EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Waikato Times, Volume 90, Issue 14025, 31 March 1919, Page 7

EDUCATIONAL REFORM

PROPOSALS OF NEW ZEALAND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE. Tito proposals for reform in the Education System of Now Zealand put forward by the Now Zealand Educational Institute at its last annual meeting closely concern the public; and it,is well that the general body of the people should get a clear grasp of what the proposals mean. To do this it is first necessary to understand the principles on which they arc based. Briefly stated, they are:

(1) The right of the individual !o an opportunity to develop Ids powers for real living; (2) The necessity in the common interest of drawing out the best intellectual and moral capacities of the people for their work in life; (3) The noccssily of a high standard of education for taking part in the life of a free and self-governing people;

(4) The right and duly of all to share in a function which is the concern of all.

Taking these principles as guides, the Institute’s proposals go down lo bedrock. They assume that every child is equally entitled lo the care of the State, and that in the interests of the community as well ns of himself he must be educated to live the. best kind of life of which be is capable. The first essential for education as for living is sound health; therefore the health of the young is to be the object of unremitting care. The infirm and feeble arc a burden to themselves and lire community, therefore they must be strengthened to the point of throwing off their infirmity and of resisting disease. Hence medical and dental inspection must bo followed by medical and dental treatment; and both must be reinforced by sound teaching on health subjects, by reasonable regulation of employment, and by provision for recreation. Measures having been taken to secure sound physical health and growth, the health and growth of the mind must be adequately provided for. In the past education has been regarded as training for earning a living. It is more than that —it is a training for living. The school-chil-dren of to-day are the citizens and workers of to-morrow. They have not only to earn a living: they have to take an intelligent share in governing the country they live in, and the kind of education they get will decide the kind of citizens they will be. They have brains to be educated and characters to he developed. Neither brains nor characters can be sufficiently trained by the fourteenth year, which is when most boys and girls,leave school. In nine cases out of ten it is in the years between the fourteenth and the eighteenth or nineteenth that the character receives its permanent bias and takes on the qualities that will determine its nature for life. Therefore it is necessary that the period of training should he greatly extended. This is a reform that will not be realised to the full until the general public attains to a new point of view with regard to educational aims. Schools should not be regarded as institutions for preparing young people for money-making. Time and again tbc Institute has laid it down that the vocational aim, though important, is not the most important; it should be delayed till ttie sixteenth year, or at least the fourteenth. Time and again it has advocated training for the right use of leisure and for the duties of citizenship,: as that is the only means by which an enlightened democracy can be built up and the industrial and civic peace of the nation maintained. Hence the proposal that the full school life should 1)0 extended lo the sixteenth year and instruction by continuation classes to the eighteenth. If that is more than parents can afford, the State must assist. The State cannot afford to let brains go untrained—they arc too valuable to be wasted in that way—neither can it afford to trust its government lo “ half-baked ” citizens who have had since early youth to trust to chance for their education. There is no asset the country possesses that will pay so well for development as the brains and character of its young people. Education, like railway-building, should be carried on to the payingpoint. A lad may leave school at fourteen, thinking he will be a carpenter or a lawyer, and he a failure',', if lie stays at school till he is sixteen he may find he was meant lo be a farmer or a professor. If he goes at fourteen into a “’blind-alley'” occupation he may become an idler and a thief; two more years at school might have shown that lie was made for a business organiser or a scientific worker. The most important thing in life is that each should get into the place where he belongs, and It is only education that will give him the power lo do it. As education is for the benefit of all, its adm'iriisthation is the interest of all. Hence it is proposed that the educational affairs of each locality shall he managed by the people of that locality—not by a Board centred many miles away. Each district should have its own Education Committee managing its own affairs. Over all, guiding and directing, should be a National Education Board. The Board should lay down the general lines that are to he followed, and should provide the teaching staff and the funds: hut the local administration should he in the hands of the people themselves. In this way the parents of the pupils would be given a share in the moulding and fostering of the education of their young people, and the school would become what it should he—the centre and rallying place of the social life of each community. ‘ At present the school is a place where the children assemble for some half-dozen hours a day, and its precincts arc closed at all other times. The school should be the intellectual and social meeting ground of the locality. It should supply the place of assembly for lectures and concerts, for meetings and clubs, and should supply means of recreation for young people of post-school age. There has been a great awakening in recent years to the value of human life. Much care is taken lo preserve the lives of children. Care must also be taken that those lives must he, given the chance lo come to full fruition, and that is what education means. This requires a much wider and deeper education than lias been given in the past; the deficiencies of the past must be made good in the future.