Cambridge Essays on Education

by Unknown

Again no boy can meet with real athletic success who has not learnt to control his temper. It is not merely that public opinion despises the man who is a bad loser; but that to lose your temper very often means to lose the game. It may be true that a Rugby forward does not develop his finest game until an opponent's elbow has met his nose and given an extra spice to his onslaught. But in the majority of contests the man who keeps his head will win. Notably this is true in boxing, a fine instrument of education, whatever may be the objections to the prize ring. So dispassionate a scientist as Professor Hall in his monumental work on Adolescence, describes boxing as "a manly art, a superb school for quickness of eye and hand, decision, full of will and self-control. The moment this is lost, stinging punishment follows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility, and has been found to have a most beneficial effect upon a peevish or unmanly disposition."

But perhaps the best lesson that a boy can learn from his games, is the lesson that he must play for his side and not for himself. He does not always learn it; the cricketer who plays for his average, the three-quarters who tries to score himself, are not unknown, though boyish opinion rightly condemns them. Popular school ethics are thoroughly sound on this point, and it is the virtue of inter-school and inter-house competitions, that in them a boy learns what it is to forget self and to think of a cause. There is a society outside himself which has its claim upon him, whose victory is his victory, whose defeat is his defeat. Whether victory comes through him or through another, is nothing so long as victory be won; later in life men may play games for their health's sake or for enjoyment, but they lose that thrill of intense patriotism, the more intense because of the smallness of the society that arouses it, with which they battled in the mud of some November day for the honour of their school or house. Small wonder that when school-fellows meet after years of separation, the memories to which they most gladly return, are the memories of hard-won victories and manfully contested defeats.

But victory must be won by fair means. There is a story (possibly without historical foundation) that a foreign visitor to Oxford said that the thing that struck him most in that great university was the fact that there were 3000 men there who would rather lose a game than win it by unfair means. It would be absurd to pretend that that spirit is universal: the commercial organisation of professional football and the development of betting have gone a long way to degrade a noble sport. But the standard of fair play in school games is high, and it is the encouragement of this spirit by cricket and football that renders them so valuable an aid in the activities of boys' clubs in artisan districts. It has been argued that the prevalence of this generous temper among our troops has been a real handicap in war; that we have too much regarded hostilities as a game in which there were certain rules to be observed, and that when we found ourselves matched against a foe whose object was to win by any means, fair or foul, the soldiers who were fettered by the scruples of honour were necessarily inferior to their unscrupulous foe. It has perhaps yet to be proved that in the long run the unchivalrous fighter always wins, and I doubt whether any of us would really prefer that even in war we should set aside the scruples of fair play. But in the arts and pursuits of peace that man is best equipped to play a noble part who realises that there are rules in the great game of life which an honourable man will respect, that there are advantages which he must not take. How often does some rather inarticulate hero, who has refused some tempting prospect or spurned some specious offer, explain his act of self-denial by the simple phrase of his boyhood, "I thought it wasn't quite playing the game." Schoolboy honour is not always a faultless thing; sometimes it means the hiding of real iniquity. But the honour of the playing field is a generous code, and to have learnt its rules is to have learnt the best that the public opinion of a boy community can teach.

The chairman of a great engineering firm recently told the Incorporated Association of Headmasters, that when he went to Oxford to get recruits for his firm, he did not look for men who had got a First in Greats, but for men who would have got a First, if they had worked. For these men had probably given a good deal of their time to rowing or games and had thereby learnt something of the art of dealing with men. The student who sticks to his books learns many lessons, but not this. To be captain of a house or of a school, and to do it well is to practise the art of governing on a small scale. A sore temptation to the schoolmaster is to interfere too much in school games. He sees obvious mistakes being made, wrong tactics being adopted, the wrong sides chosen, and he longs to interfere. He is anxious for victories, and forgets that after all victories are a very secondary business, that games are only a means, not an end, that if he does not let the boys really govern and make their mistakes, the game is failing to provide the training that it ought to give. It is undoubted that schools which are carefully coached by competent players, where the responsibility is largely taken out of the captain's hands, are more likely to win their matches. But much is lost, though the game may be won. The strong captain who goes his own way, chooses his own side, frames his own tactics and inspires the whole team with his own spirit, has had a practical training in the management of men which will stand him in good stead in the greater affairs of life. "We are not very well satisfied" said a War Office official, "with the stamp of young officer we are getting. Many of them never seem to have played a game in their lives, though they are first-rate mathematicians." And there is no doubt that whether for war or peace mathematics is not a substitute for leadership.

