South Canterbury Times, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1883.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3332, 6 December 1883, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1883.

The Timaru High School Board, we trust and believe, entered on Tuesday evening, on a new era of prosperity and peace. The Board of Governors were unanimous in electing as their new Chairman a gentleman who, all parties agree, is eminently fitted for the position, and Mr McKerrow’s proposal that be should be so elected was peculiarly graceful. The most important business of the meeting was the consideration of the reports of Professors Brown and Shand, upon their recent examination of the school. Both these gentlemen, who, in their several departments, are universally recognised as specially qualified ; and whose academic status affords a guarantee of their impartiality, had evidently bestowed the utmost pains upon the examination , and the reports submitted by them are of the highest value. What most of all convinces of the soundness of the Professors’ judgment, and the truthfulness of their verdict, is the fact that they have vigorously denoted the weak points. We rise from a perusal of these reports with two predominant feelings, (amounting indeed to positive conviction), viz. :(l)that the examiners have thoroughly and most searchingly examined the school, and most frankly indicated the results, and (2) that the efficiency of the school is now proved byond question. These unavoidable conclusions, it seems to us, it is the duty of all to loyally accept. It is to be presumed that the welfare of the school was the one thing which all parties sought during the former contentions, each in its own way and after its own ideas. While the late soreness .of feeling existed, the school was heavily handicapped, and the chances of its coming out with credit

from the ordeal of a searching examination were terribly diminished. It had been long and persistently denounced ; it has now been subjected to an examination of a most searching and analytic character, and it has come forth, we may say, triumphant. It has its weak points—the professors have not plastered it with nauseating praise—but its general state is declared, and shoivn, to be most sound and healthful. It seems to us that now a point has been reached from which a new departure ought to bo taken by all parties. To the imputations of incorapetency in the Hector and unsoundness in the progress of the school (imputations which have been freely uttered), the report of the professors is a sufficient answer ; the school maintains its position in the front rank of the secondary schools of the colony. This we say should now be loyally accepted by all parties, and there should be from henceforth a generous rivalry only to advance the interests of the institution. Mr McKerrow, on Tuesday evening, went to the root of a good deal of the trouble, viz., the excessive frequency of Board meetings. The school has been too much legislated about, and left too little to itself. We pointed that out long ago, and we are pleased to see that members of the Board have now come to the same way of thinking. So far of the school, which we sincerely wish bon voyage throughout the future.

We cannot allow the occasion to pass without something more than a passing reference to Professor Brown’s report. This document, it seems to us, is a valuable contribution, not merely to the records of the Timaru High School, but to the whole educational world. We are impelled to make this remark by a conviction of the absolute fidelity of the Professor’s suggestive treatise on the deficiency in respect of English composition which characterises every secondary school in the colony, and, we are tempted to say, in the Empire. It points to a state of things which we know to be correctly indicated. It was true, emphatically true, of the best of the English public schools ; It is still true. The question arises—ls this state of things incurable ? The report we are now considering declares that it is curable. On the other hand there are eminent scholars who maintain that the art of composition cannot be taught. The truth lies, we think, between the two. The power to express oneself in elegant English, with facility and correctness, is more rare than it is generally supposed to be. It is given to very few persons to have a ready command of language. Bat it is not impossible to acquire some skill and readiness in composition, and we entirely concur with the Professor,that a strong effort should be made to mend this universal defect. But no effort will succeed, till the curriculum of our schools is purged of the vexatious grammatical rules, which overload the memory and hamper the other faculties. When this is done, and the imagination, the sympathy, the taste, of the pupils are brought into play,and progressive lessons are given in the expression of ideas, composition will no longer be a weak point everywhere. It is marvellous that some of our educational reformers and rule-makers do not open up a new path to teachers and pupils in a matter of such vast importance.

In our correspondence columns last evening, “ An Elector ” drew attention to a point of great importance, both local and national. He places side by side, the recent declaration of the Member for Gladstone that Government would in all probability impose an additional £d in the £ property tax to make up a deficit in the revenue, and the fact that the grain traffic on our railways is so mismanaged that the department is actually worked here at a loss, and comments with deserved severity upon the inconsistency of Government in mismanaging its sources of revenue, imposing additional burdens on the people to make up for the loss entailed by such mismanagement. “An Elector ” asks whether Mr Sutter ought not to have given his constituents some idea on the subject. For our own part, we think he ought at once to be called upon to do so, and to explain why he should so readily acquiesce in a proposal to increase taxation. It would be more creditable to him to bestir himself to see this matter right. The real extent of the wrong is at once apparent. The Railway Department has instituted special rates from Albury to Washdyke, and thence again to Lyttelton, making it actually more to the advantage of the farmer of South Canterbury to send his grain, for shipment, to Lyttelton, than to forward it to the natural outlet of his district, the port of Timaru. We should like to know how Government would defend their action in this matter. We may well protest indignantly against a manipulation of the grain tariff in the interest of Christchurch merchants which, while it inflicts a serious injury on this port, also results in loss to the colonial revenue and increased taxation. Government should endeavor to foster the port of the district, not to drive trade away from it to the other centres of population. We respectfully offer these little nuts to the Member for Gladstone to crack at bis leisure, and the electors will be glad to hear from him on the subject of “ An Elector’s ” letter, at an early date.