The Public Schools
THE passion for building all things new is dying and one can take satisfaction in it, for it would be odd indeed if this particular age, which has so many dubious characteristics, were in fact to possess in every field a finer creativeness than any that has gone before. Few national institutions came in for more abuse from the destruc- tive Utopians of a few years ago than the public schools. If they were allowed to have merit, and this was a rare concession—the Workers' Educational Association brought out a report during the war which found not one solitary point in their favour—it was merit reserved for the few, and no argument from quality was acceptable to equalitarian abolitionists. Fortunately opinion has changed ; in a hard-pressed economy quality is more valued, and even a recent Fabian pamphlet has advised the retention of the public school, without fees.
Mr. Gallie's sympathetic account of his own school—he does not name it, but those who know Yorkshire will have an easy guess— will strengthen the returning interest in the independent boarding schools. He does not discuss the economics of their future or ways of associating them, on the lines of the Fleming report, with the national system. He is concerned solely to reflect upon the good and bad sides of one school as he remembers them, and the approach throughout is firmly critical. His chief criticisms are of the curri- culum. He is for less book-work up to the age of sixteen and more " learning by doing," with geography, starting from the school dis- trict, as the central arts subject. It is refreshing, however, to find him, pace Dr. Eric, JaMes of Manchester, demanding Latin up to sixteen for all in tit* type of school because it is "a vital unifying thread in the history of European thought and institutions." A chapter on " The Liberal Principle in Education," with a digression on how liberal unbelievers may contribute to the upbringing of liberal Christians, raises more questions than it answers. The doc- trine of fitting children to make up their own minds someday, some- where, has worn a little thin. A good part of the book is given to discussing school life, the character of friendships and the influence of masters. Education through a life in common—not a few hours together morning and afternoon—is the distinguishing feature of these schools, and the author gives it as high a place as Newman did in his celebrated idealisation of Oxford. "The individuals, men and boys, described in this book," he says, "stirred in me as a boy (and still stir in me as I recall them) certain ideals and beliefs and, perhaps more important, certain questions or ways of questioning that were to be the vantage-point, the point of advances and returns, in my best efforts in living." To four or five outstanding masters the author, and many of his contemporaries, clearly owed a very great deal. A cause for anxiety about English education today is that the small- ness of the financial rewards of schoolmastering tempts the out- standing man to do almost anything else. WALTER JAMES.
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