THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE PROVISION OF EDUCATION
The end of education is, as we have seen, the securing of the future
social efficiency of the rising generation, and the method in every case
is through the evoking of the reason-activity of the individual to
organise and establish in the minds of the young and immature, systems
of ideas which will hereafter function as means in the attainment of
ends of definite social worth.
The question now arises as to whether the provision and organisation of
the agencies of education may be safely left to the care and
self-interest of the individual parent, or whether on principle such
provision is a duty which devolves upon the State.
The principle of the State provision of the means of elementary
education has now practically been admitted, and whether wisely or
unwisely, the larger part by far of the cost of this provision now falls
upon the shoulders of the general and local taxpayer. _E.g._, in England
in 1902 there were six hundred and thirty-three thousand fee-paying
children in the Public Elementary Schools, and over five millions
receiving their education free.[9] Further, by the Education Act
(England) of 1902 and by the Education and Local Taxation Account
(Scotland) Act of the same year the principle of the State aid for the
provision of the means of secondary and technical education may be said
also practically to have been recognised. By the former Act certain
Imperial funds derived from the income on Probate and Licence duties
were handed over to the Councils of counties and boroughs for
expenditure on the provision of the means of education other than
elementary, and at the same time these bodies were empowered, if they
thought it necessary, to impose a limited rate for the same purpose. In
Scotland at the same time a certain part of Scotland's share of the
"whisky" money was set aside for the provision of secondary education in
urban and rural districts, and Secondary Education Committees were
appointed in the counties and principal boroughs charged with the
allocation of the funds towards the aid and increase of the provision of
higher education in their respective districts.
But while this has been done, the question as to whether and to what
extent the State should undertake the provision of the means of higher
education is still one on which there is no general agreement. If it is
the duty of the State to see that the provision of the means of
education, elementary, secondary, technical, and university, is adequate
to the attainment of the end of securing the future social efficiency of
all the members of the community, then it must be admitted that the
means at present provided for this purpose are totally inadequate, and
that the method followed in furnishing this provision is not of a kind
to ensure that the funds granted are spent in the manner best calculated
to extend the agencies and to increase the efficiency of the higher
education of the children of the nation. This latter objection applies
more especially in the case of Scotland. In that country certain
nominated bodies who are responsible only to themselves and to the
Scotch Education Department are entrusted with the expenditure of the
monies received for the extension of the means of higher education, and
since these bodies stand in no intimate connection with the
representative bodies entrusted with the control of elementary
education, no efficient co-ordination of the two grades of education is
possible. Further, in some cases sectional interests rather than the
educational interests of the district as a whole are the main motives at
work in determining the distribution of the funds amongst the various
bodies claiming to participate in its benefits. The uncertainty of the
amount of income available for this purpose, and the limitation in
England of the power of rating, might also be urged in objection to this
peculiarly English method of providing the means for the higher
education of the youth of the country.
Similar reasons to those urged prior to 1870 in favour of the State
provision of elementary education may be urged in favour of the
extension of the principle to higher education. These reasons are
nowhere more clearly stated than in the writings of John Stuart Mill.
In discussing the functions of government, Mill lays down that education
is one of those things which it is admissible on principle that a
Government should provide for the people, and although in adducing the
reasons for the State undertaking this duty he is concerned mainly with
the provision of the means of elementary education, yet looking to the
altered social conditions of our own time, and taking into account the
difference in the economic relations which exist now between Great
Britain and her Continental rivals, the arguments advanced by Mill are
no less applicable now to the extension of the principle of State
provision. Let us consider these arguments.
In the first place, Mill declares that there are "certain primary
elements and means of knowledge that all human beings born into the
community must acquire during childhood." If their parents have the
power of obtaining for them this instruction and fail to do so, they
commit a double breach of duty. The child grows up an imperfect being,
socially inefficient, and members of the community are liable to suffer
seriously from the consequences of this ignorance and want of education
in their fellow-citizens.
In the second place, Mill urges that unlike that the giving of other
forms of help, the provision of education is not one of the things in
which the tender of help perpetuates the state of things which renders
help necessary. Instruction strengthens and enlarges the active
faculties; its effect is favourable to the growth of the spirit of
independence--it is help towards doing without help.
