ji — n_tsc._
REESE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
. ,a.
TEACHERS' GUILD ADDRESSES
AND THE
REGISTRATION OF TEACHERS
TEACHERS' GUILD ADDRESSES
AND THE
REGISTRATION OF TEACHERS
BY
S. S. LAURIE, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF THE THEORY, HISTORY, AND ART OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
U o n & o «
PERCIVAL & CO. 1892
LB775"
PREFACE
IT was suggested to me that the printing of my evidence before the Parliamentary Select Com- mittee last year in support of the Teachers' Guild Registration Bill might be of service in the present state of opinion. I took advantage of the opportunity of printing the evidence to publish a few addresses delivered for the most part to the Teachers' Guild, some of which bore, more or less directly, on the question of the train- ing and registration of secondary schoolmasters. The essay on Montaigne appeared in a former book, but it has been for many years out of print. It is reprinted in this volume to accompany the papers on Ascham and Comenius. These three men are representatives of the three leading theories of Education.
S. S. L.
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, April, 1892.
'UNIVERSITY
.- - -'. - -•
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND THE TRAINING
OF TEACHERS i
II. THEORY AND THE CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS — UNIVERSITIES — REGISTRATION OF TEACHERS AND DECENTRALIZATION .... 35
III. METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER . 69
IV. MONTAIGNE, THE RATIONALIST 95
V. ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST 130
VI. COMENIUS, THE ENCYCLOPEDIST AND FOUNDER
OF METHOD 169
VII. THE SCHOOLMASTER AND UNIVERSITY (DAY)
TRAINING COLLEGES 202
VIII. SELECTION FROM EVIDENCE GIVEN BEFORE A SELECT PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE ON A TEACHERS' REGISTRATION AND ORGANIZATION
BILL 233
IX. REPORT OF SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS 291
I.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS.1
SOUND practice is sound theory unconscious of itself: sound theory is merely sound practice conscious of itself. My thesis is simply this — that a teacher should be conscious of the art he practises, conscious of its rational basis, its process and its end : and that for his own sake, for the sake of his pupils, and for the sake of the dignity, usefulness, and influence of the profession to which he belongs.
There is not time in one lecture to discuss the question fully, and what I have now to say is, in truth, more of the nature of an apologia preparing the way for an argument, than itself an argument.
There is a conviction abroad — which, though it does not obtrude itself so often as it used to do,
// * Annual Address to the Teachers' Guild, London, 1890.
B
2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
still influences opinion — that a teacher, like a poet, is born, not made. This opinion is due, I suppose, to the fact that they both practise arts : but it is scarcely necessary to point out that the arts are of different kinds ; nay, that in some essential respects they are to be contrasted rather than compared^
Like most opinions which have a trick of per- sistently turning up when one thinks them dead, the dictum as to the divine origin of the teacher, as of the poet, has an element of truth in it : for it is certainly possible for a man to be born a teacher ; and the greatest teachers of the world have been born teachers. But this is simply to say that there is such a thing as educational genius, just as there is genius in other departments of human activity. If we could command the fountains of Nature and Providence, we should certainly take care to have none but born teachers. As we cannot do this, and as not more than one teacher in a thousand is a born teacher, and of the remainder, not probably more than twenty per cent, even half-born, we must have some way of making teachers out of men who desire to practise the art, and of making them in the image of him who is born to it.
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 3
We cannot define genius in any department of human activity. After we have given such account of it as we can, there remains a " something " which escapes us. In art we recognize the fact that while genius accepts tradition, it is yet essentially outside rule/: it makes rule. It is a subtle, com- plex, and wholly mysterious combination of faculty, which by a native impulse gives a new form of beauty to the products of the mind. We may call it feeling or inspiration. For this inspiration a man has to wait, and to wait in vain if he has not been born to receive it. By the grace of God, Raphael and Shakespeare were artists. So, by the grace of God, the builder of Westminster Abbey was an artist, and the builders of many a simple church-tower that gives charm to the rural parishes of England, making a poem of even the most prosaic landscape, were also in their degree artists.
The difficulty of definition, however, is not so great in the field of education as it is in the aesthetic arts. Were we asked to explain more closely wherein educational genius consists, I doubt if we could find any word more suitable than the old familiar word, Sympathy. All that a teacher needs, it has been held, is knowledge of the subject he teaches, and sympathy ; and I am
4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
quite willing to accept this word as a fair enough approximation to what we mean when we speak of the genius of the teacher. But I would ask you to consider with me what Sympathy itself means, because I think that by starting from what is an educational commonplace, I shall more effectively convince you that all teachers should study the Philosophy of Mind, as containing the theory of their art.
Now, we shall find three senses in which this word "sympathy " is used in its scholastic reference : in the first, it is the essential qualification of every teacher ; in the second, it borders on a vice ; in the third, it may be accepted as a fair enough equivalent for educational genius.
In its first sense, it means little more in a young teacher than a genuine interest in the young, and a strong desire to help them on their way. This is not only a good thing, but the first and indis- pensable qualification of every man who teaches with a view to educate. If he has it not, he ought to find some other occupation ; for, without it, he will not only do no good, but much harm, and be himself of all men most miserable as he hope- lessly fulfils the drudgery of a daily routine. But
AND THE TRAINING ~OJ^TSACffERS.
sympathy in this sense is nothing more than the ordinary impulse of good will towards our fellow- men, taking a specific line in the direction of those who are as yet young and weak. It is a manly quality, and is bred generally of a deep sense of the spiritual responsibility of the elder for the younger brother. But this simple virtue is not what many, in these days, mean by " sympathy " in the teacher.
The second sense in which the word is used, is to mark a quality of mind which many admire and cultivate — viz. a sentimental affection for boys which shows itself in a constant effort to gain their regard by stooping to their level, and involves a good deal of attitudinizing on the part of the man. The object is to influence children for good and to make them (I presume) like one's self. This kind of sympathy is, I think, the excess, and there- fore the vice of what, in moderation, is a virtue. Aristotle, the apostle of the " mean," would not have approved of it. Does it not too often charac- terize minds which combine with a certain essential vanity a feeble fumbling after power ? They are not strong enough, or virile enough, in themselves to exercise power without scheming to do it, and taking advantage7— often undue advantage — of
6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
their superior age and position ; always, of course, with the best intentions. But good intentions are a bad plea in a court of Ethics. A teacher must question his good intentions and the moral sym- pathy with boys out of which they are supposed to spring. The kind of sympathy of which we now speak impresses me as unwholesome, and much in need of guidance and correction. Is it not a kind of Protestant Jesuitry in education ? The sympathetic sentimentalist among teachers ought, above all men, to be put through a stiff course of educational methods and science. There are many good instincts in him running to seed. He requires bracing up. Genuine power never needs to assert itself. The sympathy which some cherish as a special virtue of their own, leads to a constant manipulating of the mind of a pupil — a constant lying in wait in order to guide, shape, and influ- ence. Such devotedness on the part of an adult to a boy necessarily conveys to the immature subject of the process a silent conviction that he is an interesting object, and so tends to engender in him a weak and narrow conceit rather than to foster a strong personality. The result is a prig. Common rumour and certain " Boys' books " tell us that there has been, since Arnold's time, a good
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 7
deal of this sort of coddling — a kind of pawing of the tender mind, by well-meaning pedagogic moralists. Now, neither plants nor kittens will grow if you are constantly handling them, and even water takes an unconscionable time to boil if you keep looking at the kettle. Indeed, it is a matter of common observation that if our much- tended plant in our aesthetic flower-pot sprouts at all, it always takes advantage of our absence to do so.
Far be it from me to say that a teacher is not consciously to endeavour to exercise " influence ; " but he must respect individuality, and be on his guard against sympathy of the spurious kind I have been describing : otherwise he will overdo his part as educator. Even a father must respect the individuality of his son. If he does not, he will most certainly be beaten in the end. Let boys alone ; but take care that they live under law, that they have good moral and spiritual food, that they do their work from a sense of duty as well as pleasure, and above all that they have in you, their master, a good strong example. To the schoolroom we may apply the words of Bacon : "Adest quoque ipse vultus, et aspectus virorum gravium qui facit ad verecundiam, et teneros
8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
animos etiam a principiis conformat ad exemplar."1 Let there be no moral analysis, no unmanly and unmanning sentimentalism, no shedding of sym- pathetic tears over interesting boy-penitents.
I fear I shall be thought to be very much (to use a colloquial expression) out of the swim ; for I look with aversion even on masters " sympatheti- cally " taking a part in boys' games. By all means see that the boys have all necessary facilities and time for games, but then leave them to themselves, with only such paying of visits to the field as may seem natural and friendly ; for boys are boys, and men are men. It is a false etymology which interprets education as a drawing-out : it is a drawing-^/. A boy grows in intelligence by lean- ing on the strongej; intelligence of his master ; in moral perception by imbibing his master's deeper moral convictions ; in conduct by forming him- self on his master's formed and disciplined will. If, then, he is to be truly educated, he must be always looking up. To require masters — men in so exalted a position of intellectual and moral authority — to run at " hare and hounds " with little boys, is, to my mind, ridiculous, and is one of the results of a false "sympathy." It is no
1 This I quote from some other writer. It has not been verified.
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 9
mark of manhood, this kind of thing — this affecta- tion of simple-mindedness, this condescension of unbending. Remember that, as Britons, we have to deal with boys who have a great history behind them, and a great imperial task before them — boys whose "blood is fet from fathers of war-proof." We have to " stiffen the sinews " of their minds if they are to bear their part nobly before God and man. The kind of sympathetic condescension against which I would protest weakens, and then flatters the weakness it has created.
But let us come now to the third sense in which the word "sympathy," as applied to the school- master, may be used — the true sense — the sense in which " sympathy " is another word for " edu- cational genius." What does it mean now? It denotes that subtle and complex combination of faculty which makes a teacher, at one bound, master of his art, just as an analogous combination marks the true artist in the sphere of the beautiful. Let us look at this more closely. We cannot analyse the art of the artist ; but we can analyse the art of the educator, and the analysis shows the fallacy that underlies the confounding of the two arts. I should say that sympathy is an intuitive perception of the mental condition and
UNIVERSITY **.. OF
io THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
processes of others, so vivid as to enable a man, without effort, to live in and with other minds, and to help them on their way to knowledge and to character, by moving with them step by step. In every lesson which a man so endowed gives to the young, in every conversation he holds with them, this sympathetic intuition is unobtrusively active without any one being specially conscious of it. Now, this is a rare gift. I don't know how many teachers there are in Great Britain ; let us say, fifty thousand. How many of these, do you think, are so endowed by the grace of God ? Shall we say fifty ? Partially so endowed, there are thousands.
Observe, now, what this sympathy is — the sympathy which characterizes the teacher of whom we may say nascitur non fit. It is simply a pro- found psychological knowledge, which yet is not knowledge at all, in any strict sense, because it is unconscious : it is rather to be called feeling or intuition. Were such a man suddenly gifted with the power and love of analytic and abstract thinking, he would, by his revelations, put our psychologists to shame. They would all go to school to him.
Since such men are few and teachers are man)-,
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. n
the question is, How are the many to rise to the level of the few ? I answer, In no way can they rise to it ; but, by the conscious study of those very mental processes which the born teacher intuitively feels and instinctively practises, the vast majority may approach it. It is possible, in short, to become conscious of the art of education ; in other words, to know and apply to the work of education the philosophy or science of the mind of man : it is not possible to become a poet or a painter by studying the principles and philosophy of the arts of poetry or painting.
Were I to ask you to analyse with me the inner processes of mind as it grows from childhood to manhood — those processes in and with which the educational genius instinctively lives — and then to formulate these, by what name would you call these formulated results ? The " Philosophy or Science of Mind," of course. Now, inasmuch as this science of mind can be taught and learned, the secret of the sympathy of the educational genius can so far be unveiled and learnt. Such study cannot make a man a genius, but it can put him on the next level to it, especially when supported by that strong desire to educate others which we assume to exist in all who choose the
12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
profession of schoolmaster. In this sense it is that, while I say of the rare schoolmaster-genius, nascitur, I say of all others, provided they have the humane prerequisite, they can be made — made in the like- ness, and after the image, of him who is " born."
What we desire, then, is that all young teachers should be helped to stand on the vantage-ground of wise and manly sympathy, by the study of the Philosophy of Mind. By this study, sympathetic teachers, in the strong virile sense, can be " made." And, once they are set on the right scientific road, every year will add to their knowledge, their skill, their wisdom ; in brief, their " sympathy," in the virile sense of the word.
Now, let no young schoolmaster, freshly crowned with tripos laurels, think that, by posing as an opponent of philosophy in education and its con- sequent methods, he thereby makes good his own claim to the rare gift of genius. The world will not accept him at his own estimate, and will shrewdly conclude that, as the pretension to genius in a youth is often a claim to shirk hard work and do whatever the said youth pleases to do, the youthful schoolmaster who makes such preten- sions must be watched. But if it should so happen that you, the young teacher, really have genius,
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 13
depend on it, your genius will be strengthened and virilized by philosophy. In truth, it will be found that the man who is endowed with educa- tional genius is always the last to oppose philo- sophy as part of the teacher's preparatory training. His very genius tells him that he has much to learn. Though conscious of his own strength, he yet cannot look behind him on the past abuse of young minds and bodies, around him on pre- valent errors, and before him on the vast national interests involved, without feeling the necessity there is for that class of professional men and women who are set apart to work at the very foundations of the social fabric, studying their work in its principles, aims, and methods. The £o£a and individualism of pretentious minds must, he feels, be made to give way to the £7rt<rrr/^rj of rational and reasoned system.
Why should a young teacher not study philo- sophy as ground of his art ? What are we afraid of ? In other professions men study science and dwell with principles. It is possible in chemistry to be a very facile practical analyst with little know- ledge of science, and yet you say to every young chemist^ " Study the science of your art ; " and you know that the genius-analysts have studied, and
14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
constantly do study, the science of the analytic art. So with engineers — especially genius-engineers. So with physicians, especially genius-physicians. The preacher, too, studies the science and history of theology ; why should he not be left to his mother- wit and the spasmodic visitations of spiritual in- flation ? It would appear that the onus of show- ing that a teacher should not, like other people, study the science of his special art lies with those who deny the necessity. Nowadays the cry is — Give technical instruction to our plumbers, and dyers, and weavers, and telegraphists, and mechanics of all sorts : and what does technical instruction mean ? It does not mean methods only, but the principles and history — i.e. the science — of the methods. Are teachers — the practisers of the art of forming the mind of the young — to be left out in the cold ? Are they not to aspire even to the education of a plumber ? In the case of school- masters alone, are we to reverse the thought of the poet, spoil the scanning, and say —
Magister Infelix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ?
Let us look, for a little, at some of the current objections : —
"Will the student of philosophy be a better
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 15
teacher," some say, "by virtue of his study?" I answer, more Scotico, by asking another question : " Will a plumber be a better plumber, a chemical analyst a better analyst, by studying the science of their respective arts ? " This, at least, all must allow to be absolutely certain : the teacher himself will be placed: on a higher plane of professional life by the study of philosophy. By being more, and thinking more, as a man, he will be more and think more in his daily work. It is a truism, " As is the teacher, so is the school : " I would add, " As is the man, so is the teacher."
But, again, some say : " By making him study the science of mind as it bears on the educating of mind, you will destroy a teacher's originality ! " Now, if there be a philosophy or science underlying all educational procedure, that youth must indeed have a weakling and rickety originality who can- not bear to look at this philosophy without being turned to stone, as if he gazed on a Medusa's head. Had such originality not better die at once and have done with it ?
Again, I have found that some fear that the study of the philosophy of education, and the con- sequent art, may make young men pedants before their time. Now, I can easily understand how the
1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
study of methods alone — dogmatic rules of pro- cedure— may make a man a pedant who is by nature already pedantically disposed ; but, even then, his pedantry, like Hamlet's madness, will have method in it, which will be something gained. But the philosophy of mind, which determines all methods, and gives them truth, meaning, vitality, is the enemy and destroyer of pedantry. For what is it, after all, save thinking ? Can a teacher be converted into a pedant by thinking about the foundations and ultimate significance of what he holds to be an Art — his Art ? Those headmasters who are, by the grace of God, themselves the whole art of education incarnate, need not surely fear a young assistant because he thinks. It is only despots to whom " such men are dangerous : " it is only they that love the " sleek smooth head."
"Well, but after all, in a schoolmaster, if you have not genius, then experience is everything," we are further told. On the contrary, experience is nothing — often less than nothing : it is a mere opportunity for further confirming bad habits of mind. Experience is the great indurator, the crust-former, of the human soul. I wish some clever fellow would write a paper "On the Futility of Experience, especially among Schoolmasters."
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 17
" Days sJiould speak, and multitude of years sJwuld teach wisdom," we are told in Job. You notice the " should " — a wisely chosen mood ; for expe- rience no more gives wisdom than facts make history. There is no department of life in which experience is of value, except to him whose prior philosophic or scientific discipline enables him to put the right questions to experience and interpret the answers.
It was only the other day — I hope we may regard the day as past — that secondary schoolmasters looked with suspicion, even contempt, on the study of methods, and regarded every man who talked of methods as a " mere theorist" There may be survivals ; but it must be difficult now, I hope, to find the headmaster who would think it a disqualification in a young teacher of language to have studied Quintilian and Ascham. The battle of methods is now won in the whole field of primary education, and in every department of science-teaching ; and it is only among secondary schoolmasters, literary, linguistic, and classical, that the heresy still prevails, that every graduate, when he puts on his hood, puts on with it the whole art of education ; that when we endue a raw youth with an academic gown, we endow him
C
1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
with method. But even with this class of teacher great progress has been made. He recognizes at least that there is such a thing as method. The primary school has taught this to the secondary school. Comenius and Pestalozzi have also taken possession of the science chairs of our Universities. It is otherwise, however, with the philosophy of mind as the basis of all methods and as alone vindicating the truth of methods, and furnishing aim and inspiration as well as plan, This is still fighting its way up. Surely, if there be methods — rules, ways of procedure in teaching and training — there must be a science of them, and that science must be the science of mind. Not psychology alone in its narrower and more empirical sense ; but the philosophy of mind, and, therefore, the philosophy of man. As with methods, so with philosophic principles ; the movement to give the latter a place has begun in primary schools. The Government of the country already examines in principles (in a fashion) — a great victory for the once abused " theorist." Mr. Kekewich and Mr. Craik now write instructions to inspectors with all the unction of a Professor of the Theory and Art of Education. Are secondary schoolmasters alone supra philoso- phiam ? Are they all born philosophers as well as
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 19
born artists ? What elixir of educational genius do Greek iambics or the mathematics of the fourth dimension distil ?
In speaking of method, I have said that I presume no headmaster would nowadays object to a young graduate who had been sufficiently in earnest about his profession to study Quintilian and Ascham. So now, may I be so daring as to say, that no headmaster (under forty) would think the worse of a young graduate if he had studied such a book in the philosophy of education as, for example, Mr. R. L. Nettleship's "Exposition of the Republic of Plato " ? That most admirable of all modern treatises on the philosophy of educa- tion— modern, but resting deep on ancient founda- tions— is buried in the volume called " Hellenica." But I would warn the rule-of-thumb empiricists — the would-be born educators — the artists by the grace of God — to put it on an Index Expurgatorius ; for it will make a youth think, it will make him " theorize." But in a classical school, at least, a young master who engages himself with Plato can hardly be treated as a suspect. I say with confi- dence, that if a clever young graduate who has been teaching for a year or two without thinking much about the great question of education, will shut
2/5 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
himself up for a week with Nettleship's essay, he will come out into his school afterwards (to use the phraseology in which our Scottish Calvinistic fathers brought us up) convicted, converted, re- generate, sanctified. A new sun will be shining by day, and a new moon by night. As a teacher, he will live henceforth in the atmosphere breathed by the minor gods.
But a more serious objection has to be en- countered. There is an art : there is method : there are methods, all now admit ; but some would foreclose all further discussion by saying there is no science of the art, no accepted philosophy of mind in its relation to education as a whole ; and, accordingly, we must adjourn till we have settled this.
Let me admit that there is no one philosophy of education which is above suspicion — no recog- nized philosophic educational system or theory : what then ? Is there any philosophy of which it can be said that it is recognized and final ? — and yet we pursue .philosophy as a part of general academic education. It is not necessary to have a philosophy of education as unquestionable as Euclid before we can, as teachers, be asked to study it Sir Frederick Pollock, in his " Introduc-
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 21
tion to Political Science " (by-the-by, I might ask students of Politics, and of Political Economy too, who doubt the science of education, where their " science " is to be found), says : " It is better to have a theory of education not exactly in the right place, than to have none at all ; which last is about the condition in which we moderns have been since the tradition of the Renaissance sank into an unintelligent routine." To discuss actual or possible educational philosophies here would be impossible, and I will content myself with saying that Aristotle's " Ethics," though wanting in direct guidance for the trainer of youth, is a science of the art of moral education from the Hellenic standpoint ; Plato's " Republic," again, is a philosophy or science of education in a much larger and wider and profounder sense. Does any one who has studied these books doubt this ? I avoid modern instances, lest I should arouse the jealousies of the " Schools." The philosophy of education is simply the groundwork of the art, as that groundwork is to be found in the nature of the mind of man, the ends of man's existence, and his relations to other men. It is, in short, what we mean by philosophy — philosophy in its grand historical sense, " musical as is Apollo's lute ; " but
22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
it is, also and chiefly, this philosophy in its special relation to the growth of the man-child to man- hood. The philosophy or science of education is the philosophy of mind and of man as a growing mind and a growing man : it is dynamical, not a barren analysis and formulation of the statical facts of the human mind abstracted from life and the conditions of life. And yet, though this way of looking at mind does not appear in the " Ethics " of Aristotle, and only partially in the " Republic " of Plato, I confidently ask any young teacher who has studied these books, especially Nettleship's exposition of the latter, " Have they anything to do with you and the social function to which you have devoted your life ? " I know the answer will be : " They have everything to do with me ; just as much as Greek accidence and syntax have to do with the teaching of Greek." Taste, then, and eat ; it is not the fruit of the forbidden tree, though it does teach the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, those who allow me to name the two books which I have called to witness as philosophies of the art of education, and make no protest, are in my net of argument. This is all I want. I suppose they will scarcely say philosophy ended with Plato and Aristotle ; that thought on the supreme subjects
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 23
of human concern — man's life, man's destiny, and man's education for his life and destiny — was arrested about 400 years B.C. The philosophy of education, then, exists, and by your own admission should be studied as a preparation for your pro- fessional work.
So much for philosophy in general, and its bearing on the great art of education ; but, it may be urged (for there is no end to the objections to the existence of colour which a man born blind may urge), " such philosophy, though always instructive and stimulating, cannot give birth, by necessary, or even probable, deduction, to methods of instruction and methods of moral training — to the rules of the teacher's art, in short ; and so it becomes part of a man's liberal culture merely, as opposed to his professional preparation for the work of life." This depends very much on what is meant by the objector : such philosophies give you end and aim ; the principles which you have imbibed from them are translated into practice by you, spite of yourself; and they cannot be trans- lated into practice without going through the intermediate stage of rules or methods — the axio- mata media which govern practical life. These rules and methods you may (it is true) be only
24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
vaguely conscious of, because of your idle habit of not thinking things out ; but they are always there in your mind, always operative, always potent. To the extent to which a man might formulate them, to that extent would he at once see that the rules and methods were deductions from principles. As Wordsworth says in the " Prelude " —
" General truths which are themselves a sort Of elements and agents, under-powers, Subordinate helpers of the living mind."
— But I would meet the objection more in the face. I have been speaking of philosophy in its larger sense as a philosophy of life, and, as such, supremely practical. The claim of philosophy on the teacher becomes irresistible when we see that, within the philosophy of life and mind, there falls not only the analysis of the processes of Intelligence, but the successive movements involved in building up Conscience and disciplining to Duty. This is psychology — a section of the larger philosophy. Omitting the moral aspects of psychology, and confining myself to the intelligence alone, whereby it is mainly that a man differs from the beasts of the field, I would sum up, in a brief paragraph, much that might be said more convincingly perhaps if dealt with at greater length, hoping that, in
i U JCil VJGRSITY
\^^ ^ OF
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 25
being concise, I do not become obscure : — The process whereby intelligence intelligizes is the process by which a man knows and can alone know. He cannot know anything through his fingers or toes, or in any other way than by a movement within him which is as definite and determined in its character as are the laws of the physical world. Knowing is only another word for learning ; and does it not follow, by necessary consequence, that the way of learning must be the way of teaching ? This question answers itself. Now, what is the meaning of the word " method " ? It simply means Way — neither more nor less. The way of learning, then, is the method of teach- ing. Let any man escape from that brief argument if he can.
The general method (or methodick) yielded by psychology applies to all subjects equally — to English, Science, Greek, Music, etc., to the extent to which the subject permits. An analysis of it breaks it up into many sub-processes which we call methods in the plural number — in other words, rules of the art of instruction and of moral education.
Now, you cannot, by any device, escape method. Admit that method is a way and that methods are ways, and I defy any man to teach without them.
26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
As Aristotle says, there is no question as to philo- sophizing or not ; a man, simply because he is a man, must philosophize. So we educationalists say, it is not at all a question whether a teacher is to teach by method or not : he must teach, by the very nature of things, according to some way or method. The questions are : Do we philosophize wisely ? Do we instruct according to a wise method ? Do not imagine that you can ever escape method of some sort. When you teach amo, amavi, or chemical processes, or Sophocles, or the pons asinorum, you are always following a way ; you must follow a way. You are devotees of method without knowing it. But what method ? What way ?
Let me assume here, however, that you have deliberately studied methods. My point is that the student of methods should carry his studies a step further back, and see method growing out of psychology as part of the larger and presiding philosophy. Still, I can imagine a young teacher of ingenuous mind hesitating. Methods he may frankly recognize ; and he may admit also that as part of general culture, quite apart from scholastic duty, a man should study philosophy in the large Platonic sense, because philosophy,
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 27
so understood, is after all only an explanation of the meaning of man, and an inquiry into the ends of human existence. An educator, above all men, he may admit, should think of these things. But when it comes to the connecting together of philosophy, psychology, and methods by a rational link, he shrinks back lest he should become a bond-slave of law and rule. "I fear I should no longer be a free man," he may say ; " I should be a mere instrument of science, — a walking formula.'' Well, it is so far true. You would not be free to do many things you now do ; your will — which is not will at all, as philosophy would teach you, but arbitrary caprice — would be under the restraint of law. To the extent to which any of us is educated we part with our freedom in the banale sense of the word. As sons of God we are under law, which alone is the true freedom of the human spirit. The law against which you, as an indi- vidual, rebel, has been called " the glorious liberty of the children of God." Does any man quarrel with this ? Does he desire to throw off the restraint of the law which alone is true freedom ? So with the educator when he studies the science of his art, there to find law.
Let me assure you, however, that it is a com-
28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
plete misconception to suppose that, when you have studied either methods or their science, viz. psychology and the larger philosophy, you are constantly thinking of these things and squaring your mode of instruction with them. A practical engineer, when he is doing his daily task, is not revolving in his mind the whole theory of mechanics ; a chemist who is engaged on a par- ticular investigation is not reproducing in imagi- nation the whole theory of chemistry from hour to hour ; a clergyman, when he is addressing an audience hungry for spiritual food, is not conning in his inner consciousness a whole scheme of scientific theology. So with the teacher : methods and philosophy he has studied and is always thinking about, more or less, with the larger thought of cultivated men everywhere ; but, in his converse with his pupils, these things do not obtrude themselves. They have already shaped his mind to his work at the first ; they have given the primary impulse, and from day to day are giving body and substance to an enthusiasm which would be otherwise thin and effervescent ; they have deepened his professional mind and enriched it : the fruits of his study are alone in evidence The higher aim, the deepened conviction, the
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 29
richer professional endowment, are all there. A large and virile conception of his work ennobles both the work and himself. Philosophy is not a stagnant pool, but a well of living water. Even of methods we say with confidence that a teacher who has wisely studied them is the master of methods ; methods are not his master. But if there be a real danger here in the sphere of method or rule, I provide the remedy when I say, " Study philosophy, which gives rational freedom." As to the teacher who trusts to the externalities of tradition or to the wilful indi- vidualism which he flatters himself is originality and genius, is not he a slave — the slave of past dead forms and of his own unreasoned opinions ? The student of method, going farther, and seeing his instruction-methods in the light of psychology, and his whole educational function in the light of philosophy, becomes objective and universal, thus entering into the whole kingdom of liberty. He is a servant, not a slave. He is an academic gentleman. He moves with an easy confidence in the discharge of his daily duties — a confidence which thought on the fundamental principles of an art always gives to the practical worker. He, last and least of all men, is a mere walking
30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
formula. It is among the unthinking and opinion- ative that you must look for the formulated man — the scholastic pedant, the prig, and the dominie.
Before I conclude, I should like, by way of illus- tration, to take an example of one or two philoso- phic utterances in the sphere of moral education of a very simple and obvious kind : " What we have to aim at is the happiness of each citizen, and happiness consists in a complete activity and practice of virtue." Again : " The soul consists of two parts — Reason in itself, and the lower nature which is capable of receiving the rule of Reason." From these pregnant words of Aristotle one could deduce a good deal of the moral philosophy of education. Does it not become the young teacher to read such utterances and to study what may help him to solve the problem which Aristotle little more than states ?
" Again," says Aristotle, " education should be regulated by the State for the ends of the State, and each citizen should understand that he is not his own master, but a part of the State." Large and complex educational questions, ethical and practical, are suggested here. Are they not ques- tions for the educational profession ? To what
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 31
extent now do you consciously educate your boys to be " part of the State " ? What, I ask you, is the modern meaning, the social significance, of this phrase ? Does it not concern educators, above all other men, to think about these things ? Let me assure you that, without the habit of thinking on the philosophy of education, your thought on this particular question will be worthless — utterly worthless.
Now, does it not become the secondary teachers of the country to put themselves in evidence on this subject, and to claim for the philosophy of education a place in the academic system, so that all young teachers should have in the universities an opportunity (at least) of studying the science of their future life-work? So long ago as 1865 Mark Pattison wrote, " The first condition of a good teacher is that he shall be a teacher and nothing else, that he shall be trained as a teacher and not brought up to serve other professions." Is the teacher's profession the only one that has no principles, no history — in brief, no scientific basis, no method resting on science? If this be truly so, why do teachers talk, and sometimes grumble, about status and social position ? They have no claim to either one or the other. What
32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
value has the teaching of a little Latin and less Greek in the estimate of sensible men ? These subjects ought to be regarded as merely the raw material whereby the teacher discharges his educa- tional and ethical functions ; and for these functions he has to be trained. A teacher is a practical philosopher, or he is of little account.
Why is it, then, that the great body of secondary schoolmasters are yet unconvinced that a part of their necessary preparation for their work should be the study of philosophy — at least in so far as it bears on education ? I have already indicated why, and I will say it more explicitly now. It is because they have not yet risen to the level of their work ; they have not yet discovered their true function in the community. They insist, in accordance with a bad tradition, on regarding themselves simply as teachers of this or that subject — English or Mathematics or Latin, as the case may be. For this a totally different idea of their function has to be substituted and firmly grasped, and that idea is that they are not teachers of subjects primarily at all, but teachers of minds by means of subjects. When they fully realize that they teach minds, they will at once see that they are bound to study Mind.
AND THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 33
I end as I began — Sound theory is sound practice become conscious of itself; and every schoolmaster who would also be an educator should be conscious of the art he practises, so that he who is not born or only, it may be, half- born, may, through that scientific consciousness, be made, and that he who is born may have his consciousness enlightened and fortified.
In conclusion, it is scarcely necessary to remind an audience such as this, that the art of the teacher, properly understood as the art of the educator, is a great art, the greatest and most difficult of all arts — mind fashioning mind. Is there any art like it — any which can so attract the finer spirits among men, any which can so engage in its service that enthusiasm which fills the moral atmosphere to- day ? Is there any, the wise practice of which brings such personal reward, strengthening from day to day the spirit of him who gives and him who takes, laying up for a man a store of peaceful days when, the struggle of life being past, he comes to cast the inevitable retrospect — not wholly satis- factory, I imagine, for even the best of us ? Surely an art so great, so full of great issues for the individual and for society, is worth thinking about
D
34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
— is worth thinking about in its principles, its rules, its history, its aims — in brief, its philosophy. After all, what is it I demand ? Merely that the young teacher, before he has hardened down, should read, observe, and think about his vocation, and that all universities should provide the necessary aid in this as in other matters — merely this and no more. Plato thought the subject worth thinking about. So did Aristotle, and Cato, and Quin- tilian, and Comenius, and Kant, and Locke, and Rousseau, and Herbart. Do not leave education as a philosophy to the philosophers alone. Claim it as, in a special sense, your subject, at once the inspirer of your lives and the science of your art.
II.
THEORY AND THE CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS— UNIVERSI- TIES—REGISTRATION OF TEACH- ERS AND DECENTRALIZATION.1
THERE are many aspects of education which might fitly enough form the subject of a presi- dential address on an occasion such as this. I have been guided in my selection of the topics of this brief discourse by the prominence or the urgency of questions now before the educational world, and still sub judice.
The curriculum of the secondary schools of the future is one of these questions. A multitude of subjects pressing for recognition in the school, and a multitude of deadening and oppressive examina- tions following close upon the teaching, — these are
1 Presidential Address to the Annual Conference of the Teachers' Guild, held in Manchester, 1891.
€e CF THE tVERSITT i
36 THEORY AND THE
the evils (as we all know) under which secondary education groans in these days. It becomes us to consider whether, under modern conditions, we can secure for teachers and scholars some of the concentration which was the chief merit of the schools of former times.
