Schoolmasters are like mothers. They imagine that because a boy happens to have survived their system of teaching the latter must necessarily be the one perfect method—just as the fond mother, whose infant has been enabled by means of a phenomenal digestion to outlive a particular food, believes that it is the only food upon which babies can possibly be brought up.
When we come to survey impartially the effects of this system of education upon boys in general, it must surely be brought home to us that something is radically wrong somewhere. If a few manage to survive the treatment and remain the ten righteous individuals, what is to be said of the degeneration of the majority? It is surely absurd, with the anomalies and defects of the whole method of educating youth staring one in the face, to ascribe it to mere boy nature.
The truth is that in boyhood the natural tendencies incline to push their way boisterously to the front. They are constantly trying to find an egress. But the parent and the pedagogue, in their blindness, can only see in this law of nature a wicked and perverse propensity that must be restrained at all hazards by a speedy application of the educational strait-waistcoat.
CHAPTER VIII
THE STRUGGLE OF THE EDUCATED
So far we have chiefly discussed the effect produced upon the individual by a compulsory course of study. It has been seen that he suffers in a number of ways, through being subjected, from his earliest childhood, to a more or less inflexible method of training. All of these, however, have been directly attributable to his education. We may now consider, before pursuing the subject any further, certain disabilities that may be traced to the same cause, but which are brought about indirectly.
It is bad enough, as most of us will have perceived, to compel a boy to learn certain things whether they are congenial to him or not. But it is preposterous that the same stock of knowledge should be forced upon all alike. This is, however, exactly what is being done in every educational establishment throughout the Empire, with the most disastrous consequences to the victims of the system.
Let us turn once more to the map of life for an illustration.
The average educated man begins to learn his alphabet at the age of four or five. During the following years he receives the necessary grounding to prepare him for the lower forms of a public school. At eleven, or thereabouts, he commences his school career. Throughout the whole of this period he is put through a course of study identical in every respect with that pursued by his schoolfellows. Every boy in the school is crammed with the same facts, and in the same way. The sixth-form boy is exactly like the rest of his class, exactly like the sixth-form boy of ten years ago, and probably exactly like the sixth-form boy of ten years hence. Not only does he possess precisely the same knowledge as his companions, hold the same opinions, and enjoy the same mental horizon, but he has acquired uniform tastes and habits. In other words, the school has stamped upon him a common individuality shared by all its pupils.
After he has left school the same process is carried on at the university. Here he is crammed again with the same facts, the same rules, and the same ideas, borrowed from the same people, that are being dinned into scores of other young men who are working for their degree. Having gone conscientiously through this routine, he takes his degree with the rest.