THE UNIVERSITIES AND A SCHOOL OF

JOURNALISM

THE University of Birmingham has now under consideration an interesting and important experiment in education. It is a scheme for a course of study and instruction specially designed for those who, after graduating in Arts or Science, desire to qualify themselves for the practical duties of modern municipal and political life, and more especially for the profession of journalism. Advanced education as at present constituted in our universities, whether at Oxford or Cambridge, or in those which have since sprung up in London and in the provinces, leaves two important and, it may be added, rapidly increasing classes of our younger citizens almost totally unprovided for. Every year a not inconsiderable percentage of graduates leave these universities to enter at once on one of the two callings referred to, a minority either to prepare themselves for a political career or for offices more or less directly associated with public life, a majority to gain a livelihood or at least partially to support themselves by journalism. In addition to these there are many other young men to whom instruction immediately bearing on the world of to-day and on the duties and interests of those concerned with it is of far more moment than anything represented in our present curricula of academic studies.

There can, indeed, be no doubt that the conditions under which we are now living-the result of that silent revolution which has during the last half-century transformed the world of our predecessors into a world without analogy in human experience-are necessitating corresponding changes in our theories and aims in education. Everything points to the fact that a time has come when, after reconstruction or modification has done its work with other academic curricula, an entirely new curriculum should be instituted. It should be essentially modern; its aim to initiate young men in all that directly pertains to the duties and interests of citizenship in the widest and most comprehensive sense of the term, and in all that conduces to a full and intelligent appreciation of what such duties and such interests involve. It should lay

stress on modern English history since the Reform Bill of 1832, with special reference to politics and social questions, such as the development of the democracy, social legislation, and the history of British institutions; on modern European history during the last fifty years with special relation to what has recently and still is chiefly occupying the attention of the leading countries of Europe, politically, socially, economically, their mutual relations, their institutions, their territory, their population; on Colonial history, which should include not only the history of the development of our Colonies, but practical information about their present state and position, their relations to Great Britain, their geography, their mercantile affairs generally, their population, their territory, their institutions; on political philosophy, to be studied principally in Burke, De Tocqueville, Bentham, Mill, Maine, Bagehot, and such modern authors as are generally prescribed, and this should also include such works as treat of the practical duties of citizenship such as we find in the series edited by Sir Henry Craik; on political economy, with special relation to British industrial development and economic problems of current interest and importance; on the elements of finance, including national and municipal taxation, public debts, the budget, and the like.

Of the instruction which such a curriculum as this would insure nothing is at present accessible in a systematic and co-ordinated form in any university at present existing, though Birmingham, recently followed by Manchester, has, by the institution of a faculty of commerce, taken an important step towards initiating such a course.

That many serious objections may be raised to the introduction of such a curriculum as this into the older universities, even as a postgraduation course, is indisputable; and had those universities been loyal to the traditions which it was their privilege to inherit and should have been their pride to uphold, many would no doubt lament such an innovation. If national education could be regulated in accordance with ideal standards and theories it would assuredly have been well had Oxford and Cambridge been content to confine themselves to the studies which for so many centuries they have directedstudies the efficacy and vitality of which recent very wise reforms have more than doubled. No sounder and more appropriate foundation could be laid for the discipline and culture of any British citizen, whatever might be his future calling, than that afforded by Classical Honour Moderations and the Literae Humaniores Schools at Oxford, and by the reorganised Classical Tripos at Cambridge. Such institutions are the peculiar glory-and long may they continue to be so-of the older universities. Their utility is not to be measured by the tests applicable to any other institutions. It is not in their relation to science and positive information or to anything which can be resolved into immediate and tangible utility, but in relation to

what cultivates, to what refines, to what fertilises, to what enables and initiates that their importance is to be estimated. They are the shrines and safeguards of what is noblest and most precious in the humanities, of 'that musical and prolific language which gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy,' of those literatures, which, in addition to their inestimable, intrinsic value, are, historically speaking, the only keys to the development and characteristics of two-thirds of what is most excellent in our own, of all, the acquisition and tincture of which must for ever differentiate a scholar and critic of the first order from a scholar and critic of a comparatively secondary stamp. It is by virtue of these and kindred institutions that the hegemony in the humanities is the natural, the undisputed prerogative of Oxford and Cambridge, constituting them the centres of all that is most influential in the study of theology and metaphysics, of moral philosophy, and of belles lettres generally. In studies like the humanities which appeal so directly to the finer instincts and affections, into which sentiment enters so largely, and which owe so much to association and surroundings, it is of immense advantage, of quite uncommon and capital importance, that in any national system of education they should find their centres where for so many hundreds of years they have found them, on the banks of the Isis and the Cam.

