Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star MONDAY JANUARY 7th, 1918. MATTERS EDUCATIONAL.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1918, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star MONDAY JANUARY 7th, 1918. MATTERS EDUCATIONAL.

It is to be regretted that indisposition and the medical officer’s insistence on complete rest, prevented Mr. L. F. de Horry presiding at the annual confer- • once of the Teacher’s Institute in Wellington last week. Mr de Berry held the chief office and the president’s report wa's an important declaration on many phases of education, apart from those purely affecting the conditions of the teaching profession. In the course of tile address, which had to be read by a substitute, the following is of general interest as opening up a road to the reform in regard to matters educational, which it seems safe to hazard will come to pass in due course.—“A s preliminaries to the comprehensive educational reform that national welfare demands there are evident, among others, two principal desiderata. The first of these is an awakening of the general public not only to the needs of the educational situation, but to the possibilj- • ties that depend upon educational progress, for it is too often forgotten, especially by politicians, that money and energy invested in education is always highly reproductive in every form of national good. This awakening has already commenced, but it needs stimulating and extending, and from it there will be brought to the assistance of edu- I cation an active and enlightened local interest that has in the past been most noticeably lacking. An education system can do its work to the fullest effect only when directed and stimulated by a National Education Board. It calls out and employs tbe energy and intelligence of the people of each district in aiding and extending the work of the schools of the district. The host way to do this is probably to make use of the i local governing bodies—county councils, borough councils, and so on—to give them certain definite portions of the education system to administer and develop, to give them power to call to their counsel by “co-optation’ any persons whose advice and assistance would he valuable, and by a system of subsidies to encourage them to raise local lands for this greatest of all local benefits. There are parts of the work of education that could bo very greatly helped by local enthusiasm directed in this way. Physical development, art and craft work, young people's social organisations, as well as secondary and

technical schools as generally under-

stood, nil offer themselves ns scope for local interest and energy; and that they so lend themselves to organisation and co-ordination that the maximum of efficiency may very well he anticipated. With efficiency, there will also he secured economy, for when the various

phases of tluv work are controlled by the one authority the best use can he made of teaching power and equipment. The mention of teaching power brings u s to the second of the two preliminary essentials already referred to —the provision of a vastly improved teaching staff, and the more effective use of the staff when secured. More teachers are needed, a better quality of recruits is needed, adequate training of those recruits is needed, and the conditions of schools and classes must he so improved as to allow the teachers, when trained, to carry on the work of eduealr n with some regard to the lessons that the educational and medical sciences Imv > taught us. Last year 29 per cent.—nearly one-third—of the teachers in primary Schools were without, any form of certificate and in secondary and technical schools a very large proportion of the teachers are untrained. And this staff is employed in such a way as to give far from the maximum of effectiveness in results. Fn large schools,

there are classes numbering up to seventy and eighty pupils; and in some country districts there are groups of perhaps four or five schools containing

in the aggregate not- more than one of

theso largo classes. Why are these small schools not consolidated into one larger efficient, school, and the teachers thus liberated used to reduce the unwieldly regiments in the others? Tho time is ripe for taking this matter resolutely in hand. More and better recruits must be found for the teaching service, and if money is required to do it money must he found. Let it he repeated, tho. life of .the nation depends on tho education of its people, and it is no reply to say that the country cannot afford not to afford it. To refuse to provide the means of mental, moral and physical health and growth, which is what education means, it to open tho door for tile entry of disease and deoav.”