the second, and indeed the third of our assumed objects. But in our
modern insistence upon social relations and citizenship--a very proper
insistence, still too much warped and hampered by selfishness and
prejudice--there is a real danger of our forgetting how much of our
conscious existence is passed, in a true sense, at leisure and alone.
It is our ideal on the one side to be "all things to all men": and for
any approach to this ideal, as we have seen, the knowledge and
sympathy born of literature are indispensable. But on the other side
no man or woman is completely fitted out without provision for the
blank spaces, the passages and waiting rooms, as it were, to say
nothing of the actual "recreation rooms" of the house of life. And
there is no provision so abundant, so accessible to all, so permanent,
so independent of fortune, and at once so mellowing and fortifying, as
literature. Our happiness or discontent depends far more, than on
anything else, on the habitual occupation of our mind when it is free
to choose its occupation. And, since thought is instantaneous, even
the busiest of us has far more of that freedom than he knows what to
do with unless he has a mental treasury from which he can at will
bring forth things new and old. It is impossible to exaggerate the
importance of hobbies in a man's own life--and of course indirectly in
his relations with his fellows. A single hobby is dangerous. You ride
it to death or it becomes your master. You need at least a pair of
them in the stable. What they are must depend, you say, upon the
temperament, the bent of the individual. True: but our main
responsibility as educators consists in our "bending of the twig." It
is not temperament nor destiny which renders so many men and women
unable to fill their leisure moments with anything more exhilarating
than, gossip, grumbling, or perpetual bridge. Perhaps the greatest
blessing which a parent or a teacher can confer on a boy or girl is
discreet, unpriggish, and unpatronising, encouragement and guidance in
the discovery and development of hobbies: and if I may venture on a
piece of advice to anyone who needs it, I should say: "Try to secure
that everyone grows up with at least two hobbies; and whatever one of
them may be, let the other be literature, or some branch of
literature."
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
(3) At this point I can imagine someone, who recognises the importance
of literary culture in the equipment of a man or woman of the world,
and perhaps feels even more strongly the truth summed up in these
lines of Wordsworth, expressing the doubt whether the second at least
of these objects can be secured, or will not rather be precluded, by
admitting the study of literature as such into the school curriculum.
This doubt, which I have heard expressed by many lovers of literature,
notably by the late Canon Ainger, is not lightly to be disregarded. It
is to be met, however, in my opinion, by keeping clearly before our
eyes the third of the objects which we assumed to be aimed at by
literary studies as a branch of education--the immediate pleasure of
the student. The two objects which we have already discussed are
ulterior objects, which should be part of the fundamental faith of
the teacher; but while the teacher is in contact with his pupils they
should be forgotten in the glowing conviction that the study of
literature is, at that very moment, the most delightful thing in the
world. Of course we all know, or should know, that this is the only
attitude of mind for the best teaching in any subject whatever. It
takes a great deal more than enthusiasm to make a competent teacher;
and it is easy to prepare pupils successfully for almost any written
examination without any enthusiasm for anything except success. But,
cramming apart, a bored teacher is inevitably a boring one: and while
unfortunately the converse is not universally true and an enthusiastic
teacher may fail to communicate his enthusiasm, yet it is quite
certain that you cannot communicate enthusiasm if you are not
possessed of it.
But this enthusiasm, indispensable for the best teaching of anything,
is, so to speak, doubly indispensable for even competent teaching of
literature. On the one hand the ulterior objects of the study, of
which I have tried to indicate the importance, are of an impalpable
kind. I doubt if there is any subject of the curriculum which it would
be so difficult to commend to an uninterested pupil by an appeal to
simple utilitarian motives. On the other hand there clings to
literature, and particularly to poetry, which is the quintessence of
literature, an air of pleasure-seeking, of holiday, of irresponsibility
and detachment from the work-a-day world, which must captivate the
student, or else the study itself will seem very poor fooling compared
with football or hockey. If the attitude of the teacher reflects the old
question of the Latin Grammar "Why should I teach you letters?" he would
better turn to some other subject which his pupils will more easily
recognise as appropriate to school hours.
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her--
unless indeed he be a candidate for Responsions?
