The Temuka Leader. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1879.

Temuka Leader, Issue 162, 16 July 1879, Page 2

The Temuka Leader. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1879.

The recent dispute'.between the South Canterbury Board of Education and the Timaru School Committee with regard to the appointment of a second master shows how very unsatisfactory the legal relations between School Committees and Boards of Education are. In the pase in question applications for the post were sent into the Board and forwarded to the School Committee, all presumably being satisfactory. The Committee selected one, and asked the Board for their formal confirmation, which they had received iu spirit already when the applications were sent forward. The Board refused to confirm, the Committee feeling the slight held to their former choice, and explained in detail by what principles they had been guided, but again the Board refused.

This process of double selection must strike the most superficial observer as being cumbrous, and where small concessions are not made, it may become very offensive. The practical means usualty adopted foi avoiding ill feeling is that the Board should only send forward such applications as they approve of, so that the School Committee in selecting can assume that their choice will be confirmed. In this way the task of the Board is not invidious, and the Committee are in some sense free. At a practical expedient for working a clumsy Act this is all very well, but is is nothing more than an expedient. An extreme case that might suggest itself to a discourteous Education Board would be to send up only one application. In that case the whole choice would become vested in the Board.

But even this would be preferable to the selection that must come out of the Timaru case. Whoever is chosen it is certain he will step into very uncomfortable shoes, if he is the elect of the Education Board he will have to work under a Committee who have already manifested their disapproval of him ; if he is the elect of the Tiinaru School Committee lie can look for no favour from the Board. Indeed the only solution of the difficulty would be to call for fresh applications. To send back the rejected candidates to a Committee, who have twice already refused them all, is a device not likely to mend matters. It is as much out of taste as the publication of the adverse criticisms made on the unfortunate candidates. It is difficult to imagine what advantages the Legislature aimed at in constituting these overlapping powers. The only possible good is the assurance that the candidate has to undergo a severe test ; and it is just possible we may reach the high standard required by the American Selection Committee who " had grave suspicions of the applicant's moral character—He wears a ' billy- j cock'hat."

Whrther tlio Board of Education or the School Committee made the bettor selection it is not our business to say. It is amusing', howevor, to see our worthy Hoard's sticking- on the question of attainments ; and their inspector, must be a standing monument of their consistency. That gentleman's scholarship it is well known falls some degrees below mediocrity ; and we are given to understand that he i 5? one of the undergraduates of the University who has not passed his first year's examination. Of course he is as good as any of the children he examines are likely to be for some time to come. But there is a cry for high-class attainments just now, and for the sake of consistence alone the Board should take their inspector aside and say something kind : " Look here, old man, you must brush up a bit. We arc refusing applicants now if they are not slap-up scholars. We couldn't wish a better fellow than you ; but the game's up, folks don't believe you're half as wise as you look." We believe in high scholastic attainments, but we like to see a reform begun at the top of the tree ; and considering the amount of work the School Committees do, and the small powers they have, we think Education Boards should be as amiable as possible.

A Ciiristchurch telegram tells of one more added to the list of prophets who have no honor in their own country. Mr C. C. Howard, Principal of the Normal School, has received notice to quit from the Board of Education. Now, Mr Howard is a man of no ordinary parts, and we cannot stand by and see him slip thus silently into oblivion, To introduce him to our readers would be superfluous ; we are sure there is nobody in South Canterbury, as in North Canterbury, who has any interest in education, but remembers the fluent gentleman who used to come down on Saturdays and give lectures on the art of teaching. Where his brilliancy begun is involved in as much obscurity as where it w'll end. We think we are treading on safe ground in saying that he was selected in England for the lucrative and honorable position of principal of the Normal School, Ciiristchurch, that he felt from the first his own importance, and that lie immediately created a great sensation in educational circles. How he was selected is one of those dark questions on which Ave cannot presume to throw any light. Some say be was a nominee of Lord Lyttelton ; there are those who doubt it. The point is immaterial—it is sufficient that Mr Howard came, and dazzled men by his splendour. As his name\ was noised abroad students nocked around him, and the Normal School, Ciiristchurch, threatened to eclipse the fame of the olive grove af Plato. There was something peculiarly attractive in Mr Howard's system outside of his personal fluency and address. It was all embracing, and never depended for its success upon the material it had to work on. In the greatness of his heart he passed no one by ; and the duller the student, the better he was pleased. This liberal system had furthermore all the simplcity that attends greatness. All that was required v/as attendance at Mr C. C. Howard's lectures, bodily prosence in Mr C. 0. Howard's school, and exclusion from everything else. A University course was an old fossilised tradition, and not at all necessary for a scholar ; if proof was wanting what better instance could be found than Mr C. C. Howard, himself ? But to humor popular beliefs his disciples might get degrees if they wished, he would have them affiliated to the University, and without such formalities as matriculation they should be capped by a sort of legerdemain. Such was the outline of a great system.

It is in method, however, not in results, that Mr Howard's talents shine. Practical folks think his students ordinary fellows after all, and in the recent teachers'examinations, which were uniform for all New Zealand, by far the greatest failure was made by the Normal School, Ciiristchurch. It is possible that the worldly minded Board of Education has thought less of Mr Howard ror this ; and for the miscarriage of practical detail have given him notice to quit.

But it is not Mr H. as the academician buried in the precincts of the Normal, but as the fluent peripatetic tliat Mr Howard is dear to us. He is one of those men who have the foresight to put their candle under a bushel. From Cbristehurch to Timaru he was constantly turning up and electrifying audiences on the art of teaching. His discourses astonished men equally by the grace of his delivery and the profundity of lijs knowledge. Of course there was always the malicious who spoke of flippancy, and insinuated that the knowledge was bogiu. One patronising lecture on the teachings of Plato and Aristotle so much irritated the ill-disposed that they went the length of saying that Mr Howard knew more of the English of PJato than the Greek. But he listened not to calumny, and still he smiled and talked. His stones themselves were worlh the journey to hear. We remember one of the most characteristic ; it turns on the story of Jacob, with which we presume our readers are familiar, how tnat in his dream he saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and angels ascending and descending by it, A precocious boy asked his master why the angels required a ladder when they had wings. The master gave it up. The boy, on being asked to explain, voiunfeered as a possible solution that the angels were moulting. Mr Howard gave this with great gusto ; and the fair pupil teachers looked admiringly, and murmured what a funny man Mr Howard was, and what nice things ho did say. We confess the connection between the • story and any possible question of school management or art of teaching is not obvihus. But Mr Howard, like indulgent mammas, had a knack of administering a very little pill in a very big. spoonful of jam —some- I times, indeed, the pill didn't appear J at all.

His versatility is infinite '; he is one of those men who can explain with the same sweet grace a balance-sheet of assets and liabilities, or a compound proportion sum, just as occasion demands. Ho appears before the public now as a readei of Shalcspeare and Tonnysou, now as a

church official, again as a munificent host. Possessed of strong individuality, he generally has a short way of doing great things, and is always confident of su< cess. The sceptical associate tins? qualities with (he quack, and it would seem that the faith of the Board of Education is shaken. The least, however, they could do was to instruct all telegraph officials to stretch a point and notify his fall in as florid and sensational way as possible. It is all too appalling tha* such a weight of fluency and resource—an education reformer, an itinerant lecturer, a brilliant Shakesperian, and a paragon of Churchwardens, should be all crammed beneath a blunt Hie JACET.