No sound educationalist is an encyclopaedist. On the other hand, the educationalist who holds that we can prepare the youth of the country for the work of the twentieth century by means of a little of one dead tongue and less of another, must be accounted an anachronism. We cannot allow boys and girls of eighteen years of age to pass out of our hands as educated, who are ignorant of the national and world life which they inherit, or of the living nature in the midst of which they are placed, and which they have to bend to their purposes, And yet we cannot teach every- thing, and we are perplexed in presence of the numerous subjects — each with a certain complete- ness in itself — that now claim admission to the school curriculum. Which, and how many, of the branches into which human knowledge has ramified shall we select for the secondary school, and how far shall we carry the study of each, are questions which not only Great Britain, but the
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 37
whole civilized world, may be said to be now considering.
It is a fair question, Has the science, or theory of education, any light to throw on our darkness, or are we to grope on empirically, hastily taking up, and as hastily dropping, first one subject and then another, in obedience to the demands of an uninstructed and exacting public, and fitting those we select into the time-table as if it were a piece of mosaic ? I think that theory may help us at least to a solution of our difficulties, if it cannot wholly solve them. For,
First of all, the theory of education requires us to transfer our attention entirely from subjects of instruction to the minds we are instructing. This alone is a great point gained. When we take up this attitude to education, we at once see, for example, wherein lies the truth and falsity of encyclopaedist!!. Encyclopaedist!! is unquestion- ably a characteristic of a completely educated mind, but not encyclopaedists in respect of the material of acquired knowledge, but what I would call encyclopaedism of faculty. That is to say, a complete education should bring the mind into intelligent contact with representative studies, and representative methods of investigating truth.
38 THEORY AND THE
Encyclopsedism, in the sense of universality of interest, and an universality of f acuity > would seem to be within our reach.
Thus far there is guidance ; but just at this point theory again interposes, and asks the ques- tion, " To what, and for what, ultimate end all this stimulating to wide intellectual interests and this laboured training of faculty ? " The question will be answered by theory thus : In order that each man may do efficiently his special work as a member of society ; but even this, only in subor- dination to a supreme end — the fulfilment of the ethical purpose of human life in him. The ethical end governs all (and by ethical I mean the moral and religious).
It comes to this, then, that it is general power or faculty we have to give, and with this, the sub- stance and motive forces of ethical living. A leaving-examination, looked at from this point of view, consists of two questions, which have to be addressed to every pupil : —
I. The first is one question, but it has a two- fold aspect. I ask a youth, on this or that point, which may be suggested by the occasions of life, What is your own thought, and what is your own utterance? The thought may be confused, and
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 39
will certainly be inadequate, but we are content to find that he thinks ; the utterance may be halt- ing and unformed, but we are content to find that he strives, with fair success, to utter the thought in his own language — to express him- self. But a satisfactory pass, even in this two- fold examination, is a subordinate matter, for it guarantees intellect only ; for the final aim has yet to be considered — that for which all know.- ledge and all faculty exists — life, living, doing. There is still, therefore, a second, and, as I have already indicated, a supreme and governing ques- tion.
2. And that question is, What are the motive forces of all your activity ; what ideas inspire you ; what ideal of life do you strive after, so that the best and highest in you may be made manifest in all your manifold relations to your fellow-men? In short, what are you, and what can you do ?
The answer which the youth of eighteen, whose secondary course is completed, can give to these two questions, is the measure of his education. From this " leaving-examination " no one can ulti- mately escape, and if we teachers dwelt more than we do on this final testing of our work, we might,
40 THEORY AND THE
perhaps, be guided to the solution of many minor difficulties, and regard with careless equanimity much that now assumes unduly large proportions in our thoughts.
Now, it is clear to me that if the " supreme end " be that which alone gives significance and vitality to all our daily work as schoolmasters, we must find, as our central subject of instruction, one which, while giving general discipline to the mental powers, with a view to mental power, will, at every step, help forward the growth of the ethical in our pupils. What is this subject ? At this point, it may appear that theory deserts us, and idiosyn- crasies, prejudices, custom, take its place. I have discussed the question elsewhere, and I shall accordingly be excused for merely dogmatically asserting here that the answer which theory gives is that the central subject we are in search of is Language — language as a discipline, and language as a liberal course of reading in literature, history, and what else you please. By language, too, I mean the vernacular ; but, inasmuch as we require to study a foreign tongue to give meaning to our own, I add Latin, as being at once our own tongue, and in contrast with it. Whatever else we may teach, all, it seems to me, must grow
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 41
round this central and magistral subject — lan- guage, that is to say, English and Latin.
I would remark that it is as a Will that man differs from animals ; will is the root of his dis- tinctive being ; and the essence of educational discipline lies in the energizing of this will ; and though it is true that there is a certain discipline in all purposed activity, even writing and carpen- tering, the discipline is not equally good in all. In these manual occupations, the successive efforts are a repetition of acts loosely connected, calling into activity a minimum of mental effort and only a very restricted range of intelligence ; but in the thorough understanding of language there is a purposed act of reason, which in its series of efforts is an organic process and demands a sustained continuity of mind. In translating and retrans- lating from a foreign tongue, for example, the difficulties are not to be overcome unless percep- tion, discrimination, judgment, association, imagi- nation, reasoning, inductive and deductive, are all brought into conscious (if not self-conscious) activity ; all these, through their organic connec- tion, creating a synthetic result, viz. the translation we are given to do. It will be said that on similar psychological grounds mathematics is a most
42 THEORY AND THE
effective mental discipline. This is true so far ; and because it is true so far, mathematics (within certain limits, at least) must always be assured a place in our curriculum second to the leading subject of all. I say second, because the mental operation involved in understanding the proof of a theorem, or in working a rider, is confined within narrow grooves, and is concerned with necessary matter. The imagination which enters into the solution of a geometrical problem is confined within strict limits. Its wings are clipped. In language, on the contrary, we have to deal with the subtle, variable, and uncertain relations that exist among words and between words and thoughts.
If to these disciplinary claims of language we add the moral and aesthetic elements in language- instruction, and the wide range, literary and historical, which an adequate course of such instruc- tion must take, we shall find it to be fruitful above all other studies, singly or in the aggregate, in building up the fabric of mind, and giving, at the same time, that general power over all the materials of experience, which it is one object of the educa- tion of the human mind to give. I assume, how- ever, that at least one foreign tongue is taught, as it is only through a foreign medium that we
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 43
become self-conscious of our own tongue as an instrument of thought, and thus take a great step towards thought becoming conscious of itself — the highest of all disciplines : and I name Latin as the most effective and fruitful for an English- speaking boy.
Theory, as I understand it, thus largely confirms the practice of the past as regards subjects of instruction, though interpreting them in a different way and extending their significance and range. Through language so interpreted, the boy comes face to face with the great realities of human life, which explain his own experience and furnish ideals of conduct. This may be said without de- preciating the claims of physical science. While sensible of the many advantages conferred by school science, I doubt if it can give true mental discipline before the age of sixteen or seventeen. Prior to that age, by supremely good teaching, concrete and experimental, a certain discipline, and a certain amount of knowledge, can be given with fair success. This, experience has placed beyond question. But the true discipline of intellect begins only when science is taught as a reinvestigation and verification of the scientific results already ascertained ; and I am disposed to
44 THEORY AND THE
think, from all I have yet observed, that only in the department of botany is this possible before the age which I have mentioned. All before this age is of the nature of object-lessons — as such extremely valuable, and indeed necessary, but restricted in their educative effect. In any case, physical science, at best, has to do with inductions and deductions from sense alone, and accordingly it can never, by any possibility, have, within the secondary school period, the educative effect of language ;* nor can it, even in its higher form, as an exercise in investigation, give that general power over all possible material that may be pre- sented to the mind to deal with in the complexities of human life. The student of science is always exercising his intelligence on a limited part of human experience, while the student of language, in the extended sense, which is the true sense (any other sense being the invention of pedants), may be said to be always in contact with the whole. The humanities alone truly educate a human being. " Train and perfect," says Professor Seeley,1 " the gift of speech, unfold all that is in it, and you train at the same time the power of thought and the power of intellectual sympathy." On the real
1 Page 222 of " Lectures and Essays."
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 45
as distinguished from the formal ^side, literature, as Mark Pattison says, "is the moral contempla- tion of the universe;" — "the criticism of life," according to Matthew Arnold.
The large results of science are, no doubt, educative in a high degree. The biological and physical conceptions which present the universe as a great system of law, exalt the intelligence and stir the emotions. At this stage science is, in fact, humanized ; man himself becomes greater as he rises to the apprehension of the ratio mundi which is revealed to him, and is thereby stimulated to live as in the constant presence of the Divine order. But the educative influence of science in this large sense is not operative at the school stage ; and in so far as preparation may be made for it during the school period, it will not be made in the chemical laboratory, but rather in that larger and more comprehensive semi-scientific explanation of things which is known in scholastic phrase as nature-knowledge.
This, then, is the answer which theory, I think gives to the question, " What shall I teach ? " First of all, and always, language (the vernacular, Latin, and what else there may be time for) — but this in a large and liberal sense ; secondly, a
46 THEORY AND THE
certain amount of pure mathematics, and, in sub- ordination to both, the elements of physical science in so far as it is contributory to intelligent nature- knowledge, giving prominence always, for reasons intellectual and practical which I have not time to enter into now, to physical and industrial geography. Such a course of instruction, well organized, would suffice to foster in our boys both moral and intellectual interests, an,d to secure a 1 certain encyclopaedism of faculty. iThe introduc- tion of any other subjects is to be determined by predisposition and natural aptitude, or, it may be, by considerations of utility alone — whether the subject be Greek, French, German, advanced mathematics, or physical science in its more exact and laboratory sense. I do not think it matters much which of these are selected, if our curriculum has already assured the education of the minds of our pupils. I would beseech masters to recognize the fact that the results of all our secondary in- struction are lamentable, and that education in English in the broad sense in which I have used that term and in realistic subjects, may throw a ray of light on the dreary path of many a school- boy, and form him for the work of the world. Theory certainly proclaims, with no uncertain
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 47
voice, that from fourteen to eighteen the rational faculties can be exercised without difficulty on the concrete, but, except in the case of bright boys, positively declines to have anything to do with the abstract, whether in language, mathe- matics, or science. Fair-seeming progress may be made in the abstract, but it is not genuine, but only rote progress. Schoolmasters are, neverthe- less, right in calling on boys in secondary schools to study the formal and abstract, but they are wrong when they fail to provide for the growth of the average intellect which can never leave the sphere of the concrete.
I take it for granted that music and drawingV,- enter into the curriculum of every secondary school. These subjects, properly organized from the lowest to the highest class, are not only easy, but refresh- ing. The tired brain is not further weaned by them if properly taught All art in education stands in the same relation to mental labour as play does to bodily labour. Both alike weary, but the fatigue is pleasing and recreative.
I have been speaking of secondary education within its own limits, and without reference to the primary instruction on which it rests, or the higher
48 THEORY AND THE
education of the universities to which it leads. The great mass of our middle-class youth have, about the age of eighteen at latest, to think of the business of life, and secondary education must not be sacrificed to the demands of the few who pro- pose to continue their studies at universities. In like manner, primary education has its own limits, and must have a certain completeness in itself, without too much regard to the secondary instruc- tion which only a select few can ever aspire to. In the theory of education, the harmonizing of the claims of each of the three stages of education in their relation to the other stages ought not to be a very difficult problem. The question which still agitates the minds of headmasters — that of com- pulsory " little-go " Greek on entering the univer- sity— has, it seems to me, been discussed too much from the university point of view, and too little regard has been had to the chief question at issue, viz. what is our scheme of secondary education to include, as within itself rounded and complete ? The dropping of Greek from the previous examina- tions in our universities will certainly drive Greek out of a great many secondary schools. No good end can be served by affecting to ignore or to minimize this certain consequence. And it is in
Aft^
' -HF
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 49
full recognition of the effect of the proposed change on the teaching of the schools that I hold that it ought to disappear from the " Previous " as a com- pulsory subject. The result will certainly be that the number learning Greek throughout the country will be lessened, but it does not at all follow that the quantity of Greek as measured by quality will be diminished. There can be no doubt that the contrary will be the result. The total wealth will be not less than now, but it will be in fewer pockets. We shall have honest Greek when we do have it, not the pretence of it. The moral effect of this will be good — no small gain. When I spoke a few minutes ago of the ethical end of all education, I did not mean to suggest that by sentiment and moralizing we should en- deavour after this end. Ethical substance we must give, and to feeling and sentiment, accordingly, we must appeal, though this more sparingly than during the primary period ; but the schoolmaster will best discharge his ethical function, during the secondary period of instruction, by securing a willing and loyal obedience to the law of the school, and by demanding exactness and thorough- ness in all the work done. Now, there is a laxity and superficiality in the Greek of our secondary
E
50 THEORY AND THE
schools (and not in the Greek alone) which is demoralizing. If we are to teach Greek, let it be Greek. A mere pass in "little-go" Greek is evidence neither of discipline nor of knowledge, but rather of inexact teaching and wasted years. Indeed, if we confine our attention to the amount of Greek necessary for a " pass " in the " Previous," it would be a mere superstition to advocate its retention. But, even assuming that the university requirement were practically what in theory it is intended to be, the increased stringency of the university demand would now, and for the future, go far to empty our universities. The discipline involved in such an amount of knowledge would doubtless be valuable ; but should we be justified in holding that an equally valuable discipline indi- cative of " ripeness " for university study could not be obtained through other instruments than Greek ? I think not. For, remember, Greek is, within the narrow restrictions of any possible " Previous " ex- amination, a question solely of linguistic discipline. Did it include acquaintance with Greek literature, Greek aesthetic forms, and Greek life, the time could not be better employed in the interests of the edu- cation of the human mind. But within the narrow restrictions we assume, this is not in any substantial
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 51
sense practicable. We must look facts in the face, and not make a pretence of doing what is beyond the powers of all save here and there a singularly apt pupil under a singularly able master. If Greek were to be compulsory in every graduation course and enter into every final examination, the question would be an altogether different one, viz. " Is a competent knowledge of the Greek language, literature, and history, to be the sine qua non of an university degree for all? Are the acquirements demanded, for example, in the excellent literae humaniores school at Oxford alone to qualify for graduation ? " I can well imagine many men maintaining the affirmative answer to this ques- tion, and finding a great deal to say for themselves. Btit if, as a matter of fact, such a three years' university training in Greek has already been given up as a qualification for a degree, the citadel of the position has, it seems to me, been surrendered. It is too late to discuss the question : the logic of events has settled it. From the point of view of secondary education regarded as in itself rounded and complete, this is the answer we would give to the question, " Should ' little-go ' Greek be retained ? " 1
1 Some of the defenders of "little-go" Greek have recently
52 THEORY AND 7 HE
What shall we say from the university point of view ? Is not the answer to this question involved in another, "What do our universities exist for?" The period of recipience which characterizes the primary period of education has been passed, suc- ceeded by the period of activity, of the ripening intelligence, and the educated youth at eighteen or nineteen now goes to an university. Why ? Not, surely, to repeat the work of the school, which, to matured powers, can be merely a vexation and harassment, and in connection with which no true growth is now possible for any mind worth edu- cating. For the mind at this stage demands not facts, not judgments, not even reasonings ; it demands realities, not forms, and a rationalizing of knowledge in its principles. Judgments and reasonings about things, accompanied by much premature self-assertion, have characterized the secondary period ; but now things are to be re- studied in their historical and scientific founda- tions : and in the course of that study, and as the result of it^ manly humility and conscious ignorance are to take the place, we hope, of the dogmatic assumptions and self-confidence of adolescence.
taken to posing as superior persons, and expressing contempt for their opponents in strong language. This is a sure indication that their cause is lost.
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 53
This is the true conception of an university, so far as the education of the human mind is con- cerned. It does not exist to teach young men to read Greek and Latin with more or less difficulty, which is the work of the school. We cannot draw a hard-and-fast line, but, speaking generally, secondary instruction is engaged with the instru- ments of knowledge, university instruction with knowledge and science.
If the university function is essentially a scientific function, it surely follows that a youth of eighteen or nineteen has, strictly speaking, no business there at all if he does not come equipped with those instruments which secondary instruction is supposed to give — language and mathematics. If he does not possess what may be called a working knowledge of these instruments, his terms should not qualify for graduation until he has remedied his defects.
While it is necessary to emphasize the function of the university as an organized body of scientific investigators and teachers in every important department of learning, it must be admitted that this is an entirely modern conception. I am not aware of its having been propounded by any one before Bacon. Comenius tried to popularize the
54 THEORY AND THE
idea in his "Pansophy." The universities arose in the twelfth century for professional purposes. They were essentially advanced schools for the training of aspirants to the professions ; and this relation of the universities to society and its needs can never be allowed to fall out of sight. The Arts instruction was secondary instruction crowned with a Bachelorship. We have had this early conception of an university bequeathed to us, and have had to effect a compromise between it and the modern idea. The compromise takes this form, that we endeavour to train each aspirant in the rational foundations and fundamental concep- tions of his own future profession, and not merely in its practice. Thus, the purely scientific pur- pose of an university and its practical aims are, as far as possible, reconciled. Each graduate then goes forth from the university to disseminate among the people, and the whole people, not any favoured portion, what he has acquired. He does this as a teacher of the young — a schoolmaster ; as a teacher of the adult — a minister of the Church ; as a lawyer, to settle the differences which arise in the transaction of business, and to regulate on principles of law and liberty the penal arm of society, so that where it strikes, it may strike the
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 55
guilty only ; as a medicus, to heal the diseases of the body of society ; as an engineer or as a journalist. Thus, however we look at it, it is impossible too highly to estimate the functions of our universities in the life of the nation, and to be too jealous of their academic honour ; on the other hand, it is equally impossible to maintain, with any show of reason, that no man shall be allowed to study in any of these higher departments, unless he first passes an examination in Greek which the examiner himself despises.
The continued study of the instruments of knowledge — languages and mathematics — is to be prosecuted at the universities, doubtless ; but only as science, by those who aim at being experts in them, or in so far as they necessarily enter into departmental study, e.g. Greek, in theology.
But it may be said, "If we make departmental and professional study, scientifically and histori- cally pursued, the chief characteristic of univer- sities, what, it may be said, will become of the liberal culture of which they have been supposed to be the homes ? " This is too large a question to be discussed in this address ; but it is manifest that those who seek the universities for liberal culture only — and the greater the number of these
56 THEORY AND THE
the better for the country — will find it there in ampler quantity than ever. They will, after passing a preliminary examination, select the subjects which interest them, and, under certain general restrictions, graduate in these. They have passed the age at which they can be forced into grooves without serious detriment to their mental growth. Free learning and free teaching must now govern. Men seem to forget that the universities are no longer entered by boys of fifteen or sixteen. And yet we have a vast amount of university energy expended in doing work for the degree which is school-work, and ought not to be recognized within an university at all, but provided for in some preparatory paedagogium.
When we try to estimate the true value of this contemporary question by the educational records of the past, as well as by educational theory, we are prepared, on historical as well as theoretical grounds, to assist at the death of "littlefgo" Greek without a tear, and to smile at the passionate advocacy of it by those who see in its abolition the destruction of the only barrier that stands between us and the inrush of a new tide of Gothic barbarism. The mediaeval universities,
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 57
during three or four centuries, concentrated in themselves all learning, and were characterized by a brilliant activity, with no Greek and very bad Latin. The supreme questions which directly concern human life and destiny had, after a thousand years of discussion, to all seeming been finally settled by the authority of the Church. The philosophic speculation of Aristotle (but this not for a time accessible in the original tongue) then asserted itself, and dogmatism had to be reconstructed on a philosophical basis. The flash of thought produced by the contact of Greek speculation, imperfectly known, with the Christian dogmatic system, lighted up afresh the mind of Europe. Thus it was that all speculation as to the nature of mind and of things gathered round the theological schools. Theology had to make terms with Greek thought, and the effort to do so found its most brilliant exponent in the daring Abelard, and finally its consummation in the organizing mind of St. Thomas. In other parts of Europe, the old Roman law did for thought on the practical and civil side what Greek tradition accomplished on the theoretical. So in medicine, it was undoubtedly the Greek tradition which was seized on by the active naturalistic minds of the
53 THEORY AND THE
wonderful twelfth century. But, during all this period, and indeed till about three hundred and fifty years ago, Greek did not enter into the educational system, and literature, save as repre- sented by a few Latin classics, was practically non-existent, spite of the literary advocacy of men like John of Salisbury. The characteristic of the Renaissance of the fifteenth century was undoubtedly the revival of Greek, but it was Greek as literature, aided by the new birth of poetry in Italy, South France, and England. In our own country, it is worthy of notice, our greatest literature owed little to Greece, except through a Latin and Italian medium and English trans- lations, though doubtless largely influenced by the growing interest in Greek.
When we pass from materials of education in secondary schools to methods, there is happily no essential difference of opinion among those who have given serious thought to the subject. So important is method, that we may almost say that the " what " in instruction is, up to the university period at least, of less importance than the "how." It is the possession of method directed to a certain understood end which makes the
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 59
difference between a mere scholar and a teacher, and gives to the latter, accordingly, his claim to be a member of a profession. It is the recogni- tion of this fact that gives us all an interest in the Teachers' Registration Bill, promoted by the guild, and this last session referred to a select Committee of the House of Commons. Teachers should have no interest in any Bill which fails to make this professional qualification vital, nor could such a Bill be of much practical value. Indeed, I do not use too strong language when I say that such a Bill would merely block the way. Better to wait than to accept a Bill which does not contain as its central principle that the pro- fession of schoolmaster is a profession at all only in so far as teachers are professionally trained..
And let it be understood that by training for the work of a schoolmaster we do not mean merely seeing and imitating the work done by others in practising schools — not even if this is supple- mented by the study of manuals of method. This, in the medical profession, would find its parallel in a system of education which confined the student to the wards of a hospital, and supplied him with a copy of a manual of medical treatment. We mean all this ; but, concurrently with it, we
60 THEORY AND THE
demand a course of instruction in the philosophy of education, that is to say, its aim and processes, and a study of the history of education as part of the history of the world. Without the inspiration of philosophy and the liberalizing influence of history, we may have technical method and methods erected into a kind of superstition, adopted in their external forms when emptied of the living spirit, and so producing a new type of pedant. Already we may see in some German and American books a disposition to exaggerate the details of method under the influence of the pedantic formalism of the Herbartian school, and to forget that they are at best only an attempt to interpret the process by which a mind that does not know, gradually comes to know ; and, further, to interpret the relation sub- sisting between the teaching and the learning mind during that process. This interpretation has, no doubt, to be formulated, but the formulas are themselves mere externalities indicating where the living and inner truth is to be found. Method may be so used as to obstruct the free intercourse of mind with mind, which is the highest kind of teaching. A living teacher cannot always be thinking of the rules of method.
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 61
Now, a specialist training college will not accom- plish the kind of training we desiderate. Education, as a subject of thought, has come within the scope of the scientific spirit of this century, and has to be scientifically and historically handled. Accordingly, it demands for itself a place in our universities, whose specific scientific function in the domain of universal knowledge I have already pointed out. It is at Oxford and Cambridge and Victoria Universities, as well as in the universities of Scotland, that we desire to see this fact recognized. In Germany, at a large number of the university seats, the subject is expounded in this philosophic and historical spirit, and during the last twelve years some seven or eight Chairs of Education have been instituted in America. An Education Council, such as the Select Com- mittee on Registration proposes, would give a powerful impulse to the whole university move- ment for the professional training of teachers — a movement which probably concerns the life of the nation as much as any now within the sphere of practical politics. Machinery is all very well, but the central motor force is always the man who teaches.
It is just possible that to demand for the
€£SE LIBR4fl7>^ CP THE \
IVERSITYJ OF ^^^
62 THEORY AND THE
present, less might be the quickest way to our end. Were it enacted, for example, that none save pro- fessionally trained teachers were eligible to State- aided and endowed schools, members of Parliament might see some sort of principle in this. For en- dowed schools have their endowments guaranteed, and supervised, if not regulated, by the State, and, so far, are subject to it in a sense similar to that in which schools receiving annual aid are subject. As every young man preparing to be a teacher in the universities would have in view one or other of these classes of schools, he would take care that he was qualified, and the object of the guild might thus be indirectly attained. I see that Mr. Roby, who is entitled to speak with authority, gives attention to this point. At the same time, we must not forget that the virtual institution of a system of compulsory free elementary education will probably give rise in this country, as it has done in the United States and Canada, to a great increase in the number of private adventure schools — the class of school from which the Education Act of 1870 was to deliver the nation — and that such a restricted Act as I suggest would not in that event be adequate. Leaving out for a time tutors and governesses (as Mr. Roby, I understand, also
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 63
proposes), it would surely not be beyond the wit of a parliamentary draughtsman to define a school and a schoolmaster, and to make registration com- pulsory on all. I see that the Select Committee include elementary teachers, but I would include only those who have been trained.
It is not generally understood how far we lag behind other countries in the recognition of the need for professional training. In Germany, for example, the State examination for many years required that every young man desirous to be a secondary teacher should spend a year of proba- tion in some recognized school, and pass a State examination in the principles and methods of his art. The law has recently been made even more stringent. In a letter from an old friend, Dr. Wiese, formerly the working head of the German secondary system, he says: "No one can open a school in Germany without having satisfied the authorities of his fitness." And as to secondary and gymnasium schools, he writes that the qualification for these has frequently of late been under the consideration of the Prussian Administration, and it is now ordered that the candidates for the office of teacher shall spend two years in certain gymnasia selected for this special purpose, under the guidance of the
64 THEORY AND THE
director there, to learn their art from those who know it, and to observe what is done. This during the first year: the second year, called the Probejahr, they have themselves to teach, and show what they have learned. The State examination follows. We should be content with much less than this in Great Britain, and thankful for it. Our colonies, too, are going ahead of us. In the Departmental Regulations of Ontario I find that the course of training for high-school masters is laid down in detail. It includes a course of instruction in the " History, Psychology, and Methods of Education," and a further course of practical training at any specially recognized training institute. The cur- riculum generally is good, but as much too brief as I think the Prussian is too long.
Had there been time, I should have liked to ask your attention to what appears to me to demand much more consideration than it has yet received — I mean the decentralization of educational administration. There is a period in the historical development of every nation, and we may say this, too, of every department of the State activity, when progress can be made only by the action of a strong centralized authority. But there also comes a
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 65
time when the vigour of mind and consciousness of freedom which local administration fosters, has itself to be an object of concern to the central power. Decentralization of educational adminis- tration is now happily made possible by the institu- tion of County Councils. The apportionment of a share of Customs taxation to each county, and the destination of it for technical instruction, is itself a beginning of a much more wholesome state of things than that which has hitherto prevailed. The fear is that the Science and Art Department may try to get its dead hand in, and succeed in virtually controlling the action of Councils. The result would be an extension of the capitation-grant principle of paying for education, and the increase of the evil of book-cram. With the grants now in the hands of Councils, it seems to me that much of the South Kensington work is superseded, and that the authorities should devote themselves to the training of science teachers, and the institution of central technical colleges.
Decentralization seems to me to be more impor- tant in school-work than in any other State depart- ment. A Minister of Education, aided by councils of experts in England, Scotland, and Wales, would doubtless be required, but his main duty
F
66 THEORY AND THE
would be (like that of the Chanties Commission in so far as I understand its constitutional powers) to correlate the educational activity of the country, collect information, and see to the carrying out of certain general rules, without interfering with local details and so weakening local responsibility. By a decentralization of education, remember, we educate the adult. Man is a political animal, as was said of old ; and it is only in so far as he feels himself to be a self-conscious force in the life of his country that he is free, and receives for himself the full benefit of being the member of a State. In administering education for the benefit of the young generation, he is himself receiving education. Only by decentralization, moreover, can the State utilize the undiscovered genius of localities for civic work, and give it a career. Mistakes will doubtless be made, but their effects will be restricted in their area and soon corrected ; whereas the mistake of a supreme central authority hurts the whole nation. Witness the Revised Code, which yielded only to a twenty-seven years' siege. So long did it take the Greeks, because of the difficulty of convincing an individual Trojan bureaucrat.
And not only so : the very purpose of the educa- tion movement, in the large sense, will be defeated
CURRICULUM OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 67
unless we have decentralization. It is a very narrow view of any social movement which measures it by its direct effects. Take the Christian Church, by which I mean all who profess Christ. What an enormous organization it is ! How many genuine Christians are there — that is to say, how many are reached by the actual teachings of the Churches in such a way as to form their convictions and govern their daily lives ? Not a large propor- tion ; and yet the influence of the idea of Christianity and the Church is immeasurable — an influence effective even among the ignorant and the hostile. So with other ideas, social and political. The idea of national education is a modern idea — a great and a potent one, which is as yet only on its way to fulfilment. It does not find its realization in the beggarly result attained in our schools — the power to read a cheap reading-book and to work decimal fractions. The national conscience and the national ideal of life are stimulated by the mere idea, the general interest in the intellectual and moral well-being of our fellow-citizens receives an impulse from it, and in a thousand ways it is operative in the city and the rural village ; so complex is the life of an organized society. A highly centralized system, always necessary to
68 THEORY AND THE CURRICULUM.
start with, blocks the way after a time. It is by devolving educational duties on citizens themselves that the idea of education is fostered, and that it can alone enter thoroughly into the life of the nation and fulfil its work as a new element in civilization.
€&SE OP THE [VERSITT
III.
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
You have asked for a short address on the preparation of the Sunday school teacher for his work. To handle such a subject adequately would involve me in a treatise in which the principles and methods of education were applied to the special work of Sunday school teaching. As it is impossible to enter on this larger task in a single lecture, I will content myself with a few obvious remarks on the qualification and preparation of the teacher and the method of instruction which he should follow. This I shall do without ob- truding the principles which in my own mind govern the criticisms and suggestions that I venture to offer.
The qualification and preparation of a Sunday school teacher can differ only in certain details from the preparation and qualification of teachers
70 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
generally. What, then, are the primary qualifica- tions to be demanded of all teachers ? They are these :—
1. That they must know thoroughly what they propose to teach.
2. That they shall have a strong desire — a desire of the heart — to teach what they know.
3. That they shall have a living, kindly, and sympathetic interest in the minds which they teach.
4. That in teaching they shall think of those minds first, of their subject second, and of them- selves and their own cleverness not at all.
How can a Sunday school teacher achieve the last three of these qualifications for himself? Not, I think, by any external machinery, or at second hand. They are the unconsciously deve- loped fruit of nature and general education. They come from the vital growth of the educational spirit in himself, and an instinctive humane interest in young minds. Men in whom these charac- teristics are active may doubtless be so trained as to grow into all these qualifications ; but, un- happily, Sunday school teachers have neither time nor opportunity for such training. Accordingly, we must just hope that none take to the work of
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 71
Sunday school teaching except those who feel that they already have the essential prerequisites ; in short, as we say of the clergy, that none follow the vocation save those who are " called " to it by the Spirit of God. This is their prime qualifica- tion. " Soul is kindled only by soul," says Carlyle. When Christ tells St. Peter to feed His sheep, He prefaces it by the question, " Lovest thou Me ? "
Having secured these " called " men and women, the next question is as to their preparation ; and this means their preparation to teach, to convey skilfully and effectively what they know, and, above all, what they feel, with a view to evoke in the young and unformed the spiritual life which they feel animating themselves. This is the question of all method in teaching or educating. It is really a difficult question, By what method or way shall the teacher best attain the end he proposes to himself? A teacher who has not a "way" is like a man who should undertake to pilot a ship to the mythical Islands of the Blessed, knowing only this, that the islands actually existed away out there somewhere in the West, but having no chart of the ocean and no knowledge of navigation. He is under the necessity of steering on the impulse of the moment. Such a man might
72 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
have all the personal qualifications for his post, but he has none of ^.^professional preparation and fitness. He would stand in need of instruction in the method or way of finding his course. By some happy inspiration he might be going straight for his haven in the morning, and again undoing all his work in the evening, by retracing his course over the pathless ocean, and perhaps finding him- self even further from his destination than when he started. So with the teacher. His impulse in educating may keep him all right, for example, during the first part of a lesson, and in the second part he may undo everything — nay, like the mariner in search of the Islands of the Blessed, he may more than undo his work ; he may be further off than ever from his goal.
If this be true of all teaching, it is specially true of religious teaching. The goal of the teacher is the religious restilt in the mind of the pupil ; and this result is life, not knowledge. Without this religious result — the true spiritual gain for the pupil — the facts of doctrine, which may be acquired after a rote fashion, are of little value.
In truth, the most difficult and delicate of all subjects of instruction is religion, if what we aim at is the spiritual life of faith, hope, and love
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 73
sustained by ethical ideals. A man who can give a really good religious lesson can give a successful lesson on any subject which he knows. And this because the subtleties and delicacies of spiritual life demand more subtle and delicate handling than any ordinary school subject. As trainers in religion, we are dealing with the sentiments and emotions of childhood, and the smallest untoward incident may rouse in our pupils sentiments and emotions the very opposite of those we desire to call into activity.
To come, then, more closely to the practical question, How is a Sunday school teacher, already " qualified " in all personal respects, to be prepared in the matter of method — to be taught to take the right way ? There can be only one answer : In the same way as teachers of public schools are prepared ; that is to say, by the study of method and by means of a normal school. A normal school has a twofold signification. It is a school conducted according to a certain norm or type, and it is a school which is, or ought to be, a norm or type for others of a like kind. In these normal schools the most important practical part of the training consists of criticism lessons ; that is to
74 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
say, lessons given to a class by a teacher in train- ing, criticized by his fellow-students and supervised by a master of method, who sums up, pointing out merits and defects.
