i8 
LAND & WATER 
December 28, 1917 
Where the Public Schools Fail 
By S. P. B. Mais 
THE late Headmaster of Eton, writing ^^.T^heCon 
temporary Refiav on that much discussed b«ok 7 w 
Loom ofYouth. makes the interesting statement that 
" whatever is wrong with our f.ubhc f hools is tiic 
outcome of certain defects of the English character a general 
improvement in them is inconceivable unless there is nrst 
a general improvement in Society," adding as a corollary, 
thft. •' masted, Uke the boys, are the product o English hom^. 
and most of them have had to acquire a sort of '"tcrcst in 
some intellectual subject in face of the steady discouragement 
of an irresponsive home circle." 
If this statement be true, it follows that untU we can 
educate the general public to take an interest in in- 
tellectual matters, there is no hope for reform in tnc 
schools, and we are once again condemned to ny 
round in our \'icious circle content to turn out a type 
of boy physically fit, honourable, according to his lights a 
good campanion and an excellent leader of others, but mental y 
obtuse, both ignorant and indifferent to any of the intricate 
problems relating to modern conditions, which arc likely not 
only to tax the capacities of the cleverest and most patriotic 
citizens in the solution, but will require distinctly brilliant 
brains in every section of the community before' any attempt 
at such solution can be feasible. I think, however, that Dr. 
Lyttelton is wrong in his premises. It is not. as he says, that 
society imposes its standard upon the schools, but rather the 
school's which set the standard for society. How else, I would 
ask, is society to be educated ? Even now the average adult 
does not despise culture, nor is he ready to run at the mention 
of poetry, music or painting, as lie was ten years ago. Why .•' 
Because the aesthetic standards at school are higher than they ' 
were in 1907. Not that they are satisfactory even now, but 
the boy certainly hae done much to educate the parent. 
My theory is that the failure of the public schools is due 
to society only, in so far as society has still to learn that cheap 
goods are the most expensive in the end. The average man 
ha^ reaUsed that if he stints his children in food he will not only 
ruin their health, birt incidentally have to pay considerably 
more on doctors than he would have had to spend originally on 
nourishment. What he has still to learn is that if he stints 
his children in mental food, ha will not only impair their 
intellectual and moral digestion, but will probably have to 
continue to contribute towards their upkeep for a far Icnger 
period than he would have done had he invested more at the 
beginning on the best possible education. How can he under- 
stand this unless he is taught ? Who so lit to teach him, 
through his son, as the schoolmaster ? In a word, the root 
of the educational evil, in common with the root of most evils, 
is poverty. For who are ultimately responsible for education 
in this country ? The schoolmasters. 
Youth's Associates 
On them depends the whole burden : they are the only grown 
up people with whom the bulk of the youth of the nation come 
into hourly and daily contact for the greater part of that period 
in life when they are most amenable to discipline, initiative 
of example, and malleable in character. It follows, then, that 
their whole view in life is going to be coloured by the attitude 
which they adopt at school, whether towards religion, morals, 
mental or bodily powers. It would seem as a consequence. 
that of all professions in the state that of teaching would stand 
as the most honourable, that only the best men would be 
all^)wed to enter its ranks, and that the qualities required, 
high moral integrity, absolute sincerity and singleness of aim, 
indefatigable energy and a fine intellect ever reaching out 
for fresh realms to conquer, ccmblncd with an inexhaustible 
sympathy, would justify those wlio were elected to so respon- 
sible a calling in demanding a very high salary'. 
Such would appear to be the logical conclusion if my argu- 
ment is sound. Instead of which, what do we find ? 
