CAMBRIDGE ESSAYS ON EDUCATION

EDITED BY A. C. BENSON, C. V. O. , LL. D. Master of Magdalene College

With an Introduction by the Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O. M. 

1919

PREFACE

The scheme of publishing a volume of essays dealing with underlyingaims and principles of education was originated by the UniversityPress Syndicate. It seemed to promise something both of use andinterest, and the further arrangements were entrusted to a smallCommittee, with myself as secretary and acting editor. 

Our idea has been this: at a time of much educational enterprise andunrest, we believed that it would be advisable to collect the opinionsof a few experienced teachers and administrators upon certainquestions of the theory and motive of education which lie a littlebeneath the surface. 

To deal with current and practical problems does not seem the _first_need at present. Just now, work is both common as well as fashionable;most people are doing their best; and, if anything, the danger is thatorganisation should outrun foresight and intelligence. Moreover aweakening of the old compulsion of the classics has resulted, not inperfect freedom, but in a tendency on the part of some scientificenthusiasts simply to substitute compulsory science for compulsoryliterature, when the real question rather is whether obligatorysubjects should not be diminished as far as possible, and moresympathetic attention given to faculty and aptitude. 

We have attempted to avoid mere current controversial topics, and toencourage our contributors to define as far as possible the aim andoutlook of education, as the word is now interpreted. 

We have not furthered any educational conspiracy, nor attempted anyfusion of view. Our plan has been first to select some of the mostpressing of modern problems, next to find well-equipped experts andstudents to deal with each, and then to give the various writers asfree a hand as possible, desiring them to speak with the utmostfrankness and personal candour. We have not directed the plan ortreatment or scope of any essay; and my own editorial supervision hasconsisted merely in making detailed suggestions on smaller points, inexhorting contributors to be punctual and diligent, and generallyrevising what the New Testament calls jots and tittles. We have beenvery fortunate in meeting with but few refusals, and our contributorsreadily responded to the wish which we expressed, that they shouldwrite from the personal rather than from the judicial point of view, and follow their own chosen method of treatment. 

We take the opportunity of expressing our obligations to all who havehelped us, and to Viscount Bryce for bestowing, as few are so justlyentitled to do, an educational benediction upon our scheme and volume. 

A. C. BENSON

MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGEAugust 18, 1917

CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION

 By the Right Hon. VISCOUNT BRYCE, O. M. 

I. THE AIM OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM

 By JOHN LEWIS PATON, M. A. , High Master of Manchester Grammar School; formerly Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, Assistant Master at Rugby School, Head Master of University College School

II. THE TRAINING OF THE REASON

 By the Very Rev. WILLIAM RALPH INGE, D. D. , Dean of St Paul's, Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and of Hertford College, Oxford; formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Assistant Master at Eton College, Fellow and Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford

III. THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION

 By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON, C. V. O. , LL. D. , Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge; formerly Assistant Master at Eton College

IV. RELIGION AT SCHOOL

 By WILLIAM WYAMAR VAUGHAN, M. A. , Master of Wellington College; formerly Assistant Master at Clifton College, and Head Master of Giggleswick School

V. CITIZENSHIP

 By ALBERT MANSBRIDGE, M. A. , Joint-Secretary of the Cambridge University Tutorial Classes Committee; Founder and formerly Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association

VI. THE PLACE OF LITERATURE IN EDUCATION

 By NOWELL SMITH, M. A. , Head Master of Sherborne School; formerly Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford, Assistant Master at Winchester College

VII. THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

 By WILLIAM BATESON, F. R. S. , Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge; formerly Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge

VIII. ATHLETICS

 By FREDERIC BLAGDEN MALIM, M. A. , Master of Haileybury College; formerly Assistant Master at Marlborough College, Head Master of Sedbergh School

IX. THE USE OF LEISURE

 By JOHN HADEN BADLEY, M. A. , Head Master of Bedales School

X. PREPARATION FOR PRACTICAL LIFE

 By Sir JOHN DAVID MCCLURE, LL. D. , D. MUS. , Head Master of Mill Hill School

XI. TEACHING AS A PROFESSION

 By FRANK ROSCOE, Secretary of the Teachers Registration Council

INTRODUCTION

In times of anxiety and discontent, when discontent has engendered thebelief that great and widespread economic and social changes areneeded, there is a risk that men or States may act hastily, rushing tonew schemes which seem promising chiefly because they are new, catching at expedients that have a superficial air of practicality, and forgetting the general theory upon which practical plans should bebased. At such moments there is special need for the restatement andenforcement by argument of sound principles. To such principles so faras they relate to education it is the aim of these essays to recallthe public mind. They cover so many branches of educational theory anddeal with them so fully and clearly, being the work of skilled andvigorous thinkers, that it would be idle for me to enter in a shortintroduction upon those topics which they have discussed with specialknowledge far greater than I possess. All I shall attempt is topresent a few scattered observations on the general problems ofeducation as they stand to-day. 

