MOSTLY PEDAGOGIC.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 190, 31 December 1912, Page 4

MOSTLY PEDAGOGIC.

We shall be quite a scholastic commaity during the next week, and it will behove us all to mind our educational P's and Q's< with some degree of dignity. We ■shall have in our midst a number of representative schoolmasters who will be attending the thirtieth annual meeting of the New Zealand . Educational Institute. It is a rather alarming prospect to have to face this scholastic invasion, but just without betraying any State secrets, it is as well to remind our readers that the average schoolmaster is not what Uncle Remus would have classified as "a bad beast" after all, and he lias a singular habit of i being particularly happy and inoffensive when away from home. He has, in fact, been known to be tame enough to feed out of the hand when dissociated from blackboards and grubby paws, and to become quite as civilised a person; as the average journalist or policeman. But away from its social side—and we are sure that that will be attended to very properly while our friends are with us—the conference will have a good deal of serious hard work to attend to. That it will do this properly in the intervals of relaxation we have no doubt, and in welcoming our visitors to town we want to make sure that they will not allow themselves ■to- be "kept in" at play-time. This i? not a wholly magnanimous wish, for if we can persuade the schoolmaster from the Bluff to visit the mountain and the scholastic head of the educational institute at Rangitata Island to "play the wag" for an hour or two while he exploits the beauties- of the Park we shall secure at least two prolific advertisers of our scenic beauties. Jesting apart, the business of the conference is ,of some importance, but we trust that our visitors will not find their sessions so strenuous as to prevent tlseir letting us see something of them socially, or stop them from learning something of Our possibilities. We do not purpose feeding them on oil and ironsand and milk ad nauseam, but we shall be glad if they will accept' what hospitality the town lias to offer in the intervals of their deliberations.