CAMBRIDGE ESSAYS ON EDUCATION
EDITED BY A.C. BENSON, C.V.O., LL.D.
Master of Magdalene College
With an Introduction by the Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M.
1919
PREFACE
The scheme of publishing a volume of essays dealing with underlying
aims and principles of education was originated by the University
Press Syndicate. It seemed to promise something both of use and
interest, and the further arrangements were entrusted to a small
Committee, with myself as secretary and acting editor.
Our idea has been this: at a time of much educational enterprise and
unrest, we believed that it would be advisable to collect the opinions
of a few experienced teachers and administrators upon certain
questions of the theory and motive of education which lie a little
beneath the surface.
To deal with current and practical problems does not seem the _first_
need at present. Just now, work is both common as well as fashionable;
most people are doing their best; and, if anything, the danger is that
organisation should outrun foresight and intelligence. Moreover a
weakening of the old compulsion of the classics has resulted, not in
perfect freedom, but in a tendency on the part of some scientific
enthusiasts simply to substitute compulsory science for compulsory
literature, when the real question rather is whether obligatory
subjects should not be diminished as far as possible, and more
sympathetic attention given to faculty and aptitude.
We have attempted to avoid mere current controversial topics, and to
encourage our contributors to define as far as possible the aim and
outlook of education, as the word is now interpreted.
We have not furthered any educational conspiracy, nor attempted any
fusion of view. Our plan has been first to select some of the most
pressing of modern problems, next to find well-equipped experts and
students to deal with each, and then to give the various writers as
free a hand as possible, desiring them to speak with the utmost
frankness and personal candour. We have not directed the plan or
treatment or scope of any essay; and my own editorial supervision has
consisted merely in making detailed suggestions on smaller points, in
exhorting contributors to be punctual and diligent, and generally
revising what the New Testament calls jots and tittles. We have been
very fortunate in meeting with but few refusals, and our contributors
readily responded to the wish which we expressed, that they should
write from the personal rather than from the judicial point of view,
and follow their own chosen method of treatment.
We take the opportunity of expressing our obligations to all who have
helped us, and to Viscount Bryce for bestowing, as few are so justly
entitled to do, an educational benediction upon our scheme and volume.
A.C. BENSON
MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
August 18, 1917
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
By the Right Hon. VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M.
I. THE AIM OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM
By JOHN LEWIS PATON, M.A., High Master of
Manchester Grammar School; formerly Fellow of
St John's College, Cambridge, Assistant Master at
Rugby School, Head Master of University College
School
II. THE TRAINING OF THE REASON
By the Very Rev. WILLIAM RALPH INGE, D.D.,
Dean of St Paul's, Honorary Fellow of Jesus College,
Cambridge, and of Hertford College, Oxford;
formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity,
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Assistant
Master at Eton College, Fellow and Tutor of
Hertford College, Oxford
III. THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION
By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON, C.V.O.,
LL.D., Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge;
formerly Assistant Master at Eton College
IV. RELIGION AT SCHOOL
By WILLIAM WYAMAR VAUGHAN, M.A., Master
of Wellington College; formerly Assistant Master
at Clifton College, and Head Master of Giggleswick
School
V. CITIZENSHIP
By ALBERT MANSBRIDGE, M.A., Joint-Secretary
of the Cambridge University Tutorial Classes
Committee; Founder and formerly Secretary of
the Workers' Educational Association
VI. THE PLACE OF LITERATURE IN EDUCATION
By NOWELL SMITH, M.A., Head Master of
Sherborne School; formerly Fellow of Magdalen
College, Oxford, Fellow and Tutor of New College,
Oxford, Assistant Master at Winchester College
VII. THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION
By WILLIAM BATESON, F.R.S., Director of the
John Innes Horticultural Institution, Honorary
Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge; formerly
Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge
VIII. ATHLETICS
By FREDERIC BLAGDEN MALIM, M.A., Master
of Haileybury College; formerly Assistant Master
at Marlborough College, Head Master of Sedbergh
School
IX. THE USE OF LEISURE
By JOHN HADEN BADLEY, M.A., Head Master of
Bedales School
X. PREPARATION FOR PRACTICAL LIFE
By Sir JOHN DAVID MCCLURE, LL.D., D.MUS.,
Head Master of Mill Hill School
XI. TEACHING AS A PROFESSION
By FRANK ROSCOE, Secretary of the Teachers
Registration Council
INTRODUCTION
In times of anxiety and discontent, when discontent has engendered the
belief that great and widespread economic and social changes are
needed, there is a risk that men or States may act hastily, rushing to
new schemes which seem promising chiefly because they are new,
catching at expedients that have a superficial air of practicality,
and forgetting the general theory upon which practical plans should be
based. At such moments there is special need for the restatement and
enforcement by argument of sound principles. To such principles so far
as they relate to education it is the aim of these essays to recall
the public mind. They cover so many branches of educational theory and
deal with them so fully and clearly, being the work of skilled and
vigorous thinkers, that it would be idle for me to enter in a short
introduction upon those topics which they have discussed with special
knowledge far greater than I possess. All I shall attempt is to
present a few scattered observations on the general problems of
education as they stand to-day.
