THE HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION.
MR. BRYCE is a man of courage. Short of action involving immediate danger to life, we know of nothing that makes a greater demand on this virtue than the duty of telling unpleasant truths to an association which has just elected you their president. This was what Mr. Bryce had to do on Saturday, and, so far as we can judge from the abridged report which is all that we have seen, he did it extremely well. To those who are outside the teaching profession, it may be permitted to say that a new word is very much wanted which shall stand in the same relation to teachers as " sacerdotalism " stands to the clergy. Sacer- dotalism, as the term is commonly used, implies a mischievous exaggeration of the clerical office, and the word we need would imply a similar exaggeration of the teacher's office. Those who are animated by this as yet nameless temper divide the world into two classes,—teachers and taught. Such third classes as parents, or employers who pay the teachers' salaries, are put aside as annoying though feeble folk, who play the same part towards the teacher as a gnat might play towards Lord Kitchener. Mr. Bryce did not speak to the Teachers' Guild of Great Britain and Ireland in quite such plain language as this. Indeed, coming from the Chair of the Guild, it would have been hardly decent language for him to use. But he told them what was much better, because much more immediately practical, what are the special dangers to which the present drift of educational opinion is liable. This drift now seems to be setting in three main directions. There is a tendency to make teaching a branch of the public service, a tendency to make teaching a close profession, and a tendency to sub- stitute physical science for literature in the critical part of education. As regards the first two we are forced to admit that the wish of the teachers is a very natural, and if the question be looked from one side only, a very reasonable, wish. By far the largest number of teachers are young men and wawa with a high esteem of their profession, and possibly of themselves, and an uneasy sense that the world does not take either quite at their valuation. Make teaching a branch of the public service and you give the teacher a great increase of dignity. He becomes at once a servant of the Crown,—the holder of an office so essential to the welfare of the community that it can no longer be left to chance to determine who shall discharge it. The State itself must select and control the teacher. When the dignity of the profession has been provided for, the next step is to secure its efficiency. We must know who our teachers are, and what are their titles to our confidence. The inquiry how this knowledge is to be- attained leads us straight to registra- tion of teachers. Nobody must teach who is not on the roll, and the fact of being on the roll must connote the passing of certain prescribed examinations. In this way the teaching profession must become close as well as official.
Yes, says Mr. Bryce, this description of the way in which things are going is perfectly accurate. But do not suppose that because it is the actual way it is therefore the ideal way. If teaching becomes a branch of the public service, how are you going to regulate promotion ? If by seniority, the average teacher may be grey-headed before he gets the rise he deserves. If by patronage, where is the Minister, or the Minister's subordinate, who can be trusted, we will not sa7 to promote men fairly, because that is at least con- ceivable, but in a way that teachers will think fair ? And then what will be the effect of making the teachers public servants on teaching ? We have seen some examples of this in foreign countries, and in our own elementary education. In France, where uniformity of studies has been carried to the highest possible pitch, there is a general complaint of the sameness and want of initiative that too often attends it. In England the best-founded objection to our elementary system is that the intervention of the Education Depart- ment in the choice of subjects to be taught in elementary schools prevents managers from adapting the teaching to local and industrial needs. In this case the system has been created by the necessity of having some security that the public get value for their money. But where no such necessity exists, it would, in our opinion, be a grave mis- take to introduce a similar uniformity. The argument for making teaching a close profession is undoubtedly stronger. We do not allow butchers and bakers to sell their goods under false names ; why should we allow teachers to sell instruction which has no right to be so called ? The only way of guarding against this, it is argued, is to allow no man or woman to teach who is not registered, and to make admission to registration dependent on passing a prescribed examination. Mr. Bryce does not specify his objections to making. teaching a close profession, he only says that it would be better if we could get on without such a result. But it is easy to imagine why. he dislikes the prospect. The closing up of a pro- fession may be necessary in order to secure a sufficient level of mediocrity among its members. But it is well to remember that the level thus gained will only be one of mediocrity. Genius will have no place left for it, for genius is naturally impatient of anything that savours of Trade- Unionism. It likes to follow its own will, and to arrive at results by paths of its own making. Registration and examinations may be necessary evils in education, but nothing is gained by losing sight of the fact that they are evils.
Professor Jebb delivered the Romanes Lecture at Oxford on Thursday, and as his subject was " Humanism in Educe; tion," he naturally touched on the third of Mr. Bryce's cautions. The whole lecture is an admirable vindication of " humanism " as "an efficient and vital influence not only . in forming men of letters and learning, but in training men who afterwards gained distinction in public life and in various active careers " ; and though it does not strictly belong to the subject of this article, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting the example which Professor Jebb gives of the latter result. " In 1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, Robert Wood "—he himself tells the story in his " Essay on the Original Genius of Homer "—" being then an Under-Secretary of State, took the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris to the President of the Council, Lord Granville ; who was then ill, and had,- indeed, but a few days to live. Seeing what his condition was, Wood proposed to withdraw ; but the Statesman replied that it could not prolong his life to neglect his duty, and then quoted in Greek from the Iliad the words of Sarpedon to Glaucus Ah, friend, if once escaped from this battle, we were ever to be ageless and immortal, I would not myself fight in the fore- most ranks, nor would I' send thee into the war that giveth men renown; but now—since ten thousand fates of death beset us every way, and these no mortal may escape bk now let us go forward.' He repeated the last. word,.7olisy, several times," says Wood, " with a calm and determinate resignation, and then, after'a pause; asked.to hear the treaty read." This noble passage has carried us far from Mr. Bryce's speech. But it may serve to give- additional poignancy to the regret which many of us feel at the change which is going on " in the direction of -substituting physical science for literary and human subjects in the ontical.part of education." We note that as to the extent of this change Professor Jebb and Mr. Bryce are not agreed. "The position of humanism in this country at the close of. the cen- tury is much stronger than it was at the beginning." That is Professor Jebb's view. " The change '—froin humanism to physical science—" has gone very much too far." That is Mr. Bryce's view. We fear, however, that the reason why they are not agreed is simply that they are speaking of different classes of society. In the Universities we can well believe that humane studies--rthe studies which aim at drawing out all the mental and moral facultiee of man—" have acquired a fresh vigour, a larger sphere of genuine activity, and a place in the higher education which is more secure, because the acceptance on which-.it rests is more intelligent." But this is quite consistent with-the fact that of " the cheaper secondary schools and the upper classes of the elementary schools " the exact opposite is true.• We are well aware that in the case of these schools the difficulty of retaining " humane studies " is immeasurably greater than it is in the Universities and the higher class, of schools. How are we to give any notion of literature to boys and girls whose education, even in favourable circumstances, ends at fourteen or fifteen ? Is it not wiser to abandon all thought of doing this, and instead to store their minds with scientific facts which are true and useful as far as they go ? We can only reply with Mr. Bryce that this latter training tends to " produce a hard, dry, unfertile type of mind," and that in no class of school can this be a result to be desired. We see something of it in the change which has come over the English, and still more the Scottish, peasantry through the loss of that familiarity with-the Old Testament which the more intelligent among them formerly possessed. The Hebrew Scriptures may be called by some a limited literature, but they are a great literature ; and when the Bible was the one book of the English poor, they derived from it a literary training which is ill replaced by a knowledge what to expect from the mixture in a glass jar of two simple chemical elements. How to make literature a real power in elementary and the lower secondary education will be a very pressing problem for educationalists in the twentieth century.
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