EDUCATION.
The Teacher’s Equipment--Oxford University and the Working People, _two
articles_--Justice to Young Workers--A Race between Education and Ruin.
THE TEACHER’S EQUIPMENT.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
March, 1911.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
Liberals must be somewhat disappointed that a Liberal Government has
done so little for education. The reforms for which they stand--their
hopes for the nation--depend on the increase of knowledge and
intelligence among the people. The establishment of Free Trade, wise
economy and wise expenditure, and the support of the statesmanship which
makes for peace, all presuppose an instructed electorate. But the
present Government has passed no measure to strengthen the foundation on
which Liberalism rests; attempts, indeed, were made to settle the
religious difficulty, but ever since those attempts were wrecked by the
House of Lords, Ministers have been content to do nothing, although
outside the religious controversy they might have launched other
attempts laden with important reforms and safe to reach their port. The
administration of the law as it stands has doubtless been vigorous; able
and public-spirited officials have seen that everything which the law
requires has been done, and every possible development effected, but the
Liberal Government has done nothing to improve the Law. Minister of
Education succeeds Minister of Education, years of opportunity roll by,
while children still leave school at an age when their education has
hardly begun, while compulsory continuation schools still wait to be
started, while great--not to say vast--endowments are absorbed in the
objects of the wealthier classes, while the provision for the equipment
of teachers is unsatisfactory.
The equipment of the teachers is confessedly the most important item in
any programme of education, as it is upon the teacher rather than upon
the building or the curriculum that the real progress of education
depends. That equipment, as far as elementary schools are concerned, is
now given in training colleges, and especially in residential colleges.
Young men and women, that is to say, who have been through a secondary
school, and also shown some aptitude for teaching, receive, largely at
Government expense, two years’ instruction and training in colleges
which are managed either by religious denominations or by local
educational authorities. In the colleges the staff is mostly occupied in
giving the knowledge which forms part of a general education, and very
little time is spent in training or in the study of problems of the
child life.
TRAINING COLLEGES.
The system is unsatisfactory on many grounds. (1) The rivalry between
denominational and undenominational colleges stirs the keenest
partisanship. When in his annual statement Mr. Runciman began to talk
about the number of students in the different colleges he had, he said
with some irony, “to drop the subject, knowing how far the religious
controversy is likely to interest this House”. (2) The system is most
costly, and every year, including building grants, an amount of
something like half a million of money is paid for the training--or, to
speak more accurately, for the ordinary education of young men and women
who may feel no call for teaching and cannot be really bound to take it
up for their life’s work. (3) It breeds a feeling of indignation among
those who do not get employment, and there is now an agitation because
the State does not find work for those whom it has selected to receive a
special training, and bound, even though it be by an ineffective bond,
to follow a particular calling. (4) It brings together a body of
students whose outlook to the future is identical, it encourages,
therefore, narrow views, and breeds the exclusive professional spirit in
a profession whose usefulness depends on its power to assimilate the
thought of the time and to sacrifice its interest for wider interests.
The training college system as a means of equipping teachers for their
work is not satisfactory, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was well
justified when he said: “The thing which mattered most in the
educational work in England to-day was the question of the training
colleges”.
THEIR REFORM OR THEIR ABOLITION.
The reforms suggested generally follow the lines of further expenditure
on buildings or on staff, but such expenditure would not remove the
objections. The money annually spent is very large--equal to the
gross income of Oxford University--and if more were spent there is no
very effective way of securing that the best among the teachers so
trained would remain in the profession; the men would still take up
more remunerative work, and the women would still marry. The rivalry
between denominational and undenominational would continue, and the
protest of conscientious objectors--religious or secular--as each
further expense was proposed would increase difficulties. If the number
turned out of the training colleges were larger there would be a more
widely spread sense of wrong among the unemployed, who would with
difficulty recognize that something else was wanting in a teacher than
the certificate of a training college. But most fatal of all to the
proposed extension or improvement of the system, is the objection that
the more and the stronger the colleges become, the more deeply would
the professional spirit be entrenched, and the more powerful would be
the influence of the teaching class in asserting its rights.
SUBSTITUTION OF A BETTER WAY OF TRAINING.
The reform might, I submit, follow the line of restriction and proceed
towards the ultimate abolition of the residential colleges in their
present form. The way is comparatively simple. Let the children from
elementary schools be helped--as, indeed, they now are--by scholarships
to enter secondary schools, and go on to University colleges, or to the
Universities. Equal opportunity for getting the best knowledge would
thus be open to children of all classes. Let any over the age of
nineteen who have passed through a college connected with some
University, or otherwise approved as giving an education of a general
and liberal character, be eligible to apply for a teachership, and if,
after a period of trial in a school--say for three or six months--they,
on the report of the inspector and master, have shown an aptitude for
teaching, then let them, at the expense of the State, be given a year’s
real training in the theory and practice of teaching. Teachers are, it
must be remembered, born and not made. One man or woman who, without any
experience, is placed over a class will at once command attention, while
another with perhaps greater ability will create confusion. Those who
are not born to it may indeed learn the tricks of discipline, and, like
a drill-sergeant, command obedience and keep order. Many of the
complaints which are heard about the unintelligence and the want of
interest in children who have come from schools where to the visitor’s
eye everything seems right are due, I believe, to the fact that the
teachers have not been born to the work. They have trusted to the rules
they have learnt and not to the gift of power which is in themselves.
