REASON, NOT AGITATION

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 80, 1 October 1931, Page 12

REASON, NOT AGITATION

The deputation which met the Minister of Education yesterday reflected more, credit on the New Zealand Federation of Teachers than did the leaflet recently issued by the Federation* The leaflet was an attempt to settle this important issue by agitation and misrepresentation. It was emphatically not an appeal of the kind which should be issued by representatives of the people who are expected to guide the' children in clear and honest thinking. One statement alone condemned it. "The Budget is to be balanced at the expense of the children"—repeated in the form:."lt is a cowardly thing to say that because the Budget has to be balanced the children must pay for it." The federation may say that it has been goaded into such methods by an agitation against educational expenditure and by threats of ruthless pruning. But the teachers themselves cannot escape responsibility for this agitation. When it was seen that general economy was essential! who raised the senseless catch-cry: "Hands off education"? It was the unreasoning resistance to any reduction of expenditure that provoked the more direct attack and alienated some of the sympathy of persons and organisations formerly wholly favourable to the education cause. Yesterday's deputation was much more reasonable in its attitude and arguments. It pointed out quite fairly that limitation of the opportunities for secondary education would intensify the unemployment problem: But this argument has quite a limited application. Children who are kept at school, longer are not removed permanently from the labour market: only their entry is deferred. To say that those who may be refused admission to the secondary schools would be "abandoned,by the.State" and "soon degenerate into the unemployable" is to state the case fallaciously.. Are those who do not .obtain post-primary education—al- , most half the number—"abandoned by the State", and degenerating into I unemployable? But the weakness of I the deputation's statement was its complete failure to,recognise that we are passing through no mere temporary depression. We hope and tru9t that there will be a rapid and substantial improvement in national finance on which Government finance depends. But we cannot expect a return of the peak prosperity of recent years. All expenditure—public and private—must be adjusted to a new level, and education cannot escape this adjustment. If this fact were recognised, and if the educational bodies would assist in making the adjustment, there would be much less risk of the most valuable parts of the system being disturbed.