TEE GRAMMAR OF OUR SCHOOLS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2620, 1 June 1877, Page 3

TEE GRAMMAR OF OUR SCHOOLS.

la a letter to the Daily Times on ihe subject of primary education, Mr Duncan, schoolmaster at Green Island, very forcibly shows the sbsiu-dities of the system of grammar tauy.ht at the schools :—'^Before little children have advanced many steps in their so called education," he writes " they are taken into the surgeon's hall and called upon to analyze their mother tongue. They are shown all the mysteries and glories (behind the scene, miseries) of proper, common, and abstract nouns. They are invited to regale themselves with the delicious feasts of transitive and intvansitive.verbs. They are then taken to another dissecling room, where the delights of prefixes and affixes fill them with ecsfcacies And all the time, be it remembered, they are only at the portals of their great feast, the choice little scraps. Grammar and the other aualytic processes, to which the tiny morsels of English classics are subjected, might be thoroughly taught, and at the same time every individual might le^ve school equipped in a very different fashion than at present for the duties of life, were a practical and rational system, founded on experience, in force, instead of a Utopian one founded on theory. The benefits to society would be immense. The ennobling sentiments and pure joys derivable from the "wells undefiled " would be powerful aids in leading a nation to rectitude, and a royal way of repressing crime. And truly it would be better far to banish grammar altogether from our schools and give an education worth the name, than pursue the present course; but this is not required. Moreover, who can measure the growing disrelish for all school work, and its sad consequences, imbibed by the too early presentation of the abstractions of grammar^ to the pupil's mind. Nor is, English composition so greatly indebted to grammar, as many imagine ; for how much of the wonderful magic of grammar did John Bunyan possess when he penned his peerless work ? Mr Currie, of Edinburgh, an authority on elementary education, has recently issued a book on " English Composition; 1 for Schools," wherein analysis ,of sentences (that " solemn 'trifling") is explained as the • basis of composition, and plentifully made use of throughout the work. Accordingly, the analysts have here another delightful field wherein to glean pleasure, and profit in the mazy windings of rules, exceptions and technicalities. Would it not be better, more, engaging, more reasonable, more thorough, to; furnish the pupil's mind well with,a rich store of thoughts from the; works of Britain's most gifted authors, thus adopting the one well-known, natural,. simple rule (somewhat modified), of Dr Johnson,; for acquiring this valuable accomplishment, which is best gained by reading, and repeated efforts (essays). For when the child, w'loin you ask to,go on with his essay, tells you he has nothing to write, do you suppose that the- best course for his case is to explain ' subject. * predicate,' 'completion of predicate,' ' simple, compound, and complex ..sentences,' 'copulative, disjunctive, adversative, and ■illative co-ordinations.' In conclusion, I ask, how much of this knowledge; 9o those,men possess who command the listening applause of the Britisji Senate.