Our sons : how to start them in life a manual of useful information respecting places of education, the modes of entrance to the professions, the Civil Service, and commercial employment

Preface

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This little work is an attempt to place before the public a mass of information which the author has been enabled by his experience over a wide range of professions, and also by the assistance of many relatives and personal friends engaged in tuition and the public offices, to gather together.

The primary object, as explained by the title, is to assist parents, guardians, and all interested in the well-being of their sons in the choice of such an education as shall be best suited for their advancement in life, with the chance of making them useful to their country, instead of being* as many are now, “ logs upon the water.”

If any failures are prevented by the perusal of this work, or any success gained, the author will have felt his time and trouble well recompensed.

London,

Introduction

What to do with our sons is a problem most of us have to solve one day or the other, and very difficult the solution often is to find. Neither do the difficulties decrease as time slips by, for rapidly as the world moves now-a-days, and rapidly as new professions and new occupations for men arise, no less quickly does population increase, as many an anxious father must confess to himself, as he counts the ever increasing number of curly heads round his table.

“ Children are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord, like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children ; happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” But the sharpest arrows may grow blunt and rusty by disuse, and warped and broken by neglect, and unless the hand of the giant has the skill to make a proper use of them, there is but little chance of their reaching the mark at which they are aimed.

The present work is intended to give, to fathers and others interested in the starting in life of boys and young men, the result of some little experience and a good deal of carefully collected information on the various professions and principal mercantile pursuits ; and with a view to taking the subject at its commencement, the first part is devoted to remarks and figures on the education of children of the male sex from infancy, comprising hints on the best plan of general education; information on the means of obtaining an entrance to the public and grammar-schools of the higher and middle classes ; the course of study to be pursued with reference to the fitting of the pupil for the various professions ; and a chapter on the desirability or otherwise, and usual course, of education at the universities.

The question of education is perhaps the most difficult part of the problem, — “what to do with our sons;” certain it is that in these days of competition no time must be wasted by the father, whose means will not allow of his maintaining his children to a tolerably advanced age unaided by any receipts on their part, less still by those who are unable to make their sons a more or less liberal allowance for the first few years of their professional career. When a boy reaches the age of seventeen or eighteen, and often even earlier, the advantages of an early start in the acquirement of knowledge either of a general kind or with a view to a special object, become apparent. Two years, or even one, wasted before entrance to a public school make a serious difference in the chances of scholarships to be obtained, or success in competitive examinations to be passed before a certain age. A father would find it hard to excuse himself for a loss of say fifty or a hundred pounds a year to his son whilst at college for the sake of putting off the evil day of school bills to be paid, for a few more months; and more bitterly still, would he regret the failure of his son to obtain a government appointment for life because his age prevented his going up a second time for a competitive examination. Competition is keen now-a-days, and a year may make all the difference one way or the other; indeed the author has known instances of a very few days difference in the date of a birthday making or marring a lad’s prospects of a lucrative appointment for life.

Our advice then is, by all means begin education early, but above all things judiciously. Education is a necessity ; be a lad of noble or lowly parentage, be he rich or poor, he must have it or his life will be a failure. But education to be successful must be the work of a skilful hand. We all know how apt we are to consider our own geese swans, and many a lad’s career has been ruined by the poor first little sparkles of his dawning intelligence being taken as unmistakable signs of a brilliant genius. Intelligence without application is next to worthless, and too early forcing of the

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brain power prevents the cultivation of habits of application. Any lad, with brains at all, is only too eager to acquire knowledge at first ; but once let him think himself a genius on the strength of the first flashy scraps of knowledge he acquires, and he will speedily think application to the acquirement of the many distasteful groundworks of sound learning (which he must of necessity study carefully to become a scholar) altogether beneath him. More than one tutor of considerable experience has assured me that he has endeavoured in vain to make anything of boys whose parents considered them little short of prodigies, simply because it was an utter impossibility for them to apply their minds to any given subject for more than one half hour in the day. It is better for a boy to think himself a fool than for him to place implicit confidence in his own powers of understanding everything and anything.

Therefore always begin at the beginning. One of the great dangers, if not the greatest, of self-education is in this skipping the groundwork ; a man or boy buys a Popular Educator, or some such work, professing to make uninstructed ignorance wise at a small cost per week, and at the end of a year the enlightened purchaser fancies himself a master of some half dozen modern languages, and more mathematics than a senior wrangler can master in four years’ arduous study, devoted to that particular branch of knowledge.