The largest of those problems, viz., how to provide elementary
instruction for the whole population, is far less urgent now than it
was fifty years ago. The Act of 1870, followed by the Act which made
school-attendance compulsory, has done its work. What is wanted now
is Quality rather than Quantity. Quantity is doubtless needed in one
respect. Children ought to stay longer at school and ought to have
more encouragement to continue education after they leave the
elementary school. But it is chiefly an improvement in the teaching
that is wanted, and that of course means the securing of higher
competence in the teacher by raising the remuneration and the status
of the teaching profession[1].
The next problem is how to find the finest minds among the children of
the country and bring them by adequate training to the highest
efficiency. The sifting out of these best minds is a matter of
educational organisation and machinery; and the process will become
the easier when the elementary teachers, who ought to bear a part in
selecting those who are most fitted to be sent on to secondary
schools, have themselves become better qualified for the task of
discrimination. The question how to train these best minds when sifted
out would lead me into the tangled controversy as to the respective
educational values of various subjects of instruction, a topic which I
must not deal with here. What I do wish to dwell upon is the supreme
importance to the progress of a nation of the best talent it
possesses. In every country there is a certain percentage of the
population who are fitted by their superior intelligence, industry,
and force of character to be the leaders in every branch of action
and thought. It is a small percentage, but it may be increased by
discovering ability in places where the conditions do not favour its
development, and setting it where it will have a better chance of
growth, just as a seedling tree brought out of the dry shade may shoot
up when planted where sun and rain can reach it freely. I am not
thinking of those exceptionally great and powerful minds, of whom
there may not be more than four or five in a generation, who make
brilliant discoveries or change the currents of thought, but rather of
persons of a capacity high, if not quite first rate, which enables
them, granted fair chances, to rise quickly into positions where they
can effectively serve the community. These men, whatever occupation
they follow, be it that of abstract thinking, or literary production,
or scientific research, or the conduct of affairs, whether commercial
or political or administrative, are the dynamic strength of the
country when they enter manhood, and its realised wealth when they are
in their fullest vigour thirty years later. We need more of them, and
more of them may be found by taking pains.
The volume of thought continuously applied to the work of life,
whether it be applied in the library or study or laboratory, or in the
workshop or factory or counting-house or council chamber, has not been
keeping pace with the growth of our population, our wealth, our
responsibilities. It is not to-day sufficient for the increasing
vastness and complexity of the problems that confront a great nation.
We in Great Britain have been too apt to rely upon our energy and
courage and practical resourcefulness in emergencies, and thus have
tended to neglect those efforts to accumulate knowledge, and consider
how it can be most usefully applied, which should precede and
accompany action. This deficiency is happily one that can be removed,
while a want of qualities which are the gift of nature is less
curable. The "efficiency" which is on every one's mouth cannot be
extemporised by rushing hastily into action, however energetic. It is
the fruit of patient and exact determination of and reflection upon
the facts to be dealt with.
The view that it was the finest minds that ought to be most cared for,
and that to them of right belonged not merely leadership, but even
control also, was carried by the ancients, and especially by Plato and
Aristotle, almost to excess. Their ideal, and indeed that of most
Greek thinkers, was the maintenance among the masses of the military
valour and discipline which the State needed for its protection, and
the cultivation among the chosen few of the highest intellectual and
moral excellence. In the Middle Ages, when power as well as rank
belonged to two classes, nobles and clergy, the ideal of education
took a religious colour, and that training was most valued which made
men loyal to the Church and to sound doctrine, with the prospect of
bliss in the world to come. In our times, educational ideals have
become not merely more earthly but more material. Modern doctrines of
equality have discredited the ancient view that the chief aim of
instruction is to prepare the few Wise and Good for the government of
the State. It is not merely upon this world but also upon the material
things of this world, power and the acquisition of territory,
industrial production, commerce, finance, wealth and prosperity in all
its forms, that the modern eye is fixed. There has been a drifting
away from that respect for learning which was strong in the Middle
Ages and lasted down into the eighteenth century. In some countries,
as in our own, that which instruction and training may accomplish has
been rated far below the standard of the ancients. Yet in our own time
we have seen two striking examples to show that their estimate was
hardly too high. Think of the power which the constant holding up,
during long centuries, of certain ideals and standards of conduct,
exerted upon the Japanese people, instilling sentiments of loyalty to
the sovereign and inspiring a certain conception of chivalric duty
which Europe did not reach even when monarchy and chivalry stood
highest. Think of that boundless devotion to the State as an
omnipotent and all-absorbing power, superseding morality and
suppressing the individual, which within the short span of two
generations has taken possession of Germany. In the latter case at
least the incessant preaching and teaching of a theory which lowers
the citizen's independence and individuality while it saps his moral
sense seems to us a misdirection of educational effort. But in it
education has at least displayed its power.
