The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 31, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2637, 31 July 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 31, 1871.

Many persons, not thoroughly satisfied with our efforts in Otago to give highclass education to our young people, are raising the question, “ What shall we “ do with our hoys 1 ” They point to the glut of learned loafers in the old country that throng the Church, the Bar, the Army and Navy. They point to briefless barristers, brainless curates, subalterns in the army, navy, law, medicine, and counting-house —men too well taught, they say, to labor with their hands, yet unable to make their way in competition with those whose brains are clearer, or who, through circumstances, are placed in leading positions. The ladies, too, have their objections to the higher education: they say, “We “ shall soon have no servants, if the “ girls of the present day are so well “ taught, for it is not likely that they “ will come and drudge for hire ” ; and they too point to a number of young ladies, whose parents are not in very affluent circumstances, who are waiting anxiously for some young gentlemen to make wives of them. In view of this acknowledged overplus of candidates for special positions, we should find it very difficult to defend giving a highclass education if it necessarily involved incapacitating either man or woman from fulfilling the common duties of life ; and we are quite ready to acknowledge that a great change must take place in the public estimate of respectability —in fact, snobbery must wane before education. Prizes in the professions are very few, and in regard to them we acknowledge the truth of Darwin’s theory of natural selection—the best man will win them. It is just so with good marriage settlements. In the Colonies especially, young gentlemen are not easily picked up who enjoy corafoi'table means at four or five-ahd-twenty years old. No matter, therefore, whether it is in the law, the Church, or the husband market, common sense must supersede our false conventional ideas. We must therefore make up our minds to discard those absurd notions of rank and position in society which we have brought with ns from Home, and which seem likely to cost us more dearly to carry about with ns than our useless luggage. In fact, it would have been much better if we could have left them behind us. They were hindrances to progress at Horae ; they drove many to the Colonies who were too high-spirited to be trammelled by them, and they are absolute blocks to healthy settlement at present. We look upon it that the higher education, which we hope to see genex-al, will cure this. What really separates society into different coteries now, is not so much difference of means as difference of education and modes of thought. Where all drink at the same fountain of knowledge, these differences will disappear, and manual labor will not be considered a disqualification for admission to the best society. To those of us who had to endure the toil and labor that marked the difficulties of the early Australasian Colonists, the assumption of this generation to exemption from any share in toil, is in some respects inexplicable. Wo see the young men content with narrow incomes rather than imitate the sturdy efforts of their parents. We see young ladies expecting to be waited upon and to take their ease, instead of following in the footsteps of their mothers, who for their sakes, without complaining, underwent all the drudgery Avhich is somehow thought beneath the daughter to submit to j who often without help had to manage a large family, and work, and stitch, antT mend, that they might grow up in health and knowledge. The real annoyance is that there is no occasion for this : that it really arises from a false estimate of human duties : that there is boundless wealth lying around us in the earth, on the earth, and in the sea, to wake every wan and every

boy independent in a few years, if his energy and talent were properly directed : and if the men succeed, no one doubt the girls will be .well provided for. But we would put this question to those who object to the high education we desire to see so general : —Has this difficulty, What to do with our children, arisen in consequence of education, or through its absence 1 The objection raised is that it will lead to the difficulty which really exists. Wo look to a sound and liberal education as a means to curing the evil. It is imperfect education that unfits men and women for work—the training of the intellect ' to the neglect of the morals and muscles. No man will use a spade the worse, but much the better, who knows the use of the extensor and flexor muscles : every man will farm the better who knows how to analyse the soil, and ascertain what is required to render it fertile : every man will mine the more certainly who knows the character of rooks and the order of their strata : every carpenter will do his work more accurately who can practically apply mathematical formulse to his plans, and who has had his taste artistically cultivated : every shoemaker will make a better fit, and a more comfortable shoe, for knowing the anatomy of the foot; and every man and woman in every station will work more conscientiously for understanding and feeling the obligations of the tasks they have undertaken. If nurse girls are well educated, they are more to be trusted with children: well taught cooks will be more skilful and careful : housemaids neater and more particular, and what is of higher importance than anything else, it will be considered more honorable to work for a living than to live upon the bounty of friends. Dependence and defective education generally go together, and it is a disgrace to our intelligence that the selfdependent should be looked upon with contempt by indolent loafers of both sexes. Tliis unhealthy state of society reminds one of the false notions in Henry the Eight’s time, when, as Mr Fursivall relates in his “Babeesßook,” a gentleman said at a public feast: —

I swear by God’s body, I’d rather that my son should hang than study letters. For it becomes the sons ef gentlemen to blow the horn nicely, to hunt skilfully, and clegmtly carry and train a hawk. But the study of letters should be left to the sous of rustics. We quite think that both boys and girls should bo taught to use their hands as well as their heads, and to look upon Avork as more honorable than idleness. We are aAvare that a generation—perhaps two—will pass before this change takes place, but it must come sooner or later, and on the principle of natural selection, which in this instance holds good, those Avho first realise the certainty of it and take the lead will take the pri7.es. The genteel empty heads, and many of the dependent husband seeking spinsters of the present day, will be displaced by a generation better fitted for the circumstances in Avhich they are placed—better trained—and those who now seek only to be genteel instead of useful, without the necessary means, will sink unhonox’ed to their graves.