THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION--THE COST OF EDUCATION
But while we may hold that it is the duty of the State to see that the
means for the education of the children of the nation is both adequate
in extent and efficient in quality, and so organised that it affords
opportunities for each to secure the education which is needed to equip
him for his after-work in life, it by no means follows as a logical
consequence that the whole cost of this provision should be borne by the
community in its corporate capacity and that the individual parent
should, if he so chooses, be relieved from any direct payment for the
education of his children. To assert this would be implicitly to affirm
that the education of a man's children is no part of his duty--that it
is an obligation which does not fall upon him as an individual, but only
as a member of a community, and that so long as he pays willingly the
proportion of the cost of education assigned to him by taxes and rates,
he has fulfilled his obligation. Education, on such a view, becomes a
matter of national concern in which as a private individual the parent
has no direct interest. This position carried out to its logical
conclusion would imply that the child and his future belong wholly to
the State, and it would also involve the establishment of a communal
system of education such as is set forth in the _Republic_ of Plato.
Further, such a position logically leads to the contention that the
other necessities of life requisite for securing the social efficiency
of the future members of the State should also be provided by the State
in its corporate capacity acting as the guardian of the young, and from
this we are but a short way from the position that it belongs to the
community to superintend the propagation of the species, and to regulate
the marriages of its individual members. This is State socialism in its
most extreme form, and is contrary to the spirit of a true liberalism, a
true democracy, and a true Christianity.
The opposing position--the position of liberalism untainted by
socialism--is that it is the duty of the State to see that as far as
possible the social inequalities which arise through the individualistic
organisation of society are removed or remedied, and that equality of
opportunity is secured to each to make the best of his own individual
life. In the educational sphere this implies that any obstacles in the
way of a man's educating his children should be removed, if and in so
far as these obstacles are irremovable by any private effort of his own,
and that the opportunity of obtaining the best possible education should
be open to the children of the poor if they are fitted by nature to
profit by such an education. It further implies that the means of higher
education, provided at the public expense, should not be wasted on the
children of any class if by nature they are unfitted to benefit by the
means placed at their disposal; _i.e._, a national system of education
must be democratic in the sense that the means of higher education shall
be open to all, rich and poor, in order that each individual may be
enabled to fit himself for the particular service for which by nature he
is best suited. It must see, further, that any obstacles which prevent
the full use of these means by particular individuals are, as far as may
be possible, removed. A national system of education, on the other hand,
must be aristocratic in the sense that it is selective of the best
ability. Lastly, it must be restrictive, in order that the means of
higher education may be utilised to the best advantage, and not misused
on those who are unfitted to benefit therefrom.
Closely connected with the position that it is the duty of the State to
see not merely to the adequate and efficient provision of the means of
education, but also that the whole cost of the provision should be borne
by the State, is the contention that because the State imposes a legal
obligation upon the individual parent to provide a certain measure of
education for his children, it is also a logical conclusion from this
step that education should be free. "The object of public education is
the protection of society, and society must pay for its protection,
whether it takes the form of a policeman or a pedagogue."[13]
But the provision of the means of elementary education, and the imposing
of a legal obligation upon each individual parent to utilise the means
provided, is not merely or solely for the protection of society.
Education confers not only a social benefit upon the community, but a
particular benefit upon the individual. Its provision falls not within
the merely negative benefits conferred by the State by its protection of
the majority against the ignorance and wickedness of the minority, but
it belongs to the positive benefits conferred by Government upon its
individual members. The State in part undertakes the provision of the
means of education, as Mill pointed out, in order to protect the
majority against the evil consequences likely to result from the
ignorance and want of education of the minority. As this provision
confers a common benefit on all, so far, but only in so far, as
education is protective, can its cost be laid upon the shoulders of the
general taxpayer.
But the provision by the State of the means of education is not merely
undertaken for the protection of any given society against the ignorance
and the lawlessness of its own individual members, it is also undertaken
in order to secure the increased efficiency of the nation as an economic
and military unit in antagonism, more or less, with similar units. At
the present day this is one main motive at work in the demand made for
the better and more intensive training of the industrial classes. To
secure the industrial and military efficiency of the nation is
explicitly set forth as the main aim of the German organisation of the
means of education. We may deplore this tendency of our times. We may
condemn the rise of the intensely national spirit of the modern world,
and regret that the ideal of universal peace and universal harmony
between the nations of the earth seems to fade for ever and for ever as
we move. But we have to look the facts in the face, and to realise that
the educational system of a nation must endeavour to secure the
industrial and military efficiency of its future members as a means of
security and protection against other competing nations and as one of
the essential conditions for the self-preservation of the particular
State in that war of nation against nation which Hobbes so eloquently
describes: "For the nature of war, consists not in actual fighting; but
in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no
assurance to the contrary."[14]
In so far, then, as the provision of education by the State is
undertaken with this end in view, it may be maintained that part, at
least, of the cost of its provision should be borne by the general
taxpayer in return for the greater national and economic security which
he enjoys through the greater efficiency of the nation as an economic
and military unit.
But the spread and the higher efficiency of education confers in
addition both a local and an individual benefit. It confers a local
benefit, in so far as by its means advantages accrue to any particular
district. It confers an individual benefit, in so far as through the
means of education placed at his disposal the individual is enabled to
attain to a higher degree of social efficiency than would otherwise have
been possible.