In the third place, he declares that the question of the provision of
elementary education is not one between its provision by the Government
on the one hand, and its provision through voluntary agencies on the
other. The full cost of the education of the children of the lower
working classes in Great Britain as in other countries has never been
wholly paid for out of the wages of the labourer, and hence the question
lies between the State provision of education and its provision by
certain charitable agencies. As a rule, when provided by the latter, it
is both inefficient in quantity and poor in quality.
Lastly, Mill lays down that in the matter of education the intervention
of Government is necessary, because neither the interest nor the
judgment of the consumer is a sufficient security for the goodness of
the commodity.
But at the same time he strenuously insists that there should be no
monopoly of education by the State. It is not desirable, he declares,
that a government should have complete control over the education of the
people. To possess such a control and actually to exert it would be
despotic. The State may, however, require that all its people shall have
received a certain measure of education, but it may not prescribe from
whom or where they may obtain it.
At the present day, and under the changed economic conditions which now
prevail, it can no longer be asserted that the imparting of the mere
elements of knowledge is adequate either to secure the future social
efficiency of the children of the lower classes of society or that such
a modicum of instruction as is provided by our Elementary Schools is
sufficient to protect the community from the ignorance of its ill
educated and badly trained members. The "hooliganism" of many of our
large cities is due to our system of half educating, half training the
children of the slums, of laying too much stress on the acquisition of
certain mechanical arts in our Primary Schools and in conceiving them as
ends in themselves. Further, our system of primary education fails on
its moral side, and this in two ways. It seems unaware of the fact that
all moral education is an endeavour to implant in the minds of the young
desires that shall impel them hereafter to good rather than to evil, and
that this end can only be attained in so far as the natural instinctive
tendencies of the child's nature which make for good are cultivated and
trained, and in so far as those other instinctive tendencies which make
for social destruction are inhibited by having their character altered
so as to be directed into channels which make for the social welfare. In
the second place, we leave off the education of the children at too
early an age. We hand over the children of the poorer classes during the
most critical period of their lives to the influences of the streets and
of the bad home, counteracted only by the efforts of the slum visitor or
the missionary. After furnishing them with the mere instruments of
knowledge, we entrust either to them or their parents the liberty of
using, misusing, or non-using the instruments provided. Moreover, we do
nothing of a systematic nature to instil into the youth of our poorer
citizens the fact that they are members of a corporate community and
future citizens of a State, and that hereafter they have duties towards
that State the performance of which is the only rational ground of their
possession of rights as against the State. _E.g._, in many of our slums
we have the best examples of individualism run mad, of the conception
that the individual is a law unto his private self, and that all
government is something alien, something forced upon the individual from
the outside and impinging upon his private will, instead of law being
what it really is, an expression of the social conditions under which
the welfare of the individual and of society may be attained.
Further, it must be maintained that our present policy in education is
economically wasteful. To spend, as we do yearly, larger and larger sums
of money on the elementary education of our children, and then, in a
large number of cases, to fail to reach the ends of securing either the
social efficiency of the individual or the protection of society against
the ignorance of its members, is surely, to say the least, unwise.
Again, if we really set before us this aim of the social efficiency of
the future individual, we must do something to carry on the education of
the children of the poorer classes after the Elementary School stage has
been passed.
