THE MUSEUM,

AND

English Journal of Education.

MIDDLE-CLASS EDUCATION.

HINTS ON THE COURSE OF STUDY.

HE public must expect to hear a good | been referred to a Royal Commission. It will deal about Middle-class Education during the next few years. The subject has long been trying to force its claims on their attention, and hitherto, it must be confessed, with a success very far from adequate to its importance or its merits. Now, however, there seems to be a chance of something being done. The expediency of doing something is at all events very generally admitted. That the education of the middle classes is, comparatively speaking, in a very unsatisfactory state; that, while advanced education and elementary education have been liberally fostered and assisted, the education of those who occupy an intermediate position has been left to shift for itself; are positions that have of late been so frequently asserted, and so universally acknowledged, that they have by this time arrived at the dignity of truisms. The subject has indeed been amply discussed in papers and periodicals, at public meetings and scientific congresses. A variety of propositions has been made, and a multitude of schemes ventilated for the benefit of the class in question. Oxford and Cambridge local examinations, Society of Arts certificates, inspection, the establishment of district or county middle-class colleges, the appropriation of charitable endowments, the conversion of a certain number of the old grammar schools, are all included in the programme which has been at one time or another put forward for consideration. And now the subject has

VOL. II.

therefore, we may venture to hope, undergo as thorough an investigation as it deserves. Subcommissioners will travel and examine, and take notes, and accumulate statistics. Witnesses of more or less ability and experience will volunteer their testimony as to the condition, the shortcomings, and the requirements of middle-class education. The projectors of ingenious educational schemes will have a hearing, and the interests, the peculiarities, and the prejudices of every section and grade, and of every party in the Church, and out of it, will be respectfully considered and fairly dealt with. And what will come out of it? Will the Commission and its report only supply material for essays and leading articles, for talk on the platform and at the dinner table, and then pass away into the limbo of forgotten verities, of antiquated and old-world matters? May the sense, spirit, and patriotism of the nation prevent such a result. Unless we are very much mistaken in our impressions, or unless the Commission does its work much less efficiently than we think it will, there will be made such a discovery of shortcomings, such a demonstration of the necessity for some kind of action, that Government will be compelled in some way to take the initiative in a movement on behalf of the education of the middle classes. What the Commissioners will discover we can partly, perhaps, guess; what they will recommend is at present beyond the reach of conjecture.

D

Now, in proposing a scheme of education for this class, we ought to keep chiefly in view the lower sections of it, because it is there that the typical middle-class character will chiefly be found, and there also is the most obvious deficiency and the least ability for self-help in the matter. The sons of farmers, shopkeepers, small merchants and manufacturers, various classes of business men, clerks in offices, and persons of a similar grade, constitute, therefore, the raw material to which our plans and processes of instruction are to be applied. We must keep in view, then, what they are likely to be in manner, habits, témper, and aptitudes, when they first come under the influ

They have a difficult and a delicate task to discharge; they will encounter many prejudices and provoke not a few jealousies, and they may pos. sibly find themselves restricted to recommendations of a very limited and qualified sort. Still we look forward to their report as directly or indirectly leading to important reforms in the external conditions, the organisation, and machinery of middle class education. Meanwhile it must be borne in mind that there is another element in the question which hitherto has not been very carefully considered-How to make provision for the education of the middle classes; how to establish an adequate number of good schools; how to make these schools at once efficient and economi-ence of the educator, and what position they are cal; how to protect those immediately interested from the hollow pretensions and flagrant incompetency of scholastic charlatans: these are the points to which public attention has so far been mainly invited; and they are points that deserve all the attention that can be bestowed upon them.lectual grinding. But when they shall all have been provided for, if we may hope to see that consummation, there will still remain the question (and it is a vital one), what is the true idea of middle-class education; what ought we to teach, and how ought we to teach it? to 15 70

To this question we wish in this paper to give some probable and satisfactory kind of answer. Our aim is to do it, not according to any high, abstract, or impossible theory of education, but in a simple and practical way, with proper regard to the circumstances and conditions of those whose interests we have in view.

to occupy when they leave his hands.

What is to be made of them? is indeed the very first point that an instructor must settle in his own mind, if his teaching is to be anything better than an aimless and mechanical process of intel

We do not of course mean by this that the educator need trouble himself very much about the particular trade or business which each of his pupils may be destined to follow. On the contrary, any great effort at special preparation for this will rather hinder than help the work which he ought specially to accomplish. Our position is that the teacher should realise in his mind, and keep constantly before him, the conception of that general character, and those common attributes, which are proper for the ideal member of the middle class. Phidias never put chisel to marble till he had worked out in his mind the individuality, the proportions, the expression of the statue which he proposed to elicit from the stone. What then do we want to make of our middle-class boys? The answer to that question will be best arrived at if we begin by putting another, What is the part allotted to the middle classes in the life and economy of the nation?

