What will it do for the boy who goes through it? The education given in the Preparatory School is completely dominated by the scholarship and entrance examinations at the Great Public Schools. The lines on which those examinations are conducted are the lines on which the Preparatory Schoolmaster must educate his pupils. He has no choice in the matter. The title "Preparatory" seals his doom. His business is, not to give his pupils the education that is best suited to their capacities and their years, but to prepare them for admission to a more advanced school. The more scholarships he can win at Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, and the rest, the higher will be the repute of his school; and as the competition between school and school is fierce and unintermittent, he cannot afford to throw away a single chance. In other words, he cannot afford to make a single serious experiment. The education given in the Great Public Schools is similarly dominated by the scholarship and entrance examinations held by the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. The lines on which those examinations are conducted are in the main the lines on which the boys must be educated. It is possible that the Great Public Schools are freer to go their own ways than are the Preparatory Schools; but if they are, they make but little use of their freedom. So far as the rank and file of the boys are concerned, it may be doubted if the word "educative" is applicable, in any sense or degree, to the daily round of their work. Of the six great expansive instincts which are struggling to evolve themselves in every healthy child, not one can be said to find a congenial soil or a stimulating atmosphere in the ordinary classroom either of the Preparatory or of the Public School. Four of the six--the _dramatic_, the _artistic_, the _musical_, and the _constructive_--are entirely or almost entirely neglected. Music and Handwork[27] are "extras" (a fatally significant word); the teaching of Drawing is, as a rule, quite perfunctory; and Acting is not a recognised part of the school curriculum. The truth is that marks are not given for these "subjects"--for in the eyes of the schoolmaster they are all "subjects"--in any entrance or scholarship examination, and that therefore it does not _pay_ to teach them. There remain two instincts,--the _communicative_ and the _inquisitive_. The study of the "Humanities"--History and Literature, ancient and modern--ought to train the former; and the study of Science ought to train the latter. But in the case of the average boy, the study of the Humanities resolves itself, in the main, into a prolonged and unsuccessful tussle with the difficulties of the Greek and Latin languages, the mastering of which is regarded as an end in itself instead of as the gateway to the wonder-worlds of ancient life and thought; and the study of Science is, as a rule, a pure farce.[28] Not one, then, of the expansive instincts of the average boy receives