allowing indeed many spare hours for accessory subjects such as
readings in English or history. Note the main features of this
programme. The time for things worth learning is found by dropping
_grammar_ as a subject of special study. There are to be no lessons in
grammar or accidence as such, nor of course any verse compositions
except for older boys specialising in classics. _Mathematics_ also is
treated as a subject which need not be carried beyond the rudiments
unless mathematical or physical ability is shown. For other boys it
leads literally nowhere, being a road impassable.
All the languages are to be taught as we learn them in later life,
when the desire or necessity arises, by means of easy passages with
the translation at our side. Our present practice not only fails to
teach languages but it succeeds in teaching how _not_ to learn a
language. Who thinks of beginning Russian by studying the "aspects" of
the verbs, or by committing to memory the 28 paradigms which German
grammarians have devised on the analogy of Latin declensions?
Auxiliary verbs are the pedagogue's delight, but who begins Spanish by
trying to discriminate between _tener_ and _haber_, or _ser_ and
_estar_, or who learns tables of exceptions to improve his French?
These things come by use or not at all.
If languages are treated not as lessons but as vehicles of speech, and
if the authors are read so that we may find out what they say and how
they say it, and at such a pace that we follow the train of thought or
the story, all who have any sense of language at all can attend and
with pleasure too. What chance has a boy of enjoying an author when he
knows him only as a task to be droned through, thirty lines at a time?
Small blame to the pupil who never discovers that the great authors
were men of like passions with ourselves, that the Homeric songs were
made to be shouted at feasts to heroes full of drink and glory, that
Herodotus is telling of wonders that his friends, and we too, want to
hear, that in the tragedies we hear the voice of Sophocles dictating,
choked with emotion and tears; that even Roman historians wrote
because they had something to tell, and Caesar, dull proser that he
is, composed the _Commentaries_ not to provide us with style or
grammatical curiosities, but as a record of extraordinary events. To
get into touch with any author he must be read at a good pace, and by
reading of that kind there is plenty of time for a boy before he
reaches 17 to make acquaintance with much of the best literature both
of Greek and Latin.
Education must be brought up to date; but if in accomplishing that, we
lose Greek, it will have been sacrificed to obstinate formalism and
pedagogic tradition. The defence of classics as a basis of education
is generally misrepresented by opponents. The unique value of the
classics is not in any begetting of literary style. We are thinking of
readers not of writers. Much of the best literature is the work of
unlettered men, as they never tire of telling us, but it is for the
enjoyment and understanding of books and of the world that continuity
with the past should be maintained. John Bunyan wrote sterling prose,
knowing no language but his own. But how much could he read? What
judgments could he form? We want also to keep classics and especially
Greek as the bountiful source of material and of colour, decoration
for the jejune lives of common men. If classics cease to be generally
taught and become the appanage of a few scholars, the gulf between the
literary and the scientific will be made still wider. Milton will need
more explanatory notes than O. Henry. Who will trouble about us
scientific students then? We shall be marked off from the beginning,
and in the world of laboratories Hector, Antigone and Pericles will
soon share the fate of poor Ananias and Sapphira.
I come now to the gravest part of the whole question. We plead for the
preservation of literature, especially classical literature, as the
staple of education in the name of beauty and understanding: but no
less do we demand science in the name of truth and advancement. Given
that our demand succeeds, what consequences may we expect? Nothing
immediate, as I fear. In opening the discussion it was argued that
even if scientific knowledge be widely diffused, any great change in
the composition of the ruling classes is scarcely attainable under
present conditions of social organisation. Even if science stand equal
with classics in examinations for the services the general tenor of
the public mind will in all likelihood be undisturbed. Yet it is for
such a revolution that science really calls, and come it will in any
community dominated by natural knowledge. Science saves us from
blunders about glycerine, shows how to economise fuel and to make
artificial nitrates, but these, though they decide national destinies,
are merely the sheaf of the wave-offering: the harvest is behind. For
natural knowledge is destined to give man not only a direct control of
the material world but new interpretations of higher problems. Though
we in England make a stand upon the ancient way, peoples elsewhere
will move on. Those who have grasped the meaning of science,
especially biological science, are feeling after new rules of conduct.
