EDUCATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XX, Issue 1166, 5 December 1863, Page 5

EDUCATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LYTTELTON TIMES. Sib,—The whole of the report of the Education Commissioners having, through the medium of your columns, been laid before the public, I shall feel glad if you will allow me to make a few comments upon it. And first, I think that the advocates of the denominational system, and those who have given their time and labour under the whole regime, may congratulate themselves on the somewhat more gentle and moderate tone of the whole report compared with the interim report. There appears to be all the difference between the " outs " and the " ins " between the opposition and office. We happily miss the wholesale and sweeping condemnation of every thing that had gone before which characterized the interim report. And there are indications that the Commissioners begin to think that there are difficulties surrounding this education question. Now, these are hopeful signs. But beyond this, the feeling in my mind, after diligently studying the report, is one of disappointment. It seems essentially a paper scheme—a scheme dependent upon machinery found almost impracticable to work, even when religious zeal is called upon to co-operate, when the education of the young is made a religious duty, a matter of spiritual concern, but quite impossible under the hard and dry routine of a political system. Enthusiasm and the " Government stroke " are very antipodes. All local management and local rating must be a sham when the Board has a veto upon all its acts and the distribution even of its local funds. Fancy our Municipal Councils under such management. The system proposed is a complete system of centralization, and the local committee are mere buffer springs to ward off responsibility from the actual agents. But I turn to the first division of the report—the digest of the educational systems of the Australian and New Zealand colonies: but in passing I must say that I regret that the Commissioners appear to have shunned the discussion of the English and other European systems. The reasons that they give for taking this course will hardly satisfy the public. The first reason expressing " the impossibility of obtaining accurate information upon the details of the European systems without an expenditure of money and loss of time which would have extended the enquiry beyond all reasonable limits, and would have been, after all, incommensurate with the value of the results " is rather weak, because information sufficient for the purpose, respecting the chief European systems, viz., the English, the French, and the German, supposing the experienced gentlemen composing the Commission were ignorant of them, might surely be procured in the colony. And the second reason tells equally against trial by jury, representative institutions, freedom of the press, or any other of our boasts as Englishmen, " because these things are for the most part the growth of many generations, and are intimately connected with our peculiar character as a people, &c., See." I trust, Sir, that we have not so lost our peculiar character as to consider that these institutions are inapplicable to us because we happen to live in a new country. Had sufficient data been given to the public to have enabled them to compare the English with the Continental systems of Europe, I think that they would have preferred the freedom of the former to the despotism of the latter, even though the system advocated in the report before us appears, as far as I can understand it, to be mainly based upon the latter principles. But as I said before to turn to the digest of the Australian and New Zealand Systems, interesting as this may be, what do we learn from it? That in all the systems described there is a strong family likeness, so strong that they may be classed as a system of secular instruction with religious accomplishments. The whole of them treat religion more or less as an item, or rather, as I have said before in a former letter to you, as a hostile or alien influence, being unable to ignore it altogether, they treat it with what impartiality or indifference they can command. The only difference is in degree. But I cannot see what practical benefit the Commissioners propose from the enunciation of mere details without at the same furnishing results. They do not tell us of the moral state of the people who have grown up or are living under these systems. They give no statistics. Not a word as to the political millenium and state of universal brotherhood, half promised by you and your contemporary the "Press," and by several influential members of the Provincial Council during the twenty-five minutes which they condescended to give to the discussion on the second reading of the Education Bill. The Commissioners do not tell us whether serious crime, bushrauging for instance, died away in New South Wales with the denominational system. Whether political rowdyism is ever heard of in Victoria. Whether love and charity have been rampant in Wellington since the passing of their Education Act in the year 1855. Or whether purity of morals reigns supreme over the antidenominational atmosphere of Nelson. Nothing^is mentioned as to results from which alone any inference of the practical value of these systems can be drawn. The one or two facts that slip out from casual observations seem to tell against government interference. They tell of the inability of the Nelson government to enforce correct school accounts. That Auckland with a larger population than Canterbury counts fewer children at her schools. That at Adelaide the government have a difficulty in supervising their schools. But, sir, it is time to move on. As regards the statistics of Canterbury we learn very little more from the report than we knew before, viz., that the funds devoted to education were insufficient; as, however,«the grant has been increased this year by the Provincial Council from £5000 to £10,000, it would be strange even if Government management should not shew something at the end of the year for the money. But it must take a good deal of faith to enunciate the principle that Government management will be less wasteful than any other conceivable invention for spending money. Well, Sir, we are now come to " Suggestions." 1, Central Administrations, and here we find as a sort of preface, a disquisition, if not a complaint, at once curious and pathetic, on the almost universal distrust of mankind to Government interference in education. Perhaps the maxim, "Universal consent is moral demonstration," may have some significance, but if not it seems strange that the sayings of the great Greek orator to one Philip, quoted by a greater man to another Philip, did not occur to the mind of the Commission or at least to their chairman; " That distrust is the strongest fortification against despotism of a free people." Now though William of Orange quoted these words to Philip the Second of Spain when he was endeavoring to crush out independence of thought and difference of religious opinion among his subjects in the Netherlands by fire and sword, and modern governments try the same by the power of the purse, yet in both cases it is the same spirit of intolerance that prompts the attempt. I trust that Englishmen will always meet attempts of this nature with a spirit of distrust. But the Commissioners say that the reason ox this distrust is as obvious as the fact itself, and then tell us that it is the fear of proselytism. Well this is a most quaint and droll use of the word proselytism in the nineteenth century. I wonder whether the Commissioners would tell us that , of old " proselytized," when they used the stake and fte rack, and the pittory to enforce to ; if so, but not otherwise, I can understand the torn

