NATIONAL EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8985, 24 February 1888, Page 3

NATIONAL EDUCATION.

Sir, —In your last issue I find a letter from Dr. Laishley denouncing national systems of education, especially our own. I should like to agree with so learned a man if I could, but I find it up-hill work. Perhaps a few plain answers to a few plain questions might make the ascent more easy. What is the State ? Is it not an organised nationality ? What is the principal object of the organisation ? Is it not to create an authority with power to guarantee rights and enforce duties ? Dr. Laishley proclaims the duty of the parent to educate. Does not that imply the right of the child ? But experience has opened the eyes of , almost every nation in Christendom to the dangerof trusting entirely to the option of parents. The exigencies of modern society demand popular enlightenment. All honour then to those enlightened men who have promoted the nationalisation of education. By this means the desired object is attained with less friction than by any other expedient, and, let me add, with less expense to the people. That is, if the same quality and quantity of education is to be maintained. But is it not, after all, the parents who perform the duty ? Subtract from the State all the heads of families, plus the families plus all others who would willingly contribute rather than let the educational status of their country go down, would you have a large remainder? Dr. Laishley pleads the financial exigencies of the State. What about the financial exigencies of the parents? The State, by laying the burden equally on every shoulder, makes it lighter for each ; but concentrating all the weight on the parents would make it very heavy for them. In fact, so many would neglect their duty that you would soon have a portentous area of barbaric and boorish ignorance. I know some would regard this result with complacency, from the idea that it would make the competition all the keener for the privilege of doing all the dirty jobs. I do not care much to pursue the subject further than to vindicate the principle of the nationalisation of education. But there are other passages of the letter provocative of comment. For one thing he indulges too freely in non sequiturs. One paragraph begins with this premise : "Education consists mainly of influence." From this he concludes that the colony must mature in demoralisation, that is, ruin, or the system must cease. This is chopping logic. In another passage he enumerates tne vices which our system will not cure. Among these he classes "The slavish fear of public odium." What is this'but the love of reputation? I do noli think this a very bad vice. It seems thatj even he would give an infinitesimal dose of education, but none should have access to it but the poverty-stricken, and even they should be taught nothing that was only for their own benefit but only for the good of the State. One naturally wonders what sort of teaching that would be. I think he alludes to religion, morals, and political economy. He say's that religion is the basis of morality. To which religion does he assign that honour, or does he mean every religion? Well, as I understand it, the substance of morals is very nearly alike Jin most religions. But what religion does for morals is to give it nobler motives and stronger sanctions. But wo must not forget that if religion ennobles morality, bigotry and superstition often distort it; and these are alvteys passed off as religion. We would need some guarantee* that in Dr. Laishley's model school the former should be taught and not the latter. His political economy, it seems, will be taught mainly with the view of making the working men learn to welcome tne flooding the labour market for the encouragement of capital. Finally, Ido nob think the doctor should have applied yon epithet to —to — well, to anybody. A controversy should be carried on with the maximum of light and the minimum of heat; bub these words create heat but no light, and they make a discussion resolve itself into a. quarrel.—l am, &c., Rusticus.