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 Some Observations of a Foster Parent
 
 Some Observations of 
 a Foster Parent 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN CHARLES TARVER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "GUSTAVE FLAUBERT AS SEEN 
 IN HIS WORKS AND CORRESrONDENCE '' 
 
 WESTMINSTER 
 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO 
 2 WHITEHALL GARDENS 
 
 1897 
 
 4 o r^ *^ " 
 
 J- !S=- -.J KJ <l-^ 
 
 1
 
 Butler & Tanner, 
 
 The Selwood Printing Works, 
 
 Frome, and Londow.
 
 LB 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory . . . ix 
 The Foster Parent to the Real Parent . . xix 
 
 CHAPTER 1/ 
 On the Detestability of Schoolmasters . . i 
 
 CHAPTER 11/ 
 On the Limited Po\yer of Education . . , lo 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 )f Education and Instruction . ... 19 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 On Reading and Writing 26 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 On Arithmetic 38 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Educational Subjects 45 
 
 b
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Tommy's IMind 52 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Some of Tommy's Blunders 60 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 What is Stupidity? 67 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 A Defence of Latin 74 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 A Defence of Latin Continued .... 82 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Greek and Elementary Science . . . . S9 
 
 CHAPTER Xin. 
 The Place of Greek 56 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Entrance Examinations 103 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Preparatory School no 
 
 vi
 
 Contents 
 
 FACE 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 An Early Preparatory School . . . . n? 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Education and Parental Control . . . .131 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Eton and Clifton 140 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Educational Questions in 425 b.c 161 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 History, Geography and English . . . • i73 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Educational Authorities 1S3 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 "Secondary" Education 190 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 The Universities 211 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Considerations Suggested by the Voluntary 
 School Question 223 
 
 vii
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 2 
 
 Tommy's Honesty 23 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Tommy's Health 241 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Punishment 250 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Athletics 257 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 Day School r. Boarding School .... 267 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 The Foster Parent again to the Real Parent . 274 
 
 VIU
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 TO 
 
 HENRY JACKSON ESQ., D.LITT 
 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Etc 
 
 Dear Dr. Jackson, — 
 
 In the year 1873 you conducted the examhiatioii 
 for the Newcastle Scholarship at Eton. In the 
 course of that examhiation I was guilty of a piece 
 of schoolboy carelessness amounting to discourtesy. 
 The reproof which you administered so exactly hit 
 the needs of the occasion, both in quality and quan- 
 tity, as to convince me that you were a man whose 
 friendship was worth winning. My destiny happily 
 took me to Cambridge, and in course of time I suc- 
 ceeded in making your more intimate acquaintance. 
 We have seldom met, and not often corresponded
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 since those days ; but your approbation of my work 
 is still of great value to me. Consequently, when 
 you remarked, after reading my first literary effort, 
 that you would like to hear something of the English 
 schoolboy, I registered a vow within myself to give 
 you what you asked for. In the fulness of time the 
 present little volume has been put together. 
 
 To you who live among the aristocracy of intellect 
 in a society where Gargantua's advice to his son 
 Pantagruel to become "an abyss, a bottomless pit 
 of knowledge," would be accepted as an ordinarily 
 practical suggestion, much that I have written must 
 appear unnecessary. I am indeed conscious of a cer- 
 tain incongruity in submitting questions of reading, 
 writing and arithmetic to a Praelector in Philosophy. 
 
 It has, however, been my fate to have come into 
 close personal contact with more numerous varieties 
 ot my countrymen and countrywomen than are ordin- 
 arily accessible to the Professors and Lecturers of our 
 Universities or the Masters of our Public Schools ; to 
 have studied the Provincial as well as the Metro- 
 politan Press. 
 
 In the course of my experience I have been 
 repeatedly asked questions by persons of considerable
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 enlightenment which, had I known only the atmo- 
 sphere of our Public Schools and two great Univer- 
 sities, I should have thought superfluous, but which I 
 now see to be necessary. There is no discussion in the 
 following pages which has not arisen from an actual 
 question put to me, or which is not a reply to state- 
 ments appearing from time to time in the news- 
 papers, either in leading articles, or in the speeches 
 of public men, or in the letters of correspondents. 
 
 You will perhaps be surprised that I base my 
 defence of Latin chiefly on its mechanical value as an 
 instrument of training, and that I have not laid more 
 stress on the refining influence of a great literature. 
 I have had no opportunity of measuring the refining 
 influence of literature ; but I have had the oppor- 
 tunity of comparing the results of teaching Latin and 
 other languages on sound and unsound principles, 
 and of testing the worthlessness of the methods of 
 those teachers who inform rather than train. 
 
 The defence of the classics is usually conducted 
 by literary enthusiasts whose experience, even when 
 they are professed teachers, has been restricted, and 
 therefore fails to convince the man untrained in 
 literature ; nor are the advocates of Latin and Greek 
 
 XI
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 invariably free from superstition. To assume that 
 the Latin and Greek authors are alone worth know- 
 ing, and that all other writers are relatively of small 
 importance, is to create a prejudice against your case 
 at the outset. My inquiries have convinced me that 
 nothing or everything is worth knowing, and there- 
 fore that the place of any particular language in a 
 curriculum does not depend solely upon the artistic 
 merits of its literature or its value for conversational 
 purposes, but upon the accidents of our history to 
 begin with, and secondly, its adaptability to the pur- 
 poses of the trainer of intellect. 
 
 I am not alone in my opinion that there is a real 
 and grave danger at the present time of the destruc- 
 tion of our sounder educational methods. I do not 
 see anywhere around me the smallest trace of enthu- 
 siasm for sound intellectual training ; money is being 
 freely spent upon institutions in which it is supposed 
 that instruction will be given in the arts and sciences 
 which are applicable to the purposes of manufacturers 
 and merchants ; but in spite of the great inconveni- 
 ence which is inflicted upon the heads of families by 
 the chaotic condition of our examinations for the 
 ^professions and public services, there is no general
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 desire to establish order in place of confusion ; while 
 in the multiplicity of subjects which it is desirable 
 to know, the one thing essential to profitable dealing 
 with any subject, the thing which must precede and 
 lead to special technical proficiency, is absolutely and 
 entirely ignored — viz., a sound training of the mind 
 in the earlier stages of education. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest illustration of our national 
 apathy in these matters is supplied by the medical 
 profession. We all of us have, unhappil}', from time 
 to time, to call in the doctor. There are many 
 occasions in life when he stands between us and 
 torturing anxiety about ourselves or others ; there 
 are times when the whole brightness of our lives may 
 seem to depend upon the saving power of his skill, 
 when a mistake on his part may mean the loss of the 
 one person without whom life becomes mere exist- 
 ence ; and yet we impose a far severer examination 
 upon a boy of sixteen who wishes to become a 
 soldier than we do upon a boy who wishes to become 
 a physician ; and the same letters after the name of 
 a medical man may mean that he has submitted him- 
 self to the most arduous training that is attainable 
 for men of his profession, or that he has scrambled
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 into it through some provincial medical school which 
 cannot afford to reject candidates at its preliminary 
 examination. Here is a case in which our personal 
 convenience is directly concerned, but in which our 
 profound national ignorance of the importance of 
 mental training in its early stages and of its con- 
 ditions causes us not to insist upon regulations con- 
 ducive to our own safety. We see ourselves rather 
 as the parents of young people in want of employ- 
 ment than as persons who may suffer by the admission 
 of incompetent persons into a profession demanding 
 in an unusual degree sound judgment, scientific 
 habits of thought, wide experience, and a high 
 standard of honour. 
 
 There are certain discussions which you may miss ; 
 you might expect of me a description of methods 
 of teaching, or an outline of an ideal examination ; 
 but, in the first place, this book is not written for 
 teachers ; in the second place, no amount of reading 
 on the subject will enable a man to teach ; in the 
 third place, the best teachers are the most divergent 
 in their methods. I have known equally good results 
 produced by men whose class-room was apparently 
 a howling place for satyrs, and by men who com-
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 manded a pin-dropping silence. On the subject of 
 examinations I have incidentally suggested a means 
 of doing away with a large number of them — viz., by 
 properly organizing and inspecting our schools. The 
 accumulation of examinations and multiplication of 
 examining bodies is an evil. It gives me the horrors, 
 when I reflect in the watches of the night upon the 
 millions of hours that are wasted in looking over 
 examination papers. I shudder when I read the 
 statements in the newspapers of the numbers of 
 candidates who have been successful in Oxford and 
 Cambridge Local Examinations. I have, however, 
 expressed myself strongly against the practice of 
 setting fixed books in languages in Junior examina- 
 tions, because to do so is to substitute cram for train- 
 ing straight off. A boy who, at the age of thirteen^ 
 can, with the help of a dictionary, translate any piece 
 of Latin or French presenting only the ordinary 
 difficulties, has necessarily been well trained ; not 
 so a boy who can only translate passages from a set 
 book. 
 
 I have not said much about boys out of school,, 
 or boys among themselves, because there are plenty 
 of books in which they are truthfully portraj-ed^
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 •among which are not to be inckided Eric and his Hke. 
 I have only concerned myself with those aspects of 
 a boy's life which seem to me to be commonly mis- 
 understood. 
 
 You will probably detect an anti-parental bias in 
 my pages ; but you will be wrong. I certainly do 
 hold that there is such a thing as a profession of 
 teaching, and that the technical experience of a 
 teacher entitles him to claim at least as much defer- 
 ence as a lawyer or medical man of the same relative 
 training and experience. I am certainly to some 
 extent indignant that this fact is habitually ignored, 
 and that any human being, by the mere act of becom- 
 ing a parent or a town councillor, considers himself 
 a fully qualified educational authority ; but I have, 
 in fact, written this book chiefly for the sake of 
 earnest and anxious persons who have no means of 
 knowing w^hat is the best thing to do for their chil- 
 dren or of measuring what is being done for them by 
 others. I have been so repeatedly asked questions 
 by them involving first principles, that I have done 
 my best to establish what the first principles are. 
 This has occasionally led me to state facts, which are 
 none the less true because they are unpalatable to
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 those who like to think that sentimental emotions arc- 
 sound guides. 
 
 On such a question as spelling, the conditions to 
 which I have drawn attention are habitually over- 
 looked, though familiar to everybody ; and an exag- 
 gerated importance is, in consequence, given to bad 
 spelling, leading to much waste of time. I remember 
 very distinctly hearing you twenty years ago read out 
 the result of the classical Tripos, and comment on the 
 bad spelling. I do not think you would have done 
 so had you realized that bad spelling is not always 
 an indication of ignorance, or even of culpable care- 
 lessness, but simply of the failure of a very compli- 
 cated machine to work accurately under conditions 
 of unusual stress. The importance attached to spell- 
 ing in the Army examinations is absurd. No less 
 absurd is the respect paid to clerkly writing by men 
 of business. It is very convenient to receive business 
 letters clearly written ; but if that mechanical pro- 
 ficiency cannot be secured without a process amount- 
 ing to mental starvation, the accomplishment is only 
 suitable to clerks, and may be wholesomely neglected 
 by the son of the merchant. People \\ho write much 
 seldom write well. Sir Richard Burton remarks that.
 
 Epistle Dedicatory and Prefatory 
 
 though caHgraphy is considered a fine art by the 
 Arabs, their literary men write as badly as the liter- 
 ary men of other nations. 
 
 In conclusion, I may seem to you to have travelled 
 -out of my beat in discussing some questions con- 
 nected with Board Schools, I have done so because 
 one of the chief dangers assailing the good things 
 that we have, is the kindly but mistaken zeal of the 
 person who imagines education to be such a simple 
 thing that it can be the same for everybod)'. An 
 attempt to correlate the Board Schools with the 
 Public Schools is most likely to end in spoiling the 
 Public Schools. 
 
 This letter threatens to be as long as my book, 
 which I therefore summarily commend to you with 
 the assurance of a deep respect both for your attain- 
 ments and your character uninterrupted through 
 many years. In this sense, at any rate, I can pre- 
 sume to subscribe myself. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 J. C. Tarver. 
 
 The Red House, Darlington, 
 Fehmary 26, 1897.
 
 The Foster Parent to the Real Parent 
 
 Madam, — 
 
 I shall occasionally address my observations to 
 you personally rather than to your excellent husband, 
 because, among other things, I have observed that he 
 is increasingly in the habit of depositing upon }'our 
 shoulders the burden of responsibility which is in- 
 volved in bringing up a family. The conditions of 
 modern life are such that only a minority of fathers 
 spend all day and every day in the bosoms of their 
 families ; consequently there is a tendency for the 
 mother only to be saddled with cares which used to 
 be, and should be, shared by both parents. So far 
 as the girls are concerned, this arrangement is not a 
 serious calamity, for it is to be presumed that all 
 women know more of their own sex — its difficulties, 
 its strength, and its temptations — than any man. 
 But with the boys it is different. No English woman
 
 The Foster Parent to the Real Parent 
 
 has, as yet, been to a boys' school, and without such 
 an intimate acquaintance with boy nature as would 
 be involved in sharing their school life, no woman 
 can expect to have a clear appreciation of the rela- 
 tive importance of the things which surround boys at 
 school. 
 
 In laying my observations before you, I shall for- 
 bear, as far as possible, to theorise. I shall endeavour 
 simply to record facts ; but as facts are dull things, I 
 may occasionally allow myself the relief of poking a 
 little fun at myself, at you, and other persons highly 
 respected, in which case I hope you will pardon my 
 levity, remembering that a serious purpose is often 
 happily furthered by a jest. This is one of the facts 
 which I have observed during my twenty years' ex- 
 perience as a 
 
 Foster Parent.
 
 SOME OBSERVATIONS OF A 
 FOSTER PARENT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Of the Detestability of Schoolmasters 
 
 PERSONS of the gravest respectability, whom 
 one could not suspect of a joke, or even of 
 an exaggerated statement, without mistrusting the 
 foundations of civilized society, have occasionally 
 assured me that the schoolmaster is the natural 
 enemy of the parent. Circumspect researches have 
 convinced me that something more is intended by 
 this maxim, than that the schoolmaster is a person 
 wishful to be paid, and the parent a person who finds 
 it inconvenient to pay him. I have never heard it 
 observed that the butcher and the baker are the 
 natural enemies of the housewife, though I have 
 occasionally remarked that the father of a large 
 
 I B
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 family of daughters is apt to speak in disparaging 
 terms, and even with some irritation, of the 
 milliner. 
 
 When I hear things that I do not understand, it is 
 my habit to seek enlightenment and consolation in 
 literature ; but here, again, I am confronted with a 
 state of affairs which tempts me to declare that the 
 schoolmaster is the enemy not only of the parent, 
 but of mankind. Thackeray's schoolmasters ! What 
 a crew ! Tyrants to the children that they teach, 
 flatterers to the parents of their pupils ; ignorant 
 impostors, every one of them. And Dickens is no 
 better. Dickens with his Squeers, his Creakle, his 
 Dr. Blimber, and his noodle of a Dr. Strong. 
 Shakespeare gives us " Holofernes, a Schoolmaster," 
 in Love's Labour Lost, whose very name, borrowed 
 from Rabelais, is an outrage, if he were not other- 
 wise ridiculous. Mrs. Quickly exhausts her humours 
 upon Sir Hugh Evans, when acting in his magis- 
 terial capacity, and no one can respect the " Pedant " 
 of the Taming of the Shreiv. If we go further back, 
 Horace had to invent an epithet for the only school- 
 master whom he mentions by name, " Stripesome 
 Orbilius " ; while Plato attacks the profession from 
 every point of view, and Aristophanes, of whom more 
 anon, ridicules the whole art and mystery of teaching 
 in a fashion that would not be inapplicable to-day. 
 
 A few years ago some wiseacre lamented in a 
 periodical upon the inadequate treatment of the 
 maternal relation in works of fiction ; and discovered 
 
 2
 
 Of the Detestability of Schoolmasters 
 
 that the mother is ignored by romance writers unless 
 she belongs to low life, or can be used for the pur- 
 poses of broad comedy. But her fate is a happy one 
 in comparison with that of the schoolmaster, who is 
 only mentioned to be laughed at, and gibbeted as a 
 cruel monster or a smooth rogue. In fact, the only 
 character in literature whose fate is on a par with 
 that of the teacher of youth is the medical man, and 
 he, after many years of insult and oppression, has 
 suddenly been deified. Even Thackeray relented 
 towards Dr. Goodenough ; and nowadaj'S the popu- 
 larity of a work of fiction is secured by the presence 
 of a beneficent, semi-detective, hypnotising doctor of 
 medicine among its characters. I am even tempted 
 to go further, and say that to be a medical man is 
 now an important qualification in one who aims at a 
 successful literary career. 
 
 Who reads Tom Brozvn's Schooldays for the picture 
 of Dr. Arnold ? And, after all, what does the praise 
 of Dr. Arnold amount to in this book ? Simply, that 
 though learned and a schoolmaster, he was an ordi- 
 narily kindly mortal supplied with the average 
 measure of common sense, and not the malignant 
 despot or unpractical pedant which a schoolmaster 
 was expected to be early in the century. 
 
 I must, by the way, be understood to exclude from 
 my survey, as not belonging to literature, the whole 
 school of books written by schoolmasters for boys or 
 their parents, in which the magisterial character is 
 invested with such a combination of virtues as one 
 
 3
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 would expect to find in a person who is half detec- 
 tive officer and half guardian angel. 
 
 To turn to another kind of evidence. In 1870 we 
 as a nation set about seriously considering our educa- 
 tional deficiencies, and elaborated an Act of Parlia- 
 ment, in which we endeavoured to secure three main 
 points — one, that everybody should be taught to read 
 and write and do sums ; the second, that nobody 
 should be taught dogmatic religion except with his 
 parents' consent ; and the third, that the teacher 
 should not cheat the taught. As to the first two 
 points I shall have more to say later on ; for the 
 present I concern myself with the enormity of the 
 third, and record as an observation, that when we 
 first legislated elaborately to provide a system 
 of national education, we deliberately adopted the 
 assumption that the teacher, male or female, was 
 likely to be a rascal or an incompetent, and that the 
 only method by which we could secure on his part 
 a proper efficiency, and a decent attention to his 
 business, was to make his bread and butter directly 
 depend upon the results of his teaching. We did 
 even worse than that ; we set over him a body of 
 inspectors whose duty it was to report upon his de- 
 ficiencies, and award his income ; we never provided 
 that those inspectors should themselves be competent 
 to inspect. We never required that these persons 
 should produce evidence of having been accustomed 
 to teach ; and, as a matter of fact, for a long time 
 Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools were young men 
 
 4
 
 Of the Detestability of Schoolmasters 
 
 from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who 
 had passed examinations with distinction, but who, 
 for all the care we took to the contrary, knew no 
 more about teaching than a man who has been 
 washed knows about the manufacture of soap. It 
 took us rather more than twenty years to modify the 
 vicious system of payment by results ; and rather 
 earlier we took to appointing a subordinate order of 
 inspectors who had been teachers themselves. But 
 even in our legislative enterprise of 1896 we did not 
 attempt to make any provision for ensuring that the 
 opinion of experienced teachers should be heard by 
 the governing bodies of our schools ; we did not even 
 provide that the interests of this large and important 
 class should be watched by a representative on the 
 new Educational Councils, a provision which has 
 occasionally been made in the regulations for the 
 governing bodies of the so-called Public Schools. 
 
 Whatever may be the share of the uninstructed in 
 getting a particular Act of Parliament passed, its 
 details are ultimately in the hands of instructed 
 persons. The system of payment by results, for 
 example, was not elaborated by the common man 
 who had not been taught, and who might, therefore, 
 reasonably suspect teachers. It was borrowed by the 
 highly instructed persons who formed Mr. Gladstone's 
 Ministry in 1870 from some foreign country, and 
 must be regarded as the expression of their view, as 
 stating the deliberate opinion of men who had been 
 educated at Eton and Harrow, at Oxford and Cam- 
 
 5
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 bridge. At the present time, again, the ignoring of 
 the teacher's i<nowledge of his profession in the con- 
 stitution of a new educational authority — which, if 
 noticed by the Press at all, was, I have observed, 
 deliberately approved of by the journalists— was not 
 the work of the all-powerful artisan, or of the smug 
 middle-class tradesman ; it was the work of men of 
 the stamp of Sir John Gorst. 
 
 On the other hand, I have observed that men, at 
 any rate English Public School men, speak of their 
 old schools with affection ; they not unfrequently, with 
 the poet Praed, wish in mature life that they might 
 again be "happy boys at Drury's." The Eton and 
 Harrow match, and similar events, are thronged by 
 " old boys " ; they do not on these occasions seek out 
 their former teachers and abuse or rend them ; they 
 shake hands with them, and discourse pleasantly of 
 old times and old friends ; then they go back to the 
 House of Commons, and assist in the passing of laws, 
 which, alike by omission and commission, condemn 
 the schoolmaster as an imbecile or a thief. 
 
 Reasoning upon this contradiction, I have come to 
 the conclusion that however abominable and abomi- 
 nated the schoolmaster may be, qua schoolmaster 
 he is both lovable and beloved so far as he exercises 
 the functions of a foster parent. These functions he 
 does exercise in England to a very considerable ex- 
 tent. The larger portion of an English boy's life 
 between the ages of nine and nineteen, if he belongs 
 to the middle class, is not spent with his natural 
 
 6
 
 Of the Detestability of Schoolmasters 
 
 parents, but with persons to whom they delegate their 
 authority, who are to the full as well liked by their 
 pupils as the foster mother and foster brother of 
 mediaeval romances, and who are none the less well 
 liked because incidentally they are also schoolmasters. 
 
 I fear that in the course of this work I may incur 
 the displeasure of Tommy's parents from time to time 
 for several reasons: first and foremost, because I shall 
 invariably discuss our beloved little Tommy, as if he 
 were only one of many little Tommies, sharing their 
 imperfections and virtues, and not as if he were the 
 incomparable and isolated unit which his parents are 
 inclined to think him ; next of all, because I shall 
 equally invariably assume that I know more about 
 Tommy than his parents. 
 
 It is not a fact that the schoolmaster is the natural 
 enemy of the parent ; but it is a fact that no profession 
 is by nature so disadvantageously circumstanced with 
 reference to its employers. Our confidence in the 
 doctor is largely based upon the fact that in our own 
 persons we happily do not as individuals experience 
 all diseases. Our knowledge of disease is fortunately 
 limited ; whereas the doctor sees many and various 
 diseases, watches all the stages of a disease from the 
 first seizure to convalescence and the re-establishment 
 of health, and we submit to the treatment which he 
 has learned from experience to be good. We are con- 
 vinced that in the point of medical knowledge we are 
 at a disadvantage with him, and we resign ourselves 
 cheerfully to his guidance unless we happen to be 
 
 7
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 "peculiar people." When, however, it comes to dealing 
 with the foster parent, with whom we are equally at a 
 disadvantage in the matter of experience, we take 
 quite another line. The mother or father of half a 
 dozen children is usually prepared at a moment's 
 notice to dictate to a person who has brought up 
 several hundred children, and even to rush into print 
 with brand new theories of education. Alike in 
 private and in public, the ordinary citizen habitually 
 tells the teacher his business, because we all know just 
 enough of teaching not to know that we know nothing 
 about it at all. 
 
 The schoolmaster being thus always under tutelage, 
 and unable to prescribe the conditions of his work, is 
 subject to failure through no fault of his own. He 
 most commonly is obliged to abandon methods, which 
 he knows to be sound, in favour of processes, which 
 are totally unsound, at the dictation of a governing 
 body, or a board of examiners, or pressure from 
 parents ; he is frequently required to teach subjects 
 under conditions which render the effective teaching 
 of those subjects impossible, or to abandon systems of 
 moral or physical training which he knows to be of 
 the highest value, because some amateur has been to 
 Sweden or Germany. 
 
 For these reasons I am convinced that there is still 
 room for a book which will help to bring the parent 
 and the foster parent together, and show them some 
 of the causes of their mutual misunderstandings. I 
 have been, for instance, forced to ask myself from time 
 
 8
 
 Of the Detestability of Schoolmasters 
 
 to time whether our faith in our PubHc Schools is 
 defensible ; and in pursuing this and some other in- 
 quiries, I have observed facts whose setting forth 
 should do something to arrest our headlong course in 
 the direction of expensive experiments in education.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 On the Limited Power of Education 
 
 I DO not propose to conduct these papers on a 
 fixed and orderly method. I certainly have some 
 idea of what I want to have said before I come to the 
 end of them, but I have no intention of constructing 
 an educational system ; there are plenty of those in 
 existence already. I am more concerned in pointing 
 out what ideas are at present afloat with reference to 
 education. I was tempted, for instance, to the present 
 chapter by my daily Standard, which devoted a 
 column and a half to reporting the views which various 
 influential bodies were taking of the Education Bill 
 of 1896, Among them I noted the following : — 
 
 " The National Council of the Independent Labour 
 Party have adopted the following resolution in refer- 
 ence to the Education Bill : ' That this meeting, 
 whilst recognising the advantages to be gained by 
 raising the standard of half-time exemption from 
 eleven to twelve, and the transference to a new edu- 
 cation authority of duties now fulfilled by Boards of 
 Guardians as School Attendance Committees, never- 
 theless emphatically condemns the Bill now before 
 
 10
 
 On the Limited Power of Education 
 
 Parliament, in sanctioning the grant of public money 
 without direct and effective public control, and hereby 
 declares that no system of education will be satis- 
 factory which does not provide : (i.) That every 
 public Elementary School shall be brought into a 
 condition of thorough efficiency ; (ii.) That the 
 children in the Schools shall be so taught for a 
 sufficient period as to effectively prepare them for 
 the work and duty of life ; (iii.) That the children, 
 while under such teaching, shall be maintained by 
 the State.' " 
 
 It would be difficult to find a better text on which 
 to indulge in observations. 
 
 We observe, then, to begin with, that in the opinion 
 of the National Council of the Independent Labour 
 Party every public elementary school is not as yet 
 in a condition of thorough efficiency ; and proceeding 
 to the second paragraph of the resolution, we may 
 justly infer that, so far, the children in these schools 
 are not " so taught for a sufficient period as to effect- 
 ively prepare them for the work and duty of life." 
 In any other case this Resolution was superfluous. 
 
 " The work and duty of life " : what, in the name of 
 goodness, does this phrase mean? It sounds pretty 
 enough : work and duty are associated with all kinds 
 of commendable ideas. We all think well of those 
 who work and do their duty. Wliat, then, are we to 
 think of these persons who propose to hand over their 
 duties to somebody else, who claim to be exempted 
 from the duty of working that their children may be 
 
 II
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 fed ; who call upon the State to undertake all those 
 responsibilities which are usually associated with the 
 fact of being a parent. As soon as the members of 
 the Independent Labour Party have brought children 
 into the world they are to have no further trouble 
 with them. This meritorious act is in itself a fulfilment 
 of all obligations ; and it is right and proper that 
 Tom, who has no children, shall pay for the food of 
 Jack's twelve children, while they are being prepared 
 effectively for the work and duty of life ! Which 
 children, if they dutifully follow the example of their 
 excellent parent, will take the earliest opportunity of 
 evading both work and duty. 
 
 It is quite possible that somebody may say "these 
 resolutions are flat socialism ; the National Indepen- 
 dent Labour Party are notoriously foolish ; at present 
 they are of no political importance ; it is not worth 
 while seriously to consider what they say ; anybody 
 can see at a glance the absurdity of these proposi- 
 tions." I have, however, observed that this desire to 
 impose upon somebody else the expense of educating 
 their children is not confined to parents of the class 
 from whom the members of the National Council of 
 the Independent Labour Party are presumably drawn. 
 There is a general and mischievous tendency to look 
 upon all education as an eleemosynary business, to be 
 less interested in establishing good schools, than in 
 securing that all schools shall be cheap. I have ob- 
 served that a large number of well-meaning persons 
 in other classes are equally anxious to relieve the 
 
 12
 
 On the Limited Power of Education 
 
 virtuous artisan parent of the duty of feeding his 
 children, and of setting them such an example as 
 will fit them for the work of life. Subscriptions for 
 poor children's breakfasts, for Board School children's 
 dinners, for providing poor children with shoes and 
 stockings in winter, we are all well acquainted with 
 these things ; and what is the upshot of them ? 
 Simply that the voluntary beneficence of those 
 credited with wealth is now claimed as a right by the 
 less rich as represented by the Independent Labour 
 Party. Is it to be supposed that those heartrending 
 appeals to the charitable, with their piteous lists of 
 " cases," are only read by those whose tenderness they 
 are designed to move ? They appear in the daily 
 papers, and there is nothing to prevent the British 
 working man from perusing them, when he has satis- 
 fied his curiosity as to " doings on the grounds " and 
 the odds on the various " events " in which he is 
 interested. 
 
 To return to the more strictly educational aspect 
 of these resolutions, in what way are children before 
 the age of twelve to be prepared for the work of life ? 
 What is the " work of life," to begin with ? It is one 
 thing for you, another thing for me. For me it is to 
 indite observations, for you possibly to calculate the 
 motions of the sun and apparently fixed stars, to ex- 
 periment with X-Rays, and produce a photograph of 
 the interior of your mother-in-law ; for little Billie of 
 Loamham it is to drive the plough, feed the pigs ; for 
 his neighbour, little Tommy, it is to forge horse-shoes, 
 
 13
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 or saw planks, or bake bread ; while the work of life 
 to either of them in roaring Roughborough may be 
 anything from clearing out ashpits to riveting boiler 
 plates, or adjusting the delicate surfaces of the slide- 
 valves of steam engines. Clearly in this sense chil- 
 dren cannot be prepared at school for the work of 
 life before they are twelve years old. Even in one 
 village the " work " of life is so varied, that the special 
 preparation of each child is an impossibility ; and if 
 children are to be prepared at school for the work 
 and duty of life, it must be in some subject which is 
 common to all trades and professions. 
 
 Passing from the fact that what the Council of the 
 Independent Labour Party want done for their chil- 
 dren they want done at somebody else's expense, I 
 observe that their requirements have to do first with 
 what are called the practical concerns of life, the 
 pecuniary advantage of the individual, and in the 
 second place with moral obligations. In other words, 
 they share the accepted opinion that the province of 
 education is in the first place to fit a man to earn his 
 own living, and in the second place to render him a 
 reputable member of a civilized society. I here note, 
 to begin with, that these ends are to be secured by the 
 education that is to be got at school ; all other edu- 
 cating influences are ignored. The life of the home, 
 for instance, is not included in the preparation for 
 work and duty. In the second place, I observe that 
 there is no misgiving as to what constitutes elemen- 
 tary education — no doubt of its power to achieve the 
 exalted aims indicated. 
 
 14
 
 On the Limited Power of Education 
 
 We were told when the first Education Act was 
 passed, that we should save in prison rates what we 
 paid in school rates. The persons who made this 
 statement believed in it, and in support of it are 
 to-day ready to point to the criminal statistics and 
 the relative diminution of crime in proportion to the 
 increase of the population. I have not, however, ob- 
 served that rates and taxes as a whole have decreased 
 since 1870. They have distinctly gone up, and not 
 the least formidable item in the increase is the 
 additional expensiveness of education. There are 
 many forces at work concurrently with compulsory 
 education to reduce the number of criminals, not 
 among the least being the increased publicity of life 
 rendering the commission of crimes of violence most 
 difficult where the population is thickest ; while 
 rapidity of communication renders the escape of the 
 more refined felonious person almost impossible, it is 
 true that he can transport himself to a distance with 
 greater speed than in the pre-railway days ; but his 
 conveyance is outstripped by a machine which con- 
 veys intelligence more swiftly than any locomotive 
 apparatus yet devised. 
 
 It might further be inquired whether, notwithstand- 
 ing the Education Act, we do not spend largely 
 increased sums upon our police force and other 
 agencies for repressing crime. 
 
 We have then, it seems, from the practical point 
 of view, two sets of persons anxious to promote the 
 efficiency of our elementary schools — we have the 
 
 15
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 legislator and humanitarian, who wishes by the agency 
 of schools to reduce crime, and we have the parent 
 who wishes to secure a livelihood for his children. 
 
 We have also the parent who resents school alto- 
 gether as interfering with his wish to set his children 
 to work at an earlier age than thirteen ; and I observe 
 with considerable interest that this person is ignored 
 by the Independent Labour Party, for they are in 
 favour of increasing the half-time age by a year. It 
 is clear that the agricultural labourer is not largely 
 represented 'on the council of the independent 
 labourers. 
 
 Is there not, however, a fallacy in the assumptions 
 alike of the person who sees in education a means of 
 securing his child's livelihood, and also of the legis- 
 lator, who thinks that moral improvement is neces- 
 sarily associated with intellectual training ? 
 
 In the first place, when every public elementary 
 school is as efficient as the Independent Labour Party 
 desire, every child will be equally well instructed ; all 
 will be able to read, write, and do sums ; the whole 
 mass will be better equipped for clerkships ; all will 
 be equally able to calculate the odds ; in fact, the 
 individual parent will be at no advantage as compared 
 with any other individual parent, so far as the effects 
 of school are concerned. Inherited aptitude will come 
 into play after adequate instruction, as it would have 
 done had there been no instruction, though it may 
 show itself in a new department of life. I observed 
 some years ago in an article upon the then condition 
 
 I6 
 
 i
 
 On the Limited Power of Education 
 
 of the kingdom of Greece that compulsory education 
 was said to contribute largely to the instability of 
 ministries. No young Greek, who could read or write, 
 was content any longer to till the soil ; he became 
 a politician, and the incessant scrambling for places 
 of emolument, which thereby ensued, imperilled the 
 security of each successive government. In the same 
 way our Education Act has flooded the country with 
 clerks. If we add to elementary education instruction 
 in various technical processes, we raise the efficiency 
 of the nation — not an undesirable end — but we do not 
 pecuniarily benefit the inckividual. 
 
 Of the moral influence of education I propose to 
 speak at length, and therefore content myself for the 
 present with remarking that it is not the subject 
 learned which improves the morality of the individual, 
 but the process by which it is learned ; and for that 
 matter there is as much morality involved in learning 
 to forge a bar, as in dividing out to ten places of deci- 
 mals, possibly more. It is the discipline inseparable 
 from instruction which favourably affects the learner 
 from a moral point of view, not the thing taught. 
 
 I am perfectly ready to concede to those who claim 
 that crime has been reduced by the compulsory Edu- 
 cation Act, that, but for that Act, life in some of our 
 large manufacturing towns would be absolutely un- 
 endurable. It is not pleasant now, when the children 
 are out of school. Were it not for school, many of 
 them — the majority of them — would not know the 
 meaning of the words authority and control, until they 
 
 17 C
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 began to work in the factories. They are now fairly 
 amenable to the requirements of civiHzed society ; but 
 this is because, in learning to read and write, they 
 have learned to submit to authority — not because they 
 can read and write. The former of these accom- 
 plishments introduces them to the world of criminal 
 literature — the latter enables them to disfigure walls 
 and palings. These are an unhappy portion of my 
 observations. 
 
 i 
 
 iS
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Of Education and Instruction 
 
 A T the risk of being ignominiously treated as the 
 -^ ^ purveyor of stale news, I propose to make a few 
 further observations upon the distinction between 
 Education and Instruction. This distinction is 
 habitually admitted in theory, but when it comes to 
 practice, both in our private capacity as parents and 
 our public capacity as platform orators, politicians, 
 passers of resolutions, and members of debating 
 societies, we equally habitually ignore its existence. 
 Hence many of our blunders. I admit that the sub- 
 ject is beset with difficulties ; for the two things 
 overlap and intertwine in a manner which renders 
 accuracy of language and thought in dealing with 
 them almost unattainable. 
 
 A man's education begins and ends with his ex- 
 istence ; he never ceases to learn the meanings of the 
 things around him, to adapt himself to them, and 
 again mould them to his own purposes, from the 
 moment when in his mother's lap he clutches at the 
 unattainable bright object at the other end of the 
 room, till the moment when he lies down to die. He 
 may be more or less successful in his comprehension 
 
 19
 
 observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 of surrounding facts, more or less amenable to the 
 discipline which other existences impose upon him, 
 but learn he must after some sort of a fashion, or 
 be eliminated from the world of being. He differs 
 from the other animals in this, that whereas each 
 of them has to start afresh and make the best of his 
 inherited aptitude for himself, man alone can avail 
 himself of the experience of others, and can profit by 
 recorded speech. This fact is in itself so stupendous 
 that it has thrown into the shade the immense 
 amount of information which every human being 
 necessarily acquires for himself without the inter- 
 vention of words spoken or written. Which of us 
 can remember the time when he first learned that 
 objects upon which light falls in a particular way 
 can be grasped by the hand, and are round, while 
 others cannot be so grasped, and are flat ? When 
 did we first enter into possession of our toes, so that 
 we could accurately estimate the distance of objects 
 lying in our path and avoid tumbling over them ? 
 Has any human being a consciousness of having 
 learned the significance of common words ? That 
 association of sounds with things edible, potable, or 
 prehensible — when did it come to us ? This uncon- 
 scious education is continually going on ; even as our 
 faculties begin to fail and we enter on our second 
 childhood, we instinctively re-adjust our actions to 
 the powers of the imperfect instruments with which 
 we now act. 
 
 As the human body thus unconsciously finds out 
 
 20
 
 Of Education and Instruction 
 
 its aptitudes, and is educated by the necessities of 
 its existence, so every human being who does not 
 live absolutely alone is forced unconsciously to con- 
 form to the conditions of the society around him ; he 
 has to forego the satisfaction of some desires, he has 
 to engage in forms of activity which are disagreeable 
 to him, or else be done away with by violence or 
 starvation. This again is education, an elementary 
 form of moral education ; but it has very little to 
 do with information imparted through books or 
 otherwise. 
 
 In boarding schools the pressure brought upon the 
 individual boy by the aggregate of boys forcing him 
 to abandon some habits and to adopt others is so 
 strong that men who have been submitted to this 
 influence are unable to dissociate it from the process 
 of being taught, and thus claim for mere instruction 
 a power of moulding the character which really be- 
 longs to quite another class of influences. 
 
 It is not an uncommon thing to hear a man, whose 
 son has taken to vicious habits, complain that he had 
 given this son an expensive education ; as if the cost 
 of the education had some relation to its moral in- 
 fluence, and as if the expensive school alone were 
 responsible for enforcing the habit of self-control. In 
 the same way there are people who complain equally 
 unfairly that, in spite of our system of compulsory 
 education, the working man is little more civilized 
 than he used to be, that he still spends too large 
 a proportion of his wages on his pleasures, and is 
 
 21
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 still increasingly capricious in the mismanagement of 
 his affairs by means of strikes. 
 
 In both cases too much is expected of mere in- 
 struction ; even the large and powerful boarding 
 schools require some six years to fix their indelible 
 stamp upon a boy, which is as often as not recognis- 
 able as much in things indifferent and external as in 
 an increase of moral strength. We should not, then 
 demand much of the public elementary schools. 
 
 The controversy as to whether you can make a 
 man virtuous by teaching him is a very ancient one ; 
 we have documentary evidence that it has been in 
 existence for more than two thousand years. I have 
 not observed that a man's morality varies with his 
 learning, or that a man who knows least is necessarily 
 the least moral man. I do not suppose that any 
 Scotchman was ever morally the better for being able 
 to repeat the Shorter Catechism with verbal accuracy, 
 except in so far as he may have been " skelped " 
 during the process of learning ; and I am quite cer- 
 tain that the mere rote learning of the Catechism 
 of the Church of England has no appreciable effect 
 upon the morals of the English schoolboy. These 
 are both cases in which instruction is directly applied 
 for the purpose of moral education ; and this is in 
 spite of the fact that our daily experience would tell 
 us, did we choose to listen to it, that men are not 
 made moral by being supplied with information about 
 morality. I have never heard that those Arabs who 
 make a living by reciting the Koran have a higher 
 
 22 
 
 ^
 
 Of Education and Instruction 
 
 reputation for morality among their countrymen than 
 other " True Beh'evers." 
 
 To enlarge upon what has been said before, if there 
 has been a tendency to a diminution of crime in 
 consequence of the compulsory Education Act, that 
 diminution is not the consequence of the fact that 
 more men can read and write, but of the fact that 
 some discipline has been substituted for no discipline. 
 No child can learn to read or write without subject- 
 ing its limbs to some control, without learning to be 
 silent at times when it would like to make a noise, 
 without concentrating its attention upon something 
 besides its mere animal discomforts of the moment. 
 Instruction is thus, from one point of view, an instru- 
 ment by which moral education is given ; but it is 
 not itself moral education. 
 
 It is not generally held that drilling is a moralizing 
 process ; drill-sergeants do not give themselves the 
 airs of persons who are conscious of a great moral 
 mission, nor is the barrack-room the place to which 
 we look for moral nicet}'. In this, however, we are 
 unjust ; our troops would not be as effective as they 
 are in the field, were not a good many habits acquired 
 from military discipline, which arc less obviously 
 present in the raw material that is worked up into 
 Tommy Atkins. It is not improbable that we should 
 have done as much as we have done for the person 
 whom we compel to go to a board school, by sub- 
 mitting him to forms of drill tending to develop his 
 dexterity, and leaving him to discover the advantages 
 
 2^
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 of learning to read and write for himself. In one 
 sense we should probably have done more, for we 
 have been obliged to apply methods like drilling to 
 subjects which do not easily lend themselves to it, 
 and have done away with many of the advantages of 
 literary and mathematical instruction by the me- 
 chanical methods which we are forced to employ in 
 dealing with large masses of unwilling pupils, and by 
 reducing our teachers to the level of machines. 
 
 There is another moral education besides the edu- 
 cation of restraint ; let us call it the education of 
 ambition, and let us be understood to use the word 
 ambition in a good sense. Well-meaning persons, 
 themselves ambitious in the best sense of the word, 
 arguing chiefly from their own personal experience, 
 are under the impression that if the young human 
 animal is taught so much, lie will necessarily wish to 
 know more. 
 
 I have not observed that this is the case ; it is only 
 a small percentage of human beings who are in this 
 way ambitious. It is not an uncommon case for a 
 youth who has mastered reading and writing and 
 summing and book-keeping by double entr}^ and 
 who has discovered that these accomplishments do 
 not lead him to El Dorado, further to wish to learn 
 shorthand, or the Science of Electricity ; but this is 
 not from any yearning after knowledge in itself — he 
 merely regards these things as preparation for the 
 work of life, as wage-earning proficiencies. 
 
 Indeed, I am more often struck in all classes of 
 
 24
 
 Of Education and Instruction 
 
 life by the determination to learn as little as possible 
 than by an insatiable desire to learn much. When 
 a man has mastered enough information about his 
 own particular business to secure himself a livelihood, 
 in nine cases out of ten he is content to stop there ; 
 he is positively angry if you urge him to do more, 
 and is very resentful of the enterprise of a more 
 ambitious fellow-worker. In this case again mere 
 instruction does not necessarily prove to be a stimu- 
 lant. How many housewives have the smallest 
 understanding of the functions of the machinery with 
 which their daily wants are supplied, of the properties 
 of the gas which lights them and cooks for them, 
 of the laws which control the mysteriously gurgling 
 water in the pipes? How many men .who use the 
 telephone know what is likely to be wrong with the 
 instrument when it goes out of order ? How many 
 schoolmasters think it worth their while to be well 
 informed about a subject which they do not happen 
 to teach ? The absence of curiosity in schoolboy's 
 is very remarkable. I have known an intelligent boy 
 able to find his way about his native to\\'n \\'ho never 
 took the trouble to learn the names of the principal 
 streets. 
 
 25
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 On Readino: and Writin,(^ 
 
 'tJ 
 
 HITHERTO my observations have been chiefly 
 such as are possible to any human being who 
 walks about in the world with his e)'es open, and 
 may therefore be held to have no special value. To- 
 day, however, I propose to follow the example of the 
 great teacher of gastronomy, to mount the professor's 
 chair, and speak as a technical proficient. The con- 
 clusions to which I have come are the result of special 
 experience. They have been tested, so far as the 
 nature of the case admits, by experiment ; and I 
 claim to be listened to as one who is tainted with no 
 more than the common measure of human fallibilit)-. 
 In order at once to arrest attention, I start with what 
 will appear to most of my readers to be a violent 
 paradox. It is to this effect : the so-called elements 
 are not elementary at all. 
 
