ENDOWMENTS FOR "POOR SCHOLARS."
go THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR
Sm,—Mr. Cardwell's letter is very interesting, as showing us how the Education Act can be worked out by public-spirited men to its logical conclusion, but I do not think that it quite meets the case of which your former correspondent was thinking. "R- H. Q." was, I imagine, referring to schools formed on what is called the "public-school" model,—that is to say, to Eton, Rugby, &c., on the one hand, and to Marlborough, Haileybury, &c., on the other. To the masters of these he would say, I imagine, some- what as follows :—‘ You are becoming daily more popular and more numerous ; your clientile is continually extending, till you threaten in the course of another generation to monopolise, or nearly so, the education of the sons of the wealthy and pro- fessional classes ; you are naturally desirous of attracting as much talent as possible to your own particular school ; you, therefore, hold out bribes to clever boys in the shape of entrance scholarships. To meet your demand, an increasing number of preparatory schools are springing up, in which, in- deed, teaching is carried to extreme perfection, but whose great ambition it is to win your scholarships. To do this, they are obliged to subject their able boys to a course of prepara- tion far too severe for their age, and which too often wins them their scholarships at the expense of their health. You are thus doing the country at large a great injury ; for those very brains which ought to prove most useful and be most tenderly protected you run the risk of spoiling ; to produce your prodigy of fifteen, you sacrifice your citizen of thirty. What account will you, then, be able to give to the next generation of the talents committed, to your charge ?' Stich, Sir, is the indictment which I have heard preferred against the present system. Whether the brains of boys are being over-forced or not by this extreme pres- sure between the years of twelve and fourteen, I will leave the physiologist and the University to say, and whether the present system might not be so far modified as to be an undoubted boon instead of a probable injury to the nation, I would venture to recommend to the Head Masters' Conference ; but that many of us masters are, from our own experience, growing more and more dissatisfied with the present system is an undoubted fact, and one which I think worthy of some consideration.—I am, Sir, &c., F.
P.S.—I have not referred to the injustice referred to in "H. H. Q.'s" second letter, because, though it undoubtedly is an evil, it does seem to me of very much less importance than that referred to in his first.
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