EDUCATION REFORM.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1920, Page 9

EDUCATION REFORM.

CONTINUATION CLASSES. "So long as we have an uneducated democracy the world is not safe for democracy," said the London Times recently. It is a commonplace that the people are what their rulers make them, and since in a democracy the people themselves are their own rulers, it follows that as the people are, so will their ruling of themselves be. A democracy can make of itself an enlightened, public-spirited, united, energetic, and liberty-loving people, or it can allow itself to become grasping, tyrannical, turbulent, intolerant —a democracy \only in name. What is to decide in which direction any given democracy will tend? The only answer is, the education of the people, of the whole body of the people on whom has been placed the responsibility of a share in their own government. The education of the democracy of New Zealand is insufficient in quantity and wanting in quality to enable the people to meet the demands made on them. More than half of its young people get no further instruction than is to be attained by their fourteenth year, and a large proportion do not reach the very moderate attainments of the sixth standard. Only a Bmall proportion remain at school after, the sixteenth year, and most of these are the more brilliant young people who are better able to look after themselves than are those who have been deprived of instruction earlier.

What becomes of the large number of our young people? Almost universally they engage in some form of occupation—many of them in "blind-alley" occupations—and so fai®as their further education goes they have to trust to such influences as the chances of life may expose them to. But they have all to perform, well or ill, their part in the nation's industry; and they all have to take thjir share in the nation's social life and in the nation's government. IN ITS OH DEFENCE. It is obvious that an education that ceases at the fourteenth year cannot be sufficient to equip the growing citizen for the industrial, the social, or the political burden that he is to bear in the future.

In its own defence, no less than for its own profit the democracy must see to it that a much higher standard of education is provided. Other countries have seen the need and made provision to meet it. Great Britain, France, America, Switzerland, Germany, have all since the war period taken great strides forward in the education of their young people. w It is not sufficient that those who have the best intellectual equipment should be provided for by scholarships and tho,Sfi who are fortunate enough to have well-to-do parents should go to secondary schools —the' nation's task demands that all its sons and daughters should «be given the best possible training to enable them to do their share. Hence the need of Compulsory Continuation Classes, or of some similar form of extended education to carry on "to the paying point" the work begun in the primary schools, to prevent the enormous waste of brain-power that is now going on through lack of development, to increase the power of the young men mid women of the nation to resist the evil influences that attack them in their most impressionable years, to implant in the hearts and minds of the future citizens those ideals and principles that constitute the only sure foundation on which a healthy, vigorous animal life can be based.

Our industries require better training and keener intelligence in their workmen and more scientific knowledge tyid research among their directors; our agriculture requires more skilled method and more trained "brains" among our (farmers; our social and civic lite mands more public spirit, more knowledge of history and social movements, more insight into the nature and duties of society, more appreciation of the essential unity of the social organism, oil which depends the question of the. growth or death of free institutions. All these ai'e matters that require a degree of national education that cannut be attained by the fourteenth year. The State makes ''equal demands on all," whether they have Jeft (school at ten or twelve years of age or have spent a long life in pursuit of learning, or in the practice of a profession, or in the direction of industry. In other words, it makes every man and woman of twenty-one responsible for the most difficult and onerous of duties, THE USE OF THE VOTE, but as regards more than the half of them it takes 110 share in their preparation for that duty after the fourteenth year. Democracy cannot be made "secure for the world" in that way. Social safety demands further education; the progress of industry and commerce demands further education; the physical health and well-being of. the community demand further education; the individual citizen's right to iy> opportunity to really "live" Remands further education. The readiest, most effective, most economical way of meeting the demand is the setting-up of Continuation Classes and making attendance compulsory. It is not enough that the most fortunate ones should be provided with further means to improve their superior position: the State must see to it that nil have a "fair sporting chance," and that all are as well equipped as possible for the discharge of their part of national duty. The period from fourteen years of age to eighteen is for most young people the deciding period of life. It is that period that must be provided for by Continuation Classes. This year

ABOUT 10,00(1 YOUNG PEOPLE of fourteen or fifteen have "left school," and the State takes no further care of them. Next year there will be another ten thousand of these who have not been given their "spoi iina chance,'' and so on. Can tlic State afford to waste the brain-power that is represented in that "ten thousand n year''? Can ii afford to contemplate, each year, the addition of ten thousand new voters to the roll who have had no instruction for that function since tliey were children of fourteen? The answer to botli questions is the same, and the form that is take is the setting up of Compulsory Continuation Clasies.