§ 1. all who are acquainted with the standard treatises on the theory of education, and also with the management of schools, will have observed that moral and religious training occupies a larger and more prominent space in theory than in practice. on consideration, we shall find perhaps that this might naturally be expected. of course we are all agreed that morality is more important than learning, and masters who are many of them clergymen, will hardly be accused of under-estimating the value of religion. why then, does not moral and religious training receive a larger share of the master’s attention? the reason i take to be this. experience shows that it depends directly on the master whether a boy acquires knowledge, but only indirectly, and in a much less degree, whether he grows up a good and religious man. the aim which engrosses most of our time is likely to absorb an equal share of our interest; and thus it happens that masters, especially those who never associate on terms of intimacy with their pupils out of school, throw energy enough into making boys learn, but seldom think at all of the development of their character, or about their thoughts and feelings in matters of religion.[493] this statement may indeed be exaggerated, but no one who has the means of judging will assert that it is altogether without foundation. and yet, although a master can be more certain of sending out his pupils well-taught than well-principled, his influence on their character is much greater than it might appear to a superficial observer. i am not speaking of formal religious instruction. i refer now to the teacher’s indirect influence. the results of his formal teaching vary as its amount, but he can apply no such gauge to his informal teaching. a few words of earnest advice or remonstrance, which a boy hears at the right time from a man whom he respects, may affect that boy’s character for life. here everything depends, not on the words used, but on the feeling with which they are spoken, and on the way in which the speaker is regarded by the hearer. in such matters the master has a much more delicate and difficult task than in mere instruction. the words, indeed, are soon spoken, but that which gives them their influence is not soon or easily acquired. here, as in so many other instances, we may in a few minutes throw down what it has cost us days—perhaps years—to build up. an unkind word will destroy the effects of long-continued kindness. boys always form their opinion of a man from the worst they know of him. experience has not yet taught them that good people have their failings, and bad people their virtues. if the scholars find the master at times harsh and testy, they cannot believe in his kindness of heart and care for their welfare. they do not see that he may have an ideal before him to which he is partly, though not wholly true. they judge him by his demeanour in his least guarded moments—at times when he is jaded and dissatisfied with the result of his labours. at such times he is no longer[494] “in touch” with his pupils. he is conscious only of his own power and mental superiority. feeling almost a contempt for the boys’ weakness, he does not care for their opinion of him or think for an instant what impression he is making by his words and conduct. he gives full play to his arbitrium, and says or does something which seems to the boys to reveal him in his true character, and which causes them ever after to distrust his kindness.
§ 2. when we consider the way in which masters endeavour to gain influence, we shall find that they may be divided roughly into two parties, whom i will call the open and the reserved. a teacher of the open party endeavours to appear to his pupils precisely as he is. he will hear of no restraint except that of decorum. he believes that if he is as much the superior of his pupils as he ought to be, his authority will take care of itself without his casting round it a wall of artificial reserve. “be natural,” he says; “get rid of affectations and shams of all kinds; and then, if there is any good in you, it will tell on those around you. whatever is bad, would be felt just as surely in disguise; and the disguise would only be an additional source of mischief.” the reserved, on the other hand, wish their pupils to think of them as they ought to be rather than as they are. against the other party they urge that our words and actions cannot always be in harmony with our thoughts and feelings, however much we may desire to make them so. we must, therefore, they say, reconcile ourselves to this; and since our words and actions are more under our control than our thoughts and feelings, we must make them as nearly as possible what they should be, instead of debasing them to involuntary thoughts and feelings which are not worthy of us. then again, a teacher who is an idealist may say,[495] “the young require some one to look up to. in my better moments i am not altogether unworthy of their respect; but if they knew all my weaknesses, they would naturally, and perhaps justly, despise me. for their sakes, therefore, i must keep my weaknesses out of sight, and the effort to do this demands a certain reserve in all our intercourse.”
