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" through the . Court , " and ends at the dogs . We have known a dozen such cases ; and very , very sad they were . The reason of so little being learned , of even what is taught at public schools , is , first , that the prizes to be obtained , even by hardreading boys , are very few as compared with the number of competitors ; secondly , that such boys as exhibit marked abilities are made the
sole objects of the solicitude of the masters ; and thirdly , that these last are not sufficiently numerous to pay attention , except in the above case , to individual requirements at all . Enormous classes , unless of music perhaps , can be taught nothing well : the system of "' calling up " one boy out of ten or so , at haphazard , and making him perform his task , is not sufficiently searching , and an idle boy of pluck will take his chance , and never look at his lesson perhaps at all . After being once detected in this , the master ,
according to his temperament , is sure either to be always pitching on this unhappy one , which diminishes still more the risk of other idle boys , or , through disgust , never meddles with him again . The defences of an insufficient staff of masters are , in reality , all based upon the fact , that a sum of money divided among many is not so snug a thing as the same sum divided among a few ; and the great stand is made , where all great stands of vested interests are made , upon the great principle of £ . s . d .
As to learning , I can scarcely imagine it disputed , that a small school is better than a large one , and a private than a public establishment : the instruction in the former is always much more diversified , and the proportion of teachers to taught , by far more reasonable . The head of the one can make his influence felt over the whole of it ; but the public schoolmaster must attach himself necessarily to the upper form only . Even Dr . Arnold was forced to do
this ; and the error of the notorious " monitorial system" is perhaps mainly attributable to that cause : he could not but think that he had rendered his boys fit to rule the rest , which may have been true enough ; but his successors held the same opinion of their boys also , and that was false .
The best education—as far as relates to study—we unhesitatingly pronounce to be that which is afforded by a wise and good man to a very few pupils ; the instructor , not exactly a private tutor , or at least not one at the boy ' s home , where his ( the tutor ' s ) authority will be always too much curtailed , but the head of a small establishment , who , with the exception of drawing , perhaps , and modern languages ,
deputes nothing to under-masters whatsoever . We ourselves have experienced as much of " our educational systems" as most men , and believe the importance and necessity oi improvement to be very great .
What grinding petty tyrants , what delicate nervous shadows , what insolent fools , what dirty ruffians , have we not seen grow up around us , forced to full expansion in the foul hotbeds of school ! Yet so much of this can unhappily never be proved ,- —so hard is it to believe men to have been anything else than what we see them to be , and so
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Untitled Article
" through the . Court , " and ends at the dogs . We have known a dozen such cases ; and very , very sad they were . The reason of so little being learned , of even what is taught at public schools , is , first , that the prizes to be obtained , even by hardreading boys , are very few as compared with the number of competitors ; secondly , that such boys as exhibit marked abilities are made the
sole objects of the solicitude of the masters ; and thirdly , that these last are not sufficiently numerous to pay attention , except in the above case , to individual requirements at all . Enormous classes , unless of music perhaps , can be taught nothing well : the system of "' calling up " one boy out of ten or so , at haphazard , and making him perform his task , is not sufficiently searching , and an idle boy of pluck will take his chance , and never look at his lesson perhaps at all . After being once detected in this , the master ,
according to his temperament , is sure either to be always pitching on this unhappy one , which diminishes still more the risk of other idle boys , or , through disgust , never meddles with him again . The defences of an insufficient staff of masters are , in reality , all based upon the fact , that a sum of money divided among many is not so snug a thing as the same sum divided among a few ; and the great stand is made , where all great stands of vested interests are made , upon the great principle of £ . s . d .
As to learning , I can scarcely imagine it disputed , that a small school is better than a large one , and a private than a public establishment : the instruction in the former is always much more diversified , and the proportion of teachers to taught , by far more reasonable . The head of the one can make his influence felt over the whole of it ; but the public schoolmaster must attach himself necessarily to the upper form only . Even Dr . Arnold was forced to do
this ; and the error of the notorious " monitorial system" is perhaps mainly attributable to that cause : he could not but think that he had rendered his boys fit to rule the rest , which may have been true enough ; but his successors held the same opinion of their boys also , and that was false .
The best education—as far as relates to study—we unhesitatingly pronounce to be that which is afforded by a wise and good man to a very few pupils ; the instructor , not exactly a private tutor , or at least not one at the boy ' s home , where his ( the tutor ' s ) authority will be always too much curtailed , but the head of a small establishment , who , with the exception of drawing , perhaps , and modern languages ,
deputes nothing to under-masters whatsoever . We ourselves have experienced as much of " our educational systems" as most men , and believe the importance and necessity oi improvement to be very great .
What grinding petty tyrants , what delicate nervous shadows , what insolent fools , what dirty ruffians , have we not seen grow up around us , forced to full expansion in the foul hotbeds of school ! Yet so much of this can unhappily never be proved ,- —so hard is it to believe men to have been anything else than what we see them to be , and so