THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9087, 22 June 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1888.

It is a generally accepted idea that New Zealand is a colony that has been governed nearly unto death. With a body of some hundred and forty amateur legislators, working as vigorously as they can, not only has the colony, as a colony, been imperilled, but the people are so law-ridden and fenced in that by-and-by they will not know which way to turn. But a more striking illustration of the tyranny of the law in relation to private interests, than that which came to pass a few days ago at Onehunga it would be difficult to imagine. A father was brought up to the Police Court for the crime of keeping his son, John Neville, from school, and for this breach of the law he was cast in costs and fined, with no doubt the alternative of going to prison. It came out in evidence that the man and his family are very poor, and the boy, who is about thirteen years of age, and able to read and write fluently, had obtained a situation, and his humble earnings were a substantial assistance in keeping the family from destitution. Indeed, the father stated in Court that if the boy was sent to school, as was ordered by the Bench, he did not see how he was to provide the lad with his breakfast. Yet the lad was compelled by order of the law to give up his situation and go to school. We do not hesitate to declare that an incident such as this is a disgrace, to any country professing to be in the enjoyment of civil liberty. We yiold to none in esteeming the value of education ; but education promoted by means such as this, is a degradation to our sense of independence, and an insult to our common manhood. We do not question that compulsory education is in certain circumstances a benefit, and even a necessity. But it is only when fathers and mothers, actuated by utter indifference to the welfare of their children, allow them to grow up in idleness and ignorance. In the case of such parental negligence, the State, in the interests of society, may be warranted in stepping forward in loco parentis, and compelling; the children to be brought up in orderly habits, and in the acquirement of such a modicum of information as may prevent them from being an injury to their fellow men. But interference such as that which has occurred in the case under review, is an outrage on parental rights, which are superior to the rights of any State; and whether sanctioned by law or otherwise, such interference must be equally intolerable in the mind of any man that is imbued with the true spirit of civil liberty. The fact of the matter is that the craze for education is fast becoming a nuisance and a curse ; and while ill-instructed and ill-regulated minds, under the impression that advocacy of education is a sign of culture and refinement, are rushing what is known to us as " education," to extremes, we are allowing irreparable injury to be done to the community. There is not one of us who does not know and deplore that the ranks of what are regarded as the genteel professions are crowded to overflowing, and it is our schools that do it. Instead of contenting themselves with giving a lad sufficient education to make him useful in the sphere in which he is likely to be placed, they stuff his head with useless knowledge, which appears to have the only effect of making him feel himself above his business, and ambitious to be employed at something more genteel. This unfortunate country lad, with quite enough of education to fit him for a useful life, had entered on industrial occupation—perhaps, as a farmer's boy —at which he might have been learning the honest business of his life ; and while doing so he was enabled by the little pittance he was earning to help his father to support his brothers and sisters, so rendering some little recompense for the care and anxiety bestowed upon him : when in steps the law and orders him to abandon all that, and to fit himself to become a miserable clerk or counter-jumper, or join some other calling more genteel than carting mangold wurzel ; but ono that will entail to him as the rule of his life, probably, an empty stomach and an anxious mind.' And it is to effect such conversions as this that we put heavy taxes on the people, on the plea that if we do not the people will suffer wrong in being left uneducated ! The colony that can do such wrong as this, and bo guilty of such arrant folly, has not yet got sufficient of the whip of financial chastisement; and the case of this country lad, torn from his situation and forced to receive an education which he does not want, at the expense of a country that is bleeding at every pore, affords a startling example of that foolishness of legislation and administration which goes to show our utter incapacity for governing ourselves.