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_The Social Problems Series_
EDITED BY
OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A., F.S.A.
THE CHILDREN
_The Social Problems Series_
THE CHILDREN
SOME EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS
BY
ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
AND EDINBURGH
1907
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION--THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION 1
II. THE MEANING AND PROCESS OF EDUCATION 13
III. THE END OF EDUCATION 22
IV. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE PROVISION
OF EDUCATION 31
V. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE COST OF
EDUCATION 46
VI. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE MEDICAL
EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN AND THE MEDICAL
INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS 54
VII. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE FEEDING OF
SCHOOL CHILDREN 66
VIII. THE ORGANISATION OF THE MEANS OF EDUCATION 77
IX. THE AIM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION 85
X. THE AIM OF THE INFANT SCHOOL 98
XI. THE AIM OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 107
XII. THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 118
XIII. THE AIM OF THE UNIVERSITY 126
XIV. CONCLUSION--THE PRESENT PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 131
THE CHILDREN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION
The problems as to the end or ends at which our educational agencies
should aim in the training and instruction of the children of the
nation, and of the right methods of attaining these ends once they have
been definitely and clearly recognised, are at the present day receiving
greater and greater attention not only from professed educationalists,
but also from statesmen and the public generally. For, in spite of all
that has been done during the past thirty years to increase the
facilities for education and to improve the means of instruction, there
is a deep-seated and widely spread feeling that, somehow or other,
matters educationally are not well with us, as a nation, and that in
this particular line of social development other countries have pushed
forward, whilst we have been content to lag behind in the educational
rear.
The faults in our present educational structure are many, and in some
cases obvious to all. In the first place, it is said, and with much
truth, that there is no systematic coherence between the different parts
of our educational machinery, and no thorough-going correlation between
the various aims which the separate parts of the system are intended to
realise. As Mr. De Montmorency has recently pointed out, we have always
had a national group of educational facilities, more or less efficient,
but we have never had, nor do we yet possess, a national system of
education so differentiated in its aims and so correlated as to its
parts as to form "an organic part of the life of the nation."[1] An
educational system should subserve and foster the life of the whole: it
should be so organised as to maintain a sufficient and efficient supply
of all the services which a nation requires at the hands of its adult
members. For it is only in so far as the educational system of any
country fulfils this end that it can be "organic," and can be entitled
to the claim of being called a national system.
This lack of coherence between the different parts of our educational
system and the want of any systematic plan or unity running through the
whole is due to many causes. As a nation, we are little inclined to
system-making, and as a consequence the problem of education as a whole
and in its total relation to the life and well-being of the State has
received but scant attention from politicians. Educational questions, in
this country, are rarely treated on their own merits and apart from
considerations of a party, political, or denominational character, and
hence the problems which have received attention in the past and evoke
discussion at the present are concerned with the nature of the
constitution, and limits of the power of the bodies to whom should be
entrusted the local control of the educational agencies of the country,
rather than with the problems as to the aims which we should seek to
realise through our educational organisation, and of the methods by
which these aims may be best realised. Hence, as a nation, we have
rarely considered for its own sake and as a whole the problem of the
education of the children. And until we have done so--until we have made
clear to ourselves the kind of future citizen which as a State we desire
to rear up--our educational agencies must manifest a like
indefiniteness, a like inconsistency, and a like want of connection as
do our educational aims and ideals.
Again, closely connected with this first-named defect in our educational
organisation, and in fact following from it as a logical consequence, is
our fatal method of developing this or that part of our educational
system and of leaving the other parts to develop, if at all, without any
central guidance or control, until at length we realise that the
neglected parts also require attention, and must somehow or other be
refitted into the whole. _E.g._, since 1870 there has been a great
advance in the extent and intent of elementary education in both England
and Scotland, but this progress has been of a one-sided nature, and
there has been no corresponding advance either in the perfecting of the
educational system as a whole, or in the co-ordination of the various
grades of education. In Scotland, since the passing into law of the
Education Bill of 1872, the means of elementary education have been
widely extended and the methods of teaching have been greatly improved,
but there has been no corresponding advance in the provision of the
means of higher education, and as a consequence, at the present day, we
find many districts without adequate provision for carrying on the
education of the youth of the country beyond the Primary School stage.
