New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4253, 6 November 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1874.

Everyone in this colony is aware of the intereat which his Excellency Sir James Fergusson takes in educational matters. During his residence in New Zealand he has frequently taken occasion, in public, to manifest his appreciation of the efforts that are being made in the several provinces to provide elementary training and high-class education for the young and rising generation, as well as laying the foundation of an educational system which shall meet all future needs. Where he conceived the means were insufficient, he did not' scruple to say so ; where these were, in his judgment, suitable, his approval was expressed. And not only has he shown a lively interest in the cause of education for people of his own race, but his Excellency has also thrown out valuable hints for the improvement of the native school system. These may not be the more showy or striking of a constitutional governor's public acts, but they are certainly amongst the more important. Unless the Queen's Representative takes an active interest in the growth of those institutions which have for their object the promotion of enlightenment and morality, they are likely to languish in new countries like this, where society has not settled down into regular grooves, and tho getting of money is the absorbing' pursuit of all. It has been tho good fortune of New Zealand, indeed, to have had as its Governors, gentlemen of culture, who have taken pleasure in promoting the cause of education ; and no more deserved or graceful tribute could have been paid to Sir George Grey, for his enlightened foresight in making valuable educational endowments throughout tho colony, than was paid by Sir James Fjshousson, to his predecessor, in his speech at the opening of the now Wellington College. Sir George Grey has indeed laid tho colony under lasting obligations to him for making reserves in aid of elementary and superior education. Tho misfortune, however, is that in several cases the trusts havo boon abused. Tho report of the Koyal Commission on tho educational endowments of tho colony, presented to both Houses of Parliament, and which was drawn up by Mr. Gisborne, demonstrates this beyond doubt; and we aro greatly surprised that successive Governments havo allowed this report to lio a dead letter, without .taking legislative action upon it. No greater abuses could

possibly bo disclosed in the close management of charitable trusts in any old country, over a long series of years, than were proven to have ripened in a quarter of a century in New Zealand. But to return. It is a noticeable fact that the last public appearance of Sib James Fergxjsson, in all probability, in New Zealand, was in connection with the opening of the Wellington College,— an institution which, we trust, will make its influence felt in future years ; while Mr. Dtr Cane, late Governor of Tasmania, made his last public speech in that colony, at the annual meeting of the Council of Education, held recently in Hobarton. The Council of Education presented an address to Mr. Dtr Cane, in which the following paragraph occurs : '' Whilst you have always manifested " warm sympathy with the working of " our ragged schools, our public schools, " and our grammar schools, we are satis- " fied that in no portion of our educa- " tional system have you taken more " cordial interest than in the scheme "for the encouragement of the higher " education of the youth of the " colony, the administration of which "is entrusted to this Council." Were there a Council of Education in New Zealand, with corresponding functions to that of the Tasmanian Council, we might have had an address from it to Sir Jambs Fergtjsson, couched in almost identical language, because the passage we have quoted exactly expresses the course which his Excellency lias taken in regard to the educational system of this country ; but in the absence of any such recognition of the Governor's services in this respect, by any public body, as journalists representing the community at large, we deem it our duty to bear testimony to the fact.

