The Societies' Section. A LIBERAL EDUCATION.-Professor Henry Thomas Huxley has become the Principal of a new institutionthe South London Working Men's College, which was formally opened on 4th Jan. by an inaugural address delivered to intending students, and in presence of several friends of the movement. This address, on account of the honest and earnest character of the speaker, and his eminence as a naturalist, has attracted much attention, and we think it advisable to supply our readers with the main elements of it; and also with the substance of a critique upon it which appeared in the Edinburgh Courant of 9th Jan., which we have heard attributed to the "blood and culture" defending pen of James Hannay, the scholarly essayist, the popular novelist, and the active journalist, who now rules the issues of Temple Bar. [Professor Huxley, F.R.S., LL.D., son of the late George Huxley, was born at Ealing, Middlesex, in 1825, and was educated at the celebrated school of his native place. Subsequently he studied at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, and was in 1846 appointed assistant surgeon in H.M.S. Rattlesnake. In that vessel he made a surveying cruise of the Southern Pacific Ocean, Torren's Straits, &c., and returning to England in 1850, was engaged in the geological survey of Great Britain, of many of the reports of which he was the author. On the advancement of the late Edward Forbes from the Government School of Mines to the Professorship of Natural History in Edinburgh, his fellow "Red Lion" was chosen to succeed him, and the lectures of Professor Huxley at the Govern ment School of Mines since 1854 have been exceedingly popular, lucid, and informing. Professor Huxley is one of the smartest and readiest debaters in the meetings of the British Association. He is a decided Darwinian in his scientific opinions, and he propagates this theory with power, ability, and sincerity. His lectures at the Science Classes, in the Kensington Museum, at the British Institute, &c., have always been remarkable for the intrepid declaration of his ideas on the subjects on hand, and his numerous contributions to the scientific journals, and to the literature of science, are acknowledged on all sides to be clear, thorough, and able. He neither flinches when getting, nor hesitates at giving, a good argumentative blow. To the Bishop of Oxford no one has ventured to address himself in such tones of rebuke for "speaking unadvisedly with his lips" upon science and scientific men with the illiberality of a presumptuous orthodoxy. He claims and takes the rights of free thought and thorough inquiry.] In the course of his address he asked, What do those higher schools, those to which the great middle class of the country sends its children, teach ?-1. There is a little more reading and writing of English. But for all that it is a rare thing to find a boy who can read aloud decently, or who can put his thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical -to say nothing of good or elegant -language. The ciphering of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics; in the higherarithmetic, a little algebra, a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever heard the The explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise than by rote. 2. Of theology the middleclass schoolboy gets rather less than poorer children, less absolutely and less relatively, because there are so many other claims upon his attention. I venture to say that in the great majority of cases his ideas on this subject when he leaves school are of the most shadowy and vague description. 3. Modern geography, modern history, modern literaturethe English language as a language, the whole circle of the sciences, physical, moral, and social, are even more completely ignored in the higher than in the lower schools. Now let us pause to consider this wonderful state of affairs; for the time will come when Englishmen will quote it as the stock example of the stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nineteenth century. most thoroughly commercial people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and colonists the world has ever seen, are precisely the middle classes of this country. If there be a people which has been busy making history on the great scale for the last three hundred years and most profoundly interesting history-history which, if it happened to be that of Greece or Rome, we should study with avidity-it is the English. If there be a people which, during the same period, has developed a remarkable literature, it is our own. If there be a people whose prosperity depends absolutely and wholly upon their mastery over the forces of nature, and upon their intelligent apprehension of, and obedience to, the laws of the creation and distribution of wealth, and of the stable equilibrium of the force of society, it is precisely this people; and yet this is what these wonderful people tell their sons:-"At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard-earned money we devote twelve of the most precious years of your lives to school. There you shall toil, or be supposed to toil; but there you shall not learn one single thing of all those you will most want to know directly you leave school and enter upon the practical business of life. You will in all probability go into business, but you shall not know where or how any article of commerce is produced, or the difference between an export or an import, or the meaning of the word capital. You will very likely settle in a colony, but you shall not know whether Tasmania is part of