THE END OF EDUCATION
We have seen that the process of education is the process of acquiring
and organising experiences that will function in the determination of
future conduct and ensure the more efficient performance of future
action; or we may say that the process is one by which means are
gradually established and fixed in the mind for the attainment of ends
of value for the realisation of the varied and complex interests of
life.
Now, this acquisition and organisation of experience is never entirely
"left to the blind control of inherited impulse," nor is the child
wholly left to gather and organise his experiences upon the incentive of
any innate or acquired interest that may for the time engage his will.
The various agencies of society--the home, the school, the shop and
yard--are ever constantly seeking to establish such or such systems of
ideas, and to prevent the formation of other systems. Hence it follows
that education is not a mere natural process--not a process of acquiring
experience in response to the demands of this or that natural need, but
that it is a regulated process, controlled with the view of finally
leading the child to acquire certain experiences, to organise certain
systems of means for the attainment of such or such ends.
Moreover, at various periods in history, the end or ends of education,
the kinds of experience thought necessary and valuable for the child to
acquire have varied, and still vary, and must vary according to the
nature of the civilisation into which the child is born and to which his
education must somehow or other adjust him; _i.e._, there is no one
type of experience, no one kind of education, which is equally suited to
meet the needs of the child born in a modern industrial State and the
child whose education must fit him hereafter to fulfil his duties as a
member of a savage tribe.
Further, in determining the nature of the experiences useful to acquire,
we must take into account not only the civilisation to which the child
is to be adjusted, but we must also take note of the nature of the
services which the given society requires of its adult members. These
services vary in character, and there can be no one kind of education
which equally fits the individual to perform efficiently any and every
service. To postulate this would be to affirm that there is a kind of
experience useful for the realisation indifferently of any and every
purpose of adult life, and to affirm that a system of knowledge acquired
and organised for the attainment of certain definite ends can be used
for the furtherance of ends different in character and having no
intrinsic connection with each other. Further, to assert that there is
one type of education equally suited to train and to develop the
reason-activity of the individual in every direction is to neglect the
fact that individuals differ in innate capacity. These differences are
due in part to differences in the extent and character of the receptive
powers of individuals, and are to be traced, probably, to differences in
the size and constitution of the sensory areas of the brain, and are due
also in part to inborn differences in the capacity for acquiring and
utilising experiences. As a consequence of these differences one
individual will acquire and organise certain kinds of experience more
readily than others.
But not only have the ends sought to be realised through the educational
agencies of society varied in the past--not only do we find that the
ideals at present vary in character according to the stage of
civilisation which the particular country has reached--we also find that
the agencies of society determining the character and end of education
also vary. For in the discussion of the ends sought to be attained by
means of education, we must remember that these are not determined by
the teacher, but by "the adult portion of the Community organised in the
forms of the Family, the State, the Church, and various miscellaneous
associations"[6] desirous of promoting the welfare of the community. At
one time the Church largely determined the character and ends of
education, but the tendency at the present time is for the State to
control more and more the education of the rising generation. In some
countries the entire control of all forms of education, primary,
secondary, and technical, has come under the guidance of the State, and
in our own country elementary education is now largely under the control
of the State authorities, and the other forms of education tend
increasingly to come under this control. Not only is this so, but the
period during which the State exercises its control over the education
of the child is gradually being lengthened.
Many causes are at work tending to produce these results in the first
place, it is being clearly realised that there can be no thorough-going
co-ordination of the various grades of instruction until all the
agencies of education in each area are placed under one authority acting
under the guidance of some central body responsible for the organisation
and direction of the education of the district as a whole. Further,
there can be no satisfactory settlement of the problem as to what
particular function each distinct type of Higher School shall perform
until the whole means of education are under one determining authority.
