."--_Scottish Educational Journal_.

THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD

CHAPTER I

THE RISE

The school in which political education was tried for a space of
something under two years is in no way a very remarkable school. It
has its sixteenth-century founder, "of pious memory," and its "second
founder," of memory almost more pious, in early Victorian days. That
second founder made the school famous as a centre of stalwart
evangelicalism. More recently its fame has been won chiefly in the
production of first-class cricketers. Until the early years of the
present century the school had also, we are told, a kind of inverted
fame as one of the "stupidest" of the public schools, as a dumping
ground for young hopefuls who could not pass entrance examinations
elsewhere. From that reputation, however, it had struggled fairly
successfully to free itself.

The present writers started with the common assumption that the
"Classical" scheme of a liberal education had long broken down in
practice, and survived only as feudalism survived in eighteenth-century
France, because sufficient energy had not yet generated to create a new
scheme to replace it. In part it had already disappeared and given
place to the patchwork innovations of the earnest but painfully
cautious and conservative reformers who have ruled the schools since
the days of Dr. Arnold.[1] The classical system had become the
classical compromise, a clipped and truncated classics, fighting a
losing battle for air space amidst a crowd of inadequately provided
"new subjects"--history, literature, science, modern languages. In
some ways the last state was worse than the first. For the first state
had at least been based upon a great tradition and an ordered
philosophy of life, but in the last state there was no tradition, no
ordered philosophy; only a jumble and a scramble, and a passing of
examinations. Such a system or lack of system must fall a prey sooner
or later to some educational movement based on a coherent and
defensible doctrine.

Now, as it chances, such a movement is already in the field; we may
call it the "Cult of Efficiency." It proclaims a great many truths
about the necessity of increasing productivity, about the connection
between education and the world of business, and generally speaking
points to the achievements of Germany for our envious imitation; it
proclaims the commercial utility of Spanish and Russian, and ranges in
its adv