EDUCATION IN PREPARATORY SCHOOLS 11

be of much greater benefit to the boys, in the face of
this demand from the parent we cannot blame them for
not being able to carry their opinions into practice.
Seeing that parents generally take very little, if any,
interest in the educational progress of their boys at the
preparatory schools, the energies and capital of the head
master are both diverted from their proper channels.
The result is that these schools are inefficiently staffed
from an educational point of view ; assistant masters are
chosen for their social and athletic attainments rather
than for any qualifications they may possess as teachers ;
the staffs are inadequately paid, and function more as
superior nurses than as schoolmasters with unlimited
opportunities for the development of mind and character
in the pupils.
There is not the slightest doubt in the writer's mind,
that if an average boy of 10 years of age were sent to a
grant-earning county secondary school, for example, he
would make as much progress in two years as he would
do in four years in the normal preparatory school of this
country. Nine out of every ten public schoolmasters
would confirm this statement.
This means the loss of two years at the most vital stage
of a boy’s career. The cumulative consequences to the
nation can scarcely be imagined, and, in order that Great
Britain may continue to hold its proud position amongst
the nations of the world in the future, the question of the
conduct of preparatory schools will have to be tackled,
and tackled very drastically.

Unfortunately, however, the direct loss of two years is
not the most serious defect in preparatory school education:
 far more serious is the charge that these schools
stultify the mind, with the consequent production of intellectual
 apathy.
Just as preparatory schoolmasters are absolved to a