The New York herald., 1876-01-24
Preparatory Schools for University
Life.

In land where education is so universally
priced, and where, when thorough, it SO
surely opens the door to position and influ-
ence, it is remarkable that even now, in our
hundredth year, there is no preparatory
school of national reputation. When the boy
gets to be twelve or thirteen, and his father,
always intending that his son shall have the
best opportunities, gives few minutes from
engrossing business to settling where to send
him to fit for college or the university, he
usually finds the easiest solution in taking
the school nearest home or that of his own
religious creed. Beyond these he is utterly
at sea. He has heard of the two Exeters and
the Boston Latin School, and the Hopkins
School at New Haven, and one at Prince
ton, and O few others; but none of them
have much of hold on him, not enough,
at any rate, to cause any preference, and,
turning to the boy, he often, for lack of bet
ter reason, lets his inclination settle it.
Almost any intelligent American could prob
ably to-day name three of the most famous
English schools easier than he could those
of his own land. He knows of some faithful
man, here or there, doing his duty by his
pupil as bravely and devotedly and well as
if the nation was looking on and deeply
interested, as it really is, in the re-
suit But usually, from lack of assist
ants and means and a name he is forced to
do it imperfectly and to send his charge up
to the examination but partially fitted at
best, and none better than he knowing the
weak places But the average teacher of
boys between twelve and eighteen, instead of
being one who has chosen teaching for lifes
work and has his heart and soul in it and
means to be worthy of his work, too often
has his mind entirely elsewhere, is looking
forward, maybe, to a professional life, and
uses the teaching merely as makeshift
until livelihood can be had in
other ways So the precious years, perhaps
the most precious ones in life, those
in which character and abilities 80 largely
develop, and which have so much to do with
the lifes work and welfare, are intrusted,
not, as in ancient days, to Gamaliel or
Socrates, or his pupil Plato but to one un-
qualified for his work or uninterested in it,
or BOTH
If near each great city there were first class
preparatory schools, such as those of Eton
and Harrow and Rugby, or if those
now existing and really deserving ma
tional prominence could receive it, we,
too, would, ere long, have here and
there our DR.. Arnolds, who would do as
much for the moral life blood Of our
people as Tom Browns master did for
England. A man of this stamp, one
who, the roommate of Wendell Phillips at
Harvard, became usher in the Boston Latin
School in 1888 at twenty-one, died but few
days ago, its head master for twenty five years,
and of whom one writer well says:-"Iiis
history has been simply the history of that
school tor nearly half century; in that has
been his life, and he has had no other of
extensive and exact scholarship, o thorough
disciplinarian, man of pure life and gener-
Gus aims, devoted son and brother" Years
ago, in crisis which justly stirred his in
most soul, he wrote to on old pupil that he
had never set himself SO much to make great
scholars and men prominent in public life,
nor had he cared greatly for these things but
that he had aimed to make them ''honest and
brave, haters of shams and Of sneaks, lynx
eyed TO see the right and prompt to strike in
its cause" America suffered loss when
! Francis Gardner died.