"THE UPBUILDING OF A NATION."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 57, 14 March 1907, Page 4

"THE UPBUILDING OF A NATION."

There are many schoolteachers, we have no doubt, who have never looked At teach.ng and iU responsibilities in llie same light a* the President of the VZ. Kducational Institute, Mr J. A. Valentine, of Tirnaru, from whose annual report to the Institute we 'lake tlie following extractsWe have just concluded a year's work, and from most of our schools there have gone out a certain number of our pup;i» who*e time with us as their teachers s over, liow have we ali'eeted their lives and their characters Tlicy may they will, forget much of what they learned with us, but they will not for#*t us. They came to us as scholars, chey stayed with us for a time, and now they have passed away from daiiy eontact with u«. l»ut for better or for worse we have ieft our mark upon them. For all the rest of their lives they will have cause to remember us for good or —shall 1 say it V—for evil. liy our example before them, by our manners, our habits, our speech, our dress, and most of ail, by ourselves, we iutve permanently ali'eeted their lives. And bo, in part, we.have helped, x)r hindered, in the upbulling of a nation ot true men and women, ii we have rthown tine examples of self-control, we have taught them to be strong ; if we have bolJly, bravely, cheerfully, met the d.flieulties of our daily work, we nave borne our part iu developing siiu-lar characteristic's in our pupil-. From us they have learned to bo manjy or womanly, and straightforward and genuine, or they have learned to put un false appearances and veneer. Have we eo influenced the.n, as Lloyd Morgan says, in coni.ng years Lhey shall, remembering us, be stimulated to do their best, or be restrained from nieau and disgraceful acts? 1 would here plead for our pup:ls that their rights be respected by us all. What r ghts '! Ihe right to be considered individually and constitutionally, the r ght to be ,ed along those lives that shall best develop their originality, their individuality, their gifts their character. . . Our eilorts, our aims are often entirely influenced by the chuaclcr 'ol our Inspector's report?. Oh those epports! Those adjectives iu theiu! lears ago, it was the figures showing how many pupils had passed or failed, and. we lost sight of the pupik in the figures. To-day it is the adjectives by which our inspector indicates his judgment as to the quality of our work, and we lose tlie pupil behind the adjective. No sooner do we read one report than we are eager to be at work again, determined to get, if possible, a better twt of adjectives next year. The peculiarities, the needs, the natures of our pupils may be as nothing. They are, poor wretches, only the mean-; whereby we get good adjectives—or bad ones. . . And thus our school life and procedure may be reduced to a performance wherein we so conduct our work that it meets with our inspector's approval. Accordingly our inspectors and our text-books may become the chief factors in determining the kind of education that our pupils receive.