THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JULI 2, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9095, 2 July 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JULI 2, 1888.

The meeting to be held to-night at tho City Hall is one that should enlist the interest of every citizen of Auckland. It will not determine for the colony what is to be done in relation to retrenchment in our education system ; but as the tirst public meeting in a leading centre essaying to grapple at close, quarters with this important subject, it cannot be doubted that the result of to-night's meeting will have an eflect not only on public opinion throughout the colony, but on the minds of legislators and their treatment of the question in the present session of Parliament. That the public mind is ripe for a change in the reckless waste that has been going on over education for a number of years is evident, for even in our own provincial district at two separate points since this question was launched at the meeting on Monday last, occasion has been taken to pass resolutions in the direction aimed at by the promoters of to-night's meeting ; and the school committee at Newmarket, and the public meeting at Hamilton, have both given expression to the feeling moving everywhere in the public "mind—that the vast cost of our education system must be curtailed. Indeed, so strongly and rapidly growing is this feeling as to the needless cost of public education, that it behoves every true friend of public education to see to it, and to guard against the danger that is looming in the future; for, if things continue as they are, it. requires no great discrimination of the signs of the times to see that the whole system will come down with its own weight; and that, if timely retrenchment is not applied, the friends of education will be suddenly startled by the throwing over of the whole cost of education on to tho shoulders of the people themselves. We maintain that the only friends of the system are those who try to eliminate from it in time the one element that is fraught with danger, its costliness. As in the case of every reform, the cry is of course raised that the system is in danger. It is ever thus. There has never been a constitutional reform proposed but the cry is raised, " The State's in danger ;" if any reform in ecclesiastical affairs is proposed " the Church is in danger f and now when it is sought to save the education system from being crushed beneath its costliness, all kinds of destructive innovations are declared to be involved.

From one end of New Zealand to the other the cry has been raised that there must be retrenchment in education as in everything else, for the simple reason that the colony cannot stagger on under heavier taxation ; but while this is admitted, there are those who say that it must not be effected in this way, or it must not be done in that way, but fail to tell us how then it is to be done. The proposal submitted to the consideration of the public of. Auckland will, if carried out, effect a reduction of £130,000 a-year on the cost of the system, and without diminishing its efficiency in the smallest degree in the objects to which alone a State system of education should be directed. For the principle of giving State instruction in a democratic community is to fit citizens for taking an intelligent part in the exercise of those civil rights and self-government which are placed in their hands. That is surely attained by giving six years of gratuitous school instruction from seven years till thirteen years of age, and not giving exemption to any child until he understands what are known as the three R's —reading, writing, and arithmetic. AU this with a liberal instruction in geography and history, with grammar and composition, with drawing and elementary science and the added subjects of singing and recitation, and drill and needlework for girls is included in the Fourth Standard, and we do not hesitate to say that when the State has given all that, it has done very fairly by its young and rising citizens. It does not, it is true, give at this stage and under this standard, instruction in "discount, stocks, partnership and exchange ; the metric system of weights and measures, and calculations witli pound, florin, cent, and mil; square root and simple cases of mensuration of surfaces ;" nor does it impart a profound knowledge of " prefixes and affixes, 1, or of "Latin and Greek roots," nor of " atmospheric phenomena, , '' and the " distribution of animals and plants," nor the " elements of social economy," on such subjects as "government, law, citizenship, labour, capital, money, and banking," all of which are included, with many others, in the Standards Five and Six. All these thing 3 are of very great importance, we have no doubt ; and those who are able to keep their children at school till fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen years may very fairly be expected to pay for them. But we do in the most emphatic manner protest that it is a wanton wrong to the humbler members of the community, who as a rule cannot, and will not, continue their children at school

to learn these subjects, to be called on to pay severe taxation on their tea and sugar, their fiour and their boots, their clothing and tobacco even, for the purpose of giving tens of thousands of pounds a year for paying teachers to impart instruction in such subjects to the children of parents who can pay for these things themselves. This is emphatically a poor man's question, but unfortunately these are the classes who are most easily led by those who appeal to their passions, and who will tell them that unless the square i-oot and atmospheric phenomena, the metric system of cents and mils, Latin and Greek roots, and the law of capital and banking are taught gratuitously by the State, the poor man will be robbed of his just rights. If six years of solid education in the things that will enable the average population to intelligently enter on the work of their lives is imparted [gratuitously to the children of the colony, those who can keep their children at home for higher education may be well called upon to pay for it. This will be done in the six years of free schooling between seven and thirteen years, and a child having passed the fourth standard, and being able to read and write and do accounts as far as " practice," including all the compound rules, and weights and measures, and bills of accounts, with grammar, and composition, and English history, and geography, and elementary science and the rest, is pretty fairly prepared for the life work of four-iifths of the population.

That all those who have been fattening on the extravagance of the administration of education;" all".those who are even connected with its; administration in any way, and may have had opportunities of exercising patronage in connection with it should be. stirred to great activity in defence of the system with all its extravagance, is. entirely in the nature of things. J3ut there can be no true and honest friend of the education of the people who should not seek to save it from the ruin that is being brought upon it by reason of its great costliness ; and there is no man that is honest in his profession of a desire for retrenchment in the public administration of the colony but must feel that the extravagance of. our system of education in the present circumstances of the colony is a luxury that nothing can justify.; This is a question in which every citizen of Auckland should have an interest'; and for the sake of education, and for the sake of the colony, now staggering under the burthen of taxation, and likely to have to take upon it heavier burthens, we trust that every intelligent citizen will recognise the gravity of tho occasion, and assist in the solution of the question by his presence at the City Hall.