 The mere mechanical arts of reading, writing, and 
 calculating are so difficult that very few persons are 
 quite at home in all three of them. Even in those 
 circles whose members are held to be both educated 
 and refined, the minorit)- rather than the majority 
 
 26
 
 On Reading and Writing 
 
 read with absolute confidence, write with precision, 
 and calculate with certainty. It is open to any one 
 who doubts my assertion to select by lot a dozen 
 persons of both sexes from their acquaintance, and, 
 excluding those who are professionally literary or 
 scholastic, to invite them to read a page of Dickens 
 aloud, to write a page of English from dictation, to 
 cast up a page of accounts with decent rapidit}'. 
 Few will face the test, still fewer will come out of it 
 unscathed. When a fact of this kind is brought 
 home to the public intelligence, hands are lifted up 
 in amazement, and voices raised in condemnation of 
 the ineffectiveness of teachers who have failed to 
 secure better results. 
 
 It is rather more than ten years since the difficulty 
 of reading first attracted my attention, and I have 
 since then, wherever possible, endeavoured to ascer- 
 tain the cause of the difficulty in all bad cases that 
 have come under my notice. It happened that by 
 way of testing the writing and spelling of a class of 
 small boys I dictated to them a simple verse of an 
 English poem. There were only four lines in it, to 
 the best of my recollection there was in it no word 
 of more than three syllables, and the children had 
 learned the poem by heart on a previous occasion. 
 A small boy of eight wrote instead of the common 
 English word " very," " voght." On endeavouring to 
 explain to him the nature of his mistake, I discovered 
 to my surprise that the majority of spoken words 
 were indistinguishable to him ; and on pursuing my 
 
 27
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 researches with the rest of the class, I found that he 
 was not alone in his difficulty. He was not deaf, he 
 was not stupid ; he has since, I am happy to say, 
 acquitted himself with considerable distinction at one 
 of our lar^rest and best public schools, where the 
 competition is severe. A few months later, having 
 continued my researches, I wrote a letter to the 
 Journal of Education, and announced that I had 
 discovered a defect of hearing which was not deaf- 
 ness, which was compatible with the enjoyment of a 
 perfectly good ear for music — one of my worst cases 
 was no mean performer on the violin — and which, 
 for want of a better name, I christened sound-blind- 
 ness. The subject attracted a little attention at the 
 time, but the idea being a new one was summarily 
 dismissed by most people, and one person was kind 
 enough to suggest that I probably had a defective 
 pronunciation myself Lest anybody should be 
 tempted to adopt this view, I hasten to state that 
 I was perfectly aware of this possible source of error, 
 and had invited other persons to dictate for me, with 
 the same results. More than that, I did not rely 
 upon dictation alone, and I found that the same 
 class of mistake occurred when boys were not writing 
 from dictation, but describing things they had seen 
 in their own language. Longer experience, a wider 
 and closer study of the defects of readers, have con- 
 vinced me that I was right, and that bad spelling and 
 bad reading — the two commonly go together, not 
 always, for reasons which will be apparent later on — 
 
 28
 
 On Reading and Writing 
 
 are largely due to dulness of ear as well as to defec- 
 tive sight, and not to inherent wickedness. Before 
 proceeding further, I wish to say a few words on this 
 topic. 
 
 You have repeatedly urged me, madam, when your 
 amiable and attractive little Tommy has failed to 
 bring out correct answers to his sums in simple addi- 
 tion, or otherwise to fulfil your expectations ; you 
 have repeatedly urged me to " make him " ; you have 
 darkly hinted, though as a rule your maternal tender- 
 ness has not allowed you to specify the process, that 
 there are methods by which Tommy can be terrified 
 into precision ; you argue that if he knows how — and 
 if he does not know how, I, you suggest, am seriously 
 to blame — his failure to work accurately is due to 
 wilful disobedience or culpable carelessness ; in fact, 
 you adhere to the great stick theory of instruction. 
 I do not. I have had to do with a great many little 
 Tommies besides your little Tommy, and I have dis- 
 covered that Tommy terrified is, as a rule, Tommy 
 confused, and further, that that young gentleman is 
 usually happier in pleasing me and his other teachers 
 than in setting us at defiance. There has been no 
 greater obstacle in the way of understanding children 
 and their difficulties, and the great question of the 
 operation and development of their intellectual facul- 
 ties, than this rough-and-ready universally accepted 
 theory, that children don't get on because they \\^on't 
 get on, or because their teachers don't choose to 
 make them get on. I very early abandoned the 
 
 29
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 theory of Tommy's inherent wickedness, and have 
 thus at times discovered things about him which had 
 escaped his mother's observation. 
 
 Some thirty years ago, attention was aroused in 
 England by the new science of Comparative Philo- 
 logy, and I remember that at Eton we were required 
 to study a presumably elementary work on the sub- 
 ject written by Mr. John Peile — not of fox-hunting 
 fame. For the life of me I never could understand 
 that book ; its statements seemed to me arbitrary 
 and the only things that interested me were some 
 diagrams representing the different vocal organs in 
 the act of producing various sounds. I believe that 
 I did the book scant justice, and that it was really 
 an excellent handbook of its sort. What, however, 
 applies to that book as well as to other and more 
 elaborate works on the same subject is this — that in 
 accounting for the differentiation of the same original 
 sound in various kindred languages the authorities, 
 one and all, attribute the difference to modifications 
 of the organs of speech alone, and not to modifica- 
 tions of the organs of hearing. To give a simple 
 illustration : a German says " tor " — I spell phoneti- 
 cally — W'here we say " door." The philologists so 
 far have suggested that these different modifications 
 of the same original sound are due to something in 
 the shape or tensity of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, 
 teeth, and throat, which is different from something 
 in those of his Teutonic kinsman. It has never 
 occurred to any one that the two nations may hear 
 
 30
 
 On Reading and Writing 
 
 differently. Now I personally am inclined to attri- 
 bute these changes of sounds to variations in the ear 
 rather than to variations in the vocal organs, because 
 I have observed that the sounds so modified are not 
 impossible to pronounce in other collocations. The 
 sound of the initial " d " in door is, for instance, com- 
 mon enough in German, and so is initial " t " in 
 English. Take another illustration from the same 
 language — German shares with the Celtic languages 
 a sound terrible to English ears, the final " ch " which 
 we find in the Scotch " loch." Though we have 
 several words in common with the Germans in which 
 it occurs, our throats have become so disused to it 
 that most of us find a difficulty in pronouncing it, 
 even when we hear it correctl}'. If our vocal organs 
 alone had a difficulty with it, we should find the 
 same sound substituted for it wherever it occurred 
 in our own language. A person who lisps always uses 
 th for J, not any other sound, and the Northumbrian 
 always replaces " r " by the same mysterious eructa- 
 tion ; but final gh, wherever adopted into our 
 language in pre-literary days, appears with a diversity 
 of forms — the ear has simply refused to grapple with 
 it. Take some of the Celtic words that we have 
 borrowed for "hill," haw, hay, heuch, haff, haugh. 
 There is a village on a hill near Dover whose name 
 is spelled Heogham and pronounced Hu_^ham, while 
 in Yorkshire we have Kei^/^ley, pronounced Kei/'//ley. 
 This is what we make of an original final ch. Simi- 
 larly " Ilaigh " or " llech " gives us law, lea, ley. The 
 
 31
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 German leichen gives us liggen (God's liggens, a 
 Shakespearian oath) and lych (lych-gate). On the 
 other hand keichen gives us cough, pronounced coff^ 
 and I have somewhere seen German " doch," Eng- 
 lish thou^//, spelled \\\of. It would be perfectly easy 
 to multiply illustrations of this nature. Another of 
 my philological difficulties was the transference of 
 letters from one organ to another. For example, I 
 refused to believe that the Greek word " pente " was 
 the Latin word " quinque " ; but you, madam, could 
 have taught me better, for you will remember that 
 when little Tommy first began to speak, he said 
 " tut " instead of " cut," — not that he could not pro- 
 nounce the " t," for he used it in other words, and 
 always said " ta ta," not " ka ka." I have, however, 
 known a child use the " k " for the " t " in this inter- 
 jection. Northumbrians will remind me that they 
 say " keek " where other people say " peep," and so 
 indicate the relationship between " peep " and the 
 German " gucken," where, by the way, the g is 
 correctly pronounced with a distinct tendency to k. 
 In dictating to boys even of fourteen and fifteen, I 
 have often observed confusion between /, /, and k. 
 
 In these and most other cases it will be found that 
 the sounds mispronounced are not by any means im- 
 possible to the speaker's vocal organs ; he habitually 
 uses them in other words. Nor is the difficulty con- 
 fined to consonants ; and so far as the vowel sounds 
 are concerned, I invite somebody with more leisure 
 than myself to work out a theory of complementary 
 
 32
 
 On Reading and Writing 
 
 vowels, which are apt to be mutually interchanged ; 
 for instance, the Highlander says " n/ver " for " river," 
 and " wull " for " will " ; the cockney says " kiver " 
 for " cover " ; not because they cannot pronounce the 
 correct sound, but because they do not hear it in the 
 collocation. Why do we write " seperate " for " sepa- 
 rate " ? Because our ear is not sensitive to the differ- 
 ence between the two sounds, and the majority of 
 people pronounce both alike, I have ascertained that 
 the explosive sounds, and groups of consonants, lead 
 most frequently to error — the ear is confused by 
 them ; also that the beginnings and ends of words 
 are specially liable to confusion, as if the ear did not 
 at once attend and became soon fatigued. Thus a 
 large part of the process of learning to read is the 
 process of learning to hear. How can Tommy estab- 
 lish a satisfactory relation between sounds and writ- 
 ten characters, when the sounds themselves are not 
 clear to him ? 
 
 I have further discovered two organic defects which 
 stand in the way of reading and spelling, in addition 
 to the various forms of defective vision commonly 
 known. One is an abnormal sensitiveness to light. 
 A boy is dazzled by the paper at which he is look- 
 ing. Boys who have this defect are apt to miss the 
 ends of their words in writing, and even to be uncon- 
 scious for some time of the fact that they have no ink 
 in their pens ; the other is more common, and still 
 more curious ; it is a habit of transposing the order 
 of letters. A boy who suffers from this will write 
 
 33 ^
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 " on " for " no," and vice versa ; and the unfortunate 
 fellow, when he encounters an unfamiliar word, has 
 first to get the letters into the accepted order, and 
 not as he sees them. I have not observed that the 
 whole of a long word is reversed, but simply that any 
 two adjacent letters will be transposed. On two occa- 
 sions when I drew the attention of parents to this 
 weakness, the father informed me that he had suffered 
 from the same weakness. A boy who was fond of 
 drawing boats, habitually, when copying, drew his boat 
 the reverse way. When I have sent boys thus suffer- 
 ing to oculists, they have not been able to detect any- 
 thing amiss in the external organs of vision, and I 
 am forced to conclude that there are a certain per- 
 centage of human beings in whom the transmitting 
 apparatus from eye to brain is abnormally arranged, 
 I do not, however, altogether trust the verdict of 
 oculists and aurists on these matters ; because the 
 conditions of a medical examination are quite dif- 
 ferent from those of ordinary life. The state of 
 Tommy's eyesight and " ear-sight " cannot be satis- 
 factorily determined upon an examination lasting for 
 half an hour or so. To begin with, the lenses of 
 Tommy's eyes are still very elastic, and he can for a 
 short period make them work normally ; the test is 
 fatigue. If you find that one child makes one kind 
 of mistake when he is fatigued, and another child 
 makes another kind of mistake under the same 
 circumstances, you will not go far wrong in assuming 
 that there is some organic difference in the two 
 children which will account for it. 
 
 34
 
 On Reading and Writing 
 
 I do not for a moment wish to assert that all children 
 are equally careful, equally observant, equally anxious 
 to please ; that would be as untenable a position as 
 to maintain that all children hear and see equally 
 well. What I do maintain is that numerous cases 
 of apparently wilful carelessness are due to eye and 
 ear, and that the difficulties of reading and writing 
 are habitually underrated. When we have learned to 
 swim or ride the bicycle, we wonder that there ever 
 was a time when we could not do so, the thing seems 
 so simple. Similarly, when once we can read and 
 write fluently, we forget the laborious steps by which 
 we advanced to our proficiency. Further, by a natural 
 and inevitable process of selection precisely those 
 persons are called upon to deal with the instruction 
 of others in these arts who have had least difficulty 
 in acquiring them themselves, and who are therefore 
 tempted to impute " wilful carelessness " or dense 
 stupidity where there is only want of training. For 
 my own part I am firmly convinced that the vast 
 majority of educated English men and English 
 women were still learning to read and write at the 
 age of sixteen. Learning our own language is com- 
 parable with learning a foreign language. You may 
 have learned French from a governess with a Parisian 
 accent, you may be able to translate English prose 
 into excellent French ; but the first time you land at 
 Calais, you will be confronted by the difficulty of not 
 understanding what is said to you — you will not be 
 able to hear. It will take you some days, and possibly 
 
 35
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 weeks, before your ear recognises the sounds addressed 
 to it. Similarly a child's ear has to be practised in 
 the recognition of an enlarged vocabulary. A gift 
 for languages does not necessarily imply any great 
 superiority of intellect ; all it necessarily indicates is 
 an accurate sensitive ear. So far from finding that 
 boys must learn to read and write accurately in 
 English before going to another language, I have 
 found that the closer attention of eye and ear de- 
 manded by a foreign language renders those organs 
 more efficient in dealing with English. 
 
 If reading is difficult where eye and ear are alone 
 concerned, what of writing in which a third organ is 
 called into work, viz., hand ? Here there is all the 
 difference in the world between copying slowly and 
 laboriously from a model placed in front of you, — a 
 process which is not very far removed from drawing, — 
 and having that command of a pen that it writes for 
 you unconsciously. You cannot really write till your 
 pen is as obedient to your thought as your mouth is 
 when you speak ; and yet people habitually talk as if 
 reading and writing were things to be got over once 
 and for all by the time a child has arrived at some 
 age arbitrarily fixed. 
 
 One of the commonest experiences of a teacher is 
 to return a badly written but correct exercise, and 
 have it brought back again well written, but full of 
 mistakes, whereupon the pupil pleads in an injured 
 tone of voice, " Please, sir, I always make mistakes 
 when I try to write well " ; and his statement is per- 
 
 36
 
 On Reading and Writing 
 
 fectly true. His machinery is not yet in sufficiently 
 good working order to enable him to attend both to 
 the mechanical process of writing and the ortho- 
 graphy. 
 
 Who of us really have perfect command of our 
 writing? I, for one, have not. My pen plays me all 
 kinds of tricks, not unfrequently writing into this 
 sentence half of a word which is destined to occur in 
 the next sentence, omitting small words, and suc- 
 cumbing to the most ordinary traps in spelling — 
 " there " for " their," etc. — and I no more dare send 
 these pages to the printer without revising them two 
 or three times than I dare perform on the tight-rope. 
 
 You, madam, of course spell, read, and write unex- 
 ceptionably. I hope you may be spared any severe 
 illness, but if you ever fall a victim, and have the 
 good fortune to recover, you will find out during your 
 convalescence that reading and writing are not the 
 simple things that you supposed them to be, but very 
 difficult operations seriously taxing your nervous 
 energies. 
 
 I proposed to say something on the subject of 
 Arithmetic, but as this chapter is already over long, 
 reserve it for the next ; meanwhile, I hope to have 
 shown some reason already for believing that Tommy 
 may be backward in both reading and writing, and 
 not be such a very dull boy after all, nor unduly 
 neglected by his teacher. 
 
 -f r> o -^ *' 4 
 
 ± iC H --c > I
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Elements Continued — Arithmetic 
 
 THE summary of my observations on reading 
 and writing amounts to this, that whereas a 
 few exceptionally gifted individuals learn to read and 
 write with little difficulty, far the greater majority do 
 not enter into the possession of their faculties, so far 
 as communicating with other human beings by means 
 of writing materials is concerned, till they have gone 
 through a laborious system of training which does for 
 the eye, ear, and hand, and the nerves associated with 
 these organs, what a judicious course of gymnastics 
 does for the muscular system. I added that the 
 great difficulty of learning to read and write is not 
 generally commented on, because only those persons 
 comment on these things who have a natural apti- 
 tude ; the others do not become literary men, and 
 the tendency is to stigmatise as stupidity a mere 
 mechanical disadvantage. Of these I shall speak 
 at greater length when discussing what constitutes 
 stupidity. 
 
 Europeans, or at any rate the educated part of 
 them, have by now been in the habit of reading and 
 
 38
 
 On Arithmetic 
 
 writing for some thousand years, but the art of calcu- 
 lating by means of the Arabic numerals is by no 
 means so ancient. My encyclopedia informs me that 
 " the Arabic numerals were not generally introduced 
 into England till the commencement of the seven- 
 teenth century, and it was long after that time before 
 the decimal arithmetic became general." That is to 
 say that the educated part of us have only used these 
 numerals for three hundred years ; while the majority 
 of us must have a considerable number of illiterate 
 ancestors to show in our pedigrees during that period 
 who never used them at all. 
 
 The art of calculating with our present numerals 
 is, in fact, the employment of a new language ; indeed, 
 the representation of sounds by written words and of 
 things by sounds is perhaps a less wonderful thing 
 than the invention of this language of quantity for 
 the employment of which we have been developing 
 our aptitude only for ten generations. 
 
 To show what an immense step the adoption of 
 the Arabic numerals and the decimal notation really 
 amounts to, I would invite my readers to add, sub- 
 tract, multiply, and divide, employing the Roman 
 numerals. The thing is an impossibility ; and when 
 these numerals or similar numerals were alone in use, 
 calculations could only be worked out by employing 
 an abacus or some similar mechanical contrivance. 
 Tallies and tokens of different kinds were largely 
 employed by the ancients in keeping accounts. 
 
 We all have heard of the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 
 39
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 chequer, and have a more or less precise idea of the 
 duties of that functionary; but how did the Ex- 
 chequer get its name ? 
 
 There is extant a dialogue written by Richard, 
 Bishop of London, Treasurer of the Exchequer in 
 the reign of Henry II., in which the functions and 
 functionaries of the Court of Exchequer are described 
 in great detail and with becoming reverence. From 
 this we learn that the sheriffs who paid the king's 
 taxes and the officials who received them used a 
 calculating machine arranged like a chessboard to 
 regulate their accounts. The worthy Bishop de- 
 scribes this apparatus in terms of almost superstitious 
 rospect, and its importance was such as to give its 
 name to the Court in which it was used, and to the 
 officials who used it : they were called the " men of 
 the chessboard," " Barones Ex Scaccario." 
 
 Some years ago I had the good fortune to read 
 some of the farming accounts of the Monastery of 
 Christ Church, Canterbury, under the tuition of the 
 late Dr. Sheppard. The margins of the MS. were 
 covered with small dots, and my friend pointed out 
 to me that these dots were made by the clerk as he 
 added up the items. When he wished to add vii.rt'. to 
 ixJ., he made seven dots and nine dots on the margin 
 of his reckoning, and then counted up the total. I 
 understood from Dr. Sheppard, whose acquaintance 
 with similar MSS. was very extensive, tl^at he had 
 found this method of reckoning all but universal in 
 the Middle Ages, though we have not always the 
 
 40
 
 On Arithmetic 
 
 good fortune to be in possession of the rough copies 
 of the accounts, and therefore are not ahvays privi- 
 leged to study the mediaeval accountant's struggles 
 with arithmetic. 
 
 The men who were thus confounded by what we 
 consider an elementary branch of education were at 
 the same time developing the science of architecture 
 on strictly scientific lines, substituting for the clumsy 
 buildings called Norman the elaborate network of 
 such a cathedral as Salisbury, whose stability depends 
 upon correctly correlating an infinite number of di- 
 vergent and mutually resistent strains. Henry II., 
 whose treasurer used a clumsy calculating machine, 
 was collecting the revenues of the whole of Eng- 
 land and of half of France : these men were not, in 
 non-arithmetical respects, our intellectual inferiors. 
 Numerous similar instances might be collected to 
 show that the language of number has been one of 
 the latest achievements of mankind, so far as any 
 general use of it is concerned. Therefore let us not 
 be surprised that by far the larger proportion of 
 European children in the nineteenth century still find 
 it exceedingly difficult. 
 
 My experience induces me to think that in spite of 
 the great reverence paid to arithmetic by men who 
 consider themselves practical, its difficulties are uni- 
 versally under-rated. When I was at Eton, three 
 hours a week was considered a sufficient time to 
 devote to the three subjects, arithmetic, algebra, and 
 euclid, and I do not remember that any longer time 
 
 41
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 was given at the excellent preparatory school which 
 I attended before going to Eton. I have no hesita- 
 tion in saying that so little time as this is absolutely 
 insufficient, not merely if we wish to produce mathe- 
 maticians, but if we wish to enable the average boy 
 to deal confidently with such calculations as he may 
 be repeatedly required to make in the ordinary busi- 
 ness of life. I have no reason whatever for believing 
 that Eton stood alone in the practice of starving 
 mathematics; indeed, the practice was common, except 
 in such schools as similarly starved classics. There 
 was an assumption among schoolmasters and parents 
 that a sharp line divided the classical from the mathe- 
 matical mind, and that it was not worth while to 
 teach the classical man mathematics and vice versa. 
 About what might be done and what ought to be 
 done to develop the faculties of the average British 
 citizen there was not felt either curiosity or obligation. 
 For this way of looking at the question some 
 excuse is to be found in the occasional abnormal 
 development of the mathematical faculty in an 
 individual, comparable only to a similar abnormal 
 development of the musical faculty. Now, for my 
 own part, I am not ashamed to admit that though 
 I can read music to the extent of strumming with 
 both hands, and not merely with one finger, and 
 though I can enjoy a string quartette and a sym- 
 phony, the process by which the composer imagines 
 these combinations of sounds and puts them down in 
 black upon paper ruled with parallel lines is to me 
 
 42
 
 On Arithmetic 
 
 absolutely inconceivable ; nor did a short excursion 
 which I made into the science of counterpoint hel[) 
 matters much. Similarly the processes by which the 
 mind of a man works who is a born calculating 
 machine are as incomprehensible to the ungifted 
 shiner as the art of musical composition. On the 
 other hand, the man who has the mathematical or 
 musical faculty is utterly incapable of conceiving the 
 difficulties of the man who has not, for which reason 
 a great mathematician is likely to be the worst pos- 
 sible teacher of mathematics, while the lives of our 
 great composers appear to indicate that as a rule 
 their teachers were third-rate musicians. 
 
 Upon the subject of mathematics I have observed 
 generally that Tommy's failure to pass into Sand- 
 hurst at sixteen is largely due to a want of proper 
 method and sufficient practice before he was eleven ; 
 instead of giving only three hours a week to the 
 combined subjects — arithmetic, algebra, and euclid — 
 he should give an hour a day to arithmetic alone 
 until he can add, subtract, multiply, and divide with 
 quickness and accuracy, and can deal with vulgar 
 fractions and decimals ; after that he can drop some 
 of his arithmetic lessons and substitute algebra and 
 euclid. 
 
 I am tempted at this moment to say something 
 severe on the subject of money sums and the English 
 tables of measures generally. I find that they stand 
 in the way of abstract calculation : for instance, 
 Tommy, who has been taught money sums before he 
 
 43
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 has learned to deal with fractions, is apt to see | and 
 I as different from all other fractions, and as concrete 
 halfpenny and farthing. 
 
 I have observed that Tommy as a rule learns to 
 add and multiply fairly quickly, but that he is apt to 
 be puzzled exceedingly when required to divide and 
 subtract. This seems to me to indicate a connection 
 between the moral and intellectual faculties, which I 
 will leave to the philosophers to be discussed. Mean- 
 while I would further observe that more tears are 
 shed over arithmetic than any other subject, and 
 express my opinion that the subject should not on 
 that account be abandoned. In no case should 
 Tommy be taught mathematics by a senior wrangler. 
 
 44
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Educational Subjects 
 
 IN my last chapter I stated that the tendency of 
 schools had till recently been to starve one or the 
 other group of subjects, that classical schools had 
 starved mathematics, and vice versd. This state of 
 things has been considerably modified in the last fifty 
 years ; indeed, there has been to some extent a re- 
 action, and we suffer now from a plethora of subjects, 
 rather than from a rigid exclusiveness. I have, in 
 fact, observed that parents, foster parents, and teachers 
 are alike in a hopeless muddle. From this state of 
 confusion we shall never disentangle ourselves, till we 
 have learned to think of education not as a means of 
 supplying information, which for various reasons it is 
 desirable to have, but as a training process, which 
 enables us to turn our inherited faculties to the best 
 advantage. We are unfortunately in the habit of 
 estimating the desirableness of information by its 
 value as a marketable commodity. Even the in- 
 genious author of Mangnall's Questions proposed to 
 herself to provide young ladies with just so much 
 
 45
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 knowledge on all topics likely to turn up in ordinary 
 conversation, that they would not be at a disadvan- 
 tage in society ; in other words, that they would com- 
 mand a good price in the marriage market. In the 
 case of boys, a superficial acquaintance with a large 
 number of subjects is commercially valueless. For a 
 long time young men who were educated to earn their 
 own livelihood were destined for three professions 
 only, the Church, Law, and Medicine, and therefore 
 the study of the two languages, Greek and Latin, 
 in which the text-books of these professions were 
 written, was dominant in the schools. At the present 
 day the El Dorado of the anxious parent is placed 
 in the regions of engineering and manufactures ; con- 
 sequently the greater part of our modern enterprise 
 in educational matters is directed to creating schools 
 and universities in which subjects shall be taught of 
 practical utility. What is shortly called " Science " 
 has taken the place of language. 
 
 But Science is a term embracing an enormous field, 
 and therefore when you assure me, madam, that 
 Tommy or Plantagenet has a remarkable taste for 
 engineering, and insist that he shall at a tender age 
 be forthwith taught electricity, I am tempted to 
 reflect that it is not improbable that in a few years 
 time you will be demanding a course of aerial navi- 
 gation. In fact, the moment we begin to think of 
 how Tommy may earn his livelihood by his wits, the 
 number of subjects which we would prudently desire 
 him to be taught is practically infinite, such is the 
 
 46
 
 Educational Subjects 
 
 complexity of modern life. Therefore I must return 
 to what I have said in a former paper, and ask you 
 to consider whether it would not be wiser to limit 
 our ambitions for Tommy. As it is quite impossible 
 to teach him all money-getting subjects, would it not 
 be better to see if we cannot train him in such a way 
 as to enable him to make the best of any subject 
 that may turn up ? 
 
 On not a few occasions, when I have propounded 
 this doctrine, a fellow-citizen has said something un- 
 pleasant ; he has informed me that he never did 
 anything at school, was always at the bottom of his 
 form, and never gave a moment to work which he 
 could possibly divert to play ; and yet, he proudly 
 adds, he is now in such and such a position of wealth 
 and consideration, whereas A and B, who won all the 
 prizes and achieved great distinction for themselves 
 at the universities, are lost in obscurity. For these 
 and similar reasons he believes education to be all 
 humbug, and thinks that so long as a boy has a jolly 
 time at school, it does not much matter what he 
 learns there. 
 
 When people talk like this, I say nothing ; I do not 
 even shrug my shoulders, for I know how much 
 excuse there is for this scepticism as to the benefits 
 to be derived from education, and am willing to 
 concede straight off that if the merits of the educa- 
 tional system pursued, say at Eton, thirty years ago 
 are to depend upon the amount of skill any individual 
 acquired in writing Latin verses, or translating a 
 
 47
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 Greek play, nearly nine-tenths of the old Etonians 
 now in existence could demonstrate that their educa- 
 tion had been a failure. They would say that they 
 left school unable to write Latin verses or to translate 
 Euripides, and even if they had acquired these accom- 
 plishments they would say that they never made any 
 further use of them. Some of them would even go 
 further than this, and point out that the time spent 
 over Latin verses might have been spent over History 
 and Geography, and Modern Languages, and suggest 
 that these subjects would have been continuously 
 studied in after life, and would have been of great 
 practical advantage. 
 
 I propose to speak In another paper of the standard 
 by which the educational value of any particular 
 subject should be judged, and merely pause now to 
 remark that I believe Latin verse-writing to be one 
 of the most wasteful forms of educational treadmill 
 yet discovered, though I concede that I have found 
 the elements of that art useful in the improvement of 
 spelling. 
 
 I am not alone in this opinion, and yet for very 
 many years the curriculum of the most important 
 school in England was based upon Latin verses, its 
 lowest form was called " nonsense," because in that 
 form the smallest boys were occupied in fitting mean- 
 ingless words together according to the rules of Latin 
 Prosody ; they were afterwards promoted to " sense," 
 and so forth. I cannot help thinking that this and 
 similar eccentricities on the part of the teachers in 
 
 48
 
 Educational Subjects 
 
 our universities and public schools have a good deal 
 to do with the mistrust and dislike of teachers to 
 which I alluded in my first paper. If an earnest 
 non-public school statesman had discussed educa- 
 tional systems with a public schoolmaster thirty 
 years ago, he would have found him a violent 
 partisan of classics or mathematics, and he would 
 ultimately have discovered that this partisanship was 
 based upon a personal predilection for one or the 
 other branch of study ; and when he pursued his 
 inquiries further, and tried to discover what benefit 
 the taught derived from studies so dear to the 
 teacher, he would have had to be content with high- 
 sounding generalities. The pa^dagogic bias towards 
 particular subjects is as violent as an odium theolo- 
 gicum. To this day there are men who stigmatise 
 all mathematical and scientific studies as " stinks," 
 and I have even heard a highly cultivated person 
 class French and German in the same category. Our 
 own age is not peculiar in this respect. The disputes 
 between " the nominalists " and " the realists " were 
 not unattended with bloodshed in the Middle Ages, 
 and the fashionable schoolmasters of his day did not, 
 so far as we are informed, protest against the execu- 
 tion of Socrates. 
 
 A robust faith in his subject is an excellent quali- 
 fication in a teacher, and I hope to be able to suggest 
 later on reasons for thinking that this violent parti- 
 sanship towards one or the other branch of studies 
 has its good features ; but for my present purpose I 
 
 49 E
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 wish to indicate that it has tended to obscure the 
 question at issue between the teachers and the 
 learners, and the persons who pay for the teaching. 
 When the person with no educational prejudices, but 
 an earnest wish to discover the most profitable sub- 
 jects in which to instruct his children, finds that the 
 scientific teacher has an unlimited contempt for the 
 classical teacher, and that the pure mathematician 
 despises both of them, and that the classical teacher 
 returns this contempt with interest, and perhaps more 
 effective use of abusive language, he naturally makes 
 up his mind that none of them have sound knowledge 
 on the subject, and pins his faith on technical in- 
 struction, as a sound money-getting kind of learning. 
 At the same time he often accepts the curriculum 
 even of a bigotedly classical school, because he sees 
 that along with what he does not understand, much 
 is taught that is comprehensible to him, notably a 
 certain generous activity of life. 
 
 Ultimately the only sound reasons for choosing 
 one or the other branch of study as an educational 
 instrument, must be drawn not from the personal 
 taste of the teacher, but from the intellectual gain to 
 the person who learns. A may have a knack of 
 writing elegant Latin lyrics, B may be in possession 
 of unusually expeditious methods of calculating the 
 distances of the fixed stars, C may be able to expose 
 to our view with the utmost neatness all the internal 
 arrangements of a frog, and all three will declare that 
 no branch of study gives so much pleasure, or is so 
 
 50 
 
 I
 
 Educational Subjects 
 
 intellectually profitable as that in which they are 
 severally engaged. Shall we send little Tommy to 
 all of them, or to which of them ? 
 
 Personally I should not choose to send little 
 Tommy to either of these gentlemen. When he has 
 begun to wear high collars and to affect gorgeous 
 ties, when he is uncomfortable in the society of 
 grown-up persons of both sexes— in short, when he is 
 ceasing to be a boy and becoming a young man, then 
 it will be time to think of setting him to get what 
 information he can out of distinguished experts ; 
 meanwhile, I should prefer to send him to a teacher 
 who had only one subject, viz., little Tommy himself. 
 
 Here has been the vice of teachers of all ages and 
 all times ; the majority of them have been learned 
 men wrapt up in the pursuit of special branches of 
 knowledge, and only teaching as a collateral in- 
 dustry. They have omitted to study that very im- 
 portant subject, the one subject of a teacher, the 
 person who is taught. 
 
 51
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Tommy's Mind 
 
 SOME time ago I was in despair of arriving at any 
 sound knowledge of the inner workings of Tommy's 
 mind. I knew that I should never be allowed to 
 vivisect Tommy, and that method being inadmissible, 
 I saw no hope of finding out why certain things are 
 supremely difficult to him, and certain other things 
 present no difficulty whatever. Cock-sure persons 
 tell me that there is some want of skill in my own 
 way of dealing with Tommy's difficulties ; but on 
 comparing notes with my colleagues, I find that I am 
 not singular in my experience. 
 
 An acquaintance of mine once had the honour of 
 personally conducting a distinguished Celestial over 
 an English arsenal. The party traversed range 
 after range of shops filled with every imaginable lathe 
 drill and plane ; wheels whirled overhead, driving bands 
 sped ubiquitous ; molten steel was conveyed about in 
 pails and swung to its destination by cranes ; red hot 
 bars of metal were wound out of long furnaces on to 
 drums, and then welded by steam-hammers into the 
 
 52
 
 Tommy's Mind 
 
 structure of lOO-ton guns ; but of all these things the 
 presumably intelligent visitor took no heed — he sur- 
 veyed all with the same imperturbable politeness and 
 the same smile of innocence. At last the party found 
 themselves in a large shop, whose further end was 
 formed by a brick wall, in the gable of which was a 
 doorway some twenty feet from the ground, unpro- 
 vided with a ladder or staircase. It opened into a loft 
 used for storing timber, and through it planks used to 
 be lowered into the shop when required. On observing 
 this doorway, the Celestial visitor betrayed signs of 
 violent excitement. He called the interpreter, and 
 asked a question, his first question ; it was, whether 
 through that door the workmen entered and left the 
 works. Now, as my acquaintance observed, what can 
 have been going on in the mind of that Chinaman ? 
 
 To this day, after twenty years' experience of 
 Tommy's difficulties, the process by which he has 
 arrived at some prodigious blunder is often equally 
 mysterious to me. I still feel at times that I know no 
 more about his mind than I do about the mind of a 
 Chinaman. Therefore I look for great things from 
 the further development of Rontgen rays ; they are 
 only in their infancy at present. I hope to live long 
 enough to see the inside of Tommy's head, when he 
 is in the act of doing a Latin exercise, projected on a 
 white sheet, enormously magnified : then we shall 
 discover minute points of important organs not coming 
 into contact at the right moment, or losing their way 
 and encountering the papillae of other organs ; and 
 
 53
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 we shall send for the surgeon, who will readjust the 
 internal mechanism of Tommy's head and make a 
 genius of him, as easily as he now cuts out his tonsils, 
 and with equal lightness of heart. 
 
 It has been my habit for many years to investigate 
 the origin of Tommy's mistakes, and not summarily 
 to ascribe them to carelessness or want of application ; 
 because, granted that Tommy's object is to get through 
 his work with the least possible amount of exertion, 
 there remains the further question, why do some 
 things apparently demand more exertion of him than 
 others, while to his teacher they appear equally easy 
 or equally difficult ? Why, for instance, in spite 
 of diagrams, illustrations, explanations, cajolements, 
 menaces, bodily torture, can no boy be trusted to 
 remember the difference between latitude and longi- 
 tude ? Why does he invariably describe the one in 
 the terms of the other ? Why does he find the fourth 
 proposition of the First Book of Euclid insuperably 
 difficult and pass gaily through the eighth? Why 
 cannot even intelligent boys translate the future par- 
 ticiple and gerundive in Latin, though the same boys 
 may make no difficulty about the far more complicated 
 " quominus " and " quin " ? Why does Tommy prefer 
 being called bad names, buffeted and smitten for 
 months together rather than dissect a sentence to find 
 its subject, though he knows the process perfectly 
 well, and is equally well aware of the direful conse- 
 quences of neglecting to apply it ? I am not speaking 
 of those long, terrible sentences invented by young 
 
 54
 
 Tommy's Mind 
 
 examiners, in which the subject is itself a sentence 
 buried beneath a mass of co-ordinate and subordinate 
 clauses, adverbs and epithets, but of such a simple 
 sentence as " in the garden lay the dog," where the 
 average Tommy year after year translates •' the dog " 
 by " canem." I know why he always translates " The 
 beggar was made king" "Mendicus factus est regem " ; 
 it is because some misguided person once told him 
 " that the accusative comes after the verb," and that 
 fact once grasped he sticks to, as a firm rock, a haven 
 of refuge in the general shipwreck of parts of speech. 
 The differences between transitive, intransitive and 
 link verbs involve abstract conceptions with which he 
 is incapable of dealing, or at least prefers to think he 
 is, which amounts to practically the same matter. 
 
 The Rev. A. Wilcox has written an ingenious Latin 
 Grammar and exercise book, in which the difficulty of 
 avoiding abstract terms in elementary grammar is to 
 some extent got over ; but even his excellent little 
 book merely postpones the difficulty ; some day or 
 other Tommy has to make use of the terminology of 
 grammar, and then begins the torment of his teacher. 
 
 In short, Tommy's mind deals with the concrete, 
 and with isolated facts, rather than with abstractions 
 and the relations of facts. On each and every occasion 
 he relies on memory rather than reason. 
 
 It is a common experience of teachers to be told by 
 a parent, who believes himself to have sound views on 
 education, that he expects his boy to " master " his 
 English grammar before he begins Latin. Such a 
 
 55
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 demand has to be accepted in silence. It is not advis- 
 able to tell a parent of this kind that he does not know 
 what he is talking about. I believe that in the imagi- 
 nation of people who talk like this, " mastering gram- 
 mar " signifies saying a number of rules by heart, and 
 the error is the more pardonable, because grave and 
 learned men held the same view for many years. The 
 correct repetition of rules is, however, a very different 
 thing from their application : though in the old schools 
 grammar teaching simply meant learning a number of 
 Latin rules by heart, of whose meaning the pupil was 
 as often as not completely ignorant. 
 
 The essential distinction between sound teaching 
 and " cram " depends ultimately upon the fact that 
 the former develops a capacity for dealing with the 
 relations of facts, the latter, temporarily, as a rule, but 
 in a very few cases, permanently, impresses facts upon 
 the memory, without enlarging the comprehension of 
 them. Tommy in his early years lends himself to 
 cram, and every possible form of pressure even now, 
 and by persons who profess to distrust cramming, is 
 put upon his teacher to cram him. It is impossible, 
 for instance, to dazzle a parent or the governor of a 
 school by a display of Tommy successfully grappling 
 with the difficulties of a Latin exercise ; but much 
 honour may be gained by putting him on a platform 
 spouting Shakespeare in studied attitudes. 
 
 When I reflect how much of the curriculum of fifty 
 years ago was taken up by mere repetition lessons 
 whether of grammar rules, or English, Latin and 
 
 56
 
 Tommy's Mind 
 
 Greek poetry, I quite understand the prominence of 
 the bugbear of " cram " in the apprehensions of those 
 who were thus taught ; but I have not observed a 
 development of any wide intelh'gence as to what con- 
 stitutes cram. There is just as much " cram " involved 
 for instance, in learning a number of scientific formulre 
 by heart, as in similarly learning a number of lines of 
 Virgil, and you may be able to reel off all the names 
 of all the places that jute and hemp come from, 
 without being any nearer an intelligent use of geo- 
 graphy _^than if you had recited " Propria quae maribus," 
 etc. 
 
 I have in not a few cases observed that the posses- 
 sion of a powerful rote-memory has been a distinct 
 drawback to Tommy. I have known him long delayed 
 in the process of learning to read, because he could 
 repeat with accuracy whatever had been read to him ; 
 
 I have known him infallible in remembering the 
 translation of a short story without being able to fit 
 the individual English words to their French or Latin 
 equivalents. I have even known him — this is a solitary 
 case — able to write out from memory with absolute 
 accuracy, after twenty minutes' preparation, two whole 
 octavo pages of a French book, of whose meaning he 
 was totally ignorant. 
 
 I see you beginning to look very grave, madam ; 
 you are dying to ask me whether I consider it wrong 
 to develop the memory. Not at all ; but there are 
 two kinds of memory : the one which I have just 
 been describing is showy, of great practical utility 
 
 57
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 to actors and professors of recitation, but by itself 
 of little value in the ordinary concerns of life. The 
 memory which we wish to cultivate is the memory 
 of facts, whether in language, or in science, or in 
 business. A man whose mind is well stored with 
 facts, and who is in the habit of considering the 
 significance of those facts, and their possible com- 
 binations with other facts, is prepared to deal m aa 
 able fashion with all the problems which may be 
 submitted to him, not only with questions of nomina- 
 tive and accusative. To be able to quote a page of 
 French prose is of no practical utility to Tomm)', 
 unless he can and does analyse the relations of the 
 words in that page ; and he more nearly approaches 
 the standard of being a scholar if he can remember 
 that a certain word is used with an unusual signifi- 
 cation on a particular page of a book that he has 
 read than if he can say the whole book off by heart 
 from beginning to end. It is the recording not the 
 reciting memory that is useful ; united with certain 
 other faculties it gives us our inventors, our com- 
 posers, our successful men of business. Some persons 
 have it developed so strongly as to use it uncon- 
 sciously, and to ascribe to intuition or a flash of 
 genius what is really the rapid adjustment of recorded 
 knowledge to unforeseen circumstances. 
 
 I have a friend, a solicitor, who told me that, as 
 is not unusual with men of his profession who wish 
 to keep their clients out of the lawcourts, he once 
 allowed the solicitor to the opponents in an impend- 
 
 58
 
 Tommy's Mind 
 
 ing suit to look through a box full of letters ; the 
 suit never came into court. Two years later the 
 same solicitor asked to be allowed to look at the 
 same letters again. On receiving permission, he 
 hastily ran through the documents, — there were a 
 considerable number of them, — and then said, " Two 
 letters are missing ; they were of such and such 
 dates." " You must be mistaken ; the box has not 
 been opened since you were last here." Eventually 
 the two letters were found sticking inside the box. 
 To show the extent of that man's recording power, it 
 is necessary to add that the letters in question were 
 of no special importance. 
 
 This is the kind of memory which can be developed 
 and trained with advantage, and which, so far as my 
 experience goes, is most expeditiously and soundly 
 developed by training in language and mathematics ; 
 not by learning the names and dates of kings and 
 battlefields, the heights of mountains and the names 
 of islands in the /Egean Sea. 
 
 59
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Some of Tommy's Blunders 
 
 EVERY now and then some ingenious person 
 favours us with a collection of absurdities drawn 
 from examination papers, and Tommy at all ages is 
 exhibited for our amusement. To the professional 
 teacher such things arc only too familiar, and soon 
 cease to provoke a smile ; but there is a lesson to be 
 drawn from most of them. Some of them cannot be 
 explained without recourse to Rontgen's rays ; the 
 majority are directly or indirectly derived from 
 Tommy's inveterate dislike of names. This is the 
 way in which he narrates to a schoolfellow the plot 
 of some stirring shocker which he has just been 
 reading. " There was a chap that ran away to sea, 
 you know, and there he fought with a lot of pirates 
 and chaps and Red Indians, and then the other chaps 
 said they wouldn't have him for a leader because the 
 other chap and he had fallen in love with the same 
 girl, or some rot of that sort, and then he was killed ; 
 
 00
 
 Some of Tommy's Blunders 
 
 at least, he wasn't killed exactly, but you think that 
 he's dead, but of course he turns up all right and kills 
 the other chap, and she marries him in the end, but 
 somebody shoots her in church. It's awfully jolly." 
 I do not believe I am in the least over-stating the 
 case when I say that the average boy reads his books 
 without reading the names of the characters and 
 places even to himself; he is too impatient to get to 
 the end of the story, and considers the names of very 
 small importance compared with the incidents. His 
 gratitude to the author is so feebly developed that he 
 never looks at the title page, unless somebody offers 
 to give him a book by the same author, who then 
 appears to him as the name of a brand, not a per- 
 sonage ; he is as little interested in Messrs. Henty 
 & Russell as champagne-drinkers are romantic 
 about the widows Mumm and Cliquot, and talks 
 of a " Henty " as wine-drinkers talk of a " Bur- 
 gundy." 
 
 Those indefinite gentlemen, Messrs. Thingumbob, 
 What's-his-name, and So-and-so, cling to us all our 
 lives, recall to us the period when we could not see 
 that there was anything in a name, and remind us 
 that we have not altogether shaken off the slovenly 
 intellectual habits of those early days. 
 
