From a College Window - Arthur Christopher Benson (grave mercy .txt) 📗

instrument. Where is the proof of it? It is true that it fortifies and invigorates minds which have, to start with, plenty of grip and interest; but pure classics are, as the results abundantly prove, too hard a subject for ordinary minds, and they are taught in too abstruse and elaborate a way. If it were determined by the united good sense of educational authorities that Latin and Greek must be retained at all costs, then the only thing to do would be to sacrifice all other subjects, and to alter all the methods of teaching the classics. I do not think it would be a good solution; but it would be better than the present system of intellectual starvation.

The truth is that the present results are so poor that any experiments are justified. The one quality which you can depend upon in boys is interest, and interest is ruthlessly sacrificed. When I used to press this fact upon my sterner colleagues, they would say that I only wanted to make things amusing, and that the result would be that we should only turn out amateurs. But amateurs are at least better than barbarians; and my complaint is that the majority of the boys are not turned out even professionally equipped in the elaborate subjects they are supposed to have been taught.

The same melancholy thing goes on in the older Universities. The classics are retained as a subject in which all must qualify; and the education provided for the ordinary passman is of a contemptible, smattering kind; it is really no education at all. It gives no grip, or vigour, or stimulus. Here again no one takes any interest in the average man. If the more liberal residents try to get rid of the intolerable tyranny of compulsory classics, a band of earnest, conventional people streams up from the country and outvotes them, saying solemnly, and obviously believing, that education is in danger. The truth is that the intellectual education of the average Englishman is sacrificed to an antiquated humanist system, administered by unimaginative and pedantic people.

The saddest part of it all is that we have, most of us, so little idea of what we want to effect by education. My own theory is a simple one. I think that we ought first of all to equip boys, as, far as we can, to play a useful part in the world. Such a theory is decried by educational theorists as being utilitarian; but if education is not to be useful, we had better close our schools at once. The idealist says, "Never mind the use; get the best educational instrument for the training of the mind, and, when you have finished your work, the mind will be bright and strong, and capable of discharging any labour." That is a beautiful theory; but it is not borne out by results; and one of the reasons of the profound disbelief which is rapidly spreading in the country with regard to our public schools, is that we send out so many boys, not only without intellectual life, but not even capable of humble usefulness. These theorists continue to talk of classics as a splendid gymnastic, but in their hands it becomes a rack; instead of leaving the limbs supple and well knit, they are strained, disjointed, and feeble. Even the flower of our classical system are too often left without any original power of expression; critical, fastidious minds, admiring erudition, preferring the elucidation of second-rate authors to the study of the best. A man who reads Virgil for pleasure is a better result of a system of education than one who re-edits Tibullus. Instead of having original thoughts, and a style of their own to express them in, these high classicists are left with a profound knowledge of the style and usage of ancient authors, a thing not to be undervalued as a step in a progress, but still essentially an anteroom of the mind.

The further task that lies before us educators, when we have trained a mind to be useful, consists in the awakening, in whatever regions may be possible, of the soul. By this I do not mean the ethical soul, but the spirit of fine perception of beauty, of generous admiration for what is noble and true and high. And here I am sure that we fail, and fail miserably. For one thing, these great classicists make the mistake of thinking that only through literature, and, what is more, the austere literature of Greece and Rome, can this sense be developed. I myself have a deep admiration for Greek literature. I think it one of the brightest flowers of the human spirit, and I think it well that any boy with a real literary sense should be brought into contact with it. I do not think highly of Latin literature. There are very few writers of the first rank. Virgil is, of course, one; and Horace is a splendid craftsman, but not a high master of literature. There is hardly any prose in Latin fit for boys to read. Cicero is diffuse, and often affords little more than small-talk on abstract topics; Tacitus a brilliant but affected prosateur, Caesar a dull and uninspiring author. But to many boys the path to literary appreciation cannot lie through Latin, or even Greek, because the old language hangs like a veil between them and the thought within. To some boys the enkindling of the intellectual soul comes through English literature, to some through history, to some through a knowledge of other lands, which can be approached by geography. To some through art and music; and of these two things we trifle with the latter and hardly touch upon the former. I cannot see that a knowledge of the lives, the motives, the performances of artists is in itself a less valuable instrument of education than a knowledge of the lives, motives, and performances of writers, even though they be Greek.

