VIRTUE DEFENDED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 717, 18 December 1933, Page 4

VIRTUE DEFENDED

It has become almost the recognised thing at school prizegivings that good boys at school are usually not so good in after life and that the bad and harumscarum lads attain- to greatness and to tendering good advice from the prize-giving platform. Practically any public man, presenting pr'izes will assufe his hearers, that at school he was a black sheep of the deepest_d^e,

modestly iriferring that it is more in spite of his school training than because of it that he has won to his position of- elevation on the platform. It is refreshing, therefore, to find one speaker coming out into the open and defending the good boys against the invidious position in which they are so often placed, at the end of each school year. "The educational exper fences of our more sttccessful citizens, I must, on' the evidence, refuse to take seriously," said Mr. J. R. Sutcliffe, in his address at he prize-giving of Scots College, Wellington. "After talking to mauy successful professional and business men and listeiiing to and reading the speeches of others, orie would be foreed to the conclusion that in nearly every case each one was :- — (1) Always in . trouble at school; (2) caned more than any other boy.in the school; and (3) was irivariably at the bottom of his class. I trust that these words will not act as a damper to the spirit of those of you boys who are to receive prizes to-night. 1 think that you can take it as true that these .men, either through perverted modesty and batred of boasting prefer to forget thejr silfccesses, or that as they advance in yeai's and become less capable of fui*ther harm, it tickles their yanity to think what bad lads they Were at school." The trouble appears to lie in the divergence of . views upon" what constitutes a good boy and what constitutes a bad boy. A good boy, according to a schoolmaster's conception, may be something very much different to an employer and a bad boy to his -school master may very of teii prove to be not so bad when he sets about the business of earning a living. On the other hand, a bad boy, where the word "bad" is used in its true sense to connote a lack of mOral balance, will probably remain "bad" in school j and out of it. But in the main, habits and tendencies moulded at school will unquestionably develop in after life and it will be found that the lad with a sound school reeord is a sound and useful citizen when he attains to that estate. It is as well to emphasise this fact, lest the good boys become permanently discouraged and begin to believe that lads who behave themselves at school have very little prospect of ever reaching the position where they are considered fit and proper persons to distribute prizes and encourage the young.