There cannot be a question that she is deliberately and systematically throwing away the most precious of all human possessions—the character of the individual. At the Berlin Conference on Secondary Education, held in 1890, Dr. Virchow observed: 'I regret that I cannot bear my testimony to our having made progress in forming the character of pupils in our schools. When I look back over the forty years during which I have been Professor and Examiner—a period during which I have been brought in contact not only with physicians and scientific investigators, but also with many other types of men—I cannot say that I have the impression that we have made material advances in training up men with strength of character. On the contrary, I fear that we are on a downward path. The number of "characters" becomes smaller. And this is connected with the shrinkage in private and individual work done during a lad's school life. For it is only by means of independent work that the pupil learns to hold his own against external difficulties, and to find in his own strength, in his own nature, in his own being, the means of resisting such difficulties and of prevailing over them.'
The inevitable result of this sacrifice of individuality must be the intellectual decay of the nation, or at least its degeneration into a state of hopeless mediocrity. Unless, therefore, Germany can persuade other countries to adopt similar tactics, and to meet her on the plane where she has already obtained the start of a generation, she must come hopelessly to grief in the future.
Unfortunately, there seems every indication that the statesmen who lead rival nations are only too ready to follow Germany's blind lead. In this country it is only the blessed ignorance of the people which is holding back those who are anxious to commit the folly that has put pounds, shillings, and pence into German pockets, at the cost of taking originality and character out of German heads.
This educational suicide, it must also be remembered, can only be committed without serious social disturbance in a despotically-governed country like the German Empire. In England, with our system of party government, a complete measure of State control in educational matters would create a political pandemonium that would be little short of appalling.
The party struggles of the future would, if this Prussian system were transplanted here, centre round educational control. The schools would no longer be regarded as establishments for the instruction of youth; they would be looked upon simply as the nursery of the future voter. A Conservative Government would cram everything into the curriculum calculated to stifle inconveniently progressive ideas, whilst a Radical Government would try to banish from the schools all established beliefs and conventions.
Between these opposing stools the manufactured scholar would fall lamentably to the ground. He would be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. There would be a perpetual chopping and changing in the methods of his education, from which he would not even derive the benefit, so gratefully acknowledged by Wordsworth, of being neglected by his teachers.
To talk of beating Germany at her own game is, therefore, the height of absurdity. Nothing could result from such an endeavour but ruin to the country. Under our party system it is obvious that it could not be done with the remotest chance of success. And even if it were possible to obtain steady uniform State interference, working always towards a specific end, German methods would only be adopted at the expense of increasing the pressure of cramming en bloc, and thereby multiplying the evils which have been but faintly depicted in the foregoing pages.
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT FALLACY
That the world is badly ordered for humanity is a self-evident truth of which the observant scarcely need reminding. It is equally obvious, from the exquisite order and symmetry of animal and vegetable life, that Providence is not to blame for the colossal mess into which civilization has managed to lead the majority of mankind.