No More Learning

413 (#443) ############################################

XIV]
Public School Reform
413
6
Popular tradition, supported by Stanley's Life (1844) and
Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857), regards Thomas Arnold
as the universal reformer or re-creator of public schools. But, so far
as the purely professional side of school-keeping is concerned, he
was anticipated by Samuel Butler, headmaster of Shrewsbury from
1798 to 1836, of which period only the last eight years fall within
Arnold's tenure of office at Rugby (1828–42). The decline
from which public schools had suffered was nowhere more evident
than at Shrewsbury, where, in 1798, there were not more than
twenty boys. Assisted by a reconstituted governing body, Butler
built upon this remnant a flourishing school, whose achievements
and organisation became models for Eton and Harrow, as Hawtrey
headmaster of Eton from 1834 to 1853, generously acknowledged
to Butler himself. Periodical examinations, and a carefully super-
vised scheme of marks'assigned for merit and industry, sustained
an emulation that gave new life to the studies of Shrewsbury boys,
which was manifested in their extraordinary successes in competi-
tion for university scholarships. The responsibility thrown upon
'preposters'—'the eight boys to whom the master delegates a
certain share of authority'-revived an ancient usage whose in-
vention is often ascribed to Arnold alone. The importance which
Butler attached to 'private work,' study done in the boys' leisure
time and under no supervision, was part of his unwavering policy
of training his pupils to initiative and self-reliance? . Stanley
claimed for Arnold the credit of being the first to introduce
modern history, modern languages and mathematics into the
regular routine; but, here again, Shrewsbury forestalled Rugby.
The truth is, that no public school ventured, of its own motion,
to reform curriculum. Even the preparation of Latin and Greek
grammars for common use throughout the schools, a project of
Arnold in 1835, had to wait till 1866 for partial realisation in The
Public School Latin Primer. The admission of mathematics,
modern history and geography to full recognition as studies was a
surrender to public opinion and a tardy imitation of the custom of
commercial or 'English'schools, chiefly under private management,
which educated the great majority of the middle classes. But not
much came of the introduction of these studies into public schools,
as the Clarendon commission of 1861—4 complained. Arnold was
of opinion that it was 'not right' to leave boys and young men 'in
ignorance of the beginnings of physical science'; nearly thirty
years later, this royal commission was saying the same thing. The
· Fisher, G. W. , Annals of Shrewsbury School, p. 362.


## p. 414 (#444) ############################################

414
[ch.
Education
first steps in a real reform of courses of instruction among schools
of this type were taken by the early Victorian foundations, chiefly
proprietary, such as Cheltenham, Liverpool, Marlborough, Rossall,
Brighton, Radley and Bradfield.
But Arnold's claim to greatness does not rest upon any purely
professional achievement. His moral earnestness and strong re-
ligious conviction were naturally reflected in his administration
of Rugby, as, also, was his intense belief in the responsibility
of his position. His moral fervour, accompanied though it was
by much heart-searching and an abiding distrust of the immaturity
of boy-nature, worked an extraordinary change in the life of
Rugby, and, through Rugby, in public schools and in English
education at large. In his view, 'the forming of the moral prin-
ciples and habits' alone constituted education, and, in this country,
the process must be based on Christianity. On the latter ground,
he desired the admission of all nonconformists, unitarians excepted,
to the full membership of Oxford and Cambridge; and he regretfully
resigned his seat (1838) in the senate of the newly created univer-
sity of London because he failed to carry his colleagues with him
in an acknowledgment of the paramount claim of religion in public
education. He regarded with pity and apprehension the material
condition of the working classes during the last years of his life; nor
is it possible to measure the influence upon social reform which,
at a much later time, he exercised through his pupils and admirers.
Falling trade, poor harvests, dear bread and the shock of
a salutary but radical change in poor-law administration brought
acute distress upon the working classes, more particularly during
the years which immediately followed the passing of the first
Reform bill. The consequent unrest was intensified by the feeling
that. that measure had not gone far enough along the road of
reform. While some sought to remove or alleviate the trouble
by further political or fiscal changes, others saw in the careful
upbringing of the children the promise of permanent improvement.
William Ellis, William Ballantyne Hodgson and Richard Dawes,
dean of Hereford, hoped to remedy the evil plight of the poorer
classes by careful moral training independent of religious teaching,
and by 'the introduction of lessons on economical science into
schools of primary instruction'; George Combe, the phrenologist,
and William Lovett, the moral force Chartist,' were, at different
times, associated with Ellis in this project. Ellis was the most
active in the cause; between 1848 and 1862, he opened in London
seven schools (usually called Birkbeck schools, from the fact that
6


## p. 415 (#445) ############################################

XIV]
Ellis. Ruskin
415
the first of them was held in the London Mechanics' institution'),
instructed teachers in his aims and methods, wrote, lectured and
aroused considerable interest in his ideas among teachers and
school managers. The Prince Consort, in pursuance of the eclectic
scheme of education which he laid down for his children, succeeded
in making Ellis a sort of 'visiting master' at Buckingham palace
for upwards of a year. The special feature of the Birkbeck schools
was the attention given to instruction relating to bodily health
and to the science of human well-being,' that is, the practical
application of the principles of political economy to individual
conduct. Most of these schools failed to compete with the board
schools created by the Education act of 1870; one or two of them
still survive as secondary schools assisted by the county council.
It was a sound instinct which led Ellis to train his teachers him-
self; his aims required for their attainment, as he often said,
something of 'apostolic' fervour, which could not be expected
from all teachers as a matter of course.
John Ruskin never ceased to denounce the blindness of political
economists; William Ellis, while confessing the charm of Ruskin
and other men of letters who touched economic problems, thought
that they one and all 'failed to convince. Yet, these two men
were in substantial agreement as to the kind of up-bringing which
their fellow-countrymen needed. Moral training and enlighten-
ment, bodily health, knowledge and skill applied to the daily
calling were the great matters; an intelligent apprehension of his
physical surroundings, some instruction in science and mathematics,
the thrifty employment of his wages, the attainment of leisure and
ability to enjoy it worthily were the next important factors of the
future workman's education. Ruskin, fully cognisant of the value
for mental development of bodily activity and manual skill, thought
‘riding, rowing and cricketing' the most useful things learned at
a public school; he would have boys of all ranks taught a handi-
craft. But the man of letters and the student of economics viewed
the whole subject from opposite standpoints; Ellis was thinking
of the individual, Ruskin of the community. Throughout the
seventeen years, dating from the appearance of The Stones of
Venice in 1853, during which he kept the subject before the
public, education and government were inseparable ideas in his
mind. 'Educate or govern, they are one and the same word,' he
said at Woolwich in 1869? It was government's duty to provide
free, universal instruction and to compel all to receive education;
1 See, ante, p. 408.
The Crown of Wild Olive, par. 144.


