It surely must have been Salem House, or an inst.i.tution very like it, that produced the delicious letter quoted by Arnold in his General Report for 1867. Even Mr. Anstey Guthrie never excelled it in the letter dictated by Dr. Grimstone to his pupils at Crichton House.
"MY DEAR PARENTS.--The antic.i.p.ation of our Christmas vacation abounds in peculiar delights. Not only that its "festivities," its social gatherings and its lively amus.e.m.e.nts crown the old year with happiness and mirth, but that I come a guest commended to your hospitable love by the performance of all you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and flowers. And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my conduct and the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly ill.u.s.trate. It is with confidence I promise that the close of every year shall find me advancing in your regard by constantly observing the precepts of my excellent tutors and the example of my excellent parents.
"We break up on Thursday, the 11th of December instant, and my impatience of the short delay will a.s.sure my dear parents of the filial sentiments of
"Theirs very sincerely,
"N.
"P.S. We shall rea.s.semble on the 19th of January. Mr. and Mrs. P.
present their respectful compliments."
The present writer lately asked a close observer of educational matters if Arnold had produced any practical effect on Secondary Education, and the answer was--"He pulled down the strongholds of such as Mr. Creakle."
If he did that, he did much; and it is a eulogy which he would have greatly appreciated. Let us see how far it was deserved. Let us admit at the outset that Mr. Squeers is dead; but then he was dead before Arnold took in hand to reform our system of Education. Mr. Creakle, it is to be feared, still exists, though his former a.s.sistant, the more benign Mr. Mell, has to some extent supplanted him. Dr. Blimber is, perhaps, a little superannuated, but still holds his own. Dr. Grimstone is going strong and well. In a word, the Private School for bigger boys--(we are not thinking of Preparatory Schools for little boys)--still exists and even flourishes. Now, if Arnold could have had his way, the Private School for bigger boys would long since have disappeared. "Mr. Creakle"s stronghold" would have been pulled down, and Salem House and Crichton House and Lycurgus House Academy would have crumbled into ruins.
And what would he have raised in their place? He wrote so often and so variously about Education--now in official reports, now in popular essays, now again in private letters, that it is not difficult to detect some inconsistencies, some contradictions, some changes of view. Indeed, it needs but the alteration of a single word to justify, at least to some extent, the "d.a.m.ning sentence," which, according to Arnold, Mr.
Frederic Harrison "launched" against him in 1867. "We seek vainly in Mr.
A. a system of philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative." For "Philosophy" read "Education," and the reproach holds good. For in Education, as in everything else that he touched, he proceeded rather by criticism than by dogma--by showing faults in existing things rather than by theoretically constructing perfection. Yet, after all said and done, his general view of the subject is quite plain. He had in his mind an idea or scheme of what National Education ought to be; and, though from time to time he changed his view about details and methods, the general outline of his scheme is clear enough.
One of the most characteristic pa.s.sages which he ever wrote is that in which he describes his interview in 1865 with Cardinal Antonelli, then Secretary of State at Rome. "When he asked me what I thought of the Roman schools, I said that, for the first time since I came on the Continent, I was reminded of England. I meant, in real truth, that there was the same easy-going and absence of system on all sides, the same powerlessness and indifference of the State, the same independence in single inst.i.tutions, the same free course for abuses, the same confusion, the same lack of all idea of _co-ordering_ things, as the French say--that is, of making them work fitly together to a fit end; the same waste of power, therefore the same extravagance, and the same poverty of result."
