A DELAYED STEP.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 225, 23 September 1929, Page 10

A DELAYED STEP.

EDUCATIONAL REFORMS. ' COMPULSORY TRANSFER. "AGRICULTURAL BIAS." (By TIDAPA.) Educational reform is to be delayed till next session of Parliament. Despite its undoubted urgency, the task of remodelling an Education Act, tinkerel with till it has become chaotic, seems to be a problem too big for due consideration during the remaining weeks of the current session. As a result an over-costly system of administration will function for another year, the problems of primary and post-primary instruction will remain, and the disorganisation of stail's through transfers and promotions depending upon a cumbrous salaries scale will go on. A few months ago there was a prospect that the many disadvantages suffered by children through frequent changes of teachers would be overcome by a proposed salaries scale which made the position of the teacher dependent on his efficiency, and not upon the time-worn system of average attendance. This prospect has gone on account of the mixed reception accorded to the scale by various branches of the Educational Institute.

Salaries and Transfer. Teachers welcomed possible salary increases and better security in positions, but they fought shy of compulsory transfer conditions, even though these were to be made at Departmental expense. They wanted the payment of removal expenses, together with the right to say themselves when and where they would move. Yet it would be to the benefit of the whole educational service, if not to the individuals eon cerned, if the State had the right to move its servants to such schools as would be most benefited, or least hampered, by the qualifications or limitations of certain teachers. It cannot be denied that in the service there are many "round pegs in square holes." Teachers, in their natural desire to secure increased salary or more amenable living conditions, apply for and secure posts for which.. they are not naturally

or academically suited, and, having secured these posts, remain ill them to the hindrance rather than tiie beuelit of the great educational machine. Suet, alas, it is, and such it will remain until

there are many radical alteration While the Department is almost denied this power of transfer, the greatest mifare of all the children under its control is jeopardised. It would be further jeopardised, perhaps, by a discontented teaching service, but in other Departments State servants cheerfully w« any hardships of compulsory transfer, anil eventually teachers must fall into line. When they do. there will be fewer misfits in the staffing of our schools Post-primary Education. • The chief regret over the delaj •'- reform arises over the question of m primary education. The Minister m faced the problem valiantly, and »j brought to bear upon ii a viewpoint tw has been lacking in the past=4he W sidered opinion of one who is in to«» with all types of. his fellow men. ij often the considerations of what a cii« shall learn, and how he shall be tranj to face the changing conditions ot niw ern life, are left to the decision cloistered experts whose judgments m be affected by their own early trainband by their lack of personal tow* with people and affairs. The old «•«»» that we should train a child to ■ i» > not to make a living, has a hard to survive in these times. The stru« , to secure employment for youth W. grows harder, and against all the jttca» 'of education the masses may well a>., "Why train a child to 'live' ***> • lacks .the equipment to make a WW, Here the Minister breaks frwh.WJJ and his proposals for "an agncui tor bias" to education, much as been criticised, indicate a new eflu tionnl trend. The predominance oil | classical mould in juvenile training ■ not conform to existing world co I tions. It will be a sorry day for I generations if the present type ol■ | primary education is discarded. « j Pils a necessary function for a pWF \ tion, as distinct from a class, ot i I community, but its limitations are e dent economically, and there must wider conception of child draining the schools of to-morrow. That ne ca not embark upon this wider pfeß ' : mediately is no fault of the Wf", He has "visioned it. and only " eti " investigation shows all the d' fficul t0 that He ahead, all the problems vet be solved. Thus it may be better i reform to be delayed, in the assum" that it will bo the more in contorrai. with modern life when it passes -no the speculative to the operative sta o *