t it would be better than the present system of
intellectual starvation.

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 once. The idealist says,
"Never mind the use; get the best educational instrument for the
training of the mind, and, when you have finished your work, the mind
will be bright and strong, and capable of discharging any labour." That
is a beautiful theory; but it is not borne out by results; and one of
the reasons of the profound disbelief which is rapidly spreading in the
country with regard to our public schools, is that we send out so many
boys, not only without intellectual life, but not even capable of
humble usefulness. These theorists continue to talk of classics as a
splendid gymnastic, but in their hands it becomes a