The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JULY 30.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 420, 30 July 1880, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JULY 30.

The Otago Daily Times thus discourses on some remarkable passages in the Education Report concerning examinations for teachers :—

Candidates for Class E in the classification of teachers have undoubtedly achieved a success of a certain kind. Judged from the extracts given in the Inspector-General's report, their papers exhibit a wealth of unconscious humor in comparison with which the studied grotesquerie of "Punch, and the Comic History of England, are flat, stale, and unprofitable. Genius or stupidity may be indicated even in the manner of a man's blundering, and the blundering of these aspirants to the teacher's office argues genius in a high degree.' What could be happier, for instance, than the description of the South Sea Bubble ? " The South Sea Bubble is spoken of in history as being similar to a waterspout, Ships have been carried many miles overland by it; in fact, everything is, as it were, sucked into it." Read as satire, nothing could be better than this. The South Sea Bubble did undoubtedly, like a waterspout, suck everything and everybody into its vortex ; and if it did not literally carry ships overland, the fond belief of those who were " sucked in " for a long time was that it was capable "of doing very much greater miracles than that. Equally clever is the statement that Archbishop Laud was a " minister of St. who did great good in promoting Purr tanism." Laud no doubt did promote Puritanism, much as Cromwell promoted Episcopacy—% nauseating people with its opposite. It is hard not to suspect satire here, as well as in the statement that Milton was a poet under " William IV., who translated the Bible." Considering the extraordinary influence the " Paradise Lost" has had upon popular theology, it might be said that though Milton did not translate the Bible, and did not live in the reign of William IV., he issued a new and improved edition of it, or what many persons regard as such. Possibly the candidate intended some playful allusion of this kind. In connecting Milton with the doctrine of gravitation, it is just within the range of possibility that the ingenious candidate may have been obliquely referring to the " fall of man," the theme which has rendered that poet immortal. It is easy to be critical at the expense of the candidate who enumerated as eminent statesmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "Sir George Grey, W. Fox, Pilchard, Carl, Crombie, Murray, and Fisher." Grey we know, and Fox we know, but who are Pilchard, Carl, Crombie and .Co. ? Murray may possibly bo the regent of that ilk, and Fisher tho anti-Reformation bishop, but we strong; y suspect that these two names stand respectively for that versal genius the member for Bruce, and the bucolic gentleman who hold a portfolio in the late Ministry. But, after all, who is to decide whether a given m.Mi is or is not an " eminent statesman"? and of what importance is nn error of a century in date ? The question —like " Who is a great poet 1" • —is one of taste and opinion, nnd possibly the candidate, had he been required, could have justified his selection.

At the same time it is hard to see why Sir George Groy and Sir W. Fox. though venerable both, should be relegated to the " seventhenth and eighteenth centuries'' —unless the condidate intended a sly hit at the antiquated nature of their politics. Looking at'the result

of these examinations moro'seriously, it is somewhat alarming to , tliink that gentlemen (and, we suppose, ladies) who framed these amusing - are essaying to become teachers *in our'public sdhools. They are probably of youthful age, but then, on the. other hand, they are supposed tb Salre passed !the'-" Sixth Standard"—so we learn from the Inspector-general's report for 1879,— and to have learned whatever the primary schools have to teach. Yet we are told that very many of them cannot spell correctly, that their acquaintance with the commonest ,rules of arithmetic fie "very meagre" that in geography thjjy " can never have the smallest hope of passing," and) as we have Becij, iha| they hold Very romatia viewsi" On ;the subject of history. ' The only consoling facts that we can thirik of in connection

with the candidates for Class E are, that, Class - E is the lowest grade in the teachers' classification, and that the : pf£rticuCiftr candidates who have.' been referred -to .did % not • pass*fuvther light may be thrown on the whole subject when wo have had the opportunity of perusing in full the Irispectqrgeneral's report. ' ; p .