Secondary education has been provided in some centres by means of
endowments; in others through the extension of the term "elementary" so
as to include education of a more extended nature than was originally
intended to be covered by that term. In England until 1902, very much
the same conditions prevailed, but since then, mainly in order to remedy
the state of things created by the judgment in the Cockerton Case, the
control of primary, secondary, and technical education has been placed
in the hands of the County and Borough Councils, who are empowered "to
consider the educational needs of their area, and to take such steps as
seem to them desirable, after consultation with the Board of Education,
to supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary, and to
promote the general co-ordination of all forms of education." Tinder the
powers so granted much has been done throughout England during the past
few years to extend and make efficient the means of higher education; to
erect schools which shall provide training for the future services
required by the community and the State of the more highly gifted of its
members, and to co-ordinate the work of the various agencies entrusted
with the care and education of the children of the nation.
Through the failure of the Education Bills of 1904 and 1905 to pass into
law, Scotland still awaits the creation of local authorities charged
with the control and direction of all grades of education, and in this
respect her educational organisation is much more loosely compacted than
the system which now exists in England.
Further, in Scotland, on account of the absence of one controlling
authority, we often find in those districts in which the provision for
higher education is ample, imperfect co-ordination between the aims and
work, on the one hand, of the Primary School, and on the other, of
schools providing higher education. From this cause also it follows
that, unlike our German neighbours, we have made little progress in
determining the different functions which each particular type of Higher
School shall perform in the social organism, and have not assigned the
particular services which the State requires of each particular type of
Higher School. It is surely manifest that the service which the modern
industrial State looks for from its members is not the same in kind and
is much more complex in its nature than that which was required during
the mediæval period, and that if this service is to be efficiently
supplied, then there is need for Higher Schools varied in type and
having various aims.
This want of unity between the various parts of our educational system
manifests itself again in the indefiniteness of aim of many of our
Higher Schools, and in the lack of co-ordination between the Higher
School on the one hand, and institutions providing university and
advanced instruction on the other. Up till quite recently, the sole aim
of our Secondary Schools was to provide students for the Universities
and to supply the needs of the learned professions. But with the
economic development of the country, and as a consequence of the keen
international competition between nation and nation in the economic
sphere, there has arisen a demand for a higher education different in
kind from that provided by the older Universities, and a need for a type
of Secondary School different in aim and curriculum from that which
looks mainly to the provision of students intending to enter upon some
one or other of the so-called well recognised learned professions. It is
here, when compared and contrasted with the educational systems of some
of our Continental neighbours, that we find the weakest point in our own
system, and at the present time our most urgent need is for the
extension and better equipment of the central institutions of the
country which provide higher technical and commercial instruction.
This unsatisfactory condition of things is due in large measure, as we
have already pointed out, to our innate dislike as a nation of all
system-making, and to the distrust felt by many minds of any and every
form of State control of education. Hence, partly from these causes,
partly as a result of historical conditions, it has followed that
various authorities have in this country the guidance and control of
education, with the usual result of want of unity of aim, of lack of
correlation of means, and in some cases of overlapping and waste of the
means of higher education.
In the second place, while much has been done since the advent of
compulsory elementary education to better the means of education and to
increase the facilities for the higher instruction of the youth of the
country, there is a widespread belief that all the hopes held out by
the early advocates of universal compulsory education have not been
realised, and that our Primary Schools in large measure have failed to
turn out the type of citizen which a State such as ours requires for her
after-service.
Universal education has not proved a panacea for all the social evils of
the Commonwealth, and while it must be admitted that much good has
resulted from the adoption of universal and compulsory education, yet at
the same time certain evils have followed in its train.
Since the institution of universal education, it may be argued that the
children of the nation have received a better training in the use of the
more mechanical arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the
tendency has been to look upon the acquisition of these arts as _ends in
themselves_, rather than as mere instruments for the further extension
and development of knowledge and practice, and hence our Primary School
system, to a large extent, has failed to cultivate the imagination of
the child, and has also failed to train the reason and to develop
initiative on the part of the pupil. There has been more instruction, it
has been said, during the last thirty years, but less education; for the
process of education consists in the building up within the child's mind
of permanent and stable systems of ideas which shall hereafter function
in the attainment and realisation of the various ends of life. Now, our
school practice is still largely dominated by the old conception that
mere memory knowledge is all-important, and as a consequence much of the
so-called knowledge acquired during the school period is found valueless
in after life to realise any definite purpose, for it is only in so far
as the knowledge acquired has been systematised that it can afterwards
be turned to use in the furtherance of the aims of adult life.
