Читать книгу The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster онлайн

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Preferment to degrees may be, and indeed ought to be, a more powerful check on insufficiency, because by this means the whole country is made either a lamentable spoil to bold ignorance, or a favourable soil for sober knowledge. When a scholar is allowed by authority of the University to profess capacity in a certain specialty for which he bears the title, and is sent into the world by the help of people who have acted under unworthy influences in disregard of merit, what must our country think when she hears the boast of the University title sound in her ears, and fails to find the benefit of University learning to serve her in her need? She will not blame the ignorant graduate, who is only naturally trying to do the best for himself, but she will very greatly blame the Universities for having deceived her and betrayed her trust. For in granting a degree the University is virtually saying, “Before God and my country, I know this man, not by perfunctory knowledge, but by thorough examination, to be well able to perform in the Commonwealth the duties of the profession to which his degree belongs, and the country may rest upon my credit in security for his sufficiency.” What if the University knew beforehand that he neither was such an one, nor was ever likely to prove such? Let the earnest professors of true religion in the universities at this day consult their consciences and remedy the defect for their own credit and the good of their country. A teacher may be pardoned, for seeking thus earnestly to have true worth recognised, considering that thereby would come not only satisfaction to himself, but advantage to his pupils and to the country at large. Can he be anything but grieved to see the results for which he has laboured with infinite care and pains set at naught by bad management at a later stage? It seems to be reasonable for anyone who is given the charge of numbers to concern himself not only with what comes under his own immediate regulation, but with the means of securing public protection and encouragement for his pupils after they pass out of his care.