Now, it is vain to hope that the thousands of Sunday school teachers throughout the country should go through such a course ; but the head (and this, perhaps, should be a woman) ought certainly, in my opinion, to go through it, and be competent to guide the efforts of the teachers under her. Why, indeed, should not all clergymen study the principles and methods of education as part of a course of pastoral theology ? Is not the command to them, " Feed My lambs," as well as " Feed My sheep " ? Will the lambs ever grow into sheep worth feeding, if they themselves are not first well fed and nurtured ? So trained, they could guide and train their assistants. This may be regarded as a novel suggestion ; but its novelty will wear off.
With this brief and somewhat perfunctory answer to the questions of qualification and pre- paration, I will now pass on to method, confining myself to such suggestions as would naturally enter into a course of instruction addressed to Sunday school teachers. These I will not present
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 75
to you didactically, as they flow from the general principles governing all education, but rather in a familiar way, as they might occur to any one thinking of the characteristics and peculiarities of the Sunday school as compared with other schools, and of the kind of teaching supposed to be given in it.
I. The characteristics and peculiarities of the Sunday school.
(i) The Sunday school is a voluntary school. The use of the word "school" as applied to the Sunday school is unfortunate. Children have been in the habit of associating what is disagree- able with the word "school," viz. lessons, restraint, and often punishment. Fortunately, schools are now much more attractive than they used to be ; the children are happier in them, and it is to be hoped that gradually the associations with the word will in time become modified, if not wholly reversed.
The great majority of parents, not to speak of the law, force children to the week-day school, but the Sunday school is essentially of a voluntary character. Children, then, must be induced to come — especially that class of children who most need it. The school is voluntary, the teachers
76 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
are voluntary, and the attendance is virtually voluntary.
Accordingly, the Sunday school should be as little like an ordinary school as possible. It must be a very pleasant place — a place to which children will like to go. It must attract.
There must be no preparation of lessons, no pressure of any kind, no imposed tasks at all in the strict sense.
There must be no place-taking, no competition, no prizes. Can you imagine Christ trying to get children to listen to the truths of God by pitting one child against another and offering gaudy book- premiums? There is no natural indisposition in child or man to hear of religious things. To say so would be a blasphemy. It is the times and ways of putting them that are in fault.
There must be no irritability on the part of the teacher, and we are not to ascribe to wickedness what has often a very trivial cause. Children are not wicked wholly ; they are restless, inattentive, frivolous. If you exaggerate the evil of their conduct, and exhibit irritability or anger, you fail.
Lessons should be short and easy and pleasant. There should be no punishment of any kind what-
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 77
soever, save the natural disapprobation of the teacher mildly expressed.
(2) Sunday school teaching is a substitute for parental teaching. It is an unhappy neces- sity. Religious teaching is best given at home ; and it can be better given at the school where all other teaching is given than at a school set apart for the purpose. Happily there is as yet no exclusion of religious instruction from the day- school, but it has been found to be inadequate. Hence Sunday schools to supplement or supersede the work of the parents. That parents do not do their duty is deeply to be lamented. It was to fathers and mothers that the words in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy were addressed : " Hear, O Israel : The Lord our God is one Lord : and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart : and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." On parents, then, was laid the religious upbringing of the young. But, I repeat, they do not do their duty^ It will be a
UNIVERSITY
78 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
happy day for this country, and the world, when parents accept and discharge this responsibility. Sunday schools will then be superfluous, and we shall not regret their disappearance.
If this be truly said, then the relation of the Sunday school teacher to the young should be parental. Kindness and affection must be con- spicuous in all his personal relations to the children whom he wishes to impress. The method of instruc- tion should be not by hard question and answer, but conversational, like the method which a wise and kindly parent instinctively adopts. The teaching must be persuasive, not dogmatic and dictatorial. In fact, I am disposed to think that the Sunday school should take largely the form of a children's service ; that is to say, reading a passage of the New Testament, conversing about it, singing, short prayers specially made for children and so often repeated that they learn them by heart — all wound up by a very brief and simple address from the chief teacher on the lesson of the day. As much music as possible should be introduced.
II. Let us consider now whether we can get any hints for the Sunday school from the nature of the instruction to be given.
It is religious instruction.
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 79
It is also moral instruction, for moral instruction is religion in life — religion used.
And yet the Sunday school does not contem- plate moral instruction as either its starting-point or its final aim. It is religion with which it starts and religion with which it ends. It is religious instruction, I say ; but this does not mean that it is religious knowledge. This comes, in due time, of course ; but your aim is to call forth and build up religious sentiment — the religious frame of mind. Some people talk of "teaching religion," as if it were an isolated subject. This is fatal. Your business is to lead into the religious life ; and for this the minimum of acquired knowledge in the child is best. The introduction to the religious life should not be too closely associated with clergymen and catechisms and creeds ; for this helps to make the whole subject appear as somehow alien to ordinary life — something to be added on to life and not in life. Formularies come back to the memory in after-days, it is said. True in some cases, but in how many cases have they driven the young away from the religious life by misrepresenting it, or by associating it with what was hard to understand and painful to learn ! Educational method regards dogmas as weeds which
8o METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
grow up and choke the fine grain of God as it begins to grow naturally in every simple child-heart.
Next, it is the Christian religion we have to teach ; that is to say, it is the religion of Christ— His life, His teaching. This you have to explain and to instil. You have to explain, I say. Here is another qualification of the teacher suggested, for you come to the child as yourself a pupil of Christ, in order to make plain the teaching of the common Master, with the humility of a pupil who knows well that he has much to learn. You are, at best, a poor substitute for Christ the Teacher. Your attitude, accordingly, is that of one learning with the children, not dominating over them with a sheaf of dogma inside which lies concealed the whip of coercion — whether that whip be the whip of a stern voice, a clouded brow, or scorn of the wicked weakness or weak wickedness of the child-mind. You bring an evangel, good news. How should you present good news ? Again, you are the instiller. This word means putting in drop by drop. You are content to-day to drop into the open and receptive minds of the young one living drop of the water of life, and another day, another.
I repeat, it is the religion of Christ that you have to explain and instil — not religion about
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 81
Christ It is Christ you teach, and not St. Augus- tine ; no, not even St. Paul. Dogma upon dogma you may pile up and pile in, but yet not one ray of light may touch the spirit of the child, no soft constraining voice be found which will evoke a response in his heart. Christian dogma in all its detail is a philosophic scheme of the world, of human life and destiny, of death, and of God. All this belongs to a more advanced period of intellectual development, and may form the sub- ject of exposition in Bible classes when the pupils are old enough to understand it, and either to receive it or reject it, as untrue to Christ or as true to Him. If they are Christians, what matters the more or less of dogma here or hereafter ?
Where, now, do you find this religion of Christ ? In the Gospels. There you have Christ Himself speaking and acting. It is a story, it is history, and that the young must be taught.
I would then say — let the children read some short Life of Christ, written as much as possible in Scripture language, so that they may get a whole view of His career on earth. Let this be read several times, and form the subject of friendly conversation. Then select a Gospel and go steadily through it, dwelling on its meaning and its teach-
82 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
ing. The children read and the teacher reads in his turn, and then they begin and converse — the children being asked for the expression of their opinions. You pause at a particularly fine saying (ask the children also which verse they like best), and dwell on it till it has been learned by heart. Never mind though the lesson stops there. It is the impression or truth of the day — the drop you wish to drop in. When the passage has been read and talked about, finish by reading it yourself quietly and gravely, while the children, with shut books, listen. After a sacred song or hymn, the chief teacher, as I have already suggested, should speak of the lesson of the day in simple language ; and then, with a blessing, the school (if we may call it so) ends.
The teacher must always prepare himself for this his chief and central act of teaching. He must study privately the Gospel, with the help of such books as the " Cambridge " or " Oxford Bible for Schools," for he must be able to explain. He must never give a lesson without studying it first. He must himself dwell on the spiritual significance of the passage till he sees the truth vividly, and till it touches his emotions. It is only then that he can possibly convey the teaching, the truth, and
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 83
the emotion to others ; and if he cannot do this, he had better give up the work.
As to the substance of religion to be taught, that must be restricted in quantity, but fine in quality. Some things are more important than others. Religion, too, is more important than theology. You wish to make children religious above everything else. The rest can wait. Through the story you will be able to teach all that is needed. Strange it would be if you could not.
I think it is too apt to be forgotten, especially by the half-educated, that we can separate religion from theology. Religion renders theology pos- sible. Whatever form religion takes, it already implies, doubtless, a certain amount of theology, but not a scheme of theology. By theology I mean the dogmatic and formulated statement of the nature of God, of human relations to God and the unseen world, and of God's relations to the life and destiny of man. As dogmatic theology in this large sense must consist of high and abstract generalizations, it follows that if there be any significance at all in educational method, we who are regarding the question of religious education only within certain limits of age, must hold that abstract dogma is not only useless, but hurtful, if
84 METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER.
prematurely presented to the growing intelligence. This we may hold in the ultimate interest of theological dogma itself. What we are mainly concerned with is religion and those views and ideals of life which are essential to, or constitute, the only religion worthy of the name — the Chris- tian. Now analyze your own religious conscious- ness, as disencumbered of a dogmatic theological scheme of things, and see what it is.
1. I should say it is the recognition of a causal Spirit, eternal and infinite, by Whom all things exist, the unity which lives in all and on Whom all things, including the spirit of man, are dependent. This is the purely intellectual or rational basis of religion ; and if of religion, then also of theology. This recognition of a causal Spirit, and the feeling of our dependence on it, lies at the foundation of the religious consciousness.
2. The second characteristic of living religion in the mind of man is an infinite aspiration after union with the spiritual ideas of goodness and truth. The idea is the perfection of a thing. The aspiration for union with spiritual perfection is the ideal element in religion ; it is that which raises ordinary morality into the light of God. For in God all ideas centre, and our ever unsatisfied
METHOD AND THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER. 85
longing after union with ideas, is thus an aspira- tion towards the infinite and eternal Being, and union with Him.
3. The third element in the religious conscious- ness is a distinctively Christian element : for it is the feeling or emotion of sonship as given through Christ, of God as Father of our spirits calling forth our love, and as an infinite Father calling forth our reverence and worship.
These ideas, these religious conceptions, fill our minds. They give consolation and rest to the weary, and at the same time they govern action by giving it both ground and aim. These are the characteristics of the matured religious conscious- ness. The teacher's business is not formally to teach even these primary truths in their fulness to the young, but rather to lay a foundation for them, and, meanwhile, quietly to assume them. If he is to do this part of his task well, he has to find those simple elements in the larger conceptions which minds as yet immature can absorb, and which will yield the fruit of a complete religious life some day.
The child, then, must learn first that God is a Spirit Who made and sustains all things, and is everywhere. Secondly, that God is perfect in goodness and wisdom, and that we are to grow
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like Him. Third, that God is a Father Who loves and reveals Himself to man in Christ. Thus the feelings of reverence, love, and sonship may be evoked.
These things are best taught by simply assuming them, and by constant reference to them. They are as plain as that two and two make four. It is natural to the human mind to accept such uni- versal truths, in their simple concrete form, even in childhood ; and as the boy grows older he cannot help holding by them if they have been properly presented. Bishop Butler (of the "Analogy") points out* that " training up children is a very different thing from merely teaching them some truths necessary to be known or believed." This is true of dogma generally ; but the universal truths which lie at the basis of the spiritual life so work in the mind of childhood that they them- selves silently train. At the same time, we are not exempt from the rules of method in teaching even these primary truths, and especially in evoking the feelings of reverence, worship, and love.
Reverence : — Words uttered by you and learned by the children will accomplish little ; the children must be led to do what is reverent, and what is loving and true, if they are to grow up reverent,
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loving, and truthful. Children are creatures of feeling mainly. Reverence with a certain awe can be taught, not by the bare statement of facts, but only by stirring the feelings of reverence and worship. Not only in children, but in men, this feeling or emotion is, probably, the most vital part of religion: It brings a great deal else in its train. Reverence and worship of an infinite God- Father humbles, and at the same time exalts, man to the highest of which he is capable ; and this elevated state of being cannot but influence character and conduct. Reverence is, in truth, the key of the whole position, especially in the case of the young. When this is wanting, the child may know his Gospels and catechisms, yet remain irreligious. You may make an eminent Pharisee in this way, but not a living Christian. By presenting God as a Father, and not as a Judge, you call forth the finer emotions ; and by means of habitual prayer you give that expression to the emotions you have evoked which makes them permanent. But the prayers should be simple, intelligible, and above all, in their manner, reverential. To this simple attitude of reverence and worship you can easily bring children, for it is a natural and needful expression of their inner life.
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Christ Himself tells us this, for He says, " Unless ye become as little children," etc. This is what He meant. Simplicity and reverence are of the essence of the religious spirit, and these are charac- teristic of childhood.
Love :• — As with reverence so with love. The method of procedure throughout is not by precep- tive inculcation, for children can grasp nothing save as concrete. They must love each other ; that is to say, they must do kindnesses if they are to know what love means, and they must see it operating in you the teacher and others. Hence the beauty of the Christian religion as compared with all others. It is already, by its original mode of presentation, adapted to the best methods of instruction as these are recognized by theoretical writers, if only you will let it alone, and let it do its own work. By means of the story of the life of Christ, naively given, you evoke love. The fundamental religious feelings grow round a person who loves, and the ideal of a loving life.
Read the Gospels, then, converse in a friendly way about them, encourage the children to talk. Utter with them short childlike prayers, and sing simple hymns. Let the whole atmosphere be pervaded by worship ; let everything be pleasing,
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consoling, and appealing to the natural ethical and aesthetic instincts, so that as the children leave the room they may feel that they have been enjoying something, — enjoying, in some small degree, the " sabbath of the spirit." It is an impression you desire to make, a feeling you desire to arouse, a human need you wish to supply. You are thereby indirectly building up, strong, firm, and stable, the universal primary truths ; and this is the main thing. Do not harshly break into the pleasant half- hour with hard dogmas. At a more advanced stage only, can you safely do this.
But I would go further and say, Do not ask children even of fourteen years of age to learn a catechism by heart. Go over it, if you think this necessary, or the best part of it, and see that they understand it. Get the substance of it from them in their own words. The learning "by heart " of the very words is a curious superstition, and most certainly despiritualizes.
In fine, take Christ's way, not the theologian's way ; and Christ's way is the way of story and parable— in short, of life. Christ, the great Teacher, is the Model you are to follow in teach- ing the young, and the adult too, for that matter. If He had wished it to be otherwise, I presume
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He would have put it otherwise. His life contains the whole Christian creed.
Need I say in conclusion, in these days of a milder and more humane Christianity, that if you are to evoke love as well as reverence, do not let the introduction to the temple of religion be a gateway to the terrors of hell, but rather a triumphal arch leading to the joys of heaven ; not a path to a God Who watches and condemns, but rather to a God Who loves, forgives, and helps ; nor to God as an eavesdropper, but as our Friend all through ? If it be presented as anything else than this, what an insult it is to the Founder of our faith ! what a travesty of His teaching !
If you have brought up a child in such a way that the feeling of dependence and the sentiments of reverence and love centre in the idea of God and the person of Christ, if he has been so accustomed to receive your teachings as the natural and needful food of his spiritual nature that they are to him truly good news — an evangel — what more do you want ? This, so far as we can see, would have satisfied Christ ; why, then, should bishop, priest, or presbyter seek for more? Assuredly, if there be anything in educational method at all, this is all that is possible to the teacher.
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The school must restrict itself to broad and universal truths, and the sentiments which underlie them, if it is to accomplish anything for the spiritual life ; and it may be that, owing to this necessity, the school is destined one day to teach the-Church those things that are "generally neces- sary to salvation."
It would be ignorant and foolish to underrate the importance of bringing up the young to be sharers in a religious scheme of thought which embodies a system of life, and to be members of a Christian communion which professes it ; but these things are outside the religious life in so far as it is vital. These externalities it is always easy to enforce, and hence the temptation to dwell on them to the extinction of the spiritual life in the young altogether. They will come in due time as the external habit of the inner life, — that external form with which man naturally seeks to endue all his social activities.
What, now, shall we say of morality in its rela- tion to religion? It is a fact — a strange one, but yet true — that a man may be religious without being moral. That is to say, he may live on the elevated plane of a being who contemplates God as the
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living Power of the universe, as Object of worship and as the completion in his own Infinite Being of all ideals, and yet he may act immorally. It is only when he becomes alive to the fact that God truly exists only in so far as He makes Himself manifest in the moral order and is Source of all moral law, that he finds that immorality is a breach with God Himself and that life in God is a mere dream — a poetic imagination — except in so far as he himself also makes manifest God in his own aims and conduct. Morality is religion in use, religion in truth, religion alive. Of vast importance, then, in purely moral teaching it is, that you should constantly present morality and virtue and all the graces as from God and to God. Thus the moral teaching is deepened and strengthened by its alliance with the Infinite, and a child no less than a man hesitates before he, by his acts, separates himself from the living God. Thus the whole power of the loftiest spiritual conceptions of the human mind are brought to the sanction and support of virtue and duty ; and these in their turn give substance to the spiritual. To do the will of God to each other, this is alone to make manifest God, to glorify Him. Except in so far as this is so, God is nothing to us and we
is
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are nothing to God. Christ Himself is the eternal Example of this life, and if we would follow this Example, we have to be continually going about doing good. The moral and religious are inter- woven. Morality without religion can never sus- tain a nation, because it can never sustain itself.
In moral teaching, do not impose on the child by telling him that duty is easy. Let him under- stand, on the contrary, that it is difficult : that it is not in this sense that Christ's yoke is easy and His burden light. It is a striving; and it is the effort of to-day that secures pardon for the failure f yesterday. By granting the difficulty and the need of effort you engage the will and personality of the child in his own moral discipline, and make him feel that a fault, if repented of, does not break the bond with God, but may, on the contrary, strengthen it.
The method of moral instruction generally is here, again, the method of the Gospels, indirect, historical and parabolical, beginning with the simple and advancing to the more abstract. It should, as much as possible, arise naturally out of the incidents of human life and the ordinary rela- tions of children, and not be imposed as precepts with the austere frown of authority. What an
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educational Nemesis on the extrusion of religion from schools in France is the Moral Text-book !
Generally, I should not like it to be supposed that some formulation of a religious system and of duty should not be taught. All I mean is, that premature instruction in formula is forbidden by sound method. Sound method commands that we train to the general and abstract by means of the concrete and particular. The broad and universal truths of religion are not formulas ; they meet a want in every human soul, and, if simply assumed, they are accepted as a matter of course by the young and grow with their growth. Preoccupation of the young mind with dogma has failed to make Christendom Christian. Let us try another and a better way.
IV. MONTAIGNE, THE RATIONALIST.1
MONTAIGNE, the essayist and sceptic, continues, after a lapse of three hundred years, to speak to us with all the freshness of a contemporary. "We converse with Montaigne," says Hallam, " or rather hear him talk : it is almost impossible to read his essays without thinking that he speaks to us : we see his cheerful brow, his sparkling eye, his negligent but gentlemanly demeanour : we picture him in his armchair, with his few books round the room, and Plutarch on the table. As a man of letters, who is also in the best sense a man of the world, he stands alone. He is original and unique as a thinker, and at the same time a type of a class which he had done much to create. Though the class he represents may not be a large one, he yet gives expression to a way of estimating life which is a passing mood
1 The first edition of the Essays appeared in Bordeaux in 1580.
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of all thoughtful minds. He thus leads a large constituency — all the larger that he makes no tyrannical demands, and warns the reader not to labour after even him. Few writers say so many wise things as Montaigne does, and no one appears so little solicitous about convincing others that his sayings are wise. His intellectual philosophy is essentially sophistical and sceptical, his morality conventional, and his moral philosophy epicurean." We are not disposed, however, to allow to Mon- taigne, and such easy-going sceptics as he, the superiority to limitations that they claim. It is all very well to proclaim the impossibility of rinding absolute truth, and to luxuriate in a cultured in- difference, but at the foundation of such talk there in truth lies a philosophical conviction as positive as that of the most ardent zealot. The conviction is that, doomed as man is to nescience, the happi- ness of each individual is for himself the only solid pursuit, and is to be at all hazards cherished. The standard of happiness will doubtless vary with the idiosyncrasies and circumstances of each man, but must always, with cultivated men, embrace equa- bility of mind, balance of judgment, a kindly disposition to all with whom they are brought in contact, an indisposition to exertion for any pur-
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pose whatsoever as leading to certain disturbance and almost as certain disappointment, a horror of a " Cause," and a strict regard to the comforts of the animal economy generally. Intellectual scepti- cism is itself, in truth, an implicit dogmatism, and in the field of moral action it is epicurean dog- matism. No man, in truth, holds more tightly to a positive philosophy of life than Montaigne. Doubtless the attitude of inquiry, the qtie sgais-je ? gives a breadth and elasticity of mind and promotes a geniality of nature that have their charms, and are genuine objects of desire to most men. They are, however, the true possession only of those who are not " too sure " of anything. A steady sus- tained conviction that there is nothing admitting of conviction runs through Montaigne's life and writings, and he is in respect of this as positive as his neighbours. No man can build his house on shifting sand. Montaigne may in words defy us to find him desperately in earnest, but he fails : for he never doubts his doubts, and he never loses his grip of his ethical standard such .as it is. So far at least he is in sober earnest.
We should like sometimes to find this arch- philosopher of practical life-wisdom in earnest about other things than indifference, and we
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naturally seek for this quality of earnestness in his views of religion and politics — subjects which call forth the passions of men more than any other. But notwithstanding all that has been said and written on these points, I think we shall find that his whole mental attitude was such as .to forbid definite conclusions even on those vital subjects. His Apology for Sebonde does not throw so much light on his religious beliefs as we should desire. If readers are disappointed in their expectations here, they have themselves to blame, for they search for something which his philosophy has beforehand told them not to expect. The fact seems to be that in religion he was strictly conven- tional, and in politics he was equally conventional. "For Heaven's sake," he would say, "don't disturb the status quo ; things are bad enough, I grant, but in seeking to make them better you will pro- bably make them worse. Let us go on from day to day, quietly meeting little difficulties as they arise, and making the best both of the good and of the bad. The practical guidance of life, in the interests of a universal bonhommie — that is our business."
If we prosecute our inquiry after the "earnest" side of Montaigne's character, we shall find it
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perhaps most conspicuous in his genuine desire to amend the condition of the poor, and in his views on education. It is the latter with which we have to do here ; but of both characteristics I would say that they were the fruit of his positive philosophy of negation. A happy, useful (provided usefulness did not call for too much exertion), practically wise life was his summum bonum, and it was this aim that unconsciously determined the substance of his educational theory. In considering, then, his teaching, we must keep Montaigne's theory of life before our minds. For education, as distinct from instruction, is a subject on which no man can possibly write without being more or less con- sciously controlled in all his utterances by his philosophy of man and of the meaning of human life.
So much is necessary for the proper under- standing of Montaigne on education. But more than this is needed for the proper placing of him in the series of educational writers. We have to understand his historical relations and the cir- cumstances of his life and time, of which receptive men like Montaigne are in a special sense the product and reflection.
Luther died when Montaigne was thirteen years
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old. It was during the latter period of Luther's life that the Humanistic movement among the leaders of the thought of Europe began to tell, as all great philosophic and political movements inevitably do, sooner or later, tell, upon the edu- cation of youth. The reformation of religion was itself only part of the larger Humanistic move- ment. For Humanism was essentially a rebellion against words and logical forms in the interest of the realities of life and thought. An intellectual movement of this kind could not fail to make itself felt in education as well as in the domain of religious rites and formularies, for it was truly a philosophical movement, and philosophy ultimately determines all such things. Up to the period of university life, and even beyond it, education con- sisted in the acquisition of Latin words and rules about Latin, and this, as the boy grew, received the addition of logic with all its scholastic subtle- ties, and such physics as abridgments of Aristotle could supply. Prior to Montaigne's school-days, the intellectual life of the schoolboy was, as may be supposed, very wretched ; but those who survived it, and continued to devote themselves to grammar, rhetoric, and logic, certainly acquired an amount of discipline which could not fail to sharpen their
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wits. Intensity and subtlety of thought were the natural outcome of the educational system, but accompanied with a restricted range of view and a belief in arid terms and phrases. Luther's educational activity was directed to aid the Humanists in reviving in the school a regard for substance as opposed to form. Pure Latinity, the study of the substance of the great Roman writers, and of rhetoric and logic by the perusal of those great products of literary genius out of which the rules of rhetoric and logic were them- selves generalized, began to take the place of mere words and of barbarous Latinity. The typical schoolmaster of this period was John Sturm, the rector of the High School of Strasbourg, whose course of instruction, severe and mainly linguistic, was yet such as to give genuine culture to all those who were capable of culture. Sturm died in 1589. Already the Humanistic movement in schools had been represented in England by Dean Colet, who died in 1519, and by Roger Ascham, who died in 1 568, and was a correspondent of Sturm. Erasmus, the friend of Colet, died in 1536. Montaigne's position is thus clearly defined. Born in 1533, and dying in 1592, he was in the midst of the full tide of the reaction against, what Milton calls, "the
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scholastic grossness of barbarous ages," "ragged notions and babblements ; " and also, curiously enough, in the full tide of the Catholic reaction against Protestantism. Bacon's influence had not yet begun.
Montaigne's father, a gentleman of private estate in the province of Guienne, had notions of his own as to the education of the young Michel, and whatever we may think of them, the son thought highly of his father's method, and all through life retained the profoundest affection and respect for " the best father that ever was." He used to ride in his father's old military cloak, " because," he said, " when I have that on, I seem to wrap myself up in my father." His education, under the paternal roof, was directed morally to the cultivation in him of an intense love of truthfulness and of kindliness of feeling and manners towards the poor and dependent. So solicitous was the father to surround his child with every beneficent influ- ence, that he had him roused every morning by the sound of music, that there might be no violent disturbance of his nervous system. As regards intellectual education, the main object even with Humanists was Latin (and a little Greek), because Latin represented humane letters. Montaigne
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himself tells us the novel arrangements his father made for initiating him in this language without straining his powers. He gave him a Latin-speaking tutor, and surrounded him with Latin conversation, so that when he was six years old he spoke Latin fluently — much better, indeed, than he could speak his own tongue. The whole household, indeed, became so Latin- ized that the domestics, and even the peasants on his father's property, began to use Latin words.
Greek was taught by the invention of a game, but it would appear without much success, for Montaigne's knowledge of Greek literature was never much more than he could obtain through a Latin medium.
He was only six years old when he was sent to the College of Guienne at Bordeaux, an institution of mark, in which the Humanistic culture must have reigned supreme, if we may judge from the names of the teachers — William Guerente the Aristotelian, Muretus the classical Latinist and rhetorician, and our own George Buchanan the historian and Latin poet.1 At college he lost his familiar acquaintance with colloquial Latin, but
1 Here also the father of Casaubon received his instruction.
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largely extended his private reading in classical authors ; this, however, only by a breach of school rules in which he was wisely encouraged by his masters. George Buchanan seems to have been his private tutor as well as his schoolmaster, and it says much for Buchanan that he connived at young Montaigne's wide reading. At the early age of thirteen he had accomplished his college course, and although he afterwards affected to study law, it cannot be said that he had any special instruction outside this professional read- ing after he was a boy. Had it not been for the wise connivance of his masters, which enabled him to make acquaintance with the literature of Rome, he would have "brought away from college nothing but a hatred of books, as almost all our young gentlemen do." His father was satisfied with the result of his school-life, "for the chief things he expected from the endeavour of those to whom he had delivered me for education was affability of manners and good humour." Mon- taigne was, to speak the truth, idle and desultory, and he would be the first to admit it. He also complains that he had " a slothful wit that would go no faster than it was led, a languishing inven- tion and an incredible defect of memory, so that
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it is no wonder," he adds, " if from these nothing considerable could be extracted." He was incap- able of sustained effort and of taking much trouble about anything. Nor could it be said that, with all the leisure at his command, he was ever master of any subject : he had " only nibbled," he him- self says, "on the outward crust of sciences, and had a little snatch of everything and nothing of the whole." Even of Latin he was not a master, and Scaliger speaks with contempt of his scholar- ship ; to which, however, Montaigne never made any claim. His innumerable classical allusions and quotations were, however, the genuine fruit of his own reading ; but he read not as a grammarian or philosopher, but as a man of letters. " I make no doubt," he says, with his usual na'fvete, " that I oft happen to speak of things that are much better and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. . . . Whoever will take me tripping in my ignorance will not in any way displease me ; for I should be very unwilling to become responsible to another for my writings, who am not so to myself nor satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be found : there is nothing I so little profess." Again, " I could wish to have
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a more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy it so dear as it will cost. My design is to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the remainder of my life. There is nothing that I will cudgel my brains about ; no, not knowledge of what price soever. ... I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading, and after a charge or two I give them over. . . . Con- tinuation and a too obstinate endeavour darken, stupefy, and tire my judgment."
The moral result was more satisfactory. Mon- taigne's disposition was naturally kindly, and its kindliness was further fostered by his father's affectionate upbringing. If ever there was a man distinguished for that "sweet reasonableness" of which we have heard not a little of late, that man was Montaigne. He had the light of culture and also its sweetness.
I have dwelt a little on Montaigne's own educa- tion and character, because they have to be taken into consideration along with the circumstances of his time, to which I have already alluded, in form- ing a true estimate of his educational opinions. The character of the man, also, is itself to be regarded as, to some extent at least, the fruit of his education, and retrospectively his father's
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method comes up for judgment according to the saying, " By their fruits ye shall know them." It is sufficiently clear that of discipline, intellectual or moral, Montaigne had received none, and that his nature was one that stood in some need of it. On the other hand, the love that his father bore him and the gentleness of his treatment unquestionably nurtured the ingenuous spirit of the son and gave him a freedom of judgment and a fearlessness of intelligence which are among Montaigne's principal charms. His mind was not at any time oppressed with too strong a burden of duty or warped by fear. He grew up into an open-eyed, gentle, bright-souled, and sweet-blooded man, with a sound practical judgment — a wise man, if not a learned one — capable of looking at every side of a question by turns and dallying with each.
But to follow the example of Montaigne's father would not always succeed. He had a man of jnius as his child and pupil, and all he did was jlicitously adapted to develop the boy's natural endowments. But the system pursued did not cure the pupil's manifest defects of character. Even his natural weakness of memory, so far from being remedied, was probably increased by the father's lax treatment. Perhaps all the better for the
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world, it may be said. In this particular case it was so ; but we have not young Montaignes to deal with. We have to discipline the intellectual and moral nature of the average boy if we would give energy of will, earnestness of purpose, power of application, and love of truth.
When Montaigne gives us his own views on the education of the young we find them to be very much a reflex of his own experience and character. Let us look at them for a little as they bear on the end of education, on the materials of instruc- tion,' on method, on intellectual and moral dis- cipline, and on the penalties whereby the work of the school is usually enforced.
If we were to put in the shortest form Mon- taigne's idea of the end of education, we should say that it is this : that a man be trained up to the use of his own reason and to virtue. " The trouble and expense of our fathers are directed only to furnish our heads with knowledge ; not a word of judgment and virtue." "A man," he says, "can never be wise save by his own wisdom." Might we not add, " A man can never be virtuous save by his own virtue " ? Again, " If the mind be not better disposed, by education, if the judgment be not better settled, I had much rather my
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scholar had spent his time at tennis, for at least his body would by that means be in better exercise and breath. Do but observe him when he comes back from school, after fifteen or sixteen years that he has been there : there is nothing so awkward and maladroit, so unfit for company and employment ; and all that you shall find he has got is, that his Latin and Greek have only made him a greater and more conceited coxcomb than when he went from home. He should bring back his soul replete with good literature, and he brings it only swelled and puffed up with vain and empty shreds and snatches of learning, and has really nothing more in him than he had before." The author of " Hudibras," when he wrote the following lines, gave expression to the impatience of both Montaigne and Milton : —
" No sooner are the organs of the brain Quick to receive and steadfast to retain Best knowledges, but all's laid out upon Retrieving of the curse of Babylon. ***** And he that is but able to express No sense in several languages, Will pass for learneder than he that's known To speak the strongest reason in his own. "
It is true that great men and vigorous natures overcome all this and are little the worse ; but
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" it is not enough that our education does not spoil us, it must alter us for the better." It is not enough to tie learning to the soul, but to work and incorporate them together; not to tincture the soul merely, but to give it a thorough and perfect dye ; and if it will not take colour and meliorate its imperfect state, it were, without question, better to let it alone." Knowledge will not "find a man eyes ; its business is to guide, govern, and direct his steps, provided he have sound feet and straight legs to go upon'' Neither Persia nor Sparta, I may interpose, made much account of mere knowledge, and Rome was at its greatest in virtue and vigour before schools were much thought of. To train to valour, honesty, prudence, wisdom, justice — these were the aims of the greatest nations. As Agesilaus said when asked " what boys should learn : " "Those things" (he said) "that they ought to do when they become men."
