But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."* CHAPTER VIII. EDUCATION. MANY of the "little faults" and some of the greater sins of life are the result of dulness. Education should be so arranged as to make dulness impossible, to make life interesting and happy. Who can say that our present system, and especially that of our great public schools and universities, is so devised? We live in a wonderful and beautiful world, offering endless problems of varied and extraordinary interest -a world which it is entrancing to understand, and dangerous, if not fatal, to misunderstand. Yet until lately our elementary schools were practically confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic; our grammar-schools mainly, as the very name denotes, to grammar; while our great public schools omitted the study of Nature ltogether, or devoted to it only an hour or two in the * Matthew v. week, snatched from the insatiable demands of Latin and Greek. Traherne pictures* a university as it might be. It opened his eyes to the revelation that "there were things in this world of which I never dreamed; glorious secrets, and glorious persons past imagination. There I saw that Logic, Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, Geometry, Astronomy, Poesy, Medicine, Grammar, Music, Rhetoric, all kinds of Arts, Trades, and Mechanisms that adorned the world pertained to felicity; at least there I saw those things, which afterwards I knew to pertain unto it; and was delighted in it. There I saw into the nature of the Sea, the Heavens, the Sun, the Moon, and Stars, the Elements, Minerals, and Vegetables. All which appeared like the King's Daughter, all glorious within; and those things which my nurses and parents should have talked of, there were taught unto me. "Nevertheless some things were defective too. There was never a tutor that did professly teach Felicity, though that be the mistress of all other sciences. Nor did any of us study these things but as aliena, which we ought to have studied as our enjoyments." * Centuries of Meditations. Our system is very different. We begin to specialise almost from the nursery. in many cases a loss of interest in intellectual exercise, which is associated with dull lessons, and the most curious ignorance of common things. We have all met persons who have taken a university degree, and yet do not understand why the moon appears to change its form; who think that corals are insects, whales fish, and bats birds; who do not realise that England has been over and over again below the sea, and even believe that the world is not more than 6000 years old! Two great faults in our present system of higher education are that it is too narrow, and not sufficiently interesting. We cannot all care about grammar, or even about mathematics. Those who love natural science, for instance, find little at school which appeals to them, and even those with literary tastes are surfeited by the monotony of classics; so that comparatively few keep up their studies after leaving school. Thus our system of education too often defeats its own object, and renders odious the very things we wish to make delightful. Children are inspired with the divine gift of curiosity -sometimes inconveniently so. They ask more questions than the wisest man can answer, and want to know the why and the wherefore of everything. Their minds are bright, eager, and thirsting for knowledge. We send them to school, and what is the result? their intellect is often dulled, and their interest is crushed out; they may have learnt much, but they have too often lost what is far more important—the wish to learn. No doubt both Oxford and Cambridge have admirable science schools. A man can study there with many advantages, and under excellent teachers. But the prizes and fellowships are still given mainly to classics and mathematics. Moreover, natural science is not yet regarded as a necessary part of education. Degrees are given without requiring any knowledge of the world in which we live. These are no peculiar views of mine. They have been reiterated by students of education, from Ascham and Milton to Huxley and Grant-Duff; they have been urged by one Royal Commission after another. University authorities seem to consider that the elements of science are in themselves useless. This view appears to depend on a mistaken analogy with language. It is no use to know a little of a number of languages, unless, indeed, one is a student of comparative grammar, or is going into the countries where they are spoken. But it is important to know the rudiments of all sciences, and it is impossible to go far in any one without knowing something of others. So far as children are concerned, it is a mistake to think of astronomy and physics, geology and biology, as so many separate subjects. For the child, Nature is one subject, and the first thing is to lay a broad foundation. We should, as Lord Brougham said, teach our children something of everything, and then, as far as possible, everything of something. Specialisation should not begin before seventeen, or at any rate sixteen. In the special report on English schools which has recently been issued as a Blue Book by the Education Department, it is shown that in our preparatory schools modern languages are neglected, and science is almost completely ignored. This is really deplorable. I am none of us wish classics to be omitted, nor do that special commercial subjects should be boys. But we do wish them to know some |