High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  The moral well-being of boys – which had so obsessed Dr Arnold – was important still. In an Arnoldian phrase, the Commissioners accepted the practice of some boys exerting discipline over their fellows, but argued that ‘this authority should not be that of mere physical strength, which is tyranny, nor that of mere personal influence, which may be of an inferior kind, but should belong to boys fitted by age, character and position to take the highest place in the school, that it should be attended by an acknowledged responsibility, and controlled by established rules.’148 The Commission conceded examples of boys abusing their authority, but these were rare: and would remain so provided masters did not simply hand over discipline to the boys, but remained interested and watchful of how it was imposed. It felt the monitor system had helped ‘create and keep alive a high and sound tone of feeling and opinion, has promoted independence and manliness of character, and has rendered possible that combination of ample liberty with order and discipline which is among the best characteristics of our great English schools’; which is what Dr Arnold sought to achieve when making praepostors.149

  Moral problems resulted from older, stupid boys being kept down in classes full of younger ones because of their inability to keep up with lessons higher up the school. ‘This admixture of older and backward boys with younger and more forward ones is a fruitful source of evil,’ the Commission observed.150 However, Rugby was singled out by the commissioners for its exemplary ‘moral tone’: ‘A general silence is studiously kept at the moment of private prayer; profane or obscene language is so far disapproved that a Sixth Form boy would, in a very bad case, report it to the Head Master. Smoking is generally condemned as affectation; drinking, as bravado.’151

  While aspects of fagging were unfortunate – restricting the fag’s opportunities to play games, or making him do things that, in the Commission’s view, a servant should be hired for – there was no element of ‘tyranny’ in it, and it was popular with the boys.152 W. S. Meyrick, removed from Westminster by his father in 1862 after two years in which he had been little more than a domestic servant and had been frequently, and arbitrarily, punished, took a different view. A favourite pastime for older boys was to make a younger one place one leg on a sink while, standing on the other, he was kicked as often as the older boy chose.153 According to Meyrick’s evidence Westminster in the early 1860s was a den of savagery, not just because of the frequent kickings, but also because of the habit of some boys to cut other boys’ hands with a paper knife.

  It was felt relations between masters and boys were more ‘friendly’ than in the past. ‘The wholesome personal influence which is within the reach of a powerful mind and kindly disposition, and which indeed any man of sense and character may possess over boys in whom he heartily interests himself and whom he accustoms to regard him as a friend without annoying him by importunity or inquisitiveness and without trying to impress his own idiosyncrasy on his pupils, is probably better understood than formerly, and is far more frequently exerted.’

  It helped that masters no longer thrashed their charges so often as in the old days. ‘Flogging, which twenty or thirty years ago was resorted to as a matter of course for the most trifling offences, is now in general used sparingly, and applied only to serious ones.’ Moberly said that though flogging was far less frequent than when he was a boy, he still doled out ‘from 10 to 20 floggings in a year, perhaps in some years a few more’, but did that in public, to encourage the others.154 At St Paul’s, nobody was flogged at all; and at Westminster, where the boys appeared to have taken responsibility for institutional barbarism, hardly any. At Harrow the head boy could cane a serious offender in front of the whole school – a ceremony known as a ‘public whopping’.155 At Charterhouse the headmaster, Richard Elwyn, was quite birch-happy, a boy on the Foundation there saying that he flogged boys probably two or three times a week: but it was not thought a severe punishment, and nobody dreaded it.156

  There are, however, well-documented cases of sadists in charge of lesser schools, notably Thomas Hopley, who beat a fifteen-year-old boy to death at his private school in Eastbourne in 1860 using an inch-thick stick with a brass casing on the end, and a skipping rope. After Hopley and his wife tried to cover up the crime and were exposed, he received four years for manslaughter at Lewes assizes: which sent a message that moderation in this particular hobby might be advisable. He had only escaped a charge of murder because, as the boy’s schoolmaster, he had been in loco parentis, exercising what he considered to be reasonable chastisement. Hopley’s lack of contrition or repentance during and after his conviction brought him abundant hate-mail. The public’s attitude to children was changing profoundly, even despite Hopley’s having obtained the advance permission of the boy’s father for the beating he gave him, which had been designed to stop the boy (who, it turned out, was suffering from water on the brain) from being ‘obstinate’.157

  In the higher class of private school, according to Clarendon, ‘more attention is paid to religious teaching . . . and more reliance is placed on the sense of duty.’ At Winchester boys were supervised saying their prayers; elsewhere there were Bible study classes and prizes for distinction in religious knowledge. This, again, was exactly what Arnold had intended, and the Commission saluted him: ‘The principle of governing boys mainly through their own sense of what is right and honourable is undoubtedly the only true principle; but it requires much watchfulness, and a firm, temperate and judicious administration, to keep up the tone and standard of opinion, which are very liable to fluctuate, and the decline of which speedily turns a good school into a bad one . . . it has been eminently successful, and . . . greatly improved during the last 30 or 40 years, partly by causes of a general kind, partly by the personal influence and exertions of Dr Arnold and other great schoolmasters.’158 The report quoted eminent university men saying how much the moral character of their undergraduates had risen in the preceding years, to confirm the point.

