EDUCATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 5, 25 February 1871, Page 7

EDUCATION.

—v ;. If it be true that “ corning events cast their shadows before,” the election of school boards in England may be justly regarded as having a far higher interest than, even the intrinsic importance of the subject would give to them. It would he premature as yet to speculate on what the effects of the great educational measure of the last session will be. For good or for ill, a most decided step has been taken, and every wellwisher to his country and his race, will .watch its issue with keen and earnest attention. But while that issue has yet to be worked out, the election is an accomplished fact, and therein for the first time experiments have been mad# which must affect in no small degree, both the theory of representation, and the machinery by which representation is to be secured. These experiments include private nomination, Secret and cumulative voting, with the extension of the franchise, and of the right to be • elected, to females as well as males. As we in this colony have now mad# a trial of secret voting, it is not necessary to say much on this point, yet it is worth while to notice what the. opinion of the press is, on this bold innovation on our English customs and traditions, The “ Standard” says :-—” The first Educational Parliament for the London district . was elected yesterday, and the accounts from the several divisions of the metropolis, agree in representing that the elections were universally conducted with an amount of order and decorum that is creditable in the highest degree to all engaged in the cantest.” And the same paper adds : ■—“ln the streets there was very little of the appearances which are usually observable even at the parish elections. On the whole, the elections went of in an admirable manner; the system of voting adopted worked well.” Another paper—the “ Nonconformist I ’—-which on most questions .takes the very opposite view to that taken by the ”, Standard,” says :—“ In all districts the new mode of voting has worked admirably. The utmost order has prevailed. The quiet has been unruffled. There have been no crowds, turbulent or otherwise, no revolting displays of degraded humanity. ‘Men arid women have gone to the poll with as little rudeness or bustle to encounter as if they had gone to their respective places of worship. There was nothing un-English in the proceedings —no skulking, no cowardice, nq act tending to. wound the self-respect the most high-minded elector. To see the ballot in actual operation is to see the most thorough collapse of all the stock arguments used against it. "We venture to affirm that London will never again submit to an open-voting election wftjbout strong repugnance and deepdis•gust.” • ■My J- ■:* ‘ : ;

**■ './.The election of-ladies, whether by »the votes of females or otherwise, is a ' ‘very significant circumstance. It may v be said that the purpose for which the I elected are . to serve, is one in which both sexes are equally interested, and r. further, that although these school boards ‘ have very large administrative powers, they have little to do in the way of /.legislation. This may be admitted, but still the fact remains that ladies have - been elected to take partin deliberative bodies, to which is committed the measure that is hoped by its promoters will * secure some degree of education, for every child in England. It will there- ••• fore "be difficult to show why those who are competent to arrange for the training of future electors and legislators, . are not also competent to deal directly with the work of legislation itself. / It is, however, as a trial of the mode '/of election by private nomination and /also of cumulative voting that these * ’elections become so worthy of study, and that will cause them to mark an epoch . in the history of the representative /system. The first got rid of the useless and noise of the hustings, f and the second has in a marked degree

secured the representation of minorities. As the ‘phrase “cumulate voting” is somewhat new here, we borrow the following explanation from a London paper,—“ Every ratepayer might either give one vote to each of the full number .of candidates to be chosen for his division, or might cumulate several or all of his votes upon one candidate.” And the machinery by which this was accomplished was by ballot papers printed with the names of candidates and

another column in which the voter inserted the number of votes be gave for each. How this operated may be seen in the case of the election at Leeds! Fifteen members were elected and they are described thus: “Five lay members of the Church of England, three Wesleyans, two Roman Catholics, one Independent, one Primitive Methodist, one Free Methodist, and one Unitarian. Mr Jewitt (Independent) headed the poll with nearly 50,000 votes.” It will thus be seen that although the Independent could only return one, yet they not only made his election sure, but placed him at the head of the poll by concentrating their fifteen votes on him. Thus also, Miss Garrett was elected for Marylebone (also

at the top of the poll), with. 47,858 votes, while the next highest (Professor Huxley) only polled 13,494. Evidently the ladies gave their seven votes to their own candidate. Indeed, in almost every case, the difference between the numbers polled by those at top of the list, and those of the unsuccessful Candidates is so great as to admit of no other explanation than that which is afforded by the accumulative votes. Thus in Westminster, MrW. H. Smith polled 13,602 votes, and the highest of the unsuccessful candidates only 4310. In the Tower hamlets it was still more marked, as Mr E. H. Currie heads the list with 26,408 votes, while the highest of the unsuccessful shows only 4972. In Manchester the list was headed by a Homan Catholic clergyman, with 54,560 votes, and a barrister of the same communion, with 36,308; yet it is said that the actual number of votes was only 6000, while the Church of England, with 9000 votes, only succeeded in returning five members, and although the .two be a smaller proportion to the number of electors than the five, still it is quite, evident that under the old system the 9000 votes would have returned the whole, leaving the 6000 practically unrepresented. .. These instances, however, show that the mode of “ working” the cumulative vote is not understood as vet. Thus Miss Garrett’s 47,858 votes may have been given by less than 7,000 voters, as there were seven.members to be returned), but the half of the votes of that number would have placed her far above all other candidates, aad the other half would have, placed another candidate in, an equally.good position. So the .50,000 voters at Leeds, and the 54,560 at Manchester, if judiciously divided, might just as easily have returned two members as one. But these are mistakes'that will soon be corrected. It has been shown that it is practicable to carry out elections, by cumulative votes,.ana that the vote by ballot has suppressed tlje greater portion, if hot all of the vices, irreparable from the

former system, and hence it is a safe prediction that this is the precursor of the large reform that thoughtful men like Lord Brougham, and practical men like William Cobbett have alike been striving to procure.