New South Wales or vice versa. Very probably you may become a manufacturer, but you shall not be provided with the means of understanding the working of one of your own steam engines, or the nature of the raw products you employ; and when you are asked to buy a patent you shall not have the slightest means of judging whether the inventor is an impostor who is contravening the elementary principles of science, or a man who will make you as rich as Croesus. You will very likely get into the House of Commons. You will have to take your share in making laws which may prove a blessing or a curse to millions of men. But you shall not hear one word respecting the political organization of your country; the meaning of the controversy between Free Traders and Protectionists shall never have been mentioned to you; you shall not so much as know that there are such things as economical laws." Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful people? I am quite prepared to allow, and, indeed, it flows necessarily from what I have already said, that education entirely devoted to these omitted subjects would not be a liberal education. But is an education which ignores them all a liberal education? Nay, it is too much to say that the edu cation which should embrace these subjects and no others would be an education though a narrow one, while an education which omits them is really not an education at all, but a more or less useful course of intellectual gymnastics. 4. For what does the middle class school put in the place of all these things which are left out? What is usually comprised under the compendious title of the classics-that is to say, the languages, the literature, and the history of ancient Greeks and Romans, and the geography of so much of the world as was known to these two great nations of antiquity. Now do not expect to hear me depreciate the study of the classics. But if the classics were taught as they might be taught-if Greek and Latin were taught, not merely as languages, but as illustrations of philological science; if a living picture of life on the shores of the Mediterranean two thousand years ago were imprinted on the minds of scholars; if ancient history were taught, not as a weary series of feuds and fights, but traced to its causes in such men placed under such conditions; if, lastly, the study of the classical books were followed in such a manner as to impress boys with their beauties instead of with their verbal and grammatical peculiarities, I still think it little proper that they should form the basis of a liberal education. What is to be said of classical teaching at its worst, or, in other words, of the classics of our ordinary middle-class schools? I will tell you. It means getting up endless forms and rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest reference to the worth or worthlessness of the author read. It means the learning of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into utter trash, and the only impression left upon a boy's mind is that the people who believed such things must have been the greatest idiots the world ever saw. And it means, finally, that, after a dozen years spent at this kind of work, the sufferer shall be incompetent to interpret a passage from a book he has not already got up; that he shall loathe the sight of a Greek or Latin book; and that he shall never open, or think of, a classical author again until, wonderful to relate, he insists upon submitting his sons to the same process. These be your gods, O Israel! For the sakc of this net result (and respectability) the British father denies his children all the knowledge they might turn to account in life. If what I have said touching the ideal of a liberal education be correct, and if what I have said about the existing educational institutions of the country is also true, it is true that the two have no sort of relation to one another; -that the best of our schools and the most complete of our University trainings give but a narrow, onesided, and essentially illiberal education-while the worst give what is really next to no education at all. Our college could not adopt or copy any of these institutions if it would. I am bold enough to express the conviction that it ought not if it could. For what you want is the reality and not the mere name of a liberal education; and this college must steadily set before itself the ambition sooner or later to be able to give you that education. At present we are but beginning, sharpening our educational tools, as it were, and except physical science we are not able to offer you much more than is to be found in an ordinary school. But as it is one of our principles to be self-supporting, you must lead and we must follow in these matters. If you take to heart what I have told you about liberal A It is beyond dispute that education is the question of the day. systematic agitation-the general preliminary in this country to parliamentary discussion and legislation -is in full force, and within a week three prominent men have lent their weight to it by delivering orations on the subject. Sir John Pakington, in addressing the members of the Droitwich Mechanics' Institute, prescribed education as the only effectual antidote to Fenianism; Professor Huxley, in opening a Working Men's College in London, spoke with his wonted brilliancy, enthusiasm, and exaggeration; and Mr. Forster defined his views and policy to the Reform Leaguers with that emphasis, dogmatism, and candour which characterize all his public utterances. With the bulk of the opinions expressed by all three gentlemen we