Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/51

Rh age, Grammar-schools believe themselves to be immortal. Those curious immortals—the Struldbrugs—described by Swift, ultimately regretted their immortality, because they found themselves out of touch, sympathy, and fitness with the centuries in which they lived.

As there is no use clamoring for an instrument of more compass and power until we have made up our mind as to the tune. Professor Huxley, in his evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1884, has given a time-table for grammar-schools. lie demands that out of their forty hours for public and private study ten should be given to modern languages and history, eight to arithmetic and mathematics, six to science, and two to geography, thus leaving fourteen hours to the dead languages. No time-table would, however, be suitable to all schools. The great public schools of England will continue to be the gymnasia for the upper classes, and should devote much of their time to classical and literary culture. Even now they introduce into their curriculum subjects unknown to them when the Royal Commission of 1868 reported, though they still accept science with timidity. Unfortunately, the other grammar-schools which educate the middle classes look to the higher public schools as a type to which they should conform, although their functions are so different. It is in the interest of the higher public schools that this difference should be recognized, so that, while they give an all-round education and expand their curriculum by a freer recognition of the value of science as an educational power in developing the faculties of the upper classes, the schools for the middle classes should adapt themselves to the needs of their existence, and not keep up a slavish imitation of schools with a different function. The old classical grammar-schools may view these remarks as a direct attack upon them, and so it is in one sense, but it is like the stroke of Ithuriel's spear, which heals while it wounds.

The stock argument against the introduction of modern subjects into grammar-schools is that it is better to teach Latin and Greek thoroughly rather than various subjects less completely. But is it true that thoroughness in teaching dead languages is the result of an exclusive system? In 1868 the Royal Commission stated that even in the few great public schools thoroughness was only given to thirty per cent of the scholars, at the sacrifice of seventy per cent who got little benefit from the system. Since then the curriculum has been widened and the teaching has improved. I question the soundness of the principle that it is better to limit the attention of the pupils mainly to Latin and Greek, highly as I value their educational power to a certain order of minds. As in biology the bodily development of animals is from the general to the special, so is it in the mental development of man. In the school a boy should be aided to discover the class of knowledge that is best suited for his mental capacities, so that, in the upper forms of the school and in the university, knowledge