THE EDUCATION VOTE IN QUEENSLAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 392, 15 October 1880, Page 5

THE EDUCATION VOTE IN QUEENSLAND.

THE Minister for Instruction (Mr. Palmer) moved that £3 230 be granted for Secretary for Public Instruction— salaries. There were two small increases in the vote. Mr, Morehead said he trusted hon. members would proceed to consider the whole question of national education. With the exception of last year, when there was a slight diminution of £1000 on the estimate, the vote for education had been increasing year by year. This year the increase on the already over-swollen estimate was £10,000. If the system was to be persisted in, where would it all end 1 It would only lead to public disaster — to financial ruin. They were treading fast in the steps of two of the southern colonies, who were already beginning to feel the heavy burden cast upon the people by their tremendously expensive educational system. As long as he stood in the House he would protest against such an expenditure— no matter whether he succeeded or not — and the probability was that he would not succeed, as it seemed the prevalent belief that any amount of money ought to be spent upon what was called the education of the people. He denied that the people were educated under the present system. The gieat centres of population received undoubted benefits from it, and so did the wealthy people ; but the poor, who had to bear the bulk of the taxation to support the system, derived the very smallest advantage from it. Last year the educational system in Victoria cost the colony £544,926 ; in New South Wales, £367,033 ; and in South Australia — where education was as well looked after as here, and where the populat : on waa only slightly larger— £B7,47l. And yet this colony was now asked to vote a sum 50 per cent, in excess of that spent in South Australia. He knew that the great scheme of free, secular, and compulsory education was one that had caught the e&\ of the people, for they thought that by it they were bringing edi> caUon to the doors of the working-man. But, in reality, they were doing noy^ng of the sort. The system of education only touched the workll*F?&n m a very Bmall wa y— excepting with regard to their pockets, which were touched very heavily to support it. Representing as he did an outside district, he spoke feelingly on the matter, for his constituents paid a very large sum per head in support of the system of education. The system was to a great extent useless to the outside districts, although, as he had said before, it was an advantage to people living in great centres of population, and an excessive advantage to the wealthier classes. In addition to going in for a sound education in the three "R's"— which he held to be the only duty of the State in the matter— they were going in for all sorts of luxuries—such as grammar schools subsidised by State, and which wfre resorted to by &ose whose parents were able to pay for the

education of their children. It was not the duly of the State to provide education for the children of the well-to-do. In these very Estimates items were put down which ought to be paid for by the pareuts themselves and not by the Slate. They were getting such a class of schools at the present time that people in every rank of life sent their children to the public schools. It might be said that rich and poor should be all alike, and that the rich had no right to be deprived of any advantages the poor possessed. But he did not told with that view. He held that the duty of the State was simply to educate children whose parents were unable to educate them. At the present moment children were taught to such a pitch in the schools that they learned to despise manual labour of any sort— they despised the trades of their fathers— and there was a possibility of over-educating them so that they would absolutely despise their own parents for their so-called ignorance. . ... What he chiefly wanted to point out was that the much vaunted education system, which was said to distribute equal justice in the shape of education to all classes of the community, had altogether and utterly failed. If it were possible to reduce the vote by oneC- XT 1 ? Propose »t, and almost " cry back "to the old system, which he had always held, unpopular as the view might be, to be better than the existing one. When national and denominational schools were running sido by side there was a healthy competition which did not now exist. The State schools were all toned down to a dead level. He did not stand there as a champioa of denomina. tionahsm or any other ism. No one could chaTge him with having any strongly expressed religious convictions, but those who had such convictions had a right to be considered ; and he held that a certain religious body to which he did not and was not likely to belong, and which contained one-third of the population of the colony, had bet n very badly treated indeed, by being taxed to pay tor a system of education which they could not conscientiously support. In that' respect the Apt was a disgrace to the statute book. However, it was useless to try to remove it. One step in a wrong direction, whether taken by people or legislators, only seemed to hurry them on in the way they should not go. Still, looking at the question from a purelyfinancial point of view, be must enter his indignant protest against the enormous growth of the education vote. He hoped hon. members would consider the question on the broad general principle of cutting one s coat according to one's oloth. In conclusion, he would poiut out again that although the people in the outside districts were heavily taxed to support education they derived little or no benefit rom it. — Australian.