Correspondence

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42744, 6 July 1905, Page 2

Correspondence

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Will you kindly allow me through the medium of your paper, to gay a few words in answer to the Chairman of the Te Aroha West School Committee and Justitia. In the first place let me ask the Chairman if it was not true that a little girl was kept away from school and a complaint made to him, and did be not call a meeting of the committee to investigate the charge of ill treatment ? As you and Justitia are so anxious for tte truth, speak out and tell the truth and all the truth, and state what was the verdict of the committee. Now, Justitia, a few words with you. After reading your letter I came to the conclusion that you were a cheap edition of James the First, “ a learned fool.” In the first place a correspondent gives a truthful item of news, and you say it is disgusting. Is it disgusting because a correspondent writes the truth about a public servant? Can not a man write the truth in a free country without you calling it disgusting? Then you jump to the conclusion that the correspondent means personal violence in his vulgar brag. If my memory serves me, I think bashing a man over the head with a club is an argument used by school teachers. The correspondent might mean by dealing with the teacher, taking him before the magistrate. It would be quite right too, if his little girl had had her arm broken and came home with that arm so bruised and swollen that her mother had to doctor it; or when the teacher breaks a stick to pieces over a girl; then the modern Solomon indulges in a little mild profanity, “how naughty.” When a barrister has finished his case in Court is, he damned because he does not know what verdict the jury will give ? If the correspondent thinks committees are one sided, I think people in a free country are allowed to hold their own opinion without being insulted by Justitia; but, I suppose, being silly, consists of holding a different opinion from Justitia. Parents are beginning to think < key pay a teacher to teach the children not brutalise them. I think it would ho a good plan if the Government compelled a teacher to eii‘.. r in a hook every time a child was punished, the punishment inflicted, the number of stripes given, and what it was for. Even if they slopped a child in the face, they should bo compelled to make an entry of it. I shall be pleased to hear from you again as promised, but do not be quite so egotistical in your next. —I am, etc., Freedom.