These amateur educationists are everywhere intolerable bores. So long as their exertions are limited to spouting in Parliament or other congenial localities, I am inclined to class them with certain insect tribes—not dangerous … But when they are ambitious for power and find an opportunity for applying their knowledge, or want of it, to some practical purpose one longs for an extinguisher of some kind to make them suffer total eclipse. —William Wilkins, Secretary, New South Wales Council of Education, to Thomas Stephens, Chief Inspector, Tasmanian Board of Education, June 24, 1875 We kept an unhealthy distance from the captains…