Montaigne, then, would keep in view the end of education from the very first ; and that end is to train to right reason and independent judgment, to moderation of mind, and to virtue. The culti- vated and capable man of affairs, fit to manage his own business well and discharge public duties wisely, is his educated man. This is the antique
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idea of education, and is very much what Quintilian has in view in the training of the " Good Orator." Philosophy is the highest fruit of education — not the philosophy which has logical formulae for its subject-matter, but philosophy which has virtue for its end. Virtue and philosophy are not "harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose," but the " enemies of melancholy and the friends of wisdom : they teach us how to know and make use of all good things, and how to part with them without concern." " Philosophy instructs us to live, and ^infancy has there its lessons as well as other ages." We are not, however, to force to virtue and to philosophy, but to attract by showing that they alone yield happiness, and by leading the pupil to recognize their essential beauty and charm. It may be that there are youths who are inaccessible to all that is noble and beautiful and ingenuous in thought and action, and turn aside by preference to common pleasures. What is to be done with these ? " Bind them 'prentice," says Montaigne, " in some good town to learn to make mince-pies, though they were the sons of dukes ; " and in a manuscript emendation he recommends that the masters should "strangle such youths if they can do it without witnesses ! "
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What now has Montaigne to say as to the materials of instruction whereby his end is to be attained ? " The most difficult and most important of all human arts is education," he says. The differences among children increase the difficulty ; but the promise of the future is with young children so uncertain that it is better, so far as the matter of instruction goes, to give to all the elements of knowledge alike. In any case, let us begin when they are young, when the clay is moist and soft. From the very first, the lessons of philosophy in their simple and practical form can be inculcated. In philosophy Montaigne includes all that we now understand by the religious and moral, and he maintains, and rightly maintains, that a child's mind is more open to all such lessons than to reading and writing. In selecting other materials of instruction, we must bear in mind that a child " owes but the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to discipline, and the rest to action. Let us, therefore, employ that time in necessary instruc- tion." At every stage that which constitutes the ultimate aim of education is to appear in some form or other — philosophy, namely, which forms the judgment and conduct. This has a hand in everything. " She is always in place, and is to
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be admitted to all sports and entertainments because of the sweetness of her conversation. By guiding conduct, as well as by discourse in season, this instruction is to be given and habits thus formed."
Montaigne is generally classed by educational writers as a realist — as the very founder of realism. Those who so write, write without understanding. Educational realism in our modern sense means the substitution of a knowledge of nature and of the practical work of after-life for the study of language and literature and all that we include in the Humanities. Those who advocate the latter are Humanists, and are the true descendants of the Humanists of the Renaissance. All educa- tionalists, however (except, perhaps, the majority of schoolmasters), are realists in this sense — Montaigne's sense — that they desire to see reality, tat is, to see the substance of fact and thought lominant in the education of youth. Montaigne's jalism opposed itself merely to verbalism, and he fought a good fight in this. But all this belongs the past, in the region of educational theory at least, whatever may be said of practice. We all now seek reality ; we are all opposed to •erbalism. The difference now consists in this,
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that one school of philosophy holds by language and literature as introducing youth to the highest and best realities — the realities of feeling and thought ; the other school holds by facts, the facts of nature and of man's relation to nature as yielding the highest and best realities for educa- tional purposes. If we may make a distinction between the real-Humanistic and the verbal- Humanistic, there can be no doubt that Montaigne belonged, like Quintilian, to the former class, and not to the utilitarian realists of whom Mr. Spencer and Professor Bain are the best contemporary types. Ethical training, then, in the broadest sense, is the main purpose of education according to Mon- taigne. Virtue and wisdom sum him up. The ordinary subjects of reading, writing, and casting accounts are, of course, to be taught. After this, whatever you teach, avoid words simply as words. So far Montaigne and Bacon agree. Most modern Humanists, however, would not go so far as Montaigne in their opposition to words. They see more in them. But we must bear in mind the state of things at the time Montaigne wrote. The Humanistic revival, which was a revival in the interest of realities, was also a revival of style ; and the tendency was to give prominence to art
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in language, and consequently to what may be called the formulas of style. This must always be the case : teachers in their daily work cannot consistently maintain from hour to hour the reality of any subject, be it language, literature, or science. The tendency inevitably is to fall back upon mechanical expedients, on the learning of rules, and on symbolism generally. It is so even with religion and morality. To the end of time, the task of the true teacher, who desires truly to educate, will be a struggle against the dominion of words and forms, and this quite irrespectively of the subjects he may choose to make the basis of his school-work. The virtues of the educational profession are all summed up in the words — life, reality ; but, like other virtues, they are not always easily practised.
" The world," says Montaigne, " is nothing but babble. . . . We are kept four or five years to learn nothing but words and to tack them together into clauses ; as many more to make exercises, and to divide a continued discourse into so many parts ; and other five years, at least, to learn suc- cinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle and intricate manner. Let us leave this to the learned professors ! " Words, grammar, style, and
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rhetoric constituted the main end of school and college instruction in those days, and this was supplemented by logic. Montaigne held that if a man had really anything to say he could manage to say it without all this training. " Let the pupil be well furnished with things " (i.e. thoughts), he says, "words will follow but too fast." People who pretend to have great thoughts which they cannot express are deceiving themselves ; they are not labouring to bring forth, but merely " licking the formless embryo " of their minds. If a man has any clear conceptions, he will express them well enough, though ignorant of "ablative, con- junctive, substantive, and grammar." " When things are once formed in the fancy, words offer themselves in muster." " Ipstz res verba rapiunt" says Cicero. " The fine flourishes of rhetoric serve only to amuse the vulgar, who are incapable of more solid and nutritive diet." The attack on mere rhetoric in the sense of style is keen and incisive, and has not a little truth in it. " Words are to serve and to follow a man's purpose." He quotes Plato as approving of fecundity of con- ception rather than of fertility of speech, and Zeno as dividing his pupils into two classes, the philologi, who loved things and reasonings, and
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logophili, who cared for nothing but words. " I am scandalized," he says, "that our whole life should be spent in nothing else."
What would he have, then, in addition to the usual elements of education, and the teaching of philosophy and of virtue ? He would have a man learn thoroughly his own language first, and then that of his neighbour, regarding Greek and Latin as ornamental merely. Little, however, did Mon- taigne think that instruction, even in our own language, could degenerate into what it has become in these latter days — verbalism of a kind much more offensive than any to be found in classical teaching. He could not foresee detailed analysis of sentences, and the dreary pedantry of the school grammars of our native tongue ! Pedagogic in- genuity had not yet invented such arid substitutes for the substance and living form of our mother- speech — arch-enemies of true Humanistic culture — the logical babblement of the primary school. Truly teachers have an "infinite capacity for sinking."
Vernacular and modern languages once secured, Montaigne would thereafter limit the course of study " to those things only where a true and real utility and advantage are to be expected and
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found. To teach a boy astronomy, for example, instead of what will make him wise and good, is absurd. After you have done this last, the pupil may be admitted to the elements of geometry, rhetoric, logic, and physics ; and then the science which his judgment most affects he will generally make his own." But we must above all teach him "what it is to know and what to be ignorant, what valour is, and temperance and justice ; the difference between ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence and liberty ; in brief, season his understanding with that which regulates his manners and his sense, that which teaches him to know himself, and how both well to die and well to live. Over and above this, let us make a selection of those subjects which directly and professedly serve for the instruction and use of life." But the direct instruction of the master is not all. " Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are otherwise of ourselves so stupid as to have our sight limited to the end of our own noses. One asking Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, 'of Athens/ but 'of the world.'" We must learn to measure ourselves aright : " whosoever shall represent to his fancy,
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as in a picture, that great image of our mother Nature portrayed in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face shall read her so universal and constant variety, whoever shall observe himself, and not only himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison with the whole, — that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate and grandeur." The great world is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do. History naturally suggests itself in this connection as a leading subject of study, for "thereby we converse with those great and heroic souls of former and better ages" — an empty and an idle study as commonly conducted, but of "inestimable fruit and value " when prosecuted with care and observation. Meanwhile the body is not to be forgotten, for, not to speak of the moral instruction which may be conveyed in connection with leaping and riding and wrestling, etc., we have to form the youth's outward fashion and mien at the same time as his mind : for " 'tis not a soul, 'tis not a body we are training only, but a man, and we ought not to divide him." And, as Plato says, " we are not to fashion one without the other, but make them
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draw together like two horses harnessed to a coach." " It is not enough to fortify the soul : you are also to make the sinews strong, for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the bodily members, and would have too hard a task to dis- charge two offices at once." Effeminacy in food or clothes or habits is also to be eschewed.
So much for the end of education according to Montaigne, and the materials of instruction whereby that end is to be attained. Montaigne's public school, if he had to construct one in these days, would certainly be somewhat after the fashion of a German Real school, as regards its external organization, and, so far, he is rightly named a realist. But the leading purpose of all his instruction would essentially be ethical and humanistic. The only respect in which his curri- culum would be realistic in the utilitarian meaning would be in the subordinate place assigned to Latin and Greek. So far is he from being a Realist in the modern sense, that he may be rather set down as an enemy of mere knowledge or informa- tion. " The cares and expense our parents are at in our education, point at nothing save to fill our heads with knowledge," he says, " but not a word of judgment or virtue. We toil and labour to
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stuff the memory, and in the mean time leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished — void."
It has to be noted that Montaigne, and after him Milton and Locke, think only of the education of the few and not of the many — of the sons of gentle- men only : but we may remark that, while the extent to which school instruction goes depends for the most part on the social position of the parent, the principles which regulate a prolonged education are equally operative in the briefest, if they are worth anything at all as principles.
Of equal importance with end and means is method. On this Montaigne has less to say, but what he says contains probably the germs of the most important principles of all method.
" 'Tis the custom of schoolmasters to be eternally thundering in their pupils' ears as if they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil is simply to repeat what the teacher has before said. I would have a tutor correct this error, and at the very first he should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste and relish things and of himself to choose and discern them, sometimes opening the way to him and sometimes
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making him break the ice himself; that is to say, I would not have him alone to invent and speak, but also hear his pupil invent and speak in his turn. Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak and then they spoke to them. The authority of those who teach is very often an impediment to those who desire to learn. It is good to make the pupil, like a young horse, trot before the master, that he may judge of his going and how much he, the master, is to abate of his own speed to accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of his pupil. For want of this due proportion we spoil all : to know how to adjust this and to keep within an exact and due measure is one of the hardest things I know ; and it is an effect of a judicious and well-tempered soul to know how to condescend to the boy's puerile movements and to govern and direct them. Those who, according to our common way of teaching, undertake with one and the same lesson and the same measure of direction to instruct several boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken in their method ; and at this rate it is no wonder if, in a multitude of scholars, there are not found above two or three who bring away any good account of their time and discipline." Here
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we have the foreshadowing of the organization of instruction and the classification of pupils. The importance of examination as a part of good method is also insisted on. " Let the master," he says, "not only examine him about the gram- matical construction of the bare words of the lesson, but about the sense and meaning of them, and let him judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory, but of his under- standing. Let him make the pupil put what he hath learned into a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to many subjects to see if he yet rightly comprehend it and have made it his own, taking instruction in his progress from the ' Insti- tutions of Plato.' " " Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion," he says, " to vomit up what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed down, and the stomach has not performed its office unless it have altered the form, and condition of what was committed to it to concoct." " What is the good of having the stomach full of meat if it do not nourish us ? " Here we have what used to be called the " Intellectual method " anticipated, the importance of assimilation enforced, and the dis- tinguishing characteristic of cram well exposed. Montaigne, further, in opposition to theories of
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education still current, advises that the pupil be made to sift and examine for himself, and to accept nothing on mere authority. " We can say, Cicero says thus : that these were the manners of Plato : that these, again, are the very words of Aristotle : but what do we say ourselves that is our own ? What do we do ? What do we judge ? A parrot would say as much."
So much for the method of intellectual instruc- tion. The method of moral teaching is summed up in the words that it should "insensibly in- sinuate " itself in so far as it is direct, as lessons do which are not set and formal, but suggested by time and place.
Of intellectual and moral discipline, in the true sense of that term, we find in Montaigne nothing. Nor does religion, in any true sense, enter into his scheme of education. And when we have said this we convict him of having left unwritten the two chief chapters in educational theory. These grave omissions the character and upbringing of the man would lead us to expect ; and we must not quarrel with what we have, because it falls short of all our demands.
With respect to discipline, in the vulgar school sense — that is to say, the means taken to force
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boys to do what their masters want them to do — Montaigne takes up a position substantially the same as that of the greater number of eminent writers on education. He is persuaded that, by following a good method, instruction will become pleasant, and that it will not be difficult to allure the pupil to both wisdom and virtue. " If you do not allure the appetite and affection," he says, "you make nothing but asses laden with books, and, by virtue of the lash, give them their pocket full of learning to keep ; whereas, to do well, you should not merely lodge it with them, but make them to espouse it." Physical punishment fails of its aim, and must fail by the nature of the case. If it be necessary at any time to punish a child, it should be done when we are calm. " No one," he says, "would hesitate to punish a judge with death who should have condemned a prisoner in a fit of passion. Why is it allowed any more to parents and masters to beat and strike children in their anger ? That is not correction : it is revenge. Chastisement stands to children in the place of medicine ; and should we endure a physician who was angry and violent with his patient ?" " Education," he says elsewhere, " should be carried on with a severe sweetness, quite con-
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trary to the practice of our pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle ways, do, in truth, present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence ! away with this compulsion ! than which nothing, I certainly believe, more dulls and degenerates a well-de- scended nature. If you would have the pupil alive to shame and chastisement, do not harden him to them. . . . The strict government of most of our colleges has even more displeased me ; and peradventure they might have erred less perni- ciously on the indulgent side. The school is the true house of correction of imprisoned youth. . . . Do but come in, when they are about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their pedagogues, drunk with fury, to make up the concert. A very pretty way this to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their book — with a furious countenance and a rod in hand ! A cursed and pernicious way of proceeding ! . . . How much more decent would it be to see their classes strewn with green leaves and fine flowers, than with the bloody stumps of birch and willows ! Were it left to my ordering, I would
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paint the school with the pictures of Joy and Gladness, Flora and the Graces, that where the profit of the pupils is, there might their pleasure also be."
We are all of Montaigne's opinion nowadays ; for he did not forbid punishment or coercion, in some form or other, when all other means failed. Extrema in extremis. He merely protested against the scholastic tyranny of his time — a tyranny still existing, and till lately prevalent. Slave-driver and schoolmaster were almost convertible terms. The school and the rod were ideas of inseparable association. Samuel Butler calls " whipping "
" Virtue's governess, Tutoress of arts and sciences."
"Oh ! ye " (says Byron) "who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, and Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions :
It mends the morals ; never mind the pain."
Thomas Hood, again, in looking back on his school-days, recalls chiefly his floggings ; and yet his pleasant humour can call up some regret : —
"Ay, though the very birch's smart Should mark those hours again, I'd kiss the rod, and be resigned Beneath the stroke, and even find Some sugar in the cane"
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The subject, however, is too serious for a jest. Before Montaigne's day, and long after it, the brutality of schoolmasters was such as to leave an almost indelible stain on the profession for all time. The whole body should make an annual pilgrimage of penitence for the sins of their pre- decessors. Schoolmasters are now beginning to understand that it is only by balanced temper and by sound method that they can dispense with physical motives, and out of the more or less contemptible " dominie " of the past, evolve the educator of the future. In no other way certainly can they make good their claim to that social posi- tion which they, often too morbidly, claim. A mere castigator pueroru m has no claim to anything save his wages, which should be the minimum for which he can be hired.
Montaigne's educational views were defective, certainly, though in substance and in their main purpose sound. The defects, as before observed, may be traced to his own upbringing and cha- racter. Everything with him is too easy. Wisdom's ways, alas ! are not always ways of pleasantness, nor are her paths always those of peace. The charming way of life of Montaigne is for a few fortunate souls only. We have to train our boys
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to work hard, to will vigorously, to be much in earnest, to have a high sense of duty. Such qualities do not come by wishing. By intellectual and moral discipline, by inducing him to do what may be disagreeable, by requiring obedience, by enforcement of law, we have to mould our British boy. For all this kind of work Montaigne has little to teach us; but we can learn much from him, and we part from the wise and kindly Frenchman with gratitude, and even affection.
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V. ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.1
"ROGER ASCHAM," says Thomas Fuller, "was born at Kirkby-weik in this County (Yorkshire) ; and bred in Saint John's Colledge in Cambridge, under Doctor Medcalfe, that good Governour, who, whet- stone-like, though dull in himself, by his encourage- ment, set an edge on most excellent wits in that foundation. Indeed Ascham came to Cambridge just at the dawning of Learning, and staid therein till the bright-day thereof, his own endeavours contributing much light thereunto. He was Oratour and Greek Professour in the University (places of some sympathy, which have often met in the same person) ; and in the beginning of the Raign of Queen Mary, within three days, wrote letters to fourty-seven severall Princes, whereof the meanest was a Cardinal He travailed into Germany, and there contracted familiarity with
1 The quotations which follow are from Beimel's quarto edition, 1761.
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John Sturmius and other learned men ; and, after his return, was a kind of teacher to the Lady Elizabeth, to whom (after she was Queen] he became her Secretary for her Latine letters.
" In a word, he was an honest man and a good shooter ; Archery (whereof he wrote a Book called ' To£o0iAoe ') being his onely exercise in his youth, which in his old age he exchanged for a worse pastime, neither so healthfull for his body, nor profitable for his purse, I mean Cock-fighting, and thereby (being neither greedy to get, nor carefull to keep money) he much impaired his estate.
" He had a facile and fluent Latine-style (not like those who, counting obscurity to be elegancy, weed out all the hard words they meet in Authors) : witness his ' Epistles,' which some say are the only Latine-ones extant of any English- man, and if so, the more the pity. What loads have we of Letters from Forraign Pens, as if no Author were compleat without those necessary appurtenances ! whilst surely our English-men write (though not so many) as good as any other Nation. In a word, his 'To^d^tXoc' is accounted a good Book for young men, his ' School-master ' for old men, his ' Epistles ' for all men, set out after his death, which happened Anno Domini 1568,
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December 30, in the 53rd year of his age ; and he was buried in Saint Sepulcher's in London."
The men who in England were not only most conspicuous, but also most eminent, as represen- tatives of the revival in all strictly educational matters, were Dean Colet, Cheke, and Roger Ascham, of whom Fuller thus quaintly writes. The first-named founded St. Paul's school, and, with the help of Lilly, made it a kind of normal school, as it were, for all England. They both shared the Humanism of their/riend Erasmus, but they possessed more Christian conviction and religious purpose than were possible to him. On the other hand, they were not dominated by the theological (as distinct from the Christian) spirit so prevalent among many of the Reformers on the continent of Europe, especially those who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century. They exhibited, in truth, that example of modera- tion in opinion and action which, until very recent times at least, has always characterized the re- formed Church of England. Ascham lays very little stress on theology ; indeed, he seems -to me rather to evade the subject. I regard him as a pure Humanist. Colet and his friends belong to the school of Melancthon ; Ascham more to the
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school of Erasmus, but with a genuine, clear, sound and specifically English vein in him.
What is Humanism in education ? It is, when largely interpreted, the formation of the mind of youth, omnibus artibits quae ad httmanitatem perti- nent. In its more restricted meaning, as under- stood in the first revival of letters, it is the formation of the human mind by literature, as opposed to the study of barren words, abstract rules, grammar, rhetorical technicalities, logical sophisticalities, and bald epitomes, all expressed by master and pupil alike in barbarous Latinity. It is also the study of style or the beautiful in expres- sion, and this by the perusal of the great writers who express themselves beautifully. At the time of the revival there were (with the single excep- tion of Italian) only two languages known to Europe which, to any large extent at least, embodied art in expression, perfection of style, whether in prose or poetry, — Greek and Latin. But Latin being the indispensable and universal language of the time, it was Latin literature that had to be chiefly cultivated. Terence, Ovid, Caesar, Virgil, Cicero, constituted the substance of education in the eyes of the Humanists, because they were the best available models of the artistic
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expression of human thought on human things. Observe that I say human thought; for the Humanists, though apparently aiming mainly at education in style, considered that they were thus giving education in "humane" things. Humane letters, the humanities, did not really mean merely style or rhetoric, but the free unencumbered thought of reason on nature and man. It is true that the Humanists emphasized mere style as such, but this arose from the fact that their movement was a reaction against bald and hard grammati- cism, barbarous uncouth language, and monkish stupidity. They truly hated mere words quite as much as the modern Realists. They were them- selves Realists, but their realism was the realism which sought for the things of reason and imagina- tion,— the product of mind which underlies words. That thought in its truest, and beauty, or at least fitness, of expression, went together, was in those days simply a fact ; and if we do not limit our definition of beauty too narrowly, it is pro- bably still the fact. Away, then, they said, with grammatical abstractions, with barbarous Latin and logical futilities — that mere " agitation of wit," as Bacon calls it, by which the schoolmen lived, and give us literary form, and with literary form
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true literary substance. This is the proper milk for the growing mind, this the proper strong meat for the matured !
In sum, the Humanists went back to Quin- tilian ; and the " good orator " was the aim of the new scholastic method. The correctness of this explanation of the humanistic attitude to the school might be established by citing many writers, were this the place to do so ; but, as I am here speaking of Ascham, I shall confine myself to quoting a passage from his chapter on " Imitation," as illustrating and confirming what I have said — a passage all the more worthy of quotation that it exhibits well the trenchancy and amusing vigour of his style. Speaking of the connection between language and thought, he says —
" We find always wisdom and eloquence, good matter and good utterance, never, or seldom, asunder. For all such authors as be fullest of good matter and right judgment in doctrine be likewise always most proper in words, most apt in sentence, most plain and pure in uttering the same.
"And contrariwise in those two tongues, all writers, either in religion or any sect of philo- sophy, whosoever be found fond in judgment of
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matter be commonly found as rude in uttering their minds. For stoics, anabaptists, and friars, with epicures, libertines, and monks, being most like in learning and life, are no fonder and more pernicious in their opinions than they be rude and barbarous in their writings. They be not wise, therefore, that say, ' What care I for a man's words and utterance, if his matter and reasons be good ? ' Such men say so, not so much of ignorance as either in some singular pride in themselves, or some special malice of others, or some private and partial matter, either in religion, or other kind of learning. For good and choice meats be no more requisite for healthy bodies than proper and apt words be for good matters ; and also plain and sensible utterance for the best and deepest reasonings ; in which two points standeth perfect eloquence, one of the fairest and rarest gifts that God doth give to man.
"Ye know not what hurt ye do to learning that care not for words, but for matter, and so make a divorce between the tongue and the heart. For mark all ages, look upon the whole course of both the Greek and Latin tongues, and ye shall surely find that, when apt and good
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words began to be neglected, and properties of those two tongues to be confounded, then also began ill deeds to spring ; strange matters to oppress good orders ; new and fond opinions to strive with old and true doctrine, first in philo- sophy and after in religion ; right judgment of all things to be perverted, and so virtue with learning is contemned, and study left off. Of ill thoughts cometh perverse judgment, of ill deeds springeth lewd talk ; which four mis-orders, as they mar man's life, so destroy they good learning withal. But behold the goodness of God's pro- vidence for learning ; all old authors and sects of philosophy which were fondest in opinion and rudest in utterance, as stoics and epicures, first contemned of wise men, and then forgotten of all men, be so consumed by time, as they be now not only out of use, but also out of memory of man. Which thing, I surely think, will shortly chance to the whole doctrine, and all the books of phantastical anabaptists and friars, and of the beastly libertines and monks."
Literary art, or the beautiful in expression, then, was the humanistic aim ; and with it, as, according to them, an inevitable concomitant, the highest and best thotight on things human. Even
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in the teaching of formal rhetoric and logic, which still constituted the higher part of the curriculum of youth, the realism of the Humanists led them to prefer the analysis of rhetorical pieces, and the exhibition of the logical sequence of great lite- rary efforts, to abstract rules of logic or rhetoric. When " Master Cheke " read Greek with Ascham and others in Cambridge, he read author after author. He did not stop to dwell on particles, or to write Greek iambics. He, and men like him, preferred the reality to the mere naming of things, the material to the formal, in the abstract sense of the term, though ardent students themselves of perfect form in the aesthetic sense.
Hence, too, the importance they assigned to the study of the characteristics of the various writers of antiquity. Criticism was revived. Most know the admirable summary of literary history in Quintilian's tenth book. We find in Ascham, in his chapter on " Imitation," to which I have already referred, an equally admirable review, and the student is directed to observe in what respects great writers differed in handling the same subject. A most admirable discipline of mind this. I can imagine nothing better. Language is so bound up with thought, - that
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in teaching language in this critical way, we teach thought. Note, too, how, in criticism, it is not rules of criticism, opinions about authors, to which the student is directed, but to the authors themselves. Here, again, the Realism shows itself.
Ere long the substance of literature disappeared from the humanistic education ; mere style or form, and Ciceronian imitation, became its aim, and then, finally, grammar, although in a less offensive form than in previous generations, reasserted itself. This degeneracy characterized all higher education till quite recently, and still indeed survives.
Ascham wishes it to be distinctly understood that he is not dealing with the question of educa- tion in general, but of school education. He takes the subject up from the day on which a boy enters the grammar school— seven years of age ; and the title of his book, "The Schoolmaster," indicates his self-imposed limitation. And yet, as we shall see, he cannot escape the larger questions.
Ascham's object is to show what a literary or humanistic training is, and how it should be set about. It was of course inevitable that he should first deal with the acquisition of the language
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which was to be the vehicle of the training, viz. Latin ; what applied to Latin applied, mutatis mutandis, to Greek. While giving his conclusions as to language-teaching, he always, however, has in his thought the great humanistic aim of all school instruction. His almost exclusive attention to Latin is explained by the fact that Greek was only beginning to claim attention in the secondary schools, and seems to have been first taught in Colet's school at St. Paul's. Few, even in the universities, yet studied Greek, and these were looked upon with suspicion as innovators and heretics ; 1 few but ardent.
I. METHOD OF TEACHING AND LEARNING LATIN. After learning the parts of speech — that is to say, what we now call the accidence — and being exercised in the joining together of adjectives and nouns, nouns and verbs, and the relative with its antecedent, the pupil should not be introduced at once, as was the then custom, to Latin compo- sition, because he has not yet the materials, and the result is that wrong words, wrong turns and order in the sentences swarm, and the boy acquires bad habits in Latinity which are never afterwards
1 Even elegant Latinity was suspected at Rome. (Pattison's " Life of Casaubon.")
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uprooted. Besides, nothing more discourages children, " dulls their wits, and takes away their will from learning, than the care they have to satisfy their masters in making of Latines."
The proper way to proceed is this : Let the " master read to his pupils the ' Epistles of Cicero, gathered together and chosen out by Sturmius for the capacity of children.
" First, let him teach the child cheerfully and plainly, the cause and matter of the letter ; then let him construe it into English so oft as the child may easily carry away the understanding of it ; 1 lastly, parse it over perfectly. This done thus, let the child, by-and-by, both construe and parse it over again ; so that it may appear the child doubteth in nothing that his master taught him before. After this, the child must take a paper book, and sitting in some place where no man shall prompt him, by himself, let him translate into English his former lesson. Then, showing it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate his own English into Latin again in another paper book. When the child bringeth it, turned into Latin, the master must compare it
1 Ratiot also advocated this plan.
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with Tullie's book, and lay them both together ; and when the child doth well, either in choosing or true placing of Tullie's words, let the master praise him and say, ' Here do ye well.' For I assure you, there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is praise " (p. 200).
* * * . * *
" In these few lines I have wrapped up the most tedious part of grammar, and also the ground of almost all the rules that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learned by the scholar in all common schools ; which after this sort the master shall teach without all error, and the scholar shall learn without great pain, the master being led by so sure a guide, and the scholar being brought in so plain and easy a way. And there- fore we do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach rules ; and teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly than they be commonly taught in common schools. For when the master shall compare Tullie's book with his scholar's translation, let the master at the first lead and teach his scholar to join the rules of his grammar-book with the examples of his present lesson, until the scholar, by himself, be able to fetch out of his grammar
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 143
every rule for every example ; so as the grammar- book be ever in the scholar's hand, and also used of him as a dictionary for every present use. This is a lively and perfect way of teaching of rules ; where the common way, used in common schools, to read the grammar alone by itself is tedious for the master, hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both" (p. 201).
*****
" All this while, by mine advice, the child shall use to speak no Latin ; for, as Cicero saith in like matter, with like words, ' Loquendo, male loqui discunt.' And that excellent learned man, G. Budaeus, in his Greek commentaries, sore com- plaineth that, when he began to learn the Latin tongue, use of speaking Latin at the table and elsewhere, unadvisedly, did bring him to such an evil choice of words, to such a crooked framing of sentences, that no one thing did hurt or hinder him more, all the days of his life afterwards, both for readiness in speaking, and also good judgment in writing " 1 (p. 202).
As you will see, the pupil is to have two paper books, the one for translation from Latin into
1 Muretus, the celebrated humanistic Latinist, always declined to speak Latin.
144 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
English, the other for retranslation from English into Latin.
When he begins to show some facility in these two exercises, the master will begin to call his attention to those words which, though like, have diverse shades of meaning, to words which are synonymous, to phrases, to idioms, and require him to open a third paper book for the recording of these, the pupil classifying what he records under the proper heads. This should be done first with the Ciceronian Epistles, and then he should be introduced to the simpler orations, such as "Pro Archia Poeta," and " Pro Lege Manilia," etc. ; and the continuance of exercises in Cicero " shall work such a right choice of words, so straight a framing of sentences, such a true judgment, both to write skilfully and speak wittily as wise men shall both praise and marvel at."
When the pupil has been for some time exercised as above, then read daily with him the third book of Epistles as selected by Sturmius, the "De Amicitia," and " De Senectute," and also some comedy of Terence or Plautus. Caesar's Commen- taries also should be read, "wherein is seen the unspotted propriety of the Latin tongue ; " and the speeches of Livy.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 145
It is not necessary at this stage that the pupil should write translations daily. It is sufficient if he construe orally and be examined in the parsing. But the teacher himself, every second or third day, " should choose some epistle ad Atticum, some notable commonplace out of his orations or some other part of Tully, by his discretion, which the scholar may not know where to find, and translate it himself into plain, natural English ; and then give it to the scholar to translate into Latin again, allowing him good space and time to do it both with diligent heed and good advisement." When the scholar brings up his exercise, bring out the Tully, and compare the work of the pupil with the original, sentence by sentence, word by word, "commend his good choice and right placing of words ; show his faults gently but blame them not over sharply ; for of such missings gently admonished oft proceed glad and good heed- taking ; of good heed-taking springeth chiefly knowledge, which after groweth to perfectness, if this order be diligently used by the scholar and gently handled by the master. For here shall all the hard points of grammar both easily and surely be learned up ; which scholars in common schools by making of Latines be groping at with care and
146 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
fear, and yet in many years they scarce can reach unto them " (p. 264).
" I remember," he says, " when I was young, in the north they went to the grammar school little children ; they came from thence great lubbers always learning and little profiting ; learning with- out book everything, understanding within the book little or nothing." By his suggested method the pupils will truly know what is in the book. To construe orally, to write translation, then to retranslate, to parse, and to analyze the passage with a view to mark out all the peculiarities, involves the perusal of the passage a dozen times at the least. Thus we follow Pliny's advice to his friend Fuscus — " Multum, non multa." x
When the scholar has attained considerable skill in retranslating into Latin, then the teacher should proceed as follows. Let him write some letter as if from him to his father or some friend, " naturally according to the disposition of the child," or some fable or narrative, and let him translate this into Latin, "abiding in some place where no other scholar can prompt him." The teacher will use his discretion in such a way as to choose matter
1 Ratke, • Milton, and Jacotot, all advocated the thorough " lessoning " of one book in acquiring a language.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 147
within the compass of the boy's previous reading, and " now," says Ascham, " take heed lest the scholar do not better in some point than yourself, except ye have been diligently exercised in these kinds of translating before."
II. CRITICISM OF CONTEMPORARY METHODS. Ascham now proceeds to consider the ways " appointed by the best learned men for the learn- ing of tongues and increase of eloquence," and to give his judgment on the value of these. And first of these is Translation.
Regarding translation and its importance, all agree, he says, but it brings forth little compara- tively, (i) because it is single and not double translation ; and (2) because of the lack of the daily use of writing, " which is the only thing that breedeth deep root both in the wit for good understanding, and in the memory for sure keeping of all that is learned." Tully, "De Oratore," commends this way. Plinius Secundus also, in an epistle to his friend Fuscus, recommends this mode of procedure with a view not merely to the acquisition of a language, but of rhetorical knowledge and of a sound judgment in the selection of arguments and expressions. Ascham maintains that any scholar who will translate in this way
I48 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
Tully, "De Senectute," and the " Epistle ad Quintum Fratrem," and the other " Ad Lentulum," the last save one in the first book, " will come to a better knowledge of the Latin tongue than the most part do who spend four or five years in tossing all the rules of grammar in common schools." He tells us that Queen Elizabeth, his pupil, never took grammar in her hand after the first declining of the noun and verb, "but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily without missing every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, had attained to such a perfect un- derstanding in both the tongues and to such a ready utterance of the Latin, and that with such a judgment as there be few in number, in both the universities or elsewhere in England, that be in both tongues comparable with her majesty."
Another argument used by Ascham is that in this exercise the master as well as the pupil is guided to correct expression.
At this stage, instruction in the mere structure of the language may be held to end. What follows really belongs to the best means of forming style as distinct from merely grammatical writing in its plainest form. Paraphrasing, metaphrasing,
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 149
epitome, imitation, declamation, are all considered in their order.
