Education will perhaps be one of the most interesting fields of
future scientific management. At present we know a few bits of a few
sciences, and a handful of historical facts. We fill the picture out
with theories and blunderingly try to make other people memorize these
things. We call the process Education. We have invented a few devices
for discovering what they forget, and call them Examinations. Recently
we have invented a few tricks of exposing what they cannot do, and
we call them Mental Tests. We wrap it all up in a tangle of loose
philosophy, and we call it The Science of Education. We profess, it is
true, some loftier pursuits. We are trying, we say, to teach our pupils
to think. We try to mould their characters, and we try to produce good
citizens.
But what does it all amount to in the end? The most successful way
yet discovered of teaching people to think is for the teacher himself
to think aloud, and hope that his pupils will catch the knack. How
do we set about moulding the character of a child? By moral precept,
good example, healthy sport, uplifting atmosphere, and an unprincipled
application of punishment and reward. Our children are bored by
precepts. They yawn in our presence and make fun of our precepts in
our absence; they break out at the first opportunity and “sow their
wild oats”, and then rediscover our old morality for themselves. The
more adventurous invent a new one of their own, probably a finer thing
than that we tried to teach. Our good examples produce two alternative
effects. If the child happens to like us, he will imitate our actions,
and morality becomes an empty mimicry. Perhaps, on the other hand,
we have an unfortunate mannerism or some innocent resemblance to a
forgotten terror, and the child dislikes us. The good example is taken
as a pattern of the thing to be avoided. By counter-suggestion he takes
the opposite course so far as in him lies. The sons of clergymen might
provide us with material for a theory of moral education.
Our healthy sports――but why go on? It is not my intention to ridicule
the best things that the wisdom of the ages has produced. My only
contention is that our methods of education are hopelessly tentative,
uncertain in their effects, justifiable only on the ground that we
cannot yet see clearly anything else to do. But things will change.
Already there _is_ a science of education, because people with
scientific minds are thinking about the problems it presents. They
are experimenting, and they are at least disclosing our ignorance.
Experiments similar to those of Scientific Management are producing
similar results. We are beginning to know important things about
the mind, its natural development, and the method by which it works.
Already we know a good deal about the conditions of remembering, enough
at least to condemn, if we dared to think out the implications of our
knowledge, many venerable educational practices. Some of the most
important of our discoveries fall readily into line with the results of
Industrial Psychology. There seems, for example, to be a natural rate
of working appropriate in learning, appropriate rhythms of impression,
rest and recall, by the operation of which knowledge becomes firmly
embedded in the mind. When these rhythms are ignored, the evil effects
of cramming are produced. Our educational methods in the school and in
the university break and crush all these rhythms, and students pass
out into the world with mutilated minds.
The rhythms of life, however, present in every field possibilities of
extensive modification. That many needs demand a rhythmic satisfaction
is well known, but there is scope for detailed investigation and
experiment here. None of these natural periods seem to be absolutely
fixed beyond all power of alteration. The rhythms of digestion probably
vary with the fashions of the age and class, according as high teas
or late dinners are in fashion. They might under certain conditions
have depended upon the tides; and changes in our habits of taking
nourishment would probably produce most interesting variations.
Why should we sleep throughout the night, and work throughout the day?
Our habits in this respect were formed in the days before fire was
stolen from the gods――and they are wasteful habits, too. Artificial
light one day may easily come to be as cheap as water, and man will
change his ways of taking rest. Some experimenters urge that the most
valuable part of sleep is in the first few minutes. The remainder of
the night we spend in dreams and in gradually waking up. Let us apply
the principle of rest-pauses in a thorough-going way. Distributed
periods of sleep might prove a great economy. People will be taught to
recline say once in every two hours, and sleep for twenty minutes. Thus
will be inaugurated the twenty-four hour day, and a race of energetic
Napoleons will emerge.