They teach as the scribes and not with authority. Let, therefore, the
men and women who have this power be those whom the State will train;
let it give them not, as at present, a few weeks in a practising school,
but experience in a variety of schools in town and in country, and under
masters with different systems; let them be made familiar with the last
thoughts on child life, and with all the many different theories of
education. The State will in this way draw from all classes in the
community the men and the women best fitted to teach, and it will give
them a training worthy the name. The teachers will have the best
equipment for their work.
The advantages of this proposal to get rid of the training colleges as
they now are may be summarized: (1) There will be an end of the
religious difficulty where at present it is most threatening. The
children with scholarships will go to the schools and University
colleges they elect just as do the children who are aiming at other
careers. The State in the training it provides will have nothing to do
with the special training required for giving religious knowledge--as
such training would naturally be given by the different denominations at
their own expense. (2) The half million of money annually spent on
training colleges would not be required for the training now proposed.
It cannot, however, be said that the money would be returned to the
taxpayers; education--if the nation is to be saved--must become more and
more costly, but it may be said that the greater part of this sum and
the existing buildings would be used for the general education of
persons taken from all classes of the community and preparing to walk in
all sorts of careers. (3) There would be no body of men and women with
the grievance that, having been selected at an early age, trained as
teachers, and bound to a profession, no work was provided. Every one
would have had the best sort of education for any career, and only one
year, after a fair time for choice and probation, would have been given
to special training. (4) The danger of professionalism would be
lessened. Men and women educated in schools and colleges alongside of
other students with other aims, would, by their association, gain a
wider outlook on life, and would be freed from the influences which tend
now to force them into an organization for the defence of their rights.
If afterwards they did join such organizations they would do so with a
wider consciousness of their relation to a body larger than their own,
and to a knowledge greater than they themselves had acquired.
A substantial number of young persons do even under present conditions
spend their three years with the Government scholarship at Universities
or University colleges, and the experience thus gained illustrates the
advantage to intending students of mixing with persons intended for
other careers.
Here, then, I submit, is a way of reform in what is confessedly the most
important part of our system of education. It might be undertaken at no
extra expense, and with small dislocation of existing institutions. The
one thing necessary is zeal for education among our political leaders.
The best students of the social problem tell us the remedy for the
unrest is education, and anyone considering the signs of the times in
England will say also that there must be more education if employers and
employed, if statesmen and people, if the pulpit and the pew are to
understand one another. The chief Minister in any Government, the
Minister on whose zeal and ability all the others depend for the
ultimate success of their work, is the Minister of Education. If he is
zealous he will find a way of equipping the teachers.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY AND THE WORKING PEOPLE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
FIRST ARTICLE.
February, 1909.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
Oxford last year invited seven working men to act with seven members of
the University on a Committee appointed to consider what the University
can do for the education of working people. The step is notable--Oxford
and Cambridge have long done something to make it possible for the sons
of workmen, by means of scholarships, to enter the colleges, to take
degrees, and, as members of the University, to climb to a place among
the professional classes. Oxford, in appointing this Committee, has
taken a new departure, and aimed to put its resources at the disposal of
people who continue to be members of the working classes.
The report of the Committee, of which the Dean of Christ Church was
Chairman, and Mr. Shackleton, M.P., Vice-Chairman, forms a most
interesting pamphlet, which may be obtained for a shilling from any
bookseller or the Clarendon Press. It tells of the purpose, the history,
and the endowments of the University, and it also gathers together
evidence of the demand which is being raised by working people for
something more than education in “bread and butter” subjects. This
evidence is summed up in the following report:--
The ideal expressed in John Milton’s definition of education, “that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all
the duties of all offices,” is one which is, we think, very deeply
embedded in the minds of the working classes, and we attribute part of
the failure of higher education among them in the past, to the feeling
that, by means of it their ablest members were being removed to spheres
where they would not be available for the service of their fellows. What
they desire is not that men should escape from their class, but that
they should remain in it and raise the whole level. The eleven millions
who weave our clothes, build our houses, and carry us safely on our
journeys demand university education in order that they may face with
wisdom the unsolved problems of their present position, not in order
that they may escape to another.... To-day in their strivings for a
fuller life, they ask that men of their own class should co-operate as
students with Oxford in order that, with minds enlarged by impartial
study, they in their turn may become the public teachers and leaders,
the philosophers and economists of the working classes. The movement,
which is thus formulated in a report signed by seven representative
workmen, is fraught with incalculable possibilities.
The sum of happiness in the nation might be vastly increased, and
politics might be guided by more persistent wisdom. The great sources of
happiness which rise within the mind and are nourished by contact with
other minds are largely out of reach of the majority of the people.
These sources might be brought within their reach. The working classes
whose minds are strengthened by the discipline of work, might have the
knowledge which would interest them in the things their hands make; they
might, in the long monotonies of toil, be illuminated by the thoughts of
the great, and inspired by ideals; they might be introduced to the
secrets of beauty, and taught the joy of admiration. They might be
released from the isolation of ignorance, so that, speaking a common
language, and sharing common thoughts, they would have the pleasure of
helping and being helped in discussions with members of other classes on
all things under the sun.
