CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 206, 31 August 1877, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

EDUCATION. To the Editor of the < Evening Mail. 5 Sir— Far be it from me to deny that excellent reasons may exist for superseding our present Education Boards by a single central body, to be made up, apparently, of professional education-mongers. But I venture to suggest that it would be just as well if your correspondent "Cerip" were to exert himself so far as to put forth some colourable pretext for making so sweeping* a change. To me it seems that his facts and his inferences are equally at fault. First, for his facts. Upon what does he found the statement that " the literary status of the teachers of this province, as shown by [their examinations, is lower than that of any other province ?" Unless I am grievously misinformed, the papers set, though apparently simple enough, are so drawn up, especially iu cases where vacancies for the more important schools are to be filled up, as to test to the utmost the capacities of even the best qualified candidates who have the ambition to answer them thoroughly. It is also notorious that a large proportion of the applicants for certificates (some of whom have not the misfortnne to be Nelsonians) fail to pass the present examinations, •' though of the most elementary character." It is not so well kuown— what I have nevertheless good reasons for believing to be true— that scarcely a single candidate, for years past, ha3 succeeded in answeriug decently well two-thirds of the questions set in these "elementary" papers. Nor should it be forgotten that on the single occasion when something like the beginning of "the higher classification" suggested by your correspondent was, in an evil hour, attempted by the Board of Examiners, the result was not such as to encourage that body of " scholarly men— all of them men of good common sense and practical knowledge," as your correspondent puts it— to repeat the experiment. Again, where did " Cerip" learn that "the certificate of a junior assistant is of equal value to that of the head teacher?" The certificate of a junior teacher simply entitles him or her to do junior work, aud is absolutely i worthless as a certificate for any higher position. And yet again. Who told him that "the ability to teach " does not form one of the considerations on which the examiuers grant a special certificate? No man who knows upon what grouuds certificates have been given and withheld, say during the past twelve months, can refrain from smiling at so preposterous an assertion. It would be difficult, without violating confidence, or dragging into publicity the names of rhose who neither need nor desire any advertisement of mine, to show how undeserved is the sneer at the low literary status of our Nelson teachers. Suffice it to say that there is not a province in these islands where ex-Nelson teachers have not taken a high rank, and the best have not all left us. In Westland, in Welliugton, in Otago, and in Canterbury old Nelson teachers appear again and again in the Inspector's re- ) ports iu the most favorable light. The documents to which I refer are accessible enough, so that the confutation of my assertion is not a difficult matter if I have overstated my case. So much for « Cerip's " facts. I will propose a simple text as to the value of his inferences. Let the Nelson Education Board staud or fall by their success or failure iu the past "to secure," as he himself puts it, " efficient teachers and well conducted schools." The issue is surely plain enough. Are our teachers, as a rule, equal to the elementary work required of tbem, or would it be possible (salaries remaining as they are) to secure and retain a better set of men and women by auy system of classification, however elaborate or cunningly devised? Or, to put it still more shortly, has our Education Bof rd made the most of the materials at its disposal?— lam, &c, X.