The Wairarapa Daily SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1889. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 3392, 21 December 1889, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1889. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand.

Some ten thousand children during the past week have retired from schools, public aud private, in the Wellington district, to worry their parents and friends for the next few weeks The en d of tho vacation will bo welcomed by fathers and mothers, and oven by very many of the children, This, : perhaps, is the be6t testimony that can-be borne to the extremely gratifying oliaraoter of the educational surroundings of tho present day, In old times the average ■ child was happier at homo than at school, lint it may truthfully be contended that the reverse is now the case, Our schools ire commodious and well arranged, equipped with full staffs of humane and intelligent teachers, and our boys and girls find ill tlieminorogenial surroundings and pleasanter companionship than they 1 can obtain elsewhere. Modern education, notwithstanding its deficiencies in certain respects, has lost the terrors which once invested the training of'the young. There are other reforms which will no doubt come in good time. A modem writer says that the objects of.truo education aro to cultivate and develop the mind in a right direction; to leach the young to carry with fortitude the burden of life which will fall to their loti to strengthen the will; to inculcate in them the love of one's neighbor, and the feeling of mutual interdependence and brotherhood; and thus to trjin and form tho character for practioal lifa. But i these objects are not provided for in our standards, which tyrannise with a rod of iron over teacher and pupil. The objects of modern education aro to pass examinations and to breed an emulation somewhat akin to jealousy and envy; and these examinations depend mainly upon the cultivation of mere physical memory, \yhich is not accompanied by a corresponding development of the thinking and reasoning faeultjes and a growth of moral power; Still .there js spe gain in a right direction, not hi the knowledge of arithmetic, grammar, and geography, but in the influences which■'. our schools exercise in teaching the young to be clean, gentle; and orderly, and training the ibjty Jiftleones to sing and to play at pleasant and instructive Kindergarten pastimes. It is only fn.'tiie nature of things that we should occasionally look the faults of our educational -"item in the face, but while doing ib^rafau^ wpaW ' w,Bm ™ w that'our-seminal; 1* &»f private, are in many respects su . mu - more excellent than were tho schools of twenty or thirty years ag), r It is j only when the ten thousand children \ retreat to their homes for the holidays that'■parents begin to realise what a l comfort and blessing they have in ' well organised and equipped schools, aud adim'pe'riieptien must even find i its way to tlie minds of the children 1 thems'elves when Ihby, before thoir!

allotted vaoation. begin to weary for the veopeniiig of school and long for tbe resuuiptiSfr of that' pupil life which is in very :'many instances the happiest porfci.■ of tHir existences, ■•