Note 90 — XI. THE GENTLEMEN OF PORT-ROYAL.[88]

A master in a great public school once stated in a school address what masters and boys felt to be true. “It would hardly be too much to say that the whole problem of education is how to surround the young with good influences. I believe we must go on to add that if the wisest man had set himself to work out this problem without the teaching of experience, he would have been little likely to hit upon the system of which we are so proud, and which we call “the Public School System.” If the real secret of education is to surround the young with good influences, is it not a strange paradox to take them at the very age when influences act most despotically and mass them together in large numbers, where much that is coarsest is sure to be tolerated, and much that is gentlest and most refining—the presence of mothers and sisters for example—is for a large part of the year a memory or an echo rather than a living voice? I confess I have never seen any answers to this objection which apart from the test of experience I should have been prepared to pronounce satisfactory. It is a simple truth that the moral dangers of our Public School System are enormous. It is the simple truth that do what you will in the way of precaution, you do give to boys of low, animal natures, the very boys who ought to be exceptionally subject to almost despotic restraint, exceptional opportunities of exercising a debasing influence over natures far more refined and spiritual than their own. And it is further the simple but the sad truth, that these exceptional opportunities are too often turned to account, and that the young boy’s character for a time—sometimes for a long time—is spoiled or vulgarized by the influence of unworthy companions.” This is what public schoolmasters, if their eyes are not blinded by routine, are painfully conscious of. But they find that in the end good prevails; the average boy gains a manly character and contributes towards the keeping up a healthy public opinion which is of great effect in restraining the evil-doer.