166 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



schools. Then, there are governors of university colleges, 

 technical and art schools ; and, finally, there is the University, 

 administered by a Senate — but all, from start to finish, being 

 maintained out of public endowments of land or by means of 

 special grants out of the Consolidated Fund. It would be an 

 interesting inquiry as to the cost of providing the machinery for 

 the education of a mere handful of children ; and yet how 

 much could be saved by effective organization and a better 

 grasp of the principles that should regulate the adminis- 

 trative work of this great and vital question of public edu- 

 cation. 



Much could be said in favour of the independence 

 of control which is such a characteristic of the secondary 

 and higher education of the country ; but to be consistent 

 the plan should be widened so as to embrace the primary 

 schools. Then it would be possible to lay the founda- 

 tion of an adaptive scheme of public education in the colony. 

 At present adaptation is impossible. It cannot even be 

 encouraged, for the standards of education that operate in 

 the primary schools make it a matter of impossibility for the 

 children to take up work outside the regulations, and every 

 pupil must pass through the same " eye of the needle," 

 known as the Sixth Standard course. Were such a change 

 made there would still be a regulating central authority ; but 

 this authority, whilst it supervised and fostered all forms of 

 education from the cradle to the university, should allow free 

 play along lines adapted to the industrial, the commercial, 

 and the agricultural necessities of districts. The same right 

 of taking the initiative should belong to every district, subject 

 always to the supervising control of the central authority, 

 whose inspectors should be men not merely of school-book 

 attainments, but capable of determining the quality of educa- 

 tion in its bearing upon the training of pupils in all those 

 qualities that make for morality, manliness, refinement, and 

 national prosperity. 



Under a scheme such as is here outlined there would be 

 no need for standards of instruction like those now in opera- 

 tion. Beyond the study of arithmetic, drawing, and English, 

 including reading, writing, and composition, each school dis- 

 trict would have the right to recommend for approval a course 

 of instruction that in the opinion of the people would best meet 

 the wants of the people. Special and school classes would 

 disappear, for the work selected would be the best suited to the 

 requirements of a district. As for science, pure or applied, 

 the latter would be left, as it ought to be left, to the time 

 when pupils quit the lower schools ; but natural science 

 would form, as it ought to form, the groundwork of all early 

 training and education. The study of natural phenomena, 



