OXFORD TEACHING AND CRAMMING.
PROFESSOR BONAMY PRICE and the Rector of Lincoln College are at least perfectly agreed as to the nature of the evils under which Oxford is labouring, though they may not perhaps be agreed as to the remedy. The examinations at Oxford, says Professor Bonamy Price, himself a most suc- cessful teacher, and one who has always had the art of in- spiring in his pupils a genuine love for the subjects which he taught,—the examinations at Oxford are "conducted by men who are not called upon to be progressive students, and to seek to master in the highest sense the subjects which they teach."* "Among us," says the Rector of Lincoln, writing in the interesting and able new Quarterly of Psychology and Philosophy, Mind t "there is a zeal of teaching which is not inspired by progressive knowledge. The whole of the literary and philosophical teaching of Oxford is in the hands of young men, the Tutorsof the Colleges. As a class, these men abound, when they begin life, with energy and ability. They overflow with zeal and the ambition to act upon their pupils, but the zeal is not the zeal of the en- thusiastic votary of science, who sees a vista of infinite pro- gress opening before him, and desires to assist younger minds in following up the track. The young teacher, as turned out by us, has never been on any such track. He is an honour- man and a prize-man, voila tout; and he knows the sure road to make others win honours and prizes, the road by which he himself won them. Even if he has better aspirations, he must not indulge them. He is embarked in the career of teaching at twenty-five, say, and he finds himself at once the slave of a great teaching engine, which drives him, day by day, in a round of mechanical work. There is no stepping aside. If you fall out of the ranks, you perish. Study, or research, or self-improvement is out of the question. The most con- scientious tutor has the least leisure for his own purposes, as he is most anxious to do justice to his pupils." This
is the cry of both these eminent Oxford teachers alike. T-Ite motive for self-improvement is painfully deficient,' says litr. Price. There is no motive at all, virtually asserts Mr. Pattison; on the contrary, the motive for self-improvement would be a motive leading the tutor away from his tutorial work, not into it. In the German Universities, says Mr. Bonamy Price, the
• Oxford litiorws. London: James Parker. 1875. Mind : a Quarterly Review of :Psychology and Philosophy. For January, 1876 London: Williams and tiorgate. highest learning furnishes the standard to the learners ; in Berlin, for instance, Savigny's authority as a teacher of jurisprudence was felt and acknowledged all through the University, "and the Prussian nation possessed in him a guarantee that its youths were trained in the highest legal science known to the age." But in Oxford, the University applies no motive to the teachers to improve themselves and extend their learning. "That increase of learning has no value for the undergraduates who are preparing for the examination," and it confers no influence on the teachers. When the knack of getting the candidates prepared to pass a good honour ex- amination has once been fully acquired, further study in the teachers becomes not only professionally useless, but even in- jurious. The Rector of Lincoln says just the same. "It is a recognised fact that the younger tutors are better than the middle-aged men, and that advance in thought and knowledge creates a gulf between the teacher and his scholars, who carefully keep away from such men, as persons who cannot help them towards the attainment of a first-class." "What the aspirant for honours requires is a repe'titeur, who knows 'the schools,' and who will look over essays for him, teaching him how to collect telling language, and arrange it in a form adequate to the expected question." Now, testimony as strong as this, from two men so thoroughly well acquainted with Oxford and the Oxford system as Pro- fessor Bonamy Price and Mr. Pattison is, from the point on which this testimony concurs, simply final. There cannot be a doubt that whatever part of the system is in fault, the fact is established that teaching is made subordinate to examina- tions, instead of examinations to teaching ; that what was intended to test sound teaching and sound learning has ceased to furnish evidence of the thoroughness and attain- ments it was meant to test, and has become instead an end in itself. It seems also to be admitted that this deficiency in the Oxford system applies more to the philosophy than to the classical learning. Instead of bringing the student's own power into play, so as to educe from him the thoughts which he is to probe, "memory is really almost the only faculty called into play." "The teacher does as much, and the pupil as little as possible." We need hardly say that such a training is not a philosophical training at all. Without exciting the love of truth, and bringing it into active operation in the student's mind, the mental discipline proper to philosophy is not even approached. Even as regards the literary discipline of the higher classical studies, Mr. Price is quite right in saying that it is not acces- sible to men who are not taught to love these authors by students themselves deeply imbued with that love. In philo- sophy and in literature alike, but especially in philosophy, young men who have only just learned to apprehend the chief difficulties of the subjects in which they train others, are not the men who can really cast over their pupils the spell of interest which these studies are adapted to exert.
