The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3032, 15 March 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1881.

As has been all along predicted, our educational system is breaking down with its ova weight. The colony haa gone iv for a luxury that it cannot afford. At The Education Board's meeting this morning, Mr Ormond said that it was impossible to carry out the Act in this district through the Government being unable to supply the necessary funds. To every demand for money for the repair of school buildings the reply was always tbe same—no funds. Districts are springing up in all directions through the natural progress of settlement and population tbat cannot be supplied with schools, for the simple rea«on that there is no money either to build them or pay for the teachers. The whole system, from its inception to its present moribund condition is a huge blunder. Can, for instance, anything be imagined more unfair than that a system, claiming to be colonial in its application, and for the support of which every one is taxed, should be only partially applied ? Why should new districts be ignored ? If there be any virtue in this educational scheme, it must be so carried out that, to the best of the administrators' ability, the same school advantages should be obtainable both in towu and country. There sbcuid be no respect shown to one district over another, but this impartiality is a simple impossibility, and being so the whole system is a mistake. It needs tho property tax to cover tbe vote for education; the tax falls on all alike, for the reason that the education of the people is the best safe-guard of property. But if the children within the old and populous districts can alone be educated, where is the benefit? A little leaven will not leaven the whole. It is hardly likely that the country will submit to be taxed to give schooling to town children. Either the colony must be burdened with another tax for tbe support of an unequally administered system, or school fees must be imposed. It is all very well for Captain Russell to aim at a little cheap popularity by talking such clap-trap as he did about the children of the rich and children of the poor rubbing shoulders together in the State schools, but if he lived far away in the country he would send his boys to some college, or obtain tutors for them, while his poor neighbors' children would go without schooling of any sort, because the educational system cannot be carried out in tip-country sparsely settled districts. We repeat that the education scheme is a wretched blunder, an extravagant luxury which the financial condition of the colony renders it dishonest to indulge in, and a one-sided affair that provides schooling for those who can afford to pay for it, and leaves alone those who most require it.