ABSTRACT
Sir,—There has been some correspondence in your paper relative to the above. Will you allow me—a crotchety old bachelor schoolmaster—to make a few remarks?
Since the introduction of the certificates, the schoolmasters (if conscientious) are fully employed in teaching men and boys alone.
Our regimental girls are shockingly reared. Their parents govern them, as a rule, by brute force, and show them animal example. The mother’s life is composed of beer and washtub; the father’s of cards and canteen.
The schoolmistress is the only person who can effect a partial reformation in the lives of these girls. Education is more needed than instruction. In the latter particular, our mistresses are required to pass satisfactorily in arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, Scripture, dictation, &c. Surely they are competent to teach the grown girls.
As a bachelor, it is not nice to have girls under my charge for three hours each morning. There are certain difficulties I daily labour under, the naming of which would be a seeming indecency.
Give our schoolmistresses the sole charge of the girls, and increase their miserable stipend of £30 per annum to £60 per annum at least, is the remedy suggested by
