The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1858-07-29

Gated people is much larger than in France; yet, in
1886. but q in every 400 convists IN that country
but 81 in 400. The whole number convicted of crime
in a single year in England and Wales was 20, 984. OF
whom 1888 we're unable to read and write, 1O,9SS
could read and write imperfectly, 2,215 could read
and write well, while only 191 were superiority in
structed. In Scotland. out of 1922 convicts during
the same period, but 55 were enumerated in the lat
ter class, and 1883 in the former. In the city of
Manchester, England. the police returns for the first
6 months of the year 1912 show that S.341 persons
were taken into custody, of whom 4.617 could nei-
ther read nor write; and similar statistics are to be
found in the police returns of Birmingham and Leeds
for the same year. The proportion of the wholly I'M
educated adults in the various pauper establishments
of England and America is substantially the same as
those above enumerated in reference to conviction for
crime. With scarcely a solitary exception. the in
mates of American aims houses nd pauper asylums
are destitute of even an ordinary common school edu-
cation-by far the greater portion of these being una
BILE to read or write"
The establishment of Free Public Schools by
the great-hearted Pilgrim I'd rs was one of
those grand mental and moral experiments,
whose effects could not be developed and made
manifest in a single generation. The boldness of
the measure at that period, aiming at the univer-
sal education of the masses, had no parallel in
the worlds history. Time has developed and
ratified the soundness of the principle, and has
refuted and silenced all the arguments brought
against it. Two centuries of successful operation
now proclaim it to have been a measure as wise
as it was courageous, and as benefcent as it was
disinterested. In the sixth generation from its
founders, its unnumbered blessings are perpetu-
ated on the Pacific coast, and in mid ocean, a
strange race, speaking a strange tongue, have
reason to be grateful TO God through the Pilgrim
Fathers of New England. The sincerity of our
gratitude must be tested by our efforts to per-
petuate and improve the gift.
On perusing the lengthy report of the Board
of Education, our first thought was to pass it by
with a mere publication in our columns, and we
should have done 50 h. not the Government very
iniudiciously aimed its attacks, in a series of ar
ticles lately published in its Journal, against our
public school system and the labors of the officers
who are devoted to its maintenance. 1t is true
that these attacks have appeared in the form of
inuendoes and halfcencealed sneers-the out
burst of a latent spite entertained against educa-
ton and those who have long been engaged in
the noble work. Nor is one single defensible
ground of, or one reason for, oppositionoto the
present system put forward by the government,
but labored and skulking attacks, utterly devoid
of that manly boldness which truth inspires are,
at every convenient opportunity, essayed by that
journal, the continuance of whose 50 moral and
political influence is considered necessary TO the
existence of the Ministry, ifnot of the people.
The cause of popular education is too dear
TO every one who cherishes the moral, social
and political welfare OF this t~ransitive race,
to see 1t openly attacked as it has been by the
government without stirring up the hearts blood
in its defense. The work of educating an igno-
rant race may be too laborious, and may bring
forth its desired fruits too slowly To suit the no.
tions of some who would overturn the whole sys-
tenn with some Archimedian lever, in the form of
English schools, without rejecting that a change
III a nations tongue as not the ,cork Of a dag, nor
Of a year. Under the pretext of this great BEN
evolent reform which, though exceedingly desira-
ole, can only be gradually introduced, and be a
slow and expensive work. the government attacks
the whole school system. In it's issue of the 18th
ult., it says:
"The President gives several reasons for the d-
minution of the schools and the scholars which mani
tests itself from year to year and we endorse them
all, but would add another which for several years
has been increasing in intensity and extent. without
however being able, as yet, 10 throw its warning
shadow across that sunshine of repose in which the
Department of Public instruction is complacently
basking we allude TO the ''hope deferred which
maketh the heart sick; the failure on one side of
obtaining, through the Hawaiian Free Schools under
the present system, that foothold in the present, that
grasp on the future which begeis self reliance aud
stimulates to progress aud the failure on the other
side of approaching that a school system which
fitted like a glove TO n New England State, with its
Puritan ancestors, its domestic training, ITS associa-
tons and appliances of science and art, would sit
awfully awry en- a people who was devoid of ~allthese;
and possibly the failure to perform its promises, or
rather its keeping them to the ear and breaking them
TO the sense as regards the uncertain character of
the schools. All these, in greater or less proportions,
go to make up that " hope deferred under which
the common schools are willing
Again, from the issue of the 10th ultimo, we
copy:
In our last we quoted the Presidents remarks upon the in
PRODUCTION os the English language in the Hawaiian free schools.
a consummatioS so devoutiy to be wished Tor, viz. the want of
means and the want Of teachers and we would beg leave TO
Of win to set about the work in that earnes; which seldom fails
way" says the proverb and the {" seven thousand" innocents-
who the President a~pprehends would go to hddlers green-with-
once to the extent Of the educational means Of the country "rnay
s spss y viii Ie net S Se en,e nr 2 fs by sp l' sobe 2 n9ara nj man. ha1 outsSis
of that Board who can appreciate the injury done TO the future
tenn Of education which even a Ienieut criticism must condemn
as practically Illustrating the old saw: "a little learning is a
So here we have it in black and white-the
ministerial journal considers that the present
school system "sits awfully awry on a people
devoid of all these !" appliances of art and
science, and takes the same ground as the New
York Bishop-s.a little learning is a danger
Gus thing therefore, we should do away with
our present schools, under the pretext that we might
do more for them than we are now doing. THERE'S
not an intelligent man in the kingdom, excepting
perhaps, the ministers, who doubts what the
President of the Board says, that seven thousand
children would receive very little attention for
the time being, and grow up in greater ignorance
than at present, if the native schools were
done away with at once.
Previous to the year 1871, the common schools
in the Sandwich Islands were supported, in part
by the American Board, and partly by the chiefs,