I remember when quite a little boy at school being one rainy day in the holidays at a loss what to do with my spare time. I provided myself with a ruler, a pair of compasses, and a set curve, and with their aid diligently set to work to copy two or three of Selous’ celebrated etchings to the Pilgrim’s Progress. My friends were astonished at the result; the resemblance to the originals was certainly striking, - the noses and mouths (thanks to the compasses) were tolerably correctly placed with reference to the eyes and corners of the picture, I was voted a born artist at once, and considered myself quite above paying any attention to the endless straight lines and easy copies my drawing master kept me working at ; yet so little have the promises of my youth been kept, that the other day whan a four-year old child of my acquaintance asked me to draw the conventional cat upon her slate, I was obliged with shame to confess my inability.

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Self-instruction is all very well for grown men studying for a special purpose and with settled habits of application and intelligence, but every father is in duty bound to give his boy for as long a period as possible the benefit of a master’s teaching and experience in meeting the difficulties of instructing each individual character. Discourage unaided self-instruction in a lad, let him never get out of his depth without a guiding hand, and encourage him rather to spend his leisure hours in manly sports and exercises calculated to fit his body to bear the strain brought upon it by the application of his mind to the studies planned for him by a competent judge.

Here again is one of the most important claims in a wisely organised system of education. Experience shows everywhere that the powers of physical exercise and mental application go as a rule hand in hand ; it has been demonstrated over and over again that at all our schools and universities the best boys and men in their forms at school and the honour lists at the universities are oftener than not also good at athletic sports and games. The connection between scholars and gentlemen has been insisted on often enough, but is not it often lost sight of that neither separate nor combined are they thoroughly fitted to hold their own in the battle of life, unless they can fairly assert their position in the crowd as men.

In the present day there are schools of every conceivable kind, and in subsequent chapters will be found a statement of the expenses connected with the various classes of them. In education, as in everything else, the highest price will command the best article ; but in the educational market, as in every other, after a certain limit, the price to be paid increases very rapidly in proportion to the advantages to be gained. Our advice to every father is to let his boj’S spend as many years of their life at school as he can possibly allow them, and at the best school he can afford. Should the length of time his sons can be kept at school depend upon the annual cost of maintaining them there, we can confidently assert that as good a practical education as need be wished for, that is one which should enable a boy to pass any qualifying examination for a profession, or even to obtain a good place in a competitive examination, may be obtained at several boarding-schools at a cost of from £7 0 per annum upwards, and consequently it would be folly on the part of a parent

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to limit the number of years his son remains at school in order to send him to one at which the cost is double that amount.

The advantages of several years of such an education are manifold, and of these a large school promises many which cannot be found in a small one.

In after life a boy must encounter many men and of many classes ; the more varied his experience of manners and character before his entrance into the dangerous and ever-changing paths along which his way to success in maturity (or, as we must always bear in mind, to failure in maturity) must be sought, the better he will be fitted to choose the right one.

How stern the competition and fierce the struggle to be passed before success is reached, many of us, alas ! know by bitter experience ; and many of us cannot but think that a very little care bestowed at an early stage in life would have saved some of the friends that have dropped into hopeless oblivion on the way.

At a large school competition is keener, success more glorious ; and the frequent change of hands, as a boy passes from class to class, and pursues his studies under different masters, prevents him from falling into that fixed groove of thinking, and manner of acting, that are so fatal to success in after life. A man of business must be able to see both sides of a subject, and the power of judging impartially the merits of a question in all its aspects can only be obtained by early cultivation of the habit of grasping each detail with full consideration of its bearing on the main subject.

