BOARDING SCHOOLS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 304, 20 December 1912, Page 7

BOARDING SCHOOLS.

jTE-ESSABY—BTTT A_. E*VT__ AN AUCKLAND TEACHER'S VIEWS T_e decision of the Auckland Grammai School Board to erect one and eventuallj boarding-houses adjacent to the - eff school at Mt. Eden gave the headmaster of the boys' school (Mr. J. VV •Tibbs) an opportunity last night at the prize-giring to tell the cold hard truth about the comparative value cf boardingschool life in any system of education. 3lr. Tibbs ruthlessly shattered the common belief, fondly iif hjnor_ntly) cherished that "tlie English public school" was en irreproachable educational system. Speaking as the headmaster of a rapidlygrowing institution. Mr. Tibbs said: "The ij_v has come when the school must seriously face the problem; for it is no longer fair to the country boy to deny _\_ his full share in the great advantages which will belong to the whole educational district of Auckland when the new school is built at Mt. Eden, i have given much thought to this subject; and first of all let, mc say tha.t, though I now recognise that the school must provide boarding accommodation, I am still of opinion mat this new feature Ln its work will add nothing to its prestige. There is a notion, widely accepted in English-speaking countries, and there only, that the boarding school ranks above the day school, that the boarder is a superior person in comparison with the mere day boy. When it is known that the invome made out of the boys in a house in one of the English public schools is equal to the salary enjoyed by some colonial governors, and that colonial boarding-schools yield a profit scarcely less handsome, it is easily understood how well it pays to keep this false comparison of the day with the boarding .school freely circulating. Mr. Oscar Browning recently published his ' Memoirs of Sixty Years.' He was for eleven yell- a leading housemaster at Eton, and afterwards a well-known tutor at Cambridge, lie introduced at Eton reforms! in the direction of more liberal treatment of the boys, and yet he frankly states that his income from a house, strictly limited to forty, wa_ £3,000 a tear. He sums up his Eton experiences in these notable words: '1 am no great believer in public boarding schools. They are, perhaps a necessary evil in a complex civilisation,, but they are an evil. Education up to the age of manhood should be given in the home. The society of sisters, of parents, is absolutely necessary to purity and simplicity oflif- Even the qualities of self-reliance and resource, of adaptability to the world ire, I believe, better fostered in a good home than in a public boarding school.' And further, 'It seemed to mc that the boys have two standards of conduct and behaviour —a home morality and a school morality. Boys would live reasonable lives at home, but, when they came back to school, they would insensibly adopt the habits of their schoolfellows and the tone of the place, the standard beirg too often set by the worst boys.' To those who know the boarding school from within it causes no surprise to hear a lecturer in the To'*a Hal! argue that the German mother who brings up her boys herself is superior to the English mother who packs her 3 off to a boarding school. The worst possible form of hoarding school is that which pays the best, and consists of one large establishment where boys of all shades of character and temperament are herded together under conditions that suggest the isirack rather than the home. The Board has already decided that ours shall not take this form, and that the tixit of the three houses to be erected Shall be limited to accommodation for forty boys."