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Here are some themes that have been selected from the writings. The researcher should read the whole text to give the extract its true context.
What child hasn't asked the question, "Why must I go to school"? This question is more appropriate than the child realises and, although every child has a need to know the three Rs, they could just as easily be taught these at home, as was the case before the 19th century. The question should perhaps be "Why must I be educated"?
To young Jack Warren, education was a necessary trial which was separated from other aspects of life. Now, to tell the truth, Jack Warren thought it hardly fair of his new acquaintance to talk History of England. Jack drew a sharp distinction between school and everything else; all that was spoken of in school was to him "lessons," and lessons should only be taught in school. He had not yet learnt to care for the History of England, and he could not understand why Mr. Corbet should care for it, or talk about it.
Battlefield treasure by F. Bayford Harrison. Chapter 1.
The writers of the West Midlands proffered many reasons for acquiring a good education. A good education was considered to be that which could be obtained from the existing schooling system and was a far cry from what is offered nowadays. Here are some of the reasons:
A good education should lead to a better standard of living.
Yet there are about one million people, of good education, who live in these Philistine ghettos in London, and never grumble. Is there any reader who does not know some family living in one of these artistically abominable terraces--some family shut up, with not too much money, in a hideous brick box--a family which, in spite of its inartistic surroundings, exhibits every form of gentleness and goodness? Any reader who does not know such a family is exceptionally unfortunate.
Education gives one a more well-balanced view on life.
Men of a learned education are not so sharp-witted as clever men without it; but they know the balance of the human intellect better. If they are more stupid, they are more steady, and are less liable to be led astray by their own sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than those who went before them.
Education refines and improves the intellect but not discipline.
"But assuredly, what with primary and technical schools, the new generation will become cultivated and more intelligent than the old."
"That may be. The schools will sharpen the brain and give edge to the wit, but will never supply that which underlies all greatness, and that is--principle. That they make no attempt to inculcate, nor again that which grows out of and becomes a necessary adjunct to principle -- self-control.
Lack of education was a reason for failure. . . . .
Oh, there's no doubt Beguildy was a very queer old man. I was used to think if he'd had a good education he met have been one of these great men we all think so much of. A great scholar he could have been, or a music-man, or a rhymer, or a preacher. And maybe if all of his mind had been used proper, he wouldna have brought ruination on hisself as he did.
. . . . . but it was not a obstacle to the success of the author, William Hutton.
The first nine months of this year were employed in writing the History of Birmingham. Fearing my ability, I wrote with dread. Rollason the printer was pleased with it, and shewed it to Dr. Withering, who pronounced it the "best topographical History he had ever seen." I had for it seventy-five copies, the profit upon which amounted to about forty pounds. To venture into the world as an Author, without having had a previous education, was a daring attempt. It was setting my knowledge against that of the public: the balance very uneven. This was afterwards considered the best book I ever wrote. I considered it in a less favourable light.
A good education will prevent youth from turning to a life of crime. . . . . .
In Germany no child under twelve years of age can suffer a penal sentence. Between twelve and eighteen years of age, youthful criminals are free to declare whether, while committing the offence, they were fully aware of their culpability against the laws of their country. In every case any term of imprisonment above one month is carried out, not in a gaol, but in an institution specially set apart, and adapted for young offenders. These institutions serve not only for the purpose of punishment, but also provide for the education of the wards; the neglect of education being recognized as one of the chief sources of crime.
. . . . . . . but education was not always a good springboard from which to tackle life.
So began the end of the old règime. That was the very last glimpse that our boys had of a British university. They had been educated as rich boys are educated at a public school and at a university. The time comes now when, by a series of accidents, they were cast into the world. Will you bear with me while I sum up their qualifications for fighting that same world? . . . . . . . .
Suppose Roland stripped of his wealth, what was he fit for? For my own part, I shall soon get near to believing that the Cornell "University" in the United States, or the Oxford, or still more, the Cambridge of Chaucer, is the host in the world. And now, when we have broken through tradition in every way, just conceive what we might make of our young men on the "Cornell" principle, with the Oxford and Cambridge revenues. But our purpose is to write a story, and this is past it. Let me come back to my proposition. Roland, after 1500l. of expenditure, was little fit to cope with the world, as far as education had helped him. . . . . . . . . .