One of the strongest points in the German system of education, as
compared and contrasted with our own, is the care which is taken of the
higher education of the children of the working classes during the
period when it is most important that some control should be exercised
over the youth of the country, throughout the time when the boy is most
open to temptation, and when the moral forces of society are potent for
good and evil in shaping and forming his character. The great majority
of the children in a modern State are and must be destined for
industrial service; the great majority of the children of the working
classes must, at or about the age of fourteen, leave the Primary School
and enter upon the learning of some trade. But manifestly at this early
stage the larger number are not fitted to guide and control their own
lives; and if moral education aims, as it ought to aim, at fitting the
individual for freedom, at fitting him to guide and direct his own life
in the light of a self-accepted and a self-directed ideal, then some
measure of control, of guidance, and of regulation is necessary in the
years when the child is passing from youth to manhood. Now, it is this
fact, this truth, which the Germans as a nation have realised. They
declare that it is neither wise nor prudent nor for the ultimate benefit
of the State to leave the vast majority of the youth without guidance,
and sometimes even without proper moral control exercised over them
during the great formative period of their lives. Nay, further, they
believe that a State which neglects its duty here is not doing what it
ought to do for the future moral good, for the future economic welfare,
and for the future happiness of its individual members. Hence, in
several of the German States, the State control over the child does not
cease when at fourteen years of age he leaves the Elementary School, but
is continued until the age of seventeen; and this is effected by the
establishment of compulsory Evening Schools. In particular, by a law
which came into force in Berlin on the 1st April 1905, every boy and
girl in that city, with certain definitely specified exceptions, must
attend at an Evening Continuation School for a minimum of not less than
four hours and a maximum of not more than six hours per week. Moreover,
this enactment has been rendered necessary not to level up the majority,
but to level up the minority. This development is a development for
which the voluntary Evening Continuation School prepared the way; and
compulsory attendance has become possible on account of the willingness
of the German youth to learn, and of his desire to make himself
proficient in his particular trade or profession. Further, the school
authorities, in this matter of compulsory attendance at an Evening
Continuation School, have with them the hearty co-operation of the great
body of employers; and the burden of seeing that the pupil attends
regularly is not put upon the parent but upon the employer. By these
means, and by other agencies of a voluntary character, every care is
taken that the Berlin youth shall have the opportunity of finding that
employment for which by nature he is best suited, and that thereafter he
shall learn thoroughly the particular trade or calling he may enter
upon.
Contrast what we do, or rather what we do not do, in this matter of
providing higher education for the sons and daughters of the working
classes. In our large towns the great majority of our boys and girls
leave the Elementary School at or before the age of fourteen. In many
cases the instruction given during this period soon passes away, and
leaves little permanent result behind. Evening Continuation Schools are
indeed provided, but only a small proportion of our youth takes
advantage of this means of further instruction. The larger number of the
children of the lower working classes drift, for a year or two, into
various forms of unskilled employment, chosen in most cases because the
immediate pecuniary reward is here greater than in the case of learning
a trade; and after spending two or three years in employments which do
nothing to educate them, some drift, by accident, into this or that
particular trade, while the others remain behind to swell the number of
the unskilled. During this period nothing of an organised nature is done
to secure the physical efficiency of the youth of our working classes;
nothing or almost nothing is done to secure his future industrial
efficiency; and, as a consequence, year after year, as a nation, we go
on fostering an army of loafers, increasing the ranks of the unskilled
workers, and even in our skilled trades adding to the number of those
who are mere process workers, at the expense of producing workers
acquainted both theoretically and practically with every department of
their particular calling. No wonder that the delegates of the
brass-workers[10] of Birmingham, contrasting what they have seen in
Berlin with what they daily see in their own trade at home and in their
own city, bitterly declare that the Berlin youth has from infancy been
under better care and training at home, at school, at the works, and in
the Army; and consequently, as a man, he is more fitted to be entrusted
with the liberty which the Birmingham youth has perhaps from childhood
only abused.
Space does not permit me to go at fuller length into this question, but
before leaving the particular problem let me put the issue plainly,
because it is an issue which we as a nation must soon clearly realise,
and must answer in either one or other of two ways. We may go on as at
present, insisting that a certain amount of elementary education is
compulsory for all, and leaving it a matter for the individual parent
and the individual youth to take advantage of the means of higher
education provided voluntarily, and as a rule without any great direct
cost to them. In this way, trusting to the voluntary agencies at work in
society, we may hope that either through enlightened self-interest, or
through a higher conception of the duty of the individual to the State,
or through a loftier moral ideal becoming prevalent and actual in
society, an increasing number of parents will see that the means
provided for the higher education of their children are duly taken
advantage of, and that the majority of the youth will make it their aim
to use these means to secure their physical and industrial efficiency.
If we adopt this course, then it must be the duty of the school
authorities of the various districts to see that Evening Schools of
various types suited to the needs of the various classes of students are
duly provided, and that no insurmountable obstacles are placed in the
way of those desirous and anxious to take advantage of the means of
higher education. Further, it must become the duty of the employers of
the country to see that the youth are encouraged in every way to take
advantage of instruction designed with the above-named end in view, and
moreover the general public must do all in their power to co-operate
with and to aid the endeavours of school authorities and employers of
labour. In this way, as has been the case in Berlin, the voluntary
system of Evening Continuation and Trade Schools may gradually and in
time pave the way for the compulsory Evening School. Without doubt this
were the better way, if it could be effected and that quickly.
