THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6439, 2 December 1881, Page 2

THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

While political orators just now discuss, as one among the many themes which make up their necessary stock-in-trade, the question whether it is not expedient, from a financial point of view, to reduce the expenditure on education by limiting the amount of free instruction imparted under the system of standards, educationists in Queensland are debating the same theme from another standpoint. Here the outflow of pupils to the State schools is so constant and steady, that the demands for school extensions and the augmentation of teaching power is only with difficulty adequately met. This is the case so far as affects towns and pillages, though there are portions of the colony wherein, as the reports of the School Inspectors show, families are so isolated that the advantages of free education are lost to their offspring. In Queensland, as it appears, this is more especially the case than in this colony. In a recent debate in the Assembly the circumstance was used as argument for a motion that the cost of State education, to which the entire leople contribute, whether dwellers in he towns or dwellers in the scrub, should oe reduced. But the proposal did not aim at lowering or limiting the standards

I of education, so far as the routine of ord nary school work is concerned, but in lopping off the grants for exhibitions and scholarships, and thus discontinuin'' the expenditure of public funds in th hit her education of the offspring of a small and favored section of the community. It was sought to justify the present system of granting bursaries on the grounds of expediency, as having an excellent effect in improving the character of elementary education, in consequence of the stimulus given io application in the acquirement of extra branches of learning. On the other hand, it was contended that, if it were conceded that the State should charge itself with the inculcation of higher education, then a new and very wide phase of the education question had been opened. Admitting this principle, then it would be also necessary to permit a periodic increase of grants in aid of bursaries, and thus would speedily develop direct State aid to higher education, the cost of which the entire public would contribute to, while but a comparative few would receive the benefit. The education system in Queensland, it will be observed, has not reached the advanced stage of that of New Zealand. Here wo make ample provision for higher education, and even when the need for retrenchment is admitted, the operation is not directed against the superfluity of the system, but against an intermediary stage where it is considered the ordinary course of free instruction should halt, and those who require to go further must do so at their own cost. But consideration of the Queensland idea arouses this reflection : Must we not in New Zealand seriously debate the incidence of retrenchment from a similar stand-point ? If we limit the range of free education, will it not be also necessary to do away with the system of bursaries or scholarships I It will bo scarcely just to say to the people; We can only afford to educate your children to a certain standard, which will not suffice to qualify them for obtaining a scholarship, but if you choose to pay the cost of the intermediary stage, then free scholarships, leading to higher education will, be still open. Such a system would involve contradictory principles, because, on the one hand, the necessity of the State would be advanced as a plea to limit free primary education, while on the other hand, free education in a higher degree would be given to the offspring of those who could afford to pay the cost of obtaining the requisite qualification. If pupils at our State schools are to stop short at the fourth or fifth standards, then such standards must be held as qualifying for scholarships, or the scholarships must be abandoned. Unless it can be shewn that there is any justice in giving premiums to those who can afford to educate their children more highly than the ordinary run of juveniles attending State schools are educated, the question debated in Queensland must be debated here.