IX

EDUCATION





I said that I was a public-school master for nearly twenty years;
and now that it is over I sometimes sit and wonder, rather sadly, I
am afraid, what we were all about.

We were a strictly classical school; that is to say, all the boys
in the school were practically specialists in classics, whether
they had any aptitude for them or not. We shoved and rammed in a
good many other subjects into the tightly packed budget we called
the curriculum. But it was not a sincere attempt to widen our
education, or to give boys a real chance to work at the things they
cared for; it was only a compromise with the supposed claims of the
public, in order that we might try to believe that we taught things
we did not really teach. We had an enormous and elaborate machine;
the boys worked hard, and the masters were horribly overworked. The
whole thing whizzed, banged, grumbled, and hummed like a factory;
but very little education was the result. It used to go to my heart
to see a sparkling stream of bright, keen, lively little boys
arrive, half after half, ready to work, full of interest, ready to
listen breathlessly to anything that struck their fancy, ready to
ask questions--such excellent material, I used to think. At the