28 



I have noted eighteen other similar quotations besides 

 several dealing with the evil effect of payment by results on the 

 teachers morally and physically. 



John Russell, Editor of The Schoolmaster, says: — "Payment 

 by results is the curse of the country." 



I quite agree with him. I have had some personal experience 

 of it in a school in the management of which I at one time 

 took a part, and it would be difficult, I think, to devise a scheme 

 which (as applied to the poorer classes for whom it was no 

 doubt primarily devised) more ingeniously defeats its own ends. 

 The teacher, hurrying for his annual crop of " results," has no 

 time to wait for the slow brain of the untutored mechanic — He 

 may go home. It is his richer brother who had been able to 

 pay for early training in the past, and who has leisure for study 

 in the present, that brings in results. 



Of the opinions in favour of the present system in Mr. 

 Herbert's book, some are from notable people, but the only 

 argument which seems worth a reply is the plea that the 

 examination system has worked a transformation in the 

 industry of the Universities which we can hardly realize. This 

 is admitted, but it has done its work and, as Herbert explains, 

 instruments are not to be confounded with moving causes. 

 The moving cause was the Zeitgeist — the spirit of the age — and 

 examination the instrument it employed. Our instruments of 

 progress are always changing. "Brown Bess," so covered with 

 glory in the past, will not do for our troops to-day. Indeed the 

 very circumstance of fitness in the past should have warned the 

 cautious man against fitness in the future. 



What, then, is to be our modern " Brown Bess " ? What is 

 to be our ideal school ? This is a difficult question, and one that 

 has puzzled wise heads before now. It is easier to see faults than 

 devise a new perfection. One may, at all events, freely suggest 

 improvements in the hope that criticism and discussion may lead 

 to better things. For very young children, especially those whose 

 home-life is not as bright as it might be, I think the best known 

 training is to be found under the Kindergarten system. And 