Further, if we look at this question not from the point of view of
benefit received, but from that of the obligation imposed, we reach a
similar result. It is an obligation upon the State to see that the
means of education and their due co-ordination and organisation are of
such a nature both in extent and in quality as to furnish a complete
system of means for the training up of the youth of the country to
perform efficiently all the services required by such a complex
community as the modern State. This duty devolves upon the State chiefly
for the reason set forth by Adam Smith in his discussion of the
functions of government. It is the duty of the sovereign, he declares,
to erect and maintain certain "public institutions which it can never be
for the interest of any individual to erect and maintain, because the
profit could never repay the expense to the individual, or small number
of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a
great society."[15]
It becomes further an obligation placed upon the local authority to aid
the central authority of the State in the establishment and distribution
of the means of education. The local authority by its more intimate
knowledge of local circumstances is the most competent to judge of the
nature of the education suited to serve its own particular needs, and is
best qualified to undertake the distribution of the means.
But the obligation to take advantage of the means for the future benefit
of his children is a moral obligation placed upon the shoulders of the
individual parent. It becomes a legal obligation only when, and in so
far as, the moral obligation is not realised by a certain number of the
community. Certainly one reason for the making of the education of a
man's children a legal obligation is the protection of society against
the ignorance and wickedness of the minority, but the other and
principal aim is to endeavour to secure that what at first was imposed
as a merely external or legal obligation may pass into a moral and
inherent obligation, so that the individual from being governed by
outward restraint may in time be governed by an inward and self-imposed
ideal.
It is no doubt difficult in any particular case to determine exactly
what precise part of the cost should be allocated to each of the three
benefiting parties, but in any national organisation of the means of
education this threefold distribution of cost should somehow or other be
undertaken.
From this it follows, that while it may legitimately be laid down that
upon the State must fall the obligation of securing the adequate
provision and the due distribution of the means of education, yet the
further duty of the State in this respect is limited to the removing of
obstacles which stand in the way of the fulfilment of the parent's
obligation to educate his children, and to the securing to each child
equality of opportunity to obtain an education in kind and quality which
will serve to fit him hereafter to perform his special duty to society.
Although since 1891 elementary education has been practically free in
this country and the whole cost of its provision is now undertaken at
the public expense, yet except from the socialistic position that the
provision of education is a communal and not a personal and moral
obligation, this public provision of the funds for elementary education
can be upheld from the individualistic point of view only on two
grounds. In the first place, it might be maintained that the protective
benefit derived from the imparting of the elements of education is so
great to all that its cost may legitimately be laid upon the community
in its corporate capacity. It is on this ground of education being
beneficial to the whole society that Adam Smith declares that the
expense of the institutions for education may, without injustice, be
defrayed by the general contributions of the whole society. But at the
same time Adam Smith recognises that education provides an immediate and
personal benefit, and that the expense might with equal propriety be
laid upon the shoulders of those benefited.
In the second place, it may be maintained that the imposition of school
fees created such a hindrance in a large number of cases to the
fulfilment of the moral obligation that it was expedient on the part of
the State to remove this obstacle by freeing education as a whole. In
support of this, it might be further urged that the difficulty of
discriminating between the marginal cases in which the imposition of
school fees really proved a hindrance and those in which it did not is
great, and that the partial relief of payment of school fees laid the
stigma of pauperism upon many who from unpreventable causes were unable
to meet the direct cost of the education of their children.
But, except on the grounds that either the protective benefit to society
is so great and so important, or that the charging of any part of the
cost directly to the parent imposes a hindrance in a large number of
cases, there is no justification for the contention that because the
State compels the individual to educate his children, therefore the
State should fully provide the means.
If this be so, then the further contention that the means of education
from the elementary to the university stage should be provided at the
public expense, and that no part of the cost should be laid directly
upon the individual parent's shoulders, must also be judged to be
erroneous.
The first duty of the State, in the matter of the provision of higher
education, is limited to seeing that the provision of the means of
higher education is adequate to the demand made for it; further, it may
endeavour to encourage and to stimulate this demand in various ways. The
means being provided, the second duty of the State is to endeavour to
secure that any hindrance which might reasonably prevent the use of
these means by those fitted to benefit therefrom should be removed. But
the only justification for the interference of the State is that the
compulsion exacted in the matter of taxes or otherwise is of small
moment compared with the capacity for freedom and intellectual
development set free in the individuals benefited. In other words, the
cost involved by the removal of the hindrance must be reckoned as small
compared with the ultimate good to the community as manifested in the
higher development--in the higher welfare of its individual members.
But the practical realisation of the ideal need not involve that
education should be free from the lowest to the topmost rung of the
so-called educational ladder. It is indeed questionable whether the
ladder simile has not been a potent instrument in giving a wrong
direction to our ideals of the essential nature of what an educational
organisation should aim at. Education should indeed provide a system of
advancing means, but the system of means may lead to many and various
aims instead of one. However that may be, what we wish to insist upon is
that the State's duty in this matter can be fulfilled not by freeing
education as a whole, but by establishing a system of bursaries or
allowances, enabling each individual who otherwise would be hindered
from using the means to take advantage of the higher education provided.
In the awarding of aid of this nature, the two tests of ability to
profit from the education and of need of material means must both be
employed. If the former test only is applied, then the result is that in
many cases the advantage is secured by those best able to pay for higher
education. If the objection be made that the granting of aid on mere
need shown is to place the stigma of pauperism upon the recipient, then
the only answer is that in so thinking the individual misconceives the
real nature of the aid, fails to understand that it is help towards
doing without help--aid to enable the individual to reach a higher and
fuller development of his powers, both for his own future welfare and
for the betterment of society.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] _National Education and National Life_, ibid. p. 101.
[14] Hobbes, _Leviathan_, p. 1. chap. xiii.
[15] Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, ed. J. Shield Nicholson (Nelsons).