science, what we want next is technical instruction, in the strict
sense of the word technical; I mean instruction in that kind of
knowledge which is essential to the successful prosecution of the
several branches of trade and industry. Now, the best way of obtaining
this end is a matter about which the most experienced persons entertain
very diverse opinions. I do not for one moment pretend to dogmatise
about it; I can only tell you what the opinion is that I have formed
from hearing the views of those who are certainly best qualified to
judge, from those who have tested the various methods of conveying this
instruction. I think we have before us three possibilities. We have, in
the first place, trade schools--I mean schools in which branches of
trade are taught. We have, in the next place, schools attached to
factories for the purpose of instructing young apprentices and others
who go there, and who aim at becoming intelligent workmen and capable
foremen. We have, lastly, the system of day classes and evening
classes. With regard to the first there is this objection, that they
can be attended only by those who are not obliged to earn their bread,
and consequently that they will reach only a very small fraction of the
population. Moreover, the expense of trade schools is enormous, and
those who are best able to judge assure me that, inasmuch as the work
which they do is not done under conditions of pecuniary success or
failure, it is apt to be too amateurish and speculative, and that it
does not prepare the worker for the real conditions under which he will
have to carry out his work. In any case, the fact that the schools are
very expensive, and the fact that they are accessible only to a small
portion of the population, seem to me to constitute a very serious
objection to them. I suppose the best of all possible organisations is
that of a school attached to a factory, where the employer has an
interest in seeing that the instruction given is of a thoroughly
practical kind, and where the pupils pass gradually by successive
stages to the position of actual workmen. Schools of this kind exist in
various parts of the country, but it is obvious that they are not
likely to be reached by any large part of the population; so that it
appears to me we are shut up practically to schools accessible to those
who are earning their bread, and in such cases they must be essentially
evening classes. I am strongly of opinion that classes of this kind do
an immense amount of good; that they have this admirable quality, that
they involve voluntary attendance, take no man out of his position, but
enable any who chooses, to make the best of the position he happens to
occupy.
Suppose that all these things are desirable, what is the best way of
obtaining them? I must confess that I have a strong prejudice in favour
of carrying out undertakings of this kind, which at first, at any rate,
must be to a great extent tentative and experimental, by private
effort. I don't believe that the man lives at this present time who is
competent to organise a final system of technical education. I believe
that all attempts made in that direction must for many years to come be
experimental, and that we must get to success through a series of
blunders. Now that work is far better performed by private enterprise
than in any other way. But there is another method which I think is
permissible, and not only permissible but highly recommendable in this
case, and that is the method of allowing the locality itself in which
any branch of industry is pursued to be its own judge of its own wants,
and to tax itself under certain conditions for the purpose of carrying
out any scheme of technical education adapted to its needs. I am aware
that there are many extreme theorists of the individualist school who
hold that all this is very wicked and very wrong, and that by leaving
things to themselves they will get right. Well, my experience of the
world is that things left to themselves don't get right. I believe it
to be sound doctrine that a municipality--and the State itself for that
matter--is a corporation existing for the benefit of its members, and
that here, as in all other cases, it is for the majority to determine
that which is for the good of the whole, and to act upon that. That is
the principle which underlies the whole theory of government in this
country, and if it is wrong we shall have to go back a long way. But
you may ask me, "This process of local taxation can only be carried out
under the authority of an Act of Parliament, and do you propose to let
any municipality or any local authority have _carte blanche_ in
these matters; is the Legislature to allow it to tax the whole body of
its members to any extent it pleases and for any purposes it pleases?"
I should reply, certainly not.
Let me point out to you that at this present moment it passes the wit
of man, so far as I know, to give a legal definition of technical
education. If you expect to have an Act of Parliament with a definition
which shall include all that ought to be included, and exclude all that
ought to be excluded, I think you will have to wait a very long time. I
imagine the whole matter is in a tentative state. You don't know what
you will be called upon to do, and so you must try and you must
blunder. Under these circumstances it is obvious that there are two
alternatives. One of these is to give a free hand to each locality.
Well, it is within my knowledge that there are a good many people with
wonderful, strange, and wild notions as to what ought to be done in
technical education, and it is quite possible that in some places, and
especially in small places, where there are few persons who take an
interest in these things, you will have very remarkable projects put
forth, and in that case the sole court of appeal for those taxpayers,
who did not approve of such projects, would be a court of law. I
suppose the judges would have to settle what is technical education.
That would not be an edifying process, I think, and certainly it would
be a very costly one. The other alternative is the principle adopted in
the bill of last year now abandoned. I don't say whether the bill was
right or wrong in detail. I am dealing now only with the principle of
the bill, which appears to me to have been very often misunderstood. It
has been said that it gave the whole of technical education into the
hands of the Science and Art Department. It appears to me nothing could
be more unfounded than that assertion. All I understand the Government
proposed to do was to provide some authority who should have power to
say in case any scheme was proposed, "Well, this comes within the four
corners of the Act of Parliament, work it as you like;" or if it was an
obviously questionable project, should take upon itself the
responsibility of saying, "No, that is not what the Legislature
intended; amend your scheme." There was no initiative, no control;
there was simply this power of giving authority to decide upon the
meaning of the Act of Parliament to a particular department of the
State, whichever it might be; and it seems to me that that is a very
much simpler and better process than relegating the whole question to
the law courts. I think that here, or anywhere else, people must be
extremely sanguine if they suppose that the House of Commons and the
House of Lords will ever dream of giving any local authority unlimited
power to tax the inhabitants of a district for any object it pleases. I
should say that was not in the range of practical politics. Well, I put
that before you as a matter for your consideration.
