EVIDENCE OF HISTORY
After an exhaustive inquiry into the multifarious evils which must be
laid at the door of education, it is refreshing to turn to history for
illustrious examples of men who not only did not owe their greatness to
academic training, but who actually owed it to what would nowadays be
designated a neglected education.
The chronicles of the past teem with instances of youths who have
developed into brilliant men, in spite of the fact that they had either
had no schooling at all, or had been considered the dunces of their
class. It would, in fact, be far more difficult to supply illustrations
of great men who have succeeded on account of their academic
distinction, than to give examples of those who failed to distinguish
themselves at school, but who nevertheless became famous afterwards as
men of unusual talent.
When Napoleon Bonaparte, at the age of fifteen, left the military
college of Brienne, where he had been a pupil for five years and a half,
the inspector of military schools gave him the following certificate:
'M. de Buonaparte (Napoleon), born August 15, 1769; height 4 feet 10
inches 10 lines; is in the fourth class; has a good constitution,
excellent health, character obedient, upright, grateful, conduct very
regular; has always been distinguished by his application to
mathematics. He knows history and geography very passably. He is not
well up in ornamental studies or in Latin, in which he is only in the
fourth class. He will be an excellent sailor. He deserves to be passed
on to the military school of Paris.'
This was an optimistic description of the youthful Napoleon's
accomplishments, for he was, as a matter of fact, so backward in Latin
that his removal to Paris was opposed by the sub-principal of the
college. According to the testimony of his schoolfellow and biographer,
M. de Bourrienne, he exhibited backwardness in every branch of education
except mathematics, for which he showed a distinct natural bent.
The only professor at Brienne who took any notice of Napoleon was the
mathematical master. The others thought him stupid because he had no
taste for the study of languages, literature, and the various subjects
that formed the curriculum of the establishment; and as there seemed no
chance of his becoming a scholar, they took no interest in him.
'His superior intelligence was, however, sufficiently perceptible,'
writes M. de Bourrienne, 'even through the reserve under which it was
veiled. If the monks to whom the superintendence of the establishment
was confided had understood the organization of his mind, if they had
engaged more able mathematical professors, or if we had had any
incitement to the study of chemistry, natural philosophy, astronomy,
etc., I am convinced that Bonaparte would have pursued these sciences
with all the genius and spirit of investigation which he displayed in a
career more brilliant, it is true, but less useful to mankind.
Unfortunately, the monks did not perceive this, and were too poor to pay
for good masters.... The often-repeated assertion of Bonaparte having
received a _careful education_ at Brienne is therefore untrue.'
Napoleon's military bent showed itself whilst he was at the College of
Brienne. Heavy snow fell during one winter, and prevented him from
taking the solitary walks that were his chief recreation. He therefore
fell back upon the expedient of getting his school companions to dig
trenches and build snow fortifications. 'This being done,' he said, 'we
may divide ourselves into sections, form a siege, and I will undertake
to direct the attacks.' In this way he organized a sham war that was
carried on with great success for a fortnight.
This brief sketch of Napoleon Bonaparte's schooldays has been given in
order to show that the development of his genius owed nothing to
academic training. Without being actually a dunce, he was backward in
all the subjects except the one in which he took a vivid interest; and,
doubtless, had he cared as little for mathematics as for Latin, he would
have left Brienne with a reputation for profound stupidity.
The school career of his great opponent, Wellington, was even less
distinguished. Tradition has handed down to posterity no further details
regarding his Eton days beyond the record of a fight with Sydney Smith's
elder brother 'Bobus.' Alluding to him as a dull boy, Mr. Smiles
states, in a footnote, in his book on 'Self-Help': 'A writer in the
_Edinburgh Review_ (July, 1859) observes that "the Duke's talents seem
never to have developed themselves until some active and practical field
for their display was placed immediately before him. He was long
described by his Spartan mother, who thought him a dunce, as only 'food
for powder.' He gained no sort of distinction, either at Eton or at the
French Military College of Angiers." It is not improbable that a
competitive examination, at this day, might have excluded him from the
army.'
