Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

not a free agent, as the lawyers say; if a mysterious thing of some importance comes to my knowledge confidentially, am I to pour it forth to everybody? You would be the very last, I am quite sure, to tempt me to anything dishonourable."

I looked at her impressively, and felt certain that such an appeal must silence her. She thought a little while, and then looked at me; and some flicker of a smile, which I could not altogether help, set her off again, as if I were only talking humbug.

"You called me a tub just now; and this perfect and wonderful creature that lives in the clouds is superior to all the Angels, but even a star may look down into a tub, as they showed us the eclipse last summer. On the other hand the tub may look up at the star; but George, can it talk about the star? Come, that is a very sound argument now. You can't get out of that, do what you will. You are bound to tell me everything, darling George, by the force of your own reasoning."

No other relative but a brother could have held out against such coaxing ways. She came, and sat upon my knee, and touched me with a run-away glance (as a child does to a child, before any cares come between them), and then brought the hollow of her temple into mine, as if to say- -"how could I run away from you?" And then, with the freshness of her sweet hair falling round me (which brought into my mind at once our joyful romps together), she knew a great deal better than to visit me with sentimental lips, though they were quivering for what man cares to kiss his sister, except upon her forehead? But she, being up to all devices, found I had a button off; and in the very place

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXV.

where it should have been, which happened to be very near my heart, there she laid her fingers trembling, and began to reproach herself instead of me.

"None of that!" I said, with the powers of logic coming to my aid; although I defy any father, grandfather, or uncle to have so got out of it. "Everybody knows how good you are. Well, well, do anything you like with me."

"Now if it had only been somebody else, somebody who never can know everything about you, as your favourite sister does, would you have called her a humbug, George-to use one of your own sweet expressions? Or would you have said, 'Yes, you have a right to know, you ought to know everything about my affairs. I should be unworthy of the name of man, if I kept any secrets from you, my dear.' And then what a help you would have, as soon as ever

[ocr errors]

"As soon as ever I had told her

all about myself! How you do mix up things! But this curiosity of yours is useless. I am compelled to maintain strict silence, until certain important events have taken place. Until

[ocr errors]

'Why, it must be at least a Princess!" Grace exclaimed, jumping up, and clapping her hands, and then walking, as if she had a ten-yard train behind her; we must all be kept waiting, until the impending vacancy of the throne. occurs."

[ocr errors]

"Exactly so," I answered, for after that bit of impudence, and her look of contempt at the ceiling, she deserved to be driven to Bedlam by the goads of curiosity; "how clever of you! There is a throne in question, and one of the most ancient in the world. Well, I never should have thought you could hit the mark like that!"

"I won't ask another thing. I

would not hear it, if you told me. No, no, not for Joe!" Oh what would Tom Erricker have thought, if he had heard the dignified Grace thus indulging in slang? "I am not going to have my head chopped off, for prying into State secrets. Who is the Prime - minister? He was to have taken Elfrida into supper, the other night, but he didn't. Still I can apply to him, not to have my head chopped off. George don't attempt to tell me anything more. Self-preservation is Heaven's first law. But I don't see how this parish will be large enough for us. Ha! I see it now. How very stupid of me, that is what the Earl or Melladew is come for. Closeted is not that the right expression?closeted with his Royal Highness, Prince George Cranleigh, for some hours! You see that nothing

[blocks in formation]

"No hope, sweet child, of putting me into a passion. And if nothing escapes you, why should you ever ask a question?"

This was enough to floor even a girl of the highest abilities, for nearly half a second; and as they seldom give more than that time to their thoughts, a man may almost calculate upon the skedaddle of his sister, unless she has at him again within that period. Not so with his wife; she will stick to her guns, having bigger ones, and knowing how to work them. Grace skedaddled, as consistency required;

but with a popgun over her shoulder.

"Alas that we should have to watch my dear brother! He is so good and soft-they will be sure to take him in."

