THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW

No. 498.-OCTOBER, 1928.

Art. 1.-THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SPIRIT.

SURROUNDED by the restless tentacles of an ever-widening Democracy the great Public Schools of England are becoming more and more lonely and in danger of being pulled from the special place which they have hitherto occupied. They are old, sometimes venerable with age; they began for the most part when teaching was in the hands of the Church, when through the study of Latin and Greek the end of all education was in the words of Milton 'to know God aright and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him and to be like him.' They are strong in tradition, and their claim to maintain their present position lies in that strength. They make no show (greater than that of other schools) in the strain of modern scholarship; yet in spite of this, or is it rather because of this, hard-headed men of business are known to prefer their product to the scientifically educated output of the very efficient technical schools, and equally scientifically educated foreigners do us the honour of pilgrimages in the hope that they may learn the secret of that fine but elusive esprit de corps which lives in these schools, and be able to carry something of it back to their own land.

This spirit is the very soul of these old schools, perhaps it is partly indigenous to their origin, and partly the result of their long history. Perhaps it was created by the teaching of the monks who would inspire into their pupils' minds that to be rather than to know was the true educational ideal; but if so, intervening centuries have added to their work. England is great and has Vol. 251.-No. 498.

played so noble a part in spreading the blessings of civilisation because she in the past was guided by statesmen who, as boys in the Public Schools, learnt in the Classics to know the lives of great men, and gained from them a knowledge of humanity which added sympathy to their judgment, and kindliness to their conduct. And the relation that so closely existed between these schools and the government of the country was reciprocal in its effect; on the one hand, it gave breadth of view to the government, on the other a fine standard of duty and a fuller sense of noblesse oblige; and if the soul of the Public Schools of England should be destroyed the end of the special contribution which our national life has made and is making for the betterment of the world will not be far off. Already the horrible invention (or is it discovery?) of the competitive examination system-truly, no doubt, a necessary appendage to democracy-has altered the old monks' standard, it has exalted knowledge into a position higher than that of character, and tended to push down the weightier matters of the law.

And now the Labour Party has issued a manifesto in which it places in the forefront of its policy, 'the creation of a democratic system of education adequately financed, free from the taint of class distinctions, and organised as a continuous whole from the nursery school to the university.' This can have no other meaning than that the great expensive boarding schools with their individuality are to be swept into a general scheme of scheduled time tables and prescribed subjects, of a daily routine mapped out according to a bureaucratic standard: they are to be sacrificed to that chimera which demands universal equality, that can only be reached when the world has settled down into unutterable dullness and unbroken monotony-which nobody wants.

Sometimes I have been on the top of Dartmoor in glorious sunshine, when the beauty of the expansive and varied view has been spread out before me; there were the upstanding tors of rugged shape calling for struggle and adventure, there were the dark wondering cattle hardy and enduring, there were the cottages in the sheltered clefts, there were the streams of crystal water flowing to the channels where they were much

needed, there was the distant haze over the busy villages, and it has seemed to me as an allegory of the course of human life, suggestive of effort, and courage and endurance; of ends attained and rest achieved. Everything that exercises and stimulates the mind of man can find its counterpart in the scene. And there has come down quite suddenly and unexpectedly, a thick, impenetrable, all-pervading cloud, which has blotted out every detail; the tors, the heather, the cottages, the stream, the distant view, all vanish as though they were not there; even the road itself has been hard to keep and to follow; there was nothing but grey, chilling, depressing mist everywhere, and nothing to do but to pray not to lose the road itself and thus be finally lost in the cold and clammy fog. And such a contrast in nature is not an unfair simile between life as it is and life as it would be when universal standardisation had been reached, and the utter dreariness of passionless existence attained.

