SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 255, 30 March 1860, Page 4

SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.

(From the Melbourne Argus.) It is most desirable that some measures should be taken for filling up the immense gap which separates our primary schools from the University. Complaint has frequently been made that the primary schools are made use of by those who could' well afford to pay for a more liberal education than is there dispensed; but the fault lies, not in the false economy or want of ambition of parents, but in the almost total absence of superior schools. The curriculum of studies taught, or * even proposed to^ be taught, in our primary schools is plainly insufficient for the mental exercise and intellectual strengthening of those who are intended for higher pursuits than such as require mere manual labor as their principal "stock-in-trade;" but it has been had recourse to because a defective education was thought to be better than no education at all. The grant in aid made some years ago to Denominational grammar schools has gone some way towards supplying Melbourne and Geelong with the much needed " high school;" but with this, and perhaps some other exceptions unknown from their obscurity, the whole school population is entirely dependent on the primary schools; and the primary schools, by the reports of the two boards and by every reliable document which comes to light, are shown to be wholly behind all other modern progress, and wholly insufficient for that severe mental exercise which experience has proved to be of intellectual strength. That the high schools of Melbourne and Geelong should, under any circumstances, be sufficient for the wants of the entire colony will, we think, be scarcely insisted on. As such they could only be used as boarding schools; and, not to talk of the school fee of one hundred guineas or so, and the expensive and uncertain methods of travelling in the colony, there are many parents who will be unwilling that their children should be deprived of home influences from "half" to "half." And besides these objections, ifc is undesirable, even if it were at all likely, that.any one of our high schools should suddenly grow into enormous proportions, and become, at least in numbers, a colonial Westminster or Rugby. Only by slow degrees, and perhaps not yet entirely, have the great public schools of England ceased to be, as admitted by Dr. Arnold, their great reformer, "the very seats and nurseries of vice." Our colonial youth are not slow to copy; and the danger had best be avoided by moderate sized schools, and more especially by day schools. That private enterprise will do much towards supplying the centres of population throughout the country with high schools is, from experience and from a consideration of our peculiar circumstances, not at all likely. Nor is it perhaps desirable that it should be otherwise. Recent events in England have removed all doubts as to the unsoundness ofthe private school system, and left it perfectly clear that Dotheboys Hall was no overdrawn picture. It is no longer asked how boys can be fed and taught for eighteen or twenty pounds a year, since it was pretty generally known by those in the secret that they were not fed; and it is now shown that they were not taught. The woeful "pluckings" at the late Oxford examinations have shown the vast room which existed for improvement; and the Civil Service examinations, and the splended Indian prizes, are powerful inducements to improve. . Nor are the endowed schools of England to be looked to as a model to copy from. That magnificent system--—with its annual revenue of half a million sterling, with its own halls and colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, with the particular excellency of each endowment to be jealously maintained —has been the slow result of ages and of princely bequests .accumulating and becoming more valuable through ages. Nothing but failure and disappointment could result from an attempt to copy the stupendous high--school system of England. We can no" better transport an Eton or a Charterhouse into a young colony, than we can an Oxford or a Cambridge.

If we look for a cheap and efficient system of schools for the middle and upper classes, we must turn to Scotland. Almost every one has read the passage of Macaulay, wherein is recounted the changes which have come over the Scotchman within tlie last century. Almost every one recollects that to education has been attributed these wonderful changes; that through education the Highland man has ceased to be a savage in his food,^ in his habitation, in his manners, and in his dealings with society; that through educationhe has done for his home all that nature would permit, and earned for himself honor and riches throughout the habitable globe. Education has'done this; but it is a peculiar system of education. From the primary schools to the universities no gap exists; no link is wanting. The primary schools aim at a higher standard than in England and Ireland is ever dreamt of. The universities are, perhaps, a little lower than universities ought to be, but it is in schools for the middle classes that Scotland has succeeded in fitting compactly together the whole of her educational machinery. The defects of the Scotch university system are to be sought for elsewhere: the nomination of professors and the low rate of remuneration are evident ones; but how closely the high school fits in with the university may be judged from the complaint of a late writer, Professor Blackie, who accuses the universities 0f.." poaching on the high schools." The universities are not content to get their alumni from the legitimate head classes of the high schools, but actually beat up the lowerforms for recruits; and similar testimony could be adduced to show the close connection between the high and the^ primary Bchool, if, indeed, it is not involved in the assertion

that the primary schools of Scotland confessedly give a more liberal education than the primary schools of England and Ireland. Lest it should be thought, on comparing the enormous revenue possessed by the endowed schools of England, that the high school system of Scotland would be also too expensive a system for us, we append a list of some of the endowments, taken from a recent number of the XNorlh British Review :—The endowment of Paisley High School amounts to £16 18s. 4d. per annum; that of Irvine to £90; of Dumfries to £144; of Perth to £250. The Rector of the Burgh School, Stirling, has a salary of £60; his total yearly emolument is £150. At Montrose, £195 is divided among five masters. The Head Master and his four colleagues of the Edinburgh High Schoola school of very high reputation—putting all:their incomes together, do not possess more than an eighth part of the income of the Head Master of Eton. These, however, are rather instances of what has been done than examples which our liberal educational funds oblige us to follow.

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