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Debateable Claims








Debateable Claims
Essays on Secondary
Education
By JOHN CHARLES TARVER
AUTHOR OF c( SOME OBSERVATIONS OF A FOSTER
PARENT" "' THE LIFE OF GUSTAVE
FLAUBERT" ETC. ETC
WESTMINSTER
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO
2 WHITEHALL GARDENS
I898




BUTLER & TANNER,
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS,
FROME, AND LONDON.




CONTENTS
EPISTLE DEDICATORY
INTRODUCTION
I
THE REFORMATION AND THE SCHOOLS
II


PAGE
ix


XV


I


SOME ASPECTS OF THE ENDOWMENT OF EDUCATION
III
ENDOWMENT OF TEACHERS
IV


20
32


SCIENCE AND ART.. 4




Contents


v
ON THE EFFECT OF SUBSIDIZING EDUCATION.
VI
AN IDEAL TEACHER AND TRUE BLUE ETONIAN


PAGE
~ 64


75


VII
ON THE QUALIFICATIONS AND
TEACHERS.
VIII
THE DEBATEABLE LAND:

REMUNERATION OF.   I05


I.
II
III
IV


121
*. 38
*. 56. 165


IX


SCHOLARSHIPS AND COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS
x
THE CLERICAL DOMINATION..
vi


191. 210




Contents
PAGE
XI
SOME WEAKNESSES OF LOCAL CONTROL... 219
XII
EDUCATION AND CLASS DISTINCTIONS... 233
XIII
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE SCHOOLS... 245
XIV
THE REGISTRATION OF SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS. 258
XV
THE AUTHOR TO THE COUNTY COUNCILLOR.. 270


vii
Yu








Epistle Dedicatory


TO THE
VENERABLE J. M. WILSON
ARCHDEACON OF MANCHESTER, VICAR OF ROCHDALE
IF, Sir, I were to select from the body of living
Englishmen, who have been or are Head Masters
of Public Schools, the one whose attainments and
experience best qualify him to be the recipient of
such small honour, as is involved in the dedication
of a work by an individual so obscure as myself
you are unquestionably the man upon whom my
choice would fall.
Educated as a Classic, you entered St. John's
College, Cambridge, as a classical scholar, and almost
immediately won a University Scholarship open to
classical scholars in their first year only; you then
turned your attention to Mathematics, and in four
years achieved what is commonly believed to be
the highest mathematical distinction that the University of Cambridge can bestow-you were Senior
ix




Epistle Dedicatory
Wrangler. Moving in due course to Rugby, you at
once made a name as a pioneer in the movement
for teaching science in schools, and won the approbation of no less a judge than Professor Huxley.
On becoming Head Master of Clifton you returned,
in some measure, to your first love, and read classics
with the VIth Form. At the same time you revealed yourself to the school, in general, as a
preacher both earnest and original, and as a lecturer
of unrivalled lucidity.
Transferred to Rochdale and an Archdeaconry,
you have studied at first-hand the vexed question
of elementary schools. It may indeed be truly said
of you, as perhaps of no other living Englishman,
that there is no department of English education
with which you have not a personal acquaintance,
and in which you have not shown yourself to be
abundantly qualified to guide opinion.
It is perhaps for this reason that you are the one
public man whose occasional speeches on educational questions are full of sympathy for the
teacher; the one man who thinks of the interests
of the teacher, at least as often as he thinks of the
interests of parents. Again, the one man who sees




Epistle Dedicatory


that the interests of the teacher and the interests
of the child whom  he teaches are one and the
same; that everything which is done to help the
teacher, to cheer and brighten his life, to make it
a life of broad sympathy and noble aspiration,
necessarily results in help to the child.
Were I, however, not constrained to do you
homage by my admiration of your public worth, I
should be impelled by private inclination to offer
you some small acknowledgment of the many acts
of kindness which I received from your hands as
an Assistant Master at Clifton College, and of the
interest which you have subsequently shown in -my
work.
You were good enough to find my last book
"amusing." I have done my best to render this
one dull: I have been warned that a large number
of my fellow-countrymen, whom I particularly wish
to interest in the questions discussed in the ensuing
pages, cannot pardon anything of the nature of a
joke in a work purporting to be serious; earnestness
and humour are to them incompatible qualities.
Now, I am very much in earnest. I believe that we
have come to a critical moment in the history of




Epistle Dedicatory
English education; that a leap in the dark now
may set us back for good; that ill-advised ambition,
combined with equally inconsiderate kindness of
heart, gross ignorance of the questions really at issue,
and a still grosser ignorance of all that pertains to
soundness in education, may lead us to destroy, under
the impression that we are building up.
It is not yet too late to stay the hand of the
destroyer.  I do not ask in the following pages
for a lavish distribution of public money; I ask
for inquiry preliminary to organization. The Royal
Commission on Secondary Education (I896) had
neither the power nor the time to give us that
complete conspectus of English education, not under
the Elementary Act, which is necessary before we
commit ourselves to legislation. It did not inquire
into the work of "private" schools, whether day
schools or boarding schools; it did not inquire in
full detail-and this I believe to be a point of the
first importance-into the status of examining bodies,
and the nature of their examinations. Registration
of existing schools and examining bodies is the first
step; after that, we may come to the question of
filling up gaps in our school system, if gaps there
xii




Epistle Dedicatory


be, and then may discuss the question of local
control and central control, rate aid and state aid,
and all the rest of it. In all matters of business
it is better to know what we want before raising
money to pay for it. The recently tipped schoolboy, in a toy shop, generally selects an article which
has no real interest or value to him, and most commonly regrets the purchase; not so the boy who
has made up his mind beforehand, and saved his
money in order to acquire possession of some
coveted object.  It seems to me that a large
section of my fellow-countrymen are at the present
moment very busy in asking for a "tip," but that
they have no very clear perception of what they
will do with it, should they be successful in their
demand.
There are many views put forth in the following
pages with which I cannot hope to find you in
agreement, but I know that I can rely upon your
charitable toleration of sentiments with which you
do not sympathise, and that your disapproval of
opinions will not be extended to the person of the
man who holds them.
I am the more inclined to this confidence in the
x'iii




Epistle Dedicatory


breadth of your sympathy, because at different times
of our lives, and under different circumstances, we
have both enjoyed the intimate acquaintance or the
intimate friendship of three men, three great teachers,
whose names are mentioned in the pages of this book
or of its predecessor-of William Johnson, of Henry
Bradshaw, and of T. E. Brown. What a trio of great
intellects! of patient, unassuming, kindly men! The
world perhaps knows little of them, but their works
live after them, and the lives of many equally unknown to fame have been sweetened by intercourse
with them, and dignified by their noble example.
Nor can I forget that many years before I ever
met you, I was already acquainted with you, through
that friend of my boyhood, who now sleeps on an
unfriendly shore beyond the "still vexed Bermoothes,"
one in whom brother and friend alike saw everything to admire, nothing that was not worthy to be
loved.
Relying on such a community of fellowship, I
dedicate to you these pages, and beg you to think of
me as being,
Respectfully, but not unaffectionately yours,
JOHN CHARLES TARVER.




Introduction


A   LITTLE book entitled Some Observations of a
Foster Parent, which I published last June,
has had the effect of bringing me into communication
with a large number of my professional brethren, and
other persons interested in educational questions.
The favourable welcome accorded to that book by
the Press, and the kindly nature of the letters which
I have received, encourage me to hope that a more
elaborate review of the matters touched upon may
not be without its value, at a time when we are
threatened with revolution rather than organization
in our schools.
Not being at the present moment the head master
of a grammar school, nor holding any official position,
I am at liberty to speak out, no interests but my own
being endangered by the process.
I believe that the true significance of the position
of our public schools, a proper estimation of their
XV




Introduction


work, is not attainable so long as nobody speaks out
on their behalf. For various causes the head masters
and assistant masters of our public schools do not
speak out. For one reason, they do not think that
it is necessary: their position seems to them so well
assured, their merit so obvious, that to defend themselves or to proclaim themselves, are alike superfluous.
Another reason is, that they suffer from a disease
which may be shortly designated tekontophobia.
As hydrophobia is an unnatural dread of water, so
tekontophobia is an unnatural dread of parents: it is
better to say nothing than to run any risk of wounding the susceptibilities of those upon whose goodwill
depends the existence of a school. I do not believe
this caution to be in all respects necessary, or altogether justifiable, and it has one very serious drawback. Secondary education is shortly to become the
subject of legislation, but there is no instructed public
opinion on the question. There is a general impression
that something should be done, nobody knows precisely what; only a very few know what is actually
being done. The silence of the public schools, as to
the nature of their work, makes it possible for a large
number of persons to overestimate the work which
xvi




Introduction


is done by the various places of education brought
into existence by the Education Act of 1870. The
fact that the public schools are principally boarding
schools has caused an arbitrary, unscientific line to
be drawn between them and the whole system of
local schools, to which they historically belong.
Does the cry for Secondary Education mean that
we wish to restore one class of local schools to the
position which they once occupied? or does it mean
that in the future, as to a large extent at the present
time, it will not be possible for professional men,
who live in large towns, to get their children educated
on the professional plane, without incurring the
expense of a boarding school? In other words, is
the tendency of the new Act to be permanently to
depress a large number of local schools, or, on the
other hand, to elevate them from their present
degradation, and place them where they were when
the majority of them were founded?
It is not to the solution of these questions; but
to a thoughtful consideration of the subject, that
the following essays are directed.  The first three
are concerned with the history of Local Schools; in
them I have largely drawn from Mr. Leach's valuable
xvii             A




Introduction


book upon English schools at the Reformation.
This naturally leads to the question of endowments,
to a contrast between modern and mediaeval forms
of endowment, to a consideration of the reckless
way in which we now spend money on what we
call science and art. This naturally tempted me to
a few remarks upon subsidizing education.
Chance having placed in my hands some correspondence and journals of the late W. Cory, better
known to Etonians as William Johnson, I availed
myself of these to give a picture of what a teacher
could be, and can be, under the public school system,
which has the merit of being drawn from actual
facts, and of not being the creation of an idealist.
Having thus introduced some remarks upon the
qualification and remuneration of teachers, I approached the subject of the Debateable Land; that
is to say, the area with which any further provision
for secondary education will have to deal.
My next subject is Competitive Examinations.
Their indirect influence upon our schools has been
very great, and no less their influence upon our
habits of mind with reference to education. While
mentioning Dr. Pridgin Teale's suggestion of ultixviii




Introduction


mately selecting qualified candidates for the public
services by lot, and to some extent approving of
his idea, I am not prepared to say that it is practically possible; at the same time there have been
countries in which the rank and file of the army
were selected by lot, and in any case it was worth
while to mention any scheme which might tend
to diminish the necessarily increasing stress of competitive examinations.
The chapter on the Clerical Domination is one
which it required some courage to write. Criticism
of any body of clergy, though common enough in
private life, is indistinguishable to most people from
an attack upon religion. Holding, however, as
strongly as I do, that the independence of the
teaching profession is essential to a sound system
of national education, I could not be silent. Had
we been accustomed to think of teachers as a body
of professional men organized by themselves, as
physicians and lawyers are organized, we might
possibly have avoided the endless bickerings connected with the position of elementary schools in
reference to religious questions.
I do not feel that I have exhausted the subject
MiX




Introduction


of local and central control. In arguing against
local control I am necessarily deprived of the
assistance of the strongest point in my favour-I
am unable to collect and print evidence from head
masters who at present teach under local control:
not even a Royal Commission could collect trustworthy evidence on this subject, which might place
some head masters, who chose to give evidence, in
the position of bringing an indictment against their
employers. I did once work for five years under
two different bodies of that kind-I believe, in so
far as the personality of the gentlemen in question
was concerned, under particularly favourable circumstances-but the difficulties of the situation appeared
to me inherent and insuperable. Were such bodies
subject to periodical popular election, not only would
these difficulties be increased tenfold, but others
would be created.
Paid councils of education, responsible to a central
authority for the administration of large areas,some half dozen for the whole kingdom,-seem to
me the form of administration most likely to do
the work required. It is not necessary to inspect,
examine, and direct with the minuteness of the




Introduction


present Education  Department.  Organized elementary education was in some respects a new thing
ill I870; what we are now concerned with is the
organization of an old thing, rather than the creation of a new one. But I may be wrong. Are we
really going to try another experiment? to call
new schools into being without first ascertaining
what can be done with our old ones?
In connection with this question it is necessary to
discuss social distinctions. Many of our regulations
with regard to elementary schools seem to be suggested by a morbid horror of social distinctions, as if
there were something wrong in recognising the fact
that increased worldly prosperity means increased
privileges in the matter of bringing up one's children;
it also means increased obligations. Were the whole
of English education from top to bottom rendered
gratuitous at one sweep, the parents would rapidly
re-assort the schools according to ideas of their own.
Unfortunately those ideas would seldom promote any
improvement in education: there is a sound form of
social distinction, and an unsound.  A man who
sends his son to a more expensive school, when his
improved circumstances justify the expense, acts
xxi




Introduction


wisely, nay more, patriotically, if his object is to get
the boy better trained. If, however, his object is
simply self-glorification, his boy may incidentally be
benefited, but there is no merit in the act.
In towns a common reason given for not sending
children to a particular school, is that certain individual children go there.
To insist that the cost of education for all persons
residing in a particular town shall be the same, is to
remove one of the most respectable motives for becoming rich. Even philosophers can respect a man
who wishes to be wealthy, that his children may have
better opportunities of becoming refined than he
himself enjoyed.
Whatever classification of schools we eventually
adopt, one point must be steadily kept in view; viz.,
increased expensiveness in a school should mean
more effective methods of teaching. Ultimately the
basis of classification should be the number of children taught together; the smaller the number in the
classes, the greater the expense of the education; the
more difficult the subjects taught, the closer the
contact of the teacher with the pupil. Surely it is a
sound social ambition to wish to bring children into
xxii




Introduction


contact with men of well-trained minds and refined
sympathies, and equally surely it is unsound to confuse such an ambition with vulgarity. As an observer, I cannot, however, refuse to admit that there
are people who would be happy to get the social
prestige of a good school, without submitting to the
obligation of getting their children well taught.
My remarks on the Universities and the training oi
teachers may not be altogether palatable to University men, but I cannot feel that everybody is necessarily imperfect who has not been to Oxford or
Cambridge, any more than I can feel that the one
object of a system of national education is to put
these Universities at the top of a ladder. There are
other Universities; let us use them.
On the subject of private schools and registration
I speak with considerable personal knowledge. I do
not know everything, but I know enough to be convinced that an exhaustive inquiry into schools conducted by private adventurers is necessary and just,
before any legislation is attempted with reference to
them.  The attitude towards them at present is
hostile, and yet they are under the direct control
of the parents who send their children to them; and
xxiii




Introduction


at any rate in the form of preparatory schools are
admitted to be doing valuable work.
Before creating new schools let us organize those
in existence, remembering that organizing schools
also means organizing examinations: it will be less
costly. We shall then perhaps find out what we
really want; but in organizing the schools do not
let us again run amuck among the schoolmasters.
I began my Observations of a Foster Parent with
a short essay on the detestability of schoolmasters.
Not a few of my reviewers were kind enough to
assure me that if all schoolmasters resembled me,
they would be less unpopular. I am grateful for the
compliment, but I cannot accept it at the expense of
my brethren. I have been engaged in teaching now
for more than twenty years, and in the course of my
career have come into contact with many schoolmasters-public schoolmasters, private schoolmasters,
Board schoolmasters. In one way or another I have
worked with them all, and my verdict is that there
is no class of men who less deserve to be unpopular.
To claim for a whole profession that all its members
have an equally high sense of duty, that none of
them are devoid of tact, that they never succumb to
xxiv




Introduction


the temptations of their position, that they all have
the guilelessness of the dove without the wisdom of
the serpent, would be ridiculous; but a profession
may fall short of such a very exalted standard without forfeiting its claim to popularity, and I do
honestly believe that there is no profession in which
such a large number of men work under conditions
of equal difficulty, with so large a measure of integrity and unselfishness.
We very often   hear of the parent's grievance
against the schoolmaster; we very seldom hear of
the grievances of the schoolmaster against the
parent. Cases of undue severity on the part of the
schoolmaster, of carelessness in matters of business,
soon find their way into the newspapers. A parent
runs no risk in proclaiming his sorrows; the countercharges are never mentioned. In every school there
are a certain proportion of boys whose fees are
irregularly paid, others whose parents habitually
grumble; but the outside world is never told, and
the children of such parents are treated precisely
like the rest. In every large school there are teachers
who, from comparatively limited means, make things
easy for pupils who have very slender claims upon
xxv




Introduction


them, rather than that their education should suffer
in times of unforeseen adversity or temporary pecuniary difficulty. It is the very rarest thing to
hear a schoolmaster, even in the society of other
schoolmasters, speak otherwise than kindly of his
pupils, even of those who give him most trouble;
and, as a rule, a true instinct teaches the boys as
they grow older to respect the intentions of the
severest masters, even though they suffer by their
rigour. Still, one must admit that, deservedly or
not, schoolmasters are unpopular. The reason is a
simple one. Where they do their duty to the children, they involuntarily impose some kind of discipline upon the parents. In day schools this extends
to many small things which are apt to be annoying.
The unpopularity of compulsory games, for instance,
in day schools, is far more often due to the fact that,
if a boy is compelled to play a game at a certain
time, he cannot do something else-for instance, go
out with his father or mother-than to the fact that
games are in themselves disliked. And when a
child first goes to school, his or her parents for the
first time discover that this is not the only child in
the world, and that some domestic arrangements
xxvi




Introduction


have to be modified, not because the schoolmaster
is a tyrant, but because he has to consider the
convenience of more than one family.
Want of faith in the schoolmaster's profession I
have shown in my previous book to be due to the
fact that our public schools, grammar schools, etc.,
were, in the middle of this century, absolutely
unorganized.  There was no central Educational
Authority in the country, except such as was indirectly in the hands of the two Universities. But
the schools are no longer without internal organization. The improvements that have been made in
the last fifty years in the housing of boarders, which
are apparent to everybody, are only the external
indications of an equally great improvement in
methods of teaching and discipline. And all these
improvements have been made by the schoolmasters
themselves; they have not been forced upon them
by a Government department.
No; the schoolmasters do not deserve to be unpopular, though they daily incur unpopularity by
their persistent efforts to protect children from the
unwisdom of their parents. It would be so easy to
give way, and yet they very seldom give way; and
xxvii




Introduction


when they do give way, the persons to whom they
surrender are not long in calling them humbugs.
Here again it has come under my observation that
consideration for the weaknesses of parents is not
uncommon among schoolmasters. It may not be
in their power to modify the organization of a
whole school in deference to the wishes of one
particular parent; but they seldom bear any personal grudge, even where the point is pressed with
excessive persistence. The contrary case is not
uncommon.
If I had only known schoolmasters as a schoolboy knows them, I might have spoken less confidently about them. A school-boy, like the British
Workman, can see clearly enough defects in the
organization under which he works, and is particularly sharp in picking out personal peculiarities
and defects. He does not know how difficult it is
to remedy things of which he disapproves, how
many causes conduce to make some parts of a
school unsatisfactory; still less does he see behind
the scenes the patient struggle against adverse circumstances, the unselfish determination to make the
best of imperfect conditions, the loyalty to a chief
xxviii




Introduction


and an institution when loyalty is difficult but still
indispensable.
One of the least satisfactory features of modern
political life is the sensitiveness of public men to
popular cries. Education is necessarily an unpopular
subject; an education bill of any real value would
give little, but impose much. An appeal to the shortsighted selfishness of individual parents would be
more popular than an appeal to the enlightened selfishness of patriots; a bill which would tempt the
individual to see an immediate advantage to himself,
would carry more votes than a bill whose object was
a general elevation of the educational standard of our
middle classes. Such an elevation of standard does
not mean an improvement in learning, but an improvement in training; a guiding of our ambitions
in the direction of being something, rather than of
getting something. In this connection the oftenquoted example of Germany is worth mentioning.
The middle classes of Germany, especially the population of the towns, are educated in schools of a
relatively higher standard than the same classes in
England. This has not been brought about by an
innate love of learning, residing in the bosom of every
xxix




Introduction


German tradesman; it has come into being through
the regulations for compulsory service in the army,
whose aim was not educational in the first place. It
was thought desirable to interfere as little as possible
with the career of young men inclined to learning,
and therefore it was provided that a young man who
had reached a certain standard in his school should
be able to claim exemption from the three years' compulsory service in the army, and substitute one year's
voluntary service; it was further arranged that depots
should be located in some university towns, thus
enabling the student to fulfil his military obligations
with the minimum of interference with his university
career.
The unforeseen resul thas been that boys are sent
to schools, whose teaching ranks with that of our
public schools, but who would otherwise have been
sent to commercial schools, and the whole mercantile
class in Germany is better educated. Germans do
not learn in these schools anything directly bearing
upon mercantile pursuits, any more than they would
in the English public schools, but yet we are told
that the German tradesman is driving the English
tradesman out of the world's markets!
XXX




Introduction


Even if it were desirable, it would not be possible
in England to reproduce such a stringent system, but
any system worth trying at all must involve some
self-abnegation on the part of our middle class
parents, and self-abnegation is not a popular word.
The State in England has hitherto been content
with giving; it is time for the State to demand.
Again, regulations interfering with that public
enemy, the schoolmaster, are always popular in
England. They are however at the present moment
less necessary than regulations which may affect the
convenience of the individual parent in the interests
of the next generation.
I have omitted special reference to Girls' Schools,
because in all essentials it seems to me that their
position is not different from that of schools intended for boys; the organization of both, so far as
external control is concerned, would be the same.


Xxxi








I


The Reformation and the Schools
T   HE untutored imagination of humanity is apt
to be attracted by the sudden and surprising
rather than by the orderly movement of every-day
events; the finger of God is seen rather in storm and
earthquake, in battle, murder, and sudden death, than
in the myriad deaths and myriad births of every
day, in the silently working, never-ceasing operations
of heat and cold, cloud and sunshine, in the continuous even march of the universe through space.
This statement is a commonplace of philosophers;
but it is a commonplace that cannot be too frequently insisted on, so deeply does our longing for
the marvellous affect our ordinary habits of thought,
and interfere with the correctness of our inferences
even when we believe ourselves to be pursuing the
paths of science.
An excellent illustration of the consequences of
this temper of mind is furnished by the way in which
I               B




The Debateable Land


persons of average information till a very recent
period used to classify historical events. For them
the records of our race were divided first of all into
Ancient and Modern History; the former ended
summarily at the Christian era, and was succeeded
by the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, after which
there was another abrupt change called the Reformation, at which period Modern History, strictly speaking, began. For fifteen hundred years, according to
this conception, the movement of humanity stopped;
such events as did happen were of purely antiquarian
interest, the more striking among them admirably
adapted for the purposes of Sir Walter Scott and
other writers of romances, but the whole concatenation of them only to be approached in the spirit in
which a young lady looks at a ruin and remarks,
"How old! " or " How sweetly quaint! "
Fifty years ago the Reformation was popularly
regarded as the very beginning of enlightenment.
Up to that time a crass and brutish ignorance was
supposed to have prevailed; people prayed to images,
sinned freely and abominably, bought Indulgences,
worshipped the Pope and the Virgin Mary; then
Harlequin, in the person of Henry VIII., gave a
slash with his wand, and there was a complete transformation; down tumbled errors and abuses, the
Pope was packed off, and everybody began for the
first time to read his Bible in the vulgar tongue;
after which came the Victorian age and invention of
the steam engine.
2




The Reformation and the Schools
Since the middle of this century this view of' our
history has been considerably modified. To begin
with, a large party among our clergy, so far from
placing the commencement of the golden age at the
Reformation, were rather concerned to prove that
there never had been a Reformation, and that the
Church of England of to-day was also a contemporary of King Vortigern; men were even found to
say a good word for the damnable and papistical
errors of Rome. The interest in medieval history
became general and 'not merely ecclesiastical, stimulated by Sir Walter Scott. One consequence of the
change of attitude has been the rediscovery of the
documents through which we are able to learn something of social life in our own and other countries
before and at the period of the Reformation. There
was a time when the MSS. lying hidden in the holes
and corners of the muniment rooms and other storehouses of our cathedrals and corporations were regarded as valueless; if they were overhauled at all,
it was in the hope of discovering illuminations, copies
of the Scriptures, copies of the classics. So recently
as when Dean Stanley was a canon at Canterbury,
some jackdaws had happened to build their nests
with the leaves of MSS. which had been at some
time thrust into recesses in the walls of the church;
and this event, leading to the rediscovery of many
valuable records, nearly contributed to their destruction. They were hastily searched in the usual way,
and condemned as worthless; one batch of them,
3




The Debateable Land


with the wooden cupboard in which they were enclosed, was summarily consigned to the stone-mason's
yard, where it was found, happily intact, by the late
Dr. Sheppard. Now-a-days the smallest scrap of
parchment is diligently perused and preserved; there
exist learned societies for the publication of such
finds, and the magnificent series of publications of
the Rolls Office is issued by the Government itself.
The flood of light thus thrown upon our history
anterior to the Reformation renders the theory of the
transformation scene untenable, as untenable it was
in any case to every thinking man.
Not among the least interesting of recent contributions to our stock of information regarding English social life before and at the period of the Reformation is a book recently published by Mr. Arthur
F. Leach, entitled English Schools at the Reformation-I 546-48, a book which should materially
change our conceptions not only as to the opportunities for being educated, which our forefathers
enjoyed in those dark medieval days, but also as
to the extent to which they availed themselves of
these opportunities; it is also a book whose lessons
are distinctly pertinent to the guidance of our modern
educational reformers.
How were the middle classes taught before the
Reformation? The popular view is that they were
not taught at all till Henry VIII. and his children,
especially Edward VI., reserved something from
the spoils of the Church endowments for Grammar
4




The Reformation and the Schools


schools.  A more enlightened view holds that incidentally the monasteries themselves were teaching
establishments, and especially that the friars were
not only preachers, but teachers. Some inquirers,
arguing from the case of Chaucer, who was brought
up as page to Edward III.'s son, Lionel, have seen
a form of educational establishment attached to
the houses of the great nobility in which all courtly
learning could be acquired. None have suspected
a general system of national education; it was simpler
to imagine a general darkness and ignorance with
which the brilliant sudden light of the Reformation
could be contrasted. And yet a very obvious circumstance should have awakened misgivings. The
reign of Edward III. gives us at least three popular
books in the English language, whose existence is
known to everybody: Wycliffs Bible, Walter
Langland's Piers Ploughman, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; and the close of the same reign saw
Caxton's printing press set up at Westminster. For
whom did these men write?    What market was
there likely to be for printed books, if the middle
classes were uneducated? The evil habit of writing
must be a violent form of insanity indeed if it leads
its victims to compose long works in a language
which has no readers.  It may be objected that
Chaucer would find a sufficient number of patrons
in courtly circles, that the more enlightened ecclesiastics and the great noblemen were a sufficient public
for him; but how about Piers Ploughman?   This
5




The Debateable Land


is certainly not a work adapted to the demands of
courtly and ecclesiastical readers. Written in an
alliterative rhyming verse, it suggests by its form a
popular literature continuous from the Saxon period;
its matter, the glorification of the peasant farmer at
the expense of the high and mighty, combined with
bitter denunciation of the evil doings of the rich, is
certainly addressed to the lower middle classes, unless we are to suppose that the taste for the Kailyard is as old as Edward III., and that John of
Gaunt read Piers Ploughlman as we read a Window
in Thrums.
Wycliff, again, did more than translate the Bible;
he wrote tracts, for which there must have been English readers.
These are salient examples of the educational
standard of the Middle Ages, and in the face of them
we cannot say that education for the mass of the
people was first thought of in England, only when it
was first believed to be of importance that everybody
should be able to read the Bible; indeed, where did
those tinkers and others of the baser sort learn to
read, who crowded round the Bibles, when they were
first chained in our churches?
Thus we might have anticipated Mr. Leach's statement that England was well supplied with schools
before the Reformation, though we should hardly
have expected to find that the period of the Reformation was a period of indifference to schools; it was
worse than that, it was a period when schools were
6




The Reformation and the Schools


suppressed. Edward VI. is credited with the foundation of eighty-six grammar schools.  Mr. Leach
shows us that these were the fortunate, though in
some cases sadly maimed, survivors out of some
three hundred previously existing schools.
The proportion of Grammar schools to the population of England and Wales before the Reformation
was, as nearly as can be calculated, one to every
eight thousand three hundred of the population.
Whitaker's list of Secondary schools for I897, taking
England and Wales alone, gives about one to every
fifty-four thousand.
Such a comparison cannot, however, be pressed too
closely, as the middle classes, who should use the
secondary schools, are relatively less numerous than
they were in the Middle Ages, the proportion of
artisans and labourers to the rest of the population
being now probably beyond what it ever has been.
Accustomed as we are to chaos in the matter of
school organization, familiarized with the spectacle of
Grammar schools doing elementary work, and colleges of science overlapping with less pretentious
establishments, we might be tempted to assume that
Mr. Leach's researches cover the whole of English
education, and that his Grammar schools did all the
work that was to be done, both elementary and advanced.
This is not the case. Of 259 schools of which the
records were preserved in 1546-48, I40 are expressly
called grammar schools, 23 are called song schools,
7




The Debateable Land


of which 5 are also called grammar schools, and so
have been reckoned among them; 22 only may possibly be regarded as elementary schools, and there
are strong reasons for classing the remaining 79 also
with the grammar schools.
To go a little more closely into the question: The
schools existing at the Reformation period may be
classified in two ways, either by their teaching or by
the nature of their endowment.
Classified according to their teaching, we find them
called A B C schools, reading schools, writing schools,
song schools, grammar schools. The first three obviously correspond to what we now call elementary
schools. The business of the song school was primarily to teach children to sing with a priest; it was
what we now call a chorister's school, and such schools
were attached to many churches besides those which
now support them; in fact, there seems to have been
a liberal provision for musical education throughout
the country, the teaching of instrumental music being
often part of the business of the song school master.
As it was necessary for the children, who sang with
a priest, to be able to read, the song schools did the
work of elementary schools in addition to their special
work.
Commenting upon the disappearance of the song
schools, Mr. Leach says: "Of all the wealth of song
schools which then existed outside the cathedrals,
the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and Winchester
and Eton, all have perished except the Song School
8




The Reformation and the Schools
at Newark, which has survived, though in a mutilated
form, to this day. How many Purcells have we lost?
how many Wesleys? not to guess at Beethovens, and
Mozarts, for lack of the proper endowment of organists and of song schools!" And again, "We might
have been a singing people, and an educated people,
three centuries ago, instead of just beginning to be
so in the nineteenth century."
The song school was thus a kind of technical
school, providing instruction in the special art of
music. What were the grammar schools?
The records of the Commissioners of Henry VIII.
and Edward VI. unfortunately throw little light upon
this question; it is merely stated that a school was
a grammar school or song school, the terms being
well understood at the time, and demanding no further
specification; we have, however, the statutes for Wolsey's school at Ipswich, where there had been a free
grammar school from 1483, which was incorporated
in "Cardinal College" in 1528. "There were to be
eight classes in the school, for which, besides their
Lily's Grammar, divers authors were prescribed. In
the third form from the bottom they were to read
AEsop (in Latin) and Terence. In the fourth they
got to Virgil; in the fifth they read Cicero's Select
Letters; in the sixth Sallust or Caesar's Commentaries; in the seventh Horace's Epistles and Ovid's
Metamorphoses, or Fasti, and had to write versetasks; in the eighth form they abandoned Lily for
Donatus, and read Valla and other ancient Latin
9




The Debateable Land


authors. They also returned to Terence, and were to
discuss his life, style, and so forth, with a view, perhaps, to performances like the Westminster play.
They were also to learn precis-writing, and to write
essays." In fact, the boys at Cardinal College, Ipswich, were to have as complete a training in Latin
literature as is ordinarily given in a public school today. At Brough-under-Stainmore, in a wild moorland district, we find two dictionaries mentioned as
part of the school property; clearly Latin was taught
there then. A visitation was made of the Grammar
School at Southwell in I484, when the inhabitants
complained, among other things, that the boys " do
not talk Latin in school, but English."
In fact, the grammar school before the Reformation was what the secondary school should be nowthe school which gave the preliminary training necessary for the professional and directing classes, and it
was thought right that such a school should exist in
the desolate wilds of Westmoreland as well as in the
populous towns and the rich home counties.
These schools were supported by endowment. Mr.
Leach arranges them in eight classes, according to
the character of the endowment. They were, according to him, cathedral schools, early college schools,
schools in connection with monasteries, later college
schools, schools in connection with hospitals, guild
schools, chantry schools, independent schools.
Of these eight classes the chantry schools are
most largely represented in the reports of the ComI0




The Reformation and the Schools


missioners, but it does not follow that they were
actually the most numerous. The Chantries Act of
Edward VI. naturally directed a more particular
inquiry into them, and so their story survives; but
Mr. Leach is of opinion that there may have been
many schools of the early collegiate type whose
existence was ignored, and is now forgotten.
These eight classes may be, for practical purposes,
reduced to six, as from our present point of view
there was little distinction between a cathedral, an
early collegiate church, and a late collegiate
church.
A college was a community of priests provided
to maintain and conduct the services of a church;
whether that church happened also to be honoured
with the seat of a bishop is of little importance.
Similarly, though it is historically interesting that
Mr. Leach can mention eleven such colleges with
schools attached to them, which are mentioned in
"Domesday Book," and therefore go back to Saxon
times, their constitution in relation to the school
maintained by them is not affected by that fact.
All that is important for us to know is that the
obligation of maintaining not only a song school,
but also a grammar school, was laid upon collegiate
churches; and that, too, not only after monastic
foundations had lost favour, as they began to do in
the thirteenth century, but also before they monopolised the attentions of the pious and wealthy.
Mr. Leach is of opinion that the monasteries have
II




The Debateable Land


not altogether deservedly acquired the reputation of
having been benefactors of schools, and of having
maintained schools; he has shown that a monastery
might be credited with supporting a school when it
was merely the trustee for the endowment; he inclines to the view that the only active part which the
monasteries took in teaching was confined to the education of their own novices, and states that though
there is no case in the records of a monk being
employed as a schoolmaster, there are cases of laymen being employed by monks to teach the novices.
Thus, when Henry VIII. imposed upon the cathedrals of the new foundation the obligation of maintaining the "King's School," he was bringing these
establishments into conformity with the constitution
of other collegiate churches, not necessarily continuing a monastic school already in existence.
Some of them-Durham, for instance-were already provided with grammar schools, whose endowment was, however, independent of the monastery.
As a school might be attached to a collegiate
church, so it might also be attached to a hospital,
which was not necessarily a place for relieving sick
people, but rather an almshouse. The records of
hospital schools are scanty, as the hospitals were
exempted from the inquiry of Edward VI. A very
famous school existed at Banbury, connected with
the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, and said to
date from the reign of the victim of Magna Charta.
This school, though it was looked upon as a model
12




The Reformation and the Schools
school in I525, and ranked with Winchester and
Eton, has totally disappeared; its site is forgotten,
and the endowment swept away.
Schools were also supported by guilds. In its
very early history the word "gild" seems to have
been associated with funeral feasts, and a prominent
feature in the constitution of nearly all guilds was
the provision for the proper burial of its members
and the maintenance of prayers for the souls of the
deceased. This form of association was found convenient for many other purposes. The existence of
trade guilds and craft guilds is well known; less
well known are the wide ramifications of the guild
system in English society. Few towns were without
guilds, whose functions " ranged from governing the
community to giving soup to the poor." Where a
guild supported a priest of its own, it was a convenient arrangement to make him also a schoolmaster; and, in fact, Mr. Leach finds twenty-eight
out of thirty-three guilds mentioned in the records
actually keeping grammar schools, while the Mercers
of London were trustees for three schools, and the
Goldsmiths for two.
As one motive which caused a man to join a guild
was a desire to ensure a proper provision for prayers
being made for his soul after his death, so private
individuals solicitous about the same end endowed
" chantries " in different churches. A " chantry " was
not primarily a building, but simply the endowment
of a priest to say prayers at a particular altar at
13




The Debateable Land


certain times. In places like Canterbury Cathedral
there must have been an endless succession of priests
at the different altars engaged in praying for the
souls of men long dead, unless, indeed, they hit
upon some compendious method of including a large
number of persons in the benefits of single services.
The founders of chantries were not, however, content
with providing that a priest should pray for them;
they also not infrequently provided that a school
should be maintained out of the chantry trust. The
number of schools attached to chantries mentioned
by Mr. Leach is very large in proportion to those
that were maintained in other ways; in fact, it seems
possible that in founding a chantry with the obligations attached to it of maintaining a school, the first
object of the pious founder may have been the school
and not the chantry.
Mr. Leach says, "The great bulk of the chantries
recorded here seem to have been founded in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and went on
in increasing crowds with the spread of wealth among
the trading classes right up to the Reformation."
The founders of chantries thus belonging to a class
who were progressively inclining to the doctrine of
the Reformers, the question naturally arises, whether
the school were not attached to the chantry in order
to strengthen the foundation of the school. A will in
favour of a mere school would not be certain of being
respected equally with a will in favour of a chantry,
which could not be set aside by the heirs without
14




The Reformation and the Schools
involving them in the curse of sacrilege. Moreover,
all legal powers relating to wills were in the hands of
the ecclesiastical courts, who would have a direct interest in the proper administration of a will by which
a priest was endowed.
Schools independent of any other foundation were
scarce; still there were some. The founder of Sevenoaks Grammar School as early as 1432 even said that
the schoolmaster was not to be a priest. Oswestry
Grammar School seems to have been independent,
and the foundation of St. Paul's School is an indication of the line that things were taking at the
Reformation; its first head master was a layman.
On the whole, even from the records that we have, it
is clear that our country was well supplied with
schools before the days of Edward VI. The records
that we have are defective for two reasons: one is
that a large number of the original documents have
disappeared; the other, that as the more searching
inquiry was directed to religious foundations, schools
well known to be independent would not have been
included.
The schools were destroyed under the Chantries
Acts of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. There is an
interesting difference between these Acts.
The first part of King Henry's Act assigned to
the king all the property belonging to "Colleges,
Free chapelles, Chantries, Hospitalles, Fraternities,
Brotherhoods, Guilds, and Stipendarie Priests," the
reason given being that the intentions of the founders
I5




The Debateable Land


were not being carried out, and that the king wanted
the money for his French and Scotch wars. The
second paragraph of the same Act states the king's
intention of reorganizing the chantries, etc., and
practically exempts such institutions as were under
purely lay control.
Within two years the king died, and the power to
issue a warrant for the execution of the Act died with
him.
A new Chantries Act was, however, one of the first
Acts of the reign of Edward VI., and this time the
reason given for attacking the chantries was a doctrinal one. The repudiation of the doctrine of Purgatory involved the abolition of prayers for the dead,
and therefore of chantries; they, and all other institutions founded for the purpose of praying for the
dead, were to be abolished by the simple process of
handing their property over to the king.
It is to the reports of the Commissioners who were
sent to inquire into the properties of these chantries,
etc., that we owe our knowledge of the existence of
the schools.
It was unquestionably the intention of Edward
VI.'s advisers to make provision for the foundation
of grammar schools. The Commissioners had power
to continue schools when they already existed; but
unfortunately the reign was a disturbed one, money
was wanted, the work of destruction was more important, because more profitable, than that of reconstruction, and such schools as survived did so chiefly
I6




The Reformation and the Schools
upon the insecure tenure that the stipend of the
schoolmaster was to be paid till further orders.
When Henry VIII. or Edward VI. is called the
founder of a school, it commonly means that the
property of a previously existing school having been
vested in the king by one of the Acts mentioned, he
generously gave back part of it, or allowed the persons
who were interested in the school to buy back whole
or part of the endowment.
In cases in which a fixed payment was continued,
the school eventually suffered severely, for it did not
benefit by the rise in the value of land, or, to put it
another way, lost by the decreased value of money.
Had all the endowments available for school purposes in the reign of Edward VI. been continued to
be applied to those purposes, secondary education
would have been well provided for to-day; it would
have profited by the unearned increment as the
schools at Birmingham and Dulwich, a post-Reformation school, have profited.
We gather from the records that in only a few
cases was any serious effort made to retain the school
in the locality in which it existed; people were ready
enough to pray that it might be continued, but there
are only a few honourable exceptions to the rule, that
localities made but feeble attempts to re-found their
schools.
For this there were probably two reasons-one a
good one, the other a bad one. The association of the
schools with the clergy and with the teaching of Latin
17               C




The Debateable Land
probably prejudiced even enlightened members of
the Reformation party in the middle classes against
them. Again, the Reformation in its later stages was
distinctly an upheaval of ignorance: the value of the
old methods of training was not understood; "the
baser sort," armed with the text of the Bible, thought
all other learning superfluous; they regarded it, as
classical learning is regarded by the scientific smatterer of to-day, as antiquated and superstitious. In
Germany, according to Dr. Scherer, this attitude of
mind contributed to the Counter-reformation; for
contempt for learning having destroyed the teachers,
when in the fulness of time the want of them was felt,
the Jesuits were ready to take their place. In England Elizabeth's Parliaments protested once and
again against the action of the bishops who ordained
lewd and ignorant men; the bishops replied that
none other were to be found. Already the want of
the schools was being felt.
The other reason was simply indifference. It is
possible to respect earnest but ill-informed persons,
who might see in the local grammar schools a hotbed of Papistry, and who might reasonably associate
Latin with the abominations of the scarlet woman;
but one cannot be otherwise than indignant with the
large number of well-to-do people who must have
simply folded their hands and allowed their school to
drag on unaided " till further orders."
The troubles of the schools did not end with the
Chantries Act; they were again attacked in the days
I8




The Reformation and the Schools


of that necessitous monarch James I., when the endowments of some of them were confiscated on the
ground that there had been concealments of Church
property, and evasion of the Chantries Act in the
reign of Edward VI.
At the present time we are allowing our Grammar
schools to perish by neglect; instead of strengthening them, we create rival institutions. There is no
more intelligent conception of their possibilities now
than there was at the period of the Reformation.