The workman knows about livelihood; he might know also about life, if
the great avenues of art, literature, and history, down which come the
thoughts and ideals of ages, were open to him. He might be happy in
reading, in thinking, or in admiring, and not be driven to find
happiness in the excitement of sport or drink. The mass of the people it
is often said are dumb, so that they cannot tell their thoughts; deaf,
so that they cannot understand the language of modern truth; and blind,
so that they cannot see the beauty of the world.
The speaker, in Mr. Lowes Dickenson’s dialogue, condemns this generation
when he says, “their idea of being better off is to eat and drink to
excess, to dress absurdly, and to play stupidly and cruelly”.
The majority of the people, it must be admitted, cannot have the best
sort of happiness, that which comes from within themselves, from the
exercise of their own thoughts, and from the use of their own faculties.
For want of knowledge the sum of happiness is decreased, and for want of
the same knowledge the dangers of war and social troubles are increased.
The working people have now become the governing class in the nation. Up
to now, the acting governors--the majority which controls the
Government--have cajoled them by party cries, by appeals to passion, and
by the familiar blandishments of expert canvassers, to fall in with
their policy. But every year working people are forming their own
opinions, and making their opinions felt, both in home and foreign
policy. They will break in upon the international equilibrium, so
delicately poised amid passions and prejudices; they will decide the use
of the Dreadnoughts and the armies of the world; they will settle
questions of property and of tariff; they will form the authority which
will have to control individual action for the good of the whole. How
can they possibly carry this responsibility if they have no wider
outlook on life, no greater knowledge of men, no more power of
foresight, no more respect for tradition than that which they already
possess?
How shortsighted is the policy which spends millions on armaments, and
leaves them to become destructive in ignorant hands. How important for
national security is a knowledge “in widest commonalty spread”. Oxford,
to a large extent, possesses this knowledge and the means of its
distribution.
“The national Universities, which are the national fountainheads of
national culture,” as one workman has said, have been regarded as the
legitimate preserves of the leisured class. They have helped the rich to
enjoy and defend their possessions, they have given them out of their
resources the power to see and to reason; they have made them wise in
their own interests; they have given to one class, and to the recruits
who have been drawn to that class from the ranks of the workman, the
knowledge in which is happiness and power. The question arises, should
Oxford, can Oxford, give the same gifts to working people while they
remain working people? The answer of the report is an unequivocal “Yes”.
In the first place the University has inherited the duty of educating
the poor. Its colleges have in many cases been founded for poor
scholars, and its tradition is that poverty shall be no bar to learning.
In the next place its long-established custom, of bringing men into
association in pursuit of knowledge, is one which peculiarly fits it
to help workmen, whose strength lies in that power of association
which has covered some districts of England with a network of
institutions--industrial, social, political, and religious. Men who
have joined in the discussions of the workshop, been members of the
committee of a co-operative store, and acted as officials of a
friendly society, have had in some ways a better preparation for
absorbing the teaching of the University on life, than is given in the
forms and playing field of a public school. The tutor of a class of
thirty-nine working people at N---- who read with him, the regular
session through, a course of Economic History, reports that the work
was excellent, and a visitor from Oxford was impressed “by the high
level of the discussion and the remarkable acumen displayed in asking
questions”.
In the last place, the University has the money. The total net receipts
of the Universities and colleges--apart from a sum of £178,000 collected
from the members of the Universities and colleges--is £265,000. Of this
sum, £50,000 is given in scholarships and exhibitions to boys who for
the most part have been trained in the schools of the richer classes,
and of this sum £34,000 is given yearly without reference to the
financial means of the recipient. The report does not analyse the
expenditure of this large income, except in so far as to suggest that
some of the scholarship and fellowship money might be diverted to the
more direct service of working people’s education. Common sense,
however, suggests that there must be many possible economies in the
management of estates, in the overlapping of lecturers, and in the
expense on buildings. The experience of the Ecclesiastical Commission
has shown how much may be gained if estates are removed from the care of
many amateur corporations, and placed under a centralized and efficient
management. The knowledge, too, that some colleges have ten times the
income of others, without corresponding difference in the educational
output, suggests that money may be saved.
Oxford seems to be compelled, both by its traditions, its customs, and
its money to do something for the education of the working people. The
question whether it can do so, is answered by the scheme which the
report recommends; that a committee be formed in Oxford, consisting of
working-class representatives, in equal numbers with members of the
University; that this Committee should draw up a two years’ curriculum,
select the tutors, who must also have work in Oxford, and settle the
localities in which classes shall be held; that students at these
classes be admitted to the diploma course; that half of the teachers’
salary be paid by the University, and the other half by the Committee of
the locality in which the classes are held. The report, with a view to
bringing working people under the influence of Oxford itself, further
recommends that colleges be asked to set aside a number of scholarships
or exhibitions, to enable selected students from the tutorial classes to
reside in Oxford, either in Colleges, in University Halls, as
non-collegiate students, or at Ruskin Hall.
These recommendations have certain advantages and certain shortcomings,
the consideration of which must be deferred to another article.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY AND THE WORKING PEOPLE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
SECOND ARTICLE.
