SCHOOL PRIZES.

Evening Star, Issue 3676, 3 December 1874, Page 3

SCHOOL PRIZES.

To the Editor, Sir, —With my week’s residence in this country I have seen much to admire, but nothing more so than the healthy tone of your leader on the practice of giving prizes to excelling children at school. And though to thoughtful minds you have hit the nail fair on the head, still it might hold the better of a little clenching. For nothing so well illustrates Darwin’s “struggle for existence” as the system of feeding contentions amongst the young at school; each blade of grass, each plant, each tree, each brute, may struggle against its neighbor for room, food, light, and a r, and we see the weaker give way to the stronger without much feeling of compunction. But, sir, when the battle of life is waged betw’eeu the young of rational beings, we should pause and think of the consequences to society. In the Old Country, at least, much evil is imposed by smart men ; smartness too often inculcated at school, under the flaunting name of emulation, which peally as often means selfishness, envy, spite, and revenge, for these are the more common feelings engendered between the successful and unsuccessful competitors for prizes at school. Then, as a rule, the most robust thinkers and useful minds are slowest to ripen, and it is important that their more steady growth should not be disturbed by the system of prizes to their more dashing but lighter schoolmates. Moved by a deep sense of the importance of the subject, I beg to respond this my “ Amen” to what you have said injyesterday’s Star, —I am, &c., A New Chum, Dunedin, December 3.