Enlarging on this congenial theme, and applying it to England and English requirements, he promulged in 1868 a very revolutionary scheme for Public Education. At the apex of the pyramid there should be a Minister of Education. "Merely for administrative convenience he is, indeed, indispensable. But it is even more important to have _a centre in which to fix responsibility_." In 1886 he said to the teachers at Westminster, "I know the Duke of Richmond told the House of Lords that, as Lord President, he was Minister of Education--(laughter)--but really the Duke of Richmond"s sense of humour must have been slumbering when he told the House of Lords that. A man is not Minister of Education by taking the name, but by doing the functions. (Cheers.) To do the functions he must put his mind to the subject of education; and so long as Lord Presidents are what they are, and education is what it is, a Lord President will not be a man who puts his mind to the subject of education. A Vice-President is not, on the Lord President"s own showing, and cannot be, Minister for Education. He cannot be made responsible for faults and neglects. Now what we want in a Minister for Education is this--a centre where we can fix the responsibility." This great and responsible officer, who presumably was to be a Cabinet Minister and change with the changes of administration, was to preside over the whole education of the country. The Universities, the Public Schools, the Middle-Cla.s.s Schools, and the Elementary Schools were all to be, in greater or less degree, subject to his sway. The Minister was to be a.s.sisted by a Council of Education, "comprising, without regard to politics, the personages most proper to be heard on questions of public education." It was to be, like the Council at the India Office, consultative only, but the Minister was to be bound to take its opinion on all important measures. It should be the special duty of this Council to advise on the graduation of schools, on the organization of examinations both in the schools and in the Universities, and to adjust them to one another. The Universities were not to be increased in number, but all such anomalous inst.i.tutions as King"s College and University College were to be co-ordinated to the existing Universities; and the Universities were to establish "faculties" in great centres of population, supply professors and lecturers, and then examine and confer degrees. Then the country should be mapped out into eight or ten districts, and each of these districts should have a Provincial School-Board, which should "represent the State in the country," keep the Minister informed of local requirements, and be the organ of communication between him and the schools in its jurisdiction. The exact amount of interference, inspection, and control which the Minister, the Council, and the Boards should exercise should vary in accordance with the grade of the schools: it should be greater in the elementary schools, less in the higher. But, in their degree, all, from Eton downwards, were to be subject to it. Then came the most revolutionary part of the whole scheme. Mr. Creakle and his congeners were to be abolished. They were not to be put to a violent death, but they were to be starved out. The whole face of the country is studded with small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary training-places of the Middle Cla.s.s. Where they did not exist, similar schools were to be created by the State--"Royal or Public Schools"--and these, like all the rest, were to be subject to the Minister and to the Provincial Boards. Arnold contended that ancient schools so revived, and modern schools so const.i.tuted, would have a dignity and a status such as no private school could attain, and would be free from the pretentiousness and charlatanism which he regarded as the bane of private education. The inspection and control of these Public Schools would be in the hands of competent officers of the State, whereas the private school is appraised only by the vulgar and uneducated cla.s.s that feeds it.
And so, descending from the Universities through Public Schools of two grades, we touch the foundation of the whole edifice--the Elementary Schools. On this all-important topic, he wrote in 1868: "About popular education I have here but a very few words to say. People are at last beginning to see in what condition this really is amongst us. Obligatory instruction is talked of. But what is the capital difficulty in the way of obligatory instruction, or indeed any national system of instruction, in this country? It is this: that the moment the working cla.s.s of this country have this question of instruction brought home to them, their self-respect will make them demand, like the working cla.s.ses of the Continent, _Public_ Schools, and not schools which the clergyman, or the squire, or the mill-owner calls "my school." And again: "The object should be to draw the existing Elementary Schools from their present private management, and to reconst.i.tute them on a munic.i.p.al basis."
That word which he italicized--_public_--is the key to his whole system.
The whole education of the country was to be Public. The Universities, already "public" in the sense that they are not private ventures, were to be made public in the sense that they were to be supervised and to some extent regulated by the State. The Public Schools, traditionally so-called, were to be made more really public by being brought under the Minister and the School-Boards. The lesser foundation-schools were to be made public by a redistribution of their revenues and a reconstruction of their system; and new schools, public by virtue of their creation, were to be put alongside of the older ones. So schools of private venture would be eliminated. And thus the whole elementary education of the country was to be taken out of the hands of societies or individuals, and was to be organized and conducted by the officials of the State. Finally, all four (or three, as you choose to reckon them) grades of public education were to be co-ordinated with one another and subordinated to a chief Minister of State presiding over a great department.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The House of the Rev. John Buckland, at Laleham
Where Matthew Arnold went to school from 1830-1836.
The Rev. John Buckland was his maternal Uncle
_Photo Ralph Lane_]
Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general outlines, and sufficiently far-reaching in its scope. But its author, promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one "capital difficulty" in the way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus: "The Public School for the people must rest upon the munic.i.p.al organization of the country. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the public elementary school has, and exists by having, the Commune, and the Munic.i.p.al Government of the Commune, as its foundations, and it could not exist without them. But we in England have our munic.i.p.al organization state to get; the country districts, with us, have at present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages, or of France before the Revolution.... The real preliminary to an effective system of popular education is, in fact, to provide the country with an effective munic.i.p.al organization."
