BOARD SCHOOL BOYS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1911, Page 15

BOARD SCHOOL BOYS.

CLASS FEELING IN LONDON. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 24th March. •The present " policy of the London County Council in the direction of bringing higher education within the reach of the poorer boys has received a blow. Hitherto County Council scholarships have been available for those boys who showed sufficient merit, whereby they have been enabled to go to the middle-class schools in London. Now these schools are being closed to the London County Council scholars, the latest school to decide to receive no mote "board, school boye" being University College School at Hampstead. The objection to the board school boy comes from both the parents and their sons. Mainly, however, from the former, whp do not think the presence of ninety- eight County Council scholars in a school of several hundred© ia fair to their boys, for whom they are paying thirty guineas a year. LEVELLING' DOWN. In some cases this is very likely prejudice. But not in all. One of these objecting parents discussed the question with perfect frankness. "I have no class prejudice at all," he said. "I think it would be an excellent thing if all children could be educated in the same schools, as they are in the United States. I have seen, th« good results of it there. But in England conditions are different. Tlje poorer classes speak another language Their personal habits are not as ours are.' In my boy's form there are cix of these London County Council scholars. One is, a perfect little gentleman. His parents, I believe, lost all their money in some bank smash, but kept their refinement. Another is the son of very Mspectable. people, whe* keep a small shop. No harm m him. But £he other four come from homes where' there is evidently no effort made to' keep up any standard of speech or manners. And the worst of it is that; instead of ■ their being levelled up, the. tendency is for them to level the others down. . 1 "I don't want my boy to pick up the language of the, streets, l want him to associate with other boys of more rather than less refinement. If I could afford it I would have sent him to Eton simply to learn how boys from the best home* behavo. That is very useful in after life. , You reply that the scholars ' from the. London County Council ought to have their tone raised by my boy and others of his stamp? Yes; I quite agree. They ought to. But, somehow, thej; don't. THE OFFICIAL DEFENCE. Dr. J. B. Benson, the distinguished lawyer and educationist, who has long been connected with University College School says that that school has given the'6ch'olar6hip system. of the L.C.C. v fair and sympathetic triaL "The primary cause of the failure," he oaye, 'is the scale upon which the experiment has been tried. The London County Council has not picked its scholars with sufficient discrimination. It has radically changed the environment of a much larger number of boys than were fit to profit by the change, and it has not ensured the conditions essential to success. It has, in fact, sought to endow poverty apart from capacity, and, under the guise of a maintenance grant, to assist the family of a scholar instead of equipping the scholar himself with food, clothing, and means- of taking part in the life of the school, without which even a capable boy cannot take full advantage of his new and unaccustomed surroundings. , But for this bribe even poverty itself might not have exhausted the available funds. The very plenitude of .these funds has tended to divert the system from its true objective — namely, the selection and equipment of .the, physically', morally, and intellectually fit, to the mere multiplication of subjects — I had almost, said victims of an experiment often bound to fail for want of initial aptitude and the means oi taking up a new life. It is small wonder, that- in these circumstances London County Council scholars in a public school should have found themselves to •some extent -a class apai't m the school, but not of it."