The largest of those problems, viz. , how to provide elementaryinstruction for the whole population, is far less urgent now than itwas fifty years ago. The Act of 1870, followed by the Act which madeschool-attendance compulsory, has done its work. What is wanted nowis Quality rather than Quantity. Quantity is doubtless needed in onerespect. Children ought to stay longer at school and ought to havemore encouragement to continue education after they leave theelementary school. But it is chiefly an improvement in the teachingthat is wanted, and that of course means the securing of highercompetence in the teacher by raising the remuneration and the statusof the teaching profession[1]. 

The next problem is how to find the finest minds among the children ofthe country and bring them by adequate training to the highestefficiency. The sifting out of these best minds is a matter ofeducational organisation and machinery; and the process will becomethe easier when the elementary teachers, who ought to bear a part inselecting those who are most fitted to be sent on to secondaryschools, have themselves become better qualified for the task ofdiscrimination. The question how to train these best minds when siftedout would lead me into the tangled controversy as to the respectiveeducational values of various subjects of instruction, a topic which Imust not deal with here. What I do wish to dwell upon is the supremeimportance to the progress of a nation of the best talent itpossesses. In every country there is a certain percentage of thepopulation who are fitted by their superior intelligence, industry, and force of character to be the leaders in every branch of actionand thought. It is a small percentage, but it may be increased bydiscovering ability in places where the conditions do not favour itsdevelopment, and setting it where it will have a better chance ofgrowth, just as a seedling tree brought out of the dry shade may shootup when planted where sun and rain can reach it freely. I am notthinking of those exceptionally great and powerful minds, of whomthere may not be more than four or five in a generation, who makebrilliant discoveries or change the currents of thought, but rather ofpersons of a capacity high, if not quite first rate, which enablesthem, granted fair chances, to rise quickly into positions where theycan effectively serve the community. These men, whatever occupationthey follow, be it that of abstract thinking, or literary production, or scientific research, or the conduct of affairs, whether commercialor political or administrative, are the dynamic strength of thecountry when they enter manhood, and its realised wealth when they arein their fullest vigour thirty years later. We need more of them, andmore of them may be found by taking pains. 

The volume of thought continuously applied to the work of life, whether it be applied in the library or study or laboratory, or in theworkshop or factory or counting-house or council chamber, has not beenkeeping pace with the growth of our population, our wealth, ourresponsibilities. It is not to-day sufficient for the increasingvastness and complexity of the problems that confront a great nation. We in Great Britain have been too apt to rely upon our energy andcourage and practical resourcefulness in emergencies, and thus havetended to neglect those efforts to accumulate knowledge, and considerhow it can be most usefully applied, which should precede andaccompany action. This deficiency is happily one that can be removed, while a want of qualities which are the gift of nature is lesscurable. The "efficiency" which is on every one's mouth cannot beextemporised by rushing hastily into action, however energetic. It isthe fruit of patient and exact determination of and reflection uponthe facts to be dealt with. 