"Ah! it is just as I expected," says my friend Orbilius at this point:
"this literature-lesson of yours is to be mere play, a 'soft-option'
for our modern youth, who is not to be made to stand up to the tussle
with Latin prose or riders in geometry." Softly, my friend! It is
quite true that those twin engines of education, classics and
mathematics, are adapted partly by long practice, but partly, as I too
believe, by their very nature, to discipline the youthful mind to
habits of intellectual honesty, of accuracy, of industry and
perseverance. It is true that they accomplish some of this
discipline--though at what a cost!--in the hands of indifferent
teachers. It is true that every other subject of the usual curriculum
is much more obviously liable than they are to the dangers of
idleness, unreality, false pretence; and that the scoffs, for
instance, about "playing with test-tubes," "tracing maps," "dishing up
history notes," are in fact too often deserved. But in the first
place, if the object to be attained is a worthy one, it is our
business to face the dangers of the road, and not to give up the
object. If a knowledge and love of literature is part of the
birthright of our children, and a part which, as things are, very
many of them will never obtain away from school, then we teachers must
strive to give it them, even if the process seems shockingly frivolous
to the grammarian or the geometrician. And, secondly, it is not true
that the study of literature, even in the mother tongue, cannot be a
discipline and a delight together. The two are very far from
incompatible: indeed that discipline is most effective which is almost
or quite unconsciously self-imposed in the joyous exercise of one's
own faculties. The genuine footballer and the genuine scholar will
both agree with Ferdinand the lover, that
There be some sports are painful, and their labour
Delight in them sets off.
And the "labour" of the boy or girl who is really wrapped up in a play
of Shakespeare or is striving to express the growing sense of beauty
in fitting forms of language, is no less truly spiritual discipline
because it is felt not as pain but as interest and delight.
It is fortunately no part of my business to endeavour to instruct
teachers in the methods of imparting the love and knowledge of
literature. But the value of literary studies in education depends so
much upon the spirit in which they are pursued that I may perhaps be
permitted a few more words on the practical side of the subject. I
have already repeated the truism that no one can impart enthusiasm who
is not himself possessed of it: but even the lover of literature
sometimes lacks that clear consciousness of aim, and that sympathetic
understanding of the personality of his pupil; which are both
essential to successful teaching. Just as the clever young graduate is
tempted to dictate his own admirable history notes to a class of boys,
or to puzzle them with the latest theories in archaeology or
philosophy, so the literary teacher is apt to dazzle his pupils with
brilliant but to them unintelligible criticism, or to surfeit them
with literary history, or to impose upon them an inappropriate
literary diet because it happens to suit his maturer taste or even his
caprice. No one is likely to deny that such errors are possible; but I
should not venture to speak so decidedly, if I were not aware of
having too often fallen into them myself. And the only safeguard for
the teacher is the familiar "Keep your eye on the object"--and that in
a double sense. We must have a clear conception of our aim, and also a
living sympathy with our pupils. I have attempted to indicate the aim,
the equipment of boy or girl for civilised life and for spiritual
enjoyment. It will be sympathy with our pupils which will chiefly
dictate both the method and the material of our instruction. In the
early stages of education this sympathy is generally to be found
either in parents, if they are fond of literature, or in the teacher,
who is usually of the more sympathetic sex. The stories and poetry
offered to children nowadays seem to be, as a rule, sympathetically,
if sometimes rather uncritically, chosen. The importance of voice and
ear in receiving the due impression of literature is recognised; and
the value of the child's own expression of its imaginations and its
sense of rhythm and assonance is understood. Probably more teachers
than Mr. Lamborn supposes would heartily subscribe to the faith which
glows in his delightful little book _The Rudiments of Criticism_,
though there must be very few who would not be stimulated by reading
it.
It is when we come to the middle stage, at any rate of boyhood--for of
girls' schools I am not qualified to speak--that there is a good deal
to be done before the cultivation of literary taste, and all that this
carries with it, will be successfully pursued. In the past, the Latin
and Greek classics were, for the few who really absorbed them, both a
potent inspiration and an unrivalled discipline in taste: but it is
noteworthy how few even of the _élite_ acquired and retained that
lively and generous love of literature which would have enabled them
to sow seeds of the divine fire far and wide--"of joy in widest
commonalty spread." Considering the intensity with which the classics
have been studied in the old universities and public schools of the
United Kingdom, the fine flower of scholarship achieved, the sure
touch of style and criticism, one cannot help being amazed at the low
standard of literary culture in the rank and file of the classes from
which this _élite_ has been drawn. How rare has been the power, or
even apparently the desire, of a Bradley or a Verrall or a Murray, to
carry the flower of their classical culture into the fields of modern
literary study! And how few and fumbling the attempts of ordinary
classical teachers to train their pupils in the appreciation of our
English literature!
