_THE GOLDEN LADDER_
Education is an excellent thing, but the word has a deterrent sound.
It breathes pedantry and dogmatism, and "all that is at enmity with
joy." To people of my age it recalls the dread spirits of Pinnock
and Colenso and Hamblin Smith, and that even more terrible Smith who
edited Dictionaries of everything. So, though this chapter is to be
concerned with the substance, I eschew the word, and choose for my
title a figurative phrase. I might, with perfect justice, have chosen
another figure, and have headed my paper "The Peg and the Hole"; for,
after nearly a century of patient expectation, we have at last got
a Square Peg in the Square Hole of Public Instruction. In simpler
speech, England has at length got a Minister of Education who has
a genuine enthusiasm for knowledge, and will do his appointed work
with a single eye to the intellectual advancement of the country,
neither giving heed to the pribbles and prabbles of theological
disputants, nor modifying his plans to suit the convenience of the
manufacturer or the squire. He is, in my judgment, exactly the
right man for the office which he fills; and is therefore strikingly
differentiated not only from some Ministers of Education whom we
have known, but also from the swarm of Controllers and Directors
and salaried busybodies who have so long been misdirecting us and
contradicting one another.
When I say that Mr. Fisher will not give heed to theological disputants,
I by no means ignore the grievance under which some of those disputants
have suffered. The ever-memorable majority of 1906 was won, not
wholly by Tariff Reform or Chinese Labour, but to a great extent
by the righteous indignation of Nonconformity at the injury which
had been inflicted on it by the Tory Education Acts. There were
Passive Resisters in those days, as there are Conscientious Objectors
now; and they made their grievance felt when the time for voting
came. The Liberal Government, in spite of its immense victory at
the polls, scored a fourfold failure in its attempts to redress
that grievance, and it remains unredressed to this hour. Not that I
admired the Liberal Education Bills. My own doctrine on the matter
was expressed by my friend Arthur Stanton, who said in 1906: "I
think National and Compulsory Education must be secular, and with
facilities for the denominations to add their particular tenets. My
objection to this Bill" (Mr. Birrell's Bill) "is that it subsidizes
undenominationalism." And again in 1909, when another of our Liberal
practitioners was handling the subject: "I object altogether to
the State teaching religion. I would have it teach secular matters
only, and leave the religious teaching entirely to the clergy,
who should undertake it at their own expense. This is the only
fair plan--fair to all. The State gives, and pays for, religious
teaching which I do not regard as being worth anything at all. It
is worse than useless. Real religious teaching can only be given
by the Church, and when Christ told us to go and teach, He did
not mean mathematics and geography."
That was, and is, my doctrine on religious education; but in politics
we must take things as they are, and must not postpone practicable
reforms because we cannot as yet attain an ideal system. So Mr.
Fisher, wisely as I think, has left the religious question on one
side, and has proposed a series of reforms which will fit equally
well the one-sided system which still oppresses Nonconformists
and the simply equitable plan to which I, as a lover of religious
freedom, aspire.
I see that some of Mr. Fisher's critics say: "This is not a great
Bill." Perhaps not, but it is a good Bill; and, as Lord Morley
observes, "that fatal French saying about small reforms being the
worst enemies of great reforms is, in the sense in which it is
commonly used, a formula of social ruin." Enlarging on this theme,
Lord Morley points out that the essential virtue of a small reform--the
quality which makes it not an evil, but a good--is that it should
be made "on the lines and in the direction" of the greater reform
which is desiderated.
Now, this condition Mr. Fisher's Bill exactly fulfils. I suppose
that the "greater reform" of education which we all wish to see--the
ideal of national instruction--is that the State should provide
for every boy and girl the opportunity of cultivating his or her
natural gifts to the highest perfection which they are capable
of attaining. When I speak of "natural gifts" I refer not only
to the intellect, but also to the other parts of our nature, the
body and the moral sense. This ideal involves a system which, by a
natural and orderly development, should conduct the capable child
from the Elementary School, through all the intermediate stages,
to the highest honours of the Universities.
The word "capable" occurs in Mr. Fisher's Bill, and rightly, because
our mental and physical capacities are infinitely varied. A good
many children may be unable to profit by any instruction higher
than that provided by the Elementary School. A good many more will
be able to profit by intermediate education. Comparatively few--the
best--will make their way to really high attainment, and will become,
at and through the Universities, great philosophers, or scholars,
or scientists, or historians, or mathematicians.
At that point--and it ought to be reached at a much earlier age
than is now usual--the State's, concern in the matter ends. The
child has become, a man, and henceforth must work out his own
intellectual salvation; but in the earlier stages the State can
and must exercise a potent influence. The earliest stage must be
compulsory--that was secured by the Act of 1870. In the succeeding
stages, the State, while it does not compel, must stimulate and
encourage; and above all must ensure that no supposed exigencies
of money-making, no selfish tyranny of the employing classes, shall
be allowed to interfere with mental or physical development, or to
divert the boy or the girl from any course of instruction by which
he or she is capable of profiting. This ideal Mr. Fisher's Bill, with
its plain enactment that education shall be free; with its precaution
against "half-time"; with its ample provision for Continuation
Schools, goes far to realize. Even if it is a "small" reform--and
I should dispute the epithet--it is certainly "on the lines and
in the direction" of that larger reform which the enthusiasts of
education have symbolized by the title of "The Golden Ladder."[*]
[Footnote *: Happily for Education, Mr. Fisher's Bill is now an
Act.]