The view that it was the finest minds that ought to be most cared for, and that to them of right belonged not merely leadership, but evencontrol also, was carried by the ancients, and especially by Plato andAristotle, almost to excess. Their ideal, and indeed that of mostGreek thinkers, was the maintenance among the masses of the militaryvalour and discipline which the State needed for its protection, andthe cultivation among the chosen few of the highest intellectual andmoral excellence. In the Middle Ages, when power as well as rankbelonged to two classes, nobles and clergy, the ideal of educationtook a religious colour, and that training was most valued which mademen loyal to the Church and to sound doctrine, with the prospect ofbliss in the world to come. In our times, educational ideals havebecome not merely more earthly but more material. Modern doctrines ofequality have discredited the ancient view that the chief aim ofinstruction is to prepare the few Wise and Good for the government ofthe State. It is not merely upon this world but also upon the materialthings of this world, power and the acquisition of territory, industrial production, commerce, finance, wealth and prosperity in allits forms, that the modern eye is fixed. There has been a driftingaway from that respect for learning which was strong in the MiddleAges and lasted down into the eighteenth century. In some countries, as in our own, that which instruction and training may accomplish hasbeen rated far below the standard of the ancients. Yet in our own timewe have seen two striking examples to show that their estimate washardly too high. Think of the power which the constant holding up, during long centuries, of certain ideals and standards of conduct, exerted upon the Japanese people, instilling sentiments of loyalty tothe sovereign and inspiring a certain conception of chivalric dutywhich Europe did not reach even when monarchy and chivalry stoodhighest. Think of that boundless devotion to the State as anomnipotent and all-absorbing power, superseding morality andsuppressing the individual, which within the short span of twogenerations has taken possession of Germany. In the latter case atleast the incessant preaching and teaching of a theory which lowersthe citizen's independence and individuality while it saps his moralsense seems to us a misdirection of educational effort. But in iteducation has at least displayed its power. 

Can a fair statement of the educational ideals which we might here andnow set before ourselves be found in saying that there are threechief aims to be sought as respects those we have called the bestminds?

One aim is to fit men to be at least explorers, even if notdiscoverers, in the fields of science and learning. 

A second is to fit them to be leaders in the field of action, leadersnot only by their initiative and their diligence, but also by thepower and the habit of turning a full stream of thought and knowledgeupon whatever work they have to do. 

A third is to give them the taste for, and the habit of enjoying, intellectual pleasures. 

Many moralists, ancient and modern, have given pleasure a bad name, because they saw that the most alluring and powerfully seductivepleasures, pleasures which appeal to all men alike, were indulged toexcess, and became a source of evil. But men will have pleasure andought to have pleasure. The best way of drawing them off from the moredangerous pleasures is to teach them to enjoy the better kinds. Moreover the quieter pleasures of the intellect mean Rest, and agreater fitness for resuming work. 

The pity is that so many sources capable of affording delight areignored or imperfectly appreciated. May not this be partly the faultof the lines which our education has followed? Perhaps some kinds ofstudy would have fared better if their defenders had dwelt more uponthe pleasure they afford and less upon their supposed utility. Thechampions of Greek and Latin have dilated on the value of grammar as amental discipline, and argued that the best way to acquire a goodEnglish style is to know the ancient languages, a propositiondiscredited by many examples to the contrary. It is really thisinsistence on grammatical minutiae that has proved repellent to youngpeople and suggested the dictum that "it doesn't much matter what youteach a boy so long as he hates it. " Better had it been, abandoningthe notion that every one should learn Greek, to dwell upon theboundless pleasure which minds of imagination and literary tastederive from carrying in memory the gems of ancient wisdom which aremore easily remembered because they are not in our own language, andthe finest passages of ancient poetry. There are plenty ofthings--indeed there are far more things--in modern literature asnoble and as beautiful as the best of the ancients can give us. Butthey are not the same things. The ancient poets have the freshness andthe fragrance of the springtime of the world [2]. Or take another sortof instance. Take the pleasures which nature spreads before us with agenerous hand, hills and fields and woods and rocks, flowers and thesongs of birds, the ever-shifting aspects of clouds and of landscapesunder light and shadow. How few persons in most countries--for thereis in this respect a difference between different peoples--noticethese things. Everybody sees them few observe them or derive pleasurefrom them. Is not this largely because attention has not been properlycalled to them? They have not been taught to look at natural objectsclosely and see the variety there is in them. Persons in whom no tastefor pictures has ever been formed by their having been taken to see, good pictures and told what constitutes merit, are, when led into apicture gallery, usually interested in the subjects. They like to seea sportsman shooting wild fowl, or a battle scene, or even a prizefight, or a mother tending a sick child, because these incidentsappeal to them. But they seldom see in a picture anything but thesubject; they do not appreciate: imaginative quality or composition, or colour, or light and shade or indeed anything except exactimitation of the actual. So in nature the average man is; struck bysomething so exceptional as a lofty rock, like Ailsa Craig or theNeedles off the Isle of Wight, or an eclipse of the moon, or perhaps ablood-red sunset; but he does not notice and consequently draws nopleasure from landscapes in general, whether noble; or quietlybeautiful. The capacity for taking pleasure, in all these things maynot be absent. There is reason: to think that most children possessit, because when they are shown how to observe they usually respond, quickly perceiving, for instance, the differences between one flowerand another, quickly, even when quite young, learning the distinctivecharacters and names of each, enjoying the process of recognisingeach when they walk along the lanes, as indeed every intelligentchild enjoys the exercise of its observing powers. The disproportionategrowth of our urban population, a thing regrettable in other respectsalso, has no doubt made it more difficult to give young people afamiliar knowledge of nature, but the facilities for going into thecountry and the happy lengthening of summer holidays render it easierthan formerly to provide opportunities for Nature Study, which, properly conducted, is a recreation and not a lesson. There is nosource of enjoyment which lasts so keen all through life or which fitsone better for other enjoyments, such as those of art and of travel. Of the value of the habit of alert observation for other purposes Isay nothing, wishing here to insist only upon what it may do fordelight. 