And of the others, what can be said? they were but little more prepared for the world than he. Had they been put to the test of competitive examination, they would have been found fit for nothing but ushers in schools or curates. Clive or Hastings were not more ignorant, or more helpless before they underwent that great competitive sink-or-swim examination, which is called The World.
Parents, teachers and mentors often use education as a tool to achieve their own ambitions.
So the boy grew paler and duller every day, but still he must work--work--for the time was going by, and Mr. Pennythorne was determined to have a man of learning in the family. His credit was at stake, for he had vaunted everywhere his son's classic acquirements, and the boast should be made good in spite of "that lazy Leigh." Morning and night the father attacked him. "Study--study!" was for ever dinned into his ears; so, at last, the boy rarely stirred out of his own little den. There he sat, with his books heaped up around him:--they helped to build the altar-pile on which the deluded father was offering up his victim.
"As regards her education?" inquired Miss Judith.
"I am afraid I cannot say much; but then, you will have virgin soil to cultivate," replied Mr. Crabb. "There will not be much to unlearn."
"That is just what I wish; my system will then have free and full scope. I want a child untaught, untrained, unshackled by ordinary methods, untrammelled by false ideas of education."
"Then Chrystabel Tyndale might have been made to your order, Miss Judith; she can read and write, I believe, and thread her needle, and she knows the multiplication table and the pence table, so her old nurse, Mrs. Mantle, assures me. She has never been to school, she has never had a governess, nor any young companions. You will have to teach her everything, except the barest elements; you can form her entirely after your own pattern."
"Precisely what I wish," replied Miss Judith, turning to me graciously. "We will overcome our evil tempers and our little passions, will we not, my love? We will become a pattern of piety, learning, grace, elegance, and every accomplishment, will we not, Chrystabel? We will be all, and more than all that can be desired, will we not, dear child?"
"My dear nephew, do you know what you are doing? Have you forgotten that your whole education has been bent towards this end; that your own small fortune--perhaps a little more, to which I will not allude--has gone in college expenses for the same purpose; that if you follow your present wild scheme, you must begin life anew, with nothing in this world to trust to?"
To a disabled man a good education did not automatically signify success.
The man, if you could call him one, had to be carried about by valets and grooms. He had brains and education, they said; but what were brains and education to a miserable anatomy like him? He was not a marriageable man at all. If it were not for his money, he would not be worth looking after. He could not live.
Lack of education was derided.
If a writer has been punished for a political libel, he is sure to hear of it in a literary criticism. If a lady goes on crutches and is out of favour at court, she is reminded of it in Mr. Gifford's manly satire. He sneers at people of low birth or who have not had a college education, partly to hide his own want of certain advantages, partly as well-timed flattery to those who possess them.
Guidance versus force. William Hutton's opinion differed from his own experience.
The conduct of many fathers and masters in training up children is very censurable. The child's temper is seldom attended to, and the rough hand is employed to force, instead of the smooth tongue to guide: hence we take ten times more trouble to ruin than would save. When a teacher draws, he treads upon sure ground, but when he drives, nineteen wrong ways are taken for one right. Nay, as every human being wishes to be master of his own actions, the best mode of education is to guide without seeming to guide.
I now went to school to Mr. Thomas Meat, of harsh memory, who often took occasion to beat my head against the wall, holding it by the hair, but never could beat any learning into it; I hated all books but those of pictures.
Informal education: There is much to be learnt outside an education system.
But young Christian was heir to little save the surname of his father and the monopoly of certain fruitless feuds. . . . . . . . . . He had been brought up to no profession, and with no particular occupation; but by looking on and using his wits, as boys can, he had learned a little of farming, and the value of farm stock. His education had been rough-and-ready enough. While his sister could play a little on the harpsichord, and sew a fine sampler, besides being able to read and write fairly, he possessed no accomplishments, save, of course, those which he had acquired by sheer force of physical courage and perseverance. He could sit any horse barebacked, he knew every beast of the field and fowl of the air, he could wrestle and swim, and he was an excellent shot at birds on the wing--this last being a much rarer accomplishment in those days than we, with our modern notions, might imagine. But he had little or no taste for books, and beyond a good ear for a tune, and a good deep voice, which might have made him a fair singer, little capacity for any of the arts.
On-the-job training: It is most important to know and understand what your own job demands.
