CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 126, 22 June 1863, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the EamTce's Bay Times. Sir, —The public at large, aud especially the parents of the rising generation in Hawke’s Bay, are greatly indebted for your exertions in the cause of that much-neglect-ed question—Education. We hear a great deal of talk about our future prospects and the bright days that are before us under the rule of our new Superintendent, which we will be very glad to see when they come, but we hear no voice raised in the Council of our Province to save the children of the poor man from being dragged up in a state of helpless ignorance. It will be said that there are schools enough in the Province to educate double the number of children in it, but they are beyond the reach of the good working colonist, or even the man of moderate means ; and as for the rich they can have their children educated, cost what it will. To suit the wants of this province, we would require a public National school, supported mainly by Provincial aid, so that for a moderate sum per annum a man of ordinary income might educate at least one or two of his family at a time, and I think that most of your readers will agree with me that the future of our Province and our adopted Country would reap a far more lasting benefit from the money laid out upon such an institution than from many thousand acres of barren fern land which we expect to acquire with our borrowed money. If we expect to attract respectable emigrants to settle amongst us, we are morally bound to provide for their mental as well as for their bodily wants. Is there a parent (worth having as an emigrant) who would not sooner settle in a Province where education is placed within the reach of family than one where such ia denied, or

beyond his means, which is about the same thing ? . The present state of education in the inland districts of this Province is really disgraceful, and much worse than any other in New Zealand, and if no hand is stretched to save the future youth of Hawke’s Bay, they will become a proverb and a bye-word for Ignorance, and, alas! her hand-maiden. Crime—for they go hand-in-hand. What a great responsibility, then, do they incur, who turn a deaf ear to the appeals already and so often made on behalf of this vital and important question. We expected better things from the countrymen of a Burns and a Hugh Miller, a nation proverbial for the love of learning. I am, &c., A Father.