EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 918, 11 March 1930, Page 7

EDUCATIONAL REFORM

NEED FOR ORGANISATION APPEAL FROM TIMARU The question of educational reform, particularly in relation to the restoration of local control, is the subject of an appeal made in a circular which lias been forwarded to all schools and school committees by the Timaru and District School Committees’ Association for consideration. The apathy displayed by school committees throughout New Zealand on the subject of united effort in order that all questions affecting the welfare of children attending the primary schools of the Dominion should receive the same consideration by the Government, the Minister of Education, and the Education Department, as is given to the requests submitted by the Teachers’ Institute, is the reason advanced for the appeal for- the immediate formation of one large and influential organisation, which would bo backed by the whole of the 16,000 men and women at present serving on school committees in the Dominion. “For many years the Government and the Minister of Education have been appealed to by various small sections of the school committee members and associations of New Zealand,” states Mr. G. Benstead, who signs the appeal. “But what have we achieved? Very little in the aggregate—indeed, %he school committees have been so completely stripped of all administrative authority that they count for nothing in the scheme of educational control, yet the fault is entirely ours, and the remedy is in our own hands. What is the remedy? Organise! No enthusiastic teacher thinks of remaining outside the New Zealand Education Institute, and when once it became known universally to all school committees throughout the Dominion that it is to their advantage to enrol as members of one large and powerful organisation, very few, if any, would fail to affiliate.

“Surely our reasons for forming a powerful organisation are good, seeing that the best interests of our children who are the future citizens and the coming hope of our country are at stake.”