It would be impossible, unless one could trace the mental processes of the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and other eminent persons who had a hand in constructing the Education Acts of 1892 and 1893, to say how far the system now in existence owes any of its features to the influence of Matthew Arnold. It is the lot of great thoughts to fall upon very different kinds of soil; to be trodden under foot by one set of enemies, and carried away by another; and yet sometimes to find a congenial lodgment, and after long years to spring into life and manifest themselves in very unexpected quarters. So it may well have been with Arnold"s educational theories. Certainly during the last five-and-thirty years people have come to regard Education in all its branches as far more a matter of public concern, far less a matter of private venture, than formerly. More and more we have come to see that the State and the Munic.i.p.ality, in their respective areas, have something to say on the matter. The idea of the Golden Ladder, having its base in the Elementary Schools and its top rung in the highest honours of the University, has taken hold of the public mind, and has pa.s.sed out of the region of abstractions into practical life.
Inst.i.tutions of Local Government have developed themselves on the lines desiderated by Arnold in 1868. The subordination of education to munic.i.p.al authority is a new and a risky experiment, but it is exactly the experiment which he wished to see. The resuscitation of the Edwardian and Elizabethan Grammar Schools all over the country has brought the notion of the Public School to the very door of the Middle Cla.s.s, and has shaken, if it has not yet destroyed, Mr. Creakle"s stronghold. Even in the matter of Denominational Education in the Elementary Schools, where many deem that a retrograde step has been taken, the State has acted on a hint which Arnold gave to the extreme reformers of his time.
"Most English Liberals," he said, "seem persuaded that our Elementary Schools should be undenominational, and their teaching secular; and that with a public elementary school it cannot well be otherwise. Let them clearly understand, however, that on the Continent generally--everywhere except in Holland--the public elementary school is denominational (of course with what we should call a "conscience clause") and its teaching religious as well as secular."
In one important respect the State, which has so often adopted his views, at once outstripped and fell short of his ideal. He was not a strong or undiscriminating advocate for Compulsory Education. He believed that, in the foreign countries where compulsion obtained, it was not the cause, but the effect, of a national feeling for education.
When a people set a high value on knowledge, they would insist that every child should have a chance of acquiring it. But you could not create that high value by compelling people to send their children to school. As late as the end of the year 1869, he seems to have feared that any legislation which hindered a child from working for its own or its parents" support would be highly unpopular and would be evaded. "A law of direct compulsion on the parent and child would probably be violated every day in practice; and, so long as this is the case, a law levelled at the employer is preferable."
But when those words were written, compulsion was near at hand. The Parliament of 1868-1874--the first elected by a democratic suffrage--was intent on Reform, and the right of a father to starve his child"s mind was strenuously denied. Forster, then Vice-President of the Council, was charged with the duty of preparing a Bill to establish Compulsory Education. Arnold was Forster"s brother-in-law, and "heard the contents" of the Bill in November, 1869. When in the following February it was brought in, he wrote: "I think William"s Bill will do very well. I am glad it is so little altered"; and, after the Second Reading, he wrote: "The majority on the Education Bill is a great relief; it will now, if William has tolerable luck, get through safely this session." By this time, therefore, he must have become a convert to the system of compulsion. Perhaps he regarded the demand for the Bill as a proof that the English people were at length waking up to a sense of the value of Education. But, while the State thus outstripped his ideal by establishing compulsion, it fell short of his ideal by severely limiting the area of the population to which compulsion was to apply.
Again and again he warned his countrymen, then unaccustomed to the practical working of Compulsory Education, that it would be intolerable, unjust, and absurd if it were applied only to the children of the poor.
He contended that the Upper and Middle Cla.s.ses were every bit as much in need of a compulsory system, if their children were to be properly educated, as the working cla.s.ses for whom it was proposed to legislate.
This theme he ill.u.s.trated, with the most exuberant fun and fancy, in a letter addressed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1867, and afterwards republished in _Friendship"s Garland_. Arminius, the cultivated Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that for his own part he is not so much concerned about the poacher as about his children. They are being allowed to grow up anyhow. Really he thinks the time has come when compulsion must be applied to the education of children of this cla.s.s. "The gap between them and our educated and intelligent cla.s.ses is really too frightful."
