School Manners

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 52, 28 December 1905, Page 1

School Manners

A correspondent who lives in the vicinity of a Large State school writes us : ' " Manners make the man and want of them the fellow." Why is not some effort made to instil the elements of good manners into those State school children and prevent or mitigate the exhibitions of larrWdnism that are so frequently made here ? ' The complaint is no new one. It has frequently found a voice in the columns of the secular press. Some time ago, tor instance, a writer in our local evening contemporary commented in part as follows upon a public and disgraceful exhibition made by well-fed young barbarians in a suburban school : ' We boast a good deal about our national system of education, but it seems to me a great pity that a little time is not devoted to instruction in manners as well as in the three R's.' ' Dock the " ologies," ' says another writer in another quarter, ' and substitute a little instruction in good manners and moral obligations.' Yet another writer before us adds his word of protest. 'We were told,' said he, ' that when the new (secular) system of education was introduced, as the masses became educated they would become refined. Alas ! the contrary is the general experience. Anyone having the misfortune to live near a State 'school, or to pass by one When the scholars are leaving, can testify to the habitual rowdiness of their behaviour and the nlthiness of their language.' The 'N.Z. Tablet ' has been combating for a generation the idea that the mere imparting, of a knowledge of decimals, vulgar fractions, and such-like secular knowledge is the all-sufficient work of the school. One can, of course, hardly condemn the exuberant schoolboy because (to v adapt slightly a well-known couplet) ' His manners have not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.' But a certain accepted minimum is obviously required by the little men and maids at school if they are to ba kept from coarse boorishness and untamed Gothicism. Our correspondent, however, must riot expect that a stream, if left to itself, will rise above its source. His indignation makes him forget that the ' system '—which is not a system of education, but of bald instruction— is not in itself either intended or calculated to produce polite youths or mannerly maidens. For what, after

all, is the true and solid basis of good manners ? ' Manners are the shadow of virtue,' says Sydney Smith. And the inculcation of either the substance or the shadow of true virtue forms no part of that glorification of Secularist training which so many of our fellow-colonists reverence as a sort of fetich. Wherever State school children preserve good manners, the credit will be due, not to the system, but to the private zeal of this or that teacher, and still more to good example in the home. Catholic schools recognise that training in religion and the formation of personal character are the foundation of all true education, and that little Bernard and Agnes must not neglect the ordinary amenities of our social life -while storing their brain-cells with such necessaries as the three R's and with such pretty bric-a-brac as ' the accomplishments.' We have seen a goodly number of inspectors' reports of Catholic schools, and we have noticed with pleasure that the verdict on ' manners ' always sounded the top note of the register—' excellent.'