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Star (Christchurch), Issue 12404, 23 August 1918, Page 8

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the quantitative. But while we must guaru against our part-time schools becoming mere centres for vocational training, it is equally important that they should not become mere part-time academies for the pursuit of belleslettres. The truth lies between these two conceptions. The true purpose ot our continuation schools was admirably put by Mr fisher and Mr J. it. Macdonald, the last-named gentleman saying:—“ The first conception of a continuation school is that if a boy has gone to be an engineer or a builder or a carpenter, he should be taught the science and arts underlying and surrounding his vocation. He should not be taught how to use a plane or a hammer-—-that is not the business ot tho school—but the school ought to teach him what is the system of knowledge which surrounds the trade in which he is engaged, so that he does not merely become a mere efficient producer as a workman, but that his brain may co-operate with i his hand in everything that he does in earning his living. In that way his world is widened, and he becomes a free man. Under our old Scottish universities our sons who started work as ploughmen or as masons, used to work in the summer at their occupations, and then in the winter went to the university. That was an extraordinary valuable experience which we ought to try to embody as much as possible in our modem sys tem. - . . The old advantage of th* Scottish University was that you got first of all people with keen intelligences. Those Intelligences were enlivened by contact in life, and were developed in that way. There you have your continuation school.” Mr Fisher —“ 1 was waiting for the pure milk of the word, and I have got it from the honourable member. . . . The honourable member has takeu us into a region where these two terms (vocational and liberal education) are. identical. Ho has shown us that a liberal education cun be obtained, and often most easily obtained. when it is brought into immediate contact with the facts of practical life. Ido not suppose any of us who have a perfect acquaintance with a young midshipman or lieutenant in the Royal Navy has not been impressed by the extra ordinary effect which a teclurical or vocational education, liberally interpreted, intellectually concciveti, and energetically pursued, has in the development of the general intelligence, and no one can fail to recognise that often it is the shortest way to a liberal education to provide some elements of a technical training.” These conceptions of tho part which a good occupational education can play in tho development or mental power, the paper adds, .is so much in harmony w'ith our own that wo regret that we arc unable to do more than reproduce these two short extracts from a debate which so strongly emphasised the W-E.A. attitude towards education.

3fr J. B. .Strothers represented the ■W.E.A. at Wednesday's ceremony in connection with the linking up of the headings of the Otira tunnel.