EDUCATION BOARDS.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4736, 12 March 1884, Page 2

EDUCATION BOARDS.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star).

Sib.—The proceedings of the Auckland Education Board were very lirely on last Friday. No one can read the report of what took place, without;feelings of amazement and bewilderment—amazement at finding a body of public men in the presence of the representative* of the Press, comporting tLemselver so unbecomingly as to impute corrupt motives to eacbjother, to call each other liais, chained dogs, &c. ; and bewilderment at the spectacle of an Education Board and its chief iaspectt^appearing, for the occasion, to ignore^ JSr ;,s»get good manners.. There can be bo doubt but things are at sixes and sevens, but to find where the fault lies is not quite easy. The past irregularities of members and of officers, the secret reporting, the privaf3 memoranda busine«sy the outrunning the constable with finance, &c, hare all come to a crisis, and the crises is discreditable to all parti?* concern d. Mr Goldie's ardent desire to are Mr Talbot appointed to Parnell may be wrong, bat the coarse adopted to keep him out of it by the officers of the Bo .rd, and by others, is equally wrong,—or if not equally wrong, the way pursued is not only equally wrong, but much more so. Mr Tatbot hes been seven or eight years in the employ of the Board, and as aasti• tant in a large school, and it appear* ixce< iingly strange, not to say suspicions, that his indifference as a teacher was hpt discovered before now,—until when? Until he runs connter to the appointment of a nominee of the officers. The nominee, it appears, is certificated, Mr Talbot is not, but if appointments were decided by superior merit or class, then the Inspector privately recommended as " His beat mm" recently, one holding an inferior certificate to many others,—a last man who since, it eppears, has to be removed from his own district. There appears to be no law or well-understcod course to | act upon in these me.tters, and so of course the door is kept open for favouriteism and cliquism.—l am, &c, Pabent.