The question as to the remedy is a very difficult one, and we do not feel at present disposed to assent to Professor Bonamy Price's suggestion, that the right expedient is to put the Professors in command not only of the teaching and examining of the University, but indirectly also of the teaching and examining of the Colleges, and so make the younger men adapt themselves to the views of the older and more serious students, instead of having everything their own way. Moreover, Professor Bonamy Price is hardly consistent with himself. His remedy really hinges on putting the sub-professors, as he proposes to call them, under the control of the professors ; but he fails to do this in his scheme, since the sub-professors are apparently to be selected not by the professors, but as at present, in some fashion by the Colleges. Now, if the sub-professors are to be selected by the Colleges, there is no evidence that the system will be very much changed. The Tutors,—especially the tutors who com- bine to teach several Colleges,—are already selected by the Colleges, and do not take muchaccount of the views of the pro- fessors. It might, no doubt, open to these tutors more of a career if it were understood that the professors would be selected from among the sub-professors, and that when so selected they would enjoy great University influence and authority. But a few openings of this kind would not be enough to inspire many tutors with the love for progressive knowledge, if they had not got it otherwise : and it requires a good deal to convince us that the Colleges which still have plenty of life in them, even though it be misdirected, could safely be superseded by the Professoriate, which has at present but very little such life in it. If Oxford had a numerous and powerful Professoriate, i greatly distinguished for its research, though not as yet put in command of the educational position, the case would be dif- ferent. But as it is, the life of the Professoriate at Oxford may be said to be in general decidedly less active and important a part of the life of the place than the life of the Colleges. It would hardly be wise to pass over the eager, living institutions which have made many mistakes, for the sake of the somewhat pallid and lifeless institutions which have made none, chiefly because they have lived in so much less energetic a fashion.
But unquestionably the Examination system at Oxford does need the most careful and anxious review, and review in the sense of making the examinations less of an end in them- selves, and a more adequate test of real and growing com- mand of knowledge, and if possible, of a love for it. As the Rector of Lincoln truly observes, Oriel College, during the twenty years which preceded Dr. Newman's conversion to Rome, did really do more than test technical philosophical acquisitions'; it founded several schools of thought, and made the spirit of philosophical investigation the leading spirit in the University. And this it did because "intellect, not scholarship, was the mark of a Fellow of Oriel." Instead of attainments, "Oriel required originality of mind." The evidence that a man was really in search of truth for himself, and had his own modes of testing it, was evidence of fitness for a place in the aristo- cracy of Oxford at that day ; and so it happened that thought was stirred by the theological leaders of that day, and not merely memory exercised. Could nothing be done to restore this ascendancy of the real philosophical spirit at Oxford, by establishing Fellowships which should be the prize of force of mind, and not in any great degree of mere acquisition I—which should be conferred, for instance, for original essays showing genuine moral and intellectual originality? It may be said that such a remedy as this would only have the effect at most of making a select class of genuine students. Yet after all, what is needed at a place like Oxford is leaders of thought and investigation,—such leaders as there were in the days of Whately, Newman, and Arnold ; and then the rest to a great extent would follow. A University is always impressible enough with all strong forms of intellectual life. And it is because there are so few original minds de- veloped there now, quite as much as for want of a better system of educating the average student, that the craft of skilful philosophical prompting has lately so much superseded the deeper work of sounding the depths of philosophical principle.
No doubt, however, something more than this is wanted. For our own parts, we believe that the practice of taking up philosophy and logic as abstract sciences, instead of taking up the careful study, interpretation, and criticism of particu- lar works and authors, has been a mischievous one. Philo- sophy is too wide and too vague a subject for the intellectual discipline of the young, unless the attention is fixed on particular writers and particular books of great mark. The old plan of sticking close to one or two leading dialogues of Plato, the " Ethics " of Aristotle, and to Butler, was better than the new one of expecting a little smattering of all sorts of philosophical systems, from Locke to Kant, and from Kant to Mill and Hamilton. The wider and vaguer a subject is, the more modest should be the range of reading, and the more thorough the study of the few works prescribed. Philosophy is a sadly showy subject for the discipline of the young, and the recent changes at Oxford have made it more showy than it need have been. You want to encourage the growth of painstaking study and thought, and to discourage all wide and superficial displays of knowledge. No doubt, Professor Bonamy Price is right that the tests of knowledge should be devised by older men, with more respect for thoroughness and simplicity, and less for the glitter of brilliant rhetorical expositions. But whether the Professoriate contains within itself the elements for superseding the Collegiate system, seems to us as yet more than doubtful. Indeed, while we quite sympathise with both Mr. Mark Pattison and Mr. Bonamy Price in their estimate of the evil of the present system, and the tendency of those of their suggestions which point in the direction of a remedy, we cannot say that as yet the true cure has, in our opinion, been, even in outline, sketched out.
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