WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 February 1929, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

EDUCATION.

THE NEW MINISTER

(Special Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, February 21

The Hon. 11. Atinore, the new Minister of Education, takes a broader view of the uses of education than does the average v ihan in the street. Addressing the-inembers of the Wellington Education Board at their meeting yesterday lie .impressed upon them that closely akin ;to the question of education was that-'of land settlement. The unemployment in the Dominion to-day, he said, was almost entirely due to the fact that there was an academic bias in the systeip otf education, and he was going to dpifc'his best to alter that. Unemployment was purely a matter of plain cause and effect and nothing else. The academic’ bias of the education system had put into the minds of boys and girls that they must be clerks or something like that, and by their drift to the towns the economic structure was becoming top-heavy. None of MrAtmore’s recent predecessors in the direction of the Education Department has taken this broad view of the uses olf school training and it is to be hoped the teaching profession and Parliament will pay some heed to the Minister s suggestions, S MINISTER AND PEOPLE. The secondary industries, Mr Atmore went on to say, could be stimulated only by increasing the purchasing power derived from the primary industries. There would be no cure for unemployment until that fact was frankly faced. The building of roads and other relief works were mere palliatives. Education must have a wide agricultural basis. The present methods were simply, combing the bright boys out of the country into the town...to further aggravate*., the^ -l competition there. Turning to another subject with refreshing candour Mr Atmore maintained that in all questions of policy a decision should be reached by the Minister, as the. representative of the people. In this, he explained, he meant no reflection ' whatever on the officers of his department. A Minister was not an expert and he should nob he. An expert in an executive position was a danger to the community. Experts were paid to “advise Ministers who were the- representatives of the people and should deckle all questions olf policy. The new Minister of Education, as his friends expected, obviously is going to be master in ‘ his own domain. STATE INTERFERENCE.

The substance of the reply of Sir Joseph Ward to the big deputation from the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee, which waited upon hirrl a fortnight ago to point out the perils adherent to State and municipal trading in opposition to private enterprise « now available. Having reviewed the

at yr-'jLi: ~ -rin. 1 subjectingcnera 1 terms Sir Joseph said he could hot with justice to Parliament go into the subject as' fully as he might otherwise have done; hut he thought he might without ftny impropriety point to the incongruity of a man in business paying all the taxation that was going while some State Department close by in the same line of business paid neither income tax nor land tax. No one could make him think that in any of the cities of New Zealand it was a fair thing for municipalities to compete against ratepayers in their own towns when the municipalities paid no license, no income tax, no land tax aud no rates on the premises they occupied. This sort ot thing, Sir Joseph emphasized, was not merely unjust to the individual, it was even more unfair to the community.

MOTHER COUNTRY’S EXAMPLE. Proceeding with his review of the general situation, the Prune Ministei said he wanted to make it perlectly plain to the deputation that ho was seeking to do the fair tliiiig to the farmers of the country, the fair thin” to the workers, and the fair thing to the business people. Until there was a mutual recognition of the right’s and deserts of every party, the progress and de\ elopinent of the Dominion would be more or less retarded. State interference was one of the problems that had been confronting him in one way and another during the last seventeen or eighteen years. He hoped, however, with the assistance of his colleagues, the members of all sections o! the House, and the fair-minded public, to reach a solution of the problem in the near future which would appeal to the good sense of the whole community. State interference with business wa.‘ largely a product of the Great War. both here and at Home, but long ag< the Mother Country got rid of tin incubus and to-day was definitely reaping the fruits of its decision.