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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1322, 20 March 1884, Page 2

There is no important public interest so wide-spread as that of education; There is no interest about which there is for the present so much diversity of opinion. There is not one which deserves to be better thought of and better thought out. No unanimity—and unanimity is desirable—can be arrived at unless those concerned in it meet to discuss the points of difference and the remedies for the faults. There should be none better fitted to discuss th'ese than the teachers themselves. It gives us pleasure, therefor', as part of the machinery for informing and educating the public, to note from time to time the deliberations of the local branch of the Otago Educational Institute. We also note that the Otago Institute has, incommon with other kindred institutions

in the colony, decided to merge into an institute to be called the New Zealand Edncational Institute. This ia a step in the right direction. If the Education Department will not listen to the continued petitions and complaints of individual branches, it surely will pay some attention to the united action of the whole educational body. Union is strength. But it must not be forgotten that, in the ancient lesson of the bundle of rods, wbich inculcates this truth, the rods -were individually of some strength. They did not consist of rotten branches. It is necssary, therefore, that the members of our local branch assemble in force at the annual meeting on Saturday first. If they desire to se?ede from the parent stem, as Mr Darley proposes, and to become a newly-ingrafted branch of the newer and larger tree, they must show that they take an interest in the matter by their presence on Saturday. Although the heads of the Education Department have hitherto extended little courtesy to educational institutes and their representations of the faults to be found in many parts of the prevailing system, that does not imply that they will always be so callous or indifferent. In systems which have had longer and severer trials than that of New Zealand there are still faults to bs found and amendments to be made. In Scotland, which boasts of educational machinery for the masses second to none within the pale of civilisation, the prevailing system is found inadequate or irksome, and amendments are to be made. Bat there the administrators do not think it beneath them to listen to the united voice of the teachers, Tar otherwise. We find fram Home papers received by the last mail that Mr Mundella, the vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, and practically the administrator of educational affairs in the British Isles, said at a meeting of a local branch of the Scottish Institute, " You need not be anxious lest what you say should not attract my attention. Whether you print it in large capitals or small, whether it is a leading article or a letter to the Schoolmaster or Educational News, whether it is the School Board Chronicle or School Guardian, or anywhere else, or any of the local papers, you may rely upon it, by one avenue or another, with the machinery at my command, and the knowledge that I desire to know of all that is going on every growl, even if it is a low mutter at John o' Groat's—will be heard at Whitehall." '< And what is the result of appeals from teachers and eduoational institutes? Do . those to whom they appeal contemptuously : ignore them? No. From a leader in the Educational News regarding an amended i code of regulations we quote the following : ' become law on this side of the border before ; the teachers have had an opportunity of ■ passing judgment upon it. It will lose » nothing by that course." What we say to i the locaKmembers of the teaching profession i therefore is : Band yourselves together and , in large numbers ; be united and unanimous, i and there is little doubt that the New Zea : laud Minister for Education will pay as i courteous attention to you as the Home l authorities do to teachers there.