The reply of Mr. Du Cane to the address in question was an exceedinglyable one, and does infinite credit to him. Like Sir James Ferqusson recently, the ex-Governor of Tasmania impressed upon his hearers the necessity for perfecting the educational system of the country. Speaking of the Tasmanian system, which is in many respects superior to anything we have in New Zealand, Mr. DuCanb said : But passing on to the merits of your own system in particular, I can only say this as a thoroughly disinterested observer, that if I thought, as some say, that your scholarships merely served to advertise in England the educational liberality of Tasmania, as a dead loss to the colony of so much intellect as may have been exerted to attain them, I should bo the first to join in the cry of away with them as a useless and expensive luxury. If I thought, too, that your wholo system was one which, as I have seen it described, withholds the bread of instruction from the poor in order that the rich may enjoy intellectual refinements and dainties, I say at once that the sooner such a system is remodelled the better. But none, to my mind, but the wilfully blind can shut their eyes to the fact that the scholars you have sent forth are gradually returning to you. Nor can it be ignored that, while each year brings a larger number of candidates for the A.A. degree, the most successful, as a rule, have been anything but tho sons of those who can afford to pay for intellectual dainties. I have seen a large proportion at all events of your firstclass, composed of youths who have worked their way up from the common schools, and who in all probability never would have done so without the aid which your system has afforded them. And the result of this annually-increasing competition for scholarships and degrees must act on the general teaching power of the colony, as well as on those who are taught; and so far, to my mind, from keeping the bread of instruction from the poor, it will give tho poor a more liberal supply of bread of a better quality, and increase their chances of rising also to the good things at the top of the ladder. Even if your scholars only come back to take part in tuition, it is a great point gained, and they will more than repay their country the assistance it has given them. But why are they not in time to stock your learned and scientific professions, and why are they not in time also to take their fair part in the active public life of the colony ? I know it is sometimes said -that English public life is not colonial public life, and that colonial public life requires no special training whatever, but the exercise of the very commonest of common sense. Whenever I hear or read anything to that effect, 1 always think of a passage in the writings of Archbishop Whately:— " While the pedantry, of learning and science has often been dwelt upon, and deservedly ridiculed, there is another danger on the opposite side, which is rarely, if ever, mentioned ; yet it is a folly quite as great as the other ; of a yet more intolerable character, and still more hopeless—l mean what may be called 'the pedantry of common sense and experience.'" For one person who is overbearing on account of his knowledge of technical terms, you will find five or six still more provokingly impertinent with their common sense and experience. " What has political economy", say they, for example, "got to do with such simple mattors as taxation, the education of the people, the national debt, and so forth. We want only common sense and experience." But their common sense will bo found to be more than common prejudice, and their experience will be found to consist in tho fact that they have done a thing wrong very often, and fancy they have done it right. In former times men knew by experience that tho earth stands still, and the sun rises and sets. Common sense taught them that there could be no antipodes, since men could not stand or walk with their heads downwards like flies on tho ceiling, Expcrlance taught the King of Bantam that water could not become solid. And the experience and common sense of one of the most observant and intelligent of historians, Tacitus, convinced him that for a mixed government to be so framed as to combine the elements of royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, must be next to impossible, and that if such a one were framed, it must inevitably bo very speedily dissolved. But then it is said, granted that colonial public life requires training as much as English, it must be training of a different sort, and however well the curriculum of an English university may suit the one, it is unauited to the other. I know that it is very difficult to disabuse people's minds of the ideathat our great English universitieg are, even now-a-days, nothing more than what Mr. Bright once called them, " The home of dead languages and undying prejudices ;" and that in tho new Museum of Oxford, or the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge, natural science, in all its branches, may be studied in the most practical form. But I suppose it will be at least admitted that the training which suits men for the public life of one Australasian colony will most probably suit them for that of another; and here, perhaps, I may be allowed to adduce a case in point. When I was travelling in New Zealand a few months since, I found that of the ten members which the Province of Canterbury sent to the central Parliament of the colony, six had been educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and as the Superintendent of the province, himself also » university man, told mo, were amongst the most useful and practical members of the House. Depend upon it that if, as these colonies harden from tho gristle into the bono and sinew of manhood, they are to be anything but a strange motley chaos of struggling democracy—there must be training of. some kind for your public men. and depend upon it further, that the strongest thread in the tie which binds tho children to tho mother country is not the kinship of race alone, but the similarity of training, manners, and institutions.