missioners talking of governments in these days, when they use the power of the purse for the same purpose,—proselytizing. I think the distrust so lamented over by the Commission is to be accounted for without such antiquated notions. I take it that the objection against the assumption of the office of schoolmaster by Government is that the education he imparts must in the nature of things be first of all dependent, then political. The office of teacher must in this case be of necessity an instrument of power; it places the minds of the people in the hands of Government, to form them as it pleases, to inculcate what it wills ; and secondly, and by consequence, its tone is essentially a political one. The head of the Government, —let us say for instance, our Superintendent, is a politician,—the choice, perhaps of a bare majority—and thus a political partizan ; his subordinates, be they the members of the Board, or schoolmasters dependent more or less upon him for their offices, become so to. It is in the nature of things that they should endeavour to advance the questions interesting to their patron. Their promotion or continuance in office may depend upon it, and so the whole system becomes tinged with a political leaven, moves in a political world, becomes subservient to political, and it may I be despotic ends ; and it is for this reason that a I people really free decline to entrust any government J with these powers. We have only to look to the students of the universities of France or Germany to see how the whole spirit of a State education becomes infected with a political pestilence. Now surely you will allow that this state of things is. an undeniable evil. But, beside the dread of a government system of education being used as an engine for the absolute subjugation of the minds of the people, Englishmen have an innate dislike of paternal governments; they do not care to trace the actions of their daily life to Acts of Parliament; they resent the being elbowed by government functionaries while quietly pursuing their social or domestic duties. I have said before that one cannot fail in reading the digest of the Australian and New Zealand, systems to be struck with the uniform treating of the religious teaching as an alien or hostile influence, and I regret to say that one cannot read the clauses relating to religion under the head 'central suggestions' without feeling that the Commissioners while speaking of its " being unwise to shrink from recognising the relation between religion and education," and " accepting the difficulty, &c." are speakimg as it were in an apologetic tone for doing that which should be the great end and aim of all education; and we find the same spirit of condescension throughout the heading " Religious Instruction." But, now we come to "Local Administration," and It it is under this head especially that what I call the paper scheme developes itself. We must read the whole of this division by the light of Bunsby's remark •' that the bearing of these observations lie in the application thereof," so entirely do the whole of the principles evolved depend upon the agents who are to carry them out. They present us with a purely political system dressed up in the clothes of the denominational system. The Commissioners seem to forget that the springs of action that would prompt men to undertake a religious duty, are not called into play under a purely political system such as they propose; and yet the whole working of their system depends upon this assumption, they would enlist zeal yet deprecate the cause from which such zeal can alone spring. They would take advantage of the sense of duty that would prompt a certain line of conduct yet choke the source whence such obligations arise. They would evoke a political system with a religious pulse. Now, sir, it seems almost puerile to talk of a character test, or a marriage certificate as a legal qualification for office if local rating is to confer real local management. There is nothing to prevent the Commissioners from placarding our towns and villages with —Brown and Babies—Poll Early—Vote for Gubbins and ten small children—Rodgers and Respectability, rush to the poll,—and indulging in innocent amusement of this kind; but I fancy they will find it rather a difficult task to exclude a ratepayer from exercising his right of voting. Depend upon it, sir, that if our educational system is to move in the turbid tide of the political world we must be content to take it with all its ebbs and flows. Now all through this division, and also the division headed "Finance," we find this impossible amalgamation of centralization and local management, of religious and political systems, and the Commissioners after mystifying themselves and the public with some columns of these Utopian theories, confess the hopelessness of laying down any rules, aud end in asking for themselves, as a board, indefinite powers, telling us that when all has been satisfactorily arranged they will retire into private life. But, Sir, who ever did witness, or hope to witness the phenomenon of a board or executive body voluntarily quitting the power or emoluments of office? I doubt if any one now living in Canterbury will see the termination of the struggle between centralization and local government. Now, though I cannot ask for space to enter into the question of taxation with reference to education, still I would remind your readers that when the Commission are asking for indefinite powers, they are asking for powers that may entail upon us all the most odious features of the church-rate question in England, and which may, like it, provoke resistance to the law through conscientious scruples as regards the teaching proposed under the head " Religious Instruction." It may be religious or otherwise ; all depends upon the accident of the master being a religious man, for under the purely political system proposed there can be no efficient guarantee for this. Having touched upon the leading points of the report, I have come to the conclusion that it will not meet the expectation of the people. Ido not believe that the majority of the people of this province are as yet -prepared to see religious teaching made a matter of accident—religious truth a matter of indifference —religious scruples a matter of civil disability; they are not as yet prepared to confide the education of their children to a political system avowedly framed to crush out all independence of thought and opinion —to use the words of the Commissioners themselves, a system which seeks to " make evert/ juture school entirely the creature of the Legislature Trusting that the'length of the Report will excuse the length of this letter, I remain, Sir, Your obedient servant, JOHN RAVEN. Ravenswood, Nov. 30, 1863.