The unfortunate youth who has no talent for the acquisition of languages, and cannot comprehend the simplest proposition in geometry, is condemned to pursue a prescribed routine, and to pass many of the most precious years of his life in the unavailing effort to learn, through the drudgery of a classical school, what is repugnant to his taste, and beyond his powers of comprehension; and all this time, from being constantly engaged in thumbing the elementary books of the dead languages (which are never at his finger ends, in the acceptation of the common phrase), he grows up shamefully ignorant of his vernacular tongue, in which he can neither read with fluency nor spell with correctness.
The schoolmaster, however, is expected to prepare him for the university within a given time, and he must be made up for entrance accordingly. If the parents are told that Young Hopeful has no turn for a literary life, no capacity for learning what is required, they doubt the judgment of the informant, who tells them the truth; for the acknowledgment of this would be an indirect admission of their own incapacity; and in proportion to their ignorance and dullness, is their self assurance that their booby has excellent abilities. The youth is therefore forced forward in spite of his natural repugnance to books; and if afterwards smuggled through the university into a profession which may give him place or emolument, without ability or exertion on his part, he disgraces his station by general ignorance and unfitness; and if he be admitted into a profession which yields honour or emolument only in proportion to talents and industry, he totally fails of the object, and it is discovered too late that the selection of his avocation was in some way unlucky.
Now, it is very probable that if such an every-day boy had been permitted to pursue some track for which his inclinations qualified him, instead of being limited to a course of unsuitable and distasteful occupations, he might have acquired useful knowledge of some sort. For example, supposing him to stumble at metrical “longs and shorts,” or to be stuck between the horns of a dilemma, or be lost amidst the mazes of metaphysics, he might have that peculiar turn which would render him a good farmer, an excellent judge of “long and short wools” or of “long and short horns,” or that shrewdness which would render him a clever tradesman, a man
“Who knows what’s what, and that’s as high
As metaphysic wit doth fly.”
And so certain am I that many young men who enter our university would prefer and far better comprehend the plain and practical lecture of a professor of agriculture, surrounded by models of machinery and plates of cattle, &c., than lectures of a far more pretending character, that I cannot avoid lamenting the deficiency in the department of agriculture which Socrates designated “the nurse and mother of all the arts,” and Gibbon “the foundation of all manufactures.”
The example afforded in this respect by the University of Edinburgh is worthy of the imitation of Trinity College. To afford at least the opportunities of gaining such information on this subject as the mind may be capable of receiving or predisposed to receive, cannot but be deemed judicious. And the theoretical knowledge of husbandry is incalculably more needed by the gentry and middle classes of Ireland than by those of the same grades in Scotland, where almost every land-proprietor and farmer understands the subject more or less.
Far be it from me to decry the advantages of what is called learning, but I would have a more diversified course, both in our schools of every class, and in the universities, so as to comprehend those useful branches of information, to which the student, if denied by Providence the faculties requisite for the attainment of others, may apply himself with pleasure or advantage.
I have met with many young persons of exceeding dullness in book learning, of decided distaste to the pursuits of literature, who have manifested a quick apprehension of mechanical contrivances, practically exhibited a love of natural history, of gardening, of agriculture, of something, in short, of a utilitarian character. If these tendencies had been duly cultivated, the results would have been favourable to the individuals themselves, and probably to the public also.
I have often been puzzled to account for the pre-eminence of the Scotch as a clever and a thinking people: it cannot be from atmospheric influence; and I am disposed to question the correctness of the assertion of a grave Caledonian, that the fine spirit of philosophical inquiry which distinguishes his countrymen is mainly attributable to their use of oatmeal porridge; it must rather be from well-directed education, from the early acquired habit of thinking for one’s self, and of giving a reason for every thing as far as they can, that the Scotch are so intelligent and so fitted for their respective stations in the social circle.
My own countrymen are naturally as shrewd and intellectual as the Scotch, but their minds are too generally ill disciplined, and school education, for all classes, is too generally defective every where. Several hours of the day are passed in wearisome restraint within the walls of a schoolroom, in learning words without ideas, sounds without sense; the mind being seldom engaged in the tasks with either pleasure or profit.