If I Were Prime Minister —

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 480, 9 October 1928, Page 8

If I Were Prime Minister

THE SUX is offering a prize of £lO for the best reply to the question: “What Would 1 Do if I Were Prime Ministerf” To-day tee publish the *1 Zth of the entries. The competition is "open to all comers /* and closes on October SO.

A. R. D. FAIRBURN

My political ideas would certainly be too unpopular to make me Prime Minister, but for the sake of this article I shall have to assume that the electors, in a moment of deep insight, put my party in power. I suppose the simplest way is to tabulate my prejudices. First, education. In this country the only sphere of education which is not labouring under the burden of short-sighted administration and out-of-date methods is the kindergarten department, and it is, also, as one might expect under a democratic regime, the worst financed and least widely developed. The primary and secondary schools cost an enormous sum every year and from an educational point of view are worth perhaps a tenth of the money. How many teachers and officials know' what they are driving at? One per cent, would be a charitable estimate. And [ these are mostly driving at the wrong

things. The only fortunate aspect of the matter is that we have not yet had. time to develop a national tradition in education. The system is still jn a state of flux, with continual experiments being applied. This at least is healthy. If the present state of affairs were static, it would probably remain for another half-century unchanged, and keep New Zealand where she is now—in rompers. Luckily, our system is based on no particular group of ideas. The principles on which it is built are heterogeneous—mere borrowings from the various systems of the Did World. A half-hearted attempt has been made, it is true, to carve some of our secondary schools in the likeness of that horrible and sterile monster, the English public school system, but it has not affected

our national life very deeply, and will probably die out entirely as we develop a national consciousness. There is not time here to detail the numberless faults in our system, but 1 might sum the position up by saying that for the most part our children — or, strictly, your children—are taught what to think rather than how to think. One grave defect in the secondary schools is the lack of opportunity to specialise. Even in the higher forms such tilings as trigonometry, algebra, chemistry and physics are taught to boys and girls who are not sufficiently interested in them to reap any benefit; and scholars who already have shown a tendency toward the sciences are crammed full of uncongenial learning in the shape of languages and dead literature. The examination system, with its glorification of intellectual pothunting, is mainly responsible for this. Properly regulated, examinations could be turned to good use.

Using the word education in its current and degraded sense, we are certainly over-educated as a people. We have been given size seven tastes when the national earnings can only supply us with size three incomes with which to gratify them. As a consequence the cities are full of pleasure-hungry young men who cannot be induced to become farmers or industrial producers. Threequarters of these are nothing more nor less than parasites. If economic conditions are only capable of supporting clods, then let us remain clods. We ll be much happier. State Socialism.—l should put aside any foolish prejudices I had in this connection and proceed to nationalise several other industries, as well as make an honest attempt to run efficiently those we have at present. There is nothing inherently vicious in the idea of nationalisation. We hear the New Zealand Railways cited as an example of its failure, but the evil state of our railways is due to bungling which should be unnecessary under any conditions, and to the absence of any desire on the part of the Government to give the thing a fair trial, rather than to any defect in the principle. For one thing, I should divert half of the money we are sending to Singapore to the financing of passion-fruit growing in the North of Auckland, an industry which has been neglected in the past, but which would find an immediate and profitable market in Great Britain. This would help, apart from other things, to absorb a few of the unemployed. Taxation.—l should discontinue all remissions on income tax to farmers, not because I dislike farmers, but because at present these remissions are merely a handsome gift to the big squatters at the expense of the community in general. Unemployment.—The position seems to me to be frequently misunderstood. I see it in this way: that whereas in normal times there are, say, 100 bricklayers, and just sufficient work to absorb them, in times of economic depression there are still the same number of men, but only enough work for 70 of them. The result, broadly speaking, is that 70 of them are fully employed, and 30 are fully unemployed. The obvious cure is to spread the amount of work evenly over the available labour, and let the slump be felt equally by all. There are two ways of doing this—either by means of unemployment insurance, which is unhealthy, since it means that the 70 men are doing the 30 men’s work as well as their own; or by establishing a labour bureau and compelling all demands for labour to pass through this channel. Unfortunately this is too clumsy for successful application, so I should resort to the insurance scheme.

I suppose my ideas seem rather barren and unconstructive. But, after all, it is difficult to compress one’s whole political philosophy into 1,000 words, although some of our politicians might manage it.