 Naturally the study of the Bible lends itself in an 
 uncommon degree to Tommy's ingenuity in the dis- 
 covery of absurdities ; his acquaintance with it begins 
 at a time when he cannot read with ease, and when 
 the unfamiliar forms of the names paralyse his small 
 
 6i
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 powers of analysis. He seldom gets more than a 
 general outline of the names; two or three easy ones 
 he grasps, and the rest welter sadly like jelly-fish in 
 the fluid depths of his imagination. If he is asked 
 who did a certain thing — reprove Ahab, for instance — 
 he is not unlikely to reply David or Jacob, as these 
 are easy names, and to him one name is as good as 
 another ; and he thinks it rather a smart stroke of 
 business, when he is asked what he knows of Moab, 
 to say that he was a wash-pot, and led the Israelites 
 through the wilderness. Not being quite sure whether 
 he is being questioned about Moses or Moab, he 
 combines his information, hoping that some of it may 
 be correct. I have known him say that Rabshakeh 
 was the mother of Uriah — his mind dealing with the 
 names of Bathsheba and Rabshakeh much as if he 
 had only seen them on a signboard through a fog, 
 and mother being a safe relationship to ascribe to 
 any female. Why he should have grasped the name 
 " Uriah " I do not know, any more than I know why 
 he always spells Israel, Isrml, and Sobmon, Sol^imon ; 
 Jerusalem I forgive him, but — to digress for a mo- 
 ment to his mis-spellings — I cannot forgive him 
 ' transaction " ; why this extra a ? Rep/tition, which 
 is also ineradicable, follows the common pronuncia- 
 tion, so do " sepperate " and " buisness," but why 
 again " genitive " and " accus/tive " ? 
 
 Tommy's blunders in geography, which, as a rule, 
 afflict his parents more than any of his misde- 
 meanours, except his incapacity to deal with money 
 
 62
 
 Some of Tommy's Blunders 
 
 sums, are similarly due to his habit of shirking 
 names. If he is asked to mention the names of the 
 five highest mountains in Europe, he writes down the 
 five names of mountains that he happens to know ; if 
 he does not happen to know five, he chances a river 
 or a cape, and the worst of it is, that when once he 
 has committed himself to an error of this kind, it 
 becomes indelibly fixed in his memory. Having once 
 said that Mount Athos is on the other side of the 
 Straits of Gibraltar, he says so to the end of the 
 chapter, and is convinced that it is so situated. This 
 fact effectually overthrows the theory of a friend of 
 mine, that Tommy is probably right in his blunders 
 and we are all wrong ; that he being nearer to a state 
 of previous existence than grown-up persons, carries 
 with him correct reminiscences of the eternal ideals, 
 and that when he spells Solomon with an a, he does 
 so because it is so spelt. There is no state of pre- 
 vious existence in which Mount Athos and Mount 
 Atlas exchanged places. 
 
 Tommy again has no conscience whatever in the 
 matter of accurate information. Any information is 
 good enough for him, and he has very little sensitive- 
 ness to inconsistency in statements. He will gravely 
 tell you in the same breath that Edward the Black 
 Prince was the son of Edward HI., and that his 
 father's name was Richard H. ; that there are twelve 
 inches in a foot, and that a foot is twenty-two inches 
 long. 
 
 63
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 No, madam, you are wrong. I have not had 
 exceptionally stupid boys to deal with. I am giving 
 you examples of the blunders of boys who have since 
 proved that their abilities were above the average, 
 and my object in doing so is to suggest to you 
 that perhaps, after all, there may be something 
 more in education than you are disposed to admit ; 
 in fact, that while sound training is necessarily 
 a slow and laborious process, it does bring its 
 rewards. 
 
 Professor A. M. Worthington has written an excel- 
 lent introduction to the study of physics ; it consists 
 almost entirely of instruction in methods of measur- 
 ing and the right manner of using measuring tools, 
 and of recording observations made with their aid. 
 He had found by experience that the ordinary boy of 
 fifteen had no conception of the importance of ac- 
 curate measurement, no idea of the way in which 
 measures were taken, and that the recorded results of 
 his experiments in light and heat and magnetism 
 were valueless till he had been put through this pre- 
 liminary training. In the same way I have found 
 boys, whose parents credited them with a passion for 
 natural history, quite incapable of describing the 
 simplest specimen of the insect world ; the wish to 
 know something about these things is there, but not 
 the wish to possess orderly and accurate information. 
 
 Ultimately we return to a point from which we 
 started early in the series of my observations, viz., 
 that reading is a very difficult art and writing still 
 
 64
 
 Some of Tommy's Blunders 
 
 more so ; but at that time we were concerned chiefly 
 with the mechanical difficulties of reading and writ- 
 ing, or rather, the difficulties connected with the 
 external mechanism — hands, ears, eyes — employed 
 in these arts. Now we are, by means of Tommy's 
 blunders, brought to see that the internal mechanism 
 has its difficulties also. To concentrate his attention, 
 to analyse, to remember, correctly to apply what he 
 has remembered — all these four things Tommy un- 
 trained has very great difficulty in doing ; and, in my 
 judgment, the main distinction between a clever and 
 a dull boy lies in the speed with which he acquires 
 these habits of mind. There is great variety in the 
 time which the training takes. An exceedingly small 
 minority seem to start with an inclination to ap- 
 proach information in the right way, and not to be 
 fatigued by analytical methods ; but the ordinary 
 boy is broken in to a sound system slowly and with 
 difficulty. There are numbers of boys apparently 
 clever, bright talkers, keen collectors of the multi- 
 farious things that boys collect, intelligent com- 
 panions, who, when it comes to developing orderly 
 habits of mind, show a very poor account of them- 
 selves ; and there are also a very large number of 
 boys who appear dull to begin with, but who, by 
 careful training, produce in the long run sounder 
 results than their brighter companions. 
 
 The question of fatigue is an important one, and 
 demands a paper to itself. What I have to say on 
 the subject is dangerously near being theoretical, and 
 
 60 i'
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 I expect to have a difference of opinion with the 
 doctors ; but then ultimately we shall be able to 
 have recourse to Rontgen rays, and it will be seen 
 that I am ricrht. 
 
 66
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 What is Stupidity? 
 
 OCCASIONALLY periodicals, daily, weekly, or 
 monthl}', allow a schoolmaster to ventilate his 
 ideas in their pages. On one such occasion some 
 gentleman supplied the Pall Mall Gazette with 
 fip-ures, from which he deduced the fact that ex- 
 ceptionally clever boys occur in the proportion of 
 three or four per cent. The estimate seemed to me 
 a high one, but then much depends upon what }'ou 
 mean by being exceptionally clever. What is the 
 test? Examinations will not help us. Have not the 
 Chinese been the most thoroughly examined race 
 for centuries? and do we regard them as exception- 
 ally clever ? For my own part, when I reflect that 
 many famous men, whom we would all agree to call 
 exceptionally clever, failed miserably to pass exami- 
 nations, and when I see that a special form of 
 intellect is best suited for the purposes of examiners, 
 and that by no means a strong form of intellect, 
 and when I further observe that by a process of 
 selection by examination, continuing over many 
 
 67
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 years, persons who possess this form of intellect will 
 ipfallibly occupy all the Government offices and 
 monopolise the public services, wh}', then — I con- 
 gratulate myself that I shall not live long enough to 
 see all the results of the system. 
 
 I do not know that anybody has ever taken the 
 trouble to estimate the number of exceptionally 
 stupid boys, and I do not think it would be worth 
 anybody's while to do so, till we are agreed as to 
 what we mean by being stupid. 
 
 Madam, do you remember the day when you were 
 told that a goose which weighs seven pounds and 
 half its own weight weighs fourteen pounds ? Or 
 that other day, when you were told about the gentle- 
 man who looked at a portrait on a wall and said 
 something about his relationship to the person repre- 
 sented, which, to spare you further anno}'ance, I 
 forbear to repeat ? 
 
 In the presence of these tremendous problems, 
 were you not afflicted with a kind of mental sinking ? 
 I frankly admit that I invariably suffer in this way 
 when confronted with similar conundrums, and I 
 have known you even betray considerable irritation 
 over that goose question. 
 
 In the same way, my admiration and envy are 
 profoundly stirred by the manner in which some of 
 my friends deal with their hands at whist. They not 
 only remember all the cards that have been played, 
 and correctly place the residue in the hands of their 
 fellow-players, but they see rapidly by what methods 
 
 68
 
 What is Stupidity? 
 
 of discarding and placing the deal they may make 
 the most out of the last six tricks. Good chess 
 players are to me equally wonderful, and what 
 appears to me still more wonderful is that there are 
 many excellent whist and chess players who seem in 
 other respects persons of rather feeble intellect. 
 
 Why it is that some people reason accurately and 
 easily about some subjects, and with great difficulty 
 about others, I cannot pretend to say ; I only know 
 that it is so. My fellow-men seem to differ in their 
 mental agility just as they do in their bodily activity. 
 A cricketer is born, and not made, just as a poet is. 
 No amount of training will make a first-rate short- 
 distance runner of a man whose fibres are not made 
 and adjusted in the right way. You can no more 
 make a Tennj'son by instruction than you can make 
 a W. G. Grace. In ordinary conversation it is the 
 custom to assume that an individual who proves 
 prominent in some special line is an extraordinarily 
 clever or active person, as the case may be. This is 
 unquestionably a fallacy ; the individual in question 
 may possess phenomenal ability in his special line, 
 and be a complete fool in relation to everj-thing 
 else. I do not say that he always is so, but he 
 certainly is so sometimes. The majority of us are 
 unevenly developed ; we acquiesce in the fact. A 
 good mathematician is not ashamed of being a poor 
 linguist, or a good oarsman of not being able to 
 handle a bat. Some people otherwise intellectually 
 gifted rather boast of their want of appreciation of 
 
 69
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 music, while musicians are apt to wonder what it is 
 that other people find to be interested in. Personally 
 I have no particular admiration for the specialist. I 
 do not deny his usefulness, but if I am asked to 
 mention an exceptionally clever person, I take one 
 of the great all-round men — such a man as Leonardo 
 da Vinci, or Rabelais, or Michael Angelo, or, in our 
 own time, Professor Herkomer. In the narrow circle 
 of my immediate acquaintance I am happy in know- 
 ing not a few men who, though they have not made 
 for themselves a name in any one department where 
 distinction may be achieved, are undeniably and 
 exceptionally clever, capable of apprehending and 
 dealing with problems involving both arts and 
 sciences, equally handy with a pen or a gun, equally 
 at home in a lecture room or a ball room. 
 
 For the present I am not concerned with the 
 ph)'sical side of education, but only with the intel- 
 lectual. Here my experience goes to indicate that 
 the exceptionall)' stupid boy is at least as rare as the 
 exceptionally clever one. Such a boy I conceive to 
 be a person who is equally paral)'sed by all problems ; 
 who, whatever you ask him, feels precisely the same 
 mystification that many of us feel in the presence of 
 the great goose question. On the other hand, there 
 are very few bo)'s who do not require long and 
 patient training to enable them to reason. P'urther, 
 till they have been through that training they shirk 
 reasoning b}- every means in their power. It is 
 obviously the thing that is laborious to them. Re- 
 
 70
 
 What is Stupidity? 
 
 memberi'ng does not seem to be fatiguing to them ; 
 they either remember or they do not, and there's an 
 end of it ; and, as a matter of fact, they ahvays try 
 to answer a question by using the memory rather 
 than by using the reason, which shows that the for- 
 mer process is the less troublesome to them. If a 
 small boy is asked to translate into Latin, " Balbus 
 built a wall," his first effort is to try and remember 
 whether he has had this particular sentence to deal 
 with before, and if so, what was it ? even though he 
 may perfectly well know the Latin for " to build " 
 and " a wall," and how to form the parts of these 
 words which are required in that particular sentence. 
 The boy who translated " omnes rumpe moras," " all 
 the Rumpians are dead," could probably have told 
 you that " rumpe " was the imperative of " rumpo," 
 and that " moras " was an accusative case. Unfortu- 
 nately, he remembered a word like " moras " having 
 something to do with death, and being convinced 
 that most unfamiliar words in Virgil are proper 
 names, jumped at a hasty conclusion. Far the 
 majority of Tommy's absurd blunders in dealing with 
 language are caused by his rushing for the words that 
 he thinks he remembers, and dealing with them first, 
 rather than stop to get his sentence into order by 
 applying rules of procedure which he knows quite as 
 well as his teacher. 
 
 Reasoning is unquestionably fatiguing to Tommy, 
 and I do not merely mean that he dislikes it, and 
 therefore avoids it, but that he dislikes it because it is 
 
 71
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 fatiguing ; and ultimately, if I have to differentiate 
 between the clever and the stupid boy in the ordinary 
 sense of the words, I say that the boy who is less 
 fatigued by reasoning is cleverer than the boy who is 
 quickly fatigued. Some boys are undeniably born 
 with a well-developed reasoning apparatus, just as 
 they are born with long arms or legs or perfect sight. 
 In other cases this apparatus, though feeble to begin 
 with, fortunately lends itself to development by train- 
 ing, just as the muscles of the body do ; in only a 
 few cases do we find something corresponding to the 
 atrophy of a limb. Even these are not often cases 
 which could be diagnosed as idiotcy or insanity ; 
 such boys not unfrequently have a good deal of 
 superficial brilliancy, and get on in all departments 
 of life in which they are not required to think closel}'. 
 I intend to speak at some length in my next paper 
 of one method of training the reasoning facult)-. 
 Meanwhile, I wish to say a few words as to its 
 physical basis. Do not rashl}' despair, madam, when 
 Tommy first goes to school, and his reports lead }'ou 
 to suspect that he is stupid ; do not unnecessarily 
 distress yourself, and assume that this will alwaj's be 
 so. To begin with, I hope I have shown that a large 
 amount of so-called stupidity is curable, more or less 
 slowly, it is true, but still distinctly curable. The 
 reasoning organ once properly developed and kept 
 in use does not waste away again, though it often 
 takes five or six }'ears to get it into good order. 
 Again, as the use of this particular organ is un- 
 
 72
 
 What is Stupidity ? 
 
 questionably fatiguing, it follows that when anything 
 occurs making exceptional demands upon Tommy's 
 physical strength, he will cease to reason. This I 
 have invariably found to be the case. Boys, when 
 they are growing rapidly, when they are passing from 
 boyhood to manhood, when they have had a severe 
 illness, not infrequently seem temporarily to lose all 
 reasoning power. Again, boys who grow rapidl}- 
 when they are very young, as is often the case with 
 children born in hot climates, sometimes appear to be 
 stupid till they have stopped growing. These are 
 things which I should not say to Tommy himself, for 
 that young gentleman would comfortably resign him- 
 self to being temporarily stupid, and possibly become 
 so permanently ; but it is necessary that his j^arents 
 should recognise these facts — otherwise they are apt 
 to deal injudiciously with Tommy and unfairl}' with 
 his teachers. Indeed, I am afraid that I cannot 
 acquit my colleagues as a body of the charge of 
 sometimes misunderstanding the causes of Tommj-'s 
 stupidity, and whipping him when he would be better 
 let alone. 
 
 73
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A Defence of Latin 
 
 AMONG the earlier indiscretions of Prince Bis- 
 marck is a remark quoted by Dr. Busch, to the 
 effect that if the object of learning Latin and Greek 
 is to be submitted to a course of mental gymnastics, 
 why do not the schoolmasters teach Russian, which 
 is hard enough in all conscience, and of practical 
 utility when acquired ? To which one answer cer- 
 tainly is, that when the Russian Empire has swal- 
 lowed up the German Empire, and when Russia has 
 imposed her laws, her language and civilization upon 
 the continents of Asia and Europe for a thousand 
 years, even though Russian, as at present spoken, 
 should have become a dead language. Prince Bis- 
 marck's remote posterity will unquestionably be 
 taught Russian at school. Ultimately the position 
 of Latin, and for that matter of Greek also, in our 
 schools is imposed upon us b)' our history. We can 
 no more say good-bye to Latin and replace it by 
 
 74 
 
 \
 
 A Defence of Latin 
 
 Russian or Sanscrit, than we can wipe out the his- 
 tory of Europe for the last two thousand years. The 
 position of Latin does not, in fact, depend simply 
 upon the beauty of its literature, by which personally 
 I am not very deeply affected ; indeed, on purely 
 •nesthetic grounds I \\ould willingly surrender all the 
 Latin writers in exchange for half the same number 
 of Greeks, We cannot, however, away with the 
 Emperors and Popes, and the great civilizing 
 organisations which worked under their names. 
 Rome has been, and, till we return to outer bar- 
 barism, must always be ; there is no doing without 
 her. 
 
 It is not, however, on these grounds, that I pro- 
 pose to defend the study of Latin, for to the man 
 who calls himself practical, they will appear purel)- 
 sentimental, though even he might perhaps admit 
 that there is some practical difficulty in sweeping awa}' 
 all the grammar and all the dictionaries, and all the 
 habits which the teaching profession has acquired in 
 the course of two thousand }'ears, and then starting 
 afresh. My claim for Latin, from the point of view 
 of an Englishman and a foster parent, is simply that 
 it would be impossible to devise for English boys a 
 better teaching instrument. There may be as good, 
 but I have not yet come across better. Misused it 
 unquestionably has been, and will continue to be so, 
 and in such a case its failure is more obvious than 
 the failure of a less complicated piece of machinery ; 
 but it must be judged by what it is capable of doing 
 
 7p
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 at its best, not by the achievements of the bungler. 
 You do not condemn a sewing machine in com- 
 parison with a needle, because numbers of per- 
 sons can use a needle who would break a sewing 
 machine. 
 
 At the risk of being considered wildly paradoxical, 
 I will venture upon a startling statement. It is this : 
 the acquisition of a language is educationally of no 
 importance ; what is important is the process of 
 acquiring it. Persons who are brought up under 
 bi-lingual conditions, such as the Welsh and the 
 Gaels in our own islands, do not thereby become 
 linguists. They speak Welsh and English, or Gaelic 
 and English, as the case may be, but do not find 
 themselves in a better position to learn French or 
 Latin than persons who have spoken only one 
 language all their lives. There has been no intel- 
 lectual training in the process of becoming bi- 
 lingual, and therefore it has led to nothing further. 
 Of course there are Welsh and Gaelic linguists, as 
 there are English linguists, but they are persons 
 who would have been linguists in any case. Whereas 
 if the habitual use of two languages tended to make 
 people good linguists, the Welsh mountains and the 
 Scotch moors would be peopled by George Borrows, 
 which they are not. Personall}', I have never come 
 across a good linguist who happened to be a Gael 
 or a Welshman, though I have encountered a few 
 good English linguists. That may be a matter of 
 chance, but I think that if bi-linguals were specially 
 
 76
 
 A Defence of Latin 
 
 gifted with tongues, the fact would not ha\'e escaped 
 my observation. 
 
 To extend this illustration : it is habitually as- 
 sumed that a person who can make himself under- 
 stood and can understand in five or six languages, 
 such a person as your Swiss porter at a hotel, 
 necessarily knows these languages. As a rule this 
 is not so. 
 
 A Swiss porter, like anybody else, may happen to 
 have the gift of language, and therefore really to 
 have studied one or more of the languages that he 
 speaks ; but as a rule he does not. I have often 
 conversed with these Continental linguists, and as a 
 rule have found that their knowledge of the tongues 
 they daily used did not go beyond their daily needs. 
 The one German that I have come across v/ho spoke 
 English with an absolutely faultless accent was a 
 tailor at Heidelberg, who assured me that he could 
 neither read English nor write it, and that he knew 
 no more of it than was necessary for the purposes 
 of his shop ; he had learned it entirely from his 
 customers. I quote this as an extreme case. 
 The man must have had an unusually delicate 
 ear. 
 
 There is no magic in Greek or Latin ; and if the 
 mere acquisition of a language were a paramount 
 end in itself, their position in our curriculum would 
 be indefensible ; but as this is not the case, and as 
 we learn Greek or Latin, so that we may be prepared 
 to learn something else, their position is likely to be 
 
 77
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 maintained, though there may be some modifications 
 with regard to Greek. 
 
 At the same time that I concede that the acquisi- 
 tion of Latin is not an end in itself, but primarily 
 a means to an end, so I further concede that the use 
 of this magnificent teaching instrument is not uni- 
 versally applicable. When boys of tender age have 
 to be taught in classes of thirty at a time, Latin is 
 out of place ; it cannot be taught under those con- 
 ditions, and it is better left alone. I much question 
 whether any language can be so taught in a manner 
 which is of any permanent advantage to the learner, 
 or even in a manner which could be pecuniarily 
 advantageous to a hotel porter. Learning a language 
 under these conditions quickly degenerates into rote 
 learning of grammar rules and phrases, especially 
 when the teacher is pressed for results. 
 
 One of the direct causes of confusion in the dis- 
 cussion of educational questions is the missionary 
 spirit of scholars, though it is also " one of the best 
 impulses of our nature," as Sergeant Buz-fuz ob- 
 served. This, coupled with the fact that scholars 
 are themselves picked men — a fact of which they are 
 modestly unconscious — has affected our habits of 
 thought with a bias towards believing, that education 
 is one and the same thing for everybody, and that 
 we have less right to rob a poor man of his Latin 
 than of his beer, for which reason we at one time 
 set to work to devise educational systems, by which 
 everybody might ultimately have the chance of 
 
 78
 
 A Defence of Latin 
 
 learning Latin. Now, by a natural reaction, we are 
 more interested in technical education, though the 
 gorgeous vision of a ladder from the gutter to the 
 University still floats before the inspired vision of some 
 philanthropic Jacobs, who wish to give everybody an 
 equal chance of becoming Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury or Prime Minister ; and this in spite of the 
 fact that they may daily contemplate, if they will 
 use their waking vision, men rapidly climbing the 
 ladder from somewhere near the gutter to the House 
 of Lords, and that without any education to speak 
 of 
 
 One consequence of this bias has been a great deal 
 of very unsound teaching of Latin and other lan- 
 guages. The universities themselves have put a 
 premium on bad teaching by setting fixed books to 
 be prepared in their junior local examinations, 
 thereby encouraging " cram " in the true sense of the 
 word to the very best of their ability. I shall have 
 more to say on this subject presently ; meanwhile I 
 wish to draw attention to the abuse of Latin, lest my 
 noble instrument should encounter a prejudice due to 
 the fact that such high authorities have blundered 
 possibly from a praiseworthy desire to throw Latin 
 and their own portals open to everybody. 
 
 The one great merit of Latin as a teaching instru- 
 ment is its stupendous difficulty. Greek, in spite 
 of its wealthy vocabulary and infinitely numerous 
 inflections, is child's play to Latin. Tommy con- 
 tinues to growl over his Latin long after he has 
 
 79
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 begun to find a pleasure in construing Greek. Now 
 the difficulty of Latin to an English boy is a diffi- 
 culty of precisely that nature, which it is most whole- 
 some for him to grapple with. The order of an 
 English sentence and of a Latin sentence are, to 
 begin with, totally dissimilar. Only one modern 
 language, German, shares this difficulty with Latin, 
 but to nothing like the same extent. 
 
 When a boy wants to worry out the meaning of a 
 Latin sentence, he must first of all be patient, draw a 
 long breath, and look for the sign-posts with which 
 the parts of speech provide him. He may have a 
 pretty long excursion to make before he gets to 
 them. There is no trifling with a Latin sentence ; 
 even a lucky shot usually lands the foolhardy sports- 
 man in disaster over the next word, and then to 
 translate from Latin to English demands consider- 
 able skill in the handling of English. There is no 
 better lesson in English composition. The scholar 
 must first be sure that he has an accurate knowledge 
 of what the Latin author intended to say, and then 
 he has to recast all this in a form which is acceptable 
 to English ears. Here is a sentence from C?esar of 
 no exceptional difficulty, as nearly as possible in the 
 order in which he wrote it : " While in these places 
 Caesar, of preparing ships for the reason delays, from 
 a great party of the Morini to him a deputation came, 
 who themselves about of a former time their conduct 
 should excuse, because uncivilized men, and in our 
 habits inexperienced war upon the Roman people 
 
 80
 
 A Defence of Latin 
 
 they had made, and that they those things which he 
 liad commanded would do, should promise," Can we 
 wonder that when such is a sentence of ordinar)^ 
 difficult}', it not unfrequentl}' happens that " all the 
 Rumpians are dead " ? 
 
 81
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A Defence of Latin continued 
 
 I AM not sure that up to a certain point the diffi- 
 culty of translating Latin into English is not less 
 than that of the converse process. Tommy at least 
 knows, or thinks he knows, the meaning of the 
 English sentence, which he has to deal with, and the 
 rest is a matter of vocabulary and the application 
 of certain rules ; but even here the demands made 
 upon his patience and his attention are severe ; far 
 greater relatively than they would be were French 
 or German to be the language employed. Take the 
 following comparatively simple sentence : — 
 
 " Having taken the town and slain all the inhabi- 
 tants, the soldiers found the next day that their 
 general had been wounded in both his legs, and was 
 dying from loss of blood." In French we may start 
 off quite comfortably, " Ayant pris la ville" ; but Latin 
 possesses no past participle active, and so we have 
 to say, " The town having been taken, " to begin with 
 
 83
 
 A Defence of Latin Continued 
 
 and use the ablative case to go on with. The same 
 process has to be repeated with " having slain all the 
 inhabitants " : and I would here pause to remark 
 that Tommy will frequently deal successfully with 
 "having taken the town," but flounder hopelessly 
 over " having slain the inhabitants." The first effort 
 has fatigued him. "The soldiers found" will be easy 
 enough in French ; but for some reason or other, in 
 translating into Latin, Tommy invariably looks out 
 " found " instead of " find," and translates it by 
 " condiderunt," which means "founded." Then comes 
 " the next day," which in French is as uninflected as 
 in English. In Latin, as it refers to point of time, it 
 should be in the ablative case ; but Tommy has at 
 one time been told that " the accusative case comes 
 after the verb," and therefore uses the accusative. 
 Then there comes the difficulty of " that," which in 
 French is a simple conjunction as in English, but in 
 Latin is omitted, the whole of the indirect statement 
 changing its form to the mysterious accusative and 
 infinitive, which accusative and infinitive has got to 
 survive the check caused by another " and " if Tommy 
 is to grapple successfully with " was dying." Nor do 
 his troubles end here, for a preposition signifying 
 motion, " from," is used in English and French before 
 " loss of blood," but not in Latin : in which language, 
 by the way, Tommy thinks it safer to translate " loss " 
 and " blood " in the same case. 
 
 In short, so that he may translate this compar- 
 atively simple English sentence into Latin, Tommy 
 
 83
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 has, apart from carefully analysing the English, to 
 think of more things than would be necessary were 
 he translating into any other language, for which 
 reason alone the boy who can correctly translate the 
 sentence into Latin is intellectually more powerful 
 than the boy who can correctly translate it into 
 French. 
 
 Nobody who has not been through it can picture 
 to himself the skill and the patience which are 
 demanded in the process of giving an ordinary Eng- 
 lish boy a sound grasp of Latin. It is really very 
 little less than putting him into full possession of his 
 intellectual faculties, always excepting the mathema- 
 tical faculty. The process is a progressive one. First 
 comes the analysis of individual words, and the 
 recognition of inflections; then the analysis of sen- 
 tences both in English and Latin ; and then after 
 that, there is the cultivation of the artistic literary 
 faculty, and development of style. During the three 
 years between ten and thirteen a boy should have 
 overcome the main difficulties of Latin. Exceptional 
 boys will take a year longer or a year less, as the 
 case may be ; but my experience is that the average 
 English boy, who has no special disability to con- 
 tend with, and who has not been previously misman- 
 aged, can, without working more than five hours a 
 day, get grounded in Latin in that time in such a 
 way, that if his education is continued, no pass 
 examination should have any terrors for him three 
 years later. Concurrently with his Latin he will 
 
 84
 
 A Defence of Latin Continued 
 
 have been able to acquire a sufficient knowledge of 
 French to enable him to translate most French books 
 with the aid of a dictionary, while his knowledge of 
 mathematics, so far as it goes, may be as sound as his 
 knowledge of Latin. But to secure this result, it is 
 absolutely essential that the boy should have been 
 taught in small classes. Teachers vary much in their 
 powers, and when all the boys in the same class are at 
 the same standard, larger numbers can be taught to- 
 gether. Still, speaking generally, I should say that 
 between the ages of ten and thirteen Tommy should 
 never be in a class of more than twenty boys, and then 
 only when all are of the same standard. When 
 Tommy has been so taught by a capable teacher, he 
 will have acquired habits of mind which will stand him 
 in good stead to the end of his life, and which he 
 would find increasing difficulty in acquiring were he 
 neglected at that age, and which I can confidently 
 affirm he would acquire less easily by any other 
 process. 
 
 There is yet another point in favour of Latin — a 
 merit which it shares with some other difficult sub- 
 jects : it makes very great demands upon the teacher. 
 This particular quality of educational subjects, viz., 
 the way in which they affect the teacher, is commonly 
 disregarded ; I do not think that I have ever heard 
 it mentioned, or seen it discussed in a book. In a 
 blundering sort of way it has been unconsciously 
 recognised by people who demand that their sons 
 shall be taught by a university man and a gentleman ; 
 
 85
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 whence enthusiastic classicists have sometimes an- 
 nounced that it is impossible to be a classical scholar 
 without being a gentleman, and vice versd. I have 
 not observed that this contention is supported by the 
 facts. 
 
 There remains, however, this great truth : no edu- 
 cational subject is a good one which does not in 
 itself interest the teacher. The possibilities of litera- 
 ture and mathematics are boundless ; nobody has ever 
 yet exhausted them, nobody ever will ; whereas the 
 possibilities, say, of geometrical drawing are strictly 
 limited, and the process of teaching such a subject is 
 strictly mechanical. Ultimately this is at the bottom 
 of the distrust which classical scholars feel for chem- 
 istry and the other natural sciences as instruments of 
 education. You may accumulate facts in these 
 sciences to any extent, you may develop superlative 
 skill in devising and manipulating experiments, but 
 there is no progressive intellectual development 
 required in dealing with them ; there is an infinite 
 repetition of the same intellectual process. In fact, 
 you cannot become a sound chemist without having 
 had previously a sound mathematical training up to 
 a certain point ; and if you are to be able to turn your 
 knowledge of chemistry to account by imparting it 
 to others, you must have had a sound linguistic 
 training as well. 
 
 To be done with the Latin question, you often ask 
 me, madam : " Then ought Tommy to begin learning 
 Latin at once ? He knows his geography and history 
 
 86
 
 A Defence of Latin Continued 
 
 quite well, and can nearly read and write." To 
 which I reply, Certainly not ; start him with French. 
 
 French is an admirable bridge from English with 
 its few inflections and simple sentences, to Latin with 
 its numerous inflections and complicated sentences. 
 Moreover, the vocabulary of French is half way 
 between English and Latin. But then French should 
 be taught on precisely the same lines as Latin : no 
 Ollendorfic methods, no attempt to speak before you 
 can understand. I believe the educational value of 
 modern languages to have been largely underrated, 
 simply because they were habitually taught on the 
 wrong principles. Of the educational value of speak- 
 ing a language I have already said something. 
 
 To speak for a moment on a technical point, why 
 should not the grammar of French and German and 
 Spanish and Italian be once for all brought into line 
 with Latin and Greek ? The Sonnenschein series 
 of parallel grammars has done a good deal, but in 
 my opinion not enough. Why should it be necessary 
 to learn a fresh classification of verbs, for instance, 
 when passing from French to Latin ? Why should 
 the unfortunate Tommy be worried with preterite in 
 one grammar and perfect in another, when both terms 
 mean the same thing ? Why should he recognise 
 strong verbs in English and German, and call them 
 irregular verbs in French, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and 
 Greek ? 
 
 As soon as Tommy can write translations of easy 
 French stories — and fortunately there are such, — an 
 
 87
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 advantage possessed by French over Latin — then let 
 him begin Latin, keeping up the French. He will have 
 got over some of his first difficulties in Latin by a 
 sound use of the French. 
 
 83
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Greek and Elementary Science 
 
 WHEN will the last vv^ord be said on the sub- 
 ject of teaching Greek ? Possibly when our 
 present civilization is extinct — before that time prob- 
 ably not. The language of philosophy, the language 
 of science, the language of the New Testament, can 
 never lose its grip upon the mind of Europe. Even 
 were its aesthetic merits smaller than they are, its 
 permanence would be secured by the fact that it is 
 impossible to discuss theology, chemistry, electricity, 
 light, heat, sound, any of the numerous branches of 
 natural science, in any European language, without 
 employing a terminology largely Greek in its origin, 
 and extended occasionally in accordance with Greek 
 principles of word formation. 
 
 The question, however, at present before us is not 
 whether we can do without Greek altogether, but 
 what is its proper place in our educational system ? 
 
 We encounter views as widely divergent as those 
 of the practical man, who holds that Greek should 
 not be taught at all, and those of the Hellenic 
 
 89
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 enthusiast, who would compel everybody to learn it. 
 Is there any satisfactory middle course ? I believe 
 there is, and I believe that we should have discovered 
 it long ago, were it not for a peculiar feature in 
 English education, viz., that for the last hundred 
 years our classical scholars have been deeply imbued 
 with the idea that the ultimate object of a classical 
 education is to be able to write in both the languages 
 not only prose, but also verse ; one result of this 
 being, that till very recently we had to go to Ger- 
 many for our editions of the classics. Repeatedly 
 when airing my heterodox views on the great class- 
 ical question, I have been put down by the remark, 
 " But then your boys will never be able to write 
 Greek prose ! " Why should they ? There is very 
 excellent mental training to be got from worrying 
 out the full meaning of the pregnant sentences of 
 Thucydides, without aiming at the further and some- 
 what undesirable accomplishment of writing Greek 
 as he wrote it ; and the delights of reading Euripides 
 are diminished rather than increased if we have one 
 eye on the development of the tragedy and the other 
 on useful phrases for the endings of iambics. 
 
 I believe the writing of Latin prose to be an in- 
 dispensable part of the higher mental training, not 
 because the prose is an eternal possession when it 
 is done, but because it is impossible to write even 
 tolerable Latin prose without having arrived at 
 exceedingly accurate habits of mind. I value it as 
 an important instrument in the development of the 
 
 90
 
 Greek and Elementary Science 
 
 intellect. I know that it makes demands upon the 
 reasoning faculty of an English bo}^ which neither 
 French nor Italian, nor even German, make. 
 
 When, however, all boys are expected to write 
 Latin verse, and in due course Greek prose and 
 Greek verse, then I side with the practical man, and 
 admit that the writing of composition in a dead 
 language may be an elegant accomplishment, but 
 that it is no more, and that it is certainly not worth 
 while to spoil the education of the many boys incap- 
 able of writing composition without great labour for 
 the sake of the few who have a special linguistic 
 gift. 
 
 Again, if I am told that all boys should learn 
 Greek because of the superlative beauty of Greek 
 literature, I admire the artistic enthusiasm of my 
 informant, but I can go no further with him. There 
 are so many things which all boys ought to learn, if 
 we are to assign a paramount importance to aesthetic 
 training. I can imagine a student of Arabic, the 
 late Professor Palmer, or Mr. Palgrave, asserting that 
 all boys should learn Arabic ; and I have an ardent 
 friend who would certainly impose Icelandic upon us, 
 could he have his own way. 
 
 The question presents itself to me in this way : 
 What is there time for ? And along with this there 
 goes another question : Is there no way of bringing 
 into line the education of boys who for various 
 reasons leave school at sixteen, and those who can 
 stay on till eighteen or nineteen ? Of course the 
 
 91
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 public schoolmasters will tell me directly, " No boy 
 ous^ht to leave school at sixteen " ; but for various 
 reasons I am compelled to differ, and I think, madam, 
 that your worthy husband will differ also. 
 
 Hitherto the difficulty of doing without Greek has 
 been met by the clumsy expedient of Modern Sides 
 — a half-hearted and contemptible arrangement, pro- 
 ductive of endless confusion in the minds of boys 
 and parents, and rendering the sound organization of 
 any but the largest schools an all but insuperable 
 task. 
 
 I am not particularly in love with what parents 
 call history and geography, nor do I believe that 
 because Tommy likes the sensation of an explosion 
 or a stink, he is therefore in the happy possession of 
 a genius for chemistry ; but I have no hesitation in 
 affirming that there are possibilities in Tommy's 
 mind which would be advantageously developed 
 were the time which is now given to Greek, before 
 Tommy has attained anything like a mastery of 
 Latin, divided between lessons in elementary physics, 
 French and English literature. In short, I would 
 banish Greek from the preparatory schools altogether, 
 and in the public schools I would treat it as a subject 
 to be taken up when the time has arrived for a boy 
 to specialize. That is to sa}-, instead of making 
 Greek the rule, and other subjects the exception, I 
 would accept the position that when a boy gets to be 
 about fifteen his preliminary training is over, and that 
 he is now to settle down to the special branches of 
 
 92
 
 Greek and Elementary Science 
 
 study which will help him in hi.-^ business or pro- 
 fession, as the case may be, and that Greek is a study 
 for specialists. 
 
 In short, my experience teaches me that the 
 average boy is overburthened if he is required to 
 be learning Mathematics, French, Latin, Greek, 
 English Literature, Histor)-, Geography, and Ele- 
 mentary Science before he is fourteen, and that at 
 that time of his life elementary science is more 
 important to him than Greek, because after all Greek 
 is merel)' another branch of language teaching. In 
 learning Greek a boy multiplies his stock of linguistic 
 facts ; he does not employ a slightly different mental 
 process, as he does in learning science. 
 
 I believe instruction in the habit of observing- 
 
 o 
 
 experiments, and eventually recording observations, 
 to be an essential part of training, and that it can 
 be most profitably applied before the average boy is 
 thirteen. 
 
 I have observed that by science most people mean 
 chemistr}'. It is curious how chemistry at once 
 seized the imagination of the English people as some- 
 thing learned and money making. Schools were 
 provided with chemical laboratories long before it 
 occurred to any one that there might be such a thing 
 las a physical laboratory. Now chemical facts are 
 I only a department of physical science, an important 
 department, but scarcely more important than facts 
 about light and heat and sound and gravitation. It 
 is unnecessary to say a good word for electricity, 
 
 93
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 because, owing to its supposed mercantile value, there 
 is a considerable run upon it, and there are people 
 anxious to teach Tommy electricity before he can 
 read. 
 
 The sort of scientific work which boys want at this 
 early age, between ten and thirteen, is such work as 
 is admirably given in Professor Miall's object lessons 
 from nature, where the physical laws which deter- 
 mine the behaviour of such ordinary things as pumps 
 and barometers are demonstrated by simple experi- 
 ments, conducted with the simplest possible appliances, 
 so that a boy can be taught to conduct the experi- 
 ment for himself. Such lessons not given too often — 
 once or twice a week is quite enough — are a training 
 both in intelligent observation and the use of tech- 
 nical appliances ; they serve to relieve the severity of 
 the mathematical and language lessons, and work 
 towards the same end the development of the reason 
 from a different point of view. 
 
 There are fanatics who would replace all other 
 lessons by these. I am not one of them. 
 
 I remember an occasion on which the science 
 masters of a great public school petitioned that the 
 modern side boys might have less science and more 
 Latin, and that in the interests of the science. Experi- 
 ments alone are of little use without language in 
 which to describe them. There is some danger that 
 the general public in England may wake too late to 
 the fact that my friends the science masters were 
 right, and that we may find our young people crammed 
 
 94
 
 Greek and Elementary Science 
 
 with information about what happens when iron is 
 heated to a white heat, and the opposite poles of a 
 battery are connected, but quite incapable of com- 
 municating their knowledge, or handing it down for 
 the benefit of posterit}'. J. M. W. Turner was a 
 mighty painter, and the world would be the poorer 
 for the loss of his pictures ; but if the price we had 
 to pay for them, were that we all wrote English as 
 he wrote English, we should be constrained to give 
 up the pictures. 
 
 95
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Place of Greek 
 
 TO every boy who is worth an}-thhig there 
 comes a time when he is in earnest, when he 
 has got over his difficulties with languages, and 
 when, though he may not be able to write faultless 
 Greek and Latin prose, he is interested in the in- 
 formation that is to be got from his authors perhaps 
 more than in the st}'le in which they wrote. I very 
 well remember the time when it first dawned upon 
 me that there was something more than lessons in 
 the world, that there was something to be learned. 
 
 Some thirty years ago Eton boys who had passed 
 into the upper fifth were allowed to take up what 
 were called extra subjects ; that is to say, they 
 were allowed to choose for themselves from among 
 a fixed number of subjects two lessons a week. At 
 that time the late William Cory — in those days 
 William Johnson — took an upper fifth division, and 
 v/as good enough to take upon himself one of the 
 extra subjects — Political Economy. The Political 
 
 Q6
 
 The Place of Greek 
 
 Economy was, however, soon dropped, and succeeded 
 by a course of Plato — Plato for boys of sixteen ! 
 But what splendid lessons they were ! To the best 
 of my recollection the Political Economy lessons were 
 abandoned after I had attended them for only one 
 term, but they inspired me with a wish to know more. 
 It was the first time that I had come into contact 
 with a man of genius, and Johnson — I prefer the 
 name by which I knew him — was certainly a man 
 of genius. He used to sit behind a book and his 
 spectacles — very much behind, for he was extremely 
 short-sighted, and wore spectacles of unusual thick- 
 ness, by which his eyes were practically concealed, 
 and even with the aid of these spectacles he could 
 only read with the book close to his face. So he sat 
 obscured by the volume of Adam Smith bound in 
 calf, and read and grunted, and told us what Ricardo, 
 and Mill, and Austin had said since Adam Smith, 
 and reasoned of McCulloch, and of the different 
 manufacturing establishments which he had himself 
 visited. There was no formal lecture. In order 
 that we might not waste our time, we were given 
 written questions to answer once a week, and my 
 answers were invariably bad ones. But I conceived 
 a great reverence for the mjan, and from that time I 
 wanted to learn. The Plato lessons were given much 
 in the same way, he construed to us, omitting, as he 
 thought fit, the Symposium, the Theatetus, the Gor- 
 gias, the Menon, the Phaedrus, occasionally interrupt- 
 ing his construing with caustic comments, which 
 
 97 H
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 were not brought down to the level of our under- 
 standing. 
 
 I am tempted to these personal reminiscences for 
 two reasons : first, because I wish to warn any 
 enthusiastic teacher who takes up an out-of-the-way 
 subject, and thinks he is doing no good with it, be- 
 cause the boys do not respond in the form of paper 
 work, that much good work sinks in without showing 
 any immediate results. I do not think, for instance, 
 that Johnson regarded me as a particularly earnest 
 pupil, and I am sure that I gave him no reason for 
 doing so ; but I owe an immense debt to him. My 
 second reason is of greater importance, for it has to 
 do with the necessity for teaching Greek. What are 
 we to do with bo}'s at the age when they begin to 
 think for themselves ? How are we further to inform 
 the mind nov/ active, curious, and to some extent 
 equipped ? I may have been unfortunate ; but I 
 have not yet come across any literature which is so 
 exactly the right thing for this purpose as Greek 
 literature. The soundness of their methods and the 
 limitations of their knowledge alike recommend the 
 Greek authors ; while the fact that the language itself 
 has to be closely studied in order to be sure of the 
 correct interpretation is a safeguard against the 
 slovenly reading which might be given to an English 
 author dealing with similar subjects, demanding, as 
 it does, vigilant attention. What, for instance, would 
 you read with a clever boy who knew only French 
 and German, and had passed beyond deriving any 
 
 98
 
 The Place of Greek 
 
 further benefit from romance reading — INIontaigne, 
 Descartes, Voltaire, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Schopen- 
 hauer ? I think not. 
 
 On the other hand, the Latin philosophy is pain- 
 fully artificial and second-hand. Cicero, out of his 
 letters, al\va)'3 appears to me as the journalist of 
 antiquity, prepared, with the aid of a commonplace 
 book, to write on any subject and patronise them all ; 
 nor have I been able myself to make anything of 
 Seneca. The Greeks were discovering the laws of 
 thought from the standpoint of a well-trained boy. 
 Their v/ork is at first hand and fresh to him ; by the 
 time the Latins wrote philosophy, it had become very 
 platitudinous. 
 
 In advocating the postponement of the study of 
 Greek, I am not advocating a new thing. I am 
 advocating the system pursued for many years at 
 Christ's Hospital, where only the upper boys learned 
 Greek, and v/ere therefore called Grecians. The 
 practice of compelling all bo}'s to learn Greek from 
 a very early age — I began myself before I was ten — 
 is an innovation. Special bo}'s, like Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury, and Gibbon, learned Greek at an early 
 age, before the institution of preparatory schools and 
 entrance scholarships ; but their cases, — and indeed 
 they were taught chiefly by private tutors, not at 
 school, — can no more be quoted in support of the 
 general rule in their days than the education of John 
 Stuart Mill by his father for a later period. 
 
