BOARDING-SCHOOLS AND DAY-SCHOOLS.
WE all talk education, but we confine the talk to the poor, and there is danger in the difficulties and dangers of the rich being ignored. It is often assumed that our Public-School system is perfect in all except the curriculum in which the mind of the Public School- boy is to be made to run. But we are seasonably reminded by an article in the Contemporary Review, by one of the ablest of the staff of one of our great Public Schools, that all is not perfect by any means in the system under which our boys are supposed to be morally and socially developed. That an immense improvement has taken place in the tone and mode of life of the Public Schools in the last fifty years no one can doubt. The progress of Liberalism has been as great in the little world of school as in the greater world outside. But the real question is whether the Public-School system has not to a great extent proceeded on the wrong lines, and has not conspicuously taken a wrong course, in the immense develop- ment of the boarding-house system. At most of the Public
Schools of the old time, with the exception of Eton and Win- chester, the day-boy element, which was the original element, still remained in considerable force. Westminster, Harrow, Rugby, St. Paul's, Bedford, all comprised and were largely dependent on the day system, which was the main and almost the sole feature of the ordinary country Grammar School. Meanwhile, Preparatory Schools, or, as Mr. Lee Warner in the article referred to calls them, in a slang worse than that of commerce or the law, " Preparatories," hardly existed. A boy was taken at once from home and plunged, often at the tender age of ten or eleven, in the hard world of a Public School. But since that time, the development of the boarding- school has almost wholly absorbed, and still tends to absorb, the day-boys. The new Public Schools—Marlborough, Hailey- bury, and the new foundation of Charterhouse—are wholly con- fined to boarders, and even in schools like Highgate the boarders form the predominant element. The raising of the standard of age for admission to a Public School, and the tremendous impetus given to competition for the rich scholarships of Winchester and Eton, and their humbler imitators, caused by the substitu- tion of examination for nomination, or birth, or residence as a means of obtaining a free, or partially free, education, has caused the even more remarkable development of the "prepara- tory," or in better, if not less slangy, English, " t'other school." The " t'other school" is, as a rule, even more predominantly a boarding-school than the Public School. Rugby and Bedford, St. Paul's, and the lesser Grammar Schools, have at least retained the day-boy as part of the system ; but " Vother school" is naturally, and to the profit of the master, wholly a boarding-school. The result is that the vast majority of the boys in the upper and upper middle-class are wholly severed from home life and home influence during three-fourths of the year flora the age of nine to the age of nineteen.
Is this and can this be right or good ? Mr. Lee Warner he ,itates a doubt whether the present system is conducive to the development of literary genius, and whether it is conducive to the welfare of the boy who, from nature or habit, fails to develop the athletic tastes and skill which are required by the ordinary public schoolboy. We venture to go further, and question whether it is good for any sort or condition of boy. It is cpite certain that you could not turn out a John Stuart Mill or a younger Pitt at a Public School ; and though the experiences of an Anthony Trollope at Harrow would hardly be quite so bad. now-a-days, it is equally certain that they would not be either pleasant or profitable. On the other hand, for the rough- and-tumble ordinary man of the world who is to succeed in life as statesman, lawyer, parson, and so forth, perhaps even in business, there is no doubt that the average athletic life of a Public School, which is begun, be it remembered, even at t'other school," is as good a preparation as could be given. But the point we wish to urge is that it would be quite possible, and infinitely more beneficial, to combine the advantages of school and home. It cannot be good, and it is not good, for boys to be cut off from the influences of their sisters and their mothers through the larger portion of their lives. There are vast numbers of boys who have suffered grievous moral harm from the sins that prevail, and are almost ineradicable from the boarding-house system, which everyone who has been at a Public School knows to exist, but which cannot be talked of. Apart from this danger there is the intellectual and social mis- fortune of want of civilising occupation. After all, the most active boy wants some rest and relief from the eternal occupation of setting a sphere in motion, which constitutes his sole relaxation, and of grinding at grammar or sums, which constitutes the chief part of his intellectual employment. Of course the debating societies, natural history societies, glee-clubs, and so forth, which now form important parts of Public-School life, relieve a certain amount of monotony. Bat it requires energy and activity, and a certain amount of pushing and drilling, even to get boys to go in for these, and often the dull boy and the prominent athletes, who, perhaps, even more than the ordinary dull boy, want some social occupation, do not go in for them. At home in the evening a boy can play cards or backgammon, without committing a crime ; he can play a musical instrument or sing without being liable to be thought a duffer or be laughed at ; or he can listen to someone else playing or singing, read or be read to, and talk with his sisters, who have some variety of interest besides the cricket-field or the class-room. He can read too, and that in books which at school he never sees, and so lay the foundation of the one enjoyment fatal to ennui. But from all these humanising diversions and pastimes, the schoolboy is cut off. When he comes home, he no doubt, in many cases, enjoys all these things with additional zest, but often he has ceased or ceases to care for them. The Public-School system is largely responsible for the incapacity of Englishmen to amuse themselves or to enjoy society. They may be good at business, and at sports which are a second business, but they are exceedingly bad at pleasure. The severance of interest in the sexes is another evil, which we impute largely to the Public-School system. The boy ceases to be at ease in the presence of his sisters, or to be able to talk to his mother, and he is even worse at ease in the pre- sence of other members of the sex. In the absence of any life in common, there cease to be any interests in common ; and until the interest of flirtation begins, the boy and the girl are absolutely ignorant of each other.
