ECONOMY AND EDUCATION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] do not think your readers will have seen any scorn or heat in my letter. I only told the-truth. which charge arouses 8sgry passions in those who do not wish to hear it. And I thould not have troubled you with this letter, but that if the other is not answered, some might assume it was unanswerable. - Mr. Pilkington-Rogers' statement has nothing to do with the fact that many free places are held by those who are unfit, and that there is a crucial peril if the base doctrine of greed infects the secondary schools. Nor does it follow, to use his figures (which I do not think are right), that if anyone has a right to receive £30 by paying £10, he should equally receive it if he pays nothing. The letter contains other assumption% thrown in by the way. That the free place test is severer than the school entrance examination, that I propose no restriction upon the entry of any who can pay, are among them.
The money question is complicated. It may be that the Government give too much to begin with ; it probably is true that the grants arc given on a wrong principle, numbering of heads: And a further point is, that the parents who have to pay part of the fees, have already paid a large share of the elementary education of those who pay nothing, including the free places in their own schools. But these are different questions from those which I brought before you, and I have ever before me the dread that this nation may come to have a " ninepence-for-fourpence " mind.—I am, Sir, &c., The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.111.1. W. II. D. ROUSE.
Previous page