From this it follows that, since much of the knowledge acquired during
the school period has no bearing on the real and practical needs of
life, the Primary School in many cases fails to create any permanent or
real interest in the works either of nature or of society.
But a much more serious charge is laid at times against our Primary
School system. It is contended that during the past thirty years it has
done little to raise the moral tone of the community, and it has done
still less to develop that sense of civic and national responsibility
without which the moral and social progress of a nation is impossible.
Our huge city schools are manufactories rather than educational
institutions--places where yearly a certain number of the youth of the
country are turned out able to some extent to make use of the mechanical
arts of reading and writing, and with a smattering of many branches of
knowledge, but with little or no training for the moral and civic
responsibilities of life. This is evident, it is urged, if we consider
how little the school does to counteract and to supplant the evil
influences of a bad home or social environment. What truth there may be
in these charges and what must be done to remedy this state of matters
will be discussed when we consider later the existing Elementary School
system. Here it is sufficient to point out that one of the causes at
work to-day tending to arouse a renewed interest in educational problems
is the feeling now beginning to find expression that the kind of
universal elementary education provided somehow or other fails, and has
failed, to produce all that was in the beginning expected of it--that it
has in the past been too much divorced from the real interests of life,
and that it must be remodelled if it is to fit the individual to perform
his duty to society.
A third fault often found with our existing school system is that in the
case of the majority of the children the process of education stops at
too early an age. The belief is slowly spreading that if we are to
educate thoroughly the children of the nation so as to fit them to
perform efficiently the after duties of life, something of a more
systematic character than has as yet been done is required, in order to
carry on and to extend the education of the child after the Elementary
school stage has been passed. For it is evident that during the Primary
School period all that can be expected in the case of the larger number
of children is that the school should lay a sound basis in the knowledge
of the elementary arts necessary for all social intercourse, and for the
realisation of the simpler needs of life. A beginning may be made,
during this period, in the formation and establishment of systems of
knowledge which have for their aim the realisation of the more complex
theoretical and practical interests of after life, but unless these are
furthered and extended in the years in which the boy is passing from
youth to manhood, then as a consequence much of what has been acquired
during the early period fails to be of use either to the individual or
to society.
Again, it is surely unwise to give no heed to the systematic education
of the majority of the children during the years when they are most
susceptible to moral and social influences, and to leave the moral and
social education of the youth during the adolescent period to the
unregulated and uncertain forces of society.
Lastly, in this connection it is economically wasteful for the nation to
spend largely in laying the mere foundations of knowledge, and then to
adopt the policy of non-interference, and to leave to the individual
parent the right of determining whether the foundation so laid shall be
further utilised or not.
A fourth criticism urged against our educational system is that in the
past we have paid too little attention to the technical education of
those destined in after life to become the leaders of industry and the
captains of commerce. Our Higher School system has been too
predominantly of one type--it has taken too narrow a view of the higher
services required by the State of its members, and our educational
system has not been so organised as to maintain and farther the economic
efficiency of the State. For it may be contended that the economic
efficiency of the individual and of the nation is fundamental in the
sense that without this, the attainment of the other goods of life can
not or can be only imperfectly realised, and it is obvious that
according to the measure in which the economic welfare of the individual
and of the State is secured, in like measure is secured the opportunity
for the development and realisation of the other aims of the individual
and of the nation.
Thus the present unrest as regards our educational affairs may be
largely traced to the four causes enumerated. We have begun to realise
that our educational system lacks definiteness of aim, and that its
various parts are badly co-ordinated; that, in short, we do not as yet
possess a national system of education which ministers to and subserves
the life of the State as a whole. We are further beginning to perceive
that the provision of the means of higher education is too important a
matter to be left to the care of the private individual, and that
education must be the concern of the whole body of the people. Hence it
has been said that on the creation of a national system of education,
fitted to meet the needs of the modern State, depends largely the future
of Britain as a nation.
Again, all that was hoped for as the result of universal compulsory
education has not been realised, and the feeling is growing that there
is something defective in the aims of our Primary School system, and
that it fails, and has failed, to develop in the individual the moral
and social qualities required by a State such as ours, which is becoming
increasingly democratic in character. Further, we are learning, partly
through experience, partly from the example of other countries, that the
period during which our children must be under the regulated control of
the school and of society must be lengthened, if we are to realise the
final aim of all education, which is to enable the individual on the
intellectual side to apply the knowledge gained to the furtherance and
extension of the various purposes of life, and on the moral side to
enable him to use his freedom rightly.
