to them for their intellectual and moral culture. The spectacle, alas, is not a solitary one; and we have selected Perth only because it seems to us a somewhat striking instance of a history which we cannot repeat. The Common Good of the city, which at one time amounted to a large sum, was, a considerable number of years ago, mortgaged to meet the liabilities of the Tay Navigation Commission, for which the city of Perth became security; and the city in 1849 obtained an Act of Parliament to compound with their creditors. As a large portion of the Common Good was probably originally acquired, inter alia, for educational purposes, the Town Council always paid for repairs on the building, taxes, salaries to the teachers, advertising, prizes, etc., to the extent of above 6001. per annum. In 1849, it was 644l. 108. 5d. But several of the salaries have been withdrawn, on the ground of there not being a legal obligation, and the town has also ceased to advertise the institution or to give anything for prizes or apparatus. The amount expended last year by the town was only 3087. 18. 1d. The town is to pay annually 2007., being the amount of the existing salaries; but aver that these are personal to the present incumbents only and not exigible further.' * As there is no other endowment besides this paltry and disputed 2001., the school is dependent almost wholly on fees. Here is a list of the teachers, minus the assistants in the Academy and Grammar School, who have been nipped off within the last twenty or thirty years, with their net emoluments : Thomas Miller, M.A. (St. And.), LL.D. (St. And. and Aber.), F.R.S., Edinburgh, Rector William D. Steele, Rector of Grammar School s. d. James G. Greig, Writing and Arithmetic Master, ditto 395 0 0 205 0 0 260 0 0 Carl Fleckstein, Modern Languages Master, ditto These sums considerably exceed those returned to the Special Commissioners in 1868, and do not seem to take account of incidental expenses to which the teachers were, and, unless relieved by the School Board, are still subjected, for apparatus, prizes, assistants, &c. These fell so heavily on the Rector of the Academy, or mathematical department, that his whole emoluments, as stated in the latter report, amounted to 1957. 10s. The masters not only have no houses of their own, but even the repairs of the building were permitted to fall on them; and the Commissioners found a broken window in one of the class rooms, which had been in that condition for a year. Second Report, p. 564. 6 In what state then, our readers may well ask, did the Special Commissioners find the teaching in such a school as this? They found the mathematical and physical teaching excellent, thanks to the efforts of a rector of unusual ability and still more unusual self-denial. On this subject a higher authority than the Commissioners, Professor Kelland, said in his evidence that from no academy have so many earned high 'distinction in the University of Edinburgh as from the Perth Academy; and at the open competition in 1873, for the Indian Civil Service, a student of this academy stood first, and was facile princeps in mathematics, having obtained about 200 marks above the second.* But what of classics, for which the school was once so famous? Here we must quote the almost incredible report of the Special Commissioners: 'Three of the Latin classes, and all the boys learning Greek, were examined vivâ voce. None of them were sufficiently advanced to be able to render the simplest piece of English into Latin prose. 'Eighteen boys of the second class were reading the Grammatical exercises. There was a great deal of confusion caused by a number of the boys, who came in late from writing and arithmetic classes that they had been attending out of the school, in the town. There was also much want of method in the teaching. Only the boys at the top of the class could answer intelligently. In the third class, composed of fourteen boys reading Cæsar, there was great listlessness and indifference, and the appearance they made was bad. The examination was confined to the lesson of the day. 'There was also a class professing to read the second book of Virgil's Æneid. The passage chosen was one that they had read some time before. The boys did not seem very much at home with it. The Greek classes were not more satisfactory. The juniors made poor work of an easy fable in Bryce's "First Greek Reader;" and the boys reading Homer, three in number, translated the lesson of the day very badly. The parsing was very bad. No composition is done in any of the classes, except an exercise in the class from Arnold's first book.' † We have said that the Fair City' is a strong instancein classics perhaps it is the strongest instance-which these Reports furnish of the neglect of the secondary instruction.‡ But it is far from a solitary instance; and it is one for which some apology may perhaps be found in the proximity of Glenalmond College, which, since its foundation in 1841, has * Official Report, 1873. + Official Report, p. 238. Shameful as this state of matters is, it compares favourably with the condition of many of the Grammar Schools of England. See Dr. Donaldson's Lectures on Education' (p. 84 et seq.); and we hear that some amendment has taken place since the publication of the Report from which we have quoted. VOL. CXLIII. NO. CCXCII. M M carried off a good many boys of the higher classes, who formerly were educated at Perth. But Glenalmond, though a splendid and generous, was not a wise, and has not been a successful effort, to introduce an English school into Scotland. Excellent work has, no doubt, been done at it; but its denominational and denationalised character has kept it from taking rank as a Scottish institution; whilst parents who desired an English education for their sons have not been content to seek it in the Highlands of Perthshire. The development of the railway system, by facilitating communication with England, and bringing Edinburgh within the reach of all persons in easy circumstances, has greatly injured its chances of success. The burgh school, on the other hand, has rather gained by improvements in communication, which enable it to draw its pupils from a wider area. Neither Perth nor the other provincial schools -if we except perhaps a slight falling off in the social status of their pupils, and even that we believe to be their own fault -labour under any new disadvantages which ought not to be more than compensated by the prodigious increase in the population and wealth of Scotland within the last half century, during which they have been steadily, and, with few exceptions, rapidly declining. That the