Letters to the Editor TO MAKE ENGLAND ONE NATION [To
the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—In his article on " The Public Schools and their Pur- pose," Dr. Norwood raises a question of profound importance to the future of this country. Our troubles in England, it will hardly be denied, arise mainly from the misunderstandings of the two " classes " which may be roughly labelled " Employer " and " Employed " ; and these misunder- standings in their turn are largely due to our system of parallel lines of education which, like Euclid's, " being pro- duced ever so far both ways never meet." From infancy the future employer and the future employed are trained absolutely apart. They have never had any opportunity of really knowing each other or of understanding each other's point of view. When occasion at last brings them together round a conference table, they meet like beings from different planets.
This is a new fact in English social life, and it is a sinister one. Till recently there was more intercourse between different classes, even in the towns ; far more in the country. In the old life of the countryside (which was formerly the background of the Public Schools) there was contact and community of interest between the squire and the village. Tom Brown's early playmates till he went to Rugby were the village boys. Even the manufacturer in the early days lived in a house near his mill with his mill-hands all round him. This made for intercourse and mutual understanding.
All this is changed ; the motor car is changing it still further. The Public Schoolboy of to-day lives a life apart : he rarely meets in any natural way boys of another class. I do not forget the splendid work of the Boy Scout move- ment, or the happy inspiration of the Duke of York's Camp ; but these are but a narrow plank for crossing a wide and deep chasm. The schools themselves recruit to-day from a socially more restricted area. All through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the " poor scholar " had his place in the Public Schools. Ben Jonson at Westminster was a bricklayer's son ; Gray at Eton was son of a scrivener. Gradually the door to the Public School has narrowed. More and more the key which opens it must be of gold. There are scholarships, it is true ; but they go mainly to boys Who have spent four or five years at an expensive " prep. sehooL" It is for this reason that I hope to see the Public Schools open their doors to the Free Place boy ; not by Act of Parlia- ment, nor under compulsion from Dr. Norwood's " strong autocrat at the Board of Education," but of their own will and of grace, being convinced not only that this is for the good of the country but that it is for their own good as well. The great need of our Public Schools to-day is greater variety and scope for originality ; release from convention and the tyranny of the type.
There are difficulties enough, heaven knows. Dr. Norwood does well, no doubt, to underline them. But it is not the English way to give a thing up because it is difficult. The most obvious of the difficulties is the heavy cost of boarding. But a beginning could anyhow be made with the Public Schools which take day boys as well as boarders. There are more of these than most people are aware of ; not only Clifton and Cheltenham, but many of the older schools— Rugby, Westminster, Shrewsbury and Uppingham. With a little adaptation any school with a sufficiently large popula- tion within reach could take free scholars as day boys ; this might bring in Winchester, Eton and Harrow. In sonie cases this would right a real wrong—the total or partial exclusion of the boys of the country town from schools founded originally for their benefit.
Constructively, what does Dr. Norwood offer ? He looks to " the University stage as the natural time when the classes should mix." Do they in fact do so ? My own recollection is that they do not ; but that is of long ago, and perhaps things are changed a little. But in any ease I should reply that this is too late. For better or worse habits are already set, the general outlook fixed.
Dr. Norwood stresses the difficultY of the boy from the humble home adapting himielf to the atmosphere of the
Public School, and says he will probably be unhappy. But the " sensitiveness " of which he speaks is more a,cute at the University stage. Catch your boy young, and you can make anything of him. Boys of thirteen are marvellously like each other, whatever their " class ; and if left to themselves they are entirely free from class consciousness. School is your true democracy, where " a boy's a boy for a' that," and each is rated at what he himself is and does at school, not at what his father is or does at home.
I write with some experience of the problem of the fusion of classes ; within narrower limits, no doubt, but similar in kind. After a fairly long apprenticeship at Radley I went on to Monmouth- with the definite- purpose of seeing how far Public School standards and ideals could be grafted on the life of a Grammar School. In the nature of things a Grammar School is recruited for the most part locally, and draws from practically every class of society. Soon after I went there Monmouth began to take Free Place boys—the statutory twenty-five per cent. This of course increased the proportion of boys from poorer homes. Some thought the percentage too large ; we did not find it so. Nothing but good came from the opening of the gates. Boys of every rank, from the " County family " to the miner from the Forest of Dean, got to know and respect each other in the keen rivalries of class room, playing field, and river. As a result they will all their lives have a broader outlook and a broader sympathy ; in a word, will be better and more useful citizens. Did the manners of the better-class boys suffer ? Not a bit. And some of the humblest homes sent the truest gentlemen. I think specially of two of the best captains of the school that I had : one the son of an R.E. sergeant—I may speak freely, for the War took him—with a natural dignity, perfect in innate breeding and courtesy ; the other was son of a village cobbler.
The founder of Radley—an educational genius whose influence on English school ideals is too little recognized— provided that at Radley every tenth boy should have a " free place." The system has not survived. But it was a generous experiment and might well give a lead to the richer Public Schools to-day. What a fine contribution it, would be to the solving of our social and economic difficulties if the schools which are definitely for the wealthy were to offer, let us say, one place in twenty to " poor scholars : not necessarily boys who have been through the elementary school, but also (as at Radley) to boys of gentle birth cut off by the res angusta domi from the hope of a Public School career.
" Skimming the cream " of the secondary schools is, I fear, inevitable—there is no other way. The secondary schools may not like it, but must lump it. They would soon get used to it ; and the transference might in itself be counted as an " honour " won, and perhaps form something of a permanent bond with the more famous neighbour. In the last resort it is a poor sort of schoolmaster who does not want to get for his boys the best possible chance in life.
Experto crede : The ablest boy that came to me at Mon- mouth I sent on with a scholarship to Rugby. In actual work he would, I think, have done as well with us ; but I felt that I ought not to deny him the advantage of the wider sphere. The elementary schoolmaster—all honour to him !- makes this sacrifice year by year when he sends on his most promising boys with Free Places at the earliest possible age— sometimes, too, at a financial sacrifice because it lowers his numbers.
I recognize the force of all that Dr. Norwood so vigorously urges ; but for the reasons I have given I dissent from his conclusion. What England owes to the Public Schools is beyond reckoning ; but the times are changed, and the old order must adapt itself to new conditions. Is it coincidence that has put in the column immediately following Dr. Norwood's article last week an unanswerable indictment of the present system ? " So far as schools are concerned, we are still in England ` two nations,' with all that that implies of waste and heart-burning on the one side and an excessive burden of responsibility on the other." Yet this is hardly stronger than Dr. Norwood's own indictment : " Few pass from one to the other ; few in either know anything about the other." The " Segregation of the Public School," as it was well called some years ago in the Speitator, is a real danger threatening the national life. If the " two nations " are to be one, the " closed frontiers " between the two types of education must be opened up. The Free Place system is the [We think that Mr. Lionel James has put his finger on one of the weakest spots in our national life. England is tzbo nations. Until we devise some method of making her one nation all is not well with the body politic. How could a better start be made than with the boys, on some such lines as -Mr. James advocates ?—ED. Spectator.]
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