High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  Clarendon’s objectivity was assisted by his accomplishment – rare for a grandee of his generation – of not having attended a public school, having been privately tutored by a master at Christ’s Hospital before entering St John’s College, Cambridge, at sixteen. He intensely disapproved of the narrowness of the school curriculum and the exhaustive emphasis on Latin and Greek. His commissioners included an aesthete, a professor from Cambridge and one from Oxford, two other peers and an MP. Public opinion – recalled by M. E. Grant Duff, the Liberal MP for Elgin – was that the education at public schools was ‘extremely bad’ and ‘sadly inadequate’ to the requirements of the age.117

  The universities had begun to modernise in the 1850s, though progress was as slow as it would be for the schools. Prince Albert had been shocked by the limitations of the curriculum at Cambridge when he became chancellor in 1847, and had been enlisted by enlightened dons who sought to expand the subjects studied beyond mathematics and the Classics. William Whewell of Trinity, the professor of philosophy and the most powerful man in the university at the time, had told Albert that he wished study to include ‘some of the most valuable portions of modern science and literature’.118 Whewell and Charles Lyell, the geologist, drew up a paper describing Cambridge’s moribund state, which they sent to Albert. The main purpose of the university was to train men for the priesthood. Standards of tuition were low and clergymen held chairs in subjects they were completely unqualified to teach. The humanities were almost completely neglected. Albert compared what was happening at Cambridge with the wide range of learning at universities in his native Germany, and preached the importance and urgency of reform.

  Later in 1847 Albert commissioned research into the curriculum and found an examination system, apart from mathematics, based entirely on knowledge of the Classics and the Scriptures. He soon found Whewell trying to obstruct him, his enthusiasm for change being confined to reforms that could be implemented slowly – he suggested no new scientific theories should be taught for 100 years, so their accuracy could be judged. However, Albert found allies in Robert Phelps, the vice-chancellor, and a subsequent incumbent of the post, Henry Philpott. Philpott, aware the university seemed like a great, down-at-heel theological college, had suggested to Albert that it should start teaching natural sciences and history. A tripos, or degree course, would be established for the natural sciences, but also one for the moral sciences, to include history, law, moral philosophy and political economy. Whewell remained resistant, but Albert talked him round. At the end of 1848 the Senate of the University approved the reforms, as well as a new mathematical tripos, and Oxford soon had to modernise or fall behind.

  In the 1850s both universities were further regulated and reformed by Acts of Parliament: Oxford in 1854, Cambridge two years later. This compelled both to allow Nonconformists to matriculate and to admit them to degrees in subjects other than theology, but stopped short of allowing them fellowships or senior appointments, since only Anglicans could join a college foundation. A commission had looked into the workings of each university and had been received with almost uniform hostility at both: neither felt the way in which they regulated themselves was any of the government’s business, and both vice-chancellors refused to cooperate. Oxford had been heavily criticised for narrowness, despite having founded schools of natural science, law and history in 1850. The following year Cambridge instituted triposes in the natural and moral sciences.

  The conduct of these universities mattered because of the near-monopoly Oxford and Cambridge had on English higher education. Scotland had St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh of ancient foundation (between 1413 and 1583); Trinity College, Dublin had been founded in 1592. Wales had had the college at Lampeter since 1822. Despite the foundations earlier in the nineteenth century of universities in London and at Durham, the rest of England was slow to advance tertiary education, and the standards of teaching and research in England outside the two ancient establishments were hardly exemplary.

  The universities were shaking off restrictive practices that defeated the original objects of those foundations. Goldwin Smith, an Oxford don who became secretary of the Commission into his university, wrote in 1894 that ‘liberalism soon took the practical shape of an effort to reform and emancipate the University, to strike off the fetters of medieval statutes from it and from its Colleges, set it free from the predominance of ecclesiasticism, recall it to its proper work, and restore it to the nation.’119 Something similar would happen to the public and, later, the endowed grammar schools. Progressive dons, such as Jowett of Balliol, by then one of the key figures at Oxford, argued for the expansion of ‘intellectual aristocracy’. ‘It is of the greatest use’, he wrote, ‘to awaken in people’s minds a sense of the necessity of a liberal education for more than the numbers contained in Harrow, Winchester, Eton etc. The abused Grammar-school and Charity foundations supply abundant means.’120

  Clarendon spent May and June 1862 touring the schools, and started to take evidence that summer, a year after the publication of Newcastle. Clarendon had three principal considerations: the property and income of the foundations, their administration and management and, most significant, ‘the system and course of study pursued in them, to the religious and moral training of the boys, their discipline and general education’.121 As with Newcastle, questionnaires were sent to headmasters and assistant masters; and the commissioners visited each school to see for themselves. They also took evidence from governors, former pupils, and eminent scholars. They found great discrepancies in wealth: Eton’s endowment raised £20,000 a year, Harrow’s just £1,000. They found that good management led to better results: ‘The practice introduced by Dr Arnold at Rugby, of meeting all his assistants for consultation at frequent intervals – a practice which has been continued, with some interruptions, by his successors and is at present maintained by Dr Temple – appears to have had the happiest results.’122 Eton and Harrow had also adopted this collegiate method, and Clarendon found them to have benefited accordingly. The Commission however deplored schools, including Eton and Winchester, who drew their masters from a narrow slice of academia, either old boys or fellows of certain Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and excluding all others.

