Too much concentration on any one subject is a great mistake, especially in early life. Nature herself indicates the true system, if we would but listen to her. Our instincts are good guides, though not infallible, and children will profit little by lessons which do not interest them. In cheerfulness, says Pliny, is the success of our studies—"studia hilaritate proveniunt"—and we may with advantage take a lesson from Theognis, who, in his Ode on the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, makes the Muses sing:
"What is good and fair,
Shall ever be our care;
Thus the burden of it rang,
That shall never be our care,
Which is neither good nor fair.
Such were the words your lips immortal sang."
There are some who seem to think that our educational system is as good as possible, and that the only remaining points of importance are the number of schools and scholars, the question of fees, the relation of voluntary and board schools, etc. "No doubt," says Mr. Symonds, in his Sketches in Italy and Greece, "there are many who think that when we not only advocate education but discuss the best system we are simply beating the air; that our population is as happy and cultivated as can be, and that no substantial advance is really possible. Mr. Galton, however, has expressed the opinion, and most of those who have written on the social condition of Athens seem to agree with him, that the population of Athens, taken as a whole, was as superior to us as we are to Australian savages."
That there is, indeed, some truth in this, probably no student of Greek history will deny. Why, then, should this be so? I cannot but think that our system of education is partly responsible.
Manual and science teaching need not in any way interfere with instruction in other subjects. Though so much has been said about the importance of science and the value of technical instruction, or of hand-training, as I should prefer to call it, it is unfortunately true that in our system of education, from the highest schools downward, both of them are sadly neglected, and the study of language reigns supreme.
This is no new complaint. Ascham, in The Schoolmaster, long ago lamented it; Milton, in his letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, complained "that our children are forced to stick unreasonably in these grammatick flats and shallows;" and observes that, "though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only;" and Locke said that "schools fit us for the university rather than for the world." Commission after commission, committee after committee, have reiterated the same complaint. How then do we stand now?
I see it indeed constantly stated that, even if the improvement is not so rapid as could be desired, still we are making considerable progress. But is this so? I fear not. I fear that our present system does not really train the mind, or cultivate the power of observation, or even give the amount of information which we may reasonably expect from the time devoted to it.
Sir M. E. Grant-Duff has expressed the opinion that a boy or girl of fourteen might reasonably be expected to "read aloud clearly and agreeably, to write a large distinct round hand, and to know the ordinary rules of arithmetic, especially compound addition—a by no means universal accomplishment; to speak and write French with ease and correctness, and have some slight acquaintance with French literature; to translate ad aperturam libri from an ordinary French or German book; to have a thoroughly good elementary knowledge of geography, under which are comprehended some notions of astronomy—enough to excite his curiosity; a knowledge of the very broadest facts of geology and history—enough to make him understand, in a clear but perfectly general way, how the larger features of the world he lives in, physical and political, came to be like what they are; to have been trained from earliest infancy to use his powers of observation on plants, or animals, or rocks, or other natural objects; and to have gathered a general acquaintance with what is most supremely good in that portion of the more important English classics which is suitable to his time of life; to have some rudimentary acquaintance with drawing and music."
To effect this, no doubt, "industry must be our oracle, and reason our Apollo," as Sir T. Browne says; but surely it is no unreasonable estimate; yet how far do we fall short of it? General culture is often deprecated because it is said that smatterings are useless. But there is all the difference in the world between having a smattering of, or being well grounded in, a subject. It is the latter which we advocate—to try to know, as Lord Brougham well said, "everything of something, and something of everything."
"It can hardly," says Sir John Herschel, "be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences."