Education and school

Front matter

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CHAPTER I. TLXeov y'lfxiav iravrbs

If half more than the whole be reckoned,

Make sure the first half, and then seize the second.

Education is the gaoler of time. Many boast of killino; Time, but few catch him. Running after him is no good; he must be met, and seized by both his ears (which the Fables have forgotten to cut off), and when they are well . twisted, he will tell some valuable secrets. He may just as well not be caught at all, as allowed to keep his secrets. But Education puts a hook in Time's ear, and makes him do his bidding. And whether men make Time do their bidding, or follow where he drags them, is no slight difference. It is the difference between going up hill, or tumbling down hill. The progress of the world turns on a certain mastery over time, and all the main distinctions of man from man, and class from class, depend on it. For, in a free country, all classes are working classes, and the superiority of one class to another in the long run depends on the value of their work ; and the value of the work depends on the capital, intellectual or other, required before the work can be done ; and both intellectual skill and money, in the ordinary course of events, are the result of a mastery over time. Each generation hands over much of its acquired capital to the next.

But money differs from intellectual stores in this important particular, that it can be passed on at once to a new possessor, whereas each man must for himself gain possession of the intellectual capital of past generations. The intellectual rank and the skill required for high class intellectual work must be conquered afresh by every man and every class daily. And time is required for this, so there is a constant demand for time. Thus, the main laws of society are simple, and. excepting where men approach more nearly to the condition of savages, rank is founded on unalterable distinctions. For though fortunate and gifted men in a free country can rise rapidly from class to class, the classes of themselves admit of no change, excepting greater graduation. Wherever there is valuable labour and intellectual power, wherever man rises above the savage state, and becomes higher and nobler in his work and objects, the value of the work done, and the time and capital expended in doing it, will determine the rank and class of the workers. / Rank and class in a well-ordered community are but other names for a mastery over time, and a wise use of it. This does not depend on opinion, it is a law of nature, and however men rebel against the idea, and endeavour to make numbers their standard, their efforts will be vain. As far as they are successful, they drop down the scale of powers to the savage's principle of brute force a little disguised, and even then, in an artificial state of society, have at once to repudiate their principle, and choose individuals by a different test to carry out their will and govern in their name. As long as time is required to learn high-class work, as lono^ as some kinds of work are better than others, there can be no change in the main class distinctions. Unless some great reformer of creation will relieve mankind from the necessity,

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Ccach generation in turn, of getting a living from the earth for itself, this law will remain in force; a necessity which decides at once and for ever that the great majority can have no mastery over time, as they have to begin to labour early in order to live, and to continue doing so. Until this law of labouring in order to live is reversed, time, the great arbiter of wealth and power, is the master and not the servant of men, and will continue to dispense his favours- only to those who are independent of him, and can treat him as they please.

Let it be assumed that on an average this law of labour comes into force at ten years of age for the majority. At ten years of age, then, the majority of mankind have to leave off preparation for life, and begin to work for life, whereas the time of preparation for the higher kinds of labour does not close till the learner is twenty, or even thirty years of age. On this mastery over time depends the progress made by each man, each class, each nation. The classes are sometimes agitated by an idle fear, that those beneath them will oust them from their rank by rising in intelligence. The fear is absurd ; no rise in intelligence can take place in a lower class without a correspondingly greater rise in the higher class, if it chooses. Individuals may rise and fall by special excellence or defects, hut the classes cannot change places as long as valuable work requires time to learn how to do it, and the time is not to be got. It is not possible, for instance, that a class which is compelled to leave off training at ten years of age can oust, by superior intelligence, a class that is able to spend four years more in acquiring skill. Neither can they oust those who can give another four years. It is a race. A must be very speedy, or B wonderfully rotund, if A can run ten miles whilst B runs five. The years of preparation are so much start, which cannot be lost without the most culpable negligence. The race is endless, and the great majority are tied by the leg, from the necessity of getting food and clothing, whilst those who are unimpeded pass on, and the goal still recedes from the most earnest striving into an eternity of successful progress, and uncompleted .power.

Those mighty ten years of training, or five years, or three years, will still keep the first-class, first ; the second, second ; and so on. Unless any class chooses to throw away its start, and by gross self-indulgence, or by sacrificing the future to present income, to put itself on a level with those who cannot, however much they may wish it, have the same mastery over time. It is not even a waiting race, where endurance might make up for want of speed. Men die, and with them die the special qualities each possessed; whatever he has gained is merged in the common treasury, and each generation starts again with the same general advantages over its predecessors that they had over theirs. The progress of life consists in a perpetual handing over to successors of the results of labour, with the perpetual necessity imposed on those successors of learning how to work and carry on these gains still further, unless they wish to lose them altogether. So the same conditions are always to be renewed, only that, whilst those who have no mastery over time remain comparatively stationary, the hoard of collected power becomes greater and greater for the children of those who have mastery over time, the interval is widened between them and those behind them, and the start gained by each generation is greater ; because, in proportion as the common stock of knowledge increases, more and more time is required by each generation in turn to learn how to make it their own. And every stage of successful progress is calculated to make any competition with the wise masters of time more hopeless.

But if knowledge has this power, and gives this advantage to its possessors, not only would the same classes in a nation maintain their places, but the same nation, which originally got the start of other nations, would still keep it and be first, and the relative position of mankind would be unchanged and unchangeable. We should not only have the same class-gradations that there were in ancient Egypt, or Assyria, or in any nation of the civilized early world, but those very nations would still be at the head of civilization, and leaders of the world as of old. For as each generation starts where its predecessor left off, each with its mighty ten years of hoarded time in advance with which to ransack the treasury of the past, these sets of ten years constantly added together, with the constant increase of the stores of knowledge and power collected unceasingly by all trained workers, would soon place any nation quite out of reach of any other nation that had been unable to cultivate knowledge in the same way, and an empire in this way a thousand years perhaps in advance of any other, could not possibly be overtaken by any after effort. Thus, the nations of the world would, by degrees, be classified according to the value of their work, just as the individuals in a nation fall into classes according to the value of their work ; and the great ruling nation at the head would at last have subordinate to it all other nations in a regular and unchangeable gradation, each occupied as they went on in a lower branch of work and knowledge, until a perpetual niggerdom would be the doom of the last to start ; who would have to find food and clothing for the rest, whilst the ruling class would devote all their lives to science, philosophy, and government. This is a perfectly logical deduction, and would certainly be true in practice, if knowledge was indeed all ; and if an advance in science, intellectual activity, and skill was anything more than an instrument, a means to an end, and a power.

If intellectual progress made men perfect, and was the true advancement of mankind, making men better as well as more powerful, we should still find Egypt, let us say, the first of the nations, by virtue of that law of nature which makes a good start all important, and gives the lead to those who first gain a mastery over time. If men really advanced as knowledge advanced, because knowledge advanced, the first civilized nation would continue to be the first civilized nation still. For it is absurd to speak of a perpetual growth towards perfect life from age to age of intellectual progress as the destiny of the world, and to state that the nation, in which this principle of perfect life was strongest, died in consequence. But this is the fact as far as regards power gained by knowledge. Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and multitudes of minor potentates, worked, were civilized, gathered in knowledge, and, with knowledge, power ; then power brought temptation, and the opportunity of gratifying lust, and even whilst they triumphed they fell. Each in turn rising like giants in bodily and intellectual strength, falling like drunken giants, as each drunkard blindly struck out in riotous insolence, wounding alike friend and foe, and insulting all. History hitherto is only the record of the drunken sons of knowledge pulling down on their own heads the palace they have raised.

io EDL'CATIOX [Chap.

There is another element of progress to be taken into consideration, the guiding principle, whatever that may be, that sets in motion every instrumental power, whether of money, bodily strength, or intellectual strength, and is alone truly man. For, surely, we do not consider man to be the body, though man cannot be separated in thought from the body, and would cease to be man without it. Nevertheless, the body is not man. We do not love or hate a person simply for bodily qualities, because of bodily strength or bodily weakness. But in a perfect being every quality or feeling is finally merged in love, and as far as man is perfect, all excellence tends finally to excite love, his being having been formed to take this impress.

"We needs must love the highest wlim we see it*." Accordingly, children honour their parents, though they grow old and weak; and parents do not love their children less, or think them less the same persons, because they ma}^ be ill, or lose a limb. Yet, of course, if the body was what we recognize as the true man, and loved as such, the loss of a limb would by so much diminish his being, and with

* Tennyson. Idylls of the King.

I.] AND SCHOOL. II

it our love for him. This is the case with an animal ; no one keeps a horse with its leg off, and for this reason. The body, then, is not man. But is the case different with intellect and intellectual knowledge? Is the intellect the man ? Do we really love people because they are clever and know much ? We ought to do so if cleverness is the quality which makes man man. But if this was the case, we should transfer our love as soon as any one who was cleverer, and knew more than our former friend, appeared. For love must follow the perception of true excellence of being, though it need not be affected at all by anything not essentially being. And friends would be cast off like old hunters and lame horses, in favour of more distinguished claimants. Nay, we should love the same person differently at different times ; differently in sickness, and differently in health, according as his intellectual power was strong or weak. But the supposition that intellect is the true being of man, and that love depends on intellect is too absurd, when plainly stated, however much mankind may hazily honour it. Intellect is only the highest instrument man possesses. Money is a great power as an instrument, but it is justly considered vulgar to be purse-proud. Bodily strength was a very great power, aDd is still in some degree ; yet to live for the body only is to live the life of a beast. So also intellectual strength is a great power ; but to live for the intellect only is, as far as it is possible, to be a devil, not a man. All these powers are necessary but as instruments, not as guides, not as supreme ; however much they have usurped the throne, and are worshipped with a fond idolatry by the majority, although they may be combined with the most destructive or the meanest qualities. Men want to be in extremities in the desert before they find out that water is better than gold, and love, that will share its last drop, than the intellect that schemes how to rob you of your own. No one ought to reverence the clever thief; (the Egyptians however with great consistency did ;) and Reynard the Fox though highly successful, after skinning his old friend's toes for boots for himself, and cutting a knapsack out of another old crony's back, does not inspire much love, and is not generally quoted as a good example.

Hence it comes to pass that although both

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bodily strength and intellectual strength are needed for work, and trained to work and are the instruments by which the class rank of individuals and nations is attained, they do not ultimately decide the fate of their possessors. They are nothing more than instruments, capable of abuse as well as use, and the start gained by them only continues to profit so long as the true governing power, man's true self, that power by which love and hate exist irrespective of strength and knowledge, directs these instruments and this start to a right end. This power is supreme, it is the source from which all voluntary actions flow, to which all actions in their effect return. This power is life, and life as far as it is true, does make perfect. True life makes all its instruments perfect, and puts all to a good use. Both body and intellect, guided by right love and right hate, can do wonderful and lasting things.

The world has yet to try the experiment whether true life will not keep a nation from falling, and maintain it in the foremost rank. Or rather, whether any nation will so seek after true life, rather than mere knowledge, and hold it fast when found, as to ensure the right use of the two slaves of the lamp, for such they are, bodily and intellectual strength. The true life-power then must be the object, if it can be attained, both of men and of nations. It is clear at a glance that it is not inherent in man, for if it was, no teaching or training would be required. There might be growth just as the body grows, but if the nature of man was good, and was true life, men would be good because they were men, and not require to be taught goodness ; just as man's body grows, because it is the nature of the body to grow, and food is received and digested by a natural and, at least as to its effect, unconscious process. That goodness requires to be taught declares at once a fallen nature. That there was original righteousness is evidenced both by its vestiges as a natural growth, however faint they may be, and also, to a Christian, by the promised gift of a new life, and grace to restore life in nature, not simply of a law to teach. But there is now no natural progress in the unassisted nature of man towards good. This is evident in the case of individuals, although in the case of the onward progress of the world other elements are so mixed up as to disturb the judgment.