Of Paraphrasing, he says : This was first tried by C. Carbo, and tried for a while by Lucius Crassus, but condemned by him and Cicero. Quintilian, it is true, commends the practice. Pliny, Quintilian's pupil, also condemned it. He calls it audax contentio. Ascham calls the practice "the turning, chopping and changing the best to worse." The scholar, if he has, as he is presumed to have, a good model, is in fact trying to express in a worse and inferior way what is already ex- pressed beautifully.
"The scholar," says Ascham, "shall win nothing by paraphrasis, but only (if we may believe Tully) to choose worse words, to place them out of order, to fear overmuch the judgment of the master, to mislike overmuch the hardness of learning ; and by use to gather up faults which will be hardly left off again." Ascham here enters into the question of the rhetorical benefit, as well as the grammatical, of such exercises. He quotes Sturmius, who counsels all to avoid paraphrasis, unless it be from worse to better.
The only case in which paraphrasis is valuable is, Ascham thinks, in turning Ionic or Doric into the
150 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
Attic form or style. A good example of this is the translation of Herodotus' story of Caudaules and Gyges out of the Ionic into the Attic by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his book Iltjoi SwOtaewQ 'Ovo/mrwv. Ascham believes that such exercises would give great power over the Greek tongue, but it is evident that they are beyond the scope of grammar-school teaching, and belong rather to the university.
Metaphrasis is the turning of prose into verse, or vice-versa. Socrates amused himself in prison by turning ^Esop's fables into verse. Quintilian lauds the exercise, but Ascham thinks it of doubtful value save at the university stage (boys went to the university at fifteen or even younger), and then only in very competent hands. He gives examples ; but, in truth, they are not truly examples, it seems to me, of deliberate meta- phrasis, but rather of imitation, which is unques- tionably a good exercise. We have an illustration in the comparison of parallel passages in eminent writers, the study of which is, in capable hands, I think, full of the elements of literary and rhetorical culture.
Under the head of Epitome, he remarks that Epitomes are of great utility if made by a
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 151
student himself for his own use ; but they are hurtful to teach from.
The rest of the chapter is, in reality, a short treatise on vices of style, and has reference rather to rhetoric than to the work of the schoolroom. There occur in the course of it many wise ob- servations and not a little keen criticism and sarcasm, and it is as a whole most interesting1 and instructive.
Imitation. — " Imitation is a faculty to express lively and perfectly that example which. we go about to follow."
" All languages both learned and mother-tongues be gotten and gotten only by imitation."
" If ye would speak and write as the best and wisest, ye must be conversant where the best and wisest are."
This chapter is, in truth, a continuance of the treatise on rhetoric begun in the previous chapter. He dwells, too earnestly for our time, on the necessity of comparing the great classical authors one with another, so as to ascertain and mark carefully in what respects they differed in their mode of handling the same subjects. In Ascham's generation, pure style was the mark of true learn- ing, as opposed to the barbarous Latinity and
1 52 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
vain disputations of the schoolmen, which were identified with ignorance. There is consequently an exaggeration of the necessity of imitation^ which was due to the circumstances of the time, and the state of learning. The object of the Humanists was to form style through the study and imitation of the best models. Every classical student should read this book, as it contains many just criticisms on classical authors. A portion of it may be compared with Quintilian's remarks on great writers in his tenth book. I do not think that more sound criticism on the literature of Greece and Rome is to be had, than may be found in the brief analysis contained in the writings of these two men taken together.
Ascham, in his commendation of imitation, has evidently in view the literary translation of a passage in a famous author from the language in which he writes into another, and is influenced by the opinion of Pliny in Epist. vii. 9, where he says, writing to his friend Fuscus, " You ask me what I think should be your method of study in the retirement which you have been for some time enjoying. As useful as anything, as it is frequently recommended, is the practice of translating either your Greek into Latin, or your Latin into Greek.
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 153
By practising this, you acquire propriety and dignity of expression, an abundant choice of the beauties of style, power in description and in the imitation of the best models, a facility of creating such models for yourself. Besides, what may escape you when you read, cannot escape you when you translate. From this follows a quick appreciation of beauty and sound taste. There is no reason why you should not write about the subjects which you have been already reading, keeping to the same matter and line of argument, as if you were a rival ; should then compare it with what you have read, and carefully consider whether the author has been the happier of the two, and wherefore. You may congratulate your- self much if sometimes you have done better, but should be much ashamed if he is always superior. Sometimes you may select even very famous passages, and compete with what you select. The competition is daring enough, but, as it is private, cannot be called impudent." 1 Such exercises are only, it is clear, for advanced scholars.
III. THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE. Speaking ' again of the
1 Translated by Messrs. Church and Brodribb in "Ancient Classics for English Readers."
154 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
importance of knowing more languages than one, with a view to style, he says (p. 308) —
" Therefore thou, that shootest at perfection in the Latin tongue, think not thyself wiser than Tullie was, in choice of the way that leadeth rightly to the same : think not thy wit better than Tullie's was, as though that may serve thee that was not sufficient for him. For, even as a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellency with one tongue.
" I have been a looker-on in the cock-pit of learning these many years ; and one cock only have I known, which with one wing, even at this day, doth pass all other, in mine opinion, that ever I saw in any pit in England though they had two wings. Yet nevertheless, to fly well with one wing,1 to run fast with one leg, be rather rare masteries much to be marvelled at, than sure examples safely to be followed. A bishop, that now liveth, a good man, whose judgment in religion I better like than his opinion in perfectness in other learning, said once unto me, 'We have no need now of the Greek tongue, when all things be translated into Latin.' But the good man under-
1 " Habeas licebit alterum pedem Ladae, Inepte, frustra crure ligneo curres " (Martial, x. 82).
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 155
stood not, that even the best translation is for mere necessity but an evil imped wing to fly withal, or a heavy stump leg of wood to go withal. Such the higher they fly, the sooner they falter and fail : the faster they run, the ofter they stumble and sorer they fall."
IV. SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. In handling this part of method, Ascham speaks with justice, though sometimes with acerbity, of teachers. His remarks being quite fresh, and applicable, to a large extent at least, to the circumstances of our present time, I shall ask your attention to them. Apart from their intrinsic value, the raciness and verve of the language in which they are expressed justify my quoting them.
Discipline was, in Ascham's own view, a very important part of his treatise. In the preface narrating the circumstances which led to his undertaking the book, we see that it was the question of school discipline which led him to take up his pen. Some boys had run away from Eton because of the seventies there practised, and this led to a conversation among some men of the time, in the course of which Ascham main- tained that " children were sooner allured by love than driven by beating to attain good learning."
156 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
Others concurred, Sir Robert Sackville citing his own sad experience, which, however, seems to have been a very common one. Ascham's school- method, accordingly, had for its motive a moral purpose. In the course of his remarks he is naturally led, like Quintilian, to make various wise and discriminating remarks on the different cha- racters of boys.
" If the child miss," he says, " either in forgetting a word, or in changing a good with a worse, or mis-ordering a sentence, I would not have the master either frown or chide with him, if the child have done his diligence and used no trowandship therein. For I know by good experience that a child shall take more profit of two faults gently warned of, than of four things rightly hit "(p. 201).
As to the relation between teacher and scholar, Ascham wishes that the scholar should never have any hesitation in asking the master questions. The relation should be of so free a kind, that he will not be driven to seek for prompting or to resort to unlawful means of obtaining help.
Another great Humanist, Cardinal Wolsey, in his directions to the master of Ipswich School (1528), says, "Imprimis hoc unum admonendum censuerimus ut neque plagis severioribus neque
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 157
vultuosis minis aut ulla tyrannidis specie tenera pubes afficiatur ; hac, enim, injuria ingenii alacritas aut extingui aut magna ex parte obtundi solet" 1
As to discipline generally, Ascham is an advocate for love rather than fear. " I do gladly agree," he says, "with all good schoolmasters to have children brought to good perfectness in learning, to all honesty in manners, to have all faults rightly amended, to have every vice severely corrected ; but for the order and way that lead rightly to these points we somewhat differ" (p. 206). School- masters, he says, rather mar than mend their pupils by their severity. When angry with some other matter altogether, they make their pupils suffer for it. These be foolish schoolmasters, you will say, and there be few of them : foolish they be, but " over many such be found everywhere." "In punishing, too, they quite as often punish nature, as correct faults. Yet some men, wise indeed, but, in this matter, more by severity of nature than any wisdom at all, do laugh at us when we thus wish and reason that young children should rather be allured to learning by gentleness and love, than compelled to learning by beating and fear." " They say our reasons serve only to breed forth talk and pass away time ; but we never saw good schoolmasters do_so, nor never
XJNIVERS1TT
158 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
read of wise men that thought so." He then brings against them the judgment of Plato, who says : " No learning ought to be learned with bondage ; for bodily labours wrought by compulsion hurt not the body, but any learning learned by compulsion tarrieth not long in the mind." He also points out that young men trained by compulsion when by time they come to their own rule carry commonly from school with them a perpetual hatred of their master, and a continual contempt for learning. He then contravenes the opinion that children have a natural distaste for learning, and throws the blame on the schoolmaster. He also advises doubters to read John Sturmius, " De Institutione Principis." At the same time, he countenances beating for moral faults. But, in learning and generally, " the schoolhouse should be counted a sanctuary against fear." "Yea, many times the better nature is sore punished : for if one by quickness of wit take his lesson readily, another by hardness of wit taketh it not so speedily, the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished ; when a wise schoolmaster should rather discreetly consider the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able to do now, as what either of them is likely to
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 159
do hereafter. For this I know, not only by reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that those which be commonly the wisest, the best learned, and best men also, when they be old, were never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young. The causes why, amongst other, which be many, that move me thus to think, be these few which I will reckon. Quick wits be commonly apt to take, unapt to keep ; soon hot, and desirous of this and that, as cold, and soon weary of the same again ; more quick to enter speedily than able to pierce far ; even like over sharp tools, whose edges be very soon turned. Such wits delight themselves in easy and pleasant studies, and never pass for- ward in high and hard sciences. And therefore the quickest wits commonly may prove the best poets, but not the wisest orators : ready of tongue to speak boldly, not deep of judgment, either for good counsel, or wise writing. Also for manners and life, quick wits commonly be, in desire new- fangled, in purpose unconstant, light to promise anything, ready to forget everything, both benefit and injury : and thereby neither fast to friend, nor fearful to foe : inquisitive of every trifle, not secret in greatest affairs ; bold with any person busy in
160 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
every matter ; soothing such as be present, nipping any that is* absent ; of nature also always flattering their betters, envying their equals, despising their inferiors ; and, by quickness of wit, very quick and ready to like none so well as themselves."
Ascham afterwards gives the notes of the best wits for learning, following Plato, viz. —
A mind well disposed generally,
Of a good memory,
Loving learning,
Loving labour,
Loving to learn of others,
Disposed to ask questions,
Loving praise.
We may compare with this a parallel passage in Quintilian's first book ; but Ascham works the whole question out much more fully than Quintilian.
V. VIRTUE. We now see Roger Ascham's aim in education: it was a humanistic aim. I have shown you briefly his method of teaching language and forming style, and given you his views of scholastic discipline. In all you see a man of simple and direct outlook, of strong and manly sense, of moral purpose and vigour. It may be asked, Had he no higher purpose than culture in the humanistic sense? Of course he had. All men who have written about education, and who are worth
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 161
reading, have placed before themselves the moral outcome of school and its studies as the highest. In the latter part of his treatise (and, indeed, all through) Ascham shows how sensible he was of the prime importance of this aspect of education, and in the whole of the first book of " The Schoolmaster," the moral result of the discipline which he advocates is constantly present to his mind. " Virtue and learning," these go together as inseparable. He desires that children be brought up in " God's fear " to " honesty of life and perfectness of learning." This training to virtue is, after all, his main interest. In his " Toxophilus " he says, " If a young tree grow crooked, when it is old a man shall rather break it than straight it." He was too much of a Greek not to have constantly before him a/oerrj, o-aj^ooo-vvrj, ro KaXov as the final aims of all school and humanistic work. " To come down," he says, " from higher matters to my little children, and poor schoolhouse again, I will, God willing, go forward orderly to instruct children and young men both for learning and manners." " I wish," he says, " to have love of learning bred up in children. I wish as much to have young men brought up in good order of living, and in some more severe discipline than commonly they be."
M
162 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
The schoolmaster has to see to this, but " always using such discreet moderation as that the school- house should be counted a sanctuary against fear."
But he felt that the most pressing matter was in- struction, and above all method, if milder discipline is to be secured, and he accordingly devotes him- self formally to the consideration of these; but the higher aim runs like a thread through the whole treatise. To the attainment of this higher aim, a better method and a milder discipline were pre- conditions, and accordingly he throws his force on them. But learning, he well knew, will not suffice alone, though if a youth's mind be brought into contact with the highest literary forms, and with the substance of morality, learning will do much.
" Learning," says Ascham, " teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty ; and learning teacheth safely when experience maketh more miserable than wise. He hazardeth sore that waxeth wise by experience. An unhappy master he is that is made cunning by many shipwrecks." l
And again, " Learning, ye wise fathers, and
1 The saying of Erasmus may be applied to schoolmasters who do not study philosophy and method as well as to young men : " Experience is the common schoolhouse of fools and ill men."
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good bringing up, and not blind and dangerous experience, is the next and readiest way, that must lead your children, first to wisdom, and then to worthiness, if ever ye purpose they shall come there. And to say all in short, though I lack authority to give counsel, yet I lack not good will to wish, that the youth in England, specially gentlemen, and namely nobility, should be by good bringing up so grounded in judgement of learning, so founded in love of honesty, as, when they should be called forth to the execution of great affairs in service of their prince and country, they might be able to use and to order all experi- ences, were they good, were they bad, and that according to the square, rule, and line of wisdom, learning, and virtue " (p. 238). " Italy and Rome," he elsewhere says, " have been, to the great good of us that now live, the best breeders and bringers- up of the worthiest men, not only for wise speak- ing but also for well-doing in all civil affairs, that ever was in the world." "Virtue once made that country mistress over all the world ; vice now maketh that country slave to them that before were glad to serve it." If we would avoid such a fate, we must train and discipline the young, so that they may " find pain in doing ill ; " and
i6* ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
if " to the goodness of nature be joined the wisdom of the teacher, in leading young wits into a right and plain way of learning, surely children kept up in God's fear, and governed by His grace, may the most easily be brought well to serve God and their country both by virtue and wisdom" (p. 221). " The foundation of youth well set (as Plato doth say), the whole body of the commonwealth shall flourish thereafter."
VI. GYMNASTIC AND Music. A man of As- cham's antique habit of thought was not likely to omit the Greek gymnastic out of his consideration. He urged that young gentlemen should "use and delight in all courtly exercises and gentleman- like pastimes." The Athenians, by making Apollo and Pallas "patrons of learning to their youth," meant that learning should always be mingled with honest mirth and comely exercises. " All pastimes joined with labour, used in open place and in daylight, containing either some fit exercise for war or some pleasant pastime for peace, be not only comely and decent, but also very necessary for a courtly gentleman to use." But it is in the " Toxophilus " that we find gym- nastic as an element in education most strongly urged. He says there, " I heard a good husband
ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST. 165
at his book once say, that to omit study some time of the day and some time of the year, made as much for the increase of learning as to let the land lie sometime fallow maketh for the better increase of corn." And he quotes Aristotle as saying, " that as rest is for labour and medicines for health, so is pastime at times for sad and weighty study." For keen and able minds physical exercise was more necessary than for dull and plodding intelligences : " The best wits to learn- ing" (he says in his " Toxophilus ") "must needs have much recreation and ceasing from their books, or else they mar themselves, when base and dumpish wits can never be hurt by con- tinual study."
It was as pastime only that he advocated gym- nastic. The Hellenic idea that gymnastic had itself a moral aim, did not occur to Ascham. At the same time, he points out that some pastimes not only contribute more to the health of the body than others do, but are more conducive to morality, by being public and demanding labour of body. For Ascham, and indeed the Humanists generally, were practical believers in the old saying of Epicharmus, that God has sold virtue and many other good things to man in return for
166 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
labour, and that amusement, accordingly, where there was no labour was hurtful to youth.
In his "Toxophilus" Ascham regrets that not more than one youth in six entering Cambridge can sing. He also deplores the decline of the practice of teaching the children of England "plain-song and prick-song."1 He evidently at- taches a moral value to music-teaching, and on this point quotes Plato and Aristotle with approval.
Ascham's aim, as we have seen, was the same as that of all the Humanists — the promotion of virtue and wisdom. The means whereby the end was to be obtained was literature, and the " criticism of life " which is embodied in literature. Literature furnished the materials with which the human mind was to be fed, as well as the vehicle of discipline. In the acquisition of literature, and in coming into personal contact with great and heroic examples, the true discipline for youth con- sisted. The study of language, which specially belongs to boyhood, is the study of literature in its elements, and trains at every step the powers of perception, discrimination, and judgment.
Do not suppose that I have exhausted Ascham :
1 Music in parts.
ROGER ASCHAM,
this is a mere introduction to the study of him. Of his method, generally, we may say that it was a sound and sensible one. If followed, it would certainly give the intellectual and moral discipline at which he aimed, and remove those obstacles to learning which make it hateful to boys. He did not deal with the art of education on psychological principles. In his time there was no psychology. But a keen, vigorous, and sane mind like Ascham's could hit very near the mark without the formal machinery of philosophy : —
" He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly."
And what came of it all, so far as the practice of schools is concerned ? Nothing. And yet that staunch old Tory, Samuel Johnson (and not alone weak-headed " theorists " who have always been suspected of revolutionary proclivities), says that "it contains, perhaps, the best advice that was ever given for the study of languages." And Mr. Quick tells us that Professor J. E. B. Mayor declares that " this book sets forth the only sound method of acquiring a dead language." Had Ascham's own college (St. John's, Cambridge) founded a lectureship on education, three hundred years ago, restricted to Quintilian and Ascham, the
1 68 ROGER ASCHAM, THE HUMANIST.
whole course of English education would have been powerfully influenced.
To return to Ascham himself: his charac- teristics, as revealed in his writings, appeared in his life. He was a pleasant-mannered and a brave man, and called forth the affection as well as esteem of his contemporaries. We find no exaggeration in the epigraphic lines of George Buchanan —
"Aschamum extinctum patriae, Graiaeque Camenae
Et Latiae, vera cum pietate, dolent ; Principibus vixit carus, jucundus amicis, Re modica, in mores dicere fama nequit."
VI.
COMENIUS, THE ENCYCLOPEDIST AND FOUNDER OF METHOD.1
IN March, 1892, three hundred years will have elapsed since Comenius was born. The whole educational world is alive to the fact, and in Germany and America the day is being widely celebrated, although forty years ago the name of Comenius was known only to an historical student here and there ; and that, chiefly as associated with an illustrated school-book, the "Orbis Pictus."
It is not universally true that writers of genuine original vein suffer neglect during their lifetime. Much depends on the position of authority which they may hold, or on their power of fitting their fresh thought to the forms of expression current
1 A memorial address for the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth.
1 70 COMENIUS, THE ENCYCLOPAEDIST.
in their time. It cannot be said that Comenius, though an unsuccessful man, as all men of ideas are, failed to interest and attract his contempo- raries : on the contrary, his two chief school-books were enormously popular ; but he was scarcely dead when his name and reputation died also. That in him which was specially original was precisely that which most of all fell into oblivion. Bayle, in his "Dictionary" (1695), speaks of him in a depreciating way, though allowing that the " Janua " is an immortal (!) school-book ; and, nearly a hundred years afterward, Adelung, in his " History of Human Folly," describes him as a man of weak and limited mind, and regards him as little more than a charlatan. Hallam passes him by, with a brief reference only to the " Janua " and the " Orbis," characterizing him as a man of "some ingenuity but little judgment." No doubt much of this neglect of the old bishop was due to the fact that his ecclesiastical and pansophic writings were of only passing interest, and that his chief claim to permanent regard as an intel- lectual force lay in his contributions to the educa- tion of the young. Even in our own day, a man who writes on education is regarded as, to some extent, a trifler, if not a fanatic, by historians and
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men of letters. The mere fact that he occupies himself with the education of the child-mind, seems to stamp him as something of a child him- self—in any case, as not worthy of notice, except by schoolmasters : and they avoid him. If Milton, the contemporary of Comenius, had written nothing but his "Tractate on Education," he would have been long since forgotten, or, at most, known only to a few antiquaries, notwithstanding the literary excellence of portions of the famous essay. Roger Ascham has seldom been assigned his fit place as a stylist and former of English prose; and this, because he wrote on education. Even many men of letters, whose business is the history of English literature, have not, I find, read his " Scholemaster," save in extracts, and, in like manner, classical experts know wonderfully little of Quintilian. Mulcaster's " Positions " has met with a like fate. And yet it is beyond all question that, had the subject on which these men wrote been the political backstairs gossip of " Memoires pour servir," or tracings on monumental stones, or even the ways of bees or beetles, their impor- tance as mere men of letters and as contributors to the enrichment of the substance, and refiners of the form, of the English tongue, would have
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been kept constantly in the eye of the literary public.
As a partial explanation of this neglect, it has to be noted that to write anything, having the aspect of novelty, on education and schools, is by implication to attack a large and powerful class, and to insure their hostility. This doubtless helps to consign the writers to forgetfulness. Even the venerable Comenius, when his life-work was approaching its close, was assailed at Amsterdam as an arch-enemy of schools and schoolmasters, and had to make a pathetic defence. "•! can affirm," he says, "from the bottom of my heart, that these forty years my aim has been simple and unpretending; indifferent whether I teach or be taught, admonish or be admonished ; willing to act the part of a teacher of teachers, if in anything it may be permitted to me to do so, and a disciple of disciples where progress may be possible. They say that I write against schools ; nay, it is for schools that I speak and have spoken. . . . Why, then, should any delight to molest me ? Let me live in tranquillity as long as God wills me to be here."
To resent criticism of an institution, or a mode of administration, as if it were a personal attack on its administrators, is not confined to the
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teaching profession, but it certainly has been a more active characteristic of schoolmasters than of clergymen, lawyers, or physicians. Teachers, as a rule, do not wish to be disturbed by new ideas. Even Milton, between whom and Come- nius there was a fundamental sympathy of aim and a common hatred of the traditionary methods, yet, just because he was himself a schoolmaster, suffers from this narrow pedagogic spirit, and declines, in his letter to Hartlib, to have anything to do with new-fangled notions. " To search what many modern ' Januas ' and ' Didactics/ more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not." It is true that he also says, " What I have benefited herein among old renowned authors I shall spare." Who the " renowned authors" may have been, however, he does not say ; nor does his treatise give any indication that he ever read any of them, although we may, perhaps, not err in presuming that Quintilian, at least, was not unknown to him. Doubtless this peculiar attitude of the scholastic mind is largely due to the position of authority in which teachers are placed when yet young and unformed. They succeed to a certain traditionary way of doing things ; a few years' practice habituates them to
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it, and this habit combines with the almost despotic position in which they are placed to produce a self-conviction of finality. They repeat themselves from day to day and call it experience. It is unreasonable, accordingly, to blame teachers for their attitude to the science, history, and criticism of their art. The causes are obvious : to under- stand is to sympathize. And it is vain, I think, to expect this attitude to be altered until all intending schoolmasters are required, before they begin their work, to study the theory and history of education. The academic study of their science and art, such as is now found at many universities in America, Germany, and elsewhere, will convey to the young aspirant the best tradition, while stimulating to thought on his own account. If he begins to think about the principles and aims of his profession when still young, he will, in the great majority of cases, continue to think when engrossed with the practical work of the school.
Comenius did not flash on the world unheralded. Perhaps no man ever stood forth as the repre- sentative of an intellectual or moral movement by organizing its essential characteristics in a coherent statement, without owing much to his predecessors. Aristotle had his Plato, and Newton
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his Kepler, and Bacon had many men working for the inductive gospel before he formulated the " Novum Organum." So with Comenius. To begin with, the Reformation movement had stirred questions which went far beyond the limits which it had originally prescribed for itself, and in no department did it more directly assail old con- ceptions than in that of education. It would be out of place here to show how this was a neces- sary consequence of the Reformation principle, and it would only irritate a reader to have the words of Luther and others quoted for the hun- dredth time. The questions, however, of whom to teach and what to teach, naturally first occupied the field of vision, to the exclusion of the more fundamental question, how to teach. Ascham, Mulcaster, and Sturm certainly wrote on the "how," but their " how " was limited to the teaching of the Latin language and literature. It is surprising to find how many books treated of the work of schools before Comenius came on the field. Comenius, accordingly, had many forerunners ; but this does not justify us in exaggerating what he owed to them, by way of detracting from his greatness and originality. No one is more open and candid on the subject than is Comenius himself. He names
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the books he had read, always in the sincere hope of finding what he wanted. He had no desire to originate. I doubt if there ever was a man who devoted himself to labour for his fellow-men so ardently as Comenius did, in the field of religion, intellectual progress, and education, who was less of an egotist. He worked and wrote in the most single-hearted spirit. Much, very much, of the work he did for education was, in truth, done un- willingly and from a pure sense of duty. His main intellectual interest was his pansophy, the co-ordination of all knowledge with a view to the advance of humanity and the conciliation of re- ligious parties. All that he conceived and did was conceived and done for the "glory of God," and to advance Christian unity and a rational Christian civilization on a Protestant basis. An irenicon was the necessity of the times, and it was the dream of Comenius as it was of Vives, Casaubon, and Grotius. Thus, in many essential respects he was the European popularizer of Bacon, and he was also the first evangelical Broad Churchman. He was constantly, however, setting aside his more ambitious schemes to do the educational work that lay to his hand ; and this he called following the leadings of Providence.
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The three most important of the precursors of Comenius were Ludovicus Vives the Spaniard, Bacon the Englishman, and Ratke the Holsteiner.
Vives was born in 1492, at Valencia, exactly one hundred years before Comenius ; Bacon was born in 1561 ; and Ratke in 1571, twenty-one years before Comenius. Rabelais and Montaigne seem to have been unknown to him. Of Vives, Comenius himself says that he knew better where the fault in schools lay than the nature of the remedy ; and yet he, like Bacon, owed more to Vives than he imagined — if not in the sphere of education, at least in his whole cast of thought, including his pansophic ideal. For Vives was an encyclopaedist in his range of intellectual activity, an enemy of mere authority, directing attention away from the barren dialectic of the schools to the silent study of nature. Like Comenius, too, he was one of those who were always hoping to find some basis of ecclesiastical and civil unity which might conciliate the distractions of the time. He is sometimes called a Humanist, sometimes a Realist. The truth is, that after giving promise of future distinction as a schoolman, he grew out of the scholastic philosophy, and became, in relation to the general current of thought, a Humanist, but
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without falling into the idolatry of style which characterized the leaders of that movement. In relation to education and the school, he was a Realist only in so far as he included in his course of education realistic subjects. In his book, " De Tradendis Disciplinis," he treats of the education of the child from infancy, keeping in view always the moral aim of all instruction. What he says is always characterized by good sense ; but to us nowadays his rules and recommendations are commonplaces. In his book on the education of women, for which he has been extolled as a reformer, it is the morals, manners, and domestic training of women, along with instruction in read- ing and writing, that he speaks of; beyond this nothing. The instruction of boys meant, with Vives, as with everybody in those days, Latin chiefly ; and he gives eight or nine years to the acquisition of this language. Into the school curriculum, however, he would introduce Greek, history, geography, and nature-knowledge. But he does not seem to have had any idea of a cur- riculum through which, with a view to mind- culture generally, all boys should be carried. His remarks are generally pertinent and sagacious, and it is believed that the Jesuit teachers learned
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much from him ; but to the specific subject of method, in our modern sense, he does not seem to have made any contribution of value. There is, I suspect, little in Vives that may not be found in Quintilian and Plutarch. The severe discipline of the time, and the want of lightness and variety in school-work, are condemned by him, but in this and in other respects he only shares his opinion with many writers. This slight sketch of the teaching of Vives will suffice to show that Comenius owed to him suggestion and stimulus, but nothing more.
The educational activity of men like Vives suggests the remark that it is impossible clearly to apprehend the history of education from the close of the Middle Ages down to this century, unless we distinctly recognize two lines of thought which run side by side in their beginning, but soon cross each other — the theological and the literary. The Renaissance had many aspects ; in its purely educational aims it was an attempt to rouse men from dogmatic slumber, and to bring them face to face once more with nature and life as that was interpreted in the great literatures of Greece and Rome. The Reforma- tion of religion was only a part of the move-
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ment, and, till Luther's time, a subordinate part. When the Lutheran movement fairly took hold of men's minds, literature and pure Human- ism found a potent rival in theology and the new ideal of justification, saving grace, and per- sonal piety. " By faith are ye saved " — not by literature. Unquestionably, the more enlightened reformers, and notably Luther and Melancthon, accepted literature and a genial view of human life. But the literary and artistic interest was not dominant with them, as with Erasmus. Faith, justification in the sight of God, and morality as fruit of faith, constituted the chief end of man, and consequently of the education of the young. But the reformed faith did not, as yet, wholly break with Humanism, as Christianity had done before the fifth century.
After Luther and Sturm and Ascham, however, the paramount interest began to obscure the less important. The career of Casaubon illustrates this. Though much had been done to improve the curriculum of schools, the literary enthusiasm had exhausted itself, and there was unquestionably a relapse into the old formalism. The Catholic reaction, also, called many minds away to the main issue of modern civilization — personality versus
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organized spiritual despotism. Then came on the scene a new educational force — the potent ideas of Realism as represented by Bacon. Nature was to be studied at first hand, and studied by silent and faithful observation. This study had more than a mere theoretical interest. The observation of nature and of its teachings was to accomplish great things for the improvement of the social and industrial conditions of human life. In a letter addressed by Bacon to Casaubon, these words are used : " The contemplations I have in view, are those which may bring about the better order- ing of man's life, with all its turmoil." l Nature, in short, was to be used as a gift of God to man. There was nothing in this nearly so dangerous to the Protestant theological conception of life as pure Humanism was, which in some of its mani- festations had little to distinguish it from a cultured paganism ; and this the Christian Church had always feared as its chief enemy, until in the middle of the sixteenth century the Jesuits suborned it. There was nothing, in truth, to prevent the whole-hearted union of Realism and a liberal reformed theology ; but in their relations to
1 Footnote in Pattison's "Life of Casaubon," p. 335. The letter was never sent.
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it the Jesuits, who had already captured Humanism and subordinated it to the Church, had to recon- sider their ways; and are still reconsidering them. Science and the scientific spirit gave them their death-blow, though it is true they are long of dying. Now, Ratke and Comenius were the apostolic missionaries of the specific Baconian realistic move- ment in the field of education. They adopted the saying that " there was nothing in the understand- ing which had not first been in sense;" but neither they nor any of their contemporaries saw the far- reaching and fatal philosophical and theological effects of such a doctrine. The maxim was used only to establish the necessity of founding all in- struction on sense, and on all the senses, and the importance of cultivating the powers of observation. " Live we not in the garden of Nature, as well as those who have gone before us ? ... Why, then, learn the works of Nature otherwise than through our senses? Why not substitute for dead books the living book of Nature ? " The philosophical consequences, I say, of the celebrated dictum as to intellect and sense could not occur to such men as Comenius ; for, in his crude psychology, there was, quite apart from the mere understanding, the " soul," and the spiritual life of the soul in God.
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Bacon's interest lay in the sphere of the higher education. He was a pansophist, and his ambition was to see a visible organization of science, in the form of a great State-supported academy of investigation and teaching. In this respect Come- nius directly affiliates himself to Bacon. All that ~^Qomenius did in this department of his activity derives itself from the Englishman. " The Advance- ment of Learning " and the " New Atlantis " were the teachers of Comenius. The same magnificent conception lay at the foundation of the " Institut National," projected by the French revolutionaries in 1795. "Finally, we propose to you to create a National Institute," they said to the Government, " able in its several parts to give every branch of public instruction and collectively human know- ledge carried to its highest point : everything which men know must be taught there to its highest perfection : every man must be able to learn there how to do what any man of any country, aglow with the fire of genius, has done, and is able still to do. This establishment must honour, not France only, but the whole human race, astonishing it by the spectacle of its power and the development of its strength." l The names
1 Quoted from a paper by Mr. Jamson Smith, Birmingham.
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of the first members of the Institute were those of men capable of doing the work expected of them — Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Cuvier, Volney, Sainte Pierre, Lakanal, Chenier, Lebrun, and Fontanes. It is a curious fact that the Long Parliament (also a revolutionary Parliament) con- templated, in 1641, handing over Chelsea College to carry out the pansophic views of Comenius, thus anticipating the action of the FrencE Republic by one hundred and fifty years. The Baconian, Comenian, and revolutionary ideas have now been, in some places, almost realized ; and, in so far as they are not realized, they still enter into the dreams of university reformers. It is of importance to insist on this, because it has been customary to look on the fervent old bishop as a visionary, whereas he was the most practical of men— only living a few centuries too soon.
The advocacy of pansophy and realism did not exhaust the powers of Comenius. He was an ardent worker, as I have indicated above, in the cause of a Protestant union, based on the vital and essential interests of Christianity. His " Unum Necessarium " had this for its aim. The fanatical divisions of Protestantism had been the Jesuits' opportunity. Being an unorganized mass, they
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had been swept back by the serried ranks of Loyola. Protestantism was in a critical position.
