Everything is vulgar that pretends to be what it is not. Priggishness is
an artificial mental condition that is far more common than people
generally suspect. We are most of us prigs, if we only knew it. The man
who is unable to get rid of conventions and to think for himself is a
prig. England is peopled with them. We meet them at every turn; we see
them driving the country to the dogs by sheer inability to grasp its
needs;--and we send our sons to the schools and universities to be
manufactured after the same pattern.

CHAPTER VII

BOY DEGENERATION

If some boys thrive, according to ordinary school standards, on the
cramming system, what becomes of those to whose nature the process is
entirely antagonistic?

The question is best answered by a glance at the schools themselves.
Take one of the great public schools, and it will be found that much the
same conditions are prevalent in every class or form. There is a small
percentage of boys at the top of each class who are considered the most
intelligent, and by whom most of the questions asked by the master are
answered. The remaining majority are divided into two sections, one of
which consists of what are termed boys of average ability, whilst the
other contains the lazy element, the refractory boys, and the dullards.

In the last chapter we chiefly discussed those individuals who may be
taken as representing the average of the best results achieved by higher
schools and universities. These form, however, only a fraction of the
scholars who pass through such institutions. It still remains for us to
discover the role which is played by the other four-fifths in
school-life. According to scholastic methods of classification, the
bulk of this residue are boys of medium intelligence who plod on without
specially distinguishing themselves, and contrive, by dint of industry
and application, to blunder through the ordinary course of study without
coming to grief.

It would be difficult to conjure up a more melancholy picture than that
presented by these plodders, whose work is rendered trebly hard by being
performed against the grain. They suffer more under the system than the
dull, the lazy, and the fractious, who escape its worst evils, either
because some active power of resistance comes to their rescue, or
because the mind itself is so formed as to be incapable of receiving
instruction imparted on the cramming principle.

But the average mediocrity among