Can a fair statement of the educational ideals which we might here and
now set before ourselves be found in saying that there are three
chief aims to be sought as respects those we have called the best
minds?
One aim is to fit men to be at least explorers, even if not
discoverers, in the fields of science and learning.
A second is to fit them to be leaders in the field of action, leaders
not only by their initiative and their diligence, but also by the
power and the habit of turning a full stream of thought and knowledge
upon whatever work they have to do.
A third is to give them the taste for, and the habit of enjoying,
intellectual pleasures.
Many moralists, ancient and modern, have given pleasure a bad name,
because they saw that the most alluring and powerfully seductive
pleasures, pleasures which appeal to all men alike, were indulged to
excess, and became a source of evil. But men will have pleasure and
ought to have pleasure. The best way of drawing them off from the more
dangerous pleasures is to teach them to enjoy the better kinds.
Moreover the quieter pleasures of the intellect mean Rest, and a
greater fitness for resuming work.
The pity is that so many sources capable of affording delight are
ignored or imperfectly appreciated. May not this be partly the fault
of the lines which our education has followed? Perhaps some kinds of
study would have fared better if their defenders had dwelt more upon
the pleasure they afford and less upon their supposed utility. The
champions of Greek and Latin have dilated on the value of grammar as a
mental discipline, and argued that the best way to acquire a good
English style is to know the ancient languages, a proposition
discredited by many examples to the contrary. It is really this
insistence on grammatical minutiae that has proved repellent to young
people and suggested the dictum that "it doesn't much matter what you
teach a boy so long as he hates it." Better had it been, abandoning
the notion that every one should learn Greek, to dwell upon the
boundless pleasure which minds of imagination and literary taste
derive from carrying in memory the gems of ancient wisdom which are
more easily remembered because they are not in our own language, and
the finest passages of ancient poetry. There are plenty of
things--indeed there are far more things--in modern literature as
noble and as beautiful as the best of the ancients can give us. But
they are not the same things. The ancient poets have the freshness and
the fragrance of the springtime of the world [2]. Or take another sort
of instance. Take the pleasures which nature spreads before us with a
generous hand, hills and fields and woods and rocks, flowers and the
songs of birds, the ever-shifting aspects of clouds and of landscapes
under light and shadow. How few persons in most countries--for there
is in this respect a difference between different peoples--notice
these things. Everybody sees them few observe them or derive pleasure
from them. Is not this largely because attention has not been properly
called to them? They have not been taught to look at natural objects
closely and see the variety there is in them. Persons in whom no taste
for pictures has ever been formed by their having been taken to see,
good pictures and told what constitutes merit, are, when led into a
picture gallery, usually interested in the subjects. They like to see
a sportsman shooting wild fowl, or a battle scene, or even a prize
fight, or a mother tending a sick child, because these incidents
appeal to them. But they seldom see in a picture anything but the
subject; they do not appreciate: imaginative quality or composition,
or colour, or light and shade or indeed anything except exact
imitation of the actual. So in nature the average man is; struck by
something so exceptional as a lofty rock, like Ailsa Craig or the
Needles off the Isle of Wight, or an eclipse of the moon, or perhaps a
blood-red sunset; but he does not notice and consequently draws no
pleasure from landscapes in general, whether noble; or quietly
beautiful. The capacity for taking pleasure, in all these things may
not be absent. There is reason: to think that most children possess
it, because when they are shown how to observe they usually respond,
quickly perceiving, for instance, the differences between one flower
and another, quickly, even when quite young, learning the distinctive
characters and names of each, enjoying the process of recognising
each when they walk along the lanes, as indeed every intelligent
child enjoys the exercise of its observing powers. The disproportionate
growth of our urban population, a thing regrettable in other respects
also, has no doubt made it more difficult to give young people a
familiar knowledge of nature, but the facilities for going into the
country and the happy lengthening of summer holidays render it easier
than formerly to provide opportunities for Nature Study, which,
properly conducted, is a recreation and not a lesson. There is no
source of enjoyment which lasts so keen all through life or which fits
one better for other enjoyments, such as those of art and of travel.
Of the value of the habit of alert observation for other purposes I
say nothing, wishing here to insist only upon what it may do for
delight.
