PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 601 
of certain subjects, and the professor ought to impose the condition, not the 
University. Again, students of certain other subjects ought to know one or more 
foreign languages, and, indeed, it seems to me that the professor in each subject 
has a right to insist on his students having certain special knowledge ‘before 
they enter upon a study with him. But to enter the University, surely the com- 
pulsory subjects ought to be as few as possible. It seems to me that the most 
important thing is to make sure that every student has had an early education 
through his own language—English ; that he should be able to write an account 
in English of anything he has seen; should have some acquaintance with what 
are called English subjects, such as geography and history, and the principles 
of natural science, and the power to make simple computations. All the teach- 
ing is to be in English, all his companions speak English; there are good English 
books on all subjects, there are English translations of all the good books that 
have been written in foreign languages. So abominable do I think compulsory 
Latin or Greek or French or German that I believe a primary school to be a much 
better school than any other for a boy if he is fitting himself for any profession 
in which applied science is important. At present English is not taught pro- 
perly in any British school. The teachers are all classical men, who are very 
careful when they write Greek or Latin and exceedingly careless and slipshod 
when they write English. We might easily write a fairy story about three sisters 
—Greek, Latin, and English—and call it ‘ Cinderella.’ The language of the 
greatest empire known in history, the empire of the English-speaking peoples, 
is not taught seriously in any part of that great empire. It is shocking to get 
from a great classical scholar a letter with misspelt words on every page, every 
sentence being ungrammatical. When will our good modern writers tell us how 
English composition may be taught to ordinary folk? 
I want you to understand that we have established some fundamental prin- 
ciples in our science : (1) A subject must interest a pupil. (2) A man who trains 
dogs or seals or bears or other animals makes a close study of their minds. In 
the same way we must recognise that one boy differs from another, and study 
the mind of each boy. (3) If a boy is not very receptive of an important subject 
we must do our best with him and try to settle what is the minimum with which 
we ought to be satisfied. Only a few subjects ought to be compulsory on all 
boys. (4) There are two classes of boys unequal as to numbers, (a) those fond 
of, and () those not capable of, abstract reasoning. (5) Another two classes are 
(a) those fond of, and (6) those not fond of, language study. (6) Every boy may 
be made to write and read in his own language and he may be made fond of 
reading. (7) The average boy’s reasoning faculties are most surely developed 
by letting him do things. That is, for example, through his sports, or through 
wood or metal working, or gardening, or experiments involving weighing and 
measuring. Through the last of these he learns to compute. A boy of eight 
learns decimals in an hour if he weighs and measures, whereas by the usual 
method of teaching he is ignorant of decimals at the age of fourteen. A boy 
learns whist very quickly if you seat him with three other people at a table with 
a pack of cards; he would not learn in a month if he had no cards. Would you 
teach a boy to swim by mere talk? (8) Every boy must get a good deal of 
personal attention. (9) However good a system may be there can be no good 
results if the teachers are cheap; cheap teachers are usually stupid and over- 
worked. Men in charge of schools and colleges never seem to learn this. The 
market price must be paid for a capable man. (10) Fairly good results may be 
expected from a good teacher, even when he is compelled to work on a bad 
system, but really good results can be obtainable only from a good teacher with 
a good system. 
I need not go into details about all these principles, but I should like to 
dwell presently upon a few of them. At the beginning of this Address I, spoke 
of the obstruction to great necessary reform—too much antiquated machinery to 
‘scrap.’ Most schoolmasters will admit the necessity for reform in the case of 
the average boy, but they say that parents are opposed to the reform. Unbelief 
in education for the average man is so general among the higher classes that T 
am afraid we shall have no reform unless some great national disaster causes 
conversion. There is a lesson for England, and, indeed, for all European races, 
in the recent history of Japan. The old structure of Japan was in many ways 
beautiful, but it proved to be without physical strength. Tts extreme weakness 
