3 APRIL 1886, Page 21

OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.*

Tuts is a thoughtful and useful little book on the eternally interesting topic of "our boys." With a great deal of it most think- ing people will agree ; and when they disagree, they will feel that there is still a good deal to be said on the other side, and that the author says it forcibly and well, and sets down the results of thought, experience, and care. The first subject which he attacks is that of outdoor exercise. Iu his views on this matter, he strongly supports what is already the rule in some at least of the leading Public Schools, though there are few in which the rule is carried out with the same logical thoroughness as he would have it. Some people are prone to think, with Mr. Matthew Arnold and Professor Huxley, that too much time and thought are already devoted to outdoor exercise of the sportive kind. "There are our young barbarians, all at play," says Mr. Arnold of Public Schools in general ; while the chief effect of Eton education, according to Professor Huxley, is to inculcate "gentlemanly manners and considerable proficiency at cricket." But notwithstanding the leading place occupied by games, it is, after all, only a moiety, or at most a majority, of the boys who really get a satisfactory amount of outdoor exercise. The boy in the eleven, or the fifteen, or the eight, gets too much ; the average boy not enough. The active athlete is compassed about with a great cloud of loafers, who, as every one knows, are the great authors of mischief in a Public School. Mr. Cotterill's remedy is compulsory exercise for everybody. This, of course, is the theory already at some schools. At Suggested Reforms in Public Schools. By C. C. Cotterill, M.A. Edinburgh and London : William Blackwood and Sons.

Winchester, we believe that every boy not medically exempt is compelled to play football two or three days a week. Mr. Cotterill extends the rule to every day ; every boy must " change into his flannels and take a minimum of one hour's active exercise out of doors in all weathers." There is no doubt that the change into flannels is an important part of the rule, and in most schools now the foolish old sumptuary laws, which forbid boys who have not attained " Cabinet rank " in games to wear flannels, are now in disrepute. In this regard, we fully sympathise with Mr. Cotterill's objection to the unhealthy custom of the "-regulation black " clothes, a requirement which the Bishop of Southwell, with great breadth of mind and good results, abolished when he was Head Master of Winchester. There is no doubt that for a boy a certain amount—but, as Mr. Cotterill rightly insists, a limited amount— of violent exercise per diem is so great an advantage, that it may be classed as a necessity to the attainment of the in,ens sans in col pore sane. In most Public Schools there is room for all to play football at the same time. As regards other games, his suggestion that the younger boys are kept too long and too continuously at their lessons, and that to give them the chance of fives and racquets when the bigger boys are in school, would be both a physical and mental benefit, is a valu- able one. That Mr. Cotterill is not a mere fanatical devotee of athleticism is clear from his vigorous objections to "athletic sets," and his forcible arguments throughout the book in favour of more varied forms of exercise and employment generally. He would have boys trained not merely in striking a ball, which forms the staple of almost every form of athletic exercise at schools, but he would have them learn the use of their hands in all kinds of employment. The carpenters'-shop system, now coming into vogue in most schools, he would like to see extended. He would have the boys make, if necessary, and turf when re- quired, as well as mow, and generally keep in order their own cricket-ground, make their own bats and stamps, do wood-carvings for their own school and chapel,—even shoe the school horse for the roller, and make wrought-iron fences for the school-grounds or buildings. There is not the smallest doubt that in principle this is sound advice. Of nine-tenths of the boys who leave Public Schools, hardly one is happy or can occupy himself in any way except intellectually in reading, and physically in propelling a "rolling circle" with foot, hand, or other instrument of torture, cricket-bat, racquet, or billiard-cue. Mr. Cotterill would add not merely general " handiness," but music, drawing, and carving, as amusements and intellectual occupations.

There are two or three points, however, on matters intellectual in which we differ from him. He inveighs against the system of competition, and particularly against the Indian Civil Service Examination. We cannot but think this is a mistake. The competition wallah has proved himself able to compete with his predecessors in every way. In reckoning up the competition wallahs of a private acquaintance, the present writer cannot remember any who were not as well up in games and sports as their schoolfellows. The Sappers and Gunners, who are the competition wallahs of the Army, are at least equal, if not superior, rather than inferior, to the Guards and the Line and the Cavalry, in the arts of cricket and football as well as the art of war. Though their chances are infinitely inferior in the latter, yet General Gordon, Sir Frederick Roberts, Sir Charles Warren, Colonel Brackenbnry, and others have shown that when they have the chance, they can seize it as well as another. A great deal of nonsense is talked about the successful competitors at school and college. It is often asked,—Where are the clever boys in after-life ? It is assumed that because all the Judges, and Bishops, and Cabinet Ministers, and authors are not first- class men or senior wranglers, that the latter have fallen behind in the race because they have " spurted " too soon. But it must be remembered that position and wealth are necessary to eminence on the Ministerial bench, and are of great service to mounting the judicial or the episcopal bench. To be well connected or heir to ten thousand a year, is a far greater help to either bench than a first-class. The true teat is to compare those who have the title or the money, plus the first- class or the fellowship, with those who have only the title or the money ; and on this comparison, assuredly the Gladstones and the Selbornes, the Salisburys and the Iddesleighs, will compare not unfavourably with the undistinguished herd of the obscure great or rich. " Pot-boiling " must needs be the lot of the penniless first-class man ;.and if he does not •rise so =near the top, nor show so soon as the rich passman or the noble victim

of University discipline, or practises of grown-rip cricket, that does not show that the first-class man was played out too young, or that he would have got on better if he had done nothing but play. Man for man, in every rank of life the competition wallah will beat his rivals in the playground as well as in school ; in after life as well as in his early days. That- the subjects in which competition takes place might well be more varied, and that other subjects than pure classics and mathematics should be given weight in examinations, is obvious ; but that competition should be eliminated or-appreci- ably reduced, is a mischievous doctrine which would restore the evil days of patronage, privilege, and patricianism.

As regards • the variety of the subjects of examination, and therefore of study, at school, Mr. Cotterill hardly insists enough on the admixture of a- greater quantity of " modern " subjects. The greater the choice offered, the greater chance there is of suiting the individual. A boy who is dull and dense in classics or geometry, may be bright in history or natural science, on the introduction of which Mr. Cotterill has scarcely a word to say. Even in the teaching of classics, we ven- ture to differ with Mr. Cotterill in regard to cribs, which he would abolish• wholly. A well-regulated use of translations may be the best possible means of instruction in literature and languages. Cracking nuts is all very well, but the whole duty of man is not to crack nuts ; still less is it the whole duty of a boy. By judicious crib-using, a far greater interest in the literary, that is, the really humanising and educating study of classics, can be evoked. For beginners it is far better to give them a fairly copious vocabulary by the use of cribs, picking up the grammar on the way by illustration and annotation, than to make them sweat and groan under a weary life, through perpetu- ally bearing the intolerable fardel of Liddell and Scott or the Latin Primer. A wholesome neglect of grammar, and a very sparing use of the dictionary till the age of thirteen, would be one of the greatest and most humanising reforms that any one could effect in Public School education.