Notes

Abstract

DURING the last week there has been a goodly talk about education, and Mr. Cross has come to the front in a most unexpected manner, while the modern English Cardinal has been acting as his foil. Cambridge, too, in the shape of Mr. James Stuart, has been active at Nottingham, and the world thinks that the University is active. The truth is, however, that the University is too poor to do anything, and that the Colleges are simply looking on while a private benefactor is providing both with those means of teaching which third-rate institutions on the Continent have possessed to a greater or less extent any time during the present century. Mr. Cross not only foreshadows compulsion, but he shows that we have now a Minister who knows the difference between Education and Instruction. “It is not mere book learning that I. am talking of. That is not the object of these schools. It is the school discipline, the training of the mind of the child, the teaching him how to teach himself, the self-control and the self-respect which he gets at school, which do more for him than all the book learning that you put into his head.” The Cardinal, on the other hand, defines “Secular Education” as “secular knowledge,” and then adds: “Education means the full possession and understanding and enjoyment of the inheritance of faith, which the child has by virtue of his regeneration in haptism.” It is clear that the Cardinal, if he means anything, confounds instruction with education as successfully as ninety-nine out of every hundred who talk on the subject confound education with instruction.