But to return to general education. Why should the period of learning
be concentrated wholly in the early years of life? Distributed periods
of study will undoubtedly prove more effective, say two hours every
day, or two days every week, or, if you like, two continuous months in
the year throughout the whole of life. Thus might come the solution to
a variety of problems. We have, first of all, the problems of education
itself. At present we arrange the life of a child so that a period of
intensive cramming is followed by the abrupt cessation of intellectual
life at the time when the intellect is just beginning to mature. There
is the problem of industrial fatigue, due more often to monotony than
to arduous labour. Recent researches afford scientific support to
the adage that a change of work is as good as a holiday. Educational
pursuits will provide the necessary change. Already many working men
spend their evenings at classes and their only holiday at a summer
school.
Lastly there is the ever-growing problem of the prolongation of
infancy. Under simpler conditions a child was adequately equipped
for practical purposes by the age of ten or even younger. Now-a-days
fourteen years is considered necessary, whilst the professional man is
almost thirty before he is fit to earn a living――and still there is
more to learn.
Given successful scientific research in this direction, back we go
to the methods of the early days of the Industrial Revolution with
children employed in every factory. Under rational supervision it may
prove a great advance. The moral education which practical life alone
can give will commence at the proper time. Children will be protected
from the dangers of neglectful or over-solicitous parents. They will
acquire at an early age the much-required sense of responsibility and
independence, and their parallel work at school will acquire some
semblance of significance and interest.
In addition to new rhythms and periods of study, new methods will be
employed. Probably the curriculum itself will be the first thing to
be revised. In spite of a good deal of relevant knowledge, no one has
yet consistently thought out an answer to the question: What should a
child be taught? Freed from the assumptions of faculty-psychology and
from its present entanglements with external systems of examination,
the course of studies prescribed for the ordinary child would omit much
that is now included and include much that is now ignored. Moreover,
the order of presentation both of subjects and of the material in each
subject will undergo extensive alteration. Changes in this respect
have already well begun, and changes blindly initiated move towards
enlightenment.
Things are moving towards a triple control of the individual life,
one that roughly corresponds to the old control of the Church and
State, with the added partnership of organized industry. To the modern
representative of the Church――whatever ultimate form this institution
may take――belongs the function of guiding the individual for his own
personal good. It is a service which the Church might easily have
continued to perform, but for its insistence upon doctrinal terms.
What was in effect a kind of strike of the religious ministry, met by
boycott on the side of the general public, has led to the development
of black leg service on the part of psychoanalysis and disinterested
teachers. At present the organization manifests all the muddle of an
emergency supply. Children in over-crowded schools cannot obtain
adequate individual guidance, and the work of the psychoanalyst
is curative only in exceptional cases, and not, as it should be,
universally preventive. Nevertheless, feeling moves in the direction of
agreement that something more must be done, though as yet nothing like
a constructive policy of personal guidance has emerged.
The activities of the State in this connection are likely to increase.
In earlier days a man could be born, could live and die in comparative
privacy. Now, official notice is taken at least of his birth, his
marriage, his income, most of his crimes, some at least of his
diseases; and his death, too, is registered. The registration of
particulars about the individual will extend to educational records,
abilities and disabilities, and of all that is relevant to his social
life. Much of this will be done by institutions of the kind which our
present “vocational bureaus” dimly and crudely foreshadow. Ultimately
a public service more or less State-controlled will be developed to
mediate between Education and Industry. When life becomes more fully
organized into a system of interlacing rhythms, the unit of the
secondary Educational System will be an institution embracing factory,
school, and clinic under a single board of control with its industrial,
educational and medical representatives; and the threefold plan will
no doubt be adopted in both the higher and lower grades.
Early in life some of the main tendencies and abilities of the child
will be diagnosed and he will be sent to the appropriate school and
industry. Doubtful and obscure cases will, with the “allround” types,
be sent for a “general education”, in the course of which, however,
they will come under more careful examination. By the age of ten
or twelve the child’s future course should in outline and general
character be fairly clearly known, and by sixteen he will have become
more or less specialized to a certain type of course. Not, however,
completely specialized. To meet the problem of trade-fluctuations and
consequent unemployment, and as a preventive of industrial monotony,
each person will probably be taught a variety of pursuits, achieving
a balance appropriate to each case of mental and manual work. The
system of multiple vocations would probably be operated in conjunction
with some form of industrial conscription; for increased wisdom in
government should by this time have undermined popular prejudice on
this score.
