N.B. (1) These figures are intended to be read as in a railway time table, e.g., 4:40 (2) The number in the 8th column shows the number of schools which made a return Latin is begun at five of these schools at the age of about At nine schools French is begun before Latin. Four of the In answer to the question: "Do you teach French in French, Of these same schools nine only teach Greek, beginning mostly Seventeen teach drawing as part of the regular school course, Six confess without comment to specialising. Two specialise With a view to discovering whether lady principals are in advance of men in what is now, or ought to be, the most important question agitating the educational world-the training of teachers the following questions were asked:-"Have you formed any opinion as to the most valuable kind of training for the work of teaching in a Preparatory School? Would you have it include a theoretical as well as a practical side? If so, in what subjects?" These questions were left unanswered by 10 out of the 24. The answers of the remaining 14 are somewhat vague. One lady only replies affirmatively and completely to both questions. She would have teachers trained in anatomy, hygiene, psychology; and have them study the lives of Froebel, Pestalozzi, Arnold, and Thring. Four more seem to be in favour of training of some kind, but one of these believes that "theories are not much use"; while two avoid reference to that part of the question, There were two emphatic "No's," and, indeed, the majority, though most of the answers are couched in somewhat ambiguous language, appear to share the opinion still held by many of their brothers in teaching that:-Practical experience is all that is wanted, and that previous training is unnecessary. Two take their stand on the old half-truth that teachers are born, not made, and a few even seem convinced that theory is incompatible with good practical work. One lady has been obliged to give up altogether engaging resident masters, because she has "had three one after another who were all theory." These statistics are less valuable than they might have been, because they are compiled from so few schools; and there is, moreover, reason to fear that from some of the best and most efficient ladies' schools no returns at all were made. The remarks which follow are based partly on the perusal of the papers from which the foregoing particulars were derived, partly on conversations on the subject held with other schoolmasters, partly on individual observations extending over a period of more than 20 years. ago. It is well known that valuable and interesting work is now being done by lady teachers in classes for little boys and girls, but so far as preparatory schools (in the strictest sense of the term and as distinguished from pre-preparatory classes) are concerned, it would appear that boys' preparatory schools kept by ladies are not, in proportion to other preparatory schools of It the same type, so numerous as they were a generation should be added that in the absence of complete statistics no confident opinion can be expressed on the subject. Nor can any one say whether the present tendency is more than a temporary one. To some extent indeed the change may be apparent rather than real. Probably more women than ever are now engaged in preparatory school work, though not so often in the capacity of principals as of assistants on the staff. But in so far as there has been a relative decline in the number of boys' preparatory schools kept by ladies, the reasons appear to be as follows: (i.) The deliberate choice of the ladies themselves. (ii.) The choice of the parents. (iii.) The influence of schoolmasters. (i.) The large increase within the last 25 years in the number of girls' schools, and the heightened standard of learning in such schools, have been attracting more and more women with a bent for teaching. The "girls' high schoolmistress" is an entirely new product, and a welcome one, of the last quarter of this century. Most of the more highly educated women who have taken to teaching as a profession in recent years have preferred to devote themselves to work in schools for children of their own sex. At the same time it should be observed that many girls' schools have a kindergarten department in which little boys and girls are taught together. Nor should it be forgotten that the financial risks incurred by the principal of a boys' preparatory school under modern conditions is serious and often harassing, and not always within the means of women engaged in the teaching profession. (ii.) There seems to be a growing dislike on the part of many parents to send their small boys to schools kept by ladies. Many preparatory schoolmasters who began with a hard-and-fast rule to take no boy till he can read and write," or "no boy under eight," have been driven to modify their plan and open a class for quite small children, because parents say plainly: "We want our boy to come to you, but we will not send him first to any school kept by a lady." What is the reason for this attitude of the parents? And how far can it be justified? It is partly owing to the fact that men, as preparatory schoolmasters, seem lately to have developed certain qualities which were once supposed to be the especial attribute of women; that is, a gentleness of manner in dealing with boys, a watchfulness, a carefulness of health even to fussiness, which were quite unknown in most, if not in all, schoolmasters of the last and previous generations. It was then supposed that a woman was the more proper person to have charge of delicate or especially sensitive boys, or of very young boys. At a man's school it was taken for granted things went more roughly, and a boy must take his chance. But now, when more boys than not are said to be delicate and especially sensitive, preparatory schoolmasters have risen to the occasion, and most Preparatory Schools are very Temples of Carefulness, and some perhaps even of Luxury. Whether this new departure is good for the race as a whole, whether even it is an unmixed blessing for the delicate and especially sensitive unit, is an open