Page:Thirty years' progress in female education.djvu/15

11 occasioned much controversy, and which are regarded with reasonable misgivings. One is the enlargement of the range of studies, the other the development of the system of examinations and prizes. Let me offer a few remarks on each of these features.

A boy's education consisted till recently in learning what he could of the classics, which meant Latin and Greek, and of mathematics. When inquiry and reform entered this field, it was inevitable that it should be asked, "Why should classics and mathematics be the whole of education?" It was seen that there was much more that it was desirable to know and to learn. Some urged the claims of modern languages, and pointed out that it was really disgraceful for English gentlemen in an age like this not to know something of French and German. Others pleaded that a systematic study of history and literature was indispensable to one who would be a man of culture. The ancient classics themselves were quoted by others, to show the importance of including the arts, and music especially, in a scheme of general education. Most energetically the claims of natural science were asserted; it was proclaimed to be monstrous that educated persons should know nothing even of the elements of sciences which were revolutionising the external world and the world of thought together. It was easy for all the claimants to establish their respective positions; and the obvious course of action suggested by their arguments was to teach, not only classics and mathematics, but also French and German, and literature and history and geography, and music and drawing, and chemistry and botany and geology and zoology, and any number of other ologies. But then it was soon found, if it did not before occur to the educator, that the human brain is of limited strength, and the school day of no more than six or eight hours; and that to attempt to teach all these things was to confuse the brain and to teach nothing. So we have been in a great difficulty. Of all the things that human beings would be the better for knowing, how many can we attempt to teach; and if we are to choose, which are to have the preference, which are to be left out of the curriculum? This problem is far from being solved yet. It still exercises the minds of those who have the control of education. The most hopeful method of dealing with it appears to lie in extending the principle of option;—