February, 1909.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
The points in the scheme which Oxford proposes to adopt for bringing its
resources to the services of working people are: The appointment of
representative workmen on the Committee responsible for the object. The
offer of a working University tutor to a locality where a class of
thirty workpeople has been formed, willing to adopt one of the two
years’ courses which the committee has approved. The recognition of the
students of these classes as eligible for a diploma in Economics,
Political Science, etc. The open door, so that students selected from
the classes may be able to enter and to reside in the University.
Two questions arise: Will the scheme attract workmen? Will it get the
sympathetic, if not the enthusiastic, support of the University?
1. Will it attract workmen? Workmen, apart from the demand that they, as
a class, should share in the joy and the power of knowledge, have learnt
that they must have educated men of their own class to direct their own
organizations. There are 1,153 trade unions, 389 friendly societies,
2,646 co-operative societies, and many other councils or congresses,
most of which employ paid officers who are daily discharging duties of
the utmost responsibility and delicacy, and which make demands on their
judgment of men and knowledge of economic and political principles, as
great or greater than those made on the Civil servant in India or in
this country. Workmen want officials who, familiar with their point of
view, will have the knowledge and experience to convince educated
opponents of the justice of their contentions. The education which
Oxford can give by broadening a man’s knowledge and strengthening his
judgment, would make him a more efficient servant of his own society,
and a more potent influence on the side of industrial peace.
Will workmen accept the offer which Oxford makes? Much shyness and
prejudice have to be overcome. Oxford is often associated with opinions
foreign to the democratic ideal. The manners of University men sometimes
suggest that they are superior persons, and a reputation for expensive
trifling is widely spread. Workmen are afraid that their young men in
the University atmosphere may be alienated from their class, grow
ashamed of their belongings, and put on artificial manners. They doubt
whether the teaching may not be of a kind directed in the interest of
property, and they fear lest there may be too many temptations to
idleness and to play. They do not want, as one Labour leader has said,
“good democratic stuff spoiled by Oxford lecturers, who may give our
people a shoddy notion of respectability, and a superficial idea of
things which can be shown by the airs and graces of book learning”.
Oxford is thus suspect; but, on the other hand, the place has immense
attraction, as is proved by the fact that so many Trade Unions send
their men to study at Ruskin College.
“What,” it was asked of one of their students, “do you get here you
could not have got in a college in your own town?”
“I get Oxford,” was his reply; and it is evident in much talk that, even
when Oxford is “suspect,” it has a great hold on the workman’s mind.
There may be shyness, but it is only shyness that may be overcome by
trust.
The place of workmen, therefore, on the University committees must be an
assured place, and not one allowed as a favour or on sufferance. Their
voices must be heard as to the subjects to be taught, and as to the
teachers who are chosen; they must be able to make their influence felt
in the University, which, as it is national, is their University. The
local centres where classes are given must, in the same way, be locally
controlled and independent of University control. The committees of
these centres must have full choice of the place and time of their
meetings, select from the list the courses of study to be followed, and
approve the tutor. They must, indeed, have the same character as club or
co-operative classes, while, through the Oxford tutor, the course of
studies and the examination, light is let in from the University. The
life must be in the local centres, but it must draw its air from Oxford.
The problem as to the admission of working people to residence is more
difficult. The proposal is that, by means of scholarships, they should
be enabled to live in colleges or in halls, or as non-collegiate
students. The difficulty would be got over if enough students could come
to be a support to one another. There must always be a fear lest, if
they be few in number, they may either lose their independence or else
go to the extreme of protest. The University can, however, get over this
difficulty by providing sufficient money to bring up a sufficient number
of men, who will strengthen one another and influence the corporate life
of the place. The question whether students should reside in colleges,
in halls, or in lodgings may be left to solve itself. If they are to
reside in colleges, the present system of erecting new buildings, with
suites of expensive rooms, might well be checked. Simpler buildings,
adapted to the needs of workmen students, would save money, bring
together types of men in one community, and not detract from the beauty
of the city.
The schemes will, I believe, attract workmen if the University
takes pain to subordinate itself, and trusts to truth rather than
to power. Workmen, if once their suspicion--justified, it must be
allowed--be allayed, will find that there is in Oxford more sympathy
with their point of view than can possibly be found in any other
English community. Oxford men have, as a rule, open minds, and many
of their younger Fellows are close and devoted students of social
questions. Many working men have already experienced what Mr. Crooks
experienced when, at a meeting in a college hall, having hurled some
stinging sentences at the superiority which University men assumed,
his remarks were received, “not with boot-jacks, but with cheers”
Friendships between working men and members of the University are soon
formed--both are used to living in associations, both have a love of
free discussion, both, to a larger extent than other Englishmen, are
believers in equality. The scheme, if the University wishes it, will
attract workmen.
2. The other question is, Will the scheme win the support of the
University? A statute has already been passed appointing a committee
consisting of working-class representatives, and it has been agreed that
tutorial-class students may be admitted to the diploma course. The
University can hardly do more. It cannot alter its constitution, which
to a large extent leaves the government in the hands of college
nominees, with an ultimate appeal to members of the University,
scattered throughout the country. Its total income is only £24,000 a
year, and it has no power to enforce adequate contributions from the
colleges, although their total income from endowments is £265,000 a
year. The University itself, unless it be reformed by Act of Parliament,
or unless the colleges voluntarily endow it with the power and the
means, can do very little to carry out the scheme.
