October 7, 1909] 



NA TURE 



443 



laws of the world in which they live, full of antiquated 

 prejudice and tradition, derived principally from the 

 straitened area of their island-home experience, so that 

 not seldom they put their hand to the plough (either 

 literally or metaphorically) and look back, becoming 

 wastrels instead of forceful citizens in this ever-widening 

 Empire? "No English need apply" has been, if I mis- 

 take not, written as a memorandum inside the breast of 

 more than one leader of industry in this great continent, 

 and small wonder is it when the cramping character of 

 the ultra-mediaeval training which our young men have 

 received at some of our historical public secondary schools 

 in England is taken into account. 



What remedy (you may ask) have I to propose? My 

 answer is this : I want to force upon the attention of 

 English educationists certain Imperial factors which 

 should occupy an indispensable place in the educational 

 curricula of the great schools in the Mother Country. 



I would give a prominent place to the scientific teach- 

 ing of geography, and particularly to historical geography, 

 with special reference, of course, to the origin, growth, 

 and progress of the British Empire. Such a volume as 

 the " Sketch of a Historical Geography," by Keith 

 Johnston, should be placed in the hands of every boy, and 

 be known by him from cover to cover. It can hardly 

 be realised that in many of our great classical schools 

 to this day not more than one, or at most two, hours a 

 week are devoted to this subject, and that it is often 

 not taught at all beyond the middle classes in a school. 



Again, I would enforce an elementary knowledge of 

 science on every boy who passes through the stage of 

 secondary education. 



I am aware that many hard things have been said 

 about the teaching of science in secondary education. A 

 learned professor, who is the president of another section 

 of the association, has passed his opinion that, as taught 

 in our schools, it has proved of little practical or educa- 

 tional value. But because the methods employed have 

 been halting, insufficient, and unscientific, it by no means 

 follows that it should be left out of the category of school 

 subjects. On the contrary, it appears astounding that 

 two-thirds of the public-school boys of England should 

 grow to man's estate without even an elementary know- 

 ledge of the laws of the world in which they live. 



Lord .'\vebury, in his presidential address at the Inter- 

 national Moral Education meeting held in London last 

 autumn, told his audience an amusing story of how, 

 ■walking back one beautiful summer night from the House 

 of Commons arm-in-arm with a leading luminary on the 

 Government benches, his companion, who had been at 

 Eton and Oxford, gazing at the great luminary in the 

 heavens, pensively observed : " I wonder, my dear 

 Lubbock, whether we shall ever know why the moon 

 changes her shape once a week at least? " 



To one who aspires to seek his fortune in the wide 

 and half-unexplored continents of Greater Britain the value 

 of the knowledge of chemistry, geology, botany, and 

 arboriculture can hardly be overestimated. And yet 

 many present here could bear critical witness to the fact 

 that a large proportion of young men go out to the 

 North-West totally unequipped, after their public-school 

 training, with even the most elementary knowledge of 

 those deoartments of science to which I have alluded. 

 No wonder, again, " No English need apply." Every 

 vouth we export to vou ought educationally to bear this 

 label on his back : " Every seed tested before being sent 

 out." 



But above and beyond all there should be brought into 

 the foreground a co-ordinated study of English language 

 and English literature. Nothing impressed me more in 

 my visit to the United States in ipo-f as one of the 

 Mosely Commission than to observe how greatly the 

 cultivated classes in the Federation outstrioned our 

 island-bred people in the facility and power with which 

 they manipulated the English tongue. Awkwardness, 

 poverty of expression, and stammering utterance mark 

 many Englishmen of high academic distinction. But the 

 American who. on account of the incessant tide of 

 Immigration, has to assimilate the congeries of all the 

 nations of the earth in the shortest possible soace of 

 time, has so co-ordinated the study of his ancestral tongue 



NO. 2084, VOL. 81] 



in the schools of his country, that the pupil emerges com- 

 pletely equipped for the use of persuasive and oratorical 

 language wherein to express his thoughts and wherewith 

 to gain his ends. 



