TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 793 



But while the Board and other schools for the people are gradually taking up 

 the work and endeavouring to work out a good system of education, it is morti- 

 fying to find how little progress has been made in the higher class schools where 

 such heavy fees are charged ; and the question arises whether in these schools the 

 teachers of geography really understand the subject thej'' teach, and would pass an 

 examination before a Government Inspector. 



The boys of the wealthy classes are put to the greatest disadvantage with 

 regard to the study of geography. The son of a labourer ^ill hear the price of 

 provisions and clothing constantly discussed, so also with the son of a mechanic 

 and tradesman, and will learn much about geography on the subjects with which 

 the parents are connected, and will also in some measure learn to exercise his 

 observation ; but the son of wealthy parents is too often carefully kept from hear- 

 ing all that might teach him geography, and he is seldom obliged to exert himself 

 to use his observations in any essential matters of daily life ; this is reserved for 

 the playground, where nothing of real importance is at stake, and must have the 

 most deleterious and detrimental effect on many young minds, and naturally results 

 in so large a proportion becoming useless for any occupation. 



It is apparent that, as education throughout the country progresses, the sons 

 of the wealthy classes, if they are to compete successfully with others, must 

 have some better mental training than they obtain at present, otherwise they 

 will in a few years be distanced by the sons of the labourers, artisans, and 

 shopkeepers. What an Englishman asks for is a fair field and no favour, and 

 it seems hard upon a parent who struggles through life to make money to be 

 enabled to give his children the best and most expensive education the country 

 affords, that with it he must risk a training of the mind which is inferior to 

 that in the less expensive schools of the people. As we are behind the Conti- 

 nental States and our colonies in so many of our institutions and land laws, so 

 we are behind them in our training of the mind in our upper-class schools ; by 

 neglecting by artificial means to develop the power of observation among boys, 

 who untU they are put out in the world are nqver accustomed to do anything 

 that will tend directly to any practical and useful result, we are putting them to 

 the greatest disadvantage, and handicapping them in the race of life. 



We omit to train the memory in early j'ears, to lay a foundation of facts in 

 the mind, and to develop any power of observation ; we carefully prevent their 

 doing anything useful, and bring them up in a moral atmosphere in which the 

 idea of anything but amusement is practically excluded, and then in later years we 

 attempt to adjust all our errors by cramming, when the memory is incapable of 

 being crammed, and the mind has ceased to desire to acquire information ; the 

 result is that so many young men are deliberately rendered unfit for work in life, 

 and those who have sufficient ccurage and energy to look their prospects in the 

 face find the enormous disadvantages to which their teaching has subjected them, 

 and lose precious years in unlearning and learning again. 



More unfortunately still, the best and choicest of our minds cannot be crammed ; 

 and thus drop out at our examinations many minds of the class that for practical 

 purposes would be most useful to the State. I allude more particularly to 

 the minds endowed with reflective faculties, which tend to originality and 

 research ; these minds cannot be successfully trained unless combined with the 

 teaching there is something useful to do. It is often observable that an indolent, 

 inert, and lazy boy suddenly becomes filled with enthusiasm and emulation, both 

 at studies and in the playground, when subjected to a change of training. I 

 venture to assert that every year at our public examinations many men are 

 rejected who are of the most superior class of mind for all practical purposes, 

 who are physically most capable, who are so constituted that they cannot cram, 

 and who, though retarded by want of proper training, are beginning to train their 

 minds for themselves, and who if brought up under a good system in early years 

 would take the highest places in examination. We are thus losing year by year 

 from our front rank the men who would be of the greatest service to the State. 



The pleas given for the study of geography by Strabo are worth bringing be- 

 fore the mind of youth, for he points out that while the success resulting from 