In recent years a new type of literary teachers has been rising, who
owe little, at any rate directly, to the old classical training; and
although their zeal is often undisciplined and "not according to
knowledge," with them lies the future hope of literary training in our
schools. They bring to their task an enthusiasm which was too often
lacking in the "grand old fortifying classical curriculum"; but it is
to be hoped that, as the importance of their subject becomes more and
more recognised, they will achieve a method which will embody all that
was valuable, while discarding much that was narrow and pedantic, in
classical teaching. And in particular may they all realise, as many
already do, what the classical teacher, however unconsciously, held as
an axiom, that in order to enter into the spirit of literature, to
appreciate style, to understand in any true sense the meaning of great
author's, it is not enough for pupils to listen and to read, and then
perhaps to write essays about what they have heard and read. They must
also _make_ something, exercise that creative, and at the same time
imitative, artistic faculty, which surely is the motive power of most
of our progress, at least in early life. Nothing has struck me more
forcibly than the intense interest which boys will take in their own
crude efforts at writing a poem or a story or essay, while they are
still quite unable to appreciate with discrimination, or even to enjoy
with any sustained feeling, the poetry or prose of the great masters.
Not that there is anything surprising in this. I know very well that
it was writing Latin verses that taught me to appreciate Virgil, and
writing juvenile epics that led me up to Milton. But it is an order of
progress which we schoolmasters are apt to overlook, expecting our
pupils to appreciate what we know to be good work before they have
that elementary, but most fruitful, experience which can only come
from handling the tools of the craft. The creative and imitative
impulse will die down in the great majority; and we shall not make the
mistake of continuing to exact formal "composition" from maturer
pupils, who no longer find it anything but a drag upon their progress
along the unfolding vistas of knowledge and appreciation. Our object
is not to increase the number of writers, already far too large, but
to increase the number of readers, which can never be too large, to
raise the standard of literary taste, and so to spread pure enjoyment
and all the benefits to society which joy, and joy alone, confers.
Inspired with such an aim, common sense and sympathy will enable us to
overcome the difficulties and avoid the pitfalls which undoubtedly
beset the teaching of that most necessary, most delightful, but most
elusive and imponderable subject, the appreciation of literature.
VII
THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION
By W. BATESON
Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution
That secondary education in England fails to do what it might is
scarcely in dispute. The magnitude of the failure will be appreciated
by those who know what other countries accomplish at a fraction of the
cost. Beyond the admission that something is seriously wrong there is
little agreement. We are told that the curriculum is too exclusively
classical, that the classes are too large, the teaching too dull, the
boys too much away from home, the examination-system too oppressive,
athletics overdone. All these things are probably true. Each cause
contributes in its degree to the lamentable result. Yet, as it seems
to me, we may remove them all without making any great improvement.
All the circumstances may be varied, but that intellectual apathy
which has become so marked a characteristic of English life,
especially of English public and social life, may not improbably
continue. Why nations pass into these morbid phases no one can tell.
The spirit of the age, that "polarisation of society" as Tarde[1]
used to call it, in a definite direction, is brought about by no cause
that can be named as yet. It will remain beyond volitional control at
least until we get some real insight into social physiology. That the
attitude or pose of the average Englishman towards education,
knowledge, and learning is largely a phenomenon of infectious
imitation we know. But even if we could name the original, perhaps
real, perhaps fictional, person--for in all likelihood there was such
an one--whom English society in its folly unconsciously selected as a
model, the knowledge would advance us little. The psychology of
imitation is still impenetrable and likely to remain so. The simple
interpretation of our troubles as a form of sloth--a travelling along
lines of least resistance--can scarcely be maintained. For first there
have been times when learning and science were the fashion. Whether
society benefited directly therefrom may, in passing, be doubted, but
certainly learning did. Secondly there are plenty of men who under the
pressure of fashion devote much effort to the improvement of their
form in fatuous sports, which otherwise applied would go a
considerable way in the improvement of their minds and in widening
their range of interests.
Of late things have become worse. In the middle of the nineteenth
century a perfunctory and superficial acquaintance with recent
scientific discovery was not unusual among the upper classes, and the
scientific world was occasionally visited even by the august. These
slender connections have long since withered away. This decline in the
public estimation of science and scientific men has coincided with a
great increase both in the number of scientific students and in the
provision for teaching science. It has occurred also in the period
during which something of the full splendour and power of science has
begun to be revealed. Great regions of knowledge have been penetrated
by the human mind. The powers of man over nature have been multiplied
a hundredfold. The fate of nations hangs literally on the issue of
contemporary experiments in the laboratory; but those who govern the
Empire are quite content to know nothing of all this. Intercommunication
between government departments and scientific advisers has of course
much developed. That, even in this country, was inevitable. Otherwise
the Empire might have collapsed long since. Experts in the sciences
are from time to time invited to confer with heads of Departments and
even Cabinet Ministers, explaining to them, as best they may, the
rudiments of their respective studies, but such occasional
night-school talks to the great are an inadequate recognition of the
position of science in a modern State. Science is not a material to be
bought round the corner by the dram, but the one permanent and
indispensable light in which every action and every policy must be
judged.