Lord Clive was a perfectly hopeless youth from the schoolmaster's point
of view. He loathed work, and was always up to some prank or other. In
the vain hope of inducing him to learn something, he was sent to four
schools in succession; but, with a single exception, every master under
whom he was placed declared him to be an incorrigible idler. The
exception was Dr. Eaton of Lostock, who predicted a great career for
Clive, provided an opportunity were afforded him for the exercise of his
talents.
At Market Drayton he amused himself by organizing a band of idle scamps,
who went about threatening to smash the windows of tradespeople unless
they paid a fine of apples or pence; and on one occasion he alarmed the
inhabitants of the town by climbing a church steeple and seating himself
upon a stone spout near the top.
A man of the same stamp who received the scantiest education was George
Washington. He is described as having been given a common-school
education, with a little mathematical training, but no instruction
whatever in ancient or modern languages.
Christopher Columbus, another adventurous spirit, owed very little to
his schooling. 'He soon evinced a strong passion for geographical
knowledge,' writes Washington Irving in his interesting Life of the
explorer, 'and an irresistible inclination for the sea.... His father,
seeing the bent of his mind, endeavoured to give him an education
suitable for maritime life. He sent him, therefore, to the university of
Pavia, where he was instructed in geometry, geography, astronomy and
navigation.... He remained but a short time at Pavia, barely sufficient
to give him the rudiments of the necessary sciences; the thorough
acquaintance with them which he displayed in after-life must have been
the result of diligent self-schooling, and of casual hours of study
amidst the cares and vicissitudes of a rugged and wandering life.'
No better instance of the advantage of natural development and
self-culture could be afforded than by the career of Dr. Livingstone.
Working in a cotton factory as a boy of ten, he studied scientific works
and books of travel, besides the classics, not only at night, but during
the hours of labour.
'Looking back now at that life of toil,' he wrote afterwards, 'I cannot
but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early
education; and, were it possible, I should like to begin life over again
in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training.'
Dr. Adam Clarke, the celebrated divine, scholar, and philanthropist, was
a regular dunce in his early youth. It was only with difficulty, and an
undue proportion of whacking, that the elements of the alphabet were
driven into his head by an impatient teacher--a mode of instruction that
probably caused him to remark, in after life, that 'many children, not
naturally dull, have become so under the influence of the schoolmaster.'
It is related of Dr. Clarke that when he reached the middle of 'As in
praesenti,' in Lilly's Latin Grammar, he came to a dead stop and could
get no further. His fellow-pupils, however, jeered him to such an extent
that he determined to go on and conquer the difficulty. And this
resolution seems to have helped him considerably, as, instead of the
grammar being forced into him, he began to study and think for himself.
Nevertheless, he always found great difficulty in learning anything at
school, but was passionately devoted to reading imaginative books and
stories of adventure, such as 'Jack the Giant-killer,' 'Arabian Nights,'
'The Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Sir Francis Drake,' and a host of similar
works. To these, in fact, and not to his painfully acquired school
education, he was wont to attribute the formation of his literary taste.
Disraeli's education was by no means thorough. There is no record of his
having distinguished himself academically in the slightest degree. It is
related of him, on the contrary, that he was such a duffer at classics
as to be incapable of grasping the rule that 'ut' should be followed by
the subjunctive mood. The following account of Disraeli's schooldays,
given by one of his school-fellows, is quoted by Sir William Fraser:
'I cannot say that Benjamin Disraeli at this period of his life
exhibited any unusual zeal for classical studies; and I doubt whether
his attainments in this direction, when he left the school for Mr.
Cogan's at Walthamstow, reached higher than the usual grind in Livy and
Caesar. But I well remember that he was the compiler and editor of a
school newspaper, which made its appearance on Saturdays, when the
gingerbread-seller was also to be seen, and that the right of perusal
was estimated at the cost of a sheet of gingerbread, the money value of
which was in those days the third of a penny.'