It is often alleged that in England boys and girls show less mental
curiosity, less desire for knowledge than those of most European
countries, or even than those of the three smaller countries north and
west of England in which the Celtic element is stronger than it is in
South Britain. A parallel charge has, ever since the days of Matthew
Arnold, been brought against the English upper and middle classes. He
declared that they care less for the "things of the mind" and show
less respect to eminence in science, literature and art, than is the
case elsewhere, as for instance in France, Germany, or Italy (to which
one may add the United States); and he thus explained the scanty
interest taken by these classes in educational progress.
Should this latter charge be well founded, the fact it notes would
tend to perpetuate the former evil, for the indifference of parents
reacts upon the school and upon the pupils. The love of knowledge is
so natural and awakens so early in the normal child, that even if it
be somewhat less keen among English than among French or Scottish
children, we may well believe our deficiencies to be largely due to
faulty and unstimulative methods of teaching, and may trust that they
will diminish when these methods have been improved.
If it be true that the English public generally show a want of
interest in and faint appreciation of the value of education, the
stern discipline of war will do something to remove this indifference.
The comparative poverty and reduction of luxurious habits; which this
war will bring in its train, along with a sense of the need that has
arisen for turning to the fullest account all the intellectual
resources of the country so that it may maintain its place in the
world,--these things may be expected to work a change for the better,
and lead parents to set more store upon the mental and less upon the
athletic achievements of their sons.
Be this as it may, no one to-day denies that much remains to be done
to spread a sense of the value of science for those branches of
industry to which (as especially to agriculture) it has been
imperfectly applied, to strengthen and develop the teaching of
scientific theory as the foundation of technical and practical
scientific work, and above all to equip with the largest measure of
knowledge and by the most stimulating training those on whom nature
has bestowed the most vigorous and flexible minds. To-day e see that
the heads of great businesses, industrial and financial, are looking
out for men of university distinction to be placed in responsible
posts--a thing which did not happen fifty years ago--because the
conditions of modern business have grown too intricate to be handled
by any but the best trained brains. The same need is at least equally
true of many branches of that administrative work which is now being
thrust, in growing volume, upon the State and its officials.
If we feel this as respects the internal economic life of our country,
is it not true also of the international life of the world? In the
stress and competition of our times, the future belongs to the nations
that recognise the worth of Knowledge and Thought, and best understand
how to apply the accumulated experience of the past. In the long run
it is knowledge and wisdom that rule the world, not knowledge only,
but knowledge applied with that width of view and sympathetic
comprehension of men, and of other nations, which are the essence of
statesmanship.
[Footnote 1: This has been clearly seen and admirably stated by the
present President of the Board of Education.]
[Footnote 2: Take for instance this little fragment of Alcman:
Greek: _Ou m heti, parthenikai meligaryest imerophônoi,
Gyia pherein dynatai. Bale dê Bale kêrylos eiên,
Hos t hepi kymatos hanthos ham alkyonessi potêtai
Nêleges hêtor hechôn haliporphyros eiaros hornis._
What can be more exquisite than the epithets in the first line, or
more fresh and delicate and tender in imaginative quality than the
three last? A modern poet of equal genius would treat the topic with
equal force and grace, but the charm, the untranslatable charm of
antique simplicity, would be absent.]
I
THE AIM OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM
By J. L. PATON
High Master of Manchester Grammar School
The last century, with all its brilliant achievement in scientific
discovery and increase of production, was spiritually a failure. The
sadness of that spiritual failure crushed the heart of Clough, turned
Carlyle from a thinker into a scold, and Matthew Arnold from a poet
into a writer of prose.
The secret of failure was that the great forces which move mankind
were out of touch with each other, and furnished no mutual support.
Art had no vital relation with industry; work was dissociated from
joy; political economy was at issue with humanity; science was at
daggers drawn with religion; action did not correspond to thought,
being to seeming; and finally the individual was conceived as having
claims and interests at variance with the claims and interests of the
society of which he formed a part, in fact as standing out against it,
in an opposition so sharply marked that one of the greatest thinkers
could write a book with the title "Man _versus_ the State." As a
result, nation was divided against nation, labour against capital,
town against country, sex against sex, the hearts of the children
were set against the fathers, the Church fought against the State,
and, worst of all, Church fought against Church.
The discords of the great society were reflect inevitably in the
sphere of education. The elementary schools of the nation were divided
into two conflicting groups, and both were separated by an estranging
gulf from the grammar schools and high schools as the grammar schools
in turn were shut off from the public schools on the one hand, and
from the schools of art, music, and of technology on the other There
was no cohesion, no concerted effort, no mutual support, no great plan
of advance, no homologating idea.
