THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL PRODUCT.

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL MASTER.

In 1898 a startling letter appeared in the "Times" from an M.D. who had examined several hundreds of boys of 13 and

14, on their entering public schools. His verdict was that 64 per cent. were in a very unsatisfactory condition.

I was glad to be able to show from physical registers, accurately kept by the same Serjeant-Major for 25 years, that boys coming to us now at the ages of 13 and 14 have better average measurements than boys of the same ages had 20 to 25 years ago. And apart from these registers, my personal impression is that they are better specimens. But whatever improvement there is, it is nothing to what might be.

We talk of science. We call ours a scientific age. And yet to apply scientific knowledge to the production of the finest possible human being is, as Mr. Herbert Spencer showed long ago, still a conception rather for the future than for the present. As in many other cases, it would be hazardous to venture on what will, it is to be hoped, be the commonplaces of a future generation, less under the iron heel of custom and prejudice.

It is impossible, however, all at once to revolutionise institutions and modes of life, or to undo the effect of ages of mismanagement. But to come down from the clouds to the solid earth. There is no doubt that the preparatory school product is not what he might easily be made to be, in physical robustness, habits of life, beliefs and ways of thinking, intelligence or knowledge.

Though I have mentioned these things separately, they are, or ought to be, so interwoven as to be inseparable in the education of a child from his earliest years. What is the most important of all kinds of knowledge? Surely that which has to do with life, which tends to make it fuller, healthier, happier. What beliefs is it most essential to impress on a child? Surely that God's laws, when we can be sure about them, are binding, and that the main laws of health are more and more verifiable every day. In what ways of thinking ought we to train a child? Surely in referring everything he does, not to the standard of what is usual, but of what is sensible and right. What sort of intelligence is most telling in the quest of happiness? Surely that which enables him to reason most accurately and most readily about what it is best for him to do in his daily conduct.

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All other intelligence, beliefs, and ways of thinking and knowledge are secondary to these; and if we have these ingrained in the child by precept and example, we shall also have excellence in physique and robustness, and rationality in habits of life.

I need not waste time in proving that this ideal is not even aimed at. If it were so, such complaints as those of M.D. would be as ludicrously groundless as if he were to assert that sufficient energy is not devoted to scientific games. But what improvement there is, I believe to be greatly due to the desire to excel in these games. They have caused more time to be spent in regular open-air exercise, the good effects of which have been so obvious, that they have opened the eyes of many schoolmasters to the exceeding sinfulness of depriving a boy of oxygen and a quickened circulation by way of punishment. They have also proved to many parents, who, after many qualms, have sent to school boys whom they have succeeded in making "delicate" by their home treatment, what a mistake all this coddling has been. The younger brothers are somewhat more rationally brought up, and the net result has been the improvement which I have no doubt we have witnessed. And the less foolish management of girls' schools, since Mr. Herbert Spencer made people think about these, is already operating in the same direction.

But the connection between cause and effect in such matters is not sufficiently realised by schoolmasters, still less so by parents, and the "preparatory product," in my experience, has rarely heard anything about it. Irregular verbs, or the mountains of South America, have been more prominent in his education, than the laws of his own being. I rarely meet with a boy who has learned why he should eat slowly, why vegetables or their equivalent should form part of his diet, why he should not eat at random between meals, why he should take a run on a wet day and change immediately afterwards, why he should sleep with his window open, why he can strengthen his throat by keeping it bare, why his breathing organs should have absolutely free play, unincumbered by a tight, or even by any waistcoat, why he should take hard exercise in flannel, and not in any

cotton fabrics.

by the mention of such When reason shall have our lives, the smile will

I am aware that I shall raise a smile things, and the smile proves my point. superseded custom as the guide of be the other way. But no one who has tried to make boys live rationally and think why they should do this, and not do that, can doubt that if all preparatory schools will do the same, handicapped as they are by the previous upbringing of their boys, and by the holidays, and if these will above all things resolutely fight against the hamper and tuck shop nuisance, no future M.D. will be able to say that they turn out 64 per cent. of their boys in bad condition.

This 64 per cent. (and M.D. cannot be far wrong) is really a very serious matter. I am not going to dilate on the enormous importance for the happiness and prosperity of life, of a bodily condition, not merely free from disease, but robust, buoyant, and

high-spirited. But there is one point of view which will touch those who have no such exalted ideas about high health, but still dread disease. The craze about epidemics, the energy consumed in isolation and disinfection, and the consequent loss of time and disturbance of arrangements, as well as the demoralising panic which is sometimes the result of all this fuss, have come to be serious evils. And it is a case, after all, of Mrs. Partington. You cannot prevent epidemics. Mumps and measles have dispersed their germs before the first signs of indisposition. It was once suggested to me to "isolate" every boy who had, first, slept in the same room with; secondly, sat in Form or Hall next to, any boy who developed measles. I replied that we should also have to isolate every boy on whom he had breathed; and further, that if a boy has not been exposed to measles before he is 15, and afterwards is exposed to them-as is certain some time or other he may be in danger of his life. For measles before 15 is nearly the safest, and after 15 the most serious, of school epidemics. And again, if you have a fair percentage of really robust boys, you cannot isolate scarlet fever, for such boys take it so mildly, that you generally cannot discover it till the skin begins to peel. But this I can certainly say, that with the exception of measles among big boys-not previously exposed to it-the healthy boy, i.e., not one of the 64 per cent., is in no danger from school epidemics, except that he may take one of them in such a mild form as to pass undetected because he has shown no signs of being unwell.

Again, with the tubercle germ, about which we have heard so much. "Boil the milk," say some. Well, the boys won't drink it; but the boy who is not one of the 64 per cent. may drink unboiled milk with impunity. He will throw off the tubercle germ as a liner's bow throws off the spray, unless the tubercle germ is present in such quantity as to imply criminal carelessness.

