Thoughts on public schools : a sermon preached at Sutton's Hospital in the Charter-House, on Founder's Day, 1875

%

THOUGHTS ON PUfiLIC^iOOLS.

A SERMON' -■"''''

PEEACHED AT SUTTON'S HOSPITAL
IN THE CHAETEE-HOUSE,

ON FOUNDER'S DAY, 1875,

BY

EDWIN PAL ME K, M.A. "

COEPUS PEOFESSOE OF LATIX IN THE UNIYEESITY OF OXFOED.

PUBLISHED BY EEQUEST.

JAMES PARKER AND CO.

1875-

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

ECCLES. xi. 1.

" Cast thy bkead Tjpojf the wateks : foe thou shalt

riND IT AFTEE MAXr DATS."

'pO old Carthusians gathered in this chapel, on such an
occasion as the present, two lines of thought inevit-
ably present themselves, — the munificent design of the
Founder, for whom we thank God to-day, and our own ex-
perience when we were schoolboj's in that Founder's school.
Let me follow each of these lines of thought a little way.

And first of the Founder and his institution. Whether
we know much or little of Thomas Sutton's history, we
know at least that he aimed at noble objects, and made
a noble contribution towards those objects. His aim was
to lighten the pressure of povertj' on the old and on the
young ; to diminish the suffering which it entailed upon
the former, to dispel the ignorance to which it condemned
the latter. He was not deterred by the vast dispro-
portion of any effort that he could make to the evils
which he desired to meet. He "did what he could;"
and he chose rather to do that little well, than to spoil the
quality of his work by an ambitious attempt to extend its
area. His poor brethren were to be relieved from the
ills of poverty, effectually', and not in name only ; his
poor scholars wei'e not only to be educated, but to be
maintained while they received their education.

We have lived to see a time, when the wisdom of such
institutions as Thomas Sutton's has been called in ques-
tion. Charitable foundations, whether educational or not,

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 6

have been represented by men of ability and honesty,
as mischievous to the common weal. For myself, I do
not believe this doctrine to be true, even for the present
day. I believe it to owe its origin, and any popularity
that it can boast, to the abuses which have crept into the
management of almost all foundations. I rejoice in the
claim of the legislature to act as supreme visitor of all
charities. In the existence of a supreme visitorial court,
which can not only enforce law but amend it, I see the
best guarantee which is attainable against abuses of every
kind, the best guarantee which is attainable for the per-
petual application of pious gifts and bequests to good and
fruitful uses.

But, even if it were conceded, that in our own age
charitable endowments are not needed, there would be
no reason to believe that they were unnecessary in Thomas
Sutton's generation, or for many generations after him. It
was a real want in his own day which he strove to meet,
and his eflforts did not prove ineffectual. The burden
of undeserved penury has been lightened for many poor
men during the last two hundred and fifty years, many
poor scholars have been trained in good learning, by help
of those gifts which God gave to Thomas Sutton, and
he deliberately gave back to God. " Deo dante dedi."
With regard to one part of his institution, the good done
has probably been much larger than he himself anti-
cipated. Round the forty scholars for whom he origin-
ally provided, has grown up one of those great schools
which have long been, and still continue to be, notable
centres of light for the whole of England. Like all
other founders of schools which have attained a hijrh
degree of excellence, — like William of Wykeham, Henry
the Sixth, Lawrence Sheriff, and the rest,.^ — our own
Sutton must be numbered by any man, who is not en-

4 THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

slaved to a false theory, among the true benefactors of
his colmtr3^

How fai" he forecast the important consequences which
would flow from his provision for forty poor scholars,
we cannot tell. There is one feature in his foundation,
■which might perhaps have been shaped otherwise, if
lie had forecast them ; — a feature, which this chapel re-
cals vividly to all our minds. I mean the combination
in one institution of boys and old men.

It was a noble idea, certainh^, to embrace in a single
scheme of charity old age and youth. I love and re-
verence Sutton's memory all the more, because he took
thought at once for both ends of life, — for the age of hope
and golden dreams, and for the age when hope — on this
side of the grave — is well-nigh over. Myself a boy no
longer, I can appreciate perhaps better than when I was
a boy his tender care for old age. Nor am I insensible
to the picturesqueness of the combination, which has often
served as a topic for the j'outhful orators, who (while the
school still remained in London) were called upon year
by year to pronounce Sutton's panegyric. Yet here,
in Sutton's chapel, I cannot but wish that from the first,
the two parts of his institution had been, as they are now,
established in difierent places.

