JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2489, 5 October 1922, Page 4

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL.

OPENED BY MINISTER OF EDUCATION. AUCKLAND, Oct. 2. The Kowhai Junior High School was opened by tho Hon. C. J. Parr to-day. The Minister characterised the occasion _ as a red letter day in the history of education in New Zealand. There had been talk of the new system injuring primary and secondary education, but such criticism was offered only by the ill-informed. A large percentage of children were at present going through courses quite unsuited to their special needs, whereas in the junior high schools they would be tried out by different courses and given the course of instruction to which they were host adapted. Bright children would not be forced to go slow to keep pace with dull ones, and the latter would not be left behind as at present, for it would be demonstrated that they were not dull at all, only different. “Let us,” said the Minister “try out this now idea and experiment, not slavishly copying other countries, but evolving a system of education that will peculiarly be adapted to the needs of the children in our own country.” Speaking at the opening of a new primary school, Mr Parr repudiated the charge that Auckland was favoured in expenditure on education. He characterised the charge as a slander, saying that in no other centre had overcrowding been so bad as here. He had been ashamed of the way in which the children had been herded together in the Auckland schools. This wn.s the result of the fact that the population had increased 45,000 in a decade.