A boarding-school is undoubtedly far better than a day-school, and residence at an University infinitely more valuable than the mere obtaining a degree as an unattached student. But here the question of expense comes in, and the difference in expense of living at home and residence in a master’s house and at college, is very considerable ; the comparative expenses of residence and boarding at home may be gained from the chapters in the present work on schools and universities. It must not be forgotten that residence in a master’s house gives a lad the benefit of readily obtaining a certain amount of private tuition and explanation of difficulties encountered in a day’s course of study, which many fathers are unable to give at home ; and this for a boy who is compelled to hold his own with other lads of his age is a benefit not to be underrated. The fear felt by so many parents as to how the hours of recreation and idleness are spent is, I think, a feeling to be got over. Sooner or later a lad must be left to act on his own responsibility, and, I think, the sooner the better ; the comparative freedom of action enjoyed by a schoolboy away from his home is always controlled and guided by an experienced and watchful hand, and is a good preparation for the more entire freedom that must come one day or the other. The choice between a day-school and a boarding-school must, however, be made mainly with reference to expense ; but it is essential that in either case boys should be encouraged to take a part in all manly games and exercises, the advantages gained being incalculably greater than can be derived from any other employment of the hours of recreation.

Manly sports promote a quickness of eye and readiness of hand, steady nerves and powers of endurance, which can never be out of place in any circumstance of life, and the robust health acquired by the practice of them cannot but be conducive to the healthiness of mind before all things necessary to profitable education. Boys cannot be always learning from dry and uncongenial books ; let them in their leisure hours learn to be men, or you may be sure they will employ them in the acquisition of very undesirable information and the study of very unprofitable literature.

We hear a great deal in the present time about corporal punishment. We wonder if any one could conscientiously say he ever knew a boy who so keenly felt the degradation of it as to be unprofitably affected by it in after life 1 if so, we are sure that boy would not have passed a medical examination.

As far as we can recollect in our own school days, the boy who took his caning like a man was regarded, certainly by his fellow boys, if not by his masters too, rather as an object of admiration than as a degraded being ; and we feel sure the mental effort required to endure the momentary pain without flinching was a healthy one. As to the more serious and solemn ceremony of a public birching, that was of the rarest occurrence, and only resorted to in cases which left no alternative between that and expulsion, and was surely the more merciful punishment both for the culprit and his parents.

In the days of our early youth, when about ten years old,

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we were for some time at a school where corporal punishment was held in abhorrence, and have not yet forgotten the dreary impositions and endless hours of imprisonment, under which we constantly groaned in solitary suffering. We have shed more tears in a single sunny afternoon than a thousand callings would have moved us to, and many a similarly situated and miserable urchin has done the same. Say what one will, tears are an unmanly weakness, and solitary confinement is an unmanly and unnatural punishment. I am afraid the author was a dreadfully aggravating child in those days ; anyway, he had the satisfaction before he left that school (for satisfaction it was even in those childish days) of seeing the collapse of the system. The mild and humane head master was moved by his pupils’ obstinacy 'to forget his mildness and humanity, and a considerable number of wales were the result. Canes were unknown in that establishment, but he used a riding whip with considerable effect.

A morally and physically healthy boy is never the worse for a caning, but he often is for too many impositions ; the fault of a moment’s thoughtlessness is surely best punished by a momentary pang.

Of course this only applies to the smaller boys of a school, and in any case the cane must be used with the greatest discretion, but the subject of corporal punishment has been so carefully considered of late years that very few objections remain to the modified iise of it now made, while its absence leads to many more serious resxdts.

Most large schools have now a modern as well as a classical side, in which the systems of education pursued are on a different plan ; to choose which of these systems is likely to prove the more useful to a boy in after life is not so easy.

It cannot be doubted that the old plan of instructing the boys at our great public schools in classics, to the almost entire exclusion of other branches of learning, in some cases not even excepting mathematics, had its advantages ; a classical education is the soundest and best groundwork on which to base any special learning, but time becomes daily more and more precious, and a lad of sixteen must now have got beyond the groundwork, and should have a definite idea of what his future life is to be, and have made some considerable progress in the acquirement of the special knowledge required to make a fair start in it. Indeed, for many professions and all mercantile pursuits in which a lad has to start at the bottom of the ladder, sixteen is too old by a year at least, but should he be lucky enough to have a berth open for him to slip into, a year or two more at school is never wasted, while a lad intended for the University, or professions to which a university education is essential, will not leave school with advantage until he is at least eighteen years of age.

For such a lad the classical side of as large a school as possible is the best place of education. In comparing the average cost of education at schools of various classes, it should be borne in mind that, up to a certain limit, money spent on a lad’s school education can scarcely be wasted ; if it is, it is the lad’s own fault, or his and his father’s combined, for no school education can be complete unless every core is taken to supplement it with that advice and fatherly counsel which it is out of the power of the schoolmaster to give. It should never -be forgotten that a schoolmaster, no matter how skilful and conscientious he may be, can never supply the place of a parent ; or, on the other hand, that a parent never possesses the impartiality of judgment necessary to enable him to act the part of a schoolmaster to his own son, even if he be endowed with the technical knowledge and patience of character which enable him to make the best of schoolmasters to the sons of others.

