SCHOOL BOARDS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3233, 23 June 1871, Page 2

SCHOOL BOARDS.

» „. . - TO THE EDITOR OF THE INDEPENDENT. Sir — I am glad to see that the Provincial Government of Wellington have in their edu cation scheme avoided the two main faults of the Nelson act, viz., a poll tax upon householders, and local committees. Local committees are chiefly an excellent device for securing a continual change of teachers, a chronic lack of discipline (ospecially in the matter of attendance), and a general state of consequent inefficiency in the schools as places of training for the future duties of life. The injustice of a poll tax is patent. If a Government take any part at all in tho school instruction of its people, tho needful rate should be borne by all, in proportion to their ability. I am also glad to see tho distinct recognition of the advisability of aiding other schools besides those established directly by the Government. I am only sorry that this principle is not recognised to a much larger extent. The duty of a Government in regard to school instruction and learning is primarily a matter of police — to lessen and prevent crime, as far as may be, by seeing that all the younger members of the community receive a certain amount of elementary instruction in the means of book learning. But I. cannot hold it to be the duty of a government itself (except in very extreme ensas) to provide that instruction or to interfere in any degree with the natural fulfilment of their duty on the part of parents by destroying that liberty of choice which " Free Trade" in private (though subsidised) schools would give them, through setting up in every place a protected, monopolist, Government academy. If a Government can be satisfied by its inspectors that every ohild is being instructed up to a certain point, and will aid as fur as is needful in facilitating that instruction, its duty will be done ; and the loss it intermeddles in the process of natural selection of schools the better, lest it should result in the production of infertile, not to say rationalistio or infidol, hybrids in education. I would suggest tho desirability, as a matter of practical convenience, of making ehool and highway districts and wards coterminous, and the elections for school and highway wardens simultaneous. If the highway wardens were also school wardens, and tho wardens of each district elected a member of tho central school board, it would simplify matters considerably. — I am, &c, An Old Committeeman and Soiioolmaster in the province of Nelson, N. Z. Wellington, June 22, 1871.