Country Versus Town.—Now or Never.

Observer, Volume X, Issue 604, 31 January 1891, Page 9

Country Versus Town.— Now or Never.

Now that retrenchment is closely looming on the educational horizon, it is high time that the personnel of the Board of Education fairly represented the wide and varied interests of the whole Auckland Provincial district — not merely the interests of the City of Auckland. Country committees have allowed the management, or to be correct, the mismanagement of the large grant of £80,000 a year of public money to pass into the hands of a clique of townsmen and town teachers ; and the natural result followed— that all interests have been sacrificed, ignored, or lost sight of, but the interests of town schools and town teachers. [Retrenchment has been actually practised without there being the least justification or need for doing it, since the grant has never been curtailed ; and the poor pupil teachers, who were paid only £30 a year, have had to suffer onethird of that pittance to be cut off ; assistant teachers who were unfriended, or who were too proud to play the sycophant, have also had to suffer a large reduction in their salaries; so have, the inspectors, the secretary, and the poorly paid clerks ; while the grants to the country committees have been made so small that they do not suffice to pay for the cleaning of the schoolrooms. But the grants to the town schools have not been dimiriished, nor have the largest salaries— paid, of course, to the town teachers— been retrenched ; the public have seen in our midst, as a specimen of local government, the spectacle of retrenchment practised, not upon the highest salaries, but upon the lowest; and what is stranger still, the men who did it are now appealing to the committees to endorse all such disreputable doings, by re-electing them for a fresh term of three years 1 It is vary evident that country teachers and country committees are held in no estimation by the present members of the Board, and were it not that they are very much despised indeed, not one of che retiring trio would have the effrontery to request the country committees to re-elect him. *If you are satisfied with my aotion in the past,' writeß Mr Upton in his circular, • elect me again.' ' Clearly he judges the committees to be very stupid, or else he would not address them in such words. . However, this ia as clear as the noonday sun—that no^ matter to what extent the education grant for primary schools be soon cut down — and it is most likely that it will be largely curtailed, for the country cannot stand the tremendous taxation under which it is staggering—not a Binvle penny or halfpenny will be cut down

from the salaries of £400, £480, £500,& c , received by the town Mr Upton's ' veteran headmasters, experts, and dear ' higher teachers who are not underpaid,' while Mr Upton and Mr Carr oaa prevent it ; nor will any diminution be made in the grants to the town schools; but the country schools and teachers and pupil teachers will have to suffer it all. From their long enjoyment of the ' plums ' of education, the town clique have now grown into a belief that they have for ever a right among themselves to such things— that it is the duty of the country to provide them with such delicacies, and that no one should think or try to disturb their enjoyment of such happiness. Disturbed they will not be, unless the retiring j heroes now begging re-election are rejeoted with a taste of that scorn and contempt with which they rejeoted Mr Udy's scheme, or any scheme, except favouritism and sycophancy, and ridiculed the request to treat country teachers in the same way as the town teachers in the matter of holidays and the copying out of the rolls. There are sycophants, of course, amongst the country teachers, who are probably now expecting their reward; but it is to be hoped that the majority of them have some little feeling of manhood still in their composition, to resent being treated as rogU6S and forgers, and such men will listen to our words and act as men should act. Now, 3ince the Boards have no legislative functions or powers, cannot alter ages of pupils or standards, or do anything else but administer the Act honestly, teaohers and oountry committees should exert themselves to elect three new, honest men to represent the country interests. To do so, now is the time, or never.