The old criteria based on ignorance have little worth. "Rights,"
whether of persons or of nations, may be abstractions well-founded in
law or philosophy, but the modern world sooner or later will annul
them.
The general ignorance of science has lasted so long that we have
virtually two codes of right and duty, that founded on natural truth
and that emanating from tradition, which almost alone finds public
expression in this country. Whether we look at the cruelty which
passes for justice in our criminal courts, at the prolongation of
suffering which custom demands as a part of medical ethics, at this
very question of education, or indeed at any problem of social life,
we see ahead and know that science proclaims wiser and gentler creeds.
When in the wider sphere of national policy we read the declared
ideals of statesmen, we turn away with a shrug. They bid us exalt
national sentiment as a purifying and redeeming influence, and in the
next breath proclaim that the sole way to avert the ruin now menacing
the world is to guarantee to all nations freedom to develop,
"unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid." So, forsooth, are we to end war.
Nature laughs at such dreams. The life of one is the death of another.
Where are the teeming populations of the West Indies, where the
civilisations of Mexico or of Peru, where are the blackfellows of
Australia? Since means of subsistence are limited, the fancy that one
group can increase or develop save at the expense of another is an
illusion, instantly dissipated by appeal to biological fact, nor would
a biologist-statesman look for permanent stability in a multiplication
of competing communities, some vigorous, others worthless, but all
growing in population. Rather must a people familiar with science see
how small and ephemeral a thing is the pride of nations, knowing that
both the peace of the world and the progress of civilisation are to be
sought not by the hardening of national boundaries but in the
substitution of cosmopolitan for national aspiration.
[Footnote 1: _Les Lois de l'Imitation_, 1911, p. 87.]
[Footnote 2: Reported in _Evening Standard_, 11 Sept. 1916.]
[Footnote 3: Two Cambridge men spoke, one being Lord Rayleigh, the
Chairman, and ten Oxford men, besides one originally Cambridge, for
several years an Oxford professor.]
[Footnote 4: _Journ. of Heredity_, VIII. 1917, p. 53.]
VIII
ATHLETICS
By F. B. MALIM
Master of Haileybury College
At a conference held by the Froebel Society in January, 1917, the
subject for discussion was the employment of women teachers in boys'
schools. With some of the questions considered, whether women should
have shorter hours than men, whether they are capable of enforcing
discipline, and the like, I am not now concerned; but I was interested
to hear from one speaker after another that a woman was at a real
disadvantage in a boys' school, because she could not take part in the
games. The speakers did not come from the public schools, whose
devotion to athletics constitutes, we are sometimes told, a public
danger, but mainly from primary and secondary day schools in London.
But none the less it was assumed that a boy's games are an essential
part of his education. The same assumption is made by the managers of
boys' clubs and similar organisations which are endeavouring to carry
on the education of boys who have left the elementary schools at the
age of fourteen. In spite of the great difficulty of finding grounds
to play on in the neighbourhood of great towns, cricket and football
are encouraged by any possible means among the working lads of our
industrial centres. Games are more and more being regarded as a
desirable element in the education of the British boy, and are
provided for him and organised for him by those responsible for his
environment. But this is quite a modern development. I have been told
by one who was at Marlborough in the very early days of that school,
that so far were the authorities from providing any means of playing
cricket, that the boys themselves were obliged to subscribe small sums
for the purchase of the necessary material. The book containing the
names of the subscribers fell into the hands of the head master, who
gated for the term all boys on the list, assuming without inquiry that
they were the clients of a juvenile bookmaker.
