OUR SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR SCHOOLS.

THEIR MANIFOLD ORIGIN.

BY MATANGA,

i Induration. thanks to the recommendations of a certain report, seems to bo in for another overhaul. That is right and just. Ihe melting-pot itself ought occasionally to get melted. There have been many such overhauls of education in this little country, some of them more comprehensive than others. This appears to be the most drastic of •'ill Its sponsors voice their concern at the tardiness of New Zealand to adopt methods followed in countries whoso example has great weight, particularly Britain, and would seo a vigorous attempt to overtake those countries. Their descrip 1 ion of the need, and their argument for its meeting in tlifi way their findings indicate, deserve closo attention. That will take time.

Ono tiling, however, can bo said in tiie meantime. There is no rail to get downhearted about the system—if such a word can be used—that we have. It has not turned this country into <*i heaven, hut it has been on the side of the angels. 1( has defects, yet it is not a failure, by any means. Even the most ardent reformer would not cast it all as rubbish to the void, though he be moved only to the damaging praise that it is, like the curate's egg, good in parts. What we have has come to us down many roads, a fact due to the halt-dozen or so of separate growing-points New Zealand once possessed. We never were a colony: we were a number of colonies. "lhe committee, noting the long struggle between provincial and national policies, can do no moro than hope the end of that struggle is in sight. In the patchwork system so open to criticism that manifold early effort has now needless memorial. Beginning With the Maori. In the earliest of our ninety years it was tho Maori whose education was the first concern. The missionaries had blazed the trail. One of Marsden's three pioneering laymen was chosen because he was a schoolmaster, and he was expected to make some fist of teaching the young Maori idea how to shoot—without a pu or tupara. How, at Pnihia particularly, this intent afterwards got well expressed in practical success, is well known. Governor Fitzroy, later, sought to have this voluntary enterprise given a legal basis, and got his Nativo Trust Ordinance passed in 1844. It received the Royal assent in due course, but Governor Grey refused to put it into operation. However, Grey was not opposed to education itself, for either brown or white; and three years later it was at his instance that there was passed the Education Ordinance, which empowered the Government "to establish and maintain schools, and to inspect schools, and to contribute toward the support of schools otherwise established."

In the phrasing of that ordinance can be read the idea of a State system, yet no such system was inaugurated by it. The powers it conferred were not exercised beyond the allocation of land endowments and money grants to certain denominations for the establishment and maintenance of their schools. So denominational schools got legal status and State aid. Some of our best-known secondary schools are the product of this ordinance, but 110 State system was begun : there was not even any inspection of schools as a result.. We must look somewhere else for that beginning. Nelson's Enterprise. It is found in Nelson. There, in the special settlement founded by the, New Zealand Company. Captain Arthur Wakefield being its agent, there was a keenness about schools not manifest so markedly elsewhere. The Nelson School Society, a voluntary association modelled on the British and Foreign School Society, established a real system of public education on free and unsectarian lines. It wis in efficient operation when Governor Grey put through his Education Ordinance, and - in 1849 Alfred Domett, who was one of the founders of tho Nelson School Society, and knew at first hand the efficiency of the system, did much to induce the New Munstcr Provincial Council, then newly set up over southern New Zealand, to refuse to administer the denominational system. He went further, urging the adoption of a free, secular and compulsory public education as . the only sound basis of a national system. If Domett had got his way, a national system might then have been born. Ho was sure of an overwhelming majority in the New Munster Council, but Eyre, the Lieutenant-Governor for the region, taking his cue from Grey,! refused to allow the proposed Bill to be introduced, and so Domett's idea camo to nothing. Tho denominational schools, on the other hand, got well established: in Auckland under Grey's ordinance, and in Canterbury and Otago under Anglican and Presbyterian direction respectively. In Wellington the settlers were content to let their educational needs be served by private teachers. So local effort produced varied results, Nelson alono standing by the national idea. Compromise in 1877.

When the now Provincial Governments were established in 1853, nothing was said as to whether the genera! or the provincial legislatures should administer education. Grey cut the Gordian Knot by calling the provincial assemblies first, and they promptly took education under their wings, confirming for :he most part, Ihrs local organisations already in existence. Later provinces went the way taken by their larger neighbours. All that was left for the Colonial Government. was native education, which long continued to be managed according to its denominational beginning. Facts were to dictate a change. The Nelson system worked well and was not unduly costly; the denominational schools were not generally satisfactory. Alone among the educational laws of the provinces, the Nelson Education Act of 1857, remained unchanged through the twenty years of provinci i; control In the. other districts there appeared a tendency to follow Nelson's lead.

Ten years later, llio Department of Native Affairs took over (lie administration of the elementary schooling of Maori children. This was a move toward a nation,?] system, though in a very limited sphere. Jn 1869, there arose a widespread disquiet about the variety and inadequacy of the provision made l>y the provinces. Even in Otago all was not well. The Recess Committee, reviewing the history, puts on record quite solemnly the fact, that the charging of fees for schooling resulted in scarcely more than half of the children of school age being enrolled. Whatever the various causes, dissatisfaction was rife. In 1877 came the famous Education Act, after ;i debate running throughout a session of Parliament. It was a compromise. Like most compromises, it had lo sacrifice tome excellences. Certainly it left a legacy of trouble for administrators, but it accomplished for the whole of New Zealand something of what Domett, and his associates of the Nelson School Society had in view for- their own settlement. In the stocktaking done by the reporting committee there has been revealed this achievement, standing as a monument of progress. But, n.onuruents are liable to fracture and decay, and that they stand is a drawback in their service to a progressive people*