Except for the chapel and its services, I should have
no reason to entertain such a wish. Whether indeed
the brothers of the Charter-house used to derive pleasure
from the neighbourhood of young life, I know not. That
the boys were sobered in any degree, or made more
thoughtful, by the neighbourhood of old age, I have no
reason to believe ; certainly I have no such memor3^
And all Carthusians know that, in practice, young and old
were completely separated ; it was only in God's house
that we met together. That we should meet in this place,

*^«*

/'

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 5

that we should join In the same pra3'er3 and hymns, that
we should communicate, young and old, at the same altar,
was surely (it may be said) no harm to either. Even
if young and thoughtless minds did not realise the senti-
ment of such a conjunction, at least it could not harm
them; nor could it harm the devotion of their elders.

All this, of course, is true ; hut there were two practical
ways in which our common use of this chapel worked
amiss. The chapel was a small one ; the old men na-
turally and rightly occupied the central space in it. The
foundation-boys were crowded together in a corner ; the
boarders, when provision came to be made for them, were
ranged in more orderly fashion, but were ill-jjlaced for
sight and hearing. Boys require every help to devotion
which can be given by the arrangements of the building
in which they are assembled for public worship : in this
chapel, — I hope I may say so without offence, — the ar-
rangements were of necessity against them. An altera-
tion, which I recal with thankfulness, was made in the
gown-boys' seats after my time. I do not doubt that
it was a considerable improvement. In my time, cer-
tainly, those seats were as ill-adapted for prayer as can
be well imagined.

Inconveniences like these might have been remedied,
no doubt, by the erection of a new chapel here on Thomas
Sutton's ground. But the erection of a larger and better
chapel would not have touched another evil consequence
which flowed from the resort to one chapel of boys
and "pensioners. Prayers and sacraments are, it is true,
the most important uses of a church ; for men mature
in age and in religion they are far more important than
preaching. But for many men preaching is of great
importance, for boys it is of peculiar importance. Our
double foundation placed the preacher in a difficult posi-

6 THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

tion : half his audience consisted of old men, half of boys.
A sermon specially adapted to old men could hardly
be fit for boys ; a sermon specially adapted to boys could
hardly suit old men. Under such circumstances, it must
always have been likely that one part of the congrega-
tion or the other would feel that little was done for its
spiritual needs ; not improbable, that both would be dis-
satisfied. At all events, the pulpit could not be employed,
like the pulpit of a mere school-chapel, with a constant
view to the needs of young hearers.

Another incident of our foundation, not unconnected
with its double character, intensified this evil. The
preachers in this chapel were not Masters in the School.
The foundation provided a Master for the Hospital ;
a Schoolmaster and an Usher for the School; and also
(so ran the original scheme) " one learned and godly
Preacher, to preach and teach the word of God to all,
poor people and children, members and officers, at or
in the house." It is far from my intention to disparage
our Preachers ; but I will say, fearlessly, that their ex-
ternal position operated to diminish their power over their
younger hearers. The ablest men, the most learned, the
most pious, could hardly know the difficulties of school-
boys like those who were toiling daily among them;
nor, as a rule, could the boys be expected to listen to
such preachers with equal attention. In my time, cer-
tainh', the Charter-house pulpit, in spite of the ability
and earnestness of the Preacher, gave no such impulse
to the moral and spiritual life of the School, as the ser-
mons of Moberly and Wordsworth were giving in those
same years at Winchester, the sermons of Arnold at
Hugby.

I dwell upon this thought, not to depreciate the sagacity
or piety of our Founder, who assuredly did not intend

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 7

to neglect anything which could conduce to the religious
training of his scholars ; but because the place in which
I stand brings it forcibly to my mind, and because it
is one among many reasons for rejoicing in the removal
of the School to Godalming. There at last we have
a Chapel worthy of its purposes ; there at last the INIasters
of the School have the privilege of preaching to their
own boys, and in preaching are able to make the good
of those boys their constant object, without fear of neg-
lecting, or seeming to neglect, an equally important part
of their congregation.

The mention of this disadvantage (if I am right in
calling it a disadvantage) in our foundation, as it was
originally planned by Sutton, has already led me on to
the second line of thought which our anniversary sug-
gests,— the personal experience of school-life, which is
indelibly printed on each man's memory.

There is an ideal of the English public school system
with which we are all familiar ; I do not speak of an
ideal sketched out in any particular book, but of an ideal
which lives in the mouths of Englishmen, and is a theme
of frequent self-gratulation. According to this ideal,
a public school is a place in which all the virtues of the
natural man — if not all the Christian graces — are de-
veloped by the conditions under which the boys associate
together. Courage, purity, honesty, truthfulness, are en-
forced by a public opinion stronger than the rules of
masters ; a healthy rivalry in athletic and intellectual
pursuits draws out and perfects the powers of mind
and body ; daily intercoui'se with superiors, inferiors,
and equals, removes alike shyness and forwardness, self-
assertion and rusticit}'.