This fact in itself is sufficient to account for the ineffectiveness,
the despondencies, the insincerities and ceaseless unrest of Western
civilisation in the nineteenth century. The tree of human life cannot
flower and bear fruit for the healing of the nations when its great
life-forces spend themselves in making war on each other.
If the experience of the century which lies before us is to be
different, it must be made so by means of education. Education is the
science which deals with the world as it is capable of becoming. Other
sciences deal with things as they are, and formulate the laws which
they find to prevail in things as they are. The eyes of education are
fixed always upon the future, and philosophy of whatever kind,
directly adumbrates a Utopia, thinks on educational lines.
The aim of education must therefore be as wide as it is high, it must
be co-extensive with life. The advance must be along the whole front,
not on a small sector only. William Morris, when he tried his hand at
painting, used to say, that what bothered him always was the frame: he
could not conceive of art as something "framed off" and isolated from
life. Just as William Morris wanted to turn all life into art, so with
education. It cannot be "framed off" and detached from the larger
aspects of political and social well-being; it takes all life for its
province. It is not an end in itself, any more than the individuals
with whom it deals; it acts upon the individual, but through the
individual it acts upon the mass, and its aim is nothing less than the
right ordering of human society.
To cope with a task which can be stated in these terms, education must
be free. A new age postulates a new education. The traditions which
have dominated hitherto must one by one be challenged to render
account of themselves, that which is good in them must be conserved
and assimilated, that which is effete must be scrapped and rejected.
Neither can the administrative machinery, as it exists, be taken for
granted; unless it shows those powers of adaptation and growth which
show it to be alive and not dead, it too must be scrapped and
rejected; new wine is fatal to old skins. Education must regain once
more what she possessed at the time of the Renascence--the power of
direction; she must be mistress of her fate.
Further, if education is to be a force which makes for co-operation
in place of conflict, she must not be divided against herself. She
must leave behind forever the separations and snobberies, the
misunderstandings, the wordy battles beloved of pedants and
politicians. The smoke and dust of controversy obscures her vision,
and she needs all her energies to tackle the great task which
confronts her. In this regard nothing is so full of promise for the
future as the new sense of unity which is beginning both to animate
and actuate the whole teaching profession, from the University to the
Kindergarten, and has already eventuated in the formation of a
Teachers Registration Council, on which all sorts and conditions of
education are represented.
The materialists have not been slow to see their chance, to challenge
the old tradition of literary education, and to urge the claims of
science. But the aim which they place before us is frankly stated--it
is the acquisition of wealth; they are "on manna bent and mortal
ends," and their conception of the future is a world in which one
nation competes against another for the acquisition of markets and
commodities. In effect, therefore, materialism challenges the
classics, but it accepts the self-seeking ideals of the past
generations, and accepts also, as an integral part of the future, the
scramble of conflicting interests, labour against capital, nation
against nation, man against man. Now the first characteristic of the
genuine scientific mind is the power of learning by experience. Real
science never makes the same mistake twice. Obviously the repetition
of the past can only eventuate in the repetition of the present. And
that is precisely what education sets itself to counteract. The
materialist forgets three outstanding and obvious facts. Firstly,
science cannot be the whole of knowledge, because "science" (in his
limited sense of the term) deals only with what appears. Secondly,
power of insight depends not so much upon the senses as on moral
qualities, the sense of sympathy and of fairness; it needs
self-discipline as well as knowledge both of oneself and one's
fellow-man. "How can a man," says Carlyle, "without clear vision in
his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head?" "Eyes and
ears," said the ancient philosopher, "are bad witnesses for such as
have barbarian souls." Thirdly, the tragedy of the past generation was
not its failure to accumulate wealth; in that respect it was more
successful than any generation which preceded it. The tragedy of the
nineteenth century was that, when it had acquired wealth, it had no
clear idea, either individually or collectively, what to do with it.
And yet the house of humanity faces both ways; it looks out towards
the world of appearances as well as to the world of spirit, and is, in
fact, the meeting-place of both. Materialism is not wrong because it
deals with material things. It is wrong because it deals with nothing
else. It is wrong, also, in education because taking the point of view
of the adult, it makes the material product itself the all-important
thing. In every right conception of education the child is central.
The child is interested in things. It wants first to _sense_ them, or
as Froebel would say "to make the outer inner"; it wants to play with
them, to construct with them, and along the line of this inward
propulsion the educational process has to act. The "thing-studies" if
one may so term them, which have been introduced into the curriculum,
such as gardening, manual training (with cardboard, wood, metal),
cooking, painting, modelling, games and dramatisation, are it is true
later introductions, adopted mainly from utilitarian motive; and they
have been ingrafted on the original trunk, being at first regarded as
detachable extras, but they quickly showed that they were an organic
part of the real educative process; they have already reacted on the
other subjects of the curriculum, and have, in the earlier stages of
education become central. In the same way, vocation is having great
influence upon the higher terminal stages of education. All this is
part of the most important of all correlations, the correlation of
school with life.
