The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1919 A STATE DEFAULT.

Taihape Daily Times, 21 May 1919, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1919 A STATE DEFAULT.

(With whieh is tncorporated The Taihaps Boat and News).

It is only in recent years that the British Empire has troubled about what is termed secondary education; indeed, it is within the memory of some yet

living that primary education of the people om,-a broad, popular' basis became a matter of concern to the State. Great strides have, admittedly, been made, but how lamentably short arc the attainments compared, with what might and should have been. All arc aware, even the Minister of Education, of the deplorable short-comings of our New Zealand education system, which can only bo correctly apprised by what it produces. One looks in vain for men who have been educated up to the positions they occupy in ithe economic life of* the country, their success or failure is ; very much a matter of chance, the consequence of some stray opportunity that came their way. We believe it, was Matthew Arnold that first used the term, secondary education; the British Empire has r however, increasingly harped upon the term until it is one of most common use, but what has been done to really justify the term being used in connection with this Dominion’s education system? It would not be unreasonable to -say that we comprise a community of misfits. Not only arc the youth of the country without any knowledge of that by which they have an average chance of reaching the highest rungs in the ladder of citizenship, but our system, has failed in that it has not instilled, or inculcated any desire or love for that knowledge. As parents are the natural controllers of the bent of their children up to the early years of their school age, so the State has, or should have, the control of an effective system whereby those children arc trained to use the facilities an indulgent creator has endowed them with to the extreme limit of their economic usefulness. Look where one will in shop, office, factory, mine, or in the vmrions professions, there is overwhelming evidence of unconcern, and haplessncss. Disaster can only spring from such easualness in the production of that which is so obviously vital to our standing as a people among the nations of the earth. So long as man \has to cat his broad by the sweat of his brow, a ■condition that will remain current with man to the time of his extinction, his labour should be trained and directed Into those channels in which the unsurpassable maximum is attainable to him. Look where one will in office or workshop, in finance and trade, in commerce, and on the farm, what disastrous results are visible. The haphazard growth of citizenship from the economic viewpoint, the only vital viewpoint, are disappointing and disheartening to hopelessness. Some stir has recently been made to improve the condition of teachers generally, but it must be assured that whatever ithe concessions they have been less political than the desire for public benefit. The best cannot be achieved unless the best of masiter hands are controlling and conducting tutorial operations. We must have the right kind of teacher to produce the right result, and no remuneration within reason is too great for such teachers

The public concern, however, does not | end with increasing salaries, in fact, | it (then only commences; having put the salary problem on a sane footing the public will interestingly look for, , and expect, a steady growth of good results on pupils. . We are daily faced with incontrovertible evidence (that our | education system misses' the mark; ( that it Hoes not aim high enough; that it is disastrously faulty and that it becomes more so until the young man or -woman emerges from the tedious humdrum environment of tutilage, when they shake themselves free of the educational stuffiness and commence do look around in search &of something, or some occupation in which their desires or bent for the time being may be gratified. Instead of our education system finishing in factories, workshops, offices, and other highly essential occupations, it casts pupils off in a half-finished condition to drift while they are in the transi- j tion stage of character formation The State is putting a very great handicap upon present day Industries'; boys, after our education system turns them adrift, are tossed about on the inclus? trial tide, first finding a lodgment in an office, then in, a factory, perhaps finally ending np in a blacksmith’s shop, a vocation for which they were least of all physically or mentally naturally adapted. >So we go on until W 7 o are charged with being a nation of misfits. Businessmen, factoryowners, financial institutions, farmers arc cursed with youths and young men roaming around, wanting employment, who arc expert at nothing; their natural proclivities have not been touched; our system of education taught them to read and write hut gave no thought or attention to what was to become of them when the time came for them to he absorbcl in the economic processes of the community. The percentage of clever men is lamentably, deplorably low in every walk of 1 life—in parliament, churches, schools, on farms, in industries, commerce, finance and wherever observation tends, and this' is all owing to indifference and parsimony; to an inadequate, jefky system of education, which is entirely wanting in unity and connectivity. It is said by statisticians that every man should be worth £246 to the State, from the total of man value would have to be deducted the human parasites, but could not the human crop bo rendered worth much more by a training that takes (the young life from its parents and places it in the economy of the State, a finished article, leaving no interim for drift into the parasitica] class, eliminating the wandering from place to place, cigarette smoking, vice-gleaning 1 period? It is for educationists and • parliament to remedy .this, to remove the baneful blot on the trailing system of our youth. It is not for public journals to give details upon which to build a saner training structure, for what is essential to maximum success is abundantly forced upon the notice of all those whose paramount duly lies in ifhat direction. Wc urge parents to take deeper thought for the training of their sons and daughters ! who are to uphold the be at. traditions of the British race. Let parents make good tlio State's lack of earnestness on this obviously all-important problem.