October i, 19 14] 



NATURE 



^ll> 



the most important duty of the parents is the education 

 of their children. At present, men who are building 

 up fortunes are too busy to think of their children, 

 and so we find that the sons of Lord Chancellors and 

 other successful men have been marrying chorus girls 

 and squandering those very fortunes to which their 

 education was sacrificed. Of course, if parents are 

 uneducated, and therefore selfish or otherwise foolish, 

 any kind of school may be better than home for their 

 doomed children. It is one of the great advantages 

 of poverty that the children go to day schools and they 

 keep in touch with home life. If the day school is 

 really a boarding school as well, it will be found that 

 there is always a differentiation in favour of the 

 boarder, which has a very bad caste effect, just as the 

 " modern-side " boy of any public school suffers in 

 character because he is of a lower caste than the 

 classical-side boy. It is usual to remove a stupid 

 classical-side boy to the modern side, and every boy 

 on the modern side has a sense of injustice. The work 

 of the modern side ought to be much the higher, but 

 it is always badly done because the atmosphere is 

 altogether bad. 



It may be said that I am only destructive in my 

 criticism of public schools. I think it will be found 

 that I am also constructive, although I acknowledge 

 that my sketch needs much filling in. Well, can 

 much more be done in an address lasting one hour? 

 I will now try my hand at a little filling in. I have 

 no objection to the existence of classical schools some- 

 thing like the present for boys who are fond of classics. 

 The average boy will not be asked to attend such a 

 school. I feel sure that much greater attention ought 

 to be paid to the teaching of English composition, to 

 English poetry and prose, and to English subjects 

 generally. I also fee! sure that much attention ought 

 to be paid to natural science. And surely it can do 

 no good for the classical masters to go on sneering 

 at natural science subjects and calling them " stThks " 

 as they do now. 



I want, however, to speak more particularly of a 

 much higher kind of school, which will educate the 

 boy usually called clever and also the boy usually 

 called stupid. As I have already remarked, I think 

 that these names may sometimes be redistributed. 



The school is one for boys from eleven to sixteen 

 years of age. It ought in no way to be connected with 

 any classical school. English subjects will pre- 

 dominate, but teaching in Latin and Greek and 

 modern languages and other alternative subjects will 

 be provided, although they will not be forced upon 

 any boy. The masters who teach English ought to 

 know enough Latin and Greek and Celtic and Old 

 English and modern languages to be able to illustrate 

 the derivation of English words through their roots. 

 And they must be well read in English subjects and 

 fond of English literature. They will make the boys 

 fond of reading English, and encourage them to find 

 out what they like best. Some boys will take to 

 history and philosophy, some to poetry and imagina- 

 tive literature. Every boy ought to get the best 

 chance of developing his faculties. It may be asked 

 , — if we cannot make the average boy spend or waste 

 TOlve hours a week on Latin, what are we to do with 

 dim? At all events, now, we keep him doing some- 

 pthing, even if it is only marking time. Mv answer is, 

 [you think only of his putting in time; well, then, let 

 him put in his time at work that interests him ; any 

 work of that kind must be educative under an intelli- 

 gent master who can help him in his studies if it 

 induces him to look up information for himself. Thus, 

 when reading travels or history, he will use the globe 

 and raised maps and read geography, and hunt up 

 plans of battlefields. Think of the things that a boy 



NO. 2344, VOL. 94] 



used to be punished for doing, and let him do those 

 things under wise direction. I used to be punished 

 for reading Scott and Cooper. Nowadays prizes are 

 given to boys for their knowledge of Ivanhoe or Ouen- 

 tin Durward. Expand this into a system. A boy who 

 loves to browse over Chambers's English literature 

 ought to be guided in his browsing, and induced to 

 take up something more than selections, and he may 

 easily be induced to get off selections by heart if his 

 teacher does not show his contempt by speaking of 

 such exercises as Rep. (repetition). 



Let the teacher take a leaf out of our methods of 

 teaching chemistrj' and physics. It has been shown 

 that twenty-five boys doing work in the laboratorv' 

 during a lesson ot an hour and a half or two hours 

 can be managed by one teacher. Experimental lec- 

 tures in a lecture-room have now been greatly dis- 

 carded; such lessons as I speak of take place in the 

 laboratory, but reliance is placed particularly upon 

 the personal attention of the teacher being given 

 to each group of students in charge of an investiga- 

 tion, the group not being usually greater than four in 

 number, and often being less than two. These 

 students are sometimes merely verifying or testing 

 a statement made by the teacher or found in a book, 

 but they are often finding out things for themselves. 

 One idea underlying the work is that there ought to 

 be more and more illustrations of simple fundamental 

 principles. It is long before these simple things really 

 become part of a bov's mental machinery; things like 

 the mere definition of force, for example. It is, of 

 course, quite different work for the teacher from any- 

 thing that he used to have to do ; for one thing, being 

 much more exhausting. He cannot shirk his duties 

 and sit down waiting for students to come to him. 

 When teaching degenerates into mere maintenance of 

 discipline, everything being regarded as right if the 

 pupils are quiet and seem to be diligent, it is necessary- 

 to make a radical change, usually a dismissal of the 

 teacher. It used to be that a science master gave an 

 experimental lecture, and afterwards he had a ver\' 

 easy time, letting the students follow a set routine in 

 the laboratory, but this will no longer do ; such attend- 

 ance at lectures and laboratory' work means poor 

 mental training. 



Now, I would work out a system for English, Eng- 

 lish composition, English poetry and prose, geo- 

 graphy, history, and other English subjects, on the 

 lines that we have found so successful in natural 

 science. An enormous change has been effected 

 during the last fifteen years in the teaching of mathe- 

 matics. The older methods always failed with the 

 average boy or man. The new system, which is 

 sometimes called practical mathematics, is based on 

 the idea that students shall work experimentally, just 

 as they do in their natural science. It is found that 

 their eyes and faces are bright, they work hard, and 

 they evidentiv enjoy their work. We have merely 

 introduced common sense into the teaching; we have 

 approached the student's mind from other points of 

 view than the old academic one, from the only side on 

 which he has ever been taught anything — the side of 

 observation and trial. He weighs and measures. He 

 does experimental geometry and mensuration, and is 

 assisted by abstract reasoning just to the extent which 

 interests him ; he makes plans of the school buildings 

 and maps of the district ; algebra becomes interesting 

 when in coordination with experiments in mechanics 

 and physics ; trigonometry becomes interesting in the 

 actual measurements of heights and distances. The 

 infinitesimal calculus is bound to be a weapon which 

 any boy of fifteen easily gets to understand by actual 

 use when he is dealing with dynamic experiments. 

 In fact, the physical and mathematical laboratories 



