274 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever may be thought of such criticisms as these, which come from 

 within our public-school life, it is, I imagine, generally agreed by those 

 who know both our national needs and the work and influence of our 

 public schools, that there is much room for improvement in regard to 

 methods of teaching, the cultivation of intellectual interests and tastes, 

 and the stimulating habits of thought in the majority of their pupils. 

 In close connection with these considerations there are two questions 

 of practical importance which deserve a prominent place in any study 

 of our public-school education. 



The first of these is whether it is good for all boys alike to continue 

 their life at school, especially at a boarding school, up to the age of 

 eighteen or nineteen; and the other is whether more encouragement 

 and pains should not be given to developing the best type of day school, 

 or, to put it somewhat differently, whether the barrack life of the board- 

 ing school has not, through fashionable drift and class prejudice, be- 

 come too predominant a part of our English education at the expense 

 of the home life with all its finer educational influences. 



As regards the first of these questions, it will be remembered that 

 Dr. Arnold considered it a matter of vital importance to expedite the 

 growth of a boy from the childish age to that of a man. In other 

 words, the boy should not be left to grow through the years of critical 

 change from fourteen to nineteen without special regard to his growth 

 in intellectual taste and moral purpose and thoughtfulness. His edu- 

 cation during these critical years should be such as to rouse in him 

 the higher ambitions of a responsible manhood. 



Does, then, the actual life of a public school really conduce to this 

 early development in the majority of cases? My own experience has 

 led me to the conclusion that it can not be confidently held to do so. 

 The boys in any of our public schools may be said to fall into two 

 classes — those who in due course reach the sixth form, and during their 

 progress through lower forms have an ambition to reach it; and, on 

 the other hand, a numerous class who do not expect to rise to the sixth, 

 don't care about it, and never exert themselves to reach it. 



For the first class, I doubt if any more effective preparation for life 

 has been devised than that of our best English schools; but the case 

 of the second class is somewhat different. Many of these come to the 

 end of their school time with their intellectual faculties and tastes and 

 their sense of responsibility as men to a great extent undeveloped. 

 From sixteen to eighteen or nineteen their thoughts, interests, and 

 ambitions have been largely centered in their games and their out-of- 

 school life, with the natural results that their strongest tastes in after 

 life are for amusement and sport. Some of these boys, after loitering 

 at school to the age of eighteen or nineteen, go to the university as 

 passmen, some begin their preparation for the work of a doctor or a 