When we ask why we have come to regard games as a part of a boy's
education, we shall naturally answer first that a full education is
concerned with the proper development of the body. For this purpose we
may employ the old fashioned gymnastic exercises, the modern Swedish
exercises or outdoor games. And of these the greatest is games. "So
far," says Dr. Saleeby, "as true race culture is concerned, we should
regard our muscles merely as servants or instruments of the will.
Since we have learnt to employ external forces for our purposes, the
mere bulk of a muscle is now a matter of little importance. Of the
utmost importance, on the other hand, is the power to coordinate and
graduate the activity of our muscles, so that they may become highly
trained servants. This is a matter however not of muscle at all, but
of nervous education. Its foundation cannot be laid by mechanical
things, like dumb-bells and exercises, but by games in which will and
purpose and co-ordination are incessantly employed. In other words the
only physical culture worth talking about is nervous culture. The
principles here laid down are daily defied in very large measure in
our nurseries, our schools and our barrack yards. The play of a child,
spontaneous and purposeful, is supremely human and characteristic.
Although when considered from the outside, it is simply a means of
muscular development, properly considered it is really the means of
nervous development. Here we see muscles used as human muscles should
be used, as instruments of mind. In schools the same principles should
be recognised. From the biological and psychological point of view,
the playing field is immensely superior to the gymnasium[1]."
It would be a mistake to under-estimate the value of the Swedish
system of physical exercises. Its object is not the abnormal
development of muscle, but the production of a healthy, alert and well
balanced body. The military authorities in the last three years have
been confronted with the problem of restoring promptness of movement,
erectness of carriage, poise and flexibility to numbers of men whose
muscles have been given a one-sided development by the constant
performance of one kind of manual work, or have grown flabby by long
sitting at a desk, and the task would have been much less successfully
tackled without the aid of the Swedish methods. In schools these
exercises may be used with real benefit given two conditions, small
classes and a really skilled instructor. For the value a boy derives
from the exercises, to a very large extent depends upon himself, on
the concentration of his own will. It is almost impossible to make
sure in a large class that this concentration is given, and any kind
of exercise done without purpose or resolution rapidly degenerates
into the most useless gesticulations. But though we may use physical
exercises as an aid, I should be sorry to see them ever regarded as a
substitute for games. Even supposing that they were an adequate
substitute in the development of the body (which I doubt) they cannot
claim to have an effect at all comparable to that of games in the
development of character. Sometimes the most extravagant claims are
put forward on behalf of athletics as a school of character, almost as
extravagant as are the terms in which at other times the "brutal
athlete" is denounced. I don't think it is found by experience that
athletes cherish higher ideals or are more humble-minded than their
less muscular fellows; I doubt if they become more charitable in their
judgments or more liberal in their giving. We must carefully limit the
claims we make, and then we shall find that we have surer grounds to
go on. What virtues can we reasonably suppose to be developed by
games? First I should put physical courage. It certainly requires
courage to collar a fast and heavy opponent at football, to fall on
the ball at the feet of a charging pack or to stand up to fast bowling
on a bumpy wicket. Schoolboy opinion is rightly intolerant of a
"funk," and we should not attach too small a value to this first of
the manly virtues. Considering as we must the virtues which we are to
develop in a nation, we realise that for the security of the nation
courage in her young men is indispensable. That it has been bred in
the sons of England is attested by the fields of Flanders and the
beaches of Gallipoli. We shall therefore give no heed to those who
decry the danger of some schoolboy games. For we shall remember that
just as few things that are worth gaining can be won without toil, so
there are some things which can only be won by taking risks. Few
things are less attractive in a boy than the habit of playing for
safety; in the old prudence is natural and perhaps admirable, in the
young it is precocious and unlovely. But we need not introduce
unnecessary risk by the matching of boys of unequal size and age. The
practice, for example, of house games in which the boys of one house
play together, without regard to size or skill, is very much inferior
to an organisation of games by means of "sets," graded solely by the
proficiency which boys have shown. In each set boys are matched with
others whose skill approximates to their own; they are not overpowered
by the strength of older boys and can get the proper enjoyment from
the display of such skill as they possess.