In the second place, the higher education of the children of the nation
is too important a matter to be left entirely to the care of the private
individual, and its cost is too great in many cases to be wholly borne
by each individual parent. But this provision, organisation, and control
of the means of higher education by the State does not necessarily
imply that it should be free--that the whole burden should be laid on
the shoulders of the general taxpayer. Yet unless means are provided by
which the poor but clever boy can realise himself, then there is so much
loss to the community.
In the third place, the organisation of all forms of education and the
more extended provision of higher and especially of technical training
is necessary, if for no other reason than as a means of economic
protection and economic security.
Lastly, the better organisation of our educational agencies is necessary
as a means of securing a democracy capable of understanding the meaning
of moral and civic freedom and of using this rightly.
But while the concrete nature of the ends to which our educational
efforts are directed may vary in accordance with the needs of a changing
and progressive civilisation, nevertheless the general nature of the
ends sought to be attained by the education of the children of a nation
is permanent and unchangeable. That is, we have to recognise a universal
as well as a particular element in our educational ideals. Now, the
universal aim of all education is, or rather should be, to correlate the
child with the civilisation of his time; to lead him to acquire those
experiences which will in after-life enable him to perform ably and
rightly his duties as a worker, as a citizen, and as a member of an
ethical and spiritual community organised for the securing of the
well-being of the individual. And the higher the civilisation, the more
difficult, the more complex, and the more lengthened must be this
process of acquiring experiences necessary to fit the individual to his
environment. Hence, whatever the particular nature of the environment
may be, the aim of education must be the fitting of the individual to
his natural and social environments. Hence also any organisation of the
means of education must have as its threefold object the securing of the
physical efficiency, of the economic efficiency, and the ethical
efficiency of the rising generation. In short, as Mr. Bagley[7] puts
it, the securing of the social efficiency of the individual must be the
ultimate aim of all education. To be socially efficient implies that as
the result of the process of education certain experiences, and the
power of applying them, have been acquired by each individual, so that
by this means he is enabled to perform some particular social service
for the community of a directly or indirectly economic nature. For if,
as the result of the educative process, we establish systems of means
for the realisation of ends which have no social value, then so far we
have failed to make the individual socially efficient. "The youth we
would train has little time to spare; he owes but the first fifteen or
sixteen years of his life to his tutor, the remainder is due to action.
Let us employ this short time in necessary instruction. Away with your
crabbed, logical subtleties; they are abuses, things by which our lives
can never be made better."[8] In these words Montaigne writes against
the false ideal that the mere accumulation of knowledge apart from any
purpose it may serve in enabling us better to understand either the
world of nature or of history should be the aim of education, and
throughout all education we must ever keep in mind that knowledge
acquired must be capable of being used and applied for the realisation
of some social purpose, otherwise it is so much useless lumber, to the
individual a burden, soon dropped, to society valueless, since it can
maintain and further no real interest of the community.
But to be socially efficient implies not merely that the individual
should be fitted to perform some service economically useful to the
community, it further implies that as the result of the process of
education there should have been acquired certain capacities of action
which restrain him from unduly interfering with the freedom of others.
He must acquire certain experiences which restrain him from hindering
the full and free development of others; he must be trained to use his
freedom rightly, to acquire those capacities for action which fit him to
take his place in the moral cosmos of his time and generation. Further,
as Mr. Bagley also points out, to be socially efficient implies in
addition that the individual should contribute something further to the
advancement of the civilisation into which he is born, and thus pass on
to his successors an increasing heritage.
The threefold aim of all education, then, is to secure the physical, the
economic, and the ethical efficiency of the future members of the
community; and our educational agencies must throughout keep this
threefold aspect in view.
To secure the physical efficiency of the child is necessary, in the
first place, because a strong, healthy, vigorous body is a good in
itself, apart from the fact that without sound health the other ends of
life cannot, or can be only imperfectly realised. It is an erroneous
point of view to maintain that many men have done good intellectual work
in spite of physical ill-health, and even in cases where there was
present some physical defect. The real thing to keep in mind is that
these individuals do not represent the average, and that for the normal
individual weak health or the presence of physical defect lessens his
intellectual and moral vigour. We can, in the light of modern
psychology, no longer regard mind and body as separate entities having a
development independent of each other, but must regard them as
conditioning and conditioned by each other.
