LIONISING SCHOOL ATHLETES

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 190, 10 May 1934, Page 8

LIONISING SCHOOL ATHLETES

Head of King’s College Replies to Critic “PERSONAL ABUSE IS NO ARGUMENT” The controversy over the question whether a team of New Zealand schoolhoys should take part in the Melbourne Centenary celebrations is carried further to-day with a letter to the Editor of “The Dominion” by the Rev. 11. K. Archdull. headmaster of King’s College. Auckland, in reply to Mr. F. Milner, headmaster of Waitaki Boys’ High School, Oamaru. Mr. Archdall writes:— To the Editor. Sir, —My attention Ims been drawn to letters from the headmaster of Waitaki Boys’ High School criticising my opposition to sending a team of New Zealand secondary schoolboys, during term time, to the Melbourne Centenary celebrations. When a public man seeks to support any cause by personal abuse one may generally conclude that he has a weak case.. I am told that I am "guilty of churlish depreciation”—that my attitude has a “soupcon of unctuous rectitude,’.’ aud, best of all, that my view is simply “gloomy vaticinations of a selfconstituted hierarch of athletic purism,” all of which is unworthy personal abuse. It seems that Mr. Milner is carried away with the exuberance ■jf his own verbosity. Then I am informed pontiiically that sportsmanship makes Imperial unity possible, and that apparently Imperial unity depends upon the sending’ of schoolboys to Melbourne to prove who can run fastest and jump furthest. It is a matter of “Imperial co-operation.” That, of course, is emotional thinking. Mr. Milner admits that "stunt exploitation” and the tendency to the “purely spectacular” is a bad thing, but assures us that . the Melbourne Centenary is “on a plane immune from that taint.” He gives us no reasons for that opinion. I can claim to know more of the tendency of school sport in Melbourne than Mr. Milner, as I was for eight years headmaster of an Australian school, and I am fortified in my opinion by the unanimous refusal of the great public schools of New South Wales to send boys to Victoria. What I object to is allowing school sport to be organised by anybody outside the schools themselves, for it is that which produces the tendency to “stunts” and “undue publicity” which Mr. Milner agrees is harmful. Anyone who knows anything of the lionising of school athletes as is common in Melbourne could not ■possibly describe my fear as "apocryphai” and as a “bogey.” It is inslructlve that Mr. Darling, the new headmaster of Geelong Grammar School, who has recently come from England, is anxious to put ft- stop to the inter-school boat race in Melbourne, which again confirms my opinion that the present proposal is not in accordance with the best English tradition. This also reminds me of Mr. Milner’s confusion in saying that I criticised American sportsmanship in general. That I never did. I was discussing American school and college athletes, and I could cite prominent Americans who are greatly concerned with current tendencies to the commercialisation of school and. college sports. His reference to Dr. Norwood. of Harrow, is particularly unfortunate. Everyone knows that Dr. Norwood, like all sensible people, postulates Anglo-American friendship as “the fundamental necessity for world peace,” but Mr. Milner does not mention Dr. Norwood’s strong condenmnation of international sport as tending to the development of a false set of values. Dr. Norwood would be on my side in this controversy, and against Mr. Milner. I therefore contend that to take New Zealand schoolboys from school in term time for at least a month and send them to the Melbourne Centenary under the conditions which will undoubtedly obtain there could only be called “education in a very abused” sense of that word. — I am. etc.. H. K. ARCHDALL. King’s College, Auckland. STRONG DISAPPROVAL Headmasters’ Resolution Definite views on the question whether secondary school athletes should be sent to the Melbourne Centenary celebrations were expressed yesterday at the annual conference in Wellington of the Association of Heads of Registered Secondary Schools, which has concluded its session.

The following resolution was carried :—“That this conference thinks it inadvisable to send secondary school athletes from New Zealand to the Melbourne Centenary celebrations on the grounds that (1) it'will tend to have an undesirable influence on the character and “general, outlook of the boys by giving sport an undue value in in their minds: (2) it will take boys away from school for at least one month: (3) it will be contrary to the best traditions of school sport in New Zealand which regards sport as part of school life, to be controlled and managed by the schools themselves and not by outside bodies.”