And what nonsense it is to talk about the taint of class distinctions! Is there any taint in them? Can there be any taint in the inevitable? And social inequalities would by nature seem to be inevitable. Though they have varied in different ages, there have been feudal class distinctions and ecclesiastical class distinctions; now the aristocracy of birth is replaced by the aristocracy of wealth; perhaps some day when the millennium is reached there may be an aristocracy of goodness, and then all problems will be solved; till then let us face existing conditions and value what is good in them. This cry for an education free from the taint of class distinctions' (while there is no definition of what is meant by class), seems to me to be asking for the mist that settles down on Dartmoor and wipes out all its beauty. Has the attainment of standardisation in human affairs, even in the limited way ever attained, made for progress rather than stagnation? Many a headmaster laments the effect of the Burnham scale upon his staff; he will speak of the lack of incentive, the loss of initiative, the unconsciousness lowering of effort, the tendency to level down rather than to level up.

Men's minds just now are obsessed with the idea of that standardisation which makes for mass production.

Mass production has become a fetish, and the Public Schools are against it. Where in the past one article was made, which reflected the mind of the workman, now machines turn out a thousand to the same pattern till our perceptions are dulled by their uniformity. Everywhere it is the same, many alike, it is quantity that pays; and to produce the quantity wheels revolve with their amazing energy, free from all passion and emotion. Henry Ford is held up to us as the most wonderful example of this mass-producing age. He has achieved wealth beyond the dreams of Monte Cristo, and on all sides he has his imitators. No wonder the human mind is fascinated by the marvels of its own invention; it has made machines that create easily and in an instant what man can only achieve with difficulty and in days. Why should it not standardise education which will work as a machine and thus tend to the uniformity that will eliminate human passions?

Against this idea is the fact that men and women are not made in handfuls and in masses, but each individually, in form and in character. We are so dreadfully inconsistent; we want individuality in matters relating to ourselves. When we are ill we wish to be treated as a unit, not as one of a crowd. We reckon the great physician to be the man who with all his stores of knowledge can bring his mind and his skill to each individual case. We know the great schoolmaster to be the one who can enlist the sympathies of his pupils, and make each one feel that he is being cared for and taught, and the great school is that which makes its own particular contribution to the varied attainments of an educated people. We fully realise that there is no influence alike so powerful and so singular as that of individual character; and have no wish to be regarded as just one of a mass-produced multitude. Yet this is the aim of a scheme of education organised as a continuous whole from the nursery to the University after the Prussian standard. The whole thing is absurd and self-condemned. While speakers in the N.U.T. meetings complain that there are 1,000,000 children in classes of fifty each and 3,000,000 in classes of forty each, and make a demand for smaller classes so that each child may get more individual attention and be more fittingly educated

according to its own special gifts and capacity, these leaders of the Labour Party are striving to make education more standardised by bringing all schools under the same organisation, and under the same care from the age of three to the age of nineteen. And the Public Schools are against it.

There is an opinion abroad, which has many adherents, that the panacea for all the admitted wrongs in our social system lies in education; crime will be diminished, the hungry will be fed, the naked will be clothed, slums will disappear; the visionary Utopia will materialise when all, the masses especially, are educated. This is the justification for the State expenditure of 100,000,000l. a year upon education, by which is meant for the most part the teaching to read and to write, to do sums and to gain a smattering of science and of languages in large and attractive rooms made beautiful with noble pictures and artistic furnishings. This belief is a fine creed, but whether it is capable of regenerating mankind is known only to the gods, certainly it has no past records to support it. But this, at least, can be said in its favour, it may perhaps diminish that despair which comes from an empty mind and unoccupied hands; for there is no greater incentive to misery and vice than that of not knowing how to spend idle hours-an educated boy or girl ought to have fewer of these hours than is the lot of those whose faculties have been undeveloped. It is interesting, however, to note that at a recent meeting of the N.U.T. a speaker had the courage to say that the education of the country would be advanced if many of the schools were burnt down and the space they occupied and the expense of maintenance were given up to sports and games and physical culture generally. Very many people will agree with him; he was one who knew what he was saying, and the Conference did not howl him down. There is often more of great value to be learnt, both by individuals and by peoples, in a good game than in half the class-rooms.

And this brings me to the rub, what is education? what is meant by this much-abused word? Before the War most people would have agreed that Germany was the most educated country in the world, in scientific development, in the critical faculty, in history and in