There must be compensation, too, for the fact that teaching children entails a contact on the part of the teacher with immature minds. In this respect teaching is not life; it is not mixing with and contending against equals. To make up for this deficiency the teacher must have enough money and leisure to live fully in his spare time. He must take part in social life; he must be able to travel in his holidays; he must have enough leisure to read widely outside the subjects which he teaches; in fine, he must be a man first and a teacher afterwards. These things are no extravagance; they are a necessity, for the benefits they bring will be communicated a hundred fold to the children. Only by permitting our teachers to acquire tolerance, a sane outlook, a wide knowledge of life, can we hope to foster these graces in those whom they teach. In order to give out, the teacher must first take in: at present we arrange for the latter process without supplying him with the means for the former; the result is that his mind, through lack of the time for its cultivation, stagnates; he becomes dead, and his power vanishes. For the teacher, too, is a living and evolving creature, not, as we are sometimes apt to think, a reservoir containing a certain amount of knowledge to be decanted by a simple process analogous to the turning on of a tap.

These are not the dreams of an impracticable idealism; they are dictates of ordinary common-sense. The old order has changed; the minds of the millions are awake and crying for food. If those to whom the bread of true learning has been given continue to refuse to share that bread with their younger brothers, if they persist in an attitude of artificial exclusiveness, civilisation must suffer greatly. Unless the leaven works from above, the State will be disrupted from below. Bolshevism, Communism and the doctrine of the sharp sword will flourish and spread, for there will be none to give them the lie.

Let us turn from gloomy presaging, ard for a moment indulge in dreams of what education could and will become. The true educator is the priest, for there is really no such thing as secular education There is no sadder evidence of the failure of the official Churches to keep ahead of the intellectual life of the age than that they have forfeited their prerogative of education. The time when the teaching profession will be a branch of the priesthood is, perhaps, far away, for before that can be there must come a religion of universal appeal and authoritative and wholly trusted priests; but it will come, and then, and then only, will the children receive an education worthy of the name. For the only

true education is that which fits him who receives it for the service of God.

We must not, however, in looking forward to a golden age, forget the dangers of the present. There is a difficulty which

State education must face: that of the responsibility of parents. At the present day the school is apt to take far too much of the weight from the parents' shoulders; there are cases, too, where parents who could perfectly well afford to educate their children themselves get not only teaching, but meals and season tickets, from the State. It may be objected that they pay for all these advantages in the rates, but paying a rate is an impersonal method of looking after the spiritual welfare of a child. Here, again, the remedy will probably be found when the attitude is changed, and education is really valued. The present generation of parents have their ideas fixed, but if their children can begin where they left off, a hundred years might produce an entirely different race.

Those who have had the advantage of a liberal education find it almost impossible to enter into the conditions of mind of the less fortunate classes. The background which the children of cultured parents take for granted, music, beauty, books and poetry-all this is a strange world to the newly awake. They are conscious of a need, but do not know how to satisfy it. They are hungry, but do not know where to find food, and so they fly to the picture palace and to the music hall; they browse on the sensational newspaper, any pasture where there is life and colour. It is the virtue of education to indicate those meadows of the mind where true joys are to be found, but those who attempt this work must realise that they are dealing with minds new-born and not adult. With such considerations before us, shall we continue to talk of effecting ' economies' in education? Shall we not rather sell all that we have so that we may educate the children?

'Ah,' the cry goes up, but there is no money in the country.' Money rolls down Piccadilly, it shops in Kensington High Street, it dines and attends the theatre as usual. There is always money for the things we really want; in the matter of education say rather that there is no desire. The greatness of nations is built, not upon their manufactures or their navies, but upon the justice and right thinking of their men and women. In the schools are sown the seeds of ruin and of fulfilment. For the State is an eternal tree, ever fructifying herself anew in her young branches; she is a mighty mother made young perpetually in her children. And shall we, who hold in our hands the keys of the future, deny to that mother her food, or withhold from the tree which shelters us the waters of life?

G. H. BONNER.

THE FRENCH DECREE OF MAY 3, 1923

M. BÉRARD, Minister of Public Instruction, has published in a book, entitled Pour la réforme classique (Colin, Paris), his speeches in the Chamber of Deputies upon his famous decree. Readers will be agreeably surprised if they expect to find the usual parliamentary verbiage. The Minister's speeches are full of grace and wit, and he meets his numerous interruptions with the most apt retorts, all delivered with an urbane command of temper. The book is also full of opinions and facts which will be equally useful to those of us who have sympathy with his aims. Those who wish to see the answer of M. Georges Leygues, defending his own reforms of 1902, will find them in La Vie Universitaire, June 1923 (13, Quai de Conti, Paris).1 He deals more in rhetoric than in cold argument.