The pith of these remarks, our readers will observe, have been expressed on moro than one occasion by Sir James Ferctjsson, but they lose none of their freshness when presented in Mr. Du Gang's eloquent language. Mr. Du Cane thinks that the tendency in the celony, after the mischievous precedent of the Civil Service examinations at Home, is towards cramming, and ho warns the Council of Education against that serious error. The " possible tendency to encourage " cramming in a variety of subjects at " the expense of fulness and accuracy in " any one of them" is, however, " an undoubted danger ahead" of tho programme of the New Zealand University Council, quite as much as it is of the programme of the Tasmanian Council of Education, to which Mr. Du Cane took marked exception in his speech. '' There " is my point," he said; "not the best " oducation merely, but the best educa- " tion to the greatest numbers. From '' common school to scholarships let your " scheme bo a really symmetrical whole, " and in your zeal for suporior education " never neglect tho paramount obligations " of primary instruction." This advice might well bo taken by public men in New Zealand, who have permitted each province to act independently in the matter of school instruction. There is no uniformity of system ; no method, so to speak, and tho ' consequenco is that tho educational results aro not nearly commensurate to tho expenditure. All this must be changed; and asymmetrical educational scheino, • such as Mr. Du Cane suggests for Tasmania, should bo dovised by tho most compotcnt teachors in the country, and submitted' to Parliament. This is clearly a quostion which tho Govornmont cannot long ovorlook. Mr. Du Cane concluded his speech in tho following terras, which aro of universal ap-

plication, and should be treasured by the youth of -chis colony, on whom its future mainly depends : But while my experience may after all profit you but little, on the lessons which your rising generation, male and female, are learning, depend the future fortunes of the entire colony. To the successful candidates then, of both sexes, I offer my sincere and hearty congratulations; but here, for your benefit, I am going to call up a very peculiar spirit of mine. Let me beg of you to remember that so far from having this day finished your education, you have only had the foundation on which to roar the structure, and that that structure is one which even a long, active, and well-employed life will leave incomplete at its close. Be sure of this, that the longer you live and the more you cultivate and develope your intellectual powers, the more will you realise the correctness of the saying that the utmost knowledge a man can attain to is but a little learning in comparison with that of which ho must remain in ignorance. The view is like that of an American forest, in which the more trees a man cuts down, the greater is the expanse of wood which he sees beyond him. Beware, then, of the fallacy of a finished education ; for false at all times, at the outset especially of the great battle of practical life I do not know a more specious or mischievous delusion. Practical life has been recently •defined to be a sum in which your duty, multiplied by your capacity, and divided by your circumstances, gives the fourth term to the proposition, which is your deserts, with great accuracy. As you persevere, then, steadfastly in the. path of duty, and enlarge your capacity by intellectual culture, the more'energetically you practice those habits of earnestness, accuracy, perseverance, and thoroughness, which have so often formed the text of my little educational sermons, the larger evidently becomes the capital of your stock-in-trade, and the greater the dividend which you may hope to receive. But standing as Ido here for the last time to address a Tasmanian audience on education, 1 must also add that greater and richer by far will be your dividend if you steadily resolve that your intellectual and moral culture shall go hand in hand. Make that resolution, and keep steadfast to it, now in the bright and golden sunshine of youth; and let me, as one for whom all the freshness of that early sunshine is past, remind you that " Youth waneth by increasing. Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers, but fading seen ; Duty, faith, love, arc roots, and are for ever green." Culture, it Ims been well said, is "to know the best that has been said and-thought in the world," while " conduct is to turn that knowledge to the best, the most moral, the most righteous account," and conduct and culture together make up the great sum total of human life and action. In this partncrshix> conduct owns three-fourths of the capital, for culture without conduct is after all but knowledge of the head. But the union of conduct and culture means knowledge of the head combined with that of the heart ; it means that knowledge which has power over life and death, over the body and the soul, and in that knowledge and that union is to be found the only sure sign of the prograss of nations, the very heart's core itself of civilisation. I say, then, let the rising generation of Tasmania inscribe on their banners the union of "conduct and culture," and let them go forth under that banner manfully and truthfully to fight the great battle of practical life. In that battle they may fail - as otheri have done before them, for the race, as wo know, is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. But failure in such a cause faithfully fought for will at least bring with it no dishonor, and they will be saved from the reproach of that aimless, hopeless, unprofitable existence, which is worse than an early death. And if they succeed, then perchance in the good time, when the memory of my governorship is beginning to wax dim, it may be their lot truthfully to claim for themselves in the best, the noblest, the purest, the most Christian sense of the words, the proud boast of the Athenian statesman and general, "That he had made a small state great."