DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1555, 19 February 1887, Page 2

DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES.

The annual distribution of prises amongst the children attending the Temukt District High School was held last Thursday evening in the Volunteer Hall, Terauka. There was a large number of children present, but their parents were conspicuous by their absence. The attendance of the public was very small. Mr J. W. Miles, Chairman of the School Committee, presided, and briefly introduced Mr Rolleaton, who read the following speech:— Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,— I am glad of the opportunity of Baying a few words on the general question of Education on an occasion when the local school authorities—the members of the Committee—the parents and their children and large number of the general public, meet together for the annual distribution of prizes to our District High School. It may seem strange that anyone should have to speak in some sense on the defensive at a meeting like this, at which the common interest of all dosses of the community m bur present system is so clearly manifested, Yet various causes have contributed to make such a course not out of place at the present time, i do not seriously think that we are likely to take any retrograde step as to the maintenance of our national system in its main and essential features ; but in a time of depression, with the prospect before us of increased taxation, consequent upon a borrowing policy and the necessity for finding interest out of revenue upon moneys spent in public works, it is not to be wondered at that those who dislike our system should take occasion to exclaim against its costliness and to call for retrenchment upon it. 1 do not now propose to enter upon the flsancial question, which is rather one to be dealt with by Parliament or on a political platform, farther than to express my own conviction that the people of New Zealand are not likely to agree to any lower standard of education ; that they want more education, not less ; that they will insist upon our present system, good as it is, being made better in the direction of more practical and technical instructions being added to our primary course, and that the system when improved will not be carried on at a less, but at n greater, cost. The only question which will continue to be agitated as to the cost will be as to its incidence. Is it to bo borne, as has hitherto been decisively settled, upon the general taxation of the country—like other great departments of State—or is it to be borne seclionally either by local bodies or religious organisations and voluntary efforts subsidised by State funds. I myself feel no doubt as to the way in which the question will be answered whenever the present system is really in danger. Nor do 1 feel much : concerned with the objections of those | who think that the tendency of our i children under the present system is to i look down upon manual labor. Theory i against the system of“ Who is to dean 11

