In recent years a new type of literary teachers has been rising, who owe little, at any rate directly, to the old classical training; and although their zeal is often undisciplined and "not according to knowledge," with them lies the future hope of literary training in our schools. They bring to their task an enthusiasm which was too often lacking in the "grand old fortifying classical curriculum"; but it is to be hoped that, as the importance of their subject becomes more and more recognised, they will achieve a method which will embody all that was valuable, while discarding much that was narrow and pedantic, in classical teaching. And in particular may they all realise, as many already do, what the classical teacher, however unconsciously, held as an axiom, that in order to enter into the spirit of literature, to appreciate style, to understand in any true sense the meaning of great author's, it is not enough for pupils to listen and to read, and then perhaps to write essays about what they have heard and read. They must also make something, exercise that creative, and at the same time imitative, artistic faculty, which surely is the motive power of most of our progress, at least in early life. Nothing has struck me more forcibly than the intense interest which boys will take in their own crude efforts at writing a poem or a story or essay, while they are still quite unable to appreciate with discrimination, or even to enjoy with any sustained feeling, the poetry or prose of the great masters. Not that there is anything surprising in this. I know very well that it was writing Latin verses that taught me to appreciate Virgil, and writing juvenile epics that led me up to Milton. But it is an order of progress which we schoolmasters are apt to overlook, expecting our pupils to appreciate what we know to be good work before they have that elementary, but most fruitful, experience which can only come from handling the tools of the craft. The creative and imitative impulse will die down in the great majority; and we shall not make the mistake of continuing to exact formal "composition" from maturer pupils, who no longer find it anything but a drag upon their progress along the unfolding vistas of knowledge and appreciation. Our object is not to increase the number of writers, already far too large, but to increase the number of readers, which can never be too large, to raise the standard of literary taste, and so to spread pure enjoyment and all the benefits to society which joy, and joy alone, confers. Inspired with such an aim, common sense and sympathy will enable us to overcome the difficulties and avoid the pitfalls which undoubtedly beset the teaching of that most necessary, most delightful, but most elusive and imponderable subject, the appreciation of literature.
VII
THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION
By W. BATESON
Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution
That secondary education in England fails to do what it might is scarcely in dispute. The magnitude of the failure will be appreciated by those who know what other countries accomplish at a fraction of the cost. Beyond the admission that something is seriously wrong there is little agreement. We are told that the curriculum is too exclusively classical, that the classes are too large, the teaching too dull, the boys too much away from home, the examination-system too oppressive, athletics overdone. All these things are probably true. Each cause contributes in its degree to the lamentable result. Yet, as it seems to me, we may remove them all without making any great improvement. All the circumstances may be varied, but that intellectual apathy which has become so marked a characteristic of English life, especially of English public and social life, may not improbably continue. Why nations pass into these morbid phases no one can tell. The spirit of the age, that "polarisation of society" as Tarde[[1]] used to call it, in a definite direction, is brought about by no cause that can be named as yet. It will remain beyond volitional control at least until we get some real insight into social physiology. That the attitude or pose of the average Englishman towards education, knowledge, and learning is largely a phenomenon of infectious imitation we know. But even if we could name the original, perhaps real, perhaps fictional, person—for in all likelihood there was such an one—whom English society in its folly unconsciously selected as a model, the knowledge would advance us little. The psychology of imitation is still impenetrable and likely to remain so. The simple interpretation of our troubles as a form of sloth—a travelling along lines of least resistance—can scarcely be maintained. For first there have been times when learning and science were the fashion. Whether society benefited directly therefrom may, in passing, be doubted, but certainly learning did. Secondly there are plenty of men who under the pressure of fashion devote much effort to the improvement of their form in fatuous sports, which otherwise applied would go a considerable way in the improvement of their minds and in widening their range of interests.
Of late things have become worse. In the middle of the nineteenth century a perfunctory and superficial acquaintance with recent scientific discovery was not unusual among the upper classes, and the scientific world was occasionally visited even by the august. These slender connections have long since withered away. This decline in the public estimation of science and scientific men has coincided with a great increase both in the number of scientific students and in the provision for teaching science. It has occurred also in the period during which something of the full splendour and power of science has begun to be revealed. Great regions of knowledge have been penetrated by the human mind. The powers of man over nature have been multiplied a hundredfold. The fate of nations hangs literally on the issue of contemporary experiments in the laboratory; but those who govern the Empire are quite content to know nothing of all this. Intercommunication between government departments and scientific advisers has of course much developed. That, even in this country, was inevitable. Otherwise the Empire might have collapsed long since. Experts in the sciences are from time to time invited to confer with heads of Departments and even Cabinet Ministers, explaining to them, as best they may, the rudiments of their respective studies, but such occasional night-school talks to the great are an inadequate recognition of the position of science in a modern State. Science is not a material to be bought round the corner by the dram, but the one permanent and indispensable light in which every action and every policy must be judged.