I9




II


Some Aspects of the Endowment of
Education
RCHBISHOP ROTHERHAM, one of the
earliest scholars of Eton and Kings, founded
Rotherham College, just outside Sheffield, in I437.
This school might have been another Eton, and was
unquestionably intended to be so by its founder; his
motive was thankfulness for the schoolmaster, who
"by some divine chance" had found his way to
Rotherham and at one time taught him. We may
assume that this happened before the future archbishop went to Eton. This is an instance of the
foundation of a school due to an unqualified respect
for learning; the good archbishop wished other
persons to enjoy the same opportunities to which
he felt that he himself owed so much.
There survive a sufficient number of similar statements in the documents drawn up by pious founders
to have promoted a very general conviction that
20




Some Aspects of Endowment


there was a time when learning was commonly
valued for its own sake, when there really existed
among our countrymen a generous and widespread
enthusiasm for education in the broadest sense of the
word; and it might seem that the ample provision
made for schools before the Reformation, as proved
by Mr. Leach, furnishes overwhelming evidence in
support of this view. We might be tempted hastily
to reproach the men of to-day with the superior
wisdom and generosity of their forefathers.
Even if we admit that the very large number of
persons who founded chantries to which schools were
attached were impelled to do so, in the first place,
because they wished to have a short experience of
the pains of purgatory, the fact remains that in the
second place they founded schools, and not almshouses or churches or monasteries.
Again, the modern philanthropist might argue from
the almost invariable occurrence of the terms "free
school," or " free teaching," and the equally frequent
mention of "poor persons " as those to be benefited
by an educational institution, that the promotion of
learning among the lowest classes of the community
was in the forefront of the social ambitions of our
ancestors. Our Grammar schools were disastrously
re-organized in accordance with this view after the
Endowed Schools Commission, and have been
steadily and progressively depressed ever since.
It is quite certain that the " poor children " of the
Middle Ages were not the poor children of to-day.
21




The Debateable Land


The majority of the medieval schools were founded
when the labouring classes were still serfs. Parliament actually petitioned at one time that serfs should
not be allowed to go to the universities or schools; it
was not for them that Latin was taught at Broughunder-Stainmore.
Again, the founders of schools are bishops, lords,
country gentlemen, or wealthy citizens; they frequently reserve special privileges for founders' kin.
Would they have included their own relatives among
the poor scholars, if these scholars were the sons of
artisans and labourers, at a time when class distinctions were very sharply drawn?
"Poor " after all is a relative term; the majority of
us could justly describe ourselves as " poor " in comparison with a Vanderbilt, and yet have no claim to
charitable relief
In the Middle Ages the word "poor" was frequently
a mere complementary epithet: " Your Majesty's
poor servants " included many persons who were not
only not poor, but positively rich; no one was
ashamed so to designate himself who was not
actually one of the great feudal nobles. Further, if
we ask ourselves where there would have been
facilities for being educated, had there been no grammar schools, we see at once that there were such
facilities in the households of the nobility and the
great ecclesiastics, but not elsewhere. A Chaucer,
the son of a London vintner, might have an opportunity of being taught with the pages of a prince;
22




Some Aspects of Endowment


but for the ordinary middle-class man there were no
such facilities. The Church could not help as it does
now. Accustomed as we are to see the clergy taking
the lead in all matters pertaining to education, we
forget that there was a time when the business of a
priest was simply to say mass, and administer the
Sacraments, and when what we now call "parish
work" was a rare exception. Chaucer's "poore Person
of a toune " was not the rule, as we may gather from
the very lines in which that beautiful character is
described.
In this use of the word "poor," as in the use of
many other words, we are misled, by forgetting the
changes that our current vocabulary suffers; for instance, when we are told that the father of Thomas
Cromwell was a blacksmith, and that Oliver Cromwell
was a grazier, we instantly picture to ourselves the
worthy parent of the one shoeing a horse, and the
other arrayed in a smock-frock driving an unwilling
cow to market; but in the reign of Henry VIII., Lord
Armstrong might have been styled a blacksmith, and
many people who now call themselves country gentlemen would have been called graziers in the reign of
Charles I. Chaucer's father, as a "vintner," suggests
a "jug and bottle" business; how if we call him a
wine merchant?
Again, we ourselves still use the word "poor" as
a term of compassionate tenderness; however rich a
man may be, we call him " poor fellow," even when
he is suffering from misfortunes that do not affect
23




The Debateable Land


his income; and it is the epithet which we habitually apply to deceased persons. It is rather in this
sense that the founders of schools used the word
" poor " in alluding to the children of their own class;
viz., as an expression of kindliness, not as a technical
definition of their social position.
Mr. Leach has clearly demonstrated that "free
schools" and  "free teaching" did really imply
teaching grammar without fees; but even then there
was a possibility of extras, and there is evidence
that it was the custom to supplement the teacher's
salary by free-will offerings. At Durham it was expressly stated that the grammar school master was
to take the normal fees from well-to-do people; just
as the rich man of to-day thinks it incumbent upon
him to pay a high fee for a surgical operation, so
the rich man of by-gone days thought himself mean
if he did not pay an "honorarium" to his son's
teacher. It is not fifty years since an Eton boy, on
taking leave of the Head Master, presented him with
a five-pound note; and we know that the majority of
them were considerably embarrassed on the occasion.
There remains the question as to how far the endowment of schools involved a genuine appreciation
of learning.
Was there ever a time when it was universally felt
that learning in itself is a good thing apart from the
collateral advantages which it may bring?
Probably not. Studious persons in all ages have
chanted the praises of wisdom. Solomon is not the
24




Some Aspects of Endowment
only sage who has declared her value to be beyond
rubies; but the vehemence with which her votaries insist upon her surpassing merits is in itself evidence that
their enthusiasm is not shared by the mass of their
contemporaries. Nobody has thought it necessary to
preach upon the text of the desirableness of riches;
our teachers only deal with facts which are not
obvious to the multitude, who, indeed, do not require
to be told that it is desirable to be wealthy and
powerful.
Furthermore, a close analysis of the teaching of the
majority of those who sing the praises of learning
reveals the fact that their admiration of learning is
largely due to the fact that they believe other things
to be secured by learning, such as an enlightened
morality, or a greater command over the material
world around us. When Charles Knight wrote his
little book on the text " Knowledge is power," he was
thinking of the steam engine, the electric telegraph,
and other mechanical appliances, which are rendered
possible by a knowledge of the laws in obedience to
which matter is moved or transformed. Similarly
Socrates is credited with having taught that a man
is vicious through ignorance; did he know what was
really good for him, he would not do what was contrary to this knowledge.
On the other hand, we cannot but admit that the
very idea of learning is distasteful to the average
human being. Whenever there is a general dislocation
of society; when barbarians burst in upon us from
25




The Debateable Land


their native wilds, or the savage, who, though under
discipline, is always present in civilized communities,
breaks his bonds; when a Reformation or a French
Revolution lets loose the brutish forces that have
been held in subjection,-learning is immediately attacked, libraries and works of art are wantonly destroyed, the contemplative man is not merely ignored,
he is molested, and the precious results of his contemplations are burned, torn, or otherwise annihilated.
When our forefathers founded grammar schools,that is to say, schools in which Latin was taught,they were not thinking of Latin as a teaching instrument, or of the learning of Latin as a moralizing
process; they were providing for the one indispensable introduction to all the professions and all the
sciences. In the Middle Ages no Volopuk or artificial
universal language was necessary; there was a universal language ready to hand, and in daily use.
When the inhabitants of Southwell complained that
Latin was not spoken in their school, but only
English, they spoke from the same point of view as
a merchant of to-day might speak who sent his son
to a tutor's to learn French for business purposes,
and discovered that French was not spoken in the
establishment, only written. There was no more
enthusiasm then than there is now for learning in the
abstract. And yet, in spite of their restricted appreciation of learning, the middle classes of those days
had their reward. From the reign of Edward IV.
onwards our sovereigns found in this class their most
26




Some Aspects of Endowment


valuable servants, who were no longer introduced to
public life through the channel of the Church, but
who were taken straight from their warehouses and
counting-houses to the king's treasury. Such persons
were Dudley and Empson, of unpopular memory; to
the same class belonged Henry VIII.'s minister,
Thomas Cromwell, and many other well-known
figures of the time. Queen Elizabeth's reign was
essentially a middle-class reign; her popularity was
largely based upon the encouragement that she
habitually gave to enterprising men of the middle
classes, even to men such as Drake and Hawkins,
whom our stricter morality would class with pirates,men who proved themselves fit for the work which
she placed in their hands.
The consequences of the suppression of schools in
1546-48 were not immediately felt; still, if we compare the Elizabethan drama with that of the reign of
Charles II., we see at once that already the audiences
must have been different.  Even to-day, though
aided by all the magnificence of the material appointments of the Lyceum, a Shakespearean play is less
popular than Charley's Aunt; and in the provinces
Mr. Benson's excellent company does not draw like
the Private Secretary. The men who enjoyed the
productions of the Elizabethan drama must have
been well-informed men of a reflective habit of mind.
In the reign of Charles II., Samuel Pepys, surely an
alert personage, could see little to admire in them
except the processions.
27




The Debateable Land


We do not now-a-days attach much value to
mediaeval science; it appears to us both fanciful and
fabulous; but it did not appear so to earnest readers
in the Middle Ages. Pliny's Natural History was to
them what Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle is to us.
Nor did speculations upon botany and zoology cease
with the silver age of Latin literature. Chaucer
could have consulted contemporary herbals, contemporary works on astrology and alchemy, and
they would have been written in Latin. Nor was
there wanting a contemporary light Latin literature;
there were rhyming songs as well as hymns, political
satires in verse.
Latin, in fact, was the key to all information; as
such it was studied, and not from merely aesthetic
and pedagogic considerations. There was not that
sharp line between scientific and literary pursuits
which is an unfortunate feature of the learning of
to-day, and which leads some men of letters to
deplore the scientific phraseology of George Eliot's
later works. Shakespeare is crammed with science,
so is Milton, so at an earlier date is Chaucer; it is
true that their science is not our science.
Too much has been made of the statement that
Shakespeare possessed "small Latin and less Greek,"
and of his indebtedness to North's Plutarch. He
was not a "scholar " in the modern sense of the word,
but he was unquestionably a scholar in the most
noble sense which the word can convey; his mind
was open to all possibilities of information; and we
28




Some Aspects of Endowment


arrive at this fact, not by considering the plots of his
plays, but by studying his allusions; his vocabulary
is the vocabulary of a learned man. What, then, of
his audience? A playwright, more than any artist,
must write in the language of his time; he cannot be
too abstruse for the majority of his contemporaries,
under penalty of failure to secure their attention. In
short, such a phenomenon as the language of Shakepeare's plays is sufficient evidence of the existence of
a well-informed and highly-cultivated middle class.
Had he written only for readers, as Milton wrote, the
width of his learning would not necessarily imply a
general diffusion of learning; a man who writes only
to be read, may easily write ahead of his contemporaries. But the conditions of the theatre are
different. None but a well-informed audience can
appreciate the productions of a well-informed author.
Finally, we may conclude that the mediaeval
grammar school or Latin school was not really
different in its aims from a modern technical school.
Latin was the key to technical and scientific information; as such it was studied, written, and spoken;
and it continued to be both written and spoken long
after its utility had ceased from the point of view of
the political and scientific man.
If then the practical advantages of a knowledge
of Latin were so obvious, why was it necessary to
endow  schools and teachers?  Or, why was it
thought expedient?  Surely persons who could
teach a language so obviously desirable to be ac29




The Debateable Land


quired must have been secure of finding both pupils
and payment!
Obviously this was not the case; it was so far
from being the case, that a common form of later
mediaeval endowment is not the foundation of a
school, but the assignment of payment to a teacher,
who is bound to teach, it is true, in a particular
locality, but who is not provided with premises, any
more than the chantry priest was necessarily provided with a chapel or a church, but was paid in
most cases to say masses at an existing altar. The
persons who assigned stipends to teachers must have
been convinced not only that teachers were a desirable institution, but also that they were not likely
to be a self-supporting institution, in spite of the
practical advantages of being learned.  In other
words, there was a general conviction that parents
would avail themselves of the services of an endowed
teacher, but could not be depended upon to pay him
themselves.
We have ourselves pushed this view of things even
further. In spite of the manifest practical advantages
of being able to read and write, we do not merely
provide elementary schools free of cost, but we compel unwilling parents to send their children to them.
In other words, we have assumed, rightly or wrongly,
that the leisure of the children is not likely to be
respected by their parents; and that even though
they can send their children to school free of cost,
they will prefer to keep them at home, or let them
30




Some Aspects of Endowment


ramble about the streets, or send them to work prematurely.,
Similarly the large gifts that are occasionally made
to the educational institutions of to-day are made to
institutions which should be self-supporting,. Literature and pure mathematics, whose attractions are not
of an obviously practical nature, receive no fresh
endowments; science and technical instruction, which
are supposed to lead to money-getting proficiencies,
receive large emoluments; and yet to the teachers of
these parents should be willing to pay adequate fees,
even though they see no merit in instruction by
means of dead languages.
Ultimately we have to accept the fact that at any
particular period only a small minority see the
necessity for the maintenance of any form of learned
institution, and that a pure and enlightened patriotism
may well find its expression in the endowment of
schools and colleges.


3I




III


Endowment of Teachers
A   DAM   SMITH, surely a high authority, discussing the question of educational endowments, pronounces decidedly against them.  The
ordinary laws of supply and demand should not be
interfered with, he thinks, in educational matters any
more than in mercantile transactions. A bounty
upon Latin appeared to him as undesirable as a
bounty upon sugar.
Adam Smith was unfortunate in his opportunities
for measuring the effects of endowment; he went to
Balliol College, Oxford, at the period of perhaps the
lowest tide of our English Universities, and he attributed the idleness and inefficiency of the professors
of those days to the security which they enjoyed;
no matter what they taught, nor how they taught,
their income remained, and he inferred that were the
teacher entirely dependent on the fees of his pupils,
32




Endowment of Teachers


he would be neither idle nor ineffective; he would
teach well in self-defence.
There is much to be said for Adam Smith's view
but his arguments do not cover all the ground.
Two very important facts eluded his observation:
first, that many men can fill a lecture-hall, who are
not particularly learned; while a teacher may be both
industrious and profound, and yet incapable of presenting his knowledge in an attractive form; such
a man might starve if unendowed, while a shallow
personage with a gift for talking might gather in a
large income. Secondly, the value of intellectual work
of the highest, or even a high order, can seldom be
measured at the time of its production, precisely
because it is of a rare quality, it can only be appreciated by the few. A decided step on in any of the
arts and sciences is apt to be fatal to the man who
takes it. A Beethoven does not at once win popular
approval; such a man usually spends his life in
teaching his contemporaries to appreciate his discoveries; if he lives long enough, he sometimes reaps
his reward in his own lifetime, but more commonly
dies in destitution, and unrecognised.
Music, in fact, was only able to live at one time by
allying itself with the stage. A successful opera
paid its composer better than a successful symphony.
Later on the oratorio took to some extent the place
of the opera. Similarly, in the world of letters, the
writer who is at the level of the average ignorance of
his day will have a larger number of readers than he
33              D




The Debateable Land


who writes for all time. It was better worth a man's
while at the end of the last century to be a Samuel
Richardson than a Samuel Johnson: it is at least as
lucrative now to be a Marie Corelli or Hall Caine as
even to be a George Eliot.
Sound teaching is a form of intellectual and moral
activity which essentially looks forward to the future;
it is apt to escape the observation of the present, and
its effects are only seen when the laws of supply and
demand cease to affect the teacher.
Adam Smith also failed to see that there are many
men whose presence in such a community as the
English University is of immense value to the general
work of the place, who are incapable of forcing themselves upon raw students, or even of appearing in a
lecture-room, whose best influence does not lend itself
to that form of production.
Such a man was in our own time Henry Bradshaw,
University Librarian at Cambridge, and Fellow of
King's. His direct contact with the undergraduate
world was of the slenderest description, and purely
social, after a manner peculiar to himself; he did not
lecture, he held no college office, he did not even
publish books, and yet few men did more for Cambridge. Professing ignorance upon all subjects, there
were few subjects in which he was not competent to
give assistance to specialists; no one who consulted
Bradshaw went away empty-handed. His life was
a continued testimony to the dignity of learning, a
protest against slovenliness, a mirror of refinement;
34




Endowment of Teachers


his minute accuracy, his boundless information, his
scientific procedure in his own special line, were a
standard by which all might measure their own
achievements, whether in arts or in sciences, and be
thereby stimulated to fresh effort.
An unworldly man, he was a sound adviser in
worldly matters, but if he had had to depend for a
livelihood upon the reputation of being a popular
lecturer, he would have starved; a system of endowment, which renders such a man's work possible, is
worth maintaining. If we could be reasonably hopeful that of every ten "idle fellows " one would be a
Bradshaw, we might congratulate ourselves upon the
profitable investment of our money; we should not
lose were the proportion even smaller.
Darwin's work gave a new impetus to the study of
life in all its forms, whether animal or vegetable. By
suggesting new principles of classification, it rendered
possible the discovery of facts hitherto ignored; it
established once for all the importance of small
things, of gradual processes, of infinite patience. His
life was a model of scientific procedure, but would it
have paid him, had he been dependent upon the
demand for what he supplied?
Again, the man who teaches successfully is seldom
the man who pursues research; the teacher is subordinate to the man of learning; the qualities which
enable a man to be exceptionally learned are seldom
combined with those other qualities which make him
a capable exponent of learning; but the very learned
35




The Debateable Land


man is none the less necessary to the existence of the
teacher.
To descend from universities to schools, it might
be thought that the advantages of good teaching are
so obvious, its results so evident, that the payment of
teachers might safely be left to the discretion of
parents. Experience has proved repeatedly that this
is not the case, and for the simple reason that there
never has been a time, and there never will be a time,
when a teacher's work will be capable of being
measured in its entirety by his employers; a teacher's
most valuable work least often shows an immediate
result.
On the whole, our forefathers were wise in their
generation when they adopted a form of educational
endowment, which provided at any rate a minimum
stipend for teachers on a by no means ungenerous scale.
Modern endowment runs in quite another direction;
we endow the persons who are taught. Such an
institution as our Science and Art Department practically bribes the parent to allow his children to learn
particular subjects; for compliance with the demands
of South Kensington means a minimum of school
fees. It might even be said that day by day we
advance further in the direction of encouraging the
parent to believe that the instruction of his children
is not a thing for which he can be expected to pay.
Parents who stint themselves, that their children may
be well educated, will soon be an absurd phenomenon; already well-to-do tradesmen send their chil36




Endowment of Teachers


dren to elementary board schools so that they may
be able to compete for County Council scholarships.
So far from endowing the teacher, we have almost
rendered him superfluous; we establish a majorgeneral at South Kensington as comprehensive head
master, and it will probably not be long before we
discover that a police officer is competent to see that
the regulations of the department are carried out in
local schools and colleges.
A couple of copies of a provincial newspaper furnish us with a satisfactory illustration of the distance
that we have travelled in the depreciation of teaching.
The first gives us a report of the proceedings of a
Town Council with reference to the technical instruction in a recently-built Technical College; in the
second, we find that the Chairman of the Technical
Instruction Committee of the same College has been
interviewed by a representative of the newspaper in
question.
The town which is the scene of this educational
enterprise can boast with reason of having shown
itself exceptionally enlightened for the last sixty
years of its history. In building a Technical College it
has acted in accordance with the spirit of its nobler
ambitions; in overlooking the importance of teachers
it is merely following the prevalent tendency of the
country at large, which tendency it also follows in
preferring to create a new institution rather than
strengthen and extend the work of an old one, for it
possesses a well-equipped Grammar school, whose
37




The Debateable Land


head master is in sympathy with science teaching,
and whose endowments can be shown to have existed
before the year of grace 129I.
Let us take the Town Council first. The Technical Instruction Sub-Committee re Classes, had reported the receipt of the following letter (from a
local magnate): "... you will probably have
heard direct from the county authorities that the
County Education Committee cannot see their way
to give us any grant towards a principal's salary, but
will favourably consider the question of giving us an
increased building grant. I think their decision might
have been different, but their annual expenditure
already exceeds the amount set aside by the County
Council." Then follows a statement that the writer
and two other munificent gentlemen of the locality
are prepared to give between them ~70 a year for
two years towards the expenses of administration
"should a suitable person be appointed."
"With regard to the question of the appointment
of a director of studies, which the Committee considered essential to the success of the college, the
Committee reported as follows on the financial position." Follows the report, which the Committee
themselves summarise in the following terms:~  s. d.
"General Receipts amounting to..  805 o o
Receipts from the Science Classes. 545 o o
Receipts from the Art Classes.. 300 o o
Total..,650 o o
38




Endowment of Teachers


~  s. d.
General Expenses..   665 I 2
Expenses on Science CIasses.  460 o o
Expenses on Art Classes..   245 o o
Total...    I,37o I 2
- -
leaving a balance of ~279 I8s. Iod. Out of this it
is proposed to put aside ~200 for the salary of
the director of studies, leaving a reserve balance of.~79 I8s. Iod."
"Alderman A said it was a pity they had to
depend to some extent upon outside help in order
to carry on the college for the next two years. If at
the end of that time the engagement of a director of
studies had not proved successful, they would have
to discontinue his services. They hoped, however,
that the college would be a success, and that they
would be able to carry it on without pecuniary loss.
Unless they were liberally endowed from outside
they would not be able to carry it on."
So far the Town Council and the Instruction
Committee, speaking officially and in a business-like
manner.
Now for the chairman of the Technical Instruction Committee and his Interviewer.
The report begins with the customary liveliness of
the journalist, who, before entering upon his serious
business, frisked on the pavement with three burghers,
one of whom   stigmatised the new college as the
"town's latest white elephant! "
39




The Debateable Land


The journalist was then conducted over the building by the clerk of the works; hear him!
"The mere enumeration of the rooms would make
a list as long and tedious as that of the ships in the
second book of the Iliad, for on the three floors almost half a hundred rooms "-why did not he say the
two hundred-thousandth part of ten million rooms?"are conveniently arranged. Entering the handsome
vestibule, with pillared arches overhead, the visitor is
confronted by the broad staircase with a long row of
high, light, well-appointed rooms on either hand.
Provision has been made here for a chemical laboratory, a physical lecture-room, three classrooms, and
rooms for engineering, drawing, optical experiments,
and photography. Then, passing the Italian workmen engaged in laying down the beautiful corridor
pavement in a substratum of fireproof material, we
reach the first floor, which is practically entirely devoted to art. Here are classrooms especially adapted
for elementary work, the antique, life classes, paintings, modelling, and a large room 95 x 251 feet, with
a good northern light.... Continuing our cursory survey, a descent to the semi-basement brings us
to the joinery and plumbing workshops, the physical
laboratory, the lockers, and rooms adapted for the
teaching of domestic economy.... But the furnishing has to be commenced with, and ought to be
carried out on a careful and elaborate scale. But
time presses and money is scarce."
After this glowing description, we are surprised to
40




Endowment of Teachers


learn that the building is still defective; it has no
lecture-hall or museum. No lecture-hall! though it
already has a large room, 95 x 25- feet! The floor
space of Westminster Hall is only eight times as
large.
After this comes the interview with the man "to
whose unflagging energy, indomitable perseverance,
and clear recognition of the educational requirements
of the day, the erection of the college is really
due."
Here are some of his statements; this is how he
begins. "We shall do something more than concentrate our present classes. We shall eventually embrace all the branches of technical education. The
laundry and cookery classes are at present under the
direction of the School Board, but we hope to have
the direct control of them. We shall be able to
substantiate our claim when we have provided the
necessary accommodation.... Particular attention will be paid to commercial education in the
French and German languages -most important subjects most inadequately appreciated. We shall take
up, in fact, every subject that bears upon the work of
the district, and will bring out the particular bent
of a student's mind."
We must pause for a moment to consider what is
implied in these last statements. The town already
has a good grammar school, in which French and
German are taught, but apparently not "in a way
which will bring out the particular bent of a student's
4I




The Debateable Land


mind," not commercially; otherwise there is no
occasion for these classes at the technical college.
Again, the School Board already teaches laundry
work and cooking; an excellent arrangement. Why
interfere with it? Why provide the necessary accommodation at the college which is already provided by
the board schools, and why classify the teaching of
French and German commercially with washing and
cooking? Perhaps "commercially" is the qualification that renders this possible.
But then will the first floor, with its handsome
Italian pavements, its rooms entirely devoted to art,
its antiques and its life classes, find itself in complete
harmony with the odour of the stew-pan and the
reek of the wash-tub?
What a text for a sermon! but that particular
sermon must be for the present deferred. Let us
listen to our enthusiast on the subject of a director
of studies.
" At first we intend to have a gentleman who can
organize and develop the college. My committee
has decided to advertise for a director of studies, who
will have to perform a multiplicity of duties. He will
undertake the general superintendence of the college,
advise the committee about its management, conduct
correspondence with the educational authorities, regulate the subjects of study, and,-most important of
all in the eyes of the ratepayer,-keep a keen watch
upon the income and expenditure of the college.
42




Endowment of Teachers


For the performance of these difficult and delicate
tasks we offer a salary of ~200 per annum. The
director ought to be a man of scientific training-an
expert in educational matters; but we shall not er.pect
him to take part in the teaching."
In answer to a question about the personnel of the
college staff, Mr. B. said that "as far as possible the
present staff would be retained, but developments
and changes would ultimately be necessary. They
sought to attain efficiency by providing the best
teachers, who, by the aid of the best and most complete apparatus, would work on the best and most
advanced methods."
What a dear old phrase this is! Let us see what
inducement is offered to teachers to make themselves
competent to use the best and most complete apparatus or what opportunity they are likely to have
of turning the Italian pavement and all the rest of it
to the best advantage.
After devoting ~200 a year to the director of
studies, and ~79 I8s. Iod. to reserve-careful Committee!-we have ~I,370 is. 2d. left, of which ~368
per annum is at once swallowed up by redemption of
the building fund, leaving us practically ~I,ooo for
maintenance 'and teachers' stipends.  Maintenance
comes to ~297 Is. 2d., which we may be justified in
calling ~300. Brooms have a way of wearing out,
washing soda gets wasted, pipes burst occasionally; all this might swallow up ~2 I8s. iod., even
under the management of an efficient director
43




The Debateable Land
of studies. This leaves us ~700 for the salaries of
teachers.
We are told in another part of the interview that
the number of pupils is 500, which allows one teacher
at ~140 a year to each o00 pupils; and the pupils
may be learning chemistry, physics, engineering,
drawing, modelling, French and German, commercially, and everything else that tends to " bring out
the particular bent of a student's mind."
What an enlightened nation we are when walking
encyclopedias, with the Latin and Greek pages torn
out, can be found to teach on the best possible methods for ~I40 a year!
The fact is, that the Quaker's curse has fallen upon
our educational aspirants; the spirit of bricks and
mortar has broken out in them.
Money can be got for a building; it cannot be got
for a teacher. What is the history of our University
Colleges of Science all over the country? First, men
without buildings, then buildings without money;
and the latter state is worse than the first. The
County Council previously referred to could allow its
expenditure to exceed its income in the interests of
a building, but not to provide that building with a
suitable teacher, leaving it, in fact, a bell without a
clapper.
Think of the multiplicity of functions to be carried
on by the director of studies, whose scientific training must have prepared him to judge of the efficiency
of the processes employed by the best laundry-maids
44




Endowment of Teachers


provided with the best washing-tubs, as well as of the
best drawing-master supplied with the best antiques,
and the best chemist, and the best physicist, and metallurgist, and geologist, and parish dustbin sweeperout-for that, too, is a technical proficiency demanded
by the requirements of the district.
Granted that such a man were possible, would he
leave other work for ~200 a year, guaranteed for two
years only? It would not pay a certificated master to
leave a board school on these terms.
The county in which this college has been built
sets aside, according to the report of the Commissioners on Secondary Education, 1 3,163 from local
taxation for educational purposes. Had this sum
been divided into salaries of ~400 per annum  for
teachers, more than thirty teachers would have been
found for the county, at an income which would have
attracted properly-qualified men.  A town which
provides ~300 a year from its rates for the erection
and maintenance of satisfactory lecture-rooms can
find sufficient teaching appliances for a sufficient
staff of these lecturers; but it might have to forego
Italian pavements, and leave clear starching to the
board schools. There are also three county boroughs
in the same county appropriating ~,4,039 to education.
The endowment of teachers without buildings on
the medieval system mentioned before is at least
economical; the modern system of finding the buildings, paying the pupil, and leaving the teacher to
45




The Debateable Land


chance, is expensive and absolutely ineffective; it is
also hideously wasteful from many points of view, but
the consideration of that question must be left to
a future occasion.
What would be the work of our director of studies
in the present instance? He is not to teach, but to
superintend and conduct correspondence. How, then,
could his success or failure demonstrate itself? By
beating up the highways and hedges for pupils? Or
by writing begging letters on behalf of the college, so
that his salary might be increased and continued?
Or by making out a case for his college, which would
enable it to get a grant from the Treasury? All these
things, and not teaching, are a large part of the functions of the principals of other local colleges, whose
buildings are equally magnificent, equally provided
with the best apparatus, and which cannot pay their
professors with certainty, or on a scale which would
attract any sane man to the profession of teaching who
could look forward and could get other work. Our
director of studies in the present case would have done
better to enter the police force; a man capable of
possessing such high qualifications could certainly
have risen to be a superintendent, and then not only
would his salary have been as large or larger, but it
would have been permanent, and would have carried
a pension with it at a comparatively early age.
So far our modern educational endowment has run
in the direction of paying for buildings and apparatus
on the one hand, and of paying persons to be taught
46




Endowment of Teachers


on the other. The evils of this latter system require
a paper to themselves; which, however, we will defer
for a while. Figures are fatiguing. Let us take a
rest in the society of Science and Art!


47




IV


Science and Art
IT might seem to the casual observer that the age
of educational endowment is over. Whether it is
that wealthy persons have ceased to be anxious about
the pains and penalties of purgatory, or that they no
longer regard the teaching of other people's children
as a proper object of benevolence, pious founders,
on a large scale, such as Henry VI. and the Lady
Margaret, have ceased from among us; the solitary
exception made by a vendor of pills, possibly of
uneasy conscience, serving only to prove the rule.
But while Holloway College is alone in its magnificence as an example of individual gifts, designed in
our own time to further the cause of education,
smaller benefactions have not ceased, and the nation
collectively endows on a large scale. The Education
Act of I870 and its successors may be looked upon
as a national endowment of education; for whether
the money is paid from taxes or from rates, the nation
collectively spends a very large annual sum in providing instruction for the children of those who, from
48




Science and Art


want of will or want of money, would not pay for it
themselves.
Individual benefactions of recent years have taken
almost exclusively the direction of benefactions to
local colleges of science and to various technical colleges. The Treasury also pays fairly large sums to
the support of certain individual local colleges of
science, while the annual expenditure of the Department of Science and Art amounted to ~666,308 in
1893-94, and forty-eight County Councils spent in the
same period ~391,598 in technical instruction; these
two last items taken together alone amount to
~I,057,906.
If we are asked what has been done in the direction of continuing the mediaeval endowments to grammar schools, since the wealth and population of this
country began their unprecedented rate of expansion
in the present century, we are obliged to admit " almost
nothing." It is true that Marlborough, and Cheltenham, and Clifton, and Wellington, and some half
dozen other large schools, have grown up on quite
modern foundations to rival the older endowed
schools, such as Eton and Winchester, while a few
small local grammar schools, such as Uppingham and
Sherbourne, have entered upon a new and glorious
life as large boarding schools. But these schools have
grown unaided by the State, and with a minimum of
assistance from private munificence. They are still
subject to the fluctuations of fashion; a succession of
epidemics, or even of unpopular though strenuous
49               E




The Debateable Land


head masters, might seriously cripple, if not destroy
any one of them. In spite of their apparent wealth,
and the considerable fees which are paid for their
pupils, the struggle with ways and means is always
pressing on them; and the rate of payment of the staff
is such that the more enterprising teachers, when
boarding-houses cannot be found for them, leave
them in despair of ever being able to maintain a wife
and family on their scanty stipends. For the present
the question of the adequate payment of teachers
must be deferred; meanwhile, the conclusion to which
we are brought is that money has been found during
the present century,-if not at a rate duly proportionate to the increase of the national wealth, still in
some proportion,-for the teaching of certain subjects,
classed as scientific and technical; while for the
purposes of comprehensive education above the
public elementary day schools, there has been practically no additional endowment, whether in the form
of Treasury grants or private benefaction. Hymer's
College at Hull stands alone.
In following Mr. Leach's investigations into the
provisions for education existing previously to the
Reformation, we were made aware of two facts: first,
that the grammar schools were Latin schools, and
that Latin was at that epoch a technical subject, the
universal language, through which all the Arts and
Sciences were approached. Secondly, that the wide
diffusion of these Latin schools produced a wellinformed English middle class, a middle class who, in
50




Science and Art
the reign of Edward III., could read Chaucer, and
who, in the reign of Elizabeth, could understand
Shakespeare, the richest of all dramatists. It is noteworthy that no other country, not even Italy or Spain,
has any form of popular literature,-and the drama
is essentially popular-comparable to Shakespeare at
the same period. If it is fair to judge of the intelligence and culture of the average Athenian citizen by
his power of appreciating Euripides and Aristophanes,
then it is surely fair to estimate the intellectual development of the Elizabethan Englishman by the
unexampled apparition of Shakespeare.
Nevertheless, we are confronted by the strange fact,
that the era at which the fruits of a liberal provision
for education are so profusely lavished, is precisely
the era at which an indifference to education sets in.
It is true that there were some schools founded or
restored in the reign of Elizabeth and subsequently,
but Mr. Leach has clearly shown that the work of
restoration was incommensurate with the work of
destruction.  The  English  people allowed their
schools to be confiscated, and pillaged for purposes
of State, almost without protest.
It is worth while to enquire into the causes of
all this, for our present position is in some respects
comparable to that of the Elizabethans. An attentive
consideration of the errors of our ancestors may
possibly put us on our guard against a repetition
of them.
In the first place, it may be observed that a sound
5i




The Debateable Land


educational system is least likely to be missed at the
time of its activity; its fruits long survive it in the
lives of the persons who have enjoyed its advantages,
and in those of their immediate posterity. Even when
Shakespeare died, there must have been many men
living who had been to school before the Chantries
Act crippled national education; nor would the effect
of the loss of endowment be immediately felt by the
schools. In most cases pensions were granted to
teachers, even where the school itself was not continued, till further orders, and the pension did not at
once cease to be an adequate provision.
In the second place, the traditions of good education would long be continued in the families which
had attended the schools before they were robbed:
such families would be prepared to make up for the
loss of the endowments by increased payment to
teachers in some form or another. There would not,
however, be a tendency to any further diffusion of
such education among the families who, under previous conditions, would have had their children well
taught at little expense to themselves, as they became
richer, instead of badly taught. Suppose Eton and
Harrow and all the rest of them swept away at the
present moment; they would only be missed by the
class of families who are now sending their sons to
such schools. These would, doubtless, find some means
of replacing them at any rate temporarily. But the
large middle class of our towns would not feel that
the nation had lost anything; they would send their
52




Science and Art
children to inferior schools with equal, if not with
greater, confidence. Only after the lapse of two
generations would historians note that something had
at this period evidently vanished from the nation's
life; and it is quite possible that they would not fix
upon the cessation of certain schools as the startingpoint of a backward movement in the nation.
Indifference to any set of interests, educational
or other, may also be due to an absorbing interest in
others. Such periods as our own and the Elizabethan
age are periods of rapid commercial development,
and they are not favourable to the claims of the
contemplative life; they will make use of what has
previously been done in the way of culture and refinement; they will not develop fresh agencies in the
same field. When many people are getting rich something goes on in the whole fabric of society akin
to the rush to a new goldfield; money fever, in all
kinds of insidious forms, breaks out; men with the
mercantile aptitude come to the front and almost
monopolise the direction of the general tone of
society; thus an impulse is given towards an exclusive attention to the external and material aspects
of life. Men do not feel the absence of a general
diffusion of learning at a time when everybody is
getting rich, for, unfortunately, the majority of them
are more apt at bestowing their energies upon the
acquisition of riches than upon being refined or virtuous; a man's income is easily measured, not so his
intellectual beauty nor his moral strength.
53




The Debateable Land


If we again call to mind the fact that the mediaeval
grammar schools were Latin schools, we see that the
growth of vernacular languages would tend to weaken
the hold of an education based upon Latin. To the
end of the last century Latin held its own as the
language of learned men, and of some of the sciences.
As late as 1776 Dr. Johnson wrote of Buchanan,
" His name has as fair a claim to immortality as can
be conferred by modern Latinity, and perhaps a
fairer than the instability of vernacular languages
admits." But even then Latin had ceased to be
habitually spoken by English scholars, and was, in
fact, for all practical purposes dead. Meanwhile the
vernacular languages of the leading continental
nations had joined with our own in becoming literary.
Again, the Reformation from the point of view
of education in our own country may be divided into
two periods of development, the one merging insensibly into the other. The popular view that it began
and ended with Henry VIII. is, of course, absurd;
it began visibly with Wycliff, and it ended with
George I. We had not done with Rome till Queen
Anne's successor was on the throne of England, who
might easily have been the Old Pretender had certain
influential persons of the time been able to get their
own way.
The first period of the Reformation, whether in
England or on the Continent, is marked by the
prominence of learned men. Whether as a political
or a religious movement, it was guided by cultivated
54