It is often alleged that in England boys and girls show less mentalcuriosity, less desire for knowledge than those of most Europeancountries, or even than those of the three smaller countries north andwest of England in which the Celtic element is stronger than it is inSouth Britain. A parallel charge has, ever since the days of MatthewArnold, been brought against the English upper and middle classes. Hedeclared that they care less for the "things of the mind" and showless respect to eminence in science, literature and art, than is thecase elsewhere, as for instance in France, Germany, or Italy (to whichone may add the United States); and he thus explained the scantyinterest taken by these classes in educational progress. 

Should this latter charge be well founded, the fact it notes wouldtend to perpetuate the former evil, for the indifference of parentsreacts upon the school and upon the pupils. The love of knowledge isso natural and awakens so early in the normal child, that even if itbe somewhat less keen among English than among French or Scottishchildren, we may well believe our deficiencies to be largely due tofaulty and unstimulative methods of teaching, and may trust that theywill diminish when these methods have been improved. 

If it be true that the English public generally show a want ofinterest in and faint appreciation of the value of education, thestern discipline of war will do something to remove this indifference. The comparative poverty and reduction of luxurious habits; which thiswar will bring in its train, along with a sense of the need that hasarisen for turning to the fullest account all the intellectualresources of the country so that it may maintain its place in theworld, --these things may be expected to work a change for the better, and lead parents to set more store upon the mental and less upon theathletic achievements of their sons. 

Be this as it may, no one to-day denies that much remains to be doneto spread a sense of the value of science for those branches ofindustry to which (as especially to agriculture) it has beenimperfectly applied, to strengthen and develop the teaching ofscientific theory as the foundation of technical and practicalscientific work, and above all to equip with the largest measure ofknowledge and by the most stimulating training those on whom naturehas bestowed the most vigorous and flexible minds. To-day e see thatthe heads of great businesses, industrial and financial, are lookingout for men of university distinction to be placed in responsibleposts--a thing which did not happen fifty years ago--because theconditions of modern business have grown too intricate to be handledby any but the best trained brains. The same need is at least equallytrue of many branches of that administrative work which is now beingthrust, in growing volume, upon the State and its officials. 

If we feel this as respects the internal economic life of our country, is it not true also of the international life of the world? In thestress and competition of our times, the future belongs to the nationsthat recognise the worth of Knowledge and Thought, and best understandhow to apply the accumulated experience of the past. In the long runit is knowledge and wisdom that rule the world, not knowledge only, but knowledge applied with that width of view and sympatheticcomprehension of men, and of other nations, which are the essence ofstatesmanship. 

[Footnote 1: This has been clearly seen and admirably stated by thepresent President of the Board of Education. ]

[Footnote 2: Take for instance this little fragment of Alcman:

Greek: _Ou m heti, parthenikai meligaryest imerophônoi, Gyia pherein dynatai. Bale dê Bale kêrylos eiên, Hos t hepi kymatos hanthos ham alkyonessi potêtai Nêleges hêtor hechôn haliporphyros eiaros hornis. _

What can be more exquisite than the epithets in the first line, ormore fresh and delicate and tender in imaginative quality than thethree last? A modern poet of equal genius would treat the topic withequal force and grace, but the charm, the untranslatable charm ofantique simplicity, would be absent. ]

I

THE AIM OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM

By J. L. PATON

High Master of Manchester Grammar School

The last century, with all its brilliant achievement in scientificdiscovery and increase of production, was spiritually a failure. Thesadness of that spiritual failure crushed the heart of Clough, turnedCarlyle from a thinker into a scold, and Matthew Arnold from a poetinto a writer of prose. 

