And as "modern
subjects," history, geography, modern languages and literatures,
gradually thrust their way into the curriculum, each was subjected as
far as possible to the same mummification. There is a theory still
widely held among teachers that the value of a subject or of a method
of instruction depends upon the amount of drudgery which it involves
or the degree of repulsion which it excites. The theory rests upon a
confusion between the ideas of discipline and punishment, which itself
is probably due to the strongly Judaistic tone of our so-called
Christianity. At any rate, far too many schoolmasters suffer from
conscientious scruples about allowing the spirits of freedom,
initiative, curiosity, enjoyment, to blow through their class-rooms.
There has been, always to some extent, but with gathering force in
recent years, a natural revolt against this mixture of puritanism,
scholasticism, and dilettantism, which made the intellectual side of
public school education such a failure except for the few who were
born with the spoon of scholarship in their mouths. The irruption of
that turbulent rascal, natural science, has perhaps had most to do
with humanising our humanistic studies. It was a great step when boys
who could not make verses were allowed to make if it was but a smell;
and even breaking a test-tube once in a while is more educative than
breaking the gender-rules every day of the week.
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