AIMS OF EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 March 1921, Page 7

AIMS OF EDUCATION.

MR. PARR’S IDEAL SCHOOL. HEALTH AND INTELLIGENCE. The aims that should be sought by New Zealand schools were discussed by the Minister for Education at the opening of a new school in Christchurch on Saturday. Mr. Parr said his first duty was to safeguard the health of the children. “What is the goal to which we are striving in our educational system?” he asked. “Hitherto it has been generally considered that it was the function of the department to train children’s intellects, and to pay no attention to their bodies. What a ruinous, mischievous idea! What a barren policy! What is the use of giving your children the best education in the world if they grow up weaklings? I want them to be healthy young animals before I start to educate their brains. Therefore, let us have healthy school buildings and spacious playing grounds all over the Dominion.” The final object should be to teach children to think clearly and intelligently. If he, as Minister of Education, taught boys and girls to think clearly and intelligently, he would have accomplished his object. Experts and educationists would give, in inflated language, half a dozen goals for the educational system, but his goal would make them good citizens of the Empire. “I should like to say to all teachers,” he continued, “that if, at the end of their school career, you have taught the boys and girls in youV schools to take an interest in good reading, in the splendid works in our own tongue, then you have accomplished everything that you are called upon to do. You have opened up a new world for them, whose interest and value cannot be described. If by sound instruction in the ‘three R’s-’ "you have taught them to think cleanly and intelligently and if you have encouraged the love of good, sound, healthy reading, you will have done much to make them worthy of the finest country in the world, as New Zealand is. . “Our educational system is sometimes criticised. No doubt it has its faults—faults which Parliament and I will endeavor to remove or alleviate—but it is something to our credit, and to the credit of our system, that it enables any boy and any ■ girl to rise to the highest position in this land if he or she has the capacity.”