The secret of failure was that the great forces which move mankindwere out of touch with each other, and furnished no mutual support. Art had no vital relation with industry; work was dissociated fromjoy; political economy was at issue with humanity; science was atdaggers drawn with religion; action did not correspond to thought, being to seeming; and finally the individual was conceived as havingclaims and interests at variance with the claims and interests of thesociety of which he formed a part, in fact as standing out against it, in an opposition so sharply marked that one of the greatest thinkerscould write a book with the title "Man _versus_ the State. " As aresult, nation was divided against nation, labour against capital, town against country, sex against sex, the hearts of the childrenwere set against the fathers, the Church fought against the State, and, worst of all, Church fought against Church. 

The discords of the great society were reflect inevitably in thesphere of education. The elementary schools of the nation were dividedinto two conflicting groups, and both were separated by an estranginggulf from the grammar schools and high schools as the grammar schoolsin turn were shut off from the public schools on the one hand, andfrom the schools of art, music, and of technology on the other Therewas no cohesion, no concerted effort, no mutual support, no great planof advance, no homologating idea. 

This fact in itself is sufficient to account for the ineffectiveness, the despondencies, the insincerities and ceaseless unrest of Westerncivilisation in the nineteenth century. The tree of human life cannotflower and bear fruit for the healing of the nations when its greatlife-forces spend themselves in making war on each other. 

If the experience of the century which lies before us is to bedifferent, it must be made so by means of education. Education is thescience which deals with the world as it is capable of becoming. Othersciences deal with things as they are, and formulate the laws whichthey find to prevail in things as they are. The eyes of education arefixed always upon the future, and philosophy of whatever kind, directly adumbrates a Utopia, thinks on educational lines. 

The aim of education must therefore be as wide as it is high, it mustbe co-extensive with life. The advance must be along the whole front, not on a small sector only. William Morris, when he tried his hand atpainting, used to say, that what bothered him always was the frame: hecould not conceive of art as something "framed off" and isolated fromlife. Just as William Morris wanted to turn all life into art, so witheducation. It cannot be "framed off" and detached from the largeraspects of political and social well-being; it takes all life for itsprovince. It is not an end in itself, any more than the individualswith whom it deals; it acts upon the individual, but through theindividual it acts upon the mass, and its aim is nothing less than theright ordering of human society. 

To cope with a task which can be stated in these terms, education mustbe free. A new age postulates a new education. The traditions whichhave dominated hitherto must one by one be challenged to renderaccount of themselves, that which is good in them must be conservedand assimilated, that which is effete must be scrapped and rejected. Neither can the administrative machinery, as it exists, be taken forgranted; unless it shows those powers of adaptation and growth whichshow it to be alive and not dead, it too must be scrapped andrejected; new wine is fatal to old skins. Education must regain oncemore what she possessed at the time of the Renascence--the power ofdirection; she must be mistress of her fate. 

Further, if education is to be a force which makes for co-operationin place of conflict, she must not be divided against herself. Shemust leave behind forever the separations and snobberies, themisunderstandings, the wordy battles beloved of pedants andpoliticians. The smoke and dust of controversy obscures her vision, and she needs all her energies to tackle the great task whichconfronts her. In this regard nothing is so full of promise for thefuture as the new sense of unity which is beginning both to animateand actuate the whole teaching profession, from the University to theKindergarten, and has already eventuated in the formation of aTeachers Registration Council, on which all sorts and conditions ofeducation are represented. 

The materialists have not been slow to see their chance, to challengethe old tradition of literary education, and to urge the claims ofscience. But the aim which they place before us is frankly stated--itis the acquisition of wealth; they are "on manna bent and mortalends, " and their conception of the future is a world in which onenation competes against another for the acquisition of markets andcommodities. In effect, therefore, materialism challenges theclassics, but it accepts the self-seeking ideals of the pastgenerations, and accepts also, as an integral part of the future, thescramble of conflicting interests, labour against capital, nationagainst nation, man against man. Now the first characteristic of thegenuine scientific mind is the power of learning by experience. Realscience never makes the same mistake twice. Obviously the repetitionof the past can only eventuate in the repetition of the present. Andthat is precisely what education sets itself to counteract. Thematerialist forgets three outstanding and obvious facts. Firstly, science cannot be the whole of knowledge, because "science" (in hislimited sense of the term) deals only with what appears. Secondly, power of insight depends not so much upon the senses as on moralqualities, the sense of sympathy and of fairness; it needsself-discipline as well as knowledge both of oneself and one'sfellow-man. "How can a man, " says Carlyle, "without clear vision inhis heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head?" "Eyes andears, " said the ancient philosopher, "are bad witnesses for such ashave barbarian souls. " Thirdly, the tragedy of the past generation wasnot its failure to accumulate wealth; in that respect it was moresuccessful than any generation which preceded it. The tragedy of thenineteenth century was that, when it had acquired wealth, it had noclear idea, either individually or collectively, what to do with it. 

