Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



457 



"OUR GENTLEMEN'S SCHOOLS." 



Mr. a. C. Benson, in the English Review for 

 October, launches a formidable indictment 

 against the training given in our public schools. 

 He does not speak as an outsider. He taught 

 classics as a public schoolmaster for nearly 

 twenty years; he has taught literature and 

 English for nearly ten at the University. He 

 is not an opponent of classics for the right boys. 

 .AH boys whose profession is going to involve 

 the use of words are bound to have some 

 acquaintance with both Latin and Greek, but 

 these are taught in far too cumbrous and ela- 

 borate a way. 



"too much gra.mm.ar and idiom." 



" There is much too much grammar and 

 idiom taught, and composition in these dead 

 languages is for almost all a melancholy waste 

 of time " : — 



The claim made for Latin and Greek is that a boy- 

 becomes familiar with Greek ideas .ind Roman views of 

 life; but, as a matter of fact, he does neither, because 

 they are only taught incidentally and fortuitously. Just 

 as a boy could get more insight into Jewish thought by 

 reading the Old Testament in English than by writing 

 Hebrew verse, so much of what is now done in Greek 

 and Latin by daily snippets of Sophocles and Livy could 

 be done freely and easily by translations. 



The catastrophic breakdown of the classics .as a vehicle 

 of general education is due to this : that other subjects 

 have l>een forced in, and that while they have made it 

 impossible for classics to be taught thoroughly, the 

 classics still prevent other subjects from being taught 

 thoroughly; so we get an elementary dilettanteism all 

 along the line. 



The only cure for this dull congestion is frankly to 

 have more alternatives and higher standards; .and we 

 must provide that classics, if they are to be retained at 

 all, should be taught reasonably and directly, exactly 

 as one would teach any other language, if one wanted a 

 boy to arrive at any mastery of its literature. 



Culture in England is not valued, bul sus- 

 pected. But 



Of all absurd dchisions the delusion that culture can 

 be won by the grammatical and philological study of 

 Latin and Greek is the absurdest. 



run IXDISPENSABI.K MINl.Vlt'.M. 



Mr. Benson's criticism is by no means lacking 

 in constructive qualities. He says : — 



The public schools ought to keep in sight a hard and 

 solid c<irc f>f utilitarian education. They ought to see 

 that every Ixiy who leaves a public school writes a good 

 legible h.nml, can spell satisfactorily, can express himself 

 clearly in ICngllsh, can read French easily and write 

 simple I'rench correctly, can calculate in arithmetic 

 rapidly and accurately, and has a general outline know- 

 ledge of Kuropean hi.*lory, modern geography, and [Kipu- 

 lar science. .V Ixjy who had these accomplishments would 

 be in a position to earn his living, and it would not 

 require anything like all the working hours for the eight 

 or nine years of school life to give him this range of 

 efficicmy. I am not saying that the duly of public 

 schools ends there; but it certainly begins there; and 



yet the above list of simple requirements is hardly ever 

 attained at all. What is to be deplored is that boys 

 leave (he public schcxjls so entirely ami contentedly 

 ignorant of the conditions and problems of the modern 

 world. 



The average boy of classical education at school 

 and university has, if he enters a commercial 

 career, to learn French and arithmetic, and 

 actually go back to doing copies. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLMEN NOT TRAINED TO THINK. 



In the university there is an almost cynical 

 neglect of the interests of pass men. Mr. 

 Benson's own experience is that men who have 

 been through the public schools come up to 

 the university without the least training in 

 thought. " They cannot arrange a subject, 

 they cannot express themselves in English." 

 They are not wanting in intellectual curiosity. 

 Mr. Benson's conclusion is that the intellectual 

 faculties have often been simply in abeyance at 

 the public schools. The public schools produce 

 an excellent type of character, wholesome and 

 manly, clean-minded, but not prudish, un- 

 affected, straightforward, sincere, with fine 

 self-possession, sense of duty, generous subor- 

 dination; bul there has been a deplorable waste 

 of energies : — 



Boys speak of their masters with tespcut, of their 

 school with pride, but of their work, constantly and 

 publicly, with contempt and dislike. 



CHARACTER GOOD, INTELLECT INIKKIOR. 



On the other side Mr. Benson frankly admits 

 that in the Appointments Board :it Cambridge 

 he finds a rapidly increasing demand on the p.irt 

 of employers for men of the ordin.iry public- 

 school type. These they do not want trained 

 in commercial accomplishments, preferring to 

 teach them those in their own wav. What they 

 want is general intelligence and that unique 

 power of dealing with other people without 

 either pretension or servility which the public 

 school undeniably produces. Mr. Henstin iilso 

 quotes statistics from Oxford lo prove that the 

 public schools and universities do not produce 

 .1 crop of w.-istrels and loafers. Out of 155 men 

 admitted to W'adham College only 22 are de- 

 scribed as " uncertain " or " unsettled " at 

 present, and these are chiefly Colonials who 

 have been lost sight of:-- 



The Englishman is supremely competent to establish 

 excellent relations with his colleagues and inferiors, and 

 10 do his work in a trtistworthy and nicrlianical way. 

 Where he fails is in his lai k of orli;iM:iiliii. .if rr.isii, ..f 

 seeing possibilities. 



It is not lack of char.n ler, liul solely our 

 intellectual inferiority, which has enabled Cier- 

 mans and .Americans lo beat us in world 

 competition.- 



