Thomas Dyke Acland

“ The Classical schools throughout the country have Universities to look to: distinction at school prepares the way for distinction at college, and distinction at college is again the road to distinction and emolument as a teacher; it is a passport with which a young man enters life with advantage, either as a tutor or as a schoolmaster. But anything like local Universities—any so much as local distinction or advancement in life held out to encourage exertion at a commercial school, it is as yet vain to look for. Thus the business of education is degraded ”

“ I may venture nevertheless to express the opinion that success in the efforts made for national education by religious bodies and by the State will to a great extent depend on the interest which the middle classes may be induced to take in it, and that it imports much to the welfare of the nation that the practical activity called forth in agriculture, manufactures, and the arts, should be guided not only by sound teaching of science, but by moral and humanising influences. ”

“ On all the five continents it is the language that grows and conquers, the language of the future, the language of the world. Grimm speaks thus:—' None of the modern languages has, through the very loss and decay of all phonetic laws, and through the dropping of nearly all inflections, acquired greater force and vigour than English, and from the fulness of those vague and indefinite sounds, which may be learned, but can never be taught, it has derived a power of expression such as has never been at the command of any human tongue. ”

“ This it is that, while ignorance of a man's special business is instantly detected, ignorance of his great business as a man and a citizen is scarcely noticed, because there are so many who share in it. Thus we see every one ready to give an opinion about politics, or about religion, or about morals, because it is said these are every man's business. And so they are, and if people would learn them as they do their own particular business all would do well; but never was the proverb more fulfilled which says that every man's business is no man's. ”

“ Although addressing farmers, I have treated of middle-class education in general. I have endeavoured to describe a really useful 'Middle-class Education,' and yet I doubt not it will appear to some that I have passed too lightly over commercial and technical acquirements, and have understated the value of particular sciences; but my object has been not so much to lay down a system for any particular class, as to awaken attention to the spirit and aim of all education that can fairly claim to be called "practical." ”

“ Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to say, "Try to make him a good man, and leave him to make himself a good farmer: aim at the formation of a manly character and of an inquiring mind, and habits of business will follow,"
If this be true, his education depends far less on book-learning than on the training of the mother, the example of the father, the habits of the family, and the choice of friends. These are the human agencies, external to himself, and yet, in one sense, a part of himself, which prepare the man whether for good or evil, for power or for weakness. ”

“ Not only do community of thought and friendly intercourse between men of different pursuits increase their respect for each other, but an acquaintance with the mysteries of nature disclosed by science, and with the still deeper mysteries of human thought and action enshrined in literature, tends to generate a love for what is intrinsically true and beautiful, and to raise a man above the conventionalities of mere fashion. ”

“ The great characteristic of literature, as distinguished from scientific or technical writing, is its breadth and largeness, in contrast to all that is narrow and exclusive. Its aim is not so much to convey information as to set the mind of the reader at work for itself in harmony with the great spirits of our race. It awakens power in the mind, and kindles the affections. It carries a man back to the past, and bids him thence gather hope for the future. ”

“ Only watch a class of little boys, of seven and eight years old, learning to read music from Hullah's Sheets, under a good master. Mark their eyes; with what intelligence and keenness they are fixed on the tablet, from the time they begin to read the page of music to the end of it. If they once lose their place they are all abroad. ”

“ The lecturing system applied to schools for lads who ought to be made to work in class-hours, I consider to be one of the delusions of the present time, a delusion fraught with evil consequences. And as to the practical instruction, I beg to say that the question whether it is desirable or not to attach laboratories to schools, is no longer a matter of individual opinion, insomuch as it is a fact that laboratories in connexion with schools have proved complete failures. ”

“ How great are the delights, and how salutary the effect of the boyish ardour for honourable and lovely objects, which good poetry inspires! It is a great mistake to think that education is designed only to make perfect reflecting machines, although it is most true that nothing can be done rightly without reflection; but the feelings are part of our moral nature, intended to give an impulse to action, and they must be cultivated by teaching. ”

“ But I do not forget, nor would I have others to forget, that there is a book suited above all others to train the young intellectually as well as morally, because it speaks to man as man, and that with that book are connected institutions of primary importance to domestic and national life. However much men may differ as to the interpretation of the one, or as to the authority of the other, no view of education can be considered complete without some reference to them. ”

“ But I confess that this is not the point upon which I feel much anxiety, I have little doubt that boys will be sufficiently taught all that they require for their particular calling; and scientific knowledge is so generally valued, and confers a power so immediately felt, that I think its diffusion may safely be reckoned on. ... [But] though such knowledge be a very good education, as far as a man's trade or livelihood is concerned, yet, in a political sense, and as a qualification for the exercise of political power, it is no education at all. ”

“ On the other hand, if the education is likely to be continued beyond 14—say, to 16 or 17—presuming that the Latin is well taught by a good scholar, good enough scholar to select what is most important as a means of discipline, and to pass by what is only required in an University course; in short, able to give a thoroughly English character to the Latin training and to make it interesting—then, in such a case I have no doubt that, to learn even the elements of Latin would be a real saving of time during the years spent at school, a gain of strength and clearness of mind for after life. ”