Science and Art


men, and refined men, by men who had not broken
with the past. Just as the French Revolution in its
beginning was the work of the Encyclopedists and
Voltaire, so the first reformers were men of the stamp
of Rabelais and Erasmus, of Wolsey and Sir Thomas
Moore; both in our own country and on the Continent such men were succeeded by men who, however capable, were  uncultivated.  In  our own
country the high-water mark of the second stage of
the Reformation is represented by Cromwell and his
generals, men with whom a refined Puritan, such as
Colonel Hutchinson, found it difficult to deal. Milton,
it is true, was Cromwell's Latin secretary; but his
poet-laureate was Sergeant-Major Peter Fisher.
During the Elizabethan age a generation grew up
who mistrusted learning, for whom only one kind of
reading had any value, viz., the Old and New Testaments with the commentaries thereon; for them
Latin and the classical writers were pagan; Colet
had already shown something of the same spirit in
founding St. Paul's School. To quote Mr. Leach:
"Colet, like Gregory the Great, seems to have had a
holy horror of the classics as represented by Virgil,
Ovid, and Terence; and though he wanted the 'very
Roman tongue' of their time, puts St. Jerome and St.
Austin on the same level with them, and prescribes
Sedulius, Juvencus, and such like, who wrote Easter
hymns and gospels in verse, etc., and even (save the
mark!) Baptista Mantuanus, a Carmelite friar, who
died in 15 6, and composed eclogues."
55




The Debateable Land


To part company with Latin in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and to confine oneself to the
study of the Scriptures in the vernacular, was to part
company with all the previous accumulations of
science. It was more than this, it was an abandonment of scientific methods of considering the world
around us. We may freely concede the fact that up to
the reign of Elizabeth science had not started on the
roads along which she has since victoriously travelled;
and yet we need not abandon the position that there
was already a spirit of enquiry, and that much information had been accumulated. The discussion
on the nature of dreams, for instance, in Chaucer's
tale of The Cock and the Fox, shows us that even in
the reign of Richard II. there was a scientific as well
as a superstitious theory of dreaming. People who
see in teachers of Latin mere gerund grinders will
naturally attribute little damage to science from the
elimination of the Latin schools; but even if it is not
true now, it was certainly true in the Middle Ages,
that the teacher of Latin might also be, and often was,
a teacher of science.
Were other evidence wanting, the general outbreak
of the hideous faith in witchcraft in the seventeenth
century would sufficiently indicate that our middle
classes had lost more than they suspected when they
lost their schools. The scientific temper of Chaucer
was gone, superstition had taken its place. It is
notorious that the most cruel witch-finders were also
the most strenuous Puritans-those who went over
56




Science and Art


to America and founded New England. There is
always present in every stage of society a minority
who believe, or are ready to believe, on very slender
evidence, in the active influence of the world of spirits
with our daily concerns; but where there is a general
confidence in the orderly progression of the universe,
such persons do not often lose their balance nor
infect others. Where, however, there is no general
diffusion of the scientific temperament, superstitious
beliefs get the upper hand. Luther and Calvin were
succeeded by John of Leyden and other " prophets ";
nor must we forget that the generation which gave
birth to Bunyan also gave birth to the Fifth Monarchy
Men and the Anabaptists. When the middle classes
of the sixteenth century threw over the learning of
their forefathers, they invited the superstitions of
their remote ancestors, and the invitation met with
an abundant response.
What, then, are we in danger of throwing away
now? Surely not science?
What precisely do we mean by the term science?
What do we wish to be at, when we set apart a
million and odd every year for scientific and technical instruction? Are we interested in promoting
scientific habits of thought among the majority of
our countrymen? or are we not rather interested in
diffusing the knowledge of some of the results which
have been achieved by scientific men, because we
believe that this knowledge is useful for commercial
purposes? Is there any clear and general under57




The Debateable Land


standing of the fact, that technical instruction is one
thing, and scientific education is another?
Technical instruction may be profoundly unscientific; and in fact for practical purposes -unscientific
methods of teaching technical operations may be the
best. Is the thermometer an instrument commonly
used in our kitchens? How are we likely to get good
soup from our cook, by telling her to take a thermometer and withdraw her pot from the fire whenever it registers more than I04~ on being plunged
into the stock, or by telling her that if she finds the
soup too hot, when she puts her finger into it, she is
overheating her pan? It is quite true that the
fingers and thumbs of cooks vary in thickness of
skin, but a cook will successfully use the simple test
who refuses to be " fashed " with the scientific instrument.
No amount of knowledge of metallurgy will teach
a man to temper a chisel. He may know all about
the arrangement of the molecules of steel in the process of heating and cooling, exactly the degree of
temperature at which it is ready to be cooled suddenly, in order to secure the requisite hardness; but
the workman, who only knows that when the heated
steel throws certain colours on its surface in a certain
order, the right moment has arrived, is for practical
purposes superior to the skilled metallurgist, who,
indeed, when he constitutes himself a workman, has
to adopt the workman's methods.
Again, there is nothing whatever scientific in learn58




Science and Art


ing by heart the latest scientific dogma. Much of
what is called scientific teaching in these days is
simply the teaching of Mangnall's questions up to
date.
There is no more science involved in learning by
heart chemical formulae, than in similarly learning
algebraical formulae, but the one process is endowed
at the rate of a million and more per annum, and the
other is left to chance.
We recently learned, through the medium of the
daily papers, that Professor Dewar had succeeded in
liquefying oxygen. What then? To men who know
all, and perhaps more than all, that Professor Dewar
knows about chemistry and physics, the fact is one
of great importance; it proves that certain views
previously held were correct; it may lead to farther
correct information about a multiplicity of things;
but to our aunt in the country, who presumably
gapes amazed as she reads the announcement, the
fact has no possible significance; yet if she were a
schoolboy, she might some day earn part of a science
and art grant by retailing it.
The strange pickle of subjects which may be taught
in the higher classes of our elementary schools show
decisively that the relative significance of branches
of learning, and the relation of each and several to
the proper work of education, are neither understood
nor studied. We have physics lightheartedly coupled
with animal physiology, botany, the principles of
agriculture, domestic science, navigation, book-keep59




The Debateable Land


ing, four languages, algebra, euclid, mensuration, and
shorthand! A study of the syllabus of any local
college of science confirms our bewilderment; for
these places, anxious to enlist pupils and public sympathy, hold out as many flags as possible.
Has it not always been so? Has there ever been
a period when scientific procedure was valued more
than the results of science? Did not astronomy
begin in astrology, and was not chemistry the accidental discovery of those who sought in vain for the
philosopher's stone? Have we not at the present
day lost our perception of the value of intellectual
processes in our amazement at the money-getting
possibilities which scientific men have revealed?
Alas, my Lady Science, your reputation was not
particularly good when you were supposed to be
married to the magician, and you have not materially improved it by your more recent flirtation with
the bagman!
At the same time that we were captured by the
golden gifts of science, Professor Ruskin and others
pressed upon us the claims of art; and when it
seemed that insufficient attention was given to them,
our advisers reminded us of what we might earn by
improving designs in our pottery and textile fabrics.
We jumped to the bait, and devote some of our
million to paying boys and girls to learn to draw.
And yet, what do we mean by art? We include
under this term, for the purposes of payment by
results, geometrical drawing and machine drawing.
60




Science and Art


It would be pleasant to hear Professor Ruskin discourse on the subject; for if there is one aptitude
which is profoundly devoid of art, it is the aptitude
of the geometrical draughtsman.
All children should at some time or other of their
school life be taught to draw without the aid of instruments, such as rulers, compasses, and the like;
both eye and hand are susceptible of acquiring dexterity, the former in correctly seeing, the latter in
correctly recording the forms seen. Any person can
test this assertion for himself by trying to draw
straight lines, and then marking them off into halves
and fourths, thirds and fifths; he will be surprised no
less by the rapidity of his improvement than by his
initial incompetence. Again, a great deal of the art
of drawing depends upon seeing with the eye and not
with the intelligence. A child, who is told to draw a
pig, draws all the four legs on one side; he knows a
pig has four legs, and conscientiously gives them all;
and even when he is confronted with the real pig, or
a correct drawing of a pig, he prefers not to look at
the model, but to evolve pigs from his own inner
consciousness, all properly provided with four legs.
There is, however, no subject in which the work of
the teacher is of less importance than in drawing; any
person who really wishes to learn to draw can do so
with the minimum of instruction, provided he can find
a table and light. There are very few people who
take the trouble to learn to draw.
What we admire in works of art, and what we are
6I




The Debateable Land


trying to secure when we pay a large endowment
to art, is the one quality which no teacher can impart-the selective faculty, which is the quality that
divides the really great artist from the mechanical
draughtsman.
Whether we are designers of wall papers or of patterns for textile fabrics, we may still be artistic; but
it is possible to design infinitely upon the suggestions
given by some other artist, without seeing or feeling
for oneself.
The ordinary history of a really great artist is that
he learned in the studio of some other master. At
first his works are almost indistinguishable from those
of his master; he sees with his master's eyes, governs
his own selective faculty by that of his teacher.
Every great painter was followed by a school, and
the majority of the men who studied in those schools
simply continued to repeat their master's work, never
establishing any distinctive note of their own. Here
and there the master was watched by a pupil who
could see and select for himself; he inevitably broke
away from the rules that he had been taught, and
himself became the founder of another school; but if
we were to spend ten millions a year instead of one
upon persuading people to let their children learn to
draw, we should be no nearer the creation of English
Raphaels than we are at present, nor of finding an
improvement upon Professor Herkomer.
Of the technicalities of art much may be learned,
and a minimum must be learned from a capable
62




Science and Art
practitioner; but the knowledge of the behaviour of
clay under the hand of the modeller, of wood under
the chisel, of iron under the hammer, is not art,-it is a
mechanical proficiency leading to art, and there is no
more reason for endowing it from the public treasury
than there is for endowing the village blacksmith,
who, by the way, seems up to the present date to
have been neglected by our technical instructors.


63




V


On the Effect of Subsidizing Education
W    HETHER money paid to subsidize education
is paid from rates and taxes, or from private
endowments, the ultimate outcome is the same; viz.,
that the individual parent does not in all cases pay
the whole of the expenses of educating his children.
It is good that from time to time the question should
be raised, whether there is any reason to subsidize
education at all. With what object does the nation
collectively tax itself to maintain schools and other
educational institutions?
It may be laid down as a fundamental proposition
that a wise nation will not subsidize institutions
which might be self-supporting. In England, for
example, we do not subsidize the theatres, because
apart from the fact that a good many of us consider
them very naughty, we have found that in all the
large centres of population theatres can support
themselves. Why do we subsidize the schools?
64




On the Effect of Subsidizing Education


When we passed the Education Act of 1870, we
believed ourselves to have discovered by experience
that the national well-being was imperilled by the
ignorance of the majority of the population, by its
moral even more than its intellectual ignorance, and
we, like other nations, were convinced that parents in
the wage-earning classes were too indifferent to the
welfare of their children to pay for schools. The
measure was in some of its aspects a measure of
police.  Compulsory elementary education as a
measure of police is not absolutely a success; some
statisticians tell us that in our own as well as in other
countries compulsory education has not resulted in
a diminution of juvenile crime, but rather in an increase. This, however, is not the question with
which we are immediately   concerned.  Having
accepted this dogma, that all children should be
educated, we put it into practice by relieving all
parents of the responsibility of educating their
children up to a certain standard, the board schools
being open to all classes of the community.
Since then we have further subsidized education
beyond the elementary standards. With what
motives! Is the subsidy really necessary? Why
are we spending one million and fifty-seven thousand
pounds odd upon the teaching of science and art and
technical instruction? Is it absolutely certain that
nobody would continue to be taught these subjects
were the subsidy withdrawn? To what extent would
the community suffer?


65


F




The Debateable Land


The subsidy paid to technical instruction and
science and art, so called, is unquestionably paid in
obedience to the wishes of those who look upon our
nation as a vast workshop in competition with other
workshops. It has been taken for granted, for instance, that we are sadly behind other nations in
the arts of designing, in our knowledge of chemistry
and physics as applied to manufactures and agriculture; and to remedy this state of affairs we tax ourselves, so that every child may be instructed in the
arts and sciences at a minimum of cost to the
individual parent. How far is this wise? Is there
not an equally effective way of attaining the same
end? Is it absolutely necessary to pauperize instruction?
Suppose that the heads of our manufacturing industries had been convinced that their business could
not face foreign competition unless the proficiency of
the individual workman in science and art had been
improved. It would surely have been worth their
while to pay increased wages to men or lads who
took the trouble to acquire the desired proficiency,
in which case it would also have been worth somebody's while to teach these subjects. Or have we to
plead guilty to a national absence of foresight and
unwillingness to learn, so great that even the prospect of increased earnings would not induce parents
to pay school fees for the instruction of their children
in advanced subjects? If we take this view, why
should we stop at science and art?
66




On the Effect of Subsidizing Education


What has happened with regard to other needs, or
supposed needs, of the body politic?
Some years ago we made up our minds that we
required better trained officers for our army and
navy, and we refused to admit young men to these
services without subjecting them to a severe competitive examination. Almost immediately there
came into being a large class of teachers, invidiously
designated "crammers," who prepared boys for these
examinations, and parents are willing to pay the
necessary expenses; yet the State is surely as much
in need of good soldiers and sailors as of good
designers. Why should the parent of the one be let
off his fees, and the other not receive assistance also?
It is true that in the one case the expenses of education, and the subsequent emoluments, are expressed
in shillings, and in the other in pounds; but the
relative self-sacrifice of the parent on behalf of the
child and State is the same.
An argument advanced on behalf of free education in elementary schools is to the effect that if the
State forces a parent to send his children to school,
the State must pay the expenses. This might fairly
be extended. The State only compels children to go
to school because that is felt to be desirable for the
general welfare; it is for the same reason that the
State raises the standard of the proficiency of public
servants. Then it is clearly the business of the State
to provide institutions where the necessary proficiencies may be acquired free of cost.
67




The Debateable Land


If we were fairly convinced that education at such
a school as Eton is absolutely indispensable to
maintain a strong breed of statesmen, we should
merely be following lines already marked out in
paying the tuition fees of Eton boys from the public
treasury.
As a matter of fact, the interests of the parent and
the interests of the nation are at variance all along
the line. The nation requires highly qualified citizens; the parent wishes for the minimum of expenditure from his own pocket upon the education of his
children. The nation demands that her civil servants
and her warriors shall be men of sound intellectual
and physical training, of the strictest integrity, servants of honour; the parent desires that admission
to the public services should be so arranged that his
sons should easily become the paid servants of the
public without any sacrifices on his part.
Similarly, in all the industries and manufactures it
is to the interest of the nation and of the employers
that those employed should be well trained; of the
parents of young persons likely to need employment,
that they should not be trained at all, because training is expensive.
If we further choose to regard our nation as a
manufacturing firm in competition with other firms,
we see that a high standard of intellectual and moral
activity in each and every citizen is conducive to the
supremacy of the nation; but to each and every
parent inside the nation it is convenient that, whether
68




On the Effect of Subsidizing Education


the general standard is to be high or low, it should
be in the first place inexpensive.
It is partly to meet this conflict of interest between
the parent and the State that the system of payment
of grants on attendance and examination has been
devised; partly also because there are soft-headed
and soft-hearted people existing in large numbers
who regard education as the one great democratic
machine for enabling anybody to become anything.
A wiser policy would have been to establish adequately-staffed schools in localities where they seemed
likely to be useful, with a scale' of fees based upon
the proportion of the population likely to attend the
classes, so that the school would, if fully attended, be
self-supporting, and the deficit would be made up by
the State where it was not fully attended. "But
then the public might be cheated by the teachers."
A nation which once deliberately allows this consideration to be dominant in its councils has said
good-bye to all that is really valuable in teaching,
and is ready to perpetrate any blunder. Only the
most mechanical forms of instruction can survive
under a system dictated by distrust of the teacher;
men fit to do the most valuable work of a teacher, the
work that we all really mean when we speak of education, will not submit to a system of payment by
results.
To revert to the question of the subsidizing of education. Leniency to the individual parent is State
socialism, nothing more or less. A, who may be a
69.




The Debateable Land


bachelor, is taxed so that B's twelve children may be
educated. A can be persuaded that the arrangement is advisable when B's disorderly twelve menace
his peace and seem likely to grow up redly revolutionary; but the case looks different when B is well off,
and could perfectly well afford to pay adequate school
fees.  We remind A that B's children are being
taught to be skilled artisans, and thereby will promote the national welfare in which A has a share;
but then he may reply that if our manufacturers
understood their responsibilities, B would have to
bring his children up to the required standard without State aid; why should he be taxed to benefit
employers of labour, whose method of selecting their
workmen is to take the first man that offers himself?
The subsidizing, not of technical instruction, but
of education in the best sense, may however be defended from a slightly different point of view. The
nation is permanent, not so the individual.  Experience has shown that the current generation of
parents collectively cannot be depended upon to
train their children in such a way as to carry on the
national life. They have no interest in providing for
the time when they will themselves have ceased to
exist; therefore the State, the permanent parent,
steps in, and provides for the due discipline and
training of its future citizens. Well and good, but
this brings us back to the old point; class for class,
all have an equal claim to instruction at the expense
of the State.
70




On the Effect of Subsidizing Education


A not uncommon motive for the private endowment of places of education has been the desire to
promote a high standard of morality by means of
influences in which the beneficent donor has a lively
faith. Some persons give or bequeath money to
establish schools in which religious instruction is the
first consideration, and in which the form of religious
instruction is in accordance with their own personal
views; others, again, seeing that certain professionsthe clergy, for instance-have a special difficulty in
finding education for their children on the same
social level on which they have themselves been
brought up, have provided schools on the professional
plane, with reduced fees for the sons of clergymen and
other professional men. Marlborough and Rossall
were founded on these principles for the benefit of
clergymen; Wellington to aid soldiers in the same
way. Here we have my Lady Bountiful at her best,
but she becomes extravagant when she is preoccupied
with the idea that it is necessary to the national
salvation to provide all forms of instruction at less
than cost price. Let private benefactors do as they
please, and let us be duly grateful to them, but the
State cannot safely tread in their steps; so long as
there are skilled workmen to be found, it is of no
advantage to the State that they should be the children of persons who could not afford, or were unwilling to pay for, their instruction.  Indeed, the
public advantage would seem to lie rather in the
other direction; thrifty parents are likely to beget
7I




The Debateable Land


thrifty children, and it is more probable that a fine
race of workmen will come into being if they are the
children of parents who have stinted themselves in
order that their families may be well educated than
if instruction is made easy for the improvident. The
same machinery which makes it easy for the workman's son to acquire instruction in science and art
enables the well-to-do tradesman to throw the expense of educating his children upon other people,
and he is not slow to realize and take advantage of
the situation. Even the foundation of inexpensive
boarding schools for the benefit of particular classes
has not been an unmixed blessing. In many parts
of the country there exist recent foundations called
county schools; men convinced of the excellence of
the public school system, and wishing to extend its
influence to the farming and kindred classes, have
created, by means of subscriptions and the utilisation
of old foundations falling into decrepitude, boarding
schools professing to give something akin to a public
school education, in which the fees are sometimes as
low as thirty guineas a year. What is the result?
In places within easy reach of manufacturing towns,
these schools are largely used by persons perfectly
well able to pay fees which would represent the real
cost of feeding and teaching their children. Worse
than that, these schools are used by such persons
simply as finishing schools; and it was recently discovered that, owing to this practice, the average life of
a boy in a large county school was barely one year.
72




On the Effect of Subsidizing Education
This is not what we call public school education,
nor was it contemplated by the founders of county
schools. Again, these low fees mean under-payment
of the teachers; a question which must be reserved
for discussion in a separate essay.
The dividing line between wise and unwise subsidization of education lies in this: all instruction which
is obviously conducive to eventually earning money
can be left to take care of itself; there is no occasion
whatever to subsidize technical instruction, except so
far as capital expenditure is concerned, in any sense
of the phrase, because as soon as any proficiency is
seen to be likely to earn money, people will willingly
pay to enable their children to acquire it. There
is, however, a large part of instruction and education which, though necessarily preliminary to these
branches of knowledge which obviously earn wages,
is not seen to be so, and for which, therefore, parents
are unwilling to pay. Take the case of algebra and
chemistry, of mechanics and machine-drawing. A
command of the uses of algebraical formula is necessary to the chemist; it is an indispensable preliminary
to sound chemistry; but parents frequently object to
paying for instruction in algebra, while they will
gladly pay extra fees for chemistry.  Similarly,
machine-drawing is a handicraft readily learned by
anybody who can afford to buy the necessary instruments and a text book; mechanics involve a considerable power of mathematical reasoning: the two
are necessary to make a really skilled engineer; but
73




The Debateable Land


while it is easy enough to fill a room with students
and drawing-boards, it is not uncommon to hear
grumbling about the uselessness of the mathematical
studies, which, however, necessarily precede the study
of mechanics.
The person who urges that, after all, expensive
public schools, such as Clifton, which owe practically
nothing to endowment, are not infrequent in the
country, may reasonably be asked how far such
schools are not technical schools, opening the way
to the different professions; and whether, if the
majority of parents could have their own way, the
curriculum of such schools would not at once be
brought down to the lowest possible standard of
instruction beyond the three R's. As a matter of
fact, any attempt to carry the methods of such
schools into the life of a local school is at present
generally crowned with failure. Parents will not pay
for having their children well taught unless they get
a considerable amount of social prestige along with
their bargain. It is sound policy to subsidize Latin
and mathematics, and even the enlightened teaching
of modern languages not exclusively for commercial
purposes; but shorthand, and book-keeping, and
scientific handicrafts of various sorts can safely be
left to take care of themselves.


74




VI


An Ideal Teacher and True Blue
Etonian
A VISITOR to the Eton Playing Fields some
thirty years ago would not improbably have
met, some time "after twelve," a broad-shouldered,
greyish-coloured man strolling along the path to
Sheep's Bridge in the company of one or more small
boys; his head would have been bent, and turned
slightly on one side; his face would have occasionally
been lit up by a smile in response to some comment
upon his conversation made by his youthful companions.
The external appearance of such a man would not
attract special notice in such a place; he would be
passed by as belonging to the fauna natural to an
abode of learning and of no great importance anywhere else; but if our stranger had been fortunate
enough to be furnished with an introduction to him,
he would have discovered that this presumably peace75




The Debateable Land


ful recluse knew more about the army than most
colonels, that his acquaintance with the history and
organization of the navy was minute and particular,
that he had an exact knowledge of the work of our
great ministers and politicians, not only in the distant, but in the recent past, and that in spite of his
distressingly short sight he had a particular and
just enjoyment of all beautiful things, of seas and
rivers, of flowers, and of the bright eyes and pretty
manners of children.
Such a man was William Johnson, born in I823,
who was an assistant-master at Eton from 1845 to
1872, spending the twenty-seven strongest years of
his life in devotion to the interests of his pupils and
the school.
He had himself been an Eton boy for ten years,
and then became a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, where he was Craven University Scholar, won
the Chancellor's medal for English verse, and the
Powis medal for Latin hexameters. King's men
being in those days excused from the public examinations of the University, his name does not
appear in the Tripos lists; but without that additional distinction he had done enough before he
took his degree to show that he possessed ability of
an exceptional standard.  It seemed, therefore, to
many of his friends that a career at the Bar lay open
before him, likely to end in the highest honours that
the legal profession can give; and, indeed, he was
upon the point of entering at the Middle Temple
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An Ideal Teacher


when Dr. Hawtrey made him the offer of an Eton
mastership. Partly his own inclinations, partly the
advice of a clear-sighted friend, determined him to
adopt that profession, which he honoured by his preference and illuminated by his example.
The choice of a profession was not made lightly,
but it is not discreditable to him that the one consideration which most commonly determines the
choice of a profession, —viz., the amount of the emoluments to be earned,-did not enter into his calculations; the question which he put to himself was
whether he would be able to lead a more worthy life
as a barrister or a schoolmaster. Speaking of the
Bar, he says, " I cannot go to London saying that my
business is to go about in clubs and law courts to
show folks that it is possible for a man of letters and
a reformer to be religious. If I go there, it will be to
live a sober and manly life under severe mental discipline, denying myself the intellectual luxuries I
could command at Cambridge for the purpose of
gaining an honest livelihood; of course intending to
avail myself of any opportunity that might present
itself for helping the progress of Christianity." And
again, speaking of the Eton mastership, " I do distinctly feel that if I have a gift it is the power of
gaining influence over the minds of people more
ignorant than myself, partly owing to my being able
to enter into other people's interests..... I put
the question on this ground: Is it not my vocation
to teach boys?  If so, must I not encounter all
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The Debateable Land


temptations incident to that life with faith and
courage? I answer in the affirmative." The temptations which he anticipated at Eton were "love of
money, gormandising, intrigue, imposture."
Having eventually made up his mind to go to
Eton, he considered the question of taking Holy
Orders, but eventually decided to remain a layman.
The start at Eton in September, 1845, was to be a
severe test of his steadfastness; it did not seem at
first that he was to have the opportunity of "gaining influence over the minds of persons more
ignorant than himself." "Birch says he gets somewhat used to the listening to 270 boys on a Friday
(ninety, three times in the day each) saying their
lessons; of course there is a certain natural provision
for callousness. The people in theAndes get larger
breasts to make them breathe in the thin mountain
air. I also shall get by the law of adaptation some
hitherto undreamt-of power of abstracting my mind
-letting it think at will while my ears endure the
same page of Greek grammar thirty times repeated.
I am going into an abyss of drudgery-I must float
upon the hope of some success in perhaps one pupil
out of fifty-the hope that before my time is out I
may rejoice in having turned out of my pupil-room
perhaps one brave soldier, or one wise historian, or
one generous legislator, or one patient missionary....
He lived to see these ambitions realized. A very
large proportion of the work done in school at Eton
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An Ideal Teacher


in those days consisted of repetition lessons, but even
in these-the most mechanical part of a teacher's
work-he found possibilities of struggling towards a
standard. "Saying by heart is a tiresome and unsatisfactory kind of teaching work; but, drudgery as
it is, I find in a few minutes that it requires a constant moral effort, the effort to be just, to deal evenhandedly."
In many respects the organization of Eton fifty
years ago was not superior to that of a modern
elementary school. "I am very well, but my voice
is weak for this bellowing; it weighs heavily in the
scale of my uncertainties. The noise of 200 boys
and four masters in the Upper School is so great
that it is impossible for those at one end to hear
what-goes on at the other, and therefore the instruction conveyed cannot be but fragmentary, and
the great bulk of the division is learning nothing. I
think myself lucky if I can interest half a dozen near
neighbours and engage their attention. If I could
but have proper opportunities, I am sure I have a
dozen who would learn a good deal." And within
two months of his first introduction to his new work
we find him, even under these adverse circumstances,
already sounding that note of personal sympathy
with his pupils which made him so valuable and
inspiring an influence in his later years at Eton. " I
have been an usher seven weeks: my juvenility is a
fault mending every day, according to William Pitt's
notion; nor do I find my mind stagnating, as it is
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The Debateable Land


generally thought ushers' minds do. As long as I
find fresh interests germinating, I have a right to
conclude that I have not altogether mistaken my
vocation.
"Sometimes I get encouragement in school, observing eagerness and inquisitiveness in some of the
younger people's faces-only perhaps what I see is
but an eagerness for display and competition. Anyhow, it is their light-heartedness which makes the
intercourse with them agreeable. On cold mornings,
when they are dispirited, discontented, and dull, I
pity them, and also I pity myself." And again the
same note occurs in a letter written during his third
term of school work, which incidentally throws a
light on the cruel want of organization, and the
need of additional masters, whom it was feared Dr.
Hawtrey would not appoint-Dr. Hawtrey, the reforming headmaster. " I had a fight yesterday with
some ninety Fourth Form in one of the extra
school times, when all the new ones are worked in
Greek grammar. I conquered them at the cost of
two lives, and a few seriously wounded. Since, I
have got leave to split the ninety into two halves,
which will give me double work in point of time;
but forty or so are not too many for my voice and
eyes.
"Misanthropical feelings are engendered by their
want of order; but I see one or two virtuous and
rational ones who are my friends and fellow-soldiers,
and their existence makes me very easily reconciled
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An Ideal Teacher


with human nature at large, inasmuch as I persevere
in an old habit of idealizing, and live in the faith that
my best Fourth Form are most noble, most generous,
most kind-as virtuous as men, without men's pride
and knowingness; as interesting as women, without
women's timorousness and artifice."
The discipline of the large, unwieldy divisions of
Eton remained a difficulty with Johnson for many
years, considerably aggravated by his short-sight;
but throughout all he never allowed himself to be out
of charity with the boys under his charge. In his
journal he continually regrets having to punish them,
finds excuses for their ill-behaviour, and eventually,
when he was sailing in calmer water, having a schoolroom to himself, and older boys to deal with, he
regretted the idealized Fourth Form.
An Eton master's life was not, however, spent
in a continual struggle with crowds of undisciplined boys-there was the relief of the pupil-room.
Every master had a larger or smaller number of
private pupils, drawn from all parts of the school,
with whom he could be on intimate terms, and for
whom he could, if he pleased, wholesomely supplement the deficiencies of the public teaching. Here
Johnson found his opportunity, and the tutorial
system in his hands bore such fruit as to make it
easily comprehensible that Eton masters shrink from
interfering with an institution capable of such good
work. It was work in the pupil-room which carried
Johnson through a period of discouragement which
81               G




The Debateable Land


set in severely in the third year of his Eton life.
"The task of keeping my mob in a state of quiet
attentiveness when their blood is warm is a task
beyond my powers; it is comparatively easy in the
cool morning. I get sometimes absolutely sick of
setting punishments-quarrelling so much with my
subjects; but in the pupil-room there is teaching,
which by itself I like....
" I look at the plasterers and carpenters now working here, and envy them their weekly wages; for all
my shoutings and questionings, and mortifications,
and all the ill-will I have to contract by punishing,
I have not received a farthing."
It is characteristic of the man that he should consider the compulsory attraction of ill-will one of the
things for which a teacher should receive compensation. Ill-will, whether he was to be its object, or was
himself to conceive an unkind state of feeling towards
others, appeared to him among the first of evils in
life. He made it a rule, seldom broken, not to record
in his private journal or correspondence causes of
dissatisfaction, severe remarks on others, but rather
habitually to note only those things that were good
in his life-things that had given him pleasure; even
when he records some vexation, it is usually corrected
by something on the other side. " My Fifth Form
boys (private pupils) are generally so idle, frivolous,
and undisciplined, and do so much harm to the
young ones, that I get ill some days of sickness of
heart; but then the place and the work provide
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An Ideal Teacher


remedies-sometimes an eager, open-eyed listener
sitting as long as I like to hear me read him poetry,
or translate Greek or Latin verse to him; sometimes
a piece of unexpected industry or good taste; sometimes a piece of good conduct, or rather of high
virtue-forgiveness, humility, or the like; sometimes
an unanimous burst of inquisitiveness in a small and
youthful class, or an impromptu vote of thanks for
some interesting story or out-of-the-way information.
Last night I had a happy party of small boys receiving shocks and sparks from an electric machine;
and though it all ended in breakages and a headache
(not my head, but Scott's, who operated), yet it was
a successful affair. Indeed, one can make Eton a
palace of art, science, and nature-anything but a
Christian Church. Yet there are a few children of
the ' free woman' even here, dwelling in the tents of
Kedar, and I feel that they are too strong for the
mocking Ishmaelites."
It is not uncommonly held to-day that there is
something essentially narrowing in the exclusive study
of the dead languages. Johnson is not an exception
to a rule; he is in himself sufficient evidence that the
contrary view is tenable. Neither the dead languages,
nor the pursuit of mathematics, nor the study of those
sciences which have to do with the operations of
natural forces, will cure a man of narrowness nor inflict it upon him; the narrow temperament is there
to begin with, and the narrow man will work in a
narrow way, no matter what the subject upon which
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The Debateable Land


he expends his energy. Johnson was a classic of the
classics; he was not merely well read, he was a
literary artist of the highest order. Gifted with a
fastidious taste, a sensitive ear, early success in one
particular branch of learning might well have tempted
him to neglect self-improvement outside the paths
along which he had successfully progressed so far;
but the reverse was the case. His intellectual sympathies were of the largest; we find him repeatedly
regretting the evil fate which had excluded mathematics from his education, and he worked to repair
the deficiency. Already, in 1849, he was lecturing at
Windsor on Hugh Miller's geological books; at a
later time he records an attempt to instruct his
youngest pupils in elementary science. There was
nothing in him of that silly spirit which used to class
even moral philosophy as "moral stinks." In later
years he tried to do something in his own pupil-room
towards improving or supplementing the scanty teaching which the Eton organization allowed to French,
and his political economy lectures to a voluntary class
revealed a man who was not only well versed in the
literature of his subject, but had studied some
economic subjects at first hand, and was able to
follow the details of industrial processes.
Something may be judged of the opportunities
given to an earnest teacher by the Eton tutorial
system by a few extracts from our friend's diary.
We will take a Sunday and a Monday. On Sundays
at Eton there was no work in school; the boys went
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An Ideal Teacher


to their tutors' pupil-room in batches for an hour, and
there transacted "private business." Johnson at this
time had apparently twenty-seven pupils, whom he
divided into three sets.
"Sunday, Feb. 7....     I spent three hours
alone, chiefly reading Milman's History of Latin
Christianity, that I might have something to say at
8 (p.m.); also Carter's sermons. I wrote three letters
full of bitterness about the frustrated reform of my
College (King's College, Cambridge).
" 2 p.m. My young boys gathered round the fire.
I read them bits of Cowper, a good passage about
the wickedness of ambitious kings, Alex. Selkirk
and the Castaway. Told them about Cowper and
Huskisson: they filled in the dropt rhymes and were
intelligent.  They read to me some chapters of
Nehemiah-the bit about Ezra telling the people not
to weep, and then St. Paul's parting with the elders
of Ephesus....
"I was sorry when they went, being chilly and
dull; fell asleep....
" 7.0.  I formed my party of seven round the
fire... a gentle set, not very clever, but sufficiently cultivated, with frivolity for the hour banished.
I told them a good many things about the Church
history of Elizabeth's days, and got them to read out
long bits of Collier.... They must have learnt
something about the principles of the English Church,
partly because I have gone over some of the points
several times; at least they know more than their
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The Debateable Land


fathers knew at the same age. They behaved so
well that I was truly sorry to part with them.
"8.o. The room was filled with the next set,
eleven.... I lectured them on Church history,
on the Roman theory of development, the AngloCatholic theory of tradition, the rational theory of
tradition compared with the undoubted writings of
the Apostles. We made references to the First Book
of Corinthians, which we are supposed to be reading.
I told them about Cassian, Jerome, Martin of Tours,
Benedict of Nursia, Gregory the Great, and reminded
them of Clemens Romanus, Diocletian, Constantine,
Theodosius, Boethius, etc. Some of them showed
some knowledge-at least more than I had at their
age....
" This day at least I have done something-rash,
perhaps, but not commonplace-that was not connected with my duties as an usher; and, by way of
change, I enjoy it, though it may cost me dear. A
little strife with men sometimes would be an agreeable
change. (The reference is to his letters on the subject of the reforms at King's.)
"I have been to-day with twenty-seven boys, all
of whom have been cheerful, orderly, attentive, and
seemingly free from any grudge against me. Not a
bad Quinquagesima, though I have begun perhaps
a quarrel with certain King's men."
Men of business who talk of the ease of a schoolmaster's life will do well to note that, on the day of


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An Ideal Teacher


rest, this man spent three hours in preparation of
work, and three hours in actual teaching.
The notes on the following Monday run as
follows:" February 8. School very difficult because of the
coughing, which comes of their rushing in hurriedly
opening their mouths. I have no voice to make
head against it, and had to bring down the quiet A
and B from the top form to get them within talking
range, and bring something out of them, whereby I
got the comfort of A's pious face (he seems to live in
a church that goes everywhere with him). I discoursed as well as I could on Spenser, from whom I
set verses, a bit on mutability, corrected some of their
frantic anachronisms, and explained that the Faerie
Queene and the Divine Comedy were not epicsthis was let in to the parsing like a line of gold
thread.
" 5. I 5. The hardest lesson in the week-Cicero on
the proofs of creative Providence. I had glanced at
Whewell's Bridgewater treatise on astronomy, and
had found the place in Bentley's lecture, Confutations of Atheism, where he follows Cicero's argument
against Lucretius. So I had something to say; told
them about Ptolemy, Copernicus, Newton, Laplace,
etc.; found that several of them gave all the credit
to Galileo; told them about Bentley and Boyle, who
endowed the Lectures.   D came to borrow the
volume of Bentley which had been passed about and
looked at....
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The Debateable Land


" My pigeons go forth and bring back little sprays
from the olive tree of truth, which it is so hard for
an elderly man encumbered with vanity, mannerism,
and authority to approach. 'Fiam lenior accedente
senecta.' Ten hours' work to-day, some of it fatiguing, but only because of the east wind.  Ten hours
spent in a Goshen of complaisance, simplicity,
gaiety, and as much mental activity as I now-a-days
expect..."
Here we may note with advantage the opportunities
which literary lessons in the hands of a competent
man give for stimulating curiosity and imparting
information. A specialist in astronomy would probably not know anything about Cicero's argument
against Lucretius, and even if he did, would think it
out of place to refer to it in a technical astronomical
lecture; in the hands of the literary man a construing
lesson in Cicero leads to an account of the history of
astronomy, invites inquiry, stimulates curiosity as to
the science.
Astronomy was one of Johnson's many hobbies.
In later years he presented the school with a fine
equatorial telescope, which is mounted with its
appliances on one of the towers of the new schools.
On the other hand, it may be urged that surely
these lessons were too discursive, that boys could not
possibly assimilate them. If a lesson is, and there
are many people who think that it is, simply a process of pouring systematized information into more
or less capacious vessels, from which it can again be
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An Ideal Teacher


recovered for purposes of examination, then we must
admit that Johnson's lessons were not unfrequently
beside the mark; that a man, who instead of discoursing of Bentley and astronomy, had ground the
whole class in the passage of Cicero prepared for the
lesson, till he was quite sure that every one of them
could translate it correctly, would have produced
better results when an examination was conducted
on the work done. There would have been, however,
one important difference in the results of the teaching. Johnson's method made teaching a dignified
thing, the width of his knowledge shamed ignorance,
his method of imparting information showed how
much there is to be known. Again, his lessons were
carefully prepared beforehand, his discursiveness was
premeditated; it was not the tiresome habit by which
some scholars are over-mastered, of running on from
one illustration to another simply because they happen
to occur to the memory.
Again, how much of the information laboriously
crammed in order to pass a good examination is
really assimilated? Very little indeed. Most of it
is forgotten as soon as the examination is over; while
those boys or young men who do assimilate something of what they learn by cramming methods, are
precisely those who would have assimilated much
more, and been immensely stimulated into the bargain, had their teacher poured upon them the floods
of information with which Johnson deluged his division and pupil-room in the course of a school term.
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Nor, again, is the value of a lesson satisfactorily
measured by the extent to which it can be reproduced by the class; many a lesson has been forgotten
at the end of a week, which has none the less helped
to form the intellectual morality of the pupil. The
boy who has begun to wonder at his teacher's proficiency, is some way on in the road of doing something for himself; and this, after all, is the best result
of teaching.
Part of the diary of the succeeding day widens our
view of this great teacher.
"12.40. F. Wood (a pupil) and I went out, ride
and tie, up the bank of the still, cold river; taking it
by turns to give Myrtle a canter, in which the dogs
shared....
" At Surley corner was a regular picture-a barge
laden with wood, with the slenderest, straightest
thread of smoke at each end; one horse pulling it
down stream, the poplars behind, Myrtle and her
glowing young rider in the foreground...
"Galloped back in time to release the captive
(some boy detained out of school hours), who had
done nine verses on Cassandra; alone for forty
minutes, finished Latin prose work; then came S.
Lyttleton with a bit of Greek prose done from
Hooker, rather a good job. Then Hale for a gossip.
Then I wrote a vicious letter to the Windsor paper
about the unbearable filthiness of the College streets.
"3.45. Small boys came for verses, etc., and I
read sundry bits of Greek and Latin, and choice bits
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An Ideal Teacher


of Motley's Dutch Republic, though wishing to sleep.
"7.0. S. Lyttleton and others took notes of my
catechetical lecture on the history of the fight against
Philip II.; sometimes they read aloud the passages
ready for them in Motley. So they were introduced
to the scholar-warriors, Ste Aldegonde and Franmois
de la Noue (Bras de Fer), and to the heroic Louis
of Nassau, and his mother Juliana; to my favourite
doctrine about chivalry-that it is a sentiment engendered by literature, and never fairly developed
till the sixteenth century, when men read the Bible
and Plutarch....
" 8.0. Then we got into a sublime passage, where
Socrates says that Apollo has made him a philosopher,
examining himself and others-and he was as much
bound to do this at all hazards as he was bound to
stand in battle where the generals bade him standand quotes the story of Achilles telling his mother
that he will avenge his friend, even though she foretells that he must die; for how could he stay to be
taunted amongst the ships and cumber the earth!
And hoarse as I was, I made them see that this was
a wonderful thing for Socrates to say; that even then
literature was the well-spring of noble thoughts; that
the record of his words stirred Cicero, and he, through
Valerius Maximus, kept up some idea of virtue in
the Middle Ages; and that when they came to read
Cicero himself in the fifteenth century they began to
be more noble, and became still more noble in the
9I