 It will be objected to me that I propose to sacrifice 
 
 99
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 the interests of the clever boys to the stupid ones. 
 Not at all. If Greek is postponed to the upper forms 
 of a school, a clever boy will have just the same 
 opportunity of beginning, when he is ready for it, as 
 he has of entering those forms, when he is ready 
 for them, under existing conditions. My contention 
 is that the clever boys are at present sacrificed ; 
 their mathematics are sacrificed, and their training 
 in experimental science is sacrificed ; they become 
 specialists much too early in life, and acquire an un- 
 wholesome bias, a narrowness of intellectual s)'m- 
 pathy, which is only too obvious in the way in which 
 the adult classical scholar is apt to speak of all other 
 branches of learning outside Greek and Latin. 
 
 To allow a boy to neglect mathematics at an early 
 age because he is thought to have a special bent 
 towards classics, — that is to say, because mathematics 
 are troublesome to him, — is to do him as serious in- 
 tellectual injury as to ^do the converse. The object 
 being not to get any particular subjects learned, but 
 the boy developed. Obviously to let him ofif the 
 subjects which are difficult to him is absurd ; it is 
 as ridiculous as if a gymnastic instructor were to 
 say, " This boy has a small and weak chest : I will 
 therefore in his case omit all exercises which tend 
 to strengthen and expand the chest." Similarly 
 boys who suffer from any of the imperfections which 
 make reading difficult to them, often seem to be 
 especially clever at mathematics, and are very un- 
 wisely allowed to drop languages. 
 
 TOO
 
 The Place of Greek 
 
 On the other hand, I deeply deplore the tendency 
 to reduce Greek to a minimum in the preliminary 
 examinations for some of the professions, especially 
 for the medical profession. The standard of pro- 
 fessional men is a thing of which we should be very 
 jealous. My own observations convince me that a 
 boy who, given a fair chance, cannot learn enough 
 Greek to read a Greek prose author of average diffi- 
 culty by the time he is eighteen, is not fit to be a 
 medical man. I have a profound respect for the 
 medical profession ; there is none in which a trained 
 intelligence and a generous, moral basis are of such 
 high importance to the community, and I believe that 
 we are all interested in strenuously resisting any step 
 in the direction of reducing it to a mere trade. 
 After all, there are certain learned professions, pro- 
 fessions linked with the past by a chain as long as 
 European history itself; and though Galen and 
 Hippocrates may be as much out of date as Gaius 
 and Trebonius, the temper of mind in which they 
 worked is as necessary to the medical man of to- 
 day as it ever was, and their terminology remains. 
 
 Personally I cannot consider the education of any 
 professional or literary man complete if he cannot 
 read his Plato in the original — an accomplishment 
 which would be within the reach of any )'oung man 
 fit to enter a profession, were Greek composition 
 reserved for students endowed with special gifts, and 
 were it recognised in the schools that the first thing 
 to do is to be able to read in a language fluently, 
 
 lOI
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 and that to write in it is a subsequent and not 
 essential achievement. Naturally, I am not speaking 
 of that small amount of composition which is a help 
 in the process of learning to translate. 
 
 I may, perhaps, be allowed further to observe that 
 I have not found any difficulty in starting boys with 
 Greek even at sixteen, assuming that they are boys 
 who have been otherwise well taught. The accidence 
 has not proved to be that insuperable obstacle which 
 it is imagined to be. On the contrary, I have found 
 that it was more quickly got over, because a trained 
 mind deals with it more intelligently than an unde- 
 veloped intellect. I have sometimes had misgivings 
 as to the merits of the analytical method of teaching 
 Greek accidence in the case of small boys. I have 
 no doubt of its success with those who begin Greek 
 late. 
 
 102
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Entrance Examinations 
 
 IFEx\R, madam, that you must be beginning to 
 feel impatient with me. I promised not to 
 theorise, and here I am dogmatically propounding a 
 whole educational system. I admit that I have not 
 quite kept my word, and yet I do not think I can 
 have done wrong in suggesting to you that after all 
 there may be something to be said even for such an 
 unpractical subject as Greek, not from the point of 
 view of an enthusiastic classical scholar, but from the 
 standpoint of an observer who has studied the in- 
 tellectual development of boys, and tested the relative 
 value of the instruments which aid that development. 
 There are people who say that education does 
 nothing, and that nature does everything. I have 
 conceded to such persons that without special qualifi- 
 cations given by nature no man can be trained to be 
 a pre-eminently successful specialist. What I will not 
 concede is, that the average citizen is incapable of 
 development by training. I refuse to concede this, 
 
 103
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 because I have observed that the opposite is the case. 
 I know that it is impossible for a boy to go through 
 such a training as he gets, say at CHfton College, 
 without acquiring intellectual and moral habits which 
 will be of service to him all his life, no matter what 
 his ultimate profession or business may be ; but I 
 admit that the full benefit of such a school will not 
 be enjoyed unless the boy comes to it properly pre- 
 pared. To secure this, all schools whose position is 
 sufficiently strong admit boys only after examination. 
 I have frequently heard this system made a subject of 
 grievance. "Why, if boys go to school to learn, 
 should they be required to know everything before 
 they enter ? " This is precisely the form, madam, in 
 which you have stated your view to me, not once, nor 
 twice, but on several occasions. 
 
 Let us see what is to be said on the other side, 
 assuming that your use of the word " everything " is 
 not to be accepted in its literal signification. 
 
 There are a very large number of persons in Eng- 
 land who think it does not matter much how or what 
 their sons are taught till they go away from home to 
 a boarding school. The injury which these persons 
 inflict upon their children is incalculable. The years 
 from seven to fourteen are the most important years 
 of a boy's life from the educational point of view. A 
 boy who has been neglected during those years goes 
 to a large school not only ignorant, but without 
 habits of application, without the power of attention, 
 and quite incapable of working by himself. What 
 
 104
 
 Entrance Examinations 
 
 happens? He is put into the lowest form, boys 
 younger than himself come into it, and pass through 
 it. There he stays, year after year, unless he is super- 
 annuated and sent away. Meanwhile, he is probably 
 capable enough out of school, and there grows in his 
 mind a feeling of resentment against boys who beat 
 him in school and against being taught. Ultimately 
 his affections centre upon colonial life, because he 
 believes intellect to be superfluous in the Colonies. 
 He emigrates, and what becomes of him afterwards is 
 a question rather of good luck than of good manage- 
 ment. 
 
 It is to prevent this, to ensure that only bo}'s who 
 are properly qualified shall be admitted, that the 
 public schools impose entrance examinations ; and 
 from my experience of them both as an examiner and 
 as one who has prepared a large number of boys to 
 pass them, I do not think that it can be truly said 
 that a boy who has passed them "knows everything." 
 
 People who trifle with the early training of their 
 boys generally do so from indolence, ignorance, or 
 motives of economy. The two former, in adult cases, 
 one cannot help much; but in connection with the 
 latter, I may perhaps be allowed to point out, that to 
 send a boy to an expensive school improperly pre- 
 pared is about the worst form of economy that could 
 be devised. Not only does such a boy fail to benefit 
 by the instruction there provided, but he positively 
 learns much that is harmful to him ; in self-defence 
 he acquires a practical knowledge of all the dodges of 
 
 105
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 evading work, which are current in such places, and 
 they arc numerous. What is even worse, he acquires 
 a habit of looking at work as a thing disagreeable in 
 itself, and to be shirked by all properly conscientious 
 persons. To the practical man it appears of small 
 importance that a boy should learn to evade Latin 
 and Greek and Mathematics ; but wait a moment. 
 The boy who has learned to evade the routine work of 
 school will be equally dexterous in evading the 
 routine work of the office; there is no charm in book- 
 keeping, even by double entry, sufficient to overcome 
 the indolent habits of a young fellow who has never 
 learned to do what is distasteful to him. In another 
 way, too, his school will have done him harm. Unable 
 to distinguish himself, or even to win a respectable 
 position by work in school, the youth, naturally 
 desirous of distinction and endowed with an ambition 
 to assert himself, turns to the work out of school — to 
 the cricket field, to the river, to the football team. 
 There he is sure of winning not only respect, but 
 popularity. Games become the real business of his 
 life, and athletics holding at present a dominant 
 position in all classes of the communit)', there is no 
 risk that he will run short of occupation in this 
 department after leaving school. Hence the pre- 
 judice that exists in the minds of many practical men 
 against public school athletics. I shall reserve for a 
 future occasion what I have to say on this subject. 
 
 The entrance examination is not a tyrannical 
 engine wielded by the indolent schoolmaster, who 
 
 1 06
 
 Entrance Examinations 
 
 \vishes to secure pupils already taught, but a protec- 
 tion to the improperly prepared, who, without its aid 
 would be put into a position to which they are un- 
 suited, and from which, being unsuited, they would 
 derive harm rather than benefit. 
 
 As to what the character of an entrance examina- 
 tion should be, I do not think the present a good 
 opportunity for discussing that question, which is a 
 purely technical one — my present business being not 
 to inform my colleagues, but to open communications 
 on their behalf with our employers. 
 
 The case for entrance examinations is easily estab- 
 lished ; but I cannot make out a case for entrance 
 scholarships, except on the ground that as there are 
 certain eleemosynary funds connected with the public 
 schools, it would be difficult to devise a less innocuous 
 way of distributing them. 
 
 Whatever weakness can be proved in the s}-stem of 
 classical education in England I believe to be very 
 largely due to the system of distributing scholarships 
 by competitive examination without duly organizing 
 these examinations, and without considering their 
 influence upon the whole body of bo)-s and teachers. 
 The mischievous element comes in through the 
 natural competition between the individual colleges 
 at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Each 
 college wishes to secure brilliant men, who will exalt 
 its reputation in the class lists. By the time a young 
 man goes to the university, he has become a specialist, 
 or is ready to become a specialist ; consequently the 
 
 107
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 colleges so arrange their examinations as to attract 
 specialists ; that is to say, not merely young men who 
 show that they could become first-rate specialists, but 
 who already are on the way to be such. In order to 
 meet this demand, the public schools train specialists, 
 and did the process end there, there might not be 
 much to complain of ; but the public schools adver- 
 tise themselves by the success of their pupils in win- 
 ning scholarships at the universities, and, in their turn, 
 they endeavour to buy promising boys by means of 
 entrance scholarships, who, again, under the present 
 conditions, are already specialists, for in the same way 
 the preparatory schools advertise themselves by their 
 successes in winning entrance scholarships, and their 
 proprietors are tempted to think chiefly of the needs 
 of their specialized pupils. It is unquestionably this 
 system that has perpetuated the immoderate attention 
 paid in England to Greek and Latin composition ; 
 and this same system has contributed to widen the 
 gulf between the foster parent and the real parent, 
 who is struck not unreasonably by the narrowness of 
 the curriculum, while the teacher, even if he is aware 
 of the possibility of any other, dare not experiment. 
 Matters have come to this pass, that the more dis- 
 tinguished a public schoolmaster is as a scholar, no 
 matter in what branch of learning, the less likely he is 
 to have a broad grasp of educational questions. By a 
 process of natural causation, those persons who have 
 won scholarships all their lives become teachers, head- 
 masters, and fellows of colleges ; they hold in their 
 
 1 08
 
 Entrance Examinations 
 
 hands the organization of the teaching at the uni- 
 versities and public schools ; and in nine cases out of 
 ten they have been so taught from their earliest 
 youth, that it is morally impossible for them to see 
 anything outside the particular system under which 
 they have themselves been taught, unless, as occasion- 
 ally happens, they fly off at a tangent, and become a 
 dangerous form of doctrinaire. Being specialists and 
 brilliant specialists, they have no imagination for the 
 difficulties of the average person ; having learned 
 quickly and easily themselves, they neither know nor 
 believe in the processes by which duller intellects are 
 trained. 
 
 One very gra\e consequence of the unwholesome 
 specialization of English scholars from too early an 
 age is the hopeless muddle in which our " secondary " 
 education at present finds itself. 
 
 The public school expert, despising and not under- 
 standing some years ago the cry for a reform of the 
 public school system, simply stood aside. When he 
 changed his curriculum, it was not from a well-con- 
 sidered appreciation of the relative educational merits 
 of different subjects ; he simply added what the 
 parents seemed to want and to be willing to pay for. 
 The expert surrendered to the amateur. 
 
 109
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Preparatory School 
 
 T is not quite fair to stigmatize our school system 
 as being in a hopeless muddle without doing 
 something to disentangle that muddle, or help other 
 persons to do so. What is the present system ? 
 
 To begin at the beginning, what is a Preparatory 
 School ? To many of us the question seems super- 
 fluous, and yet it has frequently been put to me ; and 
 in any case it is clear that if we are to have just ideas 
 as to what can be done and what cannot be done in 
 the way of reorganizing our " Secondary" education, 
 it is important that we should start with accurate 
 information as to what is being done by existing 
 institutions. 
 
 The Preparatory School is a comparatively modern 
 invention ; fifty years ago there were not many of 
 them, and at a slightly earlier period there were 
 none. Alike in the day schools and in the boarding 
 schools, it was the habit to herd boys of all ages to- 
 gether. In the early days of such modern public 
 schools as Marlborough and Rossall, boys of nine or 
 
 no
 
 The Preparatory School 
 
 ten still slept in the same dormitories with much 
 older boys. In the private proprietary schools the 
 same system, or want of system, was followed. As 
 long as the proprietor filled his school, he did not 
 trouble himself as to the ages of the boys whom he 
 taught ; and the parents did not object — they do not 
 even yet seem to object universally. It is to this 
 epoch that belong the stories of bullying which rend 
 the maternal heart ; the system was unfair alike upon 
 the luckless children and the hobbledehoy's into whose 
 close intimacy they were thrust. The remedy seemed 
 to be the separation of boys at about the age of thir- 
 teen from younger children. Eton started her " baby 
 house," since abandoned ; and most of the public 
 schools now have preparatory departments, and 
 houses in which the younger boys live apart. A 
 wholesome arrangement. Even before the public 
 schools adopted the system, some of the private 
 proprietors of boarding schools saw that there was 
 an opening for schools restricted to small boys, and 
 now the number of such schools is legion. They 
 came into being not from any demand for a more 
 systematic course of instruction, but simply from a 
 natural desire on the part of the parents to avoid the 
 discomforts and brutalities of the mixed schools ; 
 consequently their curriculum was never discussed, 
 j it already existed. The preparatory school was 
 ■ merely the lower end of a public school lopped off 
 I and located somewhere else. Each private prepara- 
 tory school bore the stamp of the public school for 
 
 III
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 which it prepared its pupils ; an Etonian proprietor 
 followed Etonian methods, and so forth. 
 
 Quite accidentally the preparatory schools have 
 vastly improved our public school education. The 
 proprietors are able to charge large fees, and can 
 therefore afford to teach their pupils in small classes ; 
 hence the subjects which they teach get a fair chance. 
 And though the curriculum is still susceptible of im- 
 provement, I believe that the best teaching which is 
 at present done in England is done in some of the 
 private preparatory schools. I would even go further, 
 and say that it is the best teaching that is done 
 in the world. French and German schools cannot 
 afford to teach the young boys in small classes. 
 
 Of course there are bad preparatory schools as 
 well as good ones. The temptation to cater for the 
 taste of the tender-hearted parent, to dwell more on 
 coddling than teaching, is very strong for commercial 
 reasons ; but on the whole the system gives )'oung 
 boys the best opportunity. The disgraceful herds 
 which cumbered the lower forms of the public schools 
 fifty years ago are a thing of the past. 
 
 Were other evidence wanting, the countless editions 
 of school books now in existence arranged for the 
 use of young boys, and often very well arranged, 
 would alone prove that the preparatory school- 
 master takes the teaching side of his profession very 
 much to heart. Fifty years ago it would have been 
 possible to count on the finger of one hand the num- 
 ber of introductory books in Greek and Latin transla- 
 
 112
 
 The Preparatory School 
 
 tion, and there was practically nothing then between 
 such works as Valpy's Delectus, and German edi- 
 tions of the classics with Latin notes. Eton had her 
 selections from Greek and Latin authors, unprovided 
 with vocabularies, and practically unprovided with 
 notes, of which more anon. Books were very ex- 
 pensive, too, in those days. We now spend ninepence 
 or a shilling where formerly we sjoent four or five 
 shillings. This change is almost entirely due to the 
 earnestness of the preparatory schoolmasters, and 
 the keen vision of Messrs. IMacmillan and other pub- 
 lishers. The Eton Latin Grammar, which occupied 
 the place now held by the Public Schools' Latin 
 Primer, was very little different from the Grammar 
 written by Lillcy for St. Paul's School. Lilley's 
 Grammar held its own for four hundred years ; now 
 there is a new Latin Grammar at least once a year. 
 This activity in the educational book market has 
 nothing to do with the Elementary Education Act ; 
 the books in question are not largely used in the 
 Board Schools. 
 
 Before passing on to something else, I wish once 
 more to insist upon the feature of the preparatory 
 schools which is valuable, viz., the opportunities 
 that they give for a reasonable amount of individual 
 teaching. This is a thing that is worth paying for. 
 Even if the accommodation in other respects were as 
 rough as in the establishments of Messrs. Squeers or 
 Creakle, it would be worth while to pay high fees to 
 a preparatory school in which there was at least one 
 
 113 I
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 teacher to every eight boys. This is entirely the con- 
 trary of the Board School system ; it is the one 
 marked improvement upon the old Grammar School 
 system. 
 
 The advisers of Henry VI. thought that a head- 
 master and an usher were sufficient staff to teach 
 seventy boys. As a rule, the founders of our older 
 schools only provided for the payment of two 
 masters. 
 
 The point is worth drawing attention to, because 
 the educational doctrinaire, who may be let loose 
 upon us, is a very rabid animal ; he is as ignorant as 
 he is impetuous, and he appeals to the prejudices of 
 an ignorant, well-meaning constituency. All parents 
 have a tendency towards the doctrinaire attitude on 
 educational questions ; all are only too willing to 
 believe that education is unnecessarily expensive, 
 and are quite willing philanthropically to vote for 
 the application of the Board School system to every- 
 body's children but their own, and to believe that 
 there is something wrong with the schoolmaster. I 
 have before had occasion to allude to the fact that 
 the ladder from the gutter to the university is an 
 impracticable ideal. I question whether at the pre- 
 sent moment the persons capable of achieving this 
 climb in our country amount to much more than one 
 per million. However this may be, it is not worth 
 while seriously to interfere with the education of the 
 directing classes of the country for the sake of a 
 small minorit}\ 
 
 114
 
 The Preparatory School 
 
 The essential difference between the teaching of 
 large classes in the modern board schools and large 
 classes in the old endowed schools lies in this. In 
 the modern board school every child is brought up 
 to a fixed standard, or supposed to be ; and the sub- 
 jects taught are such as lend themselves more or less 
 readily to such a system of drill as is necessitated by 
 large classes, in which every child has to be kept at 
 work during the whole of the lesson. In the old gram- 
 mar school the majority of the class were simply kept in 
 order by the liberal application of the rod, the minority 
 were taught ; and the subjects taught were such as 
 were suited to the capacity only of the minority. 
 The system produced a plentiful crop of dunces, and 
 a very small crop of scholars ; but the struggle for 
 the survival of the fittest was so severe that the 
 fittest were very fit indeed. The modern preparatory 
 school has solved the problem, but it is necessarily 
 expensive. 
 
 It is also unnecessarily expensive ; but the super- 
 fluous expense is due to the feet that only the minority 
 of parents know or care whether their children are 
 being well taught ; the majority can see and appre- 
 ciate swimming baths, gymnasiums, speech days, 
 school magazines, and so forth. The temptation to 
 the preparatory schoolmaster is to spend a great 
 deal of money upon buildings and entertainments 
 and to starve the teaching. I know cases in which 
 he manfully resists that temptation, and I know cases 
 in which he docs not. It is possible to spend money
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 i 
 
 upon fives courts which would be better spent upon 
 well-aired dormitories and good kitchens. It is 
 possible to give undue importance to cricket matches 
 and other public manifestations which serve as adver- 
 tisements, but do not help the teaching. 
 
 The most marvellous achievement of the moden 
 preparatory school is, however, the male nursemai' 
 or masculine dry nurse. Lest dear Tommy shou' 
 "dirty his clothes" or " use naughty words "— offenc ' 
 of equal and awful magnitude in the minds of son:' j 
 people — he is attended upon out of school by youn£ 
 men who have received a university education, and wh( 
 contentedly frolic with children from morn till dewy 
 eve. It may be very good for the children, though, 
 in my opinion, children who need a nurse should 
 stay with the nurse ; but it is not good for the young 
 men ; and I am inclined to think that the type of 
 young man who takes kindly to nursing is not pre- 
 cisely the most wholesome kind of young man. In 
 fact, we run some risk of creating a class resembling 
 the French " Pion," who performs analogous duties 
 in the French schools, and of whom Maxime Ducamp, 
 having duly investigated, discovered that they were 
 " Pions " because they were too incurably lazy to be 
 anything else. 
 
 lib
 
 'HAPTER XVI 
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 CONCRETE examples are more effective than 
 general statements ; of the weaknesses and the 
 strength of the preparatory school system more can 
 be learned by the description of a single specimen 
 than by generalizations drawn from man}'. 
 
 I had the good fortune between the ages of ten 
 and thirteen to be taught chiefly at one of the first 
 preparatory schools, first both in date and in merit. 
 It was not at the seaside ; it was not at Harrogate or 
 Malvern, or any other inland watering-place ; it was 
 plump down in the middle of England at a point 
 where the counties of Warwick, Oxon, Bucks, and 
 Northants become contiguous in a fashion intricate 
 and puzzling to the juvenile geographer. Within 
 four miles of the school was a stone set up in a plan- 
 tation by the proprietor of the ground as marking 
 the point in England furthest from the sea in every 
 direction. I do not know whether he was correct 
 in his geography, or merely vain. Be that as it may, 
 
 117
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 the place owed nothing to the supposed sakibrity of 
 the locah'ty ; it was not on a gravel soil — indeed, 
 I suspect the surface formation of that district of 
 being a pretty stiff clay ; it had a capacity for be- 
 coming abominably muddy in wet weather ; the pre- 
 vailing rock was oolite or lias, full of fossils and oxide 
 of iron. There are not a few iron springs in the 
 locality, but they are none of them known to fame, 
 and it was not advertised that we partook of them 
 for our stomach's sake. In the neighbourhood arable 
 land was of less frequent occurrence than pastures — 
 there were miles of grass fields ; we were in the heart 
 of the hunting country. As a small boy I never 
 realized that the place was particularly beautiful. 
 Going back there after a few years' absence, I was 
 enchanted with it, and am still ; the scenery of War- 
 wickshire and Northamptonshire contrives to look 
 sumptuous, and occasionally even mountainous, 
 though devoid alike of large hills and large rivers. 
 We could see Edgehill from a field about a mile 
 distant from the house, and from our own football 
 field a windmill, that stands over Daventr}', eleven 
 miles off. The " Governor " always took parents to 
 look at that windmill ; they contemplated it with 
 awe. 
 
 The house itself had at some time or other begun 
 to be a country house of some pretension. The 
 original block of it chiefl)- consisted of hall and stair- 
 case. It was built upon a slope, and the rooms on 
 the east front were on a higher level than those 
 
 Il8
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 facing the west ; the hall was pavccl in black and 
 white marble, wainscotted with oak ; so was the 
 dining-room, and a very delightful small room open- 
 ing out of it by folding doors. There the " Governor " 
 used to sit in the winter evenings reading his Times 
 with one eye on us in the dining-room, as we finished 
 learning our repetition lessons, and then read story- 
 books. It was not advisable to read a story-book 
 with a yellow back ; the same books were less 
 deleterious when bound with brown paper. 
 
 On one side of the great hall there had originally 
 been nothing but a small study, and a wing contain- 
 ing the kitchens, back stairs and offices, with a few 
 rooms over them. The " Governor " had added a 
 schoolroom, with two dormitories and a smaller room 
 over it, a lavatory, and another small room over 
 that. The schoolroom opened directly into the pla}'- 
 ground ; a porch was a later addition. In the middle 
 of the schoolroom there was a delightful big iron 
 stove, on which we placed the dishes when we dis- 
 tributed our hampers ; the walls were malignantly 
 covered with a paper made to resemble granite blocks, 
 bluish granite blocks. Great as my respect is, and 
 was, for the " Governor," I find it difficult to forgive 
 him that paper, though in other respects he v\-as a 
 man of taste. 
 
 Attached to the house there v/ere stables and a 
 farm)'ard. I wish to draw attention to this farmj-ard. 
 It was in the middle of our domain, so to speak ; a 
 wall only divided it from the garden. It was sur- 
 
 iiq
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 rounded with byres and piggeries, its centre was a 
 manure heap, its odour stimulating to the agri- 
 cultural fancy; it prognosticated plenty; we passed in 
 and out of it as we pleased. Would it be possible 
 nowadays to run a school contiguous to a farmyard ? 
 I fear not ; though, as a matter of fact, we never 
 suffered from it, and were always remarkably 
 health}'. 
 
 Our ordinary pla}'ing field was a paddock of some 
 two or three acres ; it had a fine double row of trees 
 down one side, under which stood a horizontal bar 
 and parallel bars. There was also a swing and a 
 giant stride; we used this apparatus as we thought fit. 
 It was not considered necessary to teach us gym- 
 nastics. Just outside our field was a clump of trees 
 known as " The Becchgrove." When a small boy was 
 required by an elder to attend him into the Beech- 
 grove, he began to shake in his shoes ; an invitation 
 to the Beechgrove, when given to an equal, was of 
 the nature of a challenge. 
 
 Opposite the house on the other side of the road 
 was a very large field — so large that the little ivy- 
 covered church, with the big yew tree adjacent, and 
 its accompan}'ing churchyard, stood in the middle of 
 one of its sides. There we had a fairly level football 
 ground for the winter, and there was an excellent 
 levelled cricket ground for summer use on the other 
 side. Practically the surrounding country was our 
 playground also. We roamed as we pleased through 
 the fields on Wednesdays and Saturdays ; on other 
 
 120
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 days we plaj-ed cricket or football according to the 
 season. 
 
 On one side of our football ground was a low wall 
 most unkindly provided with a recess in the middle. 
 When we had got ourselves well jammed into this 
 recess, the " Governor," with superfluous and mistaken 
 energ}', would charge us from behind. This we con- 
 sidered unkind of him. I have reason to believe that 
 our struggling against the limestone impediment 
 recalled to him his j'outh, and revived in him the 
 fervour of the ancient wall game. He sped upon us 
 in this cruel fashion, whirled along by reminiscences 
 of victory at Eton on St. Andrew's Da)'. 
 
 The only restriction imposed upon our liberty in 
 the matter of prowling round the county was that 
 we were not allowed to go singly. We were asked at 
 dinner with whom we were going to walk. If we 
 showed any tendency to drop into gangs, we were re- 
 assorted. Of course we got into mischief. We went 
 into woods after birds' nests, and disturbed the game; 
 we stole uneatable cider apples from orchards, chiefly 
 for the fun of being chased ; we set traps, and caught 
 nothin"- ; but I believe our best beloved amusement 
 was damming up brooks and making waterfalls. One 
 haunt of ours, known as the Haven of Hope, rivalled 
 the gardens of Versailles in our imaginations ; new 
 boys were only admitted to the secret of this re- 
 treat after probation, and by the administration of 
 oaths, 
 
 I do not know that we were generally encouraged 
 
 121
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 to collect fossils or butterflies, though some of us did 
 so, but I am quite certain that those country rambles 
 were of infinite service to us. We learned many 
 things — among others, that the most beautiful crab- 
 apple is the least edible. We often tried to eat them, 
 but we never tried for long at a time. We also dis- 
 covered that it is very easy to see a plover, but very 
 difficult to find its nest, and that a gamekeeper who 
 pursues a well-dressed boy does not care very much 
 about catching him ; in fact, he does not always know 
 what to do with him when he has got him. Looking 
 back upon all this, I cannot help thinking that we 
 were much wholesomer without the ever-attendant 
 dry nurse. If we did get in a mess now and then, we 
 were none the worse for it ; and I really do not think 
 that we developed an alarming stock of naughty 
 words. As an illustration of our innocence, I re- 
 member that the deed of darkness which most 
 impressed our youthful minds and caused much awe- 
 struck whispering in the school for a whole evening, 
 was the purchase of some sausages by two bo}'s when 
 out for a walk, which were cooked over a fire in the 
 Beechgrove. This last was an act of such heroic 
 daring as never to be imitated. We should have 
 thought nothing of a person who had bought the 
 sausages ready cooked, or eaten them raw ; but to 
 roast them in the Beechgrove ! 
 
 The " Governor" was fond of riding, and occasion- 
 all)' took one or the other of us out with him. He 
 did not advertise the practice in the Fields or raise 
 
 122
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 his terms in consequence; indeed, he did not advertise 
 at all— directly or indirectly. We had no speech 
 day, no confirmation, no sports — at least, they were 
 of a mild description. We were six miles from the 
 nearest station of any importance, and the 
 " Governor " availed himself of the fact to keep the 
 parents at a distance as much as possible. He dis- 
 liked visits from parents as possibly resulting in 
 interference. Such of the old bo)-s as had gone to 
 Eton used sometimes to come down and play a 
 match with us ; but the event was a domestic one, 
 celebrated in privac}'. I remember going down from 
 Eton once on such an expedition — a gorgeous day. 
 It was then that for the first time I felt the beauty 
 of the country. 
 
 I do not believe there ever were such standard 
 roses as used to grow in that garden, or such a 
 wisteria as covered the west front of the house. It 
 was not a very large garden ; it sloped westwards 
 from the house. On Sunday evenings in the summer 
 we used to lie on rugs on the lawn, and read Milton 
 with the "Governor." We used also to surreptitiously 
 cull the petals of bright-coloured flowers, delicate 
 cenothera, and flaring Oriental poppy ; these we 
 squeezed between the leaves of our books. Sphinx 
 moths were frequent in that garden, and hummed in 
 rather an alarming fashion. 
 
 Occasionally we used to go for what was known 
 as a jumping walk. The " Governor " attended with 
 hi-^. assistant ; he wore gaiters and spectacles ; he 
 
 123
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 looked remarkably like Mr. Pickwick ; he also carried 
 a stick or dog whip. Brooks of no very great width 
 are common in that country, streaming into the 
 Cherwell some three miles off, or eastward to the 
 Ouse ; these we used to leap over. The " Governor " 
 would select a suitable spot, and stand by the side of 
 it ; we then, in turn, ran and jumped. 
 
 Woe betide you if )'ou funked ! You at once 
 tasted the stick or the dog whip, and considerable 
 ridicule. Occasionally our ambition was stimulated 
 by a promise of herrings or some other delicacy for 
 
 tea. 
 
 I dwell upon our out-of-door life because it seems 
 to me to have been in a high degree educational. 
 Nowadays, mere games take too large a place in a 
 boy's life ; the training to be got from them is, after 
 all, only a second best. Give me country life for 
 quickening the intelligence and promoting habits of 
 healthy endurance. 
 
 The " Governor " was an enthusiastic cricketer, and 
 had little sympathy with those who were not. This 
 was a weak spot in his arrangements; duffers were 
 laughed at, they were not taught ; but, then, such 
 was the universal practice in his day — professional 
 tuition in cricket was unheard of in private schools. 
 
 In the winter the mummers used to come round 
 just before we broke up for the Christmas holidays, 
 and we witnessed their performances in the kitchen 
 or an outhouse ; then we heard English spoken as 
 the clowns in Shakespeare's plays spoke it. 
 
 124
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 " Is there a doctor to be found 
 To cure this man of a deadly wound ? " 
 
 and so forth. In May we had the IMorris dancers 
 with quarter staves. 
 
 There was no coddh'ng in that estabh'shment, no 
 fussing ; the doctor so rarely emerged upon the scene 
 that I forget his appearance, and can only remember 
 his name by an effort. The one thing we were afraid 
 of was being effeminate or cowardly, the one offence 
 punished corporally was a lie. I only remember 
 three such executions, though I was at that school 
 over three years. They were terrific ; the instrument 
 was the thick part of the lash of a hunting whip 
 doubled. I am inclined to suspect the " Governor " 
 of simulating a degree of fury which he did not feel, 
 and of allowing his weapon to come into frequent 
 and noisy collision with an adjacent table in order 
 to inspire the greater terror. Certainly the per- 
 formance was tremendous, and I was pleased to 
 reflect that on one occasion the victim, foreseeing the 
 dire future, had taken care to pad the parts likely 
 to be affected with copy books and towels, upon 
 which the " Governor," unsuspecting, or not really 
 caring, vigorously welted. 
 
 Dear, good old friend, it is unkind to recall these 
 things of you ; but you certainly were awe-inspiring ; 
 we were terribly afraid of you ; a look ruled us ; im- 
 positions were hardly necessary. Occasionally some 
 desperate villain had to write out twenty lines of 
 
 12.-1
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 Ovid ! But we learned afterwards to appreciate 
 your vigour and geniality and kindness at their 
 true worth. 
 
 Plumped down there in those bucolic regions with 
 few, and those for the most part unscholarly, neigh- 
 bours, the "Governor" learned to read Italian and 
 German, His teacher was one Signor Brezzi, an Italian 
 linguist and literary man, who lived at Leamington ; 
 there he had a small house crammed with books. He 
 taught us French once a week, on Saturday mornings, 
 driving over in a cab from Banbury. I am proud of 
 having been taught by him, for he had taught George 
 Eliot, I have hitherto said little of the " Governor " 
 as a teacher, I have selected this trait, his energetic 
 reading of modern languages, in order to introduce 
 what I have to say of him in that capacity. He was a 
 superb teacher, and the secret of his teaching lay in 
 this, that he was himself always a learner. Not long 
 before his death, I remember his saying to me, " I 
 never get tired of teaching ; I still read the books 
 that I used to read with you, and I still find something 
 new in them." 
 
 He was not a scholar of the type of Parson Adam, 
 or the father of Pisistratus Caxton, a mine of quota- 
 tions and illustrations. He delighted in comprehen- 
 ding the book that he had before him, and in making 
 you comprehend it too. Whatever were the defects 
 of his teaching from our present point of view, 
 they were occasioned by the imperfect instruments 
 in his hands. For instance, my first Greek book _, 
 
 126 
 
 I
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 was yEsop's fables with Latin notes, and along with 
 it Farnaby. Farnaby was a selection of Greek 
 poetry, chiefly epigrams in all the dialects known 
 to the Greeks ; it was also provided with Latin 
 notes, and no vocabulary. From the beginning we 
 had to grapple with Liddell and Scott. Fortunately 
 the small edition was already invented, or we should 
 have had to tackle the large one. Our next step 
 in Greek prose authors was the Eton book of ex- 
 tracts called Sa'iptores Graeci, practically for our 
 purposes not annotated, and containing selections from 
 Xenophon, Herodotus and Thucydides. One of the 
 passages selected from Thucydides was the famous 
 funeral oration of Pericles, notoriously the hardest 
 passage in Greek prose literature. In Greek verse we 
 went straight to the Iliad, using Ileyne's edition ; 
 and then we went on with the Eton Poetae Graeci, in 
 which there were passages from Theocritus, one of 
 which, the Incantation by means of the Wryneck 
 bound to a wheel, took my fancy immensely at the 
 age of thirteen. In Latin our books were of the 
 same stamp ; we either went straight to the original 
 authors, or if we used selections, they were selections 
 not of easy, but of striking passages. There was no 
 notion of tempering the austere wind of learning to 
 the thinly clothed lamb. Verses, of course, as being 
 an Etonian school, we practised from the commence- 
 ment, almost to the exclusion of prose. Science 
 " falsely so-called " or otherwise we did not attempt. 
 We learned Greek and Roman history with the 
 
 127
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 geography appertaining thereto ; but not much of 
 other geography, though the " Governor " was 
 fond of maps, and had a collection of real 
 beauties. 
 
 Mathematics were our weak point ; they were taught 
 three times a week by a gentleman known to us as 
 " Pop," who rode over from a neighbouring village 
 on a pony where he kept a small shop, and I believe 
 was the sole educational authority ; but even this was 
 enough to enable us to win mathematical distinctions 
 when we went to Eton. 
 
 I do not think the duller boys were neglected, but 
 the brilliant ones must have been magnificently 
 taught. For years the majority of the King's Scho- 
 lars who passed into Eton were taught by the 
 " Governor," and I should not like to say for how 
 many successive years the first or second boy on the 
 list was one of his pupils. Of my own contempor- 
 aries two are now headmasters of most important 
 public schools. We have Members of Parliament in 
 plenty, and if we cannot show a Bishop, the reason 
 must probably be looked for in the still extreme 
 youth of the majority of us. Our average school hours 
 were less than five hours a day. 
 
 This school flourished in the most unlikely of 
 localities for more than thirty years ; its reputation 
 rested on good sound teaching, both moral and intel- 
 lectual. Plain, straightforward, common-sense ways / 
 of dealing with boys and their weaknesses were the j 
 mark of the establishment. And I sometimes ask ' 
 
 1 28
 
 An Early Preparatory School 
 
 myself, could such a place exist now ? I fear not. 
 There was absolutely no humbug about the place. 
 We slept six in a room ; we had no dimity curtains 
 in our dormitories, no carpets by our beds ; we had 
 no swimming bath, but a warm bath once a week — 
 this I consider a blot upon the establishment ; we 
 did not learn to dance, and only incidentally to sing ; 
 we did not boast of a school blazer nor a school 
 magazine, and we only wore gloves on Sundays, when 
 we went to church. 
 
 Still I would gladly forego all the modern luxuries, 
 all the show of the modern preparatory school, could 
 I be certain that boys would be taught as we were 
 taught. Nowadays such schools seem generally to 
 be designed rather for Master Tommy Merton than 
 for Master Harry Sandford. 
 
 Parents were seldom seen on the premises. On 
 one memorable occasion two ladies arrived from 
 different localities, and unknown to each other. The 
 " Governor " had ordered a fly to meet them, but 
 had not informed either of them that she would share 
 this conveyance with somebody else. The conse- 
 quence was a pitched battle just outside Banbury 
 station. One of the ladies pleaded guilty subsequently 
 to having forgotten that she was a lady ; she was 
 the defeated party, and was forced to seek for 
 herself another fly in Banbury. On arriving at her 
 destination, she was horrified to discover her victorious 
 foe in the possession of the drawing-room ; and as 
 
 129 K
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 they had to stay in the house till late in the afternoon, 
 and as relations were strained between them, the 
 " Governor " for the first time in his life wished the 
 station nearer. 
 
 130
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Education and Parental Control 
 
 I SEE the County Councillor dismissing my last 
 set of observations with disgust. He does not 
 want to learn anything about schools that are self- 
 supporting. " The education of the children of people 
 who can pay to educate their children as they please 
 does not concern the State, whereas the real problem 
 is to bring to our working classes such technical 
 education as will prevent us from succumbing to the 
 competition of Germany," etc., etc. 
 
 My dear County Councillor, you are an excellent 
 and well-meaning person, but you are not as a rule 
 professionally cognisant of important facts in matters 
 educational. For instance, did it ever occur to you 
 that the increasing commercial enterprise of Germany 
 may be due to the fact that her directing classes are 
 well educated ? You and your kind are immensely 
 interested in getting Hodge and Geordie brought up 
 to the mark in their respective avocations, — I don't 
 know whether you have yet started technical classes 
 
 131
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 in the art of milking a cow or trashing a hedge, — but 
 you are content to let their emploj'ers take care of 
 themselves ; and you habitually talk as if the very 
 large class of organizers and organizers' subordinates, 
 who are not handicraftsmen, did not exist. And yet, 
 if you had looked across the Tweed, you would have 
 seen what a complete system of national education 
 has done for our neighbours. It is true that whisky 
 and Sir Walter Scott have done a good deal, but 
 John Knox and the schools have done more. Simi- 
 larl)', if Germany is beating us in manufactures — I 
 am not positively certain that she is, but you as 
 often say so as not — the reason is possibly quite as 
 much to be found in the excellent training of her 
 middle classes as in the technical education of her 
 artisans, if, indeed, the latter exists. I shall have 
 more to say about technical education presently. 
 
 The point to which I wish now to draw your atten- 
 tion is this : at the present moment the public mind 
 is agitated, — so far as it ever is agitated about educa- 
 tional questions, — about State aid and rate aid, about 
 State control and local control of the elementary and 
 possibly " secondary " schools. That fine old demo- 
 cratic maxim is trotted out : " Those who pay should 
 control," therefore the local ratepayer should manage 
 the local school ; that is to say, in practice, the local 
 school should be managed by the local parent. The 
 contention is so plausible that its value is worth 
 serious investigation. Does the system of parental 
 control work well where it is applied ? It is applied 
 
 132
 
 Education and Parental Control 
 
 in the directest fashion in schools, which are depen- 
 dent upon the good-will of the parent, and which can 
 only exist so long as they please the parents. 
 
 Take, for example, Eton. This school enjoys, 
 rightly or wrongly, the reputation of being the most 
 expensive school in the world. It is attended by 
 more than a thousand boys. Obviously the organiza- 
 tion satisfies the parents, for nobody is compelled to 
 send his son to Eton. It should at that rate be the 
 best organized school in the world. Is it so ? Do 
 Frenchmen, and Germans, and Scandinavians flock 
 to Eton to find out how to deal with educational 
 problems ? Are her assistant-masters habitually in- 
 vited to become the head masters of other schools, 
 so that they may spread over the country the good 
 things that they have learned at Eton ? Do the 
 scholars habitually pass straight into the army and 
 other public services ? Is it the universal opinion that 
 Eton boys are trained in habits of frugality and in- 
 dustry ? Are the boarding houses at Eton models of 
 construction ? Is the situation of the place magnifi- 
 cently sanitary ? This kind of question could easily 
 be multiplied, and the answers given, if truthful, 
 would tend to prove that the distinguished persons 
 who as public men are very particular about the 
 education of other people's children, ignore their con- 
 victions when they select a school for their own sons. 
 Perhaps of our public schools Rugby can claim to 
 have attracted remarkably vigorous men to her staff, 
 — Rugby, which has given us three Archbishops in 
 
 133
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 succession — for Archbishop Benson was schoolhouse 
 tutor at Rugby before he was head-master of Wel- 
 Hngton — to say nothing of the Bishop of Hereford, 
 Archdeacon Wilson, and other dignitaries. Yet 
 Rugby has twice in the last thirty years gone down 
 very seriously in numbers. Whatever her merits 
 may be, they have not been continuously obvious 
 to the eye of the parent. 
 
 Let us look at the question from another point of 
 view for a little while. 
 
 In an ordinary commercial transaction, — buying a 
 horse, for instance, — the purchaser very soon finds out 
 the defects of his purchase, and, if he is ordinarily 
 wise, does not deal twice with a person who has sold 
 him an unsatisfactory animal. Under certain circum- 
 stances he can even demand back the purchase 
 money. The horse dealer rapidly acquires a repu- 
 tation for honesty and capacity, or the reverse ; for 
 the person who buys is the person who enjoys the 
 use of the article purchased, and a very short period 
 is sufficient to enable him to judge whether he has 
 expended his money wisely or no. Many people 
 habitually talk as if the reputation of a schoolmaster 
 depended upon the same conditions as those of a 
 horse dealer. The parent pays his money for a certain 
 article, viz., a good education for his son, and if he 
 gets it he is satisfied, and the schoolmaster's reputa- 
 tion is made, and if he does not get it he is not 
 satisfied, and the schoolmaster is eventually extin- 
 guished for lack of pupils. 
 
 134
 
 Education and Parental Control 
 
 Let us see how their view works out. 
 
 In the first place, the person who buys the horse 
 presumably rides him himself; he knows whether the 
 horse bucks him off", or roars, or is spavined, or is 
 otherwise a victim to equine fallibiHties ; but the 
 person who pays the schoohnaster does not himself 
 go to school. Secondly, the merits or vices of a 
 horse declare themselves rapidly, while the sounder 
 an educational system, the less likely it is to show 
 immediate results. On this point I have found 
 unanimous testimony from dancing-masters, drawing- 
 masters, drill-instructors, music-masters, as well as 
 schoolmasters in the ordinary sense of the word, to 
 the effect that it is dangerous to employ sound 
 methods of teaching, because the results are not 
 obvious quickly enough to win the approbation of 
 the parents. Again, it is surely obvious that even 
 if good results could be quickly obtained, only a very 
 small minority of parents are fitted by previous train- 
 ing to appreciate them, for which reason parental 
 strictures upon a school curriculum are invariably 
 limited to finding fault with the writing, the arith- 
 metic, the geography, and the absence of colloquial 
 teaching of modern languages. 
 
 The person who pays for education not being the 
 person who receives the benefit, are we to accept 
 the judgment of the person who is being educated ? 
 Tommy at any age between seven and eighteen is to 
 state whether he is being well taught or the reverse I 
 Surely this will not do ! No boy knows at the time 
 
 135
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 how he is being taught ; and though Tommy is of 
 all persons the least capable of bearing malice, he is 
 not likely, other things being equal, to prefer severe, 
 though salutary, discipline to unbounded athletics. 
 
