CORRESPONDENCE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 284, 10 July 1873, Page 10

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE ALEXANDRA SCHOOL AND MR. IIISLOP. (To the Editor.) Sir, — In glancing over Mr. Hislop's report of the Education Department for 1872, 1 find he says "Teachers generally are entitled to the credit of doing all in their power to make the cost of school books fall as lightly as possible on the parents of their pupils." 1 would ask on whose authority does Mr. Hislop make that statement? Certainly not on the authority of the parents, as the expense of school books has been v standing grievance even in Dunedin for several years past, and I think the statement ought not to be made on che authority of the teachers. I consider the present system quite as unsatisfactory to the latter as the former. It allows them first to create the demand and then to supply it. It casts an unnecessary temptation in their way, not only to over-charge but to multiply the text books without cause, as I have known a child have three different sorts of arithmetic books before he understood the multiplication table. It allows one teacher to tax the community according to his pleasure, and to the, next it gives no remuneration for his services, as for instance, the one in Alexandra being allowed to charge a heavy percentage of profit and the one in Clyde nothing. Mr. Hislop says he has heard few complaints. ; but that gentlemen must be

aware that the evil may be wide spread and very grievous without a complaint reaching him. It is always disagreable to complain ; then it is a positive injury to the person so complaining, and were it not from a sense of public duty, to use a hackneyed phrase, no one would be self-sacrificing enough to undertake the task. The school in Alexandra of 1873 is very different from the one of 1870 ; but 1 have not the least doubt the individual who first initiated the sanitary reform they are so pleased and proud of had the vials of this wrath poured over him long before those reforms were completed. That complaint is useless may be gathered from the following : Mr. Hislop says in his report of Alexandra that " all the members of the Committee were piesent." Some were present at personal inconvenience, as it was known a complaint was to made against the teacher's charges made for books ; but that complaint was useless so far as the parents were conoerneil, as they had the same to pay after as before, and it was worse than useless as far as Mr. Hislop's opinion went, as it only turned a suspicion into a certainty. Everything which tends to a difference of opinion between the teacher and the parent should be carefully avoided, as it tends to injure the cause of education. Mr. Hislop is quite a ware of this as far as the Catholics are 'concerned, and thinks a teacher who could offend in the smallest particular deserving of the gravest censure ; yet here is a bone of contention actually thrown not only among Catholics and Protestants, but even the teacher is induced to join in the squabble, with an energy quite foreign to his nature. I consider teachers in general arc under-paid, that a good one can't be paid too high, and a bad one ought to be fined so much a year for the injury he does to the children. But if their salaries are to be increased, let it be in a manner that parents will be pleased to pay and the teacher proud to receive, and not, as is often the. case at present, where the charge is made wiili a blush and paid [ with a growl. But if teachers niuot have, an interest in the sale of books, let that incoiest be. defined so that if we have a grievance it 111113/ not be a local one. — Yuuvk, &c, " A Mother. Alexandra, June 27th.