To scientific men this is so evident that they are unable to imagine
what the world looks like to other people. They cannot realise that by
a majority of even the educated classes the phenomena of nature and
the affairs of mankind are still seen through the old screens of
mystery and superstition. The man of science regards nature as in
great and ever increasing measure a soluble problem. For the layman
such inquiries are either indifferent and somewhat absurd, or, if they
attract his attention at all, are interesting only as possible sources
of profit. I suspect that the distinction between these two classes of
mind is not to any great degree a product of education.
It is contemporary commonplace that if science were more prominent in
our educational system everybody would learn it and things would come
all right. That interest in science would be extended is probable.
There is in the population a residuum of which we will speak later,
who would profit by the opportunity; but that the congenitally
unscientific, the section from which the heads of government temporal
and spiritual, the lawyers, administrators, politicians, the classes
upon whose minds the public life of this country almost wholly
depends, would by imbibition of scientific diet at any period of life,
however early, be essentially altered seems in a high degree unlikely.
Of the converse case we have long experience, and I would ask those
who entertain such sanguine expectations, whether the results of
administering literature to scientific boys give much encouragement to
their views. This consideration brings us to the one hard,
physiological fact that should form the foundation of all educational
schemes: the congenital diversity of the individual types. Education
has too long been regarded as a kind of cookery: put in such and such
ingredients in given proportions and a definite product will emerge.
But living things have not the uniformity which this theory of
education assumes. Our population is a medley of many kinds which will
continue heterogeneous, to whatever system of education they are
submitted, just as various types of animals maintain their several
characteristics though nourished on identical food, or as you may see
various sorts of apples remaining perfectly distinct though grafted on
the same stock. Their diversity is congenital.
According to the proposal of the reformers the natural sciences should
be universally taught and be given "capital importance" in the
examinations for the government services, but, cordially as we may
approve the suggestion, we ought to consider what exactly its adoption
is likely to effect. The intention of the proposal is doubtless that
our public servants, especially the highest of them, shall, while
preserving the great qualities they now possess, add also a knowledge
of science and especially scientific habits of mind. Such is the
"ample proposition that hope makes." Does experience of men accord
with it at all? Education, whether we like it or not, is a selective
agency. I doubt whether the change proposed will sensibly alter the
characters of the group on whom our choice at present falls. Rather,
if forced upon an unwilling community, must it act by substituting
another group. The most probable result would not be that the type of
men who now fill great positions would become scientific, but rather
that their places would be taken by men of an altogether distinct
mental type. At the present time these two types of men meet but
little. They scarcely know each other. Their differences are profound,
affecting thoughts, ways of looking at things, and mental interests of
every kind. If either could for a moment see the world with the vision
of the other he would be amazed, but to do so he would need at least
to be born again, and probably, as Samuel Butler remarked, of
different parents. No doubt the abler man of either type could learn
with more or less effort or unreadiness the subject-matter and
principles of the other's business, but any one who has watched the
habits of the two classes will perceive that for them in any real
sense to exchange interests, or that either should adopt the scheme of
proportion which the other assigns to the events of nature and of
life, a metamorphosis well nigh miraculous must be presupposed.
The Bishop of London speaking lately on behalf of the National Mission
said that nature helped him to believe in God, and as evidence for his
belief referred to the fact that we are not "blown off" this earth as
it rushes through space, declaring that this catastrophe had been
averted because "Some one" had wrapped seventy miles of atmosphere
round our planet[2]. Does any one think that the Bishop's slip was in
fact due to want of scientific teaching at Marlborough? His chances of
knowing about Sir Isaac Newton, etc., etc., have been as good as those
of many familiar with the accepted version. I would rather suppose
that such sublunary problems had not interested him in the least, and
that he no more cared how we happen to stick on the earth's surface
than St Paul cared how a grain of wheat or any other seed germinates
beneath it, when he similarly was betrayed into an unfortunate
illustration.
So too on the famous occasion--always cited in these debates--when a
Home Secretary defended the Government for having permitted the
importation of fats into Germany on the ground that the discovery that
glycerine could be made from fat was a recent advance in chemistry, he
was not showing the defects of a literary education so much as a want
of interest in the problems of nature, and the subject-matter of
science at large. It is to be presumed indeed that neither fats, nor
glycerine, nor the dependent problem how living bodies are related to
the world they inhabit, had ever before seemed to him interesting. Nor
can we suppose they would, even if chemistry were substituted for
Greek in Responsions.