THISTLEDOWN.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1778, 12 October 1895, Page 2

THISTLEDOWN.

“ A man may jest and tell the truth.” , —Horace.

School Committees will he delighted with one paragraph in Mr Petrie’s last' report, that in which he' condemns the too frequent changes vin the teaching staff which he reckons have done most to retard progress and improvement. Committees have been constantly protesting against these changes, and apparently might have continued to protest without avail to the end of the chapter, had not Mr Petrie struck at the two misconceptions which lay at the root of and seemed to necessitate them. One of these was the idea that all teachers are equally adapted to work of the most radically different kinds. As the Chief Inspector points out one is specially fitted for teaching single advanced-classes, another’s forte lies in the management of a. country school where the bulk of the work in all classes, falls on the sjiead, a third has a natural talent for the training Of infants and, he might have added, a fourth finds his proper element in the control of a large city school where organising capacity is of more importance than teaching power. Prom the mistaken idea that all teachers are equally capable in these four widely different spheres the Board has confined the prizes of the profession to the Headmastership of large schools, and as a natural consequence has insistsd on all teachers passing through every single phase of their profession. The remedy lies in the recognition of these different phrases and in providing as a logical sequence for adequate promation in each.

I am glad to see that the Board of Education has postponed to the new year the coming into operation of the resolution which° reduced schools with an average attendance under 20 to the elas3 of aided schools. Country settlers have to put up with quite enough inconveniences, not to say hardships, without adding to them,,the loss of education for their children unless they put. their hands in their pockets to grope there.for the major portion of the teacher’s salary. A farmer’s income, it may be worth while to remind dwellers in cities, consists rather i 1 abundance of eatables than in actual cash, either hard or soft, and many really thriving settlers have only a bowing acquaintance with Her Gracious Majesty’s effigy even on.the shilling, which it would be only a wild stretch of a too lively imagination to call in their case nimble. Such stray coins as fall in their way are only travellers stopping for refreshment and.rest..on their way.to the ironmonger, the butcher, the baker or the grocer. The Board has long made a practice of transferring large sims yearly from' the maintenance to the building account, a procedure manifestly illegal in spirit if not in act. I cannot help thinking too that' the city schools committee is a cormorant which fishes’too successfully for lu .dries Auckland schools might well do without if they can be supplied only by 'scrimping small country schools. With a view to circumvent similar action on the part of the Board, my friend, Mr Dj Con-a*-, talks' of a petition to the Minister of Lands urging him to reserve half the sections in. all settlements for Irishmen so as to keep up the school average. He tells me of a son of.the old sod who. met one of his little girls returning from school. .'Hullo. Dada,’ said she. ‘ What’s your name, my dear, I [ have not the the(roll in my pocket.’ ,

Our dairymen hare. good and sufficient reason to complain of the action of the Minister for Agriculture in closing the Auckland cool stox-es, and requiring our butter to be sent to Wellington for storage and grading. What on earth is the good of paying experts big sal aides to teach our farmers how to make butter if its shipment be made impossible in any other condition than that of cart grease ? . Some time ago I promised a report of our local parliament’s debate on the butter industry. I have, however, mislaid the Hansard report and can for the prese t only summarise the proceedings. The feeling of members was unanimously in favour of suppliers being .paid the actual price of the butter, minus definite' charges for manufacture, freight and agency. It was only generally thought that Government might do v.orse with the million and a-half loan than advance portion of the cost cf co-operation creameries, while the honorable members for Limerick and Belfast carried a resolution calling on Government to undertake the Home Agency and advance settlers up to a definite sum per pound pending sales, equal say to twopence per gallon of standard milk. It was generally thought that while the present Agent-General had fairly developed the commercial side of the agency, it was capable of further expansion at the expense of the political and more ornamental side.

It is well to be logical .and consistent, but better to be honest and true. Greatly against the grain the Legislative Council some years ago agreed to the parsing of what used to be called at Home with grim irony ‘ The Diseased Wife’s Sister Bill.’ Breaking the law proved in this case an excellent way of altering, I Cannot say amending, it. Now the widows want to marry their dead husband’s brother, but I am happy to say the Council has been logical enough to refuse its sanction. The mover of the Bill actually saw no objection to men marrying their step-daughters, in fact recognised no bar to marriage in any affinity however close. Now, I believe it to be a physiological as well as . a Biblical truth that man and wife are one flesh, and look on all such proposals as revolting in the extreme; though they may in one way soften a husband's lot by ' inducing his mother-in-law to "coddle him with ulterior views as to the right of succession to her daughter. ■» # ' ' # #

Continuing my popular extracts from Hansard J inflict on my readers this week Mr McLachlan's defence of the Ministry from the charge of being a one-man Government. ‘ Even.though the Premier likes a soft seat I think the Minister of Lands would resent being sat upon. Now look at the Minister for Labour. Is he a rose without a thorn ? Not he. He has'perhaps too many thorns, and that is .why he is not quite so popular in this House as he might be; but I do not think he can be classed as a nonentity here, whatever he may be outside. What about Mr Cadman P This is one man in the Ministry who has .particularly earned all sorts of encomiums. ' He„doea not travel about, like Premier or the Leader of the Opposition, with a band of music; he does not attend festive banquets in Dunedin; he is not even invited to stay and attend after-meeting saturnalia. But he is full of chivalry. The Colonial Treasui’sr let them know at Home he represented the. greatest colony ia the world. He believed it because he was Treasurer of New Zealand, and he had never seen any' other colony.’ If that speech did not put the Opposition in a pleasanter frame of mind, and they sadly wanted it that night,

their indignation and wrath against Mr Ward must be far more serious than I can well imagine. ; :

Mr E. M. Smith the same sitting contributed his share towards restoring the harmony disturbed by some of the bitterest personalities ever heard in the House. Mr Hutchison, for instance, suggested that the Treasurer would yet find his home beside Jabez Balfour in gaol,- and the beasuty of it 'all is that whenever one member has anything particularly bitter or insulting to say of another he always makes a point of calling him‘his honorable friend,’ a piece of Parliamentary hypocrisy, much better omitted I should say. Well Mr Smith assured the House that the only mistake made was in not sending him Home with Mr Ward. He would have given the Treasurer the tip how to raise his loan at 2£ per cent. If not sent home at the expense of the colony he will sell his second coat and go at his own cost, and * in that grand old Liberal town of Birmingham with Joe, the only Joe, him with the eye-glass at his side/ he will tell them of the progress of New Zealand, taking himself as an example. * Here am I, representing one of the most important constituenties in the colony, I fm the lamplighterl am the turncock; ut the people took me from the lamplighting ; they took the hydrent from my shoulder and put me to represent them in Parliament, This shows we are a truly democratic country.’ I fancied Joe, Irishmen Call him Judas, had forgotten half his democratic ideas and smothered the other half for the sake of dividing the spoils with Salisbury and Co* I also fancied, but perhaps I am mistaken, that Conservative members had for some years past been a leading sample of Brummagem wares and that the prodigal midland capital had long since eschewed Liberal husks.

lapyx.*