Note 211 — XXII. CONCLUSION.

This theory of the educator’s task which makes him a disposer or director of influence rather than a teacher, led Locke to decry our public schools, for in them the traditions and tone of the school seem the source of influence, and the masters are to all appearance mainly teachers. Locke’s own words are these:—“The difference is great between two or three pupils in the same house and three or four score boys lodged up and down; for let the master’s industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or a hundred scholars under his eye any longer than they are in the school together, nor can it be expected that he should instruct them successfully in anything but their books; the forming of their minds and manners requiring a constant attention and particular application to every single boy which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study and correct everyone’s particular defects and wrong inclinations) when the lad was to be left to himself or the prevailing infection of his fellows the greatest part of the four-and-twenty hours.” But the educator who considers himself a director of influences must remember that he is not the only force. The boy’s companions are a force at least as great; and if he were brought up in private on Locke’s system, he would be entirely without a kind of influence much more valuable than Locke seems to think—the influence of boy companions, and of the traditions of a great school. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that our public schools used to be, and perhaps are still to some extent, under-mastered, and that the masters should not be the mere teachers which, from overwork and other causes, they often tend to become. The consequence has been that the real education of the boys has in a great measure passed out of their hands. What has been the result? A long succession of able teachers have aimed at giving literary instruction and making their pupils classical scholars. Both manners and bodily training have been left to take care of themselves. Yet such is the irony of Fate that the majority of youths who leave our great schools are not literary and are not much of classical scholars, but they are decidedly gentlemanly and still more decidedly athletic.