CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1921, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

EDUCATION BOARDS AND HOME WORK. (To the Editor.) Sir, —In your report of ,a recent truancy case" heard in the Magistrate’s Cpurt, the Magistrate is said to have stated that a parent has no right to set his parential authority Against that of the Education Board in regard to the matter of “home-work”; and it is to be inferred that he -gave it as his opinion that ; a child could . properly be punished for not doing home-work even if forbidden by its parent.. If such is a correct report of the Magistrate’s remarks, it seems desirable to raise the question of his authority for making such a statement. It is not at all uncommon for some teachers (it may be that they are in a minority) to act as if, by virtue of their office, they might contemptuously dismiss the question of “parental authority” so far as it affects any matter of school work, and it Is in the highest degree undesirable that such ideas should seem to be tacitly encouraged by what seem to be 111auvised remarks of a Magistrate. It is, of course, admitted that a parent is required by law to send his children to school, and he is properly punished for failing to do so whether kis reason be an objection to homework or anything else, but it may be questioned whether he is hound to permit tome work to be done of • which he disapproves, and there does not appear to be any power vested in a teacher to punish a child for not doing home-work which its parent has forbidden it to do. It may be true tkat the Education Board has by regulation, permitted teachers to give home-work to certain standards, but such regulation is at best a matter between the Board and its servants, and. It is submitted, is destitute of any legal effect so far as a parent is concerned. It has been held in a ease tried in the English Courts (hat, in the case of a pupil attending a public elementary school under statutory rules relating to compulsory school attendance detention beyond the period of attendance required by the by-laws is not justified, and where- such detention was enforced by ■ a school-master as a punishment for not obeying a. direction to study at home (a direction equally not justified), it was held that detention could not be treated as it matter of school discipline, but was an assault. This being so, It would seem that the Magistrate (if he be correctly reported) went somewhat further in his remarks than the circumstances of the case required.— I am, etc.,