"BRITAIN'S SLAVES."

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 157, 4 July 1888, Page 4

"BRITAIN'S SLAVES."

The above is the title of a work published in England by Mr George Challis, who attributes the universal depression to the popular system of education now in force in every civil' ised community. This book has been largely quoted with approval by some of the Home papers, and it has also been quoted in this country with a more modified approval, as suited to our more altered circumstances.

It may seem, perhaps, ungenerous to "rub in" the defeat experienced by the foes of our educational system the other night, but the matter is a very serious one, and it is well that the public should be kept on the alert as to the true meaning of this deeply sinister movement. The specious arguments .used by the enemy concerning the inhumanity of taking little children of tender age out of the gutters and placing them under kind and skilled teachers in well-ventilated rooms for a few hours a day, half of which time is spent in play, and the rest in playing at school; and that other argument concerning the expense of the system, which we are supposed not to be able to afford, do tell with many people, especially when advocated by a plausible orator.

The decision como to at the City Hall was, however, unmistakeable, and there can be no doubt that every city, town, and hamlet throughout New Zealand would declare as unanimously in favour of keeping our present system intact as did that large Auckland audience.

The author of "Britain's Slaves" argues that school teaching is being carried to too great an extent, and he is prepared with precisely the same specious reasoning as is employed by the public school opponents here. He, however, uses many other arguments in support of his views which no one would dare use in this country, and they are not only allowed to pass, but are quoted with approval in the old country, where class distinctions and prejudices and injustice are more clearly defined than they are with us.

Take, for instance, the following, and it must be remembered that, outrageous as is the sentiment expressed, and utterly revolting to the feelings of a democratic community, yet the quotations have appeared in colonial newspapers with remarks anything but condemnatory — one paper says : "It is a bold subject to take up in the manner the author has, but the book is an interesting one, and finds many readers." The appended passage will afford an insight into the scope of the author's teachings: "No one knows how much depends upon our little workers; tie their hands from helping each other, their parents and themselves, and then you will begin to see the effect of compulsory education. In a large family where many little hands work the labour falls lightly. Father's money buys food, one child's earnings pays the rent, another buys shoes, stockings, etc., whilst a third helps with the household work and minds the universal baby, setting the mother's hands froe to sew, bake and wash. People can live very well upon plenty of money and education, but plenty of education and no money will not fill empty stomachs, Everyone alive cannot get a living with education. There are many losing their time with education who will never need it, and do ribt value it. It would be a poor look-out for the world if it were not so. God is wiser than man in ordering it so, otherwise no one would work. Keeping children from work so many years and filling their heads with rubbish is certainly unfitting them for the coarse, hard work which they have to do." That is the real secret of the whole proceeding. Education will, it is feared by the governing classes, unfit the people for work, it will take them out of their society-compelled " proper position;" they will aspire to stand on an equality with the highest, and then chaos. Nothing could be more erroneous. Ruskin with his gang of University men did splendid navvy work. Besides, God's law is not, as Mr Challis asserts, that the majority shall slave and live in poverty that the minority may live in luxury and affluence, but that "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat." The probable result of universal education would be that God's law would take effect. There would be no more drones, all would have to work or starve, social distinctions would be obliterated, classes would be no more, and every individual would be in possession of those "softened manners" which the Latin grammar tells us accompany a knowledge of the fine arts.