At this I was exceedingly annoyed. So much so, that if dignity and triumphant reason had allowed, I would even have called her back at once, and challenged her to explain her words; which (as I said before) is the last thing they can do. However, upon second thoughts I found it wiser to leave her to herself, which would be a miserable self; when reflection, which is a liquid operation with every true woman, should have set her straight again.

But, thanks be to the Lord, who has made us real men, and given us power to exert our brains, without pit-pat of the heart to distract them at every pulse! Although I was not in the calmest mood for thinking, because I had never had such a row with Grace before (and she was a darling soul, whenever she let her mind come afterwards), nevertheless my road was clear enough before me. "If I am to be watched," thought I, "and everything is to be put upon a business footing, the sooner I assert myself the better. I have talked rather

big perhaps, because she provoked me, and I am bound to have something to show for it. I will strike. a stroke at once. I will go and see my Princess."

THE REGISTRATION

THE defunct Education Bill called forth an expression of opinion from all sorts and conditions of men and women, from the educational expert as well as from the man in the street. The strongest search-light of discussion illuminated its every part. Meanwhile, the less attractive and apparently less controversial Bill for the Registration of Teachers that mod estly followed in the wake of the great measure was almost entirely disregarded. There is every likeli hood that the Registration Bill will, when it is reintroduced, receive scanty consideration in the House of Commons, and that it will become a veritable Act of Parliament before any one knows the contents of its clauses, or how it will affect the status of teachers. Yet, when discussions on education became last spring the order of the day, it was borne in on many a patient listener that the inefficient teacher is mainly responsible for the defects in our educational system. That proposition is thoroughly sound. Consequently, any measure that, like the Registration Bill, deals directly with what shall, and what shall not, form the necessary qualifications of teachers, demands most careful consideration on the part of the community at large.

The Registration Bill, in the form in which it was drawn last session, provides for the establishment of a Registration Council consisting of six persons appointed by the Queen, with the advice of her Privy Council, one person elected by each of the following bodies: the Hebdomadal Council of the University of Oxford, the Council of the Senate of the University of Cambridge, the

[blocks in formation]

Senates of the Universities of Durham, London, and Wales, and the Council of the Victoria University; two persons elected by the registered teachers engaged otherwise than in public elementary schools, two elected by the registered teachers employed in public elementary schools, and two elected by the registered teachers generally.

As the council will necessarily be elected before the formation of the register, no elections to the first council can be made by registered teachers. To meet that difficulty, it is proposed that one person shall be elected by each of the following bodies: the Conference of Head-Masters, the Incorporated Association of HeadMasters, the Association of HeadMistresses, the College of Preceptors, the Teachers' Guild of Great Britain and Ireland, and the National Union of Teachers.

The conditions of admission to the register are to be(1) A degree or certificate of general attainments which is granted by some university or other body recognised for that purpose by the council; and (2) A certificate or diploma of adequate knowledge of the theory and practice of education and of practical efficiency in teaching which is granted by some university or other body recognised for that purpose by the council.

In rare cases the council may, with the approval of the Education. Department, admit to the register a person who cannot produce the qualifications required. A brief record of qualifications and experience will be placed after the name of every teacher on the register.

The register is to include both secondary and elementary teachers. Our remarks apply mainly to secondary women teachers. It is of that body that our experience best qualifies us to speak.

In two minor details the bill needs amendment, which can be easily effected. It is satisfactory to find that women are qualified to be members of the council, but it would be desirable to insist that a fixed proportion of the eighteen members of the council should be

women.

Secondly, the list of educational institutions nominated to elect the first council makes no certain provision for the proper representa tion on the council of assistant secondary teachers, or of those engaged in private tuition.

The main principles of the bill are open to more serious criticism, and raise many controverted questions.

