TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3169, 25 August 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1881.

The decisions of the Justices in the assault cases heard yesterday at iVaipawa mark, we presume, the magisterial opinion ot the duties and responsibilities of teachers in the State schools. For the future a teacher will think twice before enforcing the discipline of a school, and consider the character of the parent of a child before resorting to corporal punishment. A fine of one shilling for assaulting a teacher in the midst of his pupils and assistants will go a very long way to undermine the whole value of the public schools in the district of Waipawa. Every little incipient larrikin, every young upgrowing hoodlum, will be able to s?ay in his heart, if he does not blurt it out with bis lips, " my father T.ili take C3re that lam not caned." And no teacher will to risk zn insult or a thrashing from parents of pupils by maintaining a discipline that is essential in every school. It is h fact that forces itself on the attention of all, that the " roughs" of England, the "hoodlums" of the Western Suces of America, and the "larrikins" of Australia, spring from the classes that have never had either home or school training ; the parents have never known the meaning of discipline, and do not understand its application to their children ; and a race of wild savages springs up to disgrace our civilisation and to fill our gaols with felons. It is notorious that in this, as in all colonies, children in every class of society are permitted a wider latitude than is known to youths in the old country. From tenderest infancy out here both boys and girls are allowed to do, and even to Bay, pretty much what they please, and whatever their faults in speech or manner they escape punishment. What is worse, it is very common for parents to laugh and to show their pleasure at acts of rudeness and vulgarity on tbe part of their children as exhibitions of what they are pleased to think is proper spirit. These untrained little roughs at a certain age are gent to school, and unless the teachers are allowed the most perfect liberty to administer severe corporal punishments discipline will be set at defiance, and the school will offer no better training than the ill-regulated home. We should like to see the Education Act so amended aa to afford the most complete protection to teachers in the exercise of their duties.