THE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN FICTION.
LCOUMUNICATED.]
r HE school story, formerly a tale written to amuse schoolboys, 1 has been adopted recently as the chief weapon in the armoury of those who assail the Public School system. Fiction is a subtle and elusive form of criticism. It is realistic, it admits of no direct reply, and it may project on a school or class of schools the mind just of a single individual or a single set. If appeal from the more lurid pictures is made to the wholesomor art of an Ian Hay or a Desmond Coke, it will be answered that schoolmasters and middle-aged men are ignorant, forgetful, or guilty of euppreaeio veri, so the critics hold the field ; a Sandhurst Professor, who, as the author of Twelve Bad Men, ought to know about such things, gives his imprimatur ; the public buys and reads, and thinks a deal. Presently, if the critics get a verdict in their favour, the question of Public School reform will be settled—there will be, or should be, neither masters nor boys left in them. Yet, though the blindest devotee of the " Lanchester Tradition " would not deny the need of reform, there still live some who retain their bith, who hold that the realistic is not necessarily the real, that even the youngest critic is not infallible, and that dramatic art may convert the episodic into the chronic, the morbid into the normal. A system such as that of the English Public Schools is easier to destroy than to re.create, and before we hang the criminal we should be quite certain that the verdict is sound. The keynote of all these works is "Oh, those masters!" The theme, for instance, of Mr. Perrin and Mr. Truitt is the narrowing effect of school routine, and the embitterment that comes Loom disillusionment,
all leading up to the tragic dinotiement which is the dramatic motif of the book. A clever book—the characters are all exaggerated specimens of real typos, and granting their conglomeration, at one time, in one common-room, surrounded by an entourage of feminine cattishneas and fatuity at its worst and presided over by Mr. Any- Thompson, for whose appointment and retention in office the Governing Body deserved penal servitude, Moffat's might exist.
The tension of school life is severe ; a master responsible for boarders is not off duty in his evenings or at week-ends, and people live in close quarters. But there are the holidays and other compensations, some of them absent apparently in this squalid institution, and the number of those who retain something of culture, kindliness, and idealism, even in surroundings far from ideal, is not inconsiderable. If and when the country considers it worth while to pay the price for making education a better profession, a larger number of the best men will take to it. Mean- while, though the failures of a public institution are more directly under the public eye, it is at least open to question whether they are in reality more numerous in the scholastic than in any other profession. In all walks of life it is the few who really succeed, and the many who wake up at forty disillusioned. In two ways the disillusionment is accentuated for the schoolmaster. It is a far more difficult profession than most in proportion as a man is dealing with persons, not things. It is like Alice playing croquet with a flamingo, and the disillusioned clerk does not find his books rise up and mock or rag him ; and while open far more than most to merit, so that a failure cannot console himself with the thought that he lacked influence or money, success depends on personal qualities that bear little relation to the initial test. A man whose University degree is as good as that of another may think himself as good a man, when be is not. It is of course true that some of the boat schoolmasters remain without promotion, especially when they cannot boast a good degree ; but that is so in all careers. When the fiction-critics have persuaded all good men to stay out of the profession they will have successfully wrecked education. but it is doubtful if they will have much benefited those who have listened to them.
The staff of Femhurst, as described in Mr. Alec Waugh's The Loom of Youth, contained, apparently with two exceptions, no one who could really be called a man ; oven the apologetic portraiture of " the Chief " suggests little impression of power. There is a lack of " grip " in the complete baleen faire pervading the school, from the liberty of the History " specialist " down- wards, which reads oddly to those who know in real life how these things are handled ; nor can one help feeling that if a serious effort had been made by some one to tackle this erratic youth. some sound sense and sound principle might have been knocked into his head. The football interview with "The Bull" was not a serious effort. It is inconceivable, too, that a Head-Master as good as "the Chief" is represented to be should have misjudged a boy in so puerile a fashion as is described in the last interview. The general conditions of Femhurst may exist, or have existed. in certain schools at certain times. It does not follow that the author's school was as he saw it. It is surprising how different the same school BOOMS to different boys at the some time. The young are arrogant and undiscriminating critics, and an incident as related is not always the incident as it occurred ; in fletioa the other side has no hearing.
To take some generalizations—the average British schoolboy is unintellectual ; he gets it from his home ; but idlers are apt to get worried even in the Sixth ; and most schools are not so barren of intellectual stimulus as Fernhurst is represented to have been. With more leisure for the staff, there would be more stimulus —there is lack neither of inclination nor ability to encourage individuality. But masters, especially the hest of them, are harassed by an absurd examination system and overworked. This will continue, to put it brutally, till the public value the teaching side of education at a higher price. The curriculum, however, is in most oases far wider than seems to be indicated here, and history, in particular, is reasonably taught. But the gibe at classics as killing originality comes oddly from one whose own peculiar gods drew their inspiration largely from Latin and Greek; and it may be doubted how far Swinbume, Shelley, and Byron would provide a convenient basis for the education of the average boy. There is some troth in what is said of athleticism ; but an athlete is not always respected who lacks other qualities, and masters, as a rule, do not encourage the cult at the expense of more vital things. In any case, athletics are wholesomer subjects of talk for the masses than some things that might take their place. The doctrine that " Christian boys goods are common" is certainly prevalent, though continual warfare is waged on it; but close proximity gives the "chance to do ill deeds" which
may seem shocking to those a survey of whose shelves might reveal some alien names in their books.
