carried my vision out to you of this little row of four or five volumes
in every house, in every life, throughout the world, holding the lives
and ideas and imaginations of men together in a net of common familiar
phrases and common established hopes?
And is this a mere fantastic talk, or is this a thing that could be done
and that ought to be done?
I do not know how it will appear to you, but to me it seems that this
book I have been talking about, the Bible of to-day's civilization, is
not simply a conceivable possibility, it is a great and urgent need. Our
education is, I think, pointless without it, a shell without a core. Our
social life is aimless without it, we are a crowd without a common
understanding. Only by means of some such unifying instrument, I
believe, can we hope to lift human life out of its present dangerous
drift towards confusion and disaster.
It is, I think therefore, an urgently desirable undertaking.
It is also a very practicable one. The creation of such a Bible, its
printing and its translation, and a propaganda that would carry it into
the homes and schools of most of the world, could I think all be
achieved by a few hundred resolute and capable people at a cost of
thirty or forty million dollars. That is a less sum than that the United
States--in a time when they have no enemy to fear in all the world--are
prepared to spend upon the building of what is for them an entirely
superfluous and extravagant toy, a great navy.
You may, you probably will, differ very widely upon much that I have
here put before you. Let me ask you not to let any of the details of my
sketching set you against the fundamental idea, that old creative idea
of the Bohemian educationist who was the pupil of Bacon and the friend
of Milton, the idea of Komensky, the idea of creating and using a common
book, a book of knowledge and wisdom, as the necessary foundation for
any enduring human unanimity.
VI
THE SCHOOLING OF THE WORLD
And now I am going on to a review of the broad facts of the educational
organization of our present world.
I am myself a very under-educated person. It is a constant trouble to
me. Like seeks like in this world. I propose to ask the question whether
the whole world is not under-educated, and I warn you in advance that I
am going to answer in the affirmative.
I am going to discuss the possibility of raising the general educational
level very considerably, and I am going to consider what such a raising
of the educational level would mean in human life.
I propose to adopt rather a vulgar, business-like tone about all this. I
am going to apply to the human community much the same sort of tests
that a manufacturer applies to his factory. His factory has some
distinctive product, and when he looks into his affairs he tries to find
out whether he gets the utmost quantity of the product, whether he gets
the best possible quality of the product, whether he gets it as
efficiently and inexpensively as possible, and constantly how he can
improve his factory and his processes in all these matters.
Now the human community may be regarded as a concern engaged in the
production of human life. And it may be judged very largely by the
question whether the human life it produces is abundant and full and
intense and beautiful.
Most of the tests that we apply to a state or a city or a period or a
nation resolve themselves, you will find, into these questions:--
What was the life it produced?
What is the life it produces?
Now I will further assume that as yet the community has little or no
control over the raw product, over the life, that is to say, that comes
into it. I admit that from at least the time of Plato onward the
possibility has been discussed of _breeding_ human beings as we do
horses and dogs. There is an enormous amount of what is called eugenic
literature and discussion to-day. But I will set all that sort of thing
aside from our present discussion because I do not think anything of the
kind is practicable at the present time.
Quite apart from any other considerations, one has to remember one
entire difference between the possible breeding of human beings and the
actual breeding of dogs and horses. We breed dogs and horses for
uniformity, for certain very limited specified _points_--speed, scent
and the like. But human beings we should have to breed for variety: we
cannot specify any particular _points_ we want. We want statesmen and
poets and musicians and philosophers and swift men and strong men and
delicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses
of another.
It is really a false analogy, that between the breeding of men and the
breeding of horses and dogs. In the case of human beings we want much
more subtle and delicate combinations of qualities. For any practical
purposes we do not know what we want nor do we know how to get it. So
let us rule that theme out of our present discussion altogether.
And I also propose to rule out another set of topics from this
discussion--simply because if we don't do so we shall have more matter
than we can handle conveniently in the time at our disposal. I propose
to leave out all questions of health and physical welfare. There is, as
you know, a vast literature now in existence, concerned with the health
and welfare of children before and after birth, concerned with infantile
life, with social conditions and social work directed to the production
of a vigorous population. I am going to assume here that all that sort
of thing is seen to--that it is all right, that somebody is doing that,
that we need not trouble for the present about any of those things.
This leaves us with the mental life only of our community and its
individuals to consider. On that I propose to concentrate this
discussion.
