TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8312, 15 December 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

M. Adam Morawski, a special oor> respondent of the Prawda, a Warsaw newspaper, who has been cornmissioned to collect information with regard to the legislation of Australia and New Zealand, arrived in Sydney on the l&t inst., by the Omrah. M. Morawski k'formed a Daily Telegi-nph representative that Poland expected to have self-govern-meat in two or thMe years as a result \ot the revolution; and he was collecting information as to what legislation of a progressive nature was in force in Australia, and of the conditions of the people, with a view to Us being used when Poland was framing her own'laws. He will investigate the conditions of commercial, agricultural, and industrial life, and his stay in Australia will probably occupy three or four months. •,

If the Marine Department is going to make the existeuco of our coastal captains mote tolerable—and the department has announced an intention in that direction—it would not be out of place, says the Dunedin Star, if a few hundred pounds were spent on tne ooast of Ofcago. Some of Ihe lighthouses, for instance, throw behma where they are not supposed to throw them, and some day a ship will go on the rocks, and the wonder wjll be how the captain got so far out of his oourse. Coming to particular oases of misleading lights, Cape Saunders is the most familiar and the most faulty. Its ara takes in the Gull Rocks off the Peninsula, when, accurdiag to the nautical publications, these rocks should be obscured; Recently Captain M'Gilvray, working an inshore course up the ooaat, passed inside the rooks, aud saw the beam quite distinctly.

In the oourse of a speech at the annual meeting of the Southland Prisoners' and Patients* Aid Society, at lnveroargill, Mr S. B. McCarthy, S.M., made some strong comment on the lack of parental responsibility. He said an Aot bad been possed known as the Juvenile

Offenders Act, providing for yoang ahildr*a who had committed offences hfliua dealt with in magistrates' rooms, He thought the Legislature would have acted wisely if it had gone a Btep further, and given the magistrates power to order floggings to boys who deserved them, irrespective o,f the nature of the offence. In a great many oasee throughout New Zealand there was an entire lack of -parental discipline, which was the cause of much juvenile crime. The children were . not to blame. I'hey were simply allowed to grow up ' without any attempt at correatioD, and if magistrates had power, when boys were convicted of little acts of theft or mischief to order floggings; he thoaght it would be a very great deterrent. They could not be seni to gaol, and it would uot be proper, perhaps, to take them away from their parents for a first offence, but for a mngißtrate to simply admonish them was no deterrent.

"It U evident to all who look helow tne surface that the time hascime when there should be an alteration in the present pupil teacher system." These words form the introduction to a oiroular recently issued by the Headmasters of the Auokland Prim ary Schools; and the case for reform as stated therein, is strong enough to convince any rational observer that there is somutbijg radically wrong with the system as it now stand*, says the Auokland Star. Briefly, the facts are that our pupil teachers begin their work too young; they have too muoh to do, and tbey do not get enough preliminary training or experience in the actual work of teaobiug before they are expected to start on their own account. In England the minimum age for entry on the cupil teacher's course is 16, while in New Zealand it in 15 years. in England no pupil teacher may spend more than about, two days per week in actual teaching' the rest of his time is given toistudy. In New Zealand the Boards of Education, which fix the hours, usually work their pupil teachers Ave hours a day. Ac Home do pupil teacher may have charge of more than 30 children, while in this country the older pupil teachers are put in sole charge of classes of 50 or more. No provision is made here for recreation, while at Home, at least two half days per week must be reserved free from ordinary studies.