At the prospect of such extensive changes in our educational
institutions one wonders what is going to happen to our ancient and
venerable universities. They might, consistently with all that has
been said, preserve their functions as specialized seats of learning;
but it is more likely that long before a rational system of education
has been evolved they will have changed their character beyond all
recognition. In optimistic, but perhaps short-sighted, moments, it is
commonly supposed that with the increasing demand for education their
future is assured, and that they will assume ever-increasing importance
and enjoy ever-growing popularity and respect.
Let us, however, for a moment consider the instructive parallel of the
Holy Catholic Church, the unfortunate history of which is a byword at
the present day. The causes of its decline do not, I think, include
one that is frequently suggested. Men are not to-day less religious
or less in need of its holy offices. The change has come about not
by decreased demands but by competition and an augmented supply. Men
still need the things of which the Church once held an almost complete
monopoly. They need some sort of philosophy, some personal guidance in
the difficult art of the moral life, and many other things which once
the Church alone could give.
The invention of the Press made possible the novelist. The novelist
found himself adopted as guide, philosopher, and friend. The younger
generation now-a-days acquires its general outlook from the novelists
and playwrights, who exercise an almost sacerdotal influence. Personal
guidance is offered by the psychoanalyst. He exercises the priestly
functions of the confessional and of exorcizing demons; whilst Coué
and his disciples offer a new technique of prayer. The validity of
these practices is not here my subject, but the fact that people
are getting what they want. Such new ways of meeting old demands
are continually being found, and may not the Universities soon find
themselves in the position of the Church? Several things would make the
suggestion plausible.
In the first place, education is already being purveyed as a commercial
product. Quite apart from the self-educators produced fortnightly
by the Press, there are Mind-training Institutes and Correspondence
Colleges. Universities at the present time can afford to ignore this
competition. They have, they think, the pull in traditional prestige,
the advantages of the tutorial system, the general atmosphere of
culture, and they have, we trust, at present the most distinguished
scholars. But traditional prestige is a slippery foundation for any
institution now-a-days. The test that is being applied is that of
practical efficiency. Already happy-go-lucky methods in University
finance are being examined by Royal Commissions and by financial
experts. The next thing will be that they will start to scrutinize
the educational methods being employed. Already, moreover, the newer
institutions are being forced to mould themselves upon the model of
an up-to-date business office. Soon they will adopt those well-proven
adjuncts of commercial progress――modern methods of advertisement, for
instance.
When the printing press arose, priests, no doubt, preserved their
self-assurance by reliance upon the peculiar efficiency of the
spoken word. They clung to the sermon and scorned the weapon of the
pamphleteers. When comparing themselves with the Correspondence
Colleges, the Universities resort to a similar argument. One day,
however, the Correspondence Colleges will realize the possibilities in
wireless as an adjunct to their methods.
When with the assistance of its influential board of directors some
national broadcasting company finally secures its charter, the
following situation will arise. Phenomenal salaries will attract
the most distinguished exponents of the various arts and sciences
to the central broadcasting stations. District Colleges staffed by
automatic invigilators will call the roll of students at the various
lectures. These will be delivered by a loud speaker synchronized with
a televisual cinema projecting the lecturer’s blackboard and other
illustrative material.
The economy effected by conducting classes of say half a million or
equally easily ten million students will enable anyone to follow
courses by all the most distinguished exponents of his subject.
European students in psychology, for example, will attend say at 9 a.m.
for Professor Stout, followed at 10 by Dr Sigmund Freud, and at 11 by
Professor G. E. Moore. Nor need these distinguished men repeat their
lectures until they have something new to say, for dictaphones will be
included among the listeners-in, and another relay of undergraduates
will acquire their wisdom from the broadcast-phonograph.
Such a soulless business organization, it will be objected, could
never replace our present establishments of culture. But here, again,
I feel the objection is of purely transitory force. Progressive
differentiation which I have mentioned as an important aspect of
evolution has produced the antithesis of commerce and cultured life.
Differentiation, however, is to a great extent counterbalanced by
processes of integration; and such integration we can see in progress
in the business world.