The Debateable Land


days of ' Bras de Fer,' when they read not only
Cicero, but Euripides, Plutarch, and the Psalms....
"Eight hours' employment; and I do not feel
older after it."
It was at about this period that the busybodies
discovered that history was not being taught in the
Public Schools; a very serious misconception, which
has resulted in substituting, in the majority of our
schools, the merest dry bones of history for the living
body of historical training such as it was in the
hands of Johnson and other Eton masters. This discourse on Motley and the soldier-scholars would be
of no value for the purpose of passing into Sandhurst, but as a moral stimulus, as an appeal to the
imaginative faculty which breeds heroes, its influence
was incalculable. There are not a few old Etonians
ready to protest that they learned no history at
school, whose lives are ennobled and sweetened, whose
standard of public duty is high, precisely because of
that historical training whose lessons they believe
themselves not to have learned.
Two letters to different pupils, the one of them on
the point of exchanging Eton for the army, the other
destined for the University, can hardly be surpassed
for sound sense and moral elevation. The first runs
as follows:
"Read the life of Sir William Napier.... I
now read the new life of Wolfe. They are both
books which an officer should read, carefully making
notes.
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An Ideal Teacher


" If you don't fill your head in your youth, you will
)e found 'Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' when the time
oomes to take command and have influence.
"That is just what the conqueror of Scinde says
nost emphatically. It is all very well to trust to
inimal spirits and tact in early life; but when the
)loom is gone, an empty-headed man has but little:nfluence. I find William Napier saying-quoting
ihe Duke, too-that half our operations are ruined
by stupid generals of division. Men of uncultivated
minds are generally stupid at forty, except in their
own groove."
One is tempted to ask, what opportunities the
modern system of cramming army candidates,
whether at the public schools or elsewhere, gives for
this kind of comment upon the Lzfe of Sir William
VNapier.
The second letter is much longer, but too valuable
from beginning to end to stand any mangling or curtailment.
"The life of the last summer half at Eton is probably as happy as any kind of life. It is pleasure set
in a framework of duties: the daily obligations are,
as it were, the hem that keeps the garment from unravelling. What else is there that makes pleasure
respectable? Would you not be ashamed if there
were no yoke to bear? With you it seems to be the
staple of life, not a diversion or a refreshment after
toil. Would life be honourable, would mankind be
respected by angels, if we all lived always in pleasure?
93


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The Debateable Land


This is the question Cicero asks. But when the
ancients speak contemptuously of pleasure they mean
something very different from what you enjoy. Your
pleasure consists in good fellowship above all things:
there is nothing solitary about it-nothing like sitting
'each under his own vine, his own fig-tree, drinking
his own cup.'
"The essence of the life which you enjoy here, and
remember proudly, is brotherly and neighbourly sympathy. In the most easily-remembered periods of
this kind of life, you are making common sacrifices,
joint efforts; you have hopes and fears towards which
many minds converge. What is dull and wearisome
here is taken patiently because you bear it together.
It is when some are exempt, when there is a doubt
about exemption, when it is not certain whether you
are expected to do a thing or not, that discontent
arises. At the Universities duty becomes more irksome,
because there is so little there of universal obligation,
and perfect, certain obligation. But there you substitute for the routine school duties private studies,
which bear distinctly on your own success.  At
college a man is divided in life: partly he is working
for and with others, partly he is struggling against
others for a place. It is a less beautiful or poetical
form of life than the Eton form.
"But the desire of knowledge is stronger; the
power of gaining knowledge is greatly increased, the
perception of the value of intellect is greatly quickened. From college you will look back with some
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An Ideal Teacher


regret for lost opportunities of gaining knowledge;
but it is not certain that you will be justly reproaching yourself for negligence. Perhaps there is much
offered here which can be taken only in fragments
and by reflection.
" As soon as you are out of the 'chamber of maiden
thought,' at once you begin to regret, to repine. The
poets say that in youth we love autumn. High
pleasure comes to us tempered and blended with regret, with a sense of insufficiency, with regard, as we
say, that is looking back.
" This is the keynote of poetry.  This is the
mystery of music; the sense that we love, have lost,
something-that there is something we cannot reach
-that there is infinity which we cannot reach.
" Perhaps the most exalted state of man's mind is
that in which he strains after a comprehension of all
that is most excellent in mankind; when he is seized
with a sweeping theory of history, animated with a
longing hope of universal human progress, dreaming,
like the man in Locksley Hall, of a golden year that
is to be, when the wars shall cease and the nations
shall be made one, or praying early and late for an
universal Church without rent or scar. In such aspirations there must always be, with pure and noble
minds, a sweetness and a bitterness too. In the best
hours of generous youth one must mourn over one's
weakness and limited range, one must deplore the
hindrances presented by society, which make it impossible to know all men, to act with all classes. One
95




The Debateable Land


must hate the diversities which keep nations apart;
one must love zealously those few men of one's acquaintance who are above prejudice, who are truly
liberal, who seem to be incapable of giving way to the
world. In the very age of great catholic ideas one is
really drawn most closely to the few. Pleasure is
there found in the hearty alliance and outspoken
communications of a select body of men of one's
own age.
"Then comes the desire to influence others; and
every moment comes disappointment. You find that
you cannot have things your own way. Even a child
or a servant beats you; a family attorney is impregnable; a churchwarden shakes off your zeal, as a seal
throws off water; a brother magistrate or a Government officer makes you feel veryyoung.
" Then comes the doubt whether one is meant to
do anything but take care of one's own skin, or save
one's own soul, or continue, in a well-marked rut, the
course of one's own family.
" Then you are tempted to acquiesce in the world's
ways, to admit that there is nothing to be' done but
smile and avoid committing yourself, and make the
best of every chance of getting something for yourself and your own kinsfolk.
"When this time comes, it would be well if one
could vividly bring before one the very happiest and
noblest part of one's early youth. The remembrance
of what you felt, and intended, when you were confirmed, or when you were leaving school, or when you
96




An Ideal Teacher


lost some dear friend or relation, would have a great
effect in saving you from going back to Egypt. If
you had a journal, or a bundle of letters, or a book of
poetry with marks in it, or a biography of some good
man, that you had read and been moved by, it would
be a counter-charm, it would be like the plant that
Mercury gave to Ulysses."
The boy to whom this letter was written carefully
treasured it for many years. Let us hope that to him
it may have often proved a counter-charm, as it has
proved to others!
The sphere of Johnson's activity was not confined
to Eton; he wrote from time to time in the weightier
periodicals, he took an active interest in the business
of his college, and in the local affairs of North Devon,
his native county, whither he retired in I872. He
was among the earnest men who in all good faith
furthered the excesses of the humanitarian movement,
and paved the way for the greedy democracy of today. He would go to a trades union tea with the
Spitalfields weavers, and admire the moderation of
their leaders. He proclaimed himself a Republican,
but his republicanism was tempered by an admiration
for individual monarchs. Francis Joseph of Austria
was a favourite of his, and a schoolboy who once
ventured to say something disrespectful of the Queen
met with the fate of Ishmael. "Her Majesty is the
only topic on which I can tolerate no difference of
opinion."
A severe critic of the idleness and frivolity which
97         go.: * go  g.-:




The Debateable Land


he discovered among the upper boys at Eton, to whom,
indeed, he never took to so kindly as to their younger
brethren, Johnson was full of a generous sympathy
with athletic activity, especially with the better forms
of combativeness which it developes. He curses his
short sight, which had made him a duffer, delights in
discovering that by means of a small telescope he was
able clearly to discern the movements of the batsmen
in Upper Club, sympathises with Lord Lyttelton's
pleasure in watching his son make a big score, and
long remembered the anniversary of a famous victory
of Eton over Westminster on the river. Even after
he had retired from Eton he found time to glory in
the fact that both the public schools honours at Wimbledon had fallen to the old school.
Much of his time in the holidays was spent in
travelling, not infrequently in the company of one or
two pupils. The celerity of his movements is astounding; in the same holidays he would be in Devonshire,
Cumberland, Dumfriesshire, at Cambridge, and the
north of France. In all these journeys, the world for
him was ennobled by associations, over and above the
pleasure which he derived from sea and sky, from the
hyssop that grows on the wall, no less than from
stately oaks; patting the smooth white stems of
holly trees in pure gratitude for the pleasure that
their beauty gave him.  He was no guide-book
traveller, consulting his Baedeker to discover what
there was to be seen, or what there was to be said of
it; he foud. the places he visited already peopled!.' "['j. * 98
* *..* *.:




An Ideal Teacher


with the memories of heroic deeds and of noble men
and women.
At Rome he was impatient of the babble of art,
at Aix he liked to think that the antique jewels preserved in the treasure house of the Cathedral are probably the only things that still look as they looked
when Cicero saw them. In our own country, one of
his first expeditions was a pilgrimage to Walter Scott
land, for whom and for Tennyson his admiration was
as near idolatry as was possible in so clear a thinker;
nor did he forget Haworth, Shirley being, in his
opinion, the best of novels. There were those who
considered him a book-worm, but his favourite stanza
was:
"Blow, blow the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim
One glorious hour of crowded life
Is worth an age without a name."
And yet he shrank from undertaking opportunities of
work that were open to him, and which might have
resulted in filling the country with his name.
We have a pleasant picture in his journal of a visit
to Plymouth:
" We saw docks and ships under the wing of Captain Napier, of the Lion, a very kind, even-mannered
man. He showed us first Achilles, then Lord Clyde,
and Prince Albert-turret ship; here he made us
laugh at his expense by suddenly appearing with
his honest face inside one of the helmets or cowls
99 e e
* 6  r




The Debateable Land


which protect the turret marksman from everything
but direct 'facers.'
"He and I stood together in the absurd little box
which is to be held in action by the Captain and the
Master, or, as it will be hereafter, the 'Navigating
Lieutenant,' and I thought humorously of Nelson's
being in such a cupboard, and sadly of 'the gallant
good Riou,' who had no such protection when he
made Amazon, weak frigate, stand before a Danish
battery to do the work of a Russell gone aground; and
when a round shot plumped into a squad of marines
hauling at a brace, said,' Never mind, boys, let us die
together,' and died straightway, fighting against an
enemy whom he never could have hated. Napier,
of the Lion, would do no less-all for dear honour,
not for our trickling tears and echoing ballads. I said
to Napier, 'Will you be so good as to show us
Canopus?' and some time after I anxiously reminded
him, and, indeed, I feared he would forget the old
ship in the crowd of scientific novelties. But when
we sat at luncheon (Her Majesty's beef was hot and
her pork was cold. I ate the pork, to be like a seaman, and I munched biscuit patriotically, thinking it
was ship's biscuit, but it wasn't) there was Canopus
lifting a fair bosom over a lap of shadow, for the sun
was out just then for a cheerful hour.
"That day we rowed past this beautiful model ship,
Nelson's trophy; next day we sailed by her twice,
and I made my companions, who had never heard
of her under that name or the old name Franklin,
' X  ' '  '  '  100




An Ideal Teacher


care for her more than for unbattered Renowns and
Revenges..."
And he does not forget to enter in his journal
thanks not only to the officers who had shown him
over the ships, but also to "the anonymous worthy
sailors and sappers who boated us."
Continually, as on this occasion, we find breaking
out in Johnson the teacher's habit of imparting information; but with him it was always seasonable, and
he was quite alive to the possibility of being a bore.
When travelling he was much in the habit of employing children as guides, questioning them, and in his
turn telling them stories. On one occasion a young
Cumbrian, aged fifteen, who was showing him the
way to Brougham Castle, entertained him with a tale
of a boy who had been drowned: Johnson, in return,
narrated the local story of the Shepherd Lord
Clifford, but found his little friend did not listen.
" So I gave him my usual exhortations to read books,
and copy extracts into a blank book, and rewarded
his half-mile of walk with a fourpenny bit, which faith
persuades me was at once spent on a copy book."
In not a few respects Johnson reminded us of his
great namesake, "Blinking Sam"; both, in spite of
defective vision, were passionately fond of seeing.
It is pathetic to find William Johnson, late in life,
recording the first occasion on which he had actually
seen a bird; they were previously known to him only
by their songs. Both these men enjoyed a remarkable power of influencing young men, exciting them
101




The Debateable Land
to good work, tempting them to rejoice in wholesome
pleasures.
As a whole, William Johnson's intellectual gifts
would naturally be wasted on the great mass of Eton
boys. It would only be here and there that a pupil
could enter into an appreciation of his attainments,
as well as of his sympathy; but among his colleagues
there were many who were encouraged to high efforts
not by his invective, but by his example. It is not
uncommon to hear men talk as if a great literary
force like Johnson were necessarily wasted upon
school work, and as if the Universities or Parliament
would give him better opportunities. Apart from
underrating the indirect work of a school, such men
overlook the fact that the staff of a big school is at
least as important to the life of the school as the
boys themselves, and is equally in need of stimulation. Men of the Johnson stamp influence the boys
through their colleagues, whom they continually
supply with fresh social and intellectual ambition, to
whom they are a standard. A head master has few
opportunities in a large school of really influencing
his staff; he is not on fair terms of give and take
with them; he is most often largely encumbered with
mere police work; he is too close to parents and
governors, very apt to give undue attention to their
meaner suggestions, and to allow a high conception
of education to be depressed by what is considered
practical information from his employers. An experienced assistant is in a much better position to
I02




An Ideal Teacher


keep the mass of his colleagues duly leavened. For
these reasons one would like to feel that schools like
Eton were provided with some kind of organization
which, while not relieving men like Johnson entirely
of teaching, and thereby putting them out of touch
with their colleagues, would establish them in a kind
of professorial position, and retain their services to
the school at a time of life when the ordinary routine
of the pupil-room and the form-room has become too
rigorous. There are happily few large schools which
cannot boast of teachers, if not so largely gifted as
Johnson, at any rate moulded on the same model,
and there are some small ones.
In I872 Wilfiam Johnson retired from Eton to live
for a few years at Halsdon, near Torrington, in North
Devon, a small property belonging to a member of
his family. Here he became horticultural and agricultural, but not forgetful of other things. On all
men and animals about the place he lavishes the
same sympathy that he had been in the habit of
giving to his pupils, and to the children who guided
him in his walks. His colt is a "good soul"; Crusoe,
his foal, is "friendly." He regrets the fact that there
is no possibility of making friends with sheep, as
there is no method of distinguishing one sheep from
another. His animals were whimsically named; the
cows Deborah and Huldah; certain pigs Manning
and Capel; a sow Pope Joan, and certain other pigs
would have been named after Russian statesmen,
only Johnson had got to like pigs.
I03




The Debateable Land


In the country he interested himself deeply in local
affairs; not in the showy affairs called politics, but
the smaller life of local boards and vestries, teaching
and helping his poorer neighbours without pauperising
them; striving in all things to make people get on
with one another, to heal the rift between Church and
Dissent. He held that real progress in civilization
meant the increased respect of man for man, the acquisition of the habit of differing without quarrelling.
He maintained his old interest in scholarship and
literature by corresponding largely with former pupils
and colleagues. He also taught some young ladies
Greek; one of them he married in 1878, and after
residing for a time in Madeira, moved to Hampstead,
where he died in I892. Soon after leaving Eton he
took the name of Cory, in place of Johnson, and under
that name published a Guide to Modern English
History, a singularly original, clear, concise book. It
is pleasant to think that he lived long enough to see
his only son an officer in Her Majesty's navy.


I04




VII


On the Qualifications and Remuneration
of Teachers
THE Bishop of Hereford and others not unfrequently make public lamentation that the
young men who teach in our public schools come to
their work inadequately trained; less frequently a
parent lifts up his voice in protest against a state of
affairs which permits the most difficult and the most
responsible work of a school-viz., the teaching. of the
youngest boys-to be placed in the hands of the
teachers of least experience, of the young men newly
appointed to the staff, who, coming fresh from the
Universities, are unversed in the art of teaching.
With perhaps no less reason, teachers themselves
complain that a very large number of persons in
this country are able to induce parents to pay them
to teach their children who are unprovided with
reasonable certificates of acquaintance with the art
of teaching, who cannot even demonstrate that they
are in possession of the knowledge which they proI05




The Debateable Land


fess to impart. On the whole there may be said to
be an increasing movement in the direction of establishing all teaching on the basis of a profession, and
of requiring of all teachers preliminary training in
their art. Our boys must be protected from unqualified teachers, as our sick are given fairly
satisfactory safeguards against the incompetence of
amateur physicians and surgeons.
It is noteworthy and creditable that the demand
for an organized profession of teaching originated
with the teachers themselves; they did not wait for
pressure from outside. It is further noteworthy, and
no less creditable, that in demanding organization
they have not also demanded remuneration.
There is not, however, any general agreement as to
what the training of a teacher should be; and in the
demand for improved training the necessity of an
inquiry into existing methods of training young men
to be teachers is overlooked.
Is it, for instance, a fact that a young man who
takes up teaching work in a public school after
having been educated in that school, and having
finished his education at Oxford or Cambridge,
begins his teaching work without preliminary training?  Most certainly not. He has already been
trained to a knowledge of the habits of boys under
the conditions of school life, which he could not
acquire either by reading books or listening to
lectures. He has further commonly had some experience of responsibility and administration as a
Io6




Qualifications and Remuneration
sixth form boy or captain of games, which has
furnished him with what appears to be an instinctive
faculty for avoiding a wrong course of action. That
there are persons who contrive to go through their
school life without acquiring any wide knowledge of
their schoolfellows, and who afterwards take up
teaching and come to grief, is undeniable; but such
persons are naturally devoid of the peculiar form of
sympathy which makes a teacher; they would be
just as incapable, if not more so, after ten years
spent in a training college.
Light is thrown on the question by the almost
universal failure of foreign teachers to maintain
discipline in English schools. They have not the
previous knowledge of English boys which enables
them to distinguish between insubordination or impertinence and mere animal spirits; they make
serious mistakes through not understanding the material that they have to deal with, and the inherited
traditions of English school life. In precisely the
same way, in spite of the martial discipline of French
and German schools, the English master is apt to fail
as a disciplinarian, in the same degree that a Frenchman or a German fails in England.
Our elementary schoolmasters have all but perfected the mechanism of instruction. Many of them
are men of very high capacity and great moral
courage; the best of them would, however, probably
fail to maintain order in a Clifton form-room, let
alone Eton or Harrow. Their influence would suffer
107




The Debateable Land


rom a consciousness that they were unacquainted
with the habits and nature of the boys with whom
they had to deal.
Again, it is not uncommon to employ non-commissioned officers as drill-sergeants in schools. These
men, who have had years of experience in teaching
recruits, and who bring high testimonials of capacity,
are not infrequently hopelessly beaten, in spite of a
gallant bearing and attractive personality, by a score
of English school-boys, whom a "raw lad from the
University " quells without raising his voice.
Not only does the young University man know
the boys with whom he has to deal, but, what is of
at least equal importance, they know that he knows.
They will not venture on conduct in dealing with
him which is contrary to a code mutually agreed
upon, but never expressed.  In dealing with the
sergeant or other authority not versed in their habits,
they are as sensitive to the weakness of his hold as a
horse is to the timidity of his rider; they are tempted
to self-destructive extravagances, of which generousnatured boys and horses alike disapprove in their
calmer moments.
The point in which young men usually fail when
they first begin to teach is in knowledge of the intellectual and mechanical ability of their pupils: they
set lessons over-long or over-difficult, condemn as
vicious ignorance what is really immaturity; they are
more concerned in imparting information than in
forming habits; they are particularly apt to be reckI08




Qualifications and Remuneration


less in setting impositions. Even in the playground
they are tempted to overlook the awkward, diffident
boys who really want help, and bestow their pains
and encouragement upon the eager and skilful for
whom such attention is less necessary.
In all these matters the guidance in a small school
of a sympathetic head master, of capable and experienced colleagues in a large one, does the work
which we are sometimes told should be done in a
training college or some similar organization. It was
unfortunately not the practice fifty years ago to look
after the work of inexperienced teachers; they were
pitched neck and crop into their class-rooms, and left
to fight out their difficulties for themselves; but in
this, as in many other respects, there has been a great
though unnoticed improvement.
In our last chapter we saw a teacher of fine sensibility grappling with the difficulty of hearing ninety
boys repeat a lesson of Greek grammar. Now, even
if we grant that the rote repetition of Greek grammar
is a sound way of learning Greek, a simpler way of
hearing the lesson is to set all the boys to write
down a few words of the lesson in answer to questions so put, as to ensure that a boy who correctly
answers them both knows and understands his lesson; and there are methods by which the answers
can be looked over rapidly in class with great advantage to the boys, without any serious danger of dishonest procedure, and without over-burdening the
teacher with paper work. When William Johnson
I09




The Debateable Land


first went to Eton, nobody had studied these mechanical devices, but they are now well known and commonly used; still, to prescribe a fixed set of rules in
a text-book and make all young teachers learn them
in order to apply them would destroy their inventiveness. In schools where the methods above alluded to
are employed, there is infinite variation between the
practice of one master and another, and between any
one master and himself at different times. This is as
it should be; a stereotyped machinery is no less bad
for the pupils than for the teacher.
It is far more difficult to be reasonably certain that
every one of a large class of boys has properly prepared a translation lesson; and in schools where the
classes were over-large (and they were over-large in
most schools fifty years ago), a vast amount of idleness was manufactured by the inadequacy of the
methods of detection. A boy was so seldom put on
to construe that it was really not worth his while to
learn his lesson; now not only have the classes in
our best schools been diminished in number, but
more satisfactory methods have been discovered of
testing each boy's knowledge of his lesson at every
lesson.
Here again it is obvious that a boy who has himself been taught under a wise and efficient system
takes back to school with him as a teacher precisely
those methods under which he has himself learned;
and a training college would do no more for him.
Again, there is one educational appliance which
IO




Qualifications and Remuneration
fifty years ago was all but unknown in our schoolsthe blackboard. This is now widely used, not only in
teaching mathematics, but in teaching languages; it
will be still more widely used when drawing, not as a
fine art, but as a mechanical proficiency scarcely less
important for teachers than writing, is demanded as
part of the qualifications of a teacher; but it is not
necessary to establish training colleges to teach
drawing on the blackboard.
The question of discipline remains. Should there
not be some means of training teachers to maintain
order? Here again we are confronted with the disagreeable fact that there are no conditions under
which some men can maintain order; on the other
hand, in the arts and devices by which order is maintained without friction, a man improves by practice,
and by free communication with his colleagues. Rules
applicable to one kind of school will not work in
another. The power of maintaining wholesome discipline, good order, of which the boys are almost
unconscious, depends upon a combination of moral
and dramatic faculties, which are innate, and cannot
be learned, though they may be improved by experience. Too much may be sacrificed to discipline.
There are men in our elementary schools who keep
large masses of children in perfect order, and it has
hence been rashly inferred that anybody who has
been properly trained can do the same; not only is
this not the case, but much time which could otherwise be spent in stimulating the understanding is
III




The Debateable Land


necessarily spent in repressing restlessness.  Men
differ in their power of combining discipline with
instruction; but the rule none the less holds good
that where the teacher is by circumstances compelled
to think in the first place of discipline, his success
is bought at the cost of teaching.
It is perhaps worth while to digress for a moment
to correct a popular misconception. Popular masters
-men who attract the admiration of boys by their
athletic achievements-are held to be more likely to
keep good order than the less showy students. This
is not, however, true; an insignificant, even shortsighted man will often keep order, where a burly
oarsman completely fails. A head master who developed a mania for tall assistants would be no better
served in the matter of discipline than was Frederick
William of Prussia by his regiment of gigantic
guardsmen.   The question is ultimately one of
moral force and judgment working in favourable
surroundings.
The difficulty of getting properly trained teachers
is, after all, one which can be satisfactorily dealt with
by the head masters of schools; so long as they
demand of a young assistant that his sole qualification shall be high proficiency in one particular branch
of learning, and accept certificates of being learned
in preference to those of having the faculty of teaching, so long will inadequate teaching be found in
schools which could afford to attract teachers of
experience. There are schools which, under present
112




Qualifications and Remuneration
conditions, cannot hope to retain or engage experienced teachers. The failure of the teacher will be
the more obvious when brilliant specialists are set
to work upon the youngest boys; nor is there much
chance of a general change of method on the part
of head masters so long as the governing bodies
of schools are at liberty to appoint to head masterships men totally ignorant of the organization of
schools, except in so far as they share with their
assistants the experience of having been taught in
a good school. There is nothing now to prevent
a young man of five-and-twenty, who has never
taught a class in his life, from being made head
master of Eton, solely on the ground that he has
just concluded a brilliant career at either University
in one special set of subjects; and the majority of the
head masters of our public schools are men who have
never taught in any but the highest forms of schools,
who have no personal grip of the difficulties of the
young boys and their teachers, and who are either
mathematicians or classics exclusively.
This leads us to a further point. What inducement is there at present held out to a teacher to make
himself proficient beyond the satisfaction of feeling
that he is doing his work well? None whatever;
worse than none. Under present arrangements, of
two public school boys coming from the same school,
one who has just taken his degree atthe University
has a better chance of being appointed to his old
school than another who, having taken a slightly less
II3               I




The Debateable Land


brilliant degree, but has spent ten years learning his
business in some other school; the inexperienced
man will be deliberately selected to take the higher
paid work.
The facts are even worse than this. The Report
of the Commission on Secondary Education tells us
that in ten of the best schools the average salary of an
assistant master is ~242 and a fraction per annum,
in one hundred and ninety others it is only ~Io5,
giving an average in the two groups of CI35. The
list of masters wanting appointments published by the
educational agents tell an even sadder story; from
them we learn that men who have had adequate
experience of teaching, and who are in no sense
failures, who have begun work with the qualification
of high University honours, and who have since
taught themselves to be good teachers, cannot hope
to command even the moderate salary of the ten
best schools mentioned in the Report of the Commissioners.
When facts of this kind are brought to the notice
of politicians, they shrug their shoulders in a superior
way, and talk of supply and demand; so long as
teachers can be found to work for the existing low
salaries, why interfere? The children, at any rate
get the teaching; and the ultimate extinction of the
teachers, whether by starvation or otherwise, is not
a matter of any public importance.
Another view is, however, possible. The profession
of teaching is not subject to the ordinary laws of
114




Qualifications and Remuneration
supply and demand. The man who makes a better
bicycle than anybody else will, unless he happens
to be particularly clumsy or unfortunate, eventually
command the market; not so the man who teaches
better. On no other hypothesis is the endowment of
education in any form desirable or reasonable. The
State in regulating education protects children against
the improvidence or ignorance of their parents in the
interests of the continuity of the State. Parents left
to their own guidance would either not get their
children taught at all, or thinking cheapness the first
consideration, would get them taught largely by unqualified persons. If the State insists, as it should
insist, that none but qualified persons shall teach,
then it must also take into consideration the question
of so regulating the profession of teaching that it
shall attract properly qualified persons, and that they
shall have reasonable facilities for working to the
best advantage of their pupils.
Under the conditions stated by the Commissioners'
Report, no reasonable father belonging to the classes
in which learning and refinement are least rare would
encourage a son of good ability to become a schoolmaster; and in the long run, if the ordinary laws of
supply and demand were to prevail, precisely that
class of persons would devote their energies to other
pursuits whom experience has shown to be the best
teachers for the directing classes.
Already the staffs of the less well-paid public
schools tend to become fluctuating to an unwholesome
115




The Debateable Land


extent; the pushing men leave them to start independently. The country is becoming inconveniently
crowded with private schools chiefly of the preparatory type: a process which cannot be continued
indefinitely, and which will ultimately place the
preparatory schoolmaster, and therefore his pupils,
at the mercy of the least instructed parents.
Nothing is gained by the regulation of teachers
by the State if the profession will not attract the best
qualified men.
The tendency of democratic societies is to cut
down the remuneration of all professions. Seldom
do public appointments fall vacant without its being
suggested, and sometimes decided, that the new man
should receive less pay than the old. This is a process which can be easily carried too far, though its
evils are not always brought to our attention in so
startling a fashion as in the lamentable case of the
town of Maidstone, whose councillors thought it wise
to economise in the payment of a public analyst, and
brought a pestilence upon their fellow-citizens.  It
may be a fact that high salaries will not necessarily
procure honest public servants, but it is equally true
that men whose efficient work depends largely upon
their sense of honour are discouraged by finding that
the value of their services is estimated by the same
processes as those of the parish dustman.
There is probably no profession, except that of
medicine, in which so much is necessarily left to the
honour of the person exercising it as the profession
116




Qualifications and Remuneration


of teaching.  Were schoolmasters in the habit of
applying to their work principles which are commonly held to be sound in business, they would not
work as William Johnson worked; they would spend
their time in devising methods of getting the largest
amount of pay with the least expenditure of trouble.
Men of William Johnson's intellectual capacity are
rare, but the spirit in which he worked is the spirit
in which really qualified teachers always work. Defects of organization in our public schools are in
some measure due to the fact that the assistant
masters are not largely interested in saving themselves
trouble; a man who proposed an innovation, solely
on the ground that it saved the masters trouble, would
not be listened to, unless he could also clearly demonstrate that it was likely to improve the teaching, to
directly benefit the boys.
Here is a day's work from the diary of an assistant
master at one of our public schools, a man of thirty
years of age working for a salary of ~30o a year,
with no reasonable prospect of any additional emolument for another ten years, and earning part of his
income under conditions which render marriage an
impossibility:7 a.m. Read prayers, then looked over exercises
till 8. A and B came in wanting help in
their construing.
8.45. Prayers in school, then form work till I,
quarter of an hour's respite.
117




The Debateable Land


1.15-12. School again; this time a set not particularly attentive.
I2-I.30. Attendance on football de rigueur.
1.30-2. Dinner, then interviews with malefactors,
set the minimum of impositions, signed
orders for haberdashery, etc.
2.30. Short walk with X, discussed methods of
teaching Latin prose.
4-6 p.m. School again; contrived to keep the
boys attentive during the last hour by
making them act to some extent the comic
scene in the Tempest, which they are reading.
7-8. Pupils construing lessons soon done with,
read them some Pickwick.
8-9. Preparation; kept my temper, find boys
work better when I am apparently to some
extent occupied in looking over exercises.
9.30. Prayers, afterwards some of the older boys
to my study to gossip, very pleasant, but
not sorry when they went to bed; afterwards
read some history for next day's lesson till
II p.m.
The man who wrote this had been at work for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, except for a respite
of four hours from actual teaching or intercourse with
boys, but these so divided that a real change of
interests was impossible. On other days in the week
the diary shows one or two hours less of actual work
I18




Qualifications and Remuneration


in school with boys, and four evenings partly free from
pupils and preparation; but the non-school hours are
generally given to looking over exercises, and the
evenings to private reading with a view to teaching;
even on Sundays five hours of the day are taken up
with definite magisterial duties.
The recognition which this kind of work is meeting
now from the press, from our politicians, when they
speak on educational subjects, from the. parents of
the boys to whom so much of a man's life is given, is
certainly not of an encouraging nature. The public
schools are treated as an amiable freak of rich people,
something quite outside the serious work of the
nation; it is assumed as a matter of course that
money must be found -liberally to exempt not only
the working classes, so called, but well-to-do tradesmen, from the necessity of paying school fees. Not a
voice is raised on behalf of the earnest teachers, whose
liberal interpretation of their responsibilities has, in
spite of some serious but inevitable blunders, materially helped to maintain the best morality of the
English people. Worse than this, instead of turning
toethe national advantage the sound training which
the assistant masters acquire in the public schools by
strengthening the one form of local school in which
their services could best be employed to the public
benefit, instead of inviting them to become head
masters of Grammar schools, and equipping the Grammar schools so as to give them fair opportunities,
enthusiasts in educational matters have deliberately
" I9




The Debateable Land


set up an untried form of school devoid of traditions,
worked under conditions the least stimulating whether
to the teacher or the taught; and whose ultimate
outcome can only be, that the instruction of the children of the lower middle classes, and even of relatively wealthy persons living in towns, will be paid
for by the taxpayer.
It must be admitted, in defence of the national
apathy towards its best teachers, that the public
schools have encouraged the nation to think of them
as a class apart; and that they do not see how they
weaken the best interests of national education by
standing on one side. Parents who are told that
a public school is something quite different from any
other place of education may be excused for acting
as if the statement were true; meanwhile, public
school boys grow up in an unhealthy ignorance of
the conditions of other schools, which ignorance is
again manifested in the gross blunders of the majority
of our public men when they come to deal with
educational questions.
The interesting question of the registration of
teachers will be most conveniently discussed when
we have learned something about the classification of
schools.


120




VIII


The Debateable Land
Pp HERE is a school of optimistic politicians who
hold that in the long run the good sense of the
English people is to be trusted: however this may
be, the application of good sense is impossible without sound information. No one who seriously studies
the speeches of public men on educational questions,
or the comments made by journalists upon their
utterances, can feel that our information on these
topics is as yet sufficiently systematized to be able
to claim the merit of soundness.
Many of us think that we know what a public
school is, at least as many are convinced that they
understand the nature of an elementary school, and
most of us will not be slow to admit that between
the two there is chaos. On the other hand, we are
all agreed that the national system of education
requires a comprehensive reorganization.
12I




The Debateable Land


It is, however, by no means self-evident that even
those classes who use the public schools understand
their distinctive features, or that they are aware of
the extent to which schools created under the Education Act of I870 have advanced beyond the elementary stage, or that they have considered the significance of the very large sums of money which are
being distributed from the local and imperial taxes
in aid of various educational schemes regarded with
popular favour, because they are thought on the one
hand to replace the narrow system of the public
schools, and on the other to enable poor parents to
get their children taught at a small cost.
The whole of the area between the limits of the
public schools, if indeed these limits are really definable, and elementary schools doing really elementary work, may be considered a Debateable Land:
the problem before the English people at present
is the occupation and regulation of this anarchic
territory.
The possibilities of the State with regard to education are threefold: education may be regulated by
the State, it may be subsidized by the State, it may
be both regulated and subsidized.  Whether the
funds employed to subsidize education are drawn
from local or imperial taxation is merely a financial
question: it may become indirectly an educational
question, because the control of local schools may be
committed to local ratepayers, and the relative enlightenment of their representatives as compared with
I22




The Debateable Land


that of the national representatives may affect the
nature of the education subsidized; but in the main
point, that education is subsidized, there is no distinction between the two systems of subsidization.
It is important to keep the two questions of regulation and subsidy distinct. Even if we admit that
there should be no subsidy without regulation, the
question still remains open whether either regulation
or subsidy is desirable; and whether regulation without subsidy is not as desirable as subsidy with
regulation.
Why should a State undertake the regulation of
education at all? or, slightly to change the form of
the question, why does any State make education
the subject of legislation?
In the first place, because parents are not to be
trusted to deal wisely and mercifully with their
children; in the second place, because the ignorance
or incompetence of certain classes of professional
men is a danger to the well-being of the community;
in the third place, because the administration of
public affairs cannot safely be entrusted to ignorant
or untrained men.
In obedience to the first of these reasons we
compel parents, who would otherwise set their children to earn wages, to send them to school till they
are strong enough to undertake manual labour.
Because of the second we do not allow men to
practise as physicians or surgeons, to become mining
engineers, to preach in the pulpit of the Established
123




The Debateable Land


Church, to accept payment for advising their fellowcitizens on questions of law, to plead in the law
courts, unless they can produce certificates of having
qualified themselves by acquiring a certain standard
of knowledge, which certificates can be issued by the
State directly, or indirectly through certain public
bodies recognised by it, such as the Colleges of
Physicians and Surgeons, the Universities, the Incorporated Law Society, Inns of Court, and others.
The third causes us to compel candidates for the
army, navy, and other public services, which are paid
by the State, to pass certain examinations with or
without competition.
Unpaid servants of the State, members of both
Houses of Parliament, County Councillors, Town
Councillors, and the like, are not required to produce
certificates of being in the possession of knowledge
of any kind, because they are subject to popular
election, and it is an axiom of modern politics that
all electors can be trusted to discriminate between
the relative fitnesses of candidates for the work with
which they wish to be entrusted.
The State subsidizes any particular form of instruction when it prescribes that instruction as a
necessary preliminary for admission to the public
services or any other remunerative occupation. Were
the authorities who preside over the examinations by
which candidates are admitted to the Indian Civil
Service to prescribe acquaintance with the " use of
the globes " as a necessary qualification for young
124




The Debateable Land
men who are to be entrusted with the administration
of justice in India, persons would be able to earn
money by teaching the use of the globes. The large
class of teachers, invidiously called "crammers," are
able to charge relatively high fees because the subjects which they teach are subsidized by the State,
through the examinations for Woolwich and Sandhurst. This is a form of subsidy which costs the taxpayer practically nothing, but which presses severely
on the individual parent.
Again, when the State says through the mouth of
the authorities of the Science and Art Department
at South Kensington, that the expenses of teaching
boys and girls a certain group of subjects will be
defrayed in great part by the State, when the pupils
attain a fixed standard of proficiency, the State subsidizes those subjects. It does not merely induce
parents, who would otherwise not get their children
taught at all, to get them taught at least those subjects; it invites parents, who would in any case get
their children taught, to neglect all other subjects.
The enormous responsibility incurred by the State
in subsidizing particular subjects is a matter which
has escaped the observation of our legislators.
There is then a very narrow line dividing one
form of regulating education from subsidizing education.
Again, there are two ways of direct money payments by which a State may subsidize education;
it may provide buildings and pay teachers, or it may
125




The Debateable Land


pay pupils either to learn particular subjects, or to
attain a high standard of proficiency in those subjects. Government grants as at present distributed
in England, whether they cover the whole or only
a part of the expenses of the teaching for which
they are assigned, belong to the second system of
subsidization: so do all the scholarships and valuable
prizes. To the first belong such parts of the emoluments of the professors at the Universities and elsewhere, and of teachers in schools, as are not derived
from the fees of the pupils, but from endowments.
In only a few cases does the State directly endow in
England, though it secures and regulates existing
endowments made in past times by private persons.
So long as bounties paid by the State, whether
directly or indirectly in favour of certain courses of
study, are employed to secure the existence of a body
of men sufficiently well informed and well trained to
perform duties which are indispensable to the wellbeing of the community, the evil of interfering with
the ordinary laws of supply and demand is reduced
to a minimum; but even to justify this minimum of
interference, we must assume or admit that without
this artificial stimulus properly qualified persons
would be too rare: and this assumption or admission
involves our recognition of two facts-one, that in the
long run parents evade the obligation of instructing
their children up to the standard wholesome for the
service of the State; the other that the number of
persons capable of appreciating the distinction beI26




The Debateable Land


tween a properly qualified and unqualified practitioner
of any profession is so small, that there would be no
inducement for professional men to take the trouble
to train themselves unless the State intervened.
There is an essential distinction between saying,
"If you wish to be an officer in the army, or a teacher
in a school, you must be able to produce evidence of
having undergone a particular kind of training," and
saying, " If you like to learn certain things, the State
will pay your school expenses, otherwise not."
In the first case a wise community takes measures
to protect itself from incapacity on the part of its
servants, in the second an unwise community eventually burdens itself with the expense of all the teaching; for in the long run all children will be instructed
under the system paid for and approved by the State.
The question of State subsidy may, however, be
looked at from a different point of view.
The State required, by the Education Act of i870,
that all children should be sent to school. Upon this
demand followed the Free Education Act; for it was
argued, if the State compels a man to send his children
to school, the State, not the parent, should pay the
expenses of the teaching. Similarly might it not be
argued, that wherever the State imposes a particular
course of instruction, it should pay for that instructionl?
There is, however, an obvious distinction.  The
State does not compel any parent to submit his
children to the more costly preparation for certain
I27




The Debateable Land


professions. The choice is left to the parent. If he
thinks it more advantageous to his children to become professional men, he takes into consideration
the increased cost of education; the State is still
willing to give his children elementary education free
of cost.
Again, whatever arguments may be brought in
favour of free elementary education, the argument
given above is unsound. When the State compels a
parent to send his children to school rather than to
manual labour, it acts in defence of the weak against
the strong, just as it protects animals from cruel
usage by their owners. Experience had demonstrated
that this was necessary. But then, would it not
have been sufficient to exclude children up to a certain age from the workshops and other labour?
Again, experience seemed to indicate that the safety
of the community would be ultimately endangered
by letting children run loose. The State stepped in
to protect itself from the results of parental improvidence and neglect; but to relieve the improvident parent of the expense of teaching and controlling
his children was bad economy. Statisticians assure
us that compulsory education has not resulted in a
diminution of juvenile crime, but rather the reverse.
This is not surprising. After all, it is by home
discipline that healthy moral habits are formed, and
free compulsory education relieves the home of responsibility.
The step, however, has been taken, and cannot be
128




The Debateable Land
retraced. Still, it is necessary to discuss this form of
subsidization of education, because we have already
gone some distance in extending the system upwards.
In order to induce artisans to allow their children
to remain at school after the age of thirteen, and
School Boards to supplement the elementary schools,
the higher grade system was devised. A list of
subjects was drawn up by which grants might be
earned; that is to say, that if certain subjects were
taught up to the standard of the requirements of the
Government inspectors, the greater part of the expense of teaching these subjects would be defrayed
by the taxpayer. The regulations of the Education
Office are so unstable that a statement made one
year may not be true the next year. At present,
however, the average fee for higher grade classes is
limited to gd. per week in voluntary schools, and
there are now free higher grade schools.  If we
assume the school year to be a period of forty weeks,
this means that a parent can procure instruction in
these subjects, even in a voluntary school, at a cost
of thirty shillings a year. The list includes all the
subjects which are taught in grammar schools and
public schools except Greek, with the pleasing
additions of horticulture for boys and domestic
economy for girls.  These schools are further at
liberty, by adopting the regulations of the Science
and Art Department at South Kensington, to become organized science schools, and earn further
grants.


