THE EDUCATION OF THE PRESENT DAY.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 735, 10 November 1870, Page 2

THE EDUCATION OF THE PRESENT DAY.

(From the Australasian.)

At the annual distribution of prizes and award of distinctions by the Council of Education in Tasmania, Professor Irving, as examiner, read a report which is deserving of attention as indicative of some of the defects of our modern methods of instruction. The lads who were examined may be regarded as the elite of the various public and private schools in Tasmania, and therefore the faults with which they are chargeable must be visited upon the general system of education pursued in that island, but not peculiar to it. While in Latin, one candidate, and in Greek and French, three candidates passed with credit, not one passed with credit in English. They could name the roots and explain the construction of words derived from the dead languages, but knew nothing of the history and origin of such as were of Saxon growth. In reading, no one candidate possessed the whole of the essentials of good reading. Iu analysis and parsing aninexcusable ignorance was displayed. In arithmetic no single candidate succeeded in doing correctly all the six sums set; and in history, Professor Irving tells us, the smallest amount of knowledge was displayed about events and persons near to our own days. Nearly all knew the date and the objects of the treaty of Troyes in the 15th century, but scarcely one could tell anything about the Peace of Amiens in the 19th. Chaucer was generally referred to the period at which he lived; but the dates assigned to Scott varied from the reign of Elizabeth to that of Victoria; the date of 1815, which it might be supposed to Waterioo, was given to the Crimean war; and, most wonderful of all, the Duke of Wellington was declared by one candidate to have comenced life as Lord Cobham, and to have beeu afterwards created Earl St. Vincent before attaiuing his dukedom. We are Fai? from undervaluing the acquisition of dead or living languages by the pupils of our public or private schools, but if proficiency in these is only tobe attained by ignoring elementary and indespeusable branches of learning, we should prefer the sacrifice of the latter. To equip a youth with classical lore, and to leave his mind unfurnished as to the English language and English history, is, to borrow Goldsmith's hackneyed, illustration " like sending him ruifles when wanting a shirt." No nation ever inherited a nobler language, a richer literature, or a more glorious history than our own; and, situated as we are in this colony, with a history to make, a literature to found, and a language to preserve from corruption, we ought to set an iuestimable value upon the heritage we enjoy, and take every precaution to make our children thoroughly conversant with its three precious constituents.