And yet the house of humanity faces both ways; it looks out towardsthe world of appearances as well as to the world of spirit, and is, infact, the meeting-place of both. Materialism is not wrong because itdeals with material things. It is wrong because it deals with nothingelse. It is wrong, also, in education because taking the point of viewof the adult, it makes the material product itself the all-importantthing. In every right conception of education the child is central. The child is interested in things. It wants first to _sense_ them, oras Froebel would say "to make the outer inner"; it wants to play withthem, to construct with them, and along the line of this inwardpropulsion the educational process has to act. The "thing-studies" ifone may so term them, which have been introduced into the curriculum, such as gardening, manual training (with cardboard, wood, metal), cooking, painting, modelling, games and dramatisation, are it is truelater introductions, adopted mainly from utilitarian motive; and theyhave been ingrafted on the original trunk, being at first regarded asdetachable extras, but they quickly showed that they were an organicpart of the real educative process; they have already reacted on theother subjects of the curriculum, and have, in the earlier stages ofeducation become central. In the same way, vocation is having greatinfluence upon the higher terminal stages of education. All this ispart of the most important of all correlations, the correlation ofschool with life. 

But the child's interest in things is social. Through the primitiveoccupations of mankind, he is entering step by step into the heritageof the race and into a richer fuller personal experience. The sciencewhich enlists a child's interest is not that which is presented fromthe logical, abstract point of view. The way in which the childacquires it is the same as that in which mankind acquired it--hisoccupation presents certain difficulties, to overcome thesedifficulties he has to exercise his thought, he invents andexperiments; and so thought reacts upon occupation, occupation reactsupon thought. And out of that reciprocal action science is born. Inthe same way his play is social--in his games too he enters into theheritage of the race, and in playing them he is learning unconsciouslythe greatest of all arts, the art of living with others. In his playas well as in his school work the lines of his natural developmentshow how he can be trained to co-operate with the law of humanprogress. 

This fitness and readiness to co-operate with the great movement ofhuman progress, all-round fitness of body, mind and spirit, providesthe formula which fuses and reconciles two growing tendencies inmodern education. 

There is in the first place the movement towards self-expression andself-development--postulating for the scholar a larger measure ofliberty in thought and action, and self-direction than hitherto--thismovement is represented mainly by Dr Montessori, and by "What is andwhat might be"; it is a movement which is spreading upwards from theinfant school to the higher standards. Side by side with it is themovement towards the fuller development of corporate life in theschool, the movement which trains the child to put the school first inhis thoughts, to live for the society to which he belongs and find hisown personal well-being in the well-being of that society. This hasbeen, ever since Arnold, sedulously fostered in the games of thepublic schools, and fruitful of good results in that limited sphere;it has been applied with conspicuous success to the development ofself-government, and it has reached its fullest expression in thelittle Commonwealth of Mr Homer Lane. But we are beginning torecognise its wider applications, it is capable of transforming thespirit of the class-room activities as well as the activities of aplaying field, it is in every way as applicable to the elementaryschool as to Eton, or Rugby, or Harrow, and to girls as well as toboys. 

These two movements towards a fuller liberty of self-fulfilment, andtowards a fuller and stronger social life, are convergent, andsupplement, or rather complement, each other. Personality, after all, is best defined as "capacity for fellowship, " and only in the socialmilieu can the individual find his real self-fulfilling. Unless hefunctions socially, the individual develops into eccentricity, negative criticism, and the cynical aloofness of the "superiorperson. " On the other hand without freedom of individual development, the organisation of life becomes the death of the soul. Prussia hasshown how the psychology of the crowd can be skilfully manipulated forthe most sinister ends. It is a happy omen for our democracy that boththese complementary movements are combined in the new life of theschools. To both appeals, the appeal of personal freedom, and theappeal of the corporate life, the British child is peculiarlyresponsive. Round these two health-centres the form of the new systemwill take shape and grow. 

