My ideal education would consist of sending the boys to a good school in the daytime, and in taking care that they prepare their work in the evening, under a good tutor, who would be trusted to simply superintend them, and to give the necessary help, but who would not do the work for them; he would not live in the house, but would simply come for the couple of hours during which the boys would work. This would do away with the great objection to home education, which is undoubtedly the work which has to be done at home, and which cannot be properly superintended unless someone is told off for the purpose, unless the parents are well up in the work of the day, and are furthermore prepared to give up almost all society for the sake of looking after the boys—a thing which should never be done, for it is most important that we should make and keep friends; if we don’t care for them for ourselves, we must care for them for the sake of the children, who would find themselves shut out of everything when they grew up did their parents withdraw themselves entirely from society when they were yet small.
Of course a great many people cannot manage to live where there are really good schools, but equally of course a great many can, and when this can be managed it undoubtedly ought to be; and places like Bedford, where the schools are excellent, and Wimborne, where the Grammar School has improved mightily of late years, and where house rent is moderately cheap and living very inexpensive, offer especial advantages to a widow left with two or three sons to educate, and to military men and others who can live where they like, and have only their boys’ education to think about, Bedford being especially good for this purpose.
I believe there is a book published which gives all necessary particulars about all these schools, and indeed about all the schools all over England, but I shall only mention those of which I have personal knowledge, as I am no believer in second-hand information: this can always be procured for special cases, and would be out of place in a book like mine, but I do strongly advise all who can—all who have no settled occupation that binds them down to a special locality—to live where they can have their children educated from the home roof. I am quite certain that this is the ideal and proper education, and results in a better class of man all round. They may not be as polished, their manners may not be as perfect, and they may be shy and gruff, but their morals will be ever so much better, and they will be better men in the highest sense of the word. For though they may ‘marry the lady’s maid,’ like the youth in ‘Punch,’ at all events they will marry her; they will not degrade and then desert her, as alas! so many men do nowadays. But I myself don’t believe they would do anything of the kind; by far and away the best men I know are those who have been least away from home, and they are not among the unsuccessful ones of this life either.
However, it is sometimes impossible for parents to manage home education, though in London there are so many opportunities, that it must be more a case of must than can’t, for there are Westminster, St. Paul’s, and the University College Schools, all of which can be managed after the boys are old enough to be trusted in the streets alone, and at the latter of which for the absurdly low fee of 8l. 8s. a quarter can be had the best education in the world, but where the boys need learn very little if they can scrape through the day’s routine without finding themselves in either the ‘black’ or the ‘appearing’ books; but even then they do not learn as little as they can if they try at either Eton or Harrow, where it seems to me the education given is especially useless for practical service, and can never by any chance fit the recipient for any real work that he may have to undertake.
The perfect education should be that which most fits a man for his work, and no one can watch the manner in which we are being ousted by Germans from every place without allowing that their education has something which ours lacks, and that unless our boys can be taught to emulate their patience, perseverance, and eager quest after knowledge, to say nothing of their capabilities of existing on a pittance, we shall wake up some day to find our lads quite out of the running, because they do not understand life properly, and because they are unable to fight for themselves against the present overwhelming German invasion. There is a limpness, a passiveness about the boys of the present day that is something dreadful, and that I think springs in some measure from these fatal examinations, and the fearsome higher education. They see the prizes can only fall to the exceptionally gifted and hard-working members of the fraternity, and therefore they are dispirited before they start, knowing that, try as they may, they can never succeed. Far from stimulating most youths to work, the sense that unless they are geniuses they cannot pass the exams cripples them, and they cease to care to try for what they know they cannot possibly obtain, read how they may; and therefore I cannot but think the excessively high standard that must be reached nowadays in everything is a mistake, and that serious consideration should be given both to this and to the fact that our boys are not able to compete with the Germans because something in our scheme of education and learning does not permit them to do so successfully.
Let us then give home education a chance and see what can come of that, and let our nurses be French and German, so that the children may learn these languages with their earliest breath; and, moreover, let us in some measure educate our children for what they are going to be. It is no manner of use to give those who are to be in trade the same teaching as that required for the learned professions; and I venture to state that if a man has to take to trade the sooner he does it the better. Eighteen ought to see him in harness of a light kind, but harness all the same; and I furthermore state boldly that it is absolutely waste of time and money and everything else to send boys abroad to school. They never do any good there, and they may get into most frightful mischief. If boys must be sent to France or Germany, take them yourselves, otherwise you may be quite sure that both time and money are wasted. I am not speaking without book, and I have never heard of one school, either in France or Germany, where the education was of the least use, neither will it be until more schools follow the example of Clifton, and form settlements abroad on the lines of our public schools; though even then I am inclined to adhere to my own opinion and urge on parents, whose sons require to know French and German thoroughly, to go to both places themselves, and stay a couple of years in each in some good town. If they do they will achieve their object, and their boys will command far higher prices in the labour market than those can who do not know any languages except their own, and a certain amount of Latin and Greek, which, it seems to me, they learn only to forget as soon as ever they can manage to do so.
But if parents will not hear of home education they must most carefully select the preparatory school, and they must manage to afford in addition a first-rate public school, for nothing can possibly be worse than a cheap or inferior place of education; and it is an astonishing fact to me that in such an important matter as is education one requires as a rule so little guarantee that we actually receive what we are paying for.
No one can be a lawyer or doctor without credentials; anyone who likes can open a school, and command scholars too. Why should not the State interfere here?—it is very fond of interfering dreadfully on far less important matters—and say boldly that no one shall have a school at all until he has qualified himself in the eye of the State, and is diplomaed or hall-marked in such a manner that one can tell at once whether he is fitted for the work or not? Until this is done I much fear that preparatory schools will not improve to any great extent, and that the middle classes will continue to send their children to people who are utterly unfit for the work they have undertaken. A personal reference from some parent, often enough from one who knows little indeed about his children, and possibly a few letters after the name, are considered quite sufficient guarantee by most people that they are obtaining all that they are paying for.
A good preparatory school costs from 85l. to about 125l. a year; of course less can be paid, and I dare say more can be paid also, but I consider an excellent school can be had for 100l. a year. Of course there are always extras beside, and these depend entirely on the means of the parents, and in some measure on the schoolmaster himself, who should undoubtedly be a man in whom we can trust, and to whom we can give our confidence, telling him exactly what we can afford to spend, and also what manner of child our special boy is, and also, most important of all, what he is to be, and what particular talents, weaknesses, or goodnesses he may be likely to inherit. We should also give our child our confidence. We should tell him emphatically what we can afford for him, what we wish him to do, and finally encourage him in every way to get on by writing to or seeing him constantly, and by never letting him imagine for one moment that ‘out of sight means out of mind;’ he is more in our minds, just because he is absent from us, than he would be were he constantly in our presence.
As regards public schools, Harrow costs roughly about 200l. a year, and the first term’s bills are as follows: