496 



NA TURE 



[September 15, 1904 



prevails concerning not only the nature and properties of 

 this substance but also its effects on the body and the mind, 

 we would urge the Board of Education of England and 

 Wales, the Scotch Education Department and the Irish 

 Education Authorities to include in the simple hygienic 

 teaching which we desire, elementary instruction at an early 

 age on the nature and effects of alcohol. We gladly 

 recognise (i) the value of the teaching on this subject given 

 in some schools in Ireland and in a proportion of the schools 

 of Great Britain, by means of reading primers, moral- 

 instruction talks, &c., and (2) the excellence of the occasional 

 temperance lessons provided in certain schools by voluntary 

 organisations : but until the four Central Educational 

 Authorities of the United Kingdom include this subject as 

 part of the system of National Education, it appears to us 

 that the mass of the pupils must fail as at present to receive 

 that systematic teaching of hygiene and of the nature and 

 effects of alcohol, which alone we consider adequate to meet 

 the national need. Finally, we would venture to urge the 

 necessity of ensuring that the training of all teachers shall 

 include adequate instruction in these subjects." 



This petition, coming, as it does, with all the weight of 

 the medical profession, as the expression of their experience 

 and convictions, is, to my mind, one of the most important 

 educational documents which have been published in our 

 time, and it can hardly be disregarded without incurring 

 the charge of folly. 



It may be worth while to set it for a moment side by side 

 with the fashionable cult of athleticism, as bringing into 

 relief our curiouslv unscientific inconsistency in such matters. 



On the one hand, in our absent-minded way, we have 

 allowed these generations of town-dwellers, to say nothing 

 of rural villagers, to grow up and live under insanitary 

 conditions which inevitably produce a physically degenerate, 

 enfeebled, and neurotic race of men and women. 



On the other hand, in the upper and middle classes, we 

 have been sedulously cultivating the taste for physical 

 exercises, outdoor life, athletics, and sport, thinking nothing 

 of such importance as the development of the body, admiring 

 nothing so much as bodily prowess ; carrying all this to 

 such an extent that a natural and wholesome use of athletic 

 exercise has been fostered into a sort of fashionable 

 athleticism, with all its parasitic piofessionalism, possessing 

 both soul and body. 



.\nd the result has been curiously significant ; at one end 

 of the scale neglect of the rudiments of sanitation, the loss 

 of the corpus sanum, at the other end the idol worship of 

 athleticism, the depreciation of the intellectual life, and the 

 loss of the vicns sana. 



.^re we not then in some danger of drifting into the ways 

 of the Greeks, not in their best days but in their decadence, 

 and of the Romans under the demoralising influences of the 

 Empire? 



The Greeks, as we are constantly reminded, in the great 

 period of their creative influence, found nothing so absorb- 

 ing as the things of the mind ; a preeminent characteristic 

 of their life was their love of knowledge, their fine curiosity, 

 their enjoyment of the things of the imagination and of 

 thought. It has been noted that what specially conciliated 

 an Athenian voter was the gift of a theatre ticket ; and this 

 is a very instructive and significant fact when we bear in 

 mind that the theatre was the great teacher of religion, 

 morals, poetry, patriotism, all in one ; that it combined the 

 influences of Westminster Abbey, the plays of Shakespeare, 

 and the heroic achievements of the race ; whereas to an 

 ordinary English voter these things are too often only as 

 caviare to the general. 



If so, our education has before it the task of doing what 

 can be done to alter this ; and from the Greeks we may 

 derive both lessons and warnings. It was in the days when 

 this decadence was beginning that their excessive admiration 

 of the professional athlete, what we might call their athletic 

 craze, called forth the bitter jibes of Euripides, and his 

 impressive warnings and exhortations to admire and to 

 crown with their highest honours, not those who happened 

 to be swiftest of foot or strongest in the wrestling bout, but 

 the man of sound mind, wise and just, who does most to 

 guide others in the more excellent ways, ,ind to uplift the 

 life of his communitv : 



KaWiaraj ffutppwy Kai St/catos iv aj'TJp. 

