836 REPORT—1904. 
requirements of the entrance examination at the public schools which they supply ; 
just as those schools in their turn are dependent on the requirements of the 
university to which they send. their pupils. 
Thus, when we come to confer with the authorities of the public schools, our 
first inquiry is whether their entrance examination is such as to conduce to the 
best system of education from infancy upwards. 
Believing, as [ do, that there is room for improvement, I would ask them to 
consider and come to a general agreement as to the subjects on which special stress 
should be laid. What place, for instance, is occupied in the Eton entrance 
examination by such subjects as English language and literature, English com- 
position, spelling, handwriting, and reading aloud? What weight is given to 
elementary drawing, or to an elementary knowledge of natural phenomena, so as 
to encourage in the preparatory school an interest in the mineral, vegetable, and 
animal world around us, and to stimulate in early years the habit of observation, 
and to impress the difference between eyes and no eyes ? 
Such subjects as these, it is now generally recognised, ought to be given a 
foremost place and equal weight with the modicum of arithmetic, French, and 
ancient languages, which have hitherto, as a rule, formed the staple of this 
entrance examination, and have consequently given an unnatural twist to the 
earlier education of our boys. 
As regards the public schools themselves, if we consider them critically— 
though, on the other hand, I trust, by no means forgetting their many and great 
excellencies—the points that invite attention would seem to be such as the 
following :— 
There is undoubtedly a great deal of waste in these schools owing to the poor 
teaching of untrained masters, who in some cases cannot even maintain reasonable 
discipline, and in many more have no real knowledge or mastery of the best 
methods of teaching their subject, be it linguistic, or historical, or literary, or 
scientific, and have not acquired that first gift of an efficient teacher, the art of 
interesting their pupils and drawing out their faculties and their tastes. 
It would, therefore, be reasonable, as it would certainly be stimulative and 
advantageous, to require that all masters should be bound to go through some 
system of well-considered and serious preparation or training for the teacher's 
work, or at the least a probationary period. 
It should, I venture to think, be made a rule that no master could be placed 
on the permanent staff until he was certified and registered as having fully satisfied 
this requirement and given proof of his efficiency. 
And here I would venture to point out to existing masters and mistresses in 
the leading schools how great a service they may do to the cause of good 
education if they themselves apply to be registered, 
Seeing the advantages which registration is destined to bring to our secondary 
education by winnowing out inefficient teachers and otherwise, the higher 
members of the profession may fairly be expected to give their personal adhesion 
to it as a part of their duty to their profession. 
We might almost say to them nodlesse oblige. 
Again, it must, I fear, be admitted that one of the chief defects in our public 
school education is still to be found in over-attention to memory work, and in the 
comparative failure to develop powers of thought, taste, and interest in the things 
of the mind. 
And even in the teaching of languages attention has been too exclusively 
devoted to mere questions of grammar, as if to learn the language were an end in 
itself, whereas, in the words of Matthew Arnold, ‘the true aim of schools and 
instruction is to develop the powers of our mind and to give us access to vital 
knowledge.’ 
For this end, as he reminds us, the philological or grammatical discipline 
should be more consciously and systematically combined with the matter to which 
it is ancillary, the end should be kept in view; whereas nine out of ten of our 
public-school boys seem never to get through the grammatical vestibule at all; 
