EDUCATION MATTERS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 175, 9 July 1932, Page 9

EDUCATION MATTERS.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—In reply to Mr J. W. Talbot’s fetter in yesterday’s issue kindly allow me through your columns to inform him that his school was visited by tho whole hoard ou the same day as tho now famous visit was paid to Maraekakaho. It was visited some three months ago by the chairman and architect in the course of their rounds and also on June 29 at the request of the Paki Paki chairman. Apparently it is a heinous offence for the board or its officials to visit a school without first officially notifying the committee. We live and learn. It is also very instructive to hear a member of the association lecturing on fairness when the patent unfairness of that body’s first pronouncement is the origin of all this discussion. Did it never occur to the Country Schools Association which I now find has been in existence for twelve months, that it has never sent any intimation of its formation to the board or to its representatives on the board, that it has never invited either of us (the Rev, F, L. Frost and myself) to attend any of its meetings? Its first bow to the public was the report in these columns on the first of July which contained a reflection on us both. If that body had seen fit in its wisdom to invite its representatives to its meeting and had expressed a desire for a country representative (quite a reasonable desire) I would have been the last to occasion an election.

My object in entering this controversy and my reason for circulating the chairman’s letter has been not so much to further my candidature as to refute the misleading insinuation that the country schools have been neglected by their presentatives. The country schools have really been the favoured ones.

Mr Editor, I find myself a most unwilling participant in alii this. I neither sought nor asked the honour or responsibility of representing the Middle Ward on the Education Board. I am not so sure that the position whoever gets it will be a very desirable one after what has happened, and I am certain that the whole controversy must be as distasteful to Mr Sutro, for whom I have the greatest respect, as it is to me.—Yours etc., ROBERT WAUGH. Havelock North, 9/7/32.