SLANDERING AND SNIVELLING.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 179, 7 August 1888, Page 2

SLANDERING AND SNIVELLING.

In Wellington there is a journal called the New Zealand Times, and it has lately made itself notorious by its besmirching the district in which it is published, the main targets for its shocking charges being the public schools of Wellington. If we are to believe all that is said in this direction the juvenile immorality in the district named must be more terrible than anything that could be imagined as existing in the most densely populated slums of Paris. Such statements being so publicly proclaimed, the Education Board was compelled to take notice of it, and a full enquiry was instituted, but the only vestige of truth that could be discovered was a vague and disjointed story of evil communications on the part of a female pupil, attending, not a public school, but a girls’ school, There may not at first sight appear much reason for the matter being noticed here and thus giving further publicity to an unsavory subject, nor may it appear sensible that because the Wellington people chose to tar themselves with the blackest pitch, we should do more than smile at their stupidity and lament the grossness of their taste, But our whole system has been brought into question, and we cannot look on mutely when an attempt is being made to undermine that system—by methods, too, which are shocking to contemplate, A certain Archdeacon has also taken up the question, and has levelled charges of a like nature against the Auckland Schools. If the Wellington and Auckland schools are as demoralised as they are branded by a certain few, then we need look no further apace, but conclude that the whole system is a sorrowful failure, and that the teachers are I

quite incompetent to perform the high tasks that devolve upon them. But the mean and cowardly attacks can only rebound on the heads of the wicked caluminators. Upon an attempt being made to sift the charges, we find the journalists who promulgate them, instead or coming forward with promised proofs, shuffle out of it by stating that for “ obvious reasons ” they do not wish to bring forward specific charges. This then is an instance of the depths to which “ journalism ” may descend—his the dishonorable subterfuge under which a paper published in the metropolis can take shelter I The actuating motive appears to have been to satisfy a low craving for nasty sensationalism, and when in any city there is found more than the ordinary number of black sheep who delight in this pabulum, it is clear that the newspaper conductors are not by any means the only ones who deserve the lash and ducking-chair. However whether as a trumped up newspape r yarn or as an underhand attack upon our educational system, the slimy bubble has burst, leaving its marks upon those who were beneath it.