"Yes. That's all," Evelyn agreed, and paused. "Well, there may be one or two other things he has to do. Settle the menus with the chef. Attend conferences. Watch the graph curves of the average bill every day. Explain satisfactorily the occasional presence of a worm in a lettuce--not so simple, that! Know the names and private histories and weaknesses and vanities and doings of every regular customer. Talk four languages. Keep the peace among his staff over the distribution of the tips. Know exactly how every dish is cooked. Persuade every customer that he has got the best table in the place. Prevent customers who prefer the prix fixe from choosing more expensive things than the price will stand. Find new waiters, because even waiters die and quarrel and so on. That's one of his worries, the waiter question. You can't bring foreigners into the country, and English lads simply refuse to go abroad to finish their education. Cappone says that English waiters would be as good as any, and better in some ways; only there's one thing they can't learn, and it's the most important thing."
Information absorption: The digestion of facts that have to be regurgitated during an examination has been a common system of teaching.
Geography had been one of his strong points. He was aware of the rivers of Asia in their order, and of the principal products of Uruguay; and he could name the capitals of nearly all the United States. But he had never been instructed for five minutes in the geography of his native county, of which he knew neither the boundaries nor the rivers nor the terrene characteristics. He could have drawn a map of the Orinoco, but he could not have found the Trent in a day's march; he did not even know where his drinking-water came from. That geographical considerations are the cause of all history had never been hinted to him, nor that history bears immediately upon modern life and bore on his own life. For him history hung unsupported and unsupporting in the air. In the course of his school career he had several times approached the nineteenth century, but it seemed to him that for administrative reasons he was always being dragged back again to the Middle Ages. Once his form had 'got' as far as the infancy of his own father, and concerning this period he had learnt that 'great dissatisfaction prevailed among the labouring classes, who were led to believe by mischievous demagogues,' etc. But the next term he was recoiling round Henry the Eighth, who 'was a skilful warrior and politician,' but 'unfortunate in his domestic relations'; and so to Elizabeth, than whom 'few sovereigns have been so much belied, but her character comes out unscathed after the closest examination.' History indeed resolved itself into a series of more or less sanguinary events arbitrarily grouped under the names of persons who had to be identified with the assistance of numbers. Neither of the development of national life, nor of the clash of nations, did he really know anything that was not inessential and anecdotic. He could not remember the clauses of Magna Charta, but he knew eternally that it was signed at a place amusingly called Runnymede. And the one fact engraved on his memory about the battle of Waterloo was that it was fought on a Sunday.
And as he had acquired absolutely nothing about political economy or about logic, and was therefore at the mercy of the first agreeable sophistry that might take his fancy by storm, his unfitness to commence the business of being a citizen almost reached perfection.
Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett. Book 1. Chapter 1.
One can feel intimidated by those who are better qualified than us.
I could make neither head nor tail of that. But remembering that Doctor was an educated man, I left off trying to understand him. For there's as much of a mystery about an educated man, that's been schooled and colleged proper, as there is about the Trinity.
It is a common fallacy that those who have a different opinion are stupid or uneducated.
"The Dissenters are such a confounded stupid, ignorant lot; their ministers have no right to be ministers; they cannot even speak their own language; they never receive any education, and they are incurably vulgar."
"Claude, my boy, I admire your superb patrician exclusiveness, but do you know you are talking a precious lot of nonsense? This is the age of progress, my young friend; one must be liberal and unsectarian, and open to conviction. The Dissenters are educated, some of them very much so; they have some splendid men among - them, men of learning and eloquence; my father says so: he knows them, and bows to their claims. Mind! he is no Dissenter himself, neither am I--mother Church for me, provided she don't intermarry with the Scarlet Lady; but let's give every one his due. And I tell you what, Claude, I hear a great deal of these things at Mornington. The time is past for despising Dissenters: I think rather we should try to conciliate them."
It was once assumed that education, once only available to the wealthy male elite, created ability. It slowly dawned that this was an unreasonable assumption.
Women were capable of doing as well, if not better, than men in male-dominated jobs.
