The Curse of Education

ffected by more genuine and efficient systems of cramming and instruction. It is not in the least degree necessary, for this purpose, to go into minute comparisons of

m, namely, the preparation of bo

est relaxation of the school system. The boys are crammed just the same. Whoever wishes to pass through the mill must go in like a pig at one end and come out as a sausage at the other. There is no middle course except th

because the prestige of the school-and consequently its commercial success-is mainly dependent upon the creditable placing of pupils in public examinations. Therefore the

king crude experiments with an air-pump, or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable

business of the schoolmaster. The boy, for the ordinary purposes of instruction, is an empty bottle into which a certain prescription is to be poured. The prescription has been made up beforehand, and cannot be alte

been entirely obliterated. They grafted upon the established methods of teaching a liberal and broad-minded effort to bring out what was best in each pupil by other influences. 'It is no wisdom,' Dr. Arnold declared, 'to make boys prodigies of information; but it is o

e the following re

h hidden truths and new creative genius. If the cursed rule-mongering and technical terms could be banished to limbo, something

It is not often that people strive to set their house in order after this fashion, and all honour is due to them for the courageous endeavour. The mistake they made

l instruction from producing prigs. Stupid boys are generally rendered more stupid by teaching, for reasons that will be analyzed later on. But boys whose brains

word, he is the embodiment of the education system, uncorrected by fortuitous influences and conditions. Everybody knows that gracefulness is not acquired by means of stilted lessons in deportment, but that it consists of natural muscular movement untrammelled by self-consciousness or artifice. The same law of nature applies to the work

the converse of that which served to call it into existence. The prig has to divest himself of the false mental outlook imposed upon him by his education, and to begin all over again. It is a hard lesson which can only be learnt in the school of life, generally after humiliating experience and bitter suffer

ut the cramming system has reached such proportions that all schools and colleges are affected in a greater or less degree. They infect our public life, as we have seen; largely recruit our p

said Dr. Arnold, alluding to original composition, 'which shows that the boy has read and thought for himself; that the next best, which shows that he has

be prepared, there are scholarships, university examinations, competitive examinations for the civil service, and a host of other po

glish system of education has been dwelt upon to such an extent, that people are apt to overlook the fact that, side by side with these fine specimens of he

ripos,' you know exactly the kind of man to whom you are going to be introduced. He will have a very proper contempt for made-up ties, and will refuse to fasten the bottom butt

on of an inch. If you say anything yourself out of the beaten track, you know that you will be looked down upon as a fool or a faddist. The Eton stamp will be upon his dress and manners; the Cambridge

s has taken place. 'A mob of boys,' said the man who raised Uppingham from complete obscurity to the front rank of public schools, 'cannot be educated.' It is, nevertheless, the process that is going on all over the civilized world. Reform does not lie alone in maki

onventional ideas, and the manufacture of what is called average ability, are the sheet-anchor of the State. And th

wholesale; the worst and most odious branch of the family being the semi-illiterate prig-the man who gets drummed out of decent regimental messes, the man who wants to go on the sta

us prigs, if we only knew it. The man who is unable to get rid of conventions and to think for himself is a prig. England is peopled with them. We meet them at every turn; we