"GRAMMATICAL IGNORANCE."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3146, 25 March 1909, Page 4

"GRAMMATICAL IGNORANCE."

The 3908 annual report of the Inspectors under the Wellington Education Board contains lengthy reference to the much debated school syllabus. The report states that the chief grievancejgiving rise to the adverse criticism appears to be the absence from the syllabus of formal grammar. Seondary teachers had complained of * grammatical ignorance" on the part of the primary pupil come up secondary school, but poorly equipped as regards the "King's English." "We do not for one minute question the right of anyone to be the best judge of his own limitations," comments the report, "but it cannot be said that proficiency in the mother tongue of the average youth from the secondary schools of the Dominion has at any time been of so conspicuous a nature as would justify the subordination of the whole system of teaching English in the primary schools to the requirements of the particular methods obtaining in secondary schools. The syllabus very properly concerns itself with grammar, not as an aid to analytical study of language,, nor as a 'means of providing exercises in logic,' but only so j far as it might he considered an aid to the correct speakng and writing of I English."