The truth is that the present results are so poor that any
experiments are justified. The one quality which you can depend
upon in boys is interest, and interest is ruthlessly sacrificed.
When I used to press this fact upon my sterner colleagues, they
would say that I only wanted to make things amusing, and that the
result would be that we should only turn out amateurs. But amateurs
are at least better than barbarians; and my complaint is that the
majority of the boys are not turned out even professionally
equipped in the elaborate subjects they are supposed to have been
taught.

The same melancholy thing goes on in the older Universities. The
classics are retained as a subject in which all must qualify; and
the education provided for the ordinary passman is of a
contemptible, smattering kind; it is really no education at all. It
gives no grip, or vigour, or stimulus. Here again no one takes any
interest in the average man. If the more liberal residents try to
get rid of the intolerable tyranny of compulsory classics, a band
of earnest, conventional people streams up from the country and
outvotes them, saying solemnly, and obviously believing, that
education is in danger. The truth is that the intellectual
education of the average Englishman is sacrificed to an antiquated
humanist system, administered by unimaginative and pedantic people.

The saddest part of it all is that we have, most of us, so little
idea of what we want to effect by education. My own theory is a
simple one. I think that we ought first of all to equip boys, as,
far as we can, to play a useful part in the world. Such a theory is
decried by educational theorists as being utilitarian; but if
education is not to be useful, we had better close our schools at