CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6095, 31 May 1881, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

AUCKLAND COLLEGE AND GRAMMAR SCHOOL. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —AVo Aucklanders have a habit of allowing a small clique of active men to carry everything their own way, and waking up when too late to stop the mischief. The present clock, for instance. The same supineness promises to allow a few theorists to upset our Grammar School and turn it from its original purpose. It is to be feared that this apparent indifference arises to some extent from a want of realising the radical nature of the proposed change, and the effect it is likely to have on the future education of our boys. Wo have at the present time a Grammar School in which, by abundance of testimony which cannot be denied, an education of a sound commercial character has been given to a large number of men who are certainly in no way inferior to their fellows in any place, and that same sound commercial education is still given in that school. Now, all at once, by a deep-laid plot, a classical fad is uppermost, the character of the school is to be changed, a small classical aristocracy is to be set up, and the commercial boys with their master are to take a back seat and be of secondary consideration. What sort of a people are we if we stand this ? The education of 95 of every 100 of our boys to make them practical men and good merchants and tradesmen must necessarily be of a commercial character, and why is this education, which is exactly what the great bulk of the people want, to be insulted and pushed back to make way for classical snobbery, which is doing to real useful education all through the country an immense amount of mischief? Where, Sir, 1 would ask, is the superiority of those who have received this classical education iu fighting the battle of life in the colonies? Take away the members of the learned professions, and we have not many of these classical gentry left, and yet who of us but can remember not a few of those few who are totally unsuited for the higher colonising work '! They are often to be found as shepherds or bullock-drivers, living in a state of semi-barbarism. Lord Palmerston once told an anecdote of three shepherds taking shelter iu a cave in Australia during a storm, and, on comparing notes, one had been a senior wrangler, another had taken high honours at Oxford, and the third had been a professor at Heidelberg. Sir B. Head relates that he was thrashed at school for not knowing where the Scamander was ; in after years having seen the little trumpery rivulet referred to, he met in South America with mighty rivers, five times as wide as the English Channel, between Dover anc. Calais, of which ho had never heard when at school. Ido not decry a classical education for those few whose profession may seem to require it. Let them have the opportunity to get it, by all means ; they are the few, we are the many. Let not, therefore, the education which the bulk of us want for our boys, and which our Grammar School was specially instituted to give, be degraded by being thrust in the background, at the whim of anyone.—l am, &c., Commercial. Auckland, May 26, ISSI.

MAUICU SCHOOL SITE. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Allow me space to state that your reporter did not catch all my remarks re the above subject. The room iu which the meetings of the Board are held is most difficult for anyone to hear in, and I am not at all surprised at the omission. I stated that I supported the recommendation of the committee to acquire a site of two acres, which had been offered to the committee, as it was central, and I believe would satisfy both parties.—l am, &c., R. Hobus.

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