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Thomas Arnold
by
As a writer and speaker he had made his presence felt at various college commencements and clergymen’s meetings. He had challenged the brutal, indifferent, lazy and so-called disciplinary methods of teaching.
And so far as we know, he is the first man in England to declare that the teacher should be the foster-parent of the child, and that all successful teaching must be born of love.
The well-upholstered conservatives twiddled their thumbs, coughed, and asked: “How about the doctrine of total depravity? Do you mean to say that the child should not be disciplined? What does Solomon say about the use of the rod? Does the Bible say that the child is good by nature?”
But Thomas Arnold could not explain all he knew. Moreover, he did not wish to fight the Church–he believed in the Church–to him it was a divine institution. But there were methods and practises in the Church that he would have liked to forget.
“My sympathies go out to inferiority,” he said. The weakling often needed encouragement, not discipline. The bad boy must be won, not suppressed.
In one of these conferences of clergymen, Arnold said:
“I once chided a pupil, a little, pale, stupid boy–undersized and seemingly half-sick–for not being able to recite his very simple lesson. He looked up at me and said with a touch of spirit: ‘Sir, why do you get angry with me? Do you not know I am doing the best I can?'”
One of the clergymen present asked Arnold how he punished the boy for his impudence.
And Arnold replied: “I did not punish him–he had properly punished me. I begged his pardon.”
The idea of a teacher begging the pardon of a pupil was a brand-new thing.
Several clergymen present laughed–one scowled–two sneezed. But a Bishop, shortly after this, urged the name of Thomas Arnold as master of Rugby, and added to his recommendation this line: “If elected to the office he will change the methods of schoolteaching in every public school in England.”
The ayes had it, and Arnold was called to Rugby. The salary was so-so, the pupils between two and three hundred in number–many were home on sick-leave–the Sixth Form was in charge.
The genius of Arnold was made manifest, almost as soon as he went to Rugby, by the way in which he managed the boys who bullied the whole school, and what is worse, did it legally.
Fagging was official.
The Sixth Form was composed of thirty boys who stood at the top, and these boys ran the school. They were boys who, by reason of their size, strength, aggressiveness and mental ability, got the markings that gave them this autocratic power. They were now immune from authority–they were free. In a year they would gravitate to the University.
We can hardly understand now how a bully could get markings through his bullying propensities; but a rudimentary survival of the idea may yet be seen in big football-players, who are given good marks, and very gentle mental massage in class. If the same scholars were small and skinny, they would certainly be plucked.
The faculty found freedom in shifting responsibility for discipline to the Sixth Form.
Read the diary of Arnold, and you will be amazed on seeing how he fought against taking from the Sixth Form the right to bodily chastise any scholar in the school that the king of the Sixth Form declared deserved it.
If a teacher thought a pupil needed punishment, he turned the luckless one over to the Sixth Form. Can we now conceive of a system where the duty of certain scholars was to whip other scholars? Not only to whip them, but to beat them into insensibility if they fought back?
Such was schoolteaching in the public schools of England in Eighteen Hundred Thirty.
Against this brutality there was now a growing sentiment–a piping voice bidding the tide to stay!
But now that Arnold was in charge of Rugby, he got the ill-will of his directors by declaring that he did not intend to curtail the powers of the Sixth Form–he proposed to civilize it. To try out the new master, the Sixth Form, proud in their prowess, sent him word that if he interfered with them in any way, they would first “bust up the school,” and then resign in a body. Moreover, they gave it out that if any pupil complained to the master concerning the Sixth Form, the one so complaining would be taken out by night and drowned in the classic Avon.