Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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4 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD tlirrat Erahntustrrs. The subjects of this essay. Drs. Thomas Arnold and Edward Thring. Hcndmasters of Rugby and Uppingham respectively, were not born great nor had greatness thrust upon them, but achieved greatness. What we already know of Dr. Arnold through his famous son Matthew lvide - Rugby Chapel . Sixth-Formersll makes it little surprising that his was the nature and his the intellect and leader- nhin best fitted to reform and invent for the great Public Schools. Findlay's excerpts from intimate touch with the ter. Coming to Rugby was being expressed on encountered a field only Stanley's Life of Arnold give us a very thought and action of the great Headmas- as he did, at a time when dissatisfaction every hand of the existing institutions, he too open for improvement. And from our knowledge of the man we know that what he did achieve was the birth ot' a mind and soul crying out for a revolution in matters of Public School Education. His early years at Laleham, his love of tuition and the success which attended his small classes there, laid the foundation of the practical side of his reforms: what changes he made might be attributed in large measure to the suggestion he welcomed from all sides, even from former pupils of his School. He first established a connection between Masters and Boys and between Masters and himself, the lack of which had long been an evil ln Public Schools. He maintained that School business was to claim the undivided interest of the boys and yet they were to have suillclent leisure for self-improvement. In each Master he desired to see what he was in his own department. It was an increasing delight to him to inspire them with the general views of life and educ-tion. bv which he was himself so fully possessed. Ultimately, so thoroughly did the School depend on him that whatever defects lt had were his defects, whatever excellences it had were his excel- lences. As to School policy, his wish was that as much as possible should be dozic by the boys and not for them: hence arose his practice of treating the boys as gentlemen, and making them respect them-

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 3 ' flllluair in thr Svrhnul. This Term has been an eventful one' with hard knocks all along. The singing in the Chapel was remarkably good from the com- mencement, a new method of singing rather than chanting the can- ticles was introduced and enthusiastically taken up by Choristers and School alike. U In the midst of our preparations for special music for the usual Confirmation Service and Easter Festival, that unromantic complaint known as mumps appeared in the Junior School, the necessary iso- lation of the Boys resulting in the disappearance of the Trebles from the Choir. We missed them very much but continued to make sat- isfactory progress by holding practices in both Schools until that ghastly coniiagration of March 3rd. destroyed both School and the magnificent Chapel. NOTICE T0 OUR FRIENDS The Headmaster has received so many kind expressions of sym- pathy that it has been quite impossible for him to answer them per- sonally. Through the Record he wants to thank everybody for the wonderful confidence reposed in us all. s i c nl fl ff

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 5 x selves by the respect he showed to them, and of showing that he ap- pealed and trusted to their own common sense and conscience. Punishment by flogging he retained but confined it absolutely to moral offences and habitual idleness. Certain evils he recognized as ineradicable by external authority, and the remedy he could only see in a system of self-government among the boys: prefects and fagging. To this he attached great importance not only as an effic- ient engine of discipline, but as the chief means of creating a respect for moral and intellectual excellence, and of diffusing his own in- fluence through the mass of the School His greatest prayer to the boys, whom he put in authority, was: What we must look for here is first, religious and moral principles: second, gentlemanly conductg third, intellectual ability. The name of Edward Thring is coupled with that of Thos. Arnold in naming two great educators who made a clearly defined improve- ment in Public School Education in England during the XIXth. cen- tury. From the matter in the great man's diaries we would gather that he resembles Dr. Arnold in his policy as to punishments. Each succeeded to a remarkable degree in establishing a greater intimacy between master and boy and instilling that wonderful respect for self and School. But I doubt very much if invention and reform are to be more accredited with their success than their personalities. Ou the whole their systems made for better communities from their time on, but some schools have deteriorated .since then with the same prefect systems but lacking that personality that made Rugby and Uppingham. Yet, Thring lived for his profession and that alone. All his lit- erary efforts are based on his work as a schoolmaster, never seeking ecclesiastical preferment in the midst of what was to nlm more con- genial work. And these same publications contain more truth than all the text-books on the practice of teaching. The pursuit of know- ledge as such he depricated, and masters who were a, mummified paste of Greek and Latin verbs he detested. With his own school rapidly improving under? his guidance he continued to be pessimistic and thought the cause still lost, but he worried unduly over little things that, as he thought, marred the whole programme. Thus he continued until his death, always making the Supreme Good his aim which he felt neither Uppingham nor any other school would achieve. Now, where the life of Edward Thring touches us most closely