William's views on education

A while back I quoted from a newspaper report of William’s speech at a public meeting held in 1856 to discuss the Education Act. In March 1856, the Nelson Provincial Government passed its own Education Act, providing for education in the province funded by a tax on rate-payers. It seems to have slipped quietly under the radar during its three readings, and the outcry only came after the Act had passed into law. Some people found the idea of a compulsory tax on every household objectionable; others had issues with the carefully-worded religious instruction provisions.

All households were to pay £1 per year towards funding education; in addition, those households with children between the ages of five and 14 were to pay 5 shillings per child, up to a maximum of an additional £1. In return, any schools funded under the Act were to be open to all children, with no additional fees to be paid for their attendance. Some people objected on the grounds that education should be funded by the government; some objected because they had already paid to educate their now-grown children and didn’t see why they should have to pay for the children of others; and some simply objected because the tax was compulsory.

The religious instruction provisions were interesting. Having already seen a completely secular education scheme fail in Wellington, the Nelson Provincial Government provided in their Act that “Any religious instruction given in schools shall be free from all controversial character, and shall be imparted at such hours that any parents objecting thereto may be able to withdraw their children from the school at the time when it is given.” It would be up to the elected school boards to determine whether a school offered any religious instruction, and the nature of it, and it would open to parents to withdraw their children if they so wished. It seems pretty inoffensive, but the local Catholic priest, who had been running a school attended largely by Protestants, got bent out of shape. He foresaw a situation where protestant-dominated school boards would run protestant schools on public funds, and the Catholic schools would struggle to get any share of public money. [As it happens, he was quite right. The original national Education Act made state-funded education free and secular (which is why we all sang hymns at school assembly, right?) and the Catholic schools were essentially privately funded until the 1975 Integrated Schools Act gave them access to state funding.]

Anyway, the meeting at which William spoke was some months later, in June, when concerns about the implementation of the Act were beginning to bite. The meeting started with the proposal of a resolution “that this meeting considers the Education Act unjust and oppressive, violating the civil and religious liberty which every one in this country is entitled to enjoy.” By the conclusion of the meeting, the original resolution had been so amended that it was reversed into saying that the Act was “a just and necessary measure, …calculated to be productive of welfare to this province”. In this form the resolution was carried by a majority of around three to one!

William’s own views were recorded in the Nelson Examiner of 21 June 1856 :

MR. NORGROVE said that, like Marmaduke Magog, it was not often that he spoke in public, but he must beg permission to say a few words on the subject of education. He remembered attending a Chartist meeting about 25 years ago, at which one of the great reasons urged for the passing of the people's charter was that the Government did not make proper provision for the education of the people [hear, hear]. He remembered that one of the speakers on that occasion had alluded to the mill girls of Manchester, who toiled from morning till night at the mills instead of going to school, and had remarked that the wonder was not that they were bad, but that they were so good [hear]. The same speaker went on to show that without education a people could become neither wise nor good, and that it was the duty of the state to care for the education of the people [hear, hear]. He (Mr Norgrove) was sorry to find that the question was so mistaken here, and that people forgot that in paying this tax for the support of a scheme of education, they were investing for posterity [hear, hear]. He had seven children, and he should some day be gathered to his fathers and leave a name behind him - it might be an indifferent one, but at all events it would be a name - and it was his earnest desire to see his boys receive a better education, and earn a better name than himself [cheers]. Should parents toil on day after day and leave their children what they considered a competence, without giving them some education to take care of that which, if they were ignorant and uneducated, some plausible scoundrel might come and chouse them of [hear, hear]? He was sorry to hear no argument on the other side; he wished to see the measure fairly tried, and he had no doubt that some day or other they would all be the better for it [vehement cheering].

Despite saying he wanted his boys to receive a better education than he had, William’s girls were also educated – the younger ones amongst the protestant crowd at the Catholic school mentioned above. The younger children seem to have had the opportunity to attend school regularly and do well – Horace, Emma and Kate appear in the school prize lists. In December 1857, 11-year old Horace received a prize in the First Division for "general good conduct". The following year, 10-year old Emma received her prize for general good conduct and attendance. In 1859, she came first in the Second Class. In 1860 she was 2nd in the First Class, and took a prize for Writing. That same year, eight-year old Kate came second in the Fourth Class.

I still don’t know how much of an education the older children received. There were schools in Wellington when Ovid, Oscar and Gertrude were small, but they were private schools, and attendance wasn’t compulsory. There may not have been money to spare for regular schooling – and Gertrude may have been needed at home to help with the babies. Certainly Ovid’s formal education was patchy – he was 12 when William took him to the Victoria goldfields, so if he had been in school until then, that would have been the end of it.

I don’t know that William got his wish, that his boys received a better education than he had. William was essentially a scholarship boy – he had received the secondary education that would usually have been out of reach for boys of his class, at an English Foundation School. Certainly, however, the investment for posterity in education was ultimately made in free and universal education. Succeeding generations of Norgrove descendants have done well – I think he would be proud of us.