at the Public Schools.

form will depend on the ability of the boys who get into it, but there will be no extra hours for it. Its success will depend on the teaching in the lower part of the school quite as much as in that of the top form itself. The assertion that some Preparatory Schools keep a special scholarship class is ridiculous. Some of the boys in the top form may get scholarships, but it is absurd to imagine that clever boys are picked out right through the school and taught with the idea of their becoming scholars and the rest of the school neglected.

There can be no doubt that the standard of teaching in schools which are uniformly successful in getting scholarships is higher than at those schools where the standard is set by the requirements of pass examinations.

But there is another point to be considered-the case of a boy who has worked well and tried for a scholarship (perhaps several times) and has not eventually succeeded. Is the result bad for him individually? We do not think that it is surely boys must learn to bear disappointments, to find out that success does not always crown effort. He has probably often been beaten in class and in games, and part of his education has been to bear these defeats and still to go on doing his best.

C. C. LYNAM,

THE TEACHING OF LATIN AND GREEK IN
PREPARATORY SCHOOLS.

It is not the primary object of this paper to discuss the arguments as to the superiority of the education given by the Classical side, as it is called, to that of the Modern side, nor to enquire how far Greek is necessary to the proper training of a boy's intelligence before a certain age; what I have in front of me is to describe to the best of my power the methods employed by English preparatory schools for teaching both Latin and Greek to boys somewhere between the ages of eight and fourteen. Yet it is advisable, for the purpose of clearing the ground, to see what the differences of opinion roughly are, and to take a brief survey of the points at issue.

Each system has its advocates and each has much in its favour. With those who maintain that a boy's education should be strictly utilitarian, who consider that French, German, Mathematics and Science, with a certain amount of English, best prepare his mind for his life's work, and who look upon even a minimum of Latin as a waste of time, we need not here concern ourselves; nor must we, even if we agree with them, waste time over those who think Greek the best possible agent for training thought and producing accuracy in the young, and who would insist upon all boys, whether intended for Classical or Modern sides, taking it as a subject until their fourteenth or fifteenth birthday, so that they may have a foundation on which to build the more securely afterwards. The number of preparatory schools teaching on either of these lines must be so limited that they would fall outside our serious consideration. The main point of contention between classical teachers is whether a boy has time for beginning Greek at all with any profit while at a preparatory school. Had he not better make the rest of his knowledge doubly sound, and will he not indeed know just as much Greek at eighteen, if he begins at fourteen, as he will if he begins at eleven or twelve? The curriculum, they say, is overloaded. Supposing that the limited time at his disposal every week is to be curtailed by six or seven hours, now to be devoted to Greek, the average boy will not properly digest enough to satisfy the public schools in English, French, Latin, etc., at his entrance examination. It may, too, appear somewhat unreasonable (as was almost unanimously decided last year by a strong committee of preparatory school headmasters) that a child of twelve should be learning concurrently four languages-English, French, Latin, and Greek,besides the other subjects universally recognised as a necessary part of his mental baggage. The curriculum of the German Reform Schulen, as exemplified by what is called the Frankfurter Lehrplan, seems to them the sensible way out of the difficulty, and it has much to recommend it. In Germany there is nothing to correspond exactly with our preparatory school. There they have large secondary day schools which undertake a boy's educa

tion from nine to eighteen years of age, or thereabouts. Of these schools that called the "Gymnasium" teaches Latin and Greek when its pupils are old enough, the "Realgymnasium" Latin but no Greek, the "Oberrealschule" neither; for some years now, however, the authorities have permitted in certain places the experiment of teaching the same elementary subjects, French, Arithmetic, etc., in all three types of school until a boy is twelve years old. This gives him the chance of obtaining a thorough grasp of the elements, and allows his parents time to decide whether his abilities or his future prospects mark him out for the Gymnasium, the Realgymnasium, or else for the Realschule or Oberrealschule; if for the former two, he now adds Latin to his subjects, dropping some of his French hours, until he is fifteen ; he then begins Greek at the Gymnasium if he is destined for any studies at the University other than Modern Mathematics, Languages or Science, spending rather less time than before at Latin. It is a reasonable scheme and is said to be answering beyond the expectations of most observers. In many cases those taught in this way have in two or three years overtaken those who began Latin at nine. Possibly Greek may show the same results, though as yet the system has not been on its trial long enough to demonstrate this conclusively. However this may be, Germany is not England. The effect of German education upon the formation of the national character is not wholly such as we should care to see in Englishmen, and our system, whatever its demerits may be, is attracting attention and even admiration abroad. The pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. Representatives from France (where there are loud complaints that their secondary schools tend to produce too many functionaries who work well in an official groove* and too little self-reliance of character), from Germany and from America are constantly visiting us and examining with interest our schemes of teaching and our system of private and public school education. Soon they will be establishing schools on our lines. The case so far then is not proven. That the ordinary intelligence can, under fixed conditions, assimilate in four years what is usually looked upon as the work of six is by no means universally accepted as true. In any case, we preparatory school headmasters are at present not free agents; we cannot each one of us carry out our ideal curriculum. We have no governing body to thwart or control us, it is true; but for all that the guiding comes from above; and, just as the public schools are compelled to bow to the wishes of the Universities and Woolwich, so are we obliged to adapt our teaching to the requirements of the public schools. To them we are in reality responsible; we cannot dictate to them or force upon them our ideas; we can only hope that when we represent to them the difficulties which beset us, they will arrange their system of work so as gradually to lessen them as they occur. As our opportunities of intercommunication increase we find the head