What our teachers fail in--and the most enthusiastic often fail most hopelessly--is sympathy and imagination. They cannot conceive that what moves, touches, and inspires themselves may have no meaning for boys with a different type of mind.

The result of our education can be well reviewed by one who, like myself, after wrestling, often very sorrowfully, with the problems of school education, comes up to a university and gets to know something of these boys at a later stage. Many of them are fine, vigorous fellows; but they often tend to look upon their work as a disagreeable necessity, which they do conscientiously, expecting nothing in particular from it. They play games ardently, and fill their hours of leisure with talk about them. Yet one discerns in mind after mind the germs of intellectual things, undeveloped and bewildered. Many of them have an interest in something, but they are often ashamed to talk about it. They have a deep horror of being supposed to be superior; they listen politely to talk about books and pictures, conscious of ignorance, not ill-disposed to listen; but it is all an unreal world to them.

I am all for hard and strenuous work. I do not at all wish to make work slipshod and dilettante. I would raise the standards of simple education, and force boys to show that they are working honestly. I want energy and zeal above everything. But my honest belief is that you cannot get strenuous and zealous work unless you also have interest and belief in work. At present, education as conducted in our public-school and university system appears to me to be neither utilitarian nor intellectual. It aims at being intellectual first and utilitarian afterwards, and it misses both.

Whether anything can be done on a big scale to help us out of the poor tangle in which we are involved, I do not know. I fear not. I do not think that the time is ripe. I do not believe that great movements can be brought about by prophets, however enlightened their views, however vigorous their personalities, unless there is a corresponding energy below. An individual may initiate and control a great force of public opinion; I do not think he can originate it. There is certainly a vague and widespread discontent with our present results; but it is all a negative opinion, a dissatisfaction with what is being done. The movement must have a certain positive character before it can take shape. There must arise a desire and a respect for intellectual things, a certain mental tone, which is wanting. At present, public opinion only indicates that the rising generation is not well trained, and that boys, after going through an elaborate education, seem to be very little equipped for practical life. There is no complaint that boys are made unpractical; the feeling rather is that they are turned out healthy, well-drilled creatures, fond of games, manly, obedient, but with a considerable aversion to settling down to work, and with a firm resolve to extract what amusement they can out of life. All that is, I feel, perfectly true; but there is little demand on the part of parents that boys should have intellectual interests or enthusiasms for the things of the mind. What teachers ought to aim at is to communicate something of this enthusiasm, by devising a form of education which should appeal to the simpler forms of intellectual curiosity, instead of starving boys upon an ideal of inaccessible dignity. I do not for a moment deny that those who defend the old classical tradition have a high intellectual ideal. But it is an unpractical ideal, and takes no account of the plain facts of experience.

The result is that we teachers have forfeited confidence; and we must somehow or other regain it. We are tolerated, as all ancient and respectable things are tolerated. We have become a part of the social order, and we have still the prestige of wealth and dignity. But what wealthy people ever dream nowadays of building and endowing colleges on purely literary lines? All the buildings which have arisen of late in my University are either buildings for scientific purposes or clerical foundations for ecclesiastical ends. The vitality of our literary education is slowly fading out of it. This lack of vitality is not so evident until you go a little way beneath the surface. Classical proficiency is still liberally rewarded by scholarships and fellowships; and while the classical tradition remains in our schools, there are a good many men, who intend to be teachers, who enter for classical examinations. But where we fail grievously is in our provision for average men; they are provided with feeble examinations in desultory and diffuse subjects, in which a high standard is not required. It is difficult to imagine a condition of greater vacuity than that in which a man leaves the University after taking a pass degree. No one has endeavoured to do anything for him, or to cultivate his intelligence in any line. And yet these are our parents in the next generation. And the only way in which we stifle mental revolt is by leaving our victims in such a condition of mental abjectness and intellectual humility, that it does not even occur to them to complain of how unjustly they have been treated. After all, we have interfered with them so little that they have contrived to have a good time at the University. They have made friends, played games, and lived a healthy life enough; they resolve that their boys shall have a good time too, if possible; and so the poor educational farce is played on from generation to generation. It is melancholy to read the sonnet which Tennyson wrote, more than sixty years ago, a grave and bitter indictment of Cambridge--


"Because you do profess