In the second place, the care of the physical health of the child is
important, because any impairment or defect in the sense organs--the
avenues of experience--implies a corresponding defect or want in mental
growth, and as a consequence tends to render the individual economically
and socially less efficient in after-life.
In the third place, and this truth is being gradually put into practice
in the education of the weak-minded and of the physically defective,
sound physical health is one of the conditions of right moral activity.
This truth Rousseau emphasised when he declared: "that the weaker the
body, the more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it obeys. All
the sensual passions find lodgment in effeminate bodies, and the less
they are satisfied the more irritable they become. The body must needs
be vigorous to obey the soul: a good servant ought to be robust."
We shall inquire further into this question when we come to treat of the
physical education of the child, but what we wish to point out is that
one aim of all our educational efforts must be to secure the physical
efficiency of the rising generation, on the grounds that sound physical
health is a good in itself; is a means to the securing of the economic
efficiency of the individual and of society; and is a condition of
securing the ethical efficiency of the individual.
In the second place, the securing of the economic efficiency of the
individual must be one of the aims of our educational efforts. This does
not imply that our educational curriculum should be based on purely
utilitarian lines, and that all subjects whose utilitarian value is not
immediately apparent should be banished from the schoolroom. But it does
imply that whether in the education of the professional man or of the
industrial worker all instruction either directly or indirectly must
have as its final result the efficiency of the individual as a worker.
An education which fits the individual to use his leisure rightly may
have as much effect in increasing the productive powers of the
individual as that which looks more narrowly to his technical training.
Further, we must remember that the larger number by far of the children
of the modern State must in after-life become industrial workers, and
that any system of education which neglects this fact, which makes no
provision for the technical training of the children of the working
classes, and has no adequate system of selecting and training those who
by innate capacity are fitted to become the leaders in industry, is a
system not in harmony with the characteristics of modern life, and that
unless this economic efficiency is secured, then the opportunity for the
development of the other ends of life cannot be secured.
Lastly, the securing of the ethical efficiency of the future members of
the State must be one of our ultimate aims. The ethical aim of education
may be said to be the supreme end, in the sense that it is the essential
condition for the security, the stability, and the progress of society;
and also from the fact that the ethical spirit of doing the work for the
sake of the work should permeate all education.
In concluding this chapter what needs to be emphasised is that while the
process of education remains ever the same, ever consists in acquiring
and organising experience, in and through the working of reason incited
to activity by the need of satisfying some natural or acquired interest,
in order that future action may be rendered more efficient, and whilst
the general nature of the ends to be attained may be said to be
permanent and unchangeable, yet the particular and concrete ends at
which we should aim in the education of our children is a practical
question which every nation has, from time to time, to ask and answer
afresh in the light of her national ideals and in view of her national
aspirations. Nay, further, it is a question which with every necessary
change in her internal organisation, and with every fundamental
alteration in her relation to her external neighbours, has to be asked
and answered anew by each and every State desirous of retaining her
place amongst the nations of the world and of securing the welfare and
happiness of her individual members. It is mainly because we as a nation
have not realised this truth that our educational organisation has,
neither in the explicitness and clearness of its aims, nor in the
distinction, gradation, and co-ordination of its means, attained the
same thoroughness and self-consistency as that possessed by the
educational systems of some of our Continental neighbours.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Cf. Professor Findlay, _Journal of Education_ (Sept. 1899), also
"_Principles of Class Teaching_," p. 2.
[7] Cf. _The Educative Process_, chap. iii., esp. pp. 59, 60
(Macmillan).
[8] Montaigne, _The Education of Children_, L. E. Rector, Ph.D.
(_International Education Series_), Appleton, New York.