"SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN.”

Taranaki Daily News, 9 March 1932, Page 12

"SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN.”

(To the Editor.) i Sir—The Minister of Education proposes to close all State-aided schools of less than six pupils on the score of national economy. His alternative to ignorance is home teaching by the mothers through the Correspondence School. Allow me to throw the gauntlet at the feet of this Minister of the Crown whose bejewelled hand would crush the flowers’ of the wilderness. As a teacher of baekblock children 'by this method I claim to speak with authority, which the Minister lacks. The Correspondence School functions solely for the benefit of isolated children. It is a last resort. The child is taught by the mother alone; the staff in Wellington simp.y prepare and correct the pupil’s work. 'Would a physician interrupt when I say, that where a mother is forced to educate her children in conjunction with her thousand and one household and maternal duties, a demand is . being made on her to which Nature will not subscribe ? The taming of the wilderness has ever been associated with hardship, want and loneliness. The lack of educational facilities has been a 'big factor in reversion and ultimate abandonment. A little while ago the political guardians of infancy 'built a wall around these Pacific Isles to shut out the sunshine stored in the golden grain of Australia from the hungry children. confined therein. The Minister of Education would now rob them of their intellectual bread. On the grounds of national economy the Minister of Education puts forth his hand to extinguish a tallow dip in a backblock school. From the rusty monuments of Ministerial extravagance and stupidity —what a spectacle! Never before has Mother Nature 'been so 'bounteous, open-handed, generous to overflowing", Yet never before has the .wolf stalked so boldly through the land. Little children, clad in rags, shiver in the cold while the moths eat the wool piled in the sheds in the valleys of the Mangaehu. The cries of starving children go up with the smoke of burning wheat ‘on the plains of Manitoba. Never yet has the Old Dame let us down in our snug little corner of this earth. The guardians of our' children cannot accuse her of being an accomplice in the betrayal of their trust. I have no axe to grind. I speak on ■behalf of -.inarticulate little children. I speak on behalf of patient young mothers, any one of whom is of more vital importance in this empty young land than the whole Ministerial 'box of tricks. —I am, etc., W. GODKIN, Mt. Humphries, March 7, 1032.