BREAKING DOWN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 16, 18 August 1893, Page 11

BREAKING DOWN.

(Melbourne Advocate. July 29.) Thb educational optimists of 1872, when the fj*e, pecular, and compulsory Act was passed, have now becotna pessimißtß. At least they are singing a very diilerent tune to that in which they delighted lv those days. Nothing in the way of the ologies and urns was then too good or too costly for the Victorian boy and girl. Everything of the kind they were to have of the best, and if anyone ventured to demur to those extravagant notions the reply was, hang the cost, the colony could well afford it, and the money could not be put to better account, and we should bo rear up a generation of truly good citi&eaa whose minds would be attuned to all gentle and ennobling arts, and whose manners, tastes, and conduct would be truly edifying. We housed the dear children in palatial edifices, supplied them with drawing and singing maatprs, afforded them ample opportunities for physicial training, taught them how to cook puddings, pies, and tarta, and only forgot to teach them how to cook a plain joint or a potato, la fact, no expense was spared on their education, and larrikinism> gaol returns, and maternity statistics show what return the State has got for its expenditure. Possibly, if public instruction had not been made free, secular education would not be as widely diffused as it is, now, but the moral tone of those who have passed through the State schooli would not ba as low aa it unquestionably is. That is our greatest loss ac a community, but the conseqrtencea financially are also very serious. There are shrewd people who attribute our financial collapse to our extravagance on public education, and as they can show that since 1872 we have spent about fourteen millions on our hobby, and that a large proportion of that sum was got out of borrowed money, and was spent on unproductive public works — i.<?,on

school buildings — their assertion cannot be considered wholly groundless. After the department rushed into an ex'ravagant expenditure it was foretold that the system would ultimately brenk down, and that prediction is now very nearly, if not entirely, fulfilled. In his Year Book for 1874 the Government Statist gave the cost of public instruction, science, etc, at £537,758 lfis 41, ami in this sum was included the grant to the University, the subsidies to mechanics' instil utep, and all votes that could be brought under the claaeification. There has not been an increase of 300,000 m the population since ibat year; the expenditure on palatial school buildings baa been stopped, or very nearly ho, and yet tie Age in its issue of Tuesday makes this startling acknowledgment :—": — " It vrould seem that the popularity of the natijnal system of education enabled tho department to run up its cost to an unreasonable amount. It reached £835,000 in 1890-91, without reckoning the cost of new buildings oi 1 the interest on the capital expended on others in previous years. The total cost for that year may be set down as not leas than £1,000,000, or about £1 a head for every man, woman, and child ia the colony. That was an excessive expenditure on primary educatioD, as everyone will admit ; and although reductions have been made, the expenditure is still greater by fir than the Government should be compelled to make. Ie is becoming apparent that when the colony declared for free, secular, and compnlsory education, a gigantic bureaucratic system, such as h&a been raised, was not drsamed of by its authors, as Mr Langton, indeed, positively declares. The error into which the Legislature fell when it passed the Educ»tion Act was that it snnihilatel local responsibility and control." Our contemporary ' 6 conversion to sound views on the subject is rather late, but even so it is welcome, for though it is now impossible to escape the consequences of past folly, it may be hoped that ita continuance will be avoided. That, however, cannot be under the present bureaucratic system, for it is in its nature costly, and could, hardly ba as efficient as one of a municipal character.