But if in this matter we have delayed too long--if we have allowed our
educational policy in the past to be guided by a one-sided and narrow
individualism--if for too lengthened a period we have permitted our
political action to be determined by the false ideal that, in the
matter of providing for and furthering his education as a citizen and as
an industrial worker, liberty for each individual consists in allowing
him to choose for himself, regardless of whether or not that choice is
for his own and the State's ultimate good, then it may be necessary in
the immediate future to take steps to remove or remedy this defect in
our present educational organisation. For it is necessary--essentially
necessary--on various grounds that the education of the boys and girls
of our working classes should not cease absolutely at the Elementary
School stage,[11] but that, with certain definite and well-considered
exceptions, all should continue for several years thereafter to fit
themselves for industrial and social service. If this result can be
effected by moral means, good and well; if not, legal compulsion must,
sooner or later, be resorted to. For it is, as it has always been, a
fundamental maxim of political action that the State should and must
compel her members to utilise the means by which they may be raised to
freedom.
The second line of argument which Mill follows in his advocacy of the
State provision of education is that instruction is one of the cases in
which the aid given does not foster and re-create the evil which it
seeks to remedy. Education which is really such does not tend to
enervate but to strengthen the individual. Its effect is favourable to
the growth of independence. "It is a help towards doing without help."
On similar grounds, we may urge that it is the duty of the State to see
that the means for the higher education of the youth of the country are
adequate in quantity and efficient in quality. The better technical
training of our workmen is necessary if we are to secure their economic
self-sufficiency and fit them to become socially useful as members of a
community. One aim therefore underlying any future organisation of
education must be to secure the industrial efficiency of the worker and
to ensure that the results of science shall be utilised in the
furtherance of the arts and industries of life. This can only be
effected by the better scientific training, by the more intensive and
the more thorough education of those children of the nation who by
natural ability and industry are fitted in after-life to guide and
control the industries of the country.
Mr. Haldane,[12] during the past few years, in season and out of season,
has called the attention of the public of Great Britain to the fact that
in the organisation and equipment of their system of technical education
Germany is much in advance of this country, and that the German people
have thoroughly and practically realised that, if they are to compete
successfully with other nations, then one of the aims of their
educational system must be to teach the youth how to apply knowledge in
the furtherance and advancement of the economic interests of life. With
this end in view we have the establishment throughout the German States
of numerous schools and colleges having as their chief aim the
application of knowledge to the arts and industries. In our own country
this branch--this very important branch--of education has been left, for
the most part, to the care of private individuals, and although the
State has done something in recent years to encourage and develop this
side of education, yet much more requires to be done; and, above all, it
is desirable that whatever is done in the future should be done in a
regular, systematic, and organised manner and with definite aims in
view.
But it is not merely in the higher reaches of German education that the
industrial aim is kept in view. It pervades and permeates the whole
system from the lowest to the highest stages. Even in the Primary School
the requirements of practical life are not left out of sight. In school,
said a former Prussian Director of Education, "children are to learn how
to perform duties, they are to be habituated to work, to gain pleasure
in work, and thus become efficient for future industrial pursuits. This
has been the aim from the earliest times of Prussian education; and to
this day it is plainly understood by all State and local administrative
officers, as well as by all teachers and the majority of the parents,
that the people's school has more to do than merely teach the vehicles
of culture--reading, writing, and arithmetic"--that the chief aim is
rather "the preparation of citizens who can and will cheerfully serve
their God and their native country as well as themselves."
In the third place, the question of the provision of the means of higher
education is not one between its provision on the one hand by means of
the Government, and on the other by means of purely voluntary agencies.
Higher education, _e.g._, in Scotland has rarely been provided and paid
for at its full cost by the individual parent or by associations of
individual parents, but has been maintained, in some cases in a high
degree of efficiency, by endowments left for this purpose. These
endowments are now in many cases insufficient to meet the demand made
for education, and the stream of private benevolence in providing the
means of education has either ceased to flow or flows in an irregular
and uncertain fashion. Further, the incomes of even the moderately
well-to-do of our middle classes are not sufficient to bear the whole
cost of the more expensive education required to fit their sons and
daughters for the after-service of the community. Hence, just as in
Mill's time the question of the provision of elementary education lay
between the State provision and the provision by means of charitable
agencies, so to-day the problem of the provision of secondary and
technical education is between its adequate provision and organisation
by the State, and its inadequate, uncertain provision by means of the
endowments of the past and by the charitable agencies of the present.
