Education in Public Schools

Abstract

THE headmaster of Eton gave a very interesting and suggestive address, which has recently been printed, on “The Education of the Average Man”, at the Royal Institution on Dec. 18. His humour and open mindedness, and his wide and special knowledge of the public schoolboy, command a sympathetic hearing for his views; and with the general tenor of them most people will agree. He deplores the constriction caused by the examination system; thinks the boys are called upon for a sort of all-round specialism which it is impossible to achieve and is calculated mainly to engender a distaste for further learning, and. would himself lay stress on three great aims—accuracy, curiosity, and observation. He speaks frankly as the spokesman of the public schools, which he describes as lying between the upper and nether millstones of the preparatory schools and the university examiners. In all of this there is much sound criticism and good sense; but one is bound to recognise the limitations of Dr. Alington's point of view. He is almost entirely critical, except of these public schools which are to him the one virtuous element struggling with adversity, and he is also almost entirely laudator tem-poris acti; the older system, as he himself knew it, seems almost always preferable.