Now, we do not at all wish to urge that manliness is not a good thing, that rubbing up against other boys is not a good thing, that athleticism or game-playing is not a good thing. But it is surely a better thing to combine these good things with the preservation of the home life and all the good influences of female society ! One great difficulty, of course, is, that the majority of the people whose sons go to Public Schools live in great towns, and the majority of great schools are in the country. But if people set themselves to do it, the diffi- culty could be easily overcome. It is not so very long ago that Westminster was more fashionable than Eton or Winchester, for the very reason that it was in town. Now the town has be- come poisonous. But the suburbs are open. By a far-sighted and excellent arrangement of the governing body, St. Paul's School, with one of the biggest foundations of any school, is going to move to West Kensington, where it has secured twelve acres of open ground, and where the boys will be able to enjoy fresh air, and cricket and football, as well as at Eton. It is to be a day- school entirely, or almost entirely. That the movement meets a want is clear from the sudden growth of the demand for houses in the new town which the enterprise of the most enterprising firm of builders that has ever been seen has created at West Kensington. There can be little doubt that the people of South Kensington and Bayswater will quickly recognise the advan- tages of the combination of Public School and home life thus brought to their doors, and will quickly swell the numbers to the ultimate limit of a thousand. Take, again, the case of Bedford, which threatens almost to become a suburb of London, simply because of the attractions which are offered to residents there in sending their sons to a first-rate school, where the day-boys are in the ascendant, and are not looked down upon by the others, so that they enjoy all the advantages of athletic and Public School, education plus home life at an almost nominal price. Why should not these examples be followed ?
The question of price is one which, though less important than the question of a good education, is yet not one to be ignored. There can be no question that, in this respect, a change of system would be an immense gain. It is obvious that if a man, with probably no great amount of private means to begin with, is not only to act the part of tutor, but also of hotel-keeper and too often of hotel-builder, his charge must be proportionate to his outlay and his risks. A first-class day-school education could be obtained for a fifth—perhaps a tenth—the price of a Boarding-school edu- cation, and the boy be better housed and fed into the bargain. Why, then, should not the St. Paul's precedent be followed ? It would be easy to do so, even for London. For other places it would be even easier. Why, for instance, should Manchester and Liverpool send their sons all the way to Rugby and Marlborough, when there is the Manchester School and similar institutions in Liverpool, capable of development at their doors ? It is sweet, no doubt, to mingle cotton with strawberry-leaves, but would it not be just as well to put off the process till the University age arrives, when, too, the strawberry flavour is more strongly developed. At all events, it is worth considering whether the mixture is not too dearly bought, at the price of danger to the character and ruin to home life. It must be admitted, of course, that there are difficulties to be overcome as regards Public Schools which may prove in some cases, though not in the vast majority, insuperable. But there can be no question that it is easy, and even more desirable, to reform the system in the case of Preparatory Schools. Even if it involved a daily journey to a suburb, for boys of nine and ten, a day-school would be preferable to the complete exile of a Public School. Even if it involved (which it
need not) a postponement of the athletic career till the Public- School age, the gain in health, in character, in intelligence, to the boy, and in cost to the parents, would be immense. For a few exceptional cases the separation from home involved in a boarding-school may be an almost unmixed benefit; but in the great majority of cases, and till a comparatively late age, it is a very dubious gain, and in a larger number than is supposed, an undoubted loss. If it is too late to retrace our steps as regards Public Schools, it is at least not too late to put an end to the system which consigns children of tender age to the life of the monastery and the barracks.
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