Turning to literary men, we find an imposing array of dunces. I have not
had time to examine into the school experiences of more than a limited
number of great names. If the reader is anxious to pursue the
investigation further, he will doubtless find that there is scarcely a
famous man of letters who made his mark at school or university.
The first person to teach Oliver Goldsmith his letters was a woman, who
afterwards became village schoolmistress, named Elizabeth Delap. She did
not form a very flattering opinion of her young pupil. 'Never was so
dull a boy,' she was wont to declare; 'he seemed impenetrably stupid.'
From this kind but undiscriminating teacher Oliver gravitated to the
village school, where he learnt nothing. Thence he was sent to Elphin;
and of this period of his school life Dr. Strean says: 'He was
considered by his contemporaries and school-fellows, with whom I have
often conversed on the subject, as a stupid heavy blockhead, little
better than a fool, whom every one made fun of.'
Goldsmith has himself, in his 'Inquiry into the Present State of Polite
Learning,' recorded some very striking impressions as to the value of
academic success. 'A lad whose passions are not strong enough in youth,'
he writes, 'to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors,
and not his inclination, have chalked out, by four or five years'
perseverance, probably obtains every advantage and honour his college
can bestow. I forget whether the simile has been used before, but I
would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the
tranquillity of dispassionate prudence to liquors that never ferment,
and consequently continue always muddy. Passions may raise a commotion
in the youthful breast, but they disturb only to refine it. However this
be, mean talents are often rewarded in colleges with an easy
subsistence.'
Another 'impenetrable dunce,' according to the opinion of his tutor, an
eminent Dublin scholar, was Richard Sheridan. He was afterwards sent to
Harrow, where he earned for himself a great reputation for idleness. Dr.
Parr, one of the under-masters, wrote to Sheridan's biographer the
following expression of opinion:
'There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was inferior to
many of his schoolfellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do
not remember any one instance in which he distinguished himself by
Latin or English composition, in prose or verse.... He was at the
uppermost part of the fifth form, but he never reached the sixth, and,
if I mistake not, he had no opportunity of attending the most difficult
and the most honourable of school business, when the Greek plays were
taught--and it was the custom at Harrow to teach these at least every
year. He went through his lessons in Horace and Virgil and Homer well
enough for a time. But, in the absence of the upper master, Dr. Sumner,
it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling
up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only slovenly in construing, but
unusually defective in his Greek grammar.... I ought to have told you
that Richard, when a boy, was a great reader of English poetry; but his
exercises afforded no proof of his proficiency.'
The latter statement speaks volumes for a method of teaching which
failed to evoke, even in such a master of English literature as Sheridan
eventually proved himself to be, a proper development of his greatest
talent. No doubt the exercises in which so little proficiency was shown
were compulsorily executed against the grain, being of such a pedantic
character that no sane schoolboy could possibly be found to evince the
smallest interest in them.
Dean Swift and Sir Walter Scott were both dull boys. The former says of
himself that he was 'stopped of his degree for dulness and
insufficiency.' Scott, in his autobiographical sketch, does not make
himself out to have been the dunce that he really was supposed to be at
school. If not bright at his lessons, however, he was certainly clever
in other ways and capable of thinking for himself. An excellent
illustration of this is contained in the story that though Scott, as a
boy, used invariably to go to sleep in church in the course of the
sermon, yet, when questioned about the latter afterwards, he was
generally able to sketch out most of the points dwelt upon by the
preacher--the explanation being, of course, that, given the text, he was
able to follow the probable train of thought inspired by its wording.
Summing up Scott's attainments, a biographer gives expression to the
opinion that he was 'self-educated in every branch of knowledge he ever
turned to account in the works of his genius.'
Neither Burns nor Carlyle was a scholar. The former received a grounding
in grammar, reading, and writing. He acquired a little French, but
learnt no Latin at all. Whatever he knew he owed to the fact that he
exercised his own taste for knowledge by choosing his own books and
devouring only what appealed to his mind. Carlyle, like many another
famous man of letters, had little Latin and less Greek. 'In the
classical field,' he wrote, 'I am truly as nothing.' For mathematics he
showed a certain amount of inclination, but even in that field did not
succeed in carrying off any prizes. His own opinion of a conventional
education is very tersely rendered by his exclamation: 'Academia! High
School instructors of youth! Oh, ye unspeakable!'