Lastly, as a nation, we are beginning to discover that without the
better technical training of our workmen, and especially of those to
whom in after-life will be entrusted the control and direction of our
industries and commerce, we are likely to fall behind the other advanced
nations in the race for economic supremacy.
But, in addition to these negative forces at work, tending to produce
dissatisfaction with our educational position, the opinion is growing
stronger and clearer that the education, physical, intellectual, and
moral, of the children of the nation is a matter of supreme importance
for the future well-being and the future supremacy of the nation, and
that it is the duty of the State to see that the opportunity is
furnished to each individual to realise to the full all the
potentialities of his nature which make for good, so that he may be
enabled to render that service to the community for which by nature he
is best fitted. Compulsory elementary education is but one stage in the
process. We must, as a nation, at least see that no insuperable
obstacles are placed in the path of those who have the requisite ability
and desire to advance farther in the development of their powers.
Moreover, if need be, we must, in the words of Rousseau, compel those
who from various causes are unwilling to realise themselves, to attain
their full freedom.
This demand for the better and fuller education of the children of the
nation is motived partly by the growing conviction that the freedom,
political, civil, and religious, which we as a nation enjoy, can only be
maintained, furthered, and strengthened in so far as we have educated
our children rightly to understand and rightly to use this freedom to
which they are heirs. Democracy, as a form of government and as a power
for good, is only possible when the mass of the people have been wisely
and fully educated, so that they are enabled to take an intelligent and
comprehensive interest in all that pertains to the good and future
welfare of the State. A democracy of ill or partially educated people
sooner or later becomes an ochlocracy,[2] ruled not by the best, but by
those who can work upon the self-interest of the badly or one-sidedly
educated. A true democracy is in fact ever aristocratic, in the original
sense of that term. A false democracy ever tends to become ochlocratic,
and the only safeguard against such a state of conditions arising in a
country where representative government exists is the spread of higher
education, and the inculcation of a right conception of the nature and
functions of the State and of the duties of citizenship.
But further, the demand for increased facilities for higher and
technical education is motived largely by the conviction that in the
education of our children we must in the future more than we have done
in the past take means to secure the fitness of the individual to
perform efficiently some specific function in the economic organisation
of society. And the demand proceeds, not from any desire to narrow down
the aims of education, to place it on a purely utilitarian basis, but
from the belief that the securing of the physical and economic
efficiency of the individual is of fundamental and primary importance
both for his own welfare and the well-being and progress of the State,
and that in proportion as we secure the higher economic efficiency of a
larger and larger number of the people we also secure the essential
condition for the development and extension of those other goods of life
which can be attained by the majority of a nation only after a certain
measure of economic prosperity and economic security is assured.
The social evils of our own or of any time cannot, of course, be removed
by any one remedy, but an education which endeavours to secure that each
individual shall have the opportunity to develop himself and to fit
himself for the after performance of the service for which by nature he
is suited may do much to mitigate the evils incident upon the
industrial organisation of society. If this end is to be realised, then
three things at least are necessary. We must seek by some means or other
to check the large number of our boys and girls who, after leaving the
Primary School, drift year by year, either through the ignorance or the
cupidity or the poverty of their parents, into the ranks of untrained
labour, and who in the course of two or three years go to swell the
ranks of the unskilled, casual workers, and become in many cases, in the
course of time, the unemployed and the unemployable. In the second
place, we must endeavour to secure the better technical training of the
youth during their years of apprenticeship, and so tend to raise the
general efficiency of the workers of the nation whatever the
nature--manual or mental--of their employment. In the third place, we
must endeavour, by means of our system of education, to increase the
mobility of labour. In the modern State, where changes in the industrial
organisation are frequent, the worker who can most easily adapt himself
to changing circumstances is best assured of constant employment, and a
great part of the social evils of our time may be traced to this want of
mobility on the part of a large number of our workers.
The mobility of labour is of course always determined within certain
limits, but much may and could be done by pursuing from the beginning a
right method in educating the child to develop its power of
self-adaptation to the needs of a changing environment.
If these results are to be attained, then we shall have, as a nation, to
make clear to ourselves the real meaning and purpose of education; we
shall have to make explicit the nature of the ends which we desire to
secure as the result of our educational efforts, and we shall have to
organise our educational agencies so that the ends desired shall be
secured.
Let us now consider the question of the meaning, purpose, and ends of
education.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _National Education and National Life_, p. 1.
[2] _Ochlos_, a mob.