THIRTY YEARS HENCE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4452, 11 August 1922, Page 1

THIRTY YEARS HENCE.

NEED FOR GOOD EDUCATION STANDARD. VITAL TO FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY. The attention. pF the Director of Education (Mr J. Caughley, M.A.) has been directed to a number of adverse comments in various parts of the Dominion on remarks made by him in the course of a lecture at the opening of the winter show in Auckland. He has accordingly issued the fallowing statement on the matter :

“I note that considerable comment has been made in the Press on a reported statement by myself that a person whose education does not go beyond wh.at he learned in the six’rh standard may be considered ignorant. If. the various commentators heard the setting or context of this remark I am sure that, instead of criticising it, they would have agreed with the speaker. Further, I am satisfied that none of those who heard the whole of the address would make any of the inferences or comments which have appeared in various newspapers.

“First, I may state that the remark had no reference to people now in middle life whose schooling terminated when they passed the sixth standard. A large number of such people have by their own reading, by the study of commercial, industrial, social, and political questions, and by intercourse with others continued the education they received in the primary school, and have shown by their success in life and their efficiency in a wide variety of positions that, their education has been extended far beyond that ; which they received in the sixth standard.

“Further, it may be pointed out that the primary school pupils of thirty or forty years ago entered adult life on fairly equal conditions as far as schooling was concerned; since only a very small proportion received any direct education after they left trie primary school. Therefore, any Jack of advanced education was not a special handicap, and, starting from the same general level, it was left, for individual capacity, ambition, and initiative to bring the best men tp the front.

“In my remarks at the winter show I was not referring to these conditions, but to tlie conditions that will exist thirty years hence. I was poiir.ing out that when the boys of the present day reach middle life educa-t tional requirements, not only for professional people, but for artisans anl workers of all classes, would be far in advance of what they are now. In particular, it was pointed out that the duties of citizenship in the enlightened democracy of. an advance:! civilisation would, apart from mere vocational requirements, demand that all citizens should have had more education in such subjects as English literature, history, economic geography, and economics and elementary science, than any boy or girl can at present receive in a primary school. It was fruther, pointed out that secondary education is now free to all, and a very large proportion of the primary school pupils proceeded to a secondary school course, irrespective of whether the pupils intended to engage in professional, commercial, or industrial pursuits. “It was also suggested that the proportion of pupils entering upon postprimary education would in the future still further increase, and that, with a remodelling and read'justmeut. of the present post-primary courses of education, the benefits to be derived by. all classes of post-primary pupils would be considerably increased. “Summing up on this topic, it was pointed out, therefore, that other things being equal the advantage would distinctly lie with those whose education was continued on sound lines up to the! age of at least 16 or 17 after leaving the primary school. It was then that I- stated that the pupil whose education did not go beyond what he learned in the sixth standard would be considered ignorant by the time he came to middle life, with respect either to the requirements of even an ordinary vocation or to the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. “I concluded by stating that the future of democracy depended upon a good standard of education among the whole mass of the people, since no nation can in these days of advancing civilisation rise above the level of the broad mass of the people. I feel sure that very few even among the critics of the isolated remark above referred .to would disagree with my view as it was fully stated.”