ESSAYS 473 



the acquisition of any of the Romance languages. As to the utility of modern 

 languages, such as French, German, Italian, or Spanish, no arguments are neces- 

 sary. Which of these are chosen for a detailed study in school must vary from time 

 to time and from school to school, according to the average requirements and 

 ambitions of the scholars and the habit of intercourse, commercial and intellectual, 

 of our nation with others. It is difficult, however, to see any valid grounds for 

 retaining Greek as a school subject. It is true that we trace back the origins of 

 our civilisation, of our general ideas, and of our politic, to Greek civilisation ; but 

 it is not necessary to study Greek language or Greek grammar in order to learn 

 Greek history or to make some acquaintance with Greek thought or art. Most 

 boys who learn Greek at school never get farther than the rudiments of the 

 language, whereas, through the medium of English, all boys could be taught 

 something of the part played by Greece in the evolution of modern ideas. As to 

 the employment of Greek roots in scientific language, half the men who employ 

 them do not know their real meaning, and they could and should be learnt as 

 part of the lesson in English when dealing with the meaning and construction 

 of words. 



Natural Science and the Humanities 



After the training in language, the instrument of thought, comes the imparting 

 of human experience — i.e. knowledge. The different forms of experience can be 

 roughly classed as — 



(i) The nature and behaviour of things — i.e. the material world, and the 

 relation and importance of these things to the individual. 



(2) The relations of men among themselves and to the individual. 



These two groups correspond roughly to what are generally spoken of as 

 natural science and the humanities. Judging by the normal order in which the 

 curiosity of the child awakens to his environment, at any rate in the case of 

 the boy, the knowledge of things should precede the more difficult and complex 

 study of the relations of men ; the latter, which must be regarded as the more 

 directly important to the average man, being more fully developed in later 

 school life with the growing mental powers of the child. 



It will be evident that if we accept the principles already enunciated a very 

 wide latitude is possible in planning out a school curriculum. Granted the 

 acceptance of these principles, I should be inclined to leave their working out 

 in practice to those whose life has been spent in the education of the young. 

 I venture, however, to give a scheme of elementary and secondary education 

 arranged in three stages, more by way of illustration than with a desire to lay 

 stress on the particular order of the stages therein contained. Throughout it must 

 be premised that the training is divided into moral and intellectual, and the latter 

 again into the training in the instrument — i.e. language or symbols — and the 

 training in human experience. 



1. Elementary Training. 



(a) Behaviour. Moral training. — A child learns the rule of the school in his 

 lessons and in his play. An ideational aspect is given to these lessons in 

 Scripture, in tales from History, etc. At this early stage the chief value of these 

 studies is the strengthening of the educational effects of the social law. 



{b) Words. Their meaning and their use. Reading, writing, and speaking. — 

 I would lay special stress on speaking, and make a child give an account in words 

 of something he has seen or knows. Moreover, there is no reason why difference 



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