If there was a natural progress, age would be equivalent to goodness, or at least to improvement. But this is not the case; growing old is not growing good, unless the beginning of growth is good. Age only adds to the kind of growth, whatever that may be. In the case of a bad man, where there is no disturbing element to perplex and warp our judgment, it is evident that every successive year makes him worse, unless this growth is checked, and the older he grows, the worse he is, the more difficult to be moved, the harder against impression for good ; and if bodily vices are the chief evil, every year breaks down bodily life more and more, and kills him more quickly. But if this is the case with the individual, what is there to jDrevent its being the case with a collection of individuals, a nation? The natural progress is not altered by numbers ; one sheep or a million sheep are all sheep. If age intensifies evil in the individual man and brings death, age will intensify evil in the collection of men and bring death. And this was just the state of the heathen world, and what the wisest heathen saw. The sons of knowledge grew, to die ; and the ancient philosophers and writers mournfully acknowledge that man, as they knew him, grew worse and worse in each generation, in spite of civilization, nay, "because of it. For there is no natural progress towards perfection.

Nature has to be restored, not merely to be taught. But because the perverted intellect must share in this renovation, and teaching is the engine that mainly moves the intellect, mankind have mistaken the pains necessary to chasten, purify, humble, and elevate the intellect, for the work of Life ; and have curiously placed intellect on a throne, because of the trouble necessary to dethrone it ; mistaking the importance of bringing the greatest instrumental power under the guidance of a right principle of life, for the instrument itself being all powerful : whereas the usurped power of the instrument is the main result of the perversion of the nature which has to be restored. Intellectual power and knowledge then as guiding principles are usurpers, and do not lead to perfection. The lost life requires to be restored, there is need that man should do good out of right feeling and a right state of being. But this restoration of a fallen nature which needs renewing, is gradual, and is therefore capable of training. The life-powers require replanting, man's nature wants to cast out false feeling and to feel rightly, to love and hate truly, from its own inward essence ; and to a certain extent cultivation and training pertain to the guiding power under these circumstances, as well as to the instrumental powers. It becomes then all important that this training should be of the best kind. True education undertakes this. True education is nothing less than bringing everything that men have learnt from God, or from experience, to bear first upon the moral and spiritual being by means of a well-governed society and healthy discipline, so that it should love and hate aright, and through this, secondly, making the body and intellect perfect, as instruments necessary for carrying on the work of earthly progress ; training the character, the intellect, the body, each through the means adapted to each. This is the object of education ; and all the works of discipline and self-government, of exercising the intellect, of exercising the body, go on at once, and, in a good system, mutually support each other in their appointed places.

Once more, then, we are brought to the question of time. Those mighty ten years still determine, not perhaps who is the Lest man, for goodness cannot be gauged like Greek or a knowledge of Euclid, but certainly who are the most highly developed representatives of humanity, amongst whom the most perfect men will be found : not mere intellectual gladiators proud of their skill standing by the road side to cut and slash the burdened travellers, if any chance to be a head taller than his fellows, or to bear a more precious burden ; levying black mail on working men ; but well-trained thoughtful labourers themselves, able perhaps to fight, but viewing the necessity as a sore hindrance to truth, and no glory. Those mighty ten years of preparation and practice determine, as they are used or abused, the position of each nation in the scale of creation. How much depends, then, on where and how they are spent. Whatever may be thought, a great school in a great nation is nothing less than a heart in the body receiving the young blood, and sending it out through every vein, and artery, and limb, aerated and imbued with its power. If the heart is diseased, what of the blood? If the heart is healthy, it will send

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health and healthy energy through the whole. The mighty ten years that change the fate of the world are passed at school, and all experience proves that with few exceptions the after life is cast in the same mould as the life at school was cast in. This is certain, there is no such thing as making up lost time. If a man has powers by which he can waste years and nevertheless outstrip his companions, he can neither catch up his true self, what he might have been without waste, nor outstrip the mark that still flies before him in the infinite space of undiscovered knowledge. There is no real getting back lost time. As is the boy so is the man, and education is nothing less than the presiding power that determines the fate of both. Education is training true life.

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Chapter II

He put in his thumb, and he pulled out a plum,

And said, What a good boy am I.

EDUCATION is training true life. But too often there is no more sure barometer of the state of the family finances than the sum spent in education. Retrenchment first begins there. And rightly so, if education means,

Getting the children out of the way with an

easy conscience : which is a luxury. Getting them an advance on the home nursery :

which is a luxury.

Getting them a good connexion : which is a

doubtful luxury.

Giving them a chance in an intellectual lottery : which is a chance.

Therefore if retrenchment is needed, by all means let it begin in these things.

CHAPTEE III.

