PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
among school-boys—but in the separation of boys of different ages into different schools.
"There should be at least three different classes of schools—the first for boys from nine to twelve; the second for boys from twelve to fifteen; the third for those above fifteen. And these schools should be in different localities.
"There ought to be a certain amount of supervision by the master at those times when there are special occasions for bullying, e. g., in the long winter evenings, and when the boys are congregated together in the bedrooms. Surely it cannot be an impossibility to keep order and protect the weak at such times. Whatever evils might arise from supervision, they could hardly be greater than those produced by a system which divides boys into despots and slaves.
"Ever yours, very truly,F. D."
The question of how to adapt English public-school education to nervous and sensitive boys (often the highest and noblest subjects which that education has to deal with) ought to be looked at from every point of view.[1] I therefore add a few extracts from the letter of an old friend and school-fellow, than whom no man in England is better able to speak on the subject:
"What's the use of sorting the boys by ages, unless you do so by strength; and who are often the real bullies?—the strong young dog of fourteen; while the victim may be one year or two years older. . . . I deny the fact about the bedrooms; there is trouble at times, and always will be; but so there is in nurseries—my little girl, who looks like an angel, was bullying the smallest twice to-day.
"Bullying must be fought with in other ways—by getting not only the Sixth to put it down, but the lower fellows to scorn it, and by eradicating- ↑ For those who believe with me in public-school education, the fact stated in the following extract from a note of Mr. G. de Bunsen will be hailed with pleasure, especially now that our alliance with Prussia (the most natural and healthy European alliance for Protestant England) is likely to be so much stronger and deeper than heretofore. Speaking of this book, he says: "The author is mistaken in saying that public schools, in the English sense, are peculiar to England. Schul Pforte (in the Prussian province of Saxony) is similar in antiquity and institution. I like his book all the more for having been there for five years."
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