627th ordinary GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOxM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, S.W., ON MONDAY, MARCH 7th, 1921, 



Professor H. Langhorne Orchard, M.A., B.Sc, in the 



Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed, and signed, 

 and the Chairman called on the Rev. H. Costley White, M.A., Headmaster 

 of Westminster School, to read his paper on Public School Education." 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. By the Rev. H. Costley 

 White, M.A., Headmaster of Westminster School. 



A RE the Public Schools wanted ? The particular irritant 



r\ which set me upon examining this question in your com- 

 pany this afternoon was a remark made in a little book 

 by Mr. William Paine. " Our public schools to-day," he says, 

 do not hold up any great ideal to the youth that passes through 

 them. They have no great ideal to offer." And again, in 

 stronger terms — " What if, in the absence of any commanding 

 ideal, the training we are giving public school boys undoes them 

 utterly before they have time to declare themselves for what 

 they are ? " I do not know the author of the book himself, 

 or with what credentials he enters the lists of those who chasten 

 our professional pride. All that I know of him is gathered from 

 the autobiographical portions of his book, The Aristocracy of 

 Comradeship, which he was kind enough to send to me. From 

 these pages I learn that he has a happy gift of literary style, 

 a fresh and optimistic outlook on life, a large sympathy with 

 " the people," and that he was not himself at a public school. 

 But criticism, whatever its source, is generally a wholesome thing. 

 Nor are schoolmasters wont to be defrauded of their share in it. 

 Indeed, it is not many years since an ingenious author dedicated 

 one of his works 



To the most criticised, 



The least advertised, 



The most poorly paid 



And the most richly rewarded 



Profession in the world — The Schoolmaster. 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



