attendance at Holy Communion should always be voluntary, not only in
name but in fact. On the whole it is better that a boy who neglects
this duty should go on neglecting it, than that those who come should
feel that their presence is noted with approval or the reverse.
But it is different with the daily service. Irksome it may sometimes
be, not only to boys; but half its virtue lies in the fact that all
are there in body and may sometimes be there in spirit too. The
familiarity of the oft-repeated prayers and the oft-sung hymns leads
to inattention perhaps, but seldom, it may be hoped, to callousness;
religious emotion may only occasionally be stirred but the thread of
natural piety, binding man to man and man to God, is strengthened, as
fresh strands are added. At the least it may be claimed for the
chapel services that they rescue from our hours of business some
minutes each day in which our thoughts are free to make their way to
the throne of God. Christ's promise to bring rest to those who come to
him has been fulfilled in many a school chapel. Those of us who have
had to pass through the valley of sorrow and temptation and
loneliness--and who has not?--know that this is no mean claim. Boys,
even men, often grumble at what they really value. To do so is our
national defect, misleading to the onlooker. The truth is, we are so
fearful of being accused of casting our pearls before swine, that we
often pretend, even to ourselves, that what we know to be the most
precious pearl in our possession is valueless.
Most masters and boys would agree that, in the few weeks preceding
confirmation, the religious life is deepest and most sincere. There is
a moving of the waters then, and many make the effort, and step in,
and are made whole for the time at all events. As to what exactly goes
on in the mind of anyone at such a time there can be no certainty.
There is the obvious danger of a reaction, and, guard against it as
one may, it exists and sometimes leads to disaster; but there is
another danger to which the schoolmaster is then liable, it is the
danger of making confirmation an occasion for much talk on sexual
difficulties. The existence of these should be faced, but at any time
rather than at confirmation, except so far as they occur quite
naturally in dealing with the commandments.
It is a real disaster for a child to associate this time, when he
should be trying to shoulder enthusiastically his responsibilities as
a citizen of God's Kingdom upon earth, with any particular sin. He
must indeed overcome evil, but he must overcome it with good. It is on
good that his eyes should be fixed. It is towards the Lord of all that
is good that his heart should be uplifted. Anyone who has had to do
with this time knows what it means in a boy's religious life, how
reluctant he is to speak of it, how perilous it is to disturb his
reluctance by inquisitive question or excessive exhortation. He knows,
too, how much his own nature has gained by contact at such times with
the reverent stirrings of less world-stained souls, how wondrous has
been the spiritual refreshment that has come to him from the
unconscious witness of the younger heart.
For most boys it is a loss not to be confirmed at school, which for
the time is the centre of their energies, their hopes, their
disappointments and their temptations; but the loss to the masters who
share their preparation would be irreparable. They may sometimes
blunder from want of knowledge and experience, but their will to help
is strong, and perhaps not least persuasive when chastened by
diffidence.
But all these scripture lessons, chapel services and confirmation
preparation will be powerless to produce a Christian education, if
they be not held together by every lesson and by the whole life of the
school. Industry and obedience, truthfulness and fidelity to duty,
unselfishness and thoroughness, must form the soil without which no
religious plant can grow; and these are taught and learnt in the
struggle with Latin prose, or mathematics, or French grammar, or
scientific formula; as well as in the cricket field, on the football
ground, in the give and take, the pains and the pleasures of daily
life.
It is hard for us in England to imagine a purely secular education,
the very buildings of many of our schools would protest against it;
perhaps it is equally difficult for us to realise how far we fall
short of what we might accomplish did the spirit of Christianity
really inform our lives.
To-day is our opportunity. The claims of education are being listened
to as they never have been in England. Money in millions is being
promised, the value of this subject or that is being canvassed, the
most venerable traditions are being shaken. It is a time of hope, but
a time of danger too. All sorts of plans are being formed for breaking
down the partition walls that divide man from man, and class from
class, and nation from nation; there is only one plan that will not
leave the ground encumbered by ruins.
That is the plan of which good men in all ages have caught glimpses,
and which the Son of Man set out for us to follow. The peril now lies,
not in the fact of nothing being done, but in some starved idea of a
narrow patriotism.
The war has surely taught two lessons;--one that the efforts we made
before 1914 to guard our country from spiritual and moral foes were
shamefully trivial compared with those we have made since to keep our
visible foe at bay; the other that our responsibilities for the
future, if we are to justify our claims to be the champions of justice
and weakness, can never be borne unless we learn ourselves, and teach
each generation as it grows up, to face the fierce light that shines
from heaven. All sorts of devices, ecclesiastical and political have
been adopted to break up that light and make it tolerable for our weak
eyes. Men have been so afraid of children being blinded by it that
they have allowed them to sit, some in darkness, and others in the
twilight of compromise.