If the mode in which the education boards in England have been elected be important in its lessons for us, equally important is the object for which these bonds h ave been called into existence. For if England be in need of a national system of education much more is this young colony, and especially this province of Wellington. We shall confine ourselves at present to the wants of the piovince. It is well known to every one that the state of things in regard to education is truly deplorable. The evil is felt even in towns; but still more in the country districts. In towns there is population to support to some extent at least—schools by school fees ; thought the want of aid from other funds is felt in the necessity arising from this to make the rate of fees so high that only a limited number can avail themselves of the education given in these schools. This Remark applies both to public and to private schools; the rate of fees is in most cases so high as practically to prevent great numbers from sending their children to them. Tt is no easy matter for parents with a limited income, and where there may be two or three in a family to educate to send their children to a school where they have to pay from three to four guineas a quarter each, with various extras over and above. We are far from thinking that the teachers in those schools are overpaid. They are not; but, depending solely on the fees, and having only a limited number of pupils, they are necessitated to charge a high rate of fee, and so, practically, a large class are shut out from sharing in the benefits of a good education. But it is in country districts, where the population is sparse, that the evils of our present system, or want of system, are most apparent. For here it is quite impossible that a teacher can realise anything like an adequate salary from fees alone. If he charge a high fee the parents cannot pay it, and, of course, won’t send their children to the school. He must therefore charge a very moderate fee ; and, even though all the children within the district should attend, yet the number is so limited from the sparseness of the population that the fees cannot yield anything like a sufficient income. Hence thoroughly qualified teachers will seek a living elsewhere, or in some other profession : and the education of the rising generation will fall into the hands of incompetent men. Or another result, and one which is already witnessed in many districts—the teachers are starved out, the schools closed, and the children allowed to grow up in gross ignorance. Visit any one of the country districts in this province, even where there are townships and villages, and you will find either the provincial school closed, or the teacher struggling amid innumerable difficulties to eke out a very scanty living. Such is the state of things in the province: the teachers are either being starved out, or they are thoroughly disheartened in their work by the. miserable remuneration they receive for it.

Now. what has been done by the Government for education in those country districts ? They have set apart in various localities sections of land, which are known as educational reserves. From these educational reserves, little or no benefit has yet been derived. They are not leased, nor fenced, nor used for any practical purpose ; for the mostpart they remain in an unreolaimed state ; and so far as education is concerned, they are for the present of no value whatever. Years hence they may come to be valuable as an endowment for education, but for the present need they are really of no account. Were they of greater extent, and nearer townships, they would sooner be occupied, and made to yield an annual rental, which would, prove a great help to the cause of education. . Again, the Provincial Government, so long as it had means, gave annual grants to the schools, and these grants, though inadequate, were a great boon. But in the present state of the Provincial it has been found necessary to these grants, and, in

some cases, to withdraw them. This, no doubt, has proved a great hardship to the teacher, and has added not a little to the difficulties of his position. Yet how can it be avoided ? The Provincial Government cannot give what they have not got. Well, but it may be said, did not the Provincial Council pass a Bill authorising a household rate of £1 to be levied for educational purposes ? True ; but for want of proper machinery to carry out this measure it is, in many districts, practically inoperative. The Council enacted that a vote of £1 a family might be levied, but they left it to local committees to enforce and collect the rateand these local committees, often either selfishly indifferent to education or not agreeing about the rate, have utterly failed to collect any rate at all. And so the teacher suffers, and the cause of education suffers. Rates, if left to local parties, who have to rate themselves as well as others, will never generally and efficiently be raised. We can see that signally manifested in the working of the Makara and Karori Road Boards and the wretched state of their roads in winter. No, the rate must be levied, enforced, and collected by some central authority, who may through these local committees distribute it again for the support of the schools. The £1 a householder rate was a step in the right direction ; but the measure needs to be amended in order to be efficiently worked. The partial failure of this measure, however, proves that the Government are not wholly to blame for the low state of education in the province. The people themselves are greatly to blame. They have in many districts shown a lamentable indifference to the educational interests of the young, not only by their not making any great exertion or any great sacrifice to support a school, but often by their unwillingness to pay the general rate' that was levied, and by their carelessness in sending their children to the school even when it was opened at their very doors. We need not wonder then at the low state of education when the Government are so poor and helpless and the people so careless and indifferent. Surely there is need ofisomething being done—of some more efficient system being ’ introduced by which the education of this province may be put on a better footing.* In short, we need a colonial system of education with means and appliances akin to that recently inaugurated in'England.