patent, that only long-established custom, and the infection of example,
mixed with some considerations of self-interest already alluded to, can
have shut the eyes of so many, within the academic walls themselves, to
an abuse which, so far as the public is concerned, has surely only to be
fully exposed and understood to be condemned unanimously. A young man
enters a college at Oxford, and thereby becomes a member of the
University, devoting to this object four of the best years of his life,
and incurring expenses which, even with prudence, are necessarily
considerable. Often, as we all know, this step cannot be taken without
much resolved self-denial on the part of parents, sometimes not without
some postponing, in the case of an eldest or talented son, of the
interests of younger brothers and sisters. But these family sacrifices
are cheerfully made, in the feeling that they will purchase for the
object of them the highest inheritance which a father can insure for a
son—a first-rate education; an education which, unless his own abilities
or industry fail him, shall enable him hereafter to move _pari passu_
through life by the side of the eldest-born of any noble in the land,
and stand in any presence unabashed by a sense of inferiority. These
advantages, which University distinction is to purchase for him, are
scarcely of less value, in the world of English society, than its more
legitimate and solid fruits—the improvement of the mind, and the
material for future usefulness. The path to all these brilliant
possibilities lies through the portals of Oxford; and the youth who
enters them, finds all the machinery which is to produce these great
results apparently in its place, and in fair working order. It is idle
for a Royal Commission to tell us how, in ruder times, ruder engines
were contrived to do the same work; that there were days when tutors
were not, and professors were all in all; that tedious exercises and
disputations supplied, or failed to supply, the stimulus which
examinations do now: we can all guess, and have a right to suppose, that
the means and appliances for education have altered like everything
else, and that the great national seminaries have not been behindhand
with minor institutions in adapting themselves to the growth of human
learning. How prælectors fell, and college tutors rose, is of little
consequence, except to the educational antiquarian. Whether the
University, or his college, or both, be responsible for his teaching, it
is certain that every man who matriculates does so under an implied
engagement that he is to be taught. Nor does there seem, to the
uninitiated eye, to be any lack of teachers. Not to mention the long
list of public functionaries who figure in the University
Calendar—professors of Greek, of Hebrew, of Divinity, of Ancient and
Modern History, of Geometry, of Moral, Natural, and Experimental
Philosophy, of Astronomy, of Logic, Geology, Chemistry, and Political
Economy—quite exclusive of any by-hours which he may devote to Music or
to Medicine—even if he should be indisposed to avail himself of the
services of the Lord Almoner’s reader in Arabic, or to study Anglo-Saxon
or Sanscrit under their respective professors,—within the walls of his
own college there is ample provision for his intellectual wants. Passing
over the Bursar and the Dean—whom he will find somewhat dry nurses—the
new _alumnus_ must have been very unfortunate in his selection, if he
does not find three tutors at the least ready to welcome him, besides a
mathematical lecturer and divinity reader; he may be lucky enough, also,
to obtain (according to the Calendar) the services of a “catechetical”
or a “humanity lecturer,” whatever those may be. At any rate, here seems
quite enough to satisfy any moderate appetite for learning. But he soon
finds that this showy and apparently well-appointed staff is considered
quite inadequate to its duties; nay, confesses itself to be so. If his
Latin prose be not quite Ciceronian, or if his irregular Greek verbs be
more than usually irregular, his best friends warn him earnestly of the
necessity of “putting on a coach for Little-go;” if he be a promising
scholar, and likely to win distinction for himself and his college, his
tutor, with a cautious compliment, and the kindest intentions, suggests
his “reading with Mr So-and-so.” No one seems to entertain the idea that
his appointed pastors and masters can either save him from being
“plucked,” or train him for his place in the class list. He finds
college lectures are regarded as matters of routine, like Temple
dinners: a course of the former, duly attended, makes a B.A., as a
course of the latter, duly eaten, makes a barrister, each being a sort
of _causa formalis_. Nay, in many cases the regular University or rather
College course of instruction is regarded as interfering with that
which, look at it as we will, is and must be the main object with
three-fourths of its recipients—the obtaining a degree. Nothing is more
common than for a young man, who is a candidate for honours, during the
term or two previous to his examination, to apply to the authorities of
his college “to be excused lectures;” and the request is commonly
granted: that is, in plain words, because the time is approaching which
is to test his acquirements under his _alma mater’s_ teaching, that very
teaching is to be withdrawn as useless—nay, worse than useless—for the
end proposed. Can anything be more preposterous? What, in the name of
common sense, was the use of that apparatus of tutors classical,
mathematical, and catechetical, if not to prepare him for this said
examination? In what is he to be “examined,” if not in the progress
which, with their help and guidance, he is supposed to have made?