§ 3. i suppose an excess in either direction might lead to mischievous results. the “open” man might be wanting in self-restraint, and might say and do things which, though not wrong in themselves, might have a bad effect on the young. then, again, the lower and more worldly side of his character might show itself in too strong relief; and his pupils seeing this mainly, and supposing that they understood him entirely, might disbelieve in his higher motives and religious feeling. on the other hand, those who set up for being better than they really are, are, as it were, walking on stilts. they gain no real influence by their separation from their pupils, and they are always liable to an accident which may expose them to their ridicule.[204]
§ 4. i am, therefore, though with some limitation, in favour of the open school. i am well aware, however, what an immense demand this system makes on the master who desires to exercise a good influence on the moral and religious character of his pupils. if he would have his pupils know him as he is, if he would have them think as he thinks, feel as he feels, and believe as he believes, he must be, at least in heart and aim, worthy of their imitation. he must[496] (with reverence be it spoken) enter, in his humble way, into the spirit of the perfect teacher, who said, “for their sakes i sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” are we prepared to look upon our calling in this light? i believe that the school-teachers of this country need not fear comparison with any other body of men, in point of morality, and religious earnestness; but i dare say many have found, as i have, that the occupation is a very narrowing one, that the teacher soon gets to work in a groove, and from having his thoughts so much occupied with routine work, especially with small fault-findings and small corrections, he is apt to settle down insensibly into a kind of moral and intellectual stagnation—philistinism, as matthew arnold has taught us to call it—in which he cares as little for high aims and general principles as his most commonplace pupil. thus it happens sometimes that a man who set out with the notion of developing all the powers of his pupils’ minds, thinks in the end of nothing but getting them to work out equations and do latin exercises without false concords; and the clergyman even, who began with a strong sense of his responsibility and a confident hope of influencing the boys’ belief and character, at length is quite content if they conform to discipline and give him no trouble out of school-hours. we may say of a really good teacher what wordsworth says of the poet; in his work he must neither
lack that first great gift, the vital soul,
nor general truths, which are themselves a sort
of elements and agents, under-powers,
subordinate helpers of the living mind.—prelude, i. 9.
but the “vital soul” is too often crushed by excessive routine labour, and then when general truths, both moral[497] and intellectual, have ceased to interest us, our own education stops, and we become incapable of fulfilling the highest and most important part of our duty in educating others.
§ 5. it is, then, the duty of the teacher to resist gravitating into this state, no less for his pupils’ sake than for his own. the ways and means of doing this i am by no means competent to point out; so i will merely insist on the importance of teachers not being overworked—a matter which has not, i think, hitherto received due attention.
we cannot expect intellectual activity of men whose minds are compelled “with pack-horse constancy to keep the road” hour after hour, till they are too jaded for exertion of any kind. the man himself suffers, and his work, even his easiest work, suffers also. it may be laid down as a general rule, that no one can teach long and teach well. all satisfactory teaching and management of boys absolutely requires that the master should be in good spirits. when the “genial spirits fail,” as they must from an overdose of monotonous work, everything goes wrong directly. the master has no longer the power of keeping the boys’ attention, and has to resort to punishments even to preserve order. his gloom quenches their interest and mental activity, just as fire goes out before carbonic acid; and in the end teacher and taught acquire, not without cause, a feeling of mutual aversion.
§ 6. and another reason why the master should not spend the greater part of his time in formal teaching is this—his doing so compels him to neglect the informal but very important teaching he may both give and receive by making his pupils his companions.
§ 7. i fear i shall be met here by an objection which has only too much force in it. most englishmen are at a loss[498] how to make any use of leisure. if a man has no turn for thinking, no fondness for reading, and is without a hobby, what good shall his leisure do him? he will only pass it in insipid gossip, from which any easy work would be a relief. that this is so in many cases, is a proof to my mind of the utter failure of our ordinary education: and perhaps an improved education may some day alter what now seems a national peculiarity. meantime the mind, even of englishmen, is more than a “succedaneum for salt;”[205] and its tendency to bury its sight, ostrich-fashion, under a heap of routine work must be strenuously resisted, if it is to escape its deadly enemies, stupidity and ignorance.
§ 8. i have elsewhere expressed what i believe is the common conviction of those who have seen something both of large schools and of small, viz., that the moral atmosphere of the former is, as a rule, by far the more wholesome;[206][499] and also that each boy is more influenced by his companions than by his master. more than this, i believe that in many, perhaps in most, schools, one or two boys affect the tone of the whole body more than any master.[207] what are called preparatory schools labour under this immense disadvantage, that their ruling spirits are mere children without reflection or sense of responsibility.[208] but where the leading boys are virtually young men, these may be made a medium through which the mind of the master may act upon the whole school. they can enter into the thoughts, feelings, and aims of the master on the one hand, and they know what is said and done among the boys on the other. the master must, therefore, know the elder boys intimately, and they must[500] know him. this consummation, however, will not be arrived at without great tact and self-denial on the part of the master. the youth who is “neither man nor boy” is apt to be shy and awkward, and is not by any means so easy to entertain as the lad who chatters freely of the school’s cricket or football, past, present, and to come. but the master who feels how all-important is the tone of the school, will not grudge any pains to influence those on whom it chiefly depends.