129


K




The- Debateable Land


Here we have a case in which the system of direct
subsidization by the State has been carried beyond
the point of elementary education.  Part of the
Debateable Land has already been annexed. A
writer in the Times of September 22nd, i897, claimed
the rest of the territory for the same organization.
We have not yet definitely committed ourselves
to the views of this sanguine gentleman. Before we
do so, it would be as well to look into the matter
more closely.
In the first place, the higher grade schools have
entered into competition with existing grammar
schools. They profess to teach the same subjects,
and even claim to employ better methods. Whether
this claim can be substantiated is of no importance
at present; what is important, and what is capable
of proof, is this, that in places where both exist,
precisely the same class of parents send their children to either.  The higher grade school does not
tempt the artisan to keep his children longer at
school to any great extent, or perhaps it would be
more exact to say that it tempts the well-to-do
tradesman to educate his children, at the expense of
the payer of rates and taxes, to a greater extent.
Even such an excellent institution as the Girls'
Public Day School Company feels in some localities
the competition of the higher grade school.
This was not contemplated by the men who superadded the higher grade school to the elementary
school. Their object was to induce the artisan to
130




The Debateable Land


give his children a chance of doing what is called
"bettering" themselves; to raise the standard of
instruction in the class who earn daily wages; not to
depress the standard of parental responsibility in the
class who are paid monthly or quarterly salaries, or
who are more or less successful in earning a livelihood by commerce.
If a private individual, inclined to benevolence,
knowing all the circumstances of a poorer neighbour,
offers to defray the expense of educating one of his
children, who has shown signs of exceptional ability,
so that the gifted child may get the greatest possible
advantage from the possession of that ability, he has
acted kindly and possibly wisely; but a course of
action which may be commendable in an individual
is apt to be exceedingly unwise when it is pursued
by the State.
The State has no interest in employing the sons of
poor men rather than the sons of rich men; what the
State requires is efficient servants, or, again, that in all
departments of life each individual should be well
qualified to do the work of his own department.
Men who are attracted by a scheme of national
education which makes it easy for the son of an
artisan to become a clerk, overlook the fact that the
nation requires artisans as much as clerks. To place
the opportunities of change from one kind of occupation to another in the forefront of our educational
ambitions is equivalent to declaring that there is
something discreditable in those occupations from
131




The Debateable Land


which the transference to another class of occupation
is made easy. Further, to invite the brighter sons of
artisans to leave the occupation of their fathers can
only result in depressing the intellectual standard
of the artisan; only the dullards will continue to
work as their fathers have worked.
To take another point of view. It is too much the
fashion to regard employment under the State as a
prize to be won, and to overlook the fact that it is
also a responsibility demanding moral and physical
no less than intellectual qualifications. In England
we are fortunate in the possession of a large number
of families who habitually train their sons for the
public service in preference to other forms of employment; it is easy to suggest other motives than an
enlightened patriotism for this line of action, but the
fact remains that relatively the professional classes
spend far more in proportion to their incomes on
training their children for the public service than the
commercial classes; and in doing so, they, to judge
them by the ordinary standards of business men,
deny themselves for the public good. To take a concrete case. Under the present regulations the earliest
age at which a boy can pass into Sandhurst is
sixteen. This means that for six years, at least, he
will have been taught in schools of which the average
fee is at least ~ioo per annum: his father will have
spent xC6oo on his education up to his entrance into
Sandhurst, and he will have to pay annually as much
as his school fees, if not more, for sometime afterI32




The Debateable Land


wards. He might have sent his son to the nearest
higher grade school at 9d. a week, and have spent the
~600 on his own pleasures, or increased it by investment. The father of more than one son will spend
more in proportion to the size of the family: whatever is spent in this way is so much gain to the State.
The family has trained soldiers for the service of the
nation; and the State has made a better bargain than
if it had devised a system of schools, whereby the
sons of artisans could become officers in the army
without cost to their parents.
Again, there is a form of capital possessed by the
State, which cannot be expressed in figures, but which
is none the less there; viz., the inherited good tendencies of families in which noble ways of living have
been practised for many generations. The quality
called genius, being of the nature of a fortuitous and
unusual combination of inherited faculties, is naturally
not transmitted from father to son in the majority of
cases, but the family temperament is unquestionably
transmitted as regularly as the family features.
Teachers who have had the opportunity of comparing their pupils with the parents of their pupils,
and have enjoyed, as is unfortunately too rare, equal
intimacy with the older and the younger generations,
note the minuteness to which family resemblances
are carried, not only in external habits which might
be copied, but in mental processes and moral tendencies. Families in which for a long number of
years honour, thrift, and refinement have been the
I33




The Debateable Land


guiding principles of life, have accumulated for the
service of the State a fund of capital: intellectual
quickness may exist, and does exist, unaccompanied
by these qualities. No system of examination has as
yet been devised which can test other than intellectual qualities, or even those in a really satisfactory
manner. A school system which would tend to
relieve the parent of the practice of foresight and
self-denial on behalf of his children, and would then
appoint those children to the public services simply
on their performances under examination, would tend
to destroy in the long run precisely those qualities
which are most valuable to the life of a nation.
This digression is not unnecessary; one of the
practical difficulties in marking out the Debateable
Land is the short-sighted kindliness of people who
do not see that little can be gained to the community by making what is called an educational
ladder, whereas much may be lost.
To encourage the artisan's wife to think that if
her son goes to work wearing a black coat, and sits
on a stool all day, he is necessarily the social superior
of his father, who wears overalls and works in a shed,
but, if capable and industrious, earns more than a
clerk, is to sanction the least desirable form of social
ambition.  There is probably no country except
America in which a thrifty artisan with good brains
so often becomes a wealthy man as in England. He
achieves this result by sticking to his business and
honouring his work. If the family has a sound
134




The Debateable Land


moral strain, his sons will succeed him and improve
upon the advantages which he has given them; if not,
a couple of generations will bring them back to
where they started from, and they will have done
less mischief to the nation in the process than if they
had climbed up an educational ladder, become clergymen, schoolmasters, or Civil Service clerks, and
proved equally wanting in moral qualities.
There is a popular maxim to the effect that "many
an honest heart beats beneath a ragged coat." Nobody questions or ever questioned its truth; but an
honest heart may beat, perhaps less comfortably, but
with equal regularity, beneath a new dress coat and
elaborately starched shirt; and the frame of mind
which prefers virtue in tatters is not necessarily more
enlightened than that which believes habits of refinement and even the possession of wealth to be compatible with virtue.
Our non-commissioned officers are a fine body of
men; but though, according to Rudyard Kipling,
they occasionally find it necessary to sit on the heads
of "Orficer boys " in action, their best friends would
hesitate'to entrust them wholesale with responsibilities
in the way of control of stores and the issue of
pay. The temptations of the commission system in
making contracts for supplies put a severe strain
upon the fidelity of a public servant.
A scrupulous sense of honour in dealing with
commercial transactions on behalf of the public does
not invariably come by the training of a singleJ in135




The Debateable Land


dividual; it is more often the result of an inherited
moral habit. Standards of honour in the individual
are not unfrequently relative to circumstances; many
a man will shrink from defrauding a comrade who
will not hesitate to defraud the State. Over many
years the morale of our public servants in this respect
has become exceptionally high; it would be a serious
error to start again from the beginning; it would be
a very serious error to throw public appointments
open wholesale to a class of men who think it
honourable to spend the accumulated savings of
their fellow-workers, the insurance which they had
made for their old age, on securing better pay for
themselves. The honest heart seems to beat rather
feebly beneath the coats of the young men who are
now on strike to secure for themselves less work and
the possibilities of more pay, and who force old men
to contribute a shilling a week from pensions of ten
shillings.
To conclude this branch of our inquiry: the
individual parent to whom a particular course of
education is suggested for his children is apt to ask,
"What shall I get by it?" The statesman can only
answer this question with safety in one way: " You
will most probably get nothing; our object in organizing our schools is not to give this individual boy
an advantage over any other individual boy, but to
make all boys fit for their work. On the other hand,
we believe that the sound training of children
acccording to the measure of their future responsi136




The Debateable Land


bilities promotes the well-being of the nation, and
enables it to contend on equal or superior terms
with other nations; by the improved competency of
the nation your children will profit.  There are
certain professions, certain forms of employment in
the service of the state, for which experience has
proved that a lengthy and expensive course of training is necessary. We therefore prescribe, in the
interests of the nation, and even of the individual, a
certain course of training for these professions, and
refuse to allow persons who have not been so trained
to practise in them. If your son submits to the
longer and more expensive training, he will of course
have a chance, which he would not otherwise have,
of getting employment in these professions; but he
will be at no advantage compared with other young
men equally qualified."
To bribe parents to get their children properly
taught is a process which once begun may be continued ad infinitum, and not only may be, but must
be. Experience has shown that a delicacy about
getting one's own children taught at the expense of
somebody else, " on charity," as the phrase used to
be, breaks down, not only under the pressure of
poverty but under the pressure of greediness.
Fortunately there is in existence in our country
a high conception of what the duty of the individual
and the nation should be in the matter of education.
Is this conception to be welcomed and encouraged
by our legislators, or is it to be snubbed? So far


I37




The Debateable Land


it is being subjected to a large amount of indirect
snubbing.
II
TIHE term "Secondary School" has not yet passed
into popular use, probably because no two persons
are in agreement as to its definition. If we classify
schools simply by the subjects which are stated to
be taught in them, higher grade schools are secondary
schools, though Mr. Whitaker has not yet included
them in that list which does not distinguish between
Eton and Ayton.
Practically, it is at present impossible to classify
schools according to the subjects taught. In default
of a more scientific classification we may learn something from popular ways of talking about them. An
enquirer proceeding on these lines discovers that there
are boarding and day schools, public schools and
grammar schools, high schools, middle class schools
commercial schools, county schools, private schools,
preparatory schools, and schools under the Education
Act. There is also a considerable sprinkling of colleges, academies, and seminaries: these are chiefly
conducted by private adventurers and are eminently
genteel.
We would all agree that the schools called public
schools claim to stand at the head of this list. Even
if, for purposes of our own, we disputed this claim,
and we could satisfactorily establish a distinction
I38




The Debateable Land


between a school, which is the private property of its
head master, who may appoint his own successor, or
close it when he pleases, and a school in which the
head master is appointed by a body-of trustees, who
are bound to keep the school open in accordance
with the will of its Founder, or in consequence of an
arrangement made with the State, once having established this distinction, we are bound to class all
grammar schools with Winchester and Eton.    Is
there any reason for not doing so?
The position of the public schools in England is
so peculiar, so totally different, for instance, from
anything in existence on the Continent, so typical of
the best as well as of some of the less desirable
features of English social life, and is, at the same
time, productive of so much confusion, that an enquiry, not into what they should be, but into what
they are, is an absolutely necessary preliminary, if we
intend to map out the Debateable Land.
To begin with, why are these schools called
Public?
The name is in no sense a scientific definition: it
has come to us in two ways. In the first place, it
was not invariably, but very commonly stated by the
persons who founded schools in early days, that these
schools were to teach "publice" for the benefit of
the people residing in the localities where they were
founded. Thus Manchester Grammar School, and
most other grammar schools, have as much right to
call themselves "public " schools as Eton and Harrow,
139




The Debateable Land


more right than recently-founded schools, such as
Marlborough, Cheltenham, Clifton, and Rossall, which
are not bound so to teach.
In the second place, the dearth of places of education, caused by the suppression of educational foundations at the period of the Reformation, followed by
the neglected condition into which the majority of
the survivors were allowed to fall after the Restoration,
brought a number of schools into being conducted by
private persons.  Public schools were hence distinguished from these; the term was not originally
associated with a superior standard of merit: the poet
Cowper was not alone in stigmatising public schools
as rough and brutal. Even if we refuse to accept as
scientifically accurate the picture of Rugby before the
days of Arnold, given in Tom Brown, we cannot
refuse to admit the evidence of persons still living as
to the hideous squalor and discomfort in which the
Foundation boys at Eton and elsewhere were allowed
to live till close on the middle of the present century.
Nor was a public school necessarily a boarding
school; in theory, the non-foundation boys at Eton
and elsewhere are the sons of towns-folk who take
advantage of the " public " nature of the teaching.
The first Public schools in which the boarding
element became the predominant feature were Westminster, Eton, and Harrow; in the cases of all three
proximity to London, and in the case of Eton proximity to Windsor, determined their popularity. At
140




The Debateable Land


the same time there were country schools, such as
Tiverton, Rugby, and some others, which, before the
days of railway travelling, were largely used by
country gentlemen. The magnificence of the Foundation of Winchester early attracted boarders. The
present character of the public schools was, however,
determined by the fact that the three schools near
London were attended by the sons of wealthy men;
hence, not only the head master but his assistants
also were men of exceptional ability and refinement.
These schools could compete with the Bar and other
learned professions for ambitious young men. The
expansion of wealth in the present century further
tended to increase the importance of these schools;
they were the places in which our leading statesmen
were taught, and not a few of our men of letters.
The merchants of Liverpool, the manufacturers of
Birmingham, were not discreditably anxious to have
their sons educated as the Duke of Wellington, and
Canning, and Peel had been educated; to say nothing,
at a latter date, of Mr. Gladstone, and other luminaries.
Dr. Arnold gave a further impetus to the movement in the direction of public boarding schools.
Meanwhile, such local Grammar Schools as did not
succeed in re-establishing themselves, as Rugby and
Uppingham have re-established themselves, fell more
and more into decay.
By the middle of the century the public schools
had already practically monopolised the teaching of
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The Debateable Land


men of leisure, and of those who were destined for
the higher professions.
A system which, however, had begun with meeting
the demands of the wealthy proved too expensive for
the ordinary professional man, and different experiments were made in the direction of creating cheap
public schools. The first cheap public school of any
importance was Marlborough, founded in the interests
of the clergy of the Established Church; Rossall, in
the north of England, followed the same lines. It
was, however, found that the necessary cost of
housing, feeding, and teaching boys was higher than
had been anticipated. Marlborough narrowly escaped
bankruptcy, and had to increase its fees considerably. At present, where the fees are not supplemented by endowment, the cost of a public school
education is seldom less than ~go a year.
The curriculum of the older public schools
naturally followed the lines indicated by the Founders.
It was precisely the same as that of all grammar
schools throughout the country. The new public
schools followed suit. The methods of teaching
were unfortunately not improved with increased prosperity and larger funds; for a long while these
schools were lamentably under-staffed. During the
last thirty years there has, however, been an immense
improvement in the methods of teaching; these may
not in all cases have come up to the demands of an
idealist; it is not to be expected that they should.
Similarly, it might be possible to prove that sound
I42




The Debateable Land


modifications could be effected in the curriculum
without damaging the general spirit of any particular
school. This does not, however, affect the fact that
the teaching of an English public school needs no
apology, when compared with the teaching in schools
frequented by the same class in France and Germany.
In one point the English public schools are superior to all schools that ever have been: they have
discovered the educational value of games. People
who condemn athletics wholesale either do not know
or forget how much of social morality is learned
practically through our school games; how much of
organization, how much of mutual forbearance, of
willing submission to equals, of self-sacrifice in defence
of the common cause, of things, in short, which cannot be learned in school. It is possible to conceive a
public school education without Latin or Greek; it
is impossible to imagine it without playing fields.
Those who mistrust a public school education-and
there are not a few old public school men who share
the suspicion with which it is regarded by men who
know nothing about it-would do well to remind
themselves that the growth of these schools has not
been accompanied by any deterioration in the
national character. Quite the reverse. When the
story of England has become a part of ancient history, and when our place among nations shall be
estimated by the historians of a far distant date; when
we shall be weighed in the balance, as the great
Italian Republic, which made an empire, is now
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The Debateable Land


weighed, this particular period of our history will be
picked out as the one in which England first
decisively showed herself as the one great civilizing
force. Errors of judgment will doubtless be detected
by future historians, and as the story of great scandals
is preserved, when the story of daily undemonstrative
success passes unnoticed, there may perhaps be
writers who will accept some future Tacitus as the
one truthful exponent of our moral or social conditions. But no partial verdict, based upon insufficient
information, can ever do away with the significance
of our government of India; nor will the record of
the singular earnestness of English life in the Victorian age ever pass away. Let us then, in all justice,
call to mind the fact that the large majority of our
Indian Civil Servants, an equally large majority of
our military officers, most of our distinguished
lawyers and our clergy, not a few of our eminent
physicians, a considerable proportion even of our men
of science, are men who have been educated at our
public schools, or in schools which, though popularly
denied that title, are none the less influenced by
public school standards.  Not the smallest service
rendered by the public schools has been the training
of a large number of teachers, who, in the face of
much opposition, work in the spirit in which they
have been taught.
The charges most commonly brought against the
public school system of teaching are to this effect:
excessive attention is given to Latin and Greek,
'44




I


The Debateable Land
especially to Greek; insufficient attention is given
to Science and Mathematics; too much attention is
given to games; the externals of refinement are
valued too highly; the formation of habits of industry is sacrificed to athletics; expensive habits of
living are encouraged rather than frugality.
Of these charges the last four may be dismissed
summarily as an indictment not of the public schools,
but of the parents who send their boys to them. No
school regulations can adequately contend with the
parents who supply their children with unbounded
pocket-money, unnecessary clothes, unlimited eatables, and who deliberately set the achievements of
the playing fields above the school work. If the
externals of refinement at the public schools are
not accompanied by a corresponding improvement of
character, the schools are not alone to be held guilty.
These things are part of home training, as well as of
school training. Boys who come from families in
which what are called the social advantages of a
public school are alone thought of, cannot be expected to give themselves heartily to its more arduous
forms of training.
The charge against the teaching is a more difficult
thing to deal with. It is largely based upon an inadequate appreciation of what school teaching should
be, can be, and cannot be. No system of teaching
has ever been devised, or ever will be devised, which
will satisfy the ideals of those men, who can only
think of teaching as a direct preparation for some
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The Debateable Land


special trade or employment; there are so many
trades and employments.   So far as the public
schools were to blame fifty years ago, they were to
blame precisely because they followed the lines of
the men who now clamour for Science and Technical
instruction. They gave technical instruction for the
purposes of boys who were going to pass through
the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge into a
small group of learned professions, whose historical development made the same course of preparation adequate for each individual member of
the group.
They were certainly not to blame for refusing to
make room in their curriculum for Modern languages
and Sciences, at a time when the capacity of these
subjects for the purposes of mental development was
not understood. That they have since been slow to
recast their scheme of work is on the whole a point
in their favour; they have defended the cause of
education against mere instruction, and if they have
done so in a more narrow spirit than would recommend itself to a competent observer, those who
attack them are open to precisely the same charge.
There is as much room for a narrow bigotry in pressing the claims of Science, as in rejecting them. Nor
is it as yet by any means certain that Science and
Mathematics alone could give a better mental training, a sounder foundation for the future edifice of
learning, than the most rigid adherence to the classics.
We have seen that a very narrow classical training
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The Debateable Land


did not stunt the intellect of William Johnson nor
lead him to despise Science.
Even in at first resisting the Army examinations,
and the examinations for the Indian Civil Service, the
public schools were not wrong. These examinations
were not devised by men who had an intimate
acquaintance with teaching; the number of subjects
included was far too large; and a boy cannot pass
into Sandhurst at sixteen even now without working
more hours a day than is good for him at that age,
and under conditions of pressure which are the reverse of wholesome. The not unfrequent changes
in the regulations for the examination of candidates
for the Indian Civil Service and the Army are a
sufficient evidence that the first organizers of those
examinations could not lay claim to the possession
of perfect illumination.
Much that has been argued against the public
school teaching has been urged by people, who, for
various reasons accept Dickens' Mr. Feeder, B.A., as
the prevalent type of schoolmaster, and believe that
his methods are universally employed. This gentleman was in the habit of turning on the Cxrsar stop
or the Xenophon stop for half an hour at a time, and
getting through his work in a purely mechanical
fashion, while conveying the least possible amount
of instruction. We have been told that boys are not
taught to read at a public school, and yet a construing lesson always involves reading, and that, too,
reading aloud: that they are not taught to write, and
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The Debateable Land


yet they are continually employed in writing exercises: that they are not taught to spell, when these
same exercises demand habits of precision in spelling.
It is quite true that boys of thirteen are expected to
have done with copies by the time they arrive at a
public school: indeed, much of the adverse criticism
of this nature is made by people who were themselves
sent to public schools inadequately prepared, or who
have sent their own children to these advanced
schools devoid of the necessary previous training; or
again, who are quite incapable of measuring any proficiencies that are beyond the mechanical training
desirable in a clerk or an accountant.
Two of the bugbears of those who do not understand the public schools are Greek and Latin verses.
The position of the former is already considerably
modified: as to the latter, the head master of Haileybury has recently published a defence of the practice
of teaching them, which is certainly worth some attention. Mr. Lyttelton was himself educated in what
William Johnson at one time called " Hawtrey's great
verse mill," and the coiner of that phrase was his
tutor: he has had a long experience of teaching, not
only as a head master, and it may therefore be
assumed that he speaks with an adequate knowledge
of the facts. Nor can Mr. Lyttelton, whose achievements in the cricket field are a matter of public
notoriety, and whose prowess at football, though less
notorious, was equally the admiration of his contemporaries, be classed with those students whose interest
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The Debateable Land


in boys is confined to one side only of school life.
Mr. Lyttelton claims for the practice of writing Latin
verses certain mechanical advantages, which, in his
opinion, no other form of instruction possesses in the
same degree. He does not base this claim solely upon
the importance of aesthetic training as part of a sound
education; though he has something'to say upon that
subject which is well worth attention, he, perhaps,
more effectively, deals with the mental and moral
processes through which a boy has to go who writes
a Latin verse; and proves that a boy who has written
a verse has gained in three things, sureness of vocabulary, a perception of rhythm, automatic punishment
of inaccuracy in grammar. In writing prose, Mr.
Lyttelton contends that a boy does not suffer from
his grammatical blunders in the same way that he
does when he writes verse. The fact that he has
made a mistake in gender, for instance, when he
writes prose, is associated in his mind simply with
the ipse dixit of his teacher; whereas the use of the
right gender in a verse enables the verse to be done
and the correct form is associated with success. A
boy who has puzzled unsuccessfully for a quarter of
an hour over a verse, because he has used a word in
the wrong gender, and then has found that the correction of this small mistake at once sets matters
straight, is likely to remember the gender of that
word for ever and aye; and the same remark applies
to other forms of inaccuracy. Then in its elementary
stages Mr. Lyttelton defends Latin verse-making as
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the most helpful means to a desired end, not as an
end in itself, a line of argument with which all true
teachers will sympathise. Mr. Lyttelton's remarks
upon the fourth gain, the stimulating effect of Latin
verse-writing, are even more valuable.
" We ought to observe that the fact just mentioned,
that the finishing of the verse makes itself felt, is one
of no little importance. There is in all our school
work, and notably in the lower stages, a grievous
want of subjects, which at any stage allow this glad
sense of completion. The human artificer longs instinctively to be able to look on a bit of work and
say, "It is mine; it is finished; and it is good."
And it is, perhaps, the most valuable feature of versemaking that, when it is well taught, it continually
imparts this legitimate joy, but it does so without being mechanical. The satisfaction-strange to
adults-which all young boys find in bringing out a
long division sum, is simply the play of this same
instinct, which has had very little scope for exercise
elsewhere. But long division sums involve no thinking of the same complex and scientific sort that the
turning of a hexameter demands. It is worth remarking, too, that the craving to attempt and finish
something is constantly stimulated and satisfied by
games. Every good stroke that wins a rally in a
ball game, every innings that wins a match, every
round at golf that betters the player's record, are
cases in point; whereas in ordinary school work
(excepting mathematics) there may be progress, but
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The Debateable Land


there is very little to mark successful achievement
with a vividness at all adequate to the learner's
desire. Of course, to any one who thinks that our
teaching of Latin so abounds in stimulus that we
suffer from excess rather than from defect, this argument can bring no conviction. I can only say that
I do not share his view; but rather, that long consideration of the mental tone exhibited by lads of
fifteen, when they are learning Latin, forces me to
the conclusion that not only do our methods lack
stimulus, but that they are as conspicuously devoid
of it, as by this very defect to endanger the whole
of classical education in England; and that whenever
we can discern any ingredient of stimulus in any
practice of teaching, traditional or modern, we ought
most jealously to guard and preserve it. And while
hesitating to affirm that verse-making satisfies the
necessary conditions to the full, I should say that it
does so more fully than any other linguistic or literary exercise in vogue at schools at the present time.
The look of well-merited satisfaction on a lad's face,
as he writes down the complete verse and draws a
line under it, marking off this chequered little chapter
of patient and piecemeal endeavour from the next, is
a faint reflection of the rapture often to be detected
in games. To compare small things with great, the
perfecting of a pentameter is, in this one respect only,
not wholly unlike the hitting of a half-volley to leg."
Mr. Lyttelton further dwells upon the immense
intellectual advantage which a boy has gained when
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The Debateable Land


he has reached the stage of translating English verse
into Latin verse. He cannot suggest any better way
of training the mind in the necessary art of fully
understanding our poets, and very justly derides all
forms of analysis and paraphrase, as tending to make
the original poem loathsome to the person who has
analysed or paraphrased.
The outcome of Mr. Lyttelton's book is a salutary
warning against hasty condemnation of systems of
teaching by those who have never taught. Even
experts, who think there are weak places in his arguments, and an inadequate appreciation of the possibilities of other teaching instruments than Latin
verses, must admit that his argument is conducted on
the right lines, and that the cause of sound education would probably lose rather than gain were any
legislative enactment to render it impossible for Mr.
Lyttelton to teach Latin verses.
The neglect of Modern Languages was largely due
to the fact that the only conception of a reason for
learning them was restricted to their practical use.
It was not seen that French and German can be
taught on lines which give most of the advantages
obtained in the process of learning Latin and Greek:
it was forgotten that Latin was learned at schools as
a spoken language till a comparatively recent period,
and that Latin had gained as a teaching instrument
precisely when it ceased to be spoken. This subject
will be dealt with in greater detail in a later chapter;
meanwhile, it may be added that the French wars at
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The Debateable Land


the end of the last century and beginning of this
considerably impeded the growth of a systematic
instruction in French, and collaterally of other modern
languages. The Nelsonian hatred of Frenchmen was
extended to their language; even at an earlier date
Dr. Johnson had begun to growl at the invasion of
London by Frenchmen: this would have been unnecessary had there not been a considerable intellectual intercourse between France and England
before the Revolution. Voltaire learned much from
his residence in England; among other things, the
value of Swift's methods of satirical writing.
When of our two Universities one was exclusively
mathematical, and the other classical, the proper
place of mathematical training was not likely to be
seen by the public schools and grammar schools;
they followed, to begin with, the lines of the Universities: they taught either Classics or Mathematics,
not both. The exclusive study of Mathematics does
not produce the intellectual qualities which were
valued by the wealthy and refined parents who gave
the first impetus to Westminster and Eton, and
Mathematics were chiefly taught in the local grammar
schools which by scholarships and exhibitions were
closely connected with the University of Cambridge.
This led to a social disparagement of Mathematics,
which was helped on by an unfortunate tendency to
confound Mathematics with Arithmetic, and therefore to despise this branch of study as being only fit
for tradesmen. There was a time when, in certain
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The Debateable Land


classes of society, it wvas almost less damaging to
be a criminal than a tradesman. The practice of
over early specialization, arising from the scholarship
system, has tended to perpetuate the division between
Classics and Mathematics; but as Mathematics lend
themselves to the purposes of examination to a degree
which is not attainable by languages, the positions
are not unlikely to be reversed. A combination of
the two branches of training in due proportions is to
be desired; exclusive training in one or the other is
extremely undesirable, least desirable of all is exclusive training in Mathematics. Information is not
necessarily imparted, curiosity is not necessarily
stimulated by the teacher of Mathematics. If the
public schools had been exclusively Mathematical,
they might with justice have been accused of neglecting History and Geography.
The first move in the direction of reforming the
public school curriculum was distinctly unfortunate.
The addition of modern sides to the public schools
was an unworthy performance. The modern sides
were defectively organized, they were largely recruited
from the classes which habitually neglect the early
stages of their children's education; and as their
curriculum was based, not upon a careful consideration
of the relative value of subjects in combination, but
upon the supposed demands of the parents, their
teaching was inadequate. Thus "modern subjects"
were discredited in the eyes of the classical teachers,
and into many schools a most undesirable complexity
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I


The Debateable Land


of organization was introduced-especially into the
smaller schools, where there were neither enough boys
nor enough teachers to maintain two courses at the
same time.
The multiplication of examinations for the Professions and Public Services differing but little from one
another, and yet differing sufficiently in the number
of subjects set, and in the relative standards demanded
in these different subjects, to make it difficult, if not
impossible, to prepare all candidates in the same
classes, has further increased the difficulties of the
public schools. A  comprehensive reorganization of
all such examinations is perhaps the best thing that
we can hope for from legislation in the matter of
secondary education.
To summarise this somewhat lengthy paper. In
spite of some not incurable defects the public schools
represent the best form of education given in England; it is the education most suitable for the directing classes of a great nation: it is moral, physical,
and intellectual. Its moral training is active, not
passive; it does not merely prohibit vice, it stimulates virtuous ambition: its physical training is not
purely mechanical, but gives room for the exercise of
moral qualities as well as for the development of
healthy activity: its intellectual training has proved
itself at least equal to that of other nations.
The question before us now is the extent to which
public school ideals are capable of being extended to
classes which have not as yet come in contact with
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The Debateable Land


them, and which view them with suspicion and dislike. On the one side we have a mean conception of
education, gross ignorance of its possibilities alike
positive and negative, mistrust of refinement, impatience of necessary discipline, a determination to
learn only what seems to be pecuniarily and immediately profitable, and a strong bias towards getting
that minimum of instruction paid for by somebody
else; on the other side we have the type of character,
the standard of morality, the intellectual and social
ambitions, which have invariably been observed to
accompany the highest development of great nations.
Which of these shall occupy the Debateable Land?
III
THE organization of the Debateable Land up to
the present time has been seriously hampered by
a general unwillingness to face the problem of Subjects, an inclination to assume helpless indigence
among that portion of the population of our provincial towns which does not earn weekly wages,
leading to a tendency to offer instruction gratuitously,
by too low an estimate of the value of schools, by too
high an estimate of the value of Colleges, Scientific
and Technical, by an inadequate comprehension of
the preparation necessary for the work of those
Colleges and by the inherent English vice of offering
prizes, rather than demanding qualifications, as an
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The Debateable Land


inducement to parents to get their children properly
taught.
The question of subjects is a large one, and will
best be considered in a separate paper. The proper
position of Scientific and Technical Colleges will be
easily deduced from the conclusions then arrived at;
the question of gratuitous instruction can be dealt
with at once.
When a number of enterprising gentlemen in a
provincial town get together to found a school,
whether for boys or girls, the basis upon which they
estimate the fees is invariably the sum which it is
supposed the parents will pay, never the sum which
the particular kind of school contemplated must
necessarily cost. The fact that particular subjects
cannot be effectively taught in over-large classes,
that the multiplication of subjects necessarily involves increase of staff unless the teaching is to be
a sham, that it is not worth while to found a school
which is no school, that good teaching is necessarily
more expensive than bad teaching, that if parents
are allowed to fix their own fees they will fix them
as near zero as possible: all these several points are
habitually disregarded in dealing with educational
questions by men of no inconsiderable enlightenment;
and their attitude is the collective attitude of the
nation at the present moment.
Are we drifting into this position-that instruction
in day schools is to be practically gratuitous, while
the cost of instruction in boarding-schools is to fall
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The Debateable Land


chiefly on the parent who pays the largest proportion of the rates and taxes which maintain the
day schools?
An educational system, which is devised on the
assumption that all parents would get their children
well educated if they could afford to pay for it, is
founded on an assumption, which is contradicted by
the every-day experience of any man who keeps his
eyes open and studies the practice of his neighbours.
In well-endowed grammar schools, which are able
to charge low fees, the influence of the parents is
unceasingly directed to lowering the character of the
education given, though the good education may cost
them no more than the bad. So far they have had
things entirely their own way. Local grammar
schools, unless they happen to have become chiefly
boarding-schools, have in most cases become practically useless to the boy, who is qualified to be
educated on the higher plane, but who is not a prizewinner. The organization of such schools is reduced
to a system of patch-work in order to make room for
the multifarious non-educational subjects which shortsighted, uneducated parents think desirable to be
learned. Even modern languages get no opportunity
of being properly taught, while Mathematics win
parental approbation only so long as the term mathematics is co-extensive with simple arithmetic. A
fair and square argument on education with the average tradesman quickly reveals the fact, that he does
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The Debateable Land


not want his son to learn more than how to read,
write, and work sums; if very ambitious, he will add
bookkeeping and shorthand, of which the former is
best learned by actual practice in an office; and the
latter as a school subject occupies a disproportionate
amount of time, is rapidly forgotten unless continuously practised, and quickly gets a boy into the
habit of listening without understanding. A shorthand writer no more attends to the sense of what he
is taking down than a compositor to the meaning
of the type that he sets up. Science has impressed
the imagination of a few parents of this class, but
then not as a means of acquiring scientific habits of
thought: they have an idea that science means
"useful " information, like the cookery book; and by
useful" information they mean information which
can be sold.
If regulation of Secondary Education by the State
is to be conducted on lines dictated by persons of
this way of thinking, it is not worth anybody's while
to interfere, still less to make such teaching gratuitous. Interference by the State is superfluous
unless it represents the opinions, founded on experience, supported by reason, of men who can see further
than the average shop-keeper.
If the State merely organizes Secondary Education
by providing inspections and examinations; if, in
fact, it limits its function to giving a school such a
-certificate as will enable a parent to feel reasonably
certain that he is getting the return that he expects
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The Debateable Land


for his school fees, the State cannot be called upon to
pay the school fees.
If the State even goes one step further, and prescribes certain forms of school to which alone it
will grant certificates, the parent has no claim to
have his school fees wholly or partially remitted; he
is still at liberty to send his children to an uncertificated school.
If, on the other hand, the State pays part of the
school fees, the State has a right to make education
at State-supported schools a condition of admission
to the service of the State, or to any professions, and
even employments, in which it is felt that the national
welfare is likely to suffer by the employment of inadequately trained men.
When the State, for instance, subsidises a College
of Science, the State has not only a right, but is in
all prudence bound to insist upon such entrance
examinations, such previous training on the part of
persons wishing to enjoy the benefits of that subsidy,
as to ensure that the subsidy will not be wasted.
It is not a little strange, that whereas we have
been for a very long period alive to the advantages
of residence at a University, and have made residence
a necessary preliminary to taking a degree, we have
not similarly insisted upon residence at a school.
We have, it is true, made attendance a necessary preliminary to earning a grant in elementary schools
or County Council Scholarships; but we do not require a boy who is to enter the Army to bring a cerI60




The Debateable Land


tificate of having regularly attended a public school
for three or four years; and this in spite of the fact
that the outdoor life of a public school is admitted
to supply much that is valuable in the training of an
officer. In fact, of the two forms of residence, attendance at school is really more important than
residence at a University; it comes at a time of life
when the assistance of teachers is absolutely necessary, whereas by the time a young man goes to the
University he should be capable of working by himself. As a matter of fact, residence at a University
does not give much to a man who has spent six
years at a good public school; its value is greatest
for those who have not enjoyed this previous training. Such men fix a very high value upon the life of
the University; just as the educated German, who
has generally been brought up at home and at a
day school, keeps all his sentiment for his studentlife.
An unwillingness to prescribe attendance at particular schools as a necessary preliminary to the examinations for the public services and professions is
partly due to a habit that we have got into of looking at schools as commercial institutions in competition with one another; it would not be fair to set
some schools apart, give them an advantage over
others.  This amounts to saying that the State
should leave the schools unorganized; but as we have
seen, the State already interferes considerably by
establishing a bonus upon Science and Art; and
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The Debateable Land


what the nation requires, and the individual parent
requires in no less a degree, is a distinct pronouncement from the perpetual parent as to the value of
certain forms of education.
There is no reason at all why schools should not
be licensed and scheduled; why schools fully equipped
with playgrounds, as well as teachers, should not be
stated to be fit and proper places of education for
boys from thirteen to sixteen years of age, who wish
to enter certain branches of the public service, provided they submit themselves to periodical inspection. Private proprietors of schools, by ranging themselves under the same organization, should be able to
secure the same privileges.
To make passing an examination the sole certificate of education is absurd; we all know how little
an examination can really test. Attendance at school
is the first point to secure; the only value of the
examination is to show that the school is doing its
work properly.
In towns this mark of approbation given to
efficient schools, whether conducted by private proprietors or by the Trustees to an endowment, would
do much towards raising the deplorably low ideals
which are held by our commercial classes with reference to education.
A man will pay an adequate fee for the education
of his child in a particular school if attendance at
that school, ipso facto, gives the child certain advantages. The only kind of advantage we have yet
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The Debateable Land


thought of has been the remission of fees to the
parent.
The line of demarcation between schools is suggested by the fact that a boy who proposes to enter
certain professions, and undertakes certain forms of
employment, must leave school at sixteen; for others
a longer training is required, and boys stay on at
school till eighteen or nineteen. This fact is already
recognised by the School Examination Board of the
Universities. 'All that is additionally required is
to insist on three years' school attendance as a
preliminary to the sixteen-year-old examination;
schools without adequate playgrounds being put
in a schedule by themselves, and not included in the
places of education qualifying for the Army, Indian
Civil Service, and other employments, in which
activity of body, habits of mutual co-operation, and
a knowledge of organization, are no less necessary
than a well-trained mind. Localities which are so
well able to afford Technical Colleges and Colleges
of Science, and can find apparently inexhaustible
funds for bricks and mortar, might possibly be induced to provide suitable playgrounds.
Again, it would be no worse economy, than that
which the State at present practises, to revert to an
older form of endowment: in order to secure efficient
teachers for local schools the State might find the
salaries of a head master and second master, provided
the locality found suitable playgrounds and buildings.
There is no financial difficulty; the money that would
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be required is at present being squandered on a system demoralising to parents, humiliating to teachers,
and of the smallest possible advantage to the children.
Money is further wasted at the present moment
upon inspections and examinations, which would be
better spent on teaching. Instead of schools which
are wanted, places of advanced learning are built
which are not wanted, and which then proceed to
teach subjects which should have been learned at
school, because pupils are not to be found who have
been properly taught. It is not as generally known
as it should be that the vaunted higher grade
schools turn out boys of sixteen less well taught
and less teachable than boys of thirteen who are
admitted to the public schools; and this too in their
favourite subject, Mathematics. This is only natural,
for the public school boys have received a degree of
individual attention which is impossible in the higher
grade schools.
Specialists in Mathematics occur in higher grade
schools as they do elsewhere.  It has been mentioned on a previous occasion that Mathematics are
a subject by themselves, and the special mathematical faculty is a thing apart. Single instances
will not disprove the rule; meanwhile the language
standard of such schools is pitiful.
This leads us to the consideration of Subjects;
their relative value and place are of first importance
in mapping out the Debateable Land.
164




