To Carlyle it was a tragedy that one man should die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge. And are not the majority of us ignorant even of the very things which lie most easily within our reach—of the air we breathe, of the ground on which we tread, of the skies on which we gaze? There is something known approximately about all of these which no man hath taught to us. After all our years of nerve-deterioration in stifling schoolrooms, few of us know anything of the very simplest facts of life, of the composition of our own bodies, of the most ordinary conditions of our own existence.
If any one doubts this assertion, let him ask two or three very elementary questions in very elementary affairs of his neighbours and acquaintance, and note the answers he obtains. The thing is easily tested. Persons regarded as educated—persons who know all about the doings of a certain aggressive warrior of past times, who from mere greed of conquest cruelly attacked harmless savages, and then had the hardihood to describe his own misdoings in writing—are hopelessly lost and bewildered if you say to them, “What is your brain composed of?” “What is a choanite?” “What makes the leaves grow on the trees?” “Where does the soil in the garden come from?” “How does the dew find its way on to the grass?” “Why does a ball bounce?”—or some such questions which sound elementary and unscientific enough.
But perhaps the knowledge required to answer these questions correctly belongs to departments of science which in most schools are regarded as extra subjects, and only taught occasionally and perfunctorily. It is certainly strange that information which ought surely to be imparted early, and which may be imparted in a most interesting and enjoyable way, should be put on one side for dry dates and grammar, a superfluity of arbitrary arithmetical rules, and the record of immoral conduct on the part of antique conquerors,—things which few wish to remember, and which sensible persons mostly take pains to forget.
After all, we have only a limited space in which to store our knowledge. As we grow up, we have to learn the things that are suited to our several professions. We have no room for useless lumber, and must cast it out. It never ought to have cumbered the ground. Let the dates be for the historian, the grammar for the grammarian, the immoral records for the classical scholar, and the endless arbitrary rules for the dull. By the time we have specialised, we shall know what uninteresting details we are forced to master, and what we may safely leave to the encyclopædias. We shall not then have disquieted ourselves for nought. Our early education should before all things mean for us “the harmonious development of all the faculties.” For each of us and all of us should be laid the foundation of the love of God and the knowledge of such of His works as daily surround us. No other foundation can be secure.
As matters at present stand, we learn quite as much out of school as we do in it. The training of the eye, and the hand, and the judgment in games is not usually considered a necessary part of education, but it is a very important part of it nevertheless. I am not sure that, up to a certain age, it is not the most important part. We are apt to forget that we go through life rapidly calculating weight, distance, and balance, and that our success in many branches depends on our power of ready attention, on our promptness of action, on our quick observation of natural phenomena and the ways of our fellow-creatures, on our delicacy of manipulation and on our perseverance and self-control, quite as much as it does on the knowledge we have learnt from books.
Considering the imperfection of our present system of education; considering how we dwarf, stunt, and starve the noblest and best part of each individual, and the noblest and best individuals of the community, the wonder is, not that there is so much nervous disease amongst us, but that there is not more. Fortunately the tide has begun to turn, and we are at last becoming alive to the fact that our method of instruction is not all that could be wished. But we wake up slowly, and “cramming” is still the order of the day. Indeed, competitive examinations seem to be multiplying while we are cogitating. This is much to be regretted. If ever the time arrives when all public posts and places of trust are filled by persons who have gone through this extraordinary process of mental stuffing, and who are about as fitted to understand the needs of our race and the conditions of our right development as Strasburg geese are fitted to set an example as athletes, then may God have mercy on us all! In our complex social state, the nimble wit, the ready invention, the adaptive disposition, are specially needed to find out for us the best means by which the resources of Nature may more and more be used for our service and to the support of our ever-increasing populations. Persons who survive a process which destroys the most sensitive and adaptive minds are but the intellectual lees and dregs of our community. To perpetuate these at the expense of the more highly organised is literally suicide. We are scarcely alive to our danger, because those who have been trained on a different pattern still take the lead amongst us, and the full results of the system of “cram” are not yet seen.
I was talking the other day to a lady who had recently been passing her time in preparing lady candidates for examinations. She herself had survived several of these ordeals; and, without falling into the error of those who have eternally saddled on the innocent Tenderden steeple the sole responsibility for the appearance of the Goodwin Sands, it may be casually observed that she was in a frightfully nervous condition, rendering her society a real trial to all but those skilled in the care of nervous invalids. She answered candidly some questions which I had the hardihood to put to her. I give both questions and answers almost word for word:—
Q. Which do you consider the cleverest of your pupils; those who pass, or those who fail?
A. The clever ones fail quite as often as the stupid. Indeed, there are one or two clever ones at this moment whom I am very anxious about.