“ I should therefore counsel that those young farmers who wish to be agricultural chemists should complete their general education first, strengthen their powers of judgment, gain an acquaintance with the language and common facts of popular science, and, after they have left school, repair to Professor Voelcker at Cirencester, or to some practical School of Chemistry, and devote at least a whole year to the subject. At any rate, they must not trust to a smattering of chemistry picked up at school as of any real use in farming, though it may be very amusing and very instructive in other ways. ”

“ Nor can there be a greater mistake than to suppose that any one will be a worse man of business for cultivating the general powers of his mind and heart. And if, in any case, the highest works of the human mind should fail of their true end, and be degraded by ministering to vulgar display and self-inflation—as in this poor world of ours "noblest things find vilest using"—the blame must be laid, not on the books, but on some defect in the character or moral training of the reader. A healthy literature, well studied, should make a man modest, because it introduces him to real greatness ”

“ It is not by chance that the most maritime people in the world is also in domestic life a model in the distribution and ordering of all which is to be done. In England this praiseworthy peculiarity is in fact grounded alike upon a well understood interest, upon national tradition, and upon religious motives. Nelson's signal, 'England expects every man to do his duty,' is properly a quotation from the English Catechism, 'to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call me.' This principle forms the key-note of the English public and domestic life. ”

“ In addressing myself to parents in the middle classes, and, in some degree, to the instructors of their children, I feel sure that this picture of a fine schoolmaster of the old school will not be out of place, and will put more plainly before them than any general descriptions of my own what literature, rightly used in teaching, may do to nourish vitality of mind and strong common sense in the boys they have to prepare for a life of business. ”

“ One advantage of a dense population is the manifold division of labour; scientific discoveries are quickly turned to account by ingenious inventors; capital is forthcoming to supply any demand; and new inventions, by means of advertising and agencies, are soon spread over the whole surface of the country. What the farmer wants in his business, is a sound, healthy, and, at the same time, discriminating habit of mind—a habit disposing him to take advantage of all useful inventions, and to reject fanciful schemes ”

“ For surely it is far better to sink the twentieth or the tithe of capital than to give children an inferior education, by which they will suffer all the best days of their life; the addition of a trifling percentage to what they will receive after their parent's death will be no compensation for such a disadvantage.
If the objects to be aimed at in the education of the middle classes, and the data for the calculation of its expense have been rightly indicated, it remains only to say a few words as to the measures by which such an education can be brought within the reach of farmers generally. ”

“ Experience would lead me to think that such a building would in the end be found unsuitable except for domestic purposes, and that sooner or later the dining-hall, school-rooms, and dormitories, must rise from the ground.
Whenever any large body of men in the middle ranks are agreed on the course to be pursued, there can be no doubt that they will raise the funds required for this or any other undertaking, of the utility of which they are convinced; but I think it of paramount importance that a public institution for education should have a certain degree of independence. ”

“ My farming friends may rest assured that the economy of labour has not made more advance within the last twenty years in the art of growing turnips than it has in the art of teaching children to read and to count. At the same time either a natural gift or some special information and training is required for teaching young children well. Without, however, depreciating the more intellectual methods, I venture still to think the old-fashioned Multiplication Table, which must be learned sooner or later, is very good discipline, and the sooner it is learnt the better. ”

“ But a moment's attention to what agriculture involves will settle the question. Agriculture is the art of producing human food from a limited extent of land, in the greatest abundance and in the shortest space of time consistent with a profit to the producer. The production of food, in some form, is as old as the human race; in savage life it is obtained by hunting ”

“ Poetry and criticism are by no means the universal concern of the world, but only the affair of idle men who write in their closets and of idle men who read there All the advantages, I can think of, accruing from a genius for poetry, are the agreeable power of self-amusement when a man is idle or alone, the privilege of being admitted into the best company, and the freedom of saying as many careless things as other people, without being so severely remarked on. ”

“ It is needless, however, here to speak of the training of a female teacher, which is only a continuation of nursery discipline, though often most valuable to young boys; nor to discuss the question in what cases it is desirable that the farmer's son should be educated by the teacher of the village school; suffice it to say that happy are those boys whose parents are wise enough to think more, during the early days of youthful simplicity, of the qualifications of the teacher, than of their own dignity. ”

“ Does the farmer require a special agricultural education?
He is to live by agriculture; must he not learn the art by which he is to live? We might safely answer on general grounds, "All arts are best learnt by practice; and unless there is some special reason why farming should be taught to schoolboys, this art will follow the rule of others, and be learned by apprenticeship after school." ”

“ But those unlettered money-makers prove my case; for it is clearly to the use of their natural faculties, and not to flourishing ciphering-books and the 'Tutor's Assistant,' nor to technical rules of any kind, except those which they may have made for themselves, that they owe the marvellous power of mental arithmetic which some of these expert dealers possess, without being able to give an account of how the ready-reckoner in their brain is constructed.
It is just this free, instinctive mental power which it is the aim of all sound arithmetical and mathematical training to evoke. ”

“ I more than doubt the value of such chemistry as can be learned at school being of any value to the farmer as a practical guide in his business. The reason is, that the properties of the constituent parts of matter are so complicated that they cannot be presented in their practical application with the same simplicity as mechanical laws; they are not, therefore, so suitable a means of education. ”