In this, as in many ways, public opinion at school is a reflex of the community at largo, which must share the blame. For instance, there is usually some smoking at school, and- language is—shall we say ?—free ; not always, we believe, so squalidly vulgar as it was at Fornhurat, but worse through the prevailing influence of militarism. Mr. E. F. Benson is probably right in saying that smoking may be almost excluded by the esprit de corps of a particular house, or. indeed of the school. Bad language may be reduced in the same way, and with more success in proportion as these things are removed from the category of vices and presented as a matter of " form." But there is no indication of any attempt at Fernhurst to handle the matter, and neither smoking nor swearing will be banished from schools while they prevail outside. The twilight of the gods " following on the declaration of war is not the common experience ; and of course a Rogers, if such a person exists, would be enough to wreck any O.T.C.; but the experience of corps with competent commanders is very different. Generally the slacker and grumbler, like Gordon Carruthers, has been either converted or suppressed, and the carps' work both has zest in itself and adds zest to cricket, which is apt to bore, by reducing the time spent on it. In passing, it seems odd that the C.O. commands a side on a field day ; generally he acts as umpire, while the operations are largely entrusted to N.C.O.'a Graver is the indictment against the honesty and truthfulness of schoolboys. There are cribbing and dishonesty at schools, which grow in inverse ratio to the competence of the staff ; but all masters are not moles and fools, and, in capable bands, it can be reduced to a minimum. Observation Will track dishonesty, and there are tests by which the general honesty of a form's work can be gauged. Some of us who have dealt directly with the matter could, if it were possible to marshal our facts, disprove the universality of the practice. Boys who are ready to lower are ready also to raise their standard when the appeal is made to their common-sense m w-ell'as their principles ; nor are an schoolmasters prigs. This would be impossible whore masters, as such, are regarded as natural enemies, treated with contempt, lied to with effrontery. But all masters are not so completely out of touch with schoolboy mentality, and that all schoolboys are liars will be repudiated by them with as much indignation as the aspersions on the commercial morality of Public School men by their elders. One is tempted to think that Gordon Carruthers got into a bad set, and judged the community by himself and his friends.
The same impression is conveyed by the constant undercurrent of indictment against schoolboy morality in the narrower sense. Where open immorality is common knowledge, a school stands condeinned ; but it is easy to take suspicion for proof, and " they say" for " it is." Against theao sweeping generalizations may be set instances without number in many schools where public opinion has risen up against such practices, when boys big, little, and middle-sized have either dealt effectively with them themselves or given ungrudging aid to masters in dealing with them. These things are knowledge, not impressions ; but against fiction it is, for obvious reasons, impossible to quote facts, with chapter and verse. The impression is given here that the evil is the product of the Pubis School system. Yet one of the gravest difficulties of the Public School master is the bad preparatory school, though many are good, and the evil is frequently rife in day schools. Indeed, it is no uncommon thing to find a boy who gots straight when he becomes a boarder, or who goes straight in term and wrong in the holidays. The tone of public: opinion is stronger either way in a boarding-school, and the first step is to exercise it against the " taking up " of little boys. This can be done, and is more effective than its necessary counterpart, supervision by masters, which seems to have been singularly absent at Fernhurst.
But again the matter lies largely with the general public. The danger is inherent in human nature, and will continue serious while parents, whose duty it is to face it, continue to follow the ostrich policy. In most schools it is frankly handled by masters, and though it may easily be dealt with in the wrong way, when it is put on a common-sense basis of physical fact without moralizing, boys, who are not generally fools, understand and co-operate. Knowledge does not always save, but ignorance is always dangerous.
The author of The Harrorians—himself, was he not ? a day boy except for two terms—treats all each efforts with mockery and derision, and of course the case of Public Schools, as of all schools, would be hopeless if such unpleasant creatures were typical boys.
Luckily they are not, and at' any rate some boys are open to reason. But before Paterfamilias sits in judgment and condemns he should first ask hirimelf what he is doing for the boy himself, and then Make further- inquiry What will be done for him at the school to
which he proposes to send him. A Head-Master once interviewed a parent whose boy he asked him to remove. "The boy," his father said, " learnt all he knows at school." " Yea," replied the Head-Master, "and what warning did you give him yourself ? " "None," was the answer, and no further objections were raised. When the community at largo has faced this problem it will have the right to blame schools when they fail ; at present school- masters, unaided, do almost all that is done ; but at Fornhurst they seem to have done nothing.
Criticism is easy, to appreciate requires penetration ; neither the author of The Loom of Youth nor the Professor appreciates. It is a very young man's book. Lot us hope that the morbid imagination of a very unusual boy is not endeavouring to give a picture of any real school, or that he has failed.
A Mesa SCHOOLMASTER.
Previous page
