Culture & Anarchy. Arnold Matthew

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СКАЧАТЬ by defining the principle of Compulsory Education. "It means that to ensure, as far as you can, every man's being fit for his business in life, you put education as a bar, or condition, between him and what he aims at. The principle is just as good for one class as another, and it is only by applying it impartially that you save its application from being insolent and invidious.... You propose to make old Diggs' boys instruct themselves before they go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want to know what you do to make those three worthies in that justice-room instruct themselves before they may go acting as magistrates and judges?"

      The imaginary Arnold replies that Lord Lumpington was at Eton, and Mr. Hittall at Charterhouse, and Mr. Bottles at Lycurgus House Academy, Peckham. But Arminius insists that to send boys of the wealthy classes to school is nothing—the natural course of things takes them there. "Don't suppose that, by doing this, you are applying the principle of Compulsory Education fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs' boys. You are not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or condition between them and what they aim at.

      "In my country," he went on, "we should have begun to put a pressure on those future magistrates at school. Before we allowed Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall to go to the University at all, we should have examined them.... There would have been some Mr. Grote as School Board Commissary, pitching into them questions about history, and some Mr. Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, pitching into them questions about English literature; and these young men would have been kept from the University, as Diggs' boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till they had instructed themselves. Then, if, after three years of their University, they wanted to be magistrates, another pressure!—a great Civil Service Examination before a Board of Experts, an examination in English law, Roman law, English history, history of jurisprudence."

      "A most abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and Hittall," says Arnold.

      "Then your compulsory education is a most abominable liberty to take with Diggs' boys," retorted Arminius.... "Oh, but," I answered, "to live at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs instruction." "Well," returns Arminius, "and to administer at all, even at the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs instruction."

      "We have never found it so," I said.

      The same argument was urged, in a graver fashion, in Schools and Universities of the Continent.

      "In the view of the English friends of compulsory education, the educated and intelligent Middle and Upper Classes amongst us are to confer the boon of compulsory education upon the ignorant lower class, which needs it while they do not. But, on the Continent, instruction is obligatory for Lower, Middle, and Upper Class alike. I doubt whether our educated and intelligent classes are at all prepared for this. I have an acquaintance in easy circumstances, of distinguished connexions, living in a fashionable part of London, who, like many other people, deals rather easily with his son's schooling. Sometimes the boy is at school, then for months together he is away from school, and taught, so far as he is taught, by his father and mother at home. He is not the least an invalid, but it pleases his father and mother to bring him up in this manner. Now, I imagine, no English friends of compulsory education dream of dealing with such a defaulter as this, and certainly his father, who perhaps is himself a friend of compulsory education for the working classes, would be astounded to find his education of his own son interfered with. But, if my worthy acquaintance lived in Switzerland or Germany, he would be dealt with as follows. I speak with the school-law of Canton Neufchatel, immediately under my eyes, but the regulations on this matter are substantially the same in all the states of Germany and of German Switzerland. The Municipal Education Committee of the district where my acquaintance lived would address a summons to him, informing him that a comparison of the school-rolls of their district with the municipal list of children of school-age, showed his son not to be at school; and requiring him, in consequence, to appear before the Municipal Committee at a place and time named, and there to satisfy them, either that his son did attend some public school, or that, if privately taught, he was taught by duly trained and certificated teachers. On the back of the summons, my acquaintance would find printed the penal articles of the School-Law, sentencing him to a fine if he failed to satisfy the Municipal Committee; and, if he failed to pay the fine, or was found a second time offending, to imprisonment. In some Continental States he would be liable, in case of repeated infraction of the School-Law, to be deprived of his parental rights, and to have the care of his son transferred to guardians named by the State. It is indeed terrible to think of the consternation and wrath of our educated and intelligent classes under a discipline like this; and I should not like to be the man to try and impose it on them. But I assure them most emphatically—and if they study the experience of the Continent they will convince themselves of the truth of what I say—that only on these conditions of its equal and universal application is any law of compulsory education possible."

      We have now seen, at least in general outline, the system of National Education which he would have wished to set up—how he would have co-ordinated all instruction from the lowest to the highest, and how he would have compelled all classes alike to submit their children, and in the higher ranks of life to submit themselves, to the training which should best equip them for their chosen or appointed work. We must now enquire what sort of knowledge he would have endeavoured, by his co-ordinated system, to impart.

      He laid it down, more than once, that the aim of culture was "to know ourselves and the world," and that, as the means to this end, we ought "to know the best which has been thought and said in the world." He recognized, candidly and fully, the claims of the physical sciences, and their use and value in Education. For example, in advising about the instruction of a little girl, in whom her teacher wished to arouse "perception," he said, "You had much better take some science—(botany is perhaps the best for a girl) and, choosing a good handbook, go through it regularly with her.... The verification of the laws of grammar, in the examples furnished by one's reading, is certainly a far less fruitful stimulus of one's powers of observation and comparison, than the verification of the laws of a science like botany in the examples furnished by the world of nature before one's eyes."

      But in spite of this, and of similar concessions, he deliberately held the opinion that Literature, rather than Science, was the chief agent in culture. In 1872 he wrote to an enquirer: "A single line of poetry, working in the mind, may produce more thought and lead to more light, which is what man wants, than the fullest acquaintance (to take your own instance) with the processes of digestion." In 1884 he said to his American audience: "My own studies have been almost wholly in Letters, and my visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very slight and inadequate, although those sciences have always strongly moved my curiosity." In a word, he was, and gloried in being, a Humanist. What Humanism meant for him is curiously illustrated by his comment on some speeches which the late14 Lord Salisbury delivered at Oxford on his first appearance there as Chancellor of the University. After praising his skill and courtesy, Arnold says: "He is a dangerous man, through, and chiefly from, his want of any true sense and experience of literature and its beneficent function. Religion he knows, and physical science he knows; but the immense work between the two, which is for literature to accomplish, he knows nothing of; and all his speeches at Oxford15 pointed this way. On the one hand, he was full of the great future for physical science, and begging his University to make up her mind to it, and to resign much of her literary studies; on the other hand, he was full, almost defiantly full, of counsels and resolves for retaining and upholding the old ecclesiastical and dogmatic form of religion. From a juxtaposition of this kind, nothing but shocks and collisions can come."

      The immense work which is for literature to accomplish. This work, lying between the work of Religion and the work of Science, was, in his view, nothing less than the culture of Humanity. Religion had its sphere, and Science had its sphere, but culture was to be effected neither by Religion nor by Science, but by Literature. The literature which he extolled was literature in its widest sense—ancient and modern, English and Continental, Occidental and Oriental—whatever contained "the best which had been thought and said in the world." And, when we come to the sub-divisions of literature, we note that he СКАЧАТЬ