| | <26 September 1868> | | | Professor Thompson has prefixed a gossipy title to a | gossipy book, but his gossip is like Montaigne's in its | shrewdness and practical interest. For those who have got | a little tired of late with the formal dissertations and set | essays which have been showered on the public in the | name of university and scholastic reform, but who are in | a quiet way reformers none the less, it is refreshing to | turn to this genial, rambling protest against the present | state of things. The protest is all the more weighty from | its author's humorous distrust of his own enthusiasm. He | tells us fairly that he is a fanatic in the cause of education, | that his whole interest is centred in teaching, that for | fifteen years he has been practically working out the | theories which he advocates. And of course, like all | fanatics, he has pet hobbies of a superhuman absurdity; | he would require, for instance | He shares with his | class that ignorance of the common social conditions of | life among our poorer classes which leads them to cry for | compulsory education, to believe that every child who is | not a school is playing at chuck-farthing in the gutter, and | to suggest that | But we can forgive a | few outbreaks of this sort to one who is evidently doing | hard practical work in the cause of education, and whose | enthusiasm never turns into the priggish injustice of so | many of his fellow-censors. We are so accustomed to | denunciations of the utter worthlessness of English | training and of the entire stagnation of our educational | institutions, that we feel no little gratitude for the tribute | which such a merciless critic pays to the progress actually | made within his own experience: ~~ | | | The Universitites are in fact, as Professor Thompson | fairly puts it, | The real obstacle to their progress | is to be found, not in a deficient curriculum of studies, but | in the narrower range of the schools which furnish | students, and in the unhappy social traditions of the past. | Things have changed very mucyh in the last fifteen years, | but we fear they have brought about no very sensible | diminution in the enormous proportion of mere

| "dead-weights"

with whom a degree is as simply a | social matter as a girl's

"coming out."

The | highly cultivated Frenchman who paid a visit to | Cambridge during the student-life of the author of these | sketches, and left it | would find little reason to | alter his verdict now. There is a hard photographic truth | in Mr. Thompson's recollections of his University life, | which is none the less hard for the kindly humour in the | telling of them, and which, one-sided as it of course is, is | true to the one side which academical reform as yet | seems powerless to touch. It is perhaps only in a very | inferior Cambridge Hall that such a state of things could | be found in its completeness, but the elements of it exist | everywhere. Among the twenty-seven students of St. | Ignavia's | | Perhaps the most novel of Mr. Thompson's suggestions | for academical reform is the proposal to blend the | existing twelve Universities of England, Ireland, and | Scotland into one, and to require the keeping of terms in a | least two of the three kingdoms as a requisite for a | degree. It is not fair, however, to judge the book by its | academical portion; the most interesting of its | suggestions, as well as of its reminiscences, are | connected with school life. The experiences of Mr. | Thompson's boyhood are drawn from that most | wonderful of all standing insults to common sense, the | Bluecoat School of Christ's Hospital. What difference the | appointment of a new head-master may make time will | tell, but it is impossible that things should remain as they | are, and that the grandest educational foundation in | England should be left at the mercy of civic prejudice and | stupidity. It is just because they are still so painfully | accurate that we pass by the details which Mr. Thompson | gives of the intellectual and moral degradation to which | hundreds of boys are doomed by the most inefficient | body of governors in the world, and turn to the more | amusing side of boy-life which the recollections of every | great school disclose. Coleridge has told us the storms of | the Reformation in the dormitories of Christ's Hospital; | but the story of the

"Trinity"

is new to us: ~~ | | There is a graceful humour in the confession that | but a little peep into | the mind of boyhood is always interesting. There is | almost as original a humour in the mode by which the | was maintained. When | the vacation was only at fifty days' distance, the boy | whose bed happened to e fiftieth in the ward was

| "bumped"

by eight of his companions to the | chaunted words, | The successive beds | kept pace with the days, and the bumpings, as may be | imagined, increased in intensity as the list of victims and | the number of school-hours drew to their end. In spite of | the real horrors of these school-days, Mr. Thompson | finds, even in the remembrances of

"brassers,"

| and the Burial Anthem ~~ which, with a special | appropriateness, closed a Christ-Hospital Sunday ~~ | something of that pleasant charm which the memories of | boyhood always bring with them. Perhaps the strongest | trace of the feelings which school-life excited is to be | found in the overpowering reaction which has really | formed his theory of education. Of all boys in the world, | a Bluecoat boy is likely to find perfection in a

| "natural"

system. Mr. Thompson's whole theory, in | fact, consists in following as far as possible the actual | tendencies of a boy's mind, in building on his strong | inquisitiveness and keenness of observation, rather than | in trusting wholly to the single faculty of memory ~~ in | appealing, in a word, to a boy's intelligence, and enlisting | his own co-operation in the work of his education. But | Mr. Thompson is far too practical a teacher not to see that | such a theoretical change includes a revolution in the | method at present pursued ~~ an entire reversal, for | instance, of the relation in which the modern and the | ancient languages are at present supposed to stand to each | other. While he hesitates to propose, with Professor | Blackie, the learning of Greek through the intermediate | usage of modern Hellenic, he decidedly recommends the | acquisition of Italian before any attempt at the study of | Latin. Language itself, too, is necessarily to be | approached in the same reverse fashion, and a knowledge | of each tongue is to be gained before any investigation of | its grammar is undertaken. Whatever opinion we may | entertain as to these theories, there can be little doubt as | to the propriety of Professor Thompson's protest against | one of the evils to which the present system of classical | training leads: ~~ | | The real point to be pressed by those who are dissatisfied | with the condition of the higher education in English | schools is one which Mr. Thompson urges with | considerable force ~~ the expediency of introducing | universally the system of official inspection which has | really raised our National Schools to their present level of | efficiency. It is hard to believe, in spite of the twenty and | one volumes of evidence and reports on them, that our | days are destined to see a thorough revision of the whole | system of our grammar-schools; and even this, were it | brought about, would have in their present unsatisfactory | state the numberless schools for the middle-classes which | are conducted by private teachers. Every instructor | necessarily contracts certain obligations to the State by | the mere fact of instruction, and we cannot think that | even the most jealous opponents of administrative | interference would take offence at the subjection of all | schools to a compulsory inspection; but even if what was | done fell short of this, and was limited to such a | supervision of foundations which necessarily fall within | the guardianship of the State, it would almost inevitably | bring with it a voluntary submission to inspection on the | part of the private schools. In fact, the simplest and | speediest method of raising the whole standard of | middle-class instruction would be the nomination of half a dozen | Government inspectors, to whom private middle-class | schools could open their doors if they liked. The best | would naturally do so at once, and rivalr6y and public | opinion would soon compel the rest to follow their | example, while the published reports would at once give | a stimulus to education, and some sort of hint to | bewildered parents as to the best destination for their | children. Biographical chat as it is, Mr. Thompson's book | is full of keen practical suggestions such as this, while it | is pervaded with a real ardour and enthusiasm which is | especially strange among teachers. As he himself points | out, the division of labour which restricts a master to his | class produces a deadening effect, and the fervour of a | neophyte dies gradually away as the boys in whom he has | just awakened a new life and adhesion to himself give | place, time after time, to fresh squads of the dull and | unintelligent. But Mr. Thompson is far from being | deadened; every line of his book is a proof of how much | fire and poetry may be poured into the very details of | teaching. And it is just this fire and enthusiasm which | really give a value to the rambling and sometimes diffuse | pages of his Wayside Thoughts.