BURDEN OF THE BACKBLOCKS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9459, 31 May 1909, Page 3

BURDEN OF THE BACKBLOCKS.

In the course of a letter to Taranaki JUdnoation Board a resident in the baokblooks, who complained that he had been summoned although In's child was a standard ahead of other children the writer said : “We have done our duty, but my reward for all this is to be brought like a common vagrant to a Police Court, and have my name appearing in the newspapers as the father of a presumably neglected child. The Education Act was intended to be benignant, not malignant. I am speaking now for settlers when I say it is being used not to help ns but to crush ns,” Then follows the writer’s idea of the educational system of the present day, which seems to be that “money is at the root of all evil,” Thus: “The teacher wants the attendance to make up his salary; the truant officer prosecutes to get his salary; the policeman serves the summons to get his salary and mileage; the Magistrate adjudicates to get his salary. Now, sir, right along that line every man has a Government salary, and all that tremendous salaried force is turned loose to crush, a struggling settler who has no salary”—the last four words were heavily underlined —“and who dares fc‘o keep his child at home on a wet day Your official talks in a lordly way about a doctors certificate. Who is going to pay for it? Take a man with say, five children at school. Every time they have little ailments is the father to leave his work and go perhaps ten miles to bring a doctor? Taranaki teachers’ troubles were also referred to. The Tougaporntu teacher wrote: “You state that I might oocnpy the whare on the land, I am afraid I can’t, as the chimney has blown down and the whole place is infested with house-bugs and rats.’ Writing of the Okau school, which is also under his charge, he says that it ‘‘seems to he in a worse condition than the Tougaporntu whare. There are several very bad leaks in the roof, and all saddles, rugs, eto,, have to be put in the room under my table. ” A male teacher's pitiable plight: “I have been stopping with Mr O f but as his daughter has come home to live, he is reluctantly compelled to ask me to seek another place to live.” Here is another: ‘‘Even the house allowance is not granted, bnt in place of it is given a beggarly set of rooms that even the rats would sooru to live in. . . It is enough to make a saint swear ”