question. (iii) Apart from the preference, which has always existed, other things being equal, for sending boys to a school kept and taught by a man, those parents who have preferred to discard the help of ladies' schools have often done so by reason of the influence and advice of schoolmasters, many of whom openly and freely express disapproval of boys' schools kept by ladies. The present writer is far from giving an unqualified assent to such expressions of disapproval. At the same time he is by no means of opinion that the disapproval so often expressed is due to jealousy or trade-union selfishness. He therefore proceeds to state the criticisms as he has heard them stated, but no one acquainted with the subject will regard them as universally applicable. They are generally applied, not to those ladies' schools (comparatively few in number) which send boys straight to the public schools, but to the general run of small schools from which boys pass on, at the age of 9, 10 or 11, to preparatory schools kept by men. But some classes or little schools of this type, so far from being open to criticism on the score of inefficiency, are admirably conducted alike in regard to the organisation of their work and to the educational results achieved. Against the unsatisfactory ones, however, the following criticisms are brought : (a) That they fail in discipline; sometimes from the motherly instinct which prompts women to spoil children; more often through worrying the boys by excessive attention to vexatious details. (b) That they fail in teaching; not at all from neglect or want of effort, but because they attempt to teach too much, or to teach things in the wrong order. For example, to teach a boy not only the Latin declensions before he can tell a noun from an adjective, the Latin verbs before he can tell a pronoun from a verb, but both before he can read simple English; to take him on in Arithmetic to Compound Addition, Vulgar Fractions, or even Practice, before he can do Simple Multiplication and Division; with the result (it is alleged) that boys do too frequently come on from a lady's to a man's school at the age of nine, or older, not only unable to decline a noun or conjugate a tense of any regular Latin verb-over which much time and labour have been wasted-but unable to say the English personal pronouns in the conventional order; unable to go through the simple auxiliary tenses "I am" and "I have"; unable sometimes to read correctly, to write legibly, or even to articulate distinctly. (c) That they fail in moral training; because (as it is said) a woman is not so well able as a man to follow the workings of a boy's mind. And further-a more serious point-by reason of her sex a woman is often absolutely ignorant of the particular moral dangers which attend the physical development of almost all boys. In the opinion of the present writer, these charges, so far from being universally applicable, should be examined with the utmost discrimination. The training of little boys, especially under 10 years of age, is work in which skilled and sympathetic women teachers are specially fitted to excel. The admirable work now being done in some of these pre-preparatory school classes is well known to those who are acquainted with the subject. There is indeed some reason to hope that much good may come from the educational experiments which are being made in some of these classes. But at the same time it will be generally agreed that the work done in very many of these little schools kept by ladies calls for improvement. The right conclusion would seem to be that better methods of teaching must be supplied to, and required from, all those (of either sex) who teach "the beggarly elements," it being understood, of course, that a large number of teachers already have good methods, and use them. For, if our whole system of education is to be maintained at or above a definite level of excellence, it ought to be made impossible for such wholesale accusations to be brought, even unjustly, against any body of teachers in the future; a result which may be attained in one of two ways either by a compulsory registration of teachers, who shall not be registered unless they can show that they possess real qualifications to teach; or voluntarily, by a wider dissemination by teachers among themselves of a knowledge concerning what things had best be taught to children, and how best to teach them. The voluntary method would undoubtedly be most generally acceptable, and probably in the end, if it could be started, the most successful, being most in accordance with the free traditions of the English race. But it presupposes a greater intimacy, or association for the exchange of ideas, between preparatory schoolmasters and boys' schoolmistressesan association which, there is reason to believe, the ladies would for the most part welcome. Such voluntary association would not prevent it would probably further-the establishment of more training schools for teachers, a step which must inevitably follow as the only reasonable corollary of a compulsory register. Nor would the ladies only be the gainers by such an association of teachers of both sexes. Each sex has much to learn from the other. Moreover, it must not by any means be supposed that it is only the teachers in ladies' schools who need more insight into better methods. It is probable-nay, it is certain-that if the initial training of all those boys, who come comparative failures from ladies' schools to men's, had been in the hands of so many men instead of women-other things being equal-the failures would have been as many and as great, perhaps more SO. If (and this also may be questioned) there are at present more failures among women teachers of boys than among men, it is not because they are women, but because they occupy themselves in greater numbers with the most difficult part of teaching the very beginnings. It is not a new discovery that the elements are harder to teach than anything else; but, like that of the sources of the Nile, it is a discovery that has lain. forgotten until quite recently for many years. Women are 4333, 2 E |