MR SIMMONS AND EDUCATION IN OTAGO.

Evening Star, Issue 3621, 30 September 1874, Page 3

MR SIMMONS AND EDUCATION IN OTAGO.

The following letter appeared in the * Nelson Colonist’: Sir, —In inserting a letter of mine which was addressed to the 4 Otago Daily Times,’ you have very naturally copied the h\a ing. This was net mine, I had no intention, for I had no right, to say one word on “Of.-wi Education,” or the “ Otagau Educationalists, whoever they may ho. I greatly regret that it should have been thought expedient to make an assault upon the schoolmasters of that Province in the columns of that journal based on any words of mine. My intention was simply to correct a misstatement, whch seem'd to me unjust to my colleagues, myself, and the Institution of which I have the honor to be Principal, and not to reflect on any man, or body of men. T know from painful experience how hard it is for a schoolmaster to do his duty in Otago, where he is liable to be assailed periodically, by the moat ignorant of the nit too intellectual gentlemen who adorn the Provincial Council, and Established Church Counts of that Province, and by those very fluent critics, whose venomous effusions, strangely enough, are published in a paper so respectable as the ‘ Daily Times.’ By these attacks a teacher’s mind must necessarily be distracted from his work, which demands his whole energies; while, as boys read newspapers he is compelled to resort to great strictness to preserve that discipline, without which school teaching is not possible. Mr Hawthorne and his colleagues have my warmest sympathy in their difficult position. If the results of the lavish expenditure ”on education in Otago are unsatisfactory and inadequate, the public and Press of Dunedin are mainly to blame j while no small share of such success as we have secured is due to the wise policy' of our- Governors, to the kindly sympathy of the Press, and to the warm interest taken in education bv the public of this Province. , Ab long as Otago permits its educational institutions to be controlled by - rovincial politicians and popular preachers, instead of bodies chosen as here, for the especial purpose, _the results of an expenditure, however “lavish,” will be inadequate and unsatisfactory. and the evil can only be aggravated by the most respectable journals opening their columns to * ommunications calumnious, if not actually libellous, which sap all discipline.

If a master is incapable, by all means let him be removed by the proper authorities. It is simple cruelty to keep him on working under conditions which make “adequate results” impossible to the most capable. —1 am, &c , Frank C. Simmons. Nelson, September 23, 1874