As matters now stand, what happens to a Harchester boy the moment he receives the promise of a commission or a clerkship, is just this: he is hastily removed from that celebrated school, and is handed over to “a crammer”—an educational empiric—who can have no pride in his calling; who deals only with full-grown and avowed dunces; and who undertakes to teach them in a few months what it is shameful to their teachers that they should not have learnt years before. The “crammer” teaches at a manifest disadvantage; he and his pupil are strangers to each other; he knows nothing of his constitution, his disposition, his capacity, or his temper; he has, and can have, no influence or control over him; all he can do, all he undertakes to do, is to hustle him, by fair means or by foul, over the low educational barrier which debars the youth from entering the profession of his choice. Sometimes he succeeds—generally after one or two mortifying failures; but very often the poor lad has been allowed to become so incurably idle as to be unable to acquire at eighteen those rudimentary parts of education, which ought to have been imparted to him when he was a child, and in which the sons of his father’s tradesmen are now mostly proficient; and he is in consequence shut out from the career to which he and his parents have for years been looking forward with eager satisfaction. In either case his friends are unfairly exposed to great expense, anxiety, and mortification. And all this happens because our old public school system is too deeply rooted in vested interests to accommodate itself readily to the altered habits and requirements of the age.
I know very well that I shall be told that our public school system is not what it used to be, and that what I have here written refers rather to what was than to what is. I am prepared to test the justice of this reproof in the manner most disadvantageous to my argument. I have before me the statistics of half-a-dozen of our largest upper-class schools; I will take up those of the most costly, the most renowned, the largest. They are those of Eton.
I find that that school lately contained between 800 and 900 boys. To teach them everything, save mathematics and French, there were twenty-one masters. But of those, one, the head master, takes no pupils: nor does the assistant master in college teach any of the boys. Upwards of 800 boys, therefore, are taught by nineteen masters. Now much economy of scholastic labour may undoubtedly be effected by teaching boys in large droves; but I am assured that the system of instruction at Eton is rather wasteful than economical of scholastic labour. All the teaching is done out of school, in the private houses of the tutors, and the boys only go into school to repeat what they have previously learnt, and to exhibit exercises that have been already examined and corrected. Therefore, as each master has a few pupils in every class in the school, each master is compelled every day to go through the entire business of every class in the school; and some of them undertake single-handed the private tuition of as many as seventy boys!
It seems absolutely impossible, under such conditions, that nineteen masters can do justice to 800 or 900 boys; and the questions naturally arise,—Do they do justice to them? Can they do justice to them? And if they do not, and cannot, why are their numbers not doubled or trebled at once? Ought not the liberal sum paid for the education of an Eton boy to ensure to him the fullest educational advantages? Ought any “crammer” to be required to prepare him for his appearance before the Civil Service Commissioners or the Board of Military Education?
Of late years we have been told that the study of modern languages has been much more attended to at our public schools than formerly; and H.R.H. the Prince Consort has kindly and thoughtfully encouraged it by offering prizes for the best scholars in that branch of knowledge at Eton. But the authorities at that school do not appear, from their published statistics, to be sensible of the importance of such acquirements, although they absolutely constitute the only current coin which will be received at the educational turnpike which the government has recently erected, and through which every boy entering on public life as a soldier or a civil servant must now pass. At that turnpike Greek and Roman money is no longer exclusively taken.
The class of youths who are educated at Eton can scarcely be said to have received the education of gentlemen, if at seventeen or eighteen they have not acquired a moderate knowledge of French. Yet to teach 800 or 900 boys French, but one master has hitherto been provided by the authorities of that school; and for their fractional share in his services, his pupils each pay 10l. 10s. a year extra. At King’s College, London,—one of the best of our middle-class schools—there are three French masters kept to instruct 880 boys, without any extra charge. At Charter-House—which enjoys the advantage of the independent supervision of its distinguished governors—there is one classical master to every twenty boys; and French—not an extra—is as well cared for as it is at King’s College; whilst at Eton there is not one classical master to every forty boys. I will, however, enter into no further comparisons of this kind. I am fearful of falling into technical errors, which might weaken the force of what I wish to say. I have no right to suppose that Eton is a bit worse than others of our public schools, or that it is not better than many of them: but I do say that the statistics to which I have here adverted call for immediate attention and explanation. It is of the utmost importance to every man in England that the schools at which our future legislators are educated should be good schools, and that the governors of this country should be at least as well educated as the governed. If they are not, in the course of a few years deplorable results must ensue.
I will now relate the accident which has decided me on calling, through your means, public attention to this matter.
Some months ago I visited one of our newly established schools, where about one hundred and fifty boys were receiving their education. The principal of it, a very distinguished man, well known for his energetic intelligence in the cause of education, told me that he felt he could not do justice to his boys unless he had one master to every twelve of them. I inquired what he paid his masters, and I found his maximum was about 800l. a year, and his minimum 300l., board included. For these sums, he assured me, he secured the best men the universities produced. All the arrangements of his school appeared to me excellent; and the conveniences and opportunities for cricket, football, and other athletic amusements, were quite equal to those we used to enjoy at Harchester. The principal himself took no part in the teaching—he merely exercised a general superintendence over the whole. I should much like to name this admirable establishment; but as I have not his permission to do so, I forbear.
Shortly afterwards I chanced to read in The Times the list of the successful competitors at one of the highest open examinations held by the Government Examiners. The boy whose name stood at the head of that list was named as having been educated at this gentleman’s school, and as having come direct from thence into the public examination room. He had won in a canter, as the number of marks assigned to him proved. Last but one on the list of sixty was the only Etonian candidate, and to his name was added, “Educated at Eton, and at subsequent private tutors’.”
In conclusion, sir, I will offer a suggestion. I do so with extreme diffidence, and with entire deference to those who are, I know, more competent to judge of educational questions than I am. I merely throw it out for consideration.