It has been said that for the average man in the ancient world there
existed two main guides and sanctions for his conduct of life, namely
the welfare of his city, and the laws and traditions of his ancestors.
Has the average man much wiser guides or stronger sanctions now? Is a
much nobler appeal made to the children of England than was made to
the children of Athens? Just before Joshua led his people over the
Jordan, he instructed them how the ark of the covenant was to go
before them and a space to be left between them and it, so that they
might know the way by which they must go, _for they had not passed
this way before_. Once again a river of decision has to be crossed, a
road has to be trodden along which men have not passed before. Whether
we speak of reconstruction or a new start or use any other metaphor to
show our conviction that war has changed all things, the idea is the
same. We must see to it that the ark of the covenant is borne before
our nation and our schools, along the way that is new and still full
of stones of stumbling.
Either the old landmarks have disappeared or a new land has to be
explored. Somehow, all things have to be made new, for even the
spiritual things have been destroyed or are found wanting. It is to
the schools, to the homes, to the mothers of England that the richest
opportunity comes. If they can solve the difficulty of making the
Christian education and the Christian life react upon one another the
partition walls between religion and conduct will be broken down for
every age. Intentionally or unintentionally, these walls have been
built up, perhaps by the teachers and parents, certainly by the
conventions of life. The result is that though there is more true
religion in the schools than is acknowledged by those outside and than
those within care to boast of, and though the standard of conduct is
not ignoble, there is too little fusion; both components are brittle,
they cannot stand the strain of sudden temptation, they lack enduring
power. No one will forget how in those first months of war,
consolation was offered even from pulpits for all the horrors and the
sadness and the waste of conflict in the thought that as a nation we
should be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all the
vices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, that
our religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, a
three years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord had
taught us in three years of gentleness. If we are going to teach the
same lessons about war when peace is made, to keep alive the fires of
hate, and to keep smouldering the embers of suspicion, we shall be
confessing that a Christian education cannot teach us anything about
Christianity.
The student in arms would not have had us despair. Peace when it comes
will make demands on our fortitude. There will be many lying in the
no-man's land between vice and virtue who will need to be rescued at
great risk. There will be many forlorn hopes to be led against
disease, the foster child of vice, that has gained strength under the
cover of war. The disappointing days of peace will give an opportunity
for the development of Christian qualities fully as great as the
bracing days of battle. Teachers will need to gird up their loins for
the task of giving a wise welcome to the thousands that an awakened
State will send to sit at their feet, and unless they can give
spiritual food as well as worldly wisdom and paying knowledge, the
souls of the new-comers will be starved beyond the remedy of any free
meals. How to spiritualise education is the real problem, for it is
only by a spiritualised education that we can escape from the
avalanche of materialism that is hanging over the European world just
now. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal
road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the
past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the
future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all
denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient
and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the
best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one
condition that they have consciously or unconsciously dedicated
themselves to the task. For a teacher to write much about it is
impossible, he must know how greatly he has failed. And he has not the
recompense that comes to many who fail, in the shape of certain
knowledge why success has been withheld.
That his failure is shared by those who strive to make religion move
the world of men is no consolation. Indeed, that thought might make
him hopeless did it not suggest that the aims and methods of both may
be wrong. It is possible to have hoped too much from the school
chapels being full, it is possible to fear too much from the churches
being empty. Piety is no doubt fostered by attendance at a religious
service, but there is some distance between piety and true religion.
It would probably not be untrue to say that Christian education has
seemed more concerned with the ceremonial duties of religion than with
its spiritual enthusiasm, more eager about faith in some particular
explanation of the past than about faith in a re-creation of the
future, more attentive to the machinery of the organisation of the
Church than to the words and commands of its Founder. As the Church
has become more powerful in the world, it has lost its power over
men's hearts. To some it has seemed an institution for the relief of
poverty, to others the support of the "haves" against the "have-nots,"
but to too few has it been the home of spiritual adventures, the
maintainer of spiritual values. Men have escaped from the relentless
simplicity of the Master's commands by attention to the complicated
machinery which disregard of them has made necessary. This may not
have been consciously marked by the young, but the atmosphere of
religion that they have had to breathe has been the tired atmosphere
of the ecclesiastical workshop, and not the bracing air of free
service. Some restoration of the hopefulness of the early Christians
is needed; hopefulness is not now the note of what is taught, though
with it is sometimes confused the boisterous cheerfulness that is
wrongly supposed to attract the young. The appeal of the Church must
be based on looking forward, not backward, on hope, rather than on
repentance.
