EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3953, 8 June 1929, Page 3

EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS

MjR. W. ADAMS’ PREDICTION. STRIKING CONTRAST WITH HON. H. ATMORE’S SCHEME. The Minister of Education (Hon. H. Atmore) has stated that we are taking the brightest brains from the .country into the cities and towns to swell the ranks of the undmployed. He says that 95 percent. of oulr products come from the land, while 95 per cent, of our educational effort goes in the direction pf fitting the people to live in towns and cities; and that the four millons we are spending annually on education is out of all proportion to the benefits received, and further that our educational system has been dominated by men who were away up in the clouds and very seldom came to earth; and that we were under the false idea that it took more brains to make a successful clerk than it took to make a successful faitmelr; that our system was too academic and went only 5 per .cent, in the direction of our primary products. The Wanganui Herald publishes an interesting interview with Mr. William Adams, who .some years ago was headmaster of the Foxtou school and is now a member of the Wanganui Education Board and of the Board of Governors, besides being an educationist of over 50 years’ experience, to which he stated that he had seen many glorious changes in the Education Act, hut couldn’t recollect one finer or better, so important or so far-reach-ing, or one of greater radiance than the possibility suggested by the Minister for so changing our educational system to uplift the social and educational status of the fanners and farming. In support of this assertion he produced a copy of a book, written by himself, that had been printed and issued by the Wanganui Education Bioa>rd a quarter of a (century ago, and he emphasised it as a fact that the subject matter and his opinions remained as true and unchanged to-day as when the book was written, except that the products of our Colony bad risen from 27 millions to 47 millions, of which the farming industries claimed 45 imillions, and further that in those days we spent annually £650,000 on education, whereas we now spend £4,000,000. The Herald quotes from Mr. Adams’s work, entitled “Some Aspects of Education in Australia,” Part I —Agriculture and Nature Study, on which he wrote 24 years go and which is now the absorbing question in our educational circles.

Air. Adams’ views expressed and published nearly a quarter -of a century ago clearly indicates that his grasp of educational matters was beyond the ken of the ruling Departmental heads of yesterday and are now about to be put into practice.