THE HIGH SCHOOL.

Evening Star, Issue 3249, 19 July 1873, Page 3

THE HIGH SCHOOL.

To the Editor. Sir,— For many years I hare persistently written and said many severe things about the High School. I have just glanced at the report of the Commission appointed to inquire into the state of that institution {asassuming that Professor Sale’s report is reliable). I must say that the present condition of the school in respect to classics is infinitely worse than I ever anticipated. It is simply discreditable. But I am not surprised at this, seeing the models upon which the Hector bases his instructions. A Mr Thompson was once one of the classical teachers in the New Academy of Edinburgh. He took an insane idea into his head that he had found out a royal road to learning. He dispensed with time-honored foundations, and ruined his pupils, and through influence got smuggled over into Galway College, and

his labors cast for a time a lethal influence over “ the Dunedin of the Northern Hemisphere.” Besides D’Arcy Thompson, whose “Sales Attmi ” proves that the man can neither give a correct nor a paraphrastic translation of the ancient authors, we have such men as Crombie and Arnold, the invariable models of ignorant teachers who cannot give original versions to their pupils. Such men Vitiate the minds of the young, and the result is that they never can in after-life become proficients in classical education. Mr Hawthorne is wholly at sea in his flippant remarks before a'tribunal, where areal scholar would never have sought such unenviable distinction. Mr Sale himself is, in two cases at least, wholly in fault; but any man with ordinary education cannot read the report without coming to the conclusion that the Rector has not only destroyed the prestige of the school, but also has rendered his pupils incapable of any success in after-life ; for to attain proficiency in the humanities, one must be drilled from infancy according to the best rules, and by the best masters. It appears, according to Professor Sale, that" the exercises are not looked overby the master, nor readout by the students; but the master reads aloud a correct Latin translation of the exercise, and each student takes his neighbor’s exercise, makes the necessary corrections, and marks the number of errors.” This is parrot-work with a vengeance. And “all mistakes are reckoned as equal!” There are no minimum and maximum errors. Some errors count as high as nine in firstclass British schools ; but in Dunedin, he that offendeth in one point is guilty of all, to quote Scripture, after the fashion of Mr Hawthorne.. Such dull uniformity of expression would deaden the most ingenious soul. Compare this stupid system with the practice adopted by Roger Ascham—the celebrated tutor of Queen Elizabeth. He used to turn a passage from Latin to English, and a day or ttfo afterwards turned the translation back into Latin, accompanying the exercise by an accurate observation of the difference of the two idioms. In short, the exercise should be made subservient to the prelection on the multifarious idioms. This was the constant habit of the great George Buchanan, of Professor Hunter, of Dr Melvin, and it is the only rational course for a thorough instruction in classics. Melvin was in the habit of lecturing for successive days on the conjunction “ut,” with the subjunctive mood. How necessary this process is, one can see when he finds Professor Sale parading his own ignorance in his virtuous indignation against some of Rector Hawthorne’s inelegant but not inaccurate sentences. Nor is this to be wondered at when theyaccept “Arnold’sExercises” as authoritative. The truth is, such school-hoy theses as those of Arnold, Crombie, Thompson, Antha, &c., have done much to poison in embryo a rational taste for classical composition. But Mr Sale himself is more deserving of censure than Mr Hawthorne; for, in his inaugural lecture in 1871,1 had to comment very severely on this very vice which be now fastens upon the shoulders of Mr Hawthorne, In my

book on the Otago University I showed that the whole aim and end of that lecture tended to show that people should not begin to learn classics till they were fourteen years of age, and then they were to discard grammatic rules and laws of thought, and “read authors in masses,” like novels. And because Mr Hawthorne tried to act upon that infatuated principle, he is now judicially censured. However little I may think of the High School, I cannot refrain from thinking that, in this particular instance, the Rector is more sinned against than sinning. 1 should like to see a commission appointed to investigate the present state of education within the walls of the Otago University. Such a production would be intensely interesting. It would be a real “ eye-opener ” to many blinded understandings. If Professor Sale had been a pupil of such a man as Dr Melvin, and had brought in his spurious emendations as correct Latinity, the critic should have been placed in an unenviable position at the tail of the fourth class,” for he never could be allowed to occupy a seat in the fifth and highest class of some one hundred young men from all quarters of the world, gathered together to prepare for entering the Universities. 1 hope you will not, like your contemporary, refuse me a small space for these few lines. —I am, &c,, J. 6. S. Grant. . Dunedin, July 19.