But let us examine matters more closely, and we may discover some of the
causes of this remarkable state of things. Our friend, whom we have
matriculated, is, we will assume, of modest acquirements, and proposes
(under the old system) to take up for his degree, Herodotus, Virgil,
portions of Cicero, and four plays of Euripides. But the lectures which
he has to attend (for he has seldom much choice of his own in the
matter) are one in Livy, one in Horace, and one in Plato’s Republic; in
which latter college tutor No. 1 is supposed to be great, having edited
some new readings. All very desirable subjects, no doubt, but not
exactly what he requires at present. One hour of Alcestis were worth
more to him than a cycle of Republics; the tense of a verb in μι is to
him, at this conjuncture, a subject of more anxiety than the destinies
of Rome or Carthage. Or, granted that he is fortunate enough to be in a
Herodotus lecture; he gets through five chapters in an hour, thrice
a-week, in a class of seventeen, including one freshman who cannot
construe a line together decently, and stutters into the bargain, and
another from the sixth form at Eton, who rattles it all off in a tone
perfectly inaudible to any one except himself, and, it is supposed, the
tutor. Why, at this rate, it will take him about two academical years
more to get through the five books of the old historian in which he is
to be examined! If he be a candidate for high honours, the case is just
the same, or even worse; either there are no college lectures on the
subject in which he needs special assistance, or they are attended by
such an ill-assorted class, containing men of all grades of scholarship
and no scholarship, that he either cuts them altogether or goes to them
with disgust, and brings away from them little of more value than a
leading-string abstracted with much patience and vigilance from his next
neighbour’s gown, or a series of bad pencil-caricatures of the tutor. He
has done more than waste an hour—he has begun, or encouraged, a habit of
idleness that may haunt him during his life.
Now, only let us transfer ourselves in fancy, for one moment, from this
great University to one of our public schools. There, a father pays some
hundred and fifty pounds per annum for his son’s education—a large
deduction from the income of many fathers, yet, perhaps, considering all
things, not too much. We agree with the Commissioners in having no fancy
for very cheap education. But supposing that at this public school the
instruction given in the school itself by the recognised head master and
assistants was considered, both by boys and masters, as quite
insufficient, and indeed, of itself, worth very little at all, but that
there were residing in the town or village in which the said school was
located several very clever gentlemen of undoubted scholarship, having
indeed, in their time, been amongst the head boys there, and carried off
all the prizes; that to these gentlemen (paying extra for the privilege,
of course) all boys who wished to learn could resort, and, in fact, did
resort, and thereby got on surprisingly (not that the head master knew
much about them, but believed them to be respectable), saving thereby
considerable trouble both to head and assistant masters, who, in fact,
could not _undertake_, though it might be possible, to educate at all
without such assistance, holding that, nevertheless, their school was an
excellent school, admitted to be such (else how did so many boys go
there?), and turned out most unexceptionable scholars;—would not the
fathers, and the public generally, think this rather a strange way of
doing business, and that the education might go on quite as effectually
in the hands of the clever gentlemen aforesaid, at a clear saving of a
hundred or so of the original guineas, which seemed a good deal to pay
to the head master for mere board and lodging, and the use of his name?
Why is it that a state of things which would not be tolerated in any
decent grammar-school is considered “unavoidable”—“beneficial”—nay, even
“a valuable element”[29] in the great schools of the nation?
We will not touch here upon a charge more than insinuated in some of the
evidence volunteered before the Commission against college tutors, of
incapacity or inattention; first, because we firmly believe that the
charge is in the main untrue, and, at all events, less true now than it
has ever been; and, secondly, because no amount of diligence, no
quintessence of scholarship, could enable any man to make an hour’s
lecture with a class of from twelve to twenty young men of various
calibre that which a catechetical lecture should be. Mr Lowe is quite
right in saying that “the plan”—if by this he means the present plan—“of
teaching in large lectures is inexpressibly odious and disgusting to the
forward student.”[30] Until this evil be remedied, no tutor can do his
work with profit or with satisfaction. But it must be borne in mind,
that when private tuition is so universal, the public tutor has not fair
play. It is hard to judge, from what college lectures are, of what they
might be, if they were attended in a different spirit. Few men work
heartily who do not hope to see some fruit of their travail: the
criminal at the treadmill works with double disgust when he knows that
he is grinding nothing. Once let the pupil think that his teacher cannot
teach, and let the teacher _know_ that he thinks so, and it is true—he
cannot. On this point Mr Foulkes, himself a college tutor, speaks with
equal sense and honesty. “Pupils,” says he, “make light of their college
lectures in comparison with those of their private tutor; and college
tutors, finding their lectures ill got up or remembered, are apt to grow
apathetic, and relax in their diligence.” They were more than mortal if
they did not. A dull audience, the Commissioners confess, may make even
a professor dull;—to borrow an illustration from the Report (which has
throughout a tendency to the poetical), a tutor with an inanimate class
is “Pyrrhus” without “his Epirots”[31]—an eagle with clipped wings.
