Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1874. "MEASURES, NOT MEN."

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 409, 18 November 1874, Page 2

Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1874. "MEASURES, NOT MEN."

The educational system of Victoria being on a somewhat different principle from our own, we naturally turn a scrutinising eye on the report of its working. As our readers are aware, the Victorian system is secular, entirely State-supported, and compulsory. The first, we feel persuaded, circumstances will one day force upon ourselves ; the second we are disposed to maintain in statu quo, and we have not taken very kindly to the last. Still there are certain considerations which weigh with us to enforce the last. It ia not a new' idea. John Knox, among other things he did for Scotland, got a compulsory Education Act passed ; and we have seen a passage extracted from the Town records of Peebles, to show that this Ordinance was not a dead letter, but was actually enforced against the refractory. Moreover, certain cases have come under our observation, which seem to indicate that a compulsory clause is needed — even in Otago. Parties living in rural districts become all of a sudden zealous on behalf of the educational necessities of their neighborhood. The Education Board is importuned to plant a school and subsidise a teacher. For a little while, the parents send their children ; but all of a sudden the novelty ceases, and the attendance is reduced far below what it ought to be. Now, along with the expenditure of public money to raise school buildings and subsidise teachers, there ought to bs a clause requiring the parents, on pains, to give guarantee that the school will be used. It is not honest to the Province to require public money to be expended on behalf of a neighborhood for education, and then withhold the children from instruction ; and where it ia done, we would not be sorry to ace compulsion employed. There are some who, from sheer niggardliness, will not send their children to school ; others, because they find some fault with the teacher. For the first, we would have no mercy ; and for the second, we say the manly way, in the first instance, is to tell the teacher himself what is deemed amiss, and if the matter cannot be rectified in that way, there are other methods open besides the one of depriving the children of education; and so we cannot even hold these exempt from a compulsory clause. In addition, there are the children of the indigent andcriminal, but for whom education has been provided gratuitously. Such we would also reuder amenable to the compulsory clause. Should the proposal of payment according to results ever obtain in the payment of teachers, then, in all fairness to the teachers, constant attendance ought to be compulsory, otherwise it would be very unfair to them. But it is now time for us to return to the report on education from Victoria. It is true we have not that report before us : we have only the summary of it, as given by the Melbourne correspondent of one of the morning papers. They have, it appears, expended £408,000 during last year, and have materially increased the attendance at Government schools. In 1873, under the new Act, there waa an actual increase of 30,000, or22,oooreckoning for those who used to attend private but now attend public schools. The total number of children within the school age not in attendance was 46,118, of whom 20,309 were students at home, or at night schools. But the report is specially instructive as regards the operation of the enforcement of the compulsory clause of the Ordinance. It would appear that we need have very little sentiment after all over the compulsory clauses. If in any case the saying hold good, "The law is not made for the righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient," it is true here. Looking at the cases in which compulsion is employed, it is difficult — very difficult — to get up even the shadow of a defence for those against whom compulsion has been used. They are mostly those in whom brutality and mere animalism have obliterated all that is human. But the extract will speak for itself : " The clause has been enforced during the last three months in 729 cases, of which 355 originated with the police. All these cases are described as ( very flagrant. 7 The details furnished by the report recently issued disclose a fearful state of things as existing in the lanes, and alleys, and back slums of the city. In the list of children whose parents have neglected to send them to school, and for whom consequently summonses have been issued, there is a column for ' remarks.' These ' remarks,' brief and expressive as they are, need no embellishment to add horror to their purport. In speaking of some, children, the teacher writes in his marginal notes : ' Father kept a brothel — now doing six months in gaol. Mother drinks. Children allowed to roam the streets.' Again, of another famity, ' Father is a shearer up-country ; drinks. Sister Chinese prostitute ; mother b«d-ridden.' In another instance, the { mother died from drink ; father living withanother man's wife ; ' and further on, in alluding to the parents of a child, he says, ' Father deserted the mother ; mother taken up with another man ; boy employed at pantomimes ; brother on board the Nelson. 5 There is one short sentence conveying, however, a great deal among the remarks aa follows ; — ' Mother blind ; won't go to school. 1 The general tenor of the information throughout the papers points to a shocking amount of drunkenness existing amongst the classes who have been visited."