V
THE STATE AND THE BOY
When Mr. A. J. Balfour was a very young man he published A Defence of Philosophic Doubt. Nobody read it, but a great many talked about it; and serious people went about with long faces, murmuring, "How sad that Lord Salisbury's nephew should be an Agnostic!" When Mr. Balfour had become a conspicuous figure in politics, the serious people began to read the book which, so far, they had only denounced, and then they found, to their surprise and joy, that it was an essay in orthodox apologetic. Thenceforward Mr. Balfour ranked in their eyes as a "Defender of the Faith" second only to Henry VIII.
To compare small things with great, I have had a similar experience. Not long ago I wrote a paper designed to set forth the pretty obvious truth that increase in knowledge is not in itself a good. It evoked much criticism, and the critics once again exemplified our truly English habit of denouncing what we have not read. If these quaint people were to be believed, I was an enemy of education in general and of elementary education in particular. I hope that they will be as much relieved as were Mr. Balfour's critics when they discover that I am, and all my life have been, a zealous supporter of education, and, to some extent, an expert in it.
If the world could be exhaustively divided into two classes-the Educated and the Uneducated—I suppose that I should be included in the former, though I anticipate an inevitable sarcasm by allowing that I should find myself perilously near the dividing-line. It is more to the purpose to say that, whatever my own educational deficiencies, I have always been keenly interested in the education of other people, and have preached incessantly that the State has a sacred duty to its boys. If I leave the education of girls on one side, I do so, not because I consider it unimportant, but because I know nothing about it.
Information, as the great Butler said, is the least part of education. The greatest is the development of the child's natural power to its utmost extent and capacity; and the duty of so developing it must be admitted by everyone who ponders our Lord's teaching about the Buried Talent and the Pound laid up in the Napkin. Unless we enable and encourage every boy in England to bring whatever mental gifts he has to the highest point of their possible perfection, we are shamefully and culpably squandering the treasure which God has given us to be traded with and accounted for. We shall have no one but ourselves to blame if, as a Nemesis on our neglect, we lose our present standing among the educated peoples of the world. I always get back to the ideal of the "Golden Ladder," reaching from the Elementary Schools, by Scholarships or "free places," to the Secondary Schools, and from them again to the Universities. This ideal is, unlike some ideals, attainable, and has in repeated instances been attained. Again and again the highest mathematical honours of Cambridge have been won by Elementary Schoolboys, and what is true of mathematics might also be true of every branch of knowledge. I say advisedly that it "might" be true: whether or not it will be depends on our handling of quite young boys.
The pedagogic notion under which people of my time were reared was that every boy must learn exactly the same things as every other boy, and must go on learning them till his last day at school, whether that day arrived when he was fourteen or eighteen. "We must catch up every man, whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke, begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians." So said Sydney Smith, and with perfect truth. "The grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum" was enforced on the boy whose whole heart was in the engineer's shed, while his friend, to whom literature was a passion, was constrained to simulate an interest in the blue lights and bad smells of a chemical lecture. "Let it be granted" (as the odious Euclid, now happily dethroned, used to say) that there is a certain amount that all alike must learn but this amount will prove, when scrutinized, to be very small. I suppose we must all learn to read and write, and it is useful to be able to do a sum in simple addition; though very eminent people have often written very illegible hands, and Dean Stanley—one of the most accomplished men of his day—could never be persuaded that eighteen pence was not the equivalent of 1s. 8d. Zealots for various "knowledges" (to use the curious plural sanctioned by Matthew Arnold) will urge the indispensability of their respective hobbies. One will say let everybody learn that the earth is round; another, that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth. But let us leave, these pribbles and prabbles. Let every boy be coerced into learning what is absolutely necessary for the daily work of life; but let him, at a very early age, have his powers concentrated on the subject which really interests him.
One of the highest gifts which a teacher can possess is the power of "discerning the spirits"—of discovering what a boy's mind really is; what it is made of; what can be made of it. This power is a natural gift, and can by no means be acquired. Many teachers entirely lack it; but those who possess it are among the most valuable servants of the State. This power may be brought to bear on every boy when he is, say, from fourteen to sixteen years old—perhaps in some cases even earlier; and, when once the teacher has made the all-important discovery, then let everything be done to stimulate, and at the same time to discipline, the boy's natural inclination, his inborn aptitude. Fifty years ago, every boy at every Public School, though he might be as unpoetical as Blackstone who wrote the Commentaries, or Bradshaw who compiled the Railway Guide, was forced to produce a weekly tale of Latin and Greek verses which would have made Horace laugh and Sophocles cry. The Rev. Esau Hittall's "Longs and Shorts about the Calydonian Boar," commemorated in Friendship's Garland, may stand for a sample of the absurdities which I have in mind; and the supporters of this amazing abuse assured the world that Greek and Latin versification was an essential element of a liberal education. It took a good many generations to deliver England from this absurdity, and there are others like unto it which still hold their own in the scholastic world. To sweep these away should be the first object of the educational reformer; and, when that preliminary step has been taken, the State will be able to say to every boy who is not mentally deficient: "This, or this, is the path which Nature intended you to tread. Follow it with all your heart. We will back you, and help you, and applaud you, and will not forsake you till the goal is won."