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
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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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    Vaughan, having said, I need hardly ask you whether they can write Greek correctly? Mr. Liddell answers, II never tried them in Greek at the ma- triculation examination. Being asked, Can they, if a Greek author is put into their hands, and they are allowed to read it once over, construe a passage which does not contain words of very rare occur- j rence, and no sentence of a very intricate character ? he says :— I can best answer that question by stating that in practice we are obliged to restrict ourselves to books that have been prepared. I do not think we should get even a tolerable translation of a book which they hafl not read before.'.. . ' Not of any pas- sage ?'—' If you pointed out an easy passage from Xenophon, in which there was not the slightest difficulty, perhaps you might; but you would have to select your passage with great care; you could not open tho book at random and ask them to read a Greek pas- sage. We do not get it well done even in the books that are prepared in a great many cases. I am speaking of those who come up merely to be matriculated — the average- boys.' ... ' Now, I have asked you generally with regard to the public schools. With respect to Eton, can you tell what is the state of classical attainments there ?' . ...' With these average boys it is very much what I have stated. Their Latin prose is certainly not elegant or scholarlike. It is exceedingly bad. Even those boys who can construe pretty fluently, when you come to probe them in grammar, often fail to give satis- factory answers. They often fail even when the question is put upon paper, and they have plenty of time to think. Many of them bring up the words misspelt in the grossest man- ner.' (Vol. iii., p. 400.)* The evidence now quoted suggests several reflections, of which I venture to present a few in brief. 1st. Seeing that, in the main, clas- * The case is not better in France. U n'est presque pas de jour qui n'apporte son temoiernage de la decadence des humanites scolaires chez vous. L'autre semaine, je fus a la Sorbonne recoinmander un candidat qui se presentait pour la deuxieme fois aux epreuves du baccalaureat. Disant qu'aux premieres epreuves sa version avait ete ' /;on?ie,' je fus vivement interrompu par le venerable exa- minateur: ' Dites passable,1 s'ecria-t-il; 'jamais nous n'en voyons une bonne 1 Et cependant cette version est la deux-millieme environ que le candi- dat a mise BUT le papier depuis le commencement de ses etudes!'—Fred. Diibner, Rrforme, Sfc. 1862. [y. 3. sics and mathematics, and especially classics, are taught in these schools to the grievous neglect, partial or total, of all other subjects which are important either from their practical utility or from their educational influence, it might have been some consolation, if not some compen- sation, to And that classics at least were well taught and commonly learned. But, no! For the sake of classics, all other subjects are more or less neglected; yet even these do not seem to profit by the monopoly so largely assigned, and so vigi- lantly guarded. This discovery is most lamentable, yet most instructive. Just as, in economics, a protected manu- facture is always sickly,—so in education, monopoly is fatal to the subject it would encourage. It is only just to add, that it is not to the public schools only, though mainly, that this stricture applies. 2nd. In the light of such disclosures as these, we can better understand the as- sault lately made on the education of the poor, so far as it depends on state agency, and the too successful attempt to restrict it virtually within limits not long ago believed to be too narrow for even the poorest of the poor. Very revolutionary indeed must have been the continuance of a scheme of primary instruction which should make the children of the humbler classes superior in real intelligence and available acquirements to those of the richer and higher classes. Payment according to results — a cry so mis- chievously potent to curtail the instruc- tion of the former—may, with far greater reason, be commended to the attention of those who conduct the instruction of the latter.* * According to the last Report of the National Society, The effect of the Revised Code has been to increase the demand for reading-books, copy-books, and slates, while that for books on history, geography, and all higher branches, has considerably diminished. At the last Annual Meeting of the Society, the Archbishop of Canter- bury said :— In order to meet the diminished contributions, it has been found necessary to give up the employment of many skilled teachers. The result has been, thnt mental teaching has not been