§ 10. Montaigne, like Locke and Rousseau, who followed in his steps, arranges for every boy to have a tutor entirely devoted to him. We may question whether this method of bringing up children is desirable, and we may assert, without question, that in most cases it is impossible. It seems ordained that at every stage of life we should require the companionship of those of our own age. If we take two beings as little alike as a man and a child and force them to be each other’s companions, so great is the difference in their thoughts and interests that they will fall into inevitable boredom and restraint. So we see that this plan, even in the few cases in which it would be possible, would not be desirable; and for the great majority of boys it would be out of the question. We must then arrange for the young to be taught, not as individuals, but in classes, and this greatly changes the conditions of the problem. One of the first conditions is this, that we have to employ each class regularly and uniformly for some hours every day. Schoolmasters know what their non-scholastic mentors forget: we can make a class learn, but, broadly speaking, we cannot make a class think, still less can we make it judge. As a great deal of occupation has to be provided, we are therefore forced to make our pupils learn. Whatever may be the value of the learning in itself it is absolutely necessary as employment.
§ 11. No doubt it will make a vast difference whether we consider the learning mainly as employment, as a means of taking up time and preventing “sauntering,” as Locke boldly calls it, or whether we are chiefly anxious to secure some special results. The knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages and the Latin and Greek authors was a result so highly prized by the Renascence scholars that they insisted on a prodigious quantity of learning, not as employment, but simply as the means of acquiring this knowledge. As the knowledge got to be less esteemed the pressure was by degrees relaxed. In our public schools fifty or sixty years ago the learning was to some extent retained as employment, but there certainly was no pressure, and the majority of the boys never learnt the ancient languages. So the masters of that time had given up the Renascence enthusiasm for the classics, and on the negative side of his teaching had come to an agreement with Montaigne. Any one inclined to sarcasm might say that on the positive side they were still totally opposed to him, for he thought virtue and judgment were the main things to be cared for, and they did not care for these things at all. But this is not a fair statement. The one thing gained, or supposed to be gained, in the public schools was the art of living, and this art, though it does not demand heroic virtue, requires at least prudence and self-control. Montaigne’s system was a revolt against the bookishness of the Renascence. “In our studies,” says he, “whatever presents itself before us is book enough; a roguish trick of a page, a blunder of a servant, a jest at table, are so many new subjects.” So the education out of school was in his eyes of more value than the education in school. And this was acknowledged also in our public schools: “It is not the Latin and Greek they learn or don’t learn that we consider so important,” the masters used to say, “but it is the tone of the school and the discipline of the games.” But of late years this virtual agreement with Montaigne has been broken up. School work is no longer mere employment, but it is done under pressure, and with penalties if the tale of brick turned out does not pass the inspector.
§ 12. What has produced this great change? It is due mainly to two causes:
1. The pressure put on the young to attain classical knowledge was relaxed when it was thought that they could get through life very well without this knowledge. But in these days new knowledge has awakened a new enthusiasm. The knowledge of science promises such great advantages that the latest reformers, headed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, seem to make the well-being of the grown person depend mainly on the amount of scientific knowledge he stored up in his youth. This is the first cause of educational pressure.
§ 13. 2. The second and more urgent cause is the rapid development of our system of examinations. Everybody’s educational status is now settled by the examiner, a potentate whose influence has brought back in a very malignant form all the evils of which Montaigne complains. Do what we will, the faculty chiefly exercised in preparing for ordinary examinations is the “carrying memory.” So the acquisition of knowledge—mere memory or examination knowledge—has again come to be regarded as the one thing needful in education, and there is great danger of everything else being neglected for it. Of the fourfold results of education—virtue, wisdom, good manners, learning—the last alone can be fairly tested in examinations; and as the schoolmaster’s very bread depends nowadays first on his getting through examinations himself and then on getting his pupils through, he would be more than human, if with Locke he thought of learning “last and least.” A great change has come over our public schools. The amount of work required from the boys is far greater than it used to be and masters again measure their success by the amount of knowledge the average boy takes away with him. It seems to me high time that another Montaigne arose to protest that a man’s intellectual life does not consist in the number of things he remembers, and that his true life is not his intellectual life only, but embraces his power of will and action and his love of what is noble and right. “Wisdom cried of old, I am the mother of fair Love and Fear and Knowledge and holy Hope” (Ecclesiasticus). In these days of science and examinations does there not seem some danger lest knowledge should prove the sole survivor? May not Knowledge, like another Cain, raise its hand against its brethren “fair Love and Fear and holy Hope?” This is perhaps the great danger of our time, a danger especially felt in education. Every school parades its scholarships at the public schools or at the universities, or its passes in the Oxford and Cambridge Locals, or its percentage at the last Inspection, and asks to be judged by these. And yet these are not the one thing or indeed the chief thing needful: and it will be the ruin of true education if, as Mark Pattison said, the master’s attention is concentrated on the least important part of his duty.[42]
VII.
ASCHAM.
(1515-1568.)
§ 1. Masters and scholars who sigh over what seem to them the intricacies and obscurities of modern grammars may find some consolation in thinking that, after all, matters might have been worse, and that our fate is enviable indeed compared with that of the students of Latin 400 years ago. Did the reader ever open the Doctrinale of Alexander de Villa Dei, which was the grammar in general use from the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century? ([v. Appendix, p. 532]). If so, he is aware how great a step towards simplicity was made by our grammatical reformers, Lily, Colet, and Erasmus. Indeed, those whom we now regard as the forgers of our chains were, in their own opinion and that of their contemporaries, the champions of freedom (Appendix, p. 533).