ACADEMIC SNOBBERY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 290, 7 September 1928, Page 12

ACADEMIC SNOBBERY

Sir, —The dissertation on the above subject in "The Dominion” recently prompts me to note a certain amount of unfair and mischievous comment by speakers who apparently are ill-equipped for the fray they have entered into. I use the term fray advisedly on account of the gall and wormwood tincturing the greater part of the comment. I have qualified on the subject by publishment of "The Snobs of ,” and As Eagles to Ilieii Eyries,” etc., dealing with real snobs. In this ease some of us were under compulsion to train the people of Wellington into what Mr. Bennett terms “Council Economics.” The poor, compressed into hundreds per acre, got less service and partly paid for greater service rendered to those who lived one or two to the acre. This was real snobbery, but it was not academic.

Tlie vicissitudes of my chequered career have led me to a close-up with “academic snobbery." I nearly escaped my first decade sans education of any kind, but at nearly ten I found myself hastily bundled through a preparation ending with the as in present!, and safely ensconced in the lowest form of the Lower Hall of Blundelliiuia, Alma Mater to Cobden, Bright, Gladstone, Lord Palmerston, and other luminaries in England's progressive greatness. At 12 I was ready for the Upper Hall, but my light went out, and all that remains is the "H. 8. carved on an oak panel removed with others to the new site provided by Lord Amery. That was two years, and all the schooling I was privileged to have, and when I compare results with those of the 12-year colonial terms under the direction of teachers so ready with their snobbery appellations, I feel rather pleased with having breathed the atmosphere they so easily and cheaply think they can flagellate. The late Dr. Newman asked on his return from college what he had learnt and what good the course had been to him, replied : “I have learned a little Latin and Greek, also science, but the' greatest lesson of all has been the measure of rayself. One goes home puffed up ■ with swelled ideas of self-importance, but the atmosphere alters that, takes the conceit out, and then the learning enters in.” Another case, commonly quoted: “How did your two sons get on at college?”*Mr. Newrich, in reply: “The eldest went to the Continent, and what he doesn’t know would be hard to discover. The other went to Harrow. I don’t know that he learnt, but there is one thing they did to him—they made of him a perfect gentleman.” These grunters should learn a lesson from an African boy. The missionary eould not get him to wash his feet, and he admitted that he could not do it. You wash your face; make your feet as clean as your face.” Next day the boy came to the mission with his face all covered with the dirt he picked up on his feet. His feet were as clean as his face. Is snobbery the cause of their troubles or their troubles the cause of the misused name? Can they not climb up unless they pull some other down? —I am, etc., HENRY BODLEY.