It has been sometimes said that Comenius owed much to Valentine Andrea, his senior by four years. This remarkable man, born at Herrenburg in 1586, was distinguished for his learning, energy, and originality, and stood eminent among his contemporaries. Of him Herder said that he " blossomed as a rose among thorns." He was a man of poetic and ideal character, and yet, like Comenius, in the highest degree practical. Like other educational reformers, he attacked the mechanical character of grammar-school instruc- tion, and the equally mechanical character of the people's schools, and of the instruction of children in the Catechism. He desiderated a better method in both the primary and secondary schools, and the substitution of an evangelical spirit for the heathenism and arid curriculum of the latter. His disgust of the narrow range of school instruction made him lean to realistic studies and hail with enthusiasm Comenius' " Didactica." Realist as he was, however, education by means of language, and education by means of things, was sub- ordinated to the religious aim — " omnis spiritus cedat Christo" His educational ideas are contained
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in his " Reipublicae Christianopolitanae Descriptio," 1619. A book published in his youth, called "Idea Bonae Institutionis," is lost. The dates of these books show that^re4iad anticipated Comenius as an educational writer ; trcrf^here is no evidence that Comenius owed anything to him which he did not himself already ascribe to the general influence of Vives. Impulse, sympathy, and encouragement he found, doubtless, in Andrea's strongly expressed views, as he did in the personal recognition and encouragement which Andrea generously extended to him by letter ; but this was all.
Within a few years after the publication of the "Advancement of Learning" (1805), we find Ratke, the Holsteiner, formulating the new ideas in the interest of education and attracting the attention of the princes and universities of Northern Europe. Although it is true that Ratke failed to answer Comenius' letter of inquiry, there can be no doubt that Ratke anticipated him in all his general principles of method. To him, and not to Vives or Andrea, Comenius was directly indebted. There was, perhaps, more of the light of originality in Ratke than in Comenius.
To Bateus, the Irish Jesuit, who died at Madrid in 1614, Comenius was, in an indirect way, also
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indebted, in so far as the Jesuit's " Janua" showed the possibility of bringing together a vast number of vocables in a school-book, and also in so far as it showed him what to avoid. He called it a "Noah's Ark for Words." To Professor Lubinus of Rostock, again, who died in 1621, Comenius certainly owed the first idea of the " Orbis Pictus."
I think I have now exhausted the external sources of Comenius' inspiration, and the result is this: In respect of his philosophy, and of the materials which should enter into the education of man, Comenius was a disciple of Bacon, of whom he speaks as " the noble Verulam, who has given us the true key of nature;" in respect of the funda- mental conception of method as determined by the inductive process of mind, and many of the rules of method, he was indebted directly to Ratke and only indirectly to Bacon ; and to Lubinus he owed the suggestion of the " Orbis Pictus." But in the wide reach of his educational conceptions, in the development of the whole subject of method, and s in his mode of procedure in discovering and ex- j pounding it, Comenius was wholly original.
Let us now briefly consider the leading charac- teristics of Comenius as an educationalist, bearing
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in mind, the while, that the education of his age consisted of reading, writing^ and the Catechism badly taught, and Latin^nothing but Latin, with here and theTe^_Jbut chiefly in the universities, Greek and scholastic logic — even reading and writing being for the few, and further education only for the select among those few.
1. Comenius held that every human being should be educated, simply because he was a human being. This is nothing new to us, but it was an immense step in advance of previous thinkers. Luther and his friends desired to educate the young because they had souls to be saved ; Come- nius, simply because they were human beings.
2. In perfect consistency with this fundamental view, Comenius advocated pansophy in the school, for only by an encyclopaedic training could we build up the whole fabric of the human mind. We must begin by instructing in the elements of all things, for our final aim has need of them all, that aim being threefold : — First, knowledge universal, including knowledge of oneself; second, virtue; and third, religion. There is involved in the first portion of the threefold end a thorough-going encyclopaedism. The work to be done in the school has for its aim pansophy, and is entirely
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governed and suggested by the pansophic ideal of man and society. Universal knowledge is to be organized, and all must share in it.
3. Knowledge must be expressed in the ver- nacular of each nation, for it is a human possession, and not the possession of any one individual or class. This also was logically involved in his fundamental conception. " We desire and pro- test," he says in the " Prodromus," " that studies of wisdom be no longer committed to Latin alone, and kept shut up in the schools, as has hitherto been done, to the greatest contempt and injury of the people at large and of the popular tongues. Let all things be delivered to each nation in its own speech." This was clearly a necessary deduction from his principle that every human being had, as such, a right to education. All knowledge existed for the bettering of man's con- dition and elevating him as a rational being. Nature is God's work, and is an enemy of man only in so far as he does not know it. He must, then, be taught to know nature and to know himself. Why? That he may rule nature and rule himself: which is virtue. The more compre- hensive the knowledge, the wiser is the ordinary life of man, and the more assured, consequently, is
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his virtue. Nay, religion, as well as virtue, rests on a knowledge of nature. Man's nature and external nature presented themselves to the mind of Comenius as a fundamental harmony. In this harmony was visible the goodness of God : man's business was to find it and then to refer all things to God, and lead a life in nature and society as with Him. So Milton held that we could not arrive at a "knowledge of God and things invisible, save by conning over the visible inferior creature;" and Picus of Mirandola identified the law of nature with the utterance of "our Lord Himself."
4. If encyclopaedic knowledge is to be acquired, even in its elements, we must take care that every one begins early, i.e. in the infant school. Comenius was the originator of the idea of the infant school — the " school of the mother's lap," as he calls it ; and there is little in Pestalozzi and Frobel which is not in Comenius, though not in him fully developed, Very simple instruction is to be given, only such as infant minds can assimilate ; but, however simple it may be, it must be wide-reaching as nature itself. It must be a foundation broad enough to sustain the weight of the pansophic temple.
5. How this broad foundation was to be laid,
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and a building erected on it, was the question of questions, for it was the question of method, and is the problem solved in the " Great Didactic " — Comenius' central work. Ratke's leading positions were that all procedure in education was to be from particulars to generals, and all, consequently, by observation and experiment. The Baconian philosophy showed that thus we acquired know- ledge, and accordingly thus must we impart knowledge. For with Ratke, as with Comenius, it was always giving and imparting, but now no longer a mere storing of memory, but all according to a method such that the teaching of one thing should be the teaching to reason on all things. Comenius seized on the same conception, and wrote, as I have said above, to Ratke for fuller information ; but his letter remained unanswered, and he had to think out the problem for himself.1 And just at that critical point, his philosophy of the world and of man's life, and the harmonious relation of the two, came to his aid. The world was not a mechanical construction, but dynamical. It was the wisdom of God making itself manifest ; and, as regarded man, God's purpose was to bring him back to himself through nature and life. Let nature and man, then,
1 Except in so far as he may have read some of Ratke's writings.
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be conceived as order and law, with a purpose. But if this were so, there must be some way of building up knowledge, virtue, and religion in the mind of man, so as to make him what he is intended to be — an image of his Creator. There must be order and law here as well as elsewhere. The larger cosmical conception suggested the way, for what was true of the whole must be true of the parts. Each individual thing, no less than the cosmic whole, was dynamical'; each thing was an organism growing from seed to flower and fruit. In fact, the biological process was the mind-process. In his " Prodromus," p. 40, he says, " After many workings and tossings of my th6ught, by reducing everything to the immovable laws of nature, I lighted upon my ' Didaetica Magna,' which shows the art of easily and solidly teaching all men all things."
6. Having already determined the end of educa- tion and the materials to be used, it was now clear to Comenius that the building up of the mind by means of these materials must be an organic process. In nature, then, he must find the clue to the method of education — in the chick, and in the seed of the plant, and in their gradual development. The mode of procedure in finding principles and
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rules was analogical, or, as he calls it, syncretic. The science of nature was then in its infancy, and Comenius could work only on such knowledge as he had — sometimes mistaken, always inadequate. His firm conviction, however, in the harmony of things sustained him. The result was that many of his illustrations were fanciful, and some of his rules of method strained. Yet in the main he was right. In spite of many defects, we have from him the only thorough-going treatise on educational method that has yet appeared in the history of the world.
7. Comenius reformed language-teaching, and began a new era in text-books. He had been met at once by a great difficulty in the practical working out of his theory. The curriculum of the schools was substantially Latin, and in Latin. His theory of the building up of the human mind demanded realia. Hence he advocated teaching of and in the vernacular : the vernacular first, and then Latin. When Latin had to be faced, his principles led to the "Janua" and the "Orbis Pictus," which latter is an illustrated real-encyclo- paedia for the young. All the words necessary for Latin intercourse must be acquired as soon and as easily as possible. But things had also
O
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to be taught, of which words are but the symbols. Words, then, must be taught with and through things. Language and reality must go hand in hand. The building up of a knowledge of things was the true building up of minds. Words being but the symbols of things were best acquired along with the things of which they are the symbols. Thus we kill two birds with one stone. Then, the true process of mind was the inductive. Accord- ingly, the universal was to be reached through the particular. Hence the multitude of facts in his school-books, which were to be the basis of future generalization and reasoning. As with things, so with language ; the elaborate abstractions of Latin grammar are obstructive. Reading and grammar must go together, and grammar itself must be simplified, and dictionaries too. Hence his graded grammars and dictionaries, that the time spent over Latin might be shorter, and progress more pleasant for the pupil. " If so much time is to be spent on language alone," he says, " when is the boy to know about things ? when will he learn philosophy, when religion, and so forth ? He will continue his life in preparing for life." Again, all was to be graduated, and adapted to the boy's age.
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8. As to school discipline, Comenius was far ahead of his own time, and even of ours. The seeds of knowledge, of virtue, and of piety were, to begin with, already in the child. Only wise culture was needed to make them spring into life and grow to maturity, just as with plants. Coercion was thus entirely out of place ; method superseded it, although he admitted that corporal chastise- ment was sometimes necessary for moral offences.
9. As to the education of girls, Comenius was not only more thorough-going than Vives, but two hundred and fifty years in advance of other men. I take Professor Masson's translation of Comenius' utterance on this subject 1 : —
"Nor, to say something particularly on this subject, can any sufficient reason be given why the weaker sex should be wholly shut out from liberal studies, whether in the native tongue or in Latin. For equally are they God's image ; equally are they partakers of grace, and of the kingdom to come ; equally are they furnished with minds agile and capable of wisdom, yea, often beyond our sex ; equally to them is there a possibility of attaining high distinction, inasmuch as they have often been employed by God Himself for the
1 Life of Milton.
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government of peoples, the bestowing of wholesome counsels on kings and princes, the science of medicine, and other things useful to the human race, nay, even the prophetical office, and the rattling reprimand of priests and bishops. Why, then, should we admit them to the alphabet, but afterwards debar them from books ? Do we fear their rashness ? The more we occupy their thoughts, the less room will there be in them for waywardness, which springs generally from vacuity of mind."
Now, it is an easy matter to pick holes in Comenius, whether we regard him as a mystic theologian, a pansophic philosopher, an enthusiastic humanitarian, or an educational reformer. I leave this task to those who care to do it. Assuredly no schoolboy in Europe or America, who under- stands the nature of the old bishop's work, would do it, even if he had the intellectual power ; and this, perhaps, is the highest tribute to the services which Comenius rendered. I confine myself to pointing out the defects which lapse of time and the accumulation of experience have taught us to be defects ; for it is the logic of events that teaches us the wisdom we call our own.
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The Baconian dictum, " Knowledge is power," is false, or, at least, fallacious. Power lies in ideas and ideals, and a vigorous intelligence behind them. This, Comenius, and with him modern sensationalists, did not see. The mind is not built up by universal knowledge, but by its own native energy and activity in using a little well. Discipline of mind is of more importance than the stocking of mind with multifarious know- ledges. " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." We can now scarcely understand that men should seriously maintain that we could form men by knowledge ; but it was an earnest conviction. "The mind is the man and the knowledge of the mind. A man is but what he knoweth," says Bacon. This being so, the conception of the school as an officina humanitatis is a logical enough consequence.
Again, literature, which, as artistic expression, includes art, is the most potent of all instruments in the hands of the educator, whether we have regard to intellectual growth, or to the moral and religious life. Comenius, however, had not the remotest conception of the aesthetic and literary, and in this respect is like Locke. His own Latin prose is hard and poor and negligent. So far,
198 COMENIUS, THE ENCYCLOPEDIST.
he is certainly an anti-humanist. But he is not an anti-humanist in his conception of the ends of education as moral and religious ends, but only in the narrower meaning of Humanism that characterized the first period of the Renaissance, when art and literary form were all in all. He lived in the latter half of the second humanistic period, when textual criticism and erudition pre- vailed, and when men's minds were too much agitated by the success of the Catholic reaction to find time to pick phrases and polish lines. The second epoch, even — that of Scaliger, Casaubon, and Buchanan — was already passing away.
Further, his " Janua," as a book for learning Latin, is, it must be confessed, a failure.
Finally, Comenius had no psychology to speak of, and thus he was compelled to rely on the frail support of analogy for the grounding of his principles.
Neither in his philosophy nor his erudition was Comenius profound. Joseph Scaliger and Casau- bon, of the immediately preceding generation, would have had none of him : Spinoza, writing his " Ethica " round the street-corner while Comenius was carrying his cumbrous works through the press, would have smiled at his too energetic faith. The
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theologians, so much in evidence in the beginning of the seventeenth century, would have deplored his vagueness and want of dogmatic system. But, in truth, he was a better theologian than any of them — Swiss Calvinist, Roman Jesuit, or Dutch Arminian ; while his moral enthusiasm and educa- tional insight almost raised him to the rank of genius. The present and the future so engrossed him that he had no time to overweight his mind by accumulating the written records of the past. He lived at a time when men of intellect were divided into two classes, those who looked back and those who looked forward ; he was essentially a modern, and at once put his hand to the work that was most urgent in the interests of Europe, viz. an irenicon, scientific organization, and education.
And yet, whatever his shortcomings, Comenius remains for us the most earnest and simple-hearted worker for the education of the people, and the most penetrating writer on method whom the world has ever seen — in fact, the founder of method. The more we study the subject of education in connection with the various influences at work in the beginning of the seventeenth century, whether we take its large national, or narrower scholastic,
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200 COMEN1US, THE ENCYCLOPEDIST.
aspects, the more clearly do we see that the simple- minded, much-enduring, and self-denying Moravian bishop, so long forgotten, stands out as a prominent figure even in general European history, and as quite the most eminent in the history of European education. He is still a living influence, and a power that will remain. When we read the record of his days, we are amazed at the persistency of his self-imposed labours in the midst of uncertain fortunes : of him it may be truly said that he " linked month with month in long-drawn chain of knitted purport."
" I thank God," he said, after a toilsome and disappointing pilgrimage of fourscore years, " that I have been a man of aspirations." But it is not as a man of aspirations alone that we honour him to-day, but as a man who laboured for us as few men have laboured ; who, in all the chances and changes of his troubled life, was a unique and touching example of the Christian graces of faith, hope, and love, and who has bequeathed to us, as the solid fruit of his aspirations, the "Great Didactic" — a possession which the educational world, at least, " will not willingly let die."
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NOTE. — There can be no doubt that Mulcaster (died 1611?) anticipated much of both Ratke and Comenius, but there is no evidence that he was known to them. Mr. Quick says in his "Educational Biographies," " The latest advances in pedagogy have established : (i) That the end and aim of education is to develop the faculties of mind and body. (2) That all teaching processes should be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner. (3) That the first stage of learning is of universal importance, and requires a very high degree of skill in the teacher. (4) That the brain of children, especially clever children, should not be subjected to pressure. (5) That childhood should not be spent in learning foreign languages, but that its language should be the mother- tongue, and its exercises should include handiwork, especially drawing. (6) That girls' education should be cared for no less than boys'. (7) That the only hope of improving our schools lies in the training of teachers." These were all advocated by Mulcaster.
VII.
THE SCHOOLMASTER AND UNIVER- SITY (DAY) TRAINING COLLEGES.1
WHEN, owing to very numerous occupations, I was about to decline the honour of your invitation to address you on this occasion, Professor MacCunn recalled to my mind the fact that I had a good deal to do with originating the idea of Day Training Colleges in connection with universities — that I had been, as we say in Scotland, "at the biggin o't." Accordingly, I put aside other engagements, and resolved to put on paper a few observations which might pass, in the lenient judgment of friends, as an inauguration address.
First, let me say that it was from no feeling of hostility to residential training colleges that university day training colleges were advocated. That, I think, is now distinctly understood. The
1 Inaugural address delivered at the Liverpool University College.
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simple fact was that a large percentage of teachers in England were untrained, and more facilities for training were wanted.
We have now a great organization of the resources of the country in the interests of the education of the people. Money and time are given to the work to an extent which would have been considered, forty years ago, an impossibility. The very conception of such a system as we now have would have been ridiculed as the dream of a "theorist." Many of us here can remember the day when two millions of children of school age in England, out of a total population of about twenty millions, were " neither at school nor at work." Add those at work who had received no schooling, and you can then imagine the educational destitution of the country. Now all is changed ; and, with the change, the education question, always with us, and always to be with us, alters its form. Two questions are now, I think, to the front — local autonomy, and the higher training of the teacher. Centralization has done its work, and decentralization (subject, of course, to central control of a general kind) is now necessary, if we are to engage the intellect and moral energy of the country more fully in the
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work of education. This point, however, I shall for the present pass by, for there is a more vital question than decentralization that demands our attention here and now ; and this question con- cerns the inner agencies by which we are to work the organization we at last, after a long contest, happily possess.
The central motive power of the whole scholastic machine is, by general consent, the teacher ; on him, his ideals, his character, his method, his living activity, all depends. Where he is weak the organization is worthless, and precisely as he is effective, so is the organization effective. Hence the necessity for more, and more highly trained, men and women. It was quite natural that attention should be directed to the university colleges springing up over England as the best available agency for adding to the number and the quality of the trained, especially as Board schools were as undenominational in their character as these colleges themselves. It was essential, more- over, in their own interests, that these young colleges should educate for the professions if they were to succeed in attracting pupils. The medical profession was open to them, and it was also open to them so to organize their scheme of studies as
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to give business men a more liberal education than was common in commercial circles. It still, however, remained for them to constitute them- selves professional schools for teachers ; and, doubtless, we shall one day find them attracting apprentice solicitors by organizing a law faculty, and apprentice clergymen by organizing a faculty of theology embracing those subjects which the Churches can leave to independent teaching. The immediate and pressing work ready to their hand was, however, unquestionably training for the teaching profession ; and this, thanks to the liberal views of Sir W. Hart Dyke and Mr. Kekewich, they are now trying to do.
It would be ungracious on this occasion not to name the vice-president and the permanent secretary. I have had a long experience of Government officials, and I know that much depends on the mental attitude of the central authority as represented by them. If they have in view merely the working of "articles" in a legal and bureaucratic spirit instead of using the code as an instrument to promote the local efforts being made by earnest men in every part of the kingdom to advance education, they may obstruct all progress and stamp out the most
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fruitful ideas. Codes may be so constructed and administered as to help forward education, and they may also be so constructed and administered that every article is a trap for the unwary and an obstacle to the zealous. The institutions, whether university colleges like this or residential colleges, which are doing the work of the State in training schoolmasters, specially merit, I think, not only the recognition which they have already secured from the Department, but the most generous con- sideration and the most liberal treatment. Every article in the code should be strained in their favour, not against them. The question for the Department should not be how little can we give, but rather how much can we give to promote the better preparation of the men and women who are to work the national system. Its chief duty is to see that the training given is liberal and generous in the spiritual sense, as justification for their being liberal and generous in the material sense.
The two reasons we have assigned for the university training college are the reasons we give to the politician, and they are true and sufficient reasons ; but there is a large idea in the movement which, though not purposely concealed, it is not always expedient to blazon on its front.
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It is difficult to get even academic men to take action in service of an idea. Ideas are suspects. The practical politician and the routine adminis- trator would gladly arrest them as vagrants having no visible means of subsistence, and put them in gaol to be reduced by spare diet till wanted. And there is, after all, some justification for their conduct. An idea must be shown to be practicable before it can be allowed to enter into an administrative system ; and we are well con- tent, accordingly, to have the official mind open to accept ideas when their practicability can be shown. In England, however, it is always wise to put some purely practical purpose in the front, and keep the idea and larger meaning of a movement in the background. The most important move- ment in our time, for example, next to the training of the teacher, is the more advanced instruction of members of trade unions — the aristocracy of the wage-earning class. What the educationalist chiefly aims at is elevating the plane of the mental life of the operative class, giving occupation for their leisure, and a higher aim to their politics. If we wish to succeed, we must demand the " technical instruction " of the working-man. That is the phrase to conjure with ; and there is enough
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of reality and substance in the demand to justify us in joining in it. If the desire be to educate the lower middle class, and provide good secondary commercial schools, the educationalist, while to save his honesty not committing himself, will yet not exert himself to check the panic about the German invasion of clerks, although he knows very well that the German can afford to take a salary which an Englishman, who has been trained to write foreign languages, would certainly despise. The German is here to be trained in English commerce. He is, in truth, attending the great mercantile university of England, and, like other students of universities, he takes his reward out, not in salary but in knowledge, and in growing familiarity with the world-language — the Volapuk — of trade.
In like manner, while there are solid practical reasons, such as I have given above, for the institution of university training colleges — solid and practical enough to justify the action taken by the Education Department — it is a purely educational purpose which can alone engage pro- fessional interest in the new movement. Let me put before you briefly what I conceive this purpose to be.
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I. The university colleges are at present con- fessedly training for primary schools. This is a work which, with slight adaptations of their academic machinery, they are well fitted to do ; but, ere many years have elapsed, their principal work will be, I believe, the preparation of teachers for the higher-grade elementary schools and for secondary schools. We prefer university institu- tions for the training of every grade of teacher to specialized training colleges, simply because they are not specialized. It is only in exceptional circumstances, and under men of exceptional ability, that a seminary restricted to one profes- sion can do the best work for that profession. There is, in truth, a radical error in the concep- tion of an exclusive seminary for the edu- cation of members of a profession. Teachers, least of all men, should be set apart from their fellow-citizens prematurely. They should breathe the invigorating air of an institution where all manner of men meet. There they come in daily contact with a larger life and with more varied intellectual interests than can possibly exist in a specialist school, that limits its scope by the horizon of examination papers imposed by out- side authority, and subordinates everything to a
P
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practical aim which prescribes " thus far and no farther." Contact with other men pursuing diverse studies, even when unaided by any other influence, counteracts the tendency to narrowness and pedantry, by giving breadth to the student's mind ; this is itself an education. The scholastic pedant will not, I am aware, concur, for he can see no gain to the human mind except in precise and exact knowledge of this or that subject : he ignores the educational influence of the indefinite. 2. Again, in universities young teachers are brought into relation with experts in all depart- ments of knowledge, and this raises their standard of what it is to know any subject. They leave with their testamur in their pockets, but well aware that it is a testamur of ignorance and not of learning. They have learned the lesson of humility. In the ordinary seminarist students we too commonly find that they cease studying after they leave college ; their knowledge is rounded off, their ignorance is their bliss. In the university- trained man his ignorance is his misery, and stimulates to further effort. He has a want which can never be satisfied. Thus, living and pro- gressive minds are sent into our schools, to the great gain of the community ; for the teacher who
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is not always learning is a bad teacher, however skilfully he may produce certain " results." He fails to give stimulus, and the intellectual outlook and imagination of the pupil lie dead under him.
3. Further, the university-trained schoolmaster imbibes some of the scientific spirit of the uni- versity, and goes forth as a scientific worker, and not as a mere craftsman. He has presumably studied the philosophy of his art, and works always with a dignified consciousness of his scien- tific function. He goes out to teach, that by teaching he may, in the largest sense, educate.
4. Finally, if he stays long enough to graduate, the young teacher goes forth as a member of an academic brotherhood. This gives him his standard of life and his code of manners and intercourse, by making him a conscious sharer in a corporate self-respect. He thus, by his academic standing, strengthens the body of teachers as a guild having rights against the community as well as owing duties to it.
These characteristics of the university man are, it is to be confessed, not always present in the youths whom universities turn out, but it is only universities that produce them. When they are present in a schoolmaster, he cannot keep them
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out of the influence he exercises, for they con- stitute him ; and as is the man so is the teacher. It is the influence of the universities and the Church on the culture and status of the school- master which have kept our great public schools up to their present level as educational institutions; and if only the scholarly men who work in these schools were also professionally trained, we should see great things.
There are many initial difficulties, financial and other, which beset a new departure such as the University Training College, and it is precisely to those most closely connected with it that the results will often seem most disappointing. But, in truth, the new idea is itself accomplishing much more than appears on the surface. In all uni- versity work the teachers have a tendency to feel despondent because of the small apparent result in the new-fledged graduates who leave their hands. This is as if a gardener were to feel hopeless about the crop the day after he had sown the seed. The flower and fruit will come in due time. In contact with the duties of life the raw graduate develops with amazing rapidity.
While trusting thus largely to the general
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influences of a liberal education and of academic life, the university training colleges have, generously and of set purpose, to do their part ; they have to remember that they are training to a profession. The broad and various university interests are necessary to the growth of the student ; but there must also be the definite aim. So far from weaken- ing, unity of aim strengthens and deepens the impression which studies make, because unity of aim gives moral purpose. It is a vulgar error to suppose that only knowledge which is pursued for its own sake is alone liberalizing. Is it not rather the case that what is studied with a view to its being turned to use among our fellow-men exalts pursuits otherwise abstract and unattractive, and throws over them a certain emotional glow ? Use, and the purpose of use, alone give life and meaning to the abstract. It is the ultimate use to which they are to be applied that gives unity as well as life to the diverse studies and influences of the university. Nay, may we not say that, of all knowledge, use is at once the consecration and the criticism ?
In the case of the schoolmaster, then, all the knowledge acquired in college must contemplate one issue — the qualification to teach and to educate.
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For this, as all admit, a practising school and a master of method are essential; but, over and above, there is needed the scientific study of education under a master in the philosophy of the human mind. If there be not this, then assuredly the specific tmiversity training of the teacher is non- existent. It is scientific or philosophic preparation for a profession that can alone liberalize it. It is an historical blunder to suppose that " liberal " edu- cation ever meant the pursuit of subjects divorced from the needs of practical life. A rtes liberates were first so called by way of contrast to the mechanical and industrial arts. The study of philosophy and history in their educational relations should, accordingly, take its place as one of the subjects qualifying for an Arts degree.
It is only by calling to mind a few great indi- viduals that we can be proud of our profession. Isocrates, Quintilian, Sturm, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Arnold, and so forth, soon exhaust our list. On the whole, we can look back on a past mainly ignoble, and on generations of boys who have learned what they have learned spite of their masters. The Orbilius plagosus, the pedant, the dominie, the brutal despot, fill the eye. The classical epithets are saevus, acerbus, sceleratus ;
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and Martial speaks of the schoolmaster as invisum pueris virginibusque caput. If we are now to recon- stitute the profession by giving to each member all that is best in the past, as illuminated and organized by modern thought, we must lay our foundations in history and philosophy. A Chair of Educa- tion, then, is to my mind an essential part of the university training college. The arts faculty must be augmented by the addition of a teacher whose subjects shall be mind as a growth and the history of attempts to educate mind. Educa- tion as a science or philosophy must be taught. Without philosophy, the best teacher is merely a clever craftsman. If the universities are unable to appoint a Professor of Education for want of money, why should not the Education Depart- ment be more liberal ? Failing the Depart- ment, why should not the County Councils of Liverpool and Lancashire step in and pay the salaries both of masters of method and professors of education, as I suggested at Manchester last September? The work in which these men are to be engaged is the highest kind of technical work, and seems to be covered by the English Technical School Acts ; or, at least, not prohibited by them. If the County Council of Cambridge-
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shire can offer money to the university to teach agriculture and teachers of agriculture, why not to teach teaching and teachers generally ?
Again, to attain the results which we hope for from our university training colleges, the authori- ties must be careful in selecting the material which they undertake to train. I think that you may (as, indeed, some colleges are now doing) supervise and direct the training of those who are fit to benefit only partially by an academic course, and be content to carry them forward to the " inter- mediate " examination ; but work of this kind must always, to a large extent, lie outside an academic organization. Your main object should be to attract those among pupil teachers and the rest of the community who can be carried forward to their full degree, the philosophy, history, and art of education being included (as I have already indicated) as one of the subjects qualifying for that degree. These graduate-teachers would naturally aim at higher-grade elementary institu- tions ; and the day would soon arrive when none save a graduate would be considered eligible to a head-mastership in all the more important State- aided schools. This surely would be to render a great public service to England ; and it is this
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which university colleges are alone qualified to render.
Whatever may be the difficulties, financial and other, that attend the new movement, a good time is at hand. Secondary schoolmasters, as well as primary, will have to be trained. A Teachers' Registration Act ought to fill your halls. When I was examined on this subject last spring by the Parliamentary Committee, it was evident that the vice-president of the Council and others were concerned about the means of getting professional training for the large numbers of young men and women who would have to seek it after the passing of an Act. I pointed to the universities and their colleges. These institutions now provide all our legitimate secondary school teachers. If they can do this, they can also give them their professional training, drawing into their net, besides, those who now open schools at their own venture, often with small qualification. It would be a great mistake to have separate training colleges for secondary schoolmasters. It would be hurtful in itself and a waste of existing resources. There are now already in England and Wales some thirteen or fourteen institutions ready to do the work which the State, by passing a Registration Act, would
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demand to have done somehow. The State, by thus utilizing the higher educational institutions which it already recognizes, would get its secondary schoolmasters at a very cheap rate, while con- tributing by the increased number of students to the financial prosperity and the national impor- tance of all the provincial colleges. The passing of a Registration Act, then, is your opportunity.
As there are some vague ideas abroad as to the course of instruction for secondary schoolmasters, I should like to take this opportunity of giving some indication of the lines on which it would naturally proceed. During their graduation course they should, if possible, take a term of logic and psychology, and then attend for two terms (followed by examination) the lectures of the professor of education, whose instruction would cover the field of applied psychology, history, and methodology. After graduating in the department of knowledge which they intended to profess as teachers (the psychological and educational studies being included in these degree qualifications), they would then spend one term under the general superintendence of the professor and the special direction of the master of method in a practising
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school — some good higher-grade elementary school in the university town. In that school they would see teaching and themselves teach. Demonstra- tion lessons would be given in their presence, and they would also be carried through a course of criticism lessons. A second term would be spent in some good secondary school — the criticism lessons still continuing. If distributed, these student-teachers would not injure the work of the schools in which they taught, but, on the contrary, stimulate it. Having already passed an examina- tion in principles, history, and; methods when taking their degree, they would conclude their course by teaching a class before the professor and some other examiner, and so finally qualify for a license or diploma which the Registration Council and the State would, of course, recognize. All this could be carried on under a university syndicate for the training of teachers — such as already exists at Cambridge and here. The licensed graduates would then — and only then — be entitled to say that they were members not only of an academic body (as at present), but also of a great profession. Certain public schools in various parts of the country should be thrown open for visitation by these licentiates, who would
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do well to spend a couple of months in thus laying a broad basis of experience for their future. The most important agency in training the teacher, whether primary or secondary, in the practice of his art as distinct from the theory and history of education, is the criticism lesson to which I have adverted above. As the criticism lesson is not fully understood outside training colleges, I may say a word or two about it : — The student is required to prepare a lesson to be taught by him to a certain class at a certain stage of progress. This he does in the presence of his fellow-students, who take notes, and after he has finished, criticize. But it is not desirable to give them license in criticism, and, with a view to point and relevancy, they should have guidance. A very good specimen of the rules which ought to regulate the remarks of the critic are those in use at the Seminarium Prcsceptorium^ at Halle : —
I. Choice and arrangement of material by the student giving the lesson, i. Was the amount of material in fair proportion to the allotted time ? 2. Was the material duly sifted, properly divided, and appropriately brought to a unity? 3. Was the plan of the lesson clear ?
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II. Manner of treatment, i. Did the teach- ing follow a systematic and appropriate order? 2. Was the lesson clearly presented, logically developed, and firmly impressed on the minds of the pupils, and so forth ? 3. How was the questioning managed, and were the questions fairly divided among the pupils ?
III. The personality of the teacher. What was the teacher's bearing? Was he fresh, stimulating, and alive ? Did he master the class by look and voice ? Was his language correct, concentrated, clear, concise ? Was his reading worthy of being taken as a model ? Was his personal manner commendable ?
IV. Discipline. Did the teacher keep the whole class busy all the time ? Did he secure the attention of the pupils and make them all share in the work in equal degree ? Did he give them recreation by pauses, opportunity to stand, recitation in concert, and the like ? Did he have his eyes and ears open for mis- demeanours, or did many things happen which he did not notice or did not consider ?
V. The general importance and success of the lesson.
The " practical master of method " would, of
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course, preside at these lessons ; but the professor should be generally present and take part in the criticism, summing up, and sometimes even testing the success of the lesson given by an extem- pore examination of the class, when the subject admitted of it.
Let me repeat, because I think it a vital point, that I do not consider that the universities are equipped for the work of training teachers — either elementary or secondary — until they have, in addi- tion to a master of method and a practising school, a professor of education, who will be the head or dean of the education faculty, so to speak. They should also have an education library containing some dozen copies of each of all the more im- portant books, besides two or three copies of many others. There should also be an educational museum, fostered and managed by the local guild, and in connection with it a hall, in which educa- tional questions might be discussed, and of which every student of education should be a member.
I have presumed that the State would recog- nize the university license or diploma, music and drawing being separately attested — the latter by the local School of Art. The State would thus, it may be said, be delegating its work to universities.
