ESSAY 327 



11 business proposition." It is the parents who pay the piper, and they will be wise, 

 we think, if they insist upon calling the tune. 



Very amazing arguments have been heard during these discussions. Thus, 

 some have maintained that the admirable voluntary recruiting in Britain has been 

 due to our " humanistic " system of education, and that the wickedness of the 

 Germans has been due to the scientific tendency of theirs. They forget that 

 universal service, which is national voluntary recruiting, has been in force in 

 Germany for fifty years, whereas it was introduced in Britain only after eighteen 

 months of actual war, and then not without much disgraceful opposition. More- 

 over, no one denies that the Germans as a nation have at least been efficient, 

 whatever their rulers may have been ; whereas many think that our attitude 

 towards the German menace has constituted ever since the cession of Heligoland 

 in 1890 one of the most colossal pieces of stupidity known in history. How poor 

 science can have stimulated German brigandage it is impossible even to conceive, 

 and the German militarists who produced the war were probably as ignorant of it 

 as the British politicians who gave them an opportunity. It is more likely that 

 the war was caused by the false ideals engendered in both nations by unreal and 

 unscientific methods of education. 



Another common pretence is that the grammatical education stimulates love of 

 literature — the truth being that the two things are quite distinct, and that boys 

 who have been through the grammatical mill have often never been through a 

 single masterpiece in the language which they have learnt at such cost. That it 

 specially stimulates a sense of duty is another hypothesis for which no evidence is 

 given or is apparent. Yet another pretence is that a scientific education makes 

 a man a "brutal materialist." This is a meaningless term of opprobrium which A 

 hurls at B when B happens to criticise the particular dogma or superstition by 

 which A gets his living or advancement ; and the use of it is evidence only of 

 obtuseness or senility in the user. 



But few will be misled by such arguments, and we believe that most men of the 

 world will summarise the discussion as follows : (1) That the first elements both of 

 Greek and Latin are necessary for every intellectual profession or employment ; 

 (2) that a complete classical education is necessary for very few of such occupa- 

 tions ; (3) that an exclusive classical education is not sufficient for any such 

 occupation ; (4) that a knowledge of one or more modern languages is more 

 useful than and just as educative as a similar knowledge of a dead language ; and 

 (5) that a man who is entirely ignorant of science can scarcely be considered 

 educated. 



But popular criticism is directed not only against the curriculum but also 

 (1) against the want of discipline which often prevents masters from being able to 

 compel their pupils to learn anything ; and (2) against the system by which nearly 

 all the better-paid scholastic and academical posts are given to men who belong 

 to an out-of-date order of things. On the other hand, evety one recognises that 

 many educationists are themselves trying to introduce reforms. Parents must, 

 however, remain on guard. We do not wish the schoolmasters, however excellent 

 they may be, to take complete charge of our boys (and of the future of our country), 

 just as some centuries ago the priests took charge of our souls. 