The commercial applications of art besides influencing the dividends of
our railway companies must be exercising a cultural effect upon their
boards of directors; and culture filters through in many ways. The
justly renowned polish of the Oxford graduate is finding a lucrative
field of expression in modern salesmanship. An up-to-date salesman
now-a-days speaks considerably better English than his customer, and
the average waiter is better mannered than the proprietor of the
hôtel. It is inconceivable that the employer will continue to be quite
uninfluenced by his cultured and refined subordinates. Perhaps this
is the secret of the growth of those Learned Societies the purport of
which we understand is to supply that liberal education demanded now
by busy business men. When the captains of industry have mastered this
business of being cultured and have seen its possibilities in practical
affairs their own peculiar talents will be applied in ever wider
spheres; of which education will probably be the first.
V
Dr Schiller is of the opinion[8] that the evolutionary impetus is
spent, and biologically at least we have seen the end of change. I
wonder. And supposing he were right? The process might begin again;
this time with the men of science at the helm.
[8] _Tantalus._
The vast and powerful machinery developed to meet the needs of
Scientific Management in industry, government, and education may
make it possible to initiate and control the operation of the
natural laws of change. Side by side with the direct control of
character, belief, and action, large-scale experiments in eugenics
may proceed. Such experiments would not demand the clumsy expedient
of the Act of Parliament. The triple control will provide adequate
means for eliminating the intractable factors in the situation.
Perhaps the constitution of the United States of America provides the
most promising machinery at present for large-scale sociological
experiment. These States, moreover, are fortunate in the character of
their population. But whether by education or by eugenic control man
himself will change. Physically, by a process of atrophy (at which Dr
Schiller will not, I trust, demur), he may consist chiefly in a head
from which will depend a mass of atrophied limbs. He will presumably be
more or less permanently mounted upon a compact automobile, travelling
by road or by air. No doubt a submarine attachment will be available to
facilitate his morning bath.[9] But it is not with his appearance that
we are here concerned. What is the future of his mind?
[9] But on all questions relating to our mechanical future I must
refer the reader to Professor A. M. Low, to whose works _The
Future_ and _Wireless Possibilities_ I myself am chiefly
indebted in this respect.
There are interesting possibilities in the sphere of sense alone.
Some of our present senses, such as taste or smell, may disappear
altogether. More and more we seem to depend upon purely visual cues. On
the other hand, vision and hearing may be considerably augmented. Even
though they be supplemented by microphones and microscopes, we always
strive to see and hear a little more than the best of instruments
allows. If, after all, the biological vitalists are right, so long
as we are interested in the constitution of matter there is a motive
for further variation. But, as Professor Low points out, our æsthetic
susceptibilities will have to be modified on the way. When we first
begin to perceive the fauna in the cheese and the microbes on our
walls, and when, like the birds, we go into the country to listen to
the worms, we shall have to revise our values. Our poets, too, will
find new themes to sing.
Memory, even more than sense, suggests many possibilities of
development. By hypnotism, or by the natural working of the unconscious
mind, it is said that we can recall even the earliest events of life.
Soon, perhaps, this power will be under conscious control, and the
autobiographers will have their millennium too. But, quite apart from
this, new methods of education and a little Scientific Management would
enable us, even now, to do much more with our memories through the
powers we already possess.
The developments of intellectual life are the most difficult to
foresee. But there are a few clues which enable us to guess at their
possible nature. What purely intellectual achievements have been
made in the past seem to depend upon the development of language and
the elaboration of symbolism convenient to thought. Philosophers and
scientists have continually expressed dissatisfaction at the modes
of expression at their disposal in a language primarily devised to
express our emotional and practical demands. Scientists have invented
a technical terminology in their nouns. Mathematicians go somewhat
further, and have invented more thorough-going systems of symbolism.