And growth it must be, not building. The body is not built up on theskeleton, the skeleton is secreted by the growing body. The hope ofeducation is in the living principle of hope and enthusiasm, whichstretches out towards perfection. One distrusts instinctively at thepresent time anything schematic. There are men, able enough asorganisers, who will be ready to sit down and produce at two days'notice a full cut-and-dried scheme of educational reconstruction. Theywill take our present resources, and make the best of them, no doubt, re-arranging and re-manipulating them, and making them go as far asthey can. They will shape the whole thing out in wood, and the resultwill be wooden. It will be static and stratified, with no upward lift. But that is not the way. Education is a thing of the spirit, it isinstinct with life, [Greek: thermon ti pragma] as Aristotle wouldsay, drawing upon resources that are not its own, "unseen yet crescivein its faculty" and in its growth taking to itself such outward formas it needs for the purpose of its inward life. Six years at least itwill take for the new spirit to work itself out into the definitelarger forms. 

That does not mean that it will come without hard purposeful thinkingand much patient effort. Education does not "happen" any more than"art happens, "--and just as with the arts of the middle ages, so thewell-being of education depends not on the chance appearance of a fewmen of genius but on the right training and love of the ordinaryworkman for his work. Education is a spiritual endeavour, and it willcome, as the things of the spirit come, through patience inwell-doing, through concentration of purpose on the highest, throughdrawing continually on the inexhaustible resources of the spiritualworld. The supreme "maker" is the poet, the man of vision. For theadministrator, the task is different from what it has been. It is forhim to watch and help experiments, to prevent the abuse of freedom, not to preserve uniformities but to select variations. But he ishandling a power which, as George Meredith says, "is a heaven-sentsteeplechaser, and takes a flying leap of the ordinary barriers. "

To-morrow is the day of opportunity. To-day is the day of preparation. Yesterday's ideals have become the practical politics of the presenthour. Our countrymen recognise now as they have never done before thatthe problem of national reconstruction is in the main a problem ofnational education: "the future welfare of the nation, " to use MrFisher's words, "depends upon its schools. " Men make light now of theextra millions which a few years ago seemed to bar the way ofprogress. At the same time the discipline of the last three years hashammered into us a new consciousness of national solidarity and socialobligation. As the whole energies of a united people are at thismoment concentrated on the duty of destruction which is laid upon us, so after the war with no less urgency and no less oneness of heart thewhole energies of a united nation must be concentrated on theupbuilding of life. That upbuilding is to be economic as well asspiritual, but those who think out most deeply the need of theeconomic situation, are most surely convinced that the problems ofindustry and commerce are at the bottom human problems and cannot findsolution without a new sense of "co-operation and brotherliness[1]. "

Such is the need and such the task. England is looking to her schoolsas she never did before. The aim of her education must be both highand wide, higher than lucre, wider than the nation. And the aim of oureducation cannot be fulfilled until the education of other peoples isinfused with the same spirit. Education, like finance, must be plannedon international lines by international consensus with a view to worldpeace. Only so can it fulfil the ultimate end which already looms onthe horizon, Becoming when the time has birth A lever to uplift the earth And roll it on another course. 

[Footnote 1: Mr Angus Watson in _Eclipse or Empire_, p. 88. ]

II

THE TRAINING OF THE REASON

By W. R. INGE

Dean of St Paul's

The ideal object of education is that we should learn all that itconcerns us to know, in order that thereby we may become all that itconcerns us to be. In other words, the aim of education is theknowledge not of facts but of values. Values are facts apprehended intheir relation to each other, and to ourselves. The wise man is he whoknows the relative values of things. In this knowledge, and in the usemade of it, is summed up the whole conduct of life. What are thethings which are best worth winning for their own sakes, and whatprice must I pay to win them? And what are the things which, since Icannot have everything, I must be content to let go? How can I bestchoose among the various subjects of human interest, and the variousobjects of human endeavour, so that my activities may help and nothinder each other, and that my life may have a unity, or at least acentre round which my subordinate activities may be grouped. These arethe chief questions which a man would ask, who desired to plan hislife on rational principles, and whom circumstances allowed to choosehis occupation. He would desire to know himself, and to know theworld, in order to give and receive the best value for his sojourn init. 

