'This evening, as we are favoured with suitable weather, we shall have aquatic sports. Some of the heats and the competition in diving have already been working off, leaving the' finals, the punt races and the 80" obstacle race to be settled to-day.
Educational Difficulties.
These there are, of course; most of them avoidable, some peculiar to the East. One of the most serious is defective early education. I would again urge parents not to postpone sending their sons to school at the usual age, not to impose this quite unnecessary handicap on them.
Another obstacle to a boy's progress is a too frequent change of school. I read some years ago the headmaster's annual report on one of our schools in the East. If I remember the figures rightly, he said that the number of pupils in the school at the beginning of the year was 40, and he had the same number at the end, but in the interval 23 had left and 23 new pupils had been admitted.
'A great deal of th's sort of thing goes on in the East, but to describe it as "education" is, of course, farcical.
Sometimes a few parents club together and engage a governess to teach their children. I trust she is well paid, for the task set her of teaching at one and the same time children of different ages and standards is herculean. The astonishing thing is that sometimes really good work is done and definite progress made, When this is so, I hope the parents concerned render honour where honour is due, and humbly do homage to an educational genius. They may not be aware of it, but theirs is a rare and precious acquisition—a "'born teacher" who has triumphed over almost insuperable difficulties.
But whatever the reason may be—whether avoidable avoidable—for so educating children, don't let us" dignify a make-shift and often temper arrangement with the title "school." That is not echod.
"Select" Schools.
As in England, there are people in this part of the world who would like to have their sons educated in so-called "'select"" schools, A school in the East that attempted to make social distinctions would, I am epnvinced, be a financial failure. The "'selectness" of school at home is largely measured by an ignorant public by the scale of fees charged. Those of my profession, who have worked in different types of school, know that the tone of a school has little or nothing to do with the price charged for the education supplied. You can no more secure a high-toned school for your eon by cash payments, than you can purchase a good character for yourself. This must be obvious to all who are not blinded by social prejudice. The high fees charged by some of our largest and old-established schools did not prevent a well-known publicist, the late W. T. Stead, from de-them as the "nurseries of vice"
Moreover, the tone of a school may differ widely at different periods of its existence, There was an amazing change wrought in the moral atmosphere of Rugby during the period that Dr. Arnold, per hay greatest of modern schoolmasters, ruled there.
Even Arnold—a man of tremendous force of character and personality—could not effect reform without wholesale expulsions. I quote from one of his addresses in the school chapel,—''It is not neces~ sary that should be @ school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be school of Christian:
I don't suppose that, in these democratic days, anyone will claim that gentility, any more than Christianity, is the peculiar possession of any particular sub-section of modern society.
Here, then, we cannot recognize social distinctions, and I am bound to say that some of our best and most promising pupils have come from humble homes, the children of people who are not rich. The school also reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the white population in the East; and we have had here at one time or another representatives of almost every European nationality. This, too, I regard as beneficial—a cortective to some of our insular defects and prejudices.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.