The wrench in Newman's solution: What about the Toms?

The wrench in Newman’s solution: What about the Toms?

The best example of the potential problem I proposed at the end of my last post on Newman’s “Idea of a University” has to be Tom in George Eliot’s “Mill on the Floss”, who has neither the intelligence nor the will for study of “Knowledge”:
“It is doubtless almost incredible to instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging strictly to ‘the masses’ who are now understood to have the monopoly on mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth: yet so it was with Tom”(Eliot, 148).
“Tom had actually come to the dim understanding of the fact that there had actually been people on earth who where so fortunate as to know Latin without learning it through the medium of Eton Grammar”(Eliot, 159).
And once Philip arrives, we see that there might be two levels of comprehension attainable to students:
“Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters, and Philip at the other end of the room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence that excited Maggie’s curiosity: he did not look as if he where learning lessons.”(Eliot, 187).
Here we see the harsh reality that face education—all students are not created equal, and while the Philips of the world may aspire to Newman’s intellectual ‘fastidiousness’, to his “delicacy” or “daintiness”, the Toms cannot (Newman, 219).
What Mary Anne Evans also shows us, through the sensibilities and intellectual abilities of Maggie is that, it is not just how we study, but who we are that affects our ability to gain a sense of morality from the study of ‘Knowledge’. Both Maggie and Tom are from the same family, yet they cannot achieve the same intellectual abilities.
So in the end, although Newman’s “Idea of a University” may provide a solution to the death of God and the proliferation of scientism to a select few, it is not a solution for everyone. It may prevent the Moral degeneration of student’s like Philip, but student’s like Tom will struggle and fail in the attempts to study Knowledge for its own sake. They will naturally be drawn to the applied science—to those things that are practical and that will allow them to gain “wealth or power or honour or the conveniences and comforts of life”, and while Newman claims he does not profess to know what the worth of Knowledge is in relation to these things, even he would admit that they are the very things that those incapable of “Knowledge” will naturally seek out. If the Toms of the world are not able to acquire the “learning for learning’s sake” that will fortify their morality in the wake of the death of God, then how can they avoid ethical degeneration?

How do we educate the Toms?