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of the education scheme of this country would be the introduction of school-fees. My experience extends to the collection of school-fees in elementary schools in England, and it is not a happy one. To me the question of education is one as to the duty of the State to educate its future citizens, irrespective of the ability of parent or child to pay for the cost of such preparation. The State desires good citizens, and it adopts a certain course in the training of children having this end in view. The course adopted is no doubt beneficial to the children, but the benefit to the State is relatively as great as the benefit to the children. Professor Leone Levi has well said, that " every child left to a career of crime costs the State £1,000, whilst every child educated to good behaviour and labour is worth to the State at the very lowest estimate £2,000." If these statements are true, and I have no doubt whatever in my own mind that they are, it is the essence of unwisdom to demand a school-fee, when by so doing many children might be kept from attending school in consequence of the inability of parents to pay the fees demanded. In my opinion, there is no greater self-sacrifice made than by that parent who foregoes the weekly earnings of a few shillings from his children, rather than they should be kept from school. Poor parents— and they are many indeed —who sacrifice the weekly earnings of their children pay by so doing a large school-fee, and they should be encouraged to do so, especially when it is remembered that the State is so much benefited thereby. This argument will suffice to show that I think it would be unwise to exclude children who have passed the Sixth Standard from attending a public school. In central districts, where high schools are established, arrangements might be made to bring into harmony the working of the primary and secondary schools, so that children after passing the Sixth Standard might be allowed to attend at the high school on payment of a capitation fee of £4 or at the most £5 per annum. Some of the best schools in England at the present time are being worked on this plan of grading. Economically and educationally the results would be beneficial to the country. 3. As to the more Economical Working of the Education Act. —l have already pointed out the direction in which it is possible to practice the greatest economies in our education system. Ido not think that a four pounds' capitation allowance is too much to pay for the education of children, at least, if the education is to be worth the having. Good wages command good men, and with fair administration it is possible to pay good salaries, and to meet all ordinary demands of maintenance on a capitation allowance of £4, estimated on the average attendance. During the past nine years this education district has paid good salaries, and has also been able to set aside some thousands of pounds out of its school fund for the erection of school-buildings. The cost of administration with a school population of nearly six thousand children is slightly less than it was nine years ago, when there were not two thousand children in the district. Both teachers and Committees have experienced the benefit of the constantly-diminishing administrative cost, and even if the children below the age of seven years were excluded the effect upon teachers' salaries would be scarcely perceptible. The only real inconvenience would be the temporary loss of employment by a few of the junior teachers. I say " temporary loss of employment," because I believe all the available places in the schools would soon be occupied by children who ought now to be attending school, but who do not. 4. Suggested Alterations likely to improve the present Standard Syllabus. —l have already set forth as a fundamental principle in education " that, in order to be effective, education must be adaptive." This aspect of the question is entirely disregarded in our standard Syllabus, because it requires that every child, no matter what his environment may be, must be required to produce the same characteristic results before he can receive the official mark of "pass " from an Inspector of Schools. Time after time I have ventured to direct attention to the utter uselessness of demanding the same kind of preparation from children whose local surroundings are so unlike, and whose lives will be spent under conditions closely allied to their surroundings. The children in our towns, in the country, and in the bush districts have little or nothing in common. They think differently, live differently, and act differently from.one another; but the aim of the Syllabus is to make them all think the same things at the same time. What is education for, but a preparation for the fulfilment of duty; and how can this preparation be successfully accomplished unless adaptation to industrial needs and local surroundings be the stepping-stones to the preparation ? To me it is just as reasonable to affirm that wheat of similar kind and quality could be grown on all lands, as to affirm that the same mental products are obtainable from all children alike. No doubt equal, or nearly equal, relative mental products are obtainable from all children, but there is a wide distinction to be drawn between "similar mental products" and "equal relative mental products:" the latter produces differentiation and adaptation, the former uniformity. Adaptation conforms to natural laws, uniformity is a device of officialism for the sake of ease and convenience. I have for many years given special attention to the study of this important aspect of the education question, and I have no hesitation in saying that education would have been far more efficient and less superficial than it now is in my district had the subjects of instruction been limited and made adaptive to the needs of districts. So long ago as the year 1880 I addressed the Education Board of this district on this very aspect of the standard Syllabus, and just before the adoption of the new standard regulations in 1885 (see E.-lc, 1885, p. 16) I addressed the Inspector-General of Schools on the same question. But the new standard Syllabus has intensified the "uniformity craze" in the schools. At least, this is my experience. With a view to making clearer my opinions on this vital question as to the kind and character of the instruction which ought to be pursued in the public schools, I venture to quote from my report to the Education Board for the year 1880, and to which reference has already been made. Eeferring to the need of making the instruction bear as much as possible upon the practical aspect of life, I say, " There are three aspects of life in this district—town, country, bush; and the condition of the people in each of these districts is different from the other two: the town from the country, the country from the bush, and also the bush-aspect of life is farther removed from the town than from the country. As the aspects are different so are the conceptions of the people. The mode of life, the surroundings, the pursuits of the people in the bush have little in common with the