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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 65

Education

Education.

I may now refer to education. The question of Bible reading in schools is a difficult one, and it is strange that it should be so. At the school which I attended page 150 in Edinburgh, we had an hour every week devoted to Bible history; and Jews and Catholics attended the school. These could stop away when that lesson was being taught, and there is no apparent cause why a somewhat similar plan would not suit here. I think at any-rate it is a thousand pities that the Bible was ever allowed to leave the schools. It is the exponent of the Divine mind, and is the crown of nature and of man, be he old or young. The youth of New Zealand may not be so hardy as the youth of Britain, but I don't think they are so delicate and soft as to be unable to read the Bible. It might not be needed for every scholar to carry all the book on his back, but extracts sufficient and suitable for the young, could easily be made and read. A revised translation of the Old Testament will soon appear, which we hope may be read more easily and intelligibly by all. This, with the revised version of the New, might commend itself to our notice.

In school books I think there is room for great changes, though they have been improved a little within the last twenty years. Phonetic spelling is however, still wanting, and until that is introduced the printing press is not full powered. The alphabet we now use is the Roman. That alphabet in its best days was never a good one, never equal to the Greek one. Rome was not literary. We have got many page 151 things from the Romans and have invariably improved on them. The Roman plough and the present double-furrow one are different. But the alphabet remains to this day the same, whilst instead of going forward with it we have gone backward, for we do not use it with consistency. The result is a bungle and a waste which future time will wonder at and condemn. Probably every language should consist, like the Sanscrit, of 50 signs. This would give a few signs to spare for the more common affixes and prefixes. The saving in writing and reading, in pens, ink, and paper, in easy learning and legibility, would be, even in a small country like New Zealand, very great. I could not certainly say how much it would amount to, but would name .£50,000 a year as the probable gain. In teaching foreign languages, some of which, like the French, for instance, are badly spelt, I think the pronunciation should be shown on all school books. They might be arranged in double columns for this and other comments. Latin is a favourite study with me, and I esteem very poorly the pronunciation of it as taught here. The quantities of all the syllables should be marked in the school books and the words pronounced accordingly. When the visions of a universal language which have floated for long before the minds of men assume more of form and force, the prospects of Latin, once so high in that page 154 servants can be done without. If you agree with a man to do any work, you must first tell him what that work is. If, then, the magistrate is to do certain public work here or elsewhere, he must first be told what that work is, and having been thus told, a base of attack and defence is marked off, and criticism may proceed accordingly. If you let a piece of fencing, how can you challenge the number of men employed on it, unless you first state the number of chains to be done? The cases are nearly similar The want of this agreement has been one of the greatest plagues the Colony has had to endure.

Regarding another plague, the plague of drunkenness, I may tell you that I am in favour of total prohibition. If we are to maintain our position in a world of competition and progress, the necessity of this is peremptory. Other communities are now up to this plane. Could not more games be established in which County could compete with County, and where the victors would be more honoured than now? Archery, "that ancient and noble art," might return to us; and other excitements and exercises be opposed to dissipation.