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1916. NEW ZEALAND.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. MEMORANDUM BY THE MINISTER DEALING WITH SOME PHASES OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS AND REVIEWING EXISTING CONDITIONS IN THE LIGHT OF NATIONAL REQUIREMENTS.

Laid on the Table of the House of Representatives hy Leave.

Office of the Minister of Education, 30th June, 1916. Owing to the extraordinary conditions and problems created by the war, I have felt it necessary on the present occasion to place before Parliament a memorandum in addition to the Education Department's report setting forth certain views relating to educational matters. I am convinced that the education and training of the present and immediately following generations constitute the greatest reconstructive agencies at our disposal for the repair and reorganization of national life after the present destructive upheaval. The principles of educational progress on which I hope to base the successive practicable reforms in educational procedure which may contribute to the reconstruction referred to are therefore presented in very general outline. The goal cannot be reached at a bound, but I am certain that we need now to make a kind of educational stocktaking and to give some perspective to educational effort, so that the people of the Dominion, on whose cordial support so much depends, will be able to follow and encourage each movement towards a thoroughly reconstructive national policy. It is also my desire to enlist the closest attention and earnest co-operation of the members of the Legislature in the future possibilities of education, the progress of which is so closely interwoven with that of the Dominion. Education and the War. The present war has severely tested our various national resources, revealing our strength and our weakness, but after-war problems will test our ability to profit by the lessons of the war. Education, being one of the most important inspiring principles, and at the same time the direct reflection of national life, finds itself in a special measure assessed by the great national test. Whatever defects have been revealed, we find our type of manhood and womanhood vindicated and our position as a people justified by the extraordinary response of a free people to the call for national service. Our educational system in New Zealand may justly claim a great share in the honour of sending forth thousands of our former scholars as volunteers in the great cause. Moreover, one of our training-college Principals, four Inspectors, and over four hundred teachers have enlisted with the boys trained under them directly or indirectly in our schools.

I—E. IA.