AN ENDOWED GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 42, 21 October 1867, Page 3

AN ENDOWED GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

The meeting held at the Greytown ■School-house on Monday evening, the ■report of which will he found elsewhere, may form- the subject of a future article'; all we propose to do at present is to refer briefly to the question introduced at the taeeting relating to the endowment of a Grammar School for the Mr airarapa. Nobody at the meeting appeared to doubt that such an institution was very desirable, and everyone appeared perfectly convinced that the town reserves, as well as the educational reserves of the district, could not be devoted to a better object than the endowment of such an institution. To enable the children of the wealthy classes to obtain a superior education in the district would prove more or less, directly or indirectly,beneficial to every settler in the district; but while it will "be admitted on all sides that it is not for such a purpose the town reserves of Greytown and Masterton should be devoted, extreme care will be necessary to prevent the diversion of the funds accruing from those reserves to this purpose. We want an “ endowed” Grammar School not for the education of the children of the wealthy, but for the children of those parents who would not be able, without such an endowment, to-give them a superior education, however desirable such a superior education would prove alike to the recipients and to the colony. It is of the first importance therefore, not as one of the details, as Mr Carter thinks, but as one of the chief features and principles of the measure, that it should be provided that while the children of all classes should have an equal right, on the fulfilment of the required conditions, of free admission to an education in the Grammar School the greater portion of the revenue derived from the endowment should be devoted towards defraying the board, lodging, and other incidental expenses of the children of those parents who are not in a position to defray those expenses themselves. In addition to the Grammar School we should like to see a Manual Labor College established in the district, which we believe to a great extent might be made self-supporting. And as in the Common School the child who distinguished himself as a successful competitor for a free scholarship would have the right to attend the Grammar School, so he wiio was the successful competitor in the Grammar School should have the right of free admission to the Manual Labor College; and thus, as in Canada, an educational ladder would be erected bv which the child of the humblest inhabitant of the district would be placed, as regards the means of acquiring education, on a footing of equality with the child of the wealthiest, while both would he able to ascend together to the highest point of scholastic eminence on equal terms. If the endowment of a Grammar School in the Wairarapa would he the means of establishing such an educational system as this, we should have no doubt of the bright future which is in store for this district, and through it, possibly, for the whole of New Zealand.