Until the passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, learning in England amounted practically to a luxury. Only the rich might be permitted to know things. It was a case of schools, colleges, and universities for the sons of noblemen and gentlemen. The rascally7 lower classes might look after themselves. It is open to question whether the rascally lower classes were not, on the whole, educationally better off in that day than they are at present. That, however, is by the way. But in the later sixties the reformer got his eagle eye on the rascally lower classes. He perceived that the rascally lower classes were in bad case. They got drunk, they used foul8 language, they smoked[Pg 173] short pipes, and, Heaven help them! they could not read. Anticipating the English or Scotch half of Lord Rosebery, as the case may be, the reformer said, "Educate, educate, educate!" And it was so. The English have been educating ever since. They educated to such purpose that thirty years later Lord Rosebery felt it incumbent9 upon himself to bid them educate, educate, educate! In those thirty years the rascally lower classes learned somewhat. They were supposed to discover, inter10 alia, that knowledge was power. They were told that a hodman who could write his name was a better hodman than the hodman whose sign-manual was a cross. They were led shrewdly to infer that their pastors11 and masters and general betters owed their supremacy12 to knowledge; and that if they, the rascally lower classes, would only instruct their children, these same children might wax great in the land and carry burdens no more. The rascally lower classes sent their children to school, some of them cheerfully, some of them[Pg 174] with groans13; and the stars began to shine over England's darkness.
What has come to pass all men know. Every Englishman gets the smatterings of a literary education, and believes in his heart that he was cut out by the Almighty14 to be a clerk. The honest trades and handicrafts are no longer desirable in the minds of English youth. To take one's coat off with a view to livelihood15 is a business for dolts16 and fools. Advertise in England for an office-boy and you shall receive five hundred applications; advertise for a boy to learn plumbing17, and you will be offered, perhaps, two daft-looking lads, who after much thrashing have managed to attain18 the age of fourteen years.
The fact is, that the English do not know what education means. At the public schools, and at the universities of Oxford19 and Cambridge, education has become, to a great extent, a social matter. You go to these places to learn, certainly; but you also go with a view to the formation of a desirable and influential20 acquaintance, and to get upon[Pg 175] your forehead the mark which is supposed to make glorious the public-school and university-bred Englishman. As a general rule, that mark is altogether imperceptible to the eyes of the unelect, who, if the truth must be told, discover the university man not so much by his manners or conversation as by his ineptitudes. When one comes to consider the principles upon which the public-school and university system are worked, one is quite prepared to admit that, were it not for the element of snobbery21 patent in the system, English public schools and universities alike would in the long run have to be disestablished. As it is, they are the conventional resort of aristocratic adolescence22, and permitted to exist only on condition that, if a low middle-class person can find the money and keep up the style, he, too, may join the angelic host. To the man of temperament23, to the scholar, to the man who loves learning for learning's sake, the English universities have precious little to offer.
After Oxford and Cambridge, one turns to[Pg 176] London and the non-resident foundations, all of them, I believe, modern. Here, as it seems to me, the English err5 again. Broadly speaking, these institutions, wittingly or unwittingly, devote their energies to the preparation of young men for the Civil Service. If you are an English board-school teacher at ￡80 a year and you discover that a second-class clerk in the Circumlocution24 Department commences at ￡300 a year, and that, roughly, the examination to be passed is the same as for matriculation at London, you naturally go in bald-headed for matriculation at London. For the learning you get by these efforts you have not the smallest respect. If, on presenting yourself for examination by the Civil Service Commissioners25, you come out sufficiently26 high on the list to secure an appointment, well and good. If not, your labour has been wasted. It is this spirit which is at the bottom of the English ignorance. With them, learning, education, is a means to an end, and not in the least its own exceeding great reward. Hence a properly[Pg 177] educated Englishman is almost as rare as a blue rose. For the masses—the rascally lower orders, that is to say—there are the board schools. Here for thirty years past has been enacted27 about the sweetest travesty28 of education that the mind of man could conceive. For the teaching of the children of the rascally lower orders, the wise English Government, with the assistance of the wise English school boards, has invented what is to all intents and purposes a new type of man. And his name shall be called Schoolmaster. He began Heaven knows how. But if you inquire into him, you will find that he has spent three years at a Government training college, and that prior to this experience he was for some years a pupil teacher; also that he is a son of the people, and that his father drove an engine or kept a shop. In these latter circumstances he was, perhaps, fortunate. The marvellous fact about him is that, in spite of his years of pupil-teachership and of his three years at a Government training college, he is not a man of either learning or[Pg 178] culture. I am told that an English pupil teacher is not expected to fash himself by the study of either Latin or Greek. Two books of Euclid will see him through the stiffest of his examinations. He does not need to have even a nodding acquaintance with modern languages; and as for science, if he really wants some, he must pick it up at evening classes. Even when he passes into the Government training college,—where, by the way, he is instructed and boarded and lodged29 gratis,—his studies do not become in any way profound. The history of England, the geography of the world, arithmetic according to Barnard Smith, algebra30 according to Dr. Todhunter, Latin and Greek according to Dr. William Smith (Part I.), with a little French,—a very little French,—bring him to the end of his tether.