In 1902 came about a radical reform in French education. M. Georges Leygues broke away from the traditional plan, and established in the secondary schools a choice between two courses : (A) the Classical Humanities, with two divisions, (1) Latin with Greek and (2) Latin without Greek; and (B) Modern, the Modern Languages, with a marked predominance of Natural Science. We need not trouble about the t me given to the various subjects; this outline is enough to give the significant points. Both these courses led to the baccalaureate, and both were regarded as equal. One diploma, for either, gave access to the same careers. Before that the modern course gave access only to the Faculty of Sciences, not to letters, nor to law, nor medicine, nor the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Thus after 1902 the arts degree no longer implied that the graduate had any knowledge of letters other than what he could get from a certain study of modern languages, and he might be a scientific man whose knowledge of letters was quite small. The modern section (B) was devised by acknowledgment for ends which are commercial, or at least practical. The preamble runs :

It is our duty, in the interests of the community, of the world of work, of the proletariat itself, to train an élite enlightened and liberal, an aristo

1 I have to thank M. Bérard and M. Crouzet, his technical adviser and chief of staff, for their courtesy in answering questions and the gift of documents; the Librarian of the Board of Education for the loan of documents; and M. Georges Roth, Prof. du Collège Chaptal, for information.

cracy of mind, which, rising above utilitarian realism, shall devote itself to disinterested research, to high speculation, and shall safeguard the permanent and superior interests of the country. It is our duty again to organise the army of labour, to give it a general staff and cadres. The University cannot be content to prepare its pupils for liberal careers, for the advanced schools and professional life; it must also prepare them for the economic life, for action.

Whatever may be thought of these aspirations-of which we shall have a word to say later-the crucial question is what actually happened; and we are told that everyone is dissatisfied by the results of twenty years' experience. There is a general complaint of encyclopædic cram, risky options followed by premature specialising, and a lowering of the standard of culture. M. Léon Bérard, the Minister, quotes in his speeches not only eminent men of learning, but men of science, and the collective opinion of various learned societies. The National Federation of Professeurs de Lycée, in 1921, voted by a large majority (1910 to 321) that the attempt at two parallel courses of culture should cease, and that the studies should be co-ordinated upon a base of compulsory Latin. This seems to have been their deliberate opinion before they were touched by politics or social prejudice, which complicated the question later; but in 1923 they broke up in confusion, not venturing to reaffirm their earlier opinion. Possibly the addition of Greek to M. Bérard's programme frightened them, but both politics and social prejudice had made their influence felt. The behaviour of the Conseil Supérieur was similar. Their recorded opinion, supported by nearly two-thirds, was that

The old classical education, based on the ancient languages, provided that it include a solid and intelligent study of science, is the means par excellence for obtaining the true general culture of the individuality; that it is consequently necessary, not only for the small handful of future humanists, but for all those who will have to think and act for themselves, to criticise, to comprehend, to innovate, to judge with almost geometrical exactitude; they wish, therefore, to give this same preliminary culture, literary and scientific at the same time, to all the best of our youth.

They agreed in desiring to have a uniform training in school, and to postpone until thereafter all separation between letters and science. Later, however, they modified this view. Various University associations offered criticisms similar to those quoted. The Comité d'Entente Universitaire, holding that 'a general

⚫ Departments of Enseignement Supérieur, above the secondary schools, with pupils from nineteen to twenty-three, such as Ecole Normale Supérieure, Ecole des Mines, Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Normale, Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures.

A technical council consisting of the high officials, directeurs de l'enseignement, and so forth, the Inspector-General of Studies, teachers elected by their peers in every speciality-classics, mathematics, history, modern languages, science.

training in the humanities is necessary to culture,' adds that the best subjects are those which do not make their aim immediate utility, and that for three years the school course should be the same and be based on Latin. M. Legras, speaking as an examiner of thirty years, declares that the plan of 1902 has all but given the coup de grâce to the teaching of modern languages,' the very study it was designed to support. The Report of the Conseil Académique de Paris1 for 1922 says that everywhere, except in three establishments (not named), the study of French is in a deplorable condition. Another critic says of the pupils:

Our great writers interest them no longer. It would be more pleasant to hide this unhappy truth, but it is the fact. . . . I have questioned young people of different professions in numbers sufficient to enable me to affirm that young men have never had an equal indifference to our literary past.

Nothing material is alleged in answer to these criticisms, which we may take therefore as well founded; indeed, one of the objectors in the parliamentary debates said: 'We are all agreed in rejecting B'; and the only explanation offered of the bad state of education, other than the failure of the 1902 plan, is the war. A certain number of people will be ready, of course, to defend any system, having been trained under it; but you will be mistaken,' says M. Bérard, to take as the expression of public will that which is only the consequence of the law which you have passed.' M. Bérard singled out as the key of the position the date at which a choice of courses is necessary. By the 1902 plan the pupil entered the lycée at ten to twelve years, and then and there he must make his choice between science and humanism. No small difficulty here to discern the mysterious signs by which a child may be predestined to a life of high thinking or to combat in the social and economic battle'! But at that age no child, or at least very few, can be fit to choose, nor can he usually know what is to be his vocation. M. Bérard makes happy play with this idea of a vocation presumée and the supposed aptitudes of a child of eleven. This premature choice, which must be taken like a leap in the dark, cannot be remedied later; nor indeed is it easy to discover aptitudes for a study which the pupil has never begun. The new plan is therefore devised as a well-balanced course, containing the elements of all important branches of knowledge, including both Latin and Greek, four years of Latin and two years and a half of Greek. The aim of secondary education is to form by the course of studies slow, prolonged and disinterested, young people who, whatever be the speciality which they will seek later, will be distinguished by the eminent faculty of interesting them

1 A council, chiefly administrative, for the Académie, consisting of the Recteur and Inspecteurs de l'Académie with elected representatives.