BLACKSTONE HILL.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 479, 12 September 1878, Page 2

BLACKSTONE HILL.

(From our own corre?pcrauont.) The Cambrian correspondent of the ' Witness" tells us the Blackstone Hill School is closed owinsi to irregularity of attendance. It would be as well were that vividly-imaginative correspondent lo take a little trouble to square Lis assertions with fact. The Blackstone Hill School is not, and has not been closed from any cause whatever.

On the 6th inst. we h;:d 2 concert in aid of the school fund, at which Messrs Gay and and M'Kay, of Hawkdun station, Mr George Smith of Waipori, Mrs Anderson, Messrs Johnston, Leeder, Holding, Dunsmuir, ic, kindly assisted. The night was fine, and all disposed to please and be pleased, so it was a success financially and otherwise. As an amateur Mr Gay is unrivalled, and our old friend, Mr Geo. Smith, displayed no mean skill in his solos, concertina and harmonium. The music for the inevitable dance, which, followed the concert, was furnished by Messrs M'Kay and Mathieson ; the party about one. It might have been thought that the Hducation Act as Administered by the Sangrados of the Education Board would be somethingbetter than the mocking sham it really is. Education is declared free, and this School Committee is compelled to call upon parents to tax themseves £1 per child, per annum, in order to subsidise the Board, to enable it to pay its teacher. The Board pays £1 Is. 3d., per quarter, for eac i child in average attendance, but it does not require a Solon to perceive that there is a wide difference in conditions. The same rule applied to Dunedin—with, its schools, at the utmost, a mile apart, and good ashphalt pavements, may be all very well, but absurd when applied to a straggling district like this, where more than half the children have to travel a distance varying from two tflfe* four miles, and that in the winter through an ocean of mud. There boys who wade the longest distance in all - weathers, but girls it impossibl. D aggled clothing is a horror, and a peril to health to boot.

It can easily be proved that no school in New Zealand has exhibited a more selfreliant spirit than this. Under the old system fully £1 for £1 was raised locally, the estimates for the new Act, the and I am sadly misinformed if in cost in such districts as this was not taken into account in the general average. If such is the case, and t lor one believe it, we are cheated out of what the Legislature intended we should have for the benefit of places which have never raised one faJthing locally with the exception of school fees. Possibly underlying all may be a piece of statecraft, —the policy of drawing the people from the country districts to herd in overgrown towns or exist in besotted ignorance. The position of teachers is far worse—reduced in pay and more dependent. The Board appoints a teacher; parents won't pay. Will the teacher be so self-denying as to exist on the Board's pittance? Uo, he must go. So that practically teachers are under the "control of the parents, who hold in terrorem the power of the purse. Let the Education Board instead of making an iron rule to serve itself bother, t;ike Ihe trouble Jo discover the \ - aryiug conditions of school districts, jnd so foster Education according to the* spirit of the Act —to leave no child uneducated, if it is at all possible to reach it. ' A number here are waiting patiently for the proclamation granting pre-emption to homesteads. Some have already deposited survey foes, but others cannot see the use of doing so until proclamation and regulations are issued- Some sixteen profess thctuselrcs rewdy to take advantage of jt. - "