RURAL VANDALISM.

Evening Post, Volume VII, Issue 131, 11 July 1871, Page 2

RURAL VANDALISM.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE EVENING POST. Sir—l have been told that a little cliqut of Vandals, connected with the school management of a country district neatWellington, lately, held a hole and cornei meeting, and acting afterwards, on a resolution which was passed Lby them, have shut up the district school, and discharged the schoolmaster at a moment's notice. The ostensible reason given for this atrocious proceedings is that it is ■• expected that by so doing they will escape the educational rate which was lately imposed by the Proviucial Council. However, another reason is whispered, namely, that the schoolmaster's pigs were a source of annoyance to .the chief of the "Vandals, who happens also to be chairman of the board. But either excuse is supremely disgraceful.

How long the school will be shut up, no one knows ; meanwhile the children, left without any schooling, will soon lose all the little learning they have acquired. It is difficult to speak with patience of such an abominable outrage on society, and it is to be hoped that the Press will gibbet the perpetrators, by giving full publicity to the whole matter.

The affair, however, shows the necessity of removing all matters connected with education from the control of little rural coteries, the members of which, stupidly ignorant themselves, have no idea of the humanizing and elevating effect of education, and would, rather than spend a shilling, see their own and their neighbours' children grow up ignorant, untaught, uncouth barbarians,

*' Like beasts with lower pleasures, ' Like beasts with, lowar pains."

I am, &c. f

Indignant.