"You live in a palace, boys!" announces the old gentleman. "I envy you." (Murmurs of "Liar!" from the very back row.)
After that the speaker communicates to his audience a discovery which has been communicated to the same audience by different speakers since the foundation of the School—to this effect, that Education (derivation given here, with a false quantity thrown in) is a "drawing out" and not a "putting-in." Why this fact should so greatly excite Speech Day orators is not known, but they seldom fail to proclaim it with intense and parental enthusiasm. Then, after a few apposite remarks upon the subject of mens sana in corpore sano—a flight of originality received with murmurs of anguish by his experienced young hearers—the old gentleman concludes with a word of comfort to "the less successful scholars." It is a physical impossibility, he points out, when there is only one prize, for all the boys in the class to win it; and adds that his experience of life has been that not every boy who wins prizes at school becomes Prime Minister in after years. All of which is very helpful and illuminating, but does not solve the problem of Education to any great extent.
So much for the experts. Their name is Legion, for they are many, and they speak with various and dissonant voices. But they have one thing in common. All their schemes of education are founded upon the same amazing fallacy—namely, that a British schoolboy is a person who desires to be instructed. That is the rock upon which they all split. That is why it was suggested earlier in these pages that educational experts are all born grown-up.
Let us clear our minds upon this point once and for all. In nine cases out of ten a schoolmaster's task is not to bring light to the path of an eager, groping disciple, but to drag a reluctant and refractory young animal up the slopes of Parnassus by the scruff of his neck. The schoolboy's point of view is perfectly reasonable and intelligible. "I am lazy and scatterbrained," he says in effect. "I have not as yet developed the power of concentration, and I have no love of knowledge for its own sake. Still, I have no rooted objection to education, as such, and I suppose I must learn something in order to earn a living. But I am much too busy, as a growing animal, to have any energy left for intellectual enterprise. It is the business of my teacher to teach me. To put the matter coarsely, he is paid for it. I shall not offer him effusive assistance in his labours, but if he succeeds in keeping me up to the collar against my will, I shall respect him for it. If he does not, I shall take full advantage of the circumstance."
That is the immemorial attitude of the growing boy. When he stops growing, conscience and character begin to develop, and he works because he feels he ought to or because he has got into the habit of doing so, and not merely because he must. But until he reaches that age it is foolish to frame theories of education based upon the idea that a boy is a person anxious to be educated.
Let us see how such a theory works, say, in the School laboratory. A system which will extract successful results from a class of boys engaged in practical chemistry will stand any test we care to apply to it. Successful supervision of School science is the most ticklish business that a master can be called upon to undertake. We will follow our friend Brown minor to the laboratory, and witness him at his labours.
He takes his place at the working bench, and sets out his apparatus—test-tubes, beakers, and crucibles. He lights all the bunsen burners within reach. Presently he is provided with a sample of some crystalline substance and bidden to ascertain its chemical composition.
"How shall I begin, sir?" he asks respectfully.
"Apply the usual tests: I told you about them yesterday in the lecture-room. Take small portions of the substance: ascertain if they are soluble. Observe their effect on litmus. Test them with acid, and note whether a gas is evolved. And so on. That will keep you going for the present. I'll come round to you again presently."
And off goes the busy master to help another young scientist in distress.