The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, June 10, 1890. SECONDARY EDUCATION ENDOWMENTS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 465, 10 June 1890, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, June 10, 1890. SECONDARY EDUCATION ENDOWMENTS.

Be just and fear not; Let all tbe ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

UNDER the heading of “ A Sorry Farce ” the Wellington Evening Press, after a trenchant onslaught on the local College, goes on to attack the whole system of secondary education as administered in the colony, and there is much truth in what it says. The following is taken from the Press article :—“ The fact is that the endowed system of secondary education in this colony is a hopeless failure, It has collapsed. From Auckland to Wellington, and Wellington to Dunedin it is one great costly blunder. If anything were needed to show how great the failure is in Wellington, we have only to point out the immense contrast between Wellington College and St Patrick’s College, and between Wellington College and Wanganuf College. Wanganui College it is true has a small endowment, but it has succeeded because the head masters have successively been, men of resource, of enterprise, and also of energy, and possessed of the talent which goes to the governing of boys, and because the Governors, recognising those facts, have wisely left them alone. The fact is that the endowment of this college, like that of all the colleges in this colony, is a curse. Endowment with its concomitant evils has ruined the efficiency of Dunedin and crippled that of Christchurch. We believe that it would be better even now to take away all endowments from the colleges, vest them in the State, and out of them endow scholarships open to the whole colony and apply the balance to such purposes as the assistance of technical training and schools of design. If the colleges, instead of being nursed with the fatal pap of endowments, had been left to private enterprise, there is not a question but that long since we should have had a first class secondary school now in Wellington. The State, by these foolish endowments, has destroyed private enter prise, and, like a dog in the manger, occupies the ground and does its best to drive away anyone who would come to the rescue of the people. The Roman Catholics are independent of the State, and support a college here which is a standing reproach to all the rest of the community, while all thosein the district who can afford to do so send their sons to be educated at Wanganui. The secondary colleges of New Zealand have endowments of £40,000 a a year. Where does it all go ? Is it not all frittered away in costly buildings and more costly staffs of half-employed tutors and professors, or professors not employed at all ? We had the other day presented to us the scandal of a public notification .by the authorities of Dunedin that they Otauld not pay for the scholarships for the boys of the primary schools who had won those scholarships. The answer to such a statement should have been the demand for the resignation of the entire Board of Governors. It is high time that the £49,000 a year was applied to the taught instead of stopping short at the teachers, When we learn that there is a secondary or high school in every considerable provincial town in Victoria, and in some more than ope, that there are two in Geelong, and one in Hamilton, one in Ballarat, and one in Sandhurst, and so on f and self-supporting and flourishing, when we learn that the University of Melbourne itself has an endowment of £9OOO a year only from the Consolidated Fund; we can only come to one conclusion,—that the endowments of secondary education in

this colony are recklessly wasted and grossly abused, and that the State should take possession of the whole and apply them to the real educational wants of the people of the entire colony.” In striking contrast with those schools to which the above remarks apply is the Gisborne District High School, which is controlled from an altogether different basis, but which has given birth to results that would be a credit to any institution which has even less disadvantages to work under. There are no thousands of pounds a year being expended upon secondary education in Gisborne, yet there has been a greater practical and proportionate success than in those large centres to which our Wellington contemporary so reproachfully alludes.