The School Inspector.

Manawatu Herald, 29 March 1892, Page 3

The School Inspector.

In a letter to the Advocate, Mr Gearge Wilks, a candidate for a seat on the Wanganui Education Board thus lays his hand on some of the •• padding " in the Inspector's report : —Your article of the 21st March, 1892, on the Inspector's report, says 11 the introduction to the report gives an idea of the arduous work of in« inspection, etc., and that Mr Bindon travelled 2,484 miles and worked 3,116 hours during the year " ! It is quite time that gentlemen capable of analyising the Inspector's report be elected to the Board— men who can blow away the chaff and get at the kernel, if there be any. What an achievement to chronicle, put into type, correct, revise and publish at the expense of the Government, or rather afc the expense of every taxpayer in the colony, 2,484 miles travelled by Mr Bindon in twelve months !" i.e., not quite 8 miles per day ! Many a school boy walks that to and from shool the year round ; whereas the Inspector often does his ' arduous ' travelling in the easy cushioned seats of a railway carriage, at other times on the back of a good upstanding hack. Again, " 8,116 hours were spent in the Board's service " ; i.e., a little over 9 (nine) hours per day. Mr Bindon duly publishes to the world the number of hours he works, and yet one never finds recorded the number of hours some teachers devote to the' interests of their respective schools ; men and women who are devoting the whole of their energies of mind and body to further the interest of their pupils, and whose reward will doubtless be— under the new regime —that they will be kicked out to beg or starve I have known personally teachers who have spent 10 to 12 hours per day at work in or for their schools, and for a reward they have oeen rapped over the knuckles by the inspector because some of their pupils failed to make an orthodox Vere Foster's letter a. The writing as taught throughout the whole of the Wanganui district is of such a character that not one per cent, of the boys trained and taught in Mr Binden's pet fad — Vere Foster's style —can write a decent legible and fluent office hand. The above is a strong and startling statement to make, but it is nevertheless true. Merchants, bankers, and tradesmen in all parts di the district can and will endorse what I have said. >