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But why not ? The universities are themselves privileged State institutions for the professions. The Education Department need never part with the right of inquiry from time to time — a right which I suppose the Medical Council exercises as regards the medical faculties. If closer supervision were needed, with a view to prevent one university underselling another by lowering its standard, a Senior Inspector of schools might be attached as an assessor to the examining bodies in the uni- versities. By granting this independence to the universities, excessive centralization of educational administration would be got rid of in a very vital matter. Different types of higher - grade and secondary schoolmasters would be sent out. All government, of course, is centralization more or less. In some things it is indispensable ; in war- like defence, for example, and in certain public services which have to do with the mechanical and industrial parts of the social organism ; but State centralization of the moral forces of society is always questionable — too often fatal.
Professional qualification, theoretical and prac- tical (such as I have sketched), can alone make the teaching body truly a profession. Without this, it
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is not even a guild. From time immemorial, guilds have demanded specific qualifications for " master- ship," as, indeed, our university guilds do at this day. The qualification of a master in the teaching guild can, it is evident, alone rest on the study of the mind of man as a growing mind/for so only can be ascer- tained the ends, ways, and means of growth. We aim at constituting such a guild — an incorporated body of educated men with a great educational tradition, which it would be their business to pass on to their successors. How else can the fires, from time to time lighted by an educational genius here and there, be kept burning ? They go out, and have to be lighted again and again. We are thus, from age to age, too much at the mercy of individuals.
The academic professional training of teachers would, I am certain, infuse a new spirit into all our schools, and raise the character and aim of every subject of instruction. The study of the philosophy of mind, for example, would, itself alone, compel the recognition of the ethical pur- pose of all school-work. It would thus tend to animate the teacher with a religious zeal, now sadly lacking in our schools. The philosophy of mind in its educational bearing necessarily
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includes the study of the moral and religious in- stincts of man. It reveals the religious idea as the highest expression of the life of mind, intellectual and ethical, and as the intimate support and sanction of right conduct. Religion is thus seen to be a necessary, and not an arbitrary, element in the education of the young. Without it all education is barren. The whole method of education con- templates the end and aim as dominant and first ; and that end is the spiritual life. When religion, in its broader aspects and essential meaning, is thus recognized by the student-teacher on scientific grounds, as something interwoven with every act of the school and as the summit and crown of the school-work, it will occupy a very different place in his estimate of his daily function to that which it now does, when regarded, as it too often is, as a system of doctrine and belief which is to be somehow added on to other attainments — as some- thing to be learned, and not as something to be lived. The tendency among teachers and taught alike is to look on religion as a " subject " to be " got up " alongside of other things, and not as the unum necessarium which is to give purpose and stimulus to the teacher, and daily sustenance to the pupil. When I said above that the philo-
Q
226 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES.
sophy of mind gives inspiration to the school- master, I meant chiefly this, that it gives him an ideal of the education of the human spirit, and enlists him in the spiritual army as a conscious and willing militant. It is this that exalts, and this which, under the difficulties and vexations of school-work, can alone sustain. Whatever system of belief a teacher may accept and inculcate, he is compelled by his philosophy ever to subordinate all to the one thing needful — the spiritual ideal of life. The teaching and bearing of such a master convey their influence into every department of his work and give it dignity. This is what is meant by the old Catholic dictum that religion should permeate the school.
There is such a thing, I freely grant, as teaching genius, which is independent of tradition and training, whether university or any other. There are teachers also who, though destitute of anything which can be called genius, are yet thoughtful and earnest men, endowed with a fair share of imagination and humour, in whom the routine methods of the school are vivified into living principles ; but, in the great majority of cases, the inherited and unrationalized methods of the school workshop govern successive generations
UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES. 227
of teachers. The consequence is that the school- master stands, in relation to his profession, pre- cisely where the unscientific mechanic stands in relation to his particular trade. Save in a few exceptional cases of great native endowment, I am persuaded that it is only insight into philo- sophical principles that can give continuous ethical stimulus to the teacher : it is the ap- prehension of educational ideals that can alone sustain and inspire him ; it is contact with the history of past efforts to educate the race that can alone give to him breadth and humanity. With- out the sustaining energy and ideal impulse which flow from these studies, the teacher's vocation is, it seems to me, dreary enough. With them, there is a renewal of moral purpose and educational faith every morning.
It is a beneficent arrangement of nature, doubt- less, that enables so many men to work by rule and routine, " circling like a gin-horse," as Carlyle says, "for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward, and realize much — for himself victuals, for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of economic society." But it is not such men we want for the
228 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES.
spiritual work of a community — the building up of the intellectual and moral fabric of mind. We cannot command the services of genius, but we can at least, through a spiritual philosophy, give to all, save those whom nature has destined to be hodmen, a certain inspiration and a certain method ; and inspiration is the fount of enthusiasm, while method regulates it. We want ethical fervour in the teacher ; but not at all that kind of enthusiasm which is the mere effervescence of aerated water. " How," to quote Carlyle again, " can an inanimate, mechanical gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured at Niirnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of anything ; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a Spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit ; Thought kindling itself at the fire of Living Thought ? How should he give kindling, in whose inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder ? The Hinterschlag professors knew syntax enough, and of the human soul thus much : that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods.
UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES. 229
Alas ! so it is everywhere ; so will it ever ; till the hodman is discharged, or reduced to hod-bear- ing ; and an architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged ; till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by gunpowder." Things are not so bad now as when Carlyle wrote these words ; but, in so far as they are better, it is due to the gradual and insensible recognition of philosophy and method, even by those who affect to despise both. Give us the university training of teachers, and Carlyle's graphic words will ere long have only the anti- quarian interest of an inscription on an Egyptian mummy-case.
NOTE.— Richard Mulcaster, the author of "The Positions," born in 1530, and Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School, London, was the first man in England to advocate the training of teachers. Mr. Quick, in his " Educational Biographies," gives the following extract from Mulcaster's book, which is of so great interest as to merit reproduction here along with Mr. Quick's introductory remarks.
' ' Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth century, by far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my opinion, the training of teachers. In this, as in most educational matters, the English, though advancing, are in the rear. Far more is made of ' training ' on the Continent and in the United States than in England. And yet we made a good start. Our early writers on education saw that the teacher has immense influence, and that to turn this
230 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES.
influence to good account he must have made a study of his pro- fession and have learnt ' the best that has been thought and done ' in it. Every occupation in life has a traditional capital of know- ledge and experience, and those who intend to follow the business, whatever it may be, are required to go through some kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn wages. To this rule there is but one exception. In English elementary schools children are paid to ' teach ' children, and in the higher schools the beginner is allowed to blunder at the expense of his first pupils into what- ever skill he may in the end manage to pick up. But our English practice received no encouragement from the early English writers, Mulcaster, Brinsley,1 and Hoole.
" As far as I am aware, the first suggestion of a training college for teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed seven special
1 John Brinsley (the elder), who married a sister of Bishop Hall's, and kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the Grammar School?), was one of the best English writers on education. In his Consola- tion for our Grammar Schooles, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says : "Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the manifold evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, and afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found in the better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me almost wholly, for many years, unto this weighty work, and that not without much comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God " (p. i). " And for the most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected by the endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and terror of the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. Now, whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who under- take this function are acquainted with any good method or right order of instruction fit for a grammar school ? " (p. 2). It is sad to think how many generations have since suffered from teachers " unacquainted with any good method or right order of instruction." And it seems to justify Goethe's dictum, " Der Engldnder ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz" that for several generations to come this evil will be but partially abated.
UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES. 231
colleges at the University ; and of these one is for teachers. Some of his suggestions, e.g., about ' University Readers ' have lately
en adopted, though without acknowledgment ; and as the University of Cambridge has since 1879 acknowledged the existence of teachers, and appointed a ' Teachers' Training Syndicate,* we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out his scheme, and have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.1 Some of the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date with his English. They are as follows : —
" 'And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this sufficiency in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be chosen and set forth for the common service ? Be either children or schools so small a portion of our multitude ? or is the framing of young minds and the training of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this Realm such a paucity, as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly thought on ? If the chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master : and where youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there will be worse. He that will not allow of this careful provision for such a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good master himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as Divines, Lawyers, Physicians do in their several professions ? Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them : and masters would prove old men, and such as Xenophon setteth over children in the schooling of Cyrus. Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift, afterward to pass thence to the other professions, though it send out very sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade requireth a particular college, for these four causes. I. First, for the subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our State. 2. Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of
1 At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already a Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools.
232 UNIVERSITY TRAINING COLLEGES.
them that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity of the pro- fession, which may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, which is comparable to the greatest professions, for language, for judgment, for skill how to train, for variety in all points of learning, wherein the framing of the mind and the exer- cising of the body craveth exquisite consideration, beside the staidness of the person.'"
VIII.
EVIDENCE GIVEN APRIL 17, 1891, BEFORE A SELECT PARLIAMENT- ARY COMMITTEE ON A TEACHERS' REGISTRATION AND ORGANIZA- TION BILL.1
MR. ARTHUR ACLAND.
Witness. In reply to a question : A departmental committee of the Scotch Education Department, after taking evidence, thought a graduate class [university graduates in preparation for the teach- ing profession] ought to have six months' course at a training college, in which they would be put through, not only the ordinary practice of teaching, but also (and this is of far more importance than the practice of teaching), what are called by train-
1 Parts of the evidence which do not bear directly on registration have been omitted. As the evidence stands as it was spoken, the reader will excuse defects of language.
23* EVIDENCE BEFORE
ing college authorities all over Great Britain, criticism lessons. In these, students are asked to teach a class in the presence of the master of method and their fellow-students, and then, after having taught the class, are subjected to the criticism both of their fellow-students and the master of method. The departmental committee recommended that they should have a six months' course of this kind.
1634. The report of that departmental com- mittee was a Parliamentary paper, I suppose ? — Yes; [C— 5336.] 1888.
1635. Is there any other special point in connec- tion with the actual work you have been conducting which you would like to refer to before we go to more general matters ? — I should like to say that, as regards the professional training of teachers, there is a pretty strong opinion entertained in Scotland that the other Scotch universities should undertake work similar to that which has been undertaken by the University of Edinburgh, where a schoolmaster's diploma is now given ; and it is generally understood that the Universities Executive Commission now sitting in Scotland will either make direct provision for chairs of education or lectureships of education in the
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 235
universities, or take such measures as will lead to such chairs or lectureships being founded.
1636. The hope is generally entertained in Scotland that that will be one of their recom- mendations ? — Yes ; that is the general feeling among the teaching class.
1637. I may say this, I suppose, while Scotland is forward in so many educational matters, in the actual matter of a fuller development of secondary education and its organization there is still a good deal to be done in Scotland ? — As regards organi- zation, everything to be done.
1638. When you get that which you are hoping for, I suppose the demand for secondary teachers will be greater than now ? — No doubt.
1639. And that would at once increase the work of your chair or other chairs of a similar kind ? — Yes ; and make them necessary.
1640. As to professional training for teachers, will you tell us your general opinion upon that subject? — I think the teacher should be carried through a course of what is called the science or principles of education, and the methods of instruc- tion and education as based on those principles, and following from them ; also a course on the history of education, so as to liberalize his mind
236 EVIDENCE BEFORE
on all questions of education, and to enable him to form a sound judgment regarding questions that come up.
1641. Would you illustrate the methods at the same time by practising schools ? — There should be' a means of connecting the Chair with some practising school or schools, especially schools organized for the purpose of training teachers, so that the student might see illustrations and methods of instruction, see good teachers teach, and receive criticism lessons with a view to his learning to do the work himself.
1642. Would you desire that facilities in that direction should be given in secondary schools beyond those that now exist in practising schools ? — It would be desirable that those intending to become teachers in secondary schools should spend a portion of their time in a high school, such as the high school of Edinburgh or Glasgow.
1643. Do you suppose that the authorities of the high school would be willing to permit such an arrangement ? — I have not the slightest doubt that they would, especially if suggested by the Department.
1644. If I understand you rightly, you think that the necessary training cannot be got by
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 237
merely taking an assistant's post and going at work at once in a school? — No, I think such a plan may make a very bad teacher : a man takes an assistant's post, he begins to practice teaching children before he has had any instruction, and of course may thus form very bad habits. The school in which he is an assistant may be a school that is called " efficient," but it may not be a school calcu- lated to teach a teacher to teach.
1645. If he went to a specially selected school under a skilled head-master, would that meet the requirements of the case ? — If certain schools were selected under a good head-master, no doubt some of the objections I take to the place of training would be obviated ; but the student in such a case would after all be simply in the position of a medical apprentice in a good surgery. It would be like training a medical man by sending him to be apprenticed in a surgery, and then after a certain amount of apprenticeship practice, in which he would learn all sorts of bad habits and get his mind habituated to certain ways of doing things, sending him to walk the hospitals, and study medical science. He would walk the hospitals and study science too late ; and it was because of the total failure of such an apprenticeship system
238 EVIDENCE BEFORE
to give a proper training to medical men that the modern system has been adopted, whereby a man studies the principles and methods in physic first, and then takes his practice in the latter part of his course.
1646. You would like to see a graduate, and I suppose they would be mostly graduates, who was going to undertake the work of teaching in a secondary school at once, as soon as he took his degree, or before he took his degree, go through a course in the method and science of education ? — Yes, either in the last year of his graduation [course] or immediately after it, and also take practice under supervision in a school specially designed for training him. That would occupy a certain length of time ; I think six months would be sufficient, because a graduate is a man of some education and mental discipline, and he could much more quickly acquire the methods and art of education than a raw youth who comes up to a training college for the first time, after having acquired bad habits as a pupil teacher.
1647. Have you observed that in Scotland there is a great deal of waste due to want of training ?— Yes. I have been in the habit of visiting schools in Scotland for the last thirty-five years, more
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 239
especially in the north-east of Scotland, where, following the tradition of the country, every teacher in a country school, with perhaps not more than four per cent, of exceptions, is a graduate of Aberdeen. The masters in the country parochial schools are all highly competent men ; no country in the world possesses men, occupying elementary schools, so highly com- petent as regards knowledge and attainments as the masters of the parochial schools in the north- east of Aberdeen ; and yet among them there is great waste of power.
1648. You lay stress on the words "knowledge and attainment " ? — Yes ; when they first enter the schools they have to feel their way towards methods, and it takes some years before they feel themselves masters of the subject notwithstanding their intelli- gence and attainments, and only a few of them ever acquire complete command over their material.
1649. If I understand you right, you have in Scotland a large number of teachers who have been assistant teachers in elementary or public schools, and who have been to a training college in the same way as in England ? — Yes ; a very large proportion of the teachers have passed through that kind of preparation.
24o EVIDENCE BEFORE
1650. You have a considerable number of what we call elementary teachers, but, unlike England, you have a considerable number who are gra- duates, and who have not been at a training college at all ? — Yes ; one-seventh of the total number are graduates.
1651. Though their attainments are higher, they are very much crippled by not having gone through a training course? — Yes, though a con- siderable number have also gone through a training college course. The attainments of a graduate are higher, his aims are higher, and he is a better man all round, perhaps, than one who is not a graduate ; but he is so defective in the matter of skill as a teacher, that you will find that the governing bodies of secondary schools are even beginning to appoint training college students with very much less attainment as assistant masters, simply because they can teach.
1652. Are you speaking of academies and high schools ? — Yes.
MR. ROBY.
1653. Do you use the word "academies" as indicating any special class ? — No ; I use it as a general term for secondary schools.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 241
MR. ARTHUR ACLAND.
1654. The point you are bringing before us is that in such secondary schools the value of train- ing is set such store on by the governing body or the head-master that they will take a man of lower attainments, if trained, in preference to one of higher attainments without that training ? — Yes.
1655. Then when we come to the question of registration, a register without an indication of a man's professional training would not be of much service ? — I think in Scotland the omission of what might be called the professional qualification from the register would make the Registration Act very much a dead letter, because, the number of our universities being so great in proportion to the population, the tradition of the country is to take graduates as teachers in secondary and other schools. These would have the qualification as regards knowledge. There would, of course, be no objection to such a Registration Act in Scot- land, because it would not alter the existing practice ; but it would do little good.
1656. That is to say, if the degree alone was suf- ficient qualification for registration I — -Yes, it would
or 2
242 EVIDENCE BEFORE
not affect us, because we have that ; the tradition of the country has secured that already.
1657. It would not bring about the improvement you desire? — No; the main object in Scotland of having registration is to ensure that every man who goes into a secondary or any school from the universities shall have had professional train- ing in the principles, methods, and practice of education.
1658. You are giving illustrations from Scotland, but you would say exactly the same in regard to England, as far as the broad principle is con- cerned ? — Yes ; and my views are not merely theoretical views, because for thirty-five years I have been going into schools constantly, and reporting on schools in connection with various endowments in Scotland.
1659. Have you done that for the Education Department ? — No ; I had to do that before the Act of 1872, in connection with the Church of Scotland ; I had to do it also for thirty-five years in connection with the Dick Bequest Trust, which is a bequest for higher instruction in parochial schools, and I gained considerable experience also as secretary to the Endowed Schools Commission of 1872. [Colebrook Commission.]
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 243
SIR HENRY ROSCOE.
1660. The Dick Bequest applies only to a small area? — Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray; what may be called the Aberdeen University district. I speak from a practical point of view, and not from a theoretical only, when I say that a Registration Act which left out the teaching qualification, cer- tainly would have no interest for me as an educa- tionalist.
1 66 1. Then what diplomas would you recognize? — That would be a matter for any council that was constituted to settle afterwards : I would begin by recognizing any education diploma which was instituted by any university, provided the conditions of taking that diploma were satisfactory to the council ; and then I should recognize also all certificates granted by training college authori- ties in England and Scotland, because whatever the attainments of a normal training college student might be, he would at least be trained professionally, and therefore we ought to recognize his training ; then I would also require training colleges in England and Scotland (though denomi- national institutions, they are in a sense national institutions) to throw open their training — not their
244 EVIDENCE BEFORE
teaching of subjects, but their training — to all men who had a certain qualification as regards attain- ments [e.g. graduates], and give them a six months' course. I would say, for example, that any young man who could show that he had a certain amount of attainment should be allowed to go to the Battersea Training College, or to the British and Foreign Training College, and say, " Here is my fee ; I want six months' training." I think it would do a good deal to nationalize such institutions.
1662. Those young men that you speak of would be day pupils, or whatever we may call them, at the residential training colleges ? — Yes, they would go to the training college as they would go to any university ; it would increase the influence of the training colleges enormously if they were known to provide such a course as this for men and women who wished to be teachers.
1663. The course ending with a certificate, which would be of real value ? — Yes, the certificate would be a qualification for registration. It may be said there would be a difficulty in finding a sufficient number of places of professional training in the event of a compulsory Registration Act being passed ; but I think there would not be any [serious] difficulty in that respect, because the uni-
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 245
versities would at once adapt themselves to it ; in fact, Cambridge is doing so. Cambridge has for some time granted schoolmasters' certificates, so has the London University, and so has the Edin- burgh University. All colleges under the " day training college" system would adapt themselves to granting such diplomas. Then all the [resi- dential] training colleges of the country, if thrown open to the extent I have indicated, would be utilized for general purposes in the same way. Voluntary institutions would also grow up. One voluntary institution for women has been established and has existed for some time in Edinburgh. There is one also in London and in Cheltenham and Cambridge.
1664. This is all, assuming that there is com- pulsion at the back of the Bill ? — Certainly.
1665. You think that is possible, do you ? — I hold the opinion that a teacher who advertises himself to take all and sundry, or who is appointed to any public school, ought to have the professional qualification for his work just like a member of any other profession.
1666. Suppose there were difficulties in the way of passing a Bill with such a provision through Parliament, would you think it desirable to say
246 EVIDENCE BEFORE
that schools in the receipt of public money from whatever source should at least be required to take teachers with such qualifications? — There could be no objection to that, because already endowed schools require that teachers, under certain circumstances, should be graduates of some university. It would be a great advantage if you could also add [to the existing requirements] that they shall have been professionally trained for their work.
1667. That after a certain time that should be an additional requirement ? — Yes, time must be given.
1668. You think that, at any rate, would be a fair requirement to make ? — Yes.
1669. And you would like to go beyond that afterwards ? — I should, if sufficient time was given before the Act became compulsory, certainly go much further. I should say that after a certain date every one who proposed to become a teacher should show that he had a professional qualifi- cation for his work, and knew the theory and art of it. That, indeed, is only what the Government has required for the last forty years in the case of elementary education. It would be simply ex- tending to secondary schools what has been done for primary schools.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 247
1670. Is it the fact that in Scotland there are not nearly as many private schools in proportion to the population as in England ? — That is so.
1671. From that point of view the problem becomes rather easier ? — Yes.
1672. Do you think there would be some diffi- culty in the working of a clause to prevent teachers from recovering their fees at law, unless they were registered, especially in the case of teachers in private establishments ? — There might be ; these things are always attended with difficulty, especially after their first institution ; there would be some difficulty, but the country would soon adapt itself to it.
1673. Do you think, if a Bill were passed with a demand of the kind that we have been speaking of on schools in receipt of public money, such a Bill, though it would not be all that you would wish, would help the whole movement forward ? — Immensely. I think such a Bill, if you applied it, e.g., to all endowed schools, would so operate that any young man (and I am thinking chiefly of the graduate class), any young man leaving Oxford or Cambridge, or any other university, intending to be a teacher in an endowed school, would feel that the way to promotion was blocked to him
248 EVIDENCE BEFORE
unless he had this qualification. The result would be that all would take the qualification whether or not they hoped to be appointed to such schools.
1674. That would be a possible way of bringing about the object in view, without this rather difficult provision about not allowing fees to be recovered ? — Yes ; an Act of that sort would be of immense influence in the country ; so far as Scotland is concerned, it would virtually settle the whole question there.
1675. — The great bulk of your schools are in receipt of public money ? — Yes, or they are endowed schools.
MR. CHARLES ACLAND.
1676. You said "would take the qualification ;" you mean would come on the register ? — Yes, as having a professional qualification ; as having been trained as a teacher. I do not attach much im- portance to registration, unless it include pro- fessional training — training in the principles, methods, and art of education.
MR. ARTHUR ACLAND.
1677. Is there any other main point in your examination-in-chief that I have passed over? —
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 249
I should just like to direct attention, in connection with the qualification, to the examinations, which lead to a diploma, or certificate, in the universities. As I dare say honourable members are aware, the University of Cambridge grants a certificate, or diploma, in education, and it seems to me that that is very well organized. They require all coming up for that diploma to pass an examina- tion. They require that they shall have spent three terms; that is, practically, a year, in some recognized college for training; and voluntary colleges have arisen, as I before mentioned, in order to meet the demand of the University of Cambridge. The diploma is chiefly taken advan- tage of by women at the present time. Then, in the Edinburgh University itself, where we have a regular organized department for instruction in the theory, history, and art of education, we have for some years granted a diploma the regulations with regard to which I will put in (handing in the same). These regulations simply require that the candidate before examination shall have attended a course of practical instruction, that is to say, that he shall give evidence either of having gone through a training college course under the Government, or that he possesses the Government
250 EVIDENCE BEFORE
qualification in the practice of teaching required of graduates imposed in the Scottish code ; or, if he possesses neither of those qualifications, that he has taught publicly at least one year in a school, and holds a certificate of practical fitness from the head-master of the school. Having these practical qualifications [which, however, I consider to be inadequate], he must also have attended a course of lectures and examinations in the University of Edinburgh.
1678. That is your lectures ? — Yes.
1679. What is the fee? — Three guineas.
1680. For the whole course? — Yes.
1 68 1. For a six months' course? — Yes.
1682. That is really for the year? — Yes, our college sessions are simply two terms ; he must have attended the class of the theory, art, and history of education in the university, and he must pass an examination in the theory, art, and history of education ; then he is examined in some practical subject or subjects to ^how his practical aptitude as a teacher, and before myself and an examiner appointed by the Court of the university, he must teach a class in some school in Edinburgh. We have a day appointed on which all those who have fulfilled the required qualifications perform
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 251
this last act with the view of obtaining a diploma ; that is to say, actually teaching classes in the presence of the examiners.
1683. If a young man is rejected on that practical examination, may he come up again ? — Yes, the other qualifications would hold ; he would simply study a little more of practical teaching.
MR. ROBY.
1684. In teaching these classes can he choose his own subject ? — To a certain extent ; he is allowed to choose two subjects, one an abstract subject and the other what may be called a real subject ; he must give a lesson say in elementary science, and another lesson say on an abstract subject — arithmetic, grammar, or geometry ; he is allowed to prepare these lessons.
MR. ARTHUR ACLAND.
1685. Supposing a young' man to be at the university already, what would be the additional expense to him of procuring the schoolmasters' diploma which you grant ? — At the present moment the whole expense is four guineas, three guineas
252 EVIDENCE BEFORE
fee to the professor,1 one guinea to the master of method in the practising school, and two guineas to be paid for the diploma itself, so that the whole expense would be six guineas.
1686. He can get all you require for six guineas ? — Yes; and what applies to Edinburgh would apply to Oxford or Cambridge.
MR. POWELL.
1687. How long a time would this course occupy ? — The course practically occupies what is called in England two terms, five and a half months.
1688. So if he goes through this course he postpones his entrance on his career by five and a half months? — In practice he does not, because he generally takes the course during the last year of his graduation in addition to his other subjects.2
1689. You do not consider that having to go through such a course would impose any unfair
1 The University Commissioners having recently included the subject of Education as one of the subjects that may be taken by a candidate for a Degree in Arts — the total additional expense to a student will now be only three guineas.
2 This will now always be done.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 253
burthen on a young man entering on his profes- sion ? — No, no unfair burthen ; if he had not completed the practical side of his work, he might have to stay three or four months at the university seat after he had taken his degree, but not more.
1690. You do not see any objection arising from what I am putting to you ? — No, none. I think I may say that the opinion of the teaching class in Scotland is, that if it were required that they should spend that additional time, the requirement would be universally accepted, though our students are poor and the question of additional time of residence is a serious one for them. It would be accepted generally as part of their university train- ing for a specific profession.
1695. I gather from your answers that your idea is that the register should be a test as regards the power to teach, but that the governing body should make other inquiries as to knowledge ? — Yes, certainly.
1696. Have you formed in your own mind any idea of what the register would be ; would it be one divided into different classes, or would *it be an alphabetical list of persons with a statement of their qualification against their names ? — I have not gone into the matter so much in detail as to be
254 EVIDENCE BEFORE
able to give a definite answer to that question, but my general opinion at present is that it should just be an alphabetical list of teachers, showing their qualification professionally, and then, follow- ing that, would be the subjects which they professed to teach, and knew how to teach. There might be, of course, in connection with such a register, a further classification of teachers for purposes of easy reference. That would simply be to simplify reference. The real qualification of a man would consist in his professional knowledge, and the statement of the subject or subjects in which the council recognized him as qualified.
1705. Do you think it is as easy to organize teaching and practising in teaching for secondary schools as it is for primary schools ? — Quite.
1706. You do not think that the greater diver- sity and the higher range of subjects does not make it more difficult in the one case than the other ? — No ; I think it makes it easier. Take the case of a teacher of one of the higher-class schools, say Rugby or Eton : the best possible preparation he can get for his profession, as a teacher of classics in the higher form, is to go to a training college and be trained in the ordinary subjects of teaching, because methods of teaching
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do not vary with the subject. The method of teaching elementary science [or English] is essen- tially the same as the method of teaching Latin or Greek.
1707. Could you give any further illustration as to what you mean by method ; do you mean the use of the blackboard ? — The whole course of instruction that is given by the professor of educa- tion or the lecturer on education has reference to method. He proceeds scientifically ; he proceeds to take the students into a consideration of philo- sophy of the human mind, the philosophy of intelligence as basis of method and guide in the art of teaching.
1708. Do you mean a complete course of psychology? — Not a complete course of psycho- logy ; it is a rather peculiar kind of psychology ; you have a sort of parallel to it in the kind of course given in technical colleges. If we wish to prepare a man for some department of industry, to make him an intelligent foreman, we carry him through an elementary course of chemistry, or physics, or electricity, or all three, but those courses are partly purely scientific and partly practical in their character. They are mixed ; if they are properly given, the scientific element in
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them has always a practical aim in view. So, in taking the student of the art of education into [ethics and] the philosophy of intelligence, we have a practical aim in view. It is not a com- plete course of psychology that you go through. A complete course of psychology would lead the student's mind away so far from his subject that he would have no time to get at practical methods. Having laid this scientific basis, we then, aided by the experience of teaching all over the world, and the history of teaching, deduce certain methods and rules of procedure in all teaching [and training].
1709. So as to excite the interest and retain the attention ? — Yes, and show the connection between the scientific and the practical. A teacher who has passed an examination on theory, art, and history may be said to have got his theoretical knowledge ; the rest must be done in a practising school under the master of method, where he applies the methods of teaching which he has learned under the actual supervision of a man competent to supervise him.
1726. You used the expression that you would require the training colleges to throw open their training, not their teaching, to those young men
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 257
who were intending to be teachers. Would you kindly tell us the exact distinction that you draw between the one and the other ? — Training consists simply in admitting a person already qualified, as regards knowledge (say a graduate), to the lectures on the principles and method of education which are given to the senior students in training colleges and also to practice.
1727. By the master of method ? — Yes, or by the principal of the college ; and it would com- prise practice also under the head-master of the school.
1728. I understood you to say that you laid great stress on the criticism lesson? — Yes, I consider that [and Demonstration lessons] more important than any amount of practice.
1729. Would you just explain what the criticism lesson is ? — The master of method calls a class into a room by itself, and one or, it may be, two students, having received, directions to give lessons to that class in certain subjects, proceed one after the other to give those lessons. They know the stage which the class has reached and what the next lesson ought to be on the subjects selected. The students thus told off to give a lesson one after the other prepare notes of the lesson which
S
258 EVIDENCE BEFORE
they mean to give, and they hand those notes in to the master of method, who sits with those notes of the lesson before him ; one of the students then begins to teach, trying to follow that course of instruction which he, applying the methods of teaching, considers to be the best. He teaches perhaps twenty minutes, and, the class having been dismissed, he sits down. All the students in the class are sitting round, and the master of method calls upon one of the students and says, " What do you think of this lesson ? " The young man gets up and may say, " I think he began the wrong way ; the children were supposed to have only so much knowledge of the subject he was teaching, but by the way he began he assumed a greater measure of knowledge than they had, and the result was that he was hampered all through in teaching his lesson, and the class never got a proper hold of what he was driving at." Then another student may get up and say, " I think in presenting such and such an illustration he chose one which was not relevant to the subject in hand." Another student may criticize his language ; he may say his language was incorrect, and he ought to be careful in teaching to use correct language in order that he may insensibly train the children to
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 259
speak good English. Another may say he con- siders the method of his teaching to be good, but he did not succeed in commanding the attention of the whole class, but only a portion, and the reason was so-and-so. The students are not allowed to say anything without giving a reason. The master of method sits and hears all the criticisms that can be made, making notes, and when all is done, he himself sums up and points out where he thinks the critics were wrong or right in their observations, and then he himself goes over the lesson as a whole, and points out where he considers were its excellences and where its defects.
1730. How long does all that take? — The criticism lesson, as a rule, is never allowed to last more than an hour ; sometimes one teacher teaches, and sometimes two teach in that time.
1371. What would you say would be the normal number of student teachers present at a criticism lesson in a training college ? — It depends on the size of the training college. I have seen as many as fifty or sixty present at a criticism lesson ; it is better that there should not be more than thirty or forty, I think.
1732. What would be the number of the class,
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the subject of experiment ? — So far as I have seen, the class never exceeds twenty.
1733. In carrying out that system, it makes no difference whether you have boys or girls as pupils of the class, the subject of the experiment ? — No, in Scotland they are mixed.
1747. Do you think, if such a register were established, it should be connected more or less closely with the Education Department, or do you think it might be established independently of the Government ? — I attach very little importance to the way in which that question may be settled. One thing only I think is of importance, that if there is to be any control of such a system, the teachers should be represented on any body con- trolling it, just as medical men are represented on the medical council; and I think it exceedingly important that the State also should have con- siderable power in any such council. Whether that should be done directly by the Government of the country, or whether through the Education Department, is a matter, I think, of very little moment. I think, if we have an Education Depart- ment, that Department should be the authority to select men to sit upon the council along with the representatives of the teachers and the various educational bodies.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 261
1748. One witness gave it as his opinion that the large schools in England would view with considerable fear and apprehension any close con- nection with the Education Department ; he did not mean merely the right of the Education Department to nominate representatives to the council, but any closer connection than that? — I think he is quite right [I heartily sympathize with him]. The great public schools, and many other schools of less importance, would hesitate very much to put themselves in the hands of the Edu- cation Department, either English or Scotch.
1749. You think there would be a considerable fear, and a legitimate fear, of the State exercising too close and direct a control ? — I have not the slightest doubt that it would do so. We can only speak from experience of the past. The closeness of the control of the department in England over elementary education has been notorious.
1750. Then it is connected with a grant of money ? — Yes.
1751. I take a case where the State does not provide any money ? — I think they should not be allowed to have any control in that case. An education bureau gets into certain habits ; it has got a certain work to do, and it does it in an
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official way by means of officials. It must necessarily have rules, and must apply them in a somewhat rigid manner ; and even where no money is given, its direct influence in the way of inspec- tion of such schools as, say, Eton or Rugby would be hurtful.
1752. You think there would be the danger of a manifestation of that bureaucratic spirit and temper if such a system of registration were too closely connected with the Education Depart- ment?— Yes ; at the same time the State ought to be represented on any Council that might be constituted ; the Education Department would naturally demand to put representatives on the council.