With the cost of living increased enormously, the school- 
master still receives the quite inadequate wage he had before 
the war. No man of brilliant capabilities can be expected to 
give of his best in exchange for a salary lower than that of a 
plumber. If you really want the best man you have to bait 
your hook to catch him. A third-rate wage only means that 
you will succeed in getting the third-rate intellect. That is 
where the pubhc schools fail. The masters cannot be expected 
to teach, as Mr. Fisher has well said, unless they arc happy ; 
no honest man can be happy if he is continually harassed by 
debt The average schoolmaster to-day simply cannot afford 
to Hve on whit he gets from his work ; he has to undertake 
uutside examining, give public lectures, try liis hand at journ- 
alism, turn his house into a sort of private hotel, go 1 ound from 
house to house in the holidays, \when he ought to be resting, 
coaching backward boys for examinations ; in a word, he has 
to turn his hand to all sorts of unnecessary labours in order 
to remain in the ranks of the profession he adore:,. In the 
light of this the astonishing thing is, not that there are so many 
inefficient schoolmasters, but that there are so few,' Ten per 
cent, is a quite generous estimate of those who are consistently 
" ragged " and fail to teach boys anything. On the other 
hand, not more than ten per cent, are really capable^fif making 
boys realise that they come to school primarily to develop their 
brain power, to leam how to learn, how to think, and the 
(to them) strange fact that knowledge is power. S<^ we arrive 
at the lamentable truth that eighty out of every hundred schoc 1- 
masters are not only martyrs to a cause, but useleS? "v.,*- ,^ 
to a forlorn cause. 
Where Money Conies In 
When they left the University these men were ceirtainly full 
of promise. They did not represent the cream of their, 
society, it is true ; the Civil Service, the Bar, Science and 
Politics may, perhaps, be said to have claimed all those who 
seemed likely to make a stir in the world, but tlic second layer, 
who shared the Church, Medicine and Education, were by no 
means dull. Furthermore, they were willing for the sake of 
an ideal to forego honour and riches. Unfortunately they 
represented a type which is more likely to be led than to lead : 
existing beliets, existing institutions and traditions become 
too much for them ; after the briefest of struggles they rfollow 
the line of least resistance, aud we see the lamentable result 
in curates deliberately shutting out the light of reason in order 
to be comfortable in their half-beliefs ; doctors in fair circum- 
stances settling down in the country to perpetrate outworn 
" cures," and, worst of all, schoolmasters enmeshed in the 
snare of that pernicious tradition, which is still rampant in 
our schools, that the training of the intellect comes last, and 
very much least, among the myriad interests of boyhood. 
Every spare hour of a schoolmaster's life is spent in coaching 
games, which are still taken with a desperate seriousness out 
of all proportion to their importance, or in perfomiing one of 
the thousand duties involved in the Officers' Training Corps. 
I am not pretending that these two side-issues of public 
school life ought not to usurp all our sji/)e>-//!/0Ms energy ; what 
I do maintain is they should come second to, not before, the 
actual class work. At present it is well-nigh impossible to 
make boys realise that it is as important, from the point of 
view of their usefulness to the State, to reach a standard of 
efficiency in actual work as it is to keep their bodies healthy 
and to acquire the rudiments of military training. 
The position in a nutshell is because the masters are under- 
paid the boys are underfed mentally. If we wish, as a nation, 
to utilise all our resonixes, to get the last ounce out of each 
individual citizen, we must go to the fountain head of all the 
present waste and confusion, and demand better education. 
It will not be cheap, but will be worth paying for. I do not 
pretend that the result of enticing the flower of the brains 
of this country to enter the teaching profession will mean 
that we shall get more Balliol Scholarships in the future, even 
though that is an end which is Ijy no means despicable in it- 
self. It will mean that we shall produce an average typo 
of a more stable kind than hitherto, stable in the sense 
of having interests outside the domain of sports, able to em- 
ploy its leisure not in vacuous, insipid pleasure, crudely mis- 
taken for happiness, nor in undertakings of doubtful morality, 
entered upon owing to lack of both imagination and depth of 
character. 
For it is a fact all too little recognised that poverty of 
intellect is the prime cause of poverty of morals. Training 
of the mind no less than training of the body results in avoiding 
excesses of any sort. Studies, as Bacon told us, serve for 
delight, ornament, and ability. Not only so, but they serve 
as an indispensable guide to life, a veiy present help in time 
of trouble, and are of distinctly marketable value, none of 
which things has even yet been sufficiently realised by the 
general public, for the simple reason that but few people ha\e 
hitherto pinned their faith to tiiem or turned them to account. 
Our paramount duty is to find and encourage the right type 
of schoolmaster, to find him by offering him a tempting salary, 
to encourage him by giving him leisure to develop on his own 
lines, ar.d to keep abreast of modem thought and discovery. 
Once this is done the public schools will no longer fail, in spite 
of attacks made upon them, either bv pupils like the author 
of The Loom of Youth, or headmasters like Dr. Lyttelton. 