Now the human mind in its opening stages in a civilized community passes
through a process which may best be named as _schooling_. And under
schooling I would include not only the sort of things that we do to a
prospective citizen in the school and the infant school but also
anything in the nature of a school-like lesson that is done by the
mother or nurse or tutor at home, or by playmates and companions
anywhere. Out of this schooling arises the general mental life. It is
the structural ground-stuff of all education and thought.
Now what is this _schooling_ to do--what is it doing to the new human
being?
Let us recall what our own schooling was.
It fell into two pretty clearly defined parts. We learnt reading and
writing, we made a certain study of grammar, the method of language,
perhaps we learnt the beginnings of some other language than our own; we
learnt some arithmetic and perhaps a little geometry and algebra; we did
some drawing. All these things were ways of expression, means of
expressing ourselves, means of comprehending our thoughts in terms of
other people's minds, and of understanding the expressions of others.
That was the basis and substance of our schooling; a training in mental
elucidation and in communication with other minds. But also as our
schooling went on there was something more; we learnt a little history,
some geography, the beginnings of science. This second part of education
was not so much expression as _wisdom_. We learnt what was generally
known of the world about us and of its past. We entered into the common
knowledge and common ideas of the world.
Now, obviously, this _schooling_ is merely a specialization and
expansion of a parental function.
In the primitive ages of our race the parent, and particularly the
mother, out of an instinctive impulse and practical necessity,
restrained and showed and taught, and the child, with an instinctive
imitativeness and docility, obeyed and learnt. And as the primitive
family grew into a tribe, as functions specialized and the range of
knowledge widened, this primitive schooling by the mother was
supplemented and extended by the showing of things by companions and by
the maxims and initiations of old men.
It was only with the development of early civilizations, as the
mysteries of writing and reading began to be important in life, that the
school, _qua_ school, became a thing in itself. And as the community
expanded, the scope of instruction expanded with it. Schooling is, in
fact, and always has been, the expansion and development of the
primitive savage mind, which is still all that we inherit, to adapt it
to the needs of a larger community. It makes out of the savage raw
material which is our basal mental stuff, a citizen. It is a necessary
process of fusion if a civilized community is to keep in being. Without
at least a network of schooled persons, able to communicate its common
ideas and act in intelligent co-operation, no community beyond a mere
family group can ever hold together.
As the human community expands, therefore, the range of schooling must
expand to keep pace with it.
I want to base my inquiry upon that proposition. If it is sound, certain
very interesting conclusions follow.
I have already shown in the preceding discussions that the _range_ of
the modern state has increased at least ten times in the past century,
and that the scale of our community of intercourse has increased
correspondingly. I want now to ask if there has been any corresponding
enlargement of the scope of the schooling--either of the community as a
whole or of any special governing classes in the community--to keep pace
with this tremendous extension of range. I am going to argue that there
has not been such an enlargement, and that a large factor in our present
troubles is the failure of education and educational method to keep pace
with the new demands made upon them.
Now I will first ask what would one like one's son or daughter to get at
school to make him or her a full living citizen of this modern world.
And at first I will not take into consideration the question of expense
or any such practical difficulties. I will suppose that for the
education of this fortunate young citizen whose case we are considering
we have limitless means, the best possible tutors, the best apparatus
and absolutely the most favourable conditions. The only limits to the
teaching of this young citizen are his or her own limitations. We
suppose a pupil of fair average intelligence only.
Now first we shall want our pupil to understand, speak, read and write
the mother tongue well. To do this thoroughly in English involves a
fairly sound knowledge of Latin grammar and at least some slight
knowledge of the elements of Greek. Latin and Greek, which are
disappearing as distinct and separate subjects from many school
curricula, are returning as necessary parts of the English course.
But nowadays a full life is not to be lived with a single language. The
world becomes polyglot. Even if we do not want to live among foreigners,
we want to read their books and newspapers and understand and follow
their thought. Few of us there are who would not gladly read and speak
several more languages if we had the chance of doing so. I would
therefore set down as a desirable part of this ideal education we are
planning, two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue
learnt early and thoroughly. These additional languages can be acquired
easily if they are learnt in the right way. The easiest way to learn a
language is to learn it when you are quite young. Many prosperous people
in Europe nowadays contrive to bring up their children with two or three
foreign languages, by employing foreign nurses and nursery governesses
who never speak to the children except in the foreign languages. In
many cases what is known as the alternate week system prevails. The
governess is Swiss and for one week she talks nothing but French and for
another nothing but German. In this way the children at the age of eight
or nine can be made to talk all three languages with a perfect accent
and an easy idiom.
