I imagine Dr. Birkbeck to have had no idea that this institution would be so extensively used for preparing people for examinations. I doubt whether he would have liked it, but respect to the pious memory of a founder may be exaggerated, and since there is no getting rid of examinations, the next best thing is to make the art of coaching as little harmful as may be to pupil and teacher. I do not mean to speak slightingly of coaching as a whole, for a great deal of it is only a very skilful way of imparting knowledge, but it will be allowed that some of it is not educative in a broad sense.
You will remember that Mr. Brooke, in Middlemarch, was in the habit of mildly investigating questions which he always threw over because he foresaw they would “carry him too far.” I confess to feeling very like Mr. Brooke when I attempt to balance the interests of teacher and student. In that comfortable period, the 18th century, things were all in favour of the teacher. The poet Gray, who was Professor of History at Cambridge, could never decide whether to lecture in Latin or English, and ended by never lecturing at all.
It is now easier to find cases where the teacher
is the victim and slave of his pupils, and has no time or strength to continue his own education.
This has at least two bad results, and probably more than that number: (1) From want of time for reading the teacher can hardly avoid falling behind in a rapidly progressive subject such as one of the natural sciences, and consequently the University or College that enslaves him is injuring its own property. (2) He has no time to do any original work, and this is even worse for him (and therefore, as before, for the College). He ceases to be on intimate terms with the plants or animals or chemical substances with which he has to deal, and his teaching must necessarily lose that vigour and freshness that comes from first-hand personal knowledge. It is downright cruelty to deny time for research to those who vehemently desire to add something to the fabric of human knowledge.
The hampered teacher reminds me of a certain migratory bird living with clipped wings in a Zoological Garden: when the migrating season came round the unfortunate prisoner started to walk, and was to be seen pressing its breast against the bars at the north end of its pen. I hope that nowadays all Colleges realise that they must not prison their birds, but give them the means of satisfying their natural instinct for fresh and self-gained knowledge. The students are in one way better off than their masters, since laboratory work is generally new to them and has therefore some of the charm of discovery.
In what I have said to-night I have confined myself to Natural Science, in which alone I have
had experience of teaching or examining. On the literary side of things I am, I fear, a Philistine, or enfant terrible. I belong to that class of persons (which has at least the merit of being very large) who have hardly opened a Greek or Latin book since the day they passed their Little-go.
I grudge the time that is given at school to making small boys groan over books not well suited to them, while French and German are, or were in my day, all but untaught. If I had had good oral teaching in modern languages (such, for instance, as that given at the Perse School in Cambridge) I could forgive my teachers. We should without tears have learned to talk fluently and write correctly in at least one modern language, and for the sake of this I could perhaps have borne the weariness of Greek and Latin grammar. If it were not for the tyranny of examinations, classical teaching might be put to its proper use, which is not to serve as an instrument of torture, but to enable us to read ancient authors.
I would teach Latin and Greek only to older boys, and by the method in which we all learn a modern language—that is when we have the advantage of being at once teacher and learner. I mean by reading quickly, with a translation if necessary; at first without understanding half of what we read, but gradually picking up words as we go along. This is how I learned to read easy Italian. By the advice of the late Henry Sidgwick I began on a bad Italian translation of a French novel, because such a version, being full of French idioms more or less literally translated, is