Of course, such an ideal is not wholly without justifica-
tion in fact. There are tendencies at work, in all good

8 THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

schools, towards the production of the several results
which it brings together into so attractive a ""picture.
But there are other tendencies which conflict with them,
and often gain such a superiority over them, that the
picture becomes thoroughly unreal.

Boys are not better than men, any more than savages
are better than the natives of a civilized country. If
they Avere, a question might be raised about the use of
education and civilization. Particular vices, it is true,
are observed among men of mature age, as particular
vices are observed in civilized times and countries, from
which boyhood and savage life are comparatively free :
but evil passions are as rife in boys as in their elders,
in the savage man as in the civilized. And in our
public schools, as among savage tribes, there are fewer
checks and restraints on the play of evil passions, than
in the life of grown men and in civilized communities.
I will name two such evil passions, cruelty and impurity.
I do not, of course, deny that these evil passions exist
and find scope for indulgence in mature life as well as
in schoolboy life ; but it is obvious that in the former
there are many more checks upon them. Occasions
for the indulgence of cruelty are in mature life com-
paratively rare. As to impuritj^, the restraints of society
prevent grown men from parading their vileness, as boys
will do, and poisoning wilfully or recklessly the minds
of their companions. In our great schools boys are
massed together without the restraint of an older public
opinion than their own, without that restraint from the
eye of their elders which is constantly upon them in
their own homes. The chief substitute for such a re-
straint is the public opinion which grows up among
the boys themselves.

What is this public opinion likely to be ? I suppose

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 9

it will be the reflection of tlie opinion of those among
them who have chief influence. The natural aristocracy
of a school, like the natural aristocracy of a savage tribe,
builds its title, for the most part, on the development of
bone and mnscle. The leaders are tliose whose bodily
strength is the greatest. This strength asserts its own
claim to rule, and maintains it (if need be) by compul-
sion. Further, bodily strength is usually accompanied
by a kindred gift, which excites admiration, and makes
others willing to obey : I mean excellence in the games
and athletic exercises that fill so large a part in boys'
thoughts. Again, certain mental qualities, which are
in themselves honourable, are not unapt to be found in
company with bodily strength. Courage, for instance ;
for what should the athlete fear ? plainness and sincerity
of speech, for the same reason : since the commonest
motive for falsehood is timidity. But bone and muscle
— the development of the athlete — has no natural affinity
to intellectual power. Some — the Crichtons of their
time — may have equal gifts of mind and body ; and
these of course are the objects of a special hero-worsliip.
But such examples are comparatively rare. The biggest
and strongest boys are not usually remarkable for their
intellectual gifts; and, by a natural consequence, they
are not usually remarkable for diligence in study. The
public opinion, then, which reflects the opinion of an
aristocracy of bod'ily strength, will be likely to set a
high value on athletic excellence, a low value on ex-
cellence in school-work. It will applaud, foster, some-
times attempt to enforce, application to games; it will
slight, discourage, sometimes persecute, application to
study. Again, it will be severe on those faults to which
its heroes have small temptation, such as cowardice and
dishonesty ; it will be indulgent to other faults to which

10 THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

the predominance of the animal nature gives more oc-
casion, such as cruelty and impurity; less indulgent,
perhaps, to the former than to the latter, because cruelty
is a vice, from the practice of which each individual of
the mass, among whom this piiblic opinion reigns, is
liable to suffer, and because it is a common belief, that
cruelty to inferiors in strength is near of kin to cowardice ;
but still, boyish opinion will put a wide difference be-
tween the heinousness of this vice, and the heinousness
of cowardice.

I have attempted to describe the natural tendency of
things in a community of boys left entirely to themselves.
Of course, this tendency may be incidentally corrected
by the circumstances of particular schools at particular
times. A school may contain, not one, but two or three
Crichtons, who may raise its standard and tone materially
in favour of intellectual pursuits. Or, it may happen,
that two or three of the bo3^s most remarkable for bodily
strength are as strong in virtue as in muscle ; that they
have brought with them fixed principles from Christian
homes, and have set their faces like flint against a lower
standard. Such boys, especially if they are not wanting in
intellectual gifts, may produce an effect upon the tone of
their school, which will last beyond their own generation.

