SECONDARY EDUCATION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 14, 12 July 1887, Page 2

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

Now that everybody is crying out for retrenchment it is high time that the above subject received a little careful consideration. We hold that the present system of free secular and compulsory education is a grand one, and one which ought to be supported at all costs and all hazards.

But what we grumble at, and what we trust the electors will kick at most unmercifully, is the scandalous, unfair, and excessively extravagant system of secondary education which prevails throughout the large centres of the Colony by which the rich man’s child is educated at the expense of the poor man. This is not bunkum, but a genuine uncontrovertible fact. When the working man’s boy or girl comes to be 13 to 14 years of age he has to clear out from school to earn his livelihood. In all probability he has passed the sth or 6th standard, but perhaps only the fourth. Off he goes to tackle the hard realities of life; but his comrade, the rich man’s son, remains behind ,to go on to the secondary, so called High Schools, and thence on to the Universities of the Colony. We have no quarrel with secondary education, but we hold that the duty of the State ends with the primary education. The vast majority of those who profit by the higher schools cary well afford to pay for them, and in the present depressed state of the Colony’s finances it is disgraceful that the State should go on providing education for those of one class only at the expense of all. A certain number of secondary schools are necessary. Clever boys, though they be of poor family, should be encouraged to further success by scholarship,s but that secondary education should be altogether free is a monstrous tax upon the country and one which should cease at once. Few taxpayers have any idea of the vast sums drawn from land and other sources to bolster up these entirely oneclass schools. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and tens of thousands of pounds are yearly subsidising these secondary schools and all to what purpose, to the free education of the children of the rich only.

To-day is the day of reform and retrenchment. Retrenchment the colony is insisting upon, but it must be retrenchment all round. We have gone ahead too fast on the downward path of ruin by extravagance. We must pull up quickly and one of the very first items to be reduced is the one-sided, reckless expendiure on secondary education.

A DAILY STANDARD, We are now in a position to state that the Gisborne STANDARD will be issued as a daily paper within a very few weeks, This means a lot of expense, time, trouble, and anxiety, but we feel confident that the public will support us. We do not wish to throw mud at our contemporary, but we recognise that there are two sides to every question and two sets of opinions in every town, it is a good thing for a town and district to have two organs of public opinion; for a healthy state of opposition is then atorised, resulting in a better supply of news for newspaper readers, and, on matters of pilblic importance one more advocate for the best interests of the place, It rests a great deal ririth tile public to say whether they shall possess another daily paper in the place. They can help us in many ways, by advertising in and subscribing to the Standard and otherwise giving us a fair show. We have, so far, tried to go fairly and honestly for the good of the place and we trust that the people of the Bay will help us to bring out another daily paper and thus help us to help them, as we shall always endeavour to do.