Really, the whole business is childish. Any youth of average capacity should get through the entire three years' course in six weeks. Of course, there is the so-called technical[Pg 179] training to reckon with; that is to say, a man at one of these colleges is supposed to spend a great deal of his time, and no doubt does, in perfecting himself as a teacher; but one would have thought that actual practice in an ordinary school would be the best instructor31 in this respect. In any case, nobody can consider closely the English schoolmaster as manufactured at Government training colleges without perceiving that the Government turns out a very remarkable32 article indeed. I have no desire to belittle33 a hard-worked, and probably underpaid, body of public servants. Their profession is a thankless one. I do not think for a moment a single man of them went into it with his eyes open, and I know for a certainty that the school boards and the Government between them have so hedged it round with petty annoyances34 that a man possessed35 of feeling must loathe36 it. It is probably this feeling of loathing37 of his work that keeps the English schoolmaster down. He knows that it is vain for him to go a hair's-breadth out of the[Pg 180] beaten tracks. The school boards must have grants; the Government inspectors38 must be satisfied. There is only one method of ensuring these desirable consummations: that one way amounts to sheer mechanism39 and slog. The English schoolmaster must have no temperament. If he possess such a thing, he is bound to come to great grief. Hence the whole weight of the English system is, from first to last, employed in the work of knocking temperament out of him and keeping it out. His three years' free training particularly tend to make a slack, unthinking sap-head of him. He gets a parchment which entitles him to call himself a certificated teacher, and he is taught to imagine that for downright learning there is nothing like himself under the sun. In this latter surmise40 he is quite right. The schoolmaster in England, though he will probably be another quarter of a century waking up to the fact, counts for next to nothing. Men of parts avoid him; men of no parts laugh at him. For himself, I imagine, he will long[Pg 181] continue to believe in his heart that he is a great man, a little lower, perhaps, than a parson, but certainly a little higher than a policeman.
The real value of English education, like the real value of most other things, becomes apparent when it is put to the test of practical affairs. Any employer of labour will tell you that, whether an English boy come to him from a board school or a school of a higher grade, whether he be the son of a ploughman or of what the English call a professional man, he is always and inevitably41 a good deal of a fool. You have to teach him how to lick stamps. You have to teach him that, excepting in so far as he can write and read, what he has learned at school is not wanted; you have to teach him how many beans make five; you have to teach him that punctuality and accuracy are worth more in business than all the botany he ever learned; and all the time you have to watch him like a cat watching a mouse. "Fire out the fools!" once exclaimed Dr. Robertson Nicoll.[Pg 182] I do not think it is too much to say that, if the average English employer took the hint, he would have nobody left to do his business for him.
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1
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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billiards
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| n.台球 | |
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rascally
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| adj. 无赖的，恶棍的 adv. 无赖地，卑鄙地 | |
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8
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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incumbent
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| adj.成为责任的，有义务的；现任的，在职的 | |
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inter
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| v.埋葬 | |
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pastors
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| n.（基督教的）牧师( pastor的名词复数 ) | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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14
almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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dolts
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| n.笨蛋，傻瓜( dolt的名词复数 ) | |
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plumbing
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| n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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snobbery
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| n. 充绅士气派, 俗不可耐的性格 | |
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adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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circumlocution
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| n. 绕圈子的话，迂回累赘的陈述 | |
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commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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travesty
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| n.歪曲，嘲弄，滑稽化 | |
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29
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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algebra
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| n.代数学 | |
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31
instructor
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| n.指导者，教员，教练 | |
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32
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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belittle
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| v.轻视，小看，贬低 | |
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34
annoyances
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| n.恼怒( annoyance的名词复数 )；烦恼；打扰；使人烦恼的事 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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36
loathe
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| v.厌恶，嫌恶 | |
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37
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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inspectors
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| n.检查员( inspector的名词复数 )；（英国公共汽车或火车上的）查票员；（警察）巡官；检阅官 | |
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39
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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surmise
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| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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