It is undeniable that the existing tutorial staff, in every College, is
insufficient for the demands upon its labours; the remedy for this
insufficiency, in any minor educational establishment where reason and
common sense hold a commission of inquiry, would be to increase it. But
before we discuss this question, it may be well to examine whether all
is done which might be done even as things stand at present. What is the
actual amount of work performed by a college tutor? We may gather pretty
accurately from the evidence volunteered by, we are bound to suppose,
not the least energetic of those who are so employed. Thirteen lectures
in the week, of one hour each, is a fair average of the actual
instruction given by each tutor;[32] how many hours besides may be spent
in preparation for each lecture is, of course, a question impossible for
any but themselves to answer. Now let us take the case of the head
master of one of our public schools, who may surely be assumed, without
offence, to be fully the college tutor’s equal in scholarship and in
social position. His work ordinarily begins at seven in the morning, and
continues, with perhaps two hours intermission, till twelve; to which,
on “whole schooldays,” about three days in the week, must be added two
hours in the afternoon; making, in all, some twenty-two hours in the
week, allowing for some extra half-holidays. This allows no time for
looking over and correcting written exercises—an important and laborious
part of every schoolmaster’s work. And this, we must remember, continues
for nearly nine months in the year, instead of six, involving a question
which we may have to discuss hereafter. Now, why should there be this
enormous disproportion? Why is the college tutor to work a little more,
on an average, than two hours in the day, and the schoolmaster a little
less than four? It may indeed be answered, that college tutors are not
so well paid; but considering that the value of this office, when
combined with a fellowship (which surely, in these days, may be
considered as implying _some_ educational duties), averages about £450
per annum, and that its cares and responsibilities are comparatively
light, it may be questioned whether the position is not quite as
desirable. It must be borne in mind, also, that many men perfectly
qualified by academical honours for a college tutorship, are content to
accept under-masterships, which, with harder and more distasteful work,
and often less emolument, offer a position immeasurably inferior in the
eyes of society, and certainly presenting a great contrast, to a man of
cultivated mind, to the collegiate life of Oxford. Even if the
advantages of such a life are not all that they might be—if the
common-room has its petty jealousies, and party bitterness, and men
thrown constantly together see too much of each other’s
weaknesses—still, a University, as a place of residence, has its
attractions for minds of almost every character, except those who, from
apathy or cynicism, set themselves firmly against the doctrine that man
is a social animal. Where, unless he have the _entrée_ of the literary
or political society of London itself, which few can have—where will a
man to whom “the humanities,” in their widest sense, are something more
than the cram of the schools—who believes in his heart that there are
subjects which are as really and truly interesting to the human
intellect as the growth of turnips or the price of stocks—find anything
approaching to a companionship of thought and feeling, if not in
collegiate society? To call such society “narrow-minded,” to say that it
has its mannerisms and its pedantries, is true enough: they are defects
incidental to all society. Never were yet three schoolboys, who walked
arm-in-arm, that had not a creed and a shibboleth of their own; but
surely the narrowest track that ever the soul of college fellow moved in
was the liberty of the prairie, compared to the round of dull
conventionalities which delight our “excellent neighbourhoods” in the
country. At all events, there will always be an abundance of ripe
scholars and sensible men, to whom the social position, and the
congenial work, even with the present modest emoluments of a college
tutor, will be an object quite sufficient, even if, in this active age,
we add a little to their work. An extra early hour in the morning—say
from eight to nine—would be a wonderful incentive to the energies of
many a freshman, who is now hugging himself every morning in bed with
the comfortable reflection, that in his new sphere he is emancipated
from the odious “first lessons” of Harrow or Eton. Another hour in the
evenings devoted to Horace or Aristophanes—say three times a-week—would
hardly interfere with those pleasant dinner-parties, or social cup of
coffee, to which the tutor naturally looks as the reward of his labours,
and with which we are sure it would be rank ingratitude for any stranger
to intermeddle, who has been welcomed, as all strangers are welcomed, to
those classic hospitalities. It is only fair to say, that more than one
college might be quoted, where, of late, tutors have been seen imposing
upon themselves some such additional labours, and doing their utmost to
make college tuition a reality. Much also might be done by a better
division of the work assigned to each, and the more judicious
classifying of their pupils—points which are at present in most colleges
grievously neglected.
