hop of Westminster

Longmans, Green and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York
Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras

Fourth Impression
1914

Nihil Obstat:
F. THOS. BERGH, O.S.B.

Imprimatur:
FRANOISOUS CARD. BOURNE
ABCHIEPOS WESIMONAST,

die 1 Januarii, 1912.

PREFACE

We have had many treatises on education in recent years; many
regulations have been issued by Government Departments; enormous sums
of money are contributed annually from private and public sources for
the improvement and development of education. Are the results in any
degree proportioned to all these repeated and accumulated efforts? It
would not be easy to find one, with practical experience of education,
ready to give an unhesitatingly affirmative answer. And the
explanation of the disappointing result obtained is very largely to be
found in the neglect of the training of the will and character, which
is the foundation of all true education. The programmes of Government,
the grants made if certain conditions are fulfilled, the recognition
accorded to a school if it conforms to a certain type, these things
may have raised the standard of teaching, and forced attention to
subjects of learning which were neglected; they have done little to
promote education in the real sense of the term. Nay, more than this,
the insistence on certain types of instruction which they have
compelled has in too many cases paralysed the efforts of teachers who
in their hearts were striving after a better way.

The effect on some of our Catholic schools of the newer methods has
not been free from harm. Compelled by force of circumstances, parental
or financial, to throw themselves into the current of modern
educational effort, they have at the same time been obliged to abandon
the quieter traditional ways which, while making less display, left a
deeper impress on the character of their pupils. Others have had the
courage to cling closely to hallowed methods built up on the wisdom
and experience of the past, and have united with them all that was not
contradictory in recent educational requirements. They may, thereby,
have seemed to some waiting in sympathy with the present, and
attaching too great value to the past. The test of time will probably
show that they have given to both past and present an equal share in
their consideration.

It will certainly be of singular advantage to those who are engaged in
the education of C