Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/510

504 of the forms. But he thinks that much may be done by an alteration in the system of matriculation examination, which sets the standard at the public schools. He would make this consist of two parts: an examination coming at about the age of sixteen and well within the reach of a boy of ordinary intelligence and industry, and comprising the ordinary subjects of school curriculum at this age; he would then let the boy leave the subjects from which he is not likely to get much further profit and begin to specialize for the remaining two or three years, say, in two subjects, which would then be the material of the second examination. In this way they would make a wholly fresh start at a critical age, and he thinks that the bulk of the boys would probably find this a great advantage.

I quote this opinion because it shows that an experienced schoolmaster regards it as highly desirable that at a certain period in a schoolboy's career a real change should be made in his curriculum, and I have expressly stated that I find it difficult to express an opinion upon this particular educational period.

What should be the exact nature of the teaching before and after the age of sixteen or seventeen for the mass of ordinary boys I would prefer to leave to the decision of those who are best able to judge. I think it highly probable that there should be a considerable alteration of curriculum at the critical age. But, if a break and change of subject are required at this age, I believe that a yet more complete change is required at the later stage when the boy goes to the university, and that school methods should then be entirely replaced by university methods—not because there is then a natural change in the mental powers of the student, but because it is the obvious stage at which to make the change if we are to abandon preparatory training at all. Should it be proposed that the change ought to be made at sixteen, and that after that age something of the nature of university methods should be gradually introduced, my fear is that this would only lead to the perpetuation of school methods at the university.

An interesting question which deserves to be very seriously considered is the question, What sort of school education affords the best preparatory training for the university? I have often heard it asserted that, if a boy is capable of taking up at the university a course which is entirely different from his school course, he will generally be found to have come from the classical side and not from the modern side. An ordinary modern-side boy is rarely able to pursue profitably a literary career at the university, whereas it often happens that ordinary classical-side boys make excellent scientific students after they have left school. I am bound to say that this is, on the whole, my own experience. It suggests that a literary education at school is at present a better intellectual training for general university work than a scientific education. If this be so, what is the reason?