SCHOOL PRIZES,

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 310, 6 December 1873, Page 3

SCHOOL PRIZES,

{To the Editor.)

Sir, — In this letter I will not state opinions; I will merely state facts, and other people can furnish inferences. There will be only one gold medal given at the Lawrence Christmas competition in the local school. Two children may be of nearly equal merit. Their respective merits will bo judged by two fallible men._ Even if these two men say, that the answers oi two superior scholars are of equal merit, they cannot give two medals. Here then is the injustice. A gets a medal] when Bis as good as A. ■ We will say that B is pot altogether as good as A. This very slight inequality may be caused by temporary nervousness, by headache ; if bo, A getß the medal, not because A ia better mentally

• than B, but because A is better physically — A having no ill health on the occasion, although half-an-hour after the examination, A may also have ill health. Thero should be graduated prizes Cor graduated intellect. " Grood, bettor, best," is in grammar ; it should also, surely, logically, appropriately, be so in a grammar school, and a similar remark applies to " bad, worse, worst." A gold medal for A, and even a grand book for 15, is an unenviablo distinction. It is a prize which pro luces cramming, not educatioi , which L?cludes moral as ■w>ell as mental " leading," and envy is not morality, nor intellectuality cither. Let us have many medals, or none at all.— T am, &c, MATKKFAMILIAS. reel-street, December 3.