What is Truth ? said Pilate ; and would not stay for an answer.

Bacon's Essays, I.

Now for the mighty ten years.

There is a double object in school training ; first, the training the life ; secondly, the training the intellect and body : first, the setting the loving and hating on a right track ; secondly, the training the instrumental powers rightly.

The first can only be done indirectly ; for formation of character and a right spirit is only in a very slight degree capable of being made a matter of imparted knowledge. Boys or men become brave, and hardy, and true, not by being told to be so, but by being nurtured in a brave, and hardy, and true way, surrounded with objects likely to excite these feelings, exercised in a manner calculated to draw them out unconsciously. For all true feelingis unconscious in proportion to its perfection. And as there is no moment in which habits are not in process of formation, there is nothing whatever which cannot be made to bear on this process ; nothing indeed which does not of necessity bear on it. In a school, therefore, it is of the utmost importance that the whole government and machinery should in its minutest particulars do this by perfect truth and perfect freedom.

It follows then that no falseness in the government, no falseness in the working plan, in or out of school, can make boys true. Whatever is professed must be done.

If a school professes to teach, then every boy must have his share of teaching. There must be no knowledge-scramble, or the untruth will make itself felt.

If a school professes to train, then every boy must be really known, his wants supplied, his character consulted, or the untruth will make itself felt.

If a school professes to board boys, then every boy must find proper food, and proper lodging, and no meanness, or the untruth will make itself felt.

A sufficient number of masters, variety of occupation, a feeling of being known and cared for, a spot free from intrusion, however small, are neces-

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sities in a good school ; and the want of these, or of any of the other real requirements for training and teaching properly, is a sort of acted falsehood ; for that which is professed is not done. It does not the least follow that this is the fault of the men engaged in these schools. The constitution and legal status of a very large number of schools absolutely compels this kind of imperfect system, as will be proved further on. And even where this is not the case, immemorial custom and popular opinion, at least as far as hearty support is an evidence of popular opinion, contribute to maintain such defects, and are almost as strong as law. It is not possible for the wisest or bravest men, individually, to break through the systems in which they find themselves working units. They can but toil and toil, as they do, to make the best of it, and lament their own helplessness to do more.

But the fact remains, whatever may be the cause ; and a lower standard of truth and efficiency must be looked for, wherever the theory of a school is at variance with its practice. It is a certainty that the continual presence of any false influence in a society must have a great effect for evil evenwhen the cause

24 ED VGA TION [Chap.

is not known or suspected. To train the life truly, implies a thorough atmosphere of truth. Like mountain air, the lungs should expand to drink it in, and the limbs will feel the freshness ; whilst the languid step and feeble breathing are too surely the consequence of living over sewers, however hidden they may be. Poison is not less poison because it is invisible, or life less life for the same reason. Good air is always invisible, and the subtle working of a great principle of life and truth can no more be caught and labelled than the virtue of air itself. But some of the necessary conditions, in the absence of which it cannot exist, may be laid down without difficulty.

The training of the life then in the mighty ten years we have to deal with, depends on the conditions under which the life is passed, and is affected for good or evil by everything with which the living being is brought in contact. So that every word that in the following pages bears on the proper teaching, boarding, amusements, or studies of each boy, and the machinery necessary in consequence, treats also of true life and healthy existence, just as an essay on drainage, ventilation,

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food, proper house-room, proper employment, would be treating of health. And the poor and the school-boy are alike in this fatal point, neither can change their own circumstances, their dwellings, their occupations, those walls and sanitary conditions, which may be, nevertheless, matters of life or death. It must be done by power from above, or not done at all. So, if truth and honour are required in a school, all things must be framed in such a way as to work out the objects professed with thorough truth ; and any want of truth, anything that is false will inevitably find its way into the life of the boys, . and taint it. And no wonder; nothing is detected so soon as inconsistency, and eyes looking upwards see sharply. Those who stand low on the ladder observe the dirt under the boots of those above them, however spotless their coats may be, and are apt to care little for preachments dropped down from aloft, telling them to keep clean and be good. Those who look up ought to see no dirt. Truth is required to produce truth, and when the machinery is right, and all things are working truly, truth may be fairly expected in return, and boys may be trusted, and can be trusted, safely.