SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 149, 20 March 1933, Page 10

SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS

Printers’ Side of the Case REPLY TO HON. R. MASTERS “It is characteristic of the Minister of Education that in all his utterances upon the question over the past nine months, he shows a definite disinclination to face the facts,” runs a statement issued by the Federation of Master Printers of New Zealand on Saturday on the school text-books controversy. “A typical instance of this,” proceeds the statement, “is the Minister’s concluding statement wherein he says that ‘the printers’ organisation was asked to appear before the Education Committee of the House of Representatives and failed to put in an appearance.’ This is absolutely inaccurate, and emphasises the fact of how little a Minister seated in the Upper House is in touch with even his own committee constituted of members of the Lower House.

“The only request to the federation is embodied in the following letter dated February 23 last, from the clerk, Education Committee of the House of Representatives:— Secretary. N.Z. Master Printers’ Federation, Wellington.—Dear Sir, —I am directed by the chairman of the Education Committee of the House of Representatives (Mr. Bodkin) to request you to furnish to the Committee “in writing” the views of your federation oh the petition presented to the House in connection with the school text books, in order that the Committee may be as fully informed as possible on the matter from all points. The Committee meets on Wednesday, March 1. 1033, at 10.30 a.m. in room 51. Kindly let me have ‘‘your report” before that date.

“In response the federation released to the Education Committee, in full, its confidential statement placed before the National Expenditure Commission in April, 1932, which statement had already been released to the Minister of Education and his department. No material alteration to the above statement was warranted, and this fact was mentioned by the federation in its reply to the committee’s letter. “The Federation of Master Printers is willing, at any time, to give the Minister an ‘opportunity of crossexamination’ before a pubic inquiryinto all the circumstances of the school books question, presided over by a Judge of the Supreme Court, as has already been suggested by school committees’ organisations, when the same •opportunity of cross-examination’ of the Minister and other witnesses will be afforded the federation.”