But the child's interest in things is social. Through the primitive
occupations of mankind, he is entering step by step into the heritage
of the race and into a richer fuller personal experience. The science
which enlists a child's interest is not that which is presented from
the logical, abstract point of view. The way in which the child
acquires it is the same as that in which mankind acquired it--his
occupation presents certain difficulties, to overcome these
difficulties he has to exercise his thought, he invents and
experiments; and so thought reacts upon occupation, occupation reacts
upon thought. And out of that reciprocal action science is born. In
the same way his play is social--in his games too he enters into the
heritage of the race, and in playing them he is learning unconsciously
the greatest of all arts, the art of living with others. In his play
as well as in his school work the lines of his natural development
show how he can be trained to co-operate with the law of human
progress.
This fitness and readiness to co-operate with the great movement of
human progress, all-round fitness of body, mind and spirit, provides
the formula which fuses and reconciles two growing tendencies in
modern education.
There is in the first place the movement towards self-expression and
self-development--postulating for the scholar a larger measure of
liberty in thought and action, and self-direction than hitherto--this
movement is represented mainly by Dr Montessori, and by "What is and
what might be"; it is a movement which is spreading upwards from the
infant school to the higher standards. Side by side with it is the
movement towards the fuller development of corporate life in the
school, the movement which trains the child to put the school first in
his thoughts, to live for the society to which he belongs and find his
own personal well-being in the well-being of that society. This has
been, ever since Arnold, sedulously fostered in the games of the
public schools, and fruitful of good results in that limited sphere;
it has been applied with conspicuous success to the development of
self-government, and it has reached its fullest expression in the
little Commonwealth of Mr Homer Lane. But we are beginning to
recognise its wider applications, it is capable of transforming the
spirit of the class-room activities as well as the activities of a
playing field, it is in every way as applicable to the elementary
school as to Eton, or Rugby, or Harrow, and to girls as well as to
boys.
These two movements towards a fuller liberty of self-fulfilment, and
towards a fuller and stronger social life, are convergent, and
supplement, or rather complement, each other. Personality, after all,
is best defined as "capacity for fellowship," and only in the social
milieu can the individual find his real self-fulfilling. Unless he
functions socially, the individual develops into eccentricity,
negative criticism, and the cynical aloofness of the "superior
person." On the other hand without freedom of individual development,
the organisation of life becomes the death of the soul. Prussia has
shown how the psychology of the crowd can be skilfully manipulated for
the most sinister ends. It is a happy omen for our democracy that both
these complementary movements are combined in the new life of the
schools. To both appeals, the appeal of personal freedom, and the
appeal of the corporate life, the British child is peculiarly
responsive. Round these two health-centres the form of the new system
will take shape and grow.
And growth it must be, not building. The body is not built up on the
skeleton, the skeleton is secreted by the growing body. The hope of
education is in the living principle of hope and enthusiasm, which
stretches out towards perfection. One distrusts instinctively at the
present time anything schematic. There are men, able enough as
organisers, who will be ready to sit down and produce at two days'
notice a full cut-and-dried scheme of educational reconstruction. They
will take our present resources, and make the best of them, no doubt,
re-arranging and re-manipulating them, and making them go as far as
they can. They will shape the whole thing out in wood, and the result
will be wooden. It will be static and stratified, with no upward lift.
But that is not the way. Education is a thing of the spirit, it is
instinct with life, [Greek: thermon ti pragma] as Aristotle would
say, drawing upon resources that are not its own, "unseen yet crescive
in its faculty" and in its growth taking to itself such outward form
as it needs for the purpose of its inward life. Six years at least it
will take for the new spirit to work itself out into the definite
larger forms.
That does not mean that it will come without hard purposeful thinking
and much patient effort. Education does not "happen" any more than
"art happens,"--and just as with the arts of the middle ages, so the
well-being of education depends not on the chance appearance of a few
men of genius but on the right training and love of the ordinary
workman for his work. Education is a spiritual endeavour, and it will
come, as the things of the spirit come, through patience in
well-doing, through concentration of purpose on the highest, through
drawing continually on the inexhaustible resources of the spiritual
world. The supreme "maker" is the poet, the man of vision. For the
administrator, the task is different from what it has been. It is for
him to watch and help experiments, to prevent the abuse of freedom,
not to preserve uniformities but to select variations. But he is
handling a power which, as George Meredith says, "is a heaven-sent
steeplechaser, and takes a flying leap of the ordinary barriers."
To-morrow is the day of opportunity. To-day is the day of preparation.
