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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3173, 30 August 1881, Page 2

The Poverty Bay Herald calls attention to tbe law that protects the dumb animal from tbe wanton cruelty of man, and to the law which prohibits a female to be worked for more than a certain number of hoim. But there is no law, says our contemporary —although it ia to be hoped there soon will be—to prevent the pupil teachers in our Government schools being done to death; or health permanently destroyed, or spirits and mind completely broken down. A few lines will show what goes on in our midst. Referring to Giaooroe, the pupil teachers—five of ibem girls —go into school for study at eight o'clock in the morning, many cf the subjects they _ra required to be up in being of a very tbstrnse and recondite nature, such as Euclid, Algebra, Physiology, the niceties of Grammar, History and its worthless chronology, the laws of health, together with some other eight or ten subjects all more or less difficult to acquire. These duti.. go on from eight in the morning until nearly half-past nine o'clock. The school bell then rings, and, with the exception ot about half-an : hour for dinner, these girl pupil teachers are engaged in the arduous and exhausting work of giving instruction to the school children. School dismissed they wend their weary way homewards and after snatching a hasty tea resume their duties up to 10 cr 11 o'clock, and only too often up till after midnight. If this be not cruelty to young girls we don't know what cruelty consists in. The worst of it all is these girls, many of them naturally intelligent, by the abominable system of cram they are made to undergo, cease to be intelligent, and are only becoming so many machines which are worked without either cessation or rest. It is a matter the State ought to look into and not long permit; it is nothing less than a grave reflection upon our common humanity.