The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1888. OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1908, 2 August 1888, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1888. OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Our Education System is doubtless, a magnificent one, but it is a costly article to the country, and it would seem that its price will soon come face to face with every individual m the colony who has come to manhood and who is called upon to pay part of the expenseof the system. The raising of the school age and the cutting off of the higher standards would have relieved the pressure of the cost to some extent. It is necessary that education should be compulsory so that m the future, the State will possess the benefit of an enlightened populace, but while we believe m educating the masses, it is plain that some grave fault exists with the present system and children of the present day may know more than their fathers and mothers did at their age, but it is open to question if, ndependent of the me^e standard information, they are as well educated or trained m a moral sense as their pro - genitors. Also what useful knowledge was imparted under the old system seems to be now substituted with cumbersome and unnecessary detail. Useful informalion is succeeded by routine and common sense education is sacrificed to { a weak smattering of various subjects, none of which are sufficiently mastered to become servicable ;.. to the youth. Mr Justice Williams 'of Melbourne, lately m a lecture denounced the entire present system of education and on the subject of history and how it was taught among other things he said : — " Of what possible value to bankers, merchants, lawyers, manufacturers, agriculturists, engineers, architects, surveyors or artisans, can be the information acquired m their youth, at the sacrifice of so much time and labor, regarding the lives and biographies of defunct, and, for the most part, barbarous worthless, and unprincipled Kings and Queens, dates of their accession, duration of their reigns, court intrigues, scandals and squabbles, plots and counterplots, hereditary titles, battles, with their dates and details of numbers of infantry, cavalry, and cannon, of killed, wounded, and prisoners, massacres and assassinations, executions by beheading, hanging, burning, strangling, quartering, and disembowelling ?" His Honor is also particularly severe on that subject which, is " dignified'" he says, " by the name of English analysis." He wants to know how comes it that if analysis is necessary to enable one to write English correotly that it was a branch of study unknown to the greatest ornaments of English literature, past and present. He would undertake to say " that there is not a judge, bishop, or bank manager m Australaßi'a who would not be hopelessly plucked m the easiest paper that could be set m English analysis as now taught." A calm and serious study of the fruits of the Education system so far as they can be gathered will show that something is wanting to make the rising generation as good or better cifizens than their fathers.