Our Public Schools: Earl of Oxford's View of Their Future The Earl of Oxford and Asquith, addressing the assembled parents and scholars at Mill Hill School, after the prize distribution in connexion with the Foundation Day} celebration, said that one of the greatest dangers to which public school education always had been expoved,-and against it always to be strenuously on its} guard, was the dominance of conven-notion which used to prevail that our famous schools where children of the well-to-do: classes were birched into a superficial acquaintance with two disused and useless classical languages! had not received any colour or countenance at Mill Hill, or in any fof the great public schools of England. At the same time one of; the great ties which united together successive generations of boys in any school that had passed: its hundredtts birthday, the ti tradition, was bound to promote a certain immobility, and even some-' times stagnation in the methods! both of teaching and learning.
There was no form of organized activity in which personality—in this case the personality of the Say teacher—counted for so much ast did in education. The great head: masters who from time to time had appeared upon the scene had trouble ed the educational school to some Purpose, both by their direct acity and by their example, and had prevented, for a time at any rate, the possibility of stay ation. The demon of routine ws ing about work and pla; though there could be nothing more important than the personal touch between the masters and each bay, he thought it was equally true that when they were dealing with boys in the mass in schools or even in larger groups, variety of method and subject was one of the secrets of vitality of work.
Public schools were in these days subject to new conditions which, if they were not very carefully' watched, would be found to hamper their work and utility. On the one hand the cost of education was rising, and on the other "large numbers of that class of parent from whom they used to receive their most valuable recruits in the shape! of schoolboys—that was the professional classes—were suffering shrinkage in their incomes. That} made it very diffeult, for they wanted to maintain, and if possible enlarge,, that particular clientele. How, mas It going to. be. done? Not, he hoped, by any appeal to the, taxpayer; that was the worst thing it would inevitably carry in its train ithe very thing they wanted to avoid—the entrance of Government control and supervision of the currieu-Ptah; and: management.
Fieo Olét Ringlish: Example They, must preserve their auto-flamy at all costa. There was only tone thing that he krew of that could: be done, and that was to revive: the era and activities of the "pious founder." He was the person whom they wanted' to extoll, and there was no reason why' ther should not. "It was @ commonplace to see in aM our most ancient foundations, that, one of the main objects of tHe founder, and for Which he made the most' carefal provision, was that children whove parents could not afford to pay for the education of their children should have provision made for them in the, shape of permanent endowment. That was the old English example. At present there was rething which had been more markable, and in some ways more to their credit, than the enormous amount of private muniflcenca [which had been devoted to the creation or enlargement of the higher form of educational facilities that existed in the United States Everyone could recall instance after instance in which American millenaries, having made great fortunes out of business, had. re-carded it as a daty to the commu nity which had helped them make their money to endow new univer sities or to rescue from poverty and inefleiency many of the great educational institutions of their country, had become almost a. practice among very wealthy men 2 America to leave. their mark behind them in some new develop ment of educational work. That example was one which we in this country might well follow, and. hoped it would become increasing! impressed on those who could d of their wealth which they ought to fulfil.
He saw no other means by which we could maintain our great public schools on the level to which they. had been raised in the past, In cone clusion,.tha Bad of Onford urged the boys to maintain" untarnished the grent traditions of their school, and when they went Shto the vari: ous fields of activity to which they. would be called never to forget there traditions or their obligations to sustain them,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.