WELLINGTON EDUCATION SCHEME.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 528, 26 February 1876, Page 2

WELLINGTON EDUCATION SCHEME.

To the Editor of the Globe. •

Sib, —The eleven resolutions on Education deserve the most careful criticism, as the welfare of New Zealand lies so much in a good system of instruction. I have four very serious objections to the resolutions, viz. :

1. District Boards are not required. 2. The examination of Teachers and their grading should not be by Board of Examiners. • .

3. The subsidising of Professors for Teachers is wrong. 4. To speak of establishments with Government aid only is bad. I long ago mentioned the plan of a Minister for Education for the whole colony, but, surely such Minister should be a Cabinet Minister, amenable to Parliament, there is no other way to secure efficiency and to secnre a sound, practical, common-sense training for our best brains. Our University even will persist in assuming that a curriculum of classic and medioeval type is what they call a High Education, so they taint our youth at the Christchurch Grammar School with all the abominable vices of the Dead Past, although even Juvenal says—- " Nil dictu fcedum, visuque hcec limina tangat, Intra quae puer est." Parliamentary control would break through classic prejudice, and would certainly give what Resolution 9 asks for, ie., Science and Art for the working classes, and for the teachers too. Surely the Minister for Education, assisted by the University Council, could manage the examination and graduation of the teachers better than a complicated system of Boards; and there need be no such extra facilities as Resolution 8 speaks of. If the New Zealand University did its duty, it could easily embrace the training and classification, as well as the examination of teachers. But they would need to alter the. Curriculum, and enable a School of Chemistry, Mines and Metallurgy, Geology, Dynamics, to become well attended by teachers and senior scholars in evening classes. I know of many in Christchurch alone, who wish for openings to study these subjects; they are principally apprentices to engineers, architects, builders, contractors, and they groan at the total want of evening tuition in those subjects and the cognate branches. Practical Geometry as qpposed tp Euc'id, and Algebra applied as it is in Dynamics, &c. Surely, Education might become a branch of the Civil Service, with its permanent officers and changeable head, with a special property tax levied upon a prqper assessment on che whole of New Zealand (Islands included), with a special account in the New Zealand Exchequer. It could be far more easily managed than the Customs, or the Surveys, or any other branch of New Zealand Civil Service.

The vesting and management of the building would be both better and more cheaply done by County and Municipal Councils.. Let us take Christelmrch, ■yyith four large schools and four gross blunders. liincow Eoad, the school perched at the far end of the section, at the end of ten years must be double the size; there is no room to enlarge effectively for want of intelligence somewhere.

Gloucester Street, a building the cost of whose marvellous roofing would in a few years build a large school, and with a fearful expense has not provided a bath and firetank.

Normal School, first one intention, then another, and both wrong, because the first intention of training teachers ought to be conducted on the pupil teacher system, and then by the University ; because the second intention of a Day School could have been perfected at one-fifth of the cost. Last, the South and East School, put into the lowest hole in Christehurch, 7£ feet above high water mark (the Post Office and Resident Magistrate's Court are "one foot lower) ; in any heavy flood the school is surrounded by acres of stinking, stagnant soil, and my floor, at Hyde Gardens, South Belt, 60 chains off, is fifteen feet above the school floor at the Gas Works, i.e., my head as I write this is about level with the saddleboards of the roof of the school. I»m quite sure that Mr Hobbs and his fellow Councillors would have managed the building of those four schools, for less money, for more usefulness, with more room, more health., and common sense.

I wish the Wellington teachers would depute an architect (not a gewgaw mediaeval dreamer), a practical school architect, to survey the messes made by District Boards, and then to look at Mr Walkden's cheap useful bridge at Montreal street, and see the city work generally. I think on his report they would instantly rescind Resolution 2, and vote for Educational Civil Service.

TJiere are scores of young men, and middleaged men, to whom popular leptures, wjth proper illustrations, diagrams, or experiments, would constitute a mental awakening, and lead them to abandon those dreadful windbag institutions, in which one night we saw they had started the theory that Christianity was Selfishness, and where young sleepy heads learn to spout intellectual froth. ;

A good course of lectures, such as Professor Bicker Jon's, is within the University control, and could be amplified by being made to issue in classes where teachers could be taught. Hence we need not subsidise professors. Lastly, all Schools, public and private, male or female, should be regulated and inspected by an efficient Educational Civil Service under the Cabinet.

Yours, &c., J, W, TREADWE^L,