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English lad, who has the restless activity and love of play that belong to youth and health; who, like his elders, thinks somewhat slowly, and does not express himself readily, and to whom mental effort is troublesome. But these are difficulties which it is the business of the schoolmaster to contend with, and which careful and skillful teaching may, to some extent, overcome. If a youth, after four or five years spent at school, quits it at nineteen, unable to construe an easy bit of Latin or Greek without the help of a dictionary, or to write Latin grammatically, almost ignorant of geography and of the history of his own country, unacquainted with any modern language but his own, and hardly competent to write English correctly, to do a simple sum, or stumble through an easy proposition in Euclid, a total stranger to the laws which govern the physical world and to its structure, with an eye and hand unpracticed in drawing, and without knowing a note of music, with an uncultivated mind and no taste for reading or observation, his intellectual education must certainly be accounted a failure, though there may be no fault to find with his principles, character, or manners; yet this is much more commonly than it ought to be the product of English public-school education.

It is true also that besides what is learned at school by the boy, much may and ought to be acquired by the child, and much more by the man. But that boys come very ill prepared to school is the general complaint, and the evil seems to be on the increase. On the other hand, there are many men who do not learn much after they leave school, because few men read much, for want of inclination or leisure. The schools have it in their power to remedy, to a certain extent, the former of these deficiencies by a stricter examination on entrance; and it should be their aim to at least diminish the latter by opening the minds of their scholars and implanting tastes which are now wanting. But the chances of leisure after entrance into active life must always be precarious. The school has absolute possession of the boy during four or five years, the most valuable years of pupilage, the time when the powers of apprehension and memory are brightest, when the faculty of observation is quick and lively, and he is forming his acquaintance with the various objects of knowledge. Something surely may be done during that time in the way not of training alone, but of positive acquisition, and the school is responsible for turning it to the best account.

The extension of the present course, as proposed, is but very moderate. The importance of arithmetic and mathematics is already recognized, and it is only necessary that they should be taught more effectively. The course should include arithmetic, so taught as to make every boy thoroughly familiar with it, and the elements of geometry, algebra, and plane trigonometry. In the case of the more advanced students, it should also comprise an introduction to applied mathematics. All the boys at every school should, in some part at least of their passage through it, learn eicher French or German. Natural science is, with slight exceptions,

practically excluded from the education of the higher classes in England, and education is, in this respect, narrower than it was three centuries ago. This exclusion is a great practical evil, narrowing unduly and injuriously the mental training of the young, and the knowledge, interests, and pursuits of men in maturer life. For all educated men an early introduction to natural science is desirable, if not necessary, and the value of the study, as a means of opening the mind and disciplining the faculties, is recognized by all who have taken the trouble to acquire it. It quickens and cultivates directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it familiarizes them with a kind of training which interests them, and which they can promptly comprehend; and it is perhaps the best corrective for that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks from any exertion which is not, like an effort of memory, merely mechanical. The teaching must necessarily be elementary, and this thoroughly understood, as far as it goes, will satisfy the purposes in view. An hour or two in the week of class teaching, properly seconded, will be found to produce substantial fruits. Whether the sciences should be taught in their logical order, at what age or point of intellectual progress any part of the subject should be taken up, in what manner it should be taught, and how far pursued, are questions to be settled by experience, and by the inquiries and deliberate judgment of the various Governing Bodies. Every boy should learn either music or drawing during a part at least of his stay at school. Positive inaptitude for the education of the ear and voice, or for that of the hand and eye, is rare; and these accomplishments are useful as instruments of training and valuable possessions in after life. Greater attention should be paid to history and geography than they now receive. A taste for history may be gained at school; the habit of reading intelligently should cer tainly be acquired then, and few books can be intelligently read without some knowledge of history, and no history without geography. More attention should also be given to English composition and orthography. A command of pure grammatical English is not necessarily gained by construing Latin and Greek, though the study of the classical languages is, or rather may be made, an instrument of the highest value for that purpose.

It may be objected that there is not time for such a course of study as this. But we are persuaded that by effective teaching time can be found for these things without encroaching on the hours of play; and that room may be made for them, by taking trouble, in the head of any ordinary boy. Of the time spent at school by nine boys out of ten, much is wasted which it is quite possible to economize. Time is economized by increasing attention; attention is sharpened and kept alive by a judicious change of work. A boy can attend without flagging to what

interests him, and what he attends to he can generally retain; but without real attention there can be no progress, and without progress, no intellectual discipline worth the name. The great difficulty of a public school is simple idleness, which is defended by numbers, and entrenched behind the system and traditions of the place, and against which the Master, if he be active, wages a more or less unequal war.

Time and Relative Value to be assigned to different Branches.—It is essential that every part of the regular course of study should have assigned to it a due proportion of the whole time given to study. Where all the subjects are pursued together-assuming that the lessons take about an hour each, and that they will be such as to demand for preparation, in the case of the classics, ten additional hours, and in those of modern languages and natural science respectively, at least two additional hours in the week, and that composition will demand about five hours— it is proposed that eleven hours be given to classics, with history and divinity; three hours to arithmetic and mathematics; and two hours each to the modern languages, natural science, and music or drawing.

It is also essential that every branch should be encouraged by the stimulus of reward and punishment; that every non-classical subject (except music and drawing) in that part of the school where it is compulsory should effect promotion; that a scale of marks should be settled upon for this purpose, and moreover, that the non-classical studies should be encouraged by prizes appropriated to them respectively. The relative weights proposed to be assigned to the classics, with history and divinity, is not less than nor more than -to each of the three non-classical subjects, not less than nor more than -to the three non-classical subjects combined, .

