And lastly there is the boy himself, whose utter loathing and horror of education as a whole has not blinded him to the fact that the cultivation of some branches thereof calls for considerably less effort than that of others, and who accordingly occupies the greater part of his weekly letter home with fervent requests to his parents to permit him to drop Classics and take up modern languages or science.
The united agitations of this incongruous band have called into existence the Modern Side--Delilah Number One. Now for Number Two.
Until a few years ago the State confined its ebullience in matters educational to the Board Schools. But with the growth of national education and class jealousy--the two seem to go hand-in-hand--the working classes of this country began to point out to the Government, not altogether unreasonably, that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. "Why," they inquired bitterly, "should _we_ be the only people educated? Must the poor _always_ be oppressed, while the rich go free? What about these public schools of yours--the seminaries of the bloated and pampered Aristocracy? You leave us alone for a bit, and give them a turn, or we may get nasty!" So a pliable Government, remembering that public-school masters are not represented in Parliament while the working-classes are, obeyed. They began by publicly announcing that in future all teachers must be trained to teach. To give effect to this decree, they declared their intention of immediately introducing a Bill to provide that after a certain date no Headmaster of any school, high or low, would be permitted to engage an assistant who had not earned a certificate at a training college and registered himself in a mysterious schedule called 'Column B,' paying a guinea for the privilege.
The prospective schoolmasters of the day--fourth-year men at Oxford and Cambridge, inexperienced in the ways of Government Departments--were deeply impressed. Most of them hurriedly borrowed a guinea and registered in Column B. They even went further. In the hope of forestalling the foolish virgins of their profession, they attended lectures and studied books which dealt with the science of education. They became _attachés_ at East End Board-Schools, where, under the supervision of a capable but plebeian Master of Method, they endeavoured to instruct classes of some sixty or seventy babbling six-year-olds in the elements of reading and writing, in order that hereafter they might be better able to elucidate Cicero and Thucydides to scholarship candidates at a public school.