AN ASSISTANT-MASTER IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL.* Mx. BENSON in this
pleasantly written and interesting book has given to the world of teachers a guide to the methods that in his judgment should govern and inspire the relationship of master and boy in the great public schools. These methods are deduced from a varied experience of boy-nature, and contain, we think, some principles of wide application. On one point of importance we are, however, inclined to differ from the author ; but as this question is not one of internal school administration, it will be well before formulating the difference to state Mr. Benson's principles and methcels as nearly as space will permit in his own language.
The perfect schoolmaster, we are told, should have sound knowledge, endless patience, inexhaustible sympathy, and an inborn sense of discipline. He should be perfectly decisive, even though he is occasionally wrong. He should give the elder boys plain and sensible reasons for the work required of them, and should encourage the practice of note-taking. The work placed before the pupils should require grip and assiduity ; originality should be encouraged, and praise, a " potent educational force," should be bestowed where due. The master should have strong prejudices concerning the authors dealt with, in order to convey a sense of interest, discrimination, and style. Classical repetition lessons should be reserved for boys of definite classical ability. Questioning should chiefly be reserved for small classes ; large classes should be instructed by a form of lecturing, interspersed with questions. Corporal punishment should be left entirely in the hands of the head-master. The boarding-house should be like home, and the house-master should be a celibate, so as to possess freedom from domestic cares, and time to develop a truly parental relationship with the boys. Each boy should be seen each day alone for a few minutes on easy terms. The master should be scrupulously just; should treat the boys with natural courtesy, but should check any approach to a liberty. Very careful reports should be sent home each half, and relations of "mutual confidence, tempered by
• The Schoolmaster: a Commentary upon the Aims and Methods of an Assistant- Master in a Public School. By Arthur Christopher Benson. Loudon: John Nuns/. [5s.) I discretion," set up between the master and the parents. Intellectual training should in no way be subordinated to athletics, while the evil tendencies that accompany athleti- cism should be sternly rooted out. Boys should be clearly and simply prepared for Confirmation. This event, as "the one great opportunity that a schoolmaster has for talking of religious matters to his boys," should be used for the purpose of making a boy feel that religion is a vital -matter, and "that it lies at the back of his life-work." Moreover, afterwards "nothing should be allowed in any way to compete with the sanctity and solemnity of the Holy Communion," since in its presence "the worst evils of boy life are apt to shrink and die." In all this we seem to see an expansion of Roger Ascham's whole duty of a schoolmaster: "To have children brought to good perfectness in learning, to all honesty in manners." That doubtless is the end and aim of all schoolmastering.
We turn from the boy to the schoolmaster himself. We have already seen the qualities that seem to Mr. Benson requisite. The question naturally arises, How shall they be attained and maintained ?— " I confess that I am somewhat sceptical about the training of
teachers I do not say that it is not an advantage to a man to have passed through a certain period of training, but I do maintain that such training can never make a man an effective teacher. It may just give an inkling of how to set to work. . . . . . The best training that a teacher can get is the training that he can give himself. Education is not, and cann.ot be, a wholly scientific thing Lastly, I am inclined to think that the best system of all, if it were feasible, would be to send a young man for a few weeks to a training college after he has had say a year's experience of teaching in a school."
The absolute drudgery inseparable from teaching should be reduced to a minimum, since the improvement of mental capacity is the object of all teaching. It is the master's duty to keep himself fresh and active-minded, "and the spirit in which a man allows himself to be carried helplessly down in a stream of mechanical duties is not only not praiseworthy, but highly reprehensible." It is the duty of teachers to "contrive some intellectual life for themselves ; to live in the company of good books and big ideas." There should be a "deep and secret" but "conscious consecration of self to work "; the master is "vowed for a time to a species of monastic life," and be should aim at ruling and stimulating himself, and at seeing that his own religion is "simple and vital." We have endeavoured to state Mr. Benson's conclusions in his own words, and we believe that, save in one important particular, they represent, in helpful language, sound views on this most important subject.
