WASTE! WASTE! WASTE!

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 380, 30 July 1880, Page 14

WASTE! WASTE! WASTE!

No one can be surprised at the lamentable picture of extravagance and inefficiency to which the hon. gentlemen quoted in the preceding article refer, who is really acquainted with the state of the educational system with which this country is burdened. To such a one it appears as if its chief object was not so much the teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, &c, to children, as how best and most expeditiously to spend taxes wrung from a suffering people. Our schoolrooms under the present administration of the system have been converted to a very great extent into nurseries, and so far ceased to be for any practical purpose schoolrooms in the proper sense of the word. One-fourth of the children attending public schools is under seven years of age, and some thousands are under five years. Yet these infants are paid for at the same rate as boys and girls of fourteen and fifteen years of age, and great bearded men are paid by the State for wielding the ferula over a crowd of mere infants. What is the meaning of all this ? It is nonsense, it is extreme folly, and under the circumstances it is not surprising that hon. Legislative Councillors should take alarm, and sound the note of admonition and retrenchment. Meantime new taxes are proposed , new burdens are put on the people for the sole purpose of maintaining this godless and absurd system, which entices babies from their mother's knees into godless schools, and makes believe to impart an education to them of which they are incapable. Why if Parliament meant to waste the public money, to persecute the people by the imposition of unnecessary taxes, a more efficacious means than our present system of education could not be devised. We have been told that our system is neither more expensive nor more godless than the systems established in the Australasian Colonies, and that consequently we should not complain. A strange argument surely. It amounts to this : because others are foolish we are bound to be foolish too, because others are wasteful we must be wasteful also, because others have erected nurseries, under the name of schools, for babies, and maintain them out of the public revenue, we must follow the example. What now becomes of the boasted intelligence and independence of mind of our supercilious politicians who proclaim they think for themselves, and fail to see how they at the same time acknowledge themselves the slaves of a Francis, a Berry, and an old chartist. All that our statesmen can do is to imitate the godlessness and the folly of Australasian statesmen ! Save the mark. A system of real education which would be at the same time efficient and economical, would never do for our politicians ; they must have the expensive article, even though it should be the merest shoddy. They must go to the same godless shop as their neighbours, and purchase the same worthless, even injurious article, because it is the fashion of the hour. Their motto is : they might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Well if they alone paid for the fashion others would not have so much to complain of. But this is precisely what they object to most. Consequently everything that misrepresentation, party politics, and a tyrannous exercise of ephemeral power can do, is done to compel all to pay for what they like and they alone use. Hence the spectacle of an absurd, inefficient and ruinously expensive system of education demoralising the country on the one hand, and on the other, of people flying from a country unduly burdened with taxes, and withdrawing their capital from it with all possible expedition.

The concert which is to be given in the Temperance Hall, Dunedin, on Wednesday evening next by Herr Benno Scherek, promises to be an exceedingly fine one. Herr Scherek, who is a host in himself, has secured for the occasion most valuable assistance, both professional and amateur. All those who desire a thorough musical treat will do well to secure tickets for this performance.