But the great remedy must be, the appointment of additional tutors in
each college. This, of course, implies additional funds for their
payment. Now, considering that the whole charge for “tuition” is £16 for
the academical year, we say unhesitatingly that the public, with all its
ardour for retrenchment of University expenses, would not grudge an
increase in this particular item. Twenty pounds per annum would hardly
be considered too much, by the most economising parent, for a really
efficient course of classics and mathematics. At all events, it would be
far cheaper, and far more satisfactory, to pay the larger sum for an
equivalent, than to be charged as at present for what is confessedly
insufficient for its purpose, and be saddled with indefinite extra
demands under the item of “private tutor.” John Bull likes to know how
the money goes, and to have his money’s worth. Half the sum annually
spent in Oxford upon private tuition, would amply provide for public
teaching of a much more useful character. It is possible that some of
the surplus income of many colleges, which is now divided among the
fellows as a sort of bonus, or laid by for the purchase of advowsons and
other purposes, might be quite as legitimately, and much more usefully,
employed in establishing an additional tutorship; or some of the
fellowships themselves, which the Report proposes to melt down into
professorships, might much more properly be held in future to involve
the residing and taking part in the college work. It appears at least
doubtful, from the statutes of more than one College, whether _all_
fellowships did not there involve some tutorial duties; at any rate,
such a regulation would be quite in accordance with the spirit of their
founders.
One objection, indeed, there is urged by the opponents of the present
tutorial system, which must be allowed to have some foundation. College
tutors are inefficient, they say, not only because they are too few, but
because they are often incompetent or indifferent. “The system,” says Mr
Lowe, “has often been grossly abused by the appointment of incompetent
persons.” So, we suppose, has pretty nearly every system at some period.
This argument from the abuse, to less subtle rhetoricians than our
Commissioners, might have seemed to border on a fallacy. Still, that
incompetent persons have occasionally been appointed is true, and is not
to be defended, even on the ground that incompetent appointments are
sometimes made by other patrons than heads of Colleges—that they are not
unknown upon the bench, at the bar—nay, we dare to say it, even in Royal
Commissions themselves. But it is hardly assuming too much for our own
times to say, that the days of such appointments, if not wholly past,
are already numbered; that soon it will be a rare exception to point to
a man who holds an important public trust by favour of nepotism or
corruption. To assume that Oxford is sharing, and will share, this
improved tone of public morality, is surely no more than we may claim
for her in common fairness, or than the testimony of any unprejudiced
observer could support by recent facts. And once let it be understood
that a college is _bonâ fide_ to educate its own men without extraneous
help, and we shall have the best of all practical checks upon
incompetence or idleness in the teachers. There needs in this case no
statute to be repealed, no founder’s will to be set aside; the heads of
houses have themselves acknowledged that “the tutors of colleges are not
necessarily appointed from the fellows of colleges.” It is in the power
of any principal to choose his tutors from the whole University; to
summon to his aid any portion of that marketable scholarship which at
present can only find employment in private teaching; it is nothing but
custom and prejudice which at present restrict his choice within his own
society.
Let this plan only be tried: let some college, now considered inferior,
select and pay a couple of first-rate tutors, and let them form their
classes according to their own judgment, selecting those departments for
which each feels himself best qualified, and really _working_ them. We
will not ask of them twelve, ten, or even six hours a-day: much less
will give an amount of genuine instruction sufficient for the limited
numbers which any one of the smaller colleges can expect to supply as
candidates for honours. A couple more tutors for the pass-men, in a
small college of say forty undergraduates, with a mathematical lecturer,
would complete an establishment, not much more formidable in point of
numbers, but infinitely more efficient than any at present existing.
They will be fully competent to do all which private tutors now do, if
it is distinctly understood both by undergraduates and their friends
that they, and they _alone_, are to do it. If it be desired to leave
something to their own free choice and taste, let each attend such
lectures (a _minimum_ number per diem being fixed, of course) as he may
think tend most to his improvement; and let each tutor be paid in
proportion to the number of his pupils. From forty men, paying, as we
have suggested, £20 per annum each, we have £800 to apply in this
manner; to which the college may well add another £200, sinking, if it
be necessary, as it seldom would be, a fellowship for the purpose. In
the larger colleges, where more tutors are required, the funds will
increase in proportion. This will allow, even in small colleges, at
least £300 per annum to a first-rate tutor, in addition to the
fellowship which we may naturally suppose he will hold on his own or
some other foundation. And this, we repeat, will be enough to secure
_good_ men, and men whose energies are young and fresh; for we cannot
agree with the Commissioners in thinking that the succession, by which a
college tutor quits his work for the “expected living,” and thus makes
way for his juniors, is in itself an evil; or that it is not far
preferable to the system of married professors, who will stick to their
chairs, if not to their work, long after the “_solve senescentem_” might
be fairly applied.