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New Zealand Mail, Issue 870, 2 November 1888, Page 16

Without entering at present into the merits of the dispute between the Wellington School Inspector and the master of the Porirua school, which has been remitted to a Committee of the Education Board, we feel bound to take very decided exception to a most objectionable practice to which the Inspector, on his own admission, is addicted. He confessed that he was in the habit of openly criticising a master’s work before his pupils, and he defended this practice as “ doing a great deal of good, notwithstanding that it sometimes tended to make the masters look small.” .We should like to ask Mr Lee what possible result he can expect from making a master “look small” before his pupils, except the total loss of that master’s influence and power for good ? We fear Mr Lee is much too fond of this sort of thing—this attempt to make a master “ look small ” in the eyes of his pupils. We recollect that on one occasion he admitted having tried to compel a head master to do a sum in long division in the presence of all the children, to test his arithmetical capacity. This is not the way to teach children that respect for their instructors which is the necessary foundation of all good educational work. We are glad to notice that at the Board meeting on Wednesday Messrs Blair, Paterson, and Fraser all very rightly and strongly condemned this most improper mode of proceeding.

A long meeting of the Cabinet was held yesterday week, when the Public Works Department and its future fate came further under review, but no final result was arrived at, nor is this expected to be attained for several days yet, as great difficulty is experienced in appraising and in weighing one against another the respective claims of various officers to retention in the Service after the abolition of the Public Works Department as a separate office. A report has found circulation to the effect that the officers to be dispensed with are chiefly those who have been employed on the survey of the proposed New Plymouth route for the North Island ..Trunk Railway. This unfortunately is not correct, but it is not yet settled how many officers will have to retire.