Will the Colleges act in the matter? Will they pass over to the control
of the University a fair portion of the money they now spend either on
scholarships and fellowships confined to boys from a few schools, or on
the maintenance of choirs and tutors, or on new buildings? It is not
enough that one or two colleges make a grant to support some workmen’s
centre. Workmen will resent the patronage of a college. The money must
be transferred to the University, the tutors must have a University
standing, and the scholarships, which enable men to reside in Oxford,
must be both ample and numerous. The University has, so far as it can,
acted on the recommendation of the report. Will the Colleges rise to the
opportunity, and enable Oxford to give the people the knowledge they
need, for the satisfaction of their own lives and the security of the
nation?
The Colleges as yet have given little sign of a will to do anything but
strengthen their own independence, and make provision for students
prepared in the public schools. In one or two instances, fellowships
have been given to men who have become lecturers under the University
Extension Scheme, but the example has not been followed.
For many years pupil teachers from the elementary schools have come to
Oxford for their training; one or two colleges have given scholarships;
but again the example has not spread, and the inspector has had to
complain of the scant provision which has been made for the men’s
advantage.
A plan was once initiated by which parties of teachers and others were
accommodated in colleges during the long vacation, and tasted some of
the advantages of Oxford life and teaching. The plan worked excellently;
it removed the reproach that for six months in the year the greatest
educational capital of the nation is allowed to lie idle. But there was
little enthusiasm; the energy of the few residents who were responsible
was, after a few years, worn out, if not by opposition, by apathy.
The colleges have as yet shown little power of adapting themselves to
the education of the new governing class. It may be that they will be
roused by this report, and that something adequate may be done.
The point I would urge is that the something be adequate--a few classes
scattered about the country, a few men admitted to Oxford, will court a
failure, and justify condemnation of the attempt.
The colleges have their opportunity, but beyond the colleges is my
friend Bishop Gore, now Bishop of Oxford, with his demand for a
Commission, and beyond the Bishop is the rising power of labour, with
its tendency, if it be not checked by University influence, to use all
national endowments for material rather than spiritual ends.
The Bishop’s case for a commission is broadly based on the impossibility
of working the present constitution of the University for its efficient
government; on the mischievous waste which spends the resources of fine
minds and unique surroundings on boys, many of whom are capable of doing
little more than play; on the folly of subsidizing with scholarships and
fellowships one set of schools, and one or two types of knowledge; on
the expensive habits which the system fostered. The case was not
answered, and cannot be answered. The report of the committee is the
first response to its call, and, as the Bishop said in a speech at
Toynbee Hall, it has given him a hope for which he has long waited.
The next response ought to be an appeal from the University itself for a
Commission which will enable it to order the resources of Oxford as a
whole, and apply its powers so as to carry out fully the recommendations
of the report.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
JUSTICE TO YOUNG WORKERS.
BY CANON BARNETT.
8 November, 1909.
Thirty years ago the “bitter cry” of the poor disturbed the public mind.
Housing has since been improved. Technical teaching has since been
established. The expenditure on the Poor Law has been greatly increased.
General Booth has raised the money for his social scheme. Philanthropy
has redoubled its efforts, and taken new forms. But still the “bitter
cry” is raised. The number of the unemployed is greater than ever. There
is more vagrancy, which the Prison Commissioners complain is adding to
the inmates of the prisons, and the amount spent on poor relief goes up
by leaps and bounds. Royal Commissions, Departmental Committees,
philanthropic conferences, scientific professors have been facing the
problem which every year becomes more threatening to the national
welfare. Their recommendations are many. The striking fact is that in
one recommendation they all concur. The one thing which they agree to be
necessary is further training for young people between the ages of
thirteen and seventeen.
The report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education,
lately published, gives the final word on the subject. The reports begin
by showing that out of the 2,000,000 children in England and Wales who
have passed their fourteenth birthday, and are still under seventeen
years of age, only one in four receives on week-days any continued
education. “The result is a tragic waste of early promise.” The children
go out of the elementary schools, which have been built up at immense
expense, and before they reach the age of seventeen, when the technical
schools may be entered, many have acquired desultory habits, and lost
the power of study. Released from school, they become idle and lawless,
or they enter “blind alley” employments, and for the sake of high
immediate wages, miss the chance of ultimate responsible employment. The
Committee agree with the Poor Law Commissioners, “that the results of
the large employment of boys in occupations which offer no opportunity
of employment as men are disastrous,” and go on to quote the Minority
Report: “The nation cannot long persist in ignoring the fact that the
unemployed, and particularly the under-employed, are thus being daily
created under our eyes out of bright young things, for whose training we
make no provision”.
The Committee having brought out this extravagant waste of money and
effort and young life, sets itself to consider a remedy. It suggests
improvements in the day schools by giving a larger place in the
curriculum to subjects which train the hand and eye, and develop the
constructive powers. It further suggests that steps should be taken to
prolong the school life of children, and it will be a surprise to many
readers that under the age of thirteen years 5,300 every year pass out
of school, and that the extension of the age to fourteen would involve
the addition of 150,000 children to the registers. These numbers do not
include the scholars now partially exempted from school attendance by
the wisdom or unwisdom of managers, who may be estimated as numbering
some 48,000 children, between thirteen and fourteen years of age. The
Committee add their opinion that the law which permits half-time in the
textile districts should be materially changed, and it goes on to
recommend that “no children under sixteen should be allowed to leave the
day school unless they could show to the satisfaction of the local
education authority that they were going to be suitably occupied, and
that such exemptions should only continue so long as they remained in
suitable employment”.