the boots?’’ is a silly one, which has not, even the merit of being epigrammatic. The tendency, so far as it exists, is due mainly to other influences, to which I shall presently refer; and if our primary school course is in any degree responsible for it it rests with the School Committees and the Education Department to modify and amend the existing regulations to meet the, difficulty. Our system leaves the people free to insist upon such changes as they require. Any amendment which will have the effect of making our girls better housewives, more skilled in cooking, plain needlework, and other household ways, and of making our boys better qualified to take up mechanical trades, or to follow the progress of scientific agriculture, are worthy of the closest attention. In connection with this subject very practical suggestions have recently been made by our neighbor Mr Jasper-Smythe, who is a member of the South .'Canterbury Education Board, as to the School of Agriculture at Lincoln. That school, as originally designed, had for its object to bring together the practical operations of farming and scientific instructions on agriculture, and this has been admirably done under the superintendence of Mr Ivey. But the necessity of raising the fess, and other causes prevent the rural districts and the primary schools from getting the full advantage that they might get out of the Institution. It is difficult for any hut men of considerable means to send their sons there. This might well be remedied by the establishment of scholarships in connection with our diitrict schools and high schools which could be competed for by those who showed capacity for this course of instruction. I venture to think that some of the public funds which are being spent on the establishment of new centrally administered departments might be beneficially applied to the establishment of such scholarships, and the more general utilisation of existing institutions, To t evert, however, to what I was saying. It is in part the parents who are responsible*for the tendency in children to shun manual labor and to be content' to settle down to a life of mere writing and compound addition. It is froth their parents that children must learn to set before themselves some definite object, some profusion, trade, er calling,’ to Which the natural vent of their faculties, merely incline them, and to devote their energies to the attainment of excellence in that line. The demand for mefe “quill driven ” is alreac \ far exceeded by the supply, and experience is daily showing how a cu’tivated intelligence is' the .best handmaid of manual labor. It requires no mean amount of accurate thinking power to become a good mechanic or s skilled agricultural laborer in these days of intricate machinery and advanced scientific knowledge, The men eveh who can build, and thatch, a stack, and perform the skilled operations of agriculture are few as compared with the class of “ generally useful ” who can “ put their band to almost anything ” but jexcel in nothing; T would strongly''urge upon my young friends before me who wish to succeed in life to make themselves thoroughly masters of one particular branch of their calling. The other branches will come easier to them, and they will be mo r e efficient in them than those who attempt too much to begin with. As one whose training lay in another direction, the longer X live the more I admire the creative power, the intelligence and accuracy, which characterise a good workman. The notion that manual labor is a degradation—wherever that notion exists—will, ere long, be expelled by the hard logic of facte. Of old the greatest and most cultivated of men pursued a handicraft. St. Paul was a tentmaksr. The Koyal Family, of Germany at the present day all have some mechanical acquirement. If our children are inclined to think themselves above manual labor, the feeling, as I have said, is due in part also to other causes outside our schools, which, I am glad to think, are surely, if slowly, working their own remedy. Thrift, iudustry, and simplicity of living were qualities of the early colonists, which a period of extravagance, of speculation, and of haste to be rich has temporarily superseded. It is .easy for a State, it is easy for individuals, to live sumptuously upon borrowed money. Every class readily catches the pleasant infection of spending. Thus industry is sapped—your boys prefer, broadcloth to moleskin, and your girls feathers and finery to home duties and domestic happiness. But—and this is what I wish to insist upon—let us be fair. Do not'let ns attribute to our educational system faults which have a different origin. Tba State as represented in our schools doel not pretend to give a complete education. It is an organisation of society for certain limited objects. There are other organisations which take up different functions in completing the full work of education —the churches, domestic life, and tha ' various social influences which surround our youth, literary associations, libraries, sports, and games, and, other means of physical and mental development. On the other ; hand there are corrupting and degrading agencies at work, which are more or lets successful in counteracting . these organisations. Yet people talk as though our school system was a failure, or as if it was responsible for all the ills which they see, or fancy they see, around them. As is often the case, they inv-nt to some extent their facts, and then propound theories to aupport them. There are not wanting those who assert that crime is on the increase, and connect the increase of such crimes as forgery with the absence, as they assert, of moral and religious influence in our schools. Sir Bobsrt Stout has dealt very conclusively with the facts as alleged, and has shown by statistics that, so far from there being an increase, there _ has been a steady decrease of juvenile crime in New Zealand since the [ year 1877, and, further, that the colonies compare favorably with the, older countries in this respect. I should not, however, be inclined to credit or discredit the school system with more than its fair share of influence, whatever the facta might be. If it were fair to hold it mainly, or solely, responsible, the time ; that it has been in operation (some eight years) would not be sufficient to allow of it being so tested. As 1 have said, there are other organisations and other influences to which responsibility more { greatly and more largely attaches in I respect of the social and moral condition of the people. We cannot, for reasona I which I must not here enter upon, look for j the teaching of religion, the most potent

of influences, in oiii* schools. The teaching of this in its higher development belong more especially to the parents and to the churches. But 1 affirm that in their own sphere the moral influence of the schools is beneficial. Apart from the fact that the lessons contained in the text books used, inch as Nelson’s Royal Readers, are distinctly moral in their teaching. The schools in many an outlying district are, with the village library, the only. .centre of order and civilisation which exist. You have upright earnestminded men and women following laboriously their daily path of duty with but little encouragement, impressing, insensibly it may be, the same sense of duty, the same characters, the same methodical industry, on their pupils. A

very high authority—the Primate of the Cfinrch of England in New Zealand—when speaking a short time since at the giving away of sbuo>l prizes, pointed out how closely the rearing of habits of strict accuracy was allied to the cultivation of truthfulness —no small testimony to the value of dnr national school teaching. It is possibl * > be imbued with a sense of duty—i' possible to learn to deal consciantions y even over a sum in practice and the'aliquot parts of a pound. How far the churches are performing their functions as teachers of religion through Sunday School, from the pulpit, and by other means I will not presume to say. Published statistics go to show that at no time were these organisations more active in the face of peculiar difficulties, both here and in:the Old Country. Each age develops its own peculiar phase-of difficulty with which schools and churches alike have to contend. The gro vtb of reverence, for instance, has not kept pace with an abnormal spread of knowledge in late years. Again the world generally, and the colonies particularly, following on the discoveries of gold, and mon lately on the fatal facility of borrowing, have entered on a period of extraordinary speculative energy. Every consideration is subordinated into the pursuit of riches, .and the enormous accumulation of wealth, consequent upon the advance of science and the improvement of machinery and locomotion is affecting io an extraordinary i. manner the whole fabric of society. If w e look dispassionately around us we must admit that it is idle and ridiculons to connect the penmanship taught in schools with forgery, when the downward career of speculation, gam. bling, and debt, leading to distress and kisbohor, is manifestly in nine cases out of ten directly responsible. Of other adverse influences, the congregating of our youth—both boys and girls—in the large towns is one which with the greater freedom which prevails in the colony, and without the domestic and other restraints which obtain in more settled

