Part 3 (1/2)

Having considered the evils produced by shaiven to the masses of the people, we can proceed to exaenuine and efficient systeree necessary, for this purpose, to go into minute coes that have been established in this country In the actualthere is little to choose between them All have practically a co o to school are not destined for professions that necessitate the passing of an examination, competitive or otherwise But that does not disturb the school authorities a jot, or involve the slightest relaxation of the school system The boys are crah the e at the other There is noto the defects of his own early training and to the terrific Conservatism peculiar to his profession, probably knows no better process than the familiar routine of cram and idea-suppression

The whole of school life is a scraers andthe boys stuffed with facts, dates, figures, and inflections, because the prestige of the school--and consequently its commercial success--isof pupils in public exaed, or rather compelled, to occupy theardless of their oishes or obvious inclinations

A boy reat public schools, teeer-tips with an inborn thirst for scientific knowledge; hecrude experih a cheap astronorasp the rudi an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to his obvious bent of mind

He had been placed there, the authorities would say, to receive a general education, and a general education he should have If during the process all the scientific enthusiasround out of him, that is not the business of the schoolmaster The boy, for the ordinary purposes of instruction, is an empty bottle into which a certain prescription is to be poured The prescription has been made up beforehand, and cannot be altered The school undertakes to ad each case There is only one method of treatment, and every patient who enters the establishment has to be subhtened pedagogues The na will always stand out prolish school life, and it will be a bad day indeed for the youth in our public schools when their traditional influence shall have been entirely obliterated They grafted upon the establishedout as best in each pupil by other influences 'It is no wisdoies of information; but it is our wisdom and our duty to cultivate their faculties each in its season, first the ment; to furnish the the on the result'

Edward Thring wrote the following remarks in his diary:

'Education is not bookork, but the giving the subtle power of observation, the faculty of seeing, the eye and enius If the cursed rule- and technical terht be done

Three parts of teaching and learning in England is the hiding conorance under phrases'

No stranger anomaly can be conceived than that presented by the constant effort of these two eminent headmasters to undo the evils of a universal system of education It is not often that people strive to set their house in order after this fashi+on, and all honour is due to theeous endeavour Thewith a syste the bold step of abolishi+ng it altogether and beginning afresh on new and sound principles

The energies of school and Arnold are, in fact, concentrated le to prevent the ordinary process of school instruction froenerally rendered , for reasons that will be analyzed later on But boys whose brains are a are liable, unless the environment of the school is peculiarly unfavourable to the developish

It is the purely acade Football, cricket, and other athletic sports are not favourable to his growth; and he receives equally little encouragement from his companions The important point about him is that he is not a natural product at all, but the outco of the mind In a word, he is the embodiment of the education system, uncorrected by fortuitous influences and conditions Everybody knows that gracefulness is not acquired by means of stilted lessons in deportment, but that it consists of natural muscular movement untrammelled by self-consciousness or artifice The sa of the brain

Stuffing a boy's head with sohis mind, and the result must necessarily be as artificial as the process Theindividually and naturally; it becoive si ison the part of the victienerally only effected outwardly Priggishness cannot be eradicated from the system in a moment, even by the most heroic measures Its excision involves a slow mental process, the converse of that which served to call it into existence The prig has to divest himself of the false in all over again It is a hard lesson which can only be learnt in the school of life, generally after hu Many never succeed in learning it There must be some material to work upon, and probably their individuality, weak at the commencement and therefore doubly in need of tender treat care, has been hopelessly crushed out of existence by the conventional training of school and university

Under present conditions prigs can and do grow up everywhere In soreat public schools like Eton and Harrow--they aresystees are affected in a greater or less degree They infect our public life, as we have seen; largely recruit our public service; and are in evidence in the pulpit, at the schoolmaster's desk, on public platforms, in the lecture-room of the university, and wherever the services of educated men are e cannot be carried out as long as the exa 'I call that the best theinal coht for himself; that the next best, which shows that he has read several books, and digested what he has read; and that the worst, which shows that he has followed but one book, and followed that without reflection'

There is no time nowadays for a boy to read and think for himself

Besides the examinations inside his own school for which he has to be prepared, there are scholarshi+ps, university examinations, competitive examinations for the civil service, and a host of other possibilities of the kind, all of which necessitate the acquisition of an enor

Too much attention is concentrated on the admirable physical product of the athletic side of our public school and university life This advantage of the English system of education has been dwelt upon to such an extent, that people are apt to overlook the fact that, side by side with these fine specimens of healthy and for thea purely acaderessive description

If so to make you acquainted with a friend, says to you: 'I want you to meet So-and-so; he was at Eton and Trinity Hall, and came out tenth in the mathematical tripos,' you know exactly the kind ofto be introduced He will have a very proper contempt for made-up ties, and will refuse to fasten the bottom button of his waistcoat You know beforehand the precise point of view that he will take upon every conceivable topic, and the channels in which his conversation is certain to flow

His entire mental horizon will be bounded by academic conventionalities in such a cast-iron fashi+on that it would, you are well aware, waste your time to attempt to extend its boundaries by the fraction of an inch If you say anything yourself out of the beaten track, you know that you will be looked down upon as a fool or a faddist The Eton stae brand seared into every crevice of his mind There will be an individuality about him, but it will be an individuality shared in co men of the same educational antecedents

That is the fault of the syste traits of each individual, and substitutes a kind ofto the particular institution, or type of institution, in which the educational metamorphosis has taken place 'A ham from complete obscurity to the front rank of public schools, 'cannot be educated' It is, nevertheless, the process that is going on all over the civilized world Refor instruction itselfas the principle is retained of forcing certain facts and certain subjects into the mind of every boy, the country will continue to breed conventionality, to produce a unifors

This is, unfortunately, exactly what the average educationist aiuise about the belief that conventional ideas, and the e ability, are the sheet-anchor of the State And this type of fossilized Conservatisrow in proportion to the nues in the country

Lower-turned out on all sides cras are produced wholesale; the worst andthe seie and declaiarizes the public service by dropping his h's in the great Government departments, and others too nuar that pretends to be what it is not Priggishness is an artificial enerally suspect We are s, if we only knew it The et rid of conventions and to think for hiland is peopled with the the country to the dogs by sheer inability to grasp its needs;--and we send our sons to the schools and universities to be manufactured after the same pattern

CHAPTER VII

BOY DEGENERATION