,28 



NATURE 



[September 28, njn 



ten seconds, and was three times as bright as Venus, 



while the - I is bi hi is Venus and endured [01 



Is 



Mr. \\ Mo reports thai he observed a first-magnitude 



al South Kensington al toh. tm. on Septembi 



111.- meteor was moderately rapid, yellowish in colour, and 



left no trail. Its app i path was from 40 , +40 to 



52$°, +32J . 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 17 

 PORTSMOl i //. 



SECTION L. 



EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE. 



g Vddress (Abridged) bv hie Right Rev. J. I 1 

 Welldon, U.D., President 01 the Section. 



An Educational Review. 



It is my duty, os it is my pleasure, to express my cordial 

 thanks to the council of the British Association for the 

 honour it has done me in asking me to occupy the 

 presidential chair of the Educational Section at the 

 annual meeting. It has remembered what 1 was 

 almost beginning to forget — that 1 was once a school- 

 master. Vet perhaps he who has once been a school- 

 master can never entirely lose the scholastic temper or, at 

 least, I am afraid, the scholastic man slight 



comfort, however, I find in reflecting that there is prob- 

 ably no profession which has been adopted and, 1 must 

 regretfully add, has been abandoned, by so many dis- 

 tinguished men and women as the educational. It 

 happened to me at one time to examine for a special pur- 

 pose all the lives recorded in the " Dictionary of National 

 Biography " ; and the number of the persons who were 

 there stated to have been more or less constantly engaged 

 in tuition was not less surprising than pleasing to an old 

 schoolmaster. Apart from such persons as were born, in 

 the proverbial phrase, with a golden spoon in their mouths, 

 it is safe, I think, to assert that one out of every three 

 or four eminent Englishmen has at some time or other 

 been a teacher. Nor is this the truth in England or in 

 Great Britain alone ; it is true everywhere. Not to speak 

 of lifelong educators or of persons whose principal work 

 was done in education, there occur to me the names of 

 such men as Isocrates, Aristotle, Origcn, St. Jerome, 

 Cardinal Wolsey, Erasmus, Milton, Rousseau, Thomas 

 Paine, Dr. Johnson, Diderot, Cardinal Mezzofanti, 

 Mazzini, President Garfield, Emerson, and Carlyle, who 

 were all content at one time or other to make a scanty 

 living by teaching. 



Perhaps the fact that so many persons have taken up 

 education simply as a means of livelihood is the reason 

 why there have been so many educational failures. In no 

 profession have good men and good women done so much 

 lasting barm, or have done it so often without being aware 

 of it, as in education. For an educator, like a poet, is 

 born ; he is seldom made : if he is deficient in discipline 

 or insight or sympathy, they are hard to win by practice ; 

 harder still is it to win the passion for young souls ; yet 

 the educational profession demands enthusiasm above all 

 other qualities; and I used sometimes to say to young 

 candidates for office at Harrow that, unless a man honestly 

 felt he would sooner be a teacher of boys than a Cal 

 Minister, he would not be a master altogether after my 

 own heart. 



Yet the educational profession in itself, if it is not the 

 most striking or shining in the eyes of the world, may be 

 said to be the most inspiring and the most satisfying of 

 all professions. It is the only profession which is naturally 

 and necessarily concerned with all the three elements of 

 man's composite nature, his body, mind, and spirit. It 

 aims immediately and instinctively at the two highest 

 objects of human aspiration, viz. the diffusion of know- 

 ledge and the promotion of virtue. Nor does any school- 

 master rise to the full height of his own calling unl 

 realises that his true object is to prepare his pupils, in 

 all their faculties and in all the relations of their after- 

 lives, for good citizenship. I cannot help thinking thai a 

 teacher who ignores or neglects the spiritual side of his 



NO. 2187, VOL. 87] 



pupils falls as fai short of the scholastic ideal 

 were to think little or nothing of their bodies or thl a 

 minds. The educational profession, when it is rightly 

 understood, is capable ol conferring signal benefits upon 

 the community at large. There is an Oriental apologue 

 which tells that in a lime of grievous drought, when the 

 king had vainly called upon the wizards, astrologers, and 

 magii ..hi- to bring down rain upon his country, one 

 humble unknown man at last stood forth to pray, and at 

 bis prayer thi heaven above grew dark with clouds, and 

 there was a great rain ; the king desired to know who 

 and what was he that bad prevailed alone with God, and 

 the answer was, " I am a teacher of small boys." 



Education, as has often been said, is to-day in the air. 

 More and inure deeply the civilised nations of the world, 

 and among them, at last, even Great Britain, are coming 

 to realise that in the future the battle will be, not to the 

 swift nor to the strong, but to the highly educated. It is 

 the nation of the highest intelligence and widest cultivation 

 which will assert its pre-eminence in the coming days. 



But before any attempt can be made 10 criticise the exist- 

 ing educate or want of system in Great Britain, 

 and especially in England, it is necessary to state ibe 

 principles underlying all true progress or reform in educa- 

 tion. In the briefesl possible language they are, I think, 

 these : 



(1) That every child shall enjoy the opportunity of 

 developing in full measure the intellectual and moral 

 faculties with which God has endowed him or her. 



(2) That no difference of opportunity, or as little differ- 

 ent.,- as possible, shall exist between the richer and the 

 poorer classes of society. 



j) lb.it the supreme object of education is to provide 



who, mi Milton's stately language, 



will be able to " perform justly, skilfully, and magnanim- 



ouslv all the offices, both public and private, of Peace and 



War." 



(4) That, as the personal influence of the teacher is a 



potent factor in education, it is the business of the State 



to ensure the highest possible efficiency, not only of 



1 e, but of character, in the men and women who 



adopt the educational profession as their life-work. 



It seems to me that all the educational questions of the 

 day may naturally be ranged under these four heads. 

 The first includes physiology and psychology as subjects 

 directlv bearing upon the teacher's art, the study of 

 individual character, the size of classes, the specialisation 

 of studies, the opportunity of self-culture, the time-table 

 and the constituents of the curriculum, above all, the 

 practical insight by which a teacher discerns, and the 

 sympathy by which he or she encourages, the signs of 

 genius or talent, even when they are overlaid by many 

 faults and failings in a pupil. There is no more humili- 

 ating reflection than that teachers have so frequently been 

 blind to the promise of distinction in their pupils. Of the 

 public schools especially it is only too true that they have 

 been, and in some degree still are, the homes of the 

 ind the commonplace. They have applauded 

 mediocrity if it conformed to the rules made by the masters 

 for boys, and the yel stricter rules made by boys for one 

 another ; they have been not only oblivious, but even con- 

 temptuous, of such conduct as was felt to be a departure 

 from, if not a reflection upon, thi I norm of 



public-school life. 



The second head includes such difficult matters as the 

 carriire ouverte aux talents, the ladder set up from the 

 lowest educational standard to the highest, the provision of 

 scholarships, the equalisation, so far as possible, of the 

 conditions under which boys and girls compete for 

 pecuniary and other rewards, 1 ocial exclusive; 



ness in schools and colleges, and the appreciation of quali- 

 ties, other than mere learning, as adapting students for 

 their parts at home and abroad in after-life. 



Under the third head, if it be granted that citizenship 

 is, or ought to be, everywhere the educational goal, it 

 follows thai thi teachet may not unfairly claim from the 

 State the opportunity of giving such an education to 

 children, especially in the wage-earning 1 lass, where 

 parents are tempted to take their rhildren away from 

 school at an early age in the hope of making them con- 

 tributors to the family purse, that it may not be ho| 