Another very important point in this connection is the question of the
supply of teachers. I should say that is one of the greatest
difficulties which beset the whole problem before us. I do not wish in
the slightest degree to criticise the existing system of preparing
teachers for ordinary school work. I have nothing to say about it. But
what I do wish to say, and what I trust I may impress on your minds
firmly is this, that for the purpose of obtaining persons competent to
teach science or to act as technical teachers, a different system must
be adopted. For this purpose a man must know what he is about
thoroughly, and be able to deal with his subject as if it were the
business of his ordinary life. For this purpose, for the obtaining of
teachers of science and of technical classes, the system of catching a
boy or girl young, making a pupil teacher of him, compelling the poor
little mortal to pour from his little bucket, into a still smaller
bucket, that which has just been poured into it out of a big bucket;
and passing him afterwards through the training college, where his life
is devoted to filling the bucket from the pump from morning till night,
without time for thought or reflection, is a system which should not
continue. Let me assure you that it will not do for us, that you had
better give the attempt up than try that system. I remember somewhere
reading of an interview between the poet Southey and a good Quaker.
Southey was a man of marvellous powers of work. He had a habit of
dividing his time into little parts each of which was filled up, and he
told the Quaker what he did in this hour and that, and so on through
the day until far into the night. The Quaker listened, and at the close
said, "Well, but, friend Southey, when dost thee think?" The system
which I am now adverting to is arraigned and condemned by putting that
question to it. When does the unhappy pupil teacher, or over-drilled
student of a training college, find any time to think? I am sure if I
were in their place I could not. I repeat, that kind of thing will not
do for science teachers. For science teachers must have knowledge, and
knowledge is not to be acquired on these terms. The power of repetition
is, but that is not knowledge. The knowledge which is absolutely
requisite in dealing with young children is the knowledge you possess,
as you would know your own business, and which you can just turn about
as if you were explaining to a boy a matter of everyday life.
So far as science teaching and technical education are concerned, the
most important of all things is to provide the machinery for training
proper teachers. The Department of Science and Art has been at that
work for years and years, and though unable under present conditions to
do so much as could be wished, it has, I believe, already begun to
leaven the lump to a very considerable extent. If technical education
is to be carried out on the scale at present contemplated, this
particular necessity must be specially and most seriously provided for.
And there is another difficulty, namely, that when you have got your
science or technical teacher it may not be easy to keep him. You have
educated a man--a clever fellow very likely--on the understanding that
he is to be a teacher. But the business of teaching is not a very
lucrative and not a very attractive one, and an able man who has had a
good training is under extreme temptations to carry his knowledge and
his skill to a better market, in which case you have had all your
trouble for nothing. It has often occurred to me that probably nothing
would be of more service in this matter than the creation of a number
of not very large bursaries or exhibitions, to be gained by persons
nominated by the authorities of the various science colleges and
schools of the country--persons such as they thought to be well
qualified for the teaching business--and to be held for a certain term
of years, during which the holders should be bound to teach. I believe
that some measure of this kind would do more to secure a good supply of
teachers than anything else. Pray note that I do not suggest that you
should try to get hold of good teachers by competitive examination.
That is not the best way of getting men of that special qualification.
An effectual method would be to ask professors and teachers of any
institution to recommend men who, to their own knowledge, are worthy of
such support, and are likely to turn it to good account.
I trust I am not detaining you too long; but there remains yet one
other matter which I think is of profound importance, perhaps of more
importance than all the rest, on which I earnestly beg to be permitted
to say some few words. It is the need, while doing all these things, of
keeping an eye, and an anxious eye, upon those measures which are
necessary for the preservation of that stable and sound condition of
the whole social organism which is the essential condition of real
progress, and a chief end of all education. You will all recollect that
some time ago there was a scandal and a great outcry about certain
cutlasses and bayonets which had been supplied to our troops and
sailors. These warlike implements were polished as bright as rubbing
could make them; they were very well sharpened; they looked lovely. But
when they were applied to the test of the work of war they broke and
they bent, and proved more likely to hurt the hand of him that used
them than to do any harm to the enemy. Let me apply that analogy to the
effect of education, which is a sharpening and polishing of the mind.
You may develop the intellectual side of people as far as you like, and
you may confer upon them all the skill that training and instruction
can give; but, if there is not, underneath all that outside form and
superficial polish, the firm fibre of healthy manhood and earnest
desire to do well, your labour is absolutely in vain.