  What the report calls ‘a gentleman’s education’ had originally been confined to learning the classical languages.123 This in time broadened slightly to include ancient history and even geography, the latter presumably in order to give the boys an idea of where the sites of ancient civilisation were. They observed that time spent on other subjects that were not examined appeared wasted ‘unless attention is stimulated by the fear of punishment, or by some form of reward’.124 The Commission criticised the means of instilling the Classics, which concentrated on extensive reading, construing and grammar lessons, much repeated. What it called ‘the assiduous practice of repetition’ was ‘worse than useless’, because the boredom it created made it ‘slovenly’.125 Eton had broadened its classical curriculum from what one old boy, Sir John Coleridge, said had once been a diet of ‘Homer, Virgil and Horace; we never ceased doing Homer, Virgil and Horace’. It now did the Greek testament, the Odyssey, Aeschylus, Euripides, Theocritus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Virgil’s Georgics, Lucretius, Horace, Tacitus and Cicero.126

  However, progress was at hand: some schools were teaching the new-fangled subjects of arithmetic and mathematics, and even using the results of examinations in them to influence where a boy was placed in the school. And in all except Eton two hours a week was now set aside for learning modern languages: mainly French and German. At Eton such teaching was available, but only if a boy could be bothered: the master who taught French said that in such cases the headmaster ‘does not appear to like to interfere’.127 French had been compulsory at Harrow since 1851 and maths since 1837. Dr Edward Balston, the headmaster of Eton, said school existed to teach boys things they could not learn at home; and ‘there are some things which boys will learn of themselves or at home, and French is one’,
he said.128 Questioned on this, Balston said he thought that if a boy wanted to learn French he should do so before he came to Eton, where the school would do what it could to ‘keep it up’, as it did with English. However, when questioned about that, he said the teaching of English was not satisfactory either.

  The Classics, however, which Balston thought ‘the basis of all education and mental training’ were ‘in themselves distasteful to boys’ and acquired only by ‘laborious perseverance’. At Winchester, by contrast, French was taught to the whole school, and attempts by boys to make life difficult for the Frenchman who taught it would result in their being reported to the headmaster, at which point their lives became difficult too.129 Charterhouse had gone even further, with some boys in the Sixth Form learning German; and it taught history until ‘the reign of George III’.130 Harrow had two resident Frenchmen, one of whom taught German. Lord Lyttelton asked Montagu Butler, the headmaster of Harrow, whether ‘a boy of 13 may know French fairly well’. Butler answered: ‘We have now one boy who speaks French better than English.’131

  The report quotes one ‘experienced and eminent Head Master’ as saying ‘I wish we could teach more history, but as to teaching it in set lessons I should not know how to do it.’132 It was a problem at certain of the poorer schools to attract the right teachers: the Commission found they were underpaid, a problem that could be rectified only by making the schools more prosperous. Rugby, whose numbers had risen to over 460 boys thanks to the momentum created by Arnold, could afford good masters, and by the time of Clarendon’s investigations was teaching both mathematics and modern languages to a high standard, and encouraging excellence by a system of prizes.

  With the exception of Charterhouse, which had a maximum of twenty boys in a form and minimum of nine, the nine schools had what would now be regarded as alarming pupil–teacher ratios. The smallest class at Rugby was twenty-four boys, the largest forty-two. Eton, though, was even worse, with forty-eight boys in the largest division and thirteen in the smallest. It was also the biggest school, with 806 boys against Charterhouse’s 116. Eton had, however, improved since the era of Dr Keate in the 1820s, when 200 boys were in a single division. The Commission also commended competition for prizes: but confirmed that they should be of high esteem rather than great in number. Most damning, though, was the evidence from the ancient universities that the standards of undergraduates from these schools were generally poor, and that many struggled in examinations whose calibre was not, they admitted, high. An Oxford examiner testified that of the forty-seven out of 168 candidates who had failed a university examination ‘43 failed so universally as to show that they were “utterly unfit to undergo any examination whatsoever”.’133 The conclusions the Commission drew were damning: ‘Of the time spent at school by the generality of boys, much is absolutely thrown away as regards intellectual progress, either from ineffective teaching, from the continued teaching of subjects in which they cannot advance, or from idleness, or from a combination of these causes.’134

  One witness said of Eton that ‘position and influence in the school, which are the things that a boy most desires, are gained chiefly, and almost exclusively, by excellence in the cricket-field or on the river . . . intellectual distinctions have little weight in this respect . . . a boy has no chance of becoming one of the leading boys in the school by work.’135 He was none other than Oscar Browning, then teaching Classics, and who would go on after being sacked from Eton for social nonconformity to become a great figure at Cambridge. If a boy went out of bounds and saw a master, his duty was to run away: to not do so was deemed ‘disrespectful’. And although drinking in public houses was banned, there were two – the Christopher and Tap – where they did go, and nobody thought to interfere.136 As for religious observance, boys regarded attendance at chapel on weekday afternoons as ‘little more than a roll call’.137 Browning also played down any idea that Eton was a nursery of intellectuals. He said that he had only known two boys ‘of refined minds, and very gentlemanly manners, and fond of literature.’138

