CHAPEL STREET SCHOOL.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 307, 24 December 1912, Page 7

CHAPEL STREET SCHOOL.

(To the Editor.) I Sir,—Permit mc, through your columns, to express my grateful thanks to all those friends who have so generously helped mc in money, in kind, and in sympathy during the years I have been headmaster oi Chapel Street School. At present the state of my health will not allow mc to say and do all I wish to say and do to vindicate the character of the school and its pupils; but, if a season of rest and quiet restores mc sufficiently, 1 it is my full intention, not as head-' master for the past fifteen and a-half years, but as a parent whose children at-1 tended the school, to compel the complete withdrawal of the odious and untrue statements which have been reported to mc by persons who heard them, and are prepared to support their evidence. I have yet to learn that because a child and his parents are poor they are necessarily vicious or depraved, or that the atmosphere they breathe becomes tainted with immorality. This sort of talk is not the wav to" deal with the children of people who are not so well circumstanced as arc their traducere. The children who attended the Chapel Street ■School have as much right to consideration and care as have any children in this Dominion, for their parents are, equally with others, taxed to provide the cost of education; and, if for any special reason, there is need for extra care and greater consideration, they ought to have that greater consideration and that extra care in the interest, not of them-1 selves alone, but of the whole community am, etc., W. H. DRAFFIN. i King Edward Avenue, Epsom, December 23rd, 1912.