X.

THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS.

ONE of the great wants of middle-class education at present, is an ideal to work towards. Our old public schools have such an ideal. The model public school-man is a gentleman who is an elegant Latin and Greek scholar. True, this may not be a very good ideal, and some of our ablest men, both literary and scientific, are profoundly dissatisfied with it. But, so long as it is maintained, all questions of reform are comparatively simple. In middle-class schools, on the other hand, there is no terminus ad quem. A number of boys are got together, and the question arises, not simply how to teach, but what to teach. Where the masters are not university men, they are, it may be, not men of broad views or high culture. Of course no one will suppose me ignorant of the fact that a great number of teachers who have never been at a university, are both enlightened and highly cultivated; and also that many teachers who have taken degrees, even in honours, are neither. But, speaking broadly of the two classes, I may fairly assume that the non-university men are inferior in these respects to the graduates. If not, our uni

versities should be reformed on Carlyle's 'live-coal' principle, without further loss of time. Many nonuniversity masters have been engaged in teaching ever since they were boys themselves, and teaching is a very narrowing occupation. They are apt therefore to be careless of general principles, and to aim merely at storing their pupils' memory with facts -facts about language, about history, about geography, without troubling themselves to consider what is and what is not worth knowing, or what faculties the boys have, and how they should be developed. The consequence is their boys get up, for the purpose of forgetting with all convenient speed, quantities of details about as instructive and entertaining as the Propria quæ maribus, such as the division of England under the Heptarchy, the battles in the wars of the Roses, and lists of geographical names. Where the masters are university men, they have rather a contempt for this kind of cramming, which makes them do it badly, if they attempt it at all: but they are driven to this teaching in many cases because they do not know what to substitute in its place. Their own education was in classics and mathematics. Their pupils are too young to have much capacity for mathematics, and they will leave school too soon to get any sound knowledge of classics, so the strength of the teaching ought clearly not to be thrown into these subjects. But the master really knows no other. He soon finds that he is not much his pupils' superior in acquaintance with the theory of the English language or with history and geography. There are not many men with sufficient

strength of will to study whilst their energies are taxed by teaching, and standard books are not always within reach: so the master is forced to content himself with hearing lessons in a perfunctory way out of dreary school-books. Hence it comes to pass that he goes on teaching subjects of which he himself is ignorant, subjects, too, of which he does not recognise the importance, with an enlightened disbelief in his own method of tuition. He finds it uphill work, to be sure-labour of Sisyphus, in factand is conscious that his pupils do not get on, however hard he may try to drive them; but he never hoped for success in his teaching, so the want of it does not distress him. I may be suspected of caricature, but not, I think, by university men who have themselves had to teach anything besides classics and mathematics.

If there is any truth in what I have been saying, school-teaching, in subjects other than classics and mathematics (which I am not now considering), is very commonly a failure. And a failure it must remain until boys can be got to work with a will, in other words, to feel interest in the subject taught. I know there is a strong prejudice in some people's minds against the notion of making learning pleasant. They remind us that school should be a preparation for after-life. After-life will bring with it an immense amount of drudgery. If, they say, things at school are made too easy and pleasant (words, by the way, very often and very erroneously confounded), school will cease to give the proper discipline: boys will be turned out not knowing what hard work is,

INTEREST IN WORK.

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which, after all, is the most important lesson that can be taught them. In these views I sincerely concur, so far as this, at least, that we want boys to work hard and vigorously to go through necessary drudgery, i.e. labour in itself disagreeable. But this result is not attained by such a system as I have described. Boys do not learn to work hard, but in a dull stupid way, with most of their faculties lying dormant, and though they are put through a vast quantity of drudgery, they seem as incapable of throwing any energy into it, as prisoners on the tread-mill. I think we shall find, on consideration, that no one succeeds in any occupation unless that occupation is interesting, either in itself or from some object that is to be obtained by means of it. Only when such an interest is aroused is energy possible. No one will deny that, as a rule, the most successful men are those for whom their employment has the greatest attractions. We should be sorry to give ourselves up to the treatment of a doctor who thought the study of disease mere drudgery, or a dentist who felt a strong repugnance to operating on teeth. No doubt, the successful man in every pursuit has to go through a great deal of drudgery, but he has a general interest in the subject, which extends, partially at least, to its most wearisome details; his energy, too, is excited by the desire of what the drudgery will gain for him.*

* On this subject I can quote the authority of a great observer of the mind-no less a man, indeed, than Wordsworth. He speaks of the 'grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy,' he continues, but what is propagated by pleasure-I would not be misunderstood-but wherever we sympathise with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is pro

Hence,

Observe, that although I would have boys take pleasure in their work, I regard the pleasure as a means, not an end. If it could be proved that the mind was best trained by the most repulsive exercises, I should most certainly enforce them. But I do not think that the mind is benefited by galley-slave labour: indeed, hardly any of its faculties are capable of such labour. We can compel a boy to learn a thing by heart, but we cannot compel him to wish to understand it; and the intellect does not act without the will. when anything is required which cannot be performed by the memory alone, the driving system utterly breaks down; and even the memory, as I hope to show presently, works much more effectually in matters about which the mind feels an interest. Indeed, the mind without sympathy and interest is like the sea-anemone when the tide is down, an unlovely thing, closed against external influences, enduring existence as best it can. But let it find itself in a more congenial element, and it opens out at once, shows altogether unexpected capacities, and eagerly

duced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, and mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the anatomist's knowledge may be connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure, and when he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.'-Preface to second edition of Lyrical Ballads. If we accept Professor Bain's doctrine, 'States of pleasure are connected with an increase, and states of pain with a diminution, of some or all of the vital functions,' it will follow that the healthy discharge of the functions, either of the mind or the body, must be pleasurable. However, I merely suggest this for consideration.