CURRICULUM
It is always difficult to define the limits of a topic. This book is
concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very
broad sense we here attach to the term. Our contention is that that
subject is of paramount importance, and that it should provide the
basis and foundation of liberal education. With that idea in view, we
have given some account of our own experience; we have also considered
what seemed the most reasonable and weighty objections; we have also
shown how politics reacted, in our experience, upon morality and
religion. And then it might seem well to make an end. But an
education is, or should be, a single whole, and the entire omission of
certain aspects lends itself to misunderstanding. Our previous book
suggested to one reader, at least, that we regarded subjects other than
those we treated of, as possessing no educational value other than a
purely utilitarian one. That was not at all the impression we wished
to create, and it is with a view to correcting it that we attempt a
brief general survey of the non-political subjects and their place in a
curriculum which took politics as its centre. But we offer these
remarks with much diffidence. If this book and its predecessor have
any value, it is due to the fact that they are based on direct and
vivid teaching experience; and here for the most part the guidance of
experience deserts us.
One very natural criticism of our thesis is that politics, though it
may stimulate interest, cannot provide intellectual discipline. The
criticism is natural because, so long as the English subjects are
regarded as a subsidiary matter, they are and will be treated by
masters and boys in an easy going manner. Other and sterner subjects
are reckoned on to supply the disciplinary factor which the English
subjects lack. There is, in fact, a very prevalent idea that interest
and discipline vary inversely to one another; that discipline is to be
found in doing what is uninteresting; and that interest is to be found
in doing what is "slack." This is very bad psychology. For we aim at
training willing servants, fit to become masters, not slaves fit for
nothing but slavery. The only valuable discipline is self-discipline,
and self-discipline will only be reached when the boy has realised for
himself that the work is intrinsically worth doing, and when he has
realised that he will have become interested. Again, what is
interesting must be absorbing, and such work can never be "slack." The
mistake seems to arise from a confusion of ideas in connection with the
word "easy." It is no more "easy" to write an adequate essay on the
subject of National Guilds than it is to learn the principal parts of a
large number of irregular verbs: possibly it is much more difficult.
But under certain conditions which we have seen produced, a boy will
find it "easy" to gird himself up to the former task; indeed, he will
get so absorbed that he will find it difficult to leave off. Few
questions are less "easy" than those connected with a paper-money
currency, but one half-holiday afternoon we found a vigorous discussion
on this subject in progress between a group of cricketers whom rain had
driven to the pavilion. Ordinary history teaching, if only time is
allowed and certificate examinations do hot threaten, affords scope for
a great variety of exercises demanding careful thought and accurate
knowledge.
So much in answer to the suggestion that only through the non-political
subjects can real hard work be secured.
The non-political subjects fall into three groups--languages,
mathematics, and the natural sciences.
Probably no one regards the teaching of foreign languages in the public
schools as at all satisfactory at present, and the chief reason is that
far too much is attempted, with far too little consideration of what
will be achieved. Most boys are either simultaneously learning, or
have at one time simultaneously tried to learn, three foreign
languages, Latin, Greek, and French, or Latin, French, and German. The
burden is too heavy for them to bear. Only the minority have any real
gift for foreign languages, and for the rest the aim should be one
foreign language only. Little will be accomplished in any subject
unless there is a real ambition to learn, and there can be no such
ambition unless a definite goal is in sight. The goal here is real
knowledge in a foreign language, for half or quarter-knowledge of a
foreign language is a most unsatisfying accomplishment. The obvious
language is French. Even so, many will not learn to write it
correctly, and as for speaking it, that is an accomplishment so much
more conveniently acquired elsewhere that we offer no opinion as to how
far it is worth attempting at school.[1] But fluent reading of French
is a thing within the reach of practically any boy, and even the stupid
boy, if he concentrates upon this, to the exclusion of other and more
difficult linguistic tasks, will make such unmistakable progress that
his ambitions may well be roused. And the accomplishment is one that
can quickly be made useful. For instance, probably the best general
history of Europe is still Guizot's book, and its French is about the
easiest ever written. But we would go further. We remember once a boy
being birched for circulating a copy of _La Vie Parisienne_. Does not
this suggest that every house should take a French daily newspaper, and
also an illustrated weekly, other than that above mentioned?
But while advocating the single language for the ordinary boy, we are
pulled up short by the claims of Latin; and here we feel a difficulty.
A good deal of what is said in favour of Latin we regard as pure
superstition. It is not true that boys can only learn to write their
own language correctly by means of Latin prose. Nor is it true that
Latin prose supplies the ideal mental discipline. That is only true
for the minority of boys who reach the stage at which real Latin prose
is written. Most flounder about all their time in the stage of
artificial Latin prose, wherein is nothing more than the meticulous
application of a set of laboriously acquired grammatical rules--a
tolerable training in conscientious application, such as any subject
can supply, but nothing more. Yet it may well be true--on this point
we feel uncertain--that an elementary knowledge of Latin supplies such
a foundation for the understanding both of English and French, that it
is worth making some sacrifices to retain it. If that be so, we would
start every boy on Latin as his first foreign language. Those who
showed little ability would abandon it at about the time they began
French.
In the case of boys with some real linguistic ability, we are happy to
find ourselves thoroughly conservative. We believe firmly in the grand
old fortifying classical curriculum, provided it is understood that the
languages themselves are but means to an end, to the understanding of
the classical civilisation. In fine, the goal of classics should be
to-day, as it was for the Renaissance scholars, ultimately political.
The classical student who, at the time when his schooling ends, is
still doing no more than "settling Hoti's business" and "properly
basing Oun," is in the position of Browning's "Grammarian," with this
vital difference that he probably does not intend to employ his future
life in building any superstructure upon the foundations thus
laboriously laid.
