Il8 CLASSICS IN MODERN EDUCATION. 



Think of the average schoohnaster's opinion of the average 

 parent's educational ideas! " Odi profanum vulgus." The 

 teacher, left to himself, is naturally the last to acknowledge the 

 necessity of a reform of which he might himself he the first 

 \ictim. He is content to teach what he was taught himself. 

 And by an association of ideas which is illogical but humanly 

 intelligible he is inclined to think that the system of which he is 

 himself the product cannot be bettered. He judges the tree by 

 its fruit, but then he is himself the fruit. And thus an educa- 

 tional system maintains itself by its own momentum, or, if you 

 like, by its own inertia. What is the result? We have witnessed 

 in the controversy which of recent years has raged about tlie 

 Classics the half-pathetic, half-ludicrous spectacle of ill-directed 

 attacks met by a blustering and uneasy defence— a defence which 

 was successful only because the real weakness had not been laid 

 bare. The defenders of Classical Education have taken up every 

 attitude from apologetic defence to scornful defiance, according 

 as the varying robustness of their consciences permitted or for- 

 bade them to doubt their own infallibility. The public, on the 

 other hand, feeling dimly that something was wrong, was yet 

 unable to analyse correctly and articulately the cause of the 

 disease, and, in consequence, has had to submit to a good many 

 hard names, e.g., Philistinism, Materialism, Commercialism, and 

 the rest of the opprobrious " isms." 



§ 5. Under these circumstances, it is clearly the duty of 

 everyone who has the interests of education at heart, and who is 

 at the same time qualified by inside knowledge of our educational 

 system, to bring the discussion back to the fundamental issues 

 and to attempt an unprejudiced estimate of the place and value 

 of Classical Studies in modern education. The main questions^ 

 as it seems to me, are : ( i ) In what lies the educational value of 

 Classics at their best? (2) Does the amount and manner of 

 what goes at present under the name of " Classics " in our 

 schools and colleges secure a profitable proportion of this edu- 

 cational value? (3) If not, must we discard Classics all 

 together, or is there a better way of teaching them, so as to 

 retain them as a valuable element in education ? 



§ 6. I cannot do better than summarise the substance of the 

 current criticism of Classics in the words of a man who has 

 some claim to speak with authority, and who, at any rate, speaks 

 neither without experience nor without sympathy. I quote from 

 H. G. Wells's " New ]\Iachiavelli " the description of the hero's 

 schooldays (pp. 72-'/'/^ : — 



" We were taught, as the chief subjects of instruction, Latin and 

 Greek- We were taught very badly,, because the men who taught us 



did not habitually use either of these languages We were taught 



these languages because long ago Latin had been the language of civi- 

 lisation ; the one way of escape from the narrow and localised life 

 had lain in those days through Latin, and afterwards Greek had come 

 in as the vehicle of a flood of new and amazing ideas. Once these two 

 languages had been the sole means of initiation to the detached criticism 

 and partial comprehension of the world. I can imagine the fierce zeal of 



