WHAT NEXT?

New Zealand Mail, Issue 119, 26 July 1873, Page 2

WHAT NEXT?

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL. Sir, —I notice in your report of the proceedings of the Education Board that the secretary has had instructions “to write a circular letter to all schoolmasters under the Board warning them against writing, directing, or instigating articles in the papers in a spirit hostile to the Board.” No longer a schoolmaster under the Board, I do not feel alarmed at this fulmination of that august body, nor would I have been under any considerable fear .had I still the honor (I) to serve under them. I have yet, however, a fellow feeling with those schoolmasters whose misfortune it is to be at the mercy of such an impersonation of despotism. When in Wellington some months ago, while the Council was sitting, I was requested—mark the word —requested as a particular favor to write articles in a spirit hostile to the Board, and that too by one of its members. This member promised to send me subjects from time to time. He has not yet done so. I may say that he then did give some matter of complaint. I drew up a few questions based upon the complaints —complaints which I in part agree with — and just then in the hands of two of the Wairarapra members. I believe they were asked in committee. To suit his own selfish ends, this member wished to take advantage of a slight feeling of irritation I then might have against the Board. That feeling has long since been swallowed up by one of infinitely greater intensity at the duplicity of the member in question. Had I written as reqxxested, I feel certain the information would have considerable bias, if it might not prove entirely erroneous. I would not be surprised to learn that a member of the Board, and not a schoolmaster, gave the erroneous information to the “Evening Herald.” Unless the information given me by the said member be erroneous, the elements of the Board are not quite so homogenous as they ought to be, and that the amount of self-seeking on tlie part of a few of the members is much in excess of what the

public would expect in such, a body. When paragraphs ft based on erroneous information” appear in public papers, it would be well for the Board to see if that information may not have been given by one of themselves, before casting the suspicion of it, as they have done in this case, upon the schoolmasters, who dare not, under penalty of dismissal, make any attempt to cast off from them so foul an aspersion. Yours, &c., R. N. Morton-. Grey town, J uly 17, 1873.