Letters to the Editor, DAY VERSUS BOARDING SCHOOLS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Snt,—It appears that, in general, both boarding school and day-school fall so far short of ideal education that there is not a great deal to choose between them. In fact, it amounts almost to this : that where the home influence is good, a day- school is to be advocated, while where home conditions are anti-educative--a lamentably frequent case—the boarding- school offers at least a better chance for the child concerned.
But may we not hope for the day when the whole system of schools will be changed—when boys and girls mixing together in and among life will be learning how to live that life to the highest good of the community?. Surely such good can never be gained by herding together in one building hundreds of boys or girls, for the greater part of each of their most impressionable years ?
Here, shut out from the world in which they should be preparing to live greatly—legislated for from morning till night, bound hand and foot by convention and tradition, they are gradually and systematically moulded into walking machines, and finally ejected as " finished."
And with what result ? All too frequently a disastrous one : a machine cannot run without the power behind it. Where are the mistresses ?—the masters ?—where the time- tables ? At twelve o'clock no French ? Past 3.30 and no bell rung for Prep ? . . . click, something has gone wrong with the machine. Is it any wonder that boredom follows, coupled with that peculiar sense of weary discontent, which saps all initiative and renders altruistic impulses lifeless ? • No, let us hope that the time may yet come when boys and girls from about twelve years of age will instead be taken together in small groups, for very short terms, to mix with life as they will find it—to learn how to live by practice rather than by precept, free, to a very large extent, to map out their own day's work—the power behind being, in the main, only the incentive to produce desire for labour.
Briefly, let there be small travelling schools, where Form I. will be perhaps found in beautiful surroundings, simply, housed, while Form II. may be a period of •town life ; Form III. a test of poverty (not, of course, in its extreme form), and so on to Form VI., probably held on the Continent, and for a longer period.
The possibilities are endless, and, I think, Sir, practicable.— I am, Sir, &c.,
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