It is no wonder that practically every man, woman, and child in the Commonwealth can read and write, a fact that should take some of the conceit out of us when we recall that in the United States twenty-five per cent. of the men examined for our army in the World War were illiterates.
The Australian school child’s health is well looked after. Medical inspection, and often medical treatment, is provided in the city schools, and the school departments of several of the states have travelling hospitals and travelling medical, dental, and eye clinics.
For many years Australia had few public high schools, and state education stopped at the age of twelve or fourteen years. But high schools are now quite common and are growing in numbers and in the variety of subjects taught.
The schools of art are a feature of education in this part of the world. In Queensland the government contributes dollar for dollar, or rather pound for pound, to any town that raises a fund for this purpose. For instance, if a village will put up one thousand pounds to establish a library and school of art, the government will give another thousand, and will continue its gifts as the people give more. These schools of art teach not only drawing, painting, and music, but also typewriting and stenography, and, in fact, about everything you will find offered in the Young Men’s Christian Association courses in the United States. All have reading rooms, and their libraries are well supplied and largely patronized. The School of Arts in Sydney has a library of sixty thousand volumes.
In addition to these schools every city of any size has its technical schools. Sydney has a technological museum with eighty-two thousand exhibits including one thousand specimens of wool. The museum building alone cost one hundred thousand dollars. In Melbourne there is a Working Men’s College with buildings and equipment worth upward of a quarter of a million dollars. The college is open to both sexes and now has enrolled more than two thousand students. Many of its classes are held in the evening, when there are lectures upon applied science, engineering, mining, commercial law, and other technical subjects, as well as on the leading trades.
The twenty-five technical schools of Victoria are under the direction of the Education Department. Among the trade subjects taught are photography, wood and metal working, plumbing and gas fitting, carpentry, coach building, wool sorting, and house and sign painting, with cooking and dressmaking for the girl students.
Every state in the Commonwealth has its university at the state capital. I visited Sydney University, which has about as many students, both men and women, as Leland Stanford University in California. It confers degrees in art, science, law, and medicine, and the courses embrace all branches except theology. Its graduates are received at Oxford and Cambridge on an equal footing with those from British institutions. The same thing is true of graduates of the University of Melbourne.
Compared with the enrollment at similar institutions in the United States the attendance at Australia’s high schools and universities is not large. Our state of Washington and the state of Victoria have about the same population. Yet Washington’s high schools and its state university have four times as many pupils and students as have the Victoria secondary schools and the University of Melbourne combined. In all the state universities together there are less than seven thousand undergraduates. As a people, the Australians are sometimes criticized for not being interested in higher education. In fact, the true stories of the thousands of American boys and girls who make sacrifices and do all kinds of work to put themselves through college read like fiction to the young Australian.
Every state has its agricultural college and all run experimental farms to develop new methods and new crops. Agricultural experts are sent travelling around the country lecturing to the farmers, and special schools are organized to meet any new need.
For example, in order to help the dairy farmers build up a big business, the state governments had their agricultural schools give instruction in making butter and cheese. The result is that there are now a number of large butter and cheese factories in every state and the exports of dairy products are rapidly increasing.