The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1888. Is our Educational System a Mistake P

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2941, 4 July 1888, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1888. Is our Educational System a Mistake P

. We have been among those who have heen wont lo take a pride in our national educational system, believing that it was doing its part towards building up what Sir George Grey might term a young Empire. Occasionally, however, a doubt must cross the minds of even its most earnest supporters as to whether the lines upon which it is founded are such that will a[ivo (ho best results for the enormous expenditure which'it entails upon the patient tax payers of New Zealand, To illustrate our meaning we will cite a too common example, viz., that of a pupil in a country school, perhaps a dozen years of age, who can manipulate fractions and decimals, parse a compound sentence and knows all the principal rivers, ancient and modern, ol the habitable globe. This glib twelve year old prodigy is fairly well primed with the regulation standard stuffing, but, withal, is boorish in manner, slatigy and profane in conversation, and possesses not a particle of reverence for eithor God or man, If the careworn parent of such a prodigy were asked to choose between good.conduct, nice language, combined with respectful behaviour as an allernativo for the standard stuffing, would lie - not, without the slightest hesitation, elect that his child should be taught "to honor his father and " mother, and to order himself lowly " and reverently to all his betters, to " hurt nobody by word or deed, to be " t-ruo and just in all his dealings, lo " bear' no malice nor hatred in his " heart, to keep his tongue from evil 11 speaking, lying and slandering, to " keep his body in temperance, sober- " ncss and chastity, not to covet nor " desiio other man's goods; but to learn " and labor truly to got his own living, " and to do his duty in that state of " life into which it shall please God to " call him." Almost every father in the Colony would give his voice on the vote of moi al training, and against standard shilling, livery man knows that a. child who has really learned the lesson wo have quoted, or one which inculcate* similar homo truths, is grandly educated for all tiffii, and everybody knows that tlio child who possesses merely the regulation padding, and has not acquired some slight smattering of the other knowledge necessary for the formation of tlio character of a good citizen, is deplorably ignorant and hopelessly savage. A recent cable from London contains tlio following significant message The Education Commission have mado their report, and recommend that encouragement should bo given to tho voluntary school system, and that religious and moral education should be developed.

They are finding out in England what we arn realizing in New Zealand, that the education given by the State to the young in insufficient, ]t is a veneer when all is said and done, which does not possess permanent good qualities, It is very easy to pull an education system to pieces, and it is very difficult to supersede it by better methods and in pointing to a weak spot, if not a putrid .sore,'in our own education we are sensible of the grave difficulty of remedying it, yet there ought to be a remedy I The parents o? the children of New Zealand are the masters of its state education, and if they are once shown a better way achange must be brought about, The English Education Coinmission suggest tbreo remedies : (1) encouragement to voluntary efforts in leaching;(2) religious education; (3) moral education, In New Zealand we have pushed all three on one side by our state. curriculum, A voluntary school, outside a large centre of population cannot exist in competition with the state school, religious teaching is necessarily tabooed in a country.school where possibly half a dozen religions are represented, and moral teaching cannot well be formulated on the irrepressible standards, Still the problem will have to be faced sooner or later, for the education which the colony now gives is not worth its cost, it,is the dry husk of knowledge, and not the nutritious kernel It is for the parents

of tlm Colony to-Eay whethersome-, thing better ought not to be provided for the development o£ the moral bilities of their cbildreu 1 The average young New Zeiilnnder is in trulli more of a savage than the average ltid in an ■English country village.