5. The elementary course. English.

many of which carried great weight with them, against our sacrifice of education to examination. Our present system, whether good or bad, is the result of accident. Winchester and Eton had large endowments, and naturally endeavoured by means of these endowments to get hold of clever boys. At first no doubt they succeeded fairly well; but other schools felt bound to compete for juvenile brains, and as the number of prizes increased, many of our preparatory schools became mere racing stables for children destined at 12 or 14 to run for "scholarship stakes." Thus, in the scramble for the money all thought of education has been lost sight of; injury has been done in many cases to those who have succeeded, still greater injury to those who have failed or who have from the first been considered "out of the running." These very serious evils would have been avoided had we taken counsel with Mulcaster: "Pity it were for so petty a gain to forego a greater; to win an hour in the morning and lose the whole day after; as those people most commonly do which start out of their beds too early before they be well awaked or know what it is o'clock; and be drowsy when they are up for want of their sleep.” (PP., p. 19; see also El., xi., pp. 52 ff.)

§ 9. (5) It would have been a vast gain to all Europe if Mulcaster had been followed instead of Sturm. He was onc of the earliest advocates of the use of English instead of Latin (see Appendix, p. 534), and good reading and writing in English were to be secured before Latin was begun. His elementary course included these five things: English reading, English writing, drawing, singing, playing a musical instrument. If the first course were made to occupy the schooltime up to the age of 12, Mulcaster held that more would be done between 12 and 16 than between 7 and 17 in

6. Girls as well as Boys.

the ordinary way. There would be the further gain that the children would not be set against learning. "Because of the too timely onset too little is done in too long a tine, and the school is made a torture, which as it brings forth delight in the end when learning is held fast, so should it pass on very pleasantly by the way, while it is in learning." (PP., 33.)

"

§ 10. (6) Among the many changes brought about in the nineteenth century we find little that can compare in importance with the advance in the education of women.. In the last century, whenever a woman exercised her mental powers she had to do it by stealth,† and her position was degraded. indeed when compared not only with her descendants of the nineteenth century, but also with her ancestors of the sixteenth. This I know has been disputed by some authorities, e.g., by the late Professor Brewer: but to others, e.g., to a man who, as regards honesty and wisdom, has had few equals and no superiors in investigating the course of education, I mean the late Joseph Payne, this educational superiority of the women of Elizabeth's time has seemed to be entirely

Quaint as we find Mulcaster in his mode of expression, the thing expressed is sometimes rather what we should expect from Herbert Spencer than from a schoolmaster of the Renascence. I have met with nothing more modern in thought than the following: "In time all learning may be brought into one tongue, and that natural to the inhabitant so that schooling for tongues may prove needless, as once they were not needed; but it can never fall out that arts and sciences in their right nature shall be but most necessary for any commonwealth that is not given over unto too too much barbarousness." (PP., 240.)

"Subject to a regulation like that of the ancient Spartans, the theft of knowledge in our sex is only connived at while carefully concealed, and if displayed [is] punished with disgrace." So says Mrs. Barbauld, and I have met with similar passages in other female writers,

7. Training of Teachers.

beyond question. On this point Mulcaster's evidence is very valuable, and, to me at least, conclusive. He not only "admits young maidens to learn," but says that 66 custom stands for him," and that "the custom of my country hath made the maidens' train her own approved

travail." (PP., p. 167.)

§ 11. (7) Of all the educational reforms of the nineteenth century by far the most fruitful and most expansive is, in my opinion, the training of teachers. In this, as in most educational matters, the English, though advancing, are in the rear. Far more is made of "training" on the Continent and in the United States than in England. And yet we made a good start. Our early writers on education saw that the teacher has immense influence, and that to turn this influence to good account he must have made a study of his profession and have learnt "the best that has been thought and done' in it. Every occupation in life has a traditional capital of knowledge and experience, and those who intend to follow. the business, whatever it may be, are required to go through some kind of training or apprenticeship before they earn wages. To this rule there is but one exception. In English elementary schools children are paid to "teach" children, and in the higher schools the beginner is allowed to blunder at the expense of his first pupils into whatever skill he may in the end manage to pick up. But our English practice received no encouragement from the early English writers, Mulcaster, Brinsley,* and Hoole.

* John Brinsley (the elder) who married a sister of Bishop Hall's and kept school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch (was it the Grammar School?) was one of the best English writers on education. In his Consolation for our Grammar Schooles, published early in the sixteen hundreds, he says:

Training college at the Universities.

As far as I am aware the first suggestion of a training college for teachers came from Mulcaster. He schemed seven special colleges at the University; and of these one is for teachers. Some of his suggestions, e.g., about "University Readers" have lately been adopted, though without acknowledgment; and as the University of Cambridge has since 1879 acknowledged the existence of teachers, and appointed a "Teachers' Training Syndicate," we may perhaps in a few centuries more carry out his scheme, and have training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge.* Some of the reasons he gives us have not gone out of date with his English. They are as follows:

"And why should not these men (the teachers) have both this sufficiency in learning, and such room to rest in, thence to be chosen and set forth for the common service? Be either children or schools so small a portion of our

“Amongst others myself having first had long experience of the manifold evils which grow from the ignorance of a right order of teaching, and afterwards some gracious taste of the sweetness that is to be found in the better courses truly known and practised, I have betaken me almost wholly, for many years unto this weighty work, and that not without much comfort, through the goodness of our blessed God." (p. 1.) "And for the most part wherein any good is done, it is ordinarily effected by the endless vexation of the painful master, the extreme labour and terror of the poor children with enduring far overmuch and long severity. Now whence proceedeth all this but because so few of those who undertake this function are acquainted with any good method or right order of instruction fit for a grammar school?" (p. 2.) It is sad to think how many generations have since suffered from teachers "unacquainted with any good method or right order of instruction." And it seems to justify Goethe's dictum, "Der Engländer ist eigentlich ohne Intelligenz," that for several generations to come this evil will be but partially abated. * At Cambridge (as also in London and Edinburgh) there is already a Training College for Women Teachers in Secondary Schools.

worse.

ANFORD LIBRARY

M.'s reasons for training teachers.

multitude? or is the framing of young minds, and the training of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this Realm such a paucity, as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly thought on? If the chancel have a minister, the belfry hath a master: and where youth is, as it is eachwhere, there must be trainers, or there will be He that will not allow of this careful provision for such a seminary of masters, is most unworthy either to have had a good master himself, or hereafter to have a good one for his. Why should not teachers be well provided for, to continue their whole life in the school, as Divines, Lawyers, Physicians do in their several professions? Thereby judgment, cunning, and discretion will grow in them: and masters would prove old men, and such as Xenophon setteth over children in the schooling of Cyrus. Whereas now, the school being used but for a shift, afterward to pass thence to the other professions, though it send out very sufficient men to them, itself remaineth too too naked, considering the necessity of the thing. I conclude, therefore, that this trade requireth a particular college, for these four causes. 1. First, for the subject being the mean to make or mar the whole fry of our State. 2. Secondly, for the number, whether of them that are to learn, or of them that are to teach. 3. Thirdly, for the necessity of the profession, which may not be spared. 4. Fourthly, for the matter of their study, which is comparable to the greatest professions, for language, for judgment, for skill how to train, for variety in all points of learning, wherein the framing of the mind, and the exercising of the body craveth exquisite consideration, beside the staidness of the person." (PP., pp. 248, 9.)

§ 12. Though once a celebrated man, and moreover the master of Edmund Spenser, Mulcaster has been long