§ 9. but, allowing the value of all these indirect influences, can we afford to neglect direct formal religious instruction? we have most of us the greatest horror of what we call a secular education, meaning thereby an education without formal religious teaching. but this horror seems to affect our theory more than our practice. few parents ever enquire what religious instruction their sons get at eton, harrow, or westminster. at harrow when i was in the fourth form there (nearly fifty years ago by the way) we had no religious instruction except a weekly lesson in watts’s scripture history; and when i was a master some twenty years ago my form had only a sunday lesson in a portion of the old testament, and a lesson in french testament at “first school” on monday. even in some “voluntary schools” we do not find “religious instruction” made so much of as the arithmetic.
§ 10. in this matter we differ very widely from the germans. all their classes have a “religion-lesson” (religionstunde) nearly every day, the younger children in the german bible, the elder in the greek testament or church history; and in all cases the teacher is careful to instruct his pupils in the tenets of luther or calvin. the germans may urge that if we believe a set of doctrines to be a fitting[501] expression of divine revelation, it is our first duty to make the young familiar with those doctrines. i cannot say, however, that i have been favourably impressed by the religion-lessons i have heard given in german schools. i do not deny that dogmatic teaching is necessary, but the first thing to cultivate in the young is reverence; and reverence is surely in danger if you take a class in “religion” just as you take a class in grammar. emerson says somewhere, that to the poet, the saint, and the philosopher, all distinction of sacred and profane ceases to exist, all things become alike sacred. as the schoolboy, however, does not as yet come under any one of these denominations, if the distinction ceases to exist for him, all things will become alike profane.
§ 11. i believe that religious instruction is conveyed in the most impressive way when it is connected with worship. where the prayers are joined with the reading of scripture and with occasional simple addresses, and where the congregation have responses to repeat, and psalms and hymns to sing, there is reason to hope that boys will increase, not only in knowledge, but in wisdom and reverence too. without asserting that the church of england service is the best possible for the young, i hold that any form for them should at least resemble it in its main features, should be as varied as possible, should require frequent change of posture, and should give the congregation much to say and sing. much use might be made as in the church of rome, of litanies. the service, whatever its form, should be conducted with great solemnity, and the boys should not sit or kneel so close together that the badly disposed may disturb their neighbours who try to join in the act of worship. if good hymns are sung, these may be taken occasionally as the[502] subject of an address, so that attention may be drawn to their meaning. music should be carefully attended to, and the danger of irreverence at practices guarded against by never using sacred words more than is necessary, and by impressing on the singers the sacredness of everything connected with divine worship. questions combined with instruction may sometimes keep up boys’ attention better than a formal sermon. though common prayer should be frequent, this should not be supposed to take the place of private prayer. in many schools boys have hardly an opportunity for private prayer. they kneel down, perhaps, with all the talk and play of their schoolfellows going on around them, and sometimes fear of public opinion prevents their kneeling down at all. a schoolmaster cannot teach private prayer, but he can at least see that there is opportunity for it.
education to goodness and piety, as far as it lies in human hands, must consist almost entirely in the influence of the good and pious superior over his inferiors, and as this influence is independent of rules, these remarks of mine cannot do more than touch the surface of this most important subject.[209]
§ 12. in conclusion, i wish to say a word on the education of opinion. sir arthur helps lays great stress on[503] preparing the way to moderation and open-mindedness by teaching boys that all good men are not of the same way of thinking. it is indeed a miserable error to lead a young person to suppose that his small ideas are a measure of the universe, and that all who do not accept his formularies are less enlightened than himself. if a young man is so brought up, he either carries intellectual blinkers all his life, or, what is far more probable, he finds that something he has been taught is false, and forthwith begins to doubt everything. on the other hand, it is a necessity with the young to believe, and we could not, even if we would, bring a youth into such a state of mind as to regard everything about which there is any variety of opinion as an open question. but he may be taught reverence and humility; he may be taught to reflect how infinitely greater the facts of the universe must be than our poor thoughts about them, and how inadequate are words to express even our imperfect thoughts. then he will not suppose that all truth has been taught him in his formularies, nor that he understands even all the truth of which those formularies are the imperfect expression.
