A NOVEL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 149, 21 December 1877, Page 2

A NOVEL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

To THE EDITOR OF THE AKAROA MAIL.

Sir, —Anyone looking across at Wainui, must' be astonished at the number of school houses visible there. We can see two of them from Akaroa, within a few chains of each other. One would think, surely there must be a vast population there. I am told, however, that only one of them—the Government one —is in use, and attended by a very small number of children. The other one, an imposing structure, exactly on the Government plan, has been built by some of the residents, who were dissatisfied with the way in which Government was providing for their wants in the matter of education, They disliked the cumbrous system, in fact, and went about inaugurating a system of their own. To illustrate it, I must repeat that Irish story which you have no doubt heard before (what rum things they do say of poor Pat 1) In the hard times in Ireland— and when were they otherwise theresome of the natives, they say, used to hang a piece of bacon, a small pieoe, from the roof, and each of the family before eating a potato, pointed it at the bacon. This economical way of using meat was known as" potatoes and point," "and the educational system followed by some of the Wainui people resembles very much, the dietary one of Pat's. When the duties of the stockyard are over for the morning, Ihe command is given by the parents— '• Go, my children (to the top of the knoll, or to the other side of the' fence, as the case may be), go.my children and" look at the school house we have provided for you?' This " potatoes and point "• system of education—or,* rather,'the point without the potatoes—is a new one, and. yet it must commend itself to every sensible man ; it is simple .and economical, no further expenditure being needed after the first outlay ; and that it is an- efficient one is proved by the fact that these Wainui

Christmas last, are making rapid progress. If this system were adopted by the State, it would save a large amount of expense, besides cutting the knot of the re,--ligious difficulty. I commend it to the consideration of.our legislators. Yours, &c, PEDAGOGUE.