In connection with this, may I add that it was indeed 

 a happy augury that, at the eve of the meeting of the 

 British .Association in this great Dominion, there should 

 have been a gathering of delegates of the Imperial Press 

 in the centre of our small island home? " Little they 

 know of England who only England know." The pheno- 

 menal, or rather abysmal, ignorance of the geography 

 and of the vastness of the productive power of the British 

 Empire which exists among the upper and middle classes 

 in England would be ludicrous if it were not so deplorable. 

 The loyalty and devotion of the Colonies, right unto the 

 utmost corners of the earth, admit of no dispute. It is 

 observable on every hand and in every national crisis. 

 The doubt is of the loyalty of the centre of the Empire 

 towards its extremities, through the crass ignorance which 

 exists as to the geographical and political meaning of that 

 Empire. I would annihilate that ignorance, as aforesaid, 

 by putting political, historical, and physical geography in 

 the forefront of our educational system ; by lectures from 

 your able men in Canada, or Australia, and South Africa, 

 vivified by lantern-slides, and encouraged and endowed by 

 the Mother Country. I would bring all visible means of 

 presentment to bear on the education of childhood, boy- 

 hood, and youth in the Motherland. 



Let me touch on one further educational factor of 

 Imperialism. The sentiment of patriotism, unlike that of 

 charity, is not equally capable of indefinite intension and 

 extension. The peculiar system of education which finds 

 vogue in England in most of our greatest institutions — 

 the institutions from which are drawn the future leaders 

 of the nation — is, as everyone knows, the barrack system, 

 otherwise called the boarding system. It is not the time 

 or place here to enlarge on the obvious advantages of 

 that system, its unique characteristics, its power of mould- 

 ing character and developing enterprise. But it has its 

 cramping and confining side — it has a tendency to localise 

 patriotism, to narrow a young man's mental horizon, and 

 to ignore whatever lies outside its immediate survey. 

 Hence the abnormal and gladiatorial devotion to games 

 and comparatively selfish amusements, which absorb, and, 

 in my opinion, not seldom paralyse and stifle wider, more 

 generous, more enlightened — in fine, more Imperial 

 instincts. However much in the field of sports the in- 

 dividual youth may subordinate his own self-regarding 

 impulses to the welfare of the tiny community for which 

 he is exercising his energies, his horizon is not wide 

 enough to bid him rise to a sentiment of self-sacrifice and 

 self-aijandonment on behalf of a greater and more abstract 

 ideal — love of Fatherland and loyalty to Empire. 



But it is a welcome thing to be able to point to a 

 larger sentiment lately awakened in this direction. There 

 is no doubt that the patriotic spirit in our schools and 

 colleges has, from whatever cause, received a great 

 impetus in the last two years, and that the general prin- 

 ciples of an intelligent defence of our shores from foreign 

 aggression have been taught and construed into terms 

 of scientific training and co-operative action with a rapidity 

 equally surprising and welcome to those who, a few years 

 ago, looked with something more than apprehension on 

 the supineness of the youth of England in all patriotic 

 regards. 



" The flannelled fool and muddied oaf," 



though they have not yet received their quietus, have 

 been less rampant lately in our educational institutions, 

 and something like an Imperial instinct, born of increas- 

 ing knowledge both of the glory and dangers of our vast 

 Empire, has, at least in the more cultured classes, taken 

 the place of apathy, disregard, and ignorance. In hours 

 formerly lavished to an abnormal extent on trivial amuse- 

 ments, and even in hours hitherto devoted to more 

 academically intellectual training, we find young men in 

 our schools and colleges now with arms in their hands, 

 shooting, signalling, scouting, and studying scientifically 

 the art of defensive warfare. This, at least, is " a beam 

 in darkness, of which we pray that it may grow." 



Time and your patience will not allow me to touch on 

 more than the fringe of the great educational problems 