This recommendation follows on evidence of how large a proportion of
boys and girls enter forms of employment “which discourage the habit of
steady work, lessen the power of mental concentration, and are
economically injurious to the community, and deteriorating in their
effect on individual character”. Employment or apprenticeship Committees
have been formed, whose members spare no pains in advising the older
scholars, and the parents of such scholars, in the choice of an
occupation. They have done enough to show how much more might be done
could the advice be driven home with more system and authority. If the
recommendation were made the law, no child under sixteen would be
allowed to enter upon industrial life without sufficient guidance, both
as to the choice of a place, and as to continued education.
“Continued education,” whatever be the improvements in the day school or
the laudation of exemption from attendance, comes thus to be regarded as
the one thing necessary. “It is clear to the Committee that the lack of
continued educational care during the years of adolescence is one of the
deeper causes of national unemployment.”
Continuation schools have greatly developed during late years. They are
more frequent, they offer teaching which is more attractive and more
adapted to the social needs of the neighbourhoods in which they have
been opened. Educational authorities and private organizations have
taken pains to commend the schools and make them known. Employers have
in some cases required attendance at continuation schools as a condition
of employment, and in other cases have encouraged attendance by giving
off-time, by payment of fees, and by the offer of prizes. Workpeople
have taken pleasure in visiting the schools, and when they are
represented on the management, get rid of some suspicions, often to
become enthusiastic supporters.
Continuation schools may thus be said to have passed the period of
experiment, and it is now recognized that the curriculum should neither
be that of the old night-school, nor of the modern recreation evening.
It should aim rather at providing a good general education, to equip men
and women for intelligent citizenship, as well as to supply workers with
technical knowledge, and with that adaptability which is one of the most
valuable possessions of workpeople under modern conditions. It cannot
too often be repeated that the aim of education is not to make machines,
but to make men and women. People who know how to think and to reason,
who have capacities for enjoyment which do not need the stimulus of
excitement, will be more valuable citizens, and when they lose one form
of work, will more readily take to another.
The right sort of continuation school is now known. Such schools
increase yearly in number, and the attendances also increase, but the
Committee has been led to the conclusion that voluntary methods alone
will not solve the problem. There must be recourse to compulsory powers.
In many districts the authorities are apathetic, in other districts
voluntary methods are powerless against the ignorance and indifference
of the people. The majority of employers, moreover, are indifferent,
failing to recognize that closer care for the educational interest of
their young employés would enhance their own profit, and the pupils are
often too tired to attend any school. The law at present says, “Children
are compelled to attend school till the age of thirteen,” it therefore
creates the impression that at the age of thirteen the obligation
ceases. The law alone can remove this impression, and it must in the
future say: “Young people are compelled to attend continuation schools
till the age of seventeen”.
The Committee, in coming to the conclusion that a compulsory system is
necessary, has been confirmed in the conclusion by the elaborate
organization of day and evening schools (continuation) in Germany and
Switzerland, and by the movement in France for the extension of
educational opportunities during the years following the conclusion of
the day-school course. The Committee has also discovered signs of the
growth of opinion in England in favour of such a course, and this
Government has already adopted it in the Scotch Act of 1908. Out of
eighty-nine witnesses examined on this question sixty declared
themselves in favour of this compulsion, and of the twenty-nine who
objected, many modified their objections. The Committee felt themselves
justified in recommending that the example of the Scotch Act be
followed, and that every local education authority should be required to
establish suitable continuation classes, and that attendance should be
made compulsory for all young persons under seventeen, when the local
education authority make by-laws to that effect.
The obligation for the satisfactory working of the compulsion would be
thrown primarily on the employer. Every employer would be bound to
supply the officer of the education authority with the names of young
people in his employ; to arrange the hours of work so as to make it
possible for them to attend classes on certain days or nights without
causing the overstrain of their bodies; it would be his duty to inspect
the attendance cards of pupils at the classes; and he would be forbidden
under penalties to keep in his employment anyone not in regular
attendance.
The local authority would be called on to draw up its by-laws with due
regard to the character of the employment in various districts, so as to
cause as little inconvenience as possible to trade, and avoid any
physical overstrain to pupils. All street selling by boys and girls
under seventeen would be prohibited, except in the case of those who
were formerly licensed, and this licence would be forfeited unless the
holders’ attendance card proved the necessary attendance at the
continuation school.
The Committee make special suggestions as to girls in urban districts,
and generally as regards rural districts. Various needs demand various
provisions. The point, however, which stands out most clearly is that
after all needs have been weighed, and after all objections have been
considered, a system of compulsory continuation classes is recommended
both in the interests of the young people, who, for want of such
classes, miss the fruit of their education, and in the interest of the
community, who have to bear the burden of the unemployed.