In fact, we ought to turn out the preparatory product pretty well germ proof, as well as accustomed to think rationally, and not conventionally or nervously, about his "health." I only wish there was a word to express that normal and glorious condition of being which ought to be that of the average man and woman. Perhaps in some future century, when the perfection of the human animal is regarded as of equal importance with the perfection of the steam engine, there will be such a word.

So far I have dealt with my subject mainly from a physical point of view; but all life, as I said before, is interwoven. In teaching our "preparatory school product" to act rationally in the concerns of his daily life, and, let us hope, in also setting him a good example ourselves (which I fear not all schoolmasters or parents do), we shall have been training him in a most valuable mental habit.

There have lately been two articles in the "Nineteenth Century," to which we ought to pay very careful heed. One is by Miss Lambert (December, 1898) on "Neglecting our Customers." The other is by Col. H. Elsdale, "Why are our Brains Deteriorating?" (August, 1899). Both, from totally different points of view, attack

radical defects in our whole education. They agree that it tends to cultivate the receptive faculties too much, and the reasoning and creative faculties too little. The boy comes from the preparatory school, knowing a good deal, and knowing it well. I am not depreciating the value of the accurate mastery of detail, but he has rarely been taught to think. In the concerns of his daily life, he has done, without thinking why, what everyone else does. In most of his lessons he has usually had just so much to learn, and so, when he comes from his preparatory school, he has, too often, no visible power of initiative in anything, either in or out of lesson hours. In former days it was not so bad. He had to hammer out his Cæsar and Virgil without notes, and in dread of pains and penalties. He had to make his verses scan. Now he receives far too much help in Cæsar and Virgil, because some book has to be got up for examination. The assault on verses, which cultivated resource and ingenuity more than anything which a boy did, has unfortunately succeeded. And really the only work about which he has still to think much is his Latin Prose. For he has to think in order to avoid" howlers," if he is made to work by himself. But Latin Prose is assailed by the informationist Philistines as worthless.

Euclid, to the average preparatory boy, is mainly a matter of memory. In the rare cases in which he can make out geometrical riders, he has so far been taught to think.

But, putting Latin aside, the rest of his education has been almost entirely receptive. This is partly due to the numerous subjects required at examinations. Working for marks almost infallibly induces a cut and dried style of teaching. It is, indeed, difficult in any subject, except translation from and into other languages and mathematical problems, to avoid what is usually called "cram," when the subject is got up for examination purposes.

But "cram," though it undoubtedly fosters some useful qualities, is fatal to the cultivation of independence, curiosity, initiative, and resource.

If I were asked to name one point in which the "preparatory school product" is inferior to boys educated by a really good tutor or governess at home, under the direction of parents who do not care for their boys being "successes" at 13 or 18 years old, but for their success at 25 or 30, I would say that the preparatory school, as a rule, puts the extinguisher on the keenness for knowledge and curiosity about things in general, which is natural to most children.

I am not blaming preparatory schools. Passing examinations and winning successes is for them a matter of life and death, and they are powerless against the examination system. If the public schools were to set more store by healthy general development, and less on the powers of receptivity and ability to cram, and if they were not so keen to bribe clever boys into being prematurely forced, in order to gain material with which to win future successes, more rational methods of education, in its widest sense, would be pursued by the preparatory schools. The

great majority of fathers, also, are anxious that their sons should possess a certain amount of definite knowledge, and having no experience in the matters on which they lecture schoolmasters, do not understand that being taught to think is a much more valuable possession. The ordinary father, e.g., will ask his boys for the chief towns of Australia or the ports of China, never reflecting that this sort of knowledge can always be readily acquired in a few minutes by anyone who has any reason for wishing to employ it. But as to the causes of climate and weather, or the beautiful, and to a boy most interesting and elevating mechanism of the solar system, or the distribution of animal and plant life over the globe, no interest is probably displayed at home. In history again, the father will probably ask for the dates of kings and battles, and the examiner will perhaps deal a final blow to any interest in history on the part of the boy by asking him about the constitutions of Clarendon. In my boyhood we read and cared for stories about the Persian wars, or Curtius and Regulus, or the Crusades or Armada. Napoleon's marshals were, somehow or other, household words to me. No wonder that the modern boy often hates Scott, because he brings in that "dreadful history," which in the boy's mind is associated with dry text books, impositions, and examinations. I admit that examinations in geography and history are not so noxious as they were, and that examinations in literature and the history of language, which necessarily foster the most hateful sort of cram, are falling into some disrepute.

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But all these causes tend to make the preparatory product what we usually find him, with a well-trained and receptive mind, but ashamed of any keenness for intellectual subjects apart from their usefulness in procuring marks or "successes avoiding punishment, averse to reading any books for himself which have the slightest connection with schoolroom subjects, and, unless he is a born naturalist and "collects," with a wet blanket thrown on his natural curiosity about the world in which he lives. We hear a great deal about the athletic mania. Surely we have not far to seek for a cause. But, if any headmaster wishes to lessen keenness about athletics, let him give scholarships for averages, and impositions for missed catches and lost runs, and let him occupy summer afternoons with papers on the history and laws of cricket, or the records of athletic feats.

It was impossible to deal with my subject, viz., "the Preparatory School Product as he should be," without describing him, more or less, as he is. I only wish we could retain the results of the intellectual gymnastics through which he has gone, without making him a victim of the general tendency to put "an increasing discount on originality and independence of thought," which Col. Elsdale so unanswerably exposes and so eloquently deplores. It could be done but for the dead weight of examinations. At present, if a preparatory school were really to try to amuse their boys with history, astronomy, natural history, and kindred subjects, the boys would feel that they were losing so