The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1874.

Evening Star, Issue 3480, 18 April 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1874.

The Colony of Victoria has lately been making a great experiment in the matter of the education of the people, and it will be well for us if we make up our minds to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the results which have followed, and are likely to follow, from the course which the people of Victoria have adopted. As our readers know, there are three vital principles on which the Victorian system has been based. Education in Victoria is free, secular, and compulsory. It is of some importance that we should attach a definite meaning to each of these three words. The first and the last of them are sufficiently easy to understand; about the second, more or less misconception exists in the minds of many persons. When it is said that education is free and compulsory, it is of

course implied that the State undertakes the whole task §£ educating the young in those branches which are to be considered essential for the making of useful and intelligent citizens ; that it undertakes to bear the whole expense incurred in the process ; and that it insists on performing these offices in every case in which parents do not, on their|own account, see that their children are educated to the extent re* quired by law. The word “secular’’ does not, as many would have us be lieve, mean “ opposed to religion it merely indicates that the system to which it is applied is non-religious. Indirectly, a secular system may be,

and in our opinion is, the most powerful support that religion can have; directly, it has nothing whatever to do with religious instruction. The system of education existing in this : Province is, then, in three very important particulars, diametrically opposed to that which has been instituted in Victoria. Parents here have to bear a very considerable part of the expense attending the education of their children ; any parent who wishes to do so may allow his children to grow up in utter ignorance ; and, lastly, very many parents are prevented from sending their children to our State schools, by the regulation which gives to part of the school routine a religious character of a kind to which they conscientiously object, inasmuch as it acts as a positive bar to the appointment of members of their

own sect as teachers in the schools. If the regulation referred to, which requires that the Bible be read either at the opening or the closing of the school, stated in plain terms, “No Roman Catholic shall hold the position of head master in any public school,” it could not more effectually prevent the appointment of a Catholic to such a post than it does at present.

Laying aside for the present a priori considerations about the correctness or the incorrectness of the view that the State ought to bear the whole expense of the education of the young, let us see what results have actually followed in Victoria from the adoption of the principle that “ education should be free.” Mr Stephen says in his address to the electors of Prahran \— It is marvellous what a number of children were on the school rolls 4 in 1873. Out of a population of less than 800.0(H), there were 206,602 attending schools—actually more than one-quarter of the population of the Colony. There were in 1872 on the rolls of the schools 135,962 children. That is to say there has been an increase of 70,640. Now, it has been said that these children have been taken from the private schools. In order to test that, I have had circulars sent round to all schools, requesting information from the teachers as to how many of the fresh children have bean at private schools, and how many were thoroughly needy children, not educated at all before they went to the State schools. We find that out of 70,640 of an increase only 15,688 are from private schools, and many of those schools were merely nominal ones, that took care of infants while their parents were at work, but taught them nothing. Reckoning, however, the number from all private schools at 15,688, there is a balance of 54,952 children on the rolls at our State schools who never were in any State school before.

These figures speak for themselves. They would seem to show that if the old system had been in force one-fourth of the children at any rate who are now getting the rudiments of a sound education, would be growing up in utter ignorance, to become in after years a dead weight to the community, to say the least.

One very important advantage derived from the new order of things is that the teachers are placed in such a position that prospective advantages can be held out to them in such a way as to induce them to exert themselves to the utmost. In a word, when the educational system is “ free,” and as an almost inevitable consequence entirely under the control of a responsible minister, every administrative act being performed by him—any undue partiality which the minister may. display in making appointments is certain to be very sharply criticised, and on the whole strict justice will be done to all teachers. The most able men will be placed in the most important schools, and promotion will, sooner or later, be the reward for distinguished services to the cause of education. In this respect, we believe, our system must be considered as very defective. Teachers have often complained to us that promotion in this Province is, in

the vast majority of cases, almost an impossibility. “ Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” might well be written over the doors of most of the schoolhouses in the Province. It seems to us that the only object in life which our Education Act sets before the teachers, is that they should endeavor to “ make it right ” with their Committees. If they can do this, they may also manage to drag out a tolerably peaceful existence, and—if they are actuated by high ideas of a virtue that is to be “its own reward”—a useful one. The last two appointments to head-masterships in our Grammar Schools give striking prooi of the truth of what we have been saying. There

were numerous applications for these positions sent in by local men who were thoroughly eligible for them. In some instances those applicants were University graduates, and teachers who had for many years discharged their duties most efficiently, the reports of the Inspector showing this to be the case • yet in both of these instances outsiders were appointed—qualified teachers, no doubt, but in no respect superior to the local candidates, except that they were outsiders. Now we de hold that this is very unjust. It reminds one of the

parable of the laborers in the vineyard who received every man a penny—both those who had borne the heat and burden of the day and those who were engaged at the eleventh hour—with the important difference in this case, however, that the eleventh-hour men have received twopence instead of the orthodox penny. Had these appointments been made by a responsible minister or by the Board of Education instead of by

irresponsible school committees, a great deal would have been heard about the matter ; as it is, every one knows that it would be a mere beating of the air to attempt to remonstrate against this injustice, palpable as it is. We may conclude this article by quoting the remarks of Mr Stephen on this point, showing as they do that the treatment which faithful public servants in. Victoria are likely to receive is very dif-

ferent from that which they experience in this Province at the hands of the local school committees. I believe I stand well n ith the schoolmasters, but there are some teachers who no doubt have suffered from the change. We have lately, however, _ initiated a plan of extending the training institute throughout the country by having twenty affiliated institutes, and we shall from amongst the teachers select twenty who shall!-be called associates of the institutes, and who, in addition to "the bonuses for pupil teachers which they pass, will have LIOO besides their own emoluments. Another point where the teachers will gain is the promotion which they will obtain under the present system, and which they could not obtain under the old one except with great difficulty. Now, the teachers will get regularly promoted accorded to merit, as the number of schools increases. Wo have

already 100 new schools. New appointments will be made, and men who have made themselves competent, will be invited to go up higher, so there will be a continual promotion, I will give you a few figures in order to show you what opening there is for premotion of the school teachers. When the new school buildings are completed, we shall have 75 of them, with accommodation for from 500 to 1,000 children each. The head-teachers for these schools will receive, independently of the incidental additions from extra subjects and bonuses for pupil teachers—which are alone worth LIOO in large schools—from L 360 to L6OO, which is as good a salary as that of the higher class—except the very highest—of the civil service. There will be 116 assistant teachers, who will receive from Ll7O to L3lO per year; whereas iu 1872 there were only 31 head teachers receiving over L 36 0; and only 44 assistants, in receipt of over Ll7O. You see that thus there will bb an improvement in their status and emolument, and the prizes of the profession bear a largep proportion to the number employed than in my profession er any other than I know.