The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Morning. Saturday August 6, 1887. THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 24, 6 August 1887, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Morning.

Saturday August 6, 1887. THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country's. Thy God's, and truth’s.

A POPULAR cry with the Opposition just now is for a heavy reduction on the Education vote. Various sums from ,£30,000 to £too,oco have been proposed as the amounts by which the vote should be reduced, and various means suggested by which the required reduction is to be effected. With the majority of the economists, £lOO,OOO is the favourite amount, and the means by which the reduction is to be effected—the raising of the school age from 5 to 7, and an abolition of free education above the fourth standard. While granting the necessity for retrenchment, we must earnestly deprecate the above means being used, for we feel certain that such a step would result in the breaking up and ruining of the whole of our educational system, which, though far from faultless, has worked well in the past, and is likely to bring about even much better results in the future.

First as to raising the school age. The opponents of the infant school system, which would be virtually abolished were this step taken, contend that the infants’ schools are but mere nurseries, saving parents the trouble of looking after their children, and carrying out a training which should be done at home. Is this a fact ? No, most certainly not. Every teacher will tell you that were the age raised, the work entailed upon him in preparing the pupils for the first and second standards would be multiplied a hundred fold. In the infants’ school, the children learn discipline, order, and neatness and obtain a training in thought and actions which renders it possible for them to master the standard work in a quarter the time they would do it in had they received no such preliminary instruction.

It is easy enough to say that this preliminary training should be done at home, but in our busy colonial life, where servants to the vast majority of homes, are an impossible luxury, few mothers have the time to spare from their household duties to undertake such training. We may take it as an uncontestable fact that were the ace raised, it would be impossible for the majority of children entering the school at seven to get through the fourth standard in five years. A few clever ones might do it, but the majority would lag behind, simply from the want of that preliminary tuition by which their minds were prepared for the more arduous Standard work.

Now for another point of view; the financial one. At the present time the large schools are virtually ’supporting the small ones through the Capitation earned by the large numbers of infants. Take the Hawkes Bay Education district alone. Upon a rough calculation we find that there are twenty-four country schools, withan ’average attendance of pupils_of under seventy-five, in eight of them the average being in fact below 30. These schools are really helped from the funds earned by the larger schools at Napier, Gisborne, Hastings. And the Port. Without such help they Could not exist, unless the Salaries Were very much reduced, and they are quite low enough already, Most the small country schools have only one teacher who would have to be paid just the same, even were the number one half. In fact were the two suggested refoi ms(?) carried out, half the country schools would either have to be closed forthwith, or be taught by illiterate persons who would be agreeable to work for about X4O or £5O a year. Were the 29,456 children attending the New Zealand preparatory schools excluded from the capitation, the various Boards would find their income so reduced that it would be impossible for a vast number of schools now existing in small and scattered districts to be kept open, We therefore oppose the raising of the age, te, the abolition of Infant Schools, alike on educational and financial grounds, Now for the upper standards, Fees are to be charged, at least the votaries of retrenchment run rabid, would have them charged, Supposing fees were charged, what would be the result ? Simply that three fourths of the pupils would at once leave the school. It would be impossible for the majority of parents to bear the expense, and poor children would thus be effectually debarred from all chance of progress in any higher station of life than their own. This in a democratic Colony should never be the case. Let all have a right to compete for the prizes of life, and not merely that section which is possessed of more worldly riches than the others. Another point. It is a fallacy to suppose that the pupils in the fifth and sixth standard are the oldest. It is the young clever child who pushes herself or himself on into the upper standards. We question very much whether the average age of children in the upper standards at the Gisborne school is over twelve, in fact we feel certain it is not. These children, if their parents could pay the fees, would actually be punished for their cleverness and their industry by having to leave when they had passed the fourth. Such a thing would be monstrous.

And from the financial point of view, what would be the result ? As with the raising of the age, we contend there would be a loss, at any rate, a saving so slight as to be far from warranting such a disastrous change. In the larger town schools the amount gained in fees would not compensate for the loss of capitation on those, who through poverty, would be obliged to leave at the fourth standard. It is said too that fewer and less highly paid masters could be employed were the upper standards less patronised. Nothing of the sort. So long as the Upper standards are retained at all, whether fees are charged of hot, some one must teach, and were there only ten upper standard pupils in a big school a special master would be required. It is an error also to suppose that the highly salaried teachers are so paid for teaching the upper standards. It is quite as difficult work and requires an equally good man to teach the third and fourth as it does for the fifth and sixth.

This idea of abolishing infants’ schools and imposing fees for the upper standard emanates from people who have never gone thoroughly into the subject, for we feel convinced that did they but study, the Department’s Annual Report and the figures contained therein, they would hesitate before dealing such a deadly blow at our grand system of national education.

Of secondary education, of the bogus universities, the expensively staffed high schools, we should have another tale to tell, but we must leave it until another day. All we want to point out is the necessity of electors exacting a pledge from the candidates that they will not take part in this ruthless would-be imperilling of the efficiency, aye, the very existence of our public schools,