Manifestly, in the light of modern conditions, with the economic
competition between nation and nation becoming keener and keener, and
knowing full well that the future belongs to the nation with the best
equipped and the best trained army of industrial workers, we can no
longer rest content with any haphazard method of providing the means of
higher education: whatever the cost may be, we must realise that the
time has come to put our educational house in order and to establish and
organise our system of higher education so that it will subserve each
and every interest of the State. This can only be effected in so far as
the nation as a whole realises the need for the better education of the
children, and takes steps to secure that this shall be provided, and
that there shall be afforded to each the opportunity of fitting himself
by education to put his talents to the best use both for his own
individual good and the good of the community. Lastly, as Mill urges,
the self-interest of the individual is neither sufficient to ensure that
the education will be provided, nor in many cases is his judgment
sufficient to ensure the goodness of the education provided by voluntary
means.
But, in addition to the reasons urged by Mill for the State provision
and control of the means of elementary education, and these reasons are,
as we have seen, as urgent and as cogent to-day for the extension of the
principle to the provision of the means of secondary and technical
education, still further reasons may be advanced.
In the first place, there can be no co-ordination of the different
stages of education until all the agencies of instruction in each area
or district are placed under one central control. Until this is effected
we must have at times overlapping of the agencies of instruction. In
some cases there may also be waste of the means of education. In every
case there will be a general want of balance between the various parts
of the system.
In the second place, one object of any organisation of the means of
education should be the selection of the best ability from amongst the
children of our Elementary Schools and the further education of this
ability at some one or other type of Intermediate or Secondary School.
In order that this may be economically and efficiently effected, the
instruction of the Elementary School should enable the pupil at a
certain age to fit himself into the work of the High School, and our
High Schools' system should be so differentiated in type as to furnish
not one type of such education but several in accordance with the main
classes of service required by the community of its adult members.
Manifestly such a co-ordination of the means and such a grading of the
agencies of education, if not impossible on the voluntary principle, is
at least difficult of complete realisation.
Hence, on the ground that the higher education of the young is necessary
for the securing of their after social efficiency, on the ground that it
is necessary for the economic and social security of the community, on
the ground that aid in higher education is a help towards doing without
help and that its provision in many cases cannot be fully met by the
voluntary contribution of the individual, we may urge the need for the
State's undertaking its adequate and efficient provision.
Further, we must remember that the State must take a "longer" view of
the problem of education than is possible for the individual. At best
the latter looks but one generation ahead. He is content to secure the
education and the future welfare of his children. In the life of the
State this is not sufficient. She must look to the needs of the remote
future as well as of the immediate present, and hence her educational
outlook must be wider and go farther than that of any mere private
individual. Lastly, if we understand the true nature and function of the
State, we need have no fear that the State should control the education
of all the people. What we have to fear on the one side is the
bureaucratic control of education, and on the other its control and
direction by one class in the interests of itself. The State exists
for--the reason of its very being is to secure--the welfare of the
individual, and the State approaches its perfection when its
organisation is fitted to secure and ensure the widest scope for the
full and free development of each individual.
The evil of bureaucracy can be removed only by our representative bodies
becoming more effective voices of the social and moral will of the
community, just as the evil of class control can only be effectually
abolished by the rise and spread of the true democratic spirit, ever
seeking that the agencies of the State shall be directed towards the
removing of the obstacles which hinder the full realisation of the life
of each of its members.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Cf. Graham Balfour, _Educational System of Great Britain_, p. 27,
2nd ed.
[10] _Brass-workers of Berlin and Birmingham_ (King).
[11] "It must not be forgotten that the instruction of the common
schools (_Volksschule_), closing with the pupil's fourteenth year, ends
too soon, that the period most susceptible to aid, most in need of
education, the years from fifteen to twenty ... are now not only allowed
to lie perfectly fallow, but to lose and waste what has been so
laboriously acquired during the preceding period at school." In the
rural parts of Northern Germany efforts are being made to remedy this
evil by the institution of schools providing half-year winter courses.
Cf. Professor Paulsen's _The German Universities and University Study_,
p. 117 (English translation).
[12] Cf. _Education and Empire_.