The Press

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16907, 7 August 1920, Page 8

The Press

Satubdat, August 7, 1920,

State and Private Schools.

In the course of his reply to A Dunedim dentation that was asking for assistance in the provision of school hostels, the Minister of Education made the following statement yesterday: "The want " of 6uch, acscommodatyra, I am sure, is "enabling private Jboaxding schools all ■ * 4 over. New Zealand to get children that " we ought to have in our own schools, " where they would get a much better "education." There are three or four assumptions in tflns brief statement to which we are sure very widespread and well-grounded objection will be raised. Mr Parr assumes (1>) that it is the wanb of hostels attached to State-managed or schools that drives scholars into private schools, (2) that tho State (has some special right to teach a certain number or a certain class of these scholars, (3) that the method and aims of private boardingschools are different from, if not antagonistic to, the methods of State or quasi-State schools, and (4) that tihe education given at the' private board-ing-schools is inferior and inadequate. There may bo some justification for the first of these assumptions, although it is not so obviously true as some people may imagine. But Mr Parr would very quickly find himself in difficulties if he were to be asked to justify the last three. As Minister of Education, he should regard the point involved in tho fourth assumption as the most important, for the quality of education is everything. He has no grounds whatever for supposing that tho private boarding-schools of the Dominion —such, schools, for example, as Christ's College, Waitaki, or Wanganui—do not turn out. their boys as well educated, in the best sense of that word, as the schools which he calls "ours."' But while the quality of education i, everything, the attitude of the State towards 'the duty of education 0 f very great importance. "When i\T r Parr 'speaks ofc\''children that we

"ought to have in our own schools," he may mean any one of two or threo different things; it is a Jlatement that the Minister should amplify. But tho basis ho may claim for his use of the word "ought" .is not material; it is the use of that "word at all that we question. It implies at the least tho existence of sqms kind of claim hy the State upon the privilege of teaching the young of the Dominion, and the usurpation by private- schools of rights which are not theirs. We have muriii admiration for the zeal and enthusiasm Mr Parr is bringing to his work as Minister of Education, and we are hopeful that he wiil put some life into a Debarment that has for many years been dull and unimaginative, but we hope he vnll realise that the State has no exclusive rights in education.