THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1902.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11872, 25 January 1902, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1902.

| The Auckland Board of Education has decided to give preference to the teaching of French, as against Latin, in the district high schools. When French is effectively taught this departure will be a distinct comi mercial gain, though many .will question the value of the argument employed by Mr. Petri e as to its literary value. Dismissing for the moment all idea of technical commercial education, and confining ourselves solely to tho consideration of what makes for Culture, there seems to us to be overwhelming evilence for the superiority of Latin. It. is true that Latin is as dead as the Roman Empire, but in it is embalmed all the wisdom of the ancients, the poetry, the philosophy, the knowledge, of one of- the greatest of civilisations. That France has a great literature none will question, but it is incomparably inferior to our own and contains comparatively little peculiar merit. French is but one of the European tongues which unitedly express the literary conceptions of the West, which have all much in common, in none of which' is any monopoly of thought, art . or knowledge. Latin, on the other stands monumentally alone and. contains in its literature not merely matchless examples of literary art, but fathomless wells of human thought not to be found elsewhere. We would not depreciate the study of French literature or deprecate the affording of ample opportunity to obtain this or any other form of mental enlightenment. But it should not be forgotten that we have had master-minds, such as Carlyle, who have urged the study of German literature as opening to us wider and longer spiritual vistas than are presented to us in any other living tongue and that we have never had any master-minds, who questioned the supreme value of the literary "treasures bequeathed to us by the writers of ancient Rome. The in- ; fluence ' of' the Latin authors has moulded our English literature.: The study of Latin has increased our comprehension of the hidden meaning of the word-symbols by which the genius of our race has made itself articulate. But we are essentially a compromising people, dominated always by • practical reasons even though they may not be prominent in our discussions and decisions. Were French really being judged as a literary rival to Latin it would find few friends on our Board of Education, and we doubt altogether if the inspectors ■would champion it. But Ave are gradually awakening as a commercial people to the desirability and even necessity of making more general a knowledge of living tongues. This awakening is so universal that' neither inspectors nor Boards of Education could escape it, even supposing they sought to emulate Rip Van Winkle. And they have no such wish. There must always and inevitably be differences of opinion as to ways and methods, but those in active control of our schools have invariably shown a laudable desire to maintain and increase the efficiency of their charge. In this spirit they respond readily to any practical suggestion for the improvement of the service which the schools render to the community, without pedantically quibbling over the reasons advanced. A- greater knowledge of French is exceedingly desirable among the v youth of the colony who are likely to pursue commercial or professional avocations. It is a tool of their trade and the public will generally approve the decision to give it preference over Latin for that most practical of motives. But we would impress Upon the Board the desirability of treating it as a living tongue and not as a dead one. Scholar!! should be taught to speak it, not merely to read it and to write it, should be versed in the fluent French of to-day and not in the archaic French of the Seventeenth and 3 Eighteenth centuries. This seems to us absolutely requisite, unless the i time of scholars is to be wasted and [ the value of language-teaching largely lost. 3 Treating the teaching of modern • languages as a commercial necessity —and we cannot suppose that any one of them is ousting Latin from - the schools upon literary grounds . alone— educational authorities ought to consider the claims of German and Spanish. Commercially, German is at least as useful as French; many hold it to be more useful and here in the Pacific, which for six thousand miles is coasted by Spanish-speaking territory, Ave have exceptional commercial inducements to acquire the whole of the four great languages of the civilised world. If any Board of Education wishes literary reasons a ■ strong case can be made out for the tongue of Goethe and Schiller, while much might be said for the study of Cervantes in the original Castilian. " For Ave are bound to become 1 a great commercial and maritime -people and this city .is certain to become one of the great centres of Pacific trade. French and German and Spanish are all spoken in the waters which may easily become our commercial domain. Much as we all hope to see the time when the Pacific will know no tongue but I English, meanwhile the knowledge 3 of neighbouring languages must be , increasingly advantageous to the in- , dividual and an additional safeguard [ to the State. The day is far distant when there will not be abundant opunity to study Latin in everj place where Letters are honoured and reverenced; and the day ought to be near when there will be equal opportunity, to acquire thope living

tongues without a fairly general knowledge of which we are at the mercy of foreigners the moment our business extends over the borders of our present Pacific sphere. ' <•■- f