Courage, endurance, self-control, public spirit, fair play, leadership, these are the virtues which we find may be encouraged by the practice of games at school. It is not a complete list of the Christian virtues, perhaps rather we might call them Pagan virtues, but it is a fine list for all that. And the best of it is that they are as it were unconsciously learnt, acquired by practice, not by inculcation. The boy who follows virtue for its own sake would be, I fear, a sad prig, but the boy who follows a football for the sake of his house, may develop virtue and enjoy the process.

But what are we to put on the other side of the account? If it be true that athletics is a fine school for character, what is the ground for the frequent complaint that the public schools make a "fetish" of athleticism? What precisely is the complaint? It is this, that boys regard, and are encouraged to regard their games as the most important side of their school life, that their interest in them is so overpowering that they have no interest left for the development of the intellect or the acquisition of knowledge, that prominent athletes, not brilliant scholars, are the heroes of a boy community, and that in consequence many men of the better nourished classes, after they have left school, look upon their amusements as the main business of life, give to them the industry and concentration which should be bestowed upon science, letters or industry, and swell the ranks of the amiable and incompetent amateur. It is argued that schools are converted into pleasant athletic clubs, and that boys, instead of learning there to work, merely learn to play. Now this is a serious indictment; it is a good thing to learn to play, but it is not the only thing a school should teach. Riding, shooting and speaking the truth may have been an adequate curriculum for an ancient Persian, but it would not provide a sufficient equipment to enable a man to face the stress of modern competition, or to understand the developments of the science and industry of to-day.

Is too much time given to the playing of games? In winter time I should say No. I suppose that if we include teaching hours and preparation, a boy spends some six hours a day on his intellectual work, or if you prefer, he is supposed to spend that time. A game of football two or three times a week, does not last more than an hour and a quarter; if you add a liberal allowance for changing and baths, two hours is the whole time occupied. A game of fives or a physical drill class need not demand more than an hour. The game that really wastes time—and I am sorry to admit it—is cricket. I am not thinking so much of the long waits in the pavilion when two batsmen on a side are well set, and the rest have nothing to do but to applaud. I see no way out of that difficulty, so long as wickets are prepared as they are now by artistic groundsmen. I am thinking rather of the excessive practice at nets. An enthusiastic house captain is apt to believe that by assiduous practice the most unlikely and awkward recruit can be converted into a useful batsman, and the result is that he will drive all his house day after day to the nets, until they begin to loathe the sight of a cricket ball.

We should recognise that cricket is a game for the few; the majority of boys can never make good cricketers. And happy are those schools which are near a river and can provide an alternative exercise in the summer, which does not require exceptional quickness of eye and wrist and does provide a splendid discipline of body and spirit. In the summer it is well to exempt all boys from cricket, who have really a taste for natural history or photography. Summer half-holidays are emphatically the time for hobbies, and it is a serious charge against our games if they are organised to such a pitch that hobbies are practically prohibited. The zealous captain will object that such "slacking" is destroying the spirit of the house. We must endeavour to point out to him that the unwilling player never makes a good player, and that such a boy may be finding his proper development in the pursuit of butterflies, a development which he would never gain by unsuccessful and involuntary cricket. House masters too are apt to complain that freedom for hobbies is subversive of discipline, and to quote the old adage about Satan and idle hands. That there is risk, is not to be denied. But you cannot run a school without taking risks. Our whole system of leaving the government largely in the hands of boys is full of risks. Sometimes it brings shipwreck; more often it does not. For in the majority of cases the policy of confidence is justified by results.

There is one way of wasting time that is heartily to be condemned, the waste involved in looking on. I am inclined to think that if all athletic contests took place without a ring of spectators, we should get all the good of games and very little of the evil. Certainly professional football would lose its blacker sides if there were no gate money and no betting. Few men or boys are the worse for playing games; it is the applause of the mob that turns their heads. But I am afraid I am not logical enough to say that I would forbid boys to watch matches against another school; the emotions that lead to the "breathless hush in the Close" are so compounded of patriotism and jealousy for the honour of the school, that they are far from ignoble. But I would not have boys compelled to watch the games against clubs and other non-school teams. Above all, if they watch, they must have a run or a game to stir their own blood. The half-holiday must not be spent in shivering on a touchline and then crowding round a fire.