ESSAY 325 



that most of the opinions are very strongly held. For example, with regard to 

 the schoolmasters' demand voiced in the extract from the Times quoted above, 

 one parent writes that he was " advised not to put the boy into Army Class, the 

 reason given being that Army Class, in the Lower Division, is chiefly composed 

 of undesirables and slackers, though the real reason is that the boy's tutor is a 

 Classical Master and he does not wish the boy to give up Latin for a modern 

 language." Unfortunately, before we trust our boys' careers entirely to their 

 schoolmasters we must remember that even schoolmasters are sometimes human. 

 Another parent writes that he, " as a business man with long experience, has felt 

 strongly that the average Briton commenced his career very inadequately 

 equipped for the struggle for the maintenance of our supremacy in trade — a 

 struggle in which, prior to the war, we were, speaking generally, being slowly 

 but steadily worsted." Another parent says that he himself " suffered in youth 

 from classical education, which has helped him in no way " ; and another that his 

 " own education at Public School taught him the highest ideals in duty and 

 discipline, but almost nothing else that was useful in the struggle for existence, or 

 public duties." This correspondent also " protests most emphatically against 

 antediluvian syllabus of instruction, and bitterly denounces arrogance and bigotry 

 of scholastic staff of great Public Schools, who know nothing of the work-a-day 

 world, especially overseas." Another complains that he must pay extra fees for 

 the tuition of his son in such an elementary subject as geography ; another that 

 mathematics and French teaching at * * * are ridiculous, and that nothing taught 

 at * * * is of any use in the Navy ; another that many posts abroad cannot be 

 filled by English boys as they have not had the necessary grounding ; another 

 complains of boys having to "grind at Latin verse, while being taught no history, 

 geography or literature, and no colloquial French " ; another objects to having his 

 boy's "time wasted, as mine was, on a smattering of useless Greek and Latin. 

 Since the stock-in-trade of most Oxford and Cambridge dons and schoolmasters 

 is knowledge of Classics, they will fight hard against any change " ; another says 

 that he " has served a year in France ; had over one hundred Public School 

 boys to deal with ; helplessness of boys greatly struck him ; few had any idea of 

 work or real devotion to irksome task . . . many French Tommies ahead of them 

 in knowledge — literary and practical " ; and another declares that he is forced to 

 send his three sons to Public Schools a not in the hope of their receiving a 

 profitable education, but because the curriculum happens to be bound up with 

 advantages which cannot be secured in any other way." 



We have seldom observed such unanimity in any series of independent 

 opinions ; and the worst of it is that any one who is acquainted with the world will 

 recognise that these opinions are not confined to parents of Public School boys, but 

 are common everywhere, except perhaps in scholastic and ecclesiastical circles. 

 Rightly or wrongly, many people think that our boys are taught, not what they 

 should be taught, but what the present type of educationist is generally able to 

 teach — that our system of education is designed in the interests rather of the 

 schoolmasters than of the boys. What such people wish to see reformed is, 

 precisely, the curriculum, and not so much the organisation. 



In order to study the point further, let us inquire what are the qualities and 

 accomplishments which most parents would like to see in their sons — say in the 

 ideally-trained young man of twenty. Whether, in Roger Ascham's sense, he is 

 by nature euphues or no, he should still, we surmise, be brought up " in the book 

 and the bow." His outdoor qualifications should comprise (1) military training ; 

 (2) athletics ; (3) walking and running ; (4) riding, bicycling, rowing, sailing, 