The poet Wordsworth was educated at the grammar school at Hawkshead. He
always declared that the great merit of the school was the liberty
allowed to the scholars. No attempt was made to cram or to produce model
pupils. Within limits they appear, in fact, to have been allowed to read
precisely what they pleased. In this way Wordsworth received in every
sense of the term a liberal education; and when he went to Cambridge,
'he enjoyed even more thoroughly than at Hawkshead whatever advantages
might be derived from the neglect of his teachers.'
The poet had a great contempt for academical training, and refused to go
through the usual Cambridge course. He finally graduated as B.A. without
honours, afterwards recording his indifference to academic distinction
in the well-known lines:
Of College labours, of the Lecturer's room,
All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand,
With loyal students faithful to their books,
Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants,
And honest dunces--of important days,
Examinations, when the man was weighed
As in a balance! Of excessive hopes,
Tremblings withal and commendable fears,
Small jealousies, and triumphs good or bad--
Let others that know more speak as they know.
Such glory was but little sought by me,
And little won.
More forcibly expressed was Rousseau's derision of ordinary educational
methods. Writing in his 'Confessions' about the school days of his
cousin and himself, he says: 'We were sent together to Bossey, to board
with the Protestant minister Lambercier, in order to learn, together
with Latin, all the sorry trash which is included under the name of
education.... M. Lambercier was a very intelligent person who, without
neglecting our education, never imposed excessive tasks upon us. The
fact that, in spite of my dislike to restraint, I have never recalled my
hours of study with any feeling of disgust, and also that, even if I did
not learn much from him, I learnt without difficulty what I did learn,
and never forgot it, is sufficient proof that his system of instruction
was a good one.'
As far as the history of science is concerned, there is a long array of
self-cultured men to whom most of the discoveries that have been made
are due. In no other occupation is the faculty of thinking originally
and independently more essential than in the pursuit of scientific
knowledge, and it is significant that amongst famous scientists more
instances are to be found of men who owe nothing to school instruction
or academic training than in almost any other walk of life.
In this connection mention has already been made of the famous botanist
Linnaeus. The whole of his school life was one unremitting protest
against the usual educational methods of endeavouring to force the mind
away from its natural bent. Linnaeus detested metaphysics, Latin, Greek,
and every subject except physics and mathematics, in which he usually
outstripped his fellow-pupils. But his nose was kept to the grindstone
until the authorities informed his father that he was not fit for a
learned education, and recommended his being given some manual
employment. Thus were twelve precious years of the life of one of the
most gifted men of science, save for what he accomplished out of school
hours, wasted to no purpose. It is not to be wondered at that he spoke
of one of his masters as 'a passionate and morose man, better calculated
for extinguishing a youth's talents than for improving them.'
One of the greatest anatomists that ever lived, John Hunter, who
numbered Dr. Jenner amongst his pupils, was scarcely educated at all for
the first twenty years of his life. Mr. Smiles states that 'it was with
difficulty that he acquired the arts of reading and writing.' Originally
a carpenter, he became assistant to his brother, who was established in
London as a surgeon. He acquired all his knowledge of anatomy in the
dissecting-room, and owed everything he had learnt to his own hard work
and habit of thinking things out for himself.
'The brilliant Sir Humphry Davy,' says Mr. Smiles, 'was no cleverer than
other boys. His teacher, Dr. Cardew, once said of him, "While he was
with me I could not discern the faculties by which he was so much
distinguished." Indeed, Davy himself in after life considered it
fortunate that he had been left to "enjoy so much idleness" at school.'
Newton was always at the bottom of his class, until he suddenly took it
into his head to give a boy, whom he had already thrashed in another
sense, an intellectual beating. 'It is very probable,' writes Sir David
Brewster in his biography, 'that Newton's idleness arose from the
occupation of his mind with subjects in which he felt a deeper
interest.' Nobody could have penned a more incisive indictment against
the imbecility of an education system that forces all boys, irrespective
of their wishes or talents, into a fixed groove. It was Newton who, in
answer to an inquiry as to how the principle of gravity was discovered,
replied: 'By always thinking of it.'