Philosophers have always found it necessary to invent peculiar
manners of speech, and now are seriously beginning to follow the
mathematicians. It is possible that quite a new language will arise,
probably a variety of purely technical languages――useful for different
purposes of thought. The process of differentiation manifests itself
here as in other ways. Already people following different pursuits find
it almost impossible to converse, at least with anything approaching
mutual understanding. And this process of specialization which
education and increasing knowledge forces upon us points to another
obstacle in the way of the Esperantists and other propagandists for
a universal language. By the time this language is adopted, we shall
have lost all common interests for the discussion of which it might
have been employed. Perhaps our newer universities will inaugurate
professorships in small-talk to keep alive an obsolescent art and to
correct this serious menace of specialism.
More rapid than changes in the intellectual life will be those of
character and of temperament. There are two significant facts in the
trend of man’s emotional development, one of special and the other of
general interest.
Firstly, there is the curious decay of cruelty and the increased desire
to avoid inflicting pain. No one, surely, would deny an enormous
change in this respect even in recent centuries. And we are beginning
to discover the lengths to which development may go. Even now it often
causes a moral man to attribute base motives to himself in doing a
kindly act to spare his friend the subtle pain or sense of obligation
which occurs in the feeling of gratitude. Modest forms of generosity
often have this motive in their modesty.
There is not much further to go before we reach the social life of
Henry James’s novels――where the principal characters have exquisite
consciences, where good souls are tortured by the regret that they had
not expressed their reproaches a shade or so less directly so as more
to convey the impression that they had really said nothing at all.
Now-a-days you are afraid to forgive your enemies, lest the pain of
remorse you thrust upon them should exceed the discomfort inflicted by
a direct retaliation. The finer spirits of the age cannot live up to
their own ideals because of the sense of inferiority it would impose
upon their less advanced companions. Society in the thirtieth century
will assuredly be even more refined.
The second significant fact of the moral history of our age to some
extent ameliorates the prospect. We are gradually growing out of our
emotions. We are acquiring self-consciousness and becoming habitually
introspective, and, as the psychologists tell us, you cannot observe
an emotion without decreasing its intensity.
This partly explains what is curious in what is called “modern love”,
as practised and expounded by our younger novelists. It is essentially
introspective. Every schoolboy knows what is going to happen when he
falls in love. He knows about the illusions arising from emotion. The
undergraduate cannot make love extravagantly like the Elizabethan
poets, or sentimentally like the Victorians. When he feels the passion
rising, he informs the provoking cause of it, that he knows quite well
that, in spite of it, she is a perfectly ordinary little person with
nothing very much to recommend her. They both agree that they are
victims of an obsolescent mechanism designed for biological purposes, a
mechanism primarily intended for the brutes, but annoyingly persistent
in its control over civilized man. They agree, however, to act the
performance through, because a rational way of making love is difficult
to devise. They agree to make senseless and meaningless remarks. He is
prepared to rave about her perfectly beautiful eyes whilst rationally
convinced that they show a distinct suspicion of squint. She in her
turn will admire his manly form whilst fully conscious that he is
rather undersized and remembering that he signally failed to get his
Blue. The kind of objective attitude that we are being taught to adopt
towards criminals, which the psycho-analysts tell us to adopt towards
the libertine, sooner or later we shall have to adopt towards ourselves.
In any attempt to picture to ourselves the life of future man one of
the chief of the things which we have to take into account is the
entirely remodelled constitution of society. There will be a small
upper class――very small because, as all the prophets agree, the
decrease of the birthrate in the upper strata will assume for sometime
quite alarming proportions. It will be regenerated for a while by
the bolder, more adventurous, and more capable of the working-class,
who use their wits to escape from the situation into which they were
born. Later, of course, this escape will be facilitated by reliable
mental, moral, and vocational tests. The working-classes proper will
then consist only of those less capable of administrative, organizing,
and managemental functions. There will be relatively little unrest
because the ruling classes will have learnt the wisdom of making the
workers comfortable and happy; and potential agitators by the system
of vocational selection will find themselves more lucratively employed
in voicing the opinions of the ruling classes at the broadcasting
stations. Plato will have come into his own. His criticism of
democracy will have become accepted and the philosopher kings――with a
difference――will have become established in the seats of power.
