EDUCATION

Southland Times, Issue 18854, 21 June 1920, Page 4

EDUCATION

THE DEMAND FOR HOSTELS. MINISTER AND SCHOOL AGE. (Per United Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, June 19. Replying to various deputations to-day the Hon. C. J. Parr, Minister of Education, said that he had received requests for 52 new hostels from Auckland to the Bluff and the average cost would be at least £20,000. A million of money could bo spent—and he did not say spent unprofit* ably—in hostels in New Zealand, but he did not think that at the present time the country could stand that expenditure for hostels all over the country. They had not room in the schools for the children who wished to attend. They needed more primary schools, extension of the present buildings and the stripping of those that were old and worn out. The department was not turning down the question of hostels, although it could not look at all of the applications just now. He had asked the Director of Education to make out a list of the eight most urgent cases. Then he would see what the Government could do with those. After the first eight had been built, they would look to the second eight and if he remained in office they might have all in eight or ten years’ time. The suggestion that there should be easier admittance to high school training for the young farmers of the future merited consideration. He did not wish to make the entrance test harder. Indeed his inclination was altogether the other way. He wanted to help every boy—he did not care how dull he was—at school until he was fifteen, then something could be knocked into him in that extra year. They could do more for the lads than they could earlier. That was the time for the teaching of history, civics and economics, so that children would not fall an easy prey, as so many of the half-educated did to-day, to the soapbox orators with their unsound doctrines. Education was not being carried far enough in this country for the safety of the democracy. The worst thing that could happen in any country was to have an illiterate democracy or a half-educated democracy. The thing that was going to keep New Zealand a safe and proper place in which to live was to educate the people along safe and sound lines. That could not be adequately done under the education system as it was at present.

He would be glad to place before Cabinet the requisition of the Canterbury College Beard of Governors for a grant of £55,000 and for an increase in the annual grant to the School of Engineering. He proposed to ask Cabinet to consider favourably reasonable provision for the school of engineering. The Minister expressed his appreciation of the agitation by qualified engineers to ensure that engineering in New Zealand should be done by engineers. Unfortunately much of it in the past had been done by “botchers and bunglers” and the public had had to pay the cost.

ENCOURAGEMENT OF SWIMMING. CHRISTCHURCH, June 18. A conference between the Canterbury Education Board and the Hon. Mr Parr took place this morning. The Minister promised assistance in connection with rebuilding and renovating several country schools. Dealing with the request that the Department’s practice of subsidising school baths should be continued, the Minister said that swimming and life-saving should he part of every child’s education. He would find £1 for every £2 found for swimming baths up to a limited amount. He promised to give careful consideration to the request for the erection of a new training college in Christchurch. COUNCIL OF EDUCATION. HIGH SCHOOLS AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS. WELLINGTON, June 18. The Council of Education met again today on the general question of establishing district high schools. The council recommended that such a school should be established if there arc twenty pupils guaranteed who have passed the sixth standard and if there is reasonable prospect that the attendance will be maintained to that number. The motion was adopted after discussion.

The following recommendations were also adopted:— That a technical high school be established if 75 pupils who have passed the sixth standard are guaranteed and if there is a reasonable prospect of the attendance being maintained to that number provided such school shall not be established if sufficient provision for such instruction already exists in the locality or district. Further recommendations adopted wer« that headmasters of district high schools receive an increase of salary proportionate (o the responsibility of the position and that the present salaries and prospects of promotion for secondary assistants in the district high schools were inadequate to attract a sufficient number of suitable teachers. WELLINGTON, June 19. The Council of Education made a recommendation to the University Senate for various improvements in the matriculation exams, including one that examination papers should be revised to make sure that impossible problems were not set and printing errors corrected. It was stated that grave mistakes had been made at times on the arithmetic paper which had contained two problems that could not b« solved. The Latin paper was misprinted and the geography examination was so framed (hat only candidates with a good knowledge of South America could paa* though they might have a sound know* ledge of Europe and other countries.