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the shallow end. The smallest, described as a plunge bath, is 16 feet long, 6 feet broad, and 5 feet deep, and it is interesting to learn that it serves its purpose, for in all these ten schools the average of non-swimmers is less than one per cent.

Twenty-one schools have the use of public baths, which presumably are heated, and at these schools the average of non-swimmers is eleven per cent.

Five schools have private swimming baths, which are not heated, and the average of non-swimmers is 5 per cent. Of the remaining seventy-two schools, several reach a very high standard in swimming; the large majority however assess their estimates of non-swimmers at figures varying between ten and eighty per cent., or else have omitted to hazard a conjecture at all. In four or five cases swimming baths are spoken of as recently constructed or unfinished; and from this we may infer that the value of them is being increasingly recognised.

Question 18.

Do you allow your boys to play golf, play fives, ride or cycle (i.) during the hours of ordinary games? (ii.) at other times?

Of the 121 contributors who have answered these questions 99 do not allow any of these recreations to interfere with the organised school games. 39 allow golf to be played at some time in the course of the day. 58 allow fives to be played at some time in the course of the day. 53 allow riding (usually for the purpose of lessons).

63 allow cycling, but 24 of these restrict cycling by limitations; in several schools boys are not allowed to cycle except in the company of a

master.

4333.

2A2

THE EMPLOYMENT OF LEISURE HOURS IN

BOYS' BOARDING SCHOOLS.

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS,

Introduction,

A glance at Schools in the Society of Friends.

Leisure Hours in one of these Schools: Spring, Summer, Autumn, the Christmas Exhibition, Extracts from Diaries.

Environment needful for the healthy growth of Leisure Hour pursuits.

Deductions from experience: effects of these pursuits on education, direct and indirect: spontaneity: loafing: fickleness.

Appendix Questions asked of correspondents. Scholars and Teachers.

Answers from old

THE EMPLOYMENT OF LEISURE HOURS IN BOYS' BOARDING SCHOOLS.*

The difficulties foreseen in meditating upon writing "HobbyHorsically" are only increased by the facts that this essay appears in a volume devoted to Preparatory Schools, whilst the school known most intimately to me takes boys from 12 to 18, that it assumes that the schools of the Society of Friends form a type, when every schoolboy knows that English Secondary Schools are unorganised and chaotic, and that the Friends' Schools stand, for better or for worse, somewhat apart from the main current of the educational stream of Great Britain and Ireland.

Most of the masters and boys in our schools are members of the Society of Friends, a Society so small that the master often knows something of the family before the boy comes to school and often retains a more or less remote intimacy with the family when schooldays are over: a Society whose boys spend a large number of quiet evenings at home before going to school and during the holidays, undisturbed by late hours, busy in their leisure, whether influenced by the traditions of the schools or by the practical workings of a sober-suited Quakerism.

The founder of the Society of Friends showed a wide view of education when he recommended the establishment of two boarding-schools, one for boys and one for girls, for the purpose of instructing them "in all things civil and useful in the creation." A century later, when the Friends founded Ackworth School, they followed Locke, probably unconsciously, in not placing learning on too high a pinnacle. Instruction in reading and writing was to be given and "some useful employment may be provided for the boys according as their age, strength, talents or condition may require. Learning and labour properly intermixed greatly assist the ends of both-a sound mind in a healthy body."

In 1829 the Yorkshire Friends founded a school in York for the education, religious, moral and literary, of the sons of Friends belonging to the middle classes. They were happy in their appointment of their first head-master, John Ford,

"Whose name, a ghost,

Streams like a cloud, manshaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still."

His watchword was influence rather than authority; he was Herbartian, though I never heard that he knew of the master's existence, in regarding character-building as his true work, and in providing many-sidedness of interest. At a time when inter

To my colleagues and numerous correspondents I owe warm thanks; without their efficient and courteous help this Essay could not have been written.

school games were out of the question in Friends' Schools he founded the first school Natural History Society, August 14th, 1834. Sixteen years later he founded the Essay Society in which boys read and discussed original essays. Both societies still live and flourish, though Ford would hardly recognise his grown child.* As the school increased in numbers and youthful enthusiasm spent itself, it was found that drones had crept into the hive: the active workers formed themselves into the Natural History Club, and the Essay Society was limited to the older boys.

A glance at leisure hours in each term followed by a glance at the Christmas Exhibition will show something of the boys' environment. We look into the school at the beginning of the Spring Term and find some boys and a master writing the Annual Report of the Natural History Society, an elaborate patchwork quilt made from the Sectional Reports of the Curators. Later, as the executive body on which both masters and boys are represented fills up the roll of Curators-Archæology, Astronomy, Botany, Conchology, Entomology, Geology, Meteorology, Microscopy, Zoology, Photography, Carpentry, Drawing—we ruminate,

Could a man be secure

That his life would endure
As of old for a thousand long years,
What arts might he know!
What acts might he do!

And all without hurry or care!

Then the whole school comes together in its capacity as Natural History Society under the presidency of the headmaster, for an "Exhortation Meeting," when the Curators lay bare the charms of their respective hobbies. Again the school assembles

* In his evidence given before the Schools Inquiry Commision, December 1865, Ford says:-"We have sought to make ample provision for the energies of the boys at times when they can neither be engaged in active play nor in school lessons, and, in order to effect that, we have an observatory furnished with a good equatorial, a transit instrument, and a good time-piece; this provision has been exceedingly valuable in occupying the elder scholars that were fond of mathematics so that all the boys in the upper class have the opportunity of familiarizing themselves with the use of those instruments; they are not compelled to do so, but some have more taste for it than others, and those who have, will soon make themselves very clever at it, and will take the right ascension and declination of a star, and be able to set the instrument, and find the star, in the centre of the glass. Q. Do you think under your system all the boys who have a natural capacity and turn for these subjects are sure to have an opportunity of developing it?-A. Certainly; and besides that we have a workshop. Q. What prizes do you give?-A. It is merely a society among the boys themselves. There is an association in the school which is called "The Natural History and Polytechnic Society" the income of which will be perhaps £7 or £8 a year, which is pretty much distributed in prizes. There is an annual show, gentlemen not belonging to the school are asked to judge, and prizes are awarded for botanical collections, collections of butterflies and beetles, collections of plants, collections of parts of plants illustrating botanical principles. There is a written examination on botany. Prizes have been established for these things. Q. Do the boys make these collections in their spare time?A. In their walks and in their spare time." Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. V., Part 2, pp. 287-288.

My subject is limited to Boys' Schools: the same system prevails in Friends' Girls' Schools.

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