༥ CHAPTER IX.

EDUCATION.

EDUCATION is proverbially a dull subject. But in Mr. Arnold's case it cannot be omitted, and in his hands it was never dull. He was an Inspector of Schools for five-and-thirty years, resigning his post only two years before his death. The Department wisely and properly treated him with great indulgence. He always had the most interesting work that there was to do. But his life was a laborious one. He was more than willing to spend and be spent for the intellectual improvement of his countrymen. When he was first appointed an Inspector there existed a sort of agreement between Church and State. The Catholic schools were inspected by Catholics; schools belonging to the Church of England were officially visited by clergymen. Being neither a clergyman nor a Catholic, Mr. Arnold was assigned to Protestant schools not connected with the Church of England, or, in other words, to the schools of the Dissenters. He did not get on with Dissenters, and his irritation, as we shall see, found vent in his writings. After 1870, when compulsory education began, and denominational inspection was abandoned, Mr. Arnold confined himself to the borough of Westminster, where for a long time there was only one Board school. He was the idol of

the children, for he petted them and treated them with the easy condescension which was his charm. Upon the teachers his influence was still more important. "Indirectly," says Sir Joshua Fitch, "his fine taste, his gracious and kindly manner, his honest and generous recognition of any new form of excellence which he observed, all tended to raise the aims and the tone of the teachers with whom he came in contact, and to encourage in them self-respect, and respect for their work." His official reports were most interesting and instructive. He had a natural insight into the real merits and defects of public teaching. He saw things as they were. "The typical mental defect of our school children," he said, "is their almost incredible scantiness of vocabulary." This is a national deficiency; and no one who has sat, for howsoever short a time, in Parliament, can believe that it is peculiar to children. Mr. Arnold held no narrow or rigid view of the difference between primary and secondary education. He thought that the rudiments of French and Latin might well be taught in elementary schools. He was also an advocate for teaching in them the beginnings of natural science, or what Huxley used to call "Physiography." "The excuse," as he put it characteristically, "for putting most of these matters into our programme is that we are all coming to be agreed that an entire ignorance of the system of nature is as grave a defect in our children's education as not to know that there ever was such a person as Charles the First."

In 1868 appeared Mr. Arnold's Report upon Schools and Universities on the Continent. It deals with education in France, Italy, Germany,

and Switzerland. But its practical interest is restricted to France and Germany. For the Swiss system was almost identical with the German, and in Italy at that time national education was in its infancy.

French institutions and French habits of thought were always thoroughly congenial to Mr. Arnold. His lucid, methodical mind was attracted by the thoroughness of French logic, and he was more especially fascinated by the orderly sequence with which the pupil ascended from the primary school to the university. Himself the product of reformed Rugby, and of unreformed Oxford, a child of the old learning and the new spirit, he was appalled by the anomalous condition of English universities, and by the chaos of intermediate teaching in England. With the admirable schools of Scotland he had nothing to do. The secondary schools of France, all under the Minister of Education, he described with hearty though not uncritical praise. The University of Paris, the great seat of learning in the Middle Ages, moved him to unwonted enthusiasm. He envied the Professors who were only teachers, and declared that he would. rather have their moderate salary with abundant leisure than be a Master in one of our public schools, receiving twice their pay, but having no time to himself. The École Normale, the training college for French teachers, he pronounced to be excellent. No one in England was taught to teach, whereas in France the State made itself directly responsible for all kinds of education, and the most stringent tests were applied to teachers. Then, again, the French language in France, unlike the English language in England, was made the subject of thorough and serious study.

Even in learning the classics the development of the mother tongue, and its resources, was the first consideration impressed upon the mind. Examinations, Mr. Arnold held, were better understood in France than here. The French did not attempt to examine boys before they were fifteen, and he held very strongly the opinion that before that age intellectual pressure was dangerous. Between fifteen and twentyfive he thought that the mind could hardly be overworked. Tested by results, he showed that the French schools were far more successful than our own. When he wrote, there were in the public schools of England fifteen thousand boys. In the public schools of France there were sixty-six thousand. It may, however, be doubted whether the standard of comparison was a fair one. The French lyceums provided for a class which in England was even more content than it is now with private or "adventure" schools.

On one point, and that certainly not the least important, Mr. Arnold had to confess that French boarding-schools were most unsatisfactory. He gave the worst possible account of the ushers, the maîtres d'études. They were drudges, they were not required to teach, and they were miserably underpaid. Their duty was to protect the morals of the boys, but many of them were gravely suspected of doing exactly the opposite. No scientific perfection of teaching can make up for such an evil as this. After all, there is something to be said for the freedom and honour of Eton and Harrow, of Rugby and Winchester. There are cruelty and vice in all schools. But constant supervision, and absolute distrust, encourage more mischief

than they prevent. In French schools the hours of work are longer, and the means of recreation scantier, than English boys would endure.

Mr. Arnold's Reports on French, Swiss, and Italian Education were never republished. To his Report on the Education of Germany he must himself have attached more value, for he brought it out again in 1874, and a third time in 1882. Perhaps he considered the example of a Teutonic race more likely to be contagious. The cheapness of German education struck him forcibly, and though prices had nearly doubled before the reappearance of his Report, he maintained that the relative proportion between the two countries was the same. This could not be said now, but there is still much room for economy in the public schools and universities of England. German schools, as Mr. Arnold found them, were denominational, with a conscience clause, and attendance at them was compulsory for all classes. In Prussia, which Mr. Arnold took as typical of Germany, the Government, as in France, set up an educational ladder which a promising boy could mount from the bottom rung to the top. Adepts in education were consulted by the State, as they were not in England. This was a point which Mr. Arnold put very strongly, and he urged it with some exaggeration. It is not quite true that expert opinion has been rejected by the Education Department, now the Board of Education. Mr. Arnold's own Reports, for instance, were very carefully considered by his official superiors, and of Education Commissions there has been no end. The difficulties in carrying out their recommendations have been Parliamentary, and the great difficulty of all has been the religious one.