The Church will have less to do with the world than it had in the
past, because it will have shaken off the fetters of the world: it
will not be always explaining to the young how they can enjoy the
world and yet deny the world: it will not need to explain itself so
often, to insist so pathetically on the superiority of its own
channels of influence, but it will attract to itself, or rather to the
work that it is trying to do--for it will have forgotten self--all the
adventurous spirits who are prepared to risk pain and failure as
fellow-workers in fulfilling the purposes of God in the world. What is
worth knowing about Christianity is surely first and foremost that it
is a leaven that might leaven the whole world; and that until that
leaven works in each individual heart, in each society, where two or
three are gathered together, Christ's presence cannot be claimed. As
this knowledge is gained, it will be possible for the learner to know
in his heart, and not merely by heart, what is meant by the great
mysterious terms Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection; as this
knowledge is tested and proved true by experience of life, the meaning
and power of prayer will become clearer. A clue will have been put
into the hand of each as he travels along the way which he has not
passed heretofore. It will not lead all by the same path but it will
lead all towards that "great and high mountain," whence "that great
city, the Holy Jerusalem" may be seen. If the teacher is wise, when
the mountain top is nigh and before that vision breaks upon his
fellow-traveller's sight, he will stand aside with thankful heart, and
close his task with the prayer that the Glory of God may shine more
brightly and more continuously on the newcomer, than it has shone on
him.
[Footnote 1: Nothing is said here about the co-operation of the home
with the school. In religion as in all other matters it is assumed.
The influence of the home cannot be exaggerated but schoolmasters must
resist the temptation to shift the burden of responsibility for any
failure on to other shoulders.]
V
CITIZENSHIP
By A. MANSBRIDGE
Founder of the Workers' Educational Association
I
DIRECT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP
There is no institution in national life which can free itself from
the responsibility of training for citizenship those who come under
its influence, whether they be men or women. The problem is common to
all institutions, although it may present itself in diverse forms
appropriate to varying ages and experiences. It is primarily the
problem of all schools and places of education.
The aim of education, according to Comenius, is "to train generally
all who are born to all that is human." From that definition it
follows that the purpose of any school must be to bear its part in
developing to the utmost the powers of body, mind and spirit for the
common good. It must be to secure the application of the finest
attributes of the race to the work of developing citizenship, which is
the art of living together on the highest plane of human life.
Citizenship is, in reality, the focusing point of all human virtues
though it is often illuminated by the consciousness of a city not made
with hands. It represents in a practical form the spirit of courage,
unselfishness and sympathy consecrated to service in time of war and
peace. Generally speaking, in England and her Dominions, citizenship
is developed in harmony with an ideal of democracy.
"The progress of democracy is irresistible," says De Tocqueville,
"because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most
permanent tendency to be found in history."
But its right working is dependent entirely upon uplift not only of
mind but of spirit. The democratic community, above all other
communities, must have within itself schools which at one and the same
time impart information concerning the theory and methods of its
government and inspire consecration to social service rather than to
individual welfare, schools which reveal the transcendence of the
interests of the State as compared with the interests of any
individual or group of individuals within it. The democratic State has
been compared to "one huge Christian personality, one mighty growth or
stature of an honest man." Out of this comparison arises the idea of
citizenship reaching out beyond the boundaries of a single State--one
honest man among many--and thus responsibility is placed upon the
schools to develop knowledge of, and sympathy with, the activities and
aspirations of human life in many nations. The comity of nations
depends directly upon the intellectual and spiritual honesty which
obtains in each of them, and true strength of nationality arises more
from the exercise of these qualities than from extent of area or of
productive power.
Every subject taught in a school should serve the needs of the larger
citizenship; if it fails to do so it is either wrongly taught or
superfluous.
Social welfare depends upon the right use of knowledge by the
individual, however restricted or developed that knowledge may be,
whether it be acquired in elementary school or university.
There has been much discussion concerning the relative importance of
the development of community spirit in the schools and the
introduction of the direct teaching of citizenship. The methods are
not mutually exclusive; their operations are distinct. The school
which does not develop community spirit, which does not fit into its
place in the work of training the complete man, is obviously
imperfect. The same cannot be said of the school which does not
provide direct instruction in citizenship; for teaching may be given
in so many indirect ways. Some consideration of what has happened in
this connection both in England and America will perhaps be most
helpful, although the intangible nature of the results would render
dangerous any attempt to make definite pronouncements on their success
or failure.
