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. In a 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:

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,

4333.

E

Greek, French, English), as well as Arithmetic, Algebra, Euclid, History, Geography, Divinity, and in some cases elementary Science and German as well. The consequence of his doing so is what might be expected. He cannot properly assimilate what he learns; he loses interest and keenness ; he does not therefore love but often positively dislikes his work, and does it in a perfunctory way. One result of all this is the want of thoroughness and good grounding which is patent

This difficulty in covering all the necessary ground has its effect, so far as general experience goes, upon most masters as well as boys. They not only have a sense of distress caused by the present pressure, but are also led to do a great deal more for their boys than is good for them. In order to save time, they are tempted to feed them with information instead of educating them. And thus, by their very willingness and devotion, they often weaken the spring of the mind, and destroy the power of doing original or unaided work.

And further, the time required for the teaching of so many subjects 18 almost certain to lead to one or two alternatives, either of which is highly undesirable, viz., either the omission of some of the subjects which ought to be taught, or a lengthening of the hours of work in school.*

The hardworking boy of fair ability, who perhaps gets a scholarship under the present system, shows the bad effects of his training more clearly (sc., than the clever boy). He wins success for the most part by sheer effort of (verbal) memory. The strain of preparation cannot be kept up. The boy's brain revenges itself by lying fallow; and the Public School wonders how the examiners could have elected so dull a boy.

His

The ordinary dull boy suffers most of all. He has little aptitude for languages. The endless Latin and Greek and French and Mathematics (the latter yet another method of discipline in accuracy) are to him intolerably wearisome. Hence he hates schoolwork as drudgery. curiosity (probably the one link with cultivation that he possesses) is left dormant. There is a divorce between his work and his life. And so, when he reaches his Public School, he seems to have learnt very little of anything, and does not know what to do with his leisure. Hence the excessive athleticism we most of us deplore, and the educational failures that are so

common.

These words give, I think, a perfectly faithful picture of existing practice and its results upon the schools. "Learning by heart," it has been said, "is the great intellectual vice of boys." A system which involves the learning of so many languages at the same time, sets an altogether disproportionate value upon mere memory work, and correspondingly fails to develop intelligence. Latin and Greek are good seed, but they require appropriate soil, if they are to grow to profit. For the mass of young boys the soil is not ready. Latin and Greek together exhaust the ground, and results are admittedly very poor. Then, again, such a system has little time to give to subjects in which boys take a natural interest. Latin, Greek, French, and Mathematics, it is pointed out in the statement from which I have just quoted, are all "methods of discipline in

*The former alternative is, I believe, generally adopted. In these days, when the risks of over-pressure are so widely acknowledged, the Preparatory schoolmaster cannot afford to neglect the health of his boys. Certainly, if boys are ever worked out of school, the victims will be scholarship candidates, and such extra hours will be devoted to classics and mathematics, not to subjects "which ought to be taught," but which would not pay in the examination,

accuracy." But discipline, though of immense importance, is not everything in early education. The best teaching is that which takes the will captive and enlists the pupil as an ally in the process of learning; which sympathises with the curiosity natural to all children, and knows how to transmute it into sound and reasoned knowledge; which stimulates imagination and arouses interest, effort, the desire to know more. In a word, stimulus is needed as well as discipline. The average boy, who spends nearly his whole schooltime in wrestling with the rudiments of three foreign languages or with the dry rules of Mathematics, never sees the wood for the trees. He does not feel that growing and encouraging sense of power which comes from having his goal well in sight, pressing towards it, reaching it. What he needs is a richer curriculum-one that appeals to other than the merely linguistic faculties; one which, while not losing sight of discipline, shall at the same time appeal to other sides of boy-nature; discovering and developing aptitudes which now languish for want of opportunity; giving him less book-work, and teaching him how to use his eyes and hands; training memory less and intelligence more; in a word, making education a less mechanical and a more vital thing. It is "more life, and fuller, that we want." The teacher's aim, it has been admirably said, "is to help the pupil to live a fuller, a richer, a more interesting and a more useful life."*

But, it will be asked, if the Preparatory Schoolmasters are so dissatisfied with the curriculum as the vigorous language of the Statement implies, what remedies do they propose? What changes do they want in subjects or standards of work?

