VACCINATION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2681, 22 October 1881, Page 2

VACCINATION AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

At the meeting of the Dunedin School Committee on Wednesday, Oct. 19, the Chairman read the following communication from the Education Board’s secretary, under date Sept. 29 :—“ I have the honor to inform you that the Government have issued instructions to the public vaccinators to examine all children attending the public schools, and to vaccinate all who who have not already been successfully vaccinated. Doctor Burns, the public vaccinator for the Dunedin district, will visit your schools in the course of a few days. In order to save time, I have communicated direct with the head masters. —.1 am, &c., P. G. Pryde.”

Mr Green said it was most arbitrary and tyrannical thing for a doctor to go to the schools and, without previously consulting the parents, vaccinate their children—this was introducing Russian practices into a free country. Why, a child might be vaccinated when in a delicate state of health, of which the doctor might know nothing ; while if its parents had been consulted the danger would have been avoided.

Mr Low was of the same opinion. He had bj the merest chance heard of the intended vaccination of the school children, and be immediately sent off a peremptory note to the master of the school which his children attended forbidding their being operated on. The Committee ought to have received notice of the intended vaccination, and they could then have notified the same to the parents. Mr Robin looked upon the affair in a somewhat diffex*ent light—in the same way as the compulsory education question. If parents would not look after the education of their children, the Government made them ; so if parents would not look after the health of their

children, the Government were quite right in looking after it for them. The Chairman said that was his view also.

Mr Green was not of that opinion. He believed in the liberty of the subject and held that the parents should have first been consulted.

Mr Low moved —“That this Committee protest against the arbitrary manner in which instructions had been given for the vaccination of the children in the schools under the. Committee’s control, and consider that before such instructions were given the parents should have received notice of the same.” He did not object to the vaccination itself, but to the arbitrary manner in which it had been ordered. The motion was carried by three to two, and was ordered to be forwarded to the Education Board and to the Government.— (“ Otago Daily Times.”)