THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19,1896.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10319, 19 December 1896, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19,1896.

The London School Board, a body composed of men of eminence and ability, anxious above all things for the improvement of the children under their charge-has beeti latijly discussing two questions of considerable importance, but somewhat out of the ordinary routine of the topics of a, School Board, The first was, ''Are tlio manners of the children improving, and are they what they ought to fa?" We bold that this question of manners is by no means of trivial importance.. Manners constitute the atmosphere that surrounds the children in -their intercourse with one another, with their parents, their brothers and psters, with acquaintances and with all around them. If children ate trained to be civil to each other, respectful to their elders, kindly and obliging to strangers, always with studious self-respect, it will sweeten the whole course of their lives, elevatq their moral natures, and improve iho entire atmosphere of society. Whether the manners of children are becoming better i£ a very wide question, If any map says they are better than ill his young days, he lays himself open to the retoyt that he speaks for lyimgelf and the circle that surrounded him in youth. For our own part, we are decidedly of opinion that the manners of young people have greatly improved within, say, thirty or forty years. Probably this improvement must be ascribed to many causes. The greater diffusion of education is, no doubt, one chief reason, the extension of the. suffrage and the political power accorded in.' ways to the masses, leading to a mingling of classes which formerly were -entirely separated. All th?se things must have tended to ameliorate the bearing and manners not (jiily of adults but of children. Another cause is probably the increased deference consideration shown to women. Besides the distinction in maimers which formerly existed in different classes, there was ways a j dirtetfenc»> amongst the various nationalities {ivhich constituted the population pf the British Isles. < The children of the English farm-labouring class wertj too' hopelessly dull for any good manners to bo expected from them. They wero taught to pull their forelock to the' parson and the landlord, but that was /not good : maimers. The children of the larger towns and country districts/ of Scotland were simply" the rudest and coarsest of barbarians. Probably the most naturally courteous and j polite children were the ; better brought up of Ireland and Wales, ; .Tie chairman of the School Management Committee of the London School

&QM<i reported At a recent meeting that the .schools long since prrivetj, as near as possible, <f> the highest point which the " grantindicator" registered, and trifling kapjbyanente were 110$ all that was requisite] Manners ( too. lie acknowledge,!, had |pejj iniprQv.ed, but was ''qijite ccjrapatibjo with. th& fact that in this regard we are half a l?, e tyiud ftny otjiqr nfttipfi of Western Europe.'' 'As an example of this, he ' said that /one in ay fide pne's horse or bicycle through the capital or provincial tywiyj of the ppntin^ji t, and he free from any annoyance, while in England you wepp §a]ujt,ed with gibes 94$ .fiajrCftjlg, which, while not always ill-natured, wer« distinctly ill-man-wprgd. H.e W°.tfce4 in (dppei)|sg§n that even the working men raised their .caps whenever they met an acquaintance. This is perjiaps tog much, *is lifting of the hat 01! cap is the mark of politeness reserved fop ladies. We can see one formidable difficulty in W £ttsW)P,t to iijjproye tjie manners of the children tending our public schools. The discussions >v|jjjc}} jsJcg place at the Board of Education are pyWislie.d, and i/i must be evident to all the fourth standard bpys ancj girl§ jylip read the Herald that good manners are not to be found there. Politeness and courtesy are often conspicuous by their fibgence. The members of the Board will have to take lessons from the toy,? p( Truaift (School in Albertstreet.

Mr. Riley opened tip the second question by asking, What effect was the education of the children of London lia\ ing upon their characters V It is a vital query to be put ps to the results of any education system. The answer here would have to lie that character, the raising of the moral Status, was not in the syllabus, and \vou)d not return any results to the teacher, He was judged by results in school attainments, not jn character. If he thought at some time that he might usefully devote an l.'Purto mora] training, to showing the children the beauty of courtesy, of moral dignity and rectitude (which he might do by narrating some story pr incident) lie would be immediately checked by the thought that the inspector could take no account of this, and that he had better speud the time in grinding and cramming for the next standard "exam." On this subject one of the members of the London School Board said He himself had been a teacher for eight years, and it was 'always a struggle with liini, every morning and aftemoob, to devote some time to morn) training and to formini; the character of die children. That was not set down i|i the Qoyeraniend grant, and if he djd not [jet the Government grant he wpuld have been a professional failure. If he had made a iioiat pf ipoi'al influence his Board would have asked him to leave because he had not secured the grant. The system of paying a teacher for what he could cram into a child's brains was responsible for the fnovul fallfiig

There are many dangers attending oui' education system, in coinmgji wjtli th;it of England. And perhaps the most formidable is, that it seems to give the young people who pass through it the ideti that they are educated, that there is npthing more to be done, that they are up to a, certain standard, aaid that the Government of tlie country has declared that standard to be sufficient. The boy may be well up in liis arithmetic and geography, but ho is usually quite ignorant of what constitutes history, he knows little or nothing of literature or science, Audi his settled conviction that he is educated prevents him from learning anymore. But a§ respects manners, which was the question with which we started, we feel sure there hqs been an improvement of late years, partly owiug to the better education; of the masses, ant} partly to mjiny other causes, some of which we have already mentioned. But there is yet considerable room for improvement and the Board might do much good in respect to manners and the general improvement of character. First, as a matter of course, they'DAust begin with themselves. They must be courteous and polite to each othe/r, considerate of each other's convenience, tolerant of differences, never attributing low or improper motives, 'pien the teachers will follow the example, and will inculcate truthfulness in the children, with kindly and considerate action towards each other,