ONLY ONE SECRET

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 70, 15 December 1933, Page 10

ONLY ONE SECRET

Hard Work Means Success in Life

CANON JAMES’S VIEW “More than ever, perhaps, is it a matter of anxiety to the parents to figure out W’hat kind of educational preparation is best to fit their boys for the battle of life,” said Canon Percival James, when addressing a large gathering at the annual prize-giving in the Masonic Hall last evening. “Even though it is a fact that popular education is more widely distributed than ever it was,” he said, “the results appear, to social students, to be far from satisfactory. It seems to me that our systems of education are now in the melting,pot, and. that everyone concerned use the word education to fit their own pet theories.” , They interpreted the word to mean “a bringing out,” whereas he held that its Latin equivalent meant “nourishment” —putting something into the boy instead of taking it-out. It did not mean the task of getting a boy to “express himself,” to use a popular term, for.it was seeking an extreme to ask a boy to express himself before he had anything to express. In. the past the pupils sat at the feet of the teachers, but, from the views held in some quarters, it would appear that the teachers not sat at the feet of their pupils. “I confess I am a little tired of the urge to hear what youth thinks,” said Canon James. “Youth demands this and wants that. Youth should take heart, and learn what the multitude of years has to say, and as it grows older, earn the right to be heard. “I am sure the' boys are receiving the right nourishment in this school. Yet it is one of the schools called private schools. I think the country owes much to these schools, as they have freedom. As an American professor said, education would never be a complete success when its. administration w’as on the lines of standard mass production, and those private schools are delivered from the tyranny of certain examinations which are dominating education in this country. “In this school there are small classes which enable the teachers to give individual attention to the boys, and every boy gets an equal chance. It is not the brilliant, but the diligent, boy that gets there in the end. ...

“You boys are those who are going to build a new world. We older ones may help with the spade-work for another 10 or 20 years, but it is you who are destined to build a new and better world. Before all remember that never was anything achieved without regular hard work—that is the sAret, and there Is only one, of success. If you want to do God’s work in the world you cannot waste a year, or even a day. Your guiding lights should be duty, honour, loyalty,' service to your God and your country. Be a giver, not a taker; and never fail in your loyalty to your school.” • .