## p. 416 (#446) ############################################

416
[CH.
Education
in return, all must yield obedience to government. All pros-
perity begins in obedience? '; as Carlyle had said long before in
Sartor Resartus, ‘obedience is our universal duty and destiny;
wherein whoso will not bend must break. ' Ruskin's first object
was an organised and, above all, a disciplined people; his model
was the Prussian polity as shaped, first, by Frederick the great and,
secondly, by Frederick William's ministers after the disaster of
Jena.
The policy of reform initiated by the Oxford Examination
statute of 1800 developed slowly at Oxford and Cambridge during
the succeeding fifty years. At the former, the single 'school,' or
examination for the degree, was made two by the institution of
the mathematical school in 1807. In similar fashion, the solitary
Cambridge 'tripos' (virtually a mathematical examination) became
two in 1824 by the establishment of the classical tripos. At Oxford,
the 'honours' and 'pass' examinations were separated, and
an increasing quantity of written work was demanded from
candidates. In 1850, Oxford recast its arrangements. A new
test, The First Public Examination before Moderators' (who
were empowered to award honours), was set up mid-way in the
degree course, and two new schools, Natural Science and Law and
Modern History were made; subsequently, the latter school became
two and Theology was added. A similar recognition of modern
studies was made at Cambridge in 1848 by the creation of the
Moral Sciences and Natural Sciences triposes, these two examina-
tions both comprehending a very wide range of studies. But the
agitation for reform first powerfully expressed by The Edinburgh
Review was not relaxed. Even improvements intensified it. The
interest aroused by classical and mathematical examinations ab-
sorbed attention from other studies; professorial lectures were
neglected in favour of teaching by college tutors, which bore
directly upon the struggle for honours and degrees. At Oxford,
in 1850, out of 1500 or 1600 students, the average attendance at
the modern history course was eight; at the chemistry course, five
and a half; at botany, six; at Arabic, none; 'medicine, Anglo-
Saxon and Sanscrit are in a similar condition. ' The regius
professor of Greek did not lecture, no pupils offering themselves.
'Indeed the main body of professors are virtually superseded by
the present system. Oxford, instead of being one great university,
consists of twenty-four small universities called colleges? '
1 The Crown of Wild Olive, par. 134.
? A Letter to. . . Lord John Russell. . . with suggestions for a Royal Commission of


## p. 417 (#447) ############################################

xiv] University Reform. Newman
417
Reformers traced most of the abuses prevalent in the uni-
versities to this subordinate position of the university corporations
themselves. The heads of the college societies formed an oli-
garchy which, entrenched behind obsolete statutes and traditional
glosses centuries old, in effect governed the university upon a
basis of privilege. In closest association with the church, the
authorities at Oxford excluded nonconformists absolutely, whilst
Cambridge refused to admit them to degrees, the effect being to
shut them out from any share in honours or powers of govern-
ment. Competition for fellowships and other college emoluments
was frequently nullified by statutes of endowment which restricted
candidates to particular localities, schools or families. As the
universities themselves were legally incompetent to change the
condition of affairs, a memorial, supported by many Oxford and
Cambridge graduates, was addressed, in 1850, to the prime
minister, lord John Russell, requesting the appointment of a
royal commission to make enquiry and suggest reform. The
request was promptly granted and the commission reported in
1852. Parliamentary legislation (1854—6) and the amendment
of college statutes, which it made possible, broke the college
monopoly of university government, enlarged the professoriate
and endowed it with college funds considered superfluous, freed
colleges from obsolete obligations, in large measure threw open
fellowships and other prizes and removed disabilities which
prevented nonconformists from taking degrees, though without
enabling them to hold fellowships. The consequence of these
radical changes was an extraordinary access of new life in
all branches of the universities' activity and a closer approach
to the life of the nation than had been witnessed for nearly two
hundred years.
The principle of undenominational education embodied in the
university of London was extended to Ireland in 1849 by the
foundation of Queen's colleges at Belfast, Cork and Galway and
their incorporation as Queen's university in the next year,
notwithstanding the protests of Daniel O'Connell, the Irish Roman
catholic bishops and Pius IX. The hierarchy determined to
establish a catholic university in Dublin and to place John Henry
Newman at its head; the university was canonically founded in
1854, Newman being its first rector. He had acted in that
Inquiry into the Universities (1850), p. 19. This pamphlet (said to be by Row, C. A. )
is & searching statement of the grievances which led to the appointment of the royal
commissions of 1850_2.
E. L. XIV.
CH. XIV.
27


## p. 418 (#448) ############################################

418
[CH.
Education
capacity previous to the formal opening, and, during 1852, he
delivered those addresses on the scope and nature of higher
education which were published under the title, The Idea of
a University? These discourses deliberately traversed those
conceptions of knowledge and of instruction which, first rendered
powerful by Brougham and the utilitarians, had become very
popular doctrines in the mid-century. In opposition to the
demand that universities should place research and the advance-
ment of knowledge in the forefront of their activities, Newman
asserted that the chief business of a university is to teach, and in
particular to illuminate the intelligence and to inculcate habits of
accurate, thorough and systematic thinking. Notwithstanding its
many acknowledged benefits, the diffusion of useful knowledge
tended to support false, illiberal notions of what constituted
instruction, to tolerate smattering and to prepare and make
current 'nutshell views for the breakfast table. While the pre-
vailing idea was to separate theology and religious teaching from
all educational institutions, Newman asserted that, as all know-
ledge, fundamentally, is one, the knowledge of God cannot be
divorced from other forms of knowledge without causing general
injury to knowledge as a whole. The elimination of theology
meant that some other branch of knowledge would usurp the
vacant place to its own detriment. At a time when reformers
regarded professors' lectures and examinations as the most
efficient mode of university education, Newman ventured upon
an outspoken justification of the practice of the ancient univer-
sities and public schools, the enforcement of college residence
and tutorial supervision. The moving passage in which he reverts
to his Oriel days is well known; so, too, is 'the taunt directed
at the Baconian philosophy, 'a method whereby bodily discomforts
and temporal wants are to be most effectually removed from the
greatest number. ' Science and literature must both occupy a
great place in university education. But the former ignores sin,
and the latter knows it only too well. It is a contradiction in
terms to attempt a sinless literature of sinful man'a home-
thrust at the sixteenth-century compromise known as pietas
litterata. Therefore, the church must fashion and mould the
university's organisation, watch over its teaching, knit its pupils
together and superintend its action. The suppressed premiss in
this argument (an infallible church) fails to conceal the prosaic
fact that the moulding and fashioning must be committed, not to
· See, ante, vol. XII, chap. XII.


