The Timaru Herald TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1907. A NATIONAL AFFAIR.

Timaru Herald, Volume XC, Issue 13297, 28 May 1907, Page 4

The Timaru Herald TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1907. A NATIONAL AFFAIR.

A paragraph in the report of a speech delivered at the Educational Conference nowsitting in London, by the Victorian Director of Education, ' summarises the :great change which a century has produced' in : the popular attitude towards the question of education. "The national taxpayer," !, said Mr Tate, "should realise his share of the w-ork, since education is no longer a private, But: a national-affair;" Less than a hundred years ago, the State disclaimed any responsibility for the elementary education of the children of England, and so far from recognising it as a national affair, refrained even from treating it as a ';private duty, since it imposed, ivpon parents no legal obligation to provide for the education of their children. It is true that at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the idea '"was- commencing to take root that the State had an interest in the proper training of its future citizens, and in 1807 (exactly a century ago) the House of Commons agreed to a Bill for the foundation of a school in eveiy parish, with power' to employ local rates. The Bill, how r ever, did • not reach the Statute Book, for there was still a strong body of eighteenth century individualism which regarded the provision of education as the duty of the parent equally with -the provision of the food and clothing needed by his children. But the conviction, of which the Bill of 1807 was one of the earliest evidences, that education is, as Mr Tate says, a national rather than a private affair, was not destroyed by its first rebuff. In 1816 Lord Brougham succeeded in securing the - appointment., of a " Select Committee to inquire into the education of .the'lower orders," and four years.later he followed this up with vn Education Bill which, like its predecessor, came to grief in Parliament. But with the passage of the Reform Act .in 1832, the State began to take a practical interestin the subject by making grants—at first on a very limited scale —for the indirect promotion of education, thereby admitting to some extent its obligations as a national educator. The progress of the iie-vi- move' rnent would no doubt have been fairly

rapid, but for the influence of the old individualistic school of thought, represented by such men as John Mill, -who m late as 1859 protested against the State's direct assumption of educational functions, and argued that it should go no further than to compel parents to provide for th« elementary education, of their children. By 1870, however.- the principle of State intervention was established,, though the individualistic theory still operated to the extent of putting the greater portion of the cost directly upon, the shoulders of the parents. The Elementary Education Act of 1876 gavo legal recognition to the claim that, every child ought to receive elementary instruction in such essentials as reading, writing and arithmetic, while four years later the .compulsory attendance of children at school was for the lirst time made compulsory." A logical outcome cf the compulsory clause was the removal <£ the obligation to pay school fees, and in IS9I elementary education in England became free—that is, its cost was defrayed by taxation instead of by direct, payments from the pupils. "Elementary education," .says Dicey in his recent volume on the relationship between law and public opinion in England, "is now controlled and guided by a .central body directly representing the State; it is administered by representative local authorities; it is based on the compulsory attendance of children at school; it is supp'orts'd party by parliamentary grants and partly by local rates." For the "-financial year 1903-4 the parliamentary grants' amounted .to nearly ten millions sterling, and the local rates seven millions, and with other charges elementary "education in England : during that year accounted for about eighteen millions of public money. Less than a century ago, educatioft received not a single penny from the public treasury, but as Mr Tate has remarked, it has changed from a private to a national affair. The change,, as Dicey is due to the "replacement of individualism by collectivism as the publje, .creed. The collucr tivist feels that the State should aim at securing for ©very citizen something like the same advantages as the rich can obtain by their own efforts, and"the development of the education'system is one of the most striking results or this struggle after the equalisation of v advantages.