EDUCATION.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3917, 19 July 1881, Page 2

EDUCATION.

(To the Editor of the Evenikg StAB.)

Sib, —Children should be considered as belonging less to their parents than to the State, lhey are the infants of thepeople ; they are their hope and strength. " It is too late to correct when they are corrupted ; it is too late to exclude them from honest employment when they are found unworthy of it. Surely it is-wjier and .better to prevent evil than to be reduced to the necessity of punishing it. The State is the father of the people, but more 'particularly the father of all the youth who constitute the flower ,of the nation. It is in the flower that:it is necessary to prepare the fruit. Children. should be brought? up to despise iinisfortune, and have no dread of death* should be taught that true honor consists in shunning delicacies and riches ;' that injustice, falsehood, ingratitude, and idleness pass for the most infamous rices. They should be talight to be tender^for their friends, faithful to their allies, equit« able to all men—even their most cruel enemies They should learn tofear death less than the torments of the least reproach of their conscience. Their bodies should be accustomed to the hardest exercise to evade luxury and idleness, which will corrupt the best natures. Who, except those who seek place and money by educational defects, will feel their interest opposed to these propositions ? Who among the people who :lias a child of his own, will not 'feel his personal interest immeasurably promoted thereby ? What parent is there-,so lost alike to duty and affection that he feels not the desire to see his children saved from the evils of ignorance? Look upon.this and the mother country ! Estimate if possible the extent of its vices and miseries! They are neither limited to "place, character, or influence ; they are innumerable, and everywhere. Our highways teem with drinking houses, gaming establishments, and places of evil resort, reeking with 1 foul disease and premature death. In; the streets themselves you will see*the: vanity „, of dress, pride of wealth, and pompousness of luxury, jostling half-naked wretchedness and brutalising excesses. See the hatred, hear the puerile bickerings that support in affluence judges and barristers; calculate, if youl can, the intolerance, envy, hatred, and malice contained in the orthodox temples of religion, with its outcome of sanctified hypocrisy; behold the rich and unscrupulous grow rich upon the ruin of honest labourers and hard working mechanics ; witness the'.contemptible struggle of the poor, toemulate therich ; contemplate the fevered and eagtr endeavour of all to barter; tranquil lib%tty and peaceful comfort for a little' higher rafck and more fashionable Btnndihg?-«one-half the slaves of etiquette ; the other, victims of excessive labour : the hardest labour made the least productive, and the least useful best rewarded; millions doomed to toil for bread labouring to famish thousands with the means to wanton in luxurious idleness; the producers of wealth dependent and miserably poor,; the consumers rich and powerful. Yet none truly honest, faithfully consistent, nobly independent, or innocently happy. These evils and abuses can only-be remedied by reaching the .-seat of the disease—the human'K«Vr*.* What would it avail if our present monopolies—pecuniary and social inequalities—were destroyed, if the ignorance remains that first produced, and would soon re-produce, - them ? Would our second member hare made 1 the flippant reply which hef did at his last meeting to the very p^Unenk v^ question put to him by a citizen upon the « greatest question of the day r that of nationalising the land of New Zealand, had his minid been properly educated upon a subject.which, isnpt,onljragitating England and Ireland,, /bui the whole civilised world, and the right, ■olutipn /r Qf' which may regenerate all' m'ankiiiiar '-"Ik is the study of such questions as these, involving no dangerous resolution to rouse the passion and blind the judgment of mankind, that our children must engage in, pre-supposing no violent change in the structure of society, ;it will, like the. silent flowing of the rising tide, -efface imperceptibly our social.e.vils.jT-1 am, <fco., ...•-■-, •■■■ ■■.--,• i i:p. Bom ■•Ami.