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 any training during the nine or ten years of his school life; and as, in his struggle for the "Pass" degree of his University, he will follow the lines on which he has been accustomed to work in both his schools, he will go out into the world at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, the victim of a course of education which has lasted for fourteen years and cost thousands of pounds, and which has done nothing whatever to foster his mental or spiritual growth.