THE HIGH SCHOOL COMMISSION.

Evening Star, Issue 3252, 23 July 1873, Page 3

THE HIGH SCHOOL COMMISSION.

To the Editor, Sil,—Before proceeding to a more particular examination of Professor Sale’s report, allow me to thank you for your very excellent leader on the subject in yesterday’s Eveiing Star. I cannot, however, agree with you that because the matter is mb judie, it is not to bo dealt with by the Press. 1 thnk now is the time when the Press shoud deal with it. If the absurd advice of Professor Sale is followed, an irreparable injury will be inflicted, not only on the High Schml, but on the higher education of the Prounce, and we shall be taking a retrograde stepin the matter of education. F.r what is it that Mr Sale wants these boyi to learn before they begin to translate. ? He lays : “ They ought, in my opinion, at onc< to cease reading Greek or Latin authors, and to return to their grammars. > They ougit to be daily and diligently exercised in repiating the accidence until they cannot male a mistake in it. They ought then to be occrcised over and oyer again in the practice of the common syntactical usages until ther are perfect in them, . . . When the/' have in this way got a thorough groundwoik of elemental y knowledge, they can begn to read Latin authors.” Yes, when the/ are thoroughly disgusted with the while thing, and hate the very sight of a Lain book, they may then begin, after years of labor of the most odious kind, to real a Latin author! And Cresar, even then will be too difficult ! Where under the sun was Professor Sale educated? In eviry school I ever heard of is one of th( elementary books. But as there are doibtless many parents of boys learning Lain in this town who have never had a classical education, or have forgotten all they evtr learnt, permit me to try to give them an idia of what this learning the accidence and syitax means. In Latin and in Greek the ve-bs, adjectives, and nouns are changed at tbir beginnings and endings when we sbuld add other words to them. For instmee, the name of this newspaper for which I un writing would be in Latin “ Stella ]'€s- - the Evening Star. But if I wanted to say “Of the Evening Star, the termination of both words must be altered by the addition of a letter, and “ Stella Vesjvrlhw” would signify “Of the Evening Star ” The same termination would signify “to,” as well an “of.” But if one wanted to say “I sent you the Evening Star,” tlen the two latter words being in the accusative case, we must write “ S/ellnm VespirtmmnP All the verbs undergo changes in like manner. Thus amo means ‘‘ 1 love; ama», “thou lovest;” amat, “he loves;” amamus, “we love ; amaiis, “yc love;” amant, “ they love.” Now, I have been calculating that there are with regular, irregular, and defective verbs, with nouns substantive and adjective, and pronouns, over two thousand different words to learn in the accidence, and these are changed and altered in various ways by some scores of different rules in the syntax. I will undertake to say that it will take a hoy of average abilities at least three, and most likely four years’ study to acquire the perfect knowledge of syntax and accidence that Mr Sale requires. If these three or four years were employed as they ought to be, the boy would acquire a fair knowledge of accidence and syntax, and prosody besides (of which Mr Sale says not a word), together with a good knowledge of Cresav, Virgil, Cicero, and perhaps Horace. He would be able to translate with ease any passage in the first three at sight, and would have sufficient acquaintance with Latin for the preliminary examination either in Law or Medicine. By Mr Sale’s method he could not possibly pass the examination, because he would not be able to translate a sentence.