Germany and Switzerland have established compulsory continuation
schools; Scotland has now followed their example. The Consultative
Committee has now shown that England is ready, and has suggested a
practicable scheme. Will the men and women whose hearts are torn, and
whose national pride is wounded by the sight of so many workers unable
to earn a living wage, and whose reason tells them that their unemployed
are often incompetent, because their training stopped and licence began
at thirteen years of age, and whose minds have now been informed by
figures that it is for want of care during the most critical period of
their lives that loafers and vagrants are made--will the men and women
who thus feel and know make the Government understand that this one
thing it is necessary shall be taken in hand without further delay?
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
A RACE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND RUIN.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
March, 1912.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
I.
“Twenty years too late” is the reflection suggested by the report of the
success of the Universities’ Experiment of Tutorial Classes for Working
People. The present industrial situation needs, it may be agreed, a
working-class able to take large and generous views, capable of shaping
not only a class but a national policy, trained to separate the
essential from the unessential, and to act consistently on principles
tried and proved in the history of the past. The old Universities have
the resources for giving the people this equipment. They have wealth;
they have teachers penetrated by the traditions accumulated in Oxford
and Cambridge; they exist, we are told, to give liberal culture a
broader outlook, a historical perspective. The Universities, roused by
the Workers’ Education Association, have, by means of the Tutorial
Classes, achieved notable success. They have offered to groups of twenty
or thirty working people in the great towns means by which they might
enter a larger life, feel the years which are behind, and get a grasp of
eternal principles. The means have been seized with surprising
eagerness. Men after a hard day’s work have been found week after week
at the tutors’ tables for the study of economics, political philosophy,
or history; they have kept up attendance for three years, and they have
learnt, to quote the words of some who attended a summer meeting in
Balliol College, “the wonderful development which has taken place in my
mind” now “that my prejudices have been dispelled and mental horizon
widened”--that “study is a pleasure rather than a task”.
The students, in a word, receive a share of that larger education which
the Universities exist to give. But success over so small an area,
affecting only a few thousand men, but serves to show what might have
been if the movement had commenced twenty years earlier.
The working people have now come into power, and they have many wrongs
to put right. The anxious question is, Will they use their power more
wisely and more generously than the capitalist class? There is not much
sign of a wide and generous outlook in a policy which assumes that war
is the necessary attitude of employed and employers. There is not much
evidence of an inspiring vision of society when there is so little
recognition of the interdependence of all sorts and conditions of men.
There is not much grasp of principle among those who begin a strike,
which must involve untold suffering, as if it were a holiday. The
working people may have wrongs to bear, they may have splendid qualities
of faithfulness to comrades and endurance under hardships, but they can
hardly be said to have that knowledge of humanity which makes them
humble before the best, with a capacity for judgment and a standard by
which to apply it.
The race in all nations seems to be one between Education and Ruin. The
Universities who are especially responsible for national education have
too late begun to share their resources with working people, and the
success of their long-delayed start has only served to encourage the
formation of the rival Central Labour College. This College is thus
described by Mr. Rowland Kenney: “It makes no pretence of giving a
‘broad’ education.... Its teaching is frankly partisan. History is dealt
with as a record of the struggles which have taken place in social
groups, because of the conflicting interests of the various classes that
have from time to time divided society.... Its key to the interpretation
of Sociology is class interest; dividing the social groups into the
owners and non-owners of property, it points out the common interest of
all those who work for wages.... It absolutely cuts out any idea of
conciliation as a final solution of labour problems.” The College, in
the name of education, appears to be using its forces to block the way
to peace and goodwill which it is largely the object of education to
keep open. It preaches a class war, treats every member of the middle
class as “suspect,” and bitterly opposes the Workers’ Education
Association because its Council includes University men. This College is
said to supply the brains behind the labour revolt.
The Universities, hating to be reformed, and allowing the misuse of
their resources by undergraduates, sometimes described by Rhodes
scholars as “British babes,” have been unable to do their part for the
nation. They have stood aside from elementary education, only coldly
tolerating the establishment of training colleges in their
neighbourhood, and only timidly following a few of their members when
they have led the way in the extension of University teaching. It may
almost be said that they have lost influence over public opinion, and
that their mission of raising the tone of democracy, of clarifying human
sympathies and elevating human preferences have passed to other hands. A
recent visitor to India remarked on his return that many of its
difficulties seemed due to its government by “unreformed Oxford,” and
reflecting on the strike, one is led to say that some of its most
disturbing features are due to unreformed Universities.
II.
There is something more needed, if not demanded, than a rise of wages. A
few more shillings a week would soon be absorbed by men whose first use
of leisure is in the enjoyment of somewhat sordid forms of sport. The
men are hardly to be blamed for what are condemned as low tastes and
brutal pleasures. They are what their environment has made them, and a
mining village is not likely to develop a love of home-making, a taste
for beauty, or any joy in the use of the higher faculties of admiration,
hope, and love. The long, grimy rows of houses, without any distinctive
features by which a man might recognize and become proud of his home.
