The Curse of Education

e and more the product of an organized educational plan. The average educated man possesse

ription of knowledge made up for them by the State. Now there is a great outcry that England is being left behind in this educational race. Other nations have got more exact systems. Where the British child is only stuffed with six pounds of facts, the German and Fren

cient, which says that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. No doubt learned theoretical treatises upon the scope and aim of educational methods are capital things in their way, b

eli, Parliamentary debate has sunk to the most hopeless level of mediocrity. The traditions of men such as Pitt, Fox, Palmerston, Peel, and others, sound at the present day almost like ancient mythology. Yet the supposed benefits of education are not only now free to all, but ha

by which our public

of all important departments of Governmen

tive examinations-that is to say, men whose brains have been more effectually stuffed wi

ammed with so many pounds avoirdupois of Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, geography, etc., acquired in such a way that he will forget, within a couple of years, every fact that has been pestled into him. For every vacancy in the various departments of the Administr

voted as our public servants are universally admitted to be, by administrative geniuses. Facts point altogether the other way. Great national catastrophes, like the blunders and miscalculations that hav

rative office, the susceptibilities of the nation would be still further shocked and outraged. Fortunately, however-or it may be unfortunately

e if the agitation dies a natural death; and if it is successfully kept up, a sort of pretence at reform takes place. There is a re-shuffle. Fresh na

possibly be effected. It is not the nomenclature of appointments, the subdivision of departmental work, and such matters of detail, that stand in need of the

in the first case, unfitted them for the performance of any but mechanical and routine work; and the strain of a competitive examination, involving the most unintellectual and

as, and mediocrity does not deal in them. It has been furnished, instead, by a systematic course of instruction, with a sufficient equipment of the ideas of other people to last its lifetime. Whilst we fill our publi

lly apparent upon the field of battle. One of our foremost generals has come home from the campaign declaring the necessity of both officers and men being trained to think and act for themselves. That is one, perhaps the chief, of the great lessons

s, and not to produce good officers. The effect here is the same as elsewhere. A quantity of useless and some useful knowledge is drilled into the pupil in such a manner that the mind retains no

ernicious. Common sense is the most valuable gift with which man can be endowed. It is the very essence of genius, for it consists in the application of intelligence to every detail, and the highest order of intellect can accomplish no more than that. Yet it is the rarest of all attributes, for the ve

ongst physicians, it is apparent everywhere. There are clever men, of course; but the very fact th

e plentiful in all walks of life. That is, to my mind, the chief pathos of the situation. It has come to be accepte

meet the supposed requirements of our complicated civilization. But I deny that this need be the case. On the con

this precious material, substituting facts for ideas, forcing the mind