“JUNIUS” IN REPLY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1553, 15 July 1885, Page 2

“JUNIUS” IN REPLY.

To the Editor. | Sir,— Although, in the opinion of Mr Thomas, my previous letter was “a very rambling, disjointed epistle, etc.,’* yet he has found very little in it with which he could disagree. He is at last becoming a hypercritio. His last letter savours of egotism, and is indicative of pusaillanimity. He has used the name “ Junius ” in a letter not half the length of my last, just eight times (not a bad proportion at that). I did not ask him if he could answer the problems, but simply to insert the answers to those questions which could be answered. He has not seen fit to do this, therefore (I fear that he has not the strength of his own opinion. I maintain that my answer (L 660) to the “ambiguous” question as I set forth in your columns is the correct and only answer thereto. If the word “ and ” was written on the blackboard instead of the word “or,” the question would simply have been one of addition and multiplication instead of LC.M. Q N.B. A.. If Mr Thomas calls that an absurdity, he will,probably soon make a more startling assertion. He appears to know what percentage is required to obtain a pass. Perhaps it would have been better had he been Inspector. I for one would like to be in a Standard under such an Inspector. On the one hand lam prepared to admit that Mr Thomas is well up in the questions of his every day practice, but on the other do not think that the art of polygraphy is one of his attainments. I would never have thought that he had been a student at a University. I am sure it wpb not a New Zealand University. I wonder what has the fact of having 2,000 men in one’s employ to do with working out problems. I must say that Mr Thomas is becoming exceedingly conservative in objecting to our present educational system. It has stood the test of seven years, and there has been no reason, on the score of education, yet found why it should be altered. Opinions differ on many {subjects. Mr Thomas only differs from me on the sub jedt of arithmetic. The syllabus of our Government schools provides for all that is thought necessary to be taught and learnt there. This syllabus is drawn up by men, mote competent to do .so than either Mr Thomas or myself will ever be I am, etc., Junius. Ashburton, Jnly 14. ‘