PARENTAL INDIFFERENCE.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 42, 5 March 1937, Page 4

PARENTAL INDIFFERENCE.

It i« a very definite and almost shameful reproach to the townsfolk of Hastings to have it reported, as was the case yesterday, that an annual meeting of the High School Parents' League the previous evening cou'ld not function formally for want of a quorum of only sixteen members. With a roll cail of about 450 pupils, tbis says very little for the real interest that the parents of Hastings and the surrounding districts take in the higher education of their children, for all the great talk we hear about its advantages. The fact of the matter is that, like everything else that is provided for us at no personal cost or with no eprsonal effort, we are all very much inclined to take the education of our children as some providential gift to be accepted as a matter of course about which we need not bother our individual heads. Were it that each parent had to put his band in his pocket to find the money wherewith to pay for his children's education, instead of having it paid for hira by the taxpayers, then there would probably be a different tale to tell. He wonld then be anxious to see that he was getting his money's worth and do all he could to promote the welfare of the sqhools. As it is, this duty is left to a mere handful of citizens whose gratuitous efforts receive but scant encouragement from those who should reaJly be the most concerned. It was only after long years of earnest and pushful endeavour on the part of a relative few that a high school was established in Hastings, but, if the advantages it confers are to be judged by the active appreciation of thein shown by tlie parents, then those endeavours have been sadly wasted. The institution of our High School was only the beginning of things, and, no matter how efficient may he its internal conduct, it is never going to develop and fulfil its great purpose unless an intimate and continuous interest is shown in it not only by the parents of the children for the time heing attending it but also by the gentral body of citizens. Our High School and its character and reputation should be objects to which we should all be able to point with that civic pride without which no urban community can make much really worth-while progress. It is therefore a manifest duty of all to give some public backing to the few whom they place in authority, and it is eertainly for the parents to give a lead in this respect. As things are the interest shown is so spasmodic as to be of very little real avail in keeping*a most important institution in the public eye. Its scholastic functions may, of course, proceed quietly enough, but there are other respects in which public interest and support are essentiai. ■ Education, such as a high school should give, does not begin and end in the cl^ss-rooms. That can come only of a much closer community relationship than already exists in Hastings between pupils, teachers, parents and citizens at large. As has been said, it is for the parents in particnlar, perhaps with the .active aid of the teachers, to do their best to bring this about. In the Hon. Peter Fraser we have a zeaJlous, energetci and, we believe, highly competent Minister of Education, and we may well rely upon him to lend practical recognition to local efforts in the way of .advancing education along lines calculated to turn out good citizens with community weilfare at heart. The best way to inculcate that is by way of example in close contact.