The word success can of course be used in two senses.
It may be used with reference to a thing serving its immediate
and peculiar purpose, as of a wheel going around; or it can
be used with reference to a thing adding to the general welfare,
as of a wheel being a useful discovery. It is one thing
to say that Smith"s flying machine is a failure, and quite
another to say that Smith has failed to make a flying machine.
Now this is very broadly the difference between the old
English public schools and the new democratic schools.
Perhaps the old public schools are (as I personally think they are)
ultimately weakening the country rather than strengthening it,
and are therefore, in that ultimate sense, inefficient.
But there is such a thing as being efficiently inefficient.
You can make your flying ship so that it flies, even if you
also make it so that it kills you. Now the public school system
may not work satisfactorily, but it works; the public schools
may not achieve what we want, but they achieve what they want.
The popular elementary schools do not in that sense achieve
anything at all. It is very difficult to point to any guttersnipe
in the street and say that he embodies the ideal for which popular
education has been working, in the sense that the fresh-faced,
foolish boy in 'Etons' does embody the ideal for which
the headmasters of Harrow and Winchester have been working.
The aristocratic educationists have the positive purpose
of turning out gentlemen, and they do turn out gentlemen,
even when they expel them. The popular educationists would say
that they had the far nobler idea of turning out citizens.
I concede that it is a much nobler idea, but where are the citizens?
I know that the boy in 'Etons' is stiff with a rather silly
and sentimental stoicism, called being a man of the world.
I do not fancy that the errand-boy is rigid with that republican
stoicism that is called being a citizen. The schoolboy will really
say with fresh and innocent hauteur, 'I am an English gentleman.'
I cannot so easily picture the errand-boy drawing up his
head to the stars and answering, 'Romanus civis sum.'
Let it be granted that our elementary teachers are teaching
the very broadest code of morals, while our great headmasters
are teaching only the narrowest code of manners.
Let it be granted that both these things are being taught.
But only one of them is being learned.
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