"_Your educated and intelligent cla.s.ses_," sneered Arminius, in his most offensive manner--"where are they? I should like to see them." The English friend, thus rudely challenged, leads the Prussian into the justice-room, where they find on the Bench three excellent specimens of education and intelligence--Lord Lumpington, the Rev. Esau Hittall, and Mr. Bottles. Arminius insists on knowing their qualifications for the post of magistrate. He begins by defining the principle of Compulsory Education. "It means that to ensure, as far as you can, every man"s being fit for his business in life, you put education as a bar, or condition, between him and what he aims at. The principle is just as good for one cla.s.s as another, and it is only by applying it impartially that you save its application from being insolent and invidious.... You propose to make old Diggs" boys instruct themselves before they go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want to know what you do to make those three worthies in that justice-room instruct themselves before they may go acting as magistrates and judges?"
The imaginary Arnold replies that Lord Lumpington was at Eton, and Mr.
Hittall at Charterhouse, and Mr. Bottles at Lycurgus House Academy, Peckham. But Arminius insists that to send boys of the wealthy cla.s.ses to school is nothing--the natural course of things takes them there.
"Don"t suppose that, by doing this, you are applying the principle of Compulsory Education fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs" boys. You are not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or condition between them and what they aim at.
"In my country," he went on, "we should have begun to put a pressure on those future magistrates at school. Before we allowed Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall to go to the University at all, we should have examined them.... There would have been some Mr. Grote as School Board Commissary, pitching into them questions about history, and some Mr.
Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, pitching into them questions about English literature; and these young men would have been kept from the University, as Diggs" boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till they had instructed themselves. Then, if, after three years of their University, they wanted to be magistrates, another pressure!--a great Civil Service Examination before a Board of Experts, an examination in English law, Roman law, English history, history of jurisprudence."
"A most abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and Hittall," says Arnold.
"Then your compulsory education is a most abominable liberty to take with Diggs" boys," retorted Arminius.... "Oh, but," I answered, "to live at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs instruction." "Well," returns Arminius, "and to administer at all, even at the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs instruction."
"_We have never found it so_," I said.
The same argument was urged, in a graver fashion, in _Schools and Universities of the Continent_.
"In the view of the English friends of compulsory education, the educated and intelligent Middle and Upper Cla.s.ses amongst us are to confer the boon of compulsory education upon the ignorant lower cla.s.s, which needs it while they do not. But, on the Continent, instruction is obligatory for Lower, Middle, and Upper Cla.s.s alike. I doubt whether our educated and intelligent cla.s.ses are at all prepared for this. I have an acquaintance in easy circ.u.mstances, of distinguished connexions, living in a fashionable part of London, who, like many other people, deals rather easily with his son"s schooling. Sometimes the boy is at school, then for months together he is away from school, and taught, so far as he is taught, by his father and mother at home. He is not the least an invalid, but it pleases his father and mother to bring him up in this manner. Now, I imagine, no English friends of compulsory education dream of dealing with such a defaulter as this, and certainly his father, who perhaps is himself a friend of compulsory education for the working cla.s.ses, would be astounded to find his education of his own son interfered with. But, if my worthy acquaintance lived in Switzerland or Germany, he would be dealt with as follows. I speak with the school-law of Canton Neufchatel, immediately under my eyes, but the regulations on this matter are substantially the same in all the states of Germany and of German Switzerland. The Munic.i.p.al Education Committee of the district where my acquaintance lived would address a summons to him, informing him that a comparison of the school-rolls of their district with the munic.i.p.al list of children of school-age, showed his son not to be at school; and requiring him, in consequence, to appear before the Munic.i.p.al Committee at a place and time named, and there to satisfy them, either that his son did attend some public school, or that, if privately taught, he was taught by duly trained and certificated teachers. On the back of the summons, my acquaintance would find printed the penal articles of the School-Law, sentencing him to a fine if he failed to satisfy the Munic.i.p.al Committee; and, if he failed to pay the fine, or was found a second time offending, to imprisonment. In some Continental States he would be liable, in case of repeated infraction of the School-Law, to be deprived of his parental rights, and to have the care of his son transferred to guardians named by the State. It is indeed terrible to think of the consternation and wrath of our educated and intelligent cla.s.ses under a discipline like this; and I should not like to be the man to try and impose it on them. But I a.s.sure them most emphatically--and if they study the experience of the Continent they will convince themselves of the truth of what I say--that only on these conditions of its equal and universal application is any law of compulsory education possible."
