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Otago Daily Times, Issue 18747, 28 December 1922, Page 4

WORK AND PLAY. More than one secondary schoolmaster in the dominion has seized, the occasion of the Christmas breaking-up iu order to comment pointedly on the prominent position occupied by games in connection with educational activity in these days. The subject, which crops up from time to time, should be treated in a • spirit of dispassionate moderation, unhampered by one-sided prejudice; and it should not be difficult to strike the just mean indicated by right reason and common sense. That the cult of athletic prowess has sometimes been carried to excess at schools and universities—though leas perceptibly in New Zealand than in the Home Country—is an undeniable fact; but games and other sports have a legitimate place in tho scholastic drama, and no wise educationist would wish to revert to the times when they,were virtually unknown. It was said by the eminent writer whose centenary we noticed a few days ago that “conduct” should be estimated as three-fourths of life, the remaining fourth comprising literary and artistic culture, learning, amusement, and other accessories. This dictum may be adapted to the matter under consideration. It may reasonably be suggested that instruction, in tho ordinary sense, should furnish at least three-fourths of school activity. That leaves a fourth part of the available time and energy to sports and other secondary avocations,—a sufficiently liberal allowance, which, however, has not always satisfied tho devotees cf athleticism. The hero of that much-criticised but intensely interesting book, “The Loom of Youth,” thus delivers his soul at the school debating society: “Games were invented because people wanted to enjoy their exercise. We all love games. I love cricket, but that does not make me worship it. We can like a thing without bowing down to it, and that’s how we have got to treat games. . . . Games don’t win- battles, but brains do, and brains aren’t trained on the footer field. It is time we realised that. . : . We can seq games as they really are without any false mist of sentiment, and we can see that for years we have been worshipping something utterly wrong.” It may he a moot question whether expert efficiency at football is entirely without value in relation to mental training. The confident young debater added : “No one works at a public school. People who do are despised. If they happen to be good at games as well, they are tolerated.” This arbitrary generalisation, whatever may he or have been its degree of applicability in England, could never have possessed any descriptive accuracy as regards New Zealand schoolsWe would emphasise the principle that scholarship and athleticism ought not to be divided by a sharp line,—ought not to have separate representatives, as it were. The scholar should he a sportsman ; the school athlete should consider himself hound in honour to excel at his work as well as his play. This dual efficiency is the essential idea of the Rhodes scholarship system,—some aspects of which, by the way, were subjected to criticism a few days ago by the retiring head master of the Auckland Grammar School. We are disposed to think that the criticism is not quite just. It would certainly be a mistake to send “mere sports’ representatives” to Oxford as Rhodes scholars, but we venture to question whether the word “mere”, is applicable to a single instance of selection in the history of the Trust. It may be (as Mr Tibbs declares) that newspapers have sometimes given unbalanced prominence to the athletic qualifications cf successful candidates; but it is not too much to say that adequate scholastic qualifications have never been wanting. Cecil Rhodes’s central idea touched the happy mean to h'hich we have alluded as the guiding principle in the matter 'of work and play.