## p. 419 (#449) ############################################

XIV]
State Responsibility
419
an abstract entity, but to the hands of possibly very fallible and
always concrete ecclesiastics.
Shortly before parliament, in 1833, voted £20,000 per annum
in aid of schools for the people, John Arthur Roebuck unsuccess-
fully moved a resolution in the commons in favour of universal,
compulsory education, the professional training of teachers in
normal schools and the appointment of a minister of education,
in all these proposals avowedly following the example of Prussia
and of France. The state policy here outlined was only partially
realised during the ensuing seventy years, throughout which period
it was almost continuously discussed. The appointment in 1839 of
a committee of the privy council on education to 'superintend
the application of any sums voted by Parliament for the purpose
of promoting public education' was an assumption of direct
responsibility by the state which promised to have far-reaching
consequences. But the committee suffered defeat at the very
outset. The first requirement of a great system of public educa-
tion was the existence of a body of competent teachers. Lord
Melbourne's ministry, therefore, proposed to establish a national
normal school, the details of their plan being committed to the
secretary of the committee, James Phillips Kay (Sir James
Kay-Shuttleworth), a close student of Swiss educational practice.
In order to maintain religious instruction as an integral part
of the scheme, and to respect 'the rights of conscience, it was
proposed to give both denominational and undenominational
instruction in such a manner as to safeguard conscientious
objectors. But this was to raise the religious difficulty' in con-
nection with a policy not too popular on other grounds; and so loud
was the clamour, that the government threw over the training
college scheme as a whole and confined itself to the appointment
of inspectors of schools. The National society and the British
and Foreign School society had, from the beginning of their
history, trained their teachers ; this 'voluntary' arrangement
was continued and the number of training colleges was greatly
increased by different religious bodies after the government's
failure in 1839. In 1846, the committee of council, still intent on
the creation of a corps of teachers, materially altered the moni-
torial system by permitting teachers to engage apprentices, or
pupil-teachers, who, after five years' service in the receipt of
government pay, became eligible by examination for admission to
one of the voluntary' training colleges, which the state aided.
The system of apprenticeship for teachers has undergone great
6
6
27-2


## p. 420 (#450) ############################################

420
[CH.
Education
changes since its introduction ; but denominational training
colleges still take part with universities and university colleges (since
1890) and municipal training colleges (since the legislation of 1902)
in the preparation of teachers for the work of elementary schools.
A greater admission of state responsibility was made in 1856
by the establishment of the Education department for the super-
vision of elementary education; with this department was associated
that of Science and Art, a public office which had been created three
years earlier. The ministries of Aberdeen and Palmerston were
marked by a series of abortive bills (1853—8) designed to bring
public elementary instruction under public control in conjunction
with expedients to meet the religious difficulty or to ignore it.
Both parties to the controversy agreed that more information on
the working of the existing arrangement was required, and, in
1858, the Newcastle commission was appointed for the purpose,
and to report on measures likely to extend ‘sound and cheap
elementary instruction to all classes of the people. The commis-
sioners' report (1861) complained that elementary schools, as a
whole, neglected the rudiments and the less capable children.
Their outstanding recommendation was that the financial aid
given to any school should depend, in part, upon the attainments
of its pupils as determined by the inspector's examination; effect
was given to this recommendation by Robert Lowe's 'revised code
of 1862, which introduced what is known as 'payment by results. '
This specious phrase won public favour for a very mischievous
method of administration. In the first place, as Kay-Shuttleworth
strongly urged, there was no 'payment' for those moral "results'
which were the best outcome of the schoolmaster's labours, and
his devotion was diverted from these to the bare rudiments of
knowledge which could be assessed and paid for. The school
depended for its existence upon the capacity of the children to
read, write and sum; the ability to use these tools in acquiring
knowledge and, still more, the manual exercises, which hitherto
had formed part of the education of children of handicraftsmen
and labourers, were, in consequence, thrust aside. In the struggle
for grants, the teaching, neglecting the intelligent, was adapted
to the lowest capacity and became very mechanical, as Matthew
Arnold pointed out at an early stage in the system's history.
Poorer schools, unable to employ teachers skilled in securing the
highest ‘results,' found, to their cost, that the watchword of the
new order was habentibus dabitur, and their attempt to keep
going was a weary business for all concerned. Until the system


## p. 421 (#451) ############################################

XIV]
Herbert Spencer
421
was abolished in 1890, attempts at improvement or palliation were,
from time to time, made by the Education department in response
to pressure from teachers and school-managers.
The decade preceding 1870 was notable by reason of its active
interest in public instruction of all grades, and this activity was
reflected in certain noteworthy books. Among these the most con-
spicuous was Herbert Spencer's Education, Intellectual, Moral and
Physical (1861), in which the author collected magazine articles
published by him between 1854 and 1859. The book completes a
series constituted by Montaigne, Locke, Rousseau and Spencer
himself, which marks the continued reaction during three centuries
of French and English thought upon its special topic. Spencer's
work is largely Rousseau's Émile in nineteenth-century English
guise. Of the four chapters into which it is divided, the second,
on intellectual education, is, perhaps, the most valuable; it is the
nearest approach to a treatise on educational method which we
have from the pen of an English writer of distinction, and much
of its teaching has been absorbed into modern practice. The next
chapter, on moral education, follows Rousseau, and, like Émile,
does nothing to solve its problem. The so-called discipline of
consequences as expounded by both writers would train the pupil
to be wary in dealing with natural forces; but this is not morality.
The fourth chapter, on physical education, has been generally
recognised as sound, and as having had a valuable influence upon
subsequent practice. The first chapter (“What knowledge is of
most worth ? '), which is a piece of special pleading for instruction
in science, teems with fallacies, some of a very crude kind. Spencer
appears to have been by nature unresponsive to art and literature;
given this defect, and a good conceit of his own judgment, many of
the author's dicta can be understood. But, after all, a more
judicious handling of the theme of his chapter would have been
quite ineffective in face of the scandalous neglect of science, as an
instrument of general education, which then prevailed in this
country. Education had an extraordinary vogue; within less than
twenty years it was translated into thirteen foreign languages,
including Chinese and Japanese; Spencer's great repute among
the latter is well known.
The Newcastle commission of 1858–61 on the education of the
poorer classes was followed by the Clarendon or Public Schools
commission of 1861-4 and the Taunton or Endowed Schools
commission of 1864–7; during the last named period, also, the
Argyll commission investigated the condition of Scottish schools.