 Then there is a further complication, and one 
 which is invariably ignored. It is this : all boys have 
 two parents, one of whom has never been to a boys' 
 school. During the early years of a boy's school 
 career this parent is the more influential, and if the 
 judgment of parents with regard to the merits of a 
 school is to be accepted as final, her judgment, be 
 it remembered, has at least equal weight with her 
 husband's. Now she is apt, among other things, to 
 lay excessive stress upon an inked collar or lost 
 pocket-handkerchief. Lest I should be unduly sus- 
 pected of a purely masculine prejudice against the 
 action of parents with reference to the education of 
 their children, I quote three aphorisms supplied to me 
 by ladies. The first was communicated to me by a 
 woman reputed to be wise, and certainly a mother, — 
 
 *' The parental relation is demoralizing." 
 
 The second sums up the experience of a woman 
 and a mother who conducted a successful preparatory 
 school for many years, — 
 
 " Parents are the worst enemies of their children." 
 
 The third is the verdict of a lady who is not among 
 the least distinguished of modern head-mistresses, — 
 
 " Good teaching is the luxury of the teacher, and 
 a very expensive luxury." 
 
 In f^ict, I have sometimes thought of constructing 
 
 136
 
 Education and Parental Control 
 
 an ideal schoolmaster, as MacchiavelH constructed 
 an ideal prince. As the object of Macchiavelli's 
 prince was not to govern well, but to make his 
 dynasty secure, so the object of my ideal school- 
 master would be not to teach well, but to make his 
 school a commercial success. There would be a 
 sanatorium and a chapel to please the mother, a 
 writing-master and cricket ground to please the 
 father, a swimming bath and tuck shop to please 
 Tommy, etc., etc. There are two reasons why I 
 have not done so. One is that my book would 
 probably be taken seriously and lead to the establish- 
 ment of successful educational impostures, and the 
 other is that it might be held to be a direct attack 
 upon several existing institutions. 
 
 Immediate parental control is certainly not to be 
 recommended for any school. Madam, would )'ou 
 like to feel that the destinies of your beloved Tommy 
 were in the hands of your neighbours, Mrs. Smith 
 and Mrs. Jones and that horrid Mrs. Brown ? 
 
 Or again, would it be reasonable to put the local 
 schools under the charge of persons who are ulti- 
 mately elected by those who only send their own 
 children to school because they fear the police court ? 
 
 And is the sentiment which occasionally leads the 
 warm-hearted parent of the slums to assault the 
 schoolmaster or prosecute him, when he has applied 
 necessary and wholesome punishment, confined to 
 such parents ? 
 
 I do not know whether the time has )'ct come for 
 
 137
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 the State to take over the whole of our national edu- 
 cation, and for all the responsible scholastic appoint- 
 ments to be State appointments ; but I am quite sure 
 that if local independence is one of the advantages 
 of an established Church, it will be equally advan- 
 tageous to established schools. 
 
 Education is, in fact, one of the salient exceptions 
 to the doctrine of control by the person who pays ; 
 but you will say, " Every parent has a right to con- 
 trol the education of his own children." 
 
 He has not, we admit that he has not, for we force 
 him to send his son to school when he would prefer 
 to send him to work. 
 
 My observations tend to convince me that there is 
 only a noble minority of parents in any class of life 
 who send their children to school because they really 
 believe in education. Some send them to school to 
 be relieved of the bother of them at home ; others 
 because they are afraid of what their neighbours will 
 say ; others because they like to brag of the money 
 they are spending on education ; others because they 
 wish their children to earn a livelihood, and there are 
 still fortunately learned professions. 
 
 I have been betrayed into some bitterness. The 
 expression of your countenance, madam, is alsolutely 
 alarming ; you long to call me horrid and cynical. 
 The latter I certainly am not, otherwise I would not 
 take all this trouble, at the risk of making myself 
 personally disagreeable, to try and open some channel 
 for mutual understanding between parent and foster 
 
 138
 
 Education and Parental Control 
 
 parent. I hope j'ou may come to think better of me 
 later on ; meanwhile it is my firm and unalterable 
 conviction that all that has been well done in the 
 education of English boys for the last half-century 
 has been done by the teachers without the intelli- 
 gent co-operation of the majority of the parents. 
 
 139
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 I REMARKED in an early set of my observations 
 upon the disrepute in which schoolmasters are 
 held in this country, and pointed out that they are the 
 last persons to be consulted upon educational ques- 
 tions ; and I suggested that the reason for this might 
 possibly be found in the disorganization of the schools 
 in which our present generation of statesmen was 
 educated. There is a talk now of reorganizing what 
 is called the " secondary " education of this country ; 
 and from the tone of the Press on the subject and the 
 speeches of public men, it seems to me that there is 
 considerable danger that the country may overlook the 
 excellent work that has been done, and is being done, 
 by the public schools. The defects of the old schools 
 are so obvious that their merits are apt to escape 
 notice. 
 
 It has been m}' good fortune to know intimately 
 the two of our public schools which may justly be 
 held to stand at the opposite poles of our Public 
 
 140
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 School system. I was an Eton boy for six years ; 
 I was an assistant master and house tutor at Clifton 
 College for five years, where I had the privilege of 
 taking part of the teaching of the sixth form, as well as 
 a low form on the classical side, besides examining 
 and taking work in other parts of the school, thus 
 seeing the work from the top to the bottom. 
 
 There was once a Scotch minister, whose flock 
 reproached him with a want of zeal in dealing with 
 the damnable errors^and papistical idolatries of Rome. 
 He replied that there was little grace in giving a bad 
 name to one's mother. I am equally alive to the 
 prejudice which is excited b}' a son of Eton who 
 criticises that gracious mother in any but the most 
 favourable terms ; and therefore I state from the out- 
 set that I yield to no man in my admiration of the 
 Etonian spirit as I knew it thirty years ago, or in my 
 sense of the fitness with which the queen of English 
 schools is housed almost beneath the shadow of the 
 stateliest of English palaces, I should be the last 
 to deny the subtle influences of those " spires and 
 antique towers," those avenues of ancient trees, those 
 green lawns bordered by the translucent Thames, 
 where, let us hope, the holy shade of Henry still 
 sometimes walks. To live in such a place is to 
 breathe history. Compared with Eton, all other 
 schools, not excepting Winchester, seem to an 
 Etonian mean and inglorious, lacking in associations. 
 The combination of Eton and Windsor is surely 
 unique ; and fortune has shown a rare and special 
 
 141
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 kindness in ordaining that the sons of England's 
 noblest families should be brought up within sight 
 of the central and most glorious home of her 
 kings. 
 
 Again, while on the one hand I have no wish to 
 decry Eton, I have equally little wish, on the other, 
 to puff Clifton unduly. I might have instituted the 
 same comparison between any of the eight schools 
 included in the Public Schools Commission of 1865, 
 and any of the public schools founded or developed 
 in the present century. I might have compared 
 Winchester and Rossall, Charterhouse and Upping- 
 ham, Rugby and Marlborough ; but then, I do not 
 know those schools, and I do know Eton and 
 Clifton. 
 
 Clifton started with a great advantage ; she had 
 the experience of her predecessors to learn from ; she 
 had no prejudices, no vested interests to encounter — 
 and, be it remembered, that vested interests of senti- 
 ment are even harder to overcome than the coarser 
 kind of vested interest, which can be bought off for 
 money down. Clifton also had the rare good fortune 
 of being organized, almost from the commencement, 
 by a man of a rare kind of ability, singular earnest- 
 ness 'and persistency — a man who combined the 
 caution and judgment of a sound man of business 
 with the enthusiasm of an apostle. His creed was 
 not literature, nor science, nor mathematics, nor sacer- 
 dotalism, nor evangelicalism ; it was work. Let it 
 not be thought for a moment that Clifton was a place 
 
 142
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 where there was no play ; be it remembered that it 
 was the first school in which a boy made four hundred 
 runs off his own bat in a single innings. Dr. Percival 
 organized the games of the school as carefully as he 
 organized the lessons. Thus the school grew up 
 under his management complete in every depart- 
 ment, an organic whole. 
 
 Recently I have heard Clifton spoken of with 
 detestation as " that horrible Radical school ! "—Dr. 
 Fercival's utterances on the question of the Disestab- 
 lishment of the Church having involved his creation 
 in the disfavour with which he is himself regarded 
 in many quarters, though it is nearly twenty years 
 since he retired from the head mastership. Nobody 
 who has any acquaintance with the teaching of a 
 large public school can hear such a remark without 
 a smile. Schools are not political seminaries, thank 
 goodness ; a schoolmaster is far too hard at work 
 to disseminate the babble of party politicians in his 
 form-room ; nor would his pupils listen to him if he 
 did. Boys bring their political convictions to school, 
 as their fathers take them to electioneering meetings, 
 ready made, unalterable. 
 
 I have been tempted into this digression, because 
 my object in comparing Eton and Clifton is a purely 
 conservative one. I do not want to disparage a 
 Conservative institution in order to exalt a Radical 
 establishment. Young though Clifton was in '82, 
 a sufficiently strong Conservative sentiment already 
 existed to render modifications of the routine a 
 
 143
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 matter of some difficulty. Conservatism seems to 
 be an essential element in the internal working of 
 schools. My aim in comparing the two schools is 
 to show that there is, after all, something worthy of 
 preservation in the old curriculum ; that it must not 
 be condemned for imperfections which are not inher- 
 ent in it, but which depended on circumstances 
 extraneous. Again I must repeat that what I have 
 to say about Eton applies in principle to all the old 
 schools ; the details may be different, but the general 
 lines of their history were similar, and occasioned 
 similar defects. 
 
 The one important change in the old schools made 
 by the Public Schools Commission — a change, how- 
 ever, which has not as yet brought much fruit — was 
 the reconstitution of the governing bodies. In old 
 times the governing body of such a school as Eton 
 was practically co-operative, and the whole of the 
 patronage had a tendency to be monopolised by a 
 few families. I do not know all the ins and outs 
 of the intermarriages between the Eton families of 
 thirty years ago, nor how far the influence of each 
 particular family permeated ; but I remember that 
 a single family was represented by the Vice-Provost, 
 one Fellow (a son), the Head Master (a son-in-law), 
 one Assistant Master (a grandson), five King's Scho- 
 lars (grandsons), and that another son and a son-in- 
 law held college livings. I] have not the smallest 
 wish to impute any undue partiality in the distribu- 
 tion of patronage. The King's Scholars certainly 
 
 144
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 earned their positions by the results of an open com- 
 petition ; and the men were at least as well qualified 
 to hold their respective posts as any other persons 
 about the place. What I want to point out is the 
 monotony of temperament which would be likely to 
 prevail in a place largely governed by members of 
 two or three families. It was also the practice to 
 appoint Eton boys to masterships, to the exclusion 
 of boys from other schools. A boy left Eton, went 
 to the University, took his degree, and returned to 
 Eton as a master without ever having seen any 
 educational work, except in the school in which he 
 had himself been taught. In the same way the head 
 master was an old Etonian, and not unfrequently his 
 sole teaching experience had been gained at Eton. 
 I interrupt myself again to say that Eton was not 
 alone in this system. 
 
 All this was supposed to preserve the true blue 
 Etonian spirit ; and it did so. It is impossible to 
 discuss a question of school discipline or school 
 organization with an Eton master of the old type 
 without encountering a wall of invincible ignorance. 
 He is to a Percival what a mandarin is to a Cham- 
 berlain ; he meets the suggestion of a possible minute 
 modification in the habits of Eton with the bland, 
 polite and pitying smile of the imperturbable Chinee 
 when he is required to consider the advantages of 
 a railway. China is China, and Eton is Eton. 
 
 The late J. K. Stephen once remarked to me : 
 " How can you venture to compare Eton, the most 
 
 145 L
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 brilliant of schools, with Clifton, the dullest?" and he 
 proceeded to expatiate, in his abundant humorous 
 fashion, on the dulness of Clifton. 
 
 Stephen did not know so much about Clifton as I 
 did, or he would have thought twice before stigma- 
 tizing as dull a school that was perpetually being 
 enlivened by the brilliant and yet mellow humour, 
 the incomparable literary charm of T. E. Brown. 
 But the spirit of his observation was the spirit of 
 many an Etonian : " Eton has the one thing that 
 cannot be taken away from her. Why insist that she 
 shall have anything else ? " To which the answer is : 
 " Those who love Eton best wish her to have every- 
 thing." 
 
 I have shown in a former paper that intellectual 
 training by means of mathematics and languages, 
 and especially by means of Latin, is a process requir- 
 ing close individual attention in its early stages. 
 Eton was the fortress of classical learning ; at Eton, 
 if anywhere, you would expect the conditions to be 
 known under which Latin and Greek can be taught ; 
 at Eton, if anywhere, you would expect the staff to 
 be as ample as the curriculum demanded. I picked 
 up an old Eton school list not many years back, and 
 found that in the Lower Fourth Form one division 
 of fifty-four boys was assigned to a single master; and 
 so far from obeying the natural rule of progress, which 
 makes it possible to increase the number taught by 
 one man as the boys get older, the smallest divisions 
 were at the top of the school, the largest at the 
 
 146
 
 Eton and Cliftoil 
 
 bottom. I have no hesitation in sa}in2 that the 
 fifty-four small boys who filled the form-room of that 
 one unfortunate man would have been far better in 
 the playing-fields. In Dr. Keate's time 198 boys 
 were assigned to one master, and Keate was supposed 
 to be a vigorous Head. 
 
 I pick up a Whittaker's Almanack for 1892. I 
 find the Eton masters all told number forty-five, and 
 the Clifton masters all told, fifty. Clifton is limited 
 to six hundred and fifty boys ; Eton was at that 
 time nearly a thousand. Thus, at Clifton there was 
 one master to every thirteen bo)'s ; at Eton, only one 
 to every sixteen and a fraction, Clifton being a school 
 absolutely without endowment, and paying for the 
 erection of its buildings and their maintenance out of 
 the education fees, which, again, were little more than 
 half those of Eton, if, as is perfectly fair for purposes 
 of comparison, the tutor's fee at Eton is reckoned 
 along with the other education fee. At Clifton 
 there was no payment for education imposed upon 
 all the boys outside the ordinary school fee ; while 
 extra tuition in a special subject was rare and not 
 well paid. 
 
 The number of boys in each form at Clifton is 
 increased gradually from the bottom of the school. 
 The Sixth Form was the largest, numbering as a rule 
 between forty and fifty boys, reckoning classical and 
 modern sides together. Very few other forms got 
 beyond thirty. The forms in the middle of the school 
 were kept as near as possible to five and twenty. 
 
 147
 
 observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 I remember finding in my own form, the Upper 
 Third, that less than twenty was too few to ensure 
 emulation ; while at twenty-six the work began to 
 be over-irksome, and it was not easy to give sufficient 
 attention to the laggards without stopping the pro- 
 gress of the foremost. 
 
 When the unwieldy size of an Eton division is 
 pointed out to an Eton master, he usually replies, 
 "You forget the tutorial system." There was a 
 tutorial system at Clifton also. I will describe it first, 
 and then provide my reader with the materials for 
 comparing it with the tutorial system which used to 
 be the favourite boast of Eton : and was rightly so at 
 its first institution. 
 
 At Clifton each boarding house of forty-eight boys 
 was provided with a resident house tutor, who shared 
 the ordinary discipline of the house with the house 
 master and one or more non-resident tutors. The 
 house master used to take Preparation, as a rule, 
 once a week, and the house tutors divided the re- 
 maining evenings between them. Only boys below 
 the fifth attended preparation. Further, all boys 
 below the fifth were assigned to one or the other of 
 the house tutors ; twice a week they went to his 
 study provided with their construing books, and pre- 
 pared their construing lessons in an informal fashion. 
 The object of the institution was to give the tutor an 
 opportunity of establishing friendly relations with his 
 pupils. " Tutor set," as the boys called it, was not 
 a lesson, and the construing was rather a pretext for 
 
 148
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 a visit than for instruction. In some tutor sets work 
 was generally done within half an hour, and the rest 
 of the time was given to conversation or reading 
 some English book aloud. A boy ceased to come to 
 tutor set after passing into the fifth, but he did not as 
 a rule cease to visit his tutor's study ; and in this way 
 were often formed friendships which in my case have 
 stood the test of time and distance. A tutor set was 
 generally small, under ten boys. If a boy was back- 
 ward, and really required help, it gave the oppor- 
 tunity of helping him ; further, as each boy's place in 
 the weekly order of his form was reported to the 
 tutor, it gave an opportunity for a word in season. 
 
 Thus the tutorial system at Clifton was entirely 
 subordinate to the form work ; it amounted to pre- 
 paration and a better chance of social intercourse 
 than is afforded by inviting boys to breakfast once or 
 twice a term. 
 
 By a stroke of genius a similar system was ex- 
 tended to the town boys, who were divided into 
 " houses," according to a geographical division of the 
 town, and who were superintended by their respective 
 tutors in the same way as the boarders. 
 
 At Eton below the middle fifth form all lessons 
 were construed to the tutor, before they were con- 
 strued in school ; in the lower parts of the school, 
 they were prepared as well as construed in pupil- 
 room : thus every lesson was done twice over. That 
 is comparatively harmless ; there is no possible ex- 
 cuse for the preposterous waste of time involved 
 
 149
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 in having all composition shown up to the tutor, 
 corrected by him, copied out, and then shown up 
 again to the master in school. The original copy 
 was shown up with the fair copy, so that the guilt of 
 any false quantities surviving in the revised edition 
 might be assigned to the real perpetrator ; and how 
 your form master did enjoy your tutor's little 
 lapses ! 
 
 After entering the middle fifth form, an Eton boy 
 ceased to construe all his lessons with his tutor, but 
 he still took his composition to him, and did so to the 
 end of the chapter. He further attended his pupil- 
 room twice a week, and read some author with him, 
 who was considered too difficult for school. In this 
 there was no harm, but had the school work proper 
 been up to the mark, it would have been unneces- 
 sary. 
 
 There are people who believe that an Eton master 
 leads a glorious butterfly existence, caring neither for 
 to-day nor for to-morrow. As a matter of fact, he 
 was one of the hardest worked of teachers. He might 
 have thirty pupils, and they might be distributed all 
 over the upper school, from the sixth down to the 
 lower fourth ; he would also have a division, which 
 would ordinarily number between thirty or fort)' 
 boys ; and be)'ond that he would probably have a 
 house, which would involve the charge of an average 
 of twenty boys single-handed. Were he a classical 
 master, these boys would also be his pupils. The 
 stock defence of this arrangement is that it promotes 
 
 150
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 a healthy personal tie between the tutor and the 
 pupil. Division masters change, but the tutor is 
 always there. 
 
 Precisely the same personal tie was created at 
 Clifton without the prodigious waste of time caused 
 by the Eton system. 
 
 The worst defect of the Eton tutorial system was 
 that it reduced the lessons in school to a farce : the 
 pupil-room and not the form-room was the teaching 
 instrument of the school. Hence the organization of 
 the form-room was neglected, and too often the dis- 
 cipline was a byword. 
 
 I carefully speak of all this in the past tense. I do 
 not know whether any material changes have been 
 made ; probably they have, but that does not affect 
 my argument, which is that the bad organization or 
 want of organization of all the old public schools 
 between fifty and thirty years ago prejudiced the 
 public mind against the studies which are pursued in 
 them, and against the persons who taught in them, 
 with the result that the professional knowledge of the 
 public schoolmaster is not respected as it should 
 be. 
 
 Want of organization not onl}' spoils the work that 
 is done, but stands in the way of the work that might 
 be done. Lost in the mazes of the tutorial sj'stem, the 
 Eton masters had failed to perceive how much trouble 
 they might have saved themselves by an effective 
 reorganization of forms and divisions. 
 
 Who then is to blame ? Nobody is to blame. 
 
 151
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 You cannot demand of an institution four hundred 
 years old that it shall suddenly say good-bye to its 
 past history, and start brand new. 
 
 I take the origin of the tutorial system to be as 
 follows : — 
 
 In the first place, the mediaeval conception of a 
 school was a place where lessons were heard, not 
 where lessons were learned. I might even go further, 
 and say that I have encountered large numbers of 
 my contemporaries, who think that all a school- 
 master has to do is to " hear a boy's task." Teach- 
 ing in the sense of teaching a bo)' how to learn is 
 a comparatively modern invention. Roger Ascham, 
 indeed, knew something of it, though strict personages 
 looked upon him with disfavour as being given to 
 dicing and cock-fighting ; but the general conception 
 of school was a continuous repetition lesson. We have 
 seen how the founders of large schools like Win- 
 chester and Eton thought it quite sufficient to pro- 
 vide a head-master and an usher as the teaching 
 establishment, even though they contemplated the 
 admission of boys who were not upon the founda- 
 tion. 
 
 They did not foresee the time when parents 
 would go to live at Eton or Winchester in order to 
 send their sons to school ; still less did they foresee 
 the enormous boarding schools which were destined 
 to swamp the original foundation. 
 
 Thus all the additions to the staff of such schools, 
 and all the arrangements of the boarding houses were 
 
 152
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 extra-foundational, and the form which they took 
 depended upon chance rather than design. 
 
 A personage who appears in all large domestic 
 establishments of the later middle ages, is the " gover- 
 nor " of the children. When the boys went to school 
 or the University, this person accompanied them ; 
 his duties were partly parental and partly scholastic ; 
 he kept them out of mischief, and saw that their work 
 was prepared to be heard in school. Eton, from 
 its proximity to Windsor, early began to be attended 
 by the sons of wealthy men, though the final impetus 
 to its popularity was given by George III. 
 
 These boys came to school attended by their 
 tutors. Less wealthy persons would combine to place 
 their sons under the charge of one tutor. At first the 
 tutor was not insisted upon by the school authorities. 
 Presently every boy was compelled to be provided 
 with a tutor, and the tutor was also obliged to be 
 a member of the classical staff of the school. Thus 
 the tutorial system is not an}'body's invention — it 
 grew out of circumstances. I am afraid that the 
 practice of correcting composition by the tutor sug- 
 gests a time when the " governor " not only saw that 
 his charge's lessons were prepared, but also did his 
 exercises for him ; and again, that the subsequent 
 revision of the composition by the division master 
 was a check upon the incapacity of the tutor, who 
 might be anj-body, seeing that his appointment was 
 originally not in the hands of the school, but of the 
 parent. 
 
 153
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 It is easy to see that the tutorial system did most 
 wholesomely supplement the school organization, and 
 that the practice of doing the detailed work of in- 
 struction in the pupil-room and simply hearing 
 lessons in school had an early and natural origin. If 
 I am asked why it was continued beyond the time at 
 which it was the best form of organization, I reply 
 by a counter-question, Why do men still wear two 
 buttons at the backs of their coats? A form once 
 adopted is with difficulty modified, and rarely shaken 
 off. Some of the London North Western Railway 
 carriages are still ornamented at the ends in such a 
 way as to suggest the body of a stage coach, and I 
 am rather surprised that the guards are not provided 
 with blunderbusses. 
 
 The most striking feature of English education to 
 a continental is the boarding school. This is a com- 
 paratively modern development ; it is still very difficult 
 to get the governors of a school to see an}'thing in 
 the boarding houses except a private speculation on 
 the part of the masters, which increases their salaries ; 
 the)' do not see that it increases their responsibilities, 
 and that the duties of the governing bod}' are 
 vastly extended where the school is no longer a 
 teaching establishment, but has become a foster 
 parent. 
 
 At Eton the boarding school grew up in the most 
 fortuitous fashion ; the first houses were simply lodg- 
 ing houses kept b}' an}'bod}'. There were still four 
 houses kept by elderly ladies when I first went to 
 
 J54
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 Eton. I slept in one'of them immediately after it had 
 passed into the hands of one of the masters. For the 
 first and only time in my life I was assailed by 
 certain insects whose presence in an ordinary lodging 
 house is held to spell ruin. My sad experience led 
 to an investigation, and it transpired that the boys 
 rooms had repeatedly been repapered without re- 
 moving the old papers. The consequences had better 
 be imagined than described. The incident is worth 
 mentioning for one thing. The head of the house 
 was a friend of mine, and I asked him whether any 
 of the boys had ever suffered in the same way. " Oh, 
 yes," he replied, " alwaj's for the first three weeks 
 after we come back," and from the tone of his voice I 
 gathered that he was rather proud of the circum- 
 stance : he certainly did not object. This and one 
 or two other things that have come under my obser- 
 vation have convinced me that boys will stand any 
 amount of discomfort provided they are allowed to 
 arrange their quarters in their own incongruous way 
 — a thing which is especially noticeable in their feed- 
 ing arrangements. I have seen a boy with a slice of 
 German sausage, two sardines, and a lump of mar- 
 malade arranged to be devoured on the same piece of 
 bread. He enjoyed the repast, but if it had been 
 offered to him by his house master, he would have 
 rejected it with disgust and complained of it at 
 home. 
 
 At the present time members of the teaching staff 
 are alone allowed to open houses at Eton ; but the 
 
 155
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 tradition of past times is continued in the fact that a 
 house master is known to his house as " my tutor," M 
 or " my dame " ; the latter in the case in which, 
 he not being a classical man, the boys in his 
 house are not his pupils. One of Eton's glorious 
 anomalies. 
 
 There seems to have been a time when it dawned 
 on the Etonian mind that some supervision of these 
 dame's houses was advisable, and Keate's nocturnal 
 visits, preceded by his butler bearing a lanthorn, are 
 immortal in the gallery of Etonian comic portraiture ; 
 but it was some years after the death of Keate before 
 all the responsibilities involved in boarding a house- 
 ful of boys were understood or provided for. Some 
 of the old houses still standing in my time were 
 miracles of construction and inconvenience and dark- 
 ness, with passages suggesting Mark Twain's descrip- 
 tion of the street called Straight at Damascus : about 
 as like the splendid palaces that have taken their 
 places as a natural wasps' nest is like a modern bee- 
 hive, or old Mentone like modern Paris. 
 
 I believe the health of the school to have been 
 saved by the practice of allowing every boy to have a 
 fire in his room ; otherwise I must disbelieve all that 
 we are told nowadays about sanitation, for the health 
 of the school was distinctly good. 
 
 Here, again, the initial advantage which a modern 
 school has over an old one is at once obvious, for it 
 is easier to change a lesson than to destroy and re- 
 build house property. 
 
 156
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 Some people have regretted that the Public 
 Schools' Commission did not do more : for my part, 
 I am inclined to regret that it did not do less. It 
 would have been far more to the point to see that 
 a school like Eton had a fair opportunity of doing 
 her old work well than to force into her curriculum 
 a muddle of untried studies. For my own part I 
 would to this day send a boy with greater confi- 
 dence to a school where Latin and Greek alone were 
 taught, provided I knew that they were well taught, 
 than send him to a school which advertised all the 
 sciences, and all the languages, a chapel, a workshop, 
 gymnasium, and swimming bath. 
 
 Mathematics were scandalously neglected at Eton 
 in my time. The very place in which they were 
 taught showed the small consideration in which 
 they were held by the authorities. Half a dozen evil 
 shanties down a damp lane were the home of the 
 science of Pythagoras. They were, however, the 
 only rooms at Eton, provided, as a matter of course, 
 with the blackboard — another survival of the times 
 when lessons were not taught, but heard. 
 
 The most conclusive testimony to the merits of the 
 Clifton organization that I have encountered came 
 involuntarily from a mathematical master from one 
 of the old schools. When there was a talk of start- 
 ing a military department in his school, he came 
 down to Clifton, which had a reputation for passing 
 boys direct into Woolwich and Sandhurst, in order 
 to see how it was done. He was entirely ignorant of 
 
 157
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 the size and importance of Clifton, which I think he 
 had imagined to be a small Somersetshire grammar 
 school. 
 
 It happened that I was told off to show him 
 about. As he wanted to see the mathematical work 
 of the school, I handed over to him all the examina- 
 tion papers — questions and answers — of the previous 
 term ; these were easily accessible, as it was the 
 custom to keep them pigeon-holed for reference from 
 one examination to the next. I left him with them 
 for an hour, and then returned. " Yes, this is all very 
 well," he said, " but I do not want to see your special 
 work ; I want to see the ordinary work of the school." 
 When I told him that he had seen it, he collapsed 
 like the Queen of Sheba, and asked how it was done, 
 and I hope I made such a reply as would not be 
 unduly distressing to a sensitive person. He would 
 have asked the same question had he looked through 
 the classical papers. The secret lay in the fact that 
 the school was adequately staffed, and that there was 
 a simple and effective organization for keeping up the 
 standard of the ordinary boy. 
 
 I have been told that Eton cannot be adequately 
 staffed for financial reasons. That is all rubbish. No 
 parent, if the alternative were put before him, would 
 rather spend twenty pounds a year in tailor's bills, 
 and haberdashery, and strawberry mess, than in 
 tuition fees. If they can afford one, they can afford 
 the other. 
 
 The danger of such a school as Clifton is over- 
 
 138 
 
 \
 
 Eton and Clifton 
 
 organization ; the great merit of such a school as the 
 Eton that I remember was the comparative intel- 
 lectual liberty of the sixth form boy. There was an 
 excellent and easily accessible school librar}', and the 
 time of the upper boys was not unduly interfered 
 with. At Clifton the sixth form boys were still too 
 dependent on their teachers, with the result that they 
 were apt to lose their bearings when they went on to 
 the universities, and had to organize their work for 
 themselves. 
 
 I know some old Etonians will be ready, at this 
 point, with a floorer, and will ask in a triumphant 
 fashion, — 
 
 " Well, but how about the tone ? " 
 
 " Tone " is rather an indefinite thing, and largely 
 a question of taste ; but if by " tone " is meant a 
 horror of an ungentlemanly action, an enthusiasm for 
 courage, a staunch patriotism, an open and fearless 
 acknowledgment of the maxim Noblesse oblige^ I have 
 not been able to discover any essential difference be- 
 tween public school-boys. Eton has no more the 
 monopoly of these sentiments than any other public 
 school. If, however, it is a question of silk hats, and 
 
 neat umbrellas, and spotless trousers, and Hum, 
 
 hum, I admit myself discomfited. 
 
 No, gracious mother, thy children are not all 
 dandies, nor if their plumage is splendid are their 
 hearts less brave. They have shown a good account 
 of themselves not so long ago in South Africa, and 
 there are many battlefields where " Floreat Etona 
 
 159
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 has been a rallying cry since the Crimea. None the 
 less let us not forget that Clifton, latest born of public 
 schools, already has her Younghusband, and let us, 
 as Englishmen, be proud of the fact. 
 
 l6o
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Educational Questions in 425 B.C. 
 
 REFORMERS who inflict fresh educational 
 theories upon us once every five years, gener- 
 ally talk as if there had been no serious attention 
 paid to education till its deplorable condition at- 
 tracted the attention of their enlightened selves ; but, 
 in fact, educational questions are as old as mental 
 education. We are still wrangling over some of them 
 which were being warmly discussed at Athens two 
 thousand three hundred and twenty years ago. 
 
 Let us rest for a moment to see how things looked 
 then. 
 
 Every respectable Greek thought of himself as a 
 worshipper of his country's gods, and as a soldier, 
 and the earliest Greek training was directed to secur- 
 ing efficiency in both these capacities. 
 
 Lads were taught to recite hymns in praise of the 
 gods, and to move rhythmically in stately dances. 
 They were also taught portions of the older poets 
 
 161 M
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 by way of moral lessons, especiall}' the didactic 
 works of Hesiod, whose denunciations of perjury 
 must have been particularly valuable to a Greek. 
 But the greater part of their training was phy- 
 sical. 
 
 Physical efficiency was in those days of paramount 
 importance. Before the invention of mechanical 
 artillery, — when the only propelling power known was 
 a man's own thews and sinews, working, it is true, 
 at times through such appliances as bows and slings 
 and catapults, but as often by the immediate appli- 
 cation of the muscles to the motion of a missile, — a 
 body of strong young men was almost as important 
 to a town as gunpowder and other explosives to our- 
 selves. 
 
 A state whose citizens were not up to the neces- 
 sary standard of physical strength was at the mercy 
 of its antagonists ; and as fighting was a fairly con- 
 tinuous pastime among the various Greek towns, a 
 weak town very soon suffered for its weakness. 
 Hence, in all Greek towns the physical training of 
 the citizens was begun at an early age and conducted 
 on scientific principles, though all did not take the 
 extreme measures adopted by the Spartans, and 
 render a man's life one long course of military train- 
 ing, till he was too old for warfare. 
 
 It was well worth their while to do so. The 
 Spartans became the acknowledged leaders in all the 
 mercenary troops who engaged themselves under the 
 Persian Satraps or other potentates, whose own sub- 
 
 162
 
 Educational Questions in 425 B.C. 
 
 jects were not equally well trained either in tactics 
 or in exercises calculatad to impi'ove the skill and 
 strength of the individual. 
 
 It was in consequence of this training that the 
 Greeks eventually overran the East. Alexander's vic- 
 torious course was the outcome of the gymnasium and 
 the palaestra. The highly developed muscles of the 
 Greek gave him an advantage over the Asiatic com- 
 parable to the possession of firearms in our own 
 time. 
 
 We are rather apt to overlook this feature of Greek 
 life, and to think of it as connected with athletic 
 displays at Olympia and elsewhere, rather than as a 
 part of their military life. The victories of Rome 
 have thrown into the shade the earlier achievements 
 of the Greeks ; but the Greeks were at Babylon 
 when Rome was still a struggling Italian Republic, 
 and Rome's victories over Greeks were won when the 
 Greeks had become orientalized, and had to some 
 extent abandoned the severity of their earlier train- 
 ing. 
 
 To revert to intellectual education. In process of 
 time in the large Greek towns, notably in Athens 
 and Syracuse, life became more complex, men had to 
 be something more than soldiers, the man who could 
 speak in public became a power, and intellectual 
 training became as necessary to the citizen as physical 
 training. The persons who supplied the intellectual 
 training were called " sophistai," as we might say 
 "wisdomers." There was nothing abusive in the 
 
 163
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 term itself, no faintest shade of reproach or ridicule 
 attaching to it. Still old-fashioned persons sniffed 
 and snorted at your " vvisdomer," just as the thorough- 
 going old classic despises a scientific man. How was 
 the state to be defended, if the young men, instead 
 of developing their muscles and inuring their bodies 
 to bear the sun and the cold sat all day long in shady 
 porticoes discussing quibbles of words ? 
 
 The dislike of the sophist was not based upon any 
 reason with which the modern philosopher would 
 sympathise. It was not his views or his doctrines 
 that were distasteful in the mass or individually ; but 
 rather that the practice of training the mind was 
 thought dangerous, likely to interfere with the train- 
 ing of the body. 
 
 The sophist very soon added moral training to 
 mental training ; he professed to teach virtue, as well 
 as the arts of discussion and persuasion, and he ac- 
 cepted money payments for his lessons. 
 
 There were also teachers of natural science, in no 
 sense an organized body, but men who took an in- 
 terest in speculations with regard to the first cause, 
 the nature of the heavenly bodies, and so forth. 
 These men published their ^lucubrations, possibly 
 lectured when they could find anybody to listen to 
 them. Hence the sober-minded Athenian pater- 
 familias got it in his mind that there was a great deal 
 of dangerous knowledge going about, and shook his 
 head over " science falsely so-called." 
 
 In early times natural science and supernatural 
 
 164
 
 Educational Questions in 425 B.C. 
 
 science were apt to march together. Are they quite 
 distinct even now ? Much that is to us obvious 
 quackery was in the day's work of the scientific man 
 not so very long ago. When astrology was not dis- 
 tinct from astronomy ; when chemical and electrical 
 phenomena were known, but not their causes, a man 
 who, by striking a dried fox's skin on a varnished 
 shield, could produce a spark, was apt to think him- 
 self, and be thought by others, supernaturally gifted ; 
 in fact, I have to admit that science and the black 
 arts overlapped one another's domains. There were 
 persons who imparted their knowledge of the 
 mysteries of nature in a mysterious fashion ; the 
 candidate was bemused by all kinds of ceremonies 
 before the dread secrets were communicated to 
 him. 
 
 To Athens, as the centre of Greek life during her 
 short period of empire, all that was striking in in- 
 tellectual discoveries naturally gravitated, and as soon 
 as there were two systems of education in conflict, 
 the conflict was bound to appear in Athens. 
 
 The air was full of the speculations of the natural 
 philosophers, which seemed to the uneducated of 
 those days to substitute impersonal causes for the 
 gods. Then there were the professors of rhetoric 
 undertaking to train the young man so that he could 
 never be overcome in the law courts, or in a political 
 assembly ; and among them all vv'as the curious per- 
 sonality of Socrates, not a teacher by profession, but 
 perpetually fastening on to people and asking them 
 
 165
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 questions which tended to confuse their ideas and 
 make them feel foolish. 
 
 All this is brought into the Clouds of Aristophanes^ 
 and was represented on the stage of Athens in 425 B.C. 
 The play was then called a " Comedy " ; we should 
 rather class it as a satire on the professors of educa- 
 tion and their employers. 
 
 The central character of the play is an old Athenian 
 farmer, Strepsiades (Mr. Shiftison), who has married 
 a fashionable wife, and has a fashionable expensive 
 son, given to horse-racing. The old gentleman is 
 deeply involved in debt owing to his son's extrava- 
 gance, and it occurs to him, pondering in the watches 
 of the night, to get his son taught by one of these 
 word-mongers, who has a lying argument, so he 
 understands, that will always beat an honest 
 one. 
 
 Here we must observe, first of all, that Strepsiades 
 wishes to have his son taught for a purely material 
 advantage ; his views of education are what some 
 people call practical ; his object would commend 
 itself to all careful-minded fathers. Secondly, that his 
 view of the trained advocate is precisely the view of 
 the uneducated man of all ages, just as Mr. Tulliver 
 would have looked, not for an honest lawyer, but for 
 a " bigger raskill " to encounter Mr. Wakem. 
 
 Pheidippides, the son, refuses to go to school. He 
 does not want to look such a miserable pale smug as 
 the scholars — a prejudice of the athlete against the 
 
 100
 
 Educational Questions in 425 B.C. 
 
 man of letters that has not yet died out. Eventually 
 the old man goes himself. 
 
 By combining our knowledge of INIr. Jourdain's 
 lessons in the Bourgeois Gentilhovune with Gulliver's 
 experiences in Laputa, we may form a pretty clear 
 idea of the atmosphere in which the greater part of 
 the play is conducted. 
 
 It chiefly ridicules the popular view of the new 
 learning in all its branches. Socrates is credited 
 with teaching that Vortex rules having kicked out 
 Zeus, and many other things of the same nature. 
 
 Apparently, the popular judgment in those days 
 treated scientific men just as it does now. To this 
 day the average Englishman believes that Darwin 
 declared authoritatively that men are descended from 
 monkeys. 
 
 We do not know enough of the contemporary 
 natural science to be sure whether Aristophanes 
 parodies or actually quotes the explanations of the 
 scientific men of his day. An explanation of thunder 
 and rain connecting them both with the clouds cer- 
 tainly sounds genuine ; and the comment of Strepsi- 
 ades, that he thought Zeus rained, is absolutely true 
 to nature. 
 
 Eventually the old man proves too stupid to be 
 taught, and goes home to fetch his son. This time 
 he is successful in inducing him to come to school, 
 and introduces him to Socrates in the following 
 words, — 
 
 167
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 " When he was quite a tiny boy ; yes, only just so big, 
 He'd build his little houses, his tiny ships he'd rig. 
 And out of strips of leather make a little cart and wheel. 
 And, oh ! such pretty little frogs of waste pomegranate 
 peel ! " 
 
 Parental nature has not changed much in two 
 thousand years. By similar indications a parent still 
 recognises mechanical and artistic genius in a child of 
 six years old. 
 
 In fact, the Clouds could be put upon the stage 
 to-day with very little alteration, and a great many 
 of the hits would still apply. 
 
 On the entrance of Pheidippides into the school, 
 the two arguments parade before him, as Virtue and 
 Vice paraded before Herakles in a well-known apo- 
 logue by the sophist Prodicus. 
 
 The honest argument represents the old-fashioned 
 Athenian education, such as well-meaning old Athen- 
 ian gentlemen conceived it to be, and the dishonest 
 argument the new education from the same point of 
 view. 
 
 Of course the young man takes up with the 
 latter, and profits so well by its lessons that he comes 
 home and beats his father, and proves that he is 
 right in doing so. Strepsiades calls upon the 
 Clouds, who have hitherto been his friends, to come 
 and help him ; but they refuse. They had led him 
 into this mischief on purpose. He wished for know- 
 ledge for unrighteous ends, and deserves his punish- 
 ment. 
 
 i68
 
 Educational Questions in 425 B.C. 
 
 Such is a summary of the work in which education 
 makes her first bow in literature. The questions 
 raised, the views expressed or contested, are much the 
 same as those which are discussed to-day. 
 
 It is to be noted that the Greeks had got hold 
 of the idea that education was a duty to the State, 
 rather than a means of private advancement ; also, 
 that when Aristophanes wrote, the motive for the 
 new learning, viz., private personal advantage in the 
 law court or public assembly was distrusted. In a 
 few years Plato was to write a series of violent 
 attacks upon the professional teachers, the sophists, 
 to deride them for undertaking to teach virtue at so 
 much a lesson, to laugh at them for meddling with 
 natural science, of which they could know nothing, 
 and neglecting the laws of accurate thought, which 
 were in his opinion ascertainable. From his time 
 onwards the whole family of words connected with 
 sophist have been terms of reproach. 
 
 The position of Socrates in this play has always 
 been a puzzle. He is made the representative alike 
 of the immoral teaching in logic and of the wild 
 guesses of the natural philosophers. Hence the play 
 has by many persons been regarded as an attack 
 upon Socrates. 
 
 I venture upon one or two suggestions which may 
 help to clear up the mystery. 
 
 First of all, though we are in the habit of regard- 
 ing Socrates as a " teacher " — I might say " a pro- 
 fessional teacher " — it is highly improbable that he 
 
 169
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 was so regarded by his countrymen during his life- 
 time. To them he was an eccentric individual of the 
 queerest possible personal appearance, with all kinds 
 of strange habits, who haunted the public meeting 
 places, where he fastened upon unlucky individuals 
 and forced them to argue with him. He was known 
 to be particularly fond of young men, over whom 
 he exerted a strange influence, and for whom he 
 possessed an attraction that could not be explained. 
 He went into the gymnasia during the lessons as other 
 people did, and during the intervals of the exercises 
 he argued with the professional teachers of the new 
 learning, who used that time to give their lessons 
 (hence the word school, which originally meant 
 leisure) ; but he did not " give lessons " himself, nor 
 did he accept payment for arguing. As he was a 
 well-known and comic figure at Athens, Aristophanes 
 used his mask so to speak for the entirely fictitious 
 character which he created, whose views and habits 
 were in such flat contradiction to the well-known 
 views of the real Socrates that nobody could possibly 
 make a mistake. In fact, I can see that the joke 
 might be perceptibly heightened by making Socrates 
 the sponsor of views about which he was perpetually 
 growling to everybody's amusement. Again, the 
 Athenians were not sensitive to caricature to the same 
 degree that we are, though, indeed, one very important 
 use that we ourselves make of our public men is to 
 enliven the pages of Punch, and they don't mind. 
 Even though the majority of the personal allusions in 
 
 170
 
 Educational Questions in 425 B.C. 
 
 the old Greek corned)' strike us as brutal, we do not 
 hear of personal violence being habitually applied 
 to the poets. I can myself imagine Socrates laughing 
 as heartily as anybody at the mask, which was like 
 himself, and the views attributed to the mask, which 
 were totally dissimilar. The incongruity will have 
 struck him more forcibly than any other member of 
 the audience. We know that Aristophanes was one 
 of his personal friends. 
 
 Unfortunately there were people who took the 
 picture of Aristophanes seriously. If Plato's Apology 
 of Socrates is the genuine defence, Socrates was con- 
 scious of this ; but even then his allusion is half- 
 playful ; he bore no grudge against the poet, and did 
 not quite believe that any one could have been really 
 taken in by him. 
 
 Such, madam, is the scope of the Clouds of 
 Aristoplianes^ written four hundred and twenty-five 
 years before the Christian era, and yet so modern in 
 its matter that an orthodox Church of England 
 clergyman, such as the grave Dr. Mitchell, habitually 
 sides with Zeus and Athene against the new learning 
 of the sophists, against that very movement of the 
 Greek intellect which paved the way for the diffusion 
 of Christianity among the Gentiles. The confusion 
 about the position attributed to the sophists has 
 been largely due to the modern practice of discover- 
 ing modern ideas too literally represented in ancient 
 authors. There is a close resemblance, it is true, but 
 the resemblance is often most misleading, just where 
 
 171
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 on the surface it seems closest, as the most puzzHng 
 words in other languages are those which have 
 the same form but not the same meaning in our 
 own. 
 
