ASHBURTON SCHOOL COMMUTES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1552, 14 July 1885, Page 2

ASHBURTON SCHOOL COMMUTES

(CONTBTBtTTBD) The late proceedings of the Ashburton School Committee have been more lively than dignified. Men without any great experience in public work have fallen into the common error of carrying strong personal feeling into their public duties, and the still greater mistake of allowing their personal antipathies to find strong, audible, and offensive expression. This is no uncommon failing, and I readily recognise in it a sign of healthy zeal and interest in their work, infinitely preferable to that apathy and indifference to the public welfare, which is the general bane of representative institutions in New Zealand. But extremes meet: and in this case the fierce zaal of the majority of the Committee appears to have produced the same practical result as wonld have followed from the moat indolent indifference.

If I understand the matter rightly the majority of the Committee have) declined to make any recommendation to the Board as to the appointment of a Headmaster to the Ashburton school. Now, this is a very great mistake, and one that I am quite sure results not from wilful but from entirely mistaken calculation. What does it really mean 1 —Why, it moans nothing less than that the Committee decline to perform the most important duty that could derolre upon them, and are trying to put it off upon another public body that has no right to accept it, that will not accept it if it can help it, and that is neither willing nor able to perform it. Nothing could be more plainly evident than that the Board of Education has too little time to perform ite own legitimate work. Five or eix hours a month, in addition to time spent in travelling to and fro, is perhaps as much time as such a body of men can be expected to give op without payment, to public work, but it cannot give time enough to decide on the building of new schools, the repair oi old ones, the election and control of all its officers and the general supervision of some 150 schools. 1 When lately called to the legitimate work of electing one of its own Inspectors it could not do it, but had to appoint a Select Committee to consider the numerous applications. How, then, can it be expected to give the necessary minute attention to the election of a master to any individual school? Besides this, it avoids such elections on principle. It is desirable that the direct representatives of the parents should elect the master ; that the Committee should watch over a man of their own choice, end not over one that has been forced npon them; and that in any appeal the Board ahoald come without bias to the examination. There is yet another reason why the majority of the Committee should take up their responsibility in this election. The opinions of the minority of the Committee as to the election has been expressed clearly enough, and is at present the only guiding expression of opinion that the Board can have before them. Now, if the majority of the Committee can agree in recommending the appointment of any other applicant the Board would be relieved from all difficulty in the business, and the majority will have acted up to their strong convictions in the matter. If, on the other hand the four Committeemen cannot agree upon any applicant the present master must stand befote the Board as more highly recommended than any other, and the Board will hardly be able to escape from the unconstitutional course of being guided by the recommendations of a minority. It is not yet too late to put the opinions of the majority properly before the Board And to carefully consider ah the applications that have been sent in for the headmastership, but unless this be dune, I can come to no other conclusion than that the majority of the Ashburton School Co n* mittee have committed an error that may be fatal to the prosperity of oar public school—and have lost a great opportunity to do justice to the children, to the honseholders, to the Board of Education, and to themselves. E.R.O.S.