1.—14b
H. HILL.
157. Ma3 r I summarise the position in this way: You believe the work of the expert should be devoted to the instruction of the teachers, and not to the instruction of the pupils?--I do. 158. Secondly, that Government aid for the purpose of further instruction should be based upon a subsidy? —Yes, a subsidy. 159. And upon local willingness to assist in the work? I would go so far as to make local government partly responsible in the way of a small rate. That is my view of the matter. 1.60. Mr. Buchanan.] You have stated to the Committee, Mr. Hill, that the teachers, speaking broadly, are not equipped for teaching what Mr. Wilson recommends should be taught, and you recommend that the teachers should be taught by coining into the town on Saturdays and being instructed by a specialist? —Yes. 161. Would not their coming into the town on every Saturday have much the same effect. in the way of overtasking the teachers, as their working during the holidays—of the effect of which you spoke? —I do not think so, because the3 7 have Sunday to rest. Their coming into town I find acts very beneficially upon them, because they thereby come into contact with their fellows. 162. How would you apply what you recommend in, sa3', a district like the Forty-mile Bush ? How would you bring these teachers into Wellington from the backwoods right away from the railway-station, letting alone the great distance, say, from Pahiatua to Wellington? —I will tell you how we do it in Hawke's Ba}\ We have two centres -the Dannevirke centre and the Napier centre. The trains are suitable for both. 163. Do you get the teachers in the schools towards the coast to come into Dannevirke?--We do as far as we can. That is why I made that explanation with regard to the winter classes. For cases where the distance was too far for the teachers to come in on Saturdays we had the winter classes, and we required all the teachers who had not been able lo attend the Saturday classes to attend the winter classes, and to take up work that we thought was necessary under the regulations to carry into the outlying districts. 164. Would you propose, then, to wait until }'0u had got your teachers trained before you did anything in this direction at all, instead of accepting Mr. Wilson's suggestion that there should be introduced, at all events, for a commencement, travelling teachers?—l think the travelling teacher would be a failure. That is my view. I think it would be a great deal better to bring the teachers to the specialist in the town. You could carry the work into the country by so doing, because 3'ou would train the teacher and the teacher would spread the teaching. Where the peripatetic man would visit one school you could have twenty teachers teaching, and twenty schools would be benefited ever 3* week. 165. Accepting that, what would you do in the meantime until your teachers were fitted to teach the children? —I am telling you that I should prefer that before you had the specialisation you should have the teachers trained in those elementary necessaries, without which, to my mind, the man is only a bookman —he teaches by the book ; he does not train the children to observe. which is the first essential in all training and anticipator- to all successful specialisation.
Thursday 29th September, 1904. Examination of H. Hill continued. (No. 3.) 1. Mr. J. AllenJ\ When we adjourned yesterda3', I think we were in the middle of your examination, Mr. Hill, on agricultural instruction ?--In continuation of what I said yesterday, T should like to put in a portion of a paper which appears in the New Zealand Institute's Transactions for 1902, dealing with technical and scientific training, especially with regard to our schools. I should like to have it put into my evidence or to have it read. 2. Would you like it read? —Yes. If you will allow me to do so I will read it: "It has become fashionable to change and add ornaments (?) to our system of education, and, without considering what is really necessary to place our system on a foundation of its own, adapted and adaptable to modifying conditions of environment, we have taken our cue from the Mother-land, where conditions are very unlike our own. Let any one take up the English blue-book, such as is issued by the Board of Education in London, and there will be no doubt as to what is. intended by the syllabuses of instruction that ma 3* be taken and taught in the night schools, the continuation schools, and the upper or secondary schools of that country. England is supremely an industrial country. She is sustained by her manufacturing superiority; but competition is so keen, internal and external alike, that every- circumstance that adds to the utilisation at an earlier period of the 3*outhful material as it comes from the schools, and ever3 7 thing that can be done to help motherhood in nursing her offspring so that she may toil in the and in assisting young men and women to become more skilful in their industrial work, is done by the State. To England industrial skill, manipulative and scientific, is everything. It means work, bread, comfort, success, power, and influence. It means the supremac3 r of England in directing the trade, and in a large measure the government, of the world. And observe what effect this trending of education to competitive necessity is having on the upbringing of young children: Halftime, scholars should not be subjected to any system of exercise or drill which, if practised in the morning, might render them unfit for their afternoon's labour, or, if practised in the afternoon, might press heavily upon a tired boy or girl.' These words are quoted from the 'Revised Instructions ' of the English code of 1899, page 659, with reference to physical exercises, and they suffice to show what so-called primary education is becoming in England as interpreted in the public-school system of that country. The schools are already little less than preparatory workshops to meet the stress of industrial competition, and an ' instruction ' such as is here quoted shows the tendency of the so-called technical and manual form of instruction in countries where competition is a case of life and death. But are we in this country called upon to adopt a similar scheme of training for the children of our pubile schools? Tt has already been explained
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