EDUCATION, ITS USES AND ABUSES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 524, 18 February 1882, Page 15

EDUCATION, ITS USES AND ABUSES.

To the Editor of the Education Gazette,

Sir,—While our Education system is a credit to the colony and the liberal views of our legislators, I am very much afraid that it will lead us into a dilemma from which there will be no escape, except in the renewal of the slave trade. There are two laws which the Government of a country should always keep in view —the moral law and the natural law, which latter generally proves the strongest when the test is applied. If a man is hungry, he mußt eat to satisfy the natural law ; and if he has not been taught to work, or has no work to do, or other means to satisfy the wants of nature, which are imperative, he will break the moral law. I am not using this argumeut against education, but rather in its favor ; for if a man is not educated to keep the moral law, how can he be expected to keep it ? But, at the same time, if he is not taught to support the natural law, by what means can he be kept from breaking the moral law ? I am glad to see the State take so much interest in the children of this generation, who will be the men and women of the next, in affoi-dingthem an intellectual and moral education which will fit them •to be a credit to our constitutional system of Government, and make them good and enlightened citizens. But while they are doing everything to satisfy the moral and intellectual, why not teach them something that will support and satisfy the natural law ? I have no objection to the chimney-sweep’s son being a scholar, but if he has no chimney of his own to sweep, he must, to satisfy the natural law, learn to sweep other people’s. I have no objection to the coachbuilder’s son learning French and. Latin, but if he iB to get his living by coach-building, he must first learn how to build coaches. The carpenter’s son ought to learn mathematics, but he ought likewise to learn how to make doors and sashes, and so on ad libitum.

Why do the one thing well and leave the othec undone $ I bare often thought this a

great fault in onr education system. When lfc was first broached I thought that it was intended to instruct the children of those who were too poor to pay for it, and that, as well as an intellectual, an industrial and mechanical school would he a part of its structure, so that orphans and indigent children might have the chance of competing in life with those who are better provided for. I will try and show what I think will be the effect of our present system. Labor is the capital of the working man, and without it the colony would be poor indeed ; and as we, by a law more steadfast than that of the Medes and Persians, shall always have the poor with, us, it is as much the duty of the State to supply the. means of that capital as it is the moral and intellectual. In fact, the well being and prosperity of the one depends upon the other.. How often do we see respectable, well-educated men in our police courts foe forgery or passing false cheques, because they can get nothing to do ; and how we pity them? If they, had been good carpenters or masons; they, might have earned an honest livelihood,-, and instead of being a disgrace to their parents, they might have been a credit. Instead: of’ .being a burden to the State they might havebecome good citizens and helped to support it. Therefore, I contend that our present system, while it seems to, and does to a certain extent, supply a. great want, robs the poor man of his future capital, and at the same time will lay a heavy burden of intellectuality .on the next generation. To obviate this evil there should be attached to every State school, at least in the cities, an industrial school, and no children should be allowed to go to the State schools whose parents would not allow their children to learn some trade. In fact, it should be an imperative law that all who entered these institutions, except from some inevitable cause, should learn & business by which, in after life, they may obtain a livelihood. The proceeds of the children’s labor should go to support hospitals, gaols, and lunatic asylums, or other charitable institutions, and when once well established would also go some way in recouping ,the State the present heavy outlay for education.I am, &c.,

John Plimmer.