EDUCATIONAL.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 557, 15 November 1881, Page 5 (Supplement)

EDUCATIONAL.

To the Editor.

Sir.—l cannot quite agree with your remarks in the leading article of last Friday's issue, re the propriety of school committees having their Inspector's reports published in the paper. My opinion is, that the teacher has quite supervision enough over him already; he_ has at least fifteen men appointed to sit in judgment over him, and what more should be wanted ? You spealc in reference to the poor teacher, as if really, it was all laziness on his part, and that he had not a single difficulty to contend against. You wish to have reports made public, so that parents iriay bo able to judge as to his capabilities for the office, quite ignoring the fact that many of these very parents are the cause of his failure. You speak as i£ both parents and children were doing their very utmost to erabracs every opportunity given to them, and the failure was the fault of the teacher alone, whereas Jn many cases it is quite the opposite. The children will not try and the parents will not interest themselvesenough in the matter to make them throw in a word on the schoolmaster's side —indeed will not trouble to send them half their tune—and these people, you say, are to b • allowed to sit in judgment over us. If that'is to be the case, then 1 say, "God help the poor schoolmaster!" and. the sooner you get some kind of machine made for us, by which we can stuff the required amount of information into the children's heads, on the shortest notice and without fear of failure, the better for us. There is not the slightest doubt but what the Inspectors do their duty, but even they are not infallible, and there are many circumstances that take plaoe during the period that elapsea between their annual visits that have gone ag-iinst the chance of the teacher's success, of which they (the Inspectors) know nothing. I should think the committees ought t<3 return you a letter of thanks for the very flattering terms in which you speak of them. If they actually are such as you describe ; if they actually do let their actions be influenced, by the sale of a few pounds of butter, etc., then I say, the sooner they are done away with the better, and some other system adopted.

In conclusion, I must say, I think the> poor schoolmasters have been pretty well roasted by tie public press for the lust two or three years, and I ask is it not nearly time that there was anv.etio'i irk their favor? At the present time wn are pretty much in the same position as \ver& the Israelites, when Pharoah wanted the same number of bricks as usual, and took the straw from them at the sa-ie time. We have more work and only t\n-, sivno time to do it in—less pay for that samd and now to be badgered into the iwi^ain is too bad. If you are strong pray hi merciful.—Yours etc., B; M. SPUJiit; Eobinson's Bay, Nov. 12j 188 J.