The Debateable Land


IV
THE solution of the question of establishing a
satisfactory school course for boys who leave school
at sixteen depends in the first place upon the educational value of Modern languages, upon the educational value of Mathematics, upon the educational
value of Science; or to look at the same thing from
another point of view, how do we answer the question
as to what subjects are necessarily preliminary to
further teaching? The question of what is desirable
to be learned is of secondary importance, for everything is desirable to be learned, or nothing.
Surely no one will be found to dispute the statement, that the accurate use of spoken and written
languages and conversance with mathematical processes are the essential preliminaries, the ground over
which every one must travel who wishes eventually
to think correctly, to acquire organized information,
and to be able to impart his information to others, or
otherwise make it profitable, in the widest sense of
this word, to himself.
This point once conceded, it follows that the
largest portion of a school course will be occupied by
languages and mathematics. The next question is,
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The Debateable Land


by what languages? Fifty years ago the answer
would have been by Latin and Greek; at the present
time a claim would be made for French and German
also. There is, however, a certain unwillingness on
the part of educational experts in England to accept
this claim. They do not find in French and German
sufficient training power; but have they ever really
tested the training power of French and German?
We may concede that Latin is the best educational
instrument for English boys, without refusing to
French and German a considerable capacity for being
used in the same way.
The reason why experienced classical teachers are
apt to be contemptuous of French and German is
because those languages are most commonly taught
from the wrong point of view; they are not looked
upon as educational instruments at all, but simply
as practically useful for persons whom business or
pleasure takes to the Continent. Being then taught
superficially by processes analogous to the teaching
of parrots, these languages naturally produce very
little evidence of mental training in the pupil; even
for conversational purposes the pupil's grip of them
is but weak, and they are soon forgotten.
If, on the other hand, they are taught soundly from
the beginning, they not only show very good results
as educational instruments, but the practical end of
using them for conversational purposes is secured in
the most reasonable and most effective manner.
People who do not seriously consider these things
I66




The Debateable Land
are so numerous, and speak so confidently on the
subject, that a short technical description of the only
sound way of teaching a modern language, let us say
French, is indispensable to our arguments.
The first step is to master the verbs, and the principles of their formation; for this is the feature in
which English differs from other languages: it has
few inflections; they have many. In French the
system of verb inflection is more complete than in
English.  This step is easier, and helps to other
languages, if we recognise the fact that there are not
four regular conjugations in French, and countless
irregular ones. There are two conjugations, a weak
and a strong, as there are in English, in Italian, in
Spanish, in German, and all languages kindred to
these. There are only seven really irregular French
verbs in common use.    Recognition of this fact
renders it easy to interest a small boy at once in pulling verbs to pieces, or building up verbs; by adding
terminations to stems, or the converse process. In
this way he quickly learns to recognise a verb, to
assign it to its proper tense and mood, and has become conversant with a process helpful to him when
he learns another language. Three months of this
work, combined with simple exercises involving the
use of the pronouns, make him ready to begin translation from French to English; and here we at once
have plenty of literature suited to his time of life.
In the process of learning to translate from French
to English, our small boy also learns how to proI67




The Debateable Land


nounce French by reading it aloud, and hearing it
read aloud; and as soon as he begins to write his
translation down, he begins to grapple with the difficulties of his own language. When translation has
become tolerably easy,-and by a judicious selection
of books, and careful use of easy exercises based
upon translation, it becomes so in a surprisingly short
space of time,-we can begin to think of translation
from English to French on a more elaborate scale.
The first stage is retranslation from the pupil's own
written work back into the original French. Of this
an advanced standard is reached, when a lesson having been construed, the teacher reads out the English
translation, and the boys write down the French as
he proceeds. The last stage is the translation of
classical English into French, involving sound analysis
of English, and an extended reading of French
authors. A boy who has been through this course
can all but talk French; a month in France puts him
at his ease in a French conversation. He has a full
vocabulary, which he can always amplify by reading
books or newspapers. This is a power which he will
never entirely lose; whereas the parrot-taught vocabulary disappears as rapidly as it is acquired.
The time required would be six lessons a week for
the first year; eight to ten for the second; four, supplemented by one of school reading, for the third.
This may be taken as a sound, general rule for
the teaching of languages. After the preliminary
stages the lessons must for a time be numerous;
i68




The Debateable Land


there then comes a time when they can be very
much reduced, and if it is thought desirable, in view
of pressure from other subjects, merely to keep up
the language after the third year, two lessons a week
are sufficient. These lessons can be made historical,
or even scientific. Classical boys, for instance, will
find plenty of useful matter in the books of Gaston
Boissier, while the French physicists are said to excel
in lucidity of statement and orderly presentment of
their subject.
Against this method of teaching we have set up
what is called "Oral Teaching of Modern Languages." Oral teaching, like Froebel, is one of the
fads; the phrase sounds well. Let us examine the
process. Its superior merit is supposed to consist in
making a language at once living to children: they
learn to converse. Do they? Ideas and words have
alike to be supplied for them by their teacher; that is
not conversation. Even in dealing with one child
conversation on the part of a grown-up person has a
tendency to become a monologue; and with even so
small a class as ten children, speaking their own language, it is very quickly reduced to the repetition of
a few phrases, which are as a rule suggested by the
bell wether of the flock-some smarter boy, who has
acquired the formula.  The larger the class the
greater the difficulty. The advocates of oral teaching are largely influenced by recollections of the kind
of work which can be done by a clever governess,
who lives all day with two or three children, and
I69




The Debateable Land


who therefore has plenty of topics in common with
them; but even then the work is not permanent,
unless her oral teaching is supplemented, as it most
commonly is, by book work.
Oral teaching of large classes, when very skilfully
conducted, may apparently give a quick result in the
way of speaking. The same time spent in sound
teaching from books as a preparation for oral teaching gives results less showy to begin with, but more
permanent in their effects. English schools at present are not in the habit of giving their modern
language teaching a sufficient number of hours; four
hours a week, for instance, given to French over four
years will not do anything like the work which can
be done in three years, or even two, with eight hours
a week. Again, when once the pupil has had a good
soaking in one language, its hours can be reduced to
make room for another.
A common English practice is to send a boy to a
school where modern languages are starved, till he is
about sixteen, and then send him for a year to the
Continent. He goes unprepared for further teaching,
and, in the majority of cases, learns very little.
Again, the place of the foreign teacher of languages
in an English school is not at the beginning, but at
the end of the course. There are already a large
number of young Englishmen who, after leaving
Oxford or Cambridge, or during the long vacations,
go abroad to qualify themselves for teaching modern
languages; they seldom meet with the encourageI70




The Debateable Land


ment that they deserve. Every large school should
have at least one Frenchman and one German on
its staff; but the foreigner will do better work by
reading and conversing with the masters than by
teaching the small boys.
Practically modern language teaching in England
must be confined at school to French and German.
It is one of the wayward pranks of destiny which has
made Italian and Spanish less useful for conversational purposes; otherwise, from the literary standpoint, it would be difficult to make out a good case
for French and German against the languages of
Dante and Ariosto, of Cervantes and Calderon.
A boy who has been scientifically taught French
and German will, however, not find any serious difficulty in learning other Romance and Teutonic languages; a boy who has been only orally taught is
very little nearer acquiring another and kindred
language.
It is, of course, obvious that oral teaching at once
eliminates the literary side of the training, and leaves
no room for that very important feature in learning
a language; viz., that by a sound process we also
learn our own.
Ultimately the demand for oral teaching, and
many other things of the same kind, is based not
upon a thoughtful consideration of the question at
issue, but upon a prejudice against methods of teaching which involve application on the part of the
pupil. Nothing was ever yet soundly learned with17I




The Debateable Land


out trouble on the part of the learner. Everybody
admits this in theory; but in practice, anybody who
declares that he has discovered a way of teaching
without trouble is listened to, and is allowed to try
reckless experiments. When a good foundation in
the structure and vocabulary of a language has been
laid by means of books, oral teaching in a modern
language can follow, the point at which it can be
applied with most advantage depending partly upon
the dexterity of the teacher, partly upon the docility
of the pupil; but alone it is valueless. English itself
cannot be, and is not, learned by English boys solely
through oral teaching; the vocabulary of ordinary
life is so limited, the habit of talking thoughtfully
so rare, the range of ideas and information of the
average Englishman so narrow, that without books
children would never learn English. It has been
repeatedly observed that boys who go from board
schools to grammar schools are apt to read without
the smallest comprehension of what they are -reading;
they see the words as a compositor sees them. There
is no time to do anything more for them owing to
the conditions under which they are taught, and the
home gives no help. Even boys who have been
given much better opportunities of learning are frequently content to read without understanding, and
have to be stimulated in various ways in order that
they may ask the necessary questions. Translating
into and from another language does the greater part
of this work automatically.
I72




-"q


The Debateable Land
The group of subjects called Mathematics forms
the other indispensable factor in sound training.
Here again we are confronted by the fact, that there
are possibilities of uninstructive teaching, countless
dodges by which boys may be taught to save themselves the trouble of thinking, and their teacher the
severe task of grappling with the difficulty of getting
them to think; and we have the further fact that
teaching by means of dodges, or rule - of-thumb
teaching, produces illusive results, which win the
approbation both of the pupil and of the person
who pays for his instruction.
If in the classical schools Mathematics were till a
recent period starved, there is a considerable danger
at the present time that they will occupy too large a
space in the curriculum of other than classical schools;
they already do so in the examinations for Woolwich
and Sandhurst. This is not altogether designed; it
arises from -the fact that no subject is so easily
examined as Mathematics.
The same amount of work given to Mathematics
and languages produces a standard of proficiency in
Mathematics relatively more easily tested by examination, more certain to win marks; consequently,
when a choice of subjects is allowed to candidates
in a competitive examination, they are advised by
teachers, who are aware of this fact, to select the
mathematical subjects. An increase of the number
of competitive examinations, unless due foresight is
exercised, will infallibly lead to an undue preponderance of Mathematics.
173




The Debateable Land


The case against Mathematics is not often clearly
stated; it is simply this. A mathematical lesson,
however soundly given, is a mathematical lesson, and
nothing else; its relation to other intellectual training is the relation of drill to games; it does not
inform outside the range of Mathematics, and it cannot deal with any facts that are not capable of being
stated in mathematical language. A man might be
a superb mathematician, and be entirely ignorant of
history, of social economy, of the laws which govern
the life of plants and animals; such a man might
walk through a world devoid of associations, peopled
at best with statistics. Windsor Castle would suggest nothing to his mind but a vast outlay upon
dressed stones; Holyrood would be a singularly uncomfortable dwelling in a damp situation; Rome
herself would be a town remarkably like Bayswater,
but better provided with drinking fountains.
On the other hand, it is impossible to teach a
language otherwise than orally, without constant
reference to manners and customs. The explanations
of the meanings of words involve history. Even such
a well-worn subject as Caesar's account of his invasion of Britain opens the way to a discussion of
methods of measuring time; a comparison between
our conception of the form of the earth and that held
by the ancients; an inquiry into the distribution of
metals and trees; of Roman methods of fighting
compared with our own; of the social conditions of
the Britons; of the qualities of the Roman army; of
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The Debateable Land


the secret of Coesar's power over this army; and the
list is not yet exhausted. In the same way, even the
simplest French book requires for its perfect comprehension descriptions of ways of living on the
Continent different from our own. A man might be
a well-informed man without being able to cast up
his accounts; but he might be able to square the
circle, without being able to grasp the force of any
single illustration in Mr. Chamberlain's Defence of
Patriotism, or in a leading article in the Times.
A third part of the curriculum can be given to
Mathematics without danger, but even then care
must be taken not to allow Mathematics to earn
marks out of due proportion.
When the age for specialization has come, Mathematics may naturally be made an exclusive subject,
as literature may be. But we are at present dealing
with the age before specialization.
To discuss the position of Science is more difficult,
because so few people take the trouble to ascertain
the meaning of the term. If by Science is meant
simply correct information about a vast number of
phenomena, the field is already covered in great part
by literature; if, however, it means a training in the
processes by which accurate information about those
phenomena has been already obtained, and will continue to be obtained, part of the ground is covered by
Mathematics. The residuum is experimental science.
As the scientific study of language supplies us with
one part of the indispensable machinery of correct
I75




The Debateable Land


thinking, and Mathematics supply us with another
part, experimental science teaches us how to observe,
and deduce the correct inferences from our observations; but a course of experimental science, to be
effective, demands a foundation of Languages and
Mathematics.
The difference between Science as information and
Science as a means of training may be illustrated
from Dr. Miall's series of experiments, which prove
that water has a skin. The mere statement, "water
has a skin," is no more scientific in its effect upon the
person to whom it is addressed than the statement
that Shakespeare lived in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth.
If, however, Dr. Miall conducts, in the presence of
a class of boys, a series of experiments with corks,
and wires, and soap bubbles, which tend to prove
that water has a skin; if at each step in his experiments he states why he applies a particular test; if he
shows that the results of his experiments cannot be
arrived at except on the assumption that water has
a skin, nor explained in any other way, he has given
a valuable demonstration of scientific method. Supposing this demonstration to be given to boys whose
minds are otherwise untrained, and who are not
skilled in the use of their own language, examination
of these boys even orally will suggest that the lesson
has been wasted; and, again, boys trained in the use
of language may be so untrained in the habit of
observing that they will be unable to state in orderly
176




The Debateable Land


sequence what they have seen Dr. Miall do, and why
he did it.
A further stage in the same lesson has been arrived
at when the boys have been set to conduct the experiments for themselves; they will probably fail in
many cases to produce the same results, and the
reasons for their failure, supplied by the teacher, are
almost as important a part of the lesson as the
original lecture.
Again, a boy who has followed these experiments,
and satisfied himself that water has a skin, may be
led to inquire further into the qualities and properties
of other things which he deals with every day. He
had swum in water, he had drunk water, he had possibly washed himself with soap and water, and yet
it had never occurred to him that water was provided
with a skin; perhaps by inquiry he might discover
equally unsuspected facts about other things in daily
use. Such lessons stimulate curiosity. The danger
which besets them is that the boy of indolent mind
cares more for the result than the process by which
it is arrived at; if he can come away from the lesson
saying that water has a skin, he is perfectly satisfied
that he knows something; he repeats the information at home, his mother flatly contradicts him, and
his father grumbles about useless knowledge.
Lessons such as these can be used with advantage
at a fairly early period in a boy's career, but they
cannot form the whole or a very considerable part
of his training at that period. Simple experimental


177


N




The Debateable Land


lessons in mechanics, in light, heat, sound, hydrostatics, gravitation, and so forth, can be devised by
skilful teachers, which are of great value so long as
the experiments are conducted by means of apparatus
which the boys can make for themselves; and all
boys should go through a course of this training.
The later stages of science belong to the period of
specialization.
After such a course a boy can use scientific books
with some profit; if he begins with the books he is
no better trained than if he had read any other books.
Properly taught science is an expensive subject,
not because it absolutely requires the costly apparatus which it is now the fashion to lavish upon
it at schools, but because, like languages, it demands
close individual attention.
There is a fairly general opinion that scientific subjects-chemistry, for instance-are necessarily more
interesting to boys than languages or mathematics.
This is not the case. An indolent boy prefers sitting
in a room where somebody is performing chemical
experiments, and talking about them, to being forced
to think for himself by means of an exercise or
arithmetical problem, but the real grind of chemistry
is just as distasteful to him as the grind of mathematics or Latin.  Even in the advanced stages,
unless students misrepresent themselves, there is
quite as much larking, quite as little attention to the
business really in hand in a chemical laboratory, as
elsewhere.  The temper of a professor or fellow178




The Debateable Land


student is generally a more interesting subject of
investigation than other acids.
Allusion has before been made to the subject of
drawing; this should unquestionably be taught all
through the secondary stage of education, not with
a view to the fine arts, nor to the sciences, nor to the
trades, but simply because a man who cannot draw
is in most cases a man who has never been taught
to see. Two lessons a week are amply sufficient for
drawing till specialization is arrived at, but they
should never be omitted.  The least educational
forms of drawing are those in which instruments are
employed, such as geometrical drawing and machine
drawing; they are well left till they are wanted for
practical purposes; freehand drawing, again, may be
overdone. The standard to be arrived at is that the
pupil should be able to draw a correct outline of any
object under any conditions of light, see and represent the shadows.
In criticizing these suggestions, or any other suggestions for curriculum, the reader should bear in mind
the fact that there are many things desirable to be
known, and many ways of acquiring information
about them, which are not applicable to class teaching; consequently the value of different methods of
teaching in schools depends upon the extent to which
they are applicable to a class. It is possible to
methodise too much; it is possible for the teacher
to be too skilful. The danger which besets the class
teacher is the danger of discovering methods, which
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The Debateable Land


save the pupils the trouble of thinking for themselves,
and which produce temporary rather than permanent
results. Much of what is called the art of teaching
is of this nature. Many of the board school masters
have brought it to perfection, with the result that
their pupils leave them not only untaught, but unteachable.  For this the teachers are not wholly
responsible; the monstrous wickedness of the education code, at the outset, with its payment by results
and grants on inspection, forced the teachers to devise
and adopt uneducational methods of teaching.
If the State is to organize secondary schools, this
form of error must not be repeated, and again care
must be taken not to sacrifice efficiency to cheapness.
Languages taught in too large classes are as valueless
as any other subjects taught under the wrong conditions. Mechanical grammar, rote learning of accidence, attract the teacher, when his class is too large.
In these, at any rate, definite results can be obtained;
grammar becomes the master, and ceases to be the
servant. This danger was already seen and understood in the days of Queen Elizabeth by Roger
Ascham. Small classes are necessarily more expensive than large ones; more teachers are required.
Few people who clamour for individual teaching are
ready to pay for it, or to admit that it must be paid
for.
Lastly, should there be alternative subjects?
Should a boy be allowed to make his second language, for instance, either Latin or German?




The Debateable Land


Alternative subjects are bad in principle; they
cause much waste of power in organization. Still this
particular alternative is possible, provided due care is
taken to protect the organization of the school. The
choice should be made once for all, and the parent
should be provided with a full statement of what
the choice involves. Where alternative subjects are
allowed without due precautions, boys prevail upon
their parents to allow them to drop one or the other
in order to avoid the rigours of some particular
master, or to get an easy time with some teacher who
has the reputation of being slack. Modern languages
are apt to be popular when taught by a foreigner
who cannot maintain discipline. When the age for
specialization has come, alternative subjects are of
course necessary.
Boys can be allowed to substitute German for
Latin if they do not propose to specialize in classics,
or if they wish to leave school at fifteen; if, however,
they mean to become professional men or public
servants, the Latin should be insisted on.
The teaching of modern languages by foreigners is
a mistake. Pronunciation, though not unimportant,
is of less importance than it is supposed to be; nor
are Englishmen so incapable of acquiring even a
French accent within certain limits as is generally
assumed. A man teaching his own language to
foreign children is at a very great disadvantage.
Apart from the difficulty of discipline, which is felt
by English teachers in foreign schools just as much
i8i




The Debateable Land


as by foreigners in English schools, such a man is
unprepared for his pupils' difficulties.  Those who
doubt this should try the experiment for themselves,
and try teaching a Frenchman English.
The place of music has not been considered. All
young children should be taught to sing by ear; to
sing from notes is a second stage. The number of
boys who have no ear is not very large, and the
defect is cured to a considerable extent by the habit
of hearing music. An ear for music, like an ear for
speaking, can be developed, except in a very few
cases. Such singing is properly an elementary subject. Instrumental music is inapplicable in its early
stages to class teaching, pianoforte playing absolutely
so; it cannot be included in a school course till a
considerable proficiency has been acquired. When
sufficient progress has been made, a school orchestra
is helpful; but, as all boys cannot be expected to
take part in it, the music must remain outside the
curriculum. Parents who are really in earnest about
music can do a good deal in their own homes.
And History and Geography —what of them?
History, as a special subject, belongs to the stage of
specialization. Meanwhile, preparation for this stage
is carried on by attention to the subject matter of
the books read in language lessons; by the illustrations given of those lessons by teachers who are not
cramped for want of time; by allowing for a couple
of lessons a week outside the languages and mathematics, in which the teacher may read what he
I82




The Debateable Land


pleases with his class, and in the way which seems
most profitable to him. Geography is in one aspect
a branch of science, in another a branch of history.
In the elementary stages children have to be taught
how to read a map; later on they can be taught to
realize the physical conditions of the countries in
which are laid the scenes of the stories that they are
reading. Now that good photographs are so easy to
be procured, stimulating lessons, calculated to give
associations to names of places, are easily managed
by any well-informed teacher. All such lessons are,
however, rather of the nature of a relief to the severer
lessons by which the mind is trained.  They are
instructional rather than educational; they supplement the other work; they cannot replace it. The
practice of giving boys so many pages of a geographical or historical text-book to read, and then
questioning them upon what they have read, is apt
to be singularly barren of permanent results.  At
the same time it is a necessary step towards teaching
them how to acquire information for themselves. It
should not be done with young boys.
A healthy curiosity about history and geography
is best insured by finding well-informed teachers.
All language lessons, after the elementary struggles
with grammar are over, are vehicles by which the
well-stored mind of the teacher is brought into contact with the mind of the pupil. When teachers are
looked upon as machines for producing a definite
knowledge of a language or anything else within
183




The Debateable Land


carefully prescribed limits, when a French lesson is
nothing but French, and a Latin lesson nothing but
Latin, the stimulating effect of the teacher's own
learning is removed. In a large school there is room
for both kinds of teaching. A boy moving from one
form to another comes under men of different types
of mind. It is the province of a skilful head master
to place his men in those parts of a school in which
their peculiar qualities are most serviceable.
Men should teach at least two sets of subjects.
One of the worst evils of unorganized schools is the
habit of placing different subjects exclusively in the
hands of special teachers.  Boys should not be
allowed to feel that any subject is an outlying
department. In the old classical schools Mathematics and modern languages suffered severely in
the estimation of the boys by being taught by a
different set of masters.
Except in the higher departments of a school
where the curriculum is already specialized, men
who only teach one subject are a source of weakness.
There is no real difficulty in finding men capable of
teaching both Classics and Mathematics, or modern
languages and Classics, or Mathematics and Science;
and there would be less difficulty still, were there a
satisfactory provision at the Universities for enabling
young men who intend to become teachers to earn
double certificates. This is, however, rather a large
question, and may be deferred till we consider the
relations of the Universities and the schools. In con184




The Debateable Land


nection with this another point requires consideration;
viz., the relations between a local secondary school
and a local college of science or University. For
instance, should all specialized work be reserved for
the place of advanced education?
Intellectually many boys become fit for the specialized instruction of a University before they are
morally fit. For this reason special work must always
be done in schools, as well as general work. In the
public schools as much as the last three years of a
boy's school life are not unfrequently given to special
work. Even in a school which contemplated sixteen
as the upward limit of age, there would be boys ready
to begin special work before the time of departure
was reached. On the other hand, such boys could
not wisely be relieved of the stricter discipline of a
school; while, on the other hand, any school which
did not allow exceptionally gifted boys to pass as
rapidly as their ability permitted through the preliminary stages, would create idleness and discourage
healthy emulation.  When grants were given to
teachers according to the number of boys who
qualified at each successive standard, there was little
inducement to promote clever boys; it was a safer
speculation to keep them to the standard fixed for
their age than to let them  pass on to a higher
standard and possibly fail.
One further point in school organization is worth
mentioning, because it is commonly overlooked by
people who regard a school simply as a knowledge
185




The Debateable Land


shop.  A boy's lessons should not be distributed
between too many teachers; there should always be
one teacher who is in possession of a satisfactory
conspectus of the work of each boy. When a boy's
time is divided between several masters, he is apt to
be overloaded with preparation or the reverse; and
as all masters are not equally exacting, the lessons
that are done for indulgent men are apt to be
inadequately attended to. This, again, indicates that
it is desirable that the mass of teachers should be
men of more than one subject.
Practically the suggestions here made have been
already adopted by many grammar schools. All
that requires to be done is to stamp with the approbation of the State a general course of study; to
deliver the head masters of schools from perpetual
interference on the part of uninstructed persons, who
are unable to see a school course as a whole, and
who, with the best intentions in the world, defeat their
own objects. If we are to have examination rather
than inspection, we must get rid of the differences
between examining bodies, unite them, or establish
clear distinctions between them; but a far better
course would be to substitute inspection for examination-to leave the schools free to teach as they
please within certain definite limits, and keep a check
on them by inspecting their own examinations. This
question belongs to the application of State control.
It is reported of a French Minister of Education
that he was in the habit of boasting that he knew
I86




The Debateable Land


what any individual boy in France was learning at
any particular hour. He was not a wise man; he
had constituted himself unknowingly and rashly the
universal Head Master of France. His example is
apparently the ideal of the Department of Science
and Art.   Even if an omniscient and all-wise
universal head master could be found, he would be
a demoralizing influence: teachers would become
machines; it would be unnecessary for them to
think about their work, to study the individual boy
that responsibility having been taken once for all off
their shoulders.
Again, Ministers of Education are neither permanent nor immortal, and in England we might
have a change of head master at least every seven
years. As it is, the Elementary Education Code is
frequently revised, not only in those larger things in
which the public is occasionally interested, but in
the detailed arrangements for teaching, sometimes
advantageously, sometimes vexatiously.
It would be a fatal error to repeat in the secondary
schools the policy of the framers of the Elementary
Education Act: to make the inspector the obvious
and supreme authority. The moral influence of a
teacher over his pupils is most seriously damaged
when they feel that his teaching is not spontaneous
but dictated by somebody else. And there is a still
more serious evil. Teachers are fallible like the rest
of mankind, and among their numbers there must
be men of weak moral fibre, as well as men of sturdy
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The Debateable Land


self-respect.  Inspectors are also fallible, and it is
possible to conceive an unholy alliance between
teacher and pupils to deceive the inspector. This is
the more likely to happen in proportion as independent action is rendered impossible to the teacher;
make him a machine, deprive him of all pride in his
work, tell him he is a thief who requires to be constantly watched, and you cannot be surprised that
he accepts your view of him, and acts upon it in ways
not intended by the framers of the Education Acts.
Some statisticians tell us that juvenile crime has
increased since the Education Acts were passed.
Why should it not?  What is there moralizing in
the work of a teacher, who is not only dependent
upon the approval of an inspector, but is publicly
exhibited in that capacity? His pupils are at once
told as plainly as it is possible to make the statement: "This man does not believe in learning; he
would not take any trouble about you, unless he
were compelled by the gentleman who comes round
once a year."
One of the most valuable influences which a school
can bring to bear upon boys is the teacher's faith
in honest work. Even under the Mundella code a
teacher was tempted to encourage dishonest work,
and that code was less stringent upon the teacher
than its predecessor.  Those who are most conversant with the working man know that a considerable part of his time and ingenuity is spent in
evading work. Nor are his children less ingenious
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The Debateable Land


at school. If a school is so organized that the teacher
is interested in letting dishonest work pass, if his
own interest in work is even suspected of being a
thing imposed upon him by somebody else, his moral
influence in the direction of forming industrious habits
is paralysed.
The inspection of the work of a school should be
kept in the background; it should not be obtruded
upon the notice of the pupils.
Again, great latitude as to methods can wholesomely be allowed to existing schools. If Eton, for
instance, should prefer to teach Latin by means of
Latin verses, and Clifton by means of Latin prose,
each school should be allowed to offer its own work,
and be judged by the results of the methods of its
predilection. An inspector who has seen the work
of a school can report that particular subjects are not
up to the level attainable elsewhere; an inquiry into
the conditions elsewhere prevailing can be instituted;
a revision of hours and proportionate time given to
subjects might ensue; in some cases additions to the
staff might be recommended, and so forth; but to
make the routine of all schools absolutely the same
might easily destroy the advantages of individual
character in schools.
Supposing the State to insist upon attendance at
a registered school for a certain period as a necessary preliminary to competing for the Army examinations, it would be right that the State should take
pains to ascertain that the work of that school was
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The Debateable Land


up to the required standard, and that in extreme
cases, after due notice, a school obviously below the
mark should be struck off the list of registered
schools; but all the preliminary stages of inspection,
suggestion, and warning should be strictly private,
and the inspector's remarks addressed privately to
the staff and governors only; otherwise both boys
and their parents would be demoralized, and a school
would not be given a fair chance of mending its ways.
At present the only method of comparing the work
of schools is that adopted by the Pall Mall Gazette,
viz., that of comparing the relative number of Successes; in other words, the work of the specialists
only; whereas a school may be doing excellent work
for its rank and file without achieving Successes;
indeed, it is not improbable that the general level of
work in most schools would be considerably improved
were there less attention paid to prize-winning.
This leads us naturally to the consideration of
Competitive Examinations.


I90




IX


Scholarships and Competitive
Examinations
ON October 8th, i883, Dr. Pridgin Teale read a
paper before the Social Science Association at
Huddersfield, which was afterwards published in
pamphlet form, and entitled "Hurry, Worry, and
Money." The learned Doctor assailed competitive
examinations from two points of view. From the
medical point of view he protested against the excessive stress of competitive examinations upon young
lads who, as in the case of Indian civil servants, would
afterwards have to encounter the further strain of
work in a tropical climate; from the moral point of
view he further declared that to make an immediate
gain in money the principal if not sole reason for
self-improvement was to degrade rather than elevate
the conception of education. He deplored the policy
which in the elementary schools had tempted the
teacher to value his work solely in proportion to the
grants that he earned.
So far as the injurious effects of competition in
relation to health were concerned, Dr. Teale was able
'9I




The Debateable Land


to refer to the evidence of experts as to the special
weaknesses set up by worry rather than work; and
stated that where no immediate and obvious collapse
was the consequence of too much pressure, there
might still be, and often was, a general lowering of
vitality, whose effect would be to depress its victim,
and render him less capable than he would otherwise have been, while he would apparently be in the
enjoyment of good health; in fact, the mischief caused
by undue strain at the critical period of life, early
manhood, would escape observation for the time, and
only become apparent in middle life, when it would
in all probability be assigned to other than the real
causes. Dr. Teale admitted that statistics might be
brought to disprove his argument, but pleaded that
for many reasons complete statistics could not be
found.  For instance, the unsuccessful candidates
would be affected as much as, if not more than, the
prize-winners, and their subsequent life history would
be more difficult to get at even than that of Indian
civil servants.
The doctor might have added to his argument the
fact, that though in all competitive examinations
there will invariably be a small minority of candidates
so liberally gifted by nature that the work does not
involve undue effort, and whose health will therefore
be unaffected, there will be a still larger number to
whom the work presents serious difficulties, and who
are only brought up to the mark by unhealthy
pressure. In fact, the most brilliant candidates, whose
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Scholarships and Examinations


subsequent careers would be the most easily traced,
would be precisely those men in whom the injurious
effects of over-pressure would be reduced to a
minimum, or would be absent, and statistics based
upon their life history would be misleading.
Towards the end of his paper Dr. Teale threw out
a suggestion, that if a certain standard of competence
were once secured, the final selection of candidates
might be made by casting lots.
For this suggestion there is even more to be said
than appears on the surface; and were we as deeply
convinced of the merits of a public school education
with its games and social life as we profess to be,
were we quite sure that we want our soldiers and
sailors and Indian civil servants to be competent men
all round rather than men developed only in one form
of energy, intellectual, we should hail Dr. Teale's proposal as an easy and simple solution of a real difficulty. Schools which placed themselves under State
control, and which satisfied the State demands in all
their departments, in the playing fields no less than
the class rooms, might be allowed in proportion to
the number of boys attending them at the age of
sixteen to ballot for so many vacancies at Sandhurst
or Woolwich or the Indian Civil- Service, the subsequent special training to continue as it is now.
This crude suggestion would require certain safeguards, but there is no insuperable difficulty in providing them; we should be rid once for all of the
evils of undue competition, and a very valuable type
193               o




The Debateable Land


of man, who is at present excluded from the public
services, would again have a chance of fighting for
his country; while the schools would be compelled
to give due attention to the rank and file, or at any
rate no longer be tempted to fix their exclusive attention upon possible prize-winners, whose successes
could be advertised.
Were it possible to examine candidates for public
appointments in all the departments of human
activity, to assign marks for skill, agility, administrative and moral power, as well as for answers to
questions in history, science, and the rest, the
method of selection by competition would be delivered from one at least of its serious defects, perhaps its most serious defect, for a competition testing
health and strength, as well as learning, would discourage any system of preparation which tended to
damage health. Such a form of competition is, however, not practically possible.
The question remains, Why have we made our
examinations for the public services competitive
rather than qualificative? Why did we assume that
there was absolutely no other method?
For this, in all probability, the competitive examinations already in existence, whereby scholarships
were awarded at schools and the universities, were
responsible.  Government appointments were regarded as prizes to be won; and a system of distributing prizes which was believed to work well under
one set of conditions was transferred to another set
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Scholarships and Examinations


of conditions whose similarity was only superficial.
It is one thing to offer prizes within the limits of
a learned profession with the object of raising the
standard of learning inside that profession, and of
enabling needy students to continue their course of
training; it is quite another thing to declare that no
qualities are needed in a Government official or
soldier or sailor except such as can be tested by competitive examination, and that at a comparatively
early age. Again, there is all the difference in the
world between saying that nobody shall be an Indian
Civil Servant who cannot bring evidence of having had
the opportunity of being well trained morally, physically, intellectually, and saying anybody may be an
Indian Civil Servant who has the particular form of
intellect which enables him to win more marls than
anybody else in an examination.
The not unfrequent change in the regulations for
admission to the Indian Civil Service indicate that
the system has not been found to work satisfactorily,
and it never will work satisfactorily till we have the
common sense to demand previous education at
schools approved by the State as a necessary preliminary to competition. A further step might be to
adopt Dr. Teale's suggestion, and to get rid of the
competition altogether.
Competitive examinations for scholarships have
affected our habits of mind in reference to education
in numerous other ways; they have to some extent
demoralized our schoolmasters and University dons,
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The Debateable Land


they have demoralized our middle classes even more,
and especially that section of our middle classes from
whom better things might have been anticipatedthe professional men with small incomes. The weakness of our local schools is in a great measure due to
them, and no less is the apathy with reference to the
course of education given in such schools which is
shown by the same classes. The need for efficient,
relatively inexpensive, local schools is not felt by
parents who expect their sons to be able to earn their
own education by winning entrance scholarships at
the public schools, after being taken at a preparatory
school on reduced terms on the strength of intellectual or even athletic ability, by which the school may
be advertised.
It is also largely due to the scholarship system that
an eleemosynary attitude is adopted towards education by all classes in England. Our imaginations
are engrossed by the " deserving poor"; we cannot
see beyond them, or outside them; we forget that
they are a small minority even of the poor, and that
the sound training of the fairly well-to-do is at least
as important to the State as the relief of amiable
destitution.  It is to this mental attitude that is due
the fact that the public money is recklessly wasted
on helping people that do not want help, and in
giving that help in a form most expensive to the
State, and least calculated to bring about the ends
for which alone the State is justified in spending
money upon education.
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Scholarships and Examinations


A more detailed inquiry into the system of scholarships is necessary, if we are to understand the real
bearings of this rather difficult subject, and clear our
minds, once for all, of the vicious propensities of my
Lady Bountiful.
In discussing medieval school endowments in a
previous chapter no detailed reference was made to exhibitions or other provisions for maintaining boys at
boarding schools or students at the Universities; it is
now necessary to look a little more closely into this
question, There were such endowments. An exhibition was most commonly a fund for enabling
students to keep themselves at the University; it was
less commonly a fund for maintaining boys at school
because the ample supply of local grammar schools
rendered such a provision unnecessary. The endowed boarding school on a large scale, such as
Winchester or Eton, was a late development; and
a provision in the statutes of Eton requiring the
scholars to take minor orders as soon as they were of
an agre to do so, indicates that here at least the
advisers of Henry VI. were thinking of creating a
supply of well-educated clergy.
The exhibitions to be held at the Universities were
invariably local; they were for the benefit of boys
educated in local schools; and as Founder's kin were
in most cases to be given a preference, it was probably not contemplated that the exhibitioners would
be poor in our sense of the word. Part of the same
system was the provision of houses or halls, which
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The Debateable& Land


afterwards became colleges, at the Universities for the
benefit of students from particular localities. Oxford
still has Lincoln College, Exeter College, Worcester
College, Hertford College; she had Gloucester College, St. Albans, Salisbury, Canterbury, and others.
The majority of the small local colleges lost their
identity when combined into big foundations such as
Christ Church at Oxford and Trinity at Cambridge.
At this latter University the local colleges have disappeared in name; but the number of exhibitions
that are even now reserved for students from particular local schools are sufficient evidence of local
connections.
The motive for the foundation of such exhibitions
seems to have been twofold. In the first place, when
bullion was the only currency, cash was a scarce commodity, and a person whom we should now consider
wealthy, rather than the reverse, would have to think
more than twice as to the possibility of finding his
son the ready money necessary for his University expenses; in the second place, mediaeval life was based
on a form of socialism, the State was regarded as a
whole organization whose corporate life demanded
separate well-developed members. From the conception of a well-ordered State a learned class was not
excluded; the Universities represented that learned
class, and it was thought patriotic to ensure a supply
of well-trained students for the Universities. The
master of St. John's College, Cambridge, preaching
before Edward VI. in 1550, and protesting against
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Scholarships and Examinations


the spoliation of Sedbergh School under the
Chantries Act, stated that the school used to send
eight scholars yearly to Cambridge. He thinks of
the loss to the University consequent on the suppression of the school; the depletion of the Universities
was, in his eyes, a national calamity likely to follow
upon the destruction of schools.
There seem even to have been exhibitions not
attached to the Universities, which were of the nature
of endowments of research, for Mr. Leach found at
least one instance of an exhibitioner of mature age
resident in the country, not a chantry priest; and the
case was not stigmatized as an abuse at the time.
Many exhibitions were charges on chantries, and so
were lost to us by the same process as the schools.
Just as the grammar school endowments were
designed for the benefit of the middle classes, or
rather to enable the middle classes to become learned,
so exhibitions were founded, not to enable the sons
of agricultural labourers to become priests and lawyers, but to give learning-a comparatively unremunerative occupation attended with inconvenient
expenses-a fair chance of finding votaries.  The
educational ladder was not a mediaeval, conception;
quite the reverse.  One of the grievances of the
unfortunate men, who took part in the Pilgrimage of
Grace, was the position of Thomas Cromwell, who,
though he may not have been the son of a blacksmith in
our sense of the word, belonged to a class from which
the advisers of the Crown were not commonly selected
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The Debateable Land


