SCHOOL “MISFITS”

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1929, Page 9

SCHOOL “MISFITS”

SOME PLAIN SPEAKING. NEED FOR TECHNICAL SCHOOLS. Tho headmaster of' the Mount Albert Grammar school, Auckland, made some pertinent remarks in regard to technical education at the prize-giving ceremony. He drew atention to the fact that schools provided a semi-technical course which, in his opinion, emphasised tho wastage of effort which had always been the bane of such schools. Each year brought tho saddening spectacle of a small army of misfits and disappointments, pupils who, setting out with brightest hopes, fell sooner - or later beneath tho burden of tasks uncongenial and beyond their power to bear. They mlist have either the machinery for a true technical course in addition to the academic, or the pupils should be transferred to a technical school proper as soon as their unsuitability for secondary work became evident. The prospect of solving the difficulty was not bright. In Auckland the balance between technical and secondary education was badly against the former. With only one technical institution, and that badly overcrowded, what hope was there of providing for the misfits of secondary schools tho type of education needed? “Tho Education Commission,” ho said in conclusion, “may find the solution that has proved elusive up to the present, elusive, ono imagines, only because of tho extreme cost of establishing more plentful technical education, in which direction the solution must lie. The secondary schools aro doing the best they can for their weaker pupils, but at best this is only playing with a matter that ncqte prompt and adequate determination?’ '•' ; ’ •