The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. MONDAY, MAY 17, 1920. THE EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Southland Times, Issue 18823, 17 May 1920, Page 4

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro . MONDAY, MAY 17, 1920. THE EDUCATION SYSTEM.

If the new Minister of Education is able to carry into effect his programme for the radical reorganisa/tion of the dominion’s education system, he will have earned the country’s deepest gratitude. The principles of the scheme laid down at the conference in Wellington give hope for beneficial changes, but it will be idle to ignore the fact that there are great difficulties in the way. The expenditure on education will doubtless be enlarged considerably, more so perhaps than would at first appear possible, but whatever money is spent on an effective system of education will be re-produc-tive in a hundred handsome ways, not directly, of course, but indirectly in the improvement in the standard of thought and achievement of the future population of this country. At the present time the expenditure on education is not giving anything like the return that it should and it is beyond argument that if the addition of some millions will alter the present ineffectual system into something of real value, the dominion will be the gainer. The paramount feature of the future education system should be, we think, that its primary schools should bo devoted to primary education, that the actual foundation of education, the old Three R’s if needs be, should be built soundly, without any of the trumpery ornamentation that at present clutters the syllabus. Some little time ago a local educationalist of considerable experience criticised the instruction given in "Home Science” by saying that there was very little "Home” in it and less “Science.” The same thing may be said of our primary system—there is little “primary” in it. It does not “ground” the pupils solidly and its product is of small real value. There are young men and women to-day who wonder why they devoted so much time in the primary schools to the training of their hand and eye in the drawing of very poor representations of apples or bothered with elementary botany of dubious value while they were still unfamiliar with their own language and were unable to, write it; why they constructed a flower garden and did not know how to construct a sentence; why they were taught to bandage a wounded limb before they could repair bad grammar. Unless the foundations are strong, even if there be some labour in the building of them, the balance of the structure cannot be sound. We understand the Minister plans to provide for a purely primary system, with the syllabus restricted to the essential first things, followed by a secondary school course, a continuation class, extending over four years, in which time the capable children should be ready to approach the university period. These “central” schools, as they are called, will probably have to develop into boarding schools of some kind if the country children are to bo properly and fairly dealt with. It will be criminally foolish in this secondary system to continue the evils that now arise from the small country school. It may be possible to overcome this difficulty by means of transportation or by the establishment of hostels, but in this new system the claims of the young folk of the country districts must undoubtedly be considered. In the raising to sixteen years of of the age limit for compulsory education, the Minister will confer upon the future men and women of this land benefits far outweighing the expense that will result from keeping them out of the industrial field for two years longer than the present system permits, and the longer school period should open to the government opportunities for handling the physical and military training of our youth on effective lines. The Minister of Education, of course, is not concerned with this point. His problem is the education of the young folk on the best possible lines. The proposal that the bright pupils should not be held back to the rate of progress of the dull ones is excellent to a point; but it should not be permitted to handicap those children who develop late. The brilliant, child at school, unless we watch this selective system carefully, may obtain all the advantages to the hurt of a glower but eolider one, whose future may be more valuable, more meritorious. The changes contemplated will raise more prominently than ever the need for more teachers. It will be necessary for the department to secure a bigger supply, which means that the nay ahd conditions of teachers must be considered more generously than they have been considered in the past. All the argument about percentages of increased pay and their relation to the cost of living does not alter the fact that the teaching profession is not holding its place in combat with the counter-attractions of trade and commerce, and the department has to meet that problem and solve it. The new Minister is evidently determined upon a thorough overhaul of the system, and, without minimising the work done by any of his predecessors, wo may say that the time had already come some years ago for extensive changes, for the elimination of many “fads” from the syllabus and for the restoration to the primary school system of its chief and its only duty—the task of primary education. That is the first point at which our top-heavy education system must be attacked, and we are pleased to be able to detect in Mr Parr's statements a determination to follow that