THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE IN OUR SCHOOLS 425 



diately. But " all we like sheep have gone astray." If A were 

 Winchester and B, Eton, acted with him, the problem would 

 be solved, the fashion being set. Schoolmasters are mainly 

 affected by the vice of indetermination if not by cowardice ; 

 somebody must jump in to show them how deep the water 

 is before they will attempt to swim. 



State control of schools must soon be demanded by the 

 public if the changes which have so long been asked for— and 

 admitted by Headmasters to be necessary and possible — are 

 not made without much further delay. I am one of those who 

 believe that no effort should be spared to avert this fate from 

 them— that a State-directed system of education would infallibly 

 land us in mediocrity by repressing initiative and reducing our 

 schools to one dead level of uniformity. 



Dr. Burge and Mr. Lyttelton imply that the shrinkage of 

 classics in our schools is in deference " to an uninstructed spirit 

 of commercialism." The testimonials I have quoted are in no 

 way tainted with commercialism ; those who wrote them — the 

 late Dean Farrar, Samuel Butler, Mr. A. C. Benson and 

 Prof. Ostwald — scarcely come under such a criticism. Pace 

 Dr. Burge and the entire host of the Headmasters' Conference, 

 the spirit at work is the spirit of common sense. Those who 

 advocate the reform, root and branch, of our school practices — 

 I count myself among them — have had no thought of com- 

 mercialism in their minds. The commercialism has been on 

 the side of the Headmasters, the Schools and the Universities. 

 The schools have allowed the Examinations and the Scholarship 

 system to dominate them for purely commercial reasons ; the 

 Examinations have been developed by the Universities into 

 eminently commercial enterprises in which there is no longer 

 a vestige of altruism to be found. Dr. Burge jibes at the 

 prospect of control by the Board of Education ; he does not see 

 that control by the Universities has " crept upon the schools by 

 stealth "—to use his own expression — in a most insidious way. 



In face, however, of the outspoken confession from Eton and 

 Winchester with which we are favoured, it is time that we 

 put an end to the farce of proclaiming the supreme value of 

 a classical education ; it is time that we recognised that a trade- 

 union attitude is not one which the scholastic profession can 

 worthily support much longer. We are all agreed that we wish 

 to develop character in boys and girls, but parents now ask 