provincial towns should ever compete successfully with the varied educational advantages which Edinburgh offers, more especially when its attractions as a place of residence are taken into account, is of course quite hopeless. That Aberdeen and Glasgow, too, should take precedence of the rest of them in the north and in the west, and St. Andrews, from the higher tone of general culture which the presence of the University communicates, is natural and proper. But what they may effect in competition with the greater centres of population, even with the sadly inadequate means at present at their command, is shown by the favourable contrast which Ayr presents to Glasgow. As Perth is the worst, Ayr is the best, of the provincial grammar schools; and as presenting the attainable limit in the opposite direction, under present circumstances, we shall, before quitting this branch of our subject, note a few of the leading facts regarding it. Like Perth, Ayr, as we have seen, is one of the historical schools of Scotland. As in other places, it probably grew out of the old sang schule,' which long continued to form part of it. In 1583 the master was required, not only to teach singing, but to play upon the spinnet.' He and his spinnet survived to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when he merged in the precentor of the parish church, who, we must hope, is permitted the consolation of a harmonium. Curiously, too, something like the Compulsory Clause' seems to have been in operation in these early days, for an intimation was sent through the town, by tuck of drum, for entering of the 'youth to the schule.' 'The Ayr Academy, as it now exists, dates from 1794. In August of that year a committee was formed of persons who wished to improve education in Ayr. Subscriptions were applied for and obtained from residents in the town and country, and an agreement was made with the magistrates, that their burgh school should be either incorporated with, or superseded by, the new institution. In 1796 the academy was formally opened within the old buildings, and in 1798 it received a royal charter. In 1810 it was transferred to the new buildings, which had been erected at a cost of 3,000l., and it has continued there up till the present time a flourishing and useful institution.'* 6 There are two peculiarities in this school which are worthy of remark, as bearing on the general recommendations of the Commissioners. The first is, that organisation, in one important respect at all events, exists, or has survived to a greater extent than elsewhere. There is something approaching to a curriculum, which, beginning even with the elementary department, extends to the whole school, and there are not quite so many instances, as in Perth, for example, of boys coming from country schools merely for one or more special branches in which they are deficient.' The second peculiarity is, the union of English with the ancient languages in the rector's department. The chief advantages, pointed out by the rector himself, as resulting from this arrangement, were of a financial kind, which, one can well imagine, touched very nearly. These would of course be compensated in a better way, if an adequate endowment were provided for the rector; and it is probable that they have already been so, to the extent to which the resources of the institution go, by the whole of the fees being thrown into a common fund and divided on some rational principle by the School Board. To enable him. to perform his duties efficiently, as a classical teacher, and as head of the school, it is surely very desirable that the rector should be relieved from the burden of elementary instruction, whether in English or in any other branch. But as regards boys who, having commenced their classics, are legitimately in his hands, or in those of his immediate assistants, the case seems different; and we think it well worthy of consideration, Report of Special Commissioners, p. 262. The whether in grammar schools generally, more efficient teaching of English would not be secured, and a considerable waste of time and energy spared to the pupils, if their whole education, with the exception of arithmetic, mathematics, and physical science, were communicated by the classical masters. specialising of subjects in University teaching is indispensable, because the teaching is there expected to be exhaustive, and exhaustive teaching, in our day, can be expected only of specialists. Even in kindred subjects there is always a difficulty in one professor occupying another's chair, even for a time. But any man whose general culture is such as to fit him to be a classical teacher in a grammar school, must possess an acquaintance with the literature of his own country which will more than fit him to teach it to school-boys; nay the chances are, that just in consequence of his being a classical master, his acquaintance with it will be greater, and his taste purer and higher, than that of an English teacher, who does not necessarily come in contact with any other language or literature than his own. English grammar too, we believe, will be more efficiently taught comparatively, and in conjunction with the grammar of the classical languages, than as a separate subject. The distinction between what is general and special, in forms of speech, can only be seen when two or more forms of speech are contrasted; and for this reason, after its first rudiments have been acquired in the elementary school, the study of English grammar ought to be prosecuted in conjunction, if not with an ancient, then with another modern language. The attempt to supply this defect by teaching Latin roots in one room to boys who are learning Latin itself in another, is a happy thought of recent times, and the habit of shortening their attendance in the classical department in order that they may receive separate instruction of an inferior kind elsewhere, is one, the retention of which, in our opinion, deserves serious reconsideration. The same remarks apply to the teaching of geography and history. Modern geography and history, like English, within the memory of the present writer, were taught, in conjunction with ancient geography and history, by the classical masters in the grammar schools; and if they were not taught well by them, it is scarcely likely that they would have been taught better by separate teachers who, as belonging to a less skilled department, must, as a rule, be men of inferior culture, and are very likely to be men of inferior intelligence. But the chief evil consists in the waste of time and attention occasioned to the boys in running from schoolroom to school |