We have now seen, at least in general outline, the system of National Education which he would have wished to set up--how he would have co-ordinated all instruction from the lowest to the highest, and how he would have compelled all cla.s.ses alike to submit their children, and in the higher ranks of life to submit themselves, to the training which should best equip them for their chosen or appointed work. We must now enquire what sort of knowledge he would have endeavoured, by his co-ordinated system, to impart.
He laid it down, more than once, that the aim of culture was "to know ourselves and the world," and that, as the means to this end, we ought "to know the best which has been thought and said in the world." He recognized, candidly and fully, the claims of the physical sciences, and their use and value in Education. For example, in advising about the instruction of a little girl, in whom her teacher wished to arouse "perception," he said, "You had much better take some science--(botany is perhaps the best for a girl) and, choosing a good handbook, go through it regularly with her.... The verification of the laws of grammar, in the examples furnished by one"s reading, is certainly a far less fruitful stimulus of one"s powers of observation and comparison, than the verification of the laws of a science like botany in the examples furnished by the world of nature before one"s eyes."
But in spite of this, and of similar concessions, he deliberately held the opinion that Literature, rather than Science, was the chief agent in culture. In 1872 he wrote to an enquirer: "A single line of poetry, working in the mind, may produce more thought and lead to more light, which is what man wants, than the fullest acquaintance (to take your own instance) with the processes of digestion." In 1884 he said to his American audience: "My own studies have been almost wholly in Letters, and my visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very slight and inadequate, although those sciences have always strongly moved my curiosity." In a word, he was, and gloried in being, a Humanist. What Humanism meant for him is curiously ill.u.s.trated by his comment on some speeches which the late[14] Lord Salisbury delivered at Oxford on his first appearance there as Chancellor of the University. After praising his skill and courtesy, Arnold says: "He is a dangerous man, through, and chiefly from, his want of any true sense and experience of literature and its beneficent function. Religion he knows, and physical science he knows; but the immense work between the two, which is for literature to accomplish, he knows nothing of; and all his speeches at Oxford[15] pointed this way. On the one hand, he was full of the great future for physical science, and begging his University to make up her mind to it, and to resign much of her literary studies; on the other hand, he was full, almost defiantly full, of counsels and resolves for retaining and upholding the old ecclesiastical and dogmatic form of religion. From a juxtaposition of this kind, nothing but shocks and collisions can come."
_The immense work which is for literature to accomplish._ This work, lying between the work of Religion and the work of Science, was, in his view, nothing less than the culture of Humanity. Religion had its sphere, and Science had its sphere, but culture was to be effected neither by Religion nor by Science, but by Literature. The literature which he extolled was literature in its widest sense--ancient and modern, English and Continental, Occidental and Oriental--whatever contained "the best which had been thought and said in the world." And, when we come to the sub-divisions of literature, we note that he was pre-eminently a cla.s.sicist. This he was partly by temperament, partly by training, partly by his matured and deliberate judgment. It can scarcely be doubted that he had an innate love of perfect form, an innate "sentiment against hideousness and rawness," and so he was a cla.s.sicist by temperament. Then his training was essentially cla.s.sical. He used to protest, with amusing earnestness, against the notion that his father had been a bad scholar. "People talk the greatest nonsense about my father"s scholarship. The Wykehamists of his day were excellent scholars. Dr. Gabell made them so. My father"s Latin verses were not good; but that was because he was not poetical--not because he was a bad scholar. But he wrote the most admirable Latin prose; and, as for his Greek prose, you couldn"t tell it from Thucydides." In this kind of scholarship Matthew Arnold was nurtured; and whatever in this respect his training had left imperfect, he perfected by close and continuous study. His Greek and Latin reading was both wide and accurate, perhaps wider in Greek than in Latin, though the soundness of his Latin scholarship is proved by the fact that he was _proxime_ for the Hertford Scholarship at Oxford. He had read Plato in the Sixth Form at Rugby, and Oxford taught him Aristotle. From first to last his "unapproachable favourites" were Homer and Sophocles, and Hesiod was "a Greek friend to whom he turned with excellent effect." But though he was thus essentially a cla.s.sicist, a mere cla.s.sicist he was not. No one had a wider, a more familiar, a more discriminating knowledge of English literature; no one--and this is worthy of remark--had the text of the Bible more perfectly at his fingers" ends. He had read all that was best in French, German, and Italian;[16] and in French at any rate he was an exact and judicious critic, as is sufficiently shown by his essay on _The French Play in London_.[17] Hebrew he mastered sufficiently to "follow and weigh the reasons offered by others" for a retranslation of the Old Testament; and into Celtic literature he made at any rate one memorable incursion.[18]
A man so equipped was essentially a man of letters: a great deal more than a cla.s.sicist, but a cla.s.sicist first and foremost. And so it was natural that he should think a cla.s.sical education the best education that could be offered to boys, and should desire to see cla.s.sics, taught in a literary and not a pedantic spirit, the staple of instruction in all those Public Schools, whether of ancient or of modern foundation, to which the Upper and Middle Cla.s.ses should resort. He was perfectly ready to make composition in Greek and Latin the luxury of the few who had a special apt.i.tude for it, therein following the doctrine of Dr.