Let me further call your attention to the fact that the terrible battle
of competition between the different nations of the world is no
transitory phenomenon, and does not depend upon this or that
fluctuation of the market, or upon any condition that is likely to pass
away. It is the inevitable result of that which takes place throughout
nature and affects man's part of nature as much as any other--namely,
the struggle for existence, arising out of the constant tendency of all
creatures in the animated world to multiply indefinitely. It is that,
if you look at it, which is at the bottom of all the great movements of
history. It is that inherent tendency of the social organism to
generate the causes of its own destruction, never yet counteracted,
which has been at the bottom of half the catastrophes which have ruined
States. We are at present in the swim of one of those vast movements in
which, with a population far in excess of that which we can feed, we
are saved from a catastrophe, through the impossibility of feeding
them, solely by our possession of a fair share of the markets of the
world. And in order that that fair share may be retained, it is
absolutely necessary that we should be able to produce commodities
which we can exchange with food-growing people, and which they will
take, rather than those of our rivals, on the ground of their greater
cheapness or of their greater excellence. That is the whole story. And
our course, let me say, is not actuated by mere motives of ambition or
by mere motives of greed. Those doubtless are visible enough on the
surface of these great movements, but the movements themselves have far
deeper sources. If there were no such things as ambition and greed in
this world, the struggle for existence would arise from the same
causes.
Our sole chance of succeeding in a competition, which must constantly
become more and more severe, is that our people shall not only have the
knowledge and the skill which are required, but that they shall have
the will and the energy and the honesty, without which neither
knowledge nor skill can be of any permanent avail. This is what I mean
by a stable social condition, because any other condition than this,
any social condition in which the development of wealth involves the
misery, the physical weakness, and the degradation of the worker, is
absolutely and infallibly doomed to collapse. Your bayonets and
cutlasses will break under your hand, and there will go on accumulating
in society a mass of hopeless, physically incompetent, and morally
degraded people, who are, as it were, a sort of dynamite which, sooner
or later, when its accumulation becomes sufficient and its tension
intolerable, will burst the whole fabric.
I am quite aware that the problem which I have put before you and which
you know as much about as I do, and a great deal more probably, is one
extremely difficult to solve. I am fully aware that one great factor in
industrial success is reasonable cheapness of labour. That has been
pointed out over and over again, and is in itself an axiomatic
proposition. And it seems to me that of all the social questions which
face us at this present time, the most serious is how to steer a clear
course between the two horns of an obvious dilemma. One of these is the
constant tendency of competition to lower wages beyond a point at which
man can remain man--below a point at which decency and cleanliness and
order and habits of morality and justice can reasonably be expected to
exist. And the other horn of the dilemma is the difficulty of
maintaining wages above this point consistently with success in
industrial competition. I have not the remotest conception how this
problem will eventually work itself out; but of this I am perfectly
convinced, that the sole course compatible with safety lies between the
two extremes; between the Scylla of successful industrial production
with a degraded population, on the one side, and the Charybdis of a
population, maintained in a reasonable and decent state, with failure
in industrial competition, on the other side. Having this strong
conviction, which, indeed, I imagine must be that of every person who
has ever thought seriously about these great problems, I have ventured
to put it before you in this bare and almost cynical fashion because it
will justify the strong appeal, which I make to all concerned in this
work of promoting industrial education, to have a care, at the same
time, that the conditions of industrial life remain those in which the
physical energies of the population may be maintained at a proper
level; in which their moral state may be cared for; in which there may
be some rays of hope and pleasure in their lives; and in which the sole
prospect of a life of labour may not be an old age of penury.
These are the chief suggestions I have to offer to you, though I have
omitted much that I should like to have said, had time permitted. It
may be that some of you feel inclined to look upon them as the Utopian
dreams of a student. If there be such, let me tell you that there are,
to my knowledge, manufacturing towns in this country, not one-tenth the
size, or boasting one-hundredth part of the wealth, of Manchester, in
which I do not say that the programme that I have put before you is
completely carried out, but in which, at any rate, a wise and
intelligent effort had been made to realise it, and in which the main
parts of the programme are in course of being worked out. This is not
the first time that I have had the privilege and pleasure of addressing
a Manchester audience. I have often enough, before now, thrown myself
with entire confidence upon the hard-headed intelligence and the very
soft-hearted kindness of Manchester people, when I have had a difficult
and complicated scientific argument to put before them. If, after the
considerations which I have put before you--and which, pray be it
understood, I by no means claim particularly for myself, for I presume
they must be in the minds of a large number of people who have thought
about this matter--if it be that these ideas commend themselves to your
mature reflection, then I am perfectly certain that my appeal to you to
carry them into practice, with that abundant energy and will which have
led you to take a foremost part in the great social movements of our
country many a time beforehand, will not be made in vain. I therefore
confidently appeal to you to let those impulses once more have full
sway, and not to rest until you have done something better and greater
than has yet been done in this country in the direction in which we are
now going. I heartily thank you for the attention which you have been
kind enough to bestow upon me. The practice of public speaking is one I
must soon think of leaving off, and I count it a special and peculiar
honour to have had the opportunity of speaking to you on this subject
to-day.
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THE END OF VOL. III
End of Project Gutenberg's Science and Education, by Thomas H. Huxley