The enormous demand for this class of literature is the most pregnant evidence of the miserable effects of misapplied education and defective instruction that could well be brought forward. But it is by no means confined to the uncultured masses who have been driven through the standards of an elementary school. Thousands who have been put through the paces of what is called 'higher education' may be seen in railway-carriages, at health resorts, or in the public libraries, deeply immersed in cheap-jack reading-matter that no self-respecting person of moderate intelligence would care even to be capable of specifying.
This painful sight, which cannot have escaped the notice of the least observant, must surely lead the reflective man or woman to doubt the value of educational methods that have led to no better result. It is monstrous to think of years spent in grinding out syntax rules, mathematics, Latin, French, geography, science, history, composition, and a dozen other branches of knowledge, in order to develop a taste for sensational rags, middle-class magazines, and inferior fiction.
If the process were coupled with no worse consequences than this, nobody of the least pretension to culture would wish to see it continued another day. But we have seen that the mischief goes far beyond mere superficiality and bad taste. It carries its pernicious influence into every social problem by which modern statesmen are perplexed and harassed. From the housing question to the dearth of servants we feel its baneful effects. And as if it were not enough to have unfitted the masses of the people for the occupations best suited to the great bulk of them, to have instilled into the minds of working-men's children, by means of illiterate Shakespeare recitations and burlesque efforts to grasp geography, a contempt for the skilled labour of the artisan—this education process has brought about a general deterioration in the manners of the lower classes that has long been a subject of general complaint.
Nobody wishes to see the common people in a constant attitude of servility towards the classes above them. To thinking people nothing is more painful than to observe such signs of a want of proper self-respect and independence on the part of freeborn men and women of whatever standing in the social scale. But it is a significant fact that educating the masses, in the sense in which that term seems to be generally employed, has had the effect of eradicating from them all respect for education. The educated man of real attainments is not looked up to in the smallest degree by the average individual of the lower orders. It would be useless to quote, in support of a statement made in the presence of unexceptional members of the working classes, the opinion of any recognised authority. For the matter of that, there are many persons of a higher rank who are supposed to have enjoyed the benefits of a more liberal type of education than that afforded by the elementary school, who are equally unimpressed by the value of expert knowledge.
Whether it is that State-educated youths think that their accomplishments have made them the equals of everybody else, or whether the inanity of the system to which they have been subjected has given them a contempt for learning, it would be difficult to determine. Probably both misconceptions are evenly distributed amongst the victims of the process. But the fact that this should be the case at all speaks eloquently for the crass ignorance which results from the confounding, on the part of so-called educationists, of mere fact-cramming and subject-compulsion with the proper development of the human faculties.
CHAPTER VI
THE OUTPUT OF PRIGS
Having considered the evils produced by sham education, such as is compulsorily given to the masses of the people, we can proceed to examine into the average results effected by more genuine and efficient systems of cramming and instruction. It is not in the least degree necessary, for this purpose, to go into minute comparisons of the various types of secondary schools and colleges that have been established in this country. In the actual method of teaching there is little to choose between them. All have practically a common aim, namely, the preparation of boys and young men for examinations.
Of course, all boys who go to school are not destined for professions that necessitate the passing of an examination, competitive or otherwise. But that does not disturb the school authorities a jot, or involve the slightest relaxation of the school system. The boys are crammed just the same. Whoever wishes to pass through the mill must go in like a pig at one end and come out as a sausage at the other. There is no middle course except the private tutor; and he, owing to the defects of his own early training and to the terrific Conservatism peculiar to his profession, probably knows no better process than the familiar routine of cram and idea-suppression.
The whole of school life is a scramble for marks. The school managers and masters are interested in getting the boys stuffed with facts, dates, figures, and inflections, because the prestige of the school—and consequently its commercial success—is mainly dependent upon the creditable placing of pupils in public examinations. Therefore the boys are encouraged, or rather compelled, to occupy themselves with what will best conduce to secure this object, regardless of their own wishes or obvious inclinations.