EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN ENGLAND.--Education, writes James Payn in the
Independent, has for a long time, as regards the upper classes, been
in the hands of impostors and coxcombs. Scotch schools for ten pounds
a year have for generations turned out better educated men than in our
public schools for two hundred pounds, and of late the school boards
have shown how efficiency can be combined with low prices. This last
development has put the great educational establishments upon their
mettle, and induced them to consider whether a smattering of Greek
obtained in twenty years, and forgotten in the twenty-first, is, after
all, the highest form of intellectual culture. The head-masters of
Harrow, Winchester and Marlbro' have come at last to the sage
conclusion that twelve years of age is quite early enough to begin
Greek, and that for a good many boys that tongue is a superfluity. The
simple truth is that not one boy in ten understands Greek. Unhappily
this act of tardy justice (and mercy) can have no retrospective
effect. Think of the generations of unhappy children who have been
tortured by that infernal language, and of the imprisonment in summer
days of which it has been the cause. Who can give us back our lost
time and liberties infringed? I don't wish to revive ancient customs
of a vindictive nature, but I should like to see the Greek grammar
burnt by the common hangman in every school yard.
Payn's indignant language might be reinforced by quoting De Quincey's
description of the second Lord Shaftesbury, a man whose intellect was
developed by classical studies alone, and who was practised daily in
talking in Latin until he became "the most absolute and
undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. No
thought, however beautiful, no image, however magnificent, could
conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in English, but
present him with the most trivial commonplaces in Greek, and he
unaffectedly fancied them divine." Hence he ridiculed Milton, Dryden,
Locke, and Shakespeare. How much time and money have been spent in
colleges to produce this pedantic perversion of the mind, to create
that love of the ignorance of antiquity and indifference to modern
enlightenment which are so common among the college-educated classes.
DEAD LANGUAGES VANISHING.--In the eighty higher grammar schools in
Germany which are entitled to grant certificates of the proficiency
requisite in order that military service may be reduced from three
years to one, French and English are the only foreign languages
taught, Latin being excluded.
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--Women in Russia have for the last
twenty-three years been permitted to obtain university degrees, and
now they are permitted to enter the medical profession. Sweden and
Norway have followed the example, so has Italy and even Portugal. De
Castro, the Portuguese prime minister, says that the improvement of
female education is the most urgent question of the day. In France,
Mad. Kergomard has been elected a member of the Superior Council of
Public Instruction by a large majority.
In the London University this year, there were 340 successful
candidates, sixty-one of whom were ladies. They were rather more
successful than the men in gaining honors.
Emily S. Bouton says, "In England a society has been formed of young
women, some of them belonging to families of wealth and distinction.
Each member binds herself upon entering to learn some one thing,
whether art, profession or trade, so thoroughly, that if misfortune
comes she will be able to maintain herself by its exercise. It is the
beginning of a realization by women themselves, that for any work that
demands wages, there must be, not a superficial knowledge which is
sure to fail when the test is applied, but a training that will give
the mastery of all the faculties, and enable the worker to labor to a
definite purpose."
BAD SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS.--An Eastern correspondent of the St. Louis
Globe has been talking with a Sunday-school superintendent about the
bad books in the Sunday-school library, as follows:
"But that isn't all or the worst of it," continued the
superintendent. "Not long ago one of the teachers came to me and
said her faith in orthodoxy had been very much shaken, and she
did not know that she could conscientiously remain longer in the
school. Several of her class were also losing their confidence
in the old creed. She said this result had been reached by
reading one of the books in the Sunday-school library. It was
'Bluffton,' and was the account of how a young Presbyterian
minister had gradually been converted to rationalism, and had
finally taken his congregation with him over to liberalism. I
hunted up the work and read it. The author is Rev. Minot J.
Savage, the prominent and eloquent Boston Unitarian clergyman.
The book is a remarkable one, and even made me feel
uncomfortable, as hide-bound in Calvinism as I supposed I was.
Investigation showed that a score of our older scholars and
several of the teachers had been very much impressed by the
story, and had been talking the subject over. The book is all
the more effective because it is a faithful portrayal, so I
understand, of Mr. Savage's experience. How the book got into
our library I don't know, but I suppose the selections were made
by some clerk in the publishing house of whom we purchased. He
saw the book was by a minister, and naturally presumed it was
eminently fit. Right in our own city I have learned that
'Bluffton' is in half a dozen libraries, and is doing deadly
work to orthodoxy. Of course this sort of thing must stop."
OUR BARBAROUS ORTHOGRAPHY.--An attempt was once made to introduce the
English language in Japan, but their learned men decided that the
irregularities of English spelling and grammar were a fatal objection.
The best illustration of its barbarism is to attempt to carry it out
uniformly,
For spelling is easy, although
We may not always knough
How to spell sough.
The attempt to form the past tense of verbs by analogy produces this
amusing result from the pen of H. C. Dodge.
The teacher a lesson he taught;
The preacher a lesson he praught;
The stealer, he stole;
The healer, he hole;
And the screecher, he awfully scraught.
The long-winded speaker, he spoke;
The poor office seeker, he soke;
The runner, he ran;
The dunner, he dan;
And the shrieker, he horribly shroke.
The flyer to Canada flew;
The buyer, on credit he bew;
The doer, he did;
The suer, he sid;
And the liar (a fisherman) lew.
The writer, this nonsense he wrote;
The fighter (an editor) fote;
The swimmer, he swam;
The skimmer, he skam;
And the biter was hungry and bote.