Whilst the masses enjoy their innocent pleasures, the ruling caste will
live a life of its own. Judged by the present, one might expect it to
be a life of sport, gambling, and house-parties, and there may be a
transition-period of this kind. In this no doubt some curious forms
of sport will be devised. If the theory is well founded which asserts
that our present modes of sport are debased survivals of ancient
occupations, the craze of the fortieth century may be the fascinating
game of mining. It will be played in specially constructed coal-mines,
filled with ingenious traps, blind alleys, and water-hazards. Messrs
Pope and Bradley in those days will circularize their clients by
provocative letters pointing out that last year’s mining suit is
hopelessly out of date, or that the time has now come for replenishing
the aerial wardrobe for the forthcoming polar sports. Chemical
warfare, conducted with novel forms of laughing-gas, will be a popular
institution at Christmas parties.
Various considerations combine, however, to suggest that sport is but a
transitory phenomenon in human life.
Firstly, the applications of scientific method to its pursuit is
tending to remove its distinctive character. And this tendency for
economic reasons is likely to prove irresistible. The old-fashioned
sportsman will protest against the newer methods. He may refuse to
bring to the golf course wind gauge and slide rule; he may refuse
to attend to the lessons of motion study, but in consequence of his
stubbornness he will find himself too ridiculously outclassed to appear
on the course at all. His will be the fate of the older militarists who
protest on similar grounds against chemical warfare.
To those who play the newer game, sport will become a rigorous
discipline and a scientific pursuit.
The general public, moreover, will increasingly enjoy its sport by
proxy. The televisual cinema, which will then be stereoscopic, will
provide a substitute for the football match; and the sporting spectacle
will naturally form only an incident in the variety show. Again, the
sporting interest will be merged, this time in the interests of
general entertainment.
Another important change already far advanced which will radically
alter the character of sporting life is man’s recent discovery of his
mind. The punch ball and gloves now hang limply on the wall whilst
the one time early riser lies comfortably in bed cherishing the
formula by which he grows sturdier and more Spartan in every way.
Instead of Sandow we have Pelman, and this will spread to the schools.
Enterprising teachers graphically plot the progress of their pupils
upon the wall. Small boys will exhibit their I.Q.s and scorn a display
of biceps. If Alec Waugh continues to write about it, the change may
reach the Public Schools. Again, it is the work of the printing press
which is at last beginning to tell. Anagrams and intellectual puzzles
of all kinds have existed for the few from ages immemorial, but in the
cross-word puzzle the principle is finding a wider appeal.
Lastly, the final blow to sport and to our British system of thought
built up upon it will come from the industrial field. Industrial
psychology will undermine it by eliminating its fundamental function.
The forms of sport with which we are most familiar arise chiefly
as a reaction against sedentary and ill-planned occupations.
Scientifically organized labour of the future will exhibit more
variety and give fuller expression to the many-sidedness of man.
Excessive specialization of the individual in his work has produced an
artificial differentiation in the arrangement of his life, of which the
distinction of work and play is the most glaring example.
With the outgrowing of sport, or, more strictly, with the blending
of work and play man will apply himself to tasks commensurate with
his powers. Dimly we begin to see what these tasks will be. The task
of government, complex as it may be, will be less difficult in many
respects than it is to-day. The danger of revolution should be only
a remote contingency. The stability of a society ultimately depends
inversely upon the prevalence of nepotism. A government of the
efficient and the talented equipped with scientific knowledge would be
impregnable. It matters not that men are mostly irrational so long
as the rational have the power to rule. The irrationality of the rest
is subject to uniform law, which, understood, can be brought within
control. But the temptation to the ruler to hand on the reins of power
to the inefficient with whom he has emotional ties of paternity or
friendship is almost irresistible. The difficulty, however, is not
insuperable. Some form of “Socialism”, which started all at equality
and promoted to power according to ability, gauged quasi-mechanically
by mental and vocational tests, would be a partial safeguard. Moreover,
in a compact ruling class a kind of family moral tradition might
emerge. This would be reinforced by the common-sense recognition of
the dangers of promoting the inefficient on a large scale over the
heads of the competent. The obvious effect of such promotion is, in the
long run, revolution; and revolutions will probably be recurrent until
the lesson has been learnt.