The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1911. MR. H. G. ELL, M.P., ON THE EDUCATION QUESTION

New Zealand Tablet, 23 February 1911, Page 337

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1911. MR. H. G. ELL, M.P., ON THE EDUCATION QUESTION

«c»— .1 ■ HERE was a time when Mr. H. G. Ell, M.P., f r llsJi was regarded as a politician with a future beill® fore him. Beyond the circle of his own con•s(. stitutents he was known as the author of a widely-circulated pamphlet on the question of establishing a State Bank of issue in New Zealand. He was the founder of a once % T flourishing Referendum Leaguenow defunct. W He was, if we remember rightly, a member of the famous ‘Left Wing’ party, which in its inception gave promise—unhappily belied by its brief and somewhat inglorious careerof some sort of independence of thought and action in political affairs. By painstaking industry in the collection of facts and statistics, he made himself probably the bestinformed authority in New Zealand on the Rating

On Improved Values question. Altogether., those of us who were not personally acquainted with the member for Christchurch South, had some reason to regard him as at least a man of ability, of more than ordinarily progressive tendencies, and of sufficient receptivity of mind to enable him to take a reasonably broad outlook on the more important questions with which he might have to deal. * On Sunday of last week it was our fortune to hear Mr. Ell in propria persona, and those who, like ourselves, had formed a somewhat high opinion of that gentleman, will hardly realise the disappointment that was in store for us. What a fall was there, my countrymen!’ Of all the speeches delivered at the gathering in question, Mr. Ell’s stands out in ignoble relief — crude in conception, tactless in execution, and absolutely schoolboyish in matter and form. The occasion was the opening of St. Bede’s Collegiate School, Christchurch; and Bishop Grimes, in his opening remarks, had voiced a spirited and eloquent protest against the injustice with which both primary and secondary Catholic schools were treated by the State. In proof of that injustice, and as showing the enormous sums saved to the State by the existence of the Catholic school system, his Lordship gave the following telling summary of irrefutable facts and figures— In the Catholic primary schools of the Dominion there were 12,000 pupils, who, if they attended the State schools would cost the State an additional £52,800' per annum on the basis of £4 8s per pupil. The Catholic secondary schools of the Dominion had an attendance of over 4000, and at a cost of £ll per pupil this amounted to £45,000 per annum, which was saved to the State. In Canterbury alone the Catholic primary schools saved the Government an annual expenditure of £II,BOO, and the Catholic secondary schools of Canterbury, with an attendance of 500, saved another £5500. The Westland Catholic primary schools, with an attendance of 825, saved another £3630. The amount saved to the Government by the Catholics of the Christchurch diocese during the thirty-four years the secular system of education had been in vogue amounted to at least £340,000, while Westland had saved the Government in that period £102,000, making a total of £442,000 for two provinces alone, exclusive of the amount to be spent on buildings and repairs. The amount saved to the Government by the Catholics throughout the Dominion during those thirty-four • years totalled at least £1,250,000.’ That his Lordship carried his people entirely with him in his earnest and determined protest was shown by the hearty and spontaneous response which his remarks elicited from the large concourse assembled. * Towards the close of the proceedings Mr. Ell —who, in common with the other local M.P.’s, had been invited to be present—was given the opportunity of making a few remarks, and he showed his sense of the fitness of things by making a rambling, ill-thought-out, and anything but courteous attack on the f Catholic claims. It would have been an easy matter for the speaker to have simply intimated that he was unable to agree with the Catholic position on the question, but that he was there, not to controvert, but to congratulate the Catholic people on the event of the day; and in such case no one could have possibly taken offence. Instead of doing that, however, Mr. Ell, with wearisome repetition—and to the manifest impatience of his hearers—labored the point as to the utter undesirableness and impossibility of granting the Catholic demand. The burden of his song was that ‘ if the Catholic schools received State aid, .so should the Anglican, Wesleyan, and Presbyterian schools and that if grants were made in aid of Catholic schools, ‘ it would mean closing up the State schools altogether.’ Mr. Ell spoke as if there were Wesleyan and Presbyterian schools at every street corner: as a matter of fact, we believe there is not a Wesleyan or Presbyterian primary school in the whole Dominion. So far, as we know, there is not one denominational primary school in New Zealand—other than the Catholic schools that is teaching the State syllabus and is subject to State inspection. To speak as if the country was dotted with Anglican, Wesleyan, and Presbyterian schools, all possessing the same qualifications for a State grant as Catholic schools possess, is in the last degree disingenuous; and in regard to his remarks on this aspect of the question, it is possible to believe in Mr Ell s sincerity only at the expense of his intelligence. * The answer' to all this somewhat superficial talk about denonnnationalism ’ is (1) As remarked by Bishop Grimes, that if the other denominations establish primary schools in every district as the Catholics have done, Catholics will be the . first to admit their right to State assistance; i’ as “ ls Grace Archbishop Redwood pointed out the other day, there is practically not the slightest likelihood of this coming to pass because the other religious denoraina-

tions have from the first accepted the State system. And we have the authority of Archdeacon Harper for saying that this latter remark applies, in a very large degree, even to the Anglican body. ‘ I believe,’ he said the other day when addressing the members of the Primitive Methodist Conference, ‘that ninety-nine hundredths of our people would prefer to do something to secure a training for children that would obviate the necessity for separate schools.’ And (3) the suggestion that the policy of giving grants in aid to such denominational schools as satisfy State requirements in regard to secular efficiency would lead to the closing of the public schools, is completely disproved by the incontestable facts of actual experience. In Germany, Holland, Belgium, England, and Canada — not to mention other countries — denominational schools are maintained out of the public funds, much as Catholics advocate should be done in New Zealand; yet in these countries the State schools flourish side by side with the denominational schools, and most of the countries named rank as being amongst the most highly educated and progressive nations in the world. We can only judge of what will happen, by what has happened; and we oppose these actual, indisputable, concrete facts to the ‘ scared guess-work ’ of our editors and politicians. * No doubt Mr. Ell was —in part, at least —stimulated to take the position he did on Sunday afternoon by the utterance of one of his political chiefs, the Hon. Mr. Fowlds, Minister for Education, at Grey Lynn, the other day. Mr Fowlds is reported as having said: ‘The present Government, like all Governments that have gone before it since 1877, stands by the present system, and so far as I am personally concerned I have on every occasion when offering my services for Parliament declared unequivocally for the maintenance of the existing system, and rather than be a party to any fundamental change, I should prefer to be excluded altogether from the public life of the Dominion. The will of the people must prevail in education as in everything else in a democratic country, but I am certain the democracy of this country will look critically at any proposal which would tend to lead us back into the dangerous and unsatisfactory bypaths of denominationalism from which we escaped after much tribulation in 1877.’ The advantage of such utterances ns those of Mr. Ell and Mr. Fowlds is that they put us in the position of knowing precisely where the speakers stand in regard to us. Some time ago, when discussing the wobbly ways of politicians, we said that they were rarely known nowadays to ‘ nail their colors to the mast,’ or to take a determined and unequivocal stand on anything. We should have added one qualifying exception — when they feel quite sure that they have a big majority behind them their courage is something magnificent to behold ! They are liable, however, like less exalted beings, to occasionally make mistakes in their calculations. ‘ Rather than be a party,’ said the valiant Minister, ‘to any fundamental change (in our education system), I should prefer to be excluded altogether from the public life of the Dominion.’ The utterers of virtuous outbursts like these— very rarely mean what they say—have, before now, much to their surprise, been quietly taken at their word.