Now, if this can be done for some children it could be done for all
children--provided we could find the nurses and governesses or some
equivalent for the nurses and governesses, and if we can organize the
business efficiently. That point I will defer. I note here simply that
the thing is possible, if not practicable.
Children, however, who have made this much start with languages are
unable, in England and America at least, to go on properly with the
learning of languages when they pass into a school. Our schools are so
badly organized that it is rare to find even French well taught, and
there is rarely any teaching at all of modern languages other than
French or German. Often the two foreign languages are taught by
different teachers employing different methods, and both employing a
different grammatical nomenclature from that used in studying the mother
tongue. The classes are encumbered with belated beginners. The child who
has got languages from its governess, therefore, marks time--that is to
say, wastes time in these subjects at school. The child well grounded
in some foreign tongue is often a source of irritation to the teacher,
and gets into trouble because it uses idiomatic expressions with which
the teacher is unfamiliar, or seems to reflect upon the teacher's
accent. These are the limitations of the school and not the limitations
of the pupil. _Given facilities_, there is no reason why there should
not be a rapid expansion of the language syllabus at thirteen or
fourteen, and why language generally should not be studied. Some
Slavonic language could be taken up--Russian or Czech--and a beginning
made with some non-Aryan tongue--Arabic, for example.
The object of language teaching in a civilized state is twofold: to give
a thorough, intimate, usable knowledge of the mother tongue and of
certain key languages. But if teaching were systematic and no time were
wasted, if schooling joined on and were continuous instead of being
catastrophically disconnected, there is another side of language
teaching altogether--now entirely disregarded--and that is the
acquisition _in skeleton_ of quite a number of languages clustering
round the key languages. If at the end of his schooling a boy knows
English, French and German very well and nothing more, he is still a
helpless foreigner in relation to large parts of the world. But if, in
addition, he has an outline knowledge of Russian and Arabic or Turkish
or Hindustani--it need only be a quite bare outline--and if he has had a
term or so of Spanish in relation to his French, or Swedish in relation
to his German, then he has the key in his hands for almost any language
he may want. If he has not the language in his head, he has it very
conveniently on call--he needs but a sensible conversation dictionary
and in a little while he can possess himself of it.
You may think this a large order; you may think I am demanding
linguistic prodigies; but remember that I am upon my own ground here; I
am a trained teacher and a student of pedagogic science, and I am a
watchful parent; I know how time and opportunity are wasted in school,
and particularly in language teaching. Languages are not things that
exist in water-tight compartments; each one illuminates the other
and--unless it is taught with stupefying stupidity--leads on to others.
A child can acquire the polyglot habit almost unawares. This widening
grasp of languages is or was within the capacity of nearly everyone born
into the world--given the facilities.
I ask you to note that qualification--"given the facilities."
And now let us turn from the language side to the rest of schooling. A
second main division of our schooling was mathematical instruction of a
sort. It fell into the three more or less isolated subjects of
arithmetic, algebra and Euclid. We carried on in these closed cells what
was, I now perceive, a needlessly laborious and needlessly muddled
struggle to comprehend quantity, series and form.
In all these matters, looking back upon what I was taught, comparing it
with what I now know, and comparing my mind with the minds of more
fortunate individuals, I cannot resist the persuasion that I was very
badly done indeed in this section. And it is small consolation to me to
note that most people's minds seem to be no better done than mine.
My arithmetic, for instance, is mediocre. It is pervaded by inaccuracy.
You may say that this is probably want of aptitude. Partly, no doubt,
but not altogether. What is want of aptitude? Bad as my arithmetic is
now it is not so bad as it was when I left school. When I was about
twenty I held a sort of inquest upon it and found out a number of
things. I found that I had been allowed to acquire certain bad habits
and besetting sins--most people do. For instance, when I ran up a column
of figures to add them I would pass from nine to seven quite surely and
say sixteen; but if I went from seven to nine I had a vicious
disposition to make it eighteen. Endless additions went wrong through
that one error. I had fumbled into this vice and--this is my point--my
school had no apparatus, and no system of checks, to discover that this
had occurred. I used to get my addition wrong and I used to be
punished--stupidly--by keeping me in from exercise. Time after time this
happened; there was no investigation and no improvement. Nobody ever put
me through a series of test sums that would have analysed my errors and
discovered these besetting sins of mine that led to my inaccurate
arithmetic.
And another thing that made my arithmetic wrong was a defect in
eyesight. My two eyes haven't quite the same focal length and this often
puts me out of the straight with a column of figures. But there was
nothing in my school to discover that, and my school never did discover
it.