And so, pleasantly chatting, these three went the tour of the farmyard, looking at all its wonderful order, thrift, and abundance. In the "woman's kingdom," which some say is coming, I, projecting my soul into the future, prophecy that a very great number of "disenthralled" women will become farmers, and, moreover, the very best of farmers. Even as they are now, with such education as they are allowed to scrape together, a vast number of women have every qualification which goes to make up a good farmer. Thrift, diligence, and attention to details are three qualifications which few, even now, will deny to the majority of women, and those three qualifications are one half the battle. Let them be instructed in the science of the matter, and that is not such a very difficult thing, and the instinct of order and management, so much higher in ordinary women than in ordinary men, will do the rest. Why are we always wanting (by advertisement) a "Lady Superintendent" for some institution or another? Why cannot a "limited hotel" get on without a "Lady Manager"? Look at the duties of a great nobleman's housekeeper; and then tell me that a well-trained, clear-headed woman could not make a better farmer than one half of the ill-educated, narrow-minded men who have got the land. Why, one of the best-managed farms, some 14,000 acres--mind you, in Victoria--was kept by two old maiden ladies: and for that matter, Eleanor Evans is no ideal personage.
Among all people in society there are those who wish to acquire an education, however meagre.
And what a queer place it was, and yet such a very familiar one. A young gentleman, in spectacles, was instructing a class of boys in Scripture history, and Eddy slipped in, on to the end of the form, as a kind of ornamental head-boy, used to the situation, and dropped from the skies. . . . . . . .
Looking at his fellow-pupils, Eddy saw that there were eight of them, and that these sons of the conquerors of India had developed their genius in the direction of dirt. Yet there was a striking similarity to the old Shrewsbury classes in the way they behaved. The furious, irrepressible boisterousness, of which the Dean of St. Paul's complained, was rampant enough here.
However, education did not allow one to cross the class barrier.
"Yes, Anne. One part of the cost must always remain--a weighty incubus. It is not only that I have placed myself beyond the pale of my own sphere, but I have entailed it on my children. My girls must grow up in the state to which they are born: let them be ever so refined, ever so well educated, a barrier lies across their path. In visiting, they must be confined to their father's class; they can never expect to be sought in marriage by gentlemen."
Religious institutions used to be the only channel through which people were taught.
Religion is the postulate of education. It is then necessary to remind a theologian, that there are only four of the commandments of the Old Testament which relate to the works of God: the other six are confined to moral and social duties.
The whole service of the church is education; and surely as much of the matter is to be taught in schools as in churches. If not, why does not the parson teach as often as the schoolmaster? The time will come when every church in the world will be a schoolroom.
The Bible was the foundation of education.
I need not describe to you how Miss Anne heard Stephen read his chapter, and taught Tim and Martha, and even little Nan herself, the first few letters of the alphabet; after which she made them all repeat a verse of a hymn, and, when they could say it correctly, sang it with them over and over again, in her sweet and clear voice, until Stephen felt almost choked with a sob of pure gladness, that would every now and then rise to his lips.
Bridget Nanfan was a lively lassie, a year younger than her brother, full of fun, but over fond of a practical joke. She was rather handsome than beautiful, a fine rider and good tennis player, but she disliked books, and her education was completed when she could read the Bible, and say the Lords Prayer and Ten Commandments.
The earliest memory of Darius Clayhanger had to do with the capital letters Q.W. and S. Even as the first steam-printer in Bursley, even as the father of a son who had received a thoroughly sound middle-class education, he never noticed a capital Q.W. or S without recalling the Widow Susan's school, where he had wonderingly learnt the significance of those complicated characters. . . . . . . . At this school Darius acquired a knowledge of the alphabet, and from the alphabet passed to Reading-Made-Easy, and then to the Bible. . . . . . . . .At the age of seven, his education being complete, he was summoned into the world. It is true that he could neither write nor deal with the multiplication table; but there were always night-schools which studious adults of seven and upwards might attend if business permitted. Further, there was the Sunday school, which Darius had joyously frequented since the age of three, and which he had no intention of leaving. . . . . . . . He passed over the heads of bigger boys, and at the age of six he was in a Bible class.
Upon hearing that Darius was going out into the world, the superintendent of the Sunday school, a grave whiskered young man of perhaps thirty . . . . . . .presented him with an old battered Bible.
A limited education of the masses was undertaken under the banner of the Church.
Before the great Revolution, Brittany had been full of itinerant teachers, educated by the Church, who travelled from village to village, and from farm to farm, teaching children the Latin prayers, the Angelus Domini, and the Catechism. They were generally men whose hopes of following the priesthood had been disappointed. Their lives were hard, their food the commonest, their whole profession allied to mendicancy. Their lessons were given at all hours and under all conditions. Sometimes in the fields, in the intervals of labour; sometimes in the stable and cowshed; sometimes under the Cross in the highway; sometimes within, but oftener without.
