South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2357, 6 October 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1880.

The Timaru School Committee are a most unhappy body. They began their duties well but they promise to end them badly. Lately they have been sailing in troubled waters, and their distresses seem to be accumulating. If they are not speedily swamped it will not be for want of indiscretion. They are divided among themselves, and their relationship to the Education Board and their teaching staff is in a delightfully mixed condition. The majority of the members would appear to have a singular faculty for making things disagreeable to themselves and everyone else concerned. If they go on as they are doing they will make scholastic; affairs in Timaru a by-word and a reproach all over Now Zealand. Either they have fallen into a most serious misapprehension respecting the intentions of the Education Act or the}' arc bent on setting the Act at defiance. When they proposed a few weeks ago to send round their Chairman’s hat among the children on behalf of the incidentals,we strongly deprecated such a proceeding. Wo pointed out that to do so would not only be an injustice to parents and children in (his not over-highly favored part of the colony, hut it would be an indirect violation of the Act under which the Committee lias been constituted. The Committee, however, has obstinately perisisted in doing a thing which is reprehensible, for they have extracted during (he past month the sum of £lO from parents by means of a begging circular. More than that, the Chairman stated that in remonstrating with a parent who objected to (his subscription business he said ‘‘ it would be a mean action to expect his children to obtain firing, Ac., for nothing when others were paying for it.” We should like to hear the chairman’s definition of meanness. The charge that he made, could it only bo substantiated, would have a very wide application, for it would apply not only to the noncontributing parents of Timaru, but to parents all over New Zealand, the Anstralian colonies, and wherever a free national system of education has been established. Is he prepared to abide by this sweeping denunciation, or will be deny that if there is any meanness at all, it is to be found in the bogging epistle, which with an unworthy contempt of the spirit and intentions of the Education Act, he has taken such a prominent part in causing to be circulated ? As a fact there is no such thing us free education either in New Zealand or anywhere else. People who talk about the pauper instruction of the State, are either contriving to hood-wink their fellow colonists, or they don’t know what-they are talking about. What is called free education is very costly. The ‘‘meanness” which the Chairman of the Timaru School Committee imputes to parents who very properly refuse to respond to the demands of the begging letter-writer, is the meanness of accepting what they have paid for. The Timaru School Committeec have stultified themselves by first Haunting their empty meal-hag in the face of the Education Board, and then sending it round like a Sunday offertory among the parents. This begging system is something demoralising. It is securing an all-pervading inHuence which is becoming absolutely nauseating. If the allowance for incidentals is sufficient for every other school district in the colony it ought to be sufficient for this one. Parents in Timaru have no right to he asked to contribute specially for that which parents everywhere else all over New enjoy for nothing. The people of this locality are not so much wealthier than outside communities that they can afford to make lingo sacrifices. Let the Timaru School Committee cut their coat according to their cloth and they will probably find the incidentals sufficient. At all events if they must appeal for aid the}’ should appeal to their paymasters on the Education Board instead of imitating the organ-grinder’s monkey.