almost entirely coincide; the general tone of the speeches is healthy, and calculated to have a beneficial effect upon the mind of the public. The three postulates, in the reiteration of which they all unite-(1) that we must have universally diffused elementary education, (2) that we must have an improved middleclass education, and (3) that we must have both of these quicklyare admitted by the public with perfect unanimity. Passing to Professor Huxley, while we admire his scientific enthusiasm, and admit the truth of what he says as to the incompleteness of any education calling itself liberal that does not embrace a knowledge of the physical sciences, we must protest against his onslaught upon classics, and their right to constitute an essential part of middle-school education. For what is education, and what does it include? Surely it is not, as Mr. Huxley would have us believeand we are taking his opinions chiefly from representative utter ances-the mere amassing of a quantity of useful information, in case that information may be required in future life. Is it not, from a philosophical as well as an etymological point of view, the leading out or training of the powers of the mind? We suppose that Mr. Huxley and the educationalists of the so-called "practical" school will admit that the teaching of geography is a useful thing. Yet, does a wise teacher teach the geography of a particular country simply in case we may happen some time or other to go to war with it, or lest some boy in his class may in the future have commercial dealings with it? Is it not rather that he may train the eye or the memory, or both? In fact, does he not teach geography, as well as everything else, chiefly because it is a means of discipline? It is just in regard to this point of discipline that we are at issue with the "practical" school. They say, Give us a knowledge of facts that will be of use to us in our future life, and ignore discipline; we say, By all means give us this useful knowledge if there is time for it during the educational part of our life, but at all events train our powers. Lowe waxes merry over the man who is ignorant of the exact whereabouts of Gondar, but what man of ordinary enlightenment and education, with a good map of Abyssinia before him, finds any difficulty in quickly mastering enough of its geography to suit his purpose? Again, whose ideas would be the preferable regarding the propriety of engaging in a war with Abyssinia, Mr. 66 those of the follower of Mr. Lowe and Mr. Huxley, who know the name of every miserable little village in the country, or those of the man whose training enables him to bring to the consideration of the question a clear, acute, and accomplished intellect? Taking it then for granted as a general principle that discipline is a more important portion of education than information, we come to the more immediate question, what part do classics play or ought to play in middleschool education? We shall take even Mr. Huxley's opinions on the subject. Classical teaching, he maintains, means getting up endless forms and rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest reference to the worth or worthlessness of the author read." This is an exaggerated statement of a truth. "Rules and forms" are got up; Latin and Greek are turned into English; but Professor Huxley forgets to add for what purpose. Rules are got up, at least in all schools where anything like common sense prevails, with the view that the pupil may himself apply them. And it is in the application, not the getting up of rules, that the discipline lies. It gives the rudiments of definiteness and precision, two essentials of accurate thinking, and if classics did nothing else than this they would still be worth preserving. We may be told that mathematics are the training par excellence for the reasoning power; but it is an indisputable fact that there are many minds to which mathematical training is perfectly unsuited; and, moreover, even they are not "useful information." We admit that an average boy at a middle school, when translating a piece of Latin or Greek into English, does not care a straw for the ideas he is unconsciously manipulating; but if he is taught properly-and that is not part of the question-he learns at least accuracy of expression. Inasmuch, therefore, as classics, even as at present taught, form an admirable discipline, producing definiteness of idea and accuracy of expres sion, they ought to be retained as a portion of middle-class education. Their adversaries have not as yet been able to provide a substitute, and until they are able to do so, Latin and Greek must retain the place they have so long held in our schools. Upon the utility of the higher classical study we do not enter, as it is admitted by all whose opinion is valuable that no man deserves the name of cultured whose mind has not come under the influence of classical ideas, and who has not drunk from the Castalian spring of ancient sentiment. SUBJECTS SUITABLE FOR DEBATE. Has ancient or modern poetry afforded art the greater number and the nobler class of subjects? Do the fine or the useful arts produce the greater amount of delight? Does music, sculpture, painting or the drama most completely fulfil the ends of art? Is feeling the standard of the artist? Does the painting [music, sculp. ture, &c.] of France excel that of Britain? Is Kugler or Waagen the better art guide? Do Pre-Raphaelite paintings rightly represent nature? Is photography favourable to art? Is science inimical to poetry? Is painting on the decline? Is sculpture more realistic than painting? |