HIGHEST CITIZENSHIP.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1934, Page 4

HIGHEST CITIZENSHIP.

The retirement of Mr. H.. Dempsey from the Taranaki Education Board is a distinct loss to that organisation. To have spent 64 years in the service of education is a remarkable record, and to have spent many years since his retirement from the active duties of a teacher in voluntary administrative work shows that Mr. Dempsey has practised the high citizenship he tried to inculcate in school pupils. As an official and as an administrator he has earned the fullest respect and warmest appreciation of all who are interested in the cause of education, and in other spheres of public service Mr. Dempsey has always done his share of community effort. He has seen many changes in systems of teaching and in the outlook upon the duties of the State towards the child. Sixty years ago there was no free education system in Great Britain, and though that beneficent policy had been adopted in New Zealand when Mr. Dempsey commenced duty in the Dominion the range of subjects taught, the buildings and equipment provided, and the possi-

bilitics of primary school pupils obtaining higher education were all very much more limited than is the case to-day. To have experienced all these changes, to have regarded them not as the annoying interference of impractical idealists, but as means to an improvement of the Dominion's education system, and finally to assist in the interpretation of the wider policy as a member of the local controlling body, is to have lived a full professional career. It is perhaps characteristic of Mr. Dempsey that he should choose to .retire while still in enjoyment of vigorous health of body and mind and thus make way for the fresh ideas and new enthusiasm rendered possible by changes in the personnel of a controlling authority. His retirement, like his long and faithful service, has been prompted no doubt by the wish to further in that way the cause of education, and if that wish has been accompanied by a natural desire to have a little more personal leisure in the evening of his years his fellow-citizens will agree that the desire has been fully justified by labour well performed. They will also hope that his leisure will be long and happy.