OXFORD AND GREEK 639 



cause why in most public schools and among the majority of 

 boys in them all the level of intellectual interest is so low. It 

 is indeed, I think, far lower in them on the whole than in most 

 elementary schools, where professionally trained teachers are 

 now in a majority. In the great public schools, as the Head 

 Master of Eton knows, 1 " the main cause of muddle-headedness 

 and hatred of learning lies in the unsoundness of the foundations 

 of language-study and mathematics." And he has no doubt about 

 the cause. " This unsoundness is due to the haste with which 

 the foundations are laid, inevitable when an excessive amount is 

 required at the age of eighteen or nineteen." 



The Greek Question then turns out to be in the main an 

 extreme case of the much larger problem of providing teachers 

 and teaching which are alive and enlivening. "Greek" is 

 worse taught and consequently worse learned than most other 

 subjects ; and one reason for this is that the Greek teachers are 

 themselves the prime product of pre-scientific teaching and 

 learning and less contaminated by modern scientific thought 

 than any other body of teachers. 



The key to this problem is in the hands of the older uni- 

 versities. It may have to be wrested from them but in the 

 meanwhile it is there. The freedom is theirs and the responsi- 

 bility to set things right. They can shut their doors on 

 Greekless persons, if they please and if (which Heaven forbid) 

 Whitehall do not step in to prevent them ; but if they do no 

 more than that, above all if they leave their entrance tests as 

 they are, they are shutting the door not only on the Greekless 

 but on thousands of would-be Grecians whose parents at 

 present send them to great schools to learn Greek, only to 

 find, too late, that instead of learning Greek, they have been 

 crammed for Responsions. 



Two distinct issues, therefore, depend on their decision. One 

 is the fate of the Greekless, for whom, if they are not to be 

 admitted to Oxford or Cambridge, other provision must be 

 made ; which means that the actual rift in English education 

 between an upper-class and a lower-class system is to be 

 extended through the university stage. This is the compul- 

 sionist's remedy. In the elegant language of Mr. Stuart Jones, 

 an Examiner in the Final Classical School at Oxford, " there are 

 universities enough and to spare in which if it be the will of 



1 Oxford Magazine ; May 11, 191 1. 



