UNITING THE RACES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 240, 30 December 1927, Page 13

UNITING THE RACES

EDUCATION IN FIJI NEW DIRECTOR’S AIMS A tangible desire to improve the educational facilities at Fiji was shown by Mr. J. Caughley immediately he assumed his duties as Director of Education there. He has established a special annual competition for his own prize for English language, and also has expressed himself in favour of assisting the education of the Indian community and uniting the different races into one big move forward. The first public duty of Mr. Caughley was to attend the prize-giving of the Boys’ and Girls’ Grammar Schools at Suva, and it was at this function that he impressed upon a big: assembly that education, beyond enabling us to earn a living, most suitably fulfilled its purpose when it enabled us to live worthily the life thus earned. Perhaps the best test of a true education is the way in which they spent their leisure, and in the effect their lives had on their homes and in social life. He was firmly of opinion that the study of the mother tongue and of English literature was one of the best means to forward these ends. The educational needs of the Indian people were placed before Mr. Caughley immediately upon his arrival, and in bidding him welcome, the various Indian bodies suggested that a secondary school be established in Suva and run on lines similar to the Boys’ Grammar School, with a primary department attached. Educational facilities for the women also were asked. Mr. Caughley said he felt he cou-tl promise that the authorities would, as far as is possible, be prepared to discuss with and receive suggestions from the people concerned, many of the proposals that might be provisionally promulgated by the department. With the proposal to give greater education facilities to women. Mr. Caughley was in agreement. ‘•We English people have only in the last generation or two, fully realised in actual administration, our perhaps previously held more theoretical idea that no nation can rise above the level of the women, the mothers end the home-makers of the race,” he said. it would bo largely useless to educate boys and girls for a wider, fuller, higher life unless the home conditions and surroundings were such as to aid and stimulate the uplifting purpose of education.”