## p. 422 (#452) ############################################

422
[CH.
Education
The Clarendon commissioners frankly recognised the improvements,
moral and material, which had been made in the daily life of the
nine schools to which their reference restricted them; they praised
their adherence to humane letters, their discipline, moral and
religious training, though they thought the schools were too tender
to idlers. But the curriculum lacked breadth and variety; every
boy should be taught mathematics, a branch of natural science and
a modern foreign language. The Public Schools act of 1868 recast
the governing bodies and gave them power to make new regula-
tions for the management of their schools, including the provision
of new studies; but, so far as the state was concerned, Win-
chester, Eton, St Paul's, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury,
Merchant Taylors' and Charterhouse were left very much as they
were before. . The Taunton commission was appointed to discover
measures 'for the improvement of secondary education. ' Though
the endowed school foundations numbered about three thousand,
more than two thousand of them fell outside the purview of the
commission, as they were giving purely elementary instruction.
The commissioners reported a great lack of secondary schools and
much inefficiency in the existing teachers, school buildings and
governing bodies. They recommended a comprehensive scheme
of national and local provision for, and control of the whole sphere
of education between the elementary and the public school; but
parliament was content to appoint, under the Endowed Schools
acts, 1869–74, commissioners with power to initiate, or amend,
the schemes which controlled the operations of individual schools.
This power was freely exercised until the functions of these com-
missioners were transferred, in 1874, to the Charity commission,
with which body they remained down to 1900. Speaking generally,
school schemes dealt with by both these bodies make the benefits
of the school widely accessible, provide for the inclusion of modern
studies, for exemption of certain pupils from religious instruction
and (where necessary) for the abolition of the ancient jurisdiction
of the bishop of the diocese.
The Newcastle and Taunton commissions are associated with
the first steps taken by Matthew Arnold to awaken England to
the defective state of such public education as it possessed.
Appointed an inspector of schools in 1851, Arnold was despatched
to the continent on special missions of observation by the first-
named commission in 1859, and by the second in 1865. His
reports (The popular education of France with notices of that
of Holland and Switzerland, 1861, Schools and Universities on


## p. 423 (#453) ############################################

XIV]
Matthew Arnold
423
the Continent, 1868) concentrated attention upon the condition
of the English middle class, 'nearly the worst educated in the
world,' served by schools destitute of great traditions and too
frequently inspired by narrow or vulgar ideals. Whereas, abroad,
the commercial and industrial class participated in the highest
culture of the nation, in England that class, notwithstanding its
great political power, was isolated from that culture, and, being
without a good standard of education in its own experience, was
unable to form a just estimate of the country's needs in that
respect. From the first, Arnold was struck by the high level
of intellectual attainment promoted by the French lycée and the
comparatively large area of its influence. But only the state
could meet the expense of a sufficient number of these schools,
supply their highly educated trained teachers and maintain a good
standard by means of official inspection. The same wide extension
of culture attained by similar means was observable in Germany,
in Holland and in democratic Switzerland. Though the occasion
of his first tour was the primary school, Arnold recognised that
the organisation of elementary instruction on a national scale,
apart from the consideration of secondary and higher education,
would be futile as well as illogical. Hence, his first report
admonished the English people to 'regard the necessities of a not
distant future and organise your secondary instruction. That
admonition he continued to repeat throughout his official career;
it concludes the report on German, Swiss and French elementary
education which he drew up on his retirement in 1886. In the
interval, expostulation, satire, sarcasm, persuasion, exhortation
were all employed to urge the English community to assume
corporate responsibility for public education as a whole; the
voluntary principle was incapable of meeting the absolute needs
of a modern state. England could no more do without universal,
compulsory instruction than could her neighbours.
Arnold died before the organisation of secondary education
was taken in hand; but his teaching did not fail to tell in due
course, as the Bryce commission of 1896 proved. In order to fix
responsibility (the want of which he regarded as one of the sins
of our administration generally), the national system should be
presided over by a minister of education, who should be assisted
by a consultative body of persons entitled to be heard on questions
affecting his duties. The schools should form part of the municipal
services, and, as municipal organisation did not yet exist in many
parts of the country, it would have to be created. As intermediary


## p. 424 (#454) ############################################

424
Education
[CH.
between the localities and the ministry, ‘provincial school boards,
eight or ten for the country, would ensure a national policy, which
respected local wishes, while they would render unnecessary an
elaborate scheme of inspection such as was employed for existing
elementary schools. A school-leaving certificate, open to all
secondary school pupils, would also serve as qualification for
admission to the university. The universities, by offering facilities
for post-graduate study, might compensate for the want of those
foreign ‘institutes' which trained members of the public services
scientifically and, at the same time, raised the whole level of national
appreciation of knowledge and the value of ideas. A comparison
of the foregoing with the subsequent development of educational
policy shows what Arnold's influence in these matters was.
On the long-established controversy about curriculum, Arnold
took an equally comprehensive view. "The rejection of the
humanities. . . and the rejection of the study of nature are alike
ignorant. The aim of the pupil is to attain ‘knowledge of him-
self and of the world. ' Secondary schools, in their lower forms,
should, therefore, provide a basis of instruction common to all
pupils; above this, there should be a bifurcation, one branch for
literary, the other for scientific, education.
Following the model
of the Prussian Realgymnasium (established in 1859 and since
fallen into disfavour), Arnold included the elements of Latin
among the common studies of all pupils; in another connection,
he suggested that the Latin Vulgate should be studied by the
more advanced pupils of elementary schools. But, of course,
he was fully alive to the humanist training to be obtained from
the study of modern literatures, especially that of the mother-
tongue; on the other hand, he thought that instruction in speaking
foreign languages was not school business.
John Stuart Mill's Inaugural Address to the university of
St Andrews on being installed lord rector in February 1867, while
not neglecting the controversies of the hour, raises the discussion
about education to a level which controversies seldom reach. He
agrees with Newman that British universities discharge, among
other functions, that of advanced schools; but, he thinks this is
owing to the absence of schools to which general education could
be fully entrusted. Yet, the Scots universities have long since so
organised their studies as to make an all-round education possible
for their students; and the old English universities . . . are now the
foci of free and manly enquiry to the higher and professional
classes south of the Tweed. ' The assumed opposition between
a