The absence of gardens which would call him to enjoy nature and be its
fellow-worker; the want of a bathroom other than a tub in the
sitting-room, by which to feel clean from the dirt of the day; the
meanness of such public buildings as are provided--the church, the
library, or the meeting-hall--do not provoke his soul to admiration or
stir up a thirst for knowledge; such surroundings are likely to make the
miner content with his pigeons, his dogs, and his football matches. Why,
it may be asked, have not more owners done what some owners have done,
and make a Bournville or a Port Sunlight for the workpeople. If out of
the average 10 per cent profits, it is impossible to provide an
appreciable addition to the men’s weekly wages, it is not impossible to
provide better and pleasanter housing. Why is it that owners and
managers, who by many acts have shown themselves to be people of
goodwill, have been content that workmen should live under conditions
which unfit them to enjoy the best things: why is it that with all their
charity they miss their opportunity? The fault lies, I believe, largely
with the Church--Established and Free. The Church has too often gone on
preaching a mediæval system, it has not moved with the times, and does
not recognize that goodwill to-day must find other ways of charity than
those trodden by our fathers, when they built almshouses and provided
food or clothing. It has allowed a business man to be hard in his
business, if he is easy in response to charitable appeals. But times
have changed, and we no longer hope for a society in which rich people
are kind to poor people; we rather think of a society where employers
and employed share justly the profits of work; where there is no
dependent class, and all find pleasure in the gifts of character which
follow the full growth of manhood in rich and poor. If the Church
recognized some such conception of society it would aim to humanize
business relations and teach investors to ask, as Bishop Stubbs (whose
“Social Creed,” lately published in the “Times,” well repays study)
suggests, “Not only whether a business is _safe_ to pay, but whether the
business _deserves_ to pay”. Coal-owners, under the Church’s influence,
might substitute for such villages as Tonypandy, villages such as
Earswick, and then every increase of wages would mean that widening of
human interests which helps to satisfy the individual and to increase
the stability of the nation.
------------------------------------
The strike is doing vast mischief, as it dislocates trade, spreads
poverty, and embitters class relationships. But all its mischief may be
outweighed if it forces people to think. Our prosperity, the triumphs of
machinery, the daily provision of opinions by an ubiquitous Press, have
encouraged a self-satisfied and easy-going spirit. We do not take pains
to make up our minds; we do not try to think our rivals’ thoughts;
employers do not put themselves in the men’s place, and the men do not
put themselves in the employers’ place; none of us put ourselves in the
Germans’ place when they are angry at our policy. The greatest danger of
the time is the forgetfulness of danger, the light-heartedness of the
people, and the want of seriousness which prefers enjoyment to study,
and the carelessness which, for example, goes on refusing to consider
the Insurance Act, saying, “It will never come into force”. People will
not think. The Tariff Reform agitation has done untold good in making,
at any rate, a few people think out the meaning of Free Trade. The
strike will do good if it makes people--masters and men--think out the
interdependence of trade--whence it is that profits come--what is the
relation between home and foreign trade--what is the duty which a trade
bears to the State--what is the justification for a strike or a lock-out
which cripples the State--and what are the calls for State interference.
Professor William James declares that the secret and glory of our
English-speaking race “consists in nothing but two common habits carried
into public life--habits more precious, perhaps, than any that the human
race has gained.... One of them is the habit of trained and disciplined
good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings.
The other is that of fierce and merciless resentment towards every man
or set of men who break the public peace.” The strike and its sufferings
will not be in vain if by making us think it strengthens our hold on
those heirlooms.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, ABERDEEN
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The following changes have been made to the text as printed:
1. Footnotes have been placed close to their respective markers and
renumbered sequentially within each chapter.
2. Page 5: 'When, however we come to the third constituent' ... A
comma has been inserted after 'however'. [There is extra space
in the line as printed, where a comma would be expected.]
3. Page 32 (footnote): 'Fom' changed to 'From'.
4. Page 50: Changed ’ to ” after 'respect'. [Quote opens with “]
5. Page 54: Changed 'some unmeaning task, work die unfreed,' to '...
taskwork, die unfreed'. [The reference is to the poem 'A
Summer Night' by Matthew Arnold: 'Their lives to some unmeaning
taskwork give,' ...]
6. Page 95 (bottom line): 'Henrietta A. Barnett' changed to
'Henrietta O. Barnett'.
7. Page 137: 'labouror' changed to 'labourer'. [The spelling has
been checked in a facsimile (not e-text) of the 1834 document
being quoted]
8. Page 141: 'satifies' changed to 'satisfies'.
9. Page 156: 'The corresponding mortality ... it between two and
three times' changed to 'is between ...'.
10. Page 205: Removed quote mark before 'Mr. Williams said:'
11. Page 212: 'motthering' changed to 'mothering'.
12. Page 230: Footnote index 1 inserted in front of 'From “The
Contemporary Review”'.
13. Page 249: 'between £160 and £200 per annum' changed to 'between
£160 and £700'. [Figures verified from the work cited: Riches
and Poverty, by E. Chiozza Money (1905), p. 42.]
14. Page 271: Inserted comma after 'Why' in 'Why what would the men
have to lean against?'
15. Page 328: '5·300' changed to '5,300'.
16. Page 332 (bottom line): 'Samuel H. Barnett' changed to 'Samuel A.
Barnett'.
The following anomalies in the printed text are noted, but no change has
been made:
1. Inconsistent hyphenations, spellings and punctuation have been
retained as printed, where not definitely erroneous. [These are
discrete essays, written at different times by two hands and
reprinted from a range of publications.]
2. In the children’s writings quoted in Chapter 4, all non-standard
spelling, punctuation and grammar have been retained as
printed.
3. Table of contents: Chapter 33 begins on page 327, not 320 as
printed. Chapter 34 begins on page 333, not 327.