PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17714, 18 May 1929, Page 9

PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

MINISTER’S VIEWS. REFORMS CONTEMPLATED. (Special to Times.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. In his address to the members of the Techncal Teachers’ Conference the lion. 11. Atmore made it quite plain that he had no intention to be swayed merely by age-old traditions or by professional prejudices. “While £5,000,000 a year,” he said, “are being spent on education —a large sum, but not too large if the public is getting value for the money—l do not think it is getting that value.” No member of a very alert Cabinet lias been more active than tiie Minister of Education lias been in making himself acquainted with the details of his Department. Frequently more frank than discreet in his utterances, lie opened his address by letting his audience know that he was not impressed by the multiplication of sucli institutions as it represented. He did not see the need for so many educational organisations and stressed the value of unification. Education should be a continuous process, lie maintained, and numerous organisatons dd not help in the national outlook. • About Mr Atmore’s thoroughness and courage there can be no doubt. Without casting any aspersions upon his predecessors in oOicc the new Minister indicated many reforms he (bought were needed in tiie education system of the Dominion. Modern conditions of life, he reminded the assembled teachers, were in a state of (lux, and no man in the world should lay down an education policy for a term of years. While technical education had advanced in popular estimation in the Dominion there had not been the changes and the progress in the educational system (fie. people had a right to expect and demand. The fact that there had been so little change in' the system since 1877 was in itself an indictment of the education policy. Mr Atmore aspires to placing the New Zealand system in the forefront of the education systems of the world, and towards this end w’ould make material changes in both its character and its application. Developments in these directions are being awaited with much interest.