 172
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 History, Geography, and English 
 
 SOME years ago I spent a night at the Abbots' 
 Hotel, at Glastonbury. There was on that occasion 
 only one other visitor ; he was a person both broad 
 and deep — indeed, of immense width — and he looked 
 the wider for being attired in black. I took him at 
 first for a seedy character, who had at one time been 
 professionally religious. In the course of conversation, 
 however, he informed me that he was a navy surgeon, 
 recently retired, who was travelling for information. 
 I should have been less surprised had he informed 
 me that he was the son of a sea-cook, for our con- 
 versation opened in this way : leaning across the 
 table with the air of a man who had something 
 tremendous to impart, he said to me, — 
 
 " Are you aware, sir, that this place has been 
 visited by Joseph of Arimathea ? Yes, sir ; he founded 
 the church opposite," and so forth. 
 
 This information was derived from the local guide 
 
 173
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 book, and he had swallowed the legend whole ; 
 indeed, he was tremendously impressed by it. 
 
 I forbore to put him out of conceit with himself, 
 as the state of his mind interested me, and I wanted 
 to hear more. It turned out that he was a person of 
 no mean ability, and of fairly wide experience, but 
 apparently a knowledge of history was not one of the 
 qualifications required of a naval surgeon. Since 
 then I have always believed the story of a recently 
 converted miner, who tried to kill a Jew. 
 
 Now I can imagine such a person becoming a town 
 councillor ; and as town councils have sometimes 
 entrusted to them the management of the local 
 grammar school, I can imagine that he would be an 
 eloquent upholder of the cause of history. " Why 
 was I not taught these things when I was at school ? " 
 he would say. " Had I known history, I should not 
 have made a fool of myself before that conceited 
 young man at Glastonbury." 
 
 I believe the cry for more history and geography 
 is principally raised by people who learn late in life, 
 or who discover late in life that they do not know 
 facts which are all put down in Whitaker's Almanack. 
 
 The claims of history and geography are on the 
 surface so obvious that I am tempted to a little piece 
 of autobiography. Be it known, then, that my first 
 ambition in teaching was to teach history. I had as 
 little faith in Greek or Latin as the most ignorant of 
 self-made men. I believed that great weight should 
 be given to English literature and English composi- 
 
 174
 
 History, Geography and English 
 
 tion ; and as for language teaching, I saw no necessity 
 for anything but French and German. Therefore 
 when I speak of Latin as the best educational instru- 
 ment, I speak with the authority of a person who has 
 tried others. My opinion would be of no value at 
 all had I never stirred out of the classical routine. 
 Similarl}', if I do not share the popular views about 
 history and geography, it is after, not before, experi- 
 ment. 
 
 I should put the age at which the average boy can 
 begin to give special study to history with permanent 
 advantage to himself at somewhere about fifteen or 
 sixteen. Observe that I say "special" study. In 
 other words, it is one of the studies that cannot be 
 properly approached by an untrained mind. To 
 learn iiames of kings, and dates of battles, and the 
 constitution of the Witenagemot, and the chief articles 
 in the Petition of Rights, is quite possible to a young 
 boy, but his information does not stick. He will 
 learn more history from Henty, more geography 
 from Mayne Reid, than he will from the text- 
 books. Let him get his imagination filled from the 
 books that he likes to read, and that suit his time of 
 life ; the orderly arrangement of his information will 
 come later. 
 
 Nothing can be duller than the ordinary historical 
 text-book of to-day, unless it be the geographical 
 text-book. Information offered in such a form cannot 
 be otherwise than distasteful and incapable of assimi- 
 lation. Nor do I see any other way of arranging 
 
 175
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 these books as long as there are people who believe 
 that lone? lists of facts can be assimilated with profit. 
 
 o 
 
 Let a boy wait for history till he can read such a 
 book as Seeley's Expansion of England. 
 
 The way in which I would deal with history for 
 young boys, and indeed with one or two other 
 subjects, is by means of what I call recreative lessons. 
 It has long been my habit to keep two hours a week 
 for reading aloud. I do not examine in what I read, 
 I do not, when I am reading Walter Scott, turn out 
 all the difficult words in the vocabulary and make 
 the boys learn them by heart — I simply leave the 
 reading to soak in. I choose books which boys 
 would not naturally read by themselves, and there 
 are a very large number of books which seem light 
 reading to grown-up persons, but which boys condemn 
 as " stale " till they hear them read. 
 
 I see you, madam, with your love of definite infor- 
 mation, brought up as you were on Mangnall's 
 Questions, severely disapproving ; but wait a moment ! 
 
 Are Caesar and Xenophon historians, or are they 
 not? Why did I give you just now an account of the 
 Clouds of Aristophanes} Because I wanted to give 
 you a lesson in history. To know that William the 
 Conqueror took possession of our beloved country in 
 1066 A.D. is a meagre piece of information com- 
 pared with knowing at first hand how educational 
 questions looked in Athens in 425 B.C. The one fact 
 is over and done for, the latter helps us to understand 
 things that are still under discussion. 
 
 176
 
 History, Geography and English 
 
 I was delighted the other day by overhearuig a 
 small boy say to a school-fellow, " Awful socks for 
 old Caesar when that chap Ariovistus said he'd no 
 business in his Gaul ! " It showed me that there is 
 nothing inherently dull in such a book as Caesar's 
 Commentaries. The dulness, I fear, lies in the way in 
 which they are introduced to the youthful mind, either 
 by some unfortunate teacher trembling under a system 
 of payment by results, or by an earnest governess, 
 who has learned enough Latin to win honours in a 
 senior local examination. 
 
 In fact, the classical authors are for us Europeans 
 the beginning of all history. You, my dear county 
 councillor, cannot even be a politician without re- 
 minding us that constitutional history begins in the 
 cities of Greece ; while to understand the full inward- 
 ness of that blessed word " democracy " one must 
 study the history of Athens, where the citizens went 
 a step further than " one man one vote," and eventually 
 elected their executive for very short periods by the 
 simple process of drawing lots. Professor James 
 Headlam sees that this is a logical development, 
 when once you have accepted the glorious theory 
 that one man is as good as another. He does not also 
 see that it was an effective way of stopping the job- 
 bery of officials. You can't be certain of getting your 
 fraudulent jerry-building passed by a town council, 
 when no human being knows who will be on the 
 town council next week, and when there is just a 
 
 177 N
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 chance that the names of half a dozen honest men 
 may roll first out of the ballot box. 
 
 Of course it is very distressing when Tommy tells 
 us that Oliver Cromwell dissolved the monasteries in 
 a glass of vinegar ; but there is no rapid way of 
 teaching Tommy any better. Till his mind is trained 
 he will continue to make such mistakes ; therefore I 
 protest against shaping his training at the dictation 
 of persons who are too lazy to use books of reference 
 when they read the newspapers. 
 
 Professor Geikie has written a great book on 
 geography, and so long as he confines himself to 
 geography, I entirely agree with him ; but, like all 
 enthusiasts, he lets his subject run away with him — in 
 his hands everything is geography. To understand 
 physical geography, you must know some geology ; 
 to understand geology you must know crystallography 
 and chemistry and natural history ; to understand 
 chemistr)', you must know physics and mathematics 
 and so forth. 
 
 It is of great importance that children should learn 
 to take their bearings, to understand the lie of the 
 locality in which they live, should get into the habit 
 of noticing how the streams flow, where the hills are 
 steep, how far places arc apart. This really is geo- 
 graphy, and helps them to get more vivid pictures 
 from the books that they read in later life. 
 
 It is also of considerable importance that they 
 should learn to read a map ; but that is not what our 
 educational authorities at the War Office and else- 
 
 178
 
 History, Geography and English 
 
 where mean by geography. To judge from the papers 
 that they set, they share the views of the author of 
 Mangnah's Questions. 
 
 Lastly — and this is a question very often asked — 
 why waste the time over Latin when there is our own 
 noble English language to hand ? 
 
 Simply because the easiest way of learning English 
 is by learning another language. Ever since there 
 have been two literary languages in Europe, one has 
 been learned through the other. The Latin stylists in 
 the time of Cicero translated and re-translated from 
 Greek into Latin, and vice versa, and recommended 
 the process as the best method of acquiring a com- 
 mand of Latin. 
 
 Every time that a boy writes a piece of translation 
 from a foreign language, he gives himself a lesson in 
 English composition ; and the mistakes that have 
 to be corrected are quite as often mistakes in the 
 manipulation of English as in failing to comprehend 
 the language from which he is translating. Can you 
 devise an easier way of learning to write English, 
 madam ? You at once suggest giving him some easy 
 subject to write about. Good : and when you have 
 done so, you find that he has no knowledge, no 
 consecutive ideas. I am speaking now of elementary 
 teaching, because English is held to be an elementary 
 subject. Is it not a weekly lament among boys that 
 they have to write home, and have nothing to write 
 about ? 
 
 If you take a dozen small boys out for the day, and 
 
 179
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 ask them afterwards to write a description of their 
 outing, their record will seldom get beyond something 
 of this kind : " We left by the ten o'clock train. We 
 reached our destination at eleven thirty-five. Then 
 we walked about till we had lunch. We caught some 
 butterflies. It was a fine day. Smith minor fell into 
 a ditch, and we all laughed at him. We had tea at 
 five p.m., and then we drove back to the station. Wc 
 had awful fun going back in the train. We all got 
 safely home at seven o'clock." Ninety-nine boys out 
 of a hundred would write no more than this if you 
 had taken them to see Niagara. 
 
 I have seen a letter home written by quite an 
 intelligent boy of thirteen, which contained nothing 
 whatever except statements about the sweet things 
 that he had eaten and the other sweet things he 
 hoped to eat. The same boy was an intelligent 
 companion, and would talk w^ith interest on many 
 subjects. 
 
 When, however, a boy translates from another lan- 
 guage, the ideas are found for him ; he has only to 
 find the English form. At the same time his stock 
 of information is enlarged. For this reason I again 
 most strongly recommend French as the first lan- 
 guage that a boy should learn. It is possible to find 
 French literature which is real French, and which is 
 still interesting to quite young children. Have we 
 not the fairy tales to begin with ? When a boy can 
 translate simple French prose with the help of a 
 dictionary, he is a long way over his first difficulties 
 
 1 80
 
 History, Geography and English 
 
 with Latin. He will have unconsciously acquired 
 some knowledge of the right way of connecting Eng- 
 lish sentences, will have learned that " and," " but," 
 "so," "now," are not the only English conjunctions. 
 
 I have found both Chaucer and Shakespeare useful 
 recreative subjects for boys of thirteen, whose Latin 
 reading had supplied them with a key to most of the 
 allusions ; but here again it is a sad mistake to grind 
 English literature. 
 
 I once heard a class of boys in a German gymna- 
 sium recite Schiller's " Lay of the Bell," which they 
 did very well indeed. After the performance was 
 finished, their teacher asked them questions upon the 
 poem. Among other questions he asked what a 
 " ballad " was, and a little fellow of thirteen instantly 
 spouted off a most learned discourse about the ballad 
 and other poetical forms. This did not impress me 
 in the least ; it was again merely a recitation. Had 
 the small boy found it all out for himself, or a tenth 
 part of it for himself, I should have been awestruck 
 indeed. 
 
 Teaching is not such a simple business as it appears 
 to be on the surface. No one can speak with authority 
 on it who has not had long and varied experience. 
 
 By the way, a comparison occurs to me. Supposing 
 your doctor were to say to you, madam, " Kindly 
 suggest the treatment that you approve of, and I will 
 do my best to carry it out " ; would you respect him ? 
 I think not. Yet that is precisely the line that is 
 habitually taken with the schoolmaster, alike by 
 
 i8i
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 private persons and by members of various public 
 bodies. The man or woman who has never taught 
 a class in his or her life, much less conducted the 
 education of several hundred children, takes upon 
 himself or herself to dictate to the schoolmaster how 
 he should carry on his profession. There is no per- 
 son more likely to fall into error than the person who 
 has just learned something fresh. The majority of 
 parents are in this position. By becoming parents 
 they, for the first time, are obliged to study children, 
 and they trumpet forth new discoveries which were 
 stale news when Aristophanes wrote the Clouds. 
 
 Clergymen complain that the ladies want to dictate 
 their sermons ; doctors that they have to humbug a 
 little to get a living ; but they are neither of them so 
 badly off as the foster parent ; for after all, madam, 
 you must admit that in your inmost heart you fear 
 the doctor, love the clergyman, and wish there was 
 no such thing as a schoolmaster. 
 
 182
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Educational Authorities : 
 
 The State and the School 
 
 IN alluding to the War Office as an educational 
 authority, I have probably amazed some gallant 
 colonels ; but, in fact, any one of the public services 
 or professions which imposes an examination, whether 
 competitive or qualif}'ing, as a condition of admission, 
 prescribes, or attempts to prescribe, a course of edu- 
 cation. The difficulties of teachers and parents are 
 thus at the present time superfluously increased. The 
 training for a boy of thirteen who wished to pass 
 into the Britannia was till recently different in some 
 respects from that of a boy who wished to pass into 
 a public school. The Woolwich standard is different 
 from that of Sandhurst, and the Indian Civil Service 
 from both. Then there are first-class clerkships and 
 second - class clerkships. The Incorporated Law 
 Society has its own examinations ; the Accountants 
 have theirs ; Medicine has others. And then we have 
 the University of London ; the local examinations of 
 
 183
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 the universities of Oxford and Cambridge ; the College 
 of Preceptors ; to say nothing of Scotch and Irish 
 universities, by all of which confusion is increased. 
 We further have the Science and Art Department 
 at South Kensington, and the Technical Education 
 Committees of County Councils. 
 
 Surely the time has come when experiments should 
 cease. A step in the right direction has been made 
 by the recognition on the part of some of the pro- 
 fessions of the examinations of the universities and 
 College of Preceptors. A further step will be to 
 combine the whole set of examining bodies, and, up 
 to the point at which specialization begins, let one 
 examination do for all. 
 
 Of course there are difficulties in the way ; any- 
 body can see them, but they are certainly not insuper- 
 able. To begin with, there is a financial difficulty. 
 But if the University of London, the Local Examina- 
 tion Syndicates of Oxford and Cambridge, the College 
 of Preceptors can pay their way at present, with fees 
 paid by the candidates, surely the same examinations 
 will not be less remunerative when conducted by the 
 State ? 
 
 We carry our dread of State supervision in matters 
 educational a little too far. We have carried it so 
 far that we have no authoritative standards — so far 
 that it is open to a number of enterprising ladies and 
 gentlemen to form a limited liability company for the 
 purpose of conducting examinations. Parents will 
 accept an)' certificate, provided it can be framed and 
 
 184
 
 Educational Authorities 
 
 glazed, and presented in public by a lady of quality. 
 All that would be essential to make such an enter- 
 prise successful would be a kw well-known names 
 on the board of directors, and an understanding that 
 candidates did not, as a rule, fail to pass. 
 
 Personally, I am not at all in love with examina- 
 tions. I look upon them as a necessary evil. There 
 are so many excellent qualities which cannot be 
 tested by any known system of examination. But if 
 there are to be examinations, let them, at any rate, be 
 systematically conducted. For instance, why should 
 there not be one qualifying examination for boys 
 of thirteen, admitting to all the public schools, and 
 another for boys of sixteen, replacing all the prelimi- 
 nary examinations for the services and professions ? 
 I mention the earliest ages at which boys would be 
 allowed to compete. 
 
 The tendency is for all the services to require boys 
 to specialize too young, to want them alread}' taught, 
 not trained and teachable. The organization of the 
 public schools would be a lighter matter, especially 
 of the smaller schools, were some such sj-stem 
 adopted. 
 
 The objection which will be at once urged is that 
 there would be too great an interference with the 
 individuality of the teacher ; but that interference 
 already exists. Are there not prescribed books in the 
 local examinations of the universities, and prescribed 
 subjects in the examinations for the Army and public 
 services ? I cannot see that an)'thing is gained b)- 
 
 1S5
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 having one examining body setting Cicero's De 
 Amicitia for its candidates, and another the same 
 author's De Senectute. There is practically the same 
 uniformity in the examination as if they both set the 
 same book. 
 
 Perhaps, if the matter were in the hands of the 
 State, we might get some uniformity in the status of 
 an examiner. I hold it to be absolutely essential to 
 the proper qualification of an examiner that he should 
 have had a sufficient experience of teaching the kind 
 of candidate that he examines. A man who examines 
 boys of thirteen should be able to produce evidence 
 of having taught boys of thirteen, and so forth. I 
 have not unfrequently seen examination papers set 
 for boys, even by the universities of Oxford and 
 Cambridge, in which it was obvious at a glance that 
 the examiner was not a practised teacher. 
 
 An Englishman particularly dislikes appealing to 
 the examples of foreign countries, and more especially 
 to the example of Germany ; but the system of State 
 supervision of schools in that country, as described to 
 me twenty years ago, seemed to me to combine so 
 happily efficient inspection by the State, with respect 
 for the individuality of the school and teacher that 
 I cannot refrain from quoting it. My memory ma)- 
 have played me false in some respects ; in that case, 
 the system described will be less open to prejudice as 
 being a foreign invention, for some of it will be a 
 domestic creation. 
 
 To begin with, all schools were under the State 
 
 1 86
 
 Educational Authorities 
 
 proprietary schools, as well as those supported by 
 State funds, and they stood on precisely the same 
 footing, provided they satisfied the Government in- 
 spectors. 
 
 The examinations were held, to the best of my 
 recollection, once a year. The school conducted its 
 own examinations, the interference of the inspector 
 being limited to providing that the examination 
 should be a fair one. For example, the masters chose 
 their own books, and set their own papers on those 
 books, which they then submitted to the inspector. 
 He sent the papers back to be done by the boj-s 
 slightly altered, substituting for some questions others 
 of a similar kind, and in other ways making it reason- 
 ably certain that the boys had not been prepared to 
 be examined in one set of questions. 
 
 Similarly, the papers having been done by the bo)'s, 
 corrected and marked by the masters, were returned 
 to the inspector, who again satisfied himself that 
 the examination had been fairly conducted. If satis- 
 fied with the school, he then reported that he had 
 examined such and such a school, containing so man}' 
 classes, of such and such standards, and that certain 
 boys had passed the leaving examination, or the 
 examination leading from one form to another. 
 
 Throughout Germany the standard of the forms in 
 the different schools is uniform. A boy who is in 
 " prima" in one gymnasium might equally well be in 
 "prima" in another gymnasium; but he would not 
 necessaril)' be reading exactly the same books, though 
 
 1S7
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 he would be reading books of about the same diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 In England the forms in our schools have not even 
 the same names in all cases, much less the same 
 standards. 
 
 The status of the school being thus satisfactorily 
 established and ascertained by the Government, its 
 examinations are accepted by the State. All boys 
 who have passed the leaving examinations can enter 
 any of the universities, and they cannot enter till they 
 have done so ; to have attained to one form exempted 
 from the three years' military service, substituting the 
 one year's voluntary, to have passed into another 
 was a sufficient qualification for admission to the 
 military schools, and so forth. 
 
 One consequence of this arrangement that struck 
 me forcibly was that the German " chor " student was 
 a very much better informed person than the )'oung 
 man who occupies a similar social position in an 
 English universit}'. I do not say that he was in all 
 respects superior to him, but he certainly possessed 
 this one advantage. Be it known that the " chor " 
 student is the aristocrat of a German universit}-. 
 
 Such a s}'stem as this does away with the degrad- 
 ing and undignified advertising which is such a 
 humiliating excrescence upon our English school 
 system. 
 
 It is, perhaps, as well to state that all German 
 schools had not all classes. They might stop one, 
 two, or three forms from the top, as circumstances 
 
 i88
 
 Educational Authorities 
 
 might dictate ; but up to that point the efficiency and 
 organization were the same. 
 
 For my own part, I cannot see why an analogous 
 system should not be introduced into England, co- 
 ordinating without levelling down all "secondary" 
 schools from Wem to Winchester. There would be 
 some gnashing of teeth on the part of establishments 
 conscious of inefficiency ; but, after all, the efficiency 
 of the schools is a matter of first importance to the 
 country. 
 
 Such a system could certainly be introduced with- 
 out unnecessary hardships to the existing small pro- 
 prietary schools in the towns. There is no hardship 
 in requiring them to put themselves under the State. 
 By so doing they would secure a certificate. Now it 
 is a hardship to try and swamp them in the Board 
 School system, and to kill them down by an unfair 
 competition — unfair because the board schools can 
 draw upon funds which are inaccessible to the private 
 proprietor. The one serious difficulty that I see in 
 this case is the inspection of premises. Satisfactory 
 premises are very expensive in towns. 
 
 169
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 " Secondary " Education 
 
 SOONER or later there will be State interference 
 in schools that are not at present under the 
 Education Department. It is of some importance 
 that when that interference comes the British public 
 should know what it is about. 
 
 For instance, what does the term " secondary " 
 mean when applied to education ? Is it a metaphor 
 from geology ? Do we imagine reading, writing and 
 arithmetic, as taught in the board schools, to be 
 primary deposits, succeeded by secondary deposits in 
 other schools, and topped by tertiary deposits in the 
 universities, a rich detritus washed down from the 
 intellects of all ages ? If not, what do we mean ? Is 
 the work done in the preparatory school, such as I 
 described some pages back, primary or secondary, or 
 both ? Suppose a boy goes to school at the age of 
 ten, having been taught to read and write and work 
 money sums at home, is the school secondary or 
 primary, or what is it ? 
 
 190
 
 " Secondary " Education 
 
 I have sometimes enjoyed the advantage of dis- 
 cussing these questions with persons of humanitarian 
 and radical temperament. In their minds there cer- 
 tainly is an idea that the whole educational system of 
 the country should be continuous, and could be con- 
 tinuous ; that boys of all classes should, and could, 
 attend the board schools ; that the sons of the daily 
 waged would leave school at thirteen or thereabouts, 
 and therefore that the primary system would end 
 there. Boys whose parents could afford it, and the 
 specially gifted sons of toil, aided by eleemosynary 
 grants, would continue their education in the secon- 
 dary system, dropping out again at the age of sixteen. 
 Again, boys destined for the professions would con- 
 tinue their education into the tertiary stage, the 
 eleemosynary arrangements being continued on behalf 
 of such boys as needed it. Thus our old friend the 
 ladder would be complete, with one end in the gutter 
 and the other in the university. 
 
 The only practical difficulty which my kindly 
 friends see in the way of this arrangement is, they 
 say, a silly social prejudice, the outcome of the in- 
 grained snobbery of the British nature, which is so 
 strong that no mother who can possibly afford to 
 send her sons anywhere else will send them to the 
 board school. In time they hope that this prejudice 
 will disappear, and quote the examples of Switzerland 
 and Scandinavia. 
 
 Persons who talk in this way ignore two very 
 important facts : one is, that the social conditions of 
 
 T91
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 England are incomparable with those of any other 
 country. Where such all-embracing schools have 
 flourished, society has been homogeneous to begin 
 with. 
 
 Where the pursuits of the population are, as a rule, 
 the same, there are no class distinctions, — the needs of 
 all are the same. In some respects the conditions of 
 Switzerland and Scandinavia are the same — a winter 
 during which agricultural operations are impossible, 
 and leisure is enforced ; a summer warm and 
 luxuriant, during which the crops must be stored 
 with the utmost expedition, to meet the return of the 
 winter. In such countries the inhabitants gather 
 together during the winter in large villages ; in the 
 summer they disperse upon the hills. In the winter 
 the children are taught ; in the summer they tend the 
 cattle on the uplands. All are occupied in the same 
 pursuit, and the same schooling suits all. There 
 are no social prejudices, because all are of the same 
 rank. 
 
 A country developing towns and manufactures upon 
 the top of such conditions continues for a long time 
 the traditions to which they have given rise ; but in 
 the long run a division declares itself between the 
 artisan and the middle-class man. These social dis- 
 tinctions are not mere prejudices — they are the state- 
 ment of social facts. 
 
 The second fact which our educational levellers 
 ignore — probably because they are not aware of its 
 existence — is the essential difference to which I have 
 
 192
 
 "Secondary" Education 
 
 already alluded, between the education of children in 
 very large classes, and the achievements possible 
 where the classes are small. From the very begin- 
 ning, the child who is taught with one or two others 
 by a governess at home is taught upon a different 
 educational plane from the child who is taught in the 
 large classes which are customary in board schools. 
 No country could afford to teach the children of its 
 artisans in classes of ten to twenty ; and how much 
 this has to do with proficiency I have already in- 
 dicated in another place. 
 
 It is not a mere question of snobbishness which 
 renders the poorer professional man unwilling to send 
 his sons to the board schools ; it is a knowledge of 
 the fact that, if his sons are also to be professional 
 men, they must be educated from the beginning on 
 the higher plane. 
 
 I have already spoken at some length upon the 
 Public School system. I wish to add a few con- 
 siderations to what I have already stated. 
 
 It has been my fate to be not unfrequently con- 
 sulted by parents as to the future of their sons, by 
 men rising in the world, or by men who, for other 
 reasons, have no educational traditions. They have 
 often opened the subject in the following sense : " I 
 know the public school course of education to be all 
 ' rot.' 
 
 " I know that my son would be better taught in 
 the local board schools and College of Science ; but 
 boys get something at the public schools which they 
 
 193 O
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 do not get anywhere else — at least, so my wife tells 
 me. I do not quite know what it is. I cannot afford 
 to send my son to Eton. Can you recommend any 
 other public school ? " 
 
 When I protest that the Public School system is 
 not all "rot," we at once go off on the Greek and 
 Latin question, and I find that I and my interlocutor 
 have no common ground. In the end I do my best 
 to leave him with unshaken confidence in that some- 
 thing which he does not understand. 
 
 The public schools are unfairly condemned quite 
 as often as they are excessively praised. When all 
 has been said against them that can be justly said 
 against them, the fact remains, that from the teacher's 
 point of view, and independently of that indefinite 
 quality which parents appreciate but don't under- 
 stand, they represent the best teaching work that is 
 done in England. Supplemented as they are by pre- 
 paratory schools, they do as good educational work 
 as is done in the world — better than is done in most 
 other countries. They are not to be condemned 
 because in the last half-century they have been in 
 a state of transition from arrangements which were 
 adequate at the end of the middle ages, to arrange- 
 ments rendered necessary by the complexity of 
 modern life. Before all things they have clung to a 
 high ideal, not only of learning, but of life. They 
 have steadily and rightly resisted that conception of 
 a school which sees in it a mere knowledge shop, in 
 which you may purchase on demand a guinea's worth 
 
 194 
 
 I
 
 " Secondary " Education 
 
 of chemistry, or shorthand to the value of half a 
 crown. 
 
 They have always, so far as the times permitted, 
 seen a boy's life as a whole ; and while they have 
 sometimes failed to give all the instruction which 
 might be demanded for the individual boy, they have 
 filled all boys \vith those ideals of public conduct and 
 public honour which should distinguish the citizens 
 of the greatest of nations. Upon that spirit we can- 
 not improve. There was room thirty years ago for 
 modifications in the curriculum ; there is room for 
 further organization, but the last thirty years have 
 not been years of standstill. 
 
 There is, however, a strong tendency in considering 
 the questions of national education to put the public 
 schools on one side, as something that resists classifi- 
 cation. The schools themselves rather encouras'e 
 this view, dreading the interference of inexpert 
 doctrinaires with their teaching, and no less the dan- 
 ger of confiscation, which they see to be the popular 
 method of dealing with establishments reputed to be 
 wealthy. I quite admit that they cannot be brought 
 into line with the present Board School system, and 
 I have given the reason ; but it is essential that they 
 should be recognised as the representatives of the 
 standard of instruction which is necessary for profes- 
 sional men, and for professional men in the widest 
 sense. Not only lawyers, doctors, and clergymen, 
 but all who will be called upon to direct the labour 
 of others, or serve in any one of the numerous 
 
 195
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 departments of the executive government, require, 
 nowadays, the training suitable for professional 
 men. 
 
 Their position is obscured by the accidental fact 
 that they are chiefly Boarding Schools, and by the 
 fact that they have been outwardly separated from a 
 large class of schools which were at one time in the 
 same position with them. 
 
 Our only pre-reformation schools are Winchester 
 and Eton, and the schools continued from the Bene- 
 dictine monasteries at the dissolution, generally called 
 King's Schools, and believed to have been founded by 
 that pious monarch, Henry VIII. 
 
 The period of the Reformation was marked by 
 the foundation of schools all over the country ; we 
 know them as Grammar Schools, and we do not 
 respect the title. Their founders, however, held a 
 different opinion ; their intention was to found 
 schools on the higher plane of education, not on 
 the lower. 
 
 After the restoration of Charles II., an unhappy 
 event occurred, so far as the interests of education 
 were concerned ; the local Grammar Schools were as 
 a rule closely connected by their founders with the 
 universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The uni- 
 versities of Oxford and Cambridge passed into the 
 hands of the Established Church of England, no non- 
 conformist could attend them. At the time there 
 was considerable excuse for this policy — the world 
 was full of Anabaptists, and Brownists, and Muggle- 
 
 196
 
 " Secondary " Education 
 
 tonians, and excitable persons who were held to be 
 a danger to the State ; safety seemed to He in pre- 
 scribing some religious opinions and proscribing 
 others. 
 
 As England became a manufacturing country and 
 her population increased, the middle classes of 
 her manufacturing towns were more often noncon- 
 formists than not, and the local Grammar Schools 
 being exclusively Church of England establishments 
 were not frequented by the sons of nonconformists ; 
 in consequence, they remained much as they were 
 left in the reign of Charles II. They were unin- 
 fluenced by the busy life around them. By the 
 middle of this century some of them had ceased to 
 do any work at all ; some were in localities where 
 there was little population, others were neglected in 
 the back streets of manufacturing towns. 
 
 Then there was an Endowed Schools' Commission 
 and eventually they were handed over to the Charity 
 Commissioners. The general line of the policy then 
 adopted for them was, that they were to continue to 
 teach on the higher plane, but their fees were to be 
 low. A common Grammar School fee is nine pounds 
 a year, rather less than a shilling a day. Nobody 
 cared to ask at that time what was the necessary 
 cost of teaching on the higher plane, and very few 
 people ask now, consequently the local Grammar 
 School was discredited, and it continued to be neces- 
 sary to send boys away from home to be taught 
 successfully on the higher plane.
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 Many of the Grammar Schools are now fighting an 
 unequal fight with the Board Schools : they supple- 
 ment their resources wherever they can. The fight is 
 unequal because they are required to do much more 
 than the Board Schools to begin with, and have very 
 little money to draw upon. The endowment some- 
 times amounts to little more than the buildings, and 
 yet the scale of fees permitted is such as would only 
 be reasonable were the greater part of the expenses 
 of the staff paid apart from the fees. Help is in 
 some places got from the Technical Education Com- 
 mittee of the County Council ; but then only for 
 special subjects. In other cases the boys are set to 
 work for the grants given by the Science and Art 
 Department of South Kensington, whose last move 
 was to prescribe eleven lessons a week as a condition 
 of making that grant. Circumstances are tending to 
 remove the Grammar Schools from the jDrofessional 
 plane of education, and to depress them to the Board 
 School level, to the higher grade school, that being 
 the present top level of the Board Schools. 
 
 The ultimate difference between the Board Schools 
 and professional schools is, as has been already 
 shown, a question of cost : when you cannot afford 
 to teach children in classes of less than forty, you 
 cannot afford to teach them subjects which require 
 closer individual attention than can be given to 
 members of so large a class. I would not, for in- 
 stance, advise anybody to begin teaching Latin to a 
 class of ten-year old boys of half that number, 
 
 198
 
 •' Secondary " Education 
 
 Things would go along swimmingly enough so long 
 as the rote repetition of inflexions and rules was all 
 that was attempted, but the moment translation 
 began, things would look different, and some boys 
 would insensibly drop out of the teaching altogether, 
 or the whole class would have to be kept back for 
 them. The larger the class the more of the teacher's 
 time has to be taken up in mere discipline, and the 
 less opportunity he has for giving attention to indivi- 
 duals. While he is helping Tommy over a style, 
 Harry and Jim are swopping pocket knives, or run- 
 ning steel pens into Alfred. At the present moment 
 the standard of attainment, which is expected of a 
 Board School boy of thirteen, should have been passed 
 by a professional boy at nine, and this is not by 
 longer hours of work, but simply by closer individual 
 attention. In speaking of Clifton I indicated the 
 size of classes in which a small boy can be taught, so 
 as to be properly prepared in Latin, French, and 
 Mathematics for the work of a public school. I have 
 found by experience that boys, who have been taught 
 in schools where there are insufficient facilities for 
 individual attention, may write well, and read well, 
 and work arithmetic well by rule of thumb, but they 
 are always far behind in languages ; these are expen- 
 sive subjects to teach. Of their educational value I 
 have already spoken. 
 
 Again, where a master has to teach large classes 
 his work is rapidly limited to seeing whether the boys 
 have prepared their lessons, he is deprived of oppor- 
 
 199
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 tunitles for elucidation, and illustration, the most 
 valuable part of his teaching. I speak of the ordi- 
 nary run of teachers. I am quite aware that there 
 are a few specially gifted men with whom discipline 
 is a matter of course, and who rapidly discover 
 whether a lesson has or has not been prepared ; but 
 they are very scarce exceptions. 
 
 Further, where the classes are too large for the 
 subjects, and where at the same time an attempt is 
 made to keep all the boys in a class up to nearly the 
 same standard, the special educational value of that 
 particular subject is apt to be destroyed. 
 
 It is of no use to prescribe that certain subjects 
 shall be taught in a school, unless you also provide 
 for the efficient teaching of those subjects. To or- 
 dain, for instance, that the local Grammar School 
 shall teach Latin, and then crowd in Science and Art 
 subjects, so that Latin cannot get more than two 
 hours a week, is to defeat your own object. Or again, 
 to keep the fees so low that the classes are over large 
 is an equal waste of pains. No language subjects, not 
 even French and German, can be taught efficiently in 
 very large classes, or on two lessons a week. 
 
 Some years ago I examined the modern language 
 work of a very large Grammar School : the subjects 
 were French and German. This school boasts, and 
 rightly boasts, of the completeness of its organization ; 
 it comes up to the most advanced modern ideals in 
 all respects. The report which I made upon that 
 work was to the effect that it was excellently done, 
 
 ?oo
 
 "Secondary" Education 
 
 but that such work was not worth doing. I had 
 looked over the papers of one hundred and twenty 
 boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen, only 
 one of whom showed any indication of having 
 thought for himself. The papers were all beauti- 
 fully neat, the rote work in grammar was nearly all 
 perfect, and the translations were almost word for 
 word the same ; the boys had had their knowledge 
 laboriously pumped into them. I could not but ad- 
 mire the energy and industry of their teachers. I 
 knew what they had been through, and shuddered at 
 the prospect. Away from their set subjects these 
 boys would have been incapable, the work was sheer 
 cram. 
 
 I quote this example to show the danger of 
 assimilation to Board School methods. 
 
 What is required in our large towns is a provision 
 for the higher plane of education. 
 
 The necessary expenses of the education on the 
 higher plane are concealed by the fact that at the 
 Public Schools money which really goes to tuition is 
 paid as an equivalent for board and lodging. 
 
 The tuition fees at Clifton used to be £2$ for boys 
 not nominated, ^^30 for others ; but even this proved 
 insufficient, and arrangements had to be made to 
 supplement the salaries of such of the senior masters 
 as did not keep boarding houses, by a tax upon the 
 boarding fees. 
 
 Similarly, when a preparatory school charges a 
 hundred guineas a year for board and tuition, at least 
 
 20 1
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 half that sum may fairly be claimed as the necessary 
 expense of tuition. Thus, if anything is done to 
 improve the condition of " secondary " education in 
 our large towns, the mistake of attempting to do it 
 over cheaply must not be repeated. What is required, 
 after all, is not a fresh set of eleemosynary founda- 
 tions, but schools which shall take the standards of 
 the Public Schools into the towns, and which shall 
 be self-supporting, when they are reasonably well- 
 attended. 
 
 Attempts have been made to open such schools by 
 the Church Day School Company and others, but not 
 often with success, because they have attempted too 
 much and charged too little. 
 
 The need of such schools is evident enough to 
 those who live in a large town. At present, these 
 towns are absolutely without educational standards, 
 and the consequence is an immense waste of excellent 
 material. Private adventure schools do a great deal, 
 but they are too much in the hands of the parents, 
 and it very seldom happens that they are provided 
 with satisfactory premises. No man who has six 
 thousand pounds to spend, invests it in a day school 
 in a town ; he takes a house by the sea-side and starts 
 a boarding school. Even if a man can afford an 
 adequate house, he can seldom afford what is most 
 essential to the well-being of a boys' school, — an 
 adequate playground, — those towns which are most 
 in need of additional schools, being precisely those in 
 which land is likely to be dearest. 
 
 202
 
 " vSecondary " Education 
 
 There is in all big towns a large class of persons 
 who are on their way to being rich, who, when 
 their boys are young, cannot afford to send them 
 away to boarding schools, but who will be per- 
 fectly well able to send them to the Public Schools 
 when they are thirteen. If these boys do not get 
 taught on the higher plane before that time, they do 
 not make much of the Public School afterwards, which 
 is discredited in consequence. 
 
 Again, the professional men want help. It is a loss 
 to the nation when the sons of professional men who 
 happen to inherit the paternal aptitudes, drift oft 
 into other businesses for lack of means at the 
 critical period of their lives between seven and 
 thirteen. 
 
 One is often told that parents will never pay such 
 fees as twenty pounds a year to a day school. If you 
 ask a parent, he will probably tell you that though he 
 might do it himself by severe pinching, he is quite 
 sure that none of his neighbours could. I do not 
 trust these statements. I have known people com- 
 plain that five guineas a term was too much to pay 
 for the education of their girls, and then cheerfully 
 pay three guineas for a couple of dozen dancing 
 lessons ; and I have observed that boys, whose fathers 
 are paupers, when it comes to paying school fees, 
 ride bicycles and go to the theatre, and otherwise 
 conduct themselves like the very well-to-do. 
 
 The eleemosynary system has in fact depressed 
 education in the public estimation ; the charges of 
 
 203
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 endowed schools are often quoted against schools 
 where there is no endowment. 
 
 One of the last hares run by the Educational 
 doctrinaires is technical education. I suppose the 
 nation will spend some millions of money over this 
 experiment, and then wake up again to abuse all 
 educational authorities. It sounds " practical," money- 
 making, and therefore it carries all before it. Tech- 
 nical education might seem to be outside the province 
 of a paper on " secondary " education ; but when the 
 question of getting grants from County Councils 
 towards establishing technical classes in Grammar 
 Schools has been seriously discussed, the two depart- 
 ments have at any rate come into contact. 
 
 There are two classes of persons for whom I pre- 
 sume technical instruction is designed — those who 
 will actually work with their hands, and those who 
 will direct them. There are great technical establish- 
 ments on the Continent which English lads attend ; 
 there is a school of mines at Freiberg in Saxony, a 
 school of woods and forests at Cassel, a Polytechnic 
 School at Zurich, another, I think, at Strasburg, 
 probably many others. 
 
 Whatever may be the conditions upon which these 
 places admit foreigners, they do not admit natives 
 unless they show proof of having had previously a 
 sound general education. I have described part of 
 the German school system, and shown how it is only 
 after having attained to a certain position in a certifi- 
 cated State school that a boy is allowed to proceed to 
 
 204
 
 '' Secondary " Education 
 
 a special school : that is, a school where the instruc- 
 tion belongs to a special profession. In England, 
 when once we lay hold of an idea of this kind, we 
 throw over all the preliminary training ; we think we 
 see a short road to the acquisition of a money-earning 
 aptitude, and are quite prepared to set our children to 
 work upon it as soon as they leave the cradle. After 
 a time the teachers of technicalities discover that 
 some preliminary training is necessary; meanwhile we 
 have probably starved the organization by which it 
 could have been most suitably given. 
 
 Some time ago, an attempt was made to start an 
 engineering school at the University of Cambridge. 
 I do not know whether it is still in existence. The 
 idea was plausible enough. Young men, who are 
 going to be the heads of engineering firms are all 
 the better for a university education; they also require 
 special instruction in engineering. Few engineering 
 firms are provided with complete sets of instruments. 
 In no one workshop can a young man learn the whole 
 art and mystery of engineering. Then why not 
 establish an eclectic shop at Cambridge ? 
 
 The weak point is this : in the first place, there is 
 all the difference in the world between work done in 
 an educational shop and work done in an establish- 
 ment where the profits are the first consideration. In 
 the second place, a young man who works as an 
 apprentice in an engineering shop may see only one 
 trade, and perhaps not all the appliances that can be 
 used in that trade ; but he sees and learns by daily 
 
 205
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 contact to know the men who work the tools. Know- 
 ledge of the men is at least as important as knowledge 
 of the machines, and it can only be acquired in a place 
 where the men are working for wages. A man who 
 wants to get this knowledge of the men must not be 
 apprenticed too late ; the younger he is, within rea- 
 sonable limits, the better opportunities he will have of 
 observing them. Knowledge of the human element 
 there acquired is of immense value ; a man, who has 
 it, knows how to avoid exciting prejudices, which a 
 man without it often unconsciously stirs. He also 
 knows when the time has come to put down his foot 
 and fight. The working man is not invariably a 
 ruffian blended with the raw material for a tract, nor 
 is he, as Rudyard Kipling says of single men in 
 barracks, " an angel unawares " ; he is certainly not 
 one of nature's noblemen. Take him in the mass, he is 
 one of nature's children, and children, to be judiciously 
 dealt with, require knowing. 
 
 Similarly in all the arts and crafts in which work- 
 men are employed, it is necessary to know not only 
 how to work machines yourself, but how workmen 
 are apt to mismanage them. They play curious 
 freaks sometimes with the elaborate appliances placed 
 in their hands. 
 
 Technical institutions are good, as museums are 
 good — places where the already trained person can 
 acquire further knowledge, but they cannot replace 
 manual labour under a real taskmaster. Still less 
 can they be advantageously substituted for the 
 
 206
 
 " Secondary " Education 
 
 whole of education which comes after the three 
 R's. 
 
 If as a nation we are to seek in versatility — mind, I 
 do not say that we are, — if we are slow to adopt 
 better methods of dealing with raw material, if we 
 are content to know no more of our business than is 
 seen to be immediately money-getting, is the remedy 
 technical education ? Surely another view is possible, 
 viz., that we have been too exclusively technical. 
 The narrow, classical education of days gone by was 
 after all a technical education; it was the narrowest 
 preparation to enable a man to become a physician, 
 a clergyman, or a lawyer. It is not so very long 
 since Galen and Hippocrates were medical text- 
 books. 
 
 We are now threatened with the danger of an ex- 
 clusive technical education in the direction of arts and 
 sciences, while very few Englishmen have even the 
 conception of a general mental training, whereby a 
 man is intellectually prepared to turn himself to any- 
 thing. Similarly their conception of moral training 
 usually stops on the negative side. They know all 
 about not doing things which lead to a waste of 
 substance ; they know and think very little of positive 
 obligations and of wholesome ambition. 
 
 This has been a long paper, and I fear that it too 
 is open to the reproach of being chiefly negative. I 
 have suggested a good many things which should 
 not be done ; I have said little of what should be 
 done. 
 
 207
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 Here then is my conception of the " secondary ' 
 school, which I think might be founded safely in 
 many of our large towns. The capital would have to 
 be advanced by the State, and the existence of the 
 school guaranteed for the first five years. 
 
 A boy educated on the higher plane is at school 
 from about seven years old to eighteen : eleven years 
 in all. The existing Public School system, combined 
 with the Preparatory Schools, divides this period year 
 by year into "forms." Though the names of the forms 
 vary, the divisions are practically the same. There is 
 one form for each year of a boy's school life. By the 
 time a boy has come to the end of his thirteenth year, 
 he will have been through six forms. If we take our 
 local professional school on two years longer, a boy 
 will be ready to be apprenticed, or to enter the local 
 College of Science, or to pass the first examination for 
 medicine. 
 
 If we stop at the end of the thirteenth year, he 
 will be ready for the public schools. Recognising 
 these two points as breaks, a school attended by 
 1 20 boys, — that is, an average of fifteen to a form, 
 taking the higher limit, — could be worked effectively 
 on an average fee of £2^, provided the boys paid for 
 their own books and stationery, and for the mainten- 
 ance of their playground. 
 