If a scholar puts his mind to it, the place of education should little influence what he can achieve. The following three extracts show how the authors perceived the public school system but it was not so much the system or college as the attitude of the scholar:
He had almost finished his education at a public school, where he had learned every vice and folly he could possibly acquire, without in the least improving either his character or his understanding. Master Mash was the son of a neighbouring gentleman, who had considerably impaired his fortune by an inordinate love of horse-racing. He, too, was now improving his talents by a public education, and longed impatiently for the time when he should be set free from all restraint, and allowed to display the superiority of his genius at Ascot and Newmarket.
The whole fabric of culture among the classes is based on self-discipline. From earliest childhood boy and girl have it impressed on them that to be gentlemen and ladies they must keep themselves under restraint. It begins before they learn A B C. Courtesy is impressed on the very babe when taught to say ‘Ta!’ on receiving a bit of cake. The whole of our public school excellence depends on the inculcation of self-government. Among the classes, this teaching of self-control may not always be due to high principle; it may be merely owing to the fact that it is demanded by cultured society, and that such as do not possess it are kicked out. To what do our young men devote themselves? The youth born with a gold spoon in his mouth idles life away usually in harmless amusements, in some cases he sinks into dissipation. Of those without gold or silver spoons, most go to the Colonies, to ranches, or into the army or navy, and do good work wherever they go. It is they who have made the name of an Englishman proverbial with truth, justice, and humanity. Why does not some of this wholesome blood come down here--come and flow in these dark places of our native land?
His obvious good looks were like the good looks of others. He looked well bred, but to look that is as common in a certain class, as it is rare in another. He had the spare, wiry figure, tall and lightly built, square in the shoulders and thin in the flank; he had the clear, weather-beaten complexion, the clean, nervous, capable hand, and the self-effacing manner, which we associate with myriads of well born, machine trained, perfectly groomed, expensively educated, uneducated Englishmen. Our public schools turn them out by the thousand. The "lost legion" is made up of them. The unburied bones of the pioneers of new colonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never, never country" under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; they fall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen and craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which they never showed in the business of cricket and football.
Famous educational institutions often acquire reputations that are hard to shake off.
In one moment, see what the Oxford and Cambridge of Chaucer were, not as bearing in any trifling opinions of mine, but in showing for the mere sake of five minutes’ amusement, how each university has kept its character through so many centuries, at all events, in the public mind. What are the popular opinions about Cambridge now? The ideal Cambridge man is plodding, thrifty, quiet, diligent, solemn, wise. The ideal Oxford man is fantastic, noisy, extravagant, and given to practical jokes.
England was once considered, and still is to a certain extent with regard to higher education, to be the place to obtain the finest education.
In the western part of England lived a gentleman of large fortune, whose name was Merton. He had a great estate in the Island of Jamaica, where he had passed many years of his life, and was master of many servants, who cultivated sugar and other valuable things for his advantage. He had only one son, of whom he was excessively fond; and to educate this child properly, was the reason of his determining to stay some years in England.
Many years before, when the Reverend George Cumberland held his chaplaincy in Madras, there were two friends there with whom he was intimate--Major Bohun and Mr. Adair. The latter held a civil appointment under Government. At that time Mr. Adair was not married. Later, this gentleman went to Australia: and Mr. and Mrs. Cumberland also went there. Mr. Adair had married in the course of time. His wife died, leaving one little child, a daughter: who was despatched to England for her education.
And a final jibe at Eton College by John Moultrie.
Her speech on this occasion I'd recorded
In my foul copy, and we all agreed
That it was most astonishingly worded,
For one who never learnt to write or read;
Yet scope for mirth it might have well afforded
To modern misses of our British breed;
And grave blue-stockings would, no doubt, have said
"Godiva's heart was better than her head."
Had she at some snug boarding-school been placed
Of modern growth for female education,
She would have had a most uncommon taste,
And I might now have printed her oration.
Her native genius she would then have graced
With stores of every sort of information,
And had, at twelve years old, more general knowledge
Than boys of fifteen gain at Eton College.
Authors and further reading can be found on page 1
Page created 13 January 2003 and last
updated 24 January 2003
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