Yesterday's ideals have become the practical politics of the present
hour. Our countrymen recognise now as they have never done before that
the problem of national reconstruction is in the main a problem of
national education: "the future welfare of the nation," to use Mr
Fisher's words, "depends upon its schools." Men make light now of the
extra millions which a few years ago seemed to bar the way of
progress. At the same time the discipline of the last three years has
hammered into us a new consciousness of national solidarity and social
obligation. As the whole energies of a united people are at this
moment concentrated on the duty of destruction which is laid upon us,
so after the war with no less urgency and no less oneness of heart the
whole energies of a united nation must be concentrated on the
upbuilding of life. That upbuilding is to be economic as well as
spiritual, but those who think out most deeply the need of the
economic situation, are most surely convinced that the problems of
industry and commerce are at the bottom human problems and cannot find
solution without a new sense of "co-operation and brotherliness[1]."
Such is the need and such the task. England is looking to her schools
as she never did before. The aim of her education must be both high
and wide, higher than lucre, wider than the nation. And the aim of our
education cannot be fulfilled until the education of other peoples is
infused with the same spirit. Education, like finance, must be planned
on international lines by international consensus with a view to world
peace. Only so can it fulfil the ultimate end which already looms on
the horizon,
Becoming when the time has birth
A lever to uplift the earth
And roll it on another course.
[Footnote 1: Mr Angus Watson in _Eclipse or Empire_, p. 88.]
II
THE TRAINING OF THE REASON
By W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul's
The ideal object of education is that we should learn all that it
concerns us to know, in order that thereby we may become all that it
concerns us to be. In other words, the aim of education is the
knowledge not of facts but of values. Values are facts apprehended in
their relation to each other, and to ourselves. The wise man is he who
knows the relative values of things. In this knowledge, and in the use
made of it, is summed up the whole conduct of life. What are the
things which are best worth winning for their own sakes, and what
price must I pay to win them? And what are the things which, since I
cannot have everything, I must be content to let go? How can I best
choose among the various subjects of human interest, and the various
objects of human endeavour, so that my activities may help and not
hinder each other, and that my life may have a unity, or at least a
centre round which my subordinate activities may be grouped. These are
the chief questions which a man would ask, who desired to plan his
life on rational principles, and whom circumstances allowed to choose
his occupation. He would desire to know himself, and to know the
world, in order to give and receive the best value for his sojourn in
it.
We English for the most part accept this view of education, and we add
that the experience of life, or what we call knowledge of the world,
is the best school of practical wisdom. We do not however identify
practical wisdom with the life of reason but with that empirical
substitute for it which we call common sense. There is in all classes
a deep distrust of ideas, often amounting to what Plato called
_misologia_, "hatred of reason." An Englishman, as Bishop Creighton
said, not only has no ideas; he hates an idea when he meets one. We
discount the opinion of one who bases his judgment on first
principles. We think that we have observed that in high politics, for
example, the only irreparable mistakes are those which are made by
logical intellectualists. We would rather trust our fortunes to an
honest opportunist, who sees by a kind of intuition what is the next
step to be taken, and cares for no logic except the logic of facts.
Reason, as Aristotle says, "moves nothing"; it can analyse and
synthesise given data, but only after isolating them from the living
stream of time and change. It turns a concrete situation into lifeless
abstractions, and juggles with counters when it should be observing
realities. Our prejudices against logic as a principle of conduct have
been fortified by our national experience. We are not a quick-witted
race; and we have succeeded where others have failed by dint of a kind
of instinct for improvising the right course of action, a gift which
is mainly the result of certain elementary virtues which we practise
without thinking about them, justice, tolerance, and moderation. These
qualities have, we think and think truly, been often wanting in the
Latin nations, which pride themselves on lucidity of intellect and
logical consistency in obedience to general principles. Recent
philosophy has encouraged these advocates of common sense, who have
long been "pragmatists" without knowing it, to profess their faith
without shame. Intellect has been disparaged and instinct has been
exalted. Intuition is a safer guide than reason, we are told; for
intuition goes straight to the heart of a situation and has already
acted while reason is debating. Much of this new philosophy is a kind
of higher obscurantism; the man in the street applauds Bergson and
William James because he dislikes science and logic, and values will,
courage and sentiment. He used to be fond of repeating that Waterloo
was won on the playing fields of our public schools, until it was
painfully obvious that Colenso and Spion Kop were lost in the same
place. We have muddled through so often that we have come half to
believe in a providence which watches over unintelligent virtue. "Be
good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever," we have said to
Britannia. So we have acquiesced in being the worst educated people
west of the Slav frontier.
I do not wish to dwell on the disadvantages which we have thus
incurred in international competition--our inferiority to Germany in
chemistry, and to almost every continental nation in scientific
agriculture. This lesson we are learning, and are not likely to
forget. It is our spiritual loss which we need to realise more fully.
