THE COST OF EDUCATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 14, 25 July 1884, Page 17

THE COST OF EDUCATION.

HE member for Dunedin East and also the member for Bruce, stated during their canvat, that our system ot education cost only £250 000 a year We shall not now, discuss their motives for a statement calculated to grievously mislead the electors whom they were addressing J3 u t this we may say, that the gross ignorance displayed by parading these figures goes far to prove in these gentlemen the absence of the qualifications required in members of Parliament. .As these misleading jW e8 have gone forth to the public uncontradicted by any iournal in the Colony except ourselves, we think ourselves bound to explain the matter fully as an antidote against what would appear to be at least a tacit understanding to mislead public opinion At the end of the session of Parliament in 1883 on the motion that the Appropriation Bill be read a first time in th« Leg.slative Council, the Hon. Mr. Holstbs made a remarkable speech" on this subject— the annual expense of our national system of education. (See Hansard No 26 p 605 )

In this speech the hon gentleman read the principal items of expenditure on education during the year 1882, viz.

The gross expenditure for Canterbury College is £66,736 15s id and for Otago University £24,222 2s 4d, but they have been reduced as above, at some of the items vrere for loans, interest, &c. The above is the ordinary expenditure for one year but this is not all. Another item and a very important one is still to be added. The amount spent by Government on school buildings since the commencement of this system is £621,750, every shilling of which has bten borrowed as was stated by the Hon. Mr. Diok in one of his electioneering speeches during the last week. This gentleman has been a Cabinet Minister, even Minister of Education, and of course he knows the real state of the case. For this large sum of £621,750 the Colony is paying in interest and sinking fund six per cent— that is, more thau £37,000 per annum - Add ?iß«^? iB «^^ c ordinar J r «penditure and the earn total amounts to £569,278. This, then, is in reality the actual yearly expenditure on education, and this, sum will increase year by year so that, as the Hon. Mr. Holmbs said, in a year or two the annnal expense of our education system will be £600,000. And for whom is the Colony making this enormous sacrifice? For the children of 60,000 parents, who for the most part are very well able to pay themselves for the education of their children. Married and unmarried, all men and women, even those v?ho actually pay for the education of their own children in private and denominational schools are compelled to pay for this extravagant, godless system of education tor a minority of the community. Nothing more onesided, nothing more tyrannical, and nothing more opposed to the principles of political economy can -be imagined. At the present moment there is a floating debt of one million sterling, which must be added to the funded debt ol the Colony, thus entailing on the people an annual payment of an additional forty or fifty thousand a year. And indeed, this floating debt of one million sterling has been incurred solely for the purpose of giving the children of a portion of the community a free and godless education • sach an education as will inevitably qualify man y to be the pests of society. What a commentary is not all this on the spirit and wisdom of our Government, and on the people who sanction such a state of things— the children of well-to-do people educated by borrowed money, and irreligion at the helm guiding the rising generation to disbelief in God and the immortality of their own souls.

school Boards JecoadaTy Education ... "" National Schools ... ... *** industrial Schools ... ... \\[ Miscellaneous Canterbury Colleges ... [[[ Dtago University ... ... ""* Auckland University • ... '][ Jew Zealand University . ... ..* Public Libraries ... ... '" Education Department ..'. Deaf and Dumb Schools ... " m \ Contributing to Schools from Charitable .Aid Vote £353,111 63,31 1 18,950 16.985 13,635 30,940 11,785 4,000 3,000 5,992 2,160 1,937 6,167 Total £531,973