Chapter II: A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools 250

Pelmanism, an indictment--Monotonous drudgery the stumbling-block
to education--A “play way”--Handicrafts--Eurhythmics--Enthusiasm
of teachers amazing--Education, a passion--_Joan and Peter_
types--Public School men do the work of the world--But schools
do not teach what a boy wants to know--Mulish resistance--Ways
of mind subtle and evasive--The error of “not what you know
that matters but how you learn it”--Every school must educate
every scholar--What is knowledge?--Intellectual requirements
satisfied by bridge and golf--Attention acts without marks,
praise or blame--But training, not education--No faculties,
only mind--Text-books make no appeal to mind--Way of Natural
Science through field work illuminated by literature--Mind,
a crucible, but no power to distil ideas from sawdust--Dr.
Arnold--“Very various reading”--Mind, a deceiver ever--Class
will occupy itself and accomplish nothing--Outer court of
mind--Inner place where personality dwells--We “go over it in our
minds”--Attention must not be allowed a crutch--Should be tested
by the reader--Knowledge, received with attention, fixed by
narration--We have ceased to believe in mind--Physical brain and
spiritual mind--Education must go as a bolt to the mind--Teacher
not a bridge--A key to humanistic teaching in English--A
liberal education, measured by the number of substantives used
with fitness and simplicity--The school not merely a nursery
for the formation of character--Knowledge in common for the
“masses” and the “classes”--All hearts rise to a familiar
allusion--Speech with those who know--Opposition, natural
resource of ignorance--A democratic education--We shall cease
to present motives of self-interest and personal advantage--The
classics in English--Old exclusive education must broaden its
base and narrow its bounds--Avoid overlapping--Academic success
and knowledge not the same thing--Brilliant, average and dull
children delight in knowledge--It unites the household--Makes
children delightful companions--A fine sense of things
worth knowing and living for--Magnanimity, proper outcome
of education--The schoolboy’s sterile syllabus--In spite of
culture common among teachers--A method which brings promise of
relief from _aphasia_--Barrenness in the written essay--Oral
composition, a habit from six to eighteen--Method cannot be
worked without a firm adherence to principle--Otherwise the books
a failure--Parents must provide necessary books--Which must take
root in the homes--Spelling comes with the use of books--Books
_and_ text-books--The choice of books, a question of division of
labour--Terminal examinations, records of permanent value--Bible
teaching must further the knowledge of God--The law and the
prophets still interpreters--History, the rich pasture of the
mind--Amyot on history--Plutarch--Poets--Every age has its
poetic aspect--Gathered up by a Shakespeare--A Dante--A world
possession--An essence of history which is poetry--An essence of
science to be expressed in exquisite prose--Art--Drawing, not
a means of self-expression--Languages--Possibility of becoming
linguists--Finally, another basis for education--Which must be
in touch with life--We aim at securing the vitality of many
minds--Which shall make England great in art and in life--Great
character comes from great thoughts--Great thoughts from great
thinkers--Thinking, not doing, the source of character.