* 66

"À quoi tient la supériorité des Anglo-Saxons ?" Par E. Demolins,

masters of public schools more and more inclined to lend a willing ear to any reasonable suggestions of ours, and it is of the highest importance that they should do so. We are to all intents the lower forms of the great public schools; their rulers now look upon us not only as valuable allies but also as a. necessary and integral part of themselves. This very question of beginning Greek they have in reality settled for us. More than ten years ago they realised how crowded was our curriculum; they promised to make arrangements themselves for teaching Greek from the elements and to admit on their Classical side boys without the slightest knowledge of the language. What was the result? A few preparatory schools took them at their word, taught no Greek, devoted the hours thus saved to strengthening other subjects, and finally found out to their sorrow that boys well advanced in French, Latin, Mathematics, etc., were relegated to an absurdly low form at the public school because they knew no Greek! What they gave us with one hand they took away with the other. Besides, the public schools soon discovered that we, with our small classes and less complicated organisation, could teach Greek far more carefully and thoroughly than they with their large forms; they saw that if they continued to be responsible for thorough grounding in this elementary work a larger staff of masters would be required; they acknowledged that we saved them some trouble and with our machinery did the work better. Consequently the status que returned. Nothing permanent has been done. We must for the present accept the fact and the responsibility.

Since, then, a considerable amount of Latin and some Greek are obligatory for admission into a fairly high form of the classical public schools, we have in preparatory schools to consider how best to teach, amid the jostling mass of other necessary work, these two important subjects. It may, perhaps, be well to trace a child's course from the day of his arrival to the time when he first faces his public examiners.

He generally enters between his ninth and tenth birthday, not always well grounded in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, and usually knowing no Latin at all. He therefore begins his life in the lowest class. His week's work for the next two years consists of some 28 hours; of this time a considerable portion is given up to English work (History, Scripture, Geography, Letter-writing, and Dictation) French, Arithmetic, and Drawing; the rest to Latin. These ten or twelve hours of Latin include preparation, in which he must be assisted for the first year. For a month his Latin work consists almost entirely of grammar which must be carefully explained, the flexional endings of nouns, adjectives, and verbs (the indicative mood of the active voice) learned by heart, and even thus early he should be practised in adding these to the stems. From the first he must be taught to think. The master should watch and try to identify himself with the pupil, to put himself in his place, to think his thoughts, for so he will best appreciate his difficulties and teach him to overcome them. An experienced teacher (and it is waste of time to hand over the

youngest children to one who is inexperienced) will not find it hard to do this with a form of five or six. A good deal of repetition is necessary and a good deal of patience. An infant learns by imitation and finds his limbs grow stronger by use; he unconsciously observes and practises; and so it is with his mind as he grows older. In a few weeks the class will try short sentences, Latin into English; this interests them, teaches them to apply what grammar they have so far learned, and shows them that this same grammar is not unmeaning nonsense but that it has a definite use. Soon the sentences can be connected and an easy story attempted, until by the end of his first term a clever little lad will have finished the passive voice of the regular verbs and will realise some of the meaning of what he has done; an average boy will know the active voice, while both will also have gained a little experience in turning easy English sentences back into Latin. Very many excellent books are published: Macmillan's First Latin Course, Rust's First Steps to Latin Composition, Heatley's Gradatim, Ritchie's Exercises in Latin Prose Composition seem among the best, though every school has its own favourite works, and possibly they are equally good. With the second term comes promotion-a new joy. Ambition is perhaps roused, the boy is keener and more teachable. Stil he must be helped in preparing. A master should walk about, see as well as he can that each volatile little boy is occupying himself with the lesson on hand, never answering a question without asking another, so as to elicit thought, but explaining the difficulty when he notices a "check." If possible it should be arranged that the class be taken in the hour immediately following that in which they have been preparing, for boys of this age are very forgetful; certainly it is better that they should not prepare on Monday what they say on Tuesday; some exceptional children are so excitable and anxious about their work that this bothers their brains and spoils their sleep. A little grammar committed to memory should form part of every translation lesson, enough to take up ten minutes in the hearing, and this ought to be carefully explained on the preceding day. About thirty minutes should be given to the construing, which ought to be heard twice over if possible, and about ten minutes to parsing. This would allow fifty minutes in all-ample time, and quite as much as is good for small boys at one stretch. Every member of the class ought to translate part of the lesson and to have his share of questions upon it. Composition should be partly oral, partly written, and it is well to vary the method of teaching it. A master will sometimes have the boys round him and make them in turn translate the English sentences into Latin; this done, he will send them to their desks that they may reproduce the exercise on paper, for thus their memory will be trained and their attention ensured; at other times he ought to explain the principle of the exercise and the rules of which it treats, and let the boys make their own attempts, without further aid, on paper. Variety both excites interest an maintains it. By the end of the second term the average boy will