NOTES AND COMMENTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18201, 28 February 1929, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Developing Secondary Industries: Although the Press has been furnished with a mere outline of the speech by the Minister of Trade and Customs in opening the annual conference of New Zealand Manufacturers’ Association, it is clear that the Hon. J. G. Cobbe has sensed the vital importance of the development of the Dominion’s secondary industries. Some days ago, the official returns of New Zealand’s oversea trade furnished some figures which should afford an interesting examination of the trend of New Zealand trade. It was encouraging to note that a new record for exports was shown, but the fact that the Dominion imported goods to the value of £4,319,001) in a single month, an increase of £549,071 compared with the corresponding period last year, should calls© every New Zealander to pause and consider the position. The figures for other periods are equally arresting. For examp'e in the July to January period, in 1928-29, that is the seven months known as the “production year,” the Dominion importations represented a value of £28,289,657. Superficial investigators would say that the increasing bulk of New Zealand’s oversea trade ensures more general enjoyment of prosperity than has previously been experienced. Generally speaking, it may be said that the gradual expansion of imports, amounting in the seven months under review to an increase of nearly £2,000,000, indicates the return to durable prosperity, while the fact that the Dominion’s importations represent, in a single year, something approaching fifty millions in value, generally reflects the prosperity of the country. That may he so, but a closer examination of the wide-reaching consequence of heavy importations should convince the great majority of the people that if they are to find suitable avenues of employment in New Zealand for their sons and daughters who are emerging in thousands from the schools each year, the more rapid development of the country’s secondary industries ir

not Duly imperative, hut is vital in the interests of national progress and prosperity. Australian political leaders are keenly alive to the need for development of secondary industries as a solution of the problem of unemployment. “If wo are to vindicate this national policy of protection,” said the Federal Minister of Trade and Customs in a recent speech, “there must be more all-round team work among the lour parties interested.” The four parties were (I) the Government, (2) (lie manufacturers generally, (3) industrial labour, and (4) the Australian consumer. From the Government there must come a sympathetic and progressive policy, while the manufac- I turers must not only insist on the • highest degree of efficiency, but also enlist the aid of scientific research. I Labour, of course, must co-operate, and the consumer, if he takes a proper , view of the problem, ought to give i preference to New Zealand-made goods. Local Control of Education: If election pledges mean anything, the new Government has undertaken to restore local control in the administration of education. No one will envy Mr Atmore the task this undertaking imposes on the new Ministerial head of the Department of Education. Over a long period of years, a concentrated attack has been made on the authority of education boards and school committees, and such a large measure of success has been won by the champions of centralisation that to-day the average school committee has little or no say in the control of schools and teachers, while education boards have been so completely stripped of administrative authority that they are so hampered in all directions b}’ irritating and restrictive regulations that they function by the grace, as it were, of the centralised authority in Wellington. One cause of much dissatisfaction is the existing system of the appointment of teachers. This phase of educational policy was closely examined by the lay members of the Primary School Syllabus Revision Committee who submitted the Minority Report for the consideration of the Minister of Education. Inter alia, the Minority Report says: As an essential first step we recommend the abolition of the grading system of teachers, and the substitution o£ a grouping system in coniormity with the grading of schools and positions, with possibly separate gradings for male and female teachers and a clear definition of positions which may be filled by each sex or by either male or female in accordance with the exigencies of the occasion. Such a system would afford boards and committees a choice of teachers, and would thus remove a cause of dissatisfaction, it would give to boards a selection of applicants falling within a specified group, while boards could afford committees a choice from a limited selected number. Teachers would also have a knowledge of the eligible group and so be restrained from making fruitless applications. From a knowledge of the working of the present grading system we are confident that it is fundamentally bad and indefensible. It is founded on the fallacious assumption that nine separate sets of inspectors, operating hundreds of miles apart (all the way from Auckland to Invercargill) will form exactly the same estimate of tfie value of service by teachers and allot the same number of marks. It would be the perfection of folly to entertain such a conception, for it is a human imposibility, for it gives no heed to the mentality of man and is subversive to common-sense and reason. The present grading is the product of accident and not of a concrete system, under which individual conceptions would not find expression. . . . We are conversant with the fact that the system is productive of discontent and dissatisfaction, and that it leads to injustice, while it does nothing to ensure efficiency or simulate personal interest in the work to be performed. The administration of the system aggravates its badness. Under a well devised grouping system no anomalies and no fruitful causes of injustice, no such discontent as prevails in the profession would exist, for teachers would be all placed in their proper group without distinctive members, and promotion would not follow on a rule-of-thumb basis, but upon actual merit as discovered by the inspectors and disclosed by them in their reports, which would naturally enter into consideration of boards when selecting applicants for vacancies. ...”

Confronted by Bureaucracy: Members of school committees in South Canterbury will sympathise with the Ladbrooks School Committee which has tendered its resignation as a protest against the fundamentally unsound system of appointing teachers which threatens, to quote the Committee’s letter to the Board, “to undo six years of strenuous work.” The letter continued:—“But we realise that the methods of appointing teachers have arrived at that stage when teachers comprise the educational system and the board is merely a buffer for a committee to knock itself against. Who knows better than the. local school committee what the parents in any district desire, and yet we have no voice whatever in matters concerning the mainstay of a

school.” Here is a definite challenge to the new Minister to institute inquiries with the object of restoring local control in the administration of education. The committee has the support of the Canterbury Education Board, which, to quote one of the members, has “consistently opposed the present system of appointments by which the highest grade teacher must secure the position though a lower grade teacher may better suit the position.” In the case of the Ladbrooks School the grading system makes it obligatory for the Board to appoint a woman teacher to take charge of a two-teacher school, whereas the committee insists, and their protest is supported by the Education Board, that a more comnionsense system of appointment would give them a male teacher, who, as far as grading is concerned, is a little lower in the list. The Minister of Education is fared with a difficult task, but if he proposes to smash the bureaurratir control of education, he must take his courage in both hands and with a strong backing of interested public opinion. tackle one of the biggest jobs the new Ministry must face if this phase of the Party’s e'ection pledges is to he honoured.