Now, I speak strongly on tins point, because I have suffered myself from the old fashioned method. I was taught French in that way: for seven mortal years I was drilled in the Grammar and exercise book until I should have satisfied even Mr Sale. I knew every inflexion of every irregular verb in the French language ; I knew all the rules for the genders of nQUU’ 1 , and X could read the help of a dictionary, an easy French boofc. I could not, however, read my prize —Molidre, and I could not write the simplest letter in French. My parents took ipe to Prance for a few weeks,' and to, my intense disgust, and tfceirs also, 1 coqjd not apeak a sentence, or understand a sentence that was said to me | So much for seveu years of Mr (Sale’s method. In after years I studied several languages, and having found out the way to learn them, I adopted a* totally different plan, when I was suddenly oallod on to learn bpanish. I received an appointment in Cuba, a Spanish Colony 1 did not know one word of the language when I started, but I took with me a grammar, a dictionary, a book of dialogues, and “Gil Bias” in Spanish and French, 1 just read over the grammar two or three times, but learned nothing by heart, and I set to work with the translation of “Gil Bias, working at it daily. By the end of the voyage I could read it easily, looking out perhaps two words in a page in the dictionary. I took lessons in pronunciation when I landed, and in three months from the time of commencing Spanish I could read the newspapers, could understand all that was said to me, and could make myself so far understood as to be able to attend patients. In the course of another month I could talk the language fluently, making plenty of blunders I have no doubt, but improving daily. My colleague, who, as he expressed it, “pegged away at the grammar,’ could not speak or read a sentence of Spanish at the end of six months! Mr Sale has been very hard on the boys and on the head master, yet strange to say he has made two or three mistakes himself, He marks mistakes in spelling in the boys’ exercises, yet there are two serious blunders in bis own. “ Sajia'amus” is put instead of “ aperamva," and “ octoyest'mo, instead of u octoyesmo." Now he marks a boy’s mistake in putting “ oetayeshno,” or else I should not have pointed these out. Again, he says that “none of the boys could tell me what sort of pronoun schwas ; the guesses given included personal,” &c Now, wouldhe be surprised to learn that in the “Bromsgrove Latin Grammar,” from which I learnt, at is enumerated among the personal pronouns? That Arnold, the author oi “ Henry’s First Latin Book,” and the book on Latin Prose composition used in the High ■School, also gives it among the personal pronouns ? That, therefore, these buys were not so very far wrong after all. Again, h< marks as a mistake the use of the word aim instead of alterius in conjunction with rit>v. Of course Mr Sale must be right and Terence must be wrong, when ho says Hue dlesqllam vitam ajj'ert.

However, these are trifles; hut thky serve to show the vigor with which the Aamination was conducted, and the Mr Sale to pick out faults. He says the sentences given to translate from to Latin were easy. I think they vvflHkery far from easy, because they are e:HHbIy idiomatic. The difficulty of English into Latin does not lie bering the words, hut in peculiar idioms of the Latin Now every sentence he has idiom different from the English. IVHHB example the one sentence : “ It wa WH to you that the city of Rcae wqp not destroyed by fire.” Wha would my English readers think is tb literal rendering of the sentence Mr &le gives as the Latin of the above entcnce, taking the words exactly as the; stand 1 “ Through (or by) thee it stood tha not the City Romo by fire was destroyer.” And these are not common idioms, ike the ablative absolute, for instance. Aboy may road the whole of Virgil and Horaci without fining once Per te stetit quomimts. There fore he has to get this up as a task. Having gone through “ Arnold’s Exercises’ myself and also having used other exercise books, . maintain that Arnold’s is very diffbult, am very puzzling, and very tiresome with it; everlasting Cains and Balbus.- I beievetha it is considered the best book for teaching Latin composition. 'I here is one point to which I mutt allude because it seems to be entirely overboked b; Mr Sale, Some boys cannot learn languages that is to say, they are very slow, »nd lean them very badly. Yet these very boys ar often clever Mathematicians, or fond o Natural History, and the reverse sometimes occurs. Now, it appears that the boys’ per formances in Arithmetic and Mathematic were very creditable. Perhaps some of th( boys' who were best in Mathematics wer< worst in Classics. Then, again, Mr Sale’s\ mode,of examination was not calculated to’ encourage them. When they held out one hand to show that they could answer the question, he sharply rebuked them, saying, “This is not an infant school”—thereby insulting both the hoys and the master. Now, the City of London was not an infant school either, seiug that the boys in the sixth form were from seventeen to nineteen years old, yet the same practice was pursued there. But Mr Sale wont with the intention of finding fault, and of course he succeeded. In conclusion, I have only to say that if Mr Sale’s system should be adopted, I shall remove my boy froot-the school.—l am, &c., R. H, Bakewell, M.D. Dunedin, July 15.