TRANSACTIOXS OF SECTION T,. 789 



one, all the component parts which are not absolutely essential, and by keeping 

 the balance of subjects carefully in view, it would be possible to arrive at a simple 

 core of education which should be available for all boys, while a little should be 

 added at one point or another, with careful reference to the tastes and abilities of 

 individual boys, by which the emphasis might be laid on one group of subjects 

 rather than on another. It may be objected to this that it would be unpractical. 

 Boys, it may bo said, must be educated more or less in the lump, and the school- 

 masters cannot afford to manipulate a boy's idiosyncrasies so delicately. 



The scheme is not in the least unpractical, because, though individual charac- 

 teristics are strongly marked in boys, yet it is very easy to group them on certain 

 fairly broad lines ; and if the experiment were tried on a large scale, the numbers 

 would probably not be found to vary seriously. 



(1) French, (2) arithmetic, (.3) modern history, English and European, with 

 (4) geography, (5) elementary science, taught by popular lectures with demoustra- 

 tion?", (6) Bible teaching, and (7) English should form the central core of educa- 

 tion. This would be ample for the majority of average boys. The French should 

 be taught most thoroughly, so that a boy would be able to read it with absolute 

 ease, and write it fle.xibly and accurately ; and the same should apply to the boy's 

 writing of English. The modern history of England and Europe would give tlie 

 boys an inkling of the development of modern political questions, whereas the 

 custom of doing isolated periods produces nothing but mental confusion. It is so 

 easy to forget that boys do not possess the large, vague, floating stock of hazy 

 general knowledge that men, as a rule, contrive to acquire, which gives an interest 

 to isolated facts, because a dim, general plan of history is 13'ing about in their 

 minds into which details, however loosely, can be fitted. It is, indeed, the absence 

 of imaginative sympathy in the minds of educational theorists with the crude 

 deficiencies of the boyish mind that is responsible for so much mischief. To pro- 

 ceed with the curriculum, the science should be elementary, and largely illustrated 

 by experiments. Experience is against the theory, so dear to certain educa- 

 tionists, that boys are taught accuracy by compelling them to devote their time 

 and energy to work that is irredeemably and essentially dull. This theory only 

 results in contempt and dislike for intellectual processes, which is the rich grain of 

 so much of our educational seed. 



Then, according as it is discerned what the boy's special idiosyncrasies are, so 

 should those abilities be catered for. A boy with literary and linguistic tastes 

 might do Latin, Greek, and possibly German ; a boy who is linguistic and not 

 literary could do German and be spared Greek ; and so on, similarly, with each 

 subject, so that every boy would have a solid centre of necessary work, andas large 

 a margin as possible of work that specially interests him. Of course mistakes 

 would sometimes be made, but they are made on a far more colossal scale now. 

 At Eton, for instance, all the boys are practically specialists in classics. The 

 simplification above suggested, or some similar scheme, is the only practical solu- 

 tion for our present discontent, as the elements of discontent are so very various in 

 character. 



With regard to the question of the training of teachers, the lime may be 

 anticipated when a teachers' training department will be a normal adjunct to every 

 public school of any importance. The essential thing is not to begin by teaching 

 the young man fresh from the university the theory of the thing ; let him make 

 some acquaintance with the practical difficulties and personal problems first, and 

 after a year or two of such discipline a man would be in a position to profit by a 

 six months' course of theory, but not before. Training of teachers may be regarded 

 as an educational factor of high importance, but the training should neither be too 

 protracted nor too scientific. 



2. The Preparatory School Currictilum. By G. Gidley Robinsox, M.A. 



I. The Preparatory School Curriculum as it i-i. — The problem set before it is 

 to satisfy a demand for multiplicity of subjects and for early specialisation as 

 well. This point was fully brought out in the Blue-book on Preparatory School? 



