Part 7 (1/2)

'There was little in his boyhood worth communication He was inferior to many of his schoolfellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do not reuished hilish composition, in prose or verse He was at the uppermost part of the fifth form, but he never reached the sixth, and, if Ithe most difficult and the most honourable of school business, when the Greek plays were taught--and it was the custoh his lessons in Horace and Virgil and Hoh for a time But, in the absence of the upper master, Dr Sumner, it once fell inup dick Sheridan, I found hi, but unusually defective in his Greek graht to have told you that Richard, when a boy, was a great reader of English poetry; but his exercises afforded no proof of his proficiency'

The latter state which failed to evoke, even in such a lish literature as Sheridan eventually proved hireatest talent No doubt the exercises in which so little proficiency was shoere co of such a pedantic character that no sane schoolboy could possibly be found to evince the smallest interest in them

Dean Swift and Sir Walter Scott were both dull boys The forree for dulness and insufficiency' Scott, in his autobiographical sketch, does not make himself out to have been the dunce that he really was supposed to be at school If not bright at his lessons, however, he was certainly clever in other ways and capable of thinking for himself An excellent illustration of this is contained in the story that though Scott, as a boy, used invariably to go to sleep in church in the course of the sermon, yet, when questioned about the latter afterwards, he was generally able to sketch out most of the points dwelt upon by the preacher--the explanation being, of course, that, given the text, he was able to follow the probable train of thought inspired by its wording

Suives expression to the opinion that he was 'self-educated in every branch of knowledge he ever turned to account in the works of his genius'

Neither Burns nor Carlyle was a scholar The for He acquired a little French, but learnt no Latin at all Whatever he knew he owed to the fact that he exercised his own taste for knowledge by choosing his own books and devouring only what appealed to his mind Carlyle, like many another famous man of letters, had little Latin and less Greek 'In the classical field,' he wrote, 'I a' For mathematics he showed a certain amount of inclination, but even in that field did not succeed in carrying off any prizes His own opinion of a conventional education is very tersely rendered by his exclah School instructors of youth! Oh, ye unspeakable!'

The poet Wordsworth was educated at the grareat merit of the school was the liberty allowed to the scholars No attempt was made to cram or to produce model pupils Within limits they appear, in fact, to have been allowed to read precisely what they pleased In this way Wordsworth received in every sense of the tere, 'he enjoyed even ht be derived froreat conteh the usual Caraduated as BA without honours, afterwards recording his indifference to acadee labours, of the Lecturer's room, All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand, With loyal students faithful to their books, Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants, And honest dunces--of ihed As in a balance! Of excessive hopes, Tres withal and coood or bad-- Let others that know ht by me, And little won

More forcibly expressed was Rousseau's derision of ordinary educationalin his 'Confessions' about the school days of his cousin and hiether to Bossey, to board with the Protestant ether with Latin, all the sorry trash which is included under the naent person ithout neglecting our education, never imposed excessive tasks upon us The fact that, in spite of my dislike to restraint, I have never recalled ust, and also that, even if I did not learn much from him, I learnt without difficulty what I did learn, and never forgot it, is sufficient proof that his systeood one'

As far as the history of science is concerned, there is a long array of self-cultured men to whom most of the discoveries that have been made are due In no other occupation is the faculty of thinking originally and independently e, and it is significant that ast famous scientiststo school instruction or acade than in almost any other walk of life

In this connection mention has already been made of the famous botanist Linnaeus The whole of his school life was one unreainst the usual educationalto force the mind away from its natural bent Linnaeus detested metaphysics, Latin, Greek, and every subject except physics and mathematics, in which he usually outstripped his fellow-pupils But his nose was kept to the grindstone until the authorities informed his father that he was not fit for a learned education, and recoiven some manual employment Thus were twelve precious years of the life of one of the ifted men of science, save for what he accomplished out of school hours, wasted to no purpose It is not to be wondered at that he spoke of one of his masters as 'a passionate anda youth's talents than for ireatest anatomists that ever lived, John Hunter, who nust his pupils, was scarcely educated at all for the first twenty years of his life Mr Smiles states that 'it ith difficulty that he acquired the arts of reading and writing' Originally a carpenter, he became assistant to his brother, as established in London as a surgeon He acquired all his knowledge of anato he had learnt to his own hard work and habit of thinking things out for himself

'The brilliant Sir Humphry Davy,' says Mr Smiles, 'was no cleverer than other boys His teacher, Dr Cardew, once said of him, ”While he ith me I could not discern the faculties by which he was so uished” Indeed, Davy himself in after life considered it fortunate that he had been left to ”enjoy so much idleness” at school'

Neas always at the bottoive a boy, whom he had already thrashed in another sense, an intellectual beating 'It is very probable,' writes Sir David Brewster in his biography, 'that Newton's idleness arose from the occupation of his mind with subjects in which he felt a deeper interest' nobody could have penned a ainst the imbecility of an education system that forces all boys, irrespective of their wishes or talents, into a fixed groove It was Neho, in answer to an inquiry as to how the principle of gravity was discovered, replied: 'By always thinking of it'

When Watt, as a boy, was engaged in investigating the condensation of stea with him at the tea-table, exclaimed:

'James, I never saw such an idle boy! Take a book or employ yourself usefully For the last half hour you have not spoken a word, but taken off the lid of that kettle and put it on again, holding now a cup and now a silver spoon over the stea the drops of water'

In this syed to think by their elders Watt's faculties were developed entirely at home He was sent to a public elementary school in Scotland; but, fortunately for science, he was so delicate that he was nearly always absent through indisposition A visitor, who found the boy drawing lines and circles on the hearth with a piece of coloured chalk, once re his son to waste his tiood fortune, however, to possess an intelligent father, who encouraged the boy as far as it lay in his power

Left to his own devices, Watt not only contrived to ineer of his time, but he also developed his talents in many other directions Sir Walter Scott says of him that 'his talents and fancy overflowed on every subject' And M Arago, the French scientist, in his memoir of Watt, expresses the view that the latter, in spite of his excellent uished hiies of ordinary schools

He could never have learned his lessons like a parrot, for he experienced a necessity of carefully elaborating the intellectual elements presented to his attention, and Nature had peculiarly endowed him with the faculty ofthat the conventional process of cra would have destroyed the fine intellectual faculties possessed by Watt But if in his case, why not in that of another? That is the strange thing about the light shed upon educational problems by cases like that of Watt, Newton, and other enius People only perceive in it a half-truth They think that it is only in these exceptional instances that the h-and-ready rounds is such an absurd deduction founded? It is true that individuals differ widely as to the capabilities of their mental machinery; but it does not follow that the intellectual fibre of one person is more delicate than that of another

The difference is not mental, but physical It is because a boy is healthy, and not because his intellectual fibre is coarse, that he is better able to withstand the strain of an educational training than a weaker and more nervous boy

Until the discovery is made that all minds are sensitive, when they have been actually reached, people will go on ignorantly destroying the finer faculties under the i, and can always shi+ft for itself

Yet, as I have attempted to show, the evidence of history points conclusively to the fact that the contrary is the case

Is it really supposed that the great names that have been handed down to posterity represent all the genius to which the world has given birth?

The idea is preposterous