Whewell, and leading the way to a notable reform in Public Schools. But to read the best Latin and Greek authors was to be the staple of a boy"s education, and thereto were to be added a full and scholarly knowledge of English, and a sufficiency, such as modern life demands, of Science and Mathematics. He "ventured once, in the very Senate-House and heart of Cambridge, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of mankind a little of mathematics goes a long way." He thought it no particular gain for a boy to know that "when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water." He thought it a clear loss that he should not know the last book of the _Iliad_, or the sixth book of the _aeneid_, or the _Agamemnon_. He encouraged the Eton boys to laugh at "Scientific lectures, and lessons on the diameter of the sun and moon"; but he was moved almost to tears when "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" was offered as a paraphrase of "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?"
He listened with amused interest to the teachers who deduced our descent from "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." But he thought it deplorable that a leading physicist should never have heard of Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, and that a leading journalist should confound him with Bishop Wilson of Calcutta.
To the Public Schools he would have entrusted that thorough drilling in Greek, Latin and English which was to be the foundation of the pupils"
culture; and, this done, he would have required the University to offer scope for the fullest development of any special apt.i.tude which the pupil might display. In brief, the school was to train in general knowledge; the University was to specialize. In 1868 he wrote: "An admirable English mathematician told me that he should never recover the loss of the two years which after his degree he wasted without fit instruction at an English University, when he ought to have been under superior instruction, for which the present University course in England makes no provision. I daresay he _will_ recover it, for a man of genius counts no worthy effort too hard; but who can estimate the loss to the mental training and intellectual habits of the country, from the absence--so complete that it needs genius to be sensible of it, and costs genius an effort to repair it--of all regular public provision for the scientific study and teaching of any branch of knowledge?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: Rugby
Matthew Arnold entered Rugby School in August, 1837, living under his father"s roof at the School-house.
He left Rugby for Oxford in June, 1841
_Photo H.W. Taunt_]
But these larger views of education belong, after all, to the region of theory, and he never had the opportunity, except very indirectly, of putting them into practice. With the Elementary Schools he dealt practically, officially, and directly; but even here, as in so many other departments, his influence was rather critical than constructive.
He had only an imperfect sympathy with "that somewhat terrible character, the scientific educator." A brother-inspector says that, "if he saw little children looking good and happy, and under the care of a kindly and sympathetic teacher, he would give a favourable report, without enquiring too curiously into the percentage of scholars who could pa.s.s the "standard" examination." There must be many who still remember with amused affection his demeanour in an Elementary School.
They see the tall figure, at once graceful and stately; the benign air, as of an affable archangel; the critical brow and enquiring eyegla.s.s bent on some very immature performance in penmanship or needlework; and the frightened children and the anxious teacher, gradually lapsing into smiles and peace, as the great man tested the proficiency in some such humble art as spelling. "Well, my little man, and how do you spell _dog_?" "Please sir, _d-o-g_." "Capital, very good indeed. I couldn"t do it better myself. And now let us go a little further, and see if we can spell _cat_." (Chorus excitedly.) "C-A-T." "Now, this is really excellent. (To the teacher.) You have brought them on wonderfully in spelling since I was here last. You shall have a capital report.
Good-bye." To those who cherish these memories there is nothing surprising in this tribute by a friend: "His effect on the teachers when he examined a school was extraordinary. He was sympathetic without being condescending, and he reconciled the humblest drudge in a London school to his or her drudgery for the next twelve months."