45« 



The Review op Reviews. 



"A SHAM, A DELUSION, AND 



A FRAUD." 



Our System of Education. 



In the article entitled " In My Study," which 



Canon Deane has written for the Treasury for 



ten years now, there are some pertinent remarks 



about Education in the October number. 



PONDERING THE PROBLEM IN SOLITUDE. 



Sitting on the shore of a Highland loch in a 

 remote corner of Scotland, where there is no 

 railway within twenty miles and where letters 

 are delivered in the most fitful fashion, he has 

 pondered over this important question. The 

 casual postman had brought him various Educa- 

 tion Reports, abounding with statistics, tables, 

 estimates. Altogether our Education system cost.; 

 us many millions a year, and the result is, he says, 

 a ghastly failure. The authorities pubHsh reams 

 of figures, conferences discuss what Tommy and 

 Mary shall be taught and how they shall be 

 taught it, and new subjects are constantly being 

 added to the syllabus. The test of education, he 

 goes on to say, is its lasting effect upon those 

 who leave school ; and the true way of discover- 

 ing what our expenditure and organisation have 

 done for Tommy and Mary is to examine them, 

 say, when they are twenty-three. 



WHAT WE GET FOR OUR MONEY. 



The theory of any education worthy the name 

 is that it trains character, makes intelligent 

 citizens, and prepares for earning a livelihood. 

 At twenty-three Tommy may be a healthy and 

 excellent young man, or he may be a wastrel. 

 If the latter, the educational system is largely to 

 blame, says Canon Deane ; but if the former, 

 how much of it is due to his early schooling? 

 If he has learnt discipline and esprit de corps, 

 it is probably due as much to the Scouts or 

 membership of some other organisation. He is 

 supposed to be a capable citizen and probably he 

 has a vote. To learn the actual reasons guiding 

 him in using the vote is a bewildering expe- 

 rience. At the age of thirteen he probably had 

 a fair knowledge of English history. At twenty- 

 ihree he has forgotten everything. Finally, his 

 schooling has probably helped him little in the 

 earning of good wages. Lcxsk at the collective 

 product of our huge expenditure— for instance, 

 the crowd pouring through the gates to witness 

 a football match. Are we getting value for our 

 money? 



The fault of the .system is obvious enough. 

 Just when a boy is beginning to learn he leaves 

 school, whereas he ought to remain till he is 

 nineteen. Instead, Tommy, if he is a rustic, 

 does odd jobs about a farm ; if he lives in a 



town, he runs errtinds. Mary is generally sent 

 out to do domestic work far beyond her physical 

 strength. The whole system is unsound and 

 bad, and the money spent is almost wasted. 

 Somehow or other the State, if it would train 

 good citizens, ought to make school attendance 

 compulsory to the age of nineteen. It is the 

 business of the State to overcome the economic 

 and other difficulties. 



INDIAN UNIVERSITIES. 



The cause of education owes much lo re- 

 ligion, and without the abiding influence of 

 spiritual aspiration education is mostly a 

 matter of dust and bones. The problem is 

 never an easy one for the administrator, and 

 in India there is no more thorny question ih.an 

 what should constitute the ideal university, 

 wherein the modern man may acquire efficiency 

 in the things of this world without closing his 

 heart to the potent influences of the past. 

 The subject is dealt with in the broadest spirit 

 of toleration in East and West, by Rai 

 Bahadur Lala Baij Nath, who writes under the 

 title, " The Influence of Indian Universities in 

 the East." The present condition of things 

 is aptly summarised : — 



The universities are merely examining bodies, composed 

 of a certain number of educationalists and otlicrs, and 

 concerning themselves chiefly with testing the progress of 

 learning through examinations. Being more or less 

 Government institutions, with their policy of non-inter- 

 ference in religious matters, they cannot be expected to 

 teach the principles of any particular religion. Their 

 text-books both in literature and philosophy may and do 

 provide for the teaching of morality, and in some cases 

 the broad principles of religion also. But beyoud this 

 they cannot go. .\nd the result is that, although the 

 Indian mind has been much broadened by their educa- 

 tion, and the standard of both public and private morality 

 amongst Indians has become as high as that of any other 

 I ivilised people, the religious ideal is not yet what it 

 ought to be. The man of education may be a good and 

 estimable man in both public and private life, but he is 

 not as a rule imbued with any deep feeling of religion. 

 The great majority of our men of education are ignorant 

 of those noble ideals of life which were the heritage of 

 our sages of the past. 



To correct this a movement has been set on 

 foot to secure the establishment of universities 

 in which the old religious and moral ideals will 

 have their place, but it is exceedingly difficult 

 to put "new wine into old bottles," and all 

 experiments up to the present have, to a large 

 extent, spelled failure. 



" Above the principal martial geniuses of the 

 world. Nelson stands out as the only one who 

 led entirely by love instead of ruling through 

 fear." So says Capt. M. Kerr, writing on the 

 Spirit of Nelson in the Nineteenth Century. 



