The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1873

Evening Star, Issue 3099, 24 January 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1873

We are glad to receive from Melbourne information respecting the success of the educational arrangements adopted last session. It may be objected that it is somewhat too early to speak of success until the system has had a lengthened trial, and the results show themselves. There is some degree of force in the argument; but, on the other hand, nothing is more certain than that the previous arrangements did not succeed; that the schools were not efficient because of the multiplication of them through sectarian teaching, and the consequent weakening of means of securing high teaching talent, and that the mere fact of many schools having been founded by persons of certain religious persuasions had a repellant effect upon the people, who would not send their children, under the idea that a bias would bo given to them towards certain doctrines they did not approve. Wo quite co-incide with those who sec in the efforts made by various religious sects most praiseworthy liberality in money mutters. They showed thcinselios fully alive to the duty of providing means for educating the young, before it had forced itself upon people generally ; and while others wore deliberating they were working. The world is therefore much indebted to them for their pioneer efforts in the cause ; but unfortunately their liberality had a limit. They were willing to give of their substance on condition that the school was connected with the Church to which they belonged. It does not even appear tliat latterly, as a rule, they insisted upon having the children instructed in their own dogmas: what they wished was to have their schools filled. It may have been very ungrateful on the part of parents not to take advantage of the provision made for the children being taught, but the boon was clogged with what rendered it distasteful to all but members of the sect; it boro the title Wesleyan Independent, Presbyterian, or otherwise, according to the peculiar views of its founders. Nor did the evil rest here. There were in Victoria mere hamlets, in which there were hardly children enough to form one decent school, in which rival sects had built two and sometimes three schoolhousos, and appointed to each a teacher. The consequence was that men of ability did not find it worth their while to accept the miserable pittance in the shape of income that could be afforded them, and, consequently, teaching fell to the lot of a class perhaps too weak mentally and bodily to succeed iu the world’s competition; but who, being attached to the church, were placed iu the position of school-teacher to secure them against want. Those parents who could afford to pay for efficient instruction, consequently, sent their children elsewhere to be taught, and the remainder, either refused to avail themselves of the school at all, or felt it a hardship to have to pay fees for what was barely better than no education. The result was not difficult to foresee : a growing indifference to all education began to prevail amongst certain classes of the population, and when once retrogression begins, its progress is rapid: each generation aggravates the evil. Advance is at all times difficult, for it is aggressive; hut in order to go backward it is only necessary to cease frem efforts, and the reign of ignorance is established. Those facts have long ago forced themselves on the attention of the Legislature, and for years past efforts have been made to grapple with the evil; hut public opinion is of slow growth. Every age has its superstition. We need not go back to the time of our Saxon forefathers or the dark ages for illustrations of its deterrent effect upon human progress, we find it working evil amongst ourselves. The world is still filled with men who have not cast off its trammels, and who still cling to the baneful error that it is unwise to prepare children to understand and fulfil their duties in this world, unless there is given with it what they conceive to bo a special preparation for the next. These men are too timid to dare to think for themselves freely; they look backward to traditions for support, instead of daring to investigate the ground on which tradition rests. The consequence is easily foreseen : instead of being leaders, they become timid and tardy followers, clinging to each rag and remnant of the past, and throwing it in the Way to impede and hamper progress in the future. We have only to look to the minutes of proceedings of Synods and church gatherings for proofs of this. Science has in all ages been denounced as “ vain philosophy# unscctarian education as “godless.” and a free untrammelled press as “infidel,” or “semi-infidel.” Experience cannot teach them that all education that leads to a knowledge and love of truth must be good, and that to attach to its being imparted a condition which is not hold in common by all men, is to impose fetters that are but intolerable tyranny, even when forged in the name of religion. It was not thus with the Church at Jerusalem in its earliest days. The only restraints laid upon Christian professors were that they were to avoid idolatory, and lead pure and moral lives — as any one may learn who reads the report of the proceedings of the Synod as given in Acts 15. and the resolution passed as stated in the 28th and 29th .verses. The fear of secular education is a superstition of this age, and will ho looked upon with as much wonder one hundred years hence, as wo feel that our forefathers should have burnt some poor old woman for a witch, or believed that it was pleasing God to burn a heretic.