In answer to this, it must be admitted that they have not yet proposed any complete or adequate solution of the problem. Nor from a Committee like that of the Association of Headmasters of Preparatory Schools could such a solution be expected. The whole subject confessedly bristles with difficulties. It is one thing to be practically unanimous in condemning a state of things, quite another to be agreed as to the best method of reform. The classics are deeply rooted in our affections as well as in our school system. Moreover, a Committee is hardly justified in going beyond the mandate of the Association which it represents; and the Preparatory Schools Association at its annual Conferences, though anxious to stop the specialisation of young boys, has not unnaturally preferred compromise to any heroic methods, and has urged a lowering of standards rather than the excision of any of the traditional subjects. Hence in the Statement I have quoted from we find :—

It is impossible for us to formulate in detail what change in the curriculum should be made, because opinion is sharply divided as to this among ourselves. But the point to be emphasised is, that too much is now required, and that some change is imperatively demanded in the interest of the boys and of education generally. And we can at least express the hope that in an amended curriculum those subjects will be recognised as important which train a boy to use his eyes and hands,

4333.

*Sir Joshua Fitch, "Lectures on Teaching," p. 34.

E 2

and to interest himself in many things of which he now learns nothing from lack of time.

In a supplement to this Statement, which had been criticised as dealing too much in generalities, the Preparatory Schools Committee explained their position more fully. After pointing out that the Public Schools" demand from us a specialised rather than a soundly educated boy," and that "for the evil effects of the system we must look not to the clever boys who win scholarships, and under any system would come to the top, but to the rank and file, the vast majority of boys of average or less than average ability who are made to suffer," they proceed:

What is the best remedy for this state of things? It may be doubted whether any remedy short of the excision of a language from the Preparatory School curriculum will be adequate to the mischief. For it is the effort to learn Latin and Greek and French at the same time, in the Preparatory School stage, that more than anything confuses and depresses and overburdens the average boy. But the remedy that we propose is of a less drastic kind. We desire that examinations should be wide rather than special; that papers should be set, and marked, in English History, Geography, Divinity, French, Latin, Greek, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Euclid, and that the aggregate of marks obtained should be the chief consideration in awarding the scholarships. It has been suggested that the Public Schools might have some difficulty, if these proposals were adopted, in selecting scholars of promise. We do not share this view. It will be easy to prevent the success of the mere smatterer by keeping the standard of each paper sufficiently high, or by fixing a minimum percentage which must be passed before marks begin to count.

We have not touched on entrance examinations, because we do not consider that the standard is so high as to prejudice the natural work of Preparatory Schools; but even here it would be easy to show that the preponderance of languages prejudicially affects the education of those boys, who, either for lack of linguistic ability, or because they go to a Public School at an unduly early age, cannot aspire to take a place above the lower half of the middle school. Such boys, under penalty of taking the very lowest place, must face papers in easy Greek translation, that is, they must learn Greek for at least three terms before leaving the Preparatory School.* This means either that for all boys Greek must be begun before sufficient advance is made in Latin, to say nothing of English, or that for these particular boys some important subject must be dropped that they may be specialised in Greek.

This reads very much as if the Committee would fain cut out Greek; but in the absence of any decisive mandate from the body they represent, hesitated to urge the adoption of so strong a remedy. The result is a proposal which is open to the criticism that, if adopted, it might indeed scotch Specialisation, but would

*This puts the facts very mildly. There must be many Preparatory Schoolmasters who will agree that the stupider (linguistically) the boy, the less can he afford to postpone beginning Greek till his last year at the Preparatory School. It would be truer to say of such a boy, that as the entrance examination draws nearer, everything for him must be subordinated to the absolute necessity of absorbing as much Latin and Greek as will carry him into the Public School. This means that the bright spots in his time-table-the drawing, the object-lessons-vanish, and he does extra Greek or extra Latin in the hope of rising to the required standard. If he scrapes in, he remains but a poor unintelligent smatterer, a thorn in the side of his form-master, doomed to early superannuation, Cui bono?