## p. 425 (#455) ############################################

XIV]
J. S. Mill
425
6
literature and science is an absurdity; anything deserving the
name of a good education must include both. If classics were
better taught, there would be sufficient time for the teaching
of science and of everything else needed’; but the greater part
of English classical schools are shams which fail to teach what
they profess. He would not have modern languages, history or
geography taught in secondary schools; the first should be
learned abroad, and the other two by desultory reading. Here,
he altogether fails to see the part which, by the systematic
instruction of the school, these studies may be made to play
in a child's development; all through the address there is ever
present the recollection of his own arduous discipline (as described
in his Autobiography) and forgetfulness of the limits to the
ordinary boy's industry and power.
In reference to another
heated quarrel of the time, Mill roundly declares it beyond the
power of schools and universities to educate morally or religiously,
and then goes on to show that the home and ‘society' can do this,
omitting to note that schools and universities are societies, and
that, from the standpoint of education, religion is not so much
a philosophy or set of intellectual ideas to be taught as a life to be
lived. The Autobiography supplies the source of the error. But
Mill does not confine himself to the place of schools and uni-
versities; he passes in review the branches of culture which
should be followed when education has, ostensibly, been com-
pleted. The ‘aesthetic branch' of human culture is barely inferior
to the other branches, the intellectual and moral; yet, the British
middle class neglects it for commercial, money-getting business
and religious puritanism,' the condition of things which, two years
later, Matthew Arnold sharply flagellated in Culture and Anarchy.
Mill's Inaugural Address and Newman's Idea of a University,
when made mutually corrective, portray ideals of individual
attainment which it is hard to imagine irrelevant at any stage of
human civilisation.
The ground taken by Mill in reference to literature and science
is that occupied by the nine distinguished writers who, under the
editorship of Frederic William Farrar, published, in 1867, Essays
on a liberal education. Henry Sidgwick, senior classic in 1859,
writing on the theory of classical education, dismisses, as sophistical,
many of the stock contentions in its favour; he is particularly
severe when commenting on the assertions of the enthusiast,
Mr Thring. Sidgwick urges that the ancient authors are fine
'
educational instruments just because their work is literature, and,


## p. 426 (#456) ############################################

426
[CH.
Education
6
on that ground, it is reasonable to employ, for a like purpose, the
literature of modern tongues. He admits the claim of natural
science to its place in modern education, favours the reform of
methods of teaching Latin and Greek, and, in particular, would
remove 'verses' from among compulsory studies, a contention to
which the editor, Farrar, devotes his own essay. After the senior
classic, the senior wrangler: James Maurice Wilson contributes
a weighty and temperately written essay on behalf of science,
which is the more convincing since it illustrates, with some detail,
the serious work which boys may undertake, even when they give
only two hours a week to it. John Wesley Hales, in an essay on
the teaching of English, urged that a child's first notions of
grammar should be derived from study of the vernacular, a rule
very generally accepted at the present time. Sir John Seeley
(then professor of Latin at University college, London), writing on
liberal education in universities, confined himself to defects in the
tutorial system of the colleges, to the baneful effects of examina-
tions and of the exaggerated importance attached to 'triposes'
and schools. ' He suggested, as remedies, the alphabetical
arrangement of all 'honours' lists, the institution of intercol-
legiate lectures and a greater readiness on the part of colleges
to admit members of other societies to fellowships-matters of
organisation now generally in operation.
Edward Thring, the enthusiast' of Sidgwick's essay, was head-
master of Uppingham school from 1853 till his death in 1887,
during which period he raised a small, country grammar school to
the educational level of the best public schools of the new founda-
tion, he and his staff contributing nearly the whole of the capital
sum required to effect the change in the material conditions of the
school. To these conditions he attached high value, and he spared
no pains to acquire buildings planned to meet the manifold re-
quirements of a modern school, apparatus and appliances to advance
or illustrate its studies, comely school-rooms and domestic sur-
roundings which respected the boys' privacy. His best known
book, Theory and Practice of Teaching, is not a professional
treatise, but a series of disconnected chapters full of shrewd
observation and practical hints expressed in a rugged yet epi-
grammatic style, which makes good reading. In his books, as in
his daily work, he insisted that schools must be judged by their
success in educating the dull and the mediocre boy, and not by
examinations or by readiness to comply with the official craving
for uniformity. Himself of a masterful disposition, he could not
a


## p. 427 (#457) ############################################

XIV]
Education Act, 1870
427
tolerate any interference with, or attempt to ignore, the individu-
ality either of scholar or of school.
The Reform bill of 1832 had led the state to assume a very small
measure of responsibility for public instruction; but mere trifling
could not satisfy the demand for popular education heightened
by the much greater extension of the parliamentary franchise
effected in the bill of 1867. Nearly as many children were
believed to be without schools of any kind as were in attendance
at all schools, state-aided or uninspected, put together. Abortive
bills and resolutions in parliament urged the imposition of an
education rate, the provision of free education and the safeguard
of a conscience clause in schools. Outside parliament, there
was loud and persistent agitation, which centred chiefly about the
question of religious instruction and the rights of conscience.
Finally, in 1870, the government introduced a bill to provide for
public elementary education in England and Wales, which was
passed after six months of contentious debate. Its introducer,
William Edward Forster, explained that its purpose was supple-
mentary, to ensure an efficient school in every part of the kingdom,
to make the erection of such schools compulsory where they did
not already exist, but to use compulsion in such cases only; for
this purpose, it was requisite to maintain an effectual conscience
clause, undenominational inspection and a standard of efficiency
in secular study. In the course of the debates, it was decided
that ratepayers, not town councils or vestries, should elect school
boards (the education authorities formed by the bill), to take
voluntary schools out of the measure and to forbid the teaching
in board schools of any formulary distinctive of a particular
religious body. This last clause favoured, at the expense of all
other denominations, that which was completely satisfied by
bible-reading. However expedient at the moment, it was but
an imperfect compromise which did not really solve the religious
difficulty; it merely kept it alive. But the full significance of the
.
Education act of 1870 lies in the fact that the English state then
definitely assumed direct responsibility for public education, whose
provision became a state service like that of defence or the ad-
ministration of justice; it was no longer a matter of private
charity conducted by the well-to-do for the benefit of the poor.
For the time being, this responsibility was confined to elementary
instruction ; but its extension was unavoidable. The lack of
schools drove most school boards into activities which rendered
the supplementary 'nature of the act a wrong description, and the