Some of the more advanced thinkers of the present day refuse to regard men and women as distinct classes of the community. Following the fashion, the framers of the Teachers' Registration Bill use the term teachers to include both men and women, and they take for granted that what is wise and expedient for the one sex is equally so for the other. To some relations of life such a mode of reasoning might well be applied; but it can easily be proved that the creation of a teachers' register which requires the qualifications of men and women teachers to be identical will seriously diminish the supply of efficient women teachers in this country.

The possession of a university degree or of a training certificate

is made the basis of admission to the register. This condition will now, and in the future, exclude a very large number of efficient women teachers from the register. A glance at the list of the members of the Assistant Mistresses' Association will show how very small among them is the proportion of women who have studied at the university, and by no means all of them have training certificates. In one of the largest and most efficient girls' schools in the kingdom, possessing a fine staff of competent teachers, one alone has a university degree, and she has only lately joined. The exclusion from, or even the appearance on, the register of the women teachers who lack a degree or a training certificate, with a note of qualifications differing from that attached to the names of teachers in possession of the academic title and certificate, will be regarded by the general public and by the teaching profession, if the register is to command full authority, as proof of inferiority and incompetence.

With regard to a university degree, what opportunity of acquiring a genuine academic training is open to the mass of women aspirants to the teaching profession? We have seen that the bill makes no distinction between the sexes. The women's degree or academic diploma, if it is to bear as much significance as in the case of men, ought to imply residence at Oxford or Cambridge, with the passing of the final schools examination in the one instance, and of the tripos examination in the other.1 By a general consensus of opinion other university distinctions are of a lower grade.

1 As a matter of fact, no woman studying at Oxford or Cambridge is at present eligible for a degree, but the passing of the examinations gives her equivalent

status.

All who have a knowledge of secondary women teachers in this country are aware that the class from which they are chiefly drawn cannot, as a rule, afford either the money or the time required for a university course. A girl who decides to enter the teaching profession does so, with very rare exceptions, from necessity, because the position of her parents or guardians makes it imperative for her to earn her living. That fact alone argues a want of means; and so long as scholarships at the women's colleges are few, and many of them of small value, it can only be the minority of intending teachers who will go to college. The daughters of men who can well afford to pay for their university education do not look forward to work as a necessity. Some few of them enter the teaching profession, either from a love of the work, or from a sense of duty, or from a desire of independence; but such women form, and always will form, a very small minority. Therefore, in considering the proportion of professional women teachers who have opportunity of enjoying a genuinely academic training, their case need not be taken into account. With men the matter stands on a totally a totally different footing. Every boy knows that sooner or later he will be required to provide for himself by his own work. That assumption causes parents, even when they are not exactly wellto-do, to make sacrifices for their sons that for various reasons they will not make for their daughters; and it is well known that a combination of public school and university scholarships will often be sufficient to support a young man during his college career. The proportion of male teachers

in secondary schools who have passed through the universities. is consequently very large.

If the possession of a university degree ensures beyond all controversy a greater efficiency in the woman teacher, it should be insisted on at all costs. But doubt as to the beneficial effect of academic life on women teachers is inevitable. Mr Matthew Arnold, in summing up the advantages of a university training to a man, said that it civilised him. From experience we can all testify to the truth of that statement. But it is by no means so certain that college life has the same salutary effect on women. The gain to women of spending three or four years of their lives entirely in their own society is questionable: there is much to be said against the advisability of women living together in large numbers. It is a very curious fact that in many cases a girl going to Oxford or Cambridge from an unrefined, uncultured home will bring away exactly what she took there, and will remain quite uninfluenced by all that should be best in college environment. We are not now alluding to her scholastic attainments; they are often, paradoxical as the statement may appear, the least important feature of a university career. We refer to the general tone and bearing of the university woman. And it is of the highest moment to keep in mind that in a teacher general tone and bearing is fully as important as scholarship. It does not therefore follow automatically that a university woman will make a better teacher - will prove of better tone and bearing-(though she may do so) than one who has not been to college. Consequently, it may be unwise to insist, without any reserve, on all our

« VorigeDoorgaan »