South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1893.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7073, 20 February 1893, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1893.

The resolutions proposed, to the Otago Board of Education by the Hon. J. Macgregor, the gist of which was telegraphed to us on Thursday, indicate that the Otago Board baa at lenat one member who wants to keep our education system moving on. Nothing could be more injurious to the canoe of education thah to confine it within stated limitr, fixed by Act or Regulations of Medo'Peraian unchangeableness. The Education Boards as a rule refuse to recognise that they have any duties as overseers of primary education. Occasionally an individual member does so, and sometimes be is only a faddist, whereas if all members were alive to the possibilities of usefulness open to them, the faddist would have less chance of working his peculiar mischiefs. Mr Macgregor moved several resolutions designed to dethrone “percentage of passes” from the high estimation it is now held in ; one of them requesting school committees to refrain from publishing the percentages gained by their resnective schools. (As a rule they do not publish them unless they are high, or unless they have a quarrel with the teachers.) The most important motions however dealt with the actual work of education, asserting the principle that in gauging the efficiency of schools, tone, order, and discipline should be considered before percentages of passes ; and, in order to make this gauge a more trustworthy measure, asking the Minister of Education to give the Inspectors more time for inspection as distinguished from examination, by doing away with the pass examinations except in the higher standards. Wo understand that at Home tho percentage system has broken down, and has been replaced, to a very large extent at all events, by a general observation test. The Otago Board, Mr Macgregor said, had for some time adopted this broader gauge of efficiency, and he wished the teachers to know it. This revolutionary motion, with all that preceded it, was adopted by the Board ; but the other, a necessary complement of it, asking the Minister to reduce the examinations, was referred to the Inspectors for report. So also was another motion of the series, condemning “ the undue-propor-tion of time devoted to arithmetic and the technicalities of grammar,”