The Evening Mail. MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1877.

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 515, 24 December 1877, Page 2

The Evening Mail. MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1877.

The new Education Act. about which there was so r.inch discussion during the last session, will become law at the beginning of the year. A new Board will bo elected by- the District School Committees, to take office on the Ist of March next. Education in Government schools will henceforward be in a measure compulsory, free, and secular. It is to be hoped that, under the new Act, the system of teaching in our public schools will be improved. Some people may have got into the habit of thinking that our local Government educational establishments are paragons, but, although in the past such an idea may have been tenable, we regret to say that it is not so now. There are too few teachers for the scholars, and, in some cases, those teachers, from want of experience, are unfit to perforin the functions which devolve upon them, even with a limited number of children under their charge. The selection of pupil teachers should be exercised with care, otherwise parents and guardians are subjected to the annoyance of noticing but little scholastic improvement in their children from one year's end to the other; and thus the most valuable and impressionable period of a child's life is frittered away ; not because it is a dullard and incapable of imbibing learning, but because of the incapacity of pupil teachers to fulfil the duties entrusted to them. A new system has of late been adopted in ■public schools, whereby it is attempted to create out of junior school children scribes and authors without putting them through the initiatory processes. The result is that they acquire habits which are fatal to either good penmanship or composition. Writing '•'exercises" is botli delightful and instructive to school children, but they should be led into it by the proper channels. In all things there is an alphabet, which should be mastered before being abandoned for higher game, just as a ladder should be mounted rung by rung. We presume, too, that it is iu consequence of the paucity of teachers that girls and boys are taught together, a custom most undesirable for many reasons. "Boys will be boys," and everybody knows that their habits and language, although somewhat pardonable because they are boys, would be absolutely shocking if adopted by girls. It may be impossible to point to any particular immoral effect that the mixture of boys and girls in our public schools has produced ; but that the system is morally injurious we have not the least doubt. We trust that the commencement of the new educational era, which will provide a uniform system of education throughout the Colony, will be characterised by reformation of the evils we have mentioned, and of many others which, no doubt, exist in our public schools.