THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL CURRICULUM. The Preparatory School curriculum, in all its main features, is the direct outcome of the Entrance Scholarship system at the Public Schools. It is true, of course, that only a very small percentage of boys obtains Scholarships, and that for the rank and file the way into a Public School must lie through the ordinary entrance examination. But between the two examinations there is only a difference of degree. The standard in the scholarship examination is much higher, but the subjects in both are practically the same-Latin, Greek, French. Mathematics, with possibly (but by no means necessarily) questions in History, Geography, and Divinity. Accordingly, all boys in the Preparatory Schools are passed through the same kind of training. If they can reach the scholarship standard, well and good; a few-perhaps 8 per cent, on a liberal estimate-secure election; the rest get as near to the standard as they can, since the form in which they are to start at the Public School will depend on their knowledge of Latin and Greek as shown in the entrance examination. The scholarship examination therefore includes that for entrance, as the greater includes the less, and its requirements are of decisive importance in shaping the work of the Preparatory School, for dull and for clever boys alike. It is necessary to draw attention to this point at the outset, in order that it may be clearly understood how small is the power of initiative that lies with the Preparatory Schoolmaster himself in shaping his curriculum. His function is to prepare boys for the Public Schools; and admission to these is dependent on certain definite conditions. There is a very general feeling among Preparatory Schoolmasters that, in the light of modern knowledge and modern experience, those conditions are in important respects unwise; but they are powerless of themselves to alter them. Public opinion, meanwhile, as represented by the average parent, finds a ready, test of efficiency in the scholarships a school is able to win. Nor is it surprising that parents should desire scholarships for their sons. They are intrinsically valuable, and to many people money is a serious consideration. But it is not only the poor or the mercenary parent that is attracted by them. Success in a public competition of this kind is gratifying evidence of a boy's ability. For intellectual fathers and mothers, moreover, there is a peculiar attractiveness in the system which obtains at Eton and Winchester, of keeping the scholars together in a community of their own, where the intellect of the school is focussed, and interest in intellectual things is therefore likely to * I must be understood to refer here and in what follows to the Classical side of Public Schools, in which the great majority of boys are trained. Some important schools have no properly organised Modern side; some require German instead of Greek. be keener. But even if there is no "college" for boys on the foundation, a scholarship is still worth having, for it ensures a good start at the Public School and the special attention of the masters-no slight advantages in a crowded world of 500 or 600 boys. For many reasons, therefore, scholarships are coveted. I need not here enter on the vexed question whether the system by which they are awarded is morally justifiable. But their influence on the Preparatory Schools is beyond dispute. Scholarships in all but a very few schools are now thrown open to general competition. If success is to be achieved, a narrow definite path must be followed. Thus, if from time to time complaints are heard from parents who are interested in educational reform and who recognise the shortcomings of the Preparatory curriculum as it stands, they count for little in the general acquiescence or indifference. If we turn to the requirements of the Public Schools, we find that at most of them the boy who secures election is one who shows exceptional ability in one particular subject. In the great majority of cases this subject is Classics. Sometimes it is Mathematics, or (rarely) Modern Languages. It is true that the examination usually includes a paper (the so-called "General Paper") of questions on History, Geography, and Divinity. But English subjects exercise little or no influence on the final award. What the Public Schools (with the rarest possible exceptions want is the specialised boy. This is frankly acknowledged by those who justify the present system. At the Headmasters' Conference in December, 1897, Dr. James (Rugby) said: The predominant reason for giving scholarships at Public Schools was the fact that they did wish to attract able boys to the schools. But then, again, there were two reasons for the wish, the first being that they naturally all of them wished to have interesting pupils to teach and pupils who would respond to the efforts of the teacher; and in the second place, there was the narrower reason, that headmasters wanted them to win scholarships at the University for their schools, and it was just there that specialising came in. The University did not recognise all-round equipment, neither did the colleges, and therefore, if schools were to succeed in the University examinations and that surely, it would be taken for granted, was an honest ambition-it was clear they could not be content simply to send their all-round boys, but must send boys who would do specially well in certain particular subjects... He could not think that specialisation even at the very earliest age was altogether in itself a bad thing. * The It would be easier to defend this point of view if all or even a large majority of Public School boys proceeded eventually to the Universities. The fact is that comparatively few do so. vast majority on leaving school go straight into one of the professions or into business. Either therefore Dr. James and those who think with him really believe a strict training in Classics to be the best education for all boys, the best means of developing faculty, so important that it cannot well be begun too early, or they are ready to subordinate the needs of the great majority to those of the clever few who are to win honours at the Universities for the schools that have educated them. It is, * Report of the Conference of Headmasters, 1897, pp. 29, 31. on the other hand, the growing conviction of many Preparatory Schoolmasters that to insist upon the teaching of both Latin and Greek in the Preparatory stage and to encourage early specialisation by scholarships, is to do an injury, in greater or less degree, to all young boys, and practically