Different Treatment of Town and Country-Teachers.

Observer, Volume X, Issue 624, 13 December 1890, Page 9

Different Treatment of Town and CountryTeachers.

Sib, — In my former letter I showed how a gross and impudent insult was offered to the country teaohora in demanding from them, but not from the town teachers, a copy of the daily registers of attendance ; and I related how uncourteously the Board of Education recently treated the request of the country teachers to expunge that insulting regulation, the Board acting, no doubt, in servile obedience to the instructions given by the xeal authors — a few of the town teachers — of that despic able but truly characteristic regulation. These pedagogic beauties felt a love for their ugly production — partly I suppose from the instincts of nature ; and somewhat after the same fashion as do, if I am creditably informed, the parents towards their offspring, even though these be black niggers ; and hence they get their Board to preserve intact what strikes me and others as a very despioable piece of work. Formerly all the teachers were treated alike in the matter of sending in those periodical retnrns ; but that uniformity was done away with as soon as a few of the town teachers acquired a complete domination over the Board ; then those overbearing men, feeling elated with their possession of that iDower, forthwith began to exhibit themselves in a new light ; they should, of course, show off what they were able to do with it ; and accordingly directed their Board to at once disgrace itself by cancelling the old uniform regulation on this matter, and substituting the existing one, exempting themselves— mark, but not other teachers from — to say the least a drudgery and waste of time. Such a one-aided regulation is »t this moment, and ha 3 been ever since it was printed, unparalleled throughout the length and breath of all New Zealand ; and it is — when rightly understood, as the collar on the slave's neck, a badge of reproach to the Board itself ; and this, apart from its offensiveness to the country teachers. It may strike a fair-minded reader as very strange that no member of the Board had enough of decency to point out, -when that one-sided proposal was impudently bronght forth, how ' ugly ' would appear the making on the one hand of such an exemption, coupled with a nonexemption on the other hand ; moreover, the exemption of those teachers who have really very little work of teaching to do, and the non-exemption of those teachers who have more than they can well pianage of work to do ; and, as if that were not strange enough, the suspicion unfairly and bluntly raised against the moral character of a large number of men and women by such a regulation. But, strange as it may appeaT, not a single member raised a single word of objection against it. How well the matter was manage-1 ! and the other day, when the country teachers requested that itbe expunged, the Board so far acceded to their very proper request as to laugh at it ! And there it still stands in all its ugliness and offensiveness in the printed regulations of the Board. No doubt it will continue there, since while there it flatters the stupid vanity of certain bloated ornaments of the teaching profession. In the matter of the holidays, too, another illustration of the servility of the Board, already more than manifest, ia to hand. Formerly, all schools •were treated alike in this respect, as well as of the sending in of the official returns ; but just at the same time that the tnwn teachers got themselves exempted from sending in copies of the registers, they also got the Board, their Board, to grant much longer holidays to themselves than to their country brethren ; and also to fix the dates of the holidays for themselves, but not for the unfortunate country brethren. Their Board did so immediately; and there, in the printed regulations, side by side with its ugly co-mate, stands this revised regulation, fixing and extending the durationof the holidays for the town teachers and unfixing 1 and curtailing the holidays for the oountry teachers ! What a fair and unselfish exercise of undue pow«r is revealed by these revisions of the regulations ! How faithfully they re-produoe the moral, or more correctly, the immoral features of their authors ! Tonohed by the candid truth of the foregoing remarks some member of the present Board might say, perhaps : ' I am not a flunkey or a puppflt to any town teacher ; lam independent of any of them ; what power has any town teacher over me ?' and so forth. There is hardly any need to reply to him, sin^e the foregoing facts reply to his questions with unanswerable force, and there is no call for surmising, while such palpable printed facts can be pointed to. A single member could have prevented the passing of such very unfair, one-sided, and offensive regulations. Would such a member be good enough to Bay where was his tongue when they were being- fabricated ? In his oheek— silent, or aiding by his vote the making of them. Would any member be good enouarh to say where was his tongue when recently and publicly the country teachers requested the excision of the offensive portions of those regulations ? In his cheek — silent, or laughing in ridicule at their request. Were there any sense of fairness in those teachers who moved the Board to alter the holidays in the onesided unfair way it has been done, or any independence in the members of the Board, the teachers who have to live away in the country would not be made still more wretched by shortening their holidays, at the same time — mark, that the holidays were being extended for the town teachers. In fairness, if there should be a difference, the difference should be in their favour. For the other teachers live in town and have not of course to lose a day to come to town ; they can call at their tailor's or get their books and stationery of an afternoon, and they have not to lose one of their Saturdays for the purpose ; or if they want to -attend lectures, they are

not compelled to travel forty or fifty miles to reach the lecture room : — considerations, these, which should and would have weight with fair men, and which would deter them from doing what our looal Board has done— from granting longer holidays to the town than to the country teachers, and fixing them for the former but not for the latter. The more remote from town a taaoher'a residence, the longer — if there bi any dsparity — not. shorter, should be the holidays allowed him ; but as I have already remarked in reference to the copying and non-copying out of the returns, what an unerring index of the base parentage is also afforded by the revised holiday regula fcions. A few words are called for upon the absurd pretext by which the revisions, or the one-sided alterations were sought to be justified; namely, that the longer the mileage from where ? — the Auckland Post Office the shorter the duration of the holidays ; and the shorter the mileage from the Auckland Po:,t Office— three miles being a sacred number— the longer the holidays. Now, my gentle reader, out of whose base brain could, or did, emanate such a basis, so shallow as to mislead no one for regulating the duration of holid -ys ? Out of no one else's than I have already pointed to— the few unfeeling selfish town fossils, in whose hands the Board of Education is nothing else than a" very serviceable puppet indeed. I have to thank you for your kindness in allowing me so much of your valuable paper. — I am, etc ,J M Drury, 25th No. v, 1890.