  Clarendon urged reform of governing bodies, to make them more accountable and efficient. As well as setting fees and holidays, and having special regard to the welfare of scholars paid for by the foundation, they should have the power to hire and fire a headmaster, to ensure adequate sanitary arrangements, to ensure attendance at divine service, but also to oversee introduction of new branches of study. There were to be rigorous examinations, and boys who could not keep up should be asked to leave. However, the findings were in some respects quite conservative: below the governors, headmasters would retain enormous power over staff, boys and curriculum, and the Classics would remain dominant, even though more maths and science were desirable. Heads were, though, to make annual reports to the governors, which were to be printed.

  The commissioners found that, compared with their own schooldays, ‘petty tyranny and thoughtless cruelty’ had gone. ‘The boys are better lodged and cared for, and more attention is paid to their health and comfort.’159 The aim had to be to ensure schools equipped pupils for a fast-changing world in which a country’s prosperity was led not just by manufacturers, but by highly educated men in the professions. Moreover, ‘these schools have been the chief nurseries of our statesmen; in them, and in schools modelled after them, men of all the various classes that make up English society, destined for every profession and career, have been brought up on a footing of social equality . . . they have had perhaps the largest share in moulding the character of an English gentleman.’

  Clarendon broke the stranglehold of Classics on public-school education. In 1865 a select committee of the House of Lords discussed science teaching. It asked Huxley what should and should not be taught, and how; how it should be examined; and whether it should be made compulsory.160 Huxley was especially keen on physics and human physiology, but only to teach so much as could be taught thoroughly. And, although a liberal and therefore distrustful of the State, he felt it would be an act of ‘wisdom and justice’ to force schools to teach science. No such compulsion occurred: but following Rugby, Har
row and the City of London School, Winchester started in the early 1870s. Eton stood out, but in 1879 Huxley was appointed to its governing body. Moves to teach science had, despite massive resistance from masters, begun before then, but Huxley’s arrival hastened and completed the process, with new laboratories being built, and old ones re-equipped. He also proselytised for science teaching in the universities, and with similar success: he failed, however, in a campaign to have Greek abolished as a requirement for those wishing to embark upon honours courses at Cambridge. Those studying the expanding range of scientific disciplines would need a small command of the tongue until 1919.

  There were recommendations for each school. Even Rugby, which had tried so hard to pursue perfection, received sixty-seven recommendations, many to do with governance, finance and the award of scholarships. When the report was received by Parliament in May 1864 there was dismay that prejudice about the state of the schools had been proved right. MPs seized on the limitations of the curriculum, and the uninspiring and counterproductive way in which the Classics were taught. One of the most damning statements was quoted by Grant Duff: ‘We have been unable to resist the conclusion that these schools, in very different degrees, are too indulgent to idleness, or struggle ineffectually with it, and that they consequently send out a large proportion of men with idle habits and empty and uncultivated minds.’161 This was the cadre from which the leaders of a fast-growing nation, and its empire, would be drawn. Grant Duff also said that the headmasters of seven of the nine schools – the honourable exceptions were Rugby, whose teaching was richly praised, and Shrewsbury – were so concerned by the ‘inferior article’ that was their average boy that they refused to allow the Commission to interview any of them.162 Eton came in for particular criticism: notably for how the Provost, Hawtrey, obstructed Goodford, his very experienced headmaster and Balston’s predecessor; and for the way in which assistant masters were never consulted on anything. Eton was not, however, the worst offender.

  The barbarities of some of the schools caused particular outrage: notably the kicking of boys at Westminster, and other revelations about that establishment, ‘reflect the greatest disgrace upon all those who have had any share in its management for some time back’.163 The Archbishop of Dublin, who as the former Dean of Westminster had some responsibility for the school’s governance, was explicitly criticised; and Grant Duff challenged Dean Stanley, his successor, saying that as the biographer of Dr Arnold he could not possibly allow such ‘infamies’ to continue. It used evidence from the headmaster, Dr Scott, to adduce that the state of scholarship in the school was ‘wretchedly, and indeed ludicrously, low’.

  Gladstone conceded that the Classics were forced on too many who could not profit by them; but he hoped they would be available, as the core of the curriculum, to those who could. He also made a case – stronger than that made by the report – for the teaching of Italian and German as well as of French, not for utilitarian purposes, but as one who would always ‘value cultivation and literature for their own sakes’.164 While agreeing there was room for improvement, he also referred to Clarendon’s criticism of parents who took no trouble to encourage habits of learning and culture at home. He quoted the report exactly: ‘Several of the masters whom we have examined have dwelt in strong terms on the ill-prepared and ignorant state in which boys are very frequently sent to school . . . it is clear that there are many boys whose education can hardly be said to have begun till they enter, at the age of twelve or thirteen, or even later, a school containing several hundreds, where there can be comparatively little of that individual teaching which a very backward boy requires.’165