 Up to the end of the thirteenth year the curriculum 
 might be restricted to Latin, French, Mathematics, 
 Elementary Science lectures, and recreative subjects 
 in English, with a Divinity lesson once a week, and 
 
 208
 
 *' Secondary " Education 
 
 these subjects could be thoroughly well taught. If 
 two higher forms were added, Greek and German 
 could be introduced as alternatives; the former would 
 give exceptionally brilliant boys who passed quickly 
 through the lower forms an opportunity of prepar- 
 ing for the existing classical course at the Public 
 Schools. 
 
 Such a school would fix a standard for the locality 
 in which it was placed ; it could become a department 
 of the local Grammar School ; it could annex to its 
 staff private adventurers of proved competence. There 
 are such desperately struggling against adverse cir- 
 cumstances in most towns. 
 
 The State would inspect these schools, and I do 
 not think a better method of inspection could be 
 found than the one I have described. 
 
 Counsels of perfection ! Yes, counsels of perfec- 
 tion ; and yet where is the difficulty? 
 
 " The working man would not take an interest In 
 such a scheme, and therefore no member of Parlia- 
 ment would take it up." After all, is not the working 
 man interested in the training of his employer ? Is it 
 to the advantage of the working man that his doctor 
 should be a person who has scrambled through the 
 examinations necessary to gain him a diploma ? Is 
 the working man any the worse off, because the min- 
 ing engineer has a high standard of honour, or the 
 shipowner is a patriot ? 
 
 Between you and me, I am not in love with the 
 working man as represented by politicians. I some- 
 
 209 p
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 times feel about him as Artemus Ward felt about the 
 nigger. Certainly he is my brother, but he is not my 
 mother and father, my first and second cousin and 
 my aunt in the country. 
 
 As a matter of fact, no one appreciates the spirit, 
 which is acquired by a Public School education, 
 better than the working man himself; even though 
 he may not be able to estimate the value of culture, 
 he respects pluck combined with organizing power ; 
 and one of the most valuable things which a boy has 
 the opportunity of learning in a big Public School, is 
 the importance of organization. A boy who has 
 been captain of the School cricket or football has 
 had a practical lesson in administration. 
 
 210
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The Universities 
 
 DO what he will, no Englishman can speak of 
 the universities without thinking of Oxford 
 and Cambridge. Learning has other homes ; nests 
 are being found for her in the noisy cities of the 
 north. She has long been enthroned by the towers 
 of St. Andrews, within hearing of the grey waves. 
 Glasgow has built her a brand new palace hard by 
 Kelvin Grove. She dwells in Edinburgh, but is lost 
 to view, for Edinburgh is something more or less 
 than a university town. Durham has found her a 
 majestic seat in the fortress of her bishops, and 
 Dublin can claim to have given her some outward 
 magnificence to testify to her dignity ; but Oxford 
 and Cambridge are unique — unsurpassed, unsurpass- 
 able. 
 
 If a man would realize something of the distinctive 
 spirit of the English universities, let him, early in 
 October, when the days are already somewhat shorter 
 than the nights, take the morning train from New- 
 
 211
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 castle-on-Tyne, and speed for Cambridge. He will 
 cross the High Level bridge — now insignificant among 
 bridges, not many years ago a world's wonder — and 
 he will look down on the busy river, with its ships 
 and its factories decently obscured in smoke ; he 
 will pass through a country which trees love not, 
 unless they are sheltered in close valleys ; but Dur- 
 ham will claim more than a passing glance. On he 
 will drive through the broad valley of the Ouse to 
 York, and do reverence to the Minster. It is a jour- 
 ney of great churches, for he will pass Lincoln ; and 
 then, rattling over miles of level land, and looking up 
 the endless dykes, catching the tints of the evening 
 sun, he will swing round the east end of Ely, and 
 from there less than half an hour will bring him to 
 one of the awkwardest railway stations in the king- 
 dom — Cambridge. 
 
 Then our traveller, if he is wise, will straightway 
 take a cab, and, expeditiously rattling over Trumping- 
 ton stones, stop at the gate of King's. By this time 
 the sun will be far down in the west, and the sky 
 glowing through the tops of the elm trees. The 
 service is half over in the chapel, but let him 
 enter. 
 
 A vast hall echoing to music, its fretted roof barely 
 discernible in the gathering twilight ; flickering 
 candles here and there ; in front a dark barrier, 
 on which rests the most beautiful of organs ; and 
 from behind this screen such singing as we think we 
 hear in dreams. 
 
 212
 
 The Universities 
 
 The anthem ceases, a distant voice intones the 
 prayers, and then the curtains are drawn aside, the 
 organ begins to hum, a robed procession issues from 
 the choir. 
 
 Most of the men turn when they reach the lower 
 end of the ante-chapel, to hear the organ finish, for 
 King's is proud of her organist. 
 
 Then let our traveller dine in the hall. Dons are 
 proverbially hospitable. Let him note the Latin 
 grace, the windows ornamented with the arms of 
 benefactors, the pictures of those who have done 
 honour to their College hanging on the walls, the 
 plate presented by grateful Fellows. Let him observe 
 the mediaeval reverence paid to rank, tables for 
 Undergraduates, and separate tables for Bachelors of 
 Arts, and himself enthroned upon the dai's among the 
 Masters. After dinner, when the undergraduates have 
 departed, the graver company withdraws to a smaller 
 apartment, and there discusses college port. It is 
 the life of a mediaeval palace lingering on. 
 
 Upon such a picture as this I cannot intrude hard 
 figures. I do not know how many colleges there 
 are at Oxford, nor how many at Cambridge ; it does 
 not matter. In all of them the life is practically the 
 same ; the magnificence of the buildings may vary, 
 but the mediaeval ceremonial is always there, cropping 
 up in unexpected places, even in colleges which affect 
 utilitarian reforms. 
 
 So many worthy people occasionally talk of Ox- 
 ford College and Cambridge College, that I must 
 
 213
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 once again state the difference between a college and 
 a university. To begin with, a university is simply 
 a corporation. The Archbishop of Canterbury ad- 
 dressed his writs indifferently " Noverit Universitas 
 vestra," " Your University to wit," whether he was 
 communicating vvath a monastery, or a mayor and 
 corporation, or the Skinners' guild. He would have 
 addressed a limited liability company in precisely 
 the same v/ay, had such a thing been in existence in 
 the middle ages. Thus a " University " was any 
 body of persons united for certain purposes, and 
 arranging their own internal affairs under regulations 
 recognised once for all by the State. An unattached 
 person had some difficulty in getting his status recog- 
 nised in the Middle Ages ; in fact, persons who could 
 not show that they belonged to some reputable body 
 were held in grave suspicion, and not unfrequently 
 realized what was meant by summary jurisdiction. 
 Students, in forming themselves into corporations, 
 only copied the prevailing fashion. They travelled 
 much ; learning was international in early days when 
 Latin was the common language of learned men. A 
 student travelled protected by a writ. There are 
 still extant such writs issued by the monastery of 
 Christ Church Canterbury to members of the fra- 
 ternity who went to study at Padua. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the Vice Chancellor in Univer- 
 sity towns is a relic of the times when the University 
 was a self-governing community, whose members 
 were subject to their own courts and their own laws 
 
 214
 
 The Universities 
 
 and to these only, except in specified cases. We see 
 from the Hfe of Francois Villon that the privileges 
 of the University of Paris might successfully interfere 
 with the ends of justice. 
 
 I do not know why we talk of a Mayor and Corpo- 
 ration, and not of a Mayor and University. 
 
 Thus a University was simply an incorporated 
 body of students. They might learn chiefly medicine, 
 as at Salerno ; or law, as at Padua and Bologna ; or 
 scholastic philosophy, as at Paris ; but they were still 
 a University. The point is worth insisting on, be- 
 cause there are people who imagine that a University 
 is so called because it is the home of universal know- 
 ledge, and that it is bound to impart instruction in 
 everything knowable (for which reason, I presume, in 
 some of the new local Universities instruction is given 
 in dairy work). A University might exist without 
 buildings of its own ; professors' lectures were some- 
 times given in the " parvise," or porch, of a large 
 church ; there were frequently no desks or benches, 
 even in a lecture-room, and students who wished to 
 take notes stood on one leg, propped themselves up 
 as best they could, and held the note-book upon the 
 other knee. 
 
 The students were of all ages, some of them little 
 better than wandering mendicants, who tramped to 
 every University in Europe. Hence the congregation 
 of a learned population in a town does not seem 
 always to have conduced to sobriety of conduct or 
 decency of manners ; consequently, pious and wealthy 
 
 215
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 persons in very early times built homes or halls for 
 youthful students, placing them under the care of 
 clerical guardians, if that seemed convenient. Uni- 
 versity College, Oxford, claims to have been such a 
 home founded by Alfred the Great. Balliol of Scot- 
 land founded a hall for Scotchmen at the same 
 University ; and, in general, the older halls and col- 
 leges, some of which have disappeared, were estab- 
 lished for the advantage of students hailing from 
 particular localities. The Canterbury Gate of Christ 
 Church, Oxford, owes its name to a small house 
 which was maintained by the monks of Christ Church, 
 Canterbury, for the use of students whom they sent 
 to complete their learning at Oxford ; and when 
 William of Wykeham founded New College to receive 
 students from Winchester, he was copying and im- 
 proving on an earlier example. 
 
 The great step forward in the constitution of these 
 students' houses was made when Walter de Merton, 
 in the thirteenth century, founded the college which 
 bears his name at Oxford. 
 
 The word " college " is a history in itself. It tells 
 us of a time when there was no longer much en- 
 thusiasm for the regular monks, and when pious 
 munificence had begun to take the shape of small 
 foundations of secular priests attached to the service 
 of a church. Such a community of colleagues was 
 called a collegium. There are not a few "collegiate " 
 churches scattered about the country. Walter de 
 Merton first conceived the idea of a home for stu- 
 
 216
 
 The Universities 
 
 dents provided with its own church, and with its 
 staff of clerical colleagues. The arrangement proved 
 to answer its purpose, and similar colleges rapidly 
 grew up at both the Universities, most of the earlier 
 " halls " being replaced by colleges. 
 
 In process of time there were practically no stu- 
 dents except those who lived in colleges or halls, and 
 the University itself was swamped in the college 
 system ; the professors became less important than 
 the heads of houses. This happened in a less de- 
 gree at Oxford than at Cambridge, where the Uni- 
 versity is dwarfed by the colleges, as her senate house 
 and library are dwarfed by the chapel of King's 
 College. 
 
 Even when the influx of students became too great 
 for the accommodation of the colleges, undergradu- 
 ates were still attached to them, and conformed to 
 their discipline. They were forced to attend chapel 
 and college lectures, to dine in hall, and live only 
 in such lodgings as were licensed by the college 
 authorities. 
 
 Each college maintaining its own staff of lecturers, 
 or combining with other colleges to do so, the work 
 of the University professors has a tendency to be- 
 come a sinecure, professors' lectures being largely 
 attended only when a certificate of attendance is 
 necessary to procure a degree, or when the professor's 
 work is not covered by work done in the colleges. 
 It would be ungenerous not to add that there are 
 professors who are good lecturers — the late Sir J. R. 
 
 217
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 Seeley was such a one — and these ahvays secure a 
 fair audience. As a rule, the undergraduate dislikes 
 lectures ; and, in fact, the reason for them is less 
 obvious now that books are universally accessible. 
 In the middle ages there was no means of getting 
 hold of knowledge except by attending lectures ; 
 books were too dear for the ordinary student. 
 
 To describe the work of either of the Universities 
 in detail would be impossible; so much would have to 
 be omitted which is more important than the scholas- 
 tic routine. 
 
 There are many things that are pleasant about a 
 German University, — life there is not all beer and 
 sword-thrusts, — but there is an incomparable dignity 
 about Oxford and Cambridge which elevates the 
 lives of all who are subjected to their influence. The 
 tone of these places promotes a genial optimism ; the 
 young men learn to believe that there is much to set 
 right in the world, and that they are the people to do 
 the work. 
 
 English university life is 'neither pessimistic, nor 
 Bohemian, nor squalid. We have eccentrics, it is 
 true, but their eccentricities generally take the form 
 of doing something unpractical for the benefit of 
 others ; they do not asphyxiate themselves with 
 charcoal, or spend their lives in an attitude of melo- 
 drama. Living on such a splendid stage, the actors 
 cannot be mean. 
 
 There was a time undoubtedly, about the end of 
 the last century, when both our Universities went 
 
 2l8
 
 The Universities 
 
 through a period of stagnation, and when, if some 
 authorities are to be credited, deep drinking was at 
 least as noticeable a feature in the colleges as deep 
 thinking. 
 
 Such, however, is no longer the case. The 
 University Extension movement and the University 
 Local Examinations indicate the reverse of a spirit 
 of stagnation. The young men no longer look for 
 comfortable country livings ; they thirst for White- 
 chapel, or seek martyrdom in Central Africa and 
 China. The residents sacrifice sources of emolument 
 to their conception of duty. The profession of private 
 tutors, once a lucrative one, is dying out, the dons 
 undertaking voluntarily to do even more work than 
 they are paid for. 
 
 Unfortunately the depreciation of landed property 
 has made a great difference to the revenues of the 
 colleges, and has malignantly come just when the 
 fact that the restrictions upon the marriage of Fellows 
 have been removed in the case of college officers, 
 has made their own acts of abnegation particularly 
 difficult to them. Let it not be supposed that the 
 average don leads a life of luxurious idleness ; on 
 the contrary, some of them work eleven hours a day 
 to realize an income of five hundred a year. Since 
 these words were written, the University of Cambridge 
 has appealed for help. 
 
 I do not know under what circumstances the dis- 
 tinction between pass and honour examinations 
 grew up. I must admit it seems to me unnecessarily 
 
 219
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 confusing. A B.A. degree, for instance, should mean 
 one thing, not two things ; the whole arrangement 
 is intelligible enough inside the University, but when 
 a certificate of this nature is given for use outside, 
 it should have a distinct value. 
 
 The influence of the Universities upon the schools 
 is very great, greater than they are disposed to admit. 
 The direct influence of the local examinations is 
 enormous, the indirect influence of the scholarship 
 examinations greater still. I have before shown 
 how the school teaching is affected by it from the 
 very beginning. These are matters which should 
 be taken into consideration when " secondary " edu- 
 cation is controlled by the State. It would be a loss 
 to disturb the Universities too much in their relations 
 with the schools, though those relations would be 
 none the worse for a comprehensive reorganiza- 
 tion. 
 
 The most remarkable change in university life 
 is the admission of the feminine element. Not only 
 are the Fellows allowed, under certain conditions, 
 to marry, but colleges for the use of lady students 
 rival the buildings of the masculine establishments. 
 The consequence has been an immense development 
 of five o'clock teas, and the undergraduate is said 
 to be more humane. It is by no means a bad thing 
 that women should have a personal familiarity with 
 University life, and will probably help the " Tommy " 
 of the future over some of his difficulties ; and yet 
 one cannot help shuddering over the dreadful pre- 
 
 220
 
 The Universities 
 
 cedent afforded by the married prebends of Canter- 
 bury, the rapacity of whose wives alarmed the pious 
 Cranmer. They even cut up the sacred vestments 
 and made gowns for themselves. All celibate estab- 
 lishments have virtues of their own, as well as vices ; 
 and as a matter of history one may say that celibate 
 establishments have been marked by a rare devotion 
 of the inmates to the interests of the house. The 
 college or the monastery is the wife and family 
 of the celibate ; upon it all his tenderness is bestowed. 
 When you surround him with beautiful young women 
 it is only natural that he should begin to think of 
 other things. One would not willingly destroy that 
 family flavour that hangs about the old colleges. 
 There is something very beautiful in the devotion 
 of a Fellow to his college ; it is a sentiment, which 
 one is apt to miss in the busy places where money 
 is made, and where there is nothing to appeal to 
 the kind of feeling which a few years ago placed the 
 stained glass in the west window of King's College 
 Chapel. 
 
 " Will Tommy be taken care of at the University ? 
 Will his bed be properly aired ? " Well, really, 
 madam, I cannot say. I know that there are bed- 
 makers of both sexes, grim or garrulous as the case 
 may be, and that they are not unprovided with 
 helps ; but whether they are in the department 
 of the Vice-Chancellor or who looks after them I 
 cannot tell you. 
 
 Probably at the end of the twentieth century, if 
 
 221
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 our present coddling of young people continues, lads 
 will be entered at King's not because of the merits 
 of the tutors, but because " The Provost's wife is such 
 a nice motherly woman, you know," 
 
 222
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Considerations suggested by the 
 Voluntary School Question 
 
 TN 1870 an Act of Parliament was passed making 
 -■■ elementary education compulsory in two senses : 
 on the one hand, it compelled towns and localities to 
 provide schools ; on the other hand, it compelled 
 parents to send their children to school. Previously 
 the existence of schools for the working classes had 
 depended, in country villages, upon the energy and 
 benevolence of the clergy and landowners; in towns 
 upon the efforts of private individuals, or associations 
 representing different denominations. There were, 
 further, one or two large central societies busy estab- 
 lishing schools in neglected places. Ultimately these 
 school were maintained by charity, for the fees 
 paid by the parents were inadequate for the pur- 
 pose. 
 
 In order to get the Bill passed, it was necessary 
 to conciliate the clergy of the Church of England, 
 who saw that they might lose the control which they 
 
 223
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 held over the majority of the village schools, and 
 the Nonconformist ministers, who were afraid that 
 the Church would gain increased power, and that 
 the State schools would tend to become State church 
 schools. Eventually a compromise was arrived at. 
 Schools supported by voluntary subscriptions were 
 to be allowed to choose their religion, and were 
 recognised by the State, provided they satisfied the 
 State inspectors. From schools supported by the 
 rates, religion was to be banished. In other words, 
 religious people would rather that children were not 
 taught religion at school, than that they should run 
 the risk of being taught the merits of some particular 
 denomination. Better that no child should be taught 
 to pray, than that any minister should come off 
 second best in the scramble for congregations. 
 
 Since that time the Nonconformists, except the 
 Roman Catholics, have learned to look upon the 
 rate-aided schools as their schools, and, though there 
 are Nonconformist voluntary schools, to consider 
 the voluntary school system something antagonistic 
 to them. On the other hand, the supporters of the 
 voluntary schools have found the financial difficulty 
 increasingly serious. By maintaining these schools, 
 they have contributed to the efficiency of the Board 
 Schools, or at least to their expensiveness, for some 
 part of the money, which would have been required 
 for necessaries had the voluntary schools been upon 
 the rates, has insensibly been applied to luxuries 
 in the Board Schools. Every clergyman in a large 
 
 224
 
 The Voluntary School Question 
 
 town who maintains voluntary schools in his parish 
 collaterally helps the board schools ; he relieves 
 the ratepayers at large of the maintenance of his 
 own particular schools, and thereby makes the 
 expense of elementary education appear to be lower 
 than it really is. So far as the towns were concerned, 
 the Church of England was not wise in her genera- 
 tion in 1870; nor was she dignified. She before all 
 should have insisted upon the use of devotional forms 
 in all schools. 
 
 But the matter was complicated by the conditions 
 which prevailed, and still prevail, in small towns 
 and country villages. There the clergyman had been 
 accustomed to a practical monopoly of the manage- 
 ment of the school ; the schoolmaster was his sub- 
 ordinate, removable at his pleasure. On the other 
 hand, if there were any Nonconformist opposition 
 in the place, this opposition was conducted with 
 all the bitterness which is usual in a small battle- 
 field. To give up the school was to descend from a 
 vantage ground, and fight on even terms an adver- 
 sary who had hitherto been very heavily handi- 
 capped, and who might prove revengeful, inclined 
 to make the very best of his opportunity. How if 
 he secured a majority on the School Board, and 
 insisted on appointing a Nonconformist schoolmaster, 
 who would refuse to play the organ in church? 
 How if the children were taught in the week not to 
 go to church on Sunday ? 
 
 These were and are real and grave dangers. The 
 
 22-^ Q
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 simplest solution would seem to be, make all schools 
 Board Schools, and to allow the different School 
 Boards to set apart denominational schools according 
 to the proportionate numbers of the denominations. 
 This might work in towns ; but in villages where 
 there would be only one school, it might not be easy 
 to fix the denomination. Would it be impossible 
 to draw up a form of devotion for such schools 
 sanctioned by the State, and not offensive to any 
 Christian ? 
 
 Or would it not be well to recognise, once for all, 
 that a separation has silently grown, not between 
 education and religion, but between education and 
 clergymen of all denominations ? 
 
 We do not easily shake off old habits, and the 
 higher education in our country has so long been 
 associated with great religious establishments, that 
 we are apt to overlook the fact that the clerical 
 administration of education is an accidental, not an 
 essential feature of education. In the last fifty years 
 a silent revolution has been at work in the Univer- 
 sities and Public Schools. It was almost impossible 
 fifty years ago to think of a schoolmaster except 
 as a clergyman ; now the clergy are very much in 
 the minority on the staffs of the Public Schools, 
 though lay head masters are still rare. The reason 
 of this is not any want of religion on the part of 
 the teachers, but rather an increased scrupulousness. 
 Many men took Holy Orders forty years ago with 
 considerable lightness of heart. The deeper earnest- 
 
 226
 
 The Voluntary School Question 
 
 ness of to-day makes some religious men enquire 
 into their intellectual power of subscribing to the 
 thirty-nine articles, it makes others recognise clerical 
 work as a thing by itself, too holy to be doubled 
 with teaching ; others again see in teaching an all- 
 engrossing business, which will not admit of a divided 
 allegiance. 
 
 The Voluntary School s)'stem is not fair ujDon the 
 schoolmaster, and in a country parish sometimes 
 presses very heavily upon him ; he is not the supreme 
 authority in his own school. It is bad enough to 
 be at the mercy of a governing body, but the case 
 is far worse when the governing body is one person, 
 who considers it to be part of his duty to drop into 
 the school two or three times a week ; who some- 
 times has a wife and grown up daughters equally 
 interested in the school ; and possibly a curate or 
 two. 
 
 Those who are joined with the clergyman in the 
 management of a church school generally confine 
 their interest to paying subscriptions, and leave him 
 to do the work. 
 
 If the teaching of the children were the first con- 
 sideration, the independence of the schoolmaster 
 would also be recognised as a matter of first im- 
 portance. He should be responsible to the School 
 Inspector and a non-resident Board of Managers, 
 least of all to the next clergyman. Again, when 
 we create our new educational authorities, element- 
 ary education in the country must not be placed 
 
 227
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 in the hands of Parish Councils. We can all see 
 the inconveniences which might attend giving the 
 patronage of the living to the Parish Council ; 
 they would be no less in the case of the school- 
 master. 
 
 To remove the appointment of the schoolmaster 
 from the parish itself to a more imposing authority, 
 such as an Educational Committee appointed by the 
 County Council, would put the school on its proper 
 footing, and would relieve the parish of one cause of 
 bitterness between the clergyman of the Established 
 Church and the resident Nonconformist. If the 
 schoolmaster were independent of both parties 
 ahke, there would be less reason to fear his in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Some people have a very arid conception of a 
 schoolmaster's duties. He is to grind enough work 
 out of his pupils to satisfy the inspector, but beyond 
 that he is to have no interest in his pupils. The 
 school door closes and he is done with them. 
 
 Teaching of dogma to children under thirteen is 
 an absurdity. They can learn a catechism by heart, 
 but they certainly cannot understand it ; they learn 
 religion not from the repetition of formulae, but from 
 the practice of devotion. A child can understand 
 being told not to go to a particular place of worship, 
 but he cannot understand the reasons for making the 
 prohibition. By saying prayers he learns at least that 
 there is a Supreme Being. Again, the use of prayers 
 in a school reminds the teachers that their work has 
 
 228
 
 The Voluntary School OuGstion 
 
 wider and deeper responsibilities than the mere 
 mechanical grind of instruction. 
 
 Sir John Gorst, in introducing his last Education 
 Bill (1896), stated that the religious difficulty was a 
 pulpit and a platform difficulty, but not an educational 
 difficulty. This is true. The parents of the children 
 who attend the board and indeed most other schools 
 are singularly indifferent to the religious complexion 
 of the school which their children frequent. Uninflu- 
 enced by their clergy, they send their children with 
 equal confidence to a Voluntary School of any de- 
 nomination, which happens to be handy. 
 
 And that is the rub. Schools have hitherto been 
 the natural recruiting grounds of the sects. Children 
 can be influenced where parents cannot. In most 
 parts of the world our missionaries have learned that 
 their work can only be done through the children, 
 and the same holds good of the artisan population 
 of our big towns. So long as clergymen look upon 
 education as being in the first place a mechanism for 
 popularising their own particular shade or shadow of 
 a creed, and in the second place something for the 
 advantage of the children taught, the platform and 
 pulpit difficulty will continue ; but this difficulty 
 would vanish of itself were the nation to recognise 
 the profession of teaching as an independent pro- 
 fession. 
 
 Some people sec in the disestablishment of the 
 Church of England the best hope of the enfranchise- 
 ment of the schoolmasters. If the Church were gone, 
 
 229
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 they say, the schools would be left, a united body 
 among the jarring sects. It would be a heavy price 
 to pay for an advantage which will come of itself in 
 the fulness of time ; and the Nonconformist minister 
 is no less meddlesome than the clergyman of the 
 establishment. 
 
 Of the financial difficulty of replacing the Volun- 
 tary Schools by State Schools, experts alone can 
 speak. If some of them are to be believed, the 
 Voluntary School system could not be replaced by 
 State Schools except at an expense which the nation 
 would refuse to meet. But the Voluntary Schools 
 are being paid for now after a fashion ; it is difficult 
 to believe that by means of rates or taxes the same 
 money could not be raised. If this is not the case, 
 the supreme unwisdom of the Voluntary system is 
 effectively demonstrated — it has caused the nation to 
 spend more on education than the nation can really 
 afford. 
 
 Clergymen sometimes talk as if a school were 
 absolutely devoid of religion when it happens not to 
 be under their own particular denomination, I have 
 heard the Girls' Public Day School company spoken 
 of disparagingly on these grounds ; and in the same 
 way they would refuse to recognise the schoolmasters 
 as a religious body. A man may be very religious 
 without being a clergyman ; in fact, there is no more 
 religious work than teaching. As a nation, so far we 
 have done all we can to take the religious element 
 out of teaching, and to make the Board Schoolmaster 
 
 230
 
 The Voluntary School Question 
 
 think of himself as in the first place a grant-earning 
 agent ; but it is not too late to retrace our steps. 
 The nation will certainly not lose by giving the 
 schoolmasters the dignity due to their very respon- 
 sible work ; we have advanced considerably since 
 1870, and we shall go further still. After all it is 
 not many years since many of our villages still 
 rejoiced in educational establishments resembling 
 that conducted by Mr. Wopsle's Great x'\unt. 
 
 231
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Tommy's Honesty 
 
 TT 7'E have neglected our beloved Tommy for some 
 ^ ^ time. We have made a long journey shice 
 we discussed the fate of the Rumpians who, as you 
 doubtless remember, are all dead. But our digres- 
 sions from the personality of our young friend have 
 not been without a purpose ; they have shown, or, at 
 any rate, were designed to show, the complexity of 
 the organizations and influences that may be brought 
 to bear upon him. 
 
 I have observed that parents, when they first begin 
 to think about the education of their children, are not 
 uncommonly ready with what I may call root and 
 branch work ; they expect everybody to start afresh 
 with them. They insist on not teaching Latin, for 
 instance, and on the great importance of instruction 
 in carpentering ; and it sometimes happens that by 
 the time they have come round to conformity with 
 systems of great antiquity and tried efficiency, friend 
 Tommy has lost much valuable time.
 
 Tommy's Honesty 
 
 In the region of morality, for example, parents 
 whose nature is stern and unbending — it usually is, 
 provided they are allowed to manifest their sternness 
 and rigidity vicariously — see no difficulties. "Tell 
 him not to tell a lie, and if he does, punish him," 
 appears to them a simple way of inculcating the 
 virtue of truthfulness. 
 
 Would that it were so ! 
 
 R. L. Stevenson, who seems to have remembered 
 his childhood better than most people, has some very 
 just remarks on the quality of truthfulness in children. 
 He points out that there is so much make-believe in 
 a child's life, inseparable from the condition of child- 
 hood, that many children are incapable of the intel- 
 lectual appreciation of truth ; their fancies are as true 
 to them as the actual facts around them, possibly 
 truer. 
 
 I have known children with invisible playmates, to 
 whom they gave names, and who were quite as real 
 to them as their own brothers and sisters. There is a 
 common superstition that such children are not long 
 for this world— that they are already communing 
 with the world of spirits ; therefore I hasten to add, 
 in case any mother should have observed this phe- 
 nomenon in her own family, and have been rendered 
 anxious, that none of the children who attracted my 
 notice in this way came to an untimely end, but are 
 now strong and healthy ; they have, however, lost 
 their visions. 
 
 As a rule it is not easy to collect information on 
 
 233
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 these points, and, therefore, I must fall back upon 
 one or two personal experiences. I am tempted to 
 do this because when Mr. Francis Galton published 
 his Enquiry into the Human Faculty I discovered that 
 certain processes in my own ways of thinking, especi- 
 ally with reference to numbers, were not universal ; 
 on the other hand, that though they were common, it 
 was diflRcult to find a reason for them. 
 
 When I was five years old I was taken to stay at 
 Deal ; it was my first visit to the seaside. In the 
 house resided a grown-up cousin, who was studying 
 chemistry, and possessed a cabinet full of enchanting 
 little bottles, in which were enclosed various coloured 
 crystals. I watched his experiments with great 
 interest. 
 
 Somehow or other I transferred these coloured 
 crystals to the beach. I can still see them lying 
 about in the broken flint stones. If I had been asked 
 I should have said that the beach at Deal was strewn 
 with rounded grey flint stones, and that some of 
 them were broken, and that where they were broken 
 there were beautiful blue and yellow crystals. I 
 should have described with accuracy the old pier 
 with the mussels and green seaweed on its wooden 
 piles, the capstans by which the Deal luggers are 
 hauled up on shore, the old castle surrounded by its 
 ditch, the Admiralty yard full of anchors, the ruin cff 
 Sandown Castle ; but when it came to the stones of 
 the beach, I should have discredited my other infor- 
 
 234
 
 Tommy's Honesty 
 
 mation by what would have appeared to a grown-up 
 person to be a prodigious "buster." 
 
 The impression was so strong in my mind that 
 twenty years later I went to Deal to see if I could 
 discover what had caused it, and in my heart of 
 hearts I was rather disappointed to find that there 
 were no crystals, and nothing that could have been 
 mistaken for them. 
 
 There was a room in my home in which there was 
 a discoloured patch on the paper. I was quite con- 
 vinced that an old woman used to look at me through 
 that hole, and that when my back was turned she 
 put her head out. This can be accounted for on the 
 assumption that the discoloration of the pattern ran 
 into something like an old woman's face. 
 
 But the terrors of that old woman were as nothing 
 compared with a certain gold-coloured boa-constrictor, 
 who used to stand on his tail all the way up to the 
 ceiling, with his head coming half way down again, 
 in a certain corner on the way up to the nursery ; 
 he was only visible in the dark, and I went to bed 
 past that corner for some years in fear and trembling. 
 
 If I had been asked, I should have said that I saio 
 that boa-constrictor, and if I had been punished for 
 telling a lie, I should have thought that I was un- 
 justly punished. 
 
 I have no doubt that many people could supply 
 similar experiences. 
 
 The point is worth mentioning for two reasons : 
 the first is that I have known parents seriously dis- 
 
 235
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 tressed by the fanciful statements of small children, 
 and think there was some dreadful moral taint in 
 them ; the second is that I have reason to believe 
 that children, by being much worried about truthful- 
 ness, are not unfrequently taught to lie. Excessive 
 questioning puzzles a child ; not infrequently the 
 question suggests an answer. Some children cannot 
 distinguish between a mental impression thus sug- 
 gested to them, and something that has really hap- 
 pened. When a child thus befogged has been severely 
 punished for untruthfulness, he is apt to give the 
 matter up, and decide that, as he has been punished 
 for telling what he believed to be the truth, it does 
 not much matter what he says. 
 
 Some people are exceedingly fond of cross-question- 
 ing their children as to what they have seen and done 
 during the day. I believe it to be a dangerous prac- 
 tice ; and when a lady informs me that her Tommy 
 has been in the habit of telling her all that he does, 
 I expect to find Tommy glib rather than truthful. 
 It is only fair to say that sometimes the mother is 
 right ; in fact, when Tommy's confidence has been 
 spontaneous, he is generally truthful, provided his 
 confidence is not abused ; it is over-much questioning 
 that hazes him, combined with reproof 
 
 In all dealings of the stronger with the weaker, 
 deviations from absolute truthfulness on the part of 
 the weaker are almost inevitable. Suppressions and 
 prevarications are common, even though the lie direct 
 may be rare. 
 
 2.q6
 
 Tommy's Honesty 
 
 You hear a noise like pandemonium broke loose 
 in a room where some dozen boys are assembled. 
 You rush in furious. " Who made that noise ? " you 
 inquire, in cloud-compelling tones. You may safely 
 bet your boots that the one boy in the room who 
 happened to be reading a book at that particular 
 moment will look up with an injured expression of 
 countenance and say : " Please, sir, I wasn't making 
 any noise, I was reading " ; and he cherishes a vague 
 hope that you will accept this statement on behalf 
 of the whole room ; he knows, in fact, that the others 
 expect it of him. There is no collusion in this, no 
 {previous priming ; he has not been set to read for 
 the purpose of asserting his innocence on behalf of 
 the others ; it is one of the numerous amusingly 
 transparent dodges which boys acquire in the con- 
 stant struggle of the weak against the strong. Few 
 things are more comical than the outraged innocence 
 of the habitual criminal who happens to be accused 
 on the one occasion when he was doing nothing 
 wrong ; he takes every advantage of your conscience, 
 overwhelms you with inward reproach, and )'et, after 
 all, he is guilty of a serious perversion of truth ; he 
 only says that he was not in fault on that particular 
 occasion, but he means you to understand that he 
 never is in fault ; his sin is in some degree mitigated 
 by the fact that he does not altogether expect to be 
 successful in his attempt to beguile. 
 
 I am not at all sure in my own mind that a boy 
 who tells me a downright lie, knowing it to be a lie, 
 
 237
 
 Observations ol a Foster Parent 
 
 in not in a healthier moral condition than the boy 
 who attempts to pass off a prevarication ; the former 
 knows where he is ; he knows he is a liar ; the latter 
 is rather apt to deceive himself, and think he is a 
 truthful person. 
 
 I have known boys come spontaneously afterwards 
 and plead guilty to having told a lie ; I cannot re- 
 member an instance of a boy coming to explain a 
 successful prevarication. 
 
 I do not think we should pass too severe a judg- 
 ment upon a child who tells a lie in self-defence to 
 a grown-up person ; we can be hopeful about such 
 a child, and be confident that, when he is older and 
 less afraid of the powers above him, he will cease to 
 try to protect himself in this way ; but I fear there 
 is little hope for a boy who tells lies to his school- 
 fellows. 
 
 Here, again, we must distinguish between lies 
 which are told with harmful intent, and mere " cram- 
 ming," where the lie is not intended to be believed, 
 but is a mere exercise of fancy and test of gullibility. 
 
 Stories which boys tell about what goes on at 
 school are seldom strictly true. The world of school 
 is so different from the world of home, that they 
 are apt to be unconsciously mendacious in the home 
 atmosphere ; they say a good many things which 
 they do not expect to be believed. When they find 
 that a sympathising mother or maiden aunt is swal- 
 lowing these falsehoods, and assuming an awe-struck 
 expression of countenance, they pile on the agony. 
 
 238
 
 Tommy's Honesty 
 
 If serious notice is taken of these tales afterwards, 
 they have some difficulty in climbing down, and are 
 tempted to suggest a basis of truth. 
 
 You may take it as an incontrovertible fact that 
 there are few things a schoolboy of lively imagination 
 enjoys so much as creating a sensation in the domes- 
 tic circle. 
 
 I have known serious trouble arise from a boy's 
 statement at home to the effect that one of his 
 teachers on a particular occasion " swore horribly " ; 
 everybody, who knows boys, knows that this is the 
 way in which a boy reports the fact that somebody 
 has expressed himself in strong disapproval of his 
 conduct ; but I have known the statement taken 
 literally, and the unfortunate Tommy cornered be- 
 tween having to admit that he had told a deliberate 
 lie, in which case severe punishment awaited him, 
 or suggest that the language used, though not strictly 
 such as would bring the speaker within range of the 
 five shilling penalty, was stronger than was seemly. 
 
 Tommy is particularly careless in his use of the 
 words " always " and " everybody " ; he defends his 
 conduct liberally by appeals to a custom, which has, 
 perhaps, existed only in the form of a single pre- 
 cedent. I am afraid this weakness is not always 
 shaken off when he leaves school. 
 
 To form habits of truthfulness, it is a bad thing for 
 either parent or foster parent to develop the habits 
 of mind of an amateur detective ; the moment you 
 pit your wits against Tommy's, he being the weaker 
 
 239
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 animal, you have rendered deceit less loathly to him ; 
 it is far better that his sins should not be found out, 
 than that they should be discovered by the policy of 
 " Set a thief to catch a thief," which very soon de- 
 stroys all moral obligation on his part. 
 
 On the whole, the English boy, given a fair chance, 
 and only burdened in proportion to his strength, is 
 a truthful animal, and the heinousness of particular 
 forms of falsehood is always obvious to him. I have 
 at rare intervals in my life come across children who 
 seemed to have no conception of truth. Sometimes 
 this has been the result of too much nagging at home, 
 and was, therefore, pardonable ; there have been other 
 cases in which the evil seemed to be very deeply 
 seated, and being usually combined with other moral 
 obliquities, suggested grave apprehensions. 
 
 It is not fair on Tommy to tell him that he will be 
 punished if he fails to produce a certain amount of 
 work in a given time, and then to give him every 
 opportunity of producing the required amount by 
 dishonest methods. When Tom.my is found to have 
 shown up exercises done by a schoolfellow, the re- 
 sponsibility does not altogether rest with him. In a 
 well organized school the thing is impossible. 
 
 240
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Tommy's Health 
 
 TOMMY'S health has a very poor chance in 
 these days : this is the age of germs and 
 bacilh'. Some Teutonic professor has calculated that 
 every time Tommy opens his mouth he takes in 
 between twenty and thirty thousand germs of dis- 
 ease. Surely, madam, we ought to sew up Tommy's 
 mouth, and put cotton wool saturated in disin- 
 fectants in his nose ! But then he couldn't eat 
 chocolate whenever he pleased, which would be a 
 serious deprivation to his lady friends. It is very 
 hard to know what to do — scarlet fever in the milk, 
 mumps in the railway carriage, measles at the danc- 
 ing class, smallpox in cabs, the seaside beset with 
 convalescents, our own homes surrounded by cases, 
 water suspected, drains condemned — however did we 
 live at all before the doctors were so good as to dis- 
 cover all these sources of danger ? 
 
 And then those good old family medicines which 
 
 241 R
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 our grandmothers administered with such absolute 
 confidence, where are they now ? 
 
 What has become of jalap and blacl^ draught, the 
 salts of Epsom and of Glauber ? Gregory's powder 
 still lingers, and cod liver oil, made they say from 
 sharks and porpoises ; and effervescent things in 
 blue bottles have not yet completely driven " Thy 
 incomparable oil, oh Castor ! " out of the field. 
 
 My observations upon Tommy convince me that 
 the less care is taken of him, the more likely he is to 
 be healthy. Great-coats, and mufflers, and india- 
 rubber overshoes do far less for him than open air 
 in most weathers, and a change into dry clothes the 
 moment he comes in. There are more colds manu- 
 factured than averted by the prodigious wraps in 
 which it is now the fashion to envelop children. 
 What is the good of life, if a man is to be nervous 
 every time he encounters a cold wind, and set him- 
 self to wonder which of his vital organs will develop 
 inflammation in consequence. 
 
 Why is it that boys, who are delicate at home, 
 suddenly lose all their ailments when they go to 
 school ? The doctor tells you, madam, that change 
 of air has done it; he probably recommended the 
 change. He is a sly fellow that doctor, and knows 
 the value of diplomacy. Had he told you the truth, 
 he would have said that Tommy was being over-fed 
 and over-fussed ; but then you would have called in 
 another doctor ; and, after all, doctors must live, and 
 Tommy has benefited by the change. 
 
 242
 
 Tommy's Health 
 
 I don't wish for a moment to suggest that Tommy 
 was not ill at home ; I firmly believe he was. I have 
 seen him suffering. Nor do I wish to suggest that 
 your intentions, madam, are not absolutely judicious ; 
 but then you are not always capable of carr}-ing 
 them out. You may be as firm as a rock yourself, 
 but there is sure to be some one about the house — the 
 cook, or the nurse, or the under-houscmaid, or even 
 papa himself — who will enter into a conspiracy with 
 Tommy to defeat the austerity of your arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 Do }-ou remember that passage in the " Dolly 
 Dialogues," in which Dolly feeds the retriever on 
 ptite defoie gras} "Poor dear," she remarks, as she 
 does so, " it's very bad for him ; but he is so fond of 
 it." I have observed that not one woman in a 
 thousand can resist the temptation to give a boy 
 or animal something to eat. However, it is no good 
 preaching about it ; Mrs. Beeton has done so already 
 to no effect, and where she is not listened to, how 
 can I expect to obtain a w^'lling audience? 
 
 The point that I really want to insist on is, that in 
 \-ery few cases is Tommy so delicate as he appears 
 to be. He is a hardy little rascal, as a rule, and has 
 a stomach like an ostrich ; but he can't stand unin- 
 terrupted feeding, no exercise, little occupation, and 
 sitting up late. A combination of these is sure to 
 bring about a weakly condition of health, sooner or 
 later. 
 
 Further, I wish to make a suggestion, respectfully, 
 
 243
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 to the medical faculty. Is it not possible that con- 
 stantly hearing his health talked about, constantly 
 feeling that his parents are thinking about his health, 
 may set Tommy's nervous system into the right 
 train for becoming ill ? What can be more terrifying 
 to a nervous child than the hushed whisper in which 
 mamma, occasionally glancing at him, narrates the 
 particulars of his last attack. Children are remark- 
 ably alert to know when they are being discussed. 
 And further, does not the anxiety of a parent com- 
 municate itself insensibly to the child, and so lower 
 the moral power, and invite disease ? 
 
 People are careful enough about not frightening 
 children when they are actually stretched on the bed 
 of sickness ; I have observed that they are not half 
 careful enough about not frightening them when they 
 are in good health. 
 
 At school diseases are made light of. I do not 
 mean they are neglected, but life is not conducted on 
 the basis of perpetually warding off disease. Boys 
 are given plenty of things besides themselves to 
 think of, and hence the marked difference that there 
 sometimes is between home health and school 
 health. 
 
 I should very much like to know the precise bene- 
 fit that is supposed to be derived from change of air. 
 I can understand that there may be a considerable 
 difference between spending the winter at Davos and 
 at Penzance. I can see clearly enough that a warm, 
 wet climate is likely to be unfavourable to some dis- 
 
 244
 
 Tommy's Health 
 
 eases, and a cold, dry one to others ; but I really 
 cannot see the difference to an ordinarily healthy 
 boy, who will have to live somewhere in the United 
 Kingdom, between living at Eton and Malvern. I 
 question whether it would be possible to bring a 
 stronger illustration of the absurdity of the faith in 
 " air " than the position of our public schools. Take 
 Eton, almost on a level with the Thames, subject to 
 floods most winters ; take Winchester, at the bottom 
 of a hill close to the water meadows of the Itchen ; 
 and yet their health record is distinctly no worse 
 than that of the new Charterhouse perched on a hill 
 in the very paradise of health. In fact, when I hear 
 that the doctor has said that Tommy must go to the 
 sea, or must go to Harrogate, or the Land's End, or 
 goodness knows where, I generally assume that the 
 doctor felt that he had to say something, and so said 
 the thing; which he believed to be least mischievous. 
 What happened to us all in the days when we 
 couldn't be transported at an hour's notice from 
 Hull to Harrogate ? Was the mortality among the 
 children of the well-to-do any greater than it is 
 now ? 
 
 In my own private opinion this mania for change 
 of air is a sheer superstition. Now that the means of 
 communication are so abundant, we are all restless, 
 and wish to be somewhere else. 
 
