TAXING KNOWLEDGE. The Abuse of School Books.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 93, 12 April 1902, Page 8

TAXING KNOWLEDGE. The Abuse of School Books.

THE Trades Conference which has been sitting in Auckland ventilated a genuine public grievance when it dug up the question of schoolbooks from its agenda paper on Saturday last. And it arrived at a resolution which must commend itself to popular sympathy and support when it resolved " That a uniform set of school-books be printed and published in New Zealand by the Government and sold at cost price." Ever since the establishment of the national school system in this colony the various Education Boards have been bitten with a craze to vary and change the school-books as often as possible. Evidently influences were at work and strings were being pulled to boom the traffic in school-books. There were various interests involved, of course. Firstly, the publishers who were competing each to score over the other in getting his particular series of readers or text-books recognised as the standard in the education districts. Then the booksellers through whom the supplies came. And naturally, if the teachers received a commission on sales, nothing would be so charming as change and variety, provided there was plenty of it. » * * What has been the result? The cost of education has been enhanced to the working man without rhyme or reason. In the first place, every Education Board in the colony has compiled its own list of school-books, and hardly two of them correspond. It is the working man with his large family who has felt the pinch of it. The more unskilled he was, and the smaller his means, the more likely he would have to move about in quest of work. If the exigencies of the labour market obliged him to shift from the jurisdiction of one Education Board to that of another, he had no sooner got a home ready for his family than he was face to face with a demand to buy them perhaps an entirely different set of school-books. The ones they had just brought with them might be quite new, but that didn't matter. Wha.t was good enough for Wellington was of no value at Napier, and what served Napier did not suit Auckland. * * » Nor was that all. The working man who had not to shift his home was also victimised. New series of school readers were constantly being rung on. He might be put to an expense of 30s. or £2 to fit out his youngsters with all the books demanded by the dominie, and a few months later the Board might revise its list and introduce a complete change of readers. No longer might Jack in Standard 111 succeed to the books used by Tom in Standard IV. All such expectations were pure \anity and vexation of spirit. The printing press had to be kept going, publishers and booksellers must have their profits, and Chips and Hodge must face the music and pay the piper. * # * The Trades Conference's resolution is amply justified. Let the schoolbooks prescribed for the national schools be uniform for the colony. Let there be a certain fixity of tenure about them — say for five years at least — so that this form of expense may be confined within reasonable limits. And finally, let the middlemen's profits — which must be large — be saved

to the people by these books being printed by the people for the people at their own printing office and retailed to them at cost price. We have handled this subject before and are glad to see that the Trades Conference has grasped its importance.