NEW HEADMASTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 20, 24 January 1936, Page 5

NEW HEADMASTER.

FOR KING'S COLLEGE. MR. J. N. PEART ARRIVES. PUBLIC SCHOOL CHANGES. After an absence of eleven years, Mr. J. N. Peart, M.A., a former Auckland Grammar School pupil, has returned to New Zealand to take over the headmastership of King's College. It was mentioned incidentally by Mr. Peart, in an interview this morning, that Lord Rutherford, of Kelson, Cavendish professor of physics at Cambridge, had commented very favourably on the capabilities of New Zealanders who went on to the universities of England, out the professor had expressed regret that no attempt was made to absorb them in their own country after their University career. This reproach, in the case of Mr. Peart, at least, has been removed for he comes back to the city where he commenced his academic career. Mr. Peart was a pupil of the Auckland Grammar School from 1914 to 191S, and after several years at the Auckland University was appointed junior science master at Nelson College. At the end of 1924 he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. with honours in 192(i. He then joined the staff of Epsom College, where, in 1933, he was appointed to the position of second master. The English public school was changing with the times, said Mr. Peart, and no longer turned out the boys in the same mould. The type of boy who used to go into the army and came to be regarded "the public school type," was nflt »s greatly in evidence, for public school life had been enlarged so that th>>re was a wide variety of interests in the schools. The object of modern teaching was to give stijdents an education with a wide peneral knowledge and particularly literature, and not take up their life's work until they had reached that standard. Mr. Peart said that he was • belieyer-ia-a-classical-education,

but when a boy had reached the sixth form he should be allowed to follow his own bent and specialise in the calling for which he seemed fitted. Mr. Peart, who arrived in Wellington last week, and has since been visiting his mother at Raglan, was welcomed at the railway station in Auckland last evening. Archdeacon G. Mac Murray represented Archbishop Averill, chairman of the St. John College Trust Board. There were also present Archdeacon W. J. Simkin, secretary of the board; Mr. H. Gibbons, president of the King's College Old Boys' Association; Mr. T. U. Wells, chairman of the Auckland Education Board; Mr. H. B. Lusk, first assistant and acting-headmaster of the college; Captain J. G. Wales, the bursar; Mr. A. M. Hume, a member of the board; Mr. Norman Heath, representing the English Public Schools' Association; and several old boys. Mr. and Mrs. Peart will be the guests of Archdeacon Simkin until the end of the week, when they will return to Raglan. Mr. Peart will begin hi» new duties on February 1.