EDUCATION PROBLEMS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 130, 25 November 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)

EDUCATION PROBLEMS.

There is in Christchurch at present Dr. William G. Torr, of South Australia, who is touring New Zealand partly on a pleasure trip, partly conducting evangelistic work in connection with the Methodist Church of Australia, and partly with a view to studying the educational and social conditions which prevail in New Zealand. For thirteen years Dr. Torr was attached to the Education Department of South Australia, and six years ago he formed one of a Royal Commission which visited England, Scotland, and France to study educational problems. Speaking to a Press interviewer, Dr. Torr said that in South Australia they had been watching our education system here with keen interest, especially in connection with our high school. “Your high school system,” he said, “is very remarkable, and the district high schools have engrossed a great deal of our attention. A Commission to inquire into the matter will probably be set up in South Australia next year, as a result of which I anticipate the system will be adopted. Manual training and Nature study have occupied the minds of educationists a great deal of late, and what you are doing here already is only the beginning of a vast movement. Australasia has much to learn from Europe, and it is only by keeping in close touch with what is going on in the Old World in matters educational that wo can hope to advance. All teachers in South Australia are trained by the University, and I certainly think that ought to be the ease here.” With regard to his views on the old question of classics versus science, Dr. Torr remarked that the only way to awaken the large majority of boys is through the medium of manual instruction. The rest has to come later. Undoubtedly the ideal theory of education is summed up in the phrase, “Cultivate the whole man.” Dr. Torr used to be an opponent of Bible-reading in schools, but after seeing the system in operation in New South Wales and West Australia and after hearing reports from teachers and clergymen, who expressed the greatest satisfaction, he feels a great deal of sympathy with the system obtaining in those colonies. At the same time he recognises that the great question of a capitation grant arises. If a capitation grant were given it would mean the absolute subversion of the State secular system of education, and the substitution of denominational education, and for that reason he would hesitate on the matter.