Experiment of a separate Modern Department.-Careful consideration is due to the question of the desirableness of introducing into the public schools, side by side with their classical organization, a distinct department for the prosecution of what are sometimes called modern, and sometime practical, studies, into which boys should be allowed to pass, either immediately upon their admission to the school or after having made a certain amount of progress in it, and in which they should be instructed principally in modern languages, mathematics, natural science, history, geography, and other branches of an English education, classical teaching being made subordinate and not of primary importance.

It is frequently said that there are boys who have no natural aptitude for classical studies, and upon whom classical teaching is consequently thrown away, but who would take in and profit by a thoroughly good system of practical education; that there are others whose destinations in life render it important that they should receive special instruction in subjects which can not be adequately taught as mere adjuncts to a classical course; and that it is hard that such boys should be condemned either to waste their time on uncongenial and unsuitable pursuits, or to forego altogether the benefits of a public-school career. It would not be

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difficult to find arguments in favor of making special provision for these two classes of boys. We are not indeed disposed to attach great weight to the argument from inapitude, for, though the capacities of boys for classical study must vary, as they do for other kinds of study, we believe that under a judicious system of teaching, administered by a sufficient number of competent masters, with a due regard to the individual characters of their pupils, almost any boy may attain such an amount of proficiency in the classics as can not fail to be of material advantage to him. The large proportion of failures, which we can not but recognize, is inainly to be attributed to the system under which idle and inferior boys are allowed to do their work in a slovenly and inefficient manner, or even to shelter themselves from the necessity of working at all. Still there are many boys who could not by any process of teaching be made superior scholars, and upon whom the high polish of which others are susceptible would be thrown away; as there are, on the other hand, many who have peculiar capabilities for scientific studies, to whom it would be of the greatest advantage to receive a higher amount of scientific instruction than would be desirable for the generality of their school-fellows, and it may fairly be urged that it would be of advantage for such boys to be allowed to drop some portion of their classical, in order to devote more time to other work. So too with regard to those boys who are said to require special preparation for their future career in life. While we strongly deprecate the idea of reducing the education of our public schools to a standard based merely upon calculations of direct and immediate utility, and should regard it as a great misfortune if those who direct them were to aim at the mere imparting of practical knowledge, or the mere training of their pupils for competitive examinations, we can not close our eyes to the fact that parents who find their sons left in total ignorance of matters which will be important to them in after life, or who perceive that they are unable to compete successfully for the professional and other prizes which are open to their contemporaries, are tempted to take the solution of the question between classical and practical education into their own hands, by removing their sons at an early age from the public school and placing them under the far less satisfactory care of a private tutor.

In France and in Germany provision is made for giving such boys as these an entirely distinct education. In France the pupils in the lycées are divided into three classes; they all pass through the elementary and grammar divisions, but when they reach the highest division, they have to elect between the section littéraire and the section scientifique, it being necessary for those who seek a degree in letters or law to attach themselves to the former, and for those who seek one in science or medicine to join the latter. Boys destined for commerce or industrial professions also usually enter the latter. Their divergence in the course of education is known by the term bifurcation. The period of separate instruction in these two sections lasts for three years, during which time,

however, a certain amount of inter-communication takes place between them, the pupils of the section littéraire attending lectures on geometry, physics, chemistry, and natural history, and those of the section scientifique attending lectures on French, Latin, history, and geography. In the fourth year they all unite in the study of logic and of the application of the laws of thought and reasoning.

In Germany the business of preparing boys for the Universities is left to the Gymnasien, and that of educating them for other careers is assigned to the Real-schulen, which are wholly distinct and separate establishments. The French principle, therefore, of keeping the pupils together while they are pursuing different lines of study, is in theory reversed in Prussia. The system of bifurcation is, however, admitted into a few of the Gymnasien, by the introduction, at a certain point in the school, of parallel classes, in which the instruction is the same as in the corresponding classes of the Real-schulen; and it is stated that the Gymnasien are preferred by many to the Real-schulen even for boys destined for commercial and industrial pursuits.

In England several attempts have of late years been made to ingraft a modern department upon a classical school and to conduct it upon distinct principles. Cheltenham College consists, in fact, of two schools, into which boys enter separately, one of them a very efficient and successful classical school of the ordinary type, the other a school in which the boys learn comparatively little Latin and no Greek, but natural science is taught and great stress is laid on modern languages. The num*ber of boys in the modern department is 276, nearly equaling the number in the classical. Marlborough has likewise its modern department, into which, however, boys do not enter till they have reached a certain point in the school, (the sixth out of thirteen divisions into which it is arranged,) and which, in 1862, contained 62 boys, or somewhat more than one-seventh of the school, taught by three masters. At Wellington College, in every form from about the middle of the school to the top, there are a certain number of boys who do less classics and more modern work than the rest of the form, and these are grouped in separate divisions, called the mathematical divisions. Few here among the boys, except those who are backward or to leave the school young, enter the mathematical divisions at the earliest point; the "cleverer moderns" continuing their Greek until they have reached the upper forms, with a view to make it available in examinations. The whole number in the mathe matical divisions in 1862 was 23, a little more than 10 per cent. of the school. The City of London School is a great day-school in the heart of London, having little connection with the Universities, and educating, apparently, with great success, a very large proportion of boys who are not intended for Oxford or Cambridge. At the same time the classical and mathematical education given there is so good that of those who do go to the Universities nearly all distinguish themselves. It is therefore somewhat remarkable that, although an opportunity is afforded to the

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