THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL AND OUR MOTHER TONGUE.

Evening Star, Issue 2961, 15 August 1872, Page 2

THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL AND OUR MOTHER TONGUE.

In an excellent article under tbe above heading the Nelson Colonist discusses the syllabus of subjects for next year’s scholarships, “ From this syllabus,” remarks our contemporary “ we see Greek and Latin or classics so called, arrogate to themselves a apace that excludes much more important things. We have no hesitation in saying that the amount of classics is excessive ; and that any candidate who aspires to distinction in that branch at the next examination, must devote his time and energies to classics and to nothing else. Indeed, wore it not for certain important omissions in the programme which we shall notice presently, we should have felt disposed to regard the amount of Classical reading prescribed as a grim way of expressing indirectly the absurdidy of a too exclusive study of the dead languages. Unfortunately, however there is too good reason for believing that the Council is really serious ; and that it intends going back three centuries at least, and reproducing in New Zealand a system which had its ori in in England at a time when our mother tongue was still rude and our national literature unborn. Meritorious enough and justifiable enough in that day, such a system i s gradually becoming effete in this. Few now will deny that education ought to represent the existing state of hum 01 knowledge; and that the grand depositories of that knowledge are not the ancient but the modem tongues. Some, whose opinion deserves consideration, even go so far as to affirm that to an earnest student six weeks’ study of French will open up more of Europe than six years’ study of what was once the European tongue; and that six months’ study of the language of Schiller and Goethe, will open up a field of more high enjoyment than six years’ study of the languages of Greece and Rome. The University Council in its scheme of higher education, ignores not only the modem classics of France and Germany, but what is still more remarkable—those of England 100. Its members seem to be of opinion that the first book put into a hoy’s hand at school should bo a Latin or a Greek grammar, and that while he is there he should never see an English grammar, nor receive an hour’s instruction in the subject. For our part, wc bold that the systematic

study of our own language, with the noble literature it enshrines, is by no means the least important part of an Englishman’s education ; and that the dead languages ought to be taught in subserviency to English, and mainly as an aid to obtaining a thorough mastery of the latter tongue. ... In the literature of England, we have the noblest and most efficient instrument for training the mind. The University Council notwithstanding, let our youths, say we, be brought en rapport with the poets, the historians, and the philosophers of our own country first, and, if time will permit, with those of the ancients afterwards. Let them gather their opinions and their principles not from the charnel-house of a literature twenty centuries old, but from the great thinkers of our own age and in the world of life and light which modern science is daily revealing to us. . , . We trust the authorities hero and elsewhere will urge upon the University Council the necessity of revising its code by materially diminishing the amount of classics prescribed and uhstituting in lieu thereof a fair proportion of the language and literature of our own fatherland.” The following is a list of the subjects in which candidates for University Scholarships will be examined in May, 1873 : Classics. Prometheus Vinctus. Thucydides—Liber VI. Virgil— Georgies, Livy—Liber I. Mathematics. Arithmetic. Algebra. Euclid—Books I, 11, 111, LV, VI. Plane Trigonometry. Physical Science. Biology Botany, Olivers i cssons. Zoology, Nicholson’s Introductory Text Book. 1 hysioiogy, Huxley’s Elementary Lessons. Geognosy —Geology, Page’s Introductory Text Book. Physical Geography, Hughes’s Outlines. Physics Natural Philosophy, Ward’s Elements Chemistry, Smith’s Inorganic Chemistry.