THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 31, 5 February 1913, Page 4

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

W hat the Lyttelton Times designates “a strangely stupid feature of the education system” was mentioned by Mr C. H. Opie at a meeting of the North Canterbury Education Board the other day. Some £I2OO is spent annually on scholarships in the North Canterbury district, the idea governing the distribution of this money being that the exceptionally bright boys and girls should be encouraged to pursue their studies into the higher branches of education. But the Times says: “All the scholarships require that attention should be concentrated on the subjects which are supposed to form the basis of a professional career, while technical knowledge of all kinds is completely neglected. In other words, we as a community select the most promising material from among the boys and girls and proceed to manufacture the type of citizen that the dominion least requires. The members of ‘the professions’ are very useful people, of course, but their ranks will remain filled to the point of overcrowding without any assistance from the State, and there is ample scope in the fields of industry and production for the vigorous young brains which win high marks in examinations. Mr Opie suggested that half the money which is allocated for scholarships should be used in the various departments of ‘vocational education’ of the kinds supplied in the technical schools, and he mentioned agriculture and domestic science, as two of the subjects which should receive attention. We are very glad to see that the Board was ready to heartily endorse the principle Mr Opie advocated. It may be difficult to convince some parents, that the lad or lass who wins a junior scholarship will derive more real benefit from a course of training in tillage or house-keeping than from the study of the higher mathematics, but the prejudice which will suggest objections to a change is merely the product of wrong thinking. Countries like Denmark, depending on the fruits of •the soil as entirely as New Zealand does, have learned that the very best brains in the community are wanted in the primary industries. The adoption of the arrangement proposed by Mr Opie would help this dominion to a similar understanding of essential facts and perhaps to the forgetting of a little snobbishness.”