Besides these contingencies, which defy calculation,
(although, thank God, they may be expected frequently
to occur, so long as English homes, and English fathers,
and English mothers, are what they are now,) a ma-
chinery subsists in all first-class public schools, which is
specially adapted to counteract the natural tendency of
boy-communities to fall under the dominion of brute
force : I mean the position of authority accorded by the
Masters to the highest forms in the school, and to se-
lected boys in these forms called at Charter-house moni-

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 11

tors. As entrance into these forms depends mainly on
intellectual progress, this system establishes at once,
over against the aristocracy of brute force, something
like an aristocracy of intellect. It gives to its creation
the support of law ; and, moreover, the natural ten-
dency of things, (since upon the whole the boj's at the
top of the school will be the ftoloot and biggest,) ensures
to this artificial aristocracy sufficient physical force to
maintain itself without the need of perpetual appeal to
the Masters. An aristocracy thus created looks natu-
rally to its creators for the general determination of its
action. The boys who are specially entrusted with au-
thority are conscious of responsibility to those from
whom their authority is derived; and they feel that it
is their duty to uphold a standard which does not fluc-
tuate with the general opinion of the school. They may
do this more or less wisely, more or less efiectively; but
in some measure they will almost always do it ; in some
measure they will almost always endeavour to put down
evils, against which the public opinion of boys left to
themselves affords no sufficient guarantee.

This authority of the upper boj's is the main security
which we possess against the evil tendencies that exist
naturally in a great school on the English nystem. Of
course it is but an imperfect security. In the Under
School, as Carthusians call it, these evil tendencies often
manage to subsist, 'and to escape observation. Here
brute force not unfrequently rules alone, — subject of
course to the fear of notice and interference from the
upper boys ; here school industry is not unfrequently
discouraged or persecuted ; here cruelty and impurity, —
gratuitous, reckless, shameless, — are to bo seen at times
in forms at once childish and diabolical. These evils
among the lower boys escape entirely the Masters' eyes,

12 THOUGHTS 0\ PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

except in some signal instances of bullying ; to a very
great extent they escape the eyes of the monitors also.
And, moreover, monitors cannot always be relied upon
to check evil which does fall under their notice. There
are evil times in schools as well as good. Intellect and
intellectual energy is not an infallible guarantee for
morality, though it is a better guarantee than bodily
strength, or skill in games. The worst boys in the
school may be at its head. They may even be trusted
by confiding masters ; and, although they will seldom
act ofiicially in the teeth of their engagements, they
will often encourage, by connivance and undisguised ap-
proval, the very things which they hold office to restrain.
Which of us has no abhorred memories ? I have re-
peatedly heard an eminent man of science, (who had
been educated not at Charter-house, but at another school
of equal fame,) say that his recollections of school -life
were so bad, that he doubted if he could ever send his
son to any public school. I can enter myself into his
feelings, while I dissent from his conclusion.

Reflections such as these may seem, perhaps, hardly
appropriate for our present meeting : but it is precisely
at meetings like the present that they rise naturally upon
the mind : and it is not the preacher's business, certainly,
either here or in any other pulpit, to put aside every
thought which is of a painful character. Here at least, in
God's house, we may own to ourselves and to God, that
our school memories are not memories only of benefits
received and honours won, of pleasant companionships and
lasting friendships, but memories also of sin and shame.
In that strange, self-contained, world, of which each of us
formed a part, ten, twenty, thirt}', forty, it may be fifty,
years ago, which of us so bore himself as he would now
wish to have borne himself ? Which of us has no reproach

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 13

in his conscience for wasted time and talents, for cruelty

to others or unldndness which deserved the name of

cruelty, for evil example or base acquiescence in the evil

tone which prevailed around him ? We come here, I

venture to think, on this day, year after year, not only

to praise God for His mercies, but to humble ourselves

before Him for our own sins, and specially for the sins of

our boyhood. Well said John Keble : —

" The deeds we do, the words we say,
Into still air they seena to fleet,
We count them ever past ;
But they shall last.
In the dread judgment they
And we shall meet."

We can never undo them, or unsay them. We can
only look to God for their pardon. But we can do some-
thing to help others, who have to face a like ordeal to
that which proved too fiery for ourselves. One thing
which we can do, and ought to do, is to resist the com-
mon fashion of glorifying an imperfect system. The
system of our English public schools may be usually, as
I believe it is, a safer system, in respect of soul and
body, heart and intellect, than education in a parent's
house, or education in a school after the French model
in which surveillance is perpetual ; but it is a system
which has great dangers of its own. To remember these
dangers, to avow them, to support every well-considered
endeavour for their limitation, is a duty we owe to God
and to our children, and not least to our public schools
themselves, and to the good men who founded them.
It is to the Masters of our schools that we must look for
their improvement in all departments, moral and intel-
lectual. It would be ungrateful to withhold the acknow-
ledgment that many improvements have been introduced
by English schoolmasters within the last fifty years.

