EDUCATION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4222, 1 October 1874, Page 3

EDUCATION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Permit me the privilege of making a few remarks relative to the able article on education in your issue of to-day. Alluding to the higher schools of the Colony, you. assert that many of thein have been endowed at the cost of Provincial and other authorities ; that at those establishments a superior education is given to boys, at the very minimum of cost to parents, and further, that the pupils are receiving a first-class education, on payment of fee* which are merely nominal. I would ask whether it is fair to this Province, in the face of School Boards under difficulties, with underpaid schoolmasters and salaries overdue, that Provincial aid should be afforded for giving a first-class education at the minimum cost, to thone who are well able to pay for it. Again, I think that such aid, under such conditiona, is highly prejudicial to private enterprise. Those like myself, who have established private schools, although we do not expect government aid, yet we hardly like to contemplate extinction, by means of those establishments which do not rely on their fees for existence, and which consequently can give » liberal education (or nothing. la

noticing the returns of the Civil Service Examination Board, you appear to consider that their standard is sufficiently high, affording an evidence of superior education in those who pas 3 it. Permit me to add, as a plea for private schools, that a careful perufial of those returns would, I think, result in proving that a very respectable number of successful candidates have been wholly educated at private unendowed schools.—l am, &c, J. H. Bbann. September 29.