618 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



ciation is correct ; but whatever may be the philological value of that pronuncia- 

 tion, I feel no doubt that the artificiality, as it seems to parents, of the non- 

 English way of pronouncing Latin will, like the artificiality of the Greek type, 

 create a prejudice in many minds against the study of Latin. Nor is this all; for 

 the study of Latin loses a good deal of its practical value if every or nearly 

 every Latin word is by the method of its pronunciation divorced from the corre- 

 sponding word in English. It does not really matter in the present day how 

 Latin is pronounced. Latin is no longer a medium of oral communication, even 

 amongst scholars. The vital matter is that Latin should be one of the subjects 

 constituting the permanent basis of education in all secondary schools. 



Apart from these subjects, viz., religion, English, French, Latin, mathema- 

 tics, and natural science, there is none, I think, which can justly claim a part 

 in that knowledge which I have ventured to describe as the common property 

 of all boys and girls in secondary schools. It is, in my judgment, a happy cir- 

 cumstance that preparatory-school masters have practically decided to relinquish 

 the teaching of Greek, and to concentrate their efforts upon such subjects as 

 form the natural basis of secondary education. 



But upon the basis so constituted the teacher will try to erect a varying 

 superstructure, by offering as wide a range as possible to individual tastes. For 

 if the secret of education lies in discovering what a pupil's capacity is, and so in 

 helping him or her to cultivate it, education must pass soon or late from the 

 common basis of subjects to specialisation. It is not my business now to 

 decide how the principle of specialisation should be applied. That is a problem 

 which the individual school master or mistress must work out for himself or her- 

 self . The two points upon which I would venture to insist are the common edu- 

 cational property, and the wide elasticity allowable as soon as this common 

 property has been gained. But I am of opinion that, while specialisation is 

 allowable and desirable in the later years of a boy's or girl's life, it should never 

 be complete. The dying out of double degrees in the universities of Oxford and 

 Cambridge has always seemed and still seems to me unfortunate. For it means 

 that nobody now gets so thorough an education as was possible if the student 

 anplied himself through his life at school as well as at the university both to 

 classical and mathematical studies. The amplification of the several studies 

 may have justly affected the course of education in the universities; but it is my 

 deliberate conviction that a boy or girl, whose time is wholly or mainly given 

 to one subject only during school life, loses a signal opportunity of obtaining a 

 generous education. 



It is tempting to me as an old schoolmaster to linger on the field of secondary 

 education. But the limit of time at the disposal even of the President of a 

 Section forbids me to think of adverting to more problems of secondary education 

 than the two following : — 



Public opinion has always been divided in the education, whether of boys or 

 of girls, between boarding schools and day schools. Adam Smith in his 

 ' Theory of Moral Sentiments ' went so far as to say ' that the education of boys 

 at distant great schools, of young men at distant colleges, as well as ladies in 

 distant nunneries and boarding schools, seems in the higher ranks of life to have 

 hurt most essentially the domestic morals, and consequently the domestic 

 happiness both of France and of England.' The complete severance of a boy 

 or a girl, except during the holidays, from parents and family is evidently or 

 may evidently prove to be an evil. It tends to undermine some of the graces of 

 character, it produces in boarding schools the same defects, but perhaps, too, 

 the same merits, as are observable in celibate religious institutions, like 

 monasteries and nunneries. There is too much tendency, especially among 

 parents of the wealthy class, to feel that they have done their duty to their 

 children in paying their children's school fees, and to hand them over to the 

 schoolmaster or the schoolmistress without any thought of the influence which 

 the home ought to exercise upon young lives. It is reasonable to suppose that, if 

 the sense of parental responsibility could be revived, fathers and mothers would 

 be more anxious than they are now to keep their children at home in the early years 

 of their lives. Preparatory day schools, at least in the great cities, will. I think, 

 acquire a growing importance. But at present the choice between boarding schools 

 and day schools for bovs, and in a less degree for girls, is largely determined 

 by pecuniary considerations. For in truth the great public boarding schools are 



