HEADMASTERS’ DUTIES

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1934, Page 6

HEADMASTERS’ DUTIES

NEW PRINCIPAL’S VIEWS. LEARNING AND ATHLETICS. Dunedin, Sept. 13. The duties of a headmaster were discussed by the new principal of John McGlashan College, Mr. R. G. C. McNab, when he was welcomed by the Board of Governors and parents to-night. “There has recently been conducted in England a controversy which is something to . the point,” Mr. McNab said. “At Eton, Harrow and Uppingham there have lately been appointed young headmasters, who were university dons, not professional schoolmasters. This did pot please everyone. One controversialist, the Rev. Adam Fox, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, has declared that the. headmaster of a public school should have three qualities—business capacity, social ease, even to the point of agility, and a flair for making an impression in public. He mentions other desirable, but not indispensable, qualities—that he should be a good teacher, a good speaker, a good-looking man, or good with boys. There is more than a touch of worldliness about these prescriptions, and I hope they were not in the minds of those who appointed me. It seems to me the position is very different, especially when one regards New Zealand headmasters of acknowledged greatness like J. W. Tibbs, of Auckland Grammar School, or J. P. Firth, of Wellington College.” The speaker added z that these men regarded their schools more as places of learning than was the fashion today. They had a reverence for scholarship and. a determination to make their boys work. Balance had sometimes been lost in letting it appear that characterbuilding was better achieved by organised athleticism and by other out-of-school activities. Such influences were powerful, but the best character-build-ing was done in the classroom.

“It is the business of the headmaster tc see that in his school the classroom, the playing-field and other methods of training receive their due consideration, but the greatest of these is the classroom,” added Mr. McNab.