CHAPTER II

A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS 250

Pelmanism, an indictment--Monotonous drudgery the stumbling-block to education--A “play way”--Handicrafts--Eurhythmics--Enthusiasm of teachers amazing--Education, a passion--_Joan and Peter_ types--Public School men do the work of the world--But schools do not teach what a boy wants to know--Mulish resistance--Ways of mind subtle and evasive--The error of “not what you know that matters but how you learn it”--Every school must educate every scholar--What is knowledge?--Intellectual requirements satisfied by bridge and golf--Attention acts without marks, praise or blame--But training, not education--No faculties, only mind--Text-books make no appeal to mind--Way of Natural Science through field work illuminated by literature--Mind, a crucible, but no power to distil ideas from sawdust--Dr. Arnold--“Very various reading”--Mind, a deceiver ever--Class will occupy itself and accomplish nothing--Outer court of mind--Inner place where personality dwells--We “go over it in our minds”--Attention must not be allowed a crutch--Should be tested by the reader--Knowledge, received with attention, fixed by narration--We have ceased to believe in mind--Physical brain and spiritual mind--Education must go as a bolt to the mind--Teacher not a bridge--A key to humanistic teaching in English--A liberal education, measured by the number of substantives used with fitness and simplicity--The school not merely a nursery for the formation of character--Knowledge in common for the “masses” and the “classes”--All hearts rise to a familiar allusion--Speech with those who know--Opposition, natural resource of ignorance--A democratic education--We shall cease to present motives of self-interest and personal advantage--The classics in English--Old exclusive education must broaden its base and narrow its bounds--Avoid overlapping--Academic success and knowledge not the same thing--Brilliant, average and dull children delight in knowledge--It unites the household--Makes children delightful companions--A fine sense of things worth knowing and living for--Magnanimity, proper outcome of education--The schoolboy’s sterile syllabus--In spite of culture common among teachers--A method which brings promise of relief from _aphasia_--Barrenness in the written essay--Oral composition, a habit from six to eighteen--Method cannot be worked without a firm adherence to principle--Otherwise the books a failure--Parents must provide necessary books--Which must take root in the homes--Spelling comes with the use of books--Books _and_ text-books--The choice of books, a question of division of labour--Terminal examinations, records of permanent value--Bible teaching must further the knowledge of God--The law and the prophets still interpreters--History, the rich pasture of the mind--Amyot on history--Plutarch--Poets--Every age has its poetic aspect--Gathered up by a Shakespeare--A Dante--A world possession--An essence of history which is poetry--An essence of science to be expressed in exquisite prose--Art--Drawing, not a means of self-expression--Languages--Possibility of becoming linguists--Finally, another basis for education--Which must be in touch with life--We aim at securing the vitality of many minds--Which shall make England great in art and in life--Great character comes from great thoughts--Great thoughts from great thinkers--Thinking, not doing, the source of character.