Largely as the result of the realisation of the immediate relationship
between national education and national productivity there are
abundant signs that the English educational system is about to be
developed. The ordinary argument has been well put:
A new national spirit has been aroused in our people by the war; if
we are to recover and improve our position at the end of the war,
that national spirit must be maintained; for unless every man and
woman comes to know and feel that industry, agriculture, commerce,
shipping, and credit, are national concerns, and that education is
a potent means for the promotion of these objects among others, we
shall fail in the great effort of national recuperation. In plainer
words, our great firms will not make money, wages will fall, and
wage-earners will be out of work[1].
The possibility of the extension of the educational system to meet the
needs of technical training need not cause disquiet among those whose
desire is for fulness of citizenship, if they are prepared to insist
that teachers shall be trained on broad and comprehensive lines and
that every vocational course shall include instruction in direct
citizenship. The argument is ready to hand and simple. If all men and
women must strive to work wisely and well, so also should they learn
how to participate in the government, local and national, which their
work supports. Moreover the right study of a trade or profession
induces a perception of the inter-relationship of all human activity.
On the other hand it is important that vocational work, at least so
far as it is carried out by manual training, should be introduced into
schemes of liberal education. In this connection it is worth recalling
that in a recent report, the Consultative Committee of the Board of
Education expressed with complete conviction the opinion that manual
training was indispensable in places of secondary education:
We consider that our secondary education has been too exclusively
concerned with the cultivation of the mind by means of books and
the instruction of the teacher. To this essential aim there must be
added as a condition of balance and completeness that of fostering
those qualities of mind and that skill of hand which are evoked by
systematic work.
In this way would be generated that "sympathetic and understanding
contact between all brainworkers and the complete men who work with
both hands and brain" so strongly pleaded for by Professor Lethaby who
insists that "some teaching about the service of labour must be got
into all our educational schemes."
It must be remembered that the question of vocational training affects
chiefly the proposed system of compulsory continuation school
education up to the age of eighteen, which has yet to be established
for all boys and girls not in attendance at secondary schools or who
have not completed a satisfactory period of attendance[2].
The inadequacy of the period of education allotted to the vast mass of
the population and the need for educational reform in many directions
can only be noted; both these matters however affect citizenship
profoundly.
It is upon the expectation of early development on the following
lines, indicated without detail, that our consideration of the
possibilities of schools in regard to citizenship must be based:
(1) A longer period of elementary school life during which no child
shall be employed for other than educational purposes.
(2) The establishment of compulsory continuation schools for all boys
and girls up to the age of eighteen, the hours of attendance to be
allowed out of reasonable working hours.
(3) Complete opportunity for qualified boys and girls to continue
their technical or humane studies from the elementary school to the
university.
(4) A distinct improvement in the supply and power of teachers,
chiefly as the result of better training in connection with
universities and the establishment of a remuneration which will enable
them to live in the manner demanded by the nature and responsibilities
of their calling.
The two main aspects of the development of citizenship through the
schools which have already been noted may be summarised as follows,
and may be considered separately:
(1) The direct teaching of civics or of citizenship;
(2) The development through the ordinary school community of the
qualities of the good citizen.
[Footnote 1: _Interim Report of the Consultative Committee of the
Board of Education on Scholarships for Higher Education, May_, 1916.]
[Footnote 2: See _Final Report of the Departmental Committee on
Juvenile Education in Relation to Employment after the War_, 1917, Cd.
8512. The Bill "to make further provision with respect to Education in
England and Wales and for purposes connected therewith" [Bill 89], had
not been introduced by Mr Fisher when this article was written.]
THE DIRECT STUDY OF CITIZENSHIP
The study in schools of civic relations has been developed to a much
greater extent in America than in England. This is probably due
largely to the fact that the American need is the more obvious. In
normal times, there is a constant influx of people of different
nationalities to the United States whom it is the aim of the
government to make into American citizens. At the same time there is
in America a greater disposition than in England to adapt abstract
study to practical ends, to link the class-room to the factory, to the
city hall, and to the Capitol itself. As one of her scholars says:
Both the inspiration and the romance of the scholar's life lie in
the perfect assurance that any truth, however remote or isolated,
has its part in the unity of the world of truth and its undreamed
of applicability to service[1].