THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS-HI
By ANOTHER HEADMASTER
THE healthy frankness of " A Headmaster " in the two articles that precede this will set people thinking. All he has said is no doubt true ; but he has not told all the truth, and he has led us to believe that the truth he has told is more widely applicable than it probably is. Everyone who has some inside knowledge of the situation among the smaller public schools knows that their lot is not an easy one. Small schools are not economical to run ; overheads are necessarily greater per boy than those of the big school. But we must not be led to think that only the small schools are suffering. There are several large schools which are living through meagre days, which are appealing to the " old school ties " for help to save them from a situation which means ultimate extinction. These schools, too, are entering into a " ruinous competition," and are as fearful of the future as their smaller sisters.
Eton and Winchester, and the other great schools we can all mention, are as safe as the solidly established day schools ; but it is not because they are big, or because they are expensive. It is because they are providing a type of education and producing a type of man for which there still seems to be a real demand. They have something quite distinctive to offer and they " deliver the goods " expected of them. But the large number of " schools of the second and third rank " referred to by " A Headmaster " do no such thing ; and the fact that, be they large or small, they are all suffering from the same dearth of boys indicates that some additional cause exists for their precarious condition.
It is difficult to believe that success is going to any school because its headmaster has a special aptitude for patting the heads of small boys and warming the hearts of their mothers. The public is not so easily gullible. He may get a few boys in that way from the particularly innocent parent, but he cannot rely on that all the time ; certainly not for more than one generation of boys. The cause lies deeper, and it is brutally this : many of these schools, emphatically not all, are conservative, ill-equipped. narrow in outlook, snobbish, unenlightened and sometimes inefficient. Instead of solemnly asking themselves what the world needs most from this generation, they are satisfied to do badly what their betters do well.
I believe if inquiry were made it would be found that the number of vacancies in the Headmasters' Conference schools in the slump period a few years ago was roughly the same as that of the number of boys in schools founded or refounded since the War. This fact is significant ; and even more significant is the fact that certain schools, not all very new, which have sincerely, devotedly and courageously pressed forward with a type of education which they believe to be more suitable to the needs of the post-War world than one conceived in a totally different setting too years ago, have increased their numbers during a most difficult period. These schools have not had any head-patting entrée to the preparatory schools ; nor have their headmasters been forced to " carry their wares to the front doors of strangers." Certainly none of them was able to take part in that magnificent advertisement so delicately and recently undertaken by the greatest, and the less great, of our public schools, which a large London daily paper provided through the circulation (gratis) of two special illustrated numbers devoted to the praise of them all. With very little help, except from their own initiative, these schools of more progressive outlOok have held their own. The reason is simple.
The schools referred to by " A Headmaster " grew out of a religious and social background which they have steadily tried to reflect and to perpetuate. Their real life began a hundred years ago when most of them were either founded or refounded. They became the natural avenue to the university and to business for the new middle classes who grew out of the materially successful laissez-faire liberalism which made our Empire, our wealth and our slums. Their background was the established church, the rectory not the manse, the Empire, the great civil and fighting services—all the forces that stood for stability, for having and holding, for the acceptance of the divinely ordained social structure. They educated for today.. The only tomorrow they could conceive of was one as much like yesterday as a world which was getting better and better every day would allow ; for they too were part of the great nineteenth- century illusion that progress was automatic. The product of the system was good, often very good, sometimes noble.
But today these schools do not look forward as much as they should. They are still clinging to the past. To them discipline is still a greater virtue than imagination ; obedience a greater good than sensitiveness ; the Empire in greater need of service than the world ; Englishmen still palpably superior to Frenchmen. They still educate for today instead of for tomorrow ; tradition is still more important than truth ; they are still under the dominion of noble but narrow ideals that have done much harm and will do more ; they still suspect the sensitive heart and mind. And there are more and more parents today who are not satisfied with such inadequacy.
It is for these reasons, as well as for the more material causes, that the cut-throat competition goes on. The statesmanlike suggestions of " A Headmaster " in his second constructive article are part of the solution, but part only. There is no reason why the schools that deserve to survive should be driven to cheapness or absurdity, to dinners, ties or insurance schemes. But there is need that there should be a change of mind in some of them. Those that survive the steep decline in the birth-rate during the next twenty years need not fear if they do their best, frugalised and reorganised, to cater for the world as it ought to be. But some are bound to go; and it will not matter greatly if they do.
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