In our own time no Opposition ever thought of objecting to the presence of the late Mr. W. H. Smith in the
Cabinet; it would have seemed quite reasonable to
do so in the reign of Henry VIII. In the reign of
Queen Elizabeth the Church catechism was drawn
up, which, in summarising and explaining the moral
obligations involved in the Ten Commandments, expressly states that in our duty to our neighbours is
included "' to do my duty in that state of life to which
it has pleased God to call me." Much that appears
to us servile in the attitude of middle class men
towards the nobility, even at a later period, involved
no real loss of self-respect; the forms of deference
were understood on the one side as well as the other;
and freedom of social intercourse between different
classes was aided rather than restricted by the welldefined barrier separating class from class. There
was no danger that the servants, who ate at the same
table with their masters below the salt, would become
inconveniently familiar. Whether we have gained or
lost by the change of social conditions is not of
importance to the present inquiry, but it is necessary
to emphasize the fact that mediaeval endowments
were not charitable in the sense that they were designed to enable what we now call poor men to rise
from one class to another. So far as education was
concerned, the bottom of the ladder rested on an
elevation; it started on the first floor, so to speak,
not on the basement. Even the provision that the
Foundation boys at Eton should be " poor and needy"
200




Scholarships and Examinations


does not involve what the use of the same words
should involve now. It is possible to be " needy " in
relation to the expenses of such an education as was
given at Eton without being an artisan. Indeed, the
scholars were bound to swear, on attaining their
fifteenth year, individually that they did not possess
more than five marks per annum. The head master's
stipend was only thirty marks. In reference to the
same Foundation, it is worth while to point out that,
though the Foundation scholars were boarders, the
selection of the scholars was still on the local basis;
preference was to be given to boys from the parishes
in which the College held property in the first place,
and from the counties of Buckingham and Cambridge
in the second.
It is worth while to insist upon these points, because one of the commonest grievances urged by
local busybodies against the administration of the
funds of a grammar school, or the distribution of
scholarships, is that the rich are enjoying what was
designed for the poor; while the modern method
of providing scholarships from the funds raised by
County Councils is quite contrary to the most cherished
prejudices of our forefathers.
To sum up what has been said. The medieval
exhibition was an endowment less of a poor person
than of learning; when its benefits were restricted to
" poor " persons, the barrier was drawn against those
whom we should now consider very rich; just as in
the Free Grammar School at Durham it was expressly
201




The Debateable Land


provided that the rich should pay the usual fees.
The object was that the nation should benefit by the
refinement of its middle-class families. Men of the
type of Bishop Latimer were the outcome of the
system; his account of his father's house and means
sounds to our ears as though it involved destitution,
because of the changed value of money and habits of
life. The advisers of Henry VI. thought five marks
— G3 6s. 8d.-a year sufficient to keep a boy; that is
to say, if we accept the view of those authorities, who
tell us to multiply by twenty to bring the medieval
values up to our own, a boy who could find as much
as ~66 I3s. 4d. for his school expenses was still poor
enough to enjoy the benefits of the Foundation at
Eton.
The statutes of the Song School at Wells, also a
boarding school, in which minute provisions are made
as to the boys' manners, especially in the matter of
eating, which Prince Bismarck has stated to be the
true measure of refinement, further indicate that these
endowments were not for the benefit of the abjectly
poor, not for Jack Cade and his friends.
Exhibitions were awarded, as were the scholarships
at Eton, to qualified candidates; competition was not
anticipated. As they were locally distributed, abuse
of the trust was rendered difficult, so long as the local
school was vigorous. The means of the parents of
boys attending any particular school were well known
in the locality. When, however, the school decayed,
and there were practically no scholars, the local
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Scholarships and Examinations
trustee was apt to use the trust fund for his own
advantage. In this way also some exhibitions have
disappeared.
After the reforms at Eton, which rendered a colleger's life as comfortable as that of an oppidan, the
character of the examination admitting candidates to
the Foundation changed. There were more candidates
than vacancies, and the examination became competitive rather than qualificative. The same thing
happened in other places, and in a very short time
entrance scholarships, awarded on the results of a
competitive examination, became a feature of the
majority of our schools.  The objections to the
system, and they are many, were not foreseen. Some
of these objections may be classified as strictly educational, capable of being met by a careful re-organization of examinations. Others are social or financial,
and more difficult to deal with.
It was not, for instance, foreseen that competition
for scholarships would lead to a premature specialization of studies, that the teachers of boys who had a
turn for languages would be driven to neglect mathematics, and vice versa. It was not foreseen that no
other certificate of efficiency being attainable, the
proprietors of preparatory schools would be driven
to make the winning of scholarships the first point
of their teaching, and that the training of the average
boy, who shows no sign of special proficiencies, would
therefore meet with less than due consideration; that
this would affect the attitude of teachers towards the
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The Debateable Land


whole curriculum; that in course of time a whole race
of specialists would grow up, who would in their own
turn become teachers, and would continue the mischievous system. Still less was it foreseen that there
would be a competition among the schools for clever
boys, and that unendowed schools would be obliged
to offer entrance scholarships in order to secure their
fair share of able young boys, whose successes at a
later period would enhance the reputation of the
school.
Some of these evils can be remedied by prescribing
a form of entrance scholarship examination binding
upon all schools, in which marks should be assigned
to the several subjects in a fixed proportion, the
subjects themselves to be those learned by all boys.
At present, for instance, though French is taught,
and fairly well taught, in many preparatory schools,
and though French papers are set in many of the
examinations for entrance scholarships, a boy who
is a mathematical specialist can get a scholarship
without French, so can a specially trained classic;
similarly a classical boy can do without mathematics.
This ought not to be; and things would have been
put on a sounder footing years ago, were it not for
the competition between the public schools.  To
maintain their reputations against one another, they
must win successes at the Universities, and the simplest way to do that, is to buy boys of thirteen ready
specialized.
Another unforeseen effect of entrance scholarships
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Scholarships and Examinations


has been to damage local schools. Able boys, who
could perfectly well afford to pay the fees of a local
school, are drawn off by the superior attractions of
a well-known boarding school, where even with an
entrance scholarship their education will be as expensive as if they had remained day scholars at a
local school, if not more so; which school loses not
only the boys, but the interest that their parents.
would otherwise take in its efficiency. Thus a system,
which in its origin was designed to strengthen the
cause of learning locally, has, under the modern conditions, helped to destroy, or at any. rate seriously
impair, the usefulness of local endowments. The
prestige of the local schools has been impaired, and
the once respected name of grammar school has
become a term of abuse.
The mischief goes further still. Boys who have
been removed from home and educated at a public
school take little interest in the schools of their own
localities. When shall we again have a local school
founded or enriched in gratitude for benefits there
received? Worse still, the eyes of men who have
been brought up- on the scholarship system are
blinded to the possibilities of any other system; and
many of us have learned to think of education solely
as a means of winning prizes, forgetting that the
prize-winners are necessarily a minority, and that
self-improvement would continue to be a duty, even
if.it were not rewarded with prizes. Again, men who
have been thus educated, and who believe that had
205;




The Debateable Land


there been no scholarships they would have received
no education, are apt to over-rate the advantages of
the system, to assume a wide-spread want of means
in relation to the cost of education, an unbounded
supply of able boys who are kept from distinction by
lack of pence.
It is difficult in any other way to account for the
general approval, which our insane system of paying
school fees instead of providing well-staffed schools
seems to meet with, not only among the persons who
think they benefit by it, but among persons presumably enlightened and disinterested.
The mediaeval form of scholarship founded by a
private person for the benefit of children in his own
class, resident in a particular locality, was under the
then existing circumstances not an unwholesome institution; it is quite another matter when the State
begins to give scholarships wholesale, as it does now
through County Council grants, etc., or to pay children's railway fares instead of paying the teachers.
How does the State gain-it loses-by withdrawing
clever boys from the employments of their parents,
and only leaving the dullards to carry on work, which
is honourable enough, though it is not conducted in
offices but in work-shops?  What again has the
artisan gained by a distribution of public money,
which tempts parents, not artisans, to send their children through the elementary board schools in order
that they may be educated at the expense of the
county at a grammar school whose fees they have
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Scholarships and Examinations


hitherto been in the habit of paying and can still
perfectly well afford to pay?
This leads us to another aspect of the same question. The Bishop of Hereford, speaking at the
Church Congress in I897, suggests that some means
ought to be discovered of assigning the entrance
scholarships at public schools only to boys who
were really in need of them. He assumed, and he
assumed correctly, that boys compete for scholarships whose parents have no real claim for assistance of this kind. There are schools which, in announcing their scholarship examinations, state that a
parent is at liberty to refuse the emoluments while
retaining the honour; it would be interesting to
know what proportion of parents have availed themselves of this license.
One serious difficulty in drawing up any regulations in reference to this abuse of scholarships would
be that a man may be rich relatively to other classes
of the community, but poor relatively to his own
class. The income of a colonel in the army, for instance, is in mere figures vastly larger than that of a
superintendent of police; but the colonel cannot get
his children educated in his own rank of life except
at an expenditure relatively to his income far higher
than that which would be incurred by the policeman.
Had our local schools been properly maintained, the
evil would have been less pressing; soldiers being
largely quartered in towns where there have been
and should be good schools. Again, the majority of
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The Debateable Land


professional men are underpaid with reference to the
education of their children; clergymen, who by the
nature of their profession dwell largely in out-of-theway districts, more especially so. The case of In-;
dian officials, who are compelled to send their children home on account of the climate and the unwholesome influence of native servants, is even worse.
If the community does not gain by tempting the
sons of artisans to become clerks, it certainly loses
when its professional men are unable to educate their
children in the same intellectual and social habits in
which they have themselves been brought up. If a
statement of poverty, such as that prescribed by
Henry VI. for the Foundation boys at Eton, were
enforced in the case of boys competing for entrance
scholarships at the public schools, the standard
adopted would have to vary, not only with the income of the parent, but with the number of his
family also. We have seen that the pious king fixed
his limit at a point which implied relative well-being
on the part of the parent. This would not square
with the views of our friends of the educational
ladder persuasion, who are completely blind to the
value of a long tradition of refined lives, and who
are firmly convinced that all that is necessary to
make a man fit to be Lord Chancellor is that he
should be capable of passing examinations.
Where endowments for entrance scholarships exist, we may wisely do our best to render them less
mischievous, and there is still room for the local
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Scholarships and Examinations


benefactions of private persons; but we shall have
entered on a very dangerous path, which may lead
us into hideous sloughs and nasty pitfalls, if we allow
the State, through any of its tax-collecting agencies,
to distribute funds wholesale in order to relieve the
pockets of parents. Even the artisan is not so poor
as we are apt to think he is; strike pay, I 5s. a week,
may be taken to be the living wage, and there are
very large numbers of workmen who earn 30s. To
provide for the existence of a well-qualified body of
teachers, to see that they are satisfactorily distributed
throughout the community, is to work for the advancement of learning and all that learning brings
with it when imparted by sound teachers. To pay
school fees wholesale is to pauperize the nation, and
to weaken the parental obligation,-to destroy, in
fact, the family. No nation has ever yet permanently
thriven in which parents disavowed their obligations
to their children. The parental relation may be in
some aspects demoralizing, but in others it is the
foundation upon which civilized life rests.


209


UP




x


The Clerical Domination
THE year 1662 is distinguished by two events:
it is the year in which the Royal Society was
founded for the advancement of learning; it is also
the year in which that Act of Uniformity was passed
which handed over all the existing educational endowments to the State Church. Under that Act
unfeigned assent to all and everything contained in
the Book of Common Prayer was required of every
beneficed minister, every Fellow of a college, and even
every schoolmaster. That Act was not repealed, so
far as the Universities were concerned, till 1872. For
2IO years the organization of education in England,
with the administration of educational endowments,
was entirely in the hands of men who could give unfeigned assent to everything contained in the Book
of Common Prayer. Its immediate effect was to
exclude the 2,000 clergymen, including the eminent
Baxter, who refused to conform to it, from any share
in the existing provisions for education, as also such
members of the congregations of these clergymen as
21I




The Clerical Domination


were faithful to their ministers. Its ulterior effect
was to withdraw schools and universities alike from
the stimulating influence of many of the active men,
who pushed English industries and commerce during
the middle decades of this century; and a yet further
effect has been that the teaching profession in England has never become an independent, recognised
profession; it has been overshadowed by the Church.
During that long period of clerical domination Englishmen forgot that a schoolmaster was not necessarily
a person who could give his unfeigned assent to
everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer;
and though there are very few endowed schools, not
even Eton and Winchester, whose head masters may
not be laymen according to the statutes, though the
vast majority of assistant masters are laymen, though
many preparatory schools are managed by a lay
principal, governing bodies and trustees in England
still with very rare exceptions refuse to accept lay
candidates for the head mastership to which they
appoint.
There are people who do not see beyond this,
who think that the almost exclusive appointment of
clerical head masters is merely a grievance of ambitious assistant masters; to whom it does not occur
that the prestige of the whole profession of teaching
is necessarily lowered by refusing it public recognition, unless it is combined with another profession,
for the head master is the public representative of
his school.
2 I I




The Debateable Land


How would it look if we were to provide that no
man should be a judge who was not also a clergyman? There was a time when the line of demarcation between the clerical and legal professions was
not considered to be any wider than that between the
teaching and clerical professions of to-day; when the
Lord Chancellor of England was more often a Bishop
than not; when much of the civil department of law
was in the hands of ecclesiastical courts. As law is
so closely connected with morality, surely it would be
safer to insist that our judges should take orders.
Or, again, nobody is shocked at seeing a majorgeneral at the head of the vast educational organization called the Science and Art Department. How
would it look if the head master of Eton were made
commander-in-chief? He has many of the necessary
qualifications of a good soldier, and used thirty years
ago to be an officer in the Eton College Volunteer
Corps. His military knowledge is probably as sound
as the educational knowledge of an Officer who has
taught in a Sunday school.
And again from another point of view. Surely it
must be rather discouraging to clergymen who have
worked hard for years at the elaborate organization
of large parishes, who have acquired experience in all
the details of the clerical profession, to see bishoprics
conferred upon head masters of schools, who have
never done a stroke of parish work in their lives.
In fact, both professions lose by the confusion; but
of the two the teaching profession loses most.
212




The Clerical Domination


There comes a time of life-happily not very early
in life, not so early as is commonly assumed-when a
teacher loses his fitness for class teaching. At that
time he would be most valuable as an organizer.
Having learned his experience by active teaching, he
might still be useful as an examiner or inspector.
The natural sequel to several years of teaching would
be an appointment on one of the Government boards
which control teaching. This point was completely
overlooked in 1870. Instead of taking experienced
teachers-and there was already a good supply of
lay teachers-from the public schools and grammar
schools, we summarily appointed young men, who
had just taken their degrees, and had no knowledge
of the difficulties and possibilities of a teacher.
Why this neglect of so obvious a fact? Simply
because we had never regarded teaching as an independent profession requiring special knowledge.
Again, so long as the assistant masters of schools
were men who had taken orders, the pension question
was not a pressing one; when the time came for retirement, a living was bought or conferred. The livings
belonging to Eton College and similar corporations
provided retiring pensions for the assistant masters.
This source of pensions is no longer open to the teaching profession; but they are still paid as if it were.
Under the Elementary Education Act of I870 it
was expressly provided that no teacher in a board
school should take orders; but the question of pensions is only thus late in the day being considered,
213




The Debateable Land


with the consequences that there are board school
teachers in middle life, who now see that they would
have done better to enter the police service twenty
years ago. A superintendent of police is better paid,
and has a higher pension, than the head master of
any but the largest board schools.
Had the question of pensions been agitated by the
public schools and grammar schools before the
Elementary Education Act was passed, it would not
have been overlooked at that time; but it had not
been agitated; it had never been a pressing question,
because the teaching profession could look to another
profession for its pensions.
The Act of Uniformity was disastrous in other
respects.
The long sleep of the Church was also the long
sleep of the schools. The schoolmasters under the
Act of Uniformity were Churchmen in the first place,
schoolmasters in the second.
No ecclesiastical body, no sect, not even the
Society of Friends, can be trusted with the exclusive
management of education; the interests of the sect
always prevail in the long run over the interests of
learning. There may be no malice prepense, but the
sheer instinct of self-preservation tempts the holders
of distinct and definite religious opinion to lay more
stress on imparting and maintaining those opinions
than on training the intellect; even where there is
not undue active energy in this direction, there is
considerable passive resistance.
14




The Clerical Domination
Why, for instance, did composition in the dead
languages take a position so exceptional, and indeed
in some respects so unwholesome, in English schools?
It was the natural result of placing those schools
under the management of persons who, by proclaiming their unfeigned assent to all and everything
contained in the Book of Common Prayer, started
their professional career by establishing limitations
to the activity of their own minds. The aesthetic
rather than the historical side of literature appeals to
men who thus limit the sphere of inquiry. When
men of restless intellect could not become schoolmasters without swallowing the Thirty-nine Articles,
the emergence of such men in the teaching profession
was a rare phenomenon; the profession proved
attractive to men of refined rather than vigorous
temperament, taking them at their best to men like
Keble, rather than to men like Kingsley.
Over a long series of years this selection of elegant
scholars rather than vigorous thinkers for the teaching work of the universities as well as the schools
could only have one effect: an intellectual quietism
prevailed; an absence of curiosity as to what was
going on in the world outside. Disproportionate
time was spent over Latin verses, because no man's
faith was ever wrecked on Latin verse; or for the
matter of that on pure mathematics.
On the Universities the effect was so disastrous as
to cause Adam Smith to protest against endowments;
he should have protested against educational endow215




The Debateable Land


ments in the hands of ecclesiastics. The degradation
of Oxford and Cambridge alike at the early part of
this century is hardly conceivable to the men of
to-day. When single colleges at Cambridge were
enjoying revenues from endowment alone larger than
the whole income of the University of Berlin, even so
recently as I870, Cambridge was studying the science
and scholarship of Germany, but Germany was not
studying Cambridge. Since then an enormous stride
has been made. Relieved of the clerical incubus,
both Universities sprang to their work; the
science school of Cambridge has produced work
which is respected even at Berlin. Both Universities have enlarged their medical schools; work
which was previously hampered by undue preponderance of clergymen among the active resident
organizers now enjoying a fair chance of being
properly developed. We may not altogether respect
the University Extension Movement, it is possible
to see room for improvement in the schools' examinations conducted by both Universities, it is
permissible to anticipate changes in the attitude of
both universities towards Greek and other vexed
questions, we may venture to hope that both may
find more satisfactory certificates for men who intend
to teach than they do at present; none the less we
must admit an enormous increase of activity since
I872, and we are bound to confess that during those
long years when the Act of Uniformity was in force,
comparatively nothing was done.   Newton, the
216




The Clerical Domination


shining light of Cambridge, belongs to a time when
the Act of Uniformity was in its infancy.
So far as the public schools are concerned, if it
were really necessary in the interests of religion and
morality that they should be staffed principally by
men who have taken orders, we must be in a very
bad way at present. The proportion of laymen to
clergymen has been completely reversed in the last
fifty years, and with what result? So far from being
less earnest, less religious, our schools are more so.
The proportion of public school men who take orders
relatively to the numbers who attend the public
schools may be numerically smaller, but what of the
quality? Is it not a matter of common observation
that nowadays it is difficult to get such young men
to take curacies in country parishes? They look for
hard work in the large towns.
But should not a head master be able to preach to
his boys? Most certainly; and many laymen preach
exceedingly effective sermons. A few words from a
form master arising out of some event in the daily
life of his form are far more effective than a year of
sermons; and a head master can always find opportunities of addressing his boys outside the pulpit of
the chapel. There are many subjects on which it is
necessary to address boys which are unfitted for the
chapel pulpit and- the restrictions imposed by a sermon. Do we not rather overrate the importance of
the pulpit? When we were boys, did we habitually
listen to sermons?
2I7




The Debateable Land


In fact, if we are to be consistent, we must return
to the Act of Uniformity; we must insist that all
assistant masters take orders, and refuse to license
any school whose head master has not declared his
assent to some religious formula.
We have, however, happily left all that behind;
one thing alone remains, to admit the complete independence of the teaching profession of any other,
whether the Army or the Church.
The Act of Uniformity was passed to secure the
episcopal organization of the State Church; it was
directed principally against the Presbyterians, partly
against the Quakers and Independents. We have
learned that questions of Church organization are of
less importance than they seemed to be in I662;
that the moral well-being of society does not hang
upon them. Then why not accept the fact, and be
done once for all with the consequences of what has
since proved to be mischievous legislation?


21&




XI


Some Weaknesses of Local Control
THE question of the control of Secondary Schools
by local authority is commonly argued from
only one point of view, that of the ratepayer; and,
again, as if the ratepayer had only one interest in
the matter-to keep down the rates; but the ratepayer is also a parent, and another set of interests is
involved. As a parent he wishes his children to be
well taught. Good teaching is expensive; the ratepayer as parent will increase the expensiveness of
the schools which he controls, as ratepayer pure and
simple he will keep down expenses. Local control
means a governing body subject to election; how
will the voter decide between candidates who offer
him no school fees, good schools, and high rates, and
the candidates who pledge themselves simply to keep
down the rates.
Nor is this all. The periodical elections will give
an opportunity of discussing the internal organization
of the schools involved. We have an illustration
ready to hand. At the present moment (autumn,
219




The Debateable Land


1897) the triennial election for the School Board of
Stockton is in progress. Hear the local newspaper
on the subject:" One of the great features of the election at
Stockton is the question of the Higher Grade
School. There is, first of all, the question of admission into the school. The Church candidates are
all in favour of no class selection into the school, and
the reception of each child for educational merit
alone.  The Unsectarian majority on the present
Board profess that every child wvho passes the third
standard will be admitted without further question;
and they have carefully omitted from their addresses the very important fact that every applicant
must, in addition, be submitted to a test by the head
master.
" The head master's test is very strongly objected
to as opening the door to selection on other grounds
than the cleverness of the child; and it is well
known that several members of the Unsectarian
majority have already stated that the school must
be kept a ' respectable' school-in other words, that
the original plan on which the late Mr. Bone proposed to establish the school should be carried out,
and that it should be made, as far as possible, a
school of a higher social character than the ordinary
Board School. However fair this might have been,
when a considerable part of the cost was to be borne
by parents in the shape of school fees, it is clearly a
great injustice that in a free school a certain selected
220




Some Weaknesses of Local Control


number of so-called better-class children should get
preferential treatment as compared with other children in free Board Schools.
"That the treatment is preferential may be seen
by the figures which the Chairman of the Finance
Committee published in his election address. He
states that while the cost per head in the average
Board School is ~i i6s. per head to the rates, the
cost in the Higher Grade School is ~4 per head; or,
taking school management alone, the cost in the
average Stockton Board School is 13s. per child, and
in the Higher Grade School ~2 7s. 7d. The question
which the working men of Stockton are considering
is, Shall we pay our share of the rates and let three
times as much be paid for teaching the children of
a so-called higher class than for our children? All
the Church candidates are in favour of fair play to
working men's children in rate-supported schools,
and the Unsectarian candidates are committed to
the present plan of admission by selection rather
than by merit alone.
"Another grievance of the working men is that
through the head master's test not only are some
fourth standard children refused, but fifth, sixth, and
seventh standard children are put down a standard,
and so lose a year. This is one of the reasons why
the school has become unpopular and has filled so
slowly. Parents look upon it as a waste for a child
to spend a second year upon a standard already
passed, and in some cases it puts the child back a
221




The Debateable Land


year from beginning work and earning money.
Where parents are poor, and an extra year's schooling can only be got by an effort, it is disappointing
to find the child traversing just the same ground as
in the last school and really making no progress, and
Mr. Meggeson thinks the excellent examination results obtained are partly due to this cause.
" The Church candidates are all educationalists, and
pledged to watch over the interests of the working
men's children, and it is to be hoped they will be
returned well up on the list to-day."
There could not have been found a more convincing
demonstration of opinions advanced in an earlier
paper in this series, to the effect that the higher
grade school system charges upon the payers ot
rates and taxes the education of children whose
parents could afford to pay school fees unaided.
There cannot be many parents who can afford to
keep their children at school after the age of thirteen
and not pay ~4 a year in school fees. That, however,
is beside the present question; the point especially
to be noticed is this:
The Higher Grade School at Stockton obtains
excellent examination results.  These results, Mr.
Meggeson, a member of the School Board, thinks are
partly due to the fact that children on admission
to the Higher Grade School are submitted to a test by
the head master, and rearranged, not according to
the mechanical standard of the elementary school
which they have previously attended, but according to
222




Some Weaknesses of Local Control
their real proficiency; in other words, children who
arrive fit to do more advanced work are set to do it,
children who are unfit are set to do less advanced
work according to their proficiency; in fact, the school
from the educational point of view, is organized on
a sound basis. The electors, however, are appealed
to in order that they may upset this organization.
The candidates are guilty of the abominable wickedness-the phrase is too weak rather than too strong
-of suggesting that other than educational motives
are at work, that class interests are involved. The
word "preferential" is used in such a way as to
induce the electors to believe that the arrangement
is not simply a piece of wholesome educational
organization, but a deliberate system of defrauding
the poor man of his rights; and we blush to observe
that the Church candidates lend themselves to this
perverse representation of facts. It is not stated in
so many words, that any child has been put back
simply because his father is a working man, or
advanced because his father was a grocer; such a
statement would have required proof; but the inference is suggested.
To digress for a moment from the question with
which we are immediately concerned-the value of
local control.
When the higher grade system was devised, a
large number of benevolent persons were in favour
of such a system, because of the opportunities which
it could give to the working man. How does he
223




The Debateable Land


regard it? The moment the Higher Grade School
begins to do its work efficiently, he protests; the
moment competition between the children is allowed
fairly free play, he conceives that he has a grievance,
or his advisers, those who want his vote, suggest a
grievance to him.
The fact that the artisan parent of a clever boy has
a good opportunity of getting him well educated
goes for nothing. The working man is quite willing
that there should be a higher grade school, but he
stipulates, or his advisers stipulate for him, that it
should not be allowed to do sound work. He wishes
the advanced classes to be encumbered with backward
children, to the detriment not only of the children
really capable of doing advanced work, but of the
backward children themselves.
This leads us back to the subject with which we
started. " Such a question could not arise," some one
will say, "with reference to secondary schools: the
children will be drawn from a superior class." On
the contrary, the question of promotions-that is to
say, the question of efficiency-is one of the commonest difficulties which the head masters of grammar
schools have to encounter. Where the governors are
local residents, appeals are not unfrequently made to
them in private to compel the head master of the
grammar school to promote boys who would be
injured by promotion, or who do not deserve to be
promoted. Every reason for preference on the part
of the school authorities is suggested, except the real
224




Some Weaknesses of Local Control


reason-merit. Even where direct interference with
reference to that particular question is not resorted
to, the wounded self-esteem of the parent finds opportunities for revenge. The number of boys who win
prizes and deserve promotion is necessarily smaller
than that of those who do not; hence a school is apt
to be unpopular with the majority of the resident
parents. In boarding schools this sentiment is not
so pronounced, because the parents of the disappointed are not compelled to witness the daily satisfaction of the parents of the successful. If local
secondary schools are put under the control of bodies
subject to periodical re-election, such as the present
School Boards, or even Town Councils-a claim has
not only been made, but pressed, for both-the internal
organization of the schools, even the appointments of
the teachers, will be at the mercy of vote-catching
candidates.
Let us take the question of subjects, for instance.
What a splendid grievance the teaching of Latin
might be made, or the non-teaching of bookkeeping!
Subjects which were found difficult by individual
boys would be condemned as useless. Boys are in
the habit of appealing to their parents to be exempted
from subjects which involve exertion.
The more complex the school, the higher the
standard of its aims; the more vigorous its teachers
the greater the number of grievances which could be
run against it by ignorant or unprincipled candidates
for seats on its governing body. It is not invariably
those teachers whose ideas of their duty to their pupils
225                 Q




The Debateable Land


are the most drastic, that win the approbation of
parents. The balance of probability is in favour of
the reverse being the case.
A strenuous teacher is apt to punish, to insist on
punctuality, to keep up attendance, to refuse extra
holidays, to reprove idlers.  None of these things
are pleasant when one's own convenience or one's
own children are the sufferers, however excellent
they may be in the case of other people's children.
Head masters who have wvorked under the control
of a local governing body, even when it is not subject
to popular election, have reason to thank their good
fortune when such a body does not prove a chronic
impediment to the efficiency of the school. Trustees
are apt to be recklessly extravagant in some things,
equally niggardly in others.  Their pet form of
economy is to refuse money for teachers' salaries;
their pet form of extravagance to build unnecessary
scientific lecture rooms and laboratories. They will
haggle over five pounds for blackboards, and readily
grant twenty for a lantern. Nowadays science is
becoming inseparably associated in the popular mind
with a dark room and a white sheet.
If any of them happen to be parents of boys
attending the school, the teaching is apt to be judged
exclusively by the proficiencies of those particular
boys, the discipline by the fanciful tales which they
take home to their mothers.
Evils such as these would be increased tenfold
were the Local Educational Authorities subject to
226




Some Weaknesses of Local Control
popular election, and especially to popular election at
such short intervals as three years. By the time the
men elected had learned their work, supposing any of
them to be teachable, they would have to cast about
for some popular cry, some grievance, by which to
secure their re-election.
It is proposed by some politicians to make the
county the administrative area for secondary education, and to treat county boroughs as if they were
counties; that is to say, to place the control of the
secondary schools in county boroughs in the hands
of the Town Councils. It is precisely in such towns
that a good system of secondary schools is possible
and necessary. Have Town Councils done anything
so far to justify their being entrusted with this particular work?
Would it be absolutely wise, for instance, to entrust
a school to the management of the Town Council of
Maidstone?
Who are the persons who form the majority of the
Town Councils in our populous towns? It is a
matter of public notoriety that they are precisely not
the people who represent the widest enlightenment,
or even the best business capacity of the town which
they represent. We have not a few towns whose
names are associated with the names of great industrial firms; these names are usually absent from
the Town Councils. Men who are managing large
businesses are obliged frequently to be away from
home; and even where this is not the case, they have
227




The Debateable Land


not the time to manage their own business and that
of the public. There is, further, the degrading process of being elected. The new and universal system
of bribery by promises keeps men who respect themselves from  the platforms.  Precisely those men
whose sense of public duty is high are the men who
shrink from making use of a popular cry as a step
up to public office. The consequence is that the
administration of provincial towns falls into the
hands of men who have a direct interest in being on
the Town Council-builders, contractors, and men
whose relatives want contracts.
The reports of the proceedings of these bodies
are not unfrequently such as to suggest that the
civilizing influences of education were wanting in the
early life of their members. They call one another
bad and even silly names; they proceed to threats
of personal violence; and sometimes attempt to carry
their threats into effect in the sacred precincts of the
council room.
In consequence, they are seldom respected by any
class of the community which they represent, and
are tolerated as an inevitable evil, whose power for
mischief is happily small, or is thought to be so,
until it is discovered that in the interests of economy
they will cheerfully run the risk of poisoning their
fellow-citizens wholesale. To such people as these
it is proposed to entrust the administration of schools,
the responsibility of selecting head masters, and of
distributing funds.
228




Some Weaknesses of Local Control
Under such management, the position of a body
of teachers is all but untenable, or only tenable by
men who are devoid of the qualities most valuable in
a teacher.
Where a grammar school has long been under the
management of a Corporation, that body has sometimes learned that the best thing that it can do for
its school is to let it alone; but it will not be allowed
to let it alone, if the example of the Stockton School
Board election is to spread.  If the cry of class
interests is to be commonly brought to bear upon
educational questions, it will be used by unscrupulous
men, and by some well-meaning but ill-informed
men, no longer in School Board elections, but in
elections to the Town Council.  Stringent limitations of the powers of the local authority, enforced
by the Central Education Department, will alone
save our children from the consequences of the ignorance and caprice of the persons who are theoretically
entrusted with the management of the local school.
As such limitations are apt to be too complex, to
fetter the teaching body, as well as the governing
body, to unnecessarily increase expenditure upon red
tape, it would be better to create a controlling body,
which would be so constituted as to require the
minimum of direction.
Schools require a governing body to ensure their
continuity, as a reserve force to be called into action
in periods of great emergency, not to do the work of the
head master. The governors should be like the onion
229




The Debateable Land


in the salad, "lurk unseen but animate the whole."
Even in the department of finance they may be overactive. To cut down the expenses of the staff, for
instance, in a school, means to reduce the number of
the teachers, or to attract in the long run less effective
men, or even to force the teachers to supplement
their salaries by devoting part of their energy to
other work; but it is a policy which invariably recommends itself to a governing body. It may be
sound policy to reduce the clerical expenses in a
large industrial concern; it sometimes proves to be
so; but the responsibilities of a clerk and the responsibilities of a teacher are totally different; men of
business cannot get out of the habit of thinking of
assistant-masters as clerks.
All voluntary boards of management, whether
publicly elected or otherwise appointed, are particularly subject to the weakness of giving way to the
man whose interest in public business is largely due
to the opportunities that it gives him of being mean
on a large scale. Do we not all know the man who
is great on black lead and matches, who shakes his
head over the account for drugs and soap at the
hospital? who thinks we could do with one nurse
less, and that five pounds might be knocked off the
salary of the house surgeon? He is singularly
fertile in expedients for the reduction of school
expenses; and even when he does not carry his
colleagues with him, he wastes a great deal of


230




Some Weaknesses of Local Control


valuable time, and renders Council meetings a terror
to head masters.
The clerical candidates won the School Board
election at Stockton. Mr. Meggeson, who had supported the policy of the Higher Grade School, was
rejected. If their party are consistent, they will now
proceed to spoil the work of the head master of the
Higher Grade School. The working man will gain
nothing, the progress of some boys will be checked,
and the teaching staff have been compelled to realize
for how little their devotion to their work counts with
the people whose children they teach.
We must steer clear, in providing for the organization of secondary schools, between the mischiefs
of popular election on the one hand and too elaborate
central administration on the other. Would it not
be as well to put some little confidence in the
teachers?
As a matter of fact, local control has governed
secondary education in all day schools up to the
present moment. Trustees have been local men in
the case of endowed schools; proprietary schools are
controlled by the local parent. The result is that we
have no organized secondary education. To separate
local control of finance from local control of the
internal organization of the local schools would be
exceedingly difficult. A demand for funds would
give an opportunity for discussing the curriculum or
administration; and unless it were expressly stipulated that no parent could be a member of the
231




The Debateable Land


governing body of the local secondary school, the
worst weakness of local governing bodies, the tendency of the individuals composing it to see the
interests of the school largely through the supposed
interests of their own children, would not be removed.
In the case of the elementary schools this difficulty
is not at present felt. Parents of boys attending the
board schools are not numerous on School Boards;
they would probably be in the majority on the local
board of the secondary school.


