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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 40

The Expense of the Present System

The Expense of the Present System.

Local Responsibility, Oversight, and Rates Would Economize Better.

To the Editor of the "New Zealand Herald."

Sir,—Having just returned from a trip in the northern districts I have had a slight insight into the way our money is spent in the matter of education, and I will now endeavour to give the public an idea of the actual waste that takes place. In this particular locality I refer to, which at present I believe boasts of some 25 or 30 children, there was a school which had been put up at an expense of some £80 or £100, which with a very little expense might have been made quite adequate for all the wants of the districts for the next five or ten years, but as the School Board thought if was not quite grand enough, it was decided to have it put up to auction, and it was accordingly knocked down for the sum of and a new one erected about half-a-mile from the site of the old one at a cost of some £350, and a house for the master another £300, some land fenced and ploughed carefully and expensively, a knocker on the door, hat pegs in the hall, a scraper at the door, in fact no luxury omitted at our expense. It would altogether total up about £750. And this is only one instance out of many hundreds. It is about time some notice was taken of it. I for one would be quite willing to contribute towards the education of page 68 those children whose parents are unable to pay for their schooling, provided the schools were called by their right name—charity schools; but to pay for other people's children and get no thanks for it is rather too much of a good thing for

One of the Taxed.

To the Editor of the "Timaru Herald."

Sir,—I assume at starting I am a parvenu or an unknown person no one can take umbrage at my styling myself thusly, and with your permission I would give my crude ideas to the public of New Zealand, so as, if feasible, to strengthen the hands of the present Government, who, I am led to believe, intend to curtail the excessive expenditure on education in this colony. We are, Sir, in my opinion, educated to extremity. It's generally admitted (and I plead guilty to the impeachment) that I have "a goodly heritage" in the way of children, but I cannot see why those who have not many or any olive branches should contribute to the teaching of mine. I fail, Sir, to see the grand effects of educating the masses we were once informed would be the outcome of our State schools. Great Britian has made gigantic strides to teach everybody, and what is the result? England proper is anything but comfortable. Her manufactures and various industries languish. Scotland, I grant, produces a number of cannie or shrewd people; they were that always. Ireland the land of modern pre-eminent education, produces a crowd of discontented, disaffected, disloyal folk. To what are we to attribute these results? Why, Sir, I say to education. Our lunatic asylums are filled with educated people, the hospitals have their quota, educated public-house loafers are not altogether uncommon, and I need not inform you that educated obstructionists occupy seats in our Houses of Parliament. Your own pen asserts this fact daily, that some are anything but what they ought to be. Sir, I would have every person pay for the higher culture of their own children. It is monstrous to suppose that the children of some one who, perhaps through accident, gets located in a large town are to have almost a classical education, whilst those of another party, who elects the country, get only a modicum of instruction. Yet the latter contributes equally to the general fund. I have, Sir, the impression on my brain, it may be erroneous, that we are over-educated, spoon fed, in fact, with instruction. For example, an advertisement appears in a paper requiring a clerk, and behold dozens of applicants are forthcoming. I argue, Sir, some one must guide the plough and through that means comes our living by the land, and it only gives us sustenance. Ploughmen are not generally required to decline propositions from Euclid. For goodnesss sake do try and repress this excessive education mania. We cannot be all clerks, clerymen, doctors, lawyers, etc., some one, I repeat, must steer the plough. page 69 The old hackneyed idea that education represses crime is, I say, effete, obsolete, played out in fact. Read the records of our criminal Courts. Who are the people who embezzle, forge, and such like? Certainly the educated. The recent Dewar affair at Dunedin is supposed, and I believe justly, to have been done by an educated scoundrel. Sir, I assert that in the matter of education we are playing with an edged-tool. My advice is, and I give it to the country gratuitously, to allow the State to teach our children to read and write fairly; then let the parents expend as much as they please in the higher walks of learning. And as the Government are beset with monetary difficulties, why, let them sell the greater part of the reserves for education, and all the church ones, pay off some of our liabilities, and New Zealand will recover from her nightmare incubus—namely, education and religion—and prosper.—I am, &c.,

A. Henry Heatley.

Woodbury,