The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 1882. THE EDUCATION REPORT.
New Zealand Tablet, Volume x, Issue 472, 28 April 1882, Page 15
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The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 1882. THE EDUCATION REPORT.
tE have elsewhere commented on this document, and from these comments and our quotations our readers will judge for themselves as to the efficiency of our colonial system of godless education in teaching even the rudiments known as the three " R's." This report is not a surprise to us. All the world over, godless education is inefficient for all purposes except that piimary one which is the chief reason and.the chief object of its existence — viz., the inculcation of godlessness. This is the ratio of its being, and well does its effect correspond with this ratio. But for all other purposes it has been everywhere proved to be a failure ; and it would be strange indeed if its efficiency for good purposes should prove to be an exception in New Zealand. No one denies it is an expensive, an enormously expensive system ; and that it has been amongst the chief causes of our financial embarrassments during the last three or four years. This is one great evil. It has been the cause principally of the shock sustained by our credit in the money market of the world, and which has caused so much defamation and financial distress. Who can calculate the amount of mischief thus done to the progress and prosperity of this country by the suspicion and doubts of capitalists in the last few years? and in great measure all this had its origin in the fact that our Government recklessly undertook an increased expenditure of about half a million sterling per annum for some years without providing any additional means to me^t it, and thus permitted the country to appear before the world year after year with an enormous deficit. It was expected, however, that compensation would be found in a great system of godless education, which, whilst banishing God from the schools of His little ones, would — vain expectation — make them intelligent, well-informed, and orderly and industrious citizens. But this expectation has not been realised, nor is it likely to be, if we may be permitted, as surely we ought to be, to form an opinion from the reports of our School Inspectors. Everybody is aware that larrikinism and godless schools are twin-institutions ; and now we have the highest authority for being convinced that so far as the teaching of reading and writing is concerned, our public school system is inefficient. Truly, iniquitas inentita est sibi. This is deplorable, but not astonishing. Men of experience, men of common sense, who had no axe to grind, no necessity for eking out a family's subsistence by the aid of subsidies derived from school salaries, exhibitions, and scholarships, and who did not care to enlarge their bankbooks' accounts by the small sums saved by the non-payment j of fees, and who did not belong to secret societies, foresaw very clearly that no other result could be expected from a ' system that, by means of a lavish expenditure of public money and the employment of all possible indirect means, endeavoured to kill all competition. Why should the administrators of a system, supported exclusively by the State, with which no other system having the slightest aid from the State was permitted to compete, exert themselves very much to teach anything to the children ? The well known bigotry of the State in this matter, its determination to exclude the pupils of all private and denominational schools from all participation in rich and numerous exhibitions and scholarships founded at the common expense of all its citizens, and all the other pecuniary and honorary advantages of the annual education vote, gave and gives full assurance to all Government teachers, &c, that, come what might, they would be sustained by the Government and that portion of the public directly or indirectly interested in maintaining the present system of education, notwithstanding its proved inefficiency . Hence the scandal' lately paraded before the world, of people ooining forward and in the most disingenuous way
endeavouring to discredit the reports of the Inspectors, and disprove the statement of the Education Board to the effect that the average attendance of last year had been less than in tortner years. In the estimation of these defenders of a bad JI US wj ,n, ns P ecfcors nra either dishonest or incapable, and the Education Board is incapable of manipulating correctly an easy sum m arithmetic. What will not prejudice, hatred of an opponent, and self-interest, or even supposed selfinterest, drive some people to do. This inefficient, injurious, expensive, and tyrannical system has been established and is maintained for the avowed purpose, on the part of some, of destroying the faith of Catholics ; on the part of others, of destroying Christianity : and for the sake of endeavouring to effect this two-told purpose it is maintained, in spite of its inefficiency, at an enormous expense not only to its supporters, but to all, tor even its opponents are tyrannically compelled to pay for the expense of what they abhor and do not use
