PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. THE great Public Schools discussed in the present volume are each of them so far typical of a class as to give the reader a fair general view of the education and life not only of the schools described, but of their followers and imitators-Wellington, Clifton, and others as well as of the older Grammar Schools, which have shaken off the lethargy of the past, as Sherborne, Tonbridge, and many more. The important considerations in regard to school life divide themselves under the heads of teaching, morals, health, and expense, and on all these the foregoing chapters give not a little help towards solving questions which arise. It may be well, however, that an independent mind should discuss these subjects freely and apart. The teaching of our schools throughout the country takes its tone from those which stand at the head, and some of the grossest absurdities are seen best as brought out in the smaller establishments. When, for instance, a grammar school in a small country village not many miles from London, from which not one per cent. of the pupils enters any learned profession, keeps the practice of Latin verse-making for all its scholars, the wanton nonsense of the thing is patent to all whose brains are not dulled by routine; but because from Eton and Harrow a considerable portion of the lads go in due course to the Universities, the folly is not quite so apparent. It is contended by the more sensible of those who defend the practice of verse-making, that for minds in a rudimentary state of development, it is an excellent drill, calling out and strengthening many faculties at the same time; that the delicacies of the classical languages can only be understood by those who can wield them in this fashion, and that so only can scholars, in the older sense of the word, be trained. At most schools Latin verses are taught in a very unintelligent manner, and continued long after they have ceased to serve the purpose of an educational instrument at all. There is no special mystery in the learning a classical language. If taught by one who knows it, the mode of learning any foreign tongue ought always to be the same, and we have never heard it even hinted that a candidate for a foreign office clerkship will learn French or German more thoroughly if he endeavour to write verses in those languages. The absurdity of competing with the poets of those nations would at once be apparent; it ought to be so in the cases of Latin and Greek. When a tongue is only partially mastered, the effect of such verse-writing is at once to hamper and mislead. The Bengal Baboo, who thinks he has gained the language of his conquerors, breaks out thus into verse: Come, Leila, come, no more procrastinate, No longer let thy favours be debarred; Expectantly I supplicate regard ; and his lines are scarce a caricature of what is poured out by the yard each week from our schools, under the name of Latin verses. When a man has learned to use a foreign tongue as his own, then, and then only if he have the gift of poetry, ought he to write in that language. It will spring from him as French verses from Mr. Swinburne, or English translations of French from the gifted Bengal singer Miss Toru Dutt. The mischievous teaching which culminates in verses runs through only too much of the system pursued in our schools: each language is taught as if it stood alone, and none is therefore taught thoroughly. If comparative philology is ever brought before boys at all, it is only in the upper forms, instead of being the first introduction to any dialect but their own. Only by comparative philology can the great problem be solved how to teach modern languages in schools, making them the same mental training which, as it is asserted, the classical languages were when studied in the old unintelligent fashion. The adoption of a philological basis would not only allow half the time to be given to language with double the result, but it would render that a delight which is now a dreary task; while space would be left in the school hours for physical science and mathematics, so lamentably neglected in so-called classical schools. It is not enough-though some of the greater schools have under pressure done so much-to build elaborate class-rooms and laboratories, and find one or two men of ability who, by dint of personal influence, get a few lads to give up part of their playtime to scientific work, supplementing the one or two hours in the week grudgingly abstracted from classics, and yet to make these men feel in a hundred ways that they are not as completely part of the school machine as the classical tutors. We are not at all among those who consider that boys should have a smattering of universal knowledge. Comparative philology, with special reference to one group of languages, should of course run through the school. For instance, English and German might well be studied together in the junior classes; French, Latin, and Greek together in the middle classes; resulting in the more complete and exhaustive study of one or two languages only in the higher forms. The outlines of geography and history would be taught through the school, branching into the study of details for a part at least of each school session; while mathematics, and some one branch of physical science, the latter, perhaps, at the choice of the pupil, would be compulsory. And such an arrangement of work would still leave time for such literature, music, or drawing as might be decided by the parents or the tutor. Closely connected with the question of the studies pursued is that of the hours spent on them. A A |