EDITOR'S TABLE. 



845 



side tlie school " ; but it strikes us very 

 forcibly that it must merely be a means 

 to an end — that is to say, that it must 

 be secondary and subsidiary to "the 

 system of management transacted in- 

 side the school " ; and if so, the conclu- 

 sion is inevitable that, as regards this 

 far more important matter, the private 

 schools carry off the palm for efficiency. 

 The admission is, to our mind, a very sig- 

 nificant one. Government can do out- 

 side work, but not inside work. It can 

 put up buildings, provide apparatus, or- 

 ganize a staff of superintendents and in- 

 spectors, and make a great show over 

 examinations ; but when it comes to the 

 vital point of teaching it breaks down, 

 or, at best, does the work inefficiently. 

 When will people understand that gov- 

 ernment work is esentially "outside" 

 work, and that, when they want inside 

 work, thej must do it themselves ? Gov- 

 ernment has the taxing power, and can 

 do whatever the command of money 

 enables it to do; but, when more than 

 this is wanted — when, for example, to 

 quote the words of the Royal Commis- 

 sion, it is a matter of establishing an 

 " effective sympathy between managers 

 and teachers or managers and scholars" 

 — state agency will not work. 



It so happens that, almost simulta- 

 neously with the appearance of this re- 

 port, a teacher of long standing and 

 much experience, Mr. James Runciman, 

 publishes in the "Contemporary Re- 

 view " a most powerful arraignment of 

 the whole system under which the board 

 schools in England have been conducted 

 since the passing of the Education Act 

 in 18T0. That act he pronounces to be 

 " a failure, if we contrast the means ex- 

 pended with the total results obtained ; 

 in fact," he adds, " the powers of evil 

 seem to be gaining force, if we study 

 broad results." Speaking of his own 

 career as a teacher, he says : " After bit- 

 ter years of effort I saw that I was frit- 

 tering away my life, and thus the glad- 

 dest day I have ever known was that 

 on which I knew I should work un- 



der the useless pedantic code no more. 

 Ninety-nine out of every hundred teach- 

 ers in Great Britain would follow my 

 example if they could, for there is no 

 chance for a man or a woman to lead a 

 human life, so long as the code governs 

 tliem ; and I say deliberately that our 

 national millions of educational grant 

 are mostly spent on keeping up a mis- 

 chievous imposture which broods like 

 a perpetual blight over education," 

 "Roughly speaking," he says in a later 

 part of the article, " we have spent 

 fifty million pounds of money on teach- 

 ing a generation how 7iot to become 

 good scholars, good workmen, good 

 clerks, or good citizens, and we have 

 performed that remarkable feat in order 

 to satisfy the fantastic desires of a set 

 of pedants whose judgment is scouted 

 by every practical man." We quote 

 only the conclusions arrived at and vig- 

 orously expressed by Mr, Runciman, be- 

 cause we have not space for the facts 

 and illustrations by which he supports 

 them ; but all who turn to his article 

 for themselves will see that he has not 

 spoken without great and bitter cause. 



The Royal Commission express the 

 hope that it may be possible in the fu- 

 ture to combine the special merits of 

 state administration, consisting chiefly, 

 as we have seen, in capacity for work 

 " outside the school," with the strong 

 points of voluntary effort. The hope is 

 an amiable one, but we regard it as 

 wholly illusory. The very life of edu- 

 cation resides in the free competition of 

 ideas, in private initiative, and in the feel- 

 ing of individual responsibility. Educa- 

 tion without these can be little more 

 than a hollow mockery. It will be 

 " outside " work in the worst sense ; 

 and, when we seek to gather from it 

 those fruits of intelligence and morality 

 which a system of national education 

 might be supposed to yield, we shall 

 find the tree smitten with a mysterious 

 disease, and the half-formed fruit fall- 

 ing withered to the ground. " A mys- 

 terious disease," do we say ? Yes, mys- 