1753. Are you in favour of the State granting money for intermediate or secondary education? — I think that is a difficult question ; in England more difficult, perhaps, than in Scotland ; but I certainly think the State should grant money to secondary schools, just as they grant money to elementary schools.
1754. If they grant money they can more easily insist upon the teacher possessing certain attain- ments, and on his possessing teaching qualifica- tions?— Yes, it gives them power on every side
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 263
the moment they give money ; at the same time, the money need not necessarily be given on terms which would make the supervision of the Education Department too close ; it could be given on such general conditions as would leave the schools free.
MR. CHARLES ACLAND.
1759. The line between different grades of schools is not nearly so sharply drawn in Scotland as in England ? — No.
1760. Perhaps that may be partly the reason why you express the opinion, as I understand, that practising schools of the primary grade are almost as good an area for practice for secondary teachers as they are for teachers of primary schools ? — It is partly the reason only : the reason why I consider that the ordinary primary school or practising school of a training college is a perfectly good field for training a secondary teacher, even of the highest classes, is that methods of instruction are best seen in operation in connection with elementary subjects, and can be applied afterwards to more advanced subjects.
1761. In point of fact, would you advocate the
264 EVIDENCE BEFORE
institution of practising classes in secondary schools ? — Yes, I should like to see secondary schools used for this purpose as well as primary. You see many of the secondary schools begin with very young pupils ; they take pupils as young as nine or ten years old, and in certain districts, and in university towns, I should have some one or more of these schools recognized as practising schools to which graduates might be sent, and where they would be under a master of method.
1762. You would like to see secondary schools chosen for such a purpose ? — Yes ; and more than one might be chosen in a town.
1763. As I understand, you do not attach much importance to having different grades of practising schools or different grades of teachers ? — I do not attach very much importance to that, although it is desirable.
1764. With regard to the criticism lesson to which you have referred, I suppose it is more for training the critic than the teacher who is criticized ? — No, it is for training both. Of course a man in the position of the criticized teacher is a little nervous in giving his lesson ; he is learning his art, and he sits there and listens to the criticisms that are made, and is benefited by them, and all
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 265
the students who are present, whether they say anything or not, are also benefited by hearing what is said.
1765. That is a system which you would like to see us practise in England ? — Yes.
1766. We have no such system here, have we ? — You have it at the training colleges in England.
1767. I understand that although you have this excellent system which you have described in Scotland, you are still of opinion that this Bill is worth having, but that registration under the Bill would be of very little value unless it specified the qualification of the teacher on the register ? — I think it is of very little value unless it require a professional qualification ; that is to say, evidence that the teacher had been trained to teach and had studied principles and methods.
1768. You wish every one who proposes to become a teacher to prove to the council a pro- fessional qualification ? — That is essential.
1769. As I understand, you do not apply that to private tuition ? — I do not exactly see the way to apply it in the mean time to private tuition ; but what I hold is that no man should be allowed to teach publicly for payment (and here, of course,
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the question of the recovery of fees comes in) unless he has some recognized qualification.
1770. On the whole, then, may I take it you would like to see private tuition included in the Bill ? — I should, if it were possible.1
1771. But you think it would be difficult to include it ? — I see a great many difficulties in the way.
1772. You do not regard it, at any rate, as unadvisable to include it ? — On the contrary, I think it would be advisable. I hold that the same principle applies to teachers as to medical men. There is a certain minimum qualification for a medical man, and I hold that there should be a minimum qualification for a teacher, whether private or public.
1773. Some witnesses have expressed the opinion that the relation between the private teacher and the parent is so close that it is, on the whole, unadvisable for us to enter into the question of private teachers in this Bill ? — I think, on the con- trary, that one may say very generally there is no class of people in the world who are so incompetent to determine whether a teacher is fit to teach their children as the parents are.
1 In Prussia it is so.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 267
1774. Therefore you would like this council to give them their assistance in that respect ? — Yes.
1775. I dare say you know there is a provision in one of the Bills to include on the register all existing teachers ; do you think that is advisable ? —I do not see how you can avoid it without doing
injustice in many quarters where you did not mean to do injustice.
1776. Do you think it advisable to include on the registers elementary teachers ? — Unquestion- ably so, down even to kindergarten teachers.
1777. You would wish the Bill to include the whole of the teaching profession in Great Britain ? —Yes.
1778. You have described to some extent the elaborate and complete system which prevails in Scotland. This Bill does not provide for anything so definite as that ; it does not go so far ; but do you regard the Bill as efficient and to some extent final for England, or only as a step in the right direction, having regard to the fact that conditions in training teachers in England are so different from what they are in Scotland, as I understand you to say? — Lest I should be misunderstood on that point, I should like to say that the condition of training in the case of elementary teachers in
268 EVIDENCE BEFORE
Scotland and England are precisely the same ; but as regards teachers who aim at secondary instruction, there is no compulsory training for them at all in Scotland. The description that I gave of the training was what was actually done for those who chose to come to get diplomas at the Edinburgh University ; and what I think ought to be universal at all university seats.
1779. You regard this Bill as likely to promote the teachers' own interests ? — Certainly ; and as likely to give rise to voluntary training institu- tions [under corporate bodies, e.g. the College of Preceptors], which would be recognized by this council, as providing the necessary qualification.
1780. On the whole, you would prefer that such voluntary institutions should be set up than that the Government should have any part in estab- lishing such a system ? — Very much ; the Govern- ment only stimulating them.
1781. You think that this Bill will stimulate the springing up of such institutions ? — Yes. They will be self-supporting, and require no money from the State, I think. [Presuming that the universities take the matter up, the State, I rather think, would have to endow Education Chairs, but this is about all.]
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 269
1785. With regard to the question of com- pulsion, I understand that you do not think it indispensable ? — I do not think the question of compulsion in the mean time is indispensable. In answering a question just now, I said that any arrangement that makes the professional qualifi- cation necessary for certain classes or types of schools would be an immense step ahead, and would probably end ere long in attaining the very object which one of these Bills has in view without compulsion.
1786. In point of fact, if there appeared to be any reaction among the teachers about this Bill, you think the advantage conferred upon the whole profession by giving it a kind of status better than it has at present would be sufficient to enable us to drop the provisions for compulsion, and still to be sanguine about the Bill doing a great deal of good ? — Yes, we might be perfectly confident about that. You could drop compulsion, and yet do an immense amount of good.
1787. Supposing we put in compulsion, have you any fear ? — As regards Scotland, none ; but as regards England I am not so sure whether there might not be a considerable amount of opposition. I am not well informed on this point.
270 EVIDENCE BEFORE
1788. Am I to understand that, on the whole, your opinion is rather against including it than in favour of it ? — I am in favour of compulsion if it can be managed at all. I merely mean that if you specified certain classes of schools which could be held only by men professionally qualified, you would give a tone to the whole teaching profession in the country, and raise the status of all the men who hoped to get those schools. In that way you would get perhaps twenty men preparing them- selves for the professional qualification for one who would ultimately get any such school. So that the effect of the Bill, even without compul- sion, would be very much wider than appears at first sight.
1789. I rather gather that you would prefer that we should adopt, if possible, some kind of indirect and partial compulsion, such as you have described, than provide distinctly that any person who was not on the register should be unable to recover the fees ? — No ; I would prefer a general compulsion.
1790. You would prefer this provision with regard to the recovery of fees if we could get it ? — Yes. All I wish to say is that the amount of good to be accomplished without compulsion is much greater than many people think.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 271
1791. Therefore you think it would be quite worth righting for if we cannot get the other ? — Undoubtedly.
1792. At the same time, you would be glad to see us fighting for the other ? — Yes.
MR. LAWRENCE.
1793. Do I understand you to say that the cer- tificates will not vary according to the class of school which a man is to teach ? — The professional certificate will not. The training to teach one subject is, speaking generally, a training to teach all.
1 80 1. What course would you be prepared to take with regard to the teaching of foreign lan- guages ? — I think no one should be allowed to teach a foreign language unless he brings a quali- fication from Germany, or Italy, or France that he is qualified to do so ; and if he has not such a qualification, he would have to submit here to an examination which the council would regard as giving a satisfactory qualification. I think there would be no hardship in that. As matter of fact, in Germany they issue diplomas, and in France too, and a man who is really qualified for the work
272 EVIDENCE BEFORE
has no difficulty in getting that evidence of his qualification. If he had it not, I say let him submit to an examination here.
1802. I think you have told the Committee that you have not fully considered the difficulty of differentiating private schools from those schools which are the subject of these Bills ? — That is part of the question of definition of a school which I am at a loss to give.
SIR HENRY ROSCOE.
1803. I suppose that a private school would be one carried on for private profit, would it not? — That would be one explanation of it ; but the question was raised here, When can you call it a " school " ?
1804. No doubt it is a difficult question. Seeing the difficulty, and yet, as I understand from your evidence, being anxious to obtain if possible com- pulsion within a certain range, do you think it would be possible to exclude on the one hand schools carried on for private profit, and on the other hand certain of the larger and more impor- tant English public schools, and yet to include the great mass of secondary schools, proprietary and otherwise, as to which compulsion might stand
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 273
while allowing the others to remain for the present without ? — One can do that by simply specifying. You would exclude everything that you do not specify.
1805. Exclusion is more simple than inclusion, probably ? — Yes ; by specifying certain schools the others fall out as a matter of course.
1806. What would be your view as to that sort of middle course ? — As I have already said, I think it would be an immense step in the right direction, but it would not be wholly satisfactory.
1807. Do you think by degrees private school- masters would come in to obtain registration for their own advantage and get themselves registered ? —Not only private schoolmasters, but I believe
you would find that the whole class of school- mistresses, governesses, and private tutors, would very soon come and be registered ; they would find it necessary for success.
1808. With regard to the more important public schools, such as Eton and Harrow, which are excluded in one of the Bills but not in the other, have you any opinion upon that subject ? — I do not think that any school of that kind should be excluded. I do not see why Eton should be worse taught than any middle-class school in the country.
T
274 EVIDENCE BEFORE
I mean taught by men less qualified professionally in principles and methods.
1809. For all teachers, whether, for example, for Eton or for a primary school, would you insist upon the same methods of obtaining knowledge and training, such as you described to one honour- able Member is the case in Scotland ; would you put them all through the same mill ? — I would put them all through the same mill as regards the purely professional part of their work, because there are no two mills to go through ; it is the same principle, the same methods, and the same art, whatever you are teaching. So far as secon- dary schools are concerned, training is at present voluntary.
1810. Take the case of a man anxious to become a master at Eton, what course would you propose he should take ; must he obtain his professional training in an elementary school, or where must he get it ? — Supposing the case of a young graduate, and no doubt, if he is intending to teach at Eton, he is a distinguished graduate, and has just taken his First Class at Cambridge or Oxford : well, if he aims at getting a good appointment at one of the public schools, he simply goes to a professor or lecturer at Oxford or Cambridge, if he has not
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 275
been to him already, and goes through a course of instruction in theory and methods, and along with that instruction takes practice in the art under a master of method in a school or schools in Oxford or Cambridge ; or, if he chooses to go elsewhere to get his training, he may do so ; but the training he must get somewhere or other.
1811. In the first place, may I point out that at Oxford or Cambridge there is no Professor of Education ? — Those things grow up very fast when they are wanted. For example, see what is happen- ing at the University of Cambridge now. Nobody could have foretold even two years ago that we should have five or six different university colleges all training teachers for elementary schools in England ; but here, with a simple stroke of the pen, the Department has done it. So at Cambridge you have already a syndicate of the university which examines for diplomas in education, and requires that all those examined shall have got training for a year in some recognized school for training. This university syndicate is now, I am told, trying to constitute itself into a kind of day training college for Cambridge under the Code. If they do that, they would certainly have to appoint a permanent lecturer in education ; call
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him a professor, or tutor, or lecturer, as you please.
1812. But at present, looking at these university colleges which last year's Bill called into existence, and which are in a very flourishing condition, taking, for example, Owens College, the students going there are only fitting themselves for the instruction of primary or elementary schools?— Yes.
1813. But you see no objection to young men who have taken their degrees, for example, and desire to enter into the secondary system of educa- tion in the country, attending such classes with those who are engaged in primary education ; you think that what is good for the one is good for the other ? — Certainly.
1814. A young man who goes through the system which is now prevalent for obtaining elementary teachers will be fitted to go on to train for secon- dary instruction ? — Certainly.
1815. Is there nothing more necessary, then ? — Nothing but knowledge, although it is desirable that he should have some practice in a secondary school also.
1816. You think that the system may be acquired by the practice which is already given in the prac-
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 277
tising schools ? — Practising schools already give the whole method necessary for any teacher at Eton. You give method to the teacher of geography, the teacher of arithmetic, the teacher of elementary Latin, reading and writing, English composition, grammar and so on, and at first sight you may say the methods for these various subjects must be different ; but, as our training colleges show, and have proved beyond question, the methods are not different, but they are the same methods applied simply to different subjects. Therefore a first-class man from Oxford or Cambridge meaning to be a master at Eton, by going into one of the prac- tising schools for six months, can get his training and get a proper education for his work, so far as the practical side of it is concerned.
1817. How long would that take ; would one of your Scotch sessions be enough ? — Yes, quite enough. The departmental committee which reported to the Scotch Education Department some two or three years ago, seemed to think about six months would suffice ; and I agree with that view.
1818. That would not be a very heavy require- ment to put upon candidates for such offices ? — No ; because they could begin their training before
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they had taken their degrees. It is merely the being in residence after taking their degrees which would fall heavily upon them ; but they could begin the work before they took their degree, as a good deal of it is not heavy work like working for a tripos.
1819. Would you apply that to female students as well ? — Yes.
1820. I suppose a master of method must be trained in some way ; what would you do as to them ? — As you are doing now ; for example, at Owens College, Cardiff College, and Liverpool College, they have been advertising for, and indeed two of them have got, masters of method, and, thanks to the training college system, which has been in operation for the last forty years, they are able to get men who have been trained in the method of teaching, and who utilize their training at these university colleges. Such a man must be himself a trained man.
1821. You do not think that the great advan- tages which would evidently accrue to any trained candidate for such a career as a teacher in secon- dary schools from attending these class proprio motu would be sufficient ; you think compulsion would be advisable ? — I think, if you are to secure
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 279
professional qualification for all schools, or for a specified class of schools, you must have com- pulsory training.
CHAIRMAN.
1960. You have written, have you not, some works on education ? — Yes, a good many ; too many, perhaps.
1961. Is there anything in those works to which you could kindly give the Committee a reference which might be useful to elucidate any of the points we are considering ? — In so far as I have dealt with this question, I have dealt with it alto- gether irrespective of the Bills, and simply as bearing on the general question of the professional training of schoolmasters. There are a good many papers that bear directly upon that to which I could give the reference if the Committee desire it.
1962. You have not put in any concrete form in those works any suggestion for the registration of teachers ? — I have not taken up the question from that point of view.
1963. On the whole, I gather from your evidence that you are in favour of a Registration Bill pure and simple ? — Yes.
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1964. You think such a Bill could apply equalb to Scotland and England ? — Yes.
1965. Failing a Bill with a penal clause or one of a compulsory nature in it, I understand you think that even a Bill permissive in its character would be better than nothing ? — Provided that it limited appointments to certain classes of schools to those who were registered.
1966. You know quite enough of the state of educational affairs in England, do you not, to be able to state to the Committee that there is a considerable difference between the position of higher education in England and in Scotland ? — Yes.
1967. On the whole you would say, I presume, that you are more advanced in intermediate education in Scotland? — We are more advanced and less advanced ; that is to say, our intermediate education is spread over a larger area of pupils, but our higher intermediate education is not so high.
1968. Do you think that the possible grounds of objection to a Bill, such as Mr. Acland's, for instance, are much more narrowed down in Scot- land than they would be in England ? — I do not think there would be any objection in Scotland at all.
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1969. You think that Scotland, educational and otherwise, would be practically unanimous in favour of a Bill like this ? — Yes ; there have been meetings and resolutions of various kinds on this subject ; in fact, I got one yesterday from Glasgow, in favour of some such Bill ; and the general senti- ment and tendency of opinion, and the articles in the newspapers and education journals, all show that there would be no opposition to it in Scotland. A few individuals might be opposed to it ; but generally speaking it would be accepted. I think I may say that ninety-five per cent, of those interested in the subject would desire to have such a Bill.
1970. You not unnaturally place enormous stress upon the importance, not only of training the teachers, but upon the essential part of the teachers' training ; the method of securing aptitude for teach- ing on the part of every teacher? — Yes, I attach the utmost importance to it.
1971. In Scotland you do not place equal im- portance on the qualification as regards the actual possession of knowledge, on account of this fact, as I understand, that no teacher in Scotland, in a private adventure school or otherwise, would attempt to undertake the work unless he were a
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graduate ? — Yes ; it is not so necessary to impose that restriction in Scotland.
1972. There, again, is there not a very special difference between Scotland and England ? — Yes.
1973. That is to say, having regard to the floating mass of the teachers in England concern- ing whom we know nothing as to qualification whatever ? — There is no doubt whatever about that.
1974. I should like to ask one or two questions with regard to this matter of the council ; I think you said that you in Scotland were specially in need of some Act for the general organization of secondary education ? — Yes.
1975. With the object, I presume, of bringing together into line the different scattered efforts and consolidating them ? — Just so.
1976. You are no doubt aware that an Act has been passed, which has been in operation nearly two years, for intermediate education in Wales ?— Yes, I have seen that Act.
1977. Are you aware that in that case there is a central guiding authority, that is to say, the Charity Commissioners, who decide on education schemes under that Act, and who are the last
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arbiters, to decide whether a scheme should be recognized or not ? — Yes.
1978. I think you also said, did you not, that you thought the council to be established under this Bill was an essential part and a good part of the machinery of the Bill ? — Yes.
1979. Does it not strike you that there may possibly be in the future some kind of collision between the central authority set up under the Intermediate Education Bill, and the council which it is proposed to establish under this Bill ? — I can- not say ; so much depends upon the form which any central administration for secondary education might take. It might be found, if this council were in operation and the qualification of teachers settled to begin with, that there was very little to be done in the way of central administration. It is difficult to answer a hypothetical question of that sort, because so much depends upon the form given to the administration of intermediate education.
1980. So far as this Bill deals with the regis- tration of teachers pure and simple, you think there would be no serious probability of collision with the central authority in London or in Edin- burgh dealing with intermediate education gene- rally ; for instance, as regards securing the proper
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examination of schools ? — There would be no possible collision, I think, so far as concerns the mere registration of teachers, because that would be a prior qualification in the case of all teachers, and there could be no collision.
1981. Assuming that in England or Scotland, or in both, an Intermediate Education Act were passed, do not you think it might be possible to have some elastic scheme which might, without obliterating the council or authority which it is proposed to set up under this Bill, bring the council well into line with any such scheme of intermediate education ? — Certainly ; I think it might be easily done.
1982. I understood you to say that you thought that either of these Bills would work better with a council, independent of the central Government authority, than if a central Government authority were set up as the guiding authority ? — Yes.
1983. Do you think there is much jealousy generally throughout the profession with regard to placing the teachers in the higher grade or highest-grade schools under any Government authority? — I think there is a very strong feeling about placing them under a Government Depart- ment. I do not think anything would reconcile
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 285
the secondary teachers in the country to that except actually getting a grant of money.
1984. You think that there is a great distinction between the position of teachers at those schools and schools under the elementary school system, which receive grants from the State ? — Yes ; some say if elementary teachers are to be under Govern- ment control, so ought secondary schoolmasters ; but I think there is a marked distinction between the two. The secondary schoolmaster is, as a rule, a man of much higher education ; the tradition of his office is of a different kind ; public opinion around him is more alert, owing to the fact that the boys and girls whom he teaches .are neces- sarily, since it is secondary instruction he gives, children of middle-class people of fairly good position who have themselves some education, and are therefore more competent to criticize the master. I always, of course, assume a good governing body for the school, but, with a good governing body for the school, I think anything in the nature of State supervision which takes the form of detailed inspection is a waste of money. If the State gives grants, of course it has the right to see that certain things are done. For instance, the State should see that the sanitation of the
286 EVIDENCE BEFORE
school is right ; that the apparatus, equipment, and everything that qualifies it to be a secondary school, is right ; and should by means of some such Bill as this secure that every man should be trained to his work ; and then I think it might leave the rest, for a great many years to come, to work of itself.
MR. ARTHUR ACLAND.
1985. In the case of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, where a large number of schools would be founded, which would be only a little above the elementary, that is to say, cheap secon- dary schools, do not you think some kind of inspection — I do not say Government inspection, but such inspection as might be arranged, perhaps, by the various Welsh counties together, would be of some value ? — I distinguish very much between what I should call local inspection and centralized Government inspection ; I think local inspection is always perfectly safe.
CHAIRMAN.
1986. If it were suggested with regard to the council proposed under this Bill to place the duties
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 287
allotted to the council under some Government Department, and to place the council in the position of a consultative committee to work with the Government Department, do you think such a scheme as that would be as good or better than the proposal in the Bill, or would you rather have the council absolutely distinct ? — I think, on the whole, it will be better for the teaching class and also for the State Department itself to have the council distinct. The State Department would then be in a position to criticize and check it ; whereas if the other body were simply consultative with it, there would be many occasions for a difference of opinion and collision.
1987. The importance of this point is obvious, having regard to the legislation which we all hope for in the near future, in reference to inter- mediate education, with the view of preventing any possible collision where public money is involved with any authority we may set up under this Act. I will ask you this one last question : Broadly speaking, do you consider that the council proposed in this Bill is the best body to carry out the object of the registration of teachers, and that, in setting up such a body as that, we shall not be running a risk in the near future of colliding with
288 EVIDENCE BEFORE
the interests of intermediate education as dealt with by any possible Act ? — I do not think it is possible that there should be any collision, as the Bill has to do not with schools, but only with the qualification of teachers before they enter on schools.
1988. I will ask you one question with regard to the compulsion clause in this Bill and to the registration under it ; I think the Committee may gather from your evidence that you think any registration Bill must be liable ab initio to this difficulty, that you would be registering, in England at any rate, a large number who were not fit to be registered ? — Certainly.
1989. You know of no way out of that difficulty ? — The only way is to say that after a certain date no man or woman shall be entitled to take up the profession of teacher unless registered.
1990. You would give a margin of time? — Yes, a certain number of years ; it might be five years, or whatever number of years was thought to be reasonable. It might perhaps be a better way than registering all and sundry who had been teaching for two years, to say that after a certain date no one shall be allowed to teach in a school who is not registered.
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. 289
1991. Let me throw out this suggestion and ask your opinion upon it : Supposing, instead of applying universally the penal clause with regard to recovery of fees directly the Act came into operation, you were to adopt a middle course, and say with regard to existing teachers that they should not be able to claim to be registered, but that they would not be subject to a penalty as regards the collection of their fees ; how would that work ? — I do not see exactly how thai would work.
1992. It would work in this way, would it not: that all the new candidates for the profession of teacher would be subject to compulsion and come under it, and with regard to existing teachers they would not be registered, but still they would not be penalized by being prevented from collecting their fees ? — I think that would work ; you must be merciful and liberal in the interpretation of any Act like this for a time.
1993. You think that any application of the Act must be worked by a gradual system ? — I think it must necessarily be so in England. In a country like Scotland, which is so much smaller, and where the question is so much more definite, it might be very quickly brought into operation.
JNIVERSITYT
290 BEFORE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE.
MR. JOHN KELLY.
20 10. Would you say that the general body of private schoolmasters in England would be repre- sented by two gentlemen named by the College of Preceptors, two by the National Union of Teachers, two by the Teachers' Guild, two by the Irish National Teachers' Association, two by the Educational Institute of Scotland, one by the Con- ference of Head Masters, and one by the Conference of Head Mistresses ; in your judgment would that be an adequate representation of the great body of private schoolmasters in England ? — Yes, I think it would. They can join the Teachers' Guild if they choose.
2011. I take it that your opinion is, that amongst other reasons, one great reason for the representa- tion of private schoolmasters is that the council should inspire the confidence of the whole body of the profession ? — It is quite necessary it should do so.
IX.
REPORT OF SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.1
A SELECT Committee was appointed to consider this subject in March, 1891, consisting of the following members : Mr. Arthur Acland, Mr. Charles Acland, Mr. Bruce, Mr. James Ellis, Mr. Conway, Sir William Hart-Dyke, Mr. Hobhouse, Mr. John Kelly, Mr. Lawrence, Viscount Lyming- ton, Mr. Powell, Mr. Roby, Sir Henry Roscoe, Mr. Rowntree, Mr. Sidebotham, Sir Richard Temple. Sir William Hart-Dyke, Vice-President of the Council, was appointed Chairman of the Com- mittee.
Two Bills which had been introduced into the House of Commons, one by Sir Richard Temple, the other by Mr. Arthur Acland, were referred to the Committee.
1 Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, July 14, 1891. Reprinted here as issued by the Technical and Secondary Education Association.
292 REPORT OF
NAMES OF WITNESSES. — The following persons gave evidence before the Committee : —
Mr. F. ANDREWS, Principal of the Society of Friends' School at
Ack worth.
Miss BEALE, Principal of the Ladies' College, Cheltenham. Rev. G. C. BELL, Head Master of Marlborough College. Mr. C. BOWDEN, Head Master of the Wesleyan School at Gates-
head-on-Tyne. Mr. COURTHORPE-BOWEN, formerly Head Master of the Grocers'
Company's Schools, Hackney Downs, and Principal of the
Finsbury Training College for Men. Mr. W. BROWN, Principal of Tollington Park College. Miss Buss, Head Mistress of the North London Collegiate School
for Girls. Miss CLARA E. COLLET, President of the Association of Assistant
Mistresses. Mr. W. H. CUMMINGS, Professor of Vocal Music in the Royal
Academy of Music.
Rev. Canon DANIEL, Principal of the Battersea Training College. Mr. H. W. EVE, Head Master of University College School,
London, and Dean of the College of Preceptors. Mr. J. G. FITCH, Her Majesty's Inspector of Training Colleges. Mr. H. B. GARROD, Secretary of the Teachers' Guild. Mr. GEORGE GIRLING, Inspector of Schools under the London
School Board, formerly President of the National Union of
Teachers.
Mr. C. R. HODGSON, Secretary to the College of Preceptors. Miss M. S. KILGOUR, Assistant-Lecturer in Mathematics at
Queen's College, Harley Street, London.
Prof. LAURIE, Professor of Theory, History, and Art of Educa- tion in the University of Edinburgh. Rev. E. F. M. MACCARTHY, Head Master of the Five Ways
School under the King Edward's Grammar School Founda- tion, Birmingham.
SELECT COMMITTEE. 293
Dr. A. C. MACKENZIE, Principal of the Royal Academy of
Music. Rev. H. K. MOORE, Principal of the Church of Ireland Training
College at Dublin.
Rev. JOHN PERCIVAL, Head Master of Rugby School. Rev. R. B. POOLE, Head Master of the Modem School at
Bedford.
Mr. BARROW RULE, Clerk to the School Board for Croydon. Mr. F. STORR, Chief Master of Modern Subjects in the Merchant
Taylors' School. Sir ARTHUR SULLIVAN, Member of the Council of the Royal
College of Music. Miss AGNES J. WARD, Principal of the Maria Grey Training
College. Dr. RICHARD WORMELL, Head Master of the City Middle Class
Schools in Cowper Street.
The Report of the Select Committee was as follows l : —
WITNESSES EXAMINED. — Your Committee have examined a large number of witnesses representing the College of Preceptors, and voluntary organiza- tions such as the Teachers' Guild, Head Masters' Conference, Association of Head Masters, and National Union of Teachers. Evidence was also obtained from independent witnesses, of a repre- sentative character, and of repute in the educational world.
1 The headings of the paragraphs given here are not part of the Report ; in other respects the Report is given exactly as it was issued.
294
REPORT OF
GENERAL OPINION FAVOURABLE TO REGIS- TRATION.— As a result there appears to be a general consensus of opinion amongst the wit- nesses in favour of the principle of registration of teachers.
SHOULD REGISTRATION BE VOLUNTARY OR COMPULSORY? — On the question, however, as to whether registration should be voluntary or com- pulsory, and, if compulsory, in what manner and to what extent, the evidence was very conflicting. The witnesses who advocated compulsion for teachers of schools by means of a clause providing that no teacher in a school should, if unregistered, be entitled to recover fees, had to meet two diffi- culties : first, that to place of necessity all existing teachers on the register would seriously lower its standard ; and, secondly, that the penalty proposed in the Bills in regard to the recovery of fees or salary might in many instances be evaded.
REGISTRATION OF TEACHERS IN SCHOOLS ASSISTED BY ENDOWMENTS, RATES, OR TAXES. — A suggestion was made to your Committee which may hereafter produce valuable results, that after a certain time, no unregistered person shall be a teacher in an endowed school or a secondary school assisted by money from rates or taxes, such,
SELECT COMMITTEE. 295
for instance, as the schools to be established under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, or the Technical Instruction Acts. Such a proposal could be enforced by Act of Parliament, or could be inserted in schemes now made, or to be made, by the Charity Commissioners or other authorities. When the conditions of registration have been well settled, and the Register is duly established as an institution which meets the educational wants, and has the approval of the country, a provision of the kind above mentioned will, in the opinion of your Committee, be simple and beneficial.
SINGLE OR DUAL REGISTER. — In this con- nection an important suggestion was made by Dr. Percival, one of the witnesses, to the efifect that the register might be divided into a pre- liminary and permanent section ; upon the first of these, which would be of a temporary cha- racter, all existing teachers might be placed, or any person who could produce the requisite cer- tificate, or other evidence of attainments in respect of the subjects he desired to teach. But the Council, hereinafter mentioned, should only place upon the permanent register persons who, in addition to the qualification of acting teachers or the possession of a certain degree of knowledge,
296 REPORT OF
should have proved their capacity as teachers, after any such test as the Council might think sufficient. This would obviate the necessity of admitting to the register a large number of un- qualified persons, and tend greatly to stimulate the training of teachers in secondary schools, which your Committee regard as one of the most important objects of a Registration Bill. But many witnesses declared themselves to be in favour of a simple alphabetical register, with a statement against each person's name of the several degrees, certificates, and other qualifica- tions to which he was entitled.
TEACHERS OF SPECIAL SUBJECTS.— Your Com- mittee think that it is not essential that teachers of music, and, possibly, of one or two other special subjects, shall be placed on the register, but that the wishes of those entitled to speak on their behalf should be consulted on this matter.
QUALIFICATIONS FOR ADMISSION TO REGIS- TER.— With respect to the qualifications which should be shown on any register of teachers, strong evidence was adduced that they should be twofold, viz. intellectual attainments, and know- ledge of the theory and practice of teaching.
SELECT COMMITTEE. 297
VALUE OF TRAINING.— As regards teachers' experience, some of the witnesses most highly qualified to give evidence in respect to its require- ment, laid great stress on the value of training. And the evidence given certainly testified that a large part of the efficiency of our elementary teachers is due to the training which they receive, first as pupil teachers, and afterwards as students in training colleges.
ABSENCE OF TRAINING COLLEGES FOR SE- CONDARY TEACHERS. — But the absence of train- ing for registered teachers in secondary schools is met by the difficulty that, with the exception of one or two institutions for female students, very few facilities exist at present in the United King- dom for that training. It appears probable, how- ever, that this deficiency will not long exist, and that the demand created by a thorough ventilation of this question will be gradually supplied by local effort. There is good reason to believe that one of the earliest effects of " The Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889," and of the establishment of Day Training Colleges in connection with the University Colleges now found in many large centres of population, will be to produce local training institutions, to which well-equipped
298 REPORT OF
practising schools may be attached, and in which the teachers who are to be employed in secondary schools may be efficiently trained.
COMPOSITION OF EDUCATIONAL COUNCIL.— Your Committee have considered the proposals embodied in both Bills submitted to them in regard to the formation of a Council for giving effect to their provisions, so far as they relate to the registration of teachers. There was a general opinion that the Council should consist of repre- sentatives of the State, the Universities, and persons actually engaged in the teaching pro- fession. It appears to your Committee that a Council formed upon such a basis would fully meet any requirements necessary for the carrying out of a scheme of registration.
Recom men dations.
ADMISSION OF TEACHERS TO REGISTER.— Your Committee are of opinion that the most satisfactory arrangements in any scheme of regis- tration that may be adopted would be (a) that existing teachers should not be put on the register merely as such, but should not suffer from any legal disability ; (b) that both existing teachers and
SELECT COMMITTEE. 299
future teachers should be admitted to the register on producing such evidence of intellectual acquire- ments and teaching capacity as might be required by the Council ; (c) that the register should, as soon as might appear reasonable in such case, be made compulsory upon existing teachers in the event of their appointment to teach in a secondary school, assisted by endowments or public money, and upon future teachers in these, and ultimately in all other secondary schools ; (d) that teachers cer- tified by the Education Department should be placed on the register with an indication, as in the case of other teachers, of the nature of their certificate.
GENERAL SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS. —Your Committee, therefore, beg to make the following recommendations : —
(1) That registration of teachers in secondary schools is in principle desirable.
(2) That such registration should be based upon the suggestions contained in the last paragraph of the foregoing report.
(3) That the qualifications for registration should include evidence both of attainments and of teach- ing capacity.
(4) That with this object, additional facilities
300 REPORT OF SELECT COMMITTEE.
are required for the training of teachers in secon- dary schools.
(5) That any educational Council to be estab- lished for the furtherance of such registration, should be composed of nominees of the State, representatives of the Universities, and members elected by the teaching profession.
Your Committee desire to report the Bills that were referred to them, without amendment, to the House.
OF THE
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