  Gladstone had his own critique of the decline of a society whose wealth and reach were, paradoxically, expanding:

  When we say that the fault lies with the parents, what does this mean? It means that we are living in an age in a great degree pampered in luxury, in which self-indulgence pervades more and more largely the habits of an ever-increasing class of society, the rapid extension of which we may see indicated by the continual addition, not only of large streets, but of whole quarters, in themselves great towns, to this metropolis; and a necessary consequence of that self-indulgence is a growing indisposition to the severe discipline which study and education invariably require . . . in one sense, in our attempts to improve the public schools, we are fighting against the age. The wealthier we become, the more difficult does it grow to apply to our children, or to realise to ourselves, the necessity of a severe self-discipline. I say this not to extenuate the mischief, but to show that the mischief is profound.166

  It was precisely because of factors outside the schools’ control – but to which they would have to adapt if they wished to survive – that Gladstone warned the Commons that there would ‘be no violent or precipitate legislation upon the subject’. He advised expansion of the curriculum, saying that there were ‘eight or nine’ branches of learning that ought to be included in it. Religion was first, and Classics second, of these: ‘then come mathematics, natural science, English composition, history, geography, and the alternative of drawing or music.’167 This was in line with what Clarendon had recommended; but Gladstone recognised that it would not be easy to fit all this in, not least because of the new importance of games: schools had moved into the era of muscular Christianity.

  The following year Gladstone asked himself what education meant, and what was required of it: ‘What is the true relation between professional education, which aims at excellence in the exercise of a particular calling, and general education, which aims at the highest excellence of the mental powers and aptitudes? What classes would partake of the one or the other, or how in each class their relative spheres would be adjusted, are questions wholly behind the present purpose . . . There is also such a thing as general training, which must be kept alive as a portion at least of the apparatus of civilisation, and which has a purpose and a province of its own.’168 He asked whether classical studies, which had always been central to achieving ‘the divine government of the world’, were now enough.

  In 1864 Northcote, who had been a commissioner, said the great schools had struggled to move with the times because of the constraints placed upon them by their founders, who had established small grammar schools. Such people could never have envisaged an industrialised world of shrinking distances and growing populations. Northcote hoped these schools would have ‘an important bearing on the formation of the national character’, saying they should be ‘schools for the moral, physical and intellectual training of boys between the important years of twelve and eighteen, and which should make of those boys young men – men in every sense of the word.’169 This was the complement to Gladstone’s idea – and indeed Matthew Arnold’s idea – of the ‘cultivated’ mind: the practical idea that the powerhouse of an empire required a cult of manliness among its leaders if it were to survive.

  Clarendon himself amplified the core findings in the Lords a few days later. He proposed a thirty-seven-hour week in the schools: twenty to be devoted to lessons of an hour each, but with ten additional hours for preparation in the Classics, two in modern languages and five in composition. He had been exasperated by some of the attitudes uncovered – ‘though a knowledge of the French language was admitted to be requisite for an English gentleman, yet the authorities at Eton obstinately refused to make it any part of the education of the school’.170 Yet he was most concerned about resistance to teaching natural sciences, something the Germans were particularly assiduous in doing.

  He said that ‘we believe that its value, as a means of opening the mind and disciplining the faculties, is recognised by all those who have taken the trouble to acquire it, whether men of business or of leisure. It quickens and cultivates directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid generalisation, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it familiarises
them with a kind of reasoning which interests them, and which they can promptly comprehend.’171 While expressing his ‘sincere respect for the opinions of the eminent schoolmasters who differ from us in this matter’, he emphasised that a ‘regular course of study’ of science was ‘desirable’: and he added that the committee had preferred the views of eminent scientists, such as the Astronomer Royal, on this subject to those evinced by the pedagogues. The absence of enthusiasm for science was widespread, despite the exciting example of Darwin and others. Sir Benjamin Brodie, President of the Royal Society, had written to Palmerston on 25 January 1861 to say that his council failed to spend all the £1,000 granted to the Society for ‘the promotion of scientific investigation’ in 1859, leaving them with a surplus, ‘in addition to which they have just received the sum of £1,000 granted in 1860. Under these circumstances the Council feel that there will be no occasion for them to avail themselves of the liberality of Parliament during the present year.’172

  Clarendon presented the Public Schools Bill in the Lords on 30 May 1864. It mainly regulated the appointment of governing bodies, believing such reform would help direct the right sort of changes in the schools. At the second reading on 7 June Lord de Ros, an old boy of Westminster, a general in the Army and the Premier Baron of England, said fagging ‘was one of the most useful trials to which boys were exposed’. He added that ‘in early days he had the honour of frequently cleaning the shoes of the most rev Prelate at the head of the Bishops’ Bench [the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley], and he had never found himself the worse for it. The most rev Prelate treated him with the kindness and good nature which his Grace had ever since displayed, and had never felt degraded by fagging for him in this way.’173 De Ros did, though, have a radical element, admitting that it would be ‘far better’ to substitute French or German for further training in Greek iambics.