Fremantle Herald, 14 January 1871
Sir,
Allow me, as the father of a child attending a Government School on the Flats, to call attention to the General Board of Education in dismissing my boy's teacher. The teacher in question, in the month of June or July last, received from the Local Committee a list of complaints
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the whole document displayed such an evident intention of getting up a case, that some of the parents of the children, to whom it was shown immediately made an effort to have some new members put on the Committee (consisting at the time of only three working members) to see fair play. The movement ended in the Catholics, whose children formed one-half of the school, and who, from the thorough impartiality of the teacher, regarded the blow as specially aimed against them, applying for some members of their own body bring placed on the Committee. Two Catholic members were granted. But before they could receive official notice of their appointment, the old Committee took advantage of the master being accidentally late one morning in opening school to recommend the General Board to dismiss him
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A memorial to the General Board subscribed by the parents of forty-two of the forty-six children in attendance declared 'the master had their full confidence, not only as efficient, painstaking and impartial, but as exercising a good influence on the children's minds far beyond that of the ordinary Colonial masters, and that the School Committee represented neither their feeling or opinions.' Now mark the action of the General Board. A week after the arrival of the Local Committee's recommendation and before the Colonial Secretary could return from the South—they held a special meeting and endorsed the Committee's recommendation, and appointed, as master to the scarcely vacant post, one of the older boys of the Government School at Perth. The Parents' Memorial, which they had before them, at the same time as the Local Committee's recommendation, they returned a month after that it might be forwarded through the Local Committee
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the opinion of the public here, is—that the General Board was glad of any excuse to get rid of the Master in question, although a man of high attainments, large educational experience, and everywhere respected—merely because he enjoyed the full confidence of the Catholics, and could not therefore be regarded as 'truly Protestant'.
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