communities—is leading to a degree of license which is fraught with no small amount of danger to opr future social bf<. It is scarcely a matter of wonder if young people who spend their days in the close atmosphere of factories and workshops lose themselves in evenings passed in dancing saloons and .theatres ' for th'want of some rational means of amusement. It seems to me that here is • large ficldjto work upon for associated benevolence, which may break through the social estrangement out of which so much evil orginates. We are fostering industries into life, What are we doing to protect those who crowd- into our towns to labor at them? Nor can either our schools or churches bo held responsible jf parents take no pains to provide tbeir children in their own homes with suitable books to occupy their leisure hours— magizines, standard works of fiction, poetry, natural history. If you do not giye the imagination hea'thy sustenance evil spirits will enter in and dwell there, which sooner or later will break out in active. mischief. A cursory inspection of a railway bookstall in one of our large towns a short time ago convinced me that the worst class of novels,, the latest verbatim editions of recent English scandals—sensational police court records —are thrust under the ailention of our youth of both sexes, and are apparently lU v great request. It is no wonder then that their minds become familiarised with crime. Our weekly newspapers are not altogether free from blame on the same score. They are, so far as I know them, without exception, generally well conducted. They contain much naeful and entertaining matter well worthy of circulation. In the country districts we look upon them as publications which may be patio the bands of anyone, and we have been accustomed to let them lie on our tables fearlessly. This will not be the

cage if we are to have a continuance of theexpeiience of the past few month?. .Publicity in respect.of criminal proceedings may or may not be necessary in the daily papers. Surely it is unnecessary and mischievous in the weekly papers. I have mentioned a few of the influences which are operating in society, and which ' ace enough to counteract the work of "' many schools and many pulpits. I fear I have already trespassed too long upon time which is required for more plea- , . santoccupation. My purpose will have \ been served If in what I have said I have made it clear that different functions belong to different organisations among us, and that we deal alike unwisely and unfairly if we allow blame or shortcoming which attach to us in our capacity as heads of families, members of churches, or otherwise, to be attributed , to a. school system, which in its widespreading operation, in the high character of its teachers, and the liberality of its provisions, is unsurpassed in any part of tbs world. The following is the prize list, the prizes being handed to the recipients by ‘ Mr Rolleston; - GIRLS. Standard VII, Harriet Sweet I Standard VI. Bose Goodey 1 Standard V. Ellen Pilbrow 1 Lilian Brown 2 Standard IV. Marion McCtiskill ... W 1 Emma Goodeve 2 Standard 111. Katie Bryan ... ] Mabel Buscoe 2 Ada Davis 3 Standard 11. Nellie Bo we 1 Minnie Metson 2 t Freda Barrett 3 Standard 1. Florence Gil),,. ... 1 Srfrah Latimer ••• Ml 2

