The Evening Star TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1873

Evening Star, Issue 3144, 18 March 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1873

Complaints come from almost all parts of the Province of the insufficiency ol our present school buildings. The funds voted by the Provincial Council are inadequate to meet the wants of the Education Board, and therefore the Executive have resolved to bring tins subject of school buildings before the Provincial Council. In Dunedin the want of necessary school accommodation is pressingly felt. At present all the schools are crowded, and in many of the buildings there are more children than proper sanitary laws allow. To meet the difficulty In Dunedin, a proposal has been made to found a normal or training school. If founded, the school would do two things. It would relieve the present schools from overcrowding, and at the same time it would allow for the training of teachers. The pupil teacher system is now in full working order in the Province, and no teachers are now being, as heretofore, specially engaged in Britain. Otago is beginning to rely on itself for its teachers, and if due provision is not made for training our schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, our system must prove a failure. Pupil teachers in Britain are supposed to attend a normal school for two years after their apprenticeship has expired, or become assistants in schools. Here there are many instances of pupil teachers being at once promoted to be matrons, as they happened to be the best procurable. In Sydney and Melbourne training schools are established, and in both these places it is recognised that the education system of the respective Colonies would be incomplete, if there were no provision made for the training of the future trainer. It is not every one who has acquired knowledge of the subjects usually taught in schools who is lit to be a teacher. In some instances teachers may he, like poets,, bora, not made, but there are tew who, even if they have little aptitude for imparting instruction and educating youth, may not become fair teachers, if they set about acquiring the art of teaching. A normal or training school is the institution to fulfil that object. In Dunedin there are many advantages that fit it for being the site of a normal school. We have our University, with classes in the evening so arranged that teachers attending a normal school may acquire at the University all the scholarship that is usually acquired by attending normal schools. This of itself will lessen considerably the cost of a normal school, for it will be unnecessary to appoint teachers for those undergoing training except to teach the art of teaching. The number of pupils that will be taught in the normal school will also be large, and the fees received from those, together with as largo an allowance as the Government gives to rectors of grammar schools, will, we believe, provide a salary large enough for the head master. The first cost will be the greatest, as the Government will have to provide suitable buildings. But buildings must be provided in Dunedin. & go on in the same way as has been done for the past eight or nine years, adding a small wooden building every two years, without reference to the buildings already erected, and placing them sp that there must be defective organisation in the school, is not wise, and not economical : it may be penny wise—certainly it is pound foolish. But the establishment of fi normal school will also aid the University, for the same would happen in Otago as happened in Glasgow, when the Normal School, under Mi' Morrison, was first carried on. Teachers came from a,U parts of Britain to attend the Glasgow

Free Church Normal School; and there being no training school in the Colony, were one established here wo should have teachers coming from all parts of New Zealand, to get what is not to be obtained in any Province —the advantages of a training school. These teachers would become also students at the University, and the one institution would thereby strengthen the other. We trust, therefore, that as school Imildrngs rrmst bo found for Dunedin, the project of establishing a normal school will not be overlooked. If it >e not founded speedily, we feel certain that, as some of the old teachers who have been trained cease to bo teachers, and their places are filled with untrained men the result will be that our system must be a failure. An education system may have no Education Boards, and no School Committees, and yet be successful. It may_ be free and compulsory, or the opposite, and still fulfil the aim of its founders ; but if the school masters and sch 00l mistresses, though learned, cannot teach, it were better the State did not have an educacation monopoly, but that education, like the selling of groceries, were left to competition. It has often been said that the University was the cope-stone of our education system ; we do not believe it. It is an important part of the system, no doubt, but if there is no provision for teaching the teacher fm training the trainer —the s} r stem is defective; and when the blind lead the blind, it requires no prophet to predict the dangers that will befall those led, if a journey be undertaken.