The solution is a very obvious one; it is, at all costs to
simplify, and to relieve pressure. The staple of education should
be French, easy mathematics, history, geography, and popular
science. I would not even begin Latin or Greek at first. Then, when
the first stages were over, I would have every boy with any special
gift put to a single subject, in which he should try to make real
progress, but so that there would be time to keep up the simpler
subjects as well. The result would be that when a boy had finished
his course, he would have some one subject which he could
reasonably be expected to have mastered up to a certain point. He
would have learnt classics, or mathematics, or history, or modern
languages, or science, thoroughly; while all might hope to have a
competent knowledge of French, English, history, easy mathematics,
and easy science. Boys who had obviously no special aptitude would
be kept on at the simple subjects. And if the result was only that
a school sent out boys who could read French easily, and write
simple French grammatically, who knew something of modern history
and geography, could work out sums in arithmetic, and had some
conception of elementary science--well, they would, I believe, be
very fairly educated boys.

The reason why intellectual cynicism sets in, is because the boys,
as they go on, feel that they have mastered nothing. They have been
set to compose in Greek and Latin and French; the result is that
they have no power of composing in any of these languages, when
they might have learnt to compose in one. Meanwhile, they have not
had time to read any English to speak of, or to be practised in
writing it. They know nothing of their own history or of modern
geography; and the blame is not with them if they find all