66 Selections from Huxley 



teaching at its best and I gather from those who have 

 authority to speak on such matters that it is so what is to 

 be said of classical teaching at its worst, or in other 

 words, of the classics of our ordinary middle-class 

 5 schools?* I will tell you. It means getting up endless 

 forms and rules by heart. It means turning Latin and 

 Greek into English, for the mere sake of being able to 

 do it, and without the smallest regard to the worth, or 

 worthlessness, of the author read. It means the learn- 



10 ing of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a 

 shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into 

 utter trash; and the only impression left upon a boy's 

 mind is, that the people who believed such things must 

 have been the greatest idiots the world ever saw. And 



15 it means, finally, that after a dozen years spent at this 

 kind of work, the sufferer shall be incompetent to in- 

 terpret a passage in an author he has not already got up; 

 that he shall loathe the sight of a Greek or Latin book; 

 and that he shall never open, or think of, a classical writer 



20 again, until, wonderful to relate, he insists upon sub- 

 mitting his sons to the same process. 



These be your gods, O Israel! For the sake of this 

 net result (and respectability) the British father denies 

 his children all the knowledge they might turn to account 



25 in life, not merely for the achievement of vulgar success, 

 but for guidance in the great crises of human existence. 

 This is the stone he offers to those whom he is bound by 

 the strongest and tenderest ties to feed with bread. 



If primary and secondary education are in this un- 



30 satisfactory state, what is to be said to the universities? 



This is an awful subject, and one I almost fear to touch 



* For a justification of what is here said about these schools, 

 see that valuable book, Essays on a Liberal Education. 



