MR SIMMONS AND EDUCATION IN OTAGO.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 397, 7 October 1874, Page 6

MR SIMMONS AND EDUCATION IN OTAGO.

The following letter appeared in the ' Nelson Colonist' :—: — Sir, — In inserting a letter of mine which was addressed to the * Otago Daily Times,' you have very naturally copied the heading. This was not mine. I had no intention, for I had no right, to say one word on "Otago Education," or the " Otagan Educationalists," whoever they may be. I greatly regret that it should have been thought expedient to make an assault upon the schoolmasters of that Province in the columns of that journal based on any words of mine. My intention was simply to correct a misstatement, when seemtd to me unjust to my colleagues, myself, and the Institution of which I have the houor to be Principal, and not to reflect on any man, or body of men. [ know from painful experien ..e how "hard it ia for a bcnoolmaster to do his duty in Otago, where he is liable to be assailed periodically, by the most ignorant of the not too intellectual gentlemen who adorn the Provincial Council, and Established Church Courts of that Province, and by those very fluent critics, whose venOBQOUB effusions, strangely enough, are published in a paper so respectable as the ' Daily 1 imes. ' By these attacks a teacher's mind must necessarily be distracted from his work, which demands his • whole energies ; while, as boys read newspapers, he is compelled to resort to great strictness to preserve that discipline, without which school teaching is not possible. Mr Hawthorne and his colleagues have my warmest sympathy in their difficult position. If the results of the ' ' lavish expenditure " on education in Otago are unsatisfactory and inadequate, the public and Press of Dunedin are mainly to blame ; while no small share of such success as we have secured is due to the wiae policy of our Governors, to the kindly sympathy of the Press, and to the warm interest taken in education by the public of this Province. As long as Otago permits its educational institutions to be controlled by rrovincial politicians and popular preachers, instead of bodies chosen as here, for the especial purpose, the results of an expenditure, however " lavish," will be inadequate and unsatisfactory, and the evil can only be aggravated by the most respectable journals opening their columns to communications calumnious, if not actually libellous, which sap all discipline. If a master is incapable, by all means let him be removed by the proper authorities. It is simple cruelty to keep him on working under conditions which make " adequate results" impossible to the most capable. — I am, &c, Prank C. Simmons. Nelson, September 23, 1874.