Let education at home and education at school be quite distinct ; they must run side by side, but should not interfere with each other. The duty of the father is to teach the application of the wisdom instilled by the schoolmaster.

It is the earnest hope of the author that this little book may prove of practical utility to all who are interested in the placing either sons or wards in a position to commence life on their own responsibility. It is not intended to compete with any of the many able books on education at present in existence, but to supply a want which has long been felt of a reliable handbook on the connection which exists between education and the use of it to be made in after life.

Education is necessarily but the commencement, but it may prove useless or of inestimable value, as it is forgotten or not, that it must be conducted with a view to fitting a boy to become a man, and must (to be of any use at all) be of a nature to enable him to surmount by his

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unaided efforts the difficulties to be encountered in the future. “ Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” said the wisest of wise men ; and none of us can fail to trace the influence of our early bringing up and education throughout our lives. Begin early, for a child begins to learn before he can speak ; but be careful to begin at the beginning, and keep the end always in view, that no time may be wasted in going back. Few of us have more money than we can well employ, and education is a costly thing. It is hoped that the ensuing pages will show how the necessary education for obtaining entrance to a position, with fair prospects for the future, may be obtained at the least possible cost ; while the second pai’t of the work will explain the necessary steps to be taken to gain admission to the various professions and mercantile pursuits. The two parts necessarily have much in common ; university education not unfrequently becomes a profession in itself ; but for some professions to which it is generally considered essential, it may be more or less profitably dispensed with. It is, however, greatly to be desired in itself, and few men lucky enough to possess sufficient means to render them independent of the profession that they nominally practise will not regret the neglect of the many advantages to be obtained by the extension of their education for the three or four years necessary to obtain a university dcgi'ee. But for the man of limited means, residence at the university, desirable as it is, is by no means always likely to repay the time devoted to it and expense incurred. The places obtained in examinations at school generally give a very fair test of the honours likely to be gained at a university. I have before me the last “ Greats ” class list issued at Oxford, in which appear two or three names of boys which I can remember to have seen in their school class lists four years ago ; and I think they retain without exception the relative places in the various classes corresponding with the promise given by their performances at school. One name in the first class and one in the second I remember distinctly as having been for many half years first and second in their classes as they moved up the forms of a great public school ; while one in the fourth class is that of a promising boy who could never run the other two very closely, though always at a respectable distance behind.

If a boy is evidently unfitted for great attainments in the way of learning, it will not be long before the watchful observer finds it out, and the wisest course is to turn his attention at once to some other more congenial branch of knowledge.

For some the luxury of an education completed at the university will be quite out of reach, without pecuniary assistance ; for these, care must be taken lest they pursue too long a course of study unfitted to their future occupations, unless, indeed, they show such unmistakable signs of aptitude for learning as will render them almost certain to obtain one or more scholarships in aid of their university expenses.

The future life of a boy is a question to be decided by the parents. Schoolmasters will generally advise the sending of a smart boy to the universities ; but without sufficient means to maintain a proper position at college, and a definite prospect of what he is going to do after leaving it, a boy is altogether out of place there; while one really good enough to do well at the university is always able to obtain a tolerably lucrative appointment in government service with the aid of a little “ coaching ” by a tutor who devotes his attention to preparing boys for competitive examinations. If a boy has to earn his living by his own unaided exertions, the earlier he starts the better.