## p. 428 (#458) ############################################

428
[CH.
Education
boards themselves became great corporations which overshadowed
the voluntary system they had been created to supplement. The
principle of universally compulsory education was asserted, but it
was so fenced by the permissive powers granted to the boards and
by the want of schools as not unfrequently to be inoperative. The
principle was enforced by an act passed in 1880, rather more than
a year in advance of the French compulsory law.
Alexander Bain's Education as a science (1879) contains little
which justifies its title. Much more is made of 'the three great
functions of the intellect in the ultimate analysis—Discrimination,
Agreement, Retentiveness,' than of the subject proper; while
education, as an art, bulks as considerably as anything else in the
book. These two parts lack cohesion. The purely psychological
discussion meanders interminably, twin rocks called pleasure and
pain, otherwise reward and punishment, standing up in mid-stream
and everywhere visible, recalling the parental Calvinism, with
its ever-present alternatives, heaven and hell. Perhaps the
same grim creed accounts for Bain's opinion that 'the quint-
essence of play' is 'the zest of the malevolent feeling '; Montaigne
and Locke knew better. The chapters on the sequence of studies
.
and of the intellectual powers are more to the point, yet, still,
there is an exasperating diffuseness, and much which appears
to be merely an apologia for 'hearing lessons' and for the
established usage generally. The 'education values of different
studies are stated as they train intelligence or impart useful
information ; but they are not equated, and the results do not
affect the consideration of a 'renovated curriculum' in science,
the humanities and the mother-tongue. Bain was singularly un-
fortunate in forecasting the trend of practice. He regarded
manual instruction and bodily regimen generally as outside the
school's province, thought laboratories unnecessary and hesitated
about admitting history; but he devotes much attention to the
now universally discredited 'object-lesson. '
The duties of Bain's chair of logic at Aberdeen included the
teaching of English, work which brought him into the line of
the Scottish school already mentioned". Archbishop Whately's
treatise, Rhetoric (1828), a contribution to the Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana, had presented its subject as a branch of logic,
namely argumentative composition. Bain used the term rhetoric
to cover all kinds of literary composition, and, like other members
of the school, tried to form a psychological groundwork for its
See, ante, p. 398.
>


## p. 429 (#459) ############################################

XIV]
A. Bain. Education of Women 429
principles. While he was more successful in this respect than
his predecessors, the connection between his prescriptions and
the underlying laws of mental process is not always evident; but,
in the absence of a well-founded psychology of aesthetic, this
is not surprising. The sharp line between composition and litera-
ture drawn in Bain's latest work on rhetoric (On teaching English,
1887) reduces the teacher to a narrow specialist and deprives the
study of letters of its highest educational office.
The great advance in the education of girls and women, which
has been a prominent feature of recent educational history, may
be traced back to the early activities of the Governesses' Bene-
volent institution, founded in 1843. From the first, this advance
has been closely connected with movements directed primarily to
make teaching a profession for women. The institution soon
found that it could be most helpful to governesses by making
them capable of the work they undertook. For this purpose, it
secured the gratuitous cooperation of F. D. Maurice and other
professors of King's college, London, who began by examining
women as to their fitness to teach and then, as the result of
experience, conducted classes in which women could receive the
necessary instruction. Queen's college, London, was founded in
1848 as a home for these classes and others for the education of
girls and women; among the first teacher-pupils were Frances Mary
Buss and Dorothea Beale, who afterwards became the leaders of
reform in girls' education. The relationship between King's college
and Queen's college was repeated between University college and
Bedford college for Women by the foundation of the latter in
1849, with a distinguished body of professors from the former as
teachers, and Harriet Martineau as secretary. A committee of
ladies, of which Emily Davies was secretary, induced the Taunton
or Endowed Schools commission of 1864—7 to enquire into the
condition of girls' schools; the commission's report stated that, in
the education of girls, there were a want of thoroughness and of
system, slovenliness and showy superficiality, inattention to rudi-
ments and waste of time on accomplishments which were badly
taught. The remedy, obviously, was to educate the teachers and
to make possible a higher education for women, for which purpose
the energetic women who had the cause at heart turned to the
universities. In 1865, girls were allowed to present themselves at
the ‘Local' examinations of Cambridge, and, in this way, periodical
authoritative statements as to girls' education were made pos-
sible. In 1869, Cambridge and London universities instituted


