Welsh Journals

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arising from two other colleges and teachers. Under present conditions in Wales not only is the teacher likely to be in a minority of two to one. when he wishes his preferred text-book chosen by the Uni- versity," but he is in a minority of three to one, if he wishes any peculiarities in his teaching recognised at the time of the examination. If the three colleges were in one centre, the teaching could be inter- changeable and subdivided according to idiosyn- crasy the student would gain by the varied presenta- tion of different sides of his subject, as does an Oxford or Cambridge student from his round of lectures not confined to his college walls. By all means, let us all migrate to Llandrindod if we need a single centre of Welsh culture, we may find it in an air salubrious and not subject to the varying gales of commerce, religion, politics, and local jealousies. But where is the University of Scotland or of England, or even of gallant little Belgium ? Surely the very claim of Wales to separate recognition on national grounds implies as a premise the recognition by Wales of the claims of separate, very far separate, local spheres of life within it to recognition as self-governed units. The problems of Northern, Central, and Southern Wales are not one problem. We cannot follow our leaders to Llandrindod, nor to Shrewsbury. If then, personality in the teacher is desirable, it cannot be effective under a federal scheme of curriculum and examination. He finds himself bound to aim his teaching towards an external, artificial end, to attempt to drive his pupils to a standard with which he has little or no sympathy, an examination standard-a soulless thing, a pitiless thing, like a granite obelisk at the bend of a race- course and happy he that rounds it by the narrowest margin And this intellectual compromise imposed upon the teacher reacts with even worse result upon the student. After all, if the teacher was deservedly appointed to a University Senate, he is a researcher, and can save his own soul from the grind-stone, at least in the summer months. But the pupil has not discovered how to work for himself indeed, he arrives expecting instruction as from a pulpit, down to the last detail of his quota of effort. He regards the University as a continuation school, which is to give him the practical advantages, not of an outlook on life, not of a critical insight founded on a blending of true knowledge with self-confession of ignorance, not even of the inspiring sense of having won to the esteem of intellectual men and to fellowship with the spirit of science or of letters breathing out of the past ages and filling the sails of the new-no, but of a pass B.A. degree (Wales). It is a commercial transaction the Professor is the master, he is the man. There are possibilities for ca-canny but the whole of the material is to be provided, and even the bare tools (the skill to take notes, the power to listen and attend, regularity, honesty of purpose), are not always felt to be essential in the worker. The master may or may not impose them by his patience, or by his much-trammelled personality. But the easiest way to impose them is to accept the unenlightened outlook of the student. and to aim the whole business towards the attainment of that B.A. Wales," by hook or by crook. Con- stant examination-practice, cramming of detail likely to be set (and who so likely to know what that is as the Welsh student, whose acquaintance with the back papers is often much more thorough than his understanding of the elements of his subject?), rigid exclusion of all "culture" or art or ideas," or, foulest fiends of all doubts as to the certainty of a dogmatic view,once make it clear that the college exists for the student as he sees himself, and not for the raising of the standard of intellectual culture in the homes of the next generation, and, as a commercial concern, it may be safe, with a minimum of friction between teachers and taught. There are, it goes without saying, glorious excep- tions among the students and in exposing the lower point of view we are intending an exposure of the system which breeds it in the schools and in the homes of Wales. For if parents will not show sympathy with the culture of the mind, if those in a position to influence the moral and mental attitude of such parents do not encourage and instil such sympathy, if the schools must submit to an iron- bound system or perish, and the shining exceptions, not few. among their masters and mistresses are trammelled with chains yet more galling than those that thwart the Professor, what hope has this country of obtaining a fair and open field for the intellectual activities of its sons and daughters, of setting up an ideal and not rigid standard of enlightened taste and knowledge, to which the phrase Welsh culture may be deservedly applied, and which may wake the admiration of the sister states of our federal Empire ? Such an ideal standard of culture is not to be obtained by the shackling of the individual, but by the blending of many points of view and a power of sympathy with them all, which arises from the dis- covery of the manysidedness, the infinity, of know- ledge. The people of Wales, if they could but grasp their destiny, would now be working heart and soul, not for a more strongly centralised University, not for what Parliamentarians call "democratisa-