to sacrifice those who have small linguistic ability. But before discussing possible improvements in the curriculum, let us see what it actually includes. What is the curriculum best adapted to secure the twofold object set before the Preparatory School, viz., either to win scholarships by developing its boys along special lines, or to get them far enough on in classics to secure for them a good start at the Public School? Briefly it will be found that, as soon as a boy comes to school, which we may take to be at nine years old, he begins (if he has not already begun) to learn Latin; at the same time he has lessons in French, and spends a good many hours a week over English (spelling, dictation, parts of speech and analysis of the simple sentence). That is, he at once begins drill in the rudiments of three languages. Arithmetic, English History, Geography, Religious Knowledge, possibly Drawing or Object Lessons, complete his work in school. As soon as he has got through the two lowest forms, which means for the clever boy before his tenth birthday, a fourth language is added-Greek. This involves a reduction in the hours devoted to English-always the first subject to suffer if time is required for anything else. Geometry and Algebra are also begun, Arithmetic being cut down to meet the need. Now also a beginning is made with Latin Verses. At the age of twelve (if he is to get a scholarship at all), a boy finds himself in the highest form, and devotes an increasing number of hours to Classics. There is no need to describe here the kind of papers he will have to face in the scholarship examination.+ But to anyone who studies those set at Harrow or Eton, Winchester or Rugby, it will be clear that a very considerable knowledge of Latin and Greek is required for success, and that without specialisation it would be impossible for a boy under fourteen to cover the ground. For the last two years of his Preparatory School training, therefore, the lion's share of the time table falls to Latin and Greek. About twelve hours a week, together with five-sixths of the evening preparation, may be taken as a not unusual total of hours allotted to these. One * Some schools postpone Greek till a boy has got through the three lowest forms, but this is exceptional. On the other hand, in some schools Greek is begun in the form next above the lowest. The reader may be reminded that I am speaking here of Preparatory Schools of moderate size (40-60 boys), with five or six forms. For large schools, with ten or twelve forms, this account would require some alteration; but there are not many such. + See Mr. Lynam's art. on "Examinations for Entrance Scholarships at the Public Schools," in this vol., p. 17, where the papers are given in full. Here and there a school may specialise its boys in Mathematics, but the case is (happily) so rarit may be left out of any general view of existing practice. school, well known for its success in winning scholarships, divides the weekly time-table, including preparation, of its highest form (average age, 12.8), as follows: Classics, it will be observed, here claim almost twice as many hours per week as all the other subjects put together. This time-table is, of course, exceptional. The following one, the figures of which also include Preparation, more nearly reflects the ordinary practice. TIME-TABLE of a Preparatory School (Summer Term, 1899) showing the hours devoted to each subject, inclusive of preparation for it, per week. N.B.-No preparation is done except under the supervision of masters. Here the time, including preparation, devoted to the classics is seen to be 17 hours per week in the highest form-just half the total number of hours spent in school; and a comparison with Mr. Stallard's Table IV. on p. 48 will show that this corresponds very fairly to the average time given in Preparatory Schools to the subject. The main purpose of the curriculum, it is seen, is to teach Latin and Greek, as much time being devoted to subjects other than these as the conditions will allow. The first thing that strikes one in this curriculum is at once its narrowness and the large number of subjects it comprises. It is, in fact, "the grand old fortifying classical curriculum," holding its ground with all the old tenacity, only that, under the pressure of public opinion, room has been found as well for the subjects now everywhere regarded as necessary ingredients in the education of cultivated people, such as French, Mathematics, History, and Geography, and perhaps also for those which are beginning to be recognised as valuable, such as Drawing. New subjects have been one after the other tacked on to the old classical system, as Dr. Welldon (late Headmaster of Harrow School) has said, "like an old coat let out to suit a growing child." The consequences of such a combination of the old and the new are what might be imagined. The clever boy climbs rapidly up the school by the classical ladder. An entrance scholarship is waiting to be won, and he has every temptation to drop, one after the other, all subjects which will not pay in the examination; thus his grounding is apt to be narrow, and his interest in everything except the world of books is stunted and impoverished. At 13 he will show a precocious facility in finding his way through an Unseen," or in writing a piece of Latin prose; but (unless he happens to come from an unusually cultivated home) his knowledge of the world in which he lives, indeed of nearly everything outside the classics, will be very small. And he will certainly suffer from the special weakness inherent in an exclusively bookish training, viz., want of originality, want of power to look at things with his own eyes instead of through the eyes of his "authorities." He has come to the top, as the clever boy always does, be the curriculum what it may, and he is certainly, in a sense, a success; but what of the great majority, the boys of moderate or less than average ability? It cannot be urged too strongly that for them the present curriculum is a most serious mistake. This was the view expressed in 1897 by the Committee of the Association of Headmasters of Preparatory Schools. statement prepared for the Headmasters' (Public Schools) Conference, at the request of the Sub-Committee of that body, they urged that "the great dangers of the present system are (1) Multiplicity of subjects, especially of languages; (2) Špecialisation at too early an age"; and continued as follows: In a It is too much to require of the average boy that he shall be learning at the same time, in the Preparatory School stage, four languages (Latin, E 4333. |