by postponing every kind of specialism to a period beyond the
elementary stage, until there is a more general agreement as to
what constitutes a liberal education. If we apply the touchstone of
Mulcaster’s conception, how much of the traditional lumber which
is now obstructing our progress would have to be cleared away!
We are the bond-slaves of two tyrants--the spirit of an outworn
classicism and the spirit of a utilitarianism falsely so-called.
Under the domination of the former we distort the curriculum of
our higher-class schools, preparatory as well as secondary, by
projecting into the elementary period and practically imposing on
every scholar linguistic studies that should form a specialism only
for a very few during the later years of school life. Misguided by
the latter we debase our public primary education by filling up
the time with subjects of mere information that neither arouse the
interests of the learner nor afford a genuine mental discipline.
It would indeed astound the Elizabethan schoolmaster who tolerated
pre-occupation with the learned tongues only until his native
English should reach a high enough point of cultivation to become a
worthy receptacle of learning, and who lamented the temporary need
for a medium which kept the student “one degree further off from
knowledge” to find that after more than 300 years the shackles had
not yet been cast aside. Nor would he be less dismayed to discover
that the sole alternative offered to those who were excluded
from what professed to be a liberal culture, consisted only to a
very small extent of that direct knowledge of the facts and laws
of Nature which he conceived to be the proper food during “our
best learning time,” but mainly of the dry bones of second-hand
experience. Mulcaster’s ideal will not be attained until we have
devised a course of study up to the age of at least 14 or 15 years,
which shall form a preparation for life that is applicable to all
pupils alike--to boys and girls, to rich and poor, to those who can
pursue their systematic education further, and to those who must
discontinue it then to enter into the world of affairs.
Enough perhaps has been already said, though it would be an easy
task to continue the catalogue of reforms suggested by Mulcaster,
which have been approved by the consensus of judgment among
thinkers on education, but have not yet been fully carried out
in this country. When we remember the over-pressure and cramming
that have resulted from the abuse of examinations in the treatment
of learning as a marketable commodity subject to the severest
struggles of competition; or the widespread neglect of the arts
and sciences as instruments of general training; or the unholy
separation of parents and children during the most critical years
of mutual influence, through the acceptance of the boarding-school
system as a normal institution; or the anomalous position of
teachers, left as they are without recognition as members of an
acknowledged profession, and having to depend for their training on
the voluntary provision made by religious sects,--when we reflect
that on these and on many kindred matters of high urgency the
wisest guidance was offered to us more than three centuries ago,
we shall have little hesitation in admitting the claim of Richard
Mulcaster to be considered the Father of English Pedagogy.
[Illustration: (Publisher’s colophon.)]