14 THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

While the general lines of the public seliool system re-
main untouelied, the influence both of Head Masters and
of House Masters among their bo3-s has been far more
widely and deeply felt than it was formerly. And that
influence has told not only on school- work, but on the
moral and religious tone of schools. I do not wish to
exaggerate the efiect of preaching upon boys. But I
know well that the words of a Master, whose intellect
commands the admiration of his boys, and whose life
commands their respect, fall on boyish ears with a power
which no other man's words possess. Fruitless, some-
times, at the moment, they bear fruit in months or years
to come. And the mind of a good Master is made known
to his pupils, and impressed upon them, in many other
ways besides sermons. Well, indeed, it is that it should
be so. To counterbalance that large share of independence
which our great schools concede to boys, it is of the first
importance that a Master's influence should leaven their
minds, and so control indirectly those actions which it is
not his part to watch and regulate from hour to hour.

But, if a Master's influence is to leaven boys for good,
it is above all things requisite that he should be not
only a moral but a religious man himself. Even so,
doubtless, he may sometimes fail. Able men, zealous,
m.oral, religious, cannot in this difficult work command
success. Evil will go on round them, and under them,
while they sometimes suspect its existence but cannot
put their finger on it, at other times are without the
least suspicion. Hard natures will defy them almost
openly, cunning natures will deceive them, and bring
disgrace on their training in after years. But this is
the lot of all who have ever worked for the good of
others; and no wonder. "The disciple is not above
his master." Their work is not, however, really thank-

THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 15

less or fruitless. On the contrary, there is perhaps no
work for others done upon the earth, which bears surer
or larger fruit than the schoolmaster's ; if, possessing
the gifts of nature and education which his employ-
ment requires, he does his work in the true love of
God and man. Such a INIaster has a rich reward in
the enduring affection of his pupils; he has a richer
reward still in the sight of their development after
they have parted from him. Many a jest have I heard
levelled at a much-loved Master of another school, whose
time of service has been long over, because he garnished
his study wall with the well-known text : " I have no
greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth."
But his meaning was deeper than young minds realised;
and his text had no inappropriate application. A Master
wjio cultivates the intellects only of his pupils finds no
small pleasure in their intellectual achievements at the
Universities, or in after life. A Master who recognises
God's work in the work which he has undertaken sees
with overflowing happiness his old scholars serving God
faithfully in Church and State, — ^brilliantly, if their natural
gifts were brilliant; if they were not brilliant, then ac-
cording to their power, — and holding fast, through evil
report and good report, to the true principles of Chris-
tian manhood which he strove to form in them. And
they, for their parts, are seldom slack to remember his
early lessons. Often indeed, because he first impressed
them M'ith a just notion of the things which make life
worth living, their memories invest his teaching with
a power which he never dared to hope that it would
possess.

We need for our children, amid the dangers of our
English schools, all the help that Masters' influence
can give : we must be careful as parents not to di-

16 THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

minish that influence; not to thwart, harass, lightly-
rebel against those who exert it. Of course we must
do more. Before our children leave home to enter
the school world, we must do our best, by precept and
example, so to form them that they may be docile for
good at school, and resolute against evil. That is our
great time for influence. When they return to us as
schoolboys, we shall often find that the time for our
direct influence is past. They will have become parts,
as it were, of another world. The opinion of their
schoolfellows, or of their masters, or of both, will have
taken the place of our opinion as a determining force
in their minds. But even then, if our advice has lost
its power, it will not be so with our example. What
the boy sees at home will tell upon him, even though
he has ceased to mind what he hears there ; — if it is
good, for good ; if it is evil, for evil. It is the exist-
ence of pure Christian homes, which makes the freedom
of our school communities tolerable; it is the children
of such homes who find school life, with all its trials,
a wholesome discipline ; who learn patience from its
hardships without learning cruelty ; who learn courtesy
and tolerance without learning indifi'erence ; who are
not corrupted by the knowledge of evil, but are pre-
pared by it for the temptations of riper years ; who
stand out in all our memories as the types of English
boyhood, and lead us to prefer, above other systems of
education, that system under which they were trained.

Prinicb bn |anus |arhfr anb Co., Croton garb, ©x&icb.