Such an arrangement as this was bad enough, but the fact that the proportion of masters to boys was dishonestly small, was worse; there were not nearly enough of them even to hear the pupils the daily tasks which were assigned to them; and as for any moral or social supervision out of school-hours, none was ever attempted—so perplexed and overwhelmed were the teachers with the burden of their scholastic duties. If the elder boys in a tutor’s house chanced to be gentlemanlike and well-conditioned lads, the juniors had a pretty good time of it, and fared tolerably; if they chanced to be roughs or snobs, which they occasionally were, the juniors had a bad time of it, and fared ill. But the whole thing was a complete matter of chance. A tutor, who from seven in the morning till ten at night, with very brief intervals for food and exercise, was occupied in teaching and hearing lessons, in examining maps, in correcting themes and verses, and who could not in that space of time hear one-fifth of the lessons his pupils were supposed, by a wild stretch of tutorial imagination, to learn, was not in a position to bestow much attention on either the morals or the manners of the boys. During the daytime they were left entirely to themselves, to ferment, and purify or corrupt, as the case might be; and at night they were in some degree supervised and controlled by the confidential servants of the houses in which they boarded.
The regular business of the school consisted solely in the study of Latin and Greek, which was taught in the precise manner in which it had been taught to our fathers and grandfathers; for no newfangled or short cuts to knowledge found favour in the eyes of the Principal of Harchester: of modern history, modern geography, modern languages, English composition and literature, arithmetic, or mathematics, we learnt nothing. There was, indeed, a slight pretence made of teaching some few of those branches of education, and French and mathematics figured occasionally as extras in our bills; but it was but a pretence—they formed no part of what was termed “the regular business of the school,” and proficiency in them obtained for a boy neither credit nor position at Harchester. Straws often show which way the wind blows. The Harchester boys were never required to touch their hats to the French or the mathematical masters; whilst to the classical masters, who alone conducted the discipline of the school, they were required to be always hat in hand.
The insufficient number of masters, and the overwhelming number of pupils, enabled the latter to shirk their lessons with great facility; and the consequence was, that the masters, conscious of the evil practice, yet unequal to prevent it, quieted their consciences by inflicting corporal punishments to an incredible amount; notwithstanding which, it is no exaggeration to say, that for one pupil who left Harchester a fair scholar, a dozen left it with scarcely any education at all.
But as the Harchester boys had plenty of holidays—as their amusements were many and varied, and as they were liberally fed and well lodged—they liked the system and the place well enough. Fives, rackets, cricket, boating, hockey, and football kept them healthy and active; they dressed well and expensively, had every opportunity they could desire for running in debt at the pastrycooks’ and the public-houses of the town, and, I am sorry to say, equal facilities for becoming initiated into some of the vices of maturer age.
The masters were scarcely to blame for this; it was the system that was mainly in fault. They had themselves been brought up under that system; they sincerely believed in it. They worked from morning till night, and more could not be expected of mortal men. If they could, they would have educated all their pupils thoroughly; they would have watched over them and kept them out of debt and difficulty of all kind; but they could not—their numbers were so few. It is true that their numbers might have been doubled, nay, trebled, with undoubted advantage to the school; but then their profits must have been proportionably diminished; and it was too much to expect from human nature that a reform, which could only be attained at such a heavy cost, should be initiated by the very individuals who would suffer from it. Government inspection would at once have shown the propriety of such a step, and would have necessitated its immediate adoption; but to talk of government inspection for such a distinguished school as Harchester would have been rank sacrilege. It might do very well for the schools of the poor, but Harchester would never have submitted to it.
Harchester was a very popular school. The sons of half the nobility and gentry of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were sent thither, because their fathers had been there before them; and because, although it was known not to be a very good school—for learning—there was no other upper-class school which was known to be decidedly better. It used to be hinted, too, that between each generation vast improvements had taken place in its system. The high social position of the Harchester boys was sure to obtain for them a remarkably good start in the race of life, and whenever any one of them distinguished himself signally at college or in parliament, the admirers of Harchester fondly attributed his success to the excellence of the Harchester system. It never seemed to occur to them that the boy might have thriven in spite of that lax and dishonest system, and not in consequence of it. Harchester men had also a great reputation for being gentlemanlike, and on that quality they prided themselves much more than upon their scholarship. But as the sons of the best noblemen and gentlemen of England all went to Harchester, it was not very surprising that they should grow up gentlemen. They would probably have done so had they all been educated anywhere else. At any rate, the masters could claim no credit for the gentility of their pupils—unless, indeed, gentility be a plant which is best cultivated by entire neglect.
Numbers of the wealthy of the middle classes sent their sons to Harchester in imitation of their betters. It was the most expensive school in England. They imagined that its associations secured to their boys great advantages in after life; and, in truth, like their betters, they knew of no other upper-class school that was decidedly superior to it. Mothers liked it because it was fashionable, and was supposed to make their boys “gentlemen;” and country squires, who had been educated there themselves, and were not particularly conscious of their own deficiencies, were quite satisfied if their sons, after passing four or five years in happy idleness, left it accomplished oarsmen and expert cricketers.
Thirty or forty years ago such a system as this did very well for our governing classes; well or ill educated, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Army, and the Civil Service, received with open arms the children of the powerful and the rich; eldest sons, after a couple of years’ additional idleness as gentlemen commoners at Oxbridge, went into parliament and voted all the more steadily with their party, because they were confirmed and incurable dunces; whilst younger sons obtained commissions in crack regiments, or stools in the Treasury and Foreign Office, and rose through the money and the parliamentary influence their fathers could command, rather than through their own merits and exertions. From such causes, and for such reasons, did Harchester College prosper, and set an example which was followed by most of the upper-class schools in England.
But in the present day, circumstances have arisen which must ere long shake the time-honoured Harchester system to its very foundations. The improvements which have of late years taken place in English education, have, indeed, been first made manifest in the schools of the poor; but they are swiftly surging upwards, and if Harchester, and our other great public schools, are to maintain the position which they have hitherto held, the sooner they call in the government inspector the better for them. Middle-class schools are rising around them—in London, in Liverpool, at Cheltenham, at Bradley, at Marlborough, at Bradfield, and elsewhere—which are readily adapting themselves to the altered requirements of the age; and unless Harchester means to be left in the lurch, that venerable establishment must conform also.
No boy can now enter the Army or the Civil Service until he has proved by an examination before government examiners, not only that his parents have paid for a good education for him, but that he has profited by it. The standard of education which has been erected by the Civil Service Commissioners and the Board of Military Education, is, indeed, a low one; but it has been constructed by the advice and with the concurrence of the masters of our largest schools, it is firmly based upon public opinion, and it is far more likely to be heightened than to be reduced. And there it will henceforward remain—a sure though not a severe test of the honesty and abilities of masters as well as of scholars. From a youth of seventeen or eighteen years of age it requires but little, but it insists that that little shall be well and thoroughly learnt. A correct knowledge of his mother tongue and of arithmetic, a fair acquaintance with history, geography, mathematics, and French, as well as with Latin and with Greek, if the candidate volunteers the latter, is all that is asked; and if an upper-class school does not teach that much to a boy between the age of twelve and eighteen, it is not unreasonable to inquire what it does teach him? But these are just the educational items which Harchester has hitherto evaded teaching. They are not yet part of the Harchester “school business;” the sooner they are, the better for the future prosperity of Harchester.