And as we desire our games to foster the spirit that faces danger, so
we shall wish them to foster the spirit that faces hardship, the
spirit of endurance. That is why I think that golf and lawn tennis are
not fit school games; they are not painful enough. I am afraid we
ought on the same ground to let racquets go, though for training in
alertness and sheer skill, in the nice harmony of eye and hand
racquets has no equal. But cricket, football, hockey, fives can all be
painful enough; often victory is only to be won by a clinching of the
teeth and the sternest resolve to "stick to it" in face of exhaustion.
This is the merit of two forms of athletics which have been oftenest
the subject of attack, rowing and running. Both of course should be
carefully watched by the school doctor; for both careful training is
necessary. But a sport which encourages boys to deny themselves
luxuries, to scorn ease, to conquer bodily weariness by the exercise
of the will, is not one which should be banished because for some the
spirit has triumphed to the hurt of the flesh. In a self-indulgent age
when sometimes it has seemed that the gibe of our enemies is true,
that the most characteristic English word is "comfort," it is good to
retain in our schools some forms of activity in which comfort is never
considered at all. The Ithaca which was [Greek: hagathê koyrotrophos]
was also [Greek: trêcheia].
Again no boy can meet with real athletic success who has not learnt to
control his temper. It is not merely that public opinion despises the
man who is a bad loser; but that to lose your temper very often means
to lose the game. It may be true that a Rugby forward does not
develop his finest game until an opponent's elbow has met his nose and
given an extra spice to his onslaught. But in the majority of contests
the man who keeps his head will win. Notably this is true in boxing, a
fine instrument of education, whatever may be the objections to the
prize ring. So dispassionate a scientist as Professor Hall in his
monumental work on Adolescence, describes boxing as "a manly art, a
superb school for quickness of eye and hand, decision, full of will
and self-control. The moment this is lost, stinging punishment
follows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive
irascibility, and has been found to have a most beneficial effect upon
a peevish or unmanly disposition."
But perhaps the best lesson that a boy can learn from his games, is
the lesson that he must play for his side and not for himself. He does
not always learn it; the cricketer who plays for his average, the
three-quarters who tries to score himself, are not unknown, though
boyish opinion rightly condemns them. Popular school ethics are
thoroughly sound on this point, and it is the virtue of inter-school
and inter-house competitions, that in them a boy learns what it is to
forget self and to think of a cause. There is a society outside
himself which has its claim upon him, whose victory is his victory,
whose defeat is his defeat. Whether victory comes through him or
through another, is nothing so long as victory be won; later in life
men may play games for their health's sake or for enjoyment, but they
lose that thrill of intense patriotism, the more intense because of
the smallness of the society that arouses it, with which they battled
in the mud of some November day for the honour of their school or
house. Small wonder that when school-fellows meet after years of
separation, the memories to which they most gladly return, are the
memories of hard-won victories and manfully contested defeats.
