PUBLIC SCHOOLS DEFENDED

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 October 1933, Page 2

PUBLIC SCHOOLS DEFENDED

RUGBY HEAD’S SCORN. LONDON, August 5. The type of public school which might develop if some of the modern critics had their way was described by Mr P. H. B. Lyon, Headmaster of Rugby, when addressing the students at the City of London Vacation Course yesterday. “I confess,” said Mr Lyon, “I do not believe in or welcome the possibility of the type of school beloved of our writers of Utopias, schools where we shall have grassy walks and quiet streams, beautiful buildings in perfect surroundings, where we shall have soul-mates dawdling down avenues, communing with each other, clad in beautiful clothes, if any at all. “Schools where all is peace and beauty, where every heart is at ease, every complex resolved, and all examinations are ended, where everyone will do what he likes when he likes, and is brilliant at everything-, where boys will govern themselves by native instinct and sweet reasonableness. “I have no fondness for that vague atmosphere in which formal religion and compulsory work and games give place to a woolly spiritual atmosphere, the apothesis of a super-Dalton plan, where compulsory games will give place to voluntary Greek dancing, lute playing, and perhaps I should add aeronautics; where man does not have to earn his bread by the sweat of his bre-w, nor have’ to summon a stout heart against disaster, nor face disappointment and petty worry with a sense of humour.

“As I see it, life is not going to be • like that, and, after all, we are here ' to prepare boys for life.” I LESSENED RISKS. Mr Lyon said he believed that the public schools were on the right track and would reform rather than destroy. “We are already approaching a right view of physical education, and beginning to realise the importance and master the technique of education in sex. More still are we beginning to link school up with the world, and' to teach boys, especially towards the end of their time, the duty of service, the necessity and understanding of. the need for sympathy.” It was true that parents who sent their boys to public boarding schools took certain risks, but they were far less than they were ten or twenty years ago. “There is a movement going on inside our public schools,” said’ Mt Lyon, “which is making them in all respects more fitting to receive our children. That movement is due to the work of the assistant masters in our public schools. “They and the work they have done, together with certain tendencies in the outside world 1 , are making our public schools better places to-day than they have ever been in the past. “To-day I believe it is the exception for a boy to come across bad influences in his school. “There are difficulties of course in public schools which a new boy has to face, and I believe that there should be these difficulties. Character is formed

. by facing and overcoming difficulties, ; and I can only claim that in our public schools these difficulties are not unJ reasonable, and they are not malicious or corrupt. “The public schools are called exclusive and are supposed to encourage ' snobbery/ I do not believe this. We are getting boys from homes where snobbery is encouraged, it is true, but, as far as is possible, that attitude is not only not tolerated _ but is denounced at the public schools. “The boy we value and the boy we want to get is the boy from the poor home with the tradition behind it of service to the country.” With regard to the criticism that too much attention was given to games, Mr Lyon said that boys to-day de-, finitely disliked what he might describe as “a tough.” That was the hoy who was all brawn and muscle and no brain. Though this wa.s the type of boy who used to bo regarded' as the school hero in days gone by, today boys reserved their real hero-’ worship for character. On fagging and bullying, Mr Lyon said: “For the ordinary boy the only fagging you get nowadays in school is not: undesirable and is even rather enjoyable. "As for bullying, this is comparatively rare to-day—especially the bullying of a younger boy by an older one. But you do find some of the younger boys bullying their contemporaries. Little boys are great bullies, and this is one of the things wo try to stamp out.” ' I

scheme which had been so very obviously needed. Now, however, some one has revealed that the “patients” were not invalids at all, but soldiers from the town garrison, who had been gi anted a day’s “sick” leave.” Some people are amused at. the story 1 —a few are a trifle embarrassed. ’