 NO. 1820 VOL. 70] 



Here we have a warning by no means inappropriate to 

 our own life and its tendencies. It is, indeed, high time 

 to bring serious and, let us say, scientific thought to bear 

 upon the whole matter. 



.\s I look with such thoughts in my mind over those 

 portions of the educational field with which I have been 

 personally familiar, I note various things which seem to 

 call for both consideration and action. 



Taking first the elementary school, it is to be noted that 

 our system does too little to draw out and stimulate the 

 faculties or to form the tastes of each individual child. 



Classes are still in many cases far too large. 



The systein of block grants, being inadequately safe- 

 guarded or supplemented by inducements to individual 

 children to apply and prepare for certificates of merit or 

 proficiency, however attractive it may be to inspectors and 

 teachers, needs to be very carefully watched in the interests 

 of individual children. The individual child requires the 

 hope and stimulus of some personal recognition or distinc- 

 tion, if its faculties are to be fully roused and its tastes 

 properly cultivated. 



Moreover, the aid of scientific thought and experience is 

 needed to bring both the subjects and methods of instruction 

 into closer and more vital relationship with the environment 

 of the children and with their practical requirements, and 

 more weight has to be given to specific ethical teaching, 

 that moral and spiritual training day by day, which has for 

 its end the development and strengthening of character, 

 and taste, and issues in conduct, which is the greater part 

 of life. 



.And seeing that it is of the essence of any rational or 

 scientific system to avoid needless waste, it is time that our 

 elementary education should no longer be left in its absurdly 

 truncated condition, which allows a child's education to be 

 stopped abruptly and finally at or about the age of twelve, 

 when in the nature of things it should be only beginning. 

 As things are at present, just when the parent of the upper 

 classes is anxiously considering w'hat school will be the best 

 for his son, a vast number of the children of the poorei 

 classes are left by the State to drift out into a wilderness 

 where all things are forgotten. 



In this connection, however, it is due to the Board of 

 Education that w^e take note of the reminders lately issued 

 in the Introduction to the New Code and the memorandum 

 prefixed to the Regulations for the Training of Teachers. 



This Introduction to the Code reminds every parent, 

 school-manager, and teacher, very emphatically, that the 

 purpose of the school is to form and strengthen the character 

 and to develop the intelligence of the children, to fit them' 

 both practically and intellectually for the work of life, to 

 send them forth with good and healthy tastes and the desire 

 to know, with habits of observation and clear reasoning, 

 with a living interest in great deeds and great men, and 

 some familiarity with, at all events, some portion of the 

 literature and history of their country ; and this being so, 

 the special charge and duty of their teachers is by the spirit 

 of their discipline and of their teaching, by their personal 

 example and influence, to foster in the children, as they 

 grow- up in their hands, habits of industry, self-control, 

 endurance, perseverance, courage, to teach them reverence 

 for things and persons good or great, to inspire them with 

 love of duty, love of purity, love of justice and of truth, 

 unselfishness, generosity, public spirit, and so not merely 

 to reach their full development as individuals, but also to 

 become upright and useful members of the community in 

 which they live and worthy sons and daughters of the 

 community to which they belong. 



Hardly less valuable, as a contribution to education which 

 shall be more thoughtful than hitherto, is the memorandum 

 prefi.xed to the new Regulations for the Training of 

 Teachers. 



I confine myself to one significant quotation from thi« 

 valuable document : 



" Much of the instruction which is given in all suhjoirs 

 must necessarily be founded upon the statements and the 

 experience of other persons ; but every education which de- 

 serves to be called complete must include some training <tt 

 the student in those systematic methods of inquiry which 

 are necessary for any assured advance in knowledge, and 

 which are the most truly educative of all mental processes. 



" If this scientific spirit is to find its right expression in 