For all mercantile pursuits a boy must be taken away from school at an early age ; the longer he remains there the more chance there is of his developing a taste for knowledge for its own sake, which, from a purely mercantile point of view, is to be avoided. In a busy and densely populated country like this, no man has more time or ability than he will require to obtain success in his own branch of business. Not many years ago it was a point for most anxious consideration at what time a boy could most profitably be withdrawn from school. Now, the feeling that a more general education is needed than the old system — that of classics, with just a smattering of figures, and a still more meagre knowledge of modern languages — has gained ground ; and should a boy be left a year or two longer at school than he could safely have pursued the old course of study, he can still be gaining knowledge which will be of practical value to him in the future of a mercantile career. As soon as a definite decision is arrived at as to the future career of a lad, the question of education is much simplified, the ttow TO EDUCATE THEM.

great secret of its success being to conduct it always with a view to its future utility. To diminish the expense of an education, the only plan is to make it extend over less time, thus curtailing the outlay it involves, and obtaining a speedier return for the money expended, and the only way to shorten it, without impairing the usefulness of instruction, is to restrict it as far as possible to the object to be gained. The design that will be followed throughout by the author will be to show how this object may be obtained ; keeping in mind, however, that a certain amount of general information and moral training is needed to enable our boys to grow up both men and gentlemen, and to discharge, to their own pr’ofit, the duties of the various stations in life they are destined to occupy, without forgetting that it is not the least part of their duty, both to themselves and to their country, to be, above all things, conscientious and upright in all their doings.

Chapter I. Education At Home

A right commencement is in all things the surest forerunner of a right ending. The first impressions the infant mind is capable of receiving are necessarily taken from home surroundings ; and from the first impressions the mind will take its tone, for it is far more difficult to unlearn than to learn — harder far to forget than to remember. It is the earliest recollection, the first ideas presented to the dawning intelligence, the lessons learnt at a mother’s knee that, unconsciously perhaps, but certainly, take the place throughout man’s life of the instinct of the lower creation. The brain is set working before it has acquired reasoning power, and in after life, when we speak of conscience, we may, I think, almost always trace its dictates (in its popular sense) to the precepts and fixed principles acquired in our days of infancy. Impressions gained before the power of reasoning is developed are hard to obliterate by any subsequent efforts of reason ; having been unconsciously acquired, they affect all our actions unconsciously, and hence it is of the utmost importance that in the earliest impressions conveyed to the infant mind there should be a clear distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. A child is only too ready to assert its own powers of judgment, and yet this very power of judgment is in great part only but the reflection of external things, photographed upon the unconscious brain through the medium of infant eyes and ears.

Man’s reasoning power is never perfected, and very rarely (if in any instance) has its fullest possible degree of development been reached ; but it is the duty of all, in any way concerned in the bringing up of children, to see that no pains are spared in the endeavour to prevent anything hurtful to its development being placed in their way.

Children during the first few years of their life are often

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necessarily, and oftener still by the neglect or carelessness of parents, left during the greater part of their time to the society and custody of servants ; parents cannot, therefore, be too careful in the selection of properly qualified and reliable persons to take charge of their offspring; still it must not be forgotten that one word from a mother or father will outweigh many heard from the lips of a nurse; for not only will the comparative rarity of children’s opportunities of learning from their parents render what they hear more likely to leave an impression on their minds, but in the conversation of their nurses and the other servants they will always hear their parents spoken of, if not with deference, at least as persons of authority, and in a superior and more important sphere of life. If a mother can and will undertake the earliest instructionof her children, so much the better; but at least it is her duty to make herself thoroughly acquainted with what they are learning and how they progress. One of the chief objections to children being left too entirely in the society of servants is that they often acquire the habit of regarding the everyday manners of ladies and gentlemen as a sort of restraint upon habits acquired in the freedom and ease of the nursery and kitchen. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon them that the drawing-room is to be their home as soon as their age shall entitle them to a place in society. I think the principal difficulty in the earliest education of a child is to uphold sufficiently the authority of nurses and enforce a proper discipline, whilst keeping always before its mind that it is of a different social standing to that of its daily companions; but it is of great importance that a child should have a proper appreciation of this fact. In after life the degree in which this distinction has been realised will show itself in the natural manner (or the reverse) in which the right course in matters of etiquette and custom of good society is taken. Unaffectedness and ease of manner arc the surest sigus of good breeding. A man who adopts a certain course of action because it is the gentlemanly one or the correct thing to do, must at any rate feel the possibility of his adopting another course. A man who acts in a gentlemanly manner is not necessarily a gentleman, blit whatever a gentleman does is gentlemanly, and no doubt that wonderful instinct which always prompts a true gentleman to take the right course in circumstances where delicate distinction is necessary, is to a certain extent hereditary, yet I am inclined u to think far more is due to nursery training than to any amount of “ blue blood,” and that attention to apparently trivial habits is at least as necessary as to many things often rated as of far more importance.