232




XII


Education and Class Distinctions
AFTER the abolition of serfdom, England was
unique among civilized nations in being free
from class distinctions. They survived in two forms
only. There were, till the municipalities were reformed, boroughs in which a share in the municipal
government was a birthright; otherwise, with one
other exception, birth of itself as constituting an
exclusive claim to political power has never been
recognised by English law; we have never had, as
France had, and Germany had, a caste of noble
families exempted from direct taxation, alone eligible
for certain employments under the Government, and
from whom officers in the Army were exclusively
drawn.  For centuries the sole legal qualification
demanded of Englishmen, who wished to be concerned in the government of their country, has been
the holding of property in some form or another.
The law, with the two exceptions above mentioned,
has never asked an Englishman who his father was;
it has asked him simply what were his possessions,
what was his stake in the country.
233




The Debateable Land


The other exception is the House of Lords. But
even here England may be held rather to have laid a
burden upon the heads of certain families, than to
have given those families privileges. The members
of the family of a peer, his children, grandchildren
and the rest have no rights which are not shared by
every Englishman. The very titles by which they
are known are mere courtesy titles; they are amenable to the same tribunals as the poorest workman;
they can claim no privilege of exemption from any
of the obligations laid upon other citizens.  Even
the children of the Sovereign are commoners until
the Crown exercises its power of conferring peerages
on them, just as it can and does confer peerages upon
brewers and other wealthy tradesmen.
Nevertheless, we continually hear the classes and
the masses spoken of in England; and the class cry
is one which is raised with confidence by unscrupulous
politicians; that is to say, by men who think the
safest way to induce their fellow-countrymen to place
confidence in them is to make public profession of
unstatesmanlike qualities.  No wise and patriotic
statesman calls into play the prejudices of class.
In connection with education there has long been
a simmering of class prejudice. The subject is a
difficult one to deal with, a very prickly pair of subjects, likely to wound the hand of him who touches
it; but none the less it must be handled. For if on
the one hand a sound educational policy is imperilled
by the ambition of those who openly avow that they
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Education and Class Distinctions
wish to break down distinctions of class, it is no less
endangered by the blindness of those who do not see
that as a matter of fact there are in England no class
distinctions.
An Englishman's social position is determined by
two factors, and two factors only-his wealth and his
education. Some fortunate persons combine the two,
some have one without the other; the absence of both
is the only social disqualification under which an
Englishman can suffer, and politically of the two
only one is recognised by the law. A man can vote
without being able to read or write, but he must be
demonstrably in possession of a certain amount of
property. In other words, our distinctions are social,
not political; not recognised by the statute book, but
voluntarily imposed by ourselves.
The education which determines the social position
of an Englishman is not the education which is, by
our slipshod methods of thinking and speaking, commonly understood by the term; it is not book learning, nor even an accurate knowledge of experimental
science. The man who knows most is not the man
who is most welcome in what a modern prophetess
calls " Smart Society "; nor does it merely consist of
the externals of good manners.
Good manners are the external expression of sound
social qualities; of the habit of considering others, of
the habit of respecting oneself.  Such habits are
largely inherited.  They may be imposed and improved by discipline; they may be partially or totally
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The Debateable Land


destroyed by neglect.  The appearance of good
manners may be acquired by imitation, enforced by
training. Then we have mere ceremony. The distinction is an important one.  The thing that is
valuable suffers in the public estimation when it is
confused with a thing that is relatively valueless. A
Norwegian or Swedish boy, in recognition of a service
done to him-on receipt of a tip, for instance-makes
an elaborate bow, shakes hands with his benefactor,
and expresses his thanks. An English boy, who has
simply said "Thank you," has shown equally good
manners. The bow, the hand-shake, are a ceremony.
But even the ceremony has some value; it demands
an effort. Even so simple an act as taking off one's
hat to a lady, instead of merely grinning or nodding
by way of recognition, is a moralizing ceremony.
These are small things, but life is made up of small
things, and it is in small things that the forces which
hold society together most commonly find their outward expression.
There are those who exalt the rough diamond,
forgetting that the value even of the diamond is
increased by the process of cutting and polishing, and
that the gem in the rough has not reached the limit
of its possibilities.
Similarly there are those who are impatient of the
restraints imposed by schools, in which intellectual
training is supplemented by external training in
manners, even when this is accompanied by a healthy
moral stimulation, who see in such schools simply an
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Education and Class Distinctions
attempt to impose class distinctions, to put the
working man or the small tradesman, or even the
rich tradesman, at a disadvantage compared with a
class whose attributes and privileges are imagined
rather than known.
To begin at the bottom or perhaps the top. Occasionally we see letters in the local newspapers, or
read in the reports of School Board meetings, statements referring to the harsh and arbitrary conduct of
teachers who have punished children for coming to
school dirty. On such occasions some one is sure to
champion the grievance: "Whether a boy is clean
or dirty is no business of the teacher's; his business
is to teach." The grievance is not looked at quite in
this way by the parent, who is doing his or her best
to bring up children in habits of cleanliness, upon
whom the dirty habits of neighbours impose every
day the necessity of a rigorous examination of the
children when they return from school. Cleanliness
is not merely a class distinction. We may as well
give up education and everything connected with it,
if we are going to discourage parents who take pains
about the good habits of their children.
Or to take another illustration with which we are
more immediately concerned. There is a very large
class of persons in our country who are impatient of
what they call "' fashionable" schools; and it is easy
enough to find reasons for laughing at, or being indignant with, ladies who select a school for their boys
simply because it is " fashionable," or because some
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The Debateable Land


other lady, whose social position is respected, happens
to send her boys there. To this question, as to all
others, there are, however, two sides. A woman, who
wishes her boys to be brought up in the society of
boys whose manners are good, is paying tribute, unconsciously perhaps, to those influences which are
over and above book-learning. The form in which
she expresses her ambition may be inadequate and
even vulgar, but the ambition is a sound one; it is a
recognition of the fact that wealth has its obligations.
Democratical persons capable of reflection should
rejoice, rather than the reverse, when the wealthy
deliberately impose upon themselves expensive processes of educating their children.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his Captains Courageous,
has held up a horrible example of the results of the
other way of dealing with children. He is not the
only man who has suffered from the enormities of
the American boy on board an Atlantic liner.
A feature of American life which has struck many
observers, among others Mr. Paul Bourget, is the
comparative neglect of the education of the sons of
wealthy men. There are exceptions, but the rule is
sufficiently well established to force itself upon the
notice of Europeans who visit the United States.
American girls are kept at school a long time, and in
every way given opportunities of self-improvement
equal, and even superior, to those enjoyed by their
sisters in the Old World; but the boys are sent to
"commercial schools," instructed in the barest pos238




Education and Class Distinctions


sible proficiencies to fit them for a career of business,
and set to work in offices at about the age when
English boys are thinking of going to a public
school. The consequence is, that not only is the
young American a terror to his fellow-passengers on
board ship, but that the American man of business is
socially one of the least attractive of human animals.
In spite of his abundant hospitality, he is a bore of
the first water; he has no interest outside his
business, no real amusements unconnected with display. His pile of dollars gives him no satisfaction
beyond what he can derive from being the husband
of some woman whose expensive entertainments are
recorded in the New York Herald.
Indirect results of the same system are the characters borne by the American politician and Tammany
Hall. Where are boys to learn that there is such a
thing as public spirit, when they are removed from
school as soon as they can read and write and do
sums?
English "snobbishness "-that is to say, the prevalent desire to push into a social circle for which
you are fitted by wealth alone, or the corresponding
dread of associating with people who are looked
down upon-has helped to preserve English refinement, and possibly English patriotism. An English
boy may be sent to the right school for the wrong
reason, but at any rate he is sent to school, and his
moral and intellectual training are continued to manhood.
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The Debateable Land


Throughout the whole of English Society this
force is at work. Among workmen there are most
minute class distinctions. Artisans who will not pay
school fees, because they value education for sound
reasons, will do so that their children may not go to
school with the sons of parents who live in some
particular street, whose inhabitants are regarded,
deservedly or otherwise, as low class.
To check this sentiment is impossible, and it may
be turned to good account.
Upon what does the " tone " of a good public school
depend? Entirely upon this, that teachers and boys
alike in the large majority belong to families which
have for generations been in the habit of continuing
the education of their children to a comparatively
late period of life. They are not necessarily more
learned than other families, but they are better
trained.  Their members have not been set to think
solely of self-interest from the age of fourteen or fifteen; they have been given time to observe life before
practically engaging in its struggles. In the matter
of making money, they would be knocked out of the
field by the next American. But how about making
a country? about maintaining a standard of private
and public obligation, which holds society together?
The subjects which have hitherto formed the inner
core, so to speak, of our public school training of our
fashionable schools, of our grammar schools, and the
methods by which those subjects have been taught,
have been largely determined by the fact that pro240




Education and Class Distinctions
ficiency in them is only acquired by long training;
and that young men of high intellectual ambition
and sound intellectual habits are attracted by them.
In other words, the qualifications of a teacher in these
schools demand time, and in some form or another
they demand capital; that is to say, that the teachers,
though derived from families relatively poor, are still
derived from families whose traditions are the same
as those of the families of their pupils. They unconsciously maintain among their pupils, or impart to
them, aptitude for refinement in the best sense of the
word. In school, and out of school alike, their influence is directed to the maintenance of standards
of conduct which are commonly found in societies
relieved from the immediate pressure of moneygetting. In this there is no arbitrary class distinction, no wilful setting up of lines and barriers designed
to confine such refinement to a narrow circle; on the
contrary, every man who has sufficient money can
send his son to Eton or Harrow, or aly other fashionable school. Any local school which is willing to pay
the proper price, or which is adequately endowed,
can secure and should secure the same teachers.
But what of those who have little money? This
consideration weighs too heavily with kindly persons,
who persist in regarding education simply as booklearning and something apart from home. There
have been, and there are, peasant homes in which
there is sound refinement; and again, it does not
weigh heavily enough. It weighs too heavily when


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The Debateable Land


attacks are made upon the schools attended by the
sons of wealthy men, as being institutions which, in
some vague way, defraud the poor man of his rights;
it does not weigh heavily enough upon people who
fail to see that though education is not book learning,
the moralizing influence of education largely depends
upon the subjects taught and the way in which they
are taught, for in these is involved the qualifications
of the teacher.
To take one point at a time. No subjects, not even
Latin and Greek, have a moralizing influence upon
the pupil if they are taught by men whose ideal, both
of learning and responsibility to their pupils, is
limited to enabling them to pass some definite standard in an examination.
Again, no teacher who has the true teacher's ambition cal find access to his pupils through purely
mechanical subjects, taught in a mechanical way, for
a definite and limited purpose.
When local parents insist that the local grammar
school shall teach mechanical subjects to the exclusion
of all others, or so hamper the school by low fees
that non-mechanical subjects have to be taught in a
mechanical way owing to over-large classes, they
destroy whatever advantage the grammar school
possesses over the board schools. There are parents
in provincial towns who send their boys to grammar
schools for social reasons; they do not wish their boys
to consort with boys who go to board schools. The
"social reasons" in this case become worse than
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Education and Class Distinctions
absurd, if such people try to have the advantage of
exclusiveness without the real social distinction of
improved training. And it is a fact, that numbers of
people raise a cry against the " snobbishness " of
local grammar schools who send their children to
them for purely "snobbish" reasons; they like to
feel that their children are at a superior school than
the children of artisans; they do not like to submit
to the demands and restraints which such a school
imposes, if it is anything other than a sham.
This feeling is not confined to provincial towns. It
is not improbable that if a poll were taken of the
parents who send their sons to public schools on the
question of curriculum, the most valuable subjects,
the soundest methods, would be set aside for the
farrago of the Education Code, South Kensington,
and Technical Colleges. Among the destructive votes
there would be those of a very large number of persons
of inherited and trained refinement, who are ignorant
of the value of their own qualities, and still more
ignorant of the processes by which they have attained
to them. Such people would have cheerfully joined
the advisers of Edward VI. when the grammar
schools were suppressed.
An educational system which admits the fact of an
unequal distribution of wealth, and which recognises
it by organizing schools in which the sons of wealthy
men are trained at a cost in proportion to their
wealth, is not a system which lays undue stress upon
social distinctions. The State should do all that it
243




The Debateable Land


can to tempt men who are relatively wealthy, to
protract the period of education for their children,
and to make that education efficient. It is impossible
to devise a system based on these principles which
will satisfy all idealists; but it must always be
sounder than a system which tends to pervert education and refuses to recognise established facts.


244




XIII


The Universities and the Schools
T   HE Universities-by which term for the present
we propose to designate Oxford and Cambridge alone-have an intimate connection with the
schools. By their examinations they prescribe what
subjects shall be taught, and, to a considerable extent, the methods of teaching them. They are also
the places in which teachers complete their education. They are not, however, the only bodies which
examine schools, whether directly or indirectly.
There are other Universities doing the same or
similar work. There is the College of Preceptors,
and there are the examinations for admission to
the public services and professions. The relations
between these various examining bodies require adjustment and organization. By their multiplicity and
variety they promote confusion, they introduce unnecessary difficulties into the organization of all but
the largest schools, and they leave us with indeterminate standards. There is, for instance, no means
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The Debateable Land


of gauging the relative values of schools which are
examined by the College of Preceptors, and schools
which are examined under the joint board of the
Universities, which Universities have again their local
examinations. Teachers may have information and
possibly prejudices on the subject, but the one person
who should be helped by these examinations, the
parent, is completely in the dark. Probably the
most useful work which can be done by an Educational Department for Secondary Schools is the
organization of examinations. That once done, the
status of any particular school will declare itself, so
far as instruction is concerned, according to the examinations in which its pupils compete.
The position of Greek is determined by the regulations of the Universities. So long as a boy is required
to pass in Greek in his first public examination at
either of the Universities, all boys who intend to proceed to the Universities must learn Greek. Whether
the Universities are right or wrong in enforcing Greek
is not part of our present discussion; the fact remains
that they can and do impose upon all schools which
send boys to them the necessity of teaching Greek.
A few years ago an attempt was made in the
University of Cambridge to release the schools from
teaching Greek by allowing an alternate subject in
the first public examination. This proposal was rejected. The method of its rejection is worth noticing.
Ultimately any disputed question of organization at
either of the Universities is referred to the senate.
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The Universities and the Schools


For ordinary purposes the senate consists of the
resident Masters of Art and men who hold degrees
of the same or higher standard; that is to say, that
the question is decided by the men who are actually engaged in the teaching and organization of the
University. But all Masters of Arts, etc., whether
resident or non-resident, have a right to vote, and
whenever any highly controversial question is raised,
such as this question of Greek, or the admission of
women to degrees, non-resident members of the
senate are whipped up from the country, and vote
according to their lights; in other words, questions
involving an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the University may be decided by men who
have ceased for many years to be in close, personal
contact with the place in which they completed their
education.
There are many University men who refuse to see
that the Universities bear the responsibility of providing teachers for schools. They are willing enough
to say," all teachers should go to the University," but
they will not go one step further and admit that this
being the case the Universities must from time to
time so modify some of their arrangements as to
meet the requirements of the schools; and though a
very large number of the non-resident Masters of
Arts are schoolmasters, the majority are not. Any
arrangement suggested to resident members of the
senate for the improvement of the relations between
the Universities and the schools might be rejected by
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The Debateable Land


the votes of men completely innocent of an acquaintance with the points at issue, except in so far as they
might be informed by the partisan flyleaves which it
is customary to circulate on these occasions.
Thus any suggestion which may be made as to the
desirability of an increased recognition by the Universities of their responsibilities to the schools is
liable, whatever its intrinsic value, to be ultimately
rejected, not by the resident teachers at the Universities, but by the non-resident voters.
It might seem to the outsider that nothing could
be simpler than to provide a teacher's degree at either
University by a modification of examinations already
in existence.
But there is a serious obstacle.
Up to the present time the schools which can
afford to pay the highest salaries, or which are otherwise attractive, have been in the habit of selecting
exclusively specialists as their teachers; and the
University examinations have exactly suited their
purpose.  The ablest undergraduates compete for
honours-that is to say, that under ordinary circumstances, as soon as they have done with their first
public examination, they proceed to study one or, at
the most, two subjects only. They read Classics or
Mathematics or Science, and the competition is so
severe that only very exceptionally gifted men can
take up more than one subject without considerable
peril to their degree. So long as schools consider
themselves places devoted to the manufacture of
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The Universities and the Schools
specialists, and regard none of their work as really
important which does not conduce to winning scholarships at the Universities, this system of examination
satisfies everybody. Further, all schools which keep
boys after the age of sixteen will continue to require
the services of at least three specialists. They will require a Classic, a Mathematician, and a Scientific
man; but for the ordinary work of a school a
specialist is out of place. The work, for reasons which
have already been dealt with, is better done by men
who have command of at least two subjects; and it
would seem to be a simple solution to institute a
teacher's degree, by which men would be able to
produce satisfactory certificates of being proficient in
certain groups of subjects up to the standard required.
Here, however, comes the difficulty. The Universities
train not only teachers for schools, but their own
teachers; and it is of the essence of University teaching that tutors and professors should be specialists.
Other teachers may be mere irrigators, men who only
distribute the stream of knowledge derived from
some fountain-head; the University professor or tutor
is the well-spring-he is the teacher of teachers.
The inducements offered to men to qualify themselves for this work are certain emoluments called
Fellowships; and by a natural and judicious arrangement Fellowships are awarded only to specialists. At
present a man may compete for a Fellowship knowing that if he fails to wvin it there will still be open to
him the chance of being offered a mastership at a
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The Debateable Land


school; but a man who entered for a teacher's degree
would at once cut himself off from all hope of a
Fellowship, and under existing circumstances few men
would care to do so whose ability was of a high
order, work at a University being generally held to be
pleasanter than work at a school.
Except for this difficulty, a modification of the pass
degree at Cambridge would meet the requirements of
the schools-a modification in the direction of giving
a certificate in modern languages as well as other
subjects-but a higher standard than that of the
ordinary pass degree would be required in all subjects.
A separate special Modern Language Examination
for Honours, such as both Universities already have,
would not meet the case; because here again there is
not time for specializing in two subjects in the case
of men of sufficient ability to become good schoolmasters, but not on the plane of University teachers.
A dread of instituting what was at Cambridge
derisively called "a courier Tripos," has further
rendered these examinations practically of little
value for teachers. After all, the art of writing even
French prose, as it is written by the masters of
French literature, is not an everyday accomplishment; and while a knowledge of mediaeval French
and German is necessary from the point of view of
the philologist, perfect conversance with the language
as now written and spoken is more important to the
schoolmaster.
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The Universities and the Schools
If we organize the teaching profession, and in so
doing increase its attractions, we can at least demand
that young men who propose to become teachers
should have made up their minds to that work by the
time that they begin their University career.  It
would be possible to place the examination for
teachers, where Moderations come at Oxford and the
first part of the different Triposes at Cambridge,
allowing a man the opportunity of getting further
honours in a single special subject should he wish to.
Under the present conditions not a few men take to
teaching as a second best.  Having failed in the
competition for Fellowships, they then bethink themselves of teaching in a school, having already reached
a time of life when further delay in getting to work is
inconvenient, if not impossible. Even when a man
can afford the time to spend a year on the Continent
learning French or German, he is unable to bring
back satisfactory certificates of having spent his time
well.
There is a kind of person in India who frequently
and persistently solicits employment on the ground
that he is a " failed B.A."; that is to say, that he has
unsuccessfully studied for a B.A. degree. We do not
want our teachers to possess analogous qualifications,
or our schools to be staffed largely by men who
would have preferred other work; we want to be
done with the assumption that teaching is anybody's
work.
In addition to the University degree, previous
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The Debateable Land


attendance at a duly registered school would also be
a necessary qualification of a teacher. This is already
recognised in practice. The reason for it has already
been stated, viz., that a boy at school learns methods
of teaching which could not so conveniently be imparted to him in any other way.
Much time may be wasted over paedagogic literature, Froebel and the rest. The practical difficulties
of teaching are not surmounted by acquaintance with
psychological theorists. Many a woman, most mothers
who are worthy of the name, is a Froebelian without
knowing it. Froebel took to the school the ordinary
practice of the family. He organized and improved
all the little employments and amusements by which
children are kept wholesomely occupied. He thus
did valuable work; but when he theorizes about child
nature, he ceases to be of practical value. We gain
nothing by stating that a child is one or is three, or
by drawing fanciful analogies between human development and crystallography.
Similarly we hear much in these days about the
"Art of teaching," and of its importance as part of
the qualifications of a teacher; but there is something
to be said on the other side also.
Much of what is called the art of teaching consists
of a series of clever devices to produce illusory results. The teacher does the work which should be
done by the pupil, with the result that, when the
pupil is left to his own resources, he collapses; he has
nothing to stand on.  Such devices are naturally
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The Universities and the Schools


most frequent when the conditions are such that the
teacher cannot study the individual, when the classes
are large, and when it is required that a whole class
shall be brought up, or possibly kept down, to a
uniform standard. No teaching is worth anything
which has not improved the working power of the
pupil; and an elaborate system of mnemonics, which
is what the art of teaching is apt to become, is mischievous rather than useful. There is even a point at
which ingenious contrivances for promoting industry
become harmful. Could a school be so organized
that no boy could possibly waste his time, the
chances are even that a large number of boys would
be so dependent upon organization as to be demoralized for good, helpless without the organization.
Take the case of the French schools. Boys in a
French school are perpetually under surveillance.
Where the system is worked thoroughly, no boy ever
has an opportunity of doing anything wrong. And
there are many ladies in England who like such a
system for their boys; but the moral standard of the
young Frenchman is certainly not superior to that of
the English public school boy, who enjoys plenty of
opportunities of getting into mischief.
Any man who has sympathy, common-sense and
powers of observation, quickly hammers out an art of
teaching for himself. And he must do it for himself.
It is a good thing to warn him against possible errors
at the outset, especially against expecting too much;
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The Debateable Land


but it is only by practical contact with his pupils
that he learns the meaning of the warnings.
If, however, a man is required to teach under conditions in which sympathy is impossible, common-sense
inapplicable, and no time is given for observation,
then he must fall back on some art of teaching, some
elaborately devised combination of drill and mnemonics. It is not in the interest of the nation to
multiply schools in which such systems are necessary.
While we are at liberty to admire the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge, we must at the same time
be on our guard against fanaticism in our adoration.
We may not unfrequently observe a tendency in the
speeches of our educational leaders to ascribe to
these Universities miraculous powers. They are the
Mecca and Medinah of our intellectual life. A fortnight's pilgrimage in the course of the long vacation
means something like intellectual salvation, or is at
least the first step in the upward path.
While conceding that these Universities have certain
special characteristics which are not found elsewhere,
and which cannot be reproduced elswhere,-in fact,
that there is much that is valuable on the banks of
the Cam and Isis that cannot by any possibility be
" extended,"-we must also allow independence to our
local Universities. These places should not be held in
leading-strings. A degree at Victoria or Durham
should be, and should be accepted as being, intellectually at least of the same value as the corresponding
degree at Oxford or Cambridge, and all possible
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The Universities and the Schools


pains should be taken to secure this end.  If a
teacher's degree is established, it should be possible
to take it at Liverpool or Newcastle-on-Tyne, as well
as at Oxford or Cambridge. By affiliating local
Universities to the older institutions, by continuing
University extension lectures in places where an independent University has already been founded, and
further by conducting local examinations within the
sphere so to speak-of another University, we damage
the prestige of our new creations, and we reduce their
practical value.
One difficulty which these places suffer from, is
the difficulty of getting a sufficiently large proportion
of students to take up the complete course of study,
except in medicine, where the conditions are prescribed by the general medical council, and where
the degree is a necessary qualification for admission
to a profession. Were a teacher's degree established
common to all Universities, many teachers would
have this opportunity of taking it who cannot go to
Oxford or Cambridge. It is possible to conceive
local law schools similarly recognised by the Incorporated Law Society attached to local Universities.
In each case there would be the same reason for
going through a complete course which already holds
in the case of medicine.
The influence of the Universities has not been
worth much, if it has not found professors for the
local colleges competent to disseminate the ideals
and standards up to which they were themselves
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The Debateable Land


taught. It would probably cost no more to equip the
local Universities - more completely than to devise
means of finding scholarships for teachers who wished
to go to Oxford or Cambridge.
Abroad, or at least in Germany, the land of Universities, there is not the same domination. After
1870 the Germans refounded the University of Strasburg, which already in i878 was not at a disadvantage
in comparison with the old Universities of Freiburg
and Heidelberg in the immediate neighbourhood,
and whose science school had a distinguished reputation. Students went to Strasburg as they would go
to Berlin. It is good to worship Oxford and Cambridge, but our worship should not degenerate into
superstition.
Already some of the provincial Universities have
associated themselves with the training of board
school teachers. The system might be wholesomely
extended; diocesan and other training colleges placed
in towns where there are University colleges. Young
men learn much from contact with other young
men, who may not be engaged in precisely the same
pursuits. The life of a seminary is not always invigorating. A teaching University is superior to an
examining University, precisely because of the possibilities of mutual improvement which it affords
outside of the lecture-room. A degree in the University of London, or other non-resident University,
reduces our conceptions of the advantages of a University education to their narrowest limits, Again, if
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The Universities and the Schools
personal influence is valuable at any time of life, it is
particularly valuable at the period of early manhood;
and Oxford and Cambridge alike send out men
whose ideals of the dignity and responsibility of the
teacher are effective without the background of Christ
Church meadows or King's Chapel. It is not necessary to go to Oxford or Cambridge in order to be
instructed by men who represent the best work that
these places can do; who believe in learning for
learning's sake, and have other noble enthusiasms.


257


s




XIV


The Registration of Schools and Teachers
ENGLISH schools at the present moment are
divided into two main classes-those which are
over-organized, and those which are not organized
at all. Schools are over-organized when the individual teacher is reduced to a machine; when no
opportunity is allowed for the development of his
individual tastes and sympathies; when even a head
master is relieved of responsibility by the machinery
of a Department. This is the condition of all schools
working under the present Education Department,
and of all schools, or sections of schools, organized
by the Department of Science and Art.
Is this the ideal which we propose for the schools
hitherto devoid of organization? or is it not possible
to devise a system which will give reasonable liberty
to the teacher, reasonable information to the parent,
reasonable protection to the children?
Registration of schools, combined with organization of examinations, seems to hit the mark.
258




Registration of Schools and Teachers


There are, however, certain difficulties in connection with registration, certain possibilities of mistake
which require consideration.
The first and most obvious mistake would be to
devise an a priori classification of schools, and require
all existing schools to conform to it. At the present
moment, for instance, we have gone some way towards classifying schools according to their financial
constitution. We have drawn a sharp line between
schools owned by their head masters and schools
administered by a body of trustees in one shape or
another. We distinguish between proprietary schools
and other schools; and in drawing this line we have
definitely expressed hostility to the proprietary school.
Such schools cannot earn grants; and, by the private
regulations of the Head Masters' Conference and the
Incorporated Association of Head Masters, their
principals cannot take part in the deliberations of
either of these bodies. We do not, however, class a
school as proprietary if it belongs to a limited liability company, in which neither the head master nor
assistants have shares-a form of organization which
has given us Cheltenham, Clifton, Malvern, Dover,
and some other schools of high reputation.
There are, however, in existence throughout the
country a very large number of schools in the hands
of private proprietors. Among these are, almost without exception, the preparatory schools for the public
schools, whose excellent work is acknowledged by
the head masters of the public schools to have raised
259




The Debateable Land


the standard of the public schools themselves. And,
again, all towns of any size are furnished with schools
varying in importance and in the nature of the work
which they do, owned by private proprietors.
To devise a national scheme of school registration
without taking these schools into consideration, without attempting to discover what work they are doing,
what place they fill in the educational needs of the
country, would be a serious blunder, and if any
attempts were made to condemn them unheard, a
gross injustice.
It would be a serious blunder, because no State is
gifted with perfect prescience. Hitherto the enterprise
of private individuals has stepped in to supply unforeseen wants for which no public provision had
been made. In our large manufacturing towns the
local grammar schools are not unfrequently poorly
endowed. They have no means of extending themselves in proportion to the population. They are
often inconveniently situated. Private enterprise has
supplied education which would have otherwise been
unattainable. Such conditions are not temporary, they
are permanent. So long as our towns continue to
grow, the centres of population inside them will shift.
Those parts of a town which were once suburbs inhabited by merchants will become again, as they
have become in times past, barracks for workmen.
The population itself will continue to increase insensibly; perhaps its social conditions will change. During the periods of transition private enterprise in the
260




Registration of Schools and Teachers
matter of opening schools is the simplest solution of
a difficulty.
What is the objection to unrestricted freedom on
the part of the private adventurer? Why is it so
commonly assumed that there is something inherently
bad in a school conducted as a private speculation?
And if the system, or want of system, has its imperfections, is there no way of removing these weaknesses
short of declaring war upon private adventurers altogether?
The sources of weakness are twofold. One is that
under present conditions anybody is at liberty to
open a school, absolutely anybody, and to call that
school by any name which he or she thinks likely to
attract pupils. It may be a college, a high school,
a seminary, an academy, a kindergarten, a commercial
school, a classical school,-in fact, anything, even an
electrical school. The proprietor need be provided
with no certificate of proficiency, as long as he can
make himself acceptable to a sufficient number of
parents. This applies everywhere. A curate at a
fashionable watering place, who has never done a
stroke of teaching in his life, whose literary attainments are represented by the barest supply of that
commodity necessary to one who takes Holy Orders,
may, and often does, open a preparatory school. A
small shop-keeper, with a gift for preaching, may find
it more profitable to abandon the shop and undertake
to teach the children of the "connection " to which
he belongs. Sometimes men who have begun work
26i




The Debateable Land


in this way prove capable of the work which they
have taken upon themselves, but there is no antecedent probability that this will be the case.
This difficulty is easily dealt with. Teachers can
be put under a system similar to that which controls
the medical profession. We could grant licenses to
teachers who wished to open schools, demand of them
certain qualifications,-so much previous teaching
experience, for instance, in duly registered schools,and allow them to fix the name and standard of their
schools according to the nature of their qualifications.
We might even fix a minimum scale of fees.
The second source of weakness in private adventure
schools is that they are insufficiently independent of
the goodwill of parents to be able to organize themselves to the best advantage of the children, too
subject to the caprices of those same parents, too
much at the mercy of competitors, and only in the
rarest cases able to provide really satisfactory premises.
These schools are defenceless against the parent
who insists on prescribing the curriculum which his
own child is to follow. They are in consequence
tempted to teach, or undertake to teach, a larger
number of subjects than they can possibly deal with,
and they are all but forced to substitute methods of
teaching which show quick and unstable results for
more laborious but less showy methods, which secure
permanent advantage to the pupil.
Included in the general organization of education
262




Registration of Schools and Teachers


such schools would be freed at least from some of
the mischiefs of parental interference; their position
could be defined by registration, approved from time
to time by inspection.
Within certain limits there is no occasion for regulating the accommodation provided by such schools
in the matter of premises. No parents are compelled
to send their children to them, and it may be presumed that although parents may not share the
prejudices of a Government inspector as to cubic
space, they are more competent to decide for themselves as to whether rooms are sufficiently large than
they are as to the relative merits of teaching instruments.
In the same way private boarding schools, whether
preparatory or advanced, could be registered. No
machinery could possibly be devised which would
prevent foolish mothers from sending their children
to a man who flattered their prejudices rather than
to a man who imposed upon them the minimum of
necessary discipline, but the possibilities of injury to
the children by the unwise selection of parents could
certainly be limited by licensing teachers according
to their experience; and material help would be
given to the sensible parents who, from want of
previous experience, might be unable to estimate the
most important qualifications of the person to whom
they proposed to entrust their children.
The details of registration of schools cannot be
helpfully discussed till we have full information about
263




The Debateable Land


the existing schools, what they are teaching, how
they teach, to what extent their organization is
rendered defective by the conditions under which
they work; but certain possibilities as the results of
registration may be indicated.
One fact will certainly come out after minute
inquiry, viz., that the courses of study pursued at
Eton and other public schools differ but little from
those of a majority of the grammar schools and
many proprietary schools; and that in many respects
the ideals and standards of the " public " schools are
widely diffused; further, that there are day schools
doing as good work as boarding schools.
Another fact that will be declared will be the
possibility of simplifying and reducing the number
of subjects taught.  Relieved from the pressure of
parents, the schools will be able to teach a few subjects soundly rather than many badly. It will be
possible to establish a distinction between subjects
preliminary to special subjects and these special subjects, to release the schools at once from continual
interference by the man who says, " I want my son
to learn...," without ever inquiring into the processes involved in learning the subject in question.
It is also within the bounds of reasonable expectation to surmise that an inquiry into the status of
existing schools will demonstrate that in demanding
" secondary education " we are shadow-hunting after
all. We have got it, if we choose to use and not
abuse the existing machinery.
264




Registration of Schools and Teachers
The demand for secondary education is not an
educational demand, not as it is at present made.
It is a demand, not that teaching should be organized
and improved, but that existing methods of teaching
which are necessarily costly, because they involve
the expense of a large staff of teachers, should be
rendered inexpensive. And it is to be feared, very
much to be feared, that the desire to render these
methods inexpensive may lead to rendering them
ineffective. To create, for instance, new schools in
some of our towns and call them secondary schools
without ensuring proper conditions of teaching, that
is to say, without providing an adequate staff to
teach those subjects which require small classes,
would be to invite failure. Such schools must be
relatively costly unless they are largely endowed.
It has already been pointed out that when our
grammar schools fail, the cause is often low fees,
inadequate endowment, multiplicity of subjects.
There is yet another reason for registration of
schools, and a sound, democratic reason too.
A large number of our fellow-countrymen, among
others the editor of the Sckoolmaster, are under the
impression that the favourable teaching conditions
enjoyed by Eton and other public schools proceed
from the fact that these schools are endowed.
Nothing could be more erroneous.    The actual
money endowment of Eton could be removed without serious disturbance to the teaching, for one endowment could never be removed-her historic past.
265




The Debateable Land


Others of our public schools have an almost nominal
endowment; others, and those not among the least
effective, none at all. The schools which owe most
to endowment are day schools; the schools at Birmingham, Bedford, Dulwich, and others. The fees
paid by the parents in these places are inadequate
to support the teaching without endowment.
We have, in fact, a large number of schools in the
country which are adequately staffed-and among
them we may include all the preparatory boarding
schools-which are supported by parents willing to
pay adequate fees or nearly adequate fees.  Who
suffers by this arrangement? Nobody; in fact, if
education in the true sense of the word is not a mere
superstition, the nation gains largely. The wealthier
families, and many that are not particularly wealthy,
deliberately set aside large sums for the training of
their children away from home, when they might avail
themselves of the nearest board school, and have
them educated at the expense of those who pay rates
and taxes. The majority of the boys who attend
these schools are not destined for the public service,
in the sense that they will become soldiers, or sailors,
or civil servants; but they are trained for the public
service in another way. They acquire those habits of
mutual toleration -and forbearance, those broader
sympathies, which are necessary to a nation largely
governed by unpaid representatives alike in Imperial
and local affairs. In fact, the English Public Schools
represent what the Athenians used to call a " liturgy,"
266




Registration of Schools and Teachers
a voluntary service imposed by rich men upon themselves for the good of the State.
In all classes of the community we want to see
more of this spirit; we should give it every encouragement.
What should we lose? who would be injured, if
we were to classify our schools according to the professions and occupations for which their preliminary
training was suitable, and then insisted upon attendance at those schools over a certain number of
years, according to the character of the school, as a
preliminary to entering for the examinations, which
admit to certain professions? This suggestion has
already been made from a slightly different point of
view. There would be no occasion to draw a distinction between boarding school and day school,
between public school and proprietary school. No
matter what the financial basis of the school, it could
be registered, recognised by Government, as a place
in which boys could be trained for professions, in
which teachers could earn their certificates. In this
way parents could be provided with a definite reason
for spending more on the education of their children,
towns would be interested in founding schools provided with adequate buildings and playgrounds. If
a locality chose further to endow its school, so that
it could be adequately staffed without charging high
fees, there would be no objection; but the declaration
of the status of the school would of itself be of the
nature of an endowment, and tend to clear the vision
267




The Debateable Land


of those men, that very numerous class in our provincial towns, who cannot think of school fees except as
a waste of money, and who choose a school because
it is the cheapest to which they can send their children without suffering in the estimation of their
neighbours.
The registration of teachers is a simpler matter
than the registration of schools, and indeed would
follow upon it. The subject has already been partially
dealt with, and it has been shown that there is no
necessity for insisting that every teacher should go
to a training college. Two points would have to be
rigidly fixed: the qualifications necessary for a head
master who is elected by a governing body; the qualifications necessary for a teacher who wishes to open
a private adventure school. In the first case it would
be essential to stipulate that a man who wished to be
a head master should not only have taught for so
many years in a registered school, but that he should
also be conversant with more than one department of
the work of that school. It would be well that the
credentials given should be signed by the inspector
as well as the other school authorities, and that these
credentials should be strictly limited in number and
specified in character. The present system of testimonial hunting is degrading to the profession. It
might also prove possible to provide that schools in
which the emoluments of the teachers are relatively
high should not take men inexperienced of teaching;
for instance, that a year or two at some other school
268




Registration of Schools and Teachers


should be a necessary qualification for an assistant
master at Eton.  Parents who pay more for the
education of their children have a right to demand
more.
No system of registration of schools and teachers
can be devised which will make all schools and all
teachers perfect. There is some danger that in straining after this ideal we may make the life of the
teacher with genius an impossibility. All restrictions
and demands designed to make a good teacher out
of a bad one are subject to the very serious drawback that they also make a bad teacher out of a good
one.
A good teacher demands before all things freedom
of contact with his pupils; and wherever that freedom
is unduly interfered with the teacher's efficiency is
damaged. The present Educational Departments
should be a warning rather than an example.


269




XV


The Author to the County Councillor
I ADDRESS myself to you, sir, because though
doubtless you will soon be a Member of Parliament, you are not so as yet. Then you will be
inaccessible to my voice. You will have forgotten
your more earnest aspirations, the generous enthusiasms which moved you to sacrifice your leisure to
the public good, the evils for which you believed that
you could find a remedy all out of your own head;
your chart of the seas and islands round Utopia, to
which blessed country you had proposed to pilot our
ship. He that becomes a Member of Parliament
must perforce play the game of the House of Commons. This appears to be an exciting form of sport.
Those that have once engaged in it forget the things
that formerly appeared to them to be real, proportion
for them vanishes; Ireland looms larger than India,
Canada becomes a speck, Crete a continent; and
while the game is being played, the Empire herself
resembles a golf-widow bereft of her natural guardian.
The game of the House of Commons has very little
to do with the government of the Empire, a responsibility which indeed obtrudes itself upon the players
270




The Author to the County Councillor


occasionally to their great confusion, after the fashion
of a living bunker, as though a stray elephant should
promenade upon a golf links. This engrossing game
is primarily concerned with keeping a particular
party in office. Legislation is a secondary consideration only handled for the purposes of the game; for
laws are no longer imposed from above, they are
demanded from below. Should, however, there be no
demand for laws, the game would cease, and therefore the chief players on either side from time to time
set certain tee-to-tums spinning before the eyes of
the multitude, whose attention being observed to be
arrested by some particularly gaudy toy, one of the
parties hastily grabs it, declares itself to be the sole
inventor and proprietor of the attractive article, sends
it spinning on further gyrations, and eventually
bestows it on the British public, who clap their hands
for joy, clutch the gift to their bosoms, repay their
benefactors in solid votes, and then discover that the
pretty thing is of no possible use to them. Even so
have we been provided with a County Council Act,
and a Parish Council Act, and an Employers' Liability Act, all of them primarily suggested by the
caddies who wait upon the players in the great
Parliamentary game.
The education top is unhappily a sober-coloured
thing. It was for a while successfully decorated with
a broad band bearing the legend, "Get your children
taught for nothing," and a galoon upon it labelled
"British commerce in danger from Foreign Com271




The Debateable Land


petition" had a considerable vogue; but since the
sensational flags which it once bore, entitled " Church
Privileges endangered" and " Nonconformist Liberties imperilled," have rather lost their colour and
become draggled, the poor thing hums away in
obscurity and is but little observed. In fact, it is
unable to attract a single vote, and has no chance of
being birled along the ordinary course except in the
intervals of the game, out of sheer wantonness, by
some player who wishes to show how much he could
do, did he choose to break with tradition and the
unwritten laws which control the unsophisticated
ambition of members of the House of Commons.
So far the County Council game has not been
developed, the course is not even marked out, and
a County Councillor may be regarded as a virgin
innocent, to whom all information is acceptable, the
avenues to his intelligence being not as yet obstructed
by the preoccupations of an order of things with
which an instructed intelligence has little enough
to do.
The County Councillor already has educational
responsibilities. It is not improbable that in the not
distant future these responsibilities will be largely
extended.  What state of preparedness will you,
friend, bring to your work?
I may be unfortunate in my acquaintance and in
the periodicals which I read, and my conviction that
the average well-to-do Englishman is singularly
devoid of information on educational subjects may
272




The Author to the County Councillor
be erroneous. I can, however, suggest a reason for
the ignorance or apathy of my countrymen in these
matters. The men who in middle life are sufficiently
wealthy to undertake voluntary public work belong
educationally to one of two classes: they are either
persons who, inheriting wealth, have been educated at
one of the public schools, or they are persons who
have made their money without having had the
advantages of a literary education. An unfortunate
peculiarity of our public school system is the narrowness of its sympathies in educational matters. Few
boys are aware of the existence of any schools except
those with which their own school happens to play
matches. Even when their information happens to be
extended and they are cognisant of a large number
of such institutions, they still set the public schools
apart from the rest of the education of the country.
Grammar schools and all the rest are classed by them
as a separate and pitiable phenomenon with which
they have nothing to do, and which is not worth the
serious consideration of anybody. This attitude is
continued through life. The recent attempt to classify
certain schools as "non-local," and so to exempt
them from being governed in accordance with any
scheme of national education, is sufficient evidence of
the restricted view of the public school man. Again,
the man whose education has been limited to instruction, who has never in his youth been submitted to
the influence of a refined scholar or the patriotic
training of an English public school, is disposed to
273              T




The Debateable Land


ignore the existence of the best things that education
can give.
These two considerations alone are enough to
account for the incomparable silliness of our methods
of dealing with educational matters as revealed by the
report of the Commission on Secondary Education.
In a previous book I endeavoured to deal with
educational questions from a parent's point of view.
The book was not exhaustive; it was not intended
to be. It was designed to be suggestive; to indicate
how very complex is this subject about which we are
all so ready to talk, and, my publishers inform me,
so very unwilling to learn.
My present observations have been addressed rather
to those who may be called upon to reorganize our
educational system than to parents and guardians.
They can pretend to no higher authority than that
which is given by the fact that the man who has
made them is pledged to utter the cry of no party, is
bound to the precepts of no master, and has enjoyed
reasonable opportunities in the way of seeing.
Again, I have been methodically unmethodical,
having largely ignored blue books and statistics; indeed, have endeavoured to recall to the minds of my
readers much that lies outside statistics, and cannot
as yet be measured by them. I admit that, according
to modern standards, I am unscientific; but those
phenomena which have not as yet been classified
by rigorously scientific methods are none the less
existent; and the value of a sermon is not entirely
dependent upon the authenticity of its text.
274




The Author to the County Councillor
I wish, in concluding these remarks, to draw your
attention to one very serious danger which besets our
legislation in connection with education. It is the
danger of offering bribes. The working man, who
now holds the majority of votes, is a good fellow in
the main, a far better fellow than his leaders. It is
becoming increasingly the habit of politicians, whether
local or imperial, to approach him on the side of his
weakness rather than on the side of his strength, to
appeal to his worse qualities rather than to his better
aspirations. He is singularly at the mercy of those
who tell him that he has a grievance, or that they can
give him something which he ought to have. If the
organization of education is to get into the hands
of people who have no scruple in attempting to win
votes by posing as benefactors to the working man,
English education is doomed. The appeal to greediness is demoralizing in itself, and drags calamity in
its train; for greediness is a quality insatiate in its
essence, and has no sooner swallowed one meal than
it is clamouring for the next.
It is in the hope of averting some such catastrophe,
of giving you something to set against the prevailing
tendency to encourage people to think rather of
what they shall get by education than of what they
shall be, that I penned the foregoing pages, for which
I respectfully solicit the favour of your enlightened
attention.


Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.








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" Miss Kate Warren, one of the most scholarly women of the day, and
an assistant to Mr. Stopford Brooke in some of his literary projects, has
been entrusted by Messrs. Constable with the editorship of the ' Faerie
Queene' in separate books, which is a new departure."-Hearth and
Home.
" It is a nice, clear, handy volume, containing a brief Preface, an able
and compendious Introduction, the text of the original editions of I590, 1596,
collated, and having its orthography slightly modernized; the author's letter
of 1589, expounding the whole intention of the poem; a serviceable glossary
and some necessary and concise notes. While fitted well for use as a school
book in higher English classes, it is suitable for the general reader, who,
having once 'felt the witchery ' of Spenser's thought and rhyme, will regard
the possession of the poem in this nice form as a joy."-Educational News.
" For school use especially and as a pocket edition this reprint is just what
the general reader requires."-Livertool Daily Post.
" Evident care has been taken with the text of the present edition, and in
the preparation of the glossary the labours of a crowd of scholars have been
placed under requisition. The introduction is critical in the illuminative
sense, and the biographical facts, though pithy, are well chosen." —Speaker.
"It is beautifully printed, well-bound, and of a convenient pocket size.
There is an excellent glossary, tersely expressed, which not only gives the
meaning of different words, but explains the classical and other references
generally treated in elaborate notes...  We commend the work,"Educational Times.
"Miss Warren, however, really explains all that is necessary to an intelligent understanding of the text."-Leeds Mercury.
" The text is good, there is a full and accurate glossary, and the notes
are clear and to the point. The introduction, too, is neatly written."Caltolic Times.












*            UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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