CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 183, 15 July 1864, Page 5 (Supplement)

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Smoke's Bay Times. SiH) —The apathy of the Government in reference to education, appears to be a matter of surprise to you, as, indeed, it is to many. Seeing that most Governments treat the education of youth as a thing of primary importance, we might naturally expect some reference to have been made to it in his Honor’s address. We have already an Education Act, which fact is not very generally known, and with its merits or demerits few are acquainted. To a great portion of the Province it is hitherto as inoperative as the laws of the Medes and Persians; and the children of the working classes are growing up in as blissful a state of ignorance as can well bo conceived. \ In some of our settlements or townships are fruitful sources of contamination, without a single counteracting influence to bear on the minds of youth. Such places are not likely to attract the most desirable class of settlers, where their children would be cut off from all chance of intellectual or moral culture. It might bo well to enquire, Mr. Editor, whether the present Act is adequate to the wants of a scattered population, or whether a more comprehensive system, as in Nelson, would not be more desirable, even at the expense of direct taxation. If the extirpation of the thistle is deemed worthy the deliberations of Council, surely it is at least equally important that ignorance be nipped in the bud, ere it bear the usual fruits of immorality and crime. I am, Mr. Editor, Yours, &c., B. B. D. Inland District, July 14, 1864.