The Manawatu Standard. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. MONDAY, SEPT. 7, 1885. PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume x, Issue 1448, 7 September 1885, Page 2

Manawatu Standard. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. MONDAY, SEPT. 7, 1885. PRACTICAL EDUCATION.

The Stratford correspondent of the Haw en Star m a letter to that journal makes some very sensible remarks on the question of State Education, which being, to our I mind, entirely to the point we reproduce m their entirety. He writes as follows : — Thinking of schools and school funds brings the whole subject of education into one's mind, and I have to confess to being one of those who have always thought the elaborate system, in-*! augurated m 1877, a great mistake : a mistake inasmuch as the State has gone altogether too far. In a country where manhood suffrage obtains, it is necessary for the future welfare of the state that those who m a few short years will practically control its destinies, should be able to read and to understand intelligently what has t ken place m the past, and what are the real points at issue which they have to decide — j that they should, m short, be able ] to ga*ther for themselves facts and j arguments from, I believe, the fairest and most independent press m the world. There stops, it seems to me, the duty pure and simple of the State ; and to enact that every child shall spend six years of its life at school, whether its parents like it or not, simply for the sake of teaching it a lot of stuff which will be forgotten twelve months later, and which would be of no earthly use to it if it were still remembered, this seems exacting too much — too much frequently for the parents, and always for the taxpayer. High schools I have always looked on simply as a fraud on the country, and the boys attending them are as a rule educated above their station, so to speak, and look forward long, ingly to some "genteel" employment. Cowpunching, pig-ceding, bedding calves, and driving the harrows, seem such very debasing tasks to settlers' boys after they have had a few years of free riding m the smoking carriage of a train night and morning, with the concomitant idleness and skylarking. They want to be bankers 1 or lawyers 1 clerks, or to enter a store, or get up consultations, or follow some other equally pleasant and beneficent pursuit. Not that a good education is to be disparaged, for it adds immensely to one's pleasure, though not so much perhaps as an aptitude for reading the ever open book of nature wonld do ; but parents who either from vanity or some better motive desire these things for their children should be parepared to pay for them. When -we reflect that this country last year overran the constable to the tune of i? 400,000, that m fact the expenditure chargeable to revenue exceeded the income by that sum, tt is time to pause.: As sure as we are here, money will be borrowed m England to make good that deficit, and for nearly the whole of it the education vote is responsible, or rather the outlay on education, nearly is close on to the amount of the deficit. This is, I believe, exclusive of the money spent on school buildings, which also comes out of loan. This state of things cannot last, and although it is neither possible nor expedient to sweep the institution away, a radical change must come before long. My indulgent editor must pardon me for "spreading" myself on this subject, but it would be really well if every thinking man would ask himself whether the game is worth such a very big candle as we are now burning.