A PLEA FOR HIGH SCHOOLS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1232, 12 February 1883, Page 2

A PLEA FOR HIGH SCHOOLS.

«■ "Civis" writes in. the Otago Witness — "A good deal has been said from time to time against the Stite providing education for the 'rich.' Yv^e are told that it is only the poor man's child who should be educated free, or at less than actual . cost. But these terras ' rich ' and ; ' poor ' want a little deiinlLiou. It is noi altogether a question of hoy,* l*.i. h ;

a man earns a week or a year, but .'what has he to do with it.' A bachelor, or a man with no children, may be comparatively rich on a hundred a year, and a professional man with £800 a year and a large family to maintain and a certain position to keep up, may be comparatively poor. All he earns goes to his landlord and the struggle to make both ends meet is keener and more severe than that of a man whose scale of living is more .proportioned to his means, though these means are far less in amount. I verily believe the pressure of life is harder on men with incomes of £250 to £600 a year than it is on many who earn far less, but who are required by the conventions of society to spend far less. The middle classes contribute very largely to the taxation- of the country, and as they thus contribute largely towards the expense of educating other people's children, I don't see why they should not get some help in educating their own. On the grounds of simple justice, then, the small expenditure out of State funds on High Schools, which are at least in .part supported by fees, may be regarded as' a very proper subvention to-; i wards middle class education. The really rich,, the men of thousands a year, who are annually accumulating wealth, do' as a rule send their boys and girls to priva c schools, but to the struggling middle class the secondary school is a boon whicli they fairly earn by their contributions to' the general taxation. They don't as a rule use the primary schools, but they douse the High Schools,' and why shouldn't they? If you exclude them by heavy fees they will soon begin to say, Why should we be forced to pay large sums for the maintenance of a system from which, we derive no benefit ? and will demand that fees should be imposed in the primary schools also . As it is they pay £8 10s a year for each child educated in the High. School, while 'the ' poof ' mail pays nothing for the education which his children receive in the common schools. I believe in scholarships to give a chance to the poor man, but talso. believe that the middle class deserve, consideration.