The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 442, 15 October 1880, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15.

The maintenance of an extravagant and elaborate system of free national education in this colony at the present time is a subject that has received much unfavorable comment throughout the length and breadth of the country, and a course of action that has been generally condemned as a glaring inconsistency on the part of a Government which has adopted retrenchment as the basis of its policy. It is not the character of the scheme that is criticised, so much as the unnecessary extent to which it is carried, and the recklessly lavish mode of its management and operation. That a system of education to be national should be free, secular, and compulsory is assumed ns a political truism ; but even so, it binds the State only so far as primary or elementary principles. Beyond this, it may be fairly argued, duty ceases, and philanthropy and sentiment are the ruling motives. This is not to say that, having afforded a free elementary education, the State should assist no further in the matter. It simply means that, having provided free of cost a primary teaching to all, the secondary and higher standards should be paid for \n some part by those to be benefited, the State providing the balance of the necessary expenditure incurred, and checking all extravagance in the working of the system, with a view to attaining the best results at the least possible burden to the taxpayer.

The mode of procedure in our national system is the very antithesis of this. The State, with well-intentioned philanthropy but most unbusiness-like action, provides free education from the very, rudiments to the university curriculum, utterly regardless of the cost entailed, the results obtained, or tho burden imposed upon the nation. With sophisticated reasoning it is urged that the taxpayer will not object to the increase of his indebtedness, since it covers the cost of education ; but if that argument is worth an) thing, it surely is refined sarcasm to call the system a free one, since indirectly the price paid for a child's education is more than would be the case, generally speaking, if the State did not interfere in the matter at all. It is like making a present witli the right hand and holding out the left for payment. The fact is that, introduced at a time when the colony was rolling in a plethora of borrowed capital, the present scheme was received with universal acclamation and gratitude. Without thought for the future, the system was set in operation throughout the country as rapidly as possible, to satisfy the eager clamoring of each and every district. No expense was spared, and imperfections were left to right themselves as time went on. The result was, of course, and is, for that matter, a mass of mismanagement and incompetency, a hideous growth of excrescences, and the development of an over-grown and unwieldy department utterly beyond the country's needs, and almost beyond control. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately in this case, that plethora of fictitious wealth has come to an abrupt end, and the colony is brought face to face with the unpleasant truth that it has been living beyond its means, and must reduce its establishments. The people must in short practice economy in every sphere of life, and cut thei* coats according to their cloth. With such a revelation staring them in the face, it is not to be wondered at that an annual expenditure of nearly half a million on a system of national education very far from perfection in its operation, and lamentably deficient in results, should be a source of considerable public dissatisfaction, and a slur on the administrative ability of a Government whose watchword is " Retrenchment." The truth is they feared to test public opinion by an adverse action in this matter. They felt it to be a difficult and delicate subject to interfere with, and in that lack of moral courage they were ably seconded by a majority of the rcpiesentntivcs of the people ; but we feel sure that the greater portion of the constituencies would have welcomed wholesale reform and reduction of expenditure in this direction, an _ accepted it as a necessary, though perhaps unpleasant, proceeding. The subject cannot fail to form one of the most, if not the most, important qu<ystions that will occupy the attrition of Parliament next

session, nnd it is to be hoped that before then the voice of the people will be heard with no uncertain sound on this head, in order that the incubus may be rendered less ruinously cumbersome. In order more clearly to show the exis ing state of educational matters, we purpose reverting to the subject from time to time, and shall endeavor, whilst proving the justice of condemning the present lavish expenditure, to indicate the direction of its abatement, and the extent to which a stringent reform and retrenchment may be entered upon without impairing the efficiency of the system as a whole. These are neither the days for wholesale philanthropic enterprises, nor for entering upon costly schemes for national aggrandisement; and if such have been undertaken in times of seeming prosperity, the exigency of tho present crisis is an all-sufficient argument not for repudiation, but for a rigid performance to the letter of the engagement; but to do this it is manifestly imperative to reduce working expenses to a minimum, _in_ to linve done with luxury and show and all that is absolutely outside actual necessity and requirements.