COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3067, 11 December 1908, Page 5

COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

AND THEIR TECHNICAL CURRICULUM.

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. IS IT SUFFICIENT? COMPLAINT BY THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION. REPLY TO PRESS CRITICISMS.

The Minister for Education (Hon. G. Powlds) devoted almost the whole of his remarks in opening the Seddon Memorial Technical School at Masterton, yesterday, to replying to the criticism of an article contained in the "Auckland Herald" of a recent issue, which charged the Minister with neglecting technical education of the children of the back-blocks, to tne profit of the scholars attending the technical institutions of city schools. The Minister said:—An article written with the deliberate intention of defaming" and injuring him appeared in the "New Zealand Herald," of 18th November, a newspaper which frequently went out of its way to misrepresent him. "A lie that is half the truth is ever the worst of lies," declared Mr Fowlds. With great plausibility and show of reason his responsibilities and actions as Minister of Education were represented with a falsity that he resented greatly, and which he felt justified on the present occasion in exposing. The first charge was the educational neglect of the backblock settlers. In gendralterms reference was made to cases in which children were growing up in ignorance, and it was said that "there must be many other places where the educational interests of ; young New Zealanders were being sadly neglected." That there were places, and many of them, where children are growing up in ignorance was unfortunately true; it would indeed be a remarkable country in which the same could not be said with equal truth. The imputation against him was contained in the following sentences: —"Undoubtedly the true responsibility for this state of things rests finally with the administration of the Education Department, and any Minister of this Department who had the interests of the back country children at heart would find means of preventing young New Zealanders growing up in ignorance. District Education Boards may be indifferent to the requirements of newly-settled lccilities, but it is to the State, and therefore the Minister appointed to represent the State, in this respect, to wham the unfortunate . schoolless children should be able to look for justice." This, safd the Minister, was exceedingly plausible. Unfortunately the majority of people were not in a position to know the precise relations between the Mi" r --ter of Education and the Edna. don Boards, and it wa3 therefore .iecessary for him to explain that the functions cf the Minister were not such as were thus stated; it was not true that the reponsibility rested with __ the Minister; the Minister had no power to establish any school or to direct an Eiucation Board to do so. Tne "Herald" may affect to consider t"iat it was to the Minist r that the children should be able to look, but the Education Act said otherwise. He did not intend to undertake the reorganisation of the education system until he was strengthened Sy a greater measure of public confidence t h an could be expected rrom little more than two years' tenure of the office, but any reforms that he might in due time have the opportunity of proposing would not oe in the direction of the centralisation proposed by the "Herald." The "New Zealand Herald" might be willing to take from Education Boards the

right of establishing new schools, and vest that authority in the Minister, but the people and Parliament of New Zealand are not prepared to take that step just yet. (Hear! Hear!) Under the law as it stood the sole function of the Minister was to supply funds for the erection of such new schools as are recommended to him by the Education Boards, and it was utGerly untrue to suggest that "being by instinct and «inclination a city man," he had placed the needs of the towns before those of the country. There had never been any necessity to do so; it was easy to prove that the grants for country schools was at least five times as numerous as those in respect of the towns. In no case had a well established claim for a school been refused. It was a matter of common fairness that while all the parents in the Dominion contributed towards the revenue for education no parents should have'the facilities for which they pay withheld just because they happened to be energetic enough to attempt to live in thinly populated districts. The suggestion, and there was no possibility of denying or evading it, was that because certain children in the cities had the advantage of "well-staffed primary schools, secondary schools, technical education, and a University College," therefore every child, every single child, in the country should have the same. Equally, it was a matter of common fairness that while all the parents in the Dominion contributed towards the revenue for postal purposes every one should have a postal delivery twice a day.

The Minister continued that the statements with regard to the encouragement of agricultural education were equally misleading. It was said that at the present time if a youth wished to become a plumber or a carpenter or a doctor or a lawyer, the Education Department provided him with teachers and with schools fitted with every necessary appliance. If he wished to learn something of Hgriculture, he was given practically no assistance. Schools were provided for those who take up farming. In technical education, as in primary and secondary education, the Educatien Act gives the Department no power either to establish classes or to engage teachers; this power is by law placed in the hands cf local controlling authorities, which are, as the case may be, Education Boards, High School Boards and Univeristy College Councils. The Act gives pre-

cisely the same capitation for agricultural as for any other form of technical instruction, and the grants prescribed by regulation are on the whole more liberal for agricultural education than for , any other branches. Ten out of thirteen education districts of the Dominion had appointed experts as special directors of agricultural education, and some of the districts have appointed more than one. The result had been a rapid increase of the classes for elementary argiculture in the elementary schools, and in the district high schools, as well as of the classes for the instruction in agriculture of those who have left school. The number of such classes for the last few years has been as follows:—1904, 47; 1905, 102; 1906, 253; 1907, 398. Liberal grants have been made in various parts of Mew Zealand for special agricultural laboratories, which were being used to good purpose. All the training colleges must include elementary agriculture in their course for teachers; agricultural teaching is being given in many Maori schools, and even in the industrial schools, where indeed it overshadows all other branches of technical instruction put together. It may be safely said that the number of young people already receiving some form of agricultural instruction in New Zealand was greater in proportion to the population than in either of the United States or Canada, of which so much is made by some pessimistic critics. Many of tne farmers' unions, county councils and other local bodies and societies are already contributing funds fof the education of the I farmer, a.n-1 all such contributions are subs/idiseu by the Government £ for £. Others seemed as yet somewhat slow to grasp the advantages of educating the farmer. But they would move soon, no doubt; the fact that they had not yet done so did not appear *o the speaker to be sufficient reason for taking away that local initiative and local control which had proved the very life of educational progress, not only in New Zealand, but in all the most advanced counties of the world.