 The superstition is founded, like most superstitions, 
 on a fact. There can be no possible doubt that some 
 fifty jears ago, before anything was known of the 
 
 245
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 dangers of the water drainage system, the majority 
 of our country houses became pestilential. Cesspools 
 were cheerfully dug next door to the wells, and sewer 
 gases were given every possible facility for permeat- 
 ing the sleeping apartments. Removed from these 
 conditions to the seaside or elsewhere, the languish- 
 ing young person was restored to health, and it was 
 assumed that good air had done what was really 
 effected by a removal from conditions not dissimilar 
 to slow poisoning. 
 
 Then again, to many persons change of air has, 
 more often than not, meant change of occupation, 
 more outdoor life, more exercise, and health has 
 improved in consequence. We seldom change our 
 locality without some modification of our lives in 
 other respects. If the modification suits us, we say 
 the air of our new home is like champagne ; if it 
 does not, we say it is relaxing. 
 
 Madam, when will you be persuaded to abandon 
 the habit of sending that — I had almost used a bad 
 word — tuck-box ? It is of no use forbidding it, for 
 )'0u always contrive to smuggle in the deleterious 
 compounds somehow. 
 
 Let us talk quite seriously for a few moments 
 about this over-indulgence in the matter of eating. 
 It is a horrible thing the way this country is given to 
 intemperance, is it not ? Homes are desolated, trade 
 ruined, wives beaten and deserted, children starved, 
 and all because men cannot forego the pleasure of 
 drinking that poisonous alcohol. 
 
 246
 
 Tommy's Health 
 
 When is Master Tommy to learn the habit of 
 controHing his appetite, if he has chocolate given 
 him almost as soon as he can cry for it, and when- 
 ever he cries for it ? I know how you shelter 
 yourself. You say, "Oh, but chocolate is so very 
 harmless ; indeed, Dr. Puffle says it is very nourish- 
 ing — quite the best thing for Tommy, dear little 
 fellow." Quite so ; but what is bad for Tommy is 
 not the chocolate, it is the habit of taking whatever 
 he has a mind for, whenever he has a mind for it. 
 If he does not learn to do without chocolate, and 
 biscuits, and lemonade when he is a child, he 
 won't learn to do without whisky when he is a 
 man. 
 
 One of the modern bugbears is over-work ; madam, 
 over-work is almost impossible. The moment Tommy 
 begins to suffer from work he becomes unworkable, 
 and the thing cures itself. There may be over- 
 worry, but there cannot be over-work. Supposing, 
 for instance, we wish Tommy to get a scholarship, 
 would any man in his senses send Tommy in to the 
 examination over-worked ? On the contrary, he 
 would be very careful to keep Tommy in the best 
 possible health, knowing that an examination is a 
 severe physical ordeal, and that however much 
 Tommy may know, he will not acquit himself well 
 unless his nerves are in excellent order. When 
 Tommy begins to manage himself, when he goes 
 to the University for instance, he is apt to work 
 unwisely, to attempt to burn the candle at both 
 
 247
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 ends, and to play havoc with his nervous system ; 
 but among boys at school over-work is a very rare 
 occurrence. 
 
 On the other hand, long holidays are necessary for 
 growing boys. I sometimes think it is a pity that 
 boys cannot have their three weeks' holiday at the 
 end of every ten weeks, as I observe that by the end 
 of ten weeks they have generally lost their briskness, 
 and begin to want a change of occupation, and I am 
 quite sure that their teachers do. 
 
 People are apt to be rather merry about the long 
 holidays of schoolmasters, and to insinuate that the 
 holidays are much longer than they need be. People 
 who talk in this way have never realized what it is to 
 be, so to speak, on the stage for five or six hours a 
 day, quite apart from other occupations. 
 
 Simply to sit in a room with twenty boys, appar- 
 ently do nothing, and yet keep them at work, is one 
 of the most exhausting nervous efforts that can be 
 imagined. The attention is unconsciously strained 
 the whole time ; were it relaxed for a few moments 
 the room would begin to get disorderly. To teach, 
 walk about and talk, hear lessons, is far less fatiguing 
 than simply to keep order. 
 
 After a few weeks of full school work one begins 
 to start when doors are banged, to feel inclined to 
 say something uncivil when a colleague la}'s his 
 hand on one's shoulder ; to hear the scrape of the 
 lead pencils with which boys take notes, and which 
 they break for the purpose of sharpening them once 
 
 248
 
 Tommy's Health 
 
 in five minutes ; to dread the crumpling of a piece 
 of waste paper. 
 
 But, dear me ! I am talking about my own health 
 and it is Tommy's that we are interested in ; evi- 
 dentl)' I have said enough. 
 
 249
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Punishment 
 
 TALKS about school life would scarcely be com- 
 plete without some consideration of the ques- 
 tion of punishment. In those hardy Elizabethan 
 da)'S that we have all read of in the pages of Mrs. 
 Markham, children's lives seem to have been made 
 up of punishment. Even when Jane Eyre was at 
 school, Miss Scatchcrd administered several strokes 
 with a birch rod over the neck and shoulders of 
 patient Helen Burns, besides inflicting on her divers 
 other annoyances of a penitential description. The 
 earliest picture of a school found at Ilerculaneum 
 represents the infliction of punishment. The seal of 
 Uppingham School still represents the head master 
 enthroned and armed with a tremendous birch. The 
 head master of Eton is still presented by the captain 
 of the school with a birch, tastefully decorated with 
 light blue ribbons, when he enters upon his learned 
 office. 
 
 250 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 4
 
 Punishment 
 
 There are even those who hold that the in- 
 scrutable ways of evolution have not forgotten to 
 provide, in the human posterity of the primary 
 ascidian, a surface upon which painful but innocuous 
 stripes may be wholesomely applied. 
 
 How disagreeably jocose old gentlemen are on this 
 topic when small boys first go to school ! and yet 
 how small a part corporal punishment now plaj-s in 
 school life ! 
 
 For my part, I protest against this view of educa- 
 tion that its leading feature is corporal punishment. 
 I am struck by a certain incongruity when I reflect 
 that thirty years ago it was still the duty of the head 
 master of Eton, duly attired in a silk cassock and gown, 
 wearing white bands, to inflict corporal punishment 
 once or twice a day upon small boys. It does not 
 seem to me to fall in with my ideas of what is due to 
 a scholar and a gentleman, who is, by virtue of his 
 office, presented at court, and sometimes dines with 
 his sovereign. 
 
 I am not one of those who hold that Tommy 
 should never be flogged. If I were quite certain that 
 it would do him any permanent good, I would flog 
 him once a week. My objection is to the degrada- 
 tion of the scholastic ideal involved in wholesale flog- 
 
 ging or canuig. 
 
 I submit a few observations upon this point. 
 
 The chief value of corporal punishment as an in- 
 centive or a deterrent is upon the imagination. No 
 boy of any spirit plays football for a week without 
 
 251
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 encountering at least as much pain as is involved in 
 any corporal punishment that can be inflicted short 
 of real brutality. In schools where caning, — a bad 
 form of punishment, — is frequent, boys rapidly cease 
 to care much about it. There is no disgrace involved, 
 and very little terror ; in fact, a boy of sporting tem- 
 perament soon learns to amuse himself with seeing 
 how near he can go to a caning. If he goes too far, 
 he accepts his fate not only with resignation, but with 
 a certain amount of moral elevation — he has become 
 a hero. 
 
 Again, for a grown-up person to have recourse to 
 physical force in dealing with children is, after all, an 
 admission of weakness ; indeed, to accept physical 
 force as the basis of discipline is demoralizing to the 
 teacher. 
 
 On the other hand, entirely to dispense with 
 it, where unwieldy classes have to be dealt with, 
 is almost impossible. Many boys come to school 
 used to this form of discipline, and they do not settle 
 down till they have sampled what the school can do 
 in that line. A new master has to be i^roven, and in 
 places where the assistant masters are allowed the use 
 of the cane, he will find it difficult to get through his 
 first term without one or two executions. 
 
 There is a strong prejudice against allovv'ing assist- 
 ant masters to inflict corporal punishment, but, in my 
 opinion, an unwise one. Let it be a rule that an 
 assistant master always states in writing when and 
 why he has used the rod, and the boys are reasonably 
 
 252
 
 Punishment 
 
 protected. There are occasions when the theatrical 
 effect of such punishment is considerably impaired if 
 it is not inflicted then and there. 
 
 As a cure for idleness, I do not believe in flogging. 
 Your real slug is unaffected by it ; your happy-go- 
 lucky dissipator of time and opportunity never thinks 
 about it till too late. Wilful disobedience is rare in 
 a school with any pretensions to good management ; 
 and that seems to me to be the only form of offence 
 which is met by corporal punishment, except one or 
 two very grave moral offences of which boys are 
 occasionally guilty, and for which it is desirable to 
 have a penalty involving contumely. 
 
 Of the whole list of impositions and detentions, and 
 the like, it is impossible to speak in detail. A 
 general principle may be accepted, that a man, whose 
 boys are frequently under impositions, may be ener- 
 getic, but is certainly clumsy. I have known men of 
 great conscientiousness go on, week after week, 
 inflicting an hour's extra school upon themselves 
 on most days, in order to bring some idle subjects up 
 to the mark. Such a thing shows a rare devotion to 
 the cause, but it is not efficacious. Some boys drop 
 quite easily into the habit of staying in every day to 
 do extra work, and the end of it is that neither they 
 nor their energetic teacher get sufficient air and 
 exercise. 
 
 There is, in fact, no department of a schoolmaster's 
 work which requires more judgment and more tact 
 than the penal department. The men whom I have 
 
 253
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 observed to get on with the smallest amount of 
 penalizing have been men who had a great command 
 of bad tcmjier, and who were capable of getting into 
 an awe-inspiring rage at a moment's notice without 
 doing anything further. It is the unknown possi- 
 bility that appals Tommy and keeps him up to the 
 mark. 
 
 There is, however, one form of i)unishment against 
 which I hold up my voice with much energy, and 
 that, is public expulsion. I do not think that any 
 circumstances can justify the infliction of this tre- 
 mendous penalty upon the parents of an immature 
 lad, or upon the lad himself, considering his imma- 
 turit}\ 
 
 Open rebellion might possibly seem to be an 
 exception, for the quality of open rebellion is known, 
 and we are all at liberty to draw our conclusions as 
 to the amount of previous mismanagement which 
 would make open rebellion possible. I can conceive 
 the case of a new head master taking over a mis- 
 managed school, and finding it absolutely necessary 
 to secure the withdrawal of some of the older boys 
 in order to establish his authority ; but in all other 
 cases in which it is necessary for a boy to be with- 
 drawn, the procedure should be as private as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Some people are ignorant of the fact that there are 
 boys who are dangerous companions for others. This 
 is a fact, and such boys must be eliminated. It is 
 true that there are not many of them. It is also 
 
 254
 
 Punishment 
 
 fortunately true that the moral conditions -which 
 render it too hazardous an experiment to ex- 
 pose other boys knowingly to their influence are 
 often temporary ; but none th<; less the fact re- 
 mains. 
 
 Whenever a parent is asked privately by the 
 school authorities to withdraw a boy, he should at 
 once comply with the request. They have generally 
 good reasons for making it, and are so fully alive to 
 the unpopularity of such a course that they are not 
 likely to adopt it without good reason. 
 
 Sometimes it is advisable to get a boy withdrawn, 
 especially a young boy, who may be guilt}- of no 
 special offence which would bring down upon him 
 the majesty of the law of school, but who has got 
 mixed up with undesirable associates. None of them 
 may be particularly wicked, though all may be 
 unsatisfactory. 
 
 One of the most interesting features in boy life is 
 their tendency to form gangs. As a rule the gangs 
 do not promote industry or order, though they seldom 
 do worse. None the less, it occasionally becomes 
 necessar)-, in the interests of all the boys concerned 
 in it, to break up a gang, and there are times when 
 the absolute elimination of one or two members is 
 the only method. 
 
 ]3o}-s may sometimes be saved from getting into 
 serious hot water by being thus removed from associ- 
 ates who, innocent enough individually, were un- 
 wholesome in combination. The complexion of a 
 
 255
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 whole house will sometimes be changed, for better or 
 for worse, by the elimination or addition of one or 
 two individuals ; but in no case let us have public 
 expulsion from schools. 
 
 I 
 
 256
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Athletics 
 
 ENGLAND is the home of noble games — her 
 enemies say of brutal sports. No other country 
 devotes so much space in the columns of its daily 
 and weekly Press to pure games, a sure indication 
 of the direction in which the sympathies of the public 
 move. The praises of cricket and of football have 
 been sung too often for me to hope to be able to 
 add anything to them, and yet I am tempted to 
 say a word or two about their position in our 
 schools. 
 
 Every now and then a fatal accident happens in 
 a cricket match or in the football field — very rarely, 
 indeed, in a match between schoolboys — and the 
 intelligent jury who attend at the inquest are pretty 
 certain to append some remark expressing disap- 
 proval of the way in which the game was conducted, 
 or even of the game itself Ladies, such of them 
 as happen not as yet to have become practical ex- 
 ponents of the game in question, read this remark 
 
 257 S
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 aloud at the breakfast table with an air of triumph, 
 and if Tommy is present, and has not as yet gone 
 to school, he shudders in his shoes. 
 
 Since when have our women taken to being the 
 advocates of cowardice in the other sex? Would 
 any woman really like to hear her son's wife stigma- 
 tize him as a milksop or worse? This perpetual 
 insistence on the absolute safety of all sports in 
 which boys indulge can have no other effect than 
 to enfeeble their courage. The time was when the 
 contemptuous remarks of his female relatives were 
 not among the least effective incentives to a boy 
 to perfect himself in manly sports ; now his absence 
 on the football field is apt to be a period of wailing 
 at home, and his return is greeted with something 
 approaching to a " Te Deum " ! — one more danger 
 past ! we breathe again. 
 
 Of all games for boys, football, or its close kins- 
 man, hockey, is unquestionably the best. My chief 
 reason for taking this view is that football is a 
 game played in combination ; the individual player 
 is relatively less important than in cricket, where 
 a good batsman or a good bowler may win the game 
 without much assistance from his fellows. 
 
 A football team whose members are individually 
 moderate may, and often does, beat opponents of 
 whom one or two are surpassingly brilliant, simply 
 by understanding the art of playing together. To 
 teach boys to play for their side, and not for the 
 sake of individual display, is not always easy, but 
 
 258
 
 Athletics 
 
 it is an excellent lesson when learned. There are 
 probably few acts of self-denial which come so hard 
 to a boy as abandoning the ball to another player 
 when the right moment has arrived. 
 
 In football, again, there is always something of 
 the combat. A boy who charges in the Eton game, 
 or collars in the Rugby game, pits himself against 
 an antagonist, fully aware that he may get a nasty 
 tumble for his pains ; there is a test of courage as 
 well as of skill. I do not for a moment dispute 
 the fact that it requires a considerable amount of 
 courage to stand up to a fast bowler, or to stop a 
 ball at point, but the personal antagonist is in this 
 case less immediately confronted. Combativeness 
 is a quality of very high importance to a nation ; 
 it has carried our nation all over the world ; it is 
 something different from quarrelsomeness, with which 
 it is apt to be confounded. A few years ago boys 
 exercised this quality in actual fisticuffs ; now they 
 exercise it equally well in the football field. 
 
 The right kind of combativeness does not grow of 
 itself. There are optimists who believe that where- 
 ever you find English boys, there you find noble 
 ideas of sport. I have unfortunately observed the 
 contrary. I have found that boys require to be 
 taught that there is no glory in beating an antagonist 
 who is obviously weak. In a state of nature one 
 victory is as good to a boy as another victory ; he 
 does not share that " stern joy that warriors feel in 
 foemen worthy of their steel." I have known boys 
 
 259
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 object to challenge a football team on the ground 
 that they were not sure of victory. 
 
 In the same way scrupulous fairness in play is not 
 an inborn quality in all boys. To prefer to lose a 
 game rather than take a questionable advantage is 
 not a point of honour with everybody. 
 
 The playing field is, in fact, the best school of 
 practical morality in which a boy can be trained. 
 No school is complete in which games are not re- 
 cognised by the authorities as being an essential 
 part of the school course. 
 
 Games played by the individual, or in pairs, such 
 as fives, rackets, and tennis, are less important to a 
 school than games which are played by sides ; they 
 promote individual skill and dexterity ; there are 
 probably few games which train the eye and hand, 
 and improve the general activity of the individual 
 so much as fives ; but such games have not the fine 
 moral training of football. 
 
 Sports, running, jumping, and so forth, occupy a 
 larger place in school life than they used to. The 
 day of the " sports " is generally an occasion for 
 inviting spectators, and prizes are liberally distri- 
 buted. Here again there is much that is good, but 
 the prize-winning element is distinctly bad, and 
 especially in the case of small boys. So long as 
 the prizes are of no particular utility in themselves, 
 and are chiefly valuable to the winner as a certificate 
 of prowess, there is not a word to be said against 
 
 260
 
 Athletics 
 
 them, but this flood of clocks, and desks, and 
 candlesticks, and hardware is a poor business. 
 
 Persons of a serious temperament have protested 
 against the practice of giving cups at school races ; 
 this is a recognition of intemperance, say they, pos- 
 sibly a suggestion, a temptation, and so forth. I 
 have never yet come across a boy who learned to 
 drink through winning a silver cup, but I have come 
 across several who have seen no shame in being 
 disgustingly avaricious of articles of vertu. 
 
 Only the minority of schools are fortunate enough 
 to be close to a river. Rowing is an excellent train- 
 ing for boys, but it is a mistake to let the racing 
 element get the upper hand. Boys should certainly 
 not race too early. For an Eton boy to row up 
 to Monkey Island and back in an eight in the course 
 of an afternoon is a fine bit of physical training, and 
 will prepare him for racing ; but a boy of fourteen 
 or fifteen is none the better for a sculling race, even 
 though the course be a couple of miles. 
 
 The excitement of a race adds a peculiar strain 
 to the mere muscular exertion, and when our young 
 athletes begin to show signs of weak hearts, the 
 ultimate reason is probably a race prematurely run 
 or rowed, as the case may be. Continued exertion 
 without excitement is harmless for a boy of ordinary 
 health, but, though I should like to, I cannot speak 
 confidently in favour of racing for young boys. If 
 we conducted our schools on the Greek system, and 
 kept our boys continually under the eye of scientific 
 
 261
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 athletes, and in continuous exercise, it is not prob- 
 able that the " athlete's heart " would be so common 
 a weakness in later life. For various and good 
 reasons we do not bring up our boys entirely as 
 athletes, and the consequences are not invariably 
 such as we should desire. If boys and young men, 
 for the matter of that, compete in severely trying 
 races, they should not be left entirely to their own 
 discretion in the matter of training. A boy's ideas 
 of training may be superlatively ridiculous. He may 
 take it into his head that raw beefsteak is a good 
 thing to run a mile on, or that a course of semi- 
 starvation is an excellent preparation for a two-mile 
 course. The professional runner is not always a 
 good adviser in these cases, because his course of 
 training is suited to the purposes of a man who does 
 nothing else but train, who gives up his whole time 
 to that purpose, whereas the amateur, even while 
 he is in training, has much sedentary and mental 
 work to do at the same time, so long as he is a 
 schoolboy or an undergraduate. 
 
 Gymnastics are unduly neglected in our schools ; 
 they should certainly be not merely a voluntary 
 addition, but a necessary part of the school course, 
 especially for young boys. 
 
 All boys up to the age at which they go to public 
 schools should have twenty minutes a day in the 
 gymnasium under a competent instructor ; not flying 
 about on the trapeze or making animated wheels of 
 themselves on the horizontal bar, but going through 
 
 262
 
 Athletics 
 
 simple exercises with a view to general muscular 
 development. In such matters as leaping and vault- 
 ing most bo)-s have a great deal to learn ; some have 
 all. I have known bo}'s when asked to jump over 
 a bar held two feet from the ground simply not know 
 how to set about it. 
 
 Gymnastics alone will not make an active man, 
 but gymnastics along with games come somewhere 
 near perfection as physical training. 
 
 It not unfrequently happens when boys first go 
 to school that they bring a document stating that 
 the condition of their health is such that they cannot 
 take part in any games. If a boy's health is such 
 that he is unfit to take part in any games, he is 
 unfit to go to school at all ; he is unfit to grow up 
 to be a man. These documents seldom specify any 
 malady or bodily deformity ; they are usually con- 
 fined to general statements of weak health, liability 
 to take cold, possible dangers of over-exertion. 
 Some ladies have a particular dread of the risks 
 which are run in the process of changing clothes 
 before and after games, and want to know whether 
 Tommy, poor little fellow, may not keep on his 
 overcoat at football. 
 
 School authorities have no interest in killing off 
 their pupils— quite the reverse ; and surely they 
 might be allowed to exercise their discretion in 
 matters conducive to health ! 
 
 These delicate boys are usually coddled children 
 who have never been allowed a fair chance of ex- 
 
 263
 
 observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 panding their lungs, and it is wonderful how quickly 
 they pull round when they are allowed to exercise 
 their limbs like other children. I have a little 
 quarrel with the doctors on this subject, some of 
 whom seem to regard a school with as much terror 
 as the fondest mother could wish. One of the dis- 
 advantages of the increase of town life is that the 
 doctor is too accessible, and women do not learn 
 self-reliance in questions affecting the health of their 
 children. 
 
 As to changing clothes, let it once for all be 
 stated that over and above the question of cleanli- 
 ness a complete change into dry clothes after ex- 
 ercise causing much perspiration is the best way 
 of avoiding the risk of chill. But perhaps it would 
 be safer never to perspire ? Well, perhaps it might 
 be, and safer still to live in a glass case. 
 
 When every possible thing has been said in favour 
 of athletics, there still remains the fact that they 
 are bad masters, though excellent servants. In a 
 Boarding School they are apt to get the upper hand, 
 especially in the smaller Boarding Schools, which are 
 tempted to advertise themselves by their athletics. 
 The young boys naturally admire feats of skill and 
 strength — it is the expression of their own whole- 
 some wish to become strong and active ; in con- 
 sequence their heroes are exclusively among the 
 athletic boys. Popularity is a pleasing circumstance 
 to a schoolboy, and the leading athletes of a school 
 are apt to over-rate the importance of their per- 
 
 264
 
 Athletics 
 
 formances. A school in which nothing but cricket 
 is talked of by masters and boys from April to 
 August is not doing all its work, and is encouraging 
 among the older boys a childish view of life, which 
 they should begin to grow out of before they leave 
 school. Athletics can never be the serious business 
 of life, and it is not good for boys of seventeen 
 onwards that they should seem to occupy that 
 position. 
 
 Many fathers talk as if the one important recom- 
 mendation of a school was its reputation in the 
 cricket field, and the same men are not unfrequently 
 the first to express disgust when their boys turn 
 out idle — that is to say, indisposed for any pursuits 
 outside the cricket field. A system must not, how- 
 ever, be judged by its extremes, and the rank and 
 file in a large school get more good than harm from 
 the games. 
 
 There is a not uncommon prejudice to the effect 
 that a clever boy is necessarily a duffer. There is 
 no necessity in the case at all. Parents of children 
 who are intellectually exceptional are rather apt to 
 overlook the necessity of physical training in the 
 early stages. Some children prefer reading to going 
 out, and are indisposed to bodily exertion. A boy 
 who easily gets credit for work in school is just as 
 likely to think too little of out-of-school employ- 
 ment as the athletic boy is to regard school as a 
 tiresome interruption to games. There are indoor 
 students who do work which cannot be dispensed 
 
 265
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 with ; but the man of really vigorous intellect is also 
 the man of vigorous body. It is important that the 
 physical side of a boy's education should be well 
 looked after in the early stages ; many a boy has 
 been made clumsy by being ridiculed instead of 
 taught. Boys of exceptionally quick intellect are 
 not unfrequently highly strung and nervous. Unless 
 care is taken to help them over these weaknesses, 
 they do not get a fair chance of physical develop- 
 ment. 
 
 For fear anybody should miss two old friends, I 
 hasten to conclude these remarks by a reference to 
 the Duke of Wellington, who said that the battle 
 of Waterloo was won in the Eton playing-fields, 
 and to confirm my conviction that mens sana itt 
 corpore sano is a sound maxim. 
 
 265
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 Day School v. Boarding School 
 
 THERE is a widespread opinion in England that 
 a Day School is, by its nature, necessarily 
 inferior to a Boarding School ; in Germany the con- 
 trary view is held. I have tried both, and therefore 
 what I have to say on the subject is based upon 
 experience, and not upon speculation. 
 
 At the present moment there are few Day Schools 
 in England which are properly equipped. The re- 
 storation of the Grammar Schools proceeded on the 
 lines of making them cheap rather than perfect ; the 
 work which a school does was seen only from the 
 point of view of the class-room, and the necessary 
 expenses even of the class-room were not fully under- 
 stood. Thus the local Day School is apt to be an 
 imperfect organization ; not because that is essential 
 to the nature of a Day School, but because the essen- 
 tial elements of a good English school were not at 
 one time generally understood. 
 
 I have spoken at some length of the educating 
 work which is done by the playground, when pro- 
 
 267
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 perly worked, and have pointed out that its influence 
 is not only physical, but moral. To starve that side 
 of an English school is to render it ineffective. This, 
 however, is generally overlooked ; and though our 
 grammar schools are often provided with satisfactory 
 buildings, they are seldom provided with a play- 
 ground sufficiently large, and sufficiently near, to 
 enable the games to be thoroughly organized with a 
 proper separation of the big boys from the little ones. 
 The unpopularity of games among small boys when 
 they first go to school is often caused by their being 
 expected to play with boys much bigger than them- 
 selves. They do not get much of the fun of the 
 game, and they get knocked about more than is good 
 for them. It is not sufficient for a school to be pro- 
 vided with a playground ; it must be provided with 
 an efficient playground. 
 
 Again, the fees paid to a Day School must be in 
 proportion to those paid to a Boarding School. No- 
 body should expect to get the same organization for 
 nine pounds a year as for thirty. I have already 
 shown that the so-called boarding fee is largely a 
 tuition fee. It goes to keep an experienced staff 
 together, and a good deal of it goes to maintain those 
 expensive accessories to a school, which make our 
 Boarding Schools so complete in their training, but 
 which might equally well be provided for a Day 
 School. 
 
 Schoolmasters say that a Day School is necessarily 
 at a disadvantage because it is impossible to get a 
 
 268 
 
 I
 
 Day School 2>. Boarding School 
 
 sufficient hold of the boys. I cannot say that I have 
 found it so. From the point of view of work, I have 
 not found the day boy less industrious than the 
 boarder ; in fact, my own personal experience would 
 entitle me to say that the reverse is the case. In a 
 Day School athletics do not so often become domi- 
 nant as in a Boarding School. A boy who goes home 
 every day has many more interests brought under his 
 notice than the boy who lives entirely at school. In 
 a busy community he is pretty certain to see some- 
 thing of work that is not school work ; and, living 
 with his parents and their friends, has an opportunity 
 of seeing his life from the point of view of grown-up 
 people. The immense responsibilities of a Boarding 
 School render all kinds of rules and regulations 
 necessary, which can be dispensed with in a da}'- 
 school, where a large share of the moral supervision 
 rests upon the home authorities. The absence of 
 rules good in a Boarding School, the impossibility of 
 carrying some points of discipline which interfere with 
 the arrangements of the British householder, do not 
 involve the condemnation of a Day School. Take, 
 for instance, such a thing as smoking. It is neces- 
 sary to forbid smoking in a Boarding School ; this 
 prohibition is sometimes insisted upon to an absurd 
 degree. There are schools in which the masters are 
 not expected to be seen smoking by the boys. No 
 wahabee could be more stringent in his prohibition of 
 " drinking the shameful " than some of our head- 
 masters. This indifferent act is placed in the same 
 
 269
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 category as a breach of the decalogue. Such an 
 absurdity is impossible in a Day School, though the 
 parents will loyally support a reasonable prohibition 
 of tobacco by the school authorities. Uniformity of 
 dress is a desirable thing in all schools ; it is quite 
 easily enforced in a Boarding School, but only with 
 difficulty in a Day School. This, however, is not a 
 point of sufficient importance to condemn Day 
 Schools. 
 
 I have heard it seriously contended that a Day 
 School cannot be a satisfactory institution because of 
 the awful example of the parents. This illustrates 
 one of the weaknesses of the Boarding School system. 
 A Boarding School placed out in the country, as 
 many of them are, is apt to develop a cloistral ten- 
 dency ; the masters cut off from intercourse with 
 other grown-up people for many months in the )'ear, 
 adopt unconsciously standards more suited to the 
 monastery than to actual life. Even people who live 
 in the full wear and tear of work-a-day existence 
 sometimes form into little coteries, whose distinguish- 
 ing feature is a pious horror of what other people do. 
 On the other hand, the removal of the children from 
 home tends to relax the bonds of discipline in the 
 home ; men and women are influenced by their 
 children more than they are altogether aware of. 
 The cares of a family involve a not unwholesome 
 self-control in many things. 
 
 The intellectual and moral influence of a Day 
 School in an industrial community is an important 
 
 270
 
 Day School v. Boarding School 
 
 point in its favour. The children bring something 
 home with them from their teachers, a way of look- 
 ing at life slightly different from the domestic way. I 
 have observed this indirect influence to be exceedingly 
 wholesome. As the children grow up their ideas are 
 in some sort of harmony with those of their parents, 
 whereas boys who only come home at long intervals 
 from a Boarding School are apt to live in a world 
 which their parents have never discovered. 
 
 Speaking entirely from an educational point of 
 view, my verdict is, that where both are the best 
 possible, a Day School is a sounder institution than a 
 Boarding School — wholesomer from every point of 
 view. Under existing circumstances, there are in 
 England few such Day Schools. Let us hope that 
 when our philanthropists have discovered the weak 
 points of science and art and technical education, 
 they may begin to turn their attention to founding 
 really satisfactory Day Schools on the outskirts of 
 our big towns. 
 
 The practical difficulties in^the way of Day Schools 
 are several. There is the disinclination of the English 
 father to burden himself with the care of his children ; 
 he wants to get them out of the house as soon as 
 possible. No matter how good and how near the 
 Day School, a large number of English boys will 
 always be sent away from home. Then there is the 
 restlessness of Master Tommy himself Probably 
 this is also a national characteristic — we are rovers by 
 inheritance, By the time he is thirteen, Tommy 
 
 271
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 generally begins to fret against home restrictions, and 
 to want to see more of the world. This restlessness 
 would be less frequent were the local schools better 
 equipped. 
 
 There is also the ill-will of the dissatisfied parent. 
 No institution can hope to appear perfect in the eyes 
 of everybody, and a school provokes criticism in a 
 higher degree than most. Few people are aware that 
 they know nothing about education, and consequently 
 there are always a large number of people in any 
 locality who see imperfections in the administration 
 of the local school. One of the peculiarities of fallible 
 human beings is that the contented man says nothing ; 
 it is the voice of the discontented that is heard in the 
 land. An attitude of criticism is easily set up, against 
 which a school struggles with great difficulty. There 
 may be nothing overt, no systematic interference with 
 the administration, simply an atmosphere of mistrust, 
 which weakens the confidence of those who would 
 otherwise be contented, and damages the influence 
 even of a sound undertaking. 
 
 Of course there is also the busybody to be con- 
 tended with ; the old gentleman without occupation, 
 who is on all the boards and committees to which he 
 can obtain access, and who is prepared to manage 
 the hospital, the workhouse, the lunatic asylum, and 
 every other public institution. We have, too, the 
 enlightened lady, whose domestic concerns do not 
 give her sufficient scope, whose knowledge of affairs 
 is derived from books and conversations, in a very 
 
 272
 
 Day School v. Boarding School 
 
 small degree from personal experience, and whose 
 self confidence is in proportion to her ignorance. 
 
 Local self-government is a beautiful thing in 
 theory ; in practice it does not work well, because 
 there are only two classes of persons who, in the long 
 run, administer local affairs — those who have a direct 
 interest, pecuniary or otherwise in doing so, and 
 those with whom ambition takes the form of wishing 
 to be always before the public. A very small 
 minority of people have the time to manage their 
 own affairs, and those of the public. Day Schools 
 rarely work well under immediate local control. 
 
 ^73
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 The Foster Parent to the Real Parent 
 
 MADAIM, I have said a great deal more than I 
 ever intended to, but I trust we are going 
 to part friends. Much that I have said will have 
 appeared to many people superfluous, or beside the 
 mark. I fall back on my position as an observer. 
 English society to-day is not so simple as it was 
 a hundred years ago ; the balance of wealth has 
 considerably changed ; the traditions which guided 
 well-to-do people in the early part of the century 
 have not spread so rapidly among the people who 
 now occupy their place, as might have been the 
 case, had not events which took place at the end of 
 the seventeenth century established two bitterly 
 opposed factions in our middle classes ; things which 
 appeal to the imagination of the south country 
 churchman do not appeal in the same way to the 
 south country Nonconformist, still less to the com- 
 mercial man of the north. 
 
 One point which has struck me more forcibly than 
 any other is the attitude of the masters and boys 
 
 274
 
 The Foster Parent Again 
 
 towards a public school in the south of England, 
 and the feeling about schools in our large towns. 
 
 The Public School master seldom looks upon 
 the school as a mercantile concern to which he gives 
 as little as he can, and from which he takes the 
 most possible ; on the contrary, he continually 
 spends money on the school to which he is attached 
 from which he can hope to derive no personal ad- 
 vantage ; his example spreads to the bo}-s, their 
 pride and delight in their school is an education in 
 patriotism. I have come across quite another way 
 of looking at these institutions. I have found the 
 schoolmaster regarded as a tradesman lilcely to give 
 short measure, and who should be dealt with accord- 
 ing to sound mercantile methods. 
 
 I have already dealt with this way of looking at 
 a school from one point of view ; let us return to it 
 from another. 
 
 The schoolmaster is after all a foster parent ; his 
 relation to his pupils is a parental relation ; their 
 parents have delegated to him responsibilities with 
 which for various reasons they cannot themselves 
 be burdened ; just as a parent does not think of. 
 his children as things to make money out of, so he 
 should be very chary of trying to establish that 
 relationship between his children and their teachers ; 
 he should refuse to recognise anything that may 
 tend in that direction. To put pressure for in- 
 stance upon a schoolmaster to reduce his fees, is to 
 tempt him to take a purely mercantile view of his 
 
 275
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 profession, and did he work on the same Hnes, 
 Master Tommy would get proportionately less care. 
 
 Some school rules seem to weigh entirely against 
 the parent ; for instance, rules as to non-remission 
 of fees when boys are absent from ill-health. A 
 school is an institution which cannot suddenly 
 reduce its expenditure, masters cannot be dis- 
 missed at a moment's notice ; buildings cannot be 
 parted with. Were fees remitted for illness, an 
 outbreak of measles would ruin most schools ; and 
 their only means of protection would be to deal 
 niggardly with their pupils when in health, so as 
 to have something to fall back upon. Fees are 
 calculated however, on the assumption that the 
 school will pay its way, when it is full, not by 
 stinting the pupils, but by doing the very best for 
 them. The loss of a term's fees to the individual 
 parent is a small matter, not so the loss of the 
 fees of fifty boys to a school, even to a large 
 
 school. 
 
 I have also observed a very strong tendency to 
 
 undervalue the intellectual and moral worth of a 
 school in comparison with its more showy char- 
 acteristics ; and in the Preparatory Schools, cod- 
 dling in all its forms is a far more profitable 
 investment for the proprietor than sound teaching. 
 
 I speak not merely from my observations as a 
 foster parent, but from my observations as a mem- 
 ber of a large and varied society. I often hear 
 the merits of schools discussed, and I have no 
 
 276
 
 The Foster Parent Again 
 
 hesitation in saying that it is a very rare occurrence 
 to hear a school praised or condemned on reason- 
 able grounds ; some infinitely small detail is more 
 often than not selected as the reason for confi- 
 dence. 
 
 Many of my remarks have been directed to 
 suggesting better reasons for giving or withholding 
 confidence than those which I usually hear. 
 
 Another point which strikes me, is the immense 
 interest which people take nowadays in managing 
 the affairs of all classes but their own ; the lady 
 bountiful attitude seems to engross all the interest. 
 There is a widespread assumption that well-to-do 
 people can take care of themselves, and that old 
 standards of honour, and courage and fidelity to 
 causes, will remain of themselves without effort. 
 Let us hope that they will remain, but they will 
 not remain without effort. The cheapness of com- 
 fort at the present time brings with it a disinclina- 
 tion to inconvenience. People are impatient of 
 pain in themselves, and in others ; our passion 
 for interfering on behalf of distressed nationalities 
 is the public expression of this feeling. Such 
 feelings, however inconvenient in their consequences 
 are not discreditable in their public manifestation, 
 but they are bad for domestic use. 
 
 I am jealous of anything which tends to weaken 
 the fibre of the nation. When Thackeray and 
 Dickens went to school, boys were expected to 
 suffer more than was good for them ; now things 
 
 277
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 go entirely the other way. I have heard of assistant 
 masters at a Preparatory School being told by the 
 proprietor not to speak roughly to the boys because 
 the parents did not like it. 
 
 Then there is another little bone I must pick 
 with you. Some time ago, the Head Master of 
 Haileybury published a volume of essays on the 
 management of boys. I happened to read a review 
 of the book, in which he was told, that much that 
 he said was superfluous, as any mother could have 
 been trusted to manage these things better. 
 
 We have also an adage that " every mother 
 knows her own child best." This is not true ; 
 apparently a mother cannot even be trusted to 
 recognise her own child after a lapse of years, for 
 did not the Dowager Lady Tichborne welcome a 
 corpulent butcher as her own long-lost son ? 
 
 In the stricter sense of the word " know," the 
 last people to know children are their parents ; it 
 is only by comparison that a sound knowledge is 
 acquired of anything, and very few parents have 
 the opportunity of comparing other children with 
 their own to any large extent. 
 
 Every schoolmaster of tolerably wide experience 
 will have observed that when a boy first comes 
 to school, he is stated to be " peculiar " ; either 
 his health, or his morals, or his intellect are differ- 
 ent from the health, morals and intellect of other 
 children. This is very seldom the case in fact. 
 The statement is made in perfect good faith, and 
 
 278
 
 The Foster Parent Aeain 
 
 ^' 
 
 the reason for it is that the parents compare their 
 children not with other people's children, of whom 
 they know little, but with grown-up people, possi- 
 bly with themselves ; now all children are " peculiar " 
 when judged by a grown-up standard. 
 
 Again, children in the home circle are quite 
 different from what they are when dealing with 
 other children, or with persons who are not suffer- 
 ing from that hunger for affection which is at the 
 root of so much injudicious indulgence. 
 
 Tommy at school is such a nice fello\\', that his 
 conduct at home has sometimes filled me with 
 amazement ; he is frequently almost unrecognisable. 
 Children instinctively scheme to get their own wa)', 
 and are terribly demoralized by success ; when 
 once they have discovered that " no " does not 
 mean " no " they become a nuisance to themselves, 
 and to their elders and betters. 
 
 Continually being looked after has a bad effect 
 on children ; it is neither good for their health nor 
 for their morals ; and I would recommend for )'our 
 consideration, madam, the example of a heroic 
 mother of my acquaintance, who, in order to teach 
 her children from the very beginning that the)' 
 were not of too much importance, used to take her 
 baby in her lap, and read the newspaper over it. 
 As the child never rolled off, I presume that there 
 was a helping hand somewhere. 
 
 Some people cannot bear to hear their children 
 depreciated, however slightl}', even in the indirect 
 
 279
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 form of praise given to the children of other 
 people. This is a thing which renders school re- 
 ports a source of much anxiety to Head Masters. 
 May I suggest, madam, that when Tommy has a 
 bad report, the fact is quite sufficient evidence that 
 he is being well looked after, and should inspire 
 confidence in his teachers ? Nevertheless, as a 
 matter of worldly wisdom, I would counsel my 
 colleagues on no account to send in a bad report 
 twice in succession. 
 
 One curious fact that has come under my ob- 
 servation is that there are a few parents who are 
 not really happy unless their children are treated 
 with great severity, and soundly abused. It is a 
 fact that parental affection is in some cases per- 
 verted, and bears the outward appearance of 
 parental animosity ; mothers are subject to it no 
 less than fathers. 
 
 There is a gentleman in one of George Eliot's 
 novels, who remarked that "he hadn't had no eddi- 
 cation, and he didn't care who knowed it." Many 
 of my friends tell me that the public in general 
 are of the same way of thinking, and of the same 
 level of training ; in fact, that to be interested 
 in education is to be interested in what nobody 
 really cares about. Can this be so ? I hope not. 
 As soon as a nation ceases to care about the edu- 
 cation, not the instruction, mind, of the directing 
 classes, that nation is doomed to go down hill ; 
 the disintegrating forces are at work. 
 
 280
 
 The Foster Parent Again 
 
 For the last seven and twenty years wc have 
 been busy enough with the instruction of our 
 workmen, but we have paid very little attention to 
 the education of their employers ; wherever wc do 
 take an interest in this, we think at once of in- 
 struction, and not of education. Even the talk of 
 making a move in the matter of " Secondary Educa- 
 tion " arises more from a wish to do something 
 more for the artisan, than to seriously re-organise 
 the system of existing " Secondary " schools, and 
 to make provision for the foundation of new 
 schools where they are wanted. The education of 
 the next generation, whether they are poor or 
 whether they are rich, equally needs some more per- 
 manent control than that which is supplied by the 
 discretion of the parent, who, by the nature of the 
 case only begins to know something about edu- 
 cation when his family no longer requires educating. 
 The parent himself wants standards. The duty of 
 the State goes further than merely directing the 
 distribution of endowments ; why should it be 
 incumbent upon the State to see that the Board 
 Schools are efficient, well ventilated, properly fur- 
 nished, and not to see that the Boarding Schools 
 are also well provided ? If it is necessary to 
 protect the children of the artisan from parental 
 improvidence or want of judgment, is it less neces- 
 sary to protect the children of other classes ? 
 
 It is not feasible to force a man to send his 
 children to any particular school, but it is quite 
 
 281
 
 Observations of a Foster Parent 
 
 feasible to give him a clear understanding of what any 
 particular school will do for him, whereas I defy 
 anybody who is not himself a schoolmaster to 
 arrive at a classification of the existing Boarding 
 Schools. 
 
 If, madam, anything that I have said has in any 
 v/ay ruffled your sensibilities and caused you to 
 think of me as harsh or unjust, please remem- 
 ber that I have throughout addressed you imper- 
 sonally, and that the remarks which have wounded 
 you were in all probability not intended for you, 
 but for Mrs. Robinson, whose mismanagement of 
 her children is so notorious. 
 
 These papers would not have been written did 
 I not feel the deepest sympathy with the mother's 
 difficulties in dealing with her sons. Were I un- 
 kindly disposed, I would not bother myself to 
 cover many pages of paper with observations, 
 many of which I know to be unpalatable, and none 
 of which are likely to interest the general public, 
 who are said to care no more for these things than 
 they care for the fate of the unfortunate Rumpians. 
 
 They, as you will remember, are all dead. 
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printins Works, Fro.iie, and London. 
 282
 
 Gustave Flaubert 
 
 As seen in his Works and Correspondence 
 
 EY 
 
 JOHN CHARLES TARVER 
 
 Diiny %vo. Fortrait and Ilhistnition. 14^. 
 
 "A moit bi'illiant letter-writer, gay, whimsical, affectionate, intimate, 
 and unfailingly sincere." — Westminster Gazette. 
 
 "An enthusiastic but also critical account of the life and letters of 
 Gustave Flaubert. The aim of the author is, as he stated in his preface, to 
 place the personality of the novelist vividly before his readers. . . . 
 Gradually as the work went on Mr. Tarxer found its scope growing under 
 his hands, not only as a biography, but as a critical estimate, and the 
 result of his labour is, at the present moment, of no little value and im- 
 portance." — Mr. W. L. Courtney in the Daily Telegraph. 
 
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 he represents. . . . We recognise the conscientious care he has brought 
 to this intimate picture of Gustave Flaubert, alike as man and literary 
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 remarkable man and a writer devoted to his art, but as a study in criticism 
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 his numerous translations, which, while they read perfectly well in English, 
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 "A very readable volume, and mainly so on account of the plan adopted 
 by the compiler — that of allowing Flaubert to speak as nmch as possible 
 for himself. Undoubtedly the most attractive portions of the work, are the 
 excerpts from the novelist's letters, in which he depicts himself and others 
 with vividness and force. Flaubert's private epistles were full of individu- 
 ality and vigour. Much credit, however, is due to Mr. Tarver for the 
 shrewdness he has shown in selection and the neatness with which he has 
 handled his quotations. Altogether, he has succeeded in painting a very 
 graphic picture of Flaubert both as man and as writer, and one which 
 should be of service to the ordinary English reader." — Globe. 
 
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