P.OPULAE EDUCATION 329 



Govt. should contribute. But why on earth I am to 

 be taxed to have every stupid child taught the niceties 

 of English grammar, and of English history three-fourths 

 of which is better forgotten, and the geography of every- 

 place under the sun I do not see ; and all the more when it 

 comes to educating the children whose parents could and 

 ought to afford it themselves. 



May 2, 1893. 



I am a Eadical in such matters but your radicalism will 

 not tolerate mine. 



To the Same 



May 24, 1893. 



You must not think that I oppose education of the 

 laboring classes, but I should like it conducted towards the 

 future life of the average, and not to the high education of 

 the few who can profit by the complex education of the 

 Board Schools. Mind you I am just as much against the 

 higher school and College education of the masses of the 

 upper classes ! surely it would be far better if much of their 

 teaching were devoted to making them more useful members 

 of society. . . . 



To return to technical education, my notion of it is, that 

 it should be begun early, at the expense of some of the Board's 

 literature, classical English, &c. and be accompanied 

 throughout by semi-scientific teaching i.e. the cobbler 

 should be taught what tanning is, what bristles are, and how 

 developed, and so forth. If any Board-school child shows 

 a genius for the higher education, push him on by all means 

 to school and college ; but it is no use trying to ' make silk 

 purses out of sows' ears.' 



To the Same 



April 22, 1898. 



I get quite giddy over the letters and articles in the 

 papers about Education. It is, I think, beginning to dawn 

 on some scholastic minds that you ' can't make a silk purse 

 out of a sow's ear,' and that four-fifths of ordinary children 

 or youths cannot be got even to see the beauties of language 

 or poetry, Greek, English, or Latin, &c., &c., that our 

 educated teachers (who do) are trying to cram into their 



