CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5492, 24 June 1879, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

TRUE EDUCATION. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Judging by the frequent reference to the subject of education in your later issues, and the interest which has consequently been evoked, I feel it will not be out of place to ask for the insertion of a few remarks, extracted from au article by Bowling Price, in the March number of Contemporary Review for 1879. At the conclusion of a very able argument on "The Work of a Classical Education," the accomplished writer thus summarises :—"The last merit to be claimed on behalf of classical education is the field which it opens to the action of the teacher, the close contact which it establishes between the mind of the boy and the mind of his master, the power with which it enables the whole nature of the teacher—his character and intellect—to influence and mould the nature of the pupil. This is the greatest work in education — the development of one human being by another. Book? written by great men are great things, but the living man himself is still greater. It is to the imperfect apprehension of this truth that the defective resultß of English schools are mainly to be attributed. The public feeling of this country does not recognise the extreme value of the specific gift of teaching, even though it was so conspicuously illustrated by the life of Dr. Arnold. Both the public and schools are content if masters are men of high classical attainment, if they have obtained distinguished honours, if they can construe any bit of Greek or Latin, if they turn out a good supply of special boys, who carry off in abundance open scholarships and prizes. And yet, for all that, they may te in fact radically bad schoolmasters, and these successes achieved by their eminent pupils may furnish but a moat ecan'.y justification of the general results of their Bnhools. And in what does the gift of teaching consist ? Assuredly not in the possession of a large body of solid learning; that is the smallest and least important qualification for educating youth. It consists infinitely more in the power of sympathy, the ability to place one's self in the exact position of the learner, to see things as he sees them, to feel the difficulties exactly as he feels them, to understand the precise point at which the obstacle bars the way, to be able to present the solution precisely in the form which will open the understanding of the pupil, and enable him, in gathering the new piece of knowledge, to comprehend its nature and its value. He will awaken the perception of broadest relations ; he will suggest principles and generalisations ; be will so handle his own stores as to let the pupil catch first glimpses, then successively clear outlines, of the ultimate form in which his own knowledge has settled down ; whilst the charmed disciple is brought to rejoice in his own strength, to feel that he, too, has the power of graspiDg high aud broad truths, to look with awe at first at the heights which his teacher has succeeded in reaching, and at last to become conscious that he may crown them also, and could rise above them. These remarks are made under the feeling that Englishmen not sufficiently alive to the immensity, and the decisive importance of the special qualities of a trite teacher. It would be enormously better for a boy to be trained by a real teacher with small learning, than by a man of great attaiuments, and no power to influence others. A hundred faults might o. forgiven to Eton or any other public schoo. —to Oxford or to Cambridge—if only the fundamental truth were recognised that the primary element of education is the teacher ; and if, as a consequence of that recognition, a great teacher were demanded and appreciated by the public with the same earnestness and discernment as a great barrister or a great physician." The good sense and deep importance of tbe foregoing must be apparent to every thinking guardian of youth, and will, no doubt, be sufficient warrant for troubling you with so lengthy a quotation.— I am, &c., Cadmus. June 21, 1879.