But victory must be won by fair means. There is a story (possibly
without historical foundation) that a foreign visitor to Oxford said
that the thing that struck him most in that great university was the
fact that there were 3000 men there who would rather lose a game than
win it by unfair means. It would be absurd to pretend that that spirit
is universal: the commercial organisation of professional football and
the development of betting have gone a long way to degrade a noble
sport. But the standard of fair play in school games is high, and it
is the encouragement of this spirit by cricket and football that
renders them so valuable an aid in the activities of boys' clubs in
artisan districts. It has been argued that the prevalence of this
generous temper among our troops has been a real handicap in war; that
we have too much regarded hostilities as a game in which there were
certain rules to be observed, and that when we found ourselves matched
against a foe whose object was to win by any means, fair or foul, the
soldiers who were fettered by the scruples of honour were necessarily
inferior to their unscrupulous foe. It has perhaps yet to be proved
that in the long run the unchivalrous fighter always wins, and I doubt
whether any of us would really prefer that even in war we should set
aside the scruples of fair play. But in the arts and pursuits of peace
that man is best equipped to play a noble part who realises that there
are rules in the great game of life which an honourable man will
respect, that there are advantages which he must not take. How often
does some rather inarticulate hero, who has refused some tempting
prospect or spurned some specious offer, explain his act of
self-denial by the simple phrase of his boyhood, "I thought it wasn't
quite playing the game." Schoolboy honour is not always a faultless
thing; sometimes it means the hiding of real iniquity. But the honour
of the playing field is a generous code, and to have learnt its rules
is to have learnt the best that the public opinion of a boy community
can teach.
The chairman of a great engineering firm recently told the
Incorporated Association of Headmasters, that when he went to Oxford
to get recruits for his firm, he did not look for men who had got a
First in Greats, but for men who would have got a First, if they had
worked. For these men had probably given a good deal of their time to
rowing or games and had thereby learnt something of the art of dealing
with men. The student who sticks to his books learns many lessons, but
not this. To be captain of a house or of a school, and to do it well
is to practise the art of governing on a small scale. A sore
temptation to the schoolmaster is to interfere too much in school
games. He sees obvious mistakes being made, wrong tactics being
adopted, the wrong sides chosen, and he longs to interfere. He is
anxious for victories, and forgets that after all victories are a very
secondary business, that games are only a means, not an end, that if
he does not let the boys really govern and make their mistakes, the
game is failing to provide the training that it ought to give. It is
undoubted that schools which are carefully coached by competent
players, where the responsibility is largely taken out of the
captain's hands, are more likely to win their matches. But much is
lost, though the game may be won. The strong captain who goes his own
way, chooses his own side, frames his own tactics and inspires the
whole team with his own spirit, has had a practical training in the
management of men which will stand him in good stead in the greater
affairs of life. "We are not very well satisfied" said a War Office
official, "with the stamp of young officer we are getting. Many of
them never seem to have played a game in their lives, though they are
first-rate mathematicians." And there is no doubt that whether for war
or peace mathematics is not a substitute for leadership.
Courage, endurance, self-control, public spirit, fair play,
leadership, these are the virtues which we find may be encouraged by
the practice of games at school. It is not a complete list of the
Christian virtues, perhaps rather we might call them Pagan virtues,
but it is a fine list for all that. And the best of it is that they
are as it were unconsciously learnt, acquired by practice, not by
inculcation. The boy who follows virtue for its own sake would be, I
fear, a sad prig, but the boy who follows a football for the sake of
his house, may develop virtue and enjoy the process.
But what are we to put on the other side of the account? If it be true
that athletics is a fine school for character, what is the ground for
the frequent complaint that the public schools make a "fetish" of
athleticism? What precisely is the complaint? It is this, that boys
regard, and are encouraged to regard their games as the most important
side of their school life, that their interest in them is so
overpowering that they have no interest left for the development of
the intellect or the acquisition of knowledge, that prominent
athletes, not brilliant scholars, are the heroes of a boy community,
and that in consequence many men of the better nourished classes,
after they have left school, look upon their amusements as the main
business of life, give to them the industry and concentration which
should be bestowed upon science, letters or industry, and swell the
ranks of the amiable and incompetent amateur. It is argued that
schools are converted into pleasant athletic clubs, and that boys,
instead of learning there to work, merely learn to play. Now this is a
serious indictment; it is a good thing to learn to play, but it is not
the only thing a school should teach. Riding, shooting and speaking
the truth may have been an adequate curriculum for an ancient Persian,
but it would not provide a sufficient equipment to enable a man to
face the stress of modern competition, or to understand the
developments of the science and industry of to-day.