UNITY NEEDED, SAYS MINISTER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18937, 6 December 1929, Page 9

UNITY NEEDED, SAYS MINISTER.

SOME PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION DEALT WITH IN SPEECH

Students of the Teachers Training College in Christchurch who were assembled this morning for their breakup ceremony were addressed by the Minister of Education (Hon H. Atmore) on some aspects of the New Zealand educational system. Mr R. Wld, chairman of the Canterbury Education Board, presided, and Mr J. E. Purchase, principal of the training college and Mr E. J. Howard, M.P., were among those on the platform. Mr Purchase said they were privileged to have the Minister of Education with them for the first time. He welcomed also the chairman' of the Canterbury Education Board and Mr Howard. Mr Wild said there were 117 students leaving the college to become teachers. He assured the students, amid laughter, that .they were the pick of the district. The board was most anxious that in addition to passing on knowledge the teachers would impart to the children those qualities that made good citizens. The board would follow their careers with the greatest interest. It had been able to follow the careers of a great number of teachers with pride. Mr Howard expressed pleasure at being present with the Minister. Education had not been made a political football in Parliament, he said. He praised the work that Mr Atmore had done as Minister of Education. Mr Atmore’s interests were with education. The Minister’s Address. Mr Atmore said the students had adopted the most important profession it was possißie for anyone to adopt in the whole of the world, for the teachers prepared the boys and girls for all the other professions as well as for their own. New Zealand spent just on £4,000,000 annually on education, and when one considered that we had slightly .less than a million and a half men, women and children in the Dominion, and that half of this number were under the age of twenty-one years, one could see that £4,000,000 was no inconsiderable sum. It was a sum that indicated the importance that New Zear land attached to New Zealand was settled in the forties with the finest stock that ever left any country to colonise a new country, and it was not surprising that we had evolved a race inspired with the traditions of the old land, and determined to do better in every way. It was pleasing to find that measurements taken throughout the secondary schools showed that the boys and girls of fifteen in New Zealand were taller and letter developed than in any other part of the world. That showed that the raw material for the teacher was fairly right. We had a good distance to go, doubtless, before we attained physical perfection, but it was a satisfaction to know that the foundation of education, the healthy body, was there. Having the healthy body they must next develop the mind to a high degree of mentality. The New Zealander, wherever he had gone after he had left school, had held his own with those educated in other countries. What was wanted was not only a splendid body but a well developed mind, and they wanted to give proper direction to the child’s forces. They wanted the children to be imbued with high ideals. He as Minister was dependent to a very large extent on the co-opera-tion of all those concerned with education. Education to-day was no side line as it was in the old days of the Dame Schools. It was now looked upon as the most important department of the State. So much depended upon it. So much depended on those who were now starting out to take their places among the school teachers of the Dominion, upon how they looked upon their duties, and with what ideals they would imbue the children committed to their care. Wane Of Lunacy. In 1914 a wave of lunacy swept the world. He called it that without in any way wishing to detract one iota from the great heroism of the men who fought. That war cost £50,000,900,000, and it cost 10,000,000 lives of the fittest and best men. It cost £l2 10s per annum to educate a boy or girl in New Zealand, but the allegedly civilised world paid £SOOO to kill each man in the war. These facts emphasised how much depended upon the schools of the world—upon the ideals with which the boys and girls were imbued. The boys and girls in the schools to-day would be running the public and private business of the world in the very near future, and so much would depend on the ideals that actuated them in carrying out their work. They wanted to bring in an age of reason. Had that stage been reached in 1914 the war would not have occurred. With the work that New Zealand was prepared to do and the money that New Zealand was prepared to spend we should be able to achieve that here, so that New Zealand’s contribution to improving the condition of the world would be no negligible one. The world could be made a place of comfort and refinement for everyone. It was a goal not beyond achievement.' Man had conquered practically all th< forces of Nature—he had but himsel still to conquer. Mr Atmore drew attention to "In work that was being done by the Edu cation Commission, and said that ir New Zealand we were trying to evolvi a better system of education. The sys tem that we had in this country to-daj was an adaptation of that in the Ole Land, and there had been only smal alterations in it since Sir Charles I Bowen’s Bill of 1877. It had to be re membered that 98 per cent of the boys and girls in the New Zealand schools to-day would have to earn their own livings, and their education must b« a practical thing, and mt-rt proceed along lines of discovered aptitude. That was one of the great changes to be brought about. But in addition to the practical education there must be also the education for the leisure hours Man could not live by bread alone, but it was equally true that he could not live without it. These were facts that had to be considered in the framing uf our educational system. Unified Control. There was a need indicated, said the Minister, for unification in the control of education. The teachers should go in for unification of r> presentation. At present there were too many controlling authorities in education. It was not to be inferred from that that he wished to lessen the authority of the education boards. So far. as the boards were concerned, he believed in local control, otherwise there would not be the local interest. But that was no reason why they should have a multiplicity of local control such as existed at present.

The unemployment in the Old Country was due to the fact that Great Britain was not selling sufficient goods, and in New Zealand the cause was very largely that we were not producing enough in our dominant industries. There must be more agriculture taught. Personally he would invert the social scale as it stood at present, and place

the farmer first and the professional man at the other end. There would be a big demand for the teaching of agricultural science in New Zealand, notwithstanding that it was scoffed at by some papers that refused to treat education as being above party. Unemployment always would increase ’ ere if oroduction in the primary industries was not sufficient. Increased production from the land meant that we were producing the wealth from the only * source where we could get it. If primary production was increased the secondary industries would make progress as a result of the -stimulation caused. The educational system was being improved. *The disparity between the salaries of the head masters in the primary schools and those paid in the secondary schools demanded that there should be a readjustment at the earliest possible moment He wanted the teachers to believe that they had as head of the Department one who was sympathetic and one w*ho was as interested in the work of education as thev were themselves. The difficulties that were before them were not greater than those that had been surmounted in the past, and he wished to feel that New Zealand was making a notable contribution to the progress of the whole world. Mr C. M. Harris, president of the Students' Union, thanked the Minister for his attendance. On behalf of the students he handed Mr Purchase an enlarged photograph of the students.