For the Preparatory School fulfils a most important function, and it fulfils it extremely efficiently. It is what it sets out to be, a school that will take a small boy almost from the nursery, and train him in the course of four or five years to take his place in a large Public School. The task that the head master of a Preparatory School has to tackle is not, however, anything like so hard as that which confronts the head master of a Public School. For a Public School has to equip a boy for life; and life is vast, indeterminate, a swiftly moving river that is never the same from one moment to another. The Preparatory School, on the other hand, has only to equip a boy for a Public School, and the Public School is a fixed quantity. As regards curriculum, the task is simple. The required standard of education is known. A certain percentage in the common entrance examination has to be obtained. The school has not to discover the career for which its individual members are best suited. It has merely to decide which of them are good enough to be trained specially for scholarships. The main object of the Preparatory School, however, is to produce presentable specimens of society, boys who will do the right thing in the right circumstances. And this the Preparatory School does admirably well.
It is at a Preparatory School that boys learn manners, courtesy, the proper behaviour in the presence of ladies. But these things, you may say, a boy will learn at home. No doubt he ought to, but any preparatory schoolmaster will disabuse you on that point. How many small boys of seven who have not been to a school will, when they are handed a plate of cakes, take the one nearest to them rather than the one of which they fancy the appearance. How many small boys will think of opening a door for a lady, of offering her his chair when she enters the room, of apologising to his hostess if he arrives late for breakfast. These are the little things that a boy learns at a Preparatory School and that he will learn nowhere else; at all good schools a great value is placed on these points of etiquette; if anything, 'good manners' are rather overdone, and the precipitate charge of twelve or thirteen urchins towards a door handle is likely to prove embarrassing to the lady visitor who has risen from her chair.
At my own school, for instance, music lessons always took place immediately after lunch; so that, if lunch was a little late, the first boys were allowed to leave the table before grace. It was a rule, however, that no boy should ever leave the dining-room till he had asked the permission of the ladies. And many visitors were much perplexed by the repeated inaudible apologies of nervous small boys who came stumbling towards them between two close-packed tables. The good manners of a preparatory school boy are indeed slightly pedagogic. Their elbows are pressed into their sides when they eat, their wrists are raised above the table, and, in a precise voice, they request permission to trouble their next door neighbour for the salt. They are like the critics who insist that a sonnet is not a sonnet if the last lines of the sestet form a couplet. But it is a fault on the right side. For manners, as well as morals, relax in the greater freedom of a Public School, and at the age of fifteen one has managed to substitute ease for stiffness.
It is, indeed, impossible to say how much one learns at a Preparatory School. At the age of ten one has not the necessary detachment to view oneself as an objective reality. It is impossible, for instance, to remember where, or when, was learnt the spirit of comradeship and sportsmanship that is, perhaps, the most lovable quality of the old public school boy. It is hardly inherited. For the average small boy is greedy, selfish, and acquisitive; and, when one is given leg before to a left-hand round the wicket bowler who is turning the ball from the off, the temptation to protest against the umpire's decision is natural. The primitive man, indeed, would have uprooted a stump and walked to the other end of the pitch. Where does one learn to turn straight round and walk towards the pavilion? I think it is at the Preparatory School. A small boy knows that he has got to play cricket like a sportsman; he knows that a sportsman does not question the umpire's decision; and he is terribly afraid of doing the wrong thing in the presence of his schoolfellows. The first time he is given out caught at the wicket off his pad, a blind anger seizes him. His mouth opens to make a protest. The same thing happened last year when he was playing cricket in the garden with his brother and sister, and, when they insisted that he was out, he sat down in the middle of the field and howled till they told him he could continue his innings. The temptation to repeat the experiment is considerable. But he dare not make any exhibition of himself. He would be mercilessly ragged; and so he returns to his seat under the trees and contents himself with the announcement that Jones is a mean sneak who was trying to get a revenge for the kicking he got that morning. And of course the incident will be repeated. Umpires make mistakes in first-class cricket: small boys make them with a melancholy frequency on lower grounds, and few batsmen are satisfied with an l.b.w. decision. The young cricketer has many opportunities of displaying the Christian qualities of patience and restraint, and every time the temptation to sit down in the middle of the pitch and howl grows weaker. 'The monster custom is angel yet in this,' and, by the time he goes to his Public School, his features have learnt to assume a good-natured smile, and he says something about it being all in the game and that last week he had a decision in his favour.
I am inclined to think that in that example can be found the essence of preparatory school life; the habits of courtesy and sportsmanship are acquired till they become a second nature. We are told that man is a logical creature, that when he has been properly educated it will be possible for forty million people to live in one country without competition; that in an enlightened society there will be no need for policemen, for every man will instinctively appreciate what is right. It may be so. No one knows what the world will be like two thousand years hence. But, in the meantime, I think we do wisely to train small boys as we train an animal. We thrash our dog if he plays havoc in our neighbour's chicken run, and we rag the small boy who disputes the umpire's decision. The dog does not chase chickens again, nor does the small boy argue in the middle of the pitch.
It is a strange business, though, this acquiring of social habits, and, though preparatory school life has been only dealt with in a small way by educationalists and novelists, the process is certainly interesting. Everything, to allow for the subsequent relaxation at the Public School, is slightly overdone, and the small boy tends to become a prig. It is only natural that he should. By nature he is at that time a somewhat poisonous little beast. He is the victim of numberless petty faults and jealousies; and when he becomes reformed he is self-righteous. He would never think of sneaking, of course, but he would not hesitate to whisper just as a master is coming into the class-room, 'Oh, shut up, Jones.' He always enjoys putting some one else in the wrong, and Arnold Lunn has, in The Harrovians, an incident that provides an admirable example of this attitude. A member of the school has just died. He was not a popular boy; he was not distinguished in games or work. No one really minded, but the school felt bound to present a countenance of appropriate melancholy. A certain Clayford, however, had a set of stamps he wished to sell, and he accosted cheerfully a couple of boys who were discussing the last hours of their lost comrade. 'I say, you chaps, like to buy a complete set of Borneos surcharged Labuan?'
'Not to-day, thank you,' said Peter stiffly.
'We're not much interested in stamps to-day,' added Morgan.
It is a perfect picture.