It is the duty of a critic to criticise those aspects of a book which on careful consideration appear capable of pro- pagating erroneous views, or of diverting in a wrong direc- tion scientific opinion. We therefore join issue with Mr. Benson on the question of the training of teachers. So far as we are able to judge from the general tone of the book, the author is convinced in his own heart that teaching is the art of an enthusiastic amateur, and not in any true sense a science. There can, however, be no manner of doubt that education is, as Sir Joshua Fitch pointed out in his invaluable lectures on teaching, published more than twenty years ago, both an art and a science. "It aims at the accomplishment of a piece of work, and is there- fore an art. It seeks to find out a rational basis for such rules as it employs, and is therefore a science." Indeed, the
book now under review, like the elaborate treatise to which we have just referred, really endeavours to place teaching on a
scientific basis by the formulation of certain principles that appear to underlie the art. But whether teaching be an art or a science, or both, and whatever may be the claim or character of intelligence requisite for the due fulfilment of pedagogic functions, it seems to us abundantly clear that the strict training of teachers and the careful classification of teachers are absolutely essential conditions precedent to effective teaching. The argument against the necessity for organised training is that the gift or genius for teaching cannot be acquired, and that the only test for the discovery of the gift is practical work in the art. But this argument is unsound. Genius un- trained is, as a rule, genius wasted, and well-trained mediocre capacity will produce more valuable results than the uncertain and tentative efforts of a born but untaught teacher. The necessity of experience will be readily admitted, but, as Sir Joshua Fitch has pointed out, "natural aptitude, the study of principles and methods, and the lessons of experience" are each and all indispensable. The problem of supplying the great demand for good teachers is a difficult one to solve.; genius is not a common thing, even talent is uncommon enough ; yet in some way or another the supply must be kept up, and it must be made to approximate in quality to the standard that Sir Joshua Fitch and Mr. Benson, one speaking as an Inspector of Schools and the other as a schoolmaster, are at one in
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. The cry to-day is the cry of Colet - to Erasmus nearly four centuries ago: "Give us a helping hand in teaching. our teachers." . For generations the art of hair-cutting and the art of schoolmastering have had a common stage of prepara- tion. The hair-dresser, we hare heard, formerly learnt his art by attendance at large boarding-schools, where the hair of the boys was cut by contract. In each case the unhappy victim had his hair half cut by the tiro, and it was then finished, as well as might be, by a more expert hand. The same process was pursued in relation to the same head in the matter of education. The result was that the assistant- master learnt, or did not learn, his art at the expense of a certain number of boys. If he had aptitude, the boys were not uselessly sacrificed; but. in any event they were 'sacrificed, and more often than not uselessly. We believe that this vicious .practice is the cause of the present low standard of teachi gin England. Methods and principles are insufficiently recognised. More people than Mr. Benson unfortunately are "somewhat sceptical about the training of teachers."
The mediaeval schoolmaster seems to have been a fairly well-paid, and was certainly a cultured, man bent on getting his pupils to the Universities. The mediaeval system, how- ever, had in a great measure broken down by the opening of the sixteenth century, and probably from about that date we can regard teaching as the trade of the ' unsuccessful. Erasmus, who believed that a schoolmaster "should himself have travelled through the whole circle of knowledge," was met with ironic laughter at Cambridge when he sought an under-master for the new school of 'Paula. Who would be a schoolmaster ? The drift of things did not raise the status of the office. Two and a half centuries of religious tests had two notable effects. The endowed classical schools throughout the country were emptied, and the stipends by the middle of the eighteenth century were drawn by men who openly scoffed at the idea of teaching. Reactionary elementary schools for the poor had multiplied by the same date, and were of necessity. placed under teachers who could not teach. In this long period:of deeay there were many opportunities for genius acting from personal experience. Yet we only find an occasional great or able head- master, and these few had no inflirence whatever on national education. The art of teaching divorced from the science limits the efforts of the teacher to his personal results. Methods were wanted. So intense was 'the want at the ehd of the eighteenth century that even bad methods were welcomed. The monitorial system was an immediate success, and automatic and unintelligent as were its results, it was acclaimed by men as different as Bentham and Brougham. Out of the monitorial voluntary schools was evolved our modern national elementary system. Despite the fact that in the early part of the nineteenth century scientific and sound theories of education were in the air, the English Government, when it at last turned its attention to national education, was content with the existing system. It left, perhaps wisely, the training of teachers to individuals and Societies, but finanoial help was ever grudgingly given for this purpose, and the State never has realised (airless Mr. Balfour has now realised) the need for adequate expenditure on the training of teachers. Not much above two per cent. of the estimated expenditure for 1902-3 of the Board of Education is devoted to training colleges. Still, our elementary system has at least something of method in its efforts to secure efficient teachers, though many of us cannot, believe that the pupil-teacher system in its present form is altogether sound. Too much depends on the type of school that originally produces the pupil-teacher; and the training is uncertain.
The other notable,. effect to which we have referred is the present system of 'education 'in our endowed and public schools. We admit that the standard ' in' these schobls, eapeciaAy if they are situat*1 in large towns, is rising, 1144 we believe that as • soon as we get organised education for the whole country the standard will rise rapidly. But at present the standard is low, and the larger and more important the school the lower, it would seem, is the standard. Mr Benson himself has no doubt about. this. He says: "It must be frankly admitted: that the intellectual standard maintained at the English public schools is low ; and what is more serious, I do not see any evidence that it is tending to become higher:" We feel little doubt as to the chief reason. In a measure bad teaching and excessive size are causes. But we must go -deeper. How many of the men who go straight from the University to one of the great schools haee any knowledge of the science' of teaching? Very few, we think, possess a teacher's certificate granted, let us say, by the University of Cambridge. It is an extraordinary fact-that while no School Board will take a teacher without some evidence of teaching power, no evidence of practical efficiency and theoretical knowledge combined is as a rule required in the schools that undertake the teaching of the children of the middle and upper classes. Doubtless a man would be removed if marked incapacity for teaching were shown, but in the meantime, as in the case of the barber, the boys have been sacrificed. The Board of Education Act,' 1899, will, we think, eventually correct this eviL The. Register of Teachers under the Act will show the record of each teacher's qualification and .experi- ence, and will gradually create a new class of secondary teachers, while the opportunities of inspection afforded by the same Act give hope of permanent intellectual improvement among the boys. The oppOsition to inspection chiefly comes from the parents, who have often a ludicrous fear of social loss arising from State interference.
With so much of criticism we must take leer% of a singularly suggestive and attractive book,—one which we hope will be read widely by schoolmasters and parents.
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