On the report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the condition of the principal public schools : a paper read at the monthly evening meeting of the College of Preceptors, May 11th, 1864 / by W.B. Hodgson.

Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the condition of the principal public schools : a paper read at the monthly evening meeting of the College of Preceptors, May 11th, 1864 / by W.B. Hodgson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    begun till they enter, at the ago of twelve or thirteen, or even later, a school containing several hundreds, where there can be com- paratively little of that individual teaching which a very backward boy requires. (p. 40.) At first sight, this evil may seem to be chargeable, not on the public schools, but on the preparatory schools, or on the parents, with whom the Commissioners do not hesitate to say that the fault chiefly rests. But a strict entrance examination, such as the Commissioners themselves recommend, and such as it is the duty, as well as the right and the interest (rightly viewed) of the public schools to institute, would very speedily abate this grievance, which now aggra- vates, much more than it excuses, their inefficiency. . ... It is the office of education, say the Commissioners, (p. 30,) not only to dis- cipline some of the faculties, but to awaken, call out, and exercise them all, so far as this can be usefully done, in boyhood ; to awaken tastes that may be developed in after life; to impart early habits of reading, thought, and observation; and to furnish the mind with such knowledge as is wanted at the outset of life. A young man is not well educated— and, indeed, not educated at all—who cannot reason, or observe, or express himself easily and correctly, and who is unable to bear his part in cultivated society, from ignorance of things which all who mix in it are assumed to be acquainted with. He is not well edu- cated if all his information is shut up within one narrow circle, and he has not been taught, at least, that beyond what he has been able to acquire lie great and varied fields of knowledge, some of which he may afterwards explore, if he has inclination and opportunity to do so. The kind of knowledge which is necessary or useful, and the best way of exercising and disciplining the faculties (?), must vary, of course, with the habits and re- quirements of the age and society in which his life is to be spent Hence, no system of instruction can be framed which will not re- quire modification from time to time. The highest and most useful office of education is certainly to train and discipline ; but it is not the only office. And we cannot but re- mark that, whilst in the busy world too great a value perhaps is sometimes set upon the actual acquisition of knowledge, and too little upon that mental discipline which enables men to acquire and turn it to the best ac- count, there is also a tendency, which is the very reverse of this, and which is among the besetting temptations of the ablest school- masters ; and that if very superficial men may be produced by one of these influences, very ignorant men are sometimes produced by the other. (p. 30.) If a youth, after four or five years spent at school, quits it at 19, unable to construe an easy bit of Latin or Greek without the help of a Dictionary, or to write Latin grammati- cally, almost ignorant of geography and of the history of his own country, unacquainted with any modern language but his own, and hardly compotent to write English correctly, to do a simple sum, or stumble through an easy proposition of Euclid, a total st ranger to the laws which govern the physical world, and to its structure, with an eye and hand unpractised in drawing, and without knowing a note of music, with an uncultivated mind, and no taste for reading or observation, his intellectual education must certainly be ac- counted a failure, though thero may be no fault to find with his principles, character, or manners. We by no means intend to repre- sent this as a type of the ordinary product of English public-school education ; but speak- ing both from the evidence we have received and from opportunities of observation open to all, we must say that it is a type much more common than it ought to be, making ample allowance for the difficulties before re- ferred to, and that the proportion of failures is, therefore, unduly large The school has absolute possession of the boy during four or five years, the most valuable years of pupil- age, the time when the powers of apprehension and memory are brightest, when the faculty of observation is quick and lively, and he is forming his acquaintance with the various objects of knowledge. Something, surely, may be done during that time in the way, not of training alone, but of positive acquisition, and the sclwol is responsible for turning it to the best account. (p. 31.) These passages may, and indeed must, suffice to indicate the point of view from which the Commissioners regard these schools, the standard by which they try their results, and the degree in which their expectations have been fulfilled or disappointed. Before we proceed to cite a small part of the evidence in support of these very grave strictures, let me remind you, first, that the Commissioners are not the ene- mies, but the friends, of the public-school system—most of them, if not all, having been themselves brought up under one or other of its forms,—and that their purpose is to amend, not to destroy; 2ndly, that