The Education Question.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 21, 30 July 1887, Page 4

The Education Question.

PRESENT SYSTEM DEFENDED.

Is his lecture on “ Self-reliance,” at the Presbyterian Literary Association on Tuesday evening, Mr DeLautour referred to the question of education, which is now so prominent a feature on all political platforms. It was, he said, a question requiring two or three nights in itself to be properly dealt with. Most of us older people, he continued, had been educated in other lands, and cotile here with such a measure of education as we have been able to receive, be it more or less, and take up our own position in the practical world in which we find ourselves, and of course the country is not in any way responsible for our success or failures ; and that being so there is great diversity in the education of the people. But looking to the young —those who are reared in the colony—the position is very different. To everyone is ensured an education, in many respects better and upon a truer idea of what education is, than had been offered to ourselves* as an average. Surely we must take th.at as an omen for good, unless the idea proclaimed openly now—he regretted to nee it on every side—was A correct one. Surely this S ociety—a literary society of 1887— would not for a moment entertain the idea that education was a mistake! That a little child able to reach the fourth standard, or work out a sum in practice, to stumble through one or two of the elementary reading books—that that diild was fit to go into the world as an educated person ; or, in the alternative, that no education was necessary. Such doctrines were not tolerable in this age. He ventured to look upon education merely as an initial self-instruction —not merely transmitting a few facts into a child, but also something that would be of use

through his or her life—-to create an appetite for the acquirement of ideas as well as facts, that in the future the man or woman may add to the sum of prosperity in the country. We were told now that the working man, whoever he was—he never heard of the working-man except during election times, and then he became very popular—could not afford to give his child the advantages of education beyond the fourth standard, and that it was an injustice to the working-man to allow any advance upon that to be given. He said the working-man of New Zealand would scout such an idea. There was not a man but did not in his heart wish that his child might have an opportunity to develop his mind and take an educated part in the affairs of his country, such as they, from inferior advantages, had been unable to attain. Everyone looked to the advantage of their children —that they might rise upon the stepping stones of our dying selves to higher things. The lecturer noticed the Gisborne Political Association had condemned the higher education, and he thought such resolutions were founded upon wrong premises. It would be better if they were to reconsider this— to get at the true facts of the case and not to generalise from information picked up from that paper and this. Such information was seldom trustworthy; it was generally obtained hurriedly or even strongly biassed. These high schools were either supported bv fees collected in the schools or from endowments made long since by the various provinces when the land belonged to the people of those provinces. Many of these schools were mere nurseries for children of parents whose prejudices prevented them sending their children to the public schools where they

would be infinitely better off. The remedy if one were required, was to remove the inefficiency of those schools to which the reflection applied, Instead of cutting away standards aud talking nonsense about expenditure which did not exist, we should go hand in hand in nationalising all schools, and placing their revenue in one fund ; not employing the expenditure to deprive children of one part to the advantage of the other part, but giving the ablest—never mind whether_ the rich man or the poor man’s child—the opportunity to rise step by step from the primary schools to the the high schools until it may be to the university, so that New Zealand might have the advantage of the matured ability of the ablest of her children. It only needed a little self sacrifice on the part of parents. They did not want mere accumulation of facts, but something that would start the young upon the path of self instruction, which could be carried on without any school, and which never ended during one’s lifetime. We would have the men of future New Zealand embarking on the course of life upon a footing of equality. The lecturer then spoke in favor of the schools being kept secular, and denied that the young people of to day were growing up in ungodliness, with all the Christian influences surrounding them.