EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS. 273 



EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS. 



By the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of HEREFORD, D.D., LL. D., 



PRESIDENT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



WE hear much more than formerly about the public schools being 

 the best training-place for good citizenship. Therefore, say 

 the critics, it is reasonable to inquire how far their educational system, 

 their ideals, their traditions, their fashions and the pervading spirit of 

 their life fit the mass of their pupils intellectually and otherwise for 

 the duties of citizenship and for grappling in the right spirit with the 

 problems that will confront them. ' Any careful observer,' says one 

 of these writers, himself a loyal public-school man, and intimately ac- 

 quainted with school life, " any careful observer, who has studied the 

 political moods and opinions of the middle classes in this country dur- 

 ing the past few years, can hardly have failed to notice two obviously 

 decisive influences: an ignorance of modern history and a want of im- 

 agination. For both of these defects the public schools must bear their 

 full share of blame. It may be doubted whether any other nation 

 teaches even its own history so little and so badly." 



The result is that * to the average public school and university man 

 the foreign intelligence in his daily paper is of less interest than the 

 county cricket; and though events of far-reaching importance may be 

 happening almost under his eyes he is in the dark as to their signifi- 

 cance.' " As regards the duties and aims of citizenship in all the vari- 

 ous affairs of his own country, political, social, economic, he goes out 

 from his school almost wholly uninstructed by the lessons of history, 

 or by any study of the life and the needs of our own times. Again, 

 as it is urged, the lack of imagination is hardly less dangerous to us 

 than lack of instruction in the lessons of history and the social condi- 

 tions and needs amongst which we have to live and work. No doubt 

 the gift of imagination is a natural gift, — it can not be created. But, 

 given the thing in the germ, it can be stimulated and developed, or 

 starved, stunted, or even crushed out. No system of education that 

 neglects it is even safe. For, without it, principle becomes bigotry 

 and zeal persecution. It is conscientiousness divorced from imagina- 

 tion that produces Eobespierres. Now, it is precisely here that we 

 should expect the public schools to be most helpful, for it is through 

 literature that the faculty is most obviously cultivated, and they all 

 profess to give something of a literary training. But though the in- 

 tention is excellent the performance is often terribly meager." What- 



