CHAPTER VII
BOY DEGENERATION
If some boys thrive, according to ordinary school standards, on the cramming system, what becomes of those to whose nature the process is entirely antagonistic?
The question is best answered by a glance at the schools themselves. Take one of the great public schools, and it will be found that much the same conditions are prevalent in every class or form. There is a small percentage of boys at the top of each class who are considered the most intelligent, and by whom most of the questions asked by the master are answered. The remaining majority are divided into two sections, one of which consists of what are termed boys of average ability, whilst the other contains the lazy element, the refractory boys, and the dullards.
In the last chapter we chiefly discussed those individuals who may be taken as representing the average of the best results achieved by higher schools and universities. These form, however, only a fraction of the scholars who pass through such institutions. It still remains for us to discover the rôle which is played by the other four-fifths in school-life. According to scholastic methods of classification, the bulk of this residue are boys of medium intelligence who plod on without specially distinguishing themselves, and contrive, by dint of industry and application, to blunder through the ordinary course of study without coming to grief.
It would be difficult to conjure up a more melancholy picture than that presented by these plodders, whose work is rendered trebly hard by being performed against the grain. They suffer more under the system than the dull, the lazy, and the fractious, who escape its worst evils, either because some active power of resistance comes to their rescue, or because the mind itself is so formed as to be incapable of receiving instruction imparted on the cramming principle.
But the average mediocrity amongst schoolboys are often inferior in ability both to those who rank above and below them in school attainment. They neither profit by the teaching process, nor do they possess those qualities that would enable them to resist its consequences. Thus they fall between two stools, being carried out of their natural sphere, and at the same time failing to attain such a measure of artificial success as would afford them compensation for the injury.
Success in life is not an easy thing to generalize about. It is, however, important to note as far as possible the results brought about by school education. The boy who is trained to pass examinations has a respectable chance of getting into some branch of the public service; and, as we have seen, it is from amongst his ranks that the permanent officials of the various departments of Government are recruited. A great number of those who distinguish themselves academically also pass into the teaching profession; though a considerable percentage of graduates, for reasons that will be discussed in due course, drift into the ranks of the unemployed.
The average schoolboy, who does his work mechanically and without enthusiasm, probably furnishes the greatest number of examples of the misplaced individual. His application to his studies is not natural; it is enforced by what is called school discipline. That is to say, the authorities devise every conceivable form of punishment to make a constant grind at obligatory subjects less disagreeable than the consequences of idleness. These are the simple arts by means of which unwilling boys are driven, like cattle, along the highway of what is termed, by an inaccurate application of the English language, knowledge.
Anybody who has been coerced, and pœnaed, and flogged through the curriculum of a public school will acknowledge that the performance is not an exhilarating one for the victim. It is preposterous to dignify this nigger-driving by the term 'education.' One might as well talk of the Chinese eagerly embracing Christianity, when, as a matter of fact, the missionaries have been forced upon them, like their foreign trade, at the point of the bayonet.
The wonder is that anybody survives the process and retains his sanity. That many nervous temperaments and highly-gifted minds do not survive it is a point of so much importance that it will be dealt with later on in a separate chapter. What needs emphasizing here is that to make boys do certain things under compulsion is not developing their faculties, but is absolutely preventing their development; and secondly, that this infamous but universal proceeding is responsible for a positive degeneration amongst those whom it is supposed to educate and improve.