APPENDIX.
Note to p. 4.
The distinction between the general and the special education of the middle classes was most forcibly stated by Dr. Arnold at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill, in a letter on commercial schools, from which the following passages are extracted:—
On General and Special Education.
"But I confess that this is not the point upon which I feel much anxiety, I have little doubt that boys will be sufficiently taught all that they require for their particular calling; and scientific knowledge is so generally valued, and confers a power so immediately felt, that I think its diffusion may safely be reckoned on. … [But] though such knowledge be a very good education, as far as a man's trade or livelihood is concerned, yet, in a political sense, and as a qualification for the exercise of political power, it is no education at all. The distinction requires to be stated more fully.
"Every man, from the highest to the lowest, has two businesses: the one his own particular profession or calling, be it what it will, whether that of soldier, seaman, farmer, lawyer, mechanic, labourer, &c.; the other his general calling, which he has in common with all his neighbours, namely, the calling of a citizen and a man. The education which fits him for the first of these two businesses is called professional, that which fits him for the second is called liberal. But because every man must do this second business, whether he does it well or ill, so people are accustomed to think that it is learnt more easily.
"A man who has learnt it indifferently seems, notwithstanding, to get through life with tolerable comfort; he may be thought not to be very wise or very agreeable, yet he manages to get married, and to bring up a family, and to mix in society with his friends and his neighbours. Whereas, a man who has learnt his other business indifferently, I mean his particular trade or calling, is in some danger of starving outright. People will not employ an indifferent workman when good ones are to be had in plenty; and therefore, if he has learnt his particular business badly, it is likely that he will not be able to practise it at all.
"This it is that, while ignorance of a man's special business is instantly detected, ignorance of his great business as a man and a citizen is scarcely noticed, because there are so many who share in it. Thus we see every one ready to give an opinion about politics, or about religion, or about morals, because it is said these are every man's business. And so they are, and if people would learn them as they do their own particular business all would do well; but never was the proverb more fulfilled which says that every man's business is no man's. It is worse indeed than if it were no man's; for now it is every man's business to meddle in, but no man's to learn. And this general ignorance does not make itself felt directly,—if it did, it were more likely to be remedied: but the process is long and roundabout; false notions are entertained and acted upon; prejudices and passions multiply; abuses become manifold; difficulty and distress at last press on the whole community; whilst the same ignorance which produced the mischief now helps to confirm it or to aggravate it, because it hinders them from seeing where the root of the whole evil lay, and sets them upon some vain attempt to correct the consequences, while they never think of curing, because they do not suspect, the cause."