In the first place, the majority of Englishmen have no thought-out
purpose in life beyond the call of "duty," which is an empty ideal
until we know what our duty is. Confusion of means and ends is
especially common in this country, though it is certainly to be found
everywhere. The passion for irrational accumulation is one example of
the error, which causes the gravest social inconvenience. The largest
part of social injustice and suffering is caused by the unchecked
indulgence of the acquisitive instinct by those who have the
opportunity of indulging it, and who have formed a blind habit of
indulging it. No one, however selfish, who had formed any reasonable
estimate of the relative values of life, would devote his whole time
to the economical exploitation of his neighbours, in order to pile up
the instruments of a fuller life, which he will never use. To regard
business as a kind of game is, from the highest point of view, right,
and our nation gains greatly by applying the ethics of sport to all
our external activities; but we err in living for our games, whether
they happen to be commerce or football. A friend of mine expostulated
with a Yorkshire manufacturer who was spending his old age in
unnecessary toil for the benefit of a spendthrift heir. The old man
answered, "If it gives him half as much pleasure to spend my half
million as it has given me to make it, I don't grudge it him." That is
not the spirit of the real miser or Mammon-worshipper. It is the
spirit of a natural idealist who from want of education has no
rational standard of good. When such a man intervenes in educational
matters, he is sure to take the standpoint of the so-called practical
man, because he is blind to the higher values of life. He will wish to
make knowledge and wisdom instruments for the production of wealth, or
the improvement of the material condition of the poor. But knowledge
and wisdom refuse to be so treated. Like goodness and beauty, wisdom
is one of the absolute values, the divine ideas. As one of the
Cambridge Platonists said, we must not make our intellectual faculties
Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water to the will and
affections. Wisdom must be sought for its own sake or we shall not
find it. Another effect of our _misologia_ is the degradation of
reasonable sympathy into sentimentalism, which regards pain as the
worst of evils, and endeavours always to remove the effects of folly
and wrong-doing, without investigating the causes. That such
sentimentalism is often kind only to be cruel, and that it frequently
robs honest Peter to pay dishonest Paul, needs no demonstration.
Sentimentalism does not believe that prevention is better than cure,
and practical politicians know too well that a scientific treatment of
social maladies is out of the question in this country. Others become
fanatics, that is to say, worldlings who are too narrow and violent to
understand the world. The root of the evil is that a whole range of
the higher values is inaccessible to the majority, because they know
nothing of intellectual wealth. And yet the real wealth of a nation
consists in its imponderable possessions--in those things wherein one
man's gain is not another man's loss, and which are not proved
incapable of increase by any laws of thermo-dynamics. An inexhaustible
treasure is freely open to all who have passed through a good course
of mental training, a treasure which we can make our own according to
our capacities, and our share of which we would not barter for any
goods which the law of the land can give or take away. "The
intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize those studies which result
in his soul getting soberness, righteousness and wisdom, and will less
value the others." The studies which have this effect are those which
teach us to admire and understand the good, the true and the
beautiful. They are, may we not say, humanism and science, pursued in
a spirit of "admiration, hope and love." The trained reason is
disinterested and fearless. It is not afraid of public opinion,
because it "counts it a small thing that it should be judged by man's
judgment"; its interests are so much wider than the incidents of a
private career that base self-centred indulgence and selfish ambition
are impossible to it. It is saved from pettiness, from ignorance, and
from bigotry. It will not fall a victim to those undisciplined and
disproportioned enthusiasms which we call fads, and which are a
peculiar feature of English and North American civilisation. Such
reforms as are carried out in this country are usually effected not by
the reason of the many, but by the fanaticism of the few. A just
balance may on the whole be preserved, but there is not much balance
in the judgments of individuals.
Matthew Arnold, whose exhortations to his countrymen now seem almost
prophetic, drew a strong contrast between the intellectual frivolity,
or rather insensibility, of his countrymen and the earnestness of the
Germans. He saw that England was saved a hundred years ago by the high
spirit and proud resolution of a real aristocracy, which nevertheless
was, like all aristocracies, "destitute of ideas." Our great families,
he shows, could no longer save us, even if they had retained their
influence, because power is now conferred by disciplined knowledge and
applied science. It is the same warning which George Meredith
reiterated with increasing earnestness in his late poems. What England
needs, he says, is "brain."
Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing
Hotly for his dues this hour,
Tell her that no drunken blessing
Stops the onward march of Power,
Has she ears to take forewarnings,
She will cleanse her of her stains,
Feed and speed for braver mornings
Valorously the growth of brains.
Power, the hard man knit for action
Reads each nation on the brow;
Cripple, fool, and petrifaction
Fall to him--are falling now.
And again: