The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1915. PUBLIC SCHOOL.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 20 December 1915, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1915. PUBLIC SCHOOL.

(With which is incorporated The Tat hape Post and Waimarino News.)

It was hoped that when the Education authorities decided that Taihape did really require more schoolhouse accommodaion, and did vote a certain sum of money for additions to the present building, the work would be put in hand at the earliest possible moment, but there is yet no visible evidence that anything- further has been done. If any district ever did need additional room it is almost certainly Taihap; the conditions had become a scandal, and a serious menace to the health of children. Health authorities are endeavouring to fight' the great white plague to which present-day civilisation is too prone, Governments are spending large sums of money %o encourage scientific research in this eonnectioon, while the authorities here seem to be crassly indifferent to the health and welfare of childrn to such an extent that they might reasonably be accused of making hotbeds of our schools for the inculcation and spread of the most insidious and terrifying of all modern death-ending inflictions. Our local School Committee is certainly entitled to the thanks of all parents having children at school and of the community as a whole, for sparing no effort to induce the authorities to realise the urgent needs and to vote the money, and now it is hoped they will keep the question well to tne fore to have the work done at the earlist possible moment. It would be inhuman and cruel to a criminal degree to permit children to be herded into that building another winter. It was dangerously small then and it may reasonably be assumed that next winter the danger will be much more accentuated by a still larger attendance. While there is altogether inadequate accommo•datioon the function of a truant j officer should be suspended, for parents Avho send their children into conditions such as obtained last winter in our public schools are sending them into a deathtrap. They may come out unscathed, but Hi ere is the risk. Now that the money has been voted for additions being erected, no unnecessary delay should

take place in liavtfig the work done so that there may be no repetition of last winter's disgraceful scenes. To herd children in wet clothing, all day in a draughty corridor when the thermomtcr' is down to freezing point is something that should not be tolerated; it is nothing short of a gross disregard for the health of those who jtorc to tight the Empire's future battles. We hope the Committee will see that the immediate necessity of commencing the erection of the additional school accommodation is kept continuously before the responsible authorities.

The fact that the public school was closed on Thusday for the annual holidays, gives rise to the sequential thought that in a few weeks' time the vacation will ne at an end,., and that there may be many who will not return, wiio, in their own interests and for the national good and advancement should return. There seems a tendency in some districts to lightly value the advantages accruable to children from giving them a fairly long term in a secondary school. It is true t?uaverage lenght' of time that pupils remain "" in such schools is satisfactory from an effective point of view, but there are some districts in which the average is lamentably short of what \x should be. We may be averagelv a strong healthy people, but no matter "what the work is on* is engaged at, he is doubly equipped if his education has been what it should be. The foremost countries are those in which education is most thorough and widespread, and if New Zealand is itstand in the van of nations me training of her young people must neither be faulty nor m any way wanting. Here we have an excellent teaching staff presided over by an almost idea" master; we have a high school and a technical school, providing the means of cultivating any trend of native or inborn ability, and yet these institutions are not used to anything like the extent they should be. Surely parents are not doing their duty by their children in looking for permanent employment for them when they have passed the third or fourth standard. Cases of the kind may be infrequent, but they are, let us hope, the few extremes of parental want ol understanding or disregard for their children in the hard battle of life they inevitably have -o engage in/ There are some who, by examination, win free places, who do no credit to themselves or to the teaching staff of the secondary school they attend, owing to not remaining for the full term of the scholarship. There is, in many places, a lack of appreciation of the splendid educational system that is provided by the State, and it is not an establishd fact that some Ta?hape parents are free from proach in his connection. When the prsent vacation ends it will be gratifying to find that all who are in any Avay short of the fullest mental training the State will provide are again at their desks, urged by their parents to do their utmost in their own Interests, and to become a credit to their teachers.