ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.

Evening Star, Issue 3535, 22 June 1874, Page 2

ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.

_ Te Epii^oT, . -Having heard se/vei/al people speakmg of an article which appeared in your paper of Tuesday, June 9, on the subject of English grammar and composition, I bought a copy a day or two ago, and have since read the article carefully. From the importance ! 0 . tae <l ueß tion, in a professional point of view, 1 expected to see it taken up by some of our schoolmasters, and temperately discussed xn your columns, especially as the i article supports a doctrine which, though it is held by a comparatively small but daily increasing minority, is directly opposed to the practice of the majority of European teachers. As the matter has not yet been 8 ? *®ken up, I must beg, as a parent having children to educate, a small space in your columns to say a few words. - I« read the article twice over With grpat pleasure/ ahd then, sitting back in my chair,"and Wishing fervently that the Evening Stab might never set, but continue to shine on with increased lustre, I at length found, in the utterance of a distinguished historical personage, which I luckily just then called to mind, a suitable form of words in which to express my pent-up feelings of delight. I said : Ihetn smy sentiments 1” Like most of your lay readers, I presume, I have a very vmd and painful recollection of leaving school (after having been well drilled in all the learning of the grammarians, including Morell , and other distinguished'celebrities of that ilk), unable to write half-a-dozen consocutiye sentences of decent, not to say idiomatic, English prosf, while my knowledge of English literature* might be ijaidtp ffeboßV tmed to the meagre extracts contained in the ordinary text school-books of the period. Most men who remember anything of their school life will agree with you in your remarks about the small importance of a knowledge of grammar analysis and deriva tiou m “ gjyying a command over language.” It must be conceded, however, that this knowledge has one advantage, which seems to many to outweigh every other consideration. It enables boys- wjio are thoroughly well up in it to pass good examinations and to satisfy the demands of incompetent examiners and pedantic inspectors, who loek upon a knowledge of ’this ■'kiud as inseparable from the possession "of a education. I infer, from the pertinent and apparently pointed remarks of your leader that you apprshend that real, as oppesed to spurious, education is in danger of suffering at the hands of some.of our educational author!ties, who appear intent on attaching undue imsudiects* to r En « ll9h and cognate thafthL * ° aU " car £ cel y however, whl nee * , of much apprehension fessor n blgh , an » ufc hority as Prolessor feale deliberately stating in his eviav beb) . re be High School Commissioners that he attaches very little value indeed to g ish grammar and analysis, and suggest-

tng that, so far as English grammar is con cerned, it should be studied in the lower part of the school only. In the Course of private reading, I have come across scores' of passages to the same effect, written by eminent men, whose writings and speeches are examples of the purest Hnglish, and who condemn, in no very measured terms, those studious triflers who obstruct the progress of real learning by insisting upon a minute knowledge of the unintelligible j rgon, of which you give but very mi d specimens in your article. One of the authors referred to, in speaking of a certain grammar remarkable for its simplicity— a feature almost unknown in the grammar ef the present day—says that “other grammars may be improve ments, but such improvements seem to him only mere grammatical niceties, no way influencing the learner, but perhaps loading him with trifling subtleties which, at a he must be at some paius to This reminds me of a letter which: appeared in the Star daring the progress of the late Provincial Scholarship examination, and in which the writer complained, and i think very jnatly, of the nature of the English grammar paper which had been placed before the competitors. This paper, which had to be answered by boys and girls under sixteen years of age—some considerably so-r-was bird enough for the ordinary degree examination at a University. It was eyidently set by a grammarian of the first water—a thorough-gqing disciple of the hypothetical scbpol of philosophers, which has been so well exposed by the author of I‘Erpwhon” It is to be hoped that the jn qqestipn is pot an indication of the kind of examination which the schoolmasters of Otago are to expect. If it be, I pity the said schoolmasters as well as their unfortunate pupils. 1 had intended to show, somewhat in detail, how unsuitable, not to say absurd, many of the questions in this grammar paper were for young boys and girls ; but as my letter is already long enough, and it requires a brace of Dunedin lawyers to make a long letter spicy, even when the subject is much more popular _ than grammar, I must beg a short space in a future issue to carry out this intention.—l am, &c., Paterfamilias. Jnne 19.