My geometrical faculties are also very poor and undeveloped. Euclid's
elements, indeed, I have always found simple and straightforward, but
when it comes to anything in solid geometry--the intersection of a
sphere by a cone, let us say, or something of that sort--I am hopelessly
at sea. Deep-seated habits of faulting and fogging, which were actually
developed by my schooling, prevent my forming any conception of the
surfaces involved.
Here again, just as with the language teaching, hardly any of us are
really fully educated. We suffer, nearly all of us, from a lack of
quantitative grasp and from an imperfect grasp of form. Few of us have
acquired such a grasp. Few of us ever made a proper use of models, and
nearly all of us have miserably trained hands. _Given proper
facilities_--and here again I ask you to note that proviso--given proper
educational facilities, most of us would not only be able to talk with
most people in the world but we should also have a conception of form
and quantity far more subtle than that possessed by any but a few
mathematicians and mechanical geniuses to-day.
Let me now come to a third main division of what we call _schooling_. In
our schooling there was an attempt to give us a view of the world about
us and a view of our place in it, under the headings of History and
Geography.
It would be impossible to imagine a feebler attempt. The History and
Geography I had was perhaps, in one respect, the next best thing to a
good course. It was so thoroughly and hopelessly bad that it left me
with a vivid sense of ignorance. I read, therefore, with great avidity
during my adolescence.
In English schools now I doubt if the teaching of history is much better
than it was in my time, but geography has grown and improved--largely
through the vigorous initiative of Professor Huxley, who replaced the
old dreary topography by a vivid description of the world and mingled
with it a sort of _general elementary science_ under the name of
Physiography. This subject, with the addition of some elementary Biology
and Physiology does now serve to give many young people in Great Britain
something like a general view of the world as a whole. We need now to
make a parallel push with the teaching of history. Upon this matter of
the teaching of history I am a fanatic. I cannot think of an education
as even half done until there has been a fairly sound review of the
whole of the known past, from the beginnings of the geological record
up to our own time. Until that is done, the pupil has not been _placed_
in the world. He is incapable of understanding his relationship to and
his role in the scheme of things. He is, whatever else he may have
learnt, essentially an ignorant person.
And now let me recapitulate these demands I have made upon the process
of schooling--this process of teaching that begins in the nursery and
ends about the age of sixteen or seventeen. I have asked that it should
involve a practical mastery of three or four languages, including the
mother tongue, and that perhaps four or five other additional languages
shall have been studied, so to speak, in skeleton. I have added
mathematics carried much higher and farther than most of our schools do
to-day. I have demanded a sound knowledge of universal history, a
knowledge of general physical and general biological science, and I have
thrown in, with scarcely a word of apology, a good training of the eyes
and hands in drawing and manual work.
So far as the pupil goes, I submit this is an entirely practicable
proposal. It can be done, I am convinced, with any ordinary pupil of
average all-round ability, given--what is now almost universally
wanting--the proper educational facilities. And now I will go on to
examine the question of why these facilities are wanting. I want to ask
why a large class, if not the whole of our population, is not educated
up to the level of wide understanding and fully developed capacity such
a schooling as I have sketched out implies.
Well, the first fact obvious to every parent who has ever enquired
closely into the educational outlook of his offspring, the first fact we
have to face is this: there are not enough properly equipped schools
and, still more, not enough good teachers, to do the job. It is
proclaiming no very profound secret to declare that there is hardly such
a thing in the world to-day as a fully equipped school, that is to say a
school having all the possible material and apparatus and staffed
sufficiently with a bright and able teacher, a really live and alert
educationist, in every necessary subject, such as would be needed to
give this ideal education. That is the great primary obstacle, that is
the core of our present problem. We cannot get our modern community
educated to anything like its full possibilities as yet because we have
neither the teachers nor the schools.
Now is this a final limitation?
For a moment I will leave the question of the possibilities of more and
better equipped schools on one side. I will deal with the supply of
teachers. At present we do not even attempt to get good teachers; we do
not offer any approach to a tolerable life for an ordinary teacher; we
compel them to lead mean and restricted lives; we underpay them
shockingly; we do not deserve nearly such good teachers as we get. But
even supposing we were to offer reasonable wages for teachers; an
average all-round wage of L1,000 a year or so, and respect and dignity;
it does not follow that we should get as many as we should need--using
the methods that are in use to-day--to provide this ideal schooling for
most of our population, or, indeed, for any large section of our
population.
You will note a new proviso creeping in at this point--"using the
methods that are used to-day."