In mathematics there is probably a deeper cleavage than in any other
subject between the real thing, as mathematicians understand it, and
the elementary knowledge within the reach of all. "The real thing" is
perhaps the most remote and specialised of all branches of learning.
For a few it is the best, indeed, the only natural, line of
development; but these are few and easily recognised, and even they
should not be allowed to specialise too narrowly--that is a point which
no one who is not a mathematician will dispute. At the other end of
the scale comes the third of the three R's; and about that again there
is no controversy, except as to the best methods of teaching it.[2]
Yet the schools do not recognise sufficiently clearly this line of
cleavage, and many boys who are presumed to have reached the end of the
elementary stage remain for some time battering in vain at the doors of
the inner temple. These should go back once over the elements again to
see if they know them, and then give it up for good. This will mean a
cheerful exodus from the upper-middle mathematical divisions. We
confess to sympathy with the conservative-radical head master who said,
"I shall not advocate the abolition of compulsory Greek in University
examinations until I can get people to agree to the abolition of
compulsory Algebra."
There is perhaps a middle term between elementary and "real"
mathematics; that is the mathematics that is the handmaid of physics,
and leads us on to the natural sciences.
To-day the claims of natural science are very insistent, and they come
from more than one quarter. From one quarter comes the claim that
science alone of the subjects in the time-table "means business," and
makes money, and that in these strenuous times other subjects that lead
to mere elegant accomplishments must crowd into a narrow space to make
room for the one subject that makes for sheer efficiency. The point is
often put with a certain crudity; but we may as well ignore that, and
recognise that the just claims of commercial training will have to be
met by the schools more fully than heretofore. Only let us recognise
commercial training for what it is, and not pretend that it can ever
offer a substitute for the liberal education which must continue
alongside of it. But the teacher of science will more often take quite
other ground, and will claim that his subject, over and above its
commercial usefulness, provides most of the ingredients of a Liberal
education in itself. He will point to the training it offers in habits
of conscientious accuracy, its exemplification of the laws of cause and
effect, its undeviating respect for truth, and the inspiration of its
endless progress, built up on the heroic researches of the great
pioneers.
This claim demands careful and sympathetic scrutiny. To begin with
criticism, we are quite unconvinced that science alone can train the
mind to logical methods, or imbue it with a respect for truth in
matters outside the scientific sphere. "Science," as the term is
commonly understood, deals with material things, and, as such, it gives
but little support to the mind when confronted with the problems of
humanity, whether personal or political. It is only too common for the
science specialist to respect cause and effect in a test-tube and
despise it in a newspaper. In science no passions are evoked in favour
of one solution or another. The search for truth may well be
disinterested, since it is, humanly speaking, uninterested. A liberal
education must train the mind to master prejudice and self-interest,
and this training cannot be given in a material where prejudice and
self-interest will not come into play.
As regards ordinary laboratory work, and lectures on laboratory detail,
of which science teaching at present, as many science masters agree,
far too exclusively consists, our view is similar to our view on
mathematics. It is often instructive, both for boy and master, to get
the boys to draw up an ideal time-table. The results, as a rule, are
disappointingly conventional, it is true. Few boys have ever
criticised their education, except in a purely destructive and cynical
spirit, and when confronted with the constructive task, produce
something not very far removed from the time-table they follow out
every week. But as regards science, it will often be found that the
form falls into two clearly marked divisions. One part cut it down to
a minimum, and would, if they had the courage of their convictions, cut
it out altogether; the other part give it half, or more than half, the
time-table. This probably marks the fact that for many boys a very
small amount of laboratory experience, just enough to give them a
notion of method, is all that they will benefit by. For the rest the
training has real value and interest; but these are a minority.
But there is another aspect of science, receiving as yet far too little
attention at school, which seems to us an essential part of a liberal
education. Indeed, when our own sixth form time-table was remodelled,
we put in a claim for a weekly lecture on General Principles of
Science, alongside with modern history and political science and
economics. The general principles of natural law, evolution and
heredity, the nature and cure of disease, the atomic theory of matter,
general principles of astronomy--these things seem to us second only in
importance to the great principles of politics themselves. Here is an
extraordinary record of patient achievement, some contact with which is
in itself an inspiration not merely intellectual, but moral. For it
seems to us hardly fanciful to suggest that such knowledge should
react--so subtle are the reactions of the boy-mind, as we have already
tried to show--most favourably on the political spirit. Dr. Gregory,
in his enthusiastic work in praise of his subject, "Discovery: or the
Spirit and Service of Science," writes: "In the discussion of political
questions, prejudice and party determine the view taken, and facts are
selected and exploited not so much with the object of arriving at the
truth as to confound the other side.... A politician may place party
above truth, and a diplomatist will conceal it on behalf of his
country, but it is the duty of the man of science to attain truth at
all costs. In direct opposition to the narrowness of thought which
views all subjects through the distorting mirage of party prejudice,
stands the absolute freedom of mind of the man of science who stands
with open arms to welcome truth...." And Dr. Gregory's moral would
seem to be: Eschew politics and devote yourself to science. As if the
world could exist without politics! As if the happy alternative to bad
politicians were no politicians! The right moral surely is that which
we have been drawing, with possibly wearisome repetition, throughout
this book; that all that is best in the scientific mind, all that is
best in the literary and artistic mind, all that is best in the
religious mind, must be brought to bear upon the problems of our
corporate life.
[1] We offer no opinion, also, on the "oral method" of teaching both
modern and classical tongues, as we have no experience at all to guide
us.
[2] Surely, too, the third of the three R's should include a knowledge
of book-keeping, balance sheets, etc. Here we join hands heartily with
the "utilitarian" school of educational reformers. We also wish that
every one learnt shorthand almost as soon as he had learnt longhand.