## p. 430 (#460) ############################################

430
[CH.
Education
6
examinations for women. Emily Davies then started the college at
Hitchin which, in 1873, was removed to Girton; in 1869, courses
of lectures were begun in Cambridge, which led to the foundation of
Newnham college. A period of great expansion followed. With
the help of the Endowed Schools commissioners, many girls'
schools were opened or revived, many endowments on revision
were divided between boys' schools and girls' schools. In 1871,
* The National Union for improving the education of women of all
classes' (among whose founders lady Stanley of Alderley and
Emily Shirreff, Mistress of Girton College, were prominent)
took up the concurrent policy of starting good, cheap das-
schools for girls and of making teaching by women a profession.
The policy was realised in the creation of The Girls' Public
Day School company in 1872 and of The Maria Grey Training
college in 1878. The university of London threw open its degree
examinations to women in 1878, Cambridge opened the triposes to
them in 1881, and, three years later, Oxford allowed women to
pass the examinations of certain of its schools. ' Colleges for
women had been instituted at Oxford in 1879. The new universi-
ties made no distinction of sex in respect of teaching, emoluments
or degrees. The project of a women's university which animates
Tennyson’s Princess (1847) has failed to secure favour ; but the
less unsubstantial elements of the poet’s ‘medley' have come near
to realisation.
No doubt, girls' schools, at the beginning, voluntarily handi-
capped themselves by trying to teach most of the things taught
in boys' schools, as well as those things which women either
need to know, or are conventionally expected to know, or to be
skilled in. But this mistake was not slow to disclose itself and be
corrected. On the other hand, they were not handicapped by
traditional methods; and the professional bent encouraged by the
advocates of a better education for girls gave the teachers a
critical attitude towards educational principles and their own work
which has resulted in a high level of teaching and of organisation,
and a freedom from routine. If this professional bias also tended
to present teaching as the most appropriate occupation of women
--which could scarcely fail to affect courses of study-later ex-
perience has reduced these early tendencies to their due proportion.
Apart from its administrative character, the relation of the
colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to the universities underwent no
great immediate change in consequence of the legislation of 1854–6.
The energy of college tutors was expended on the education of


## p. 431 (#461) ############################################

XIV]
Universities and Research
431
1
1
!
undergraduates ; it was almost a commonplace of speakers and
writers that, in striking contrast with some foreign universities,
Oxford and Cambridge produced but little original work in science
or learning. No reformers were more dissatisfied with the state
of affairs than many of the university teachers themselves.
Newman believed that a university could not at the same time
be a place of education and a home of research and learning ;
Mark Pattison, on the contrary, boldly asserted that, unless
teachers were actively engaged in advancing knowledge, their
teaching would be inadequate and barren.
All attempts to stimulate the teaching activity (of Oxford) without adding
to its solid possession of the field of science will only feed the unwholesome
system of examinations which is now undermining the educational value of
the work we actually dol.
As Pattison read the early history of colleges, their founders
intended them for the promotion of learning and the technical
instruction of priests, ecclesiastical lawyers and men of affairs; the
most urgently needed reform was the appropriation of a large part
of the college revenues to the encouragement of research and the
provision of the highest type of scientific technical instruction.
It was Pattison's hope that such a readjustment of finances would
ensure a numerous body of fairly paid teachers, who would have
time and opportunity to continue their own studies, to the ad-
vantage of the world beyond their own lecture rooms. The act
of 1877, which appointed, in both universities, commissions with
executive powers to deal with college statutes, rendered possible
the partial realisation of this policy. The abolition of religious
tests at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham in 1871 removed the last
disability which rested upon nonconformists, with the double
advantage of admitting them into the full current of national
education and of rendering university life a truer mirror of the
life of the nation at large. The greatly increased activities of both
universities since 1870 are reflected in the number and variety of
'schools' and 'triposes'instituted since that date.
The growth of university colleges' (under this or some similar
name), which was remarkable during the period 1872–84, was
the result of the development of physical science, of a better
appreciation of the dependence of industry upon science and a
more widely extended faith in the power conferred by knowledge
and intellectual cultivation, added to a growing sense of our
national deficiencies in these respects. In some places, these
1 Suggestions on academical organisation (1868).
6


## p. 432 (#462) ############################################

432
[CH.
Education
currents of opinion were strengthened or liberalised by 'university
extension,' the movement in favour of which was due, in the first
place, to the desire, already described, of making teaching a pro-
fession for women. In 1872, James Stuart was invited to give
lectures to women on the art of teaching. He preferred, however,
to deliver a course on astronomy, which he repeated in several of
the great northern cities. These lectures proved the existence of
a demand for teaching which Cambridge met in the following year
by inaugurating the plan of extra-mural lecturing and tuition, a
plan adopted by the London society (instituted in 1876) and by
Oxford in 1878. The development of all these new centres of
intellectual life led, in due course, to the creation of new uni-
versities, none of which is confined to the study of science, applied
or pure, while some have already made notable contributions to
the advancement of letters in many directions.
Owens college, founded so far back as 1851 in response to
demands very like those which had led to the creation of the
university of London, was the earliest of the university colleges
outside the capital to seek academical independence. In 1880, a
royal charter was granted to Victoria university with its seat in
Manchester, and Owens college was, at first, its only college. In
1884, it was joined by University college, Liverpool, and, in 1887,
by the Yorkshire college, Leeds, as constituted colleges of the
university. A university charter having been granted to Mason's
college, Birmingham, in 1900, the three colleges of Victoria
university were by fresh charters created the Victoria university
of Manchester (1903), the university of Liverpool (1903) and that
of Leeds (1904) respectively. The university of Sheffield was
founded in 1905, and that of Bristol in 1909. University college,
Dundee, had been affiliated to the university of St Andrews in
1897; and the Irish university system had been remodelled in
1880 and 1908—9.
The University of London act of 1898 led to the restoration of
its teaching function and the possibility of unifying the higher
education of the metropolis. It is worth remarking that, of the
eleven universities now existing south of Tweed, nine were founded
later than the reign of George IV. 'I wish we had several more
universities,' said Seeley, ‘our material progress has outrun our
intellectual? ' The worship of material success and the indiffer-
ence to “ideas' with which Mill, Arnold, Pattison, Seeley and others
charged the English middle class are, perhaps, not much less
Essays on a liberal education (1867).
1