  Clarendon asked him whether he thought the chapel services ‘satisfactory’. ‘The services do not produce a satisfactory effect on the boys,’ he replied.139 Clarendon then asked: ‘And are they not productive of any reverential feeling?’ Browning answered: ‘I should say not; the boys’ object is certainly to get out as soon as they can.’ Clarendon later quizzed him on the teaching of modern languages, of which Browning was in favour: but he said it ought to be done by the classical masters. ‘Do you think that a French master cannot keep order and discipline in his class?’ Clarendon asked him. ‘Experience goes to prove that he cannot,’ Browning replied. ‘That is to say, that such a Frenchman has yet to be found,’ Clarendon suggested.140 Browning said that the present French master was an Englishman: but he was regarded as inferior to his colleagues because he did not teach Classics. There had been a French assistant who, Browning added, ‘was a distinguished man, but he did not understand English boys.’

  Goodford, the Provost of Eton, admitted he would always prefer an Old Etonian when appointing staff if there were rival candidates of similar quality. He maintained he would ‘fearlessly’ appoint a non-Etonian if Etonian candidates were ‘inferior’, ‘but still I say I should like first of all a good Eton man.’141 Many of these Eton men were, like Browning, straight from university – the sister foundation of King’s College, Cambridge, which supplied (as Sidgwick had pointedly observed in his Macmillan’s article) a disproportionate number of the school’s masters. ‘Do you think it a point of importance in a large school like Eton to have for junior assistant classical masters men who have had experience in school teaching?’ Clarendon asked Goodford. ‘No,’ the Provost replied. He later told Clarendon that it was ‘most desirable’, in the interests of maintaining the spirit of the school, that the masters should be ‘all Eton men’.142

  In his evidence, Balston had to admit he was not master in his own house. He could do as he pleased in matters affecting the Oppidans – the 750 boys whose parents paid for their education – but had to seek the permission of the Provost to do anything that might affect the seventy boys on the Foundation. Clarendon quizzed him about how differently he ran his school from how Arnold had run Rugby. ‘If I may be allowed to express an opinion,’ Balston responded, testily, ‘I should say that Dr Arnold was not an every-day man; and it does not follow that what he achieved is attainable by all other Head Masters.’143 Balston, a divine, then twisted the knife. ‘I should also be disposed to question the results of his preaching, eminently successful though it is meant to have been. I think the religious character formed by it was not so genuine as it should have been . . . what I have noticed in Eton men has been an absence of all mannerism, if I may so call it, a freedom from ostentation in the conscientious discharge of what they consider their duty as Christian men.’

  Since roughly a third of boys from these schools went to Oxford or Cambridge, the quality of those universities was not improved: and a significant proportion went into the Army, where a preliminary course of education, particularly in mathematics, was often required before they could be of any use. Natural sciences were almost non-existent, and the Commission argued that every boy should have a grounding in them. Where an attempt was made to teach them, such as at Winchester, the methods were ‘worthless’.144 Some schools outside the nine, notably Cheltenham College, City of London School and King’s College School, London, had all experimented in this way, and were held up as models to the older, grander establishments. It was possible, the Commission argued, to give a good education that was not saturated in the Classics.

  The Reverend Dr George Moberly, the headmaster of Winchester, who had been in post since 1835 and would, after his retirement, become Bishop of Salisbury, was asked: ‘Are the physical sciences not of value as a discipline of the mind?’ He replied: ‘I hardly know what their value is. I do think it is very desirable that young people and old people should know these things. I think they ar
e matters of accomplishment and knowledge which every body should have something of. But as a matter of education and training of the mind, which is our particular duty as instructors, I do not feel the value of them.’145 Another witness told the Commission that ‘the existence of the Modern Department at Cheltenham gives far greater perfection to the system of education, and far better scope for the various ability and knowledge of our boys than could be possible if only the classical system prevailed. I feel sure that it gives a true education, and not mere instruction in various subjects.’146 However, the Commission was proceeding with caution, and decided that the existence of ‘modern departments’ in schools was not of sufficiently long-standing, and its results insufficiently substantiated, to recommend they be established in the nine schools.

  Mens sana in corpore sano was an abiding consideration. The Commission liked not just physical training and games, but also the establishment of cadet corps. These were flourishing at five of the schools – Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury – and one had been tried, but had failed, at Westminster. They were volunteer bodies and it was agreed it was best they remain so. However, the Commission observed that the rifle was now the ‘national weapon’ in the way the longbow had once been, and teaching boys how to use it might be no bad thing.147 The Commission found the sanitary arrangements at the schools generally acceptable: though there were already moves to relocate some London schools to the country, where they could buy far more land, expand and have extensive playing fields. Charterhouse and Merchant Taylors’ took this step; St Paul’s left the shadow of the cathedral to go to Hammersmith, which rapidly urbanised. Westminster talked about going, but stayed, and does to this day.