SCHOOL COMMITTEES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16328, 26 August 1913, Page 8

SCHOOL COMMITTEES.

TO THB EDITOB. Sir, —The teaching profession is not one to envy, but this cry to abolish school committees is a move towards autocracy, as were committees abolished and commissions appointed favouritism and snobbery would rule. None are perfect, and two swallows do not make summer. Though committees may blunder, still they represent the people, and were it otherwise the would-be elite of any settlement would boss the show. There would be lawn tennis for the favoured few, and few, if any, scholarships for the poor man's children. Tact is a gem, and the want of it often causes friction, as when a teacher sneeringly remarks that the school committees are all illiterate boors. Those who make such remarks forget that the risen* generation were handicapped through their parents' poverty, and denied a sound education. It would be more noble to lift the ignorant out of the ditch than kick them farther into it, as neither the tailor nor dressmaker make men or women cultured. Vanity is just tinselled courtesy—a make-believe. Then the people should stand firm for democracy, the people's charter, and crush all attempts to introduce autocracy, which means misgovernment by the snobbish few.—l am, etc., EQUITY.