SECONDARY SCHOOLS. A Melancholy Record.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 248, 21 March 1888, Page 10

SECONDARY SCHOOLS. A Melancholy Record.

In tho course of an article on the secondary B chools of New Zealand, the Wellington " Post " gays : — There is a melancholy record in connection with the secondary schools of New Zealand which ought to make us heartily ashamed of ourselves, and which must certainly suffice to pour contempt on all our pride as an educated and educating democracy. The autocratic, hierarchic, or highly aristocratic mode of government which prevails in the public schools of Great Britain is almost entirely unknown here. In place of it, we have for the most part a purely popular form of government. The members of the governing body of most of the schools are either elected by the people by one method or another, or else appointed by the Ministry of the day at the direct instanco of popularly elected Parliamentary representatives. To these governing bodies ia entrusted a virtually unlimited control over tho schools. The principal, rector, headmaster, or whatever the chief teacher may be called, is nominally supiemo within his allotted sphere, when once he has gob his appointment ; but a long and bitter expeiience has shown that this supremacy 13 merely nominal. Jealousy of the headmaster's authority is the abiding passion of Boards of Governors and the bane of secondary schools. Lest this statement should be deemed too strong, we invite our readers' earnest attention to the following account of the fate of the headmasters of the seven oldest and most important secondary schools of the. colony : — Dunedin High School — Rev. Mr Campbell, drowned ; Rev. Mr Simmons, driven away ; Mr Hawthorne, worried to death ; "Mr Norie badgered into resigning ; Dr. McDonald, in Lunatic Asylum ; Dr Belcher, survives. Christ's College, Chris tchurch— Rev. Mr Harris, retired broken in health, and died ; Mr Corfe, survives. Canterbury High School (comparatively young)— Mr Miller driven away ; Mr Bevan Brown, survives. Wellington College — Rev. Mr Bowden, dismissed; Mr Wilson, dismissed ; Mr Mackay, survives. Nelson College — Rev. Mr Bagshaw, dismissed ; Mr Heppel, dismissed ; Mr Broughton, dismissed ; Dr. Greenwood dismissed, Rev. Mr McLean dismissed ; Rev. Mr Simmons died of an overdose of chloral ; Rev. J. C. Andrew dismissed ; Mr M. Fearnley died iv Lunatic Asylum ;Mr Ford survives, Auckland College and Gtammar School — Dr. Kidd dismissed, Mr Mcßae dismissed, Mr Bourne survives but sorely baited. Wanganui Collegiate School— -Mr Godwin most; successful, but eventually dismissed ; Dr. Harvey died of overwoik in the prime of his powers and usefulness. Could anything be more shocking or more disgraceful, as a commentary on ths popular government of secondary schools, than this black list of twenty-two schoolmasters killed, driven mad, or hounded out of their position in about as many years? We do not hesitate to say that it, would be very difficult to find twenty-two better men in aiiypartof the world. Therecanbcnodoubt of the first-class ability of every one, or almost every one among them. They were nearly all specially chosen by first-class men at Horne — Bishops, heads of Colleges, Agents Geneial, and so forth —on the ground of their special fitness for the posts they were to fill, and from a long list of candidates. In most cases, too, their depaiture fiom Home and their arrival in the colony were heralded with a tremendous flourish of trumpets. Several of them have shaken the d\isb off their feet, in burning shame and indignation against a country where they had met with nothing but cruelty and treachery, were welcomed back into the scat of learning at Home, and have risen to and still adorn pinnacles of fame and power and usefulness. The only survivors of those who were in harness 22 years ago are Mr Corfo, of Christ's College at Christchurch, and Mr Mackay, of Wellington College. The average tenure of office of all tho others has been about 3 years ;— and what the life of those 3 years has been can only bo testified by the broken heart, the disordered intellect, or the lonely grave of a score of the brightest and noblest men that ever set foot on our shores.