EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 May 1933, Page 4

EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES.

The presidential address given by Mr. W. G. Aldridge at the annual conference of technical school tedchers was of interest to all who are concerned with the education system of the Dominion. Mr. Aldridge admitted that criticism of the system was much in evidence, and he did not claim that it was altogether unjustified. Public opinion generally is that the opportunity of advancement to higher education should be open to every pupil with the brains and grit to take it, but that a good deal of expenditure has been incurred in the past without much result. Economic pressure has made a reduction in expenditure imperative, and the Dominion looks to its experts in education to see that the funds still available provide the Opportunities for the “trier," and that the general standard of teaching is not allowed to drop behind. It is no easy undertaking. The teaching profession requires the aid of parents if the education system is to be brought nearer perfection. An improvement in the syllabus, particularly in secondary school work, has already begun, and the study of craftsmanship is approaching nearer to its rightful place than seemed likely a few years ago. Then the academic scholar was almost the only one worth studying, but with the recognition that craftsmanship and husbandry are the two main channels of employment for New Zealand boys and girls when they leave school, a saner conception of secondary education has begun. The community does not desire a lowered standard of education. Next to debt charges and unemployment relief the expenditure upon

education is the biggest item of expenditure in the national budget, and there has been no hostility to the heavy cost. There is another reason why educationists must be up and doing. If, as some think likely, the age of machinery will permit increasing leisure among wageearners it Is all the more essential that they should begin to learn while at school the difference between well and ill-directed leisure hours. Waste of time is, like all other waste, an offence against social well-being, and the aim of all real education must be to teach true citizenship.