AN UNFAIR SYSTEM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 26, 21 October 1887, Page 17

A N UNFAIR SYST EM.

£ fwV^*

benefits they are unable to partake. He mentioned, as a proof of his assertion, a specific instance- of a certain district in which there were a large number of children whom it was impossible to provide with schools, — and doubtless many other districts also exist under similar circumstances. But yet the parents of these children are not exempted from taxation — and, like Catholics, must pay double rates for such instruction as they are able to procure for their families. Unfair taxation, in short, is one of the principal features in the Education Act, and it by no means falls on Catholics alone, although they are most openly and most oppressively affected by it. It falls in an especial manner on the poor generally, who are supposed to be the people in whose interests the education system was above all introduced. The cases are numerous in which people who have struggled to keep their children at school until they had attained the age at which compulsory attendance ceases have been obliged, immediately on their reaching that age, to withdraw them for the purpose of obtaining their much-needed assistance in the support of the household. — And, indeed, we are not prepared to say that cases might not be found in which arrival at the age of emancipation has been anticipated. Still such needy or poverty-stricken parents obtain no remission of their burden, but are forced to continue to contribute their portion to the taxation by which the children of well-to-do people are enabled to prolong their studies far beyond the time required by law. A man need be little blamed for selfishness if he grumbles when he realises the fact that, whereas he cannot afford to leave his own children at school, he is forced to pay for the education, and the completed education, of the children of his neighbour who, as the saying is, can buy and sell him twice over. And a great deal more grumbling there would undoubtedly be if the poorer classes generally were able to realise this truth. But the notion of the benefits, or tku imaginary benefits, enjoyed by them uudor the system seems to hide from them the real grievances ..nder which they labour.

And as to the benefits of the education given to these children whose parents are forced to withdraw them from school directly on their attaining the legal age, or perhaps

NE of the members of the Anglican Synod, recently held at Wellington, and to which we have already referred, brought forward a point in connection with the education grievance that hag not received anything like the attention due to it — that is, the taxation in numerous cases of settlers in the country for a system in whose

even before it, they are very doubtful. The Scotsman, for example, some years ago published an article in which the writer affirmed that the results of a careful inquiry had convinced him that a large percentage of the pupils who had attended the Scotch schools, in a few years afterwards, had forgotten all that they had learned, including even the art of reading. What is still more to the purpose, again, the Royal Commission lately held in England on the work of the public schools has brought out the fact of a similar forgetf ulness . Young people .who had spent tbe required time at school, on presenting themselves afterwards at the night-schools, have been found to be in a complete state of ignorance. And this is a condition of things that must be promoted by the nature of an educational system by which the pupil on leaving school is lost sight of, and no longer forms an object of interest for anyone belonging to the educational staff of the country. Its remedy is only to be found in a system under which the late pupils would continue to receive due care and attention such as might, and for the most part would certainly, be bestowed upon them by the patrons of denominational schools. The poor man, then, not only pays for the education of his wealthy neighbour's children, while his own must leave off their studies, but receives for all his share of the benefits an imperfect ©equipment for his children, which is insufficient probably to be of any practical use to them, and which may be altogether lost by them before many months have expired. Into the provisions of retrenchment, therefore, the educational taxation of the Colony may very well erifcer, for, as we see, nothing can be more unjust than its present apportionment. It is unfair to the isolated country settler, as it is to the Catholic everywhere, and it is unfair especially to the poor man, from whose slender resources it takes for the benefit of the wealthy— conferring upon him instead at best an imperfect and probably a totally worthless and useless return.