We English for the most part accept this view of education, and we addthat the experience of life, or what we call knowledge of the world, is the best school of practical wisdom. We do not however identifypractical wisdom with the life of reason but with that empiricalsubstitute for it which we call common sense. There is in all classesa deep distrust of ideas, often amounting to what Plato called_misologia_, "hatred of reason. " An Englishman, as Bishop Creightonsaid, not only has no ideas; he hates an idea when he meets one. Wediscount the opinion of one who bases his judgment on firstprinciples. We think that we have observed that in high politics, forexample, the only irreparable mistakes are those which are made bylogical intellectualists. We would rather trust our fortunes to anhonest opportunist, who sees by a kind of intuition what is the nextstep to be taken, and cares for no logic except the logic of facts. Reason, as Aristotle says, "moves nothing"; it can analyse andsynthesise given data, but only after isolating them from the livingstream of time and change. It turns a concrete situation into lifelessabstractions, and juggles with counters when it should be observingrealities. Our prejudices against logic as a principle of conduct havebeen fortified by our national experience. We are not a quick-wittedrace; and we have succeeded where others have failed by dint of a kindof instinct for improvising the right course of action, a gift whichis mainly the result of certain elementary virtues which we practisewithout thinking about them, justice, tolerance, and moderation. Thesequalities have, we think and think truly, been often wanting in theLatin nations, which pride themselves on lucidity of intellect andlogical consistency in obedience to general principles. Recentphilosophy has encouraged these advocates of common sense, who havelong been "pragmatists" without knowing it, to profess their faithwithout shame. Intellect has been disparaged and instinct has beenexalted. Intuition is a safer guide than reason, we are told; forintuition goes straight to the heart of a situation and has alreadyacted while reason is debating. Much of this new philosophy is a kindof higher obscurantism; the man in the street applauds Bergson andWilliam James because he dislikes science and logic, and values will, courage and sentiment. He used to be fond of repeating that Waterloowas won on the playing fields of our public schools, until it waspainfully obvious that Colenso and Spion Kop were lost in the sameplace. We have muddled through so often that we have come half tobelieve in a providence which watches over unintelligent virtue. "Begood, sweet maid, and let who will be clever, " we have said toBritannia. So we have acquiesced in being the worst educated peoplewest of the Slav frontier. 

I do not wish to dwell on the disadvantages which we have thusincurred in international competition--our inferiority to Germany inchemistry, and to almost every continental nation in scientificagriculture. This lesson we are learning, and are not likely toforget. It is our spiritual loss which we need to realise more fully. In the first place, the majority of Englishmen have no thought-outpurpose in life beyond the call of "duty, " which is an empty idealuntil we know what our duty is. Confusion of means and ends isespecially common in this country, though it is certainly to be foundeverywhere. The passion for irrational accumulation is one example ofthe error, which causes the gravest social inconvenience. The largestpart of social injustice and suffering is caused by the uncheckedindulgence of the acquisitive instinct by those who have theopportunity of indulging it, and who have formed a blind habit ofindulging it. No one, however selfish, who had formed any reasonableestimate of the relative values of life, would devote his whole timeto the economical exploitation of his neighbours, in order to pile upthe instruments of a fuller life, which he will never use. To regardbusiness as a kind of game is, from the highest point of view, right, and our nation gains greatly by applying the ethics of sport to allour external activities; but we err in living for our games, whetherthey happen to be commerce or football. A friend of mine expostulatedwith a Yorkshire manufacturer who was spending his old age inunnecessary toil for the benefit of a spendthrift heir. The old mananswered, "If it gives him half as much pleasure to spend my halfmillion as it has given me to make it, I don't grudge it him. " That isnot the spirit of the real miser or Mammon-worshipper. It is thespirit of a natural idealist who from want of education has norational standard of good. When such a man intervenes in educationalmatters, he is sure to take the standpoint of the so-called practicalman, because he is blind to the higher values of life. He will wish tomake knowledge and wisdom instruments for the production of wealth, orthe improvement of the material condition of the poor. But knowledgeand wisdom refuse to be so treated. Like goodness and beauty, wisdomis one of the absolute values, the divine ideas. As one of theCambridge Platonists said, we must not make our intellectual facultiesGibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water to the will andaffections. Wisdom must be sought for its own sake or we shall notfind it. Another effect of our _misologia_ is the degradation ofreasonable sympathy into sentimentalism, which