THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION.

Wellington Independent, Volume VII, Issue 585, 21 May 1851, Page 4

THE EDUCATIONAL QUESTION.

We extract the following article from the Times, us a question which will ultimately become as serious in Victoria as it is now in England.

The educational question is one ofi feeling, of taste, of propriety, and of justice ; but it is also a question of pru-1 dence, and therefore of probablities. If it is taken up merely by harmless visionaries, or even by such men as Mr. Fox, it might easily be confined to the regions of rhetoric for at least the present generation. But it is now taken up by practical men, who fight buttles in order to win them, and do actually win them. There is in our days so much " brutum fuhnen,"so many men thundering away, at the pitch of their lungs, apparently for the sole purpose of making a disagreeable noise, that the public fails to recognise the difference between an affective and a non-affective agitation. When the former is on the eve of success the public is surprised and considers itself rather taken in, simply because it thought this agitation as great a humbug as the rest of the species. Or it may be, that as John Bull is addicted to grumbling, he is not prepared for those who go a little further. As we would rather not be surprised by a result contrary to our expectations, we think it better to inquire whether the persons we have to deal with bite as well as bark. It is as necessary to know this with regard to men as it is with regard to dogs. A commercial scheme may bo rejected the moment its projectors are known to be men of straw, and apolitical scheme may be safely dismissed as soon as we know that its authors can do nothing but write pamphlets, hold meetings, and talk. On the other hand, when a man like Mr. Cobdeu—aman of practical sagacity and singular success—throws himself into the breach, and stakes his reputation upon carrying a point, we cannot help regarding it as almost half won. Mr. Cobden has declared that he will henceforth devote himself to the establishment of a comprehensive public education; and considering the man, we cannot help suspecting that something of the sort [ will be done. ! But the , most practical man, and the J most able man, is tied by the nature of his object. The best agiiator must have a case, and the utmost he can do is to hasten the settlement of asocial question by a few years, or perhaps a generation, and also to give it a little bias after his own way thinking. But he must have a capital to proceed upon. Has Mr. Cobden, then, any capital in the educational question ? He has a good case in his hands ? Sorry as we are to declare it, the man who undertakes to prove the jgnorance of our labouring population'

can feel no other difficulty than the abundance of his materials. There is no denying it—the bulk of our fellow subjects will not bear an examination into their attainments, their religion, or their morals. Wo tremble at the bare idea of a commission of inquiry into this delicate subject. There is hardly any estimate, however favourable, however malicious, that would come near the deplorable truth. Travellers tell pleasant stories of the profound ignorance and the ridiculous notions they find in Asiatic or other semi-barbarous populations. We can only say that for every such story we could produce a parallel in our own country. An average labourer in one of our agricultural counties wo take to be about as ill informed in matters not immediately relating to his employment, or his domestic affairs, as an average Hindoo ; and should he be at all thrown out of his sphere and left to his own resources, he is as much a fish out of water as a Lascar in the streets of this metropolis.

Now, ignorance itself is a very great evil. All of us who have the power try to escape from it and leara everything that we can. The Almighty would not have given us such expansive faculties and such inexhaustible materials of knowledge, had knowledge been otherwise than a blessing- But it is wholly unnecessary to go so deep into the question. It has long since been ruled in in this country, that knowledge is a Messing and instruction a necessary of life. Our Constitution protests against the dogma of an infallible Church, and drives men to choose for themselves among the many religious communions in the land. They cannot go about the inquiry, with the least chance of success, without a respectable amount of infermation. Our social and economical institutions drive the younglabourer from his parish into the wide world, tell him that it is his first duty to shift for himself, meet him with the threat of a prison whenever he falls back upon his native soil. Such a policy, at all events, is not consistent with the arguments for leaving the labourer ignorant and helpless. Fither leave him to vegetate on the spot of his birih,or make him a man before you send him on his } wanderings. Again, we see all very busy upon plans of emigration. We are at an immense expense in the foundation of colonies, and in soldiers and fleets to protect them. We congratulate ourselves on every man who leaves these isles for British America, for Australia, and even for the United States. Statesmen, ladies, clergymen, and philanthropists of every degree, are all employed in draining off our men without land to lands without men. Surely this presupposes every effort on our part to prepare the emigrant for his distant journey and his arduous career. The poor settler, who is to carry civilisation into the midst of savages, into solitudes, into temptations, into darkness and crime, ought to be supplied with as large a stock of knowledge as we can manage to procure for him. But everywhere the most bitter complaints are heard of the English settler. Whether the Englishman works on a French railway, or tends sheep in Australia, or takes land in the interior of the North American continent, it is still the same story that his national superiority forsakes him and he loses caste for want of mental resources. The English labourer is often found less able to shift for himself than the German or even the Irishman.

Thus, while much is required from the laborer, he has but little of that help which he more peculiarly requires. A father does not send his son to India, or design him for a profession, without an appropriate education. It is the policy, or rather the necessity, of the age to thrust out the teeming population of our agricultural counties into distant colonies or our manufacturing towns. Let it be so ; but at all events let us prepare the adventurers for the arduous lot. The expatriation of the ignorant and hopeless is nothing more or less than penal transportation. The same may be said of our great manufacturing towns. If we drive people into masses, let us at least qualify them for a condition that puts many trials and many temptations in their way. Mr. Cobden observes very justly, that people complain of the brutality of our manufacturing population, forgetting that half of it is of rural origin. Such, then, is the case in the hands of these gentlemen. All our institutions create a necessity for education and there is none, except of the most restricted character, and very little of that. With such a case, and with such agitators, there is very little doubt of success. We only trust that those who are qualified to give a safe turn to the controversy will not waste their influence by an indiscriminate opposition.