344 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



That is the question which I propose for your consideration. Why is it 

 that all the pious opinions about education come to nothing or to so little? 



First of all it must be noted that the resolutions and proposals are not 

 addressed to anybody in particular. Presumably they are intended to form 

 public opinion, but public opinion ha« no authoritative voice with those who 

 are in charge of the higher educational institutions. The resolutions are sent 

 out like wireless signals from a ship at sea. Any educational institution with 

 a receiver tuned to the proper wave-length can take them in, but if the 

 receiver is not tuned or the operator is inattentive nothing happens. Thoee 

 who are in charge of the a-dministration of our justice when they want to 

 settle a disputed point do not hold a meeting and pass a resolution to be 

 printed in the ' Law Times ' or other forensic journals. They put a yellow 

 paper in the post with blue lines drawn cross-wise over it, with somebody's 

 name and address more or less legibly written thereon, and twopence in 

 addition to the postage. The postman does the rest. The recipient is 

 reminded of his duty by the laconic exhortation at the end ' Herein fail not.' 

 There i.s no such simple process with educational procedure. We are accus- 

 tomed to regard educational institutions as somehow in the aggregate respon- 

 sible for what we know as education, but there is no corporate responsibility 

 for the aggregate of our higher educational institiitions. There is no door 

 at which a postman could deliver a registered letter of business. 



We may, I think, agree that if we wish for ideals in education in this 

 country we must find them in the Universities. If the Universities give the 

 encouragement of their example and their licence to teach only to men and 

 women who are really educat€d in the best sense of the word their influence 

 will leaven the whole of education throughout the country; and, on the con- 

 trary, if when they leave the Universities the men and women who have to 

 teach, or to control teachers, are themselves imperfectly educated, it is hope- 

 less to expect a well-balanced living educational system. Among the Univer- 

 sities, for reasons good or ill, into which I need not enter, the older Universities 

 of Cambridge and Oxford have a preponderant influence. 



And to my mind the outstanding characteristic of the organisation of the 

 older Universities is the want of any recognised door by which their corporate 

 responsibility can be reached. In each case the University is itself a corporate 

 educational institution which includes some twenty Colleges which are also 

 separate corporate educational institiitions. You never can tell whether the 

 persons with whom you have business are the University or the Colleges, and 

 it is quite possible that when you think to address the one you find yourself 

 confronted with the other. The Universities in their corporate capacity are 

 constrained by statutes and traditions handed down by our forefathers to look 

 on in comparative impotence while their ideals are distorted or concealed by 

 the interplay of the interests of the many corporations of which they are com- 

 posed. The whole complex scheme of management forms a sort of craft or 

 mystery which very few even of the initiated really comprehend. 



In January of the year when I was writing (1917) I came across two delig'ht- 

 ful examples of this. The Headmasters' Conference (which consists of men 

 with some academic experience) passed a resoliition to the effect that Greek 

 should no longer be required for the entrance examination of the Universities 

 of Oxford and Cambridge, and thereupon the Master of University College, 

 Oxford, spent half a column of ' The Times ' in explaining that the University 

 of Oxford had no entrance examination at all. 



In the same newspaper Sir William E/idgeway, who is Professor of Archaeology 

 at Cambridge, and might therefore be supposed to know something about 

 Oxford, wrote a column about Graduate Research, which brought a reply of 

 another column from Professor Percy Gardner, now of Oxford, formerly of 

 Cambridge, to say that so far as Oxford is concerned ' Professor Ridgeway's 

 letter is nothing but a tissue of blimders.' Writing about the same time the 

 Master of a Cambridge College explained to me that everything that appeared 

 in the newspapers about Cambridge was wrong. 



This veil of incomprehensibility, the claim to a sort of impenetrable free- 

 masonry or mystery about matters of national concern, is very perplexing for those 

 who want things done in education but do not know the technicalities of the 