But unhappily these 'august and romantic' seminaries have had to move with the times, and becoming the battle-grounds of desperate conservatives who wished to retain or rather monopolise them as the nurseries of specialists and of intemperate and reckless innovators bent on 'modernising' them, have, outside their purely classical and scientific curricula, come as near to realising mere anarchy as they well could do. This is not the place to enter into any criticism of what has, in the regulation of the curricula relating to modern as distinguished from classical studies, resulted in this anarchy, but merely to observe that it has originated partly from attempts to effect compromise where compromise is impossible, and partly from confusing what ought to be distinguished. The first has resulted in the monstrous anomaly of establishing Honour Schools of English literature expressly excluding any acquaintance with those literatures apart from which the development and characteristics of our own are both historically and critically unintelligible, and so conferring on superficiality and what is little better than charlatanry an Honour diploma; in the establishment of Schools of Modern History in which neither political philosophy nor the history of the last halfcentury has any place at all, or at least any emphasis, and so substituting for history in the true sense of the term mere antiquities; and lastly in crowding and confusing their curricula with almost every subject known to science or art, some clamouring for the academic recognition of agriculture, others, and these successfully, for

engineering, others again for faculties still more banausic. It is, indeed, nothing less than pitiable to contemplate the chaos obtaining at the present moment in the University of Oxford in all that relates to the attempts to modernise' its studies. But Nemesis in some form is almost certainly at hand. The recent appeals to the nation for money will no doubt hasten the crisis, and philanthropists will do well to pause till there is some security that their benevolence will not merely have the effect of perpetuating anarchy and of making confusion worse confounded. Let us hope that the solution of the problem-that is the definition of the functions and of the true relation of the older universities to the educational system of the country, when it comes to be settled and adjusted, as settled and adjusted it must be before long-will not involve, what it possibly may involve, the destruction of the old régime. Surely the true position of Oxford and Cambridge is that indicated by their position in the past, and that secured to them by the maintenance of their characteristic institutions. It would be a great mistake to 'modernise' them in the sense in which the London and the provincial universities must necessarily be modernised, and the present deplorable condition of Oxford has arisen from ill-considered and reckless attempts to do so.

The truth is that there is, and always must be, an essential difference between what may be called academic and what may be called civic ideals of the aims and methods of instruction-between the instruction proper for the professed scholar and specialist, and that proper for the general culture and intellectual equipment of the ordinary citizen. The chief and primary function of the older universities is to provide for the former, and the needs of the latter are, and should be, there at least, of secondary importance. If the curricula of Oxford and Cambridge were properly organised, the requirements of the first would be met by the Honour Schools, the requirements of the second by the Pass Schools. But, unhappily, the difference between the instruction provided in these schools is not in the subjects taught or in the manner of approaching those subjects, but simply in the degrees of proficiency required in the same subject. Take an illustration from history. What is of the utmost importance to the education of the specialist is of little or no importance to that of the ordinary citizen. To him the causes of the dissolution of Charlemagne's empire and the manœuvres preceding the battle of Agincourt are of small moment compared with what led to the defeat of Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, or what led to the annexation and restitution of the Transvaal. Again, in the study of our national literature the specialist, resolving it into philology, may proceed on the assumption that it originated in the valleys of Central Asia and ended with Chaucer, but if for the general student it does not begin where it was assumed to end and include the last effusion

of Mr. Swinburne and Mr. William Watson, he will be very imperfectly informed. In the older universities courses of instruction will always take their ply and their constitution from specialists who by right of office naturally control them. Of these men it is no injustice to say that they are not as a rule distinguished by the qualities which Aristotle desiderates in educational legislators, a nice sense of the moderate, the possible, the becoming. If Oxford and Cambridge are to be 'modernised '—and that appears to be the popular cry—what is devoutly to be hoped is that their Classical Schools, that is Moderations and the Literae Humaniores Schools at Oxford and the Classical Tripos at Cambridge, will, at least, be spared and left intact. Drastic reforms are most certainly needed in the Modern History and Modern Literature Schools, Honour and Pass alike. For the curricula of the first severing history from political philosophy, from rhetoric and from the latest stages of its evolution resolve it into little more than the study of its mere phenomena and its antiquities. To the present constitution of the Modern Literature Schools objections graver still may be, and, indeed, must be urged. They satisfy neither the requirements of Honour men nor those of Pass men. All that is solid in them-this does not apply to Oxford-is what pertains to philology. The rest is anarchy. Of their central and capital defect I have already spoken; of its disastrous effects there is no need to speak, for they are not only obvious but are written large wherever the teaching of English literature is represented by graduates in these Schools. At Cambridge, indeed, this institution is saved from contempt by the solidity of the purely linguistic and philological teaching. At Oxford an unfortunate compromise between literature and philology has resulted in an institution of which the friends of literature and the friends of philology are equally ashamed.

With so much, then, crying for reform-and it is hopeless to expect that reform will come from within-it is not likely that Oxford and Cambridge will long be allowed to pursue an independent course. No autonomy can last which is not justified. They have already been reminded that they belong to the nation and must meet the needs of conditions very different from those under which they originated and developed. Had they maintained their ancient character and remained the aristocratic centres of art and science, their historical dignity would have protected them; they would have had strong allies in sentiment and in piety. But they have been true neither to themselves nor to the powers to which they have bowed the knee. Round the old solid temples dedicated to the true worship they have, in concession to 'modern needs' (not met), huddled and crowded every sort of flimsy and fantastic kiosk and pagoda, and the fear is that in the revolution provoked and certainly at hand, all will perish indiscriminately, to give place perhaps to a socialistic Utopia of glorified polytechnics and mechanics' institutes.