## p. 433 (#463) ############################################

XIV]
Legislation of 1902 433
prevalent today than they were fifty years ago; but the agents for
overcoming them and the reasons why they should be overcome
have, in the interval, been greatly multiplied.
Wales preceded England in the organisation of secondary
education. The Welsh Intermediate Education act of 1889 gave
the principality a scheme which filled the gap between public
elementary schools and her three colleges, Aberystwyth, Cardiff
and Bangor; the system was completed by the incorporation of
these colleges as the university of Wales in 1893. English legisla-
tion of 1889–90, dealing with technical instruction, brought about
a chaos which rendered organisation imperative. The immediate
consequence of the acts of parliament was to stimulate the Science
and Art department's mischievous system of examination grants,
the transformation of all but the strongest grammar schools into
schools of science, the entire discouragement of literary instruction
and ruinous competition between new and old institutions. The
great school boards, assisted by the Education department, had en-
deavoured to compensate for the lack of secondary education within
their areas by the creation of higher grade schools,' which, in some
respects, partook of the nature of secondary schools, while, in others,
they resembled the higher primary schools of the continent. These,
also, became competitors, in some places, with the older schools
under boards of governors, while they bred confusion in the public
mind as to the respective functions of elementary' and 'secondary'
instruction. The Bryce commission, appointed in 1894 to review
.
the whole field of secondary instruction, reported in 1896, the chief
measures proposed being first, the creation of a Board of Educa-
tion, under a minister, to absorb the functions of the Education
department, the Science and Art department and the educational
side of the Charity commission, the new body thus becoming the
central authority for elementary, technical and secondary education;
second, the institution of a consultative committee of independent
persons competent to advise the minister; and the erection in
counties and county boroughs of Local Education authorities. In
the meantime, voluntary schools' had fallen into financial dis-
tress and denominational education suffered correspondingly. The
general policy long before indicated by Matthew Arnold, reiterated
by the Bryce commission and emphasised by the condition of the
country and the menace of foreign competition was at length
embodied in the Board of Education act of 1899 and the Education
acts of 1902—3. The English state had, after a century of hesita-
tion, consented to accept full responsibility for national education.
28
a
E. L. XIV.
CH. XIV.


## p. 434 (#464) ############################################

CHAPTER XV
CHANGES IN THE LANGUAGE SINCE
SHAKESPEARE'S TIME
In a general view of the fortunes of the English language since
Shakespeare's time, one of the first things to strike an observer is
the world-wide expansion of its use. At the beginning of the seven-
teenth century it was, with slight exceptions, confined to England.
The exceptions were Ireland, where English colonisation had begun
in the previous century, and Scotland, where literary English was
already influencing the speakers of a tongue descended from the old
Northumbrian dialect. Even today, English does not completely
occupy the whole of the United Kingdom. Celtic exists in Ireland,
in Wales and in the Scottish Highlands, while, in the Channel
islands, Norman-French has by no means disappeared. Till into the
eighteenth century, Cornish survived in Cornwall, and Norse in
Orkney and Shetland. Outside the British isles, the language has
followed the flag, and is spoken all over the empire—in Canada,
in Australia, in New Zealand, in Africa, and in the East and
West Indies. Beyond the boundaries of the empire, it possesses
a vigorous life and literature among many millions in the United
States of North Americal
Since in those regions English was planted at different times
and has been subjected to varying influences, the types of language,
especially as spoken, differ from standard English and from one an-
other. The vocabulary, in particular, is notably dissimilar. Strange
objects, new conditions of life, have either added native words, or
caused special adaptations of old words or extensions of meaning.
Sometimes, also, as in the United States, the language is splitting
1 Attempts have been made to calculate how many persons employ English.
Exact figures are not obtainable ; but, in round numbers, 120,000,000 may be considered
a tolerably safe estimate-about double the aggregate of those who speak French,
or Italian, or Spanish; and half as many again as speak German, or Russian. It is
believed that, in 1600, English was spoken by about 6,000,000, much fewer than then
spoke French, or German, or Italian, or Spanish.


## p. 435 (#465) ############################################

CH, XV]
Pronunciation
435
into dialects. To discuss all these varieties of English as well as
the numerous dialects in Britain, with their chequered history
during the last three centuries, would be impossible here, for
want of space, if for no other reason. We must, accordingly,
restrict ourselves to the standard literary language, which is every-
where practically homogeneous. Its principal changes we shall
now consider under the three divisions of pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary
Pronunciation
A book printed in the early decades of the seventeenth century
presents little difficulty in one respect. It can be read without
much trouble; for the differences in orthography are trifling, and
whole sentences may occur with present-day spelling. But, if a
chapter from The Authorised Version or a scene from one of
Shakespeare's plays were read to us with the contemporary
pronunciation, the ear would be considerably puzzled to recognise
certain of the words. For, while the spelling has remained
tolerably constant, many of the sounds have changed a great
deal.
To begin with the vowels. Middle English i and è, in wit and
men for example, have, as a rule, continued unaltered. Not so
the other vowels, whether single or diphthongal. Sometimes, one
Middle English sound has, in modern times, split into several,
as a in man, was, path. Sometimes different Middle English
sounds have converged : name, day, which have now one and the
same vowel sound, had distinct sounds (ā, ai) in Middle English.
Today see and sea are indistinguishable in pronunciation. In
Middle English, the former had tense ē, the latter slack ē; and
their pronunciation was dissimilar till into the eighteenth century.
This explains and justifies the rimes in Pope :
But for the wits of either Charles's days,
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease;
and in Cowper :
I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
The vowel sound in sea, meat, heat, treat, deal was then identical
with the vowel sound in day, name: it is now the same as in meet,
feel, see. There are exceptions, however : great, break, steak have
not followed the example of the others. Middle English Ō also
2842


## p. 436 (#466) ############################################

436
Changes in the Language [CH.
had a tense and a slack value. Tense 7 changed to ū, which
remains in such words as too, soon, moon. Sometimes ū has been
shortened and made slacker: hence, the sound we have in book,
good. Slack 7 has been diphthongised to the sound heard in go,
stone, coat. Middle English ŭ was unrounded in the seventeenth
century. Then, in words like sun, son, come it was lowered to its
present value; but, in other words, it was again rounded, as in bull,
full, put. Consequently, cut and put no longer rime. Middle
English i and ū were gradually diphthongised till they acquired
their modern sounds, as in wine and house. The diphthong oi has
now the same sound as in Middle English ; but that does not imply
that it has undergone no change. It altered from time to time till
its accepted value closely resembled the current pronunciation of
the diphthong in wine, to which it was then assimilated. Dryden
rimes coin'd, mind; choice, vice; join, line. Similarly, Pope rimes
night with doit, mind with join'd; and writes :
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
In those days, the oi sound was considered 'low'in such words as
join; now it is correct, while the other pronunciation is vulgar,
dialectic, or comic as in “strike ile. The influence of the spelling
helped, in comparatively recent times, to restore the old sound of oi.
During the last three centuries the consonants have, on the
whole, been more stable than the vowels ; but they, also, have
suffered certain changes. In words like night, gh seems to have
been mute by 1600, while the vowel received compensatory
lengthening. In laugh, enough, thought, sought, gh continued
to be pronounced into the seventeenth century, though not un-
modified. Then it disappeared, or was replaced by an f sound.