SCIENCE-TEACHING IN ENGLISH SCHOOLS. 283 



until ii leuviiig-examination which shows his progress to have been 

 satisfactory in all three sets him free to follow his inclination by pur- 

 suing exclusively the subject which suits him best; happy since emi- 

 nence in that one will not liave been })urchased by entire ignorance 

 of all the others. Unfortunately, though most necessarily for this 

 report concerns schools only the curtain drop^ upon this interesting 

 moment of transition, shutting out of view the influence which uni- 

 versity scholarships and exhibitions exercise upon school-work, and 

 thus ignoring an obstacle to the realization of the programme far 

 greater than want of money, want of time, or want of appreciation, 

 in the schools themselves. 



What is the avowed object and purpose of the higher English 

 school education? Is it the even and progressive development of 

 young minds ? the strengthening in equal proportion of the faculties 

 of imagination, memory, reason, observation ? the opening doors of 

 knowledge in the plastic time of youth, which if not opened then will 

 be fast closed in later years by the pressure of active woi'k, or habit- 

 ual exclusiveness, or energies paralyzed through disuse ? Nothing of 

 the kind. It is constructed entirely with the aim of winning certain 

 prizes; for scholai-ships with which a costly university bribes men to 

 come to it for education ; for class-lists leading up to college fellow- 

 ships ; for the lucrative posts of military and civil service. In all 

 these, but most of all where the universities can determine the ordeal, 

 one principle of success has been established, and that principle is one- 

 sidedness. The candidate for India, for Woolwich, for Cooper's Hill, 

 must at an early age select certain subjects and throw overboard all 

 the rest. The childish aspirant to the entrance scholarships of a jDublic 

 school is placed in the hands of a crammer at eight years old, that at 

 thirteen he may turn out Latin verses as a Buddhist prayer-mill turns 

 out prayers, and may manifest, as a distinguished head-master has 

 lately said, to the eye of a teacher searching for intelligence, thought- 

 fulness, promise, intenseness, " a stupidity which is absolutely appall- 

 ing." His scholarship won, he is pledged to pursue a course whose 

 benefits are tangible and its evil consequences remote. The universi- 

 ties have stamped upon all the schools one deep certainty, that for a 

 boy to be " all around," as it is called, is the irremissible sin ; that 

 a school-master who teaches with reference to intellectual growth and 

 width of cultiire sacrifices thereby all hope of the distinctions which 

 make a school famous and increase its numbers. If a classical scholar- 

 ship is desired, science and mathematics are abandoned : uay, the 

 palm of literary excellence is conceded even to men ignorant of the 

 noblest literature in the world, their own birthright and inheritance, 

 and knowing less of the history and structure of the English language 

 than a fourth-form boy knows of Greek. If mathematical success is 

 aimed at, literature and science are ignored ; if the few science scholar- 

 ships existing tempt candidates from any of "the thirteen schools 