When Watt, as a boy, was engaged in investigating the condensation of
steam, his aunt, who was sitting with him at the tea-table, exclaimed:
'James, I never saw such an idle boy! Take a book or employ yourself
usefully. For the last half hour you have not spoken a word, but taken
off the lid of that kettle and put it on again, holding now a cup and
now a silver spoon over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout,
and counting the drops of water.'
In this sympathetic way children are usually encouraged to think by
their elders. Watt's faculties were developed entirely at home. He was
sent to a public elementary school in Scotland; but, fortunately for
science, he was so delicate that he was nearly always absent through
indisposition. A visitor, who found the boy drawing lines and circles on
the hearth with a piece of coloured chalk, once remonstrated with Mr.
James Watt, senior, for allowing his son to waste his time at home. Watt
had the good fortune, however, to possess an intelligent father, who
encouraged the boy as far as it lay in his power.
Left to his own devices, Watt not only contrived to make himself the
foremost engineer of his time, but he also developed his talents in many
other directions. Sir Walter Scott says of him that 'his talents and
fancy overflowed on every subject.' And M. Arago, the French scientist,
in his memoir of Watt, expresses the view that the latter, in spite of
his excellent memory, 'might, nevertheless, not have peculiarly
distinguished himself among the youthful prodigies of ordinary schools.
He could never have learned his lessons like a parrot, for he
experienced a necessity of carefully elaborating the intellectual
elements presented to his attention, and Nature had peculiarly endowed
him with the faculty of meditation.'
This is only a roundabout way of saying that the conventional process of
cramming would have destroyed the fine intellectual faculties possessed
by Watt. But if in his case, why not in that of another? That is the
strange thing about the light shed upon educational problems by cases
like that of Watt, Newton, and other men of commanding genius. People
only perceive in it a half-truth. They think that it is only in these
exceptional instances that the mind is incapable of being developed by
ordinary rough-and-ready methods.
Upon what grounds is such an absurd deduction founded? It is true that
individuals differ widely as to the capabilities of their mental
machinery; but it does not follow that the intellectual fibre of one
person is more delicate than that of another.
The difference is not mental, but physical. It is because a boy is
healthy, and not because his intellectual fibre is coarse, that he is
better able to withstand the strain of an educational training than a
weaker and more nervous boy.
Until the discovery is made that all minds are sensitive, when they have
been actually reached, people will go on ignorantly destroying the
finer faculties under the impression that genius or talent is a very
rare thing, and can always shift for itself.
Yet, as I have attempted to show, the evidence of history points
conclusively to the fact that the contrary is the case.
Is it really supposed that the great names that have been handed down to
posterity represent all the genius to which the world has given birth?
The idea is preposterous.
For every man of genius or talent who has been permitted to survive,
education systems have killed a hundred.
If it had not been for Dr. Rothmann, there would probably have been no
Linnaeus to revolutionize the system of botanical classification. Had
tyrannical parents and schoolmasters compelled Watt and Newton to give
up mechanics and scientific study for a thorough cramming in Latin
grammar and Greek roots, we might to-day be without a steam-engine or a
theory of the law of gravitation. Even the genius of Napoleon and
Wellington might easily have been crushed under the auspices of a modern
competitive examination.
Would stupid Oliver Goldsmith have written his immortal 'Vicar of
Wakefield' and 'She Stoops to Conquer,' or would idle Sheridan have
penned the exquisite comedies that have not to this day been approached
by any subsequent writer, if their idleness and stupidity had been
submitted to the test of an enforced academic training for classical or
mathematical honours?
Surely the evidence of history points to only one conclusion--namely,
that all the genius in the world cannot survive the hopeless imbecility
of educational methods, except by successfully dodging them through
stupidity and idleness, whilst the faculties develop themselves at
stolen intervals.