The Daily News FRIDAY, APRIL 27. IN THE MATTER OF EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8095, 27 April 1906, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, APRIL 27. IN THE MATTER OF EDUCATION.

" Diuw a map of North Africa, from Cape Guanlafui to the Bight o; Biafra," " Give the boundaries of Egypt," " When wheat is 15s a' bushel eight men can be fed for twelve days at a certain c st, for how many clays caD six men be fed for the same cost, when wheat is 12s a bushel ?" No, we are not a lunatic. We are simply quoting at random questions asked New Zealand young sters in standard schoolbooks. You don't know what good it will do your boy who is going to draw milk, to learn how to draw a map of a place we hope he may never see. Also, you can't imagine why arithmetic books shnill require goods to be charged famine prices for, and for the youth of the country to go in for idiotic computations that only worry them silly and do no one any good. Fancy even suggesting wheat at fifteen shillings a bushel to the receptive mind of a schoolboy!

* * * * ■ The Premier, in his colonial peregrinations, recently halted momentarily :it Masterton, where he gave his | views on educational questions affecting the coming citizens. In the past the dearth of teachers has been positively painful, merely because for the most important task of teaching the coming men and women of New Zealand, someI thing less *;han laborers' wages were paid. However, as the Premier pointed out, a good deal more money was now being spent on teachers. Let this not altogether be counted unto him for righteousness, because if there had been no advance in teachers' salaries, soon there would have been no teachers. As it was, the male teacher was taking to navvying as being a more payable occupation, And any man with a brain practical enough to warrant him in tackling the teaching profession would most assuredly be a resistor, if a "passive" one, to the kind of twaddle tiiat is often considered the correct test as to the ability of a boy or girl to enter into the "leirntd" professions, the public service, and what not.

* * * * It does not matter to the kiddy in the State schools of Naw Zealand whether Erzroum is the capital of Turkish Armenia or a village in China. His own country, and the knowledge that, will most fit him for the work in life he is destined for, are of the . first import ance. It is of more importance than the grand old fl.ig and the British Empire and every old fetish that sounds a lot but doesn't pay dividends. The Premier, speaking on the fringe of a considerable portion of " backblocks," remarked that the said blocks would have to be looked after better educationally than formerly, and that there would have to be agricultural classes and so on. If the agricultural classes begin to tell the youngs'.ers in an educational way that dagga is an irritant and narcotic wee 1 smoked by the Hindoos and introduced by them to the destruction of Kaffirs in Africa, the authorities will be pursuing the course that has made them so noteworthy in the past. The educational idea in the past has not been to find out what the youngster knows, but what he doesn't know, and to te.ich him those things outside the " three r's," which lie is likely to forget soonest and which will be the least service to him in the light for a crust. While the Government is improving the lot of the backblocks' youngster—who, - by the way, is usually in the habit of doing a little practical farming to while away the hours between sunrise and school time—it might see that there are no teachers who are forced to live in tents and subsist on pigeons. It also might ar range that the " fat" be distributed a little more evenly, and tell us why a person with a degree is often found looking for ,tucker in the bush on Saturdays, while a favored person with a " I) " or an " E " certificate is in a more lordly position in a first-class town.

There is also another matter the Premier might -have promised to reform, and that is the presant system of gambling for salaries. In many educational districts in New Zealand, the teacher is paid on the " average " system, He is not in the remotest way responsible for the attendance or non-attendance of pupils, and yet a falling off in the roll number-say, at harvest time, in bad weather, or the busy milking season is the signal for the authorities to reduce his salary. On the converse, he scores if the district is suddenly rushed by a family or two with a number of children. Oftentimes the mere addition of one pupil to a school may mean the addition to a salary of twenty pounds or so per annum. We just ask you the question, " Is this putting temptation in the way of n teacher who may be underpaid, or is it not ?'' We all know such a condition has been the temptation that some teachers have fallen over. **' * *

Three cases occur to us off-hand, and for its own fault the Education Department has punished the tempted by dismissal. Another matter that calls for reform is the manner of making teachers. We hold very strongly that the teacher who enters a school to teach should be the complete article. At present the pupil teacher and the probationer is a good deal of a hack, who, while he or she has to perform a daily task, which, in our opinion, is a greater strain than milking twenty-five cows, has also to " swat" hard to pass examinations. Innumerable physical and mental breakdowns are attributable to this system. If the Government is sincere in its desii e to have the children taught in the best subjects, in the best wi.y, and by the best teachers, it will have to go about training teachers i l a more workminlike way. Teaching is a, profession of the very 'highest importance, and the people who give their lives to it are worthy of a great deal more considemtio.i than tl.oy get.. It is a lifrt si full of holidays that hundruls of people tackle if, only to find ihat lives with r.o holidays, ir. compuisin, do not result in the broken health and broken .'-pi,it that is so often the portion of the dominie.