Preparing for Standard I. Florence Bryan 1 Primer. Grice Greaves 1 BOYS. Standard Yll. Wm. A. Morton (Dux) ... 1 Standard VI. A. Cooper ... Ml 1 Standard V. P. Fanvel 1 E. Clayton 2 Standard IY. Hubert Greaves ... ... 1 Charles A. C, Opio 2 Standard HI. Ernest Morris ... ... I Jos. Freddy 2 Normaa Rout 3 Standard 11. Walter Robinson 1 Frail. Radford 2 Jas. Douglas ... 3 'Standard I. Donald McCaskill ... , ... 1 Charles Walker 2 Preparing for Standard I. Leonard Hobbs ... . ... 1 Primer. 'Gebrge Franks ... 1 Special and Secondary Prizes. Drawing (Hon. W, Rolieston’a prize)— Ellen Pilbrow (Standard Y.) Science (Dr Hayes’ prize)—Ernest Clayton (Standard V.) English Composition (Mr Gaze’s prize) —Rose.Goodey (Standard YI) and John Austin (Standard VII.) equal. Senior Latin and Mathematics—Wm. A. Morton (Dux). i; Middle Latin and Mathematics—John f.uatin. Junior Latin —Douglas McKenzie. Mathematics and French-*»Gertrude Alice Brown. Latin—John Morton. Sewing Prizes. Standard YI. —Eliza Pilbrow 1. Standard Y.—Ellen Pilbrow 1, Ada Ackroyd 2. s : Standard IV.-Annie’Mcßratney 1, Harriet Ackroyd 2. , Standard lll.—Ada Davis 1, Nellie Fenton 2. Standard II. —Eiith Lynch 1, Mary Beeby 2, Laura Fauvel 3. Standard - I—Alice Smith 1, Milly Ackroyd 2. The Rev. T. A. Hamilton said he felt great pleasure in being present, in response to the invitation of the Committee to congratulate the prize winners on the success they had achieved. It was no easy matter to win these prizes. It meant a great deal of bard study, and self sacrifice, for it was only by great perseverance and industry the prizes could have been won. It was perhaps as well that the prizes were not more numerous than they were, for if all got prizes they.would not create a spirit of emulation amongst the children. He hoped those who had failed this year would work harder and try to get prizes next year. He congratulated the Committee on the excellence of the prizes, and bore testimony to the good work the teaching staff were doing. He had listened to Mr Rollestori with great pleasure. He had said that ' no country had such a good system of education as this, and it was true. No country had So ambitious a system, but it had its blots. It was a mistake to throw all the cost on the consolidated revenue, as at least some trifling allure of it ought to be borne locally, so as to give people an interest in the school, and promote a feeling of self-reliance amongst the people. Their coming there that night and paying their shilling towards the incidental fund was a step in the right direction, for it was only right to relieve the revenue of this. He considered that funds for incidentals, gymnastics, etc., ought to be provided locally It was no use to develop the intellect to the detriment of the physique, so appliance for providing the children with moans of healthy recreation were necessary, and these means ought to be got locally. The next blot was the absence of moral training from the school. Mr Rolleston hid said that the virtue of the young was destroyed by pernicious literature, and he was right to a certain extent, but they must go to the fountain head. The teachers were no doubt exercising a great deal ol good influence over the children ; their moral training was not altogether neglected, but that was not sufficient. They must have some standard to appeal to, and they could not do without the Bible in the schools. He did not care how it would be read, whether as a book of history, or otherwise, but as a minister of leligion, he must say that it was necessary in the schools. In England it was rend in the schools ; in New South Wales certain portions of it were read and ministers of religion were allowed to go into the school and teach there. He was doing us much as he could personally; he attended every Friday at the school, and a large number of children attended. It, was, however, very hard on them after their day’s work, to begin again with him, and it was not the best time to teach them. Ho would ask all children to.meet him next Friday when he would talk to them on Biblical subjects. Intellectual and moral training ought to go on side by side. The Bible recognised nothing as secular; everything should bo done for the glory of God, and the nation that neglected moral influences would eventually topple over. Mrs Rout sang “Kathleen Mavourneen” charmingly, and in response to a most enthusiastic encore, gave “ Who’s that Tapping at the Garden Gate ” in a manner that brought down the house. Miss Gertrude Brown gave a recitation entitled “Becalmed,” with great effect, and Miss Ladbrooke received much applause for her rendering of the song “ The Blue Alsatian Mountains.” Miss Rowe recited “An Auction Extraordinary” with much dramatic effect, and Mr Clinch was as comical as ever in his rendering of “ Put it Down to Me,” As an encore be sang “Bank Holiday,” and received quite an ovation. The Chairman then proposed a vote of thanks to Mr Rolleston for his presence that evening, and also for the prize he bad given. He desired to include in the vote of thanks Dr Hayes and Mr A. W. Gaze, who had also given prizes, and he desired the audience to carry it by acclamation. The motion was carried amidst great applause* In returning thanks Mr Rollestori said he was pleased his own prize had not been won without active competition. He knew of nothing more likely to prove a source of. pleasure than to be able to draw. Some people questioned the advisablenees of establishing district high

but he believed it would not be fair tu <b pnve a locality like this of the advun ages of secondary «■ ducation. He belicvd the fact of s* condary education being taught would raise the tone.of the reboot. He was ready to give next y?«r, in addition to a prize for drawing, a prize for Needlework. Uro.it applause followed, amidst which the meeting came to a close.