EDUCATION ECONOMY

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 258, 9 October 1931, Page 3

EDUCATION ECONOMY

(To the Editor.) Sir,—ln all the correspondence and propaganda which has been published regarding. whether . there can be economy in education without loss of efficiency no one has said there is more political jobbery in the education system of New Zealand than in tbe railways. The free-place schema is largely graft and waste. Ninety percent, of the recipients would make better and more contented workers without it. A little wholesome training in morals, manners, and . conduct would be ten times more valuable in the making of good citizens than the bookstuff that, is pumped into the youth of to-day. Education (so-called) is costing nearly £3 per head of population in New Zealand. In England, where it has been enormously extended of late years, I think I am right in saying it is still only about £l. If a million a year were lopped off the Education vote and spent in subsidies on new and struggling: industries, it would return a hundredfold, and in a few years solve our unemployment problem by making jobs instead of half-baked schoolmasters. Many of the best and most successful men of the day had little schooling, as witness the story of Sir Thomas Lipton. A lot of the poor fellows in the “ten-bob-a-week” camps have haUl secondary education, and what is it worth to them?—l am, etc., ANOTHER COW COOKIE.