In the first place, the trade, and even the commerce, of the nation, is in a great degree in their hands On them, therefore, depends our material prosperity. Want of thrift, misapprehension as to the great principles that regulate supply and

And obviously we must, as a necessary step to the solution of our question, begin by turning our attention to the class with which we have to deal. We ought indeed, on the authority of Cicero, being about to enter on a systematic inquiry, to set out with a definition. But it is not easy to define the middle class. Like the north, which, according to the stand point of the observer, may be at Berwick, Orkney, Zembla, or some still remoter region, the constitution and limits of the middle class vary according to the points of view in which they are regarded. We desiderate some solution of our difficulty as simple, complete, and exhaus-demand, non-appreciation of the interdependence tive as that which made the keeping of a gig the standard of respectability. But in default of this it is possible to arrive at a sufficiently correct conception of what the term middle-class practically involves. For educational purposes we may include in it nearly all those whose calling in life connects them with trade, commerce, and manufactures, and whose school-time therefore will not, as a rule, extend beyond their sixteenth year.

of the various peoples and divisions of the civilised world, ignorance of the productions and capabili ties of different countries, and of the instruments and agencies which assist labour and advance trade, all these things would not only be a disadvantage to themselves, but an injury and a loss to the whole nation. So, again, the maintenance of the national character and the national eredit devolves very much upon them. They are con

stantly occupied in those affairs and negotiations which require promptness, business habits, and, above all, integrity, Dispatch, accuracy, method, honesty, are therefore indispensable qualifications. Looking at them in another point of view, they are in many respects the ruling element in the country, the middle point on which the national constitution balances itself. Hence it is important that they should be at once conservative and liberal in the true sense of those words; that they should be, as far as possible, emancipated from class prejudices, from bigotry, from contracted views of the great questions on which they, in common with the rest of their countrymen, will from time to time be called upon to reflect and to take action. Now the merits of the middle classes of this country are neither few nor small. They are, as a rule, fair dealers and honest workers. They have a proper pride in thrift, industry, and independence. They are attentive to the pro- And in entering on this branch of our subject, prieties of life, domestic in their habits, sociable we at once see that it also subdivides itself into in their temperament. They love their country, the matter to be taught, and the method of teaching it. and would gather manfully to the defence of the And after all perhaps it is this latter point which legitimate and constitutional throne of their sove- will make the greatest demand on our judgment reign, But, on the other hand, they are the sub- and discrimination. About many of the subjects, jects of a good many prejudices. They are ultra indeed, which must be taught in middle class British; generally destitute of all cosmopolitan schools, there can be no question or controversy. feeling. They are religiously disposed, but their Such, for instance, are arithmetic, geography, hisreligion is of a very sectarian type. They are apt tory, and grammar. No one is likely to advocate to be seduced by the attractions of a false economy, the omission of any one of these from the syllabus, apt to be too much led by local as opposed to and therefore the whole question, as far as they are national influences. Perhaps, too, we may be concerned, turns on the use to be made of them, pardoned for saying that there runs through the the form in which they should be exhibited, the middle class character a vein of coarseness, a ten- way in which they should be taught. Before, dency to animal enjoyment, a want of apprecia- however, we enter on the consideration of this tion of culture for its own sake. Well now these matter, we will enumerate and classify the subare some of the facts, and if space allowed we jects which appear most suitable for a middle class might extend our analysis, but these are some of course. And it will, we think, be admitted, that the facts which the educator has to keep in mind a classification of these subjects into elementary, when he is making out his programme of middle- disciplinary, practical, and mixed, will be suffi class studies. Reflecting on them, he finds that ciently complete and exhaustive. By the elethe education which he is to give must be a prac-mentary subjects, are of course meant those which tical one, must be in affinity with common things and the daily business of life, must deal largely, therefore, in facts and phenomena. But then he is bound also to remember that the middle-class man ought to be something more than a bundle of business aptitudes and habits, something more than a goods-producing, prosperity-increasing, credit-sustaining machine. The life is more than meat, and so the man has a higher calling than that which associates him with farm or merchan ́dise, with desk or counter. The raw material, therefore, which comes into the teacher's hands has to be wrought up, if possible, into a thoughtful, large-hearted, liberal-minded English citizen,

intelligently versed in his country's institutions, able to appreciate her greatness, and worthy to be a partaker in it. Now this calls for a more generous and elevated discipline. For this, the application of some severer and more abstract study is required; for this, it is necessary that the pupil should be brought in contact with the great thoughts of great thinkers, should become conversant with leading truths and general principles.

Guided by these considerations, we will proceed to set forth, in a sober and practical way, our views of what the middle class educational programme should be. But if we give to the term education its full meaning, if we are careful to recognise all that it involves, we must, if we would treat our subject adequately, regard it under the two separate heads of intellectual and of moral training. To the former of these we shall in this paper confine ourselves.

serve as the foundation of all education, which are the necessary equipments of the learner; without which he can make no advances in knowledge, the scaffolding by aid of which the great temple of the intellect is edified. The disciplinary subjects, again, are those which are taught exclusively or chiefly for their use in mental training. They have not perhaps any near relation to the business of life, or to the future calling of those who study them; but they avail to awaken thought, to concentrate attention, to strengthen memory, to develop reasoning, to stimulate the perceptive powers, to refine and exalt the whole nature. What, then, are the subjects of this class which