OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9104, 12 July 1888, Page 3

OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,As Mr. Cooper courts, or, rather, challenges inquiry, I would like to say a word or two. We pay for our educational system, in all its departments, something like seventeen shillings and sixpence a-head on the entire population of the colony. If our educational system is on the lines of other countries — and Mr. Cooper would almost have us to believe that it is—it would entail an annual vote of something like thirty million pounds sterling on the British estimates, and fifty millions on the American! Is this so ? Is it half so? Mtq we so immeasurably richer (except in public men) than either of these countries that we can afford to vie with them, nay, outshine them in the glorious glamour of our education craze ? Is it a sound policy, and for the eventual good of the colony, that Mr. Cooper says, "I know this education is too expensive ; I am certain it is more than we can bear ; but you, my dear friends, the working men, get the advantage of it, and therefore I advise you to stick to it." Of course Mr. Cooper will deny this, but I have boiled down his speech, and the above is the residue. Now my dear friends (the "working man" of course), are you quite sure that you gain the advantage of this system? Yes, you are ! Well, I can't help you, but go to any of our suburban schools and look over the names of the children attending the same, and tell me how many you find whose parents are well able to pay for the education of their children. I do not blame them for taking advantage of you and j making you assist them through the Customs. You would do the same by them very likely if you had the chance. j Mr. Cooper says, "Poor country schools r "If you raise the school age you ruin them.' i "If you stop at the fourth standard you ruin them." And yet this estimable gentleman would so cut down the salaries of all country school teachers, and so reduce the officers, that advancement would soon become mythical. Children might attend as soon as they were born, and stay at school until old age removed them, without ever reaching the fifth standard. Of course this would assist the working-man wonderfully ! Mr. Cooper would degrade the school system, and do it irreparable injury. As to the saving in school buildings: Hitherto this has been voted out of loan, and stands on a different footing from consolidated revenue. I hardly think Parliament this year is likely to vote any large sum, especially out of revenue, so that this saving will most likely be made without any outside assistance. Now as to the Maori vote: Why should _ it be disgraceful to educate Maori children? They have as much right to the system as the white people have, and we are too proud to let them go to school with us. My view of our public education system is this : Trim oft' all excrescences, and go in for a good, solid, sound education. Pay the school teachers well, and get the

best that you can. - Let the children com* to school if they like at five years of age, and stay until the sixth standard is reached, but make attendance compulsory to tha fourth standard. Let the children of indigent parents attend free; but otherwise charge a weekly fee of from three-pence to one shilling and sixpence for the attendance of each child, according to the ability of its parent to pay the same. This may be tinpopular; but I am quite certain ib is the proper course for us to pursue. We would have better attendance at our schools.* Children would not be sent very oft en before seven, and would not dawdle avay their time and our money after they had passed the fourth standard, unless they displayed genius, and then of course, they could get off their log and make a start for the White House, and like everyone who has ever preceded them on that delightful journey, work their own passage. It is the duty of a State to make its subjects selfreliant. We seem to think it is our duty to plant posts everywhere for people to lean against. It is the duty of a State to enter into competition as little as possible with the avocations of its individual members. We pursue an exactly opposite course. Bub then we live on that side of the world where Little Alice supposed people walked on their heads. And I hold, further, that it is not the duty of the State to refund to at least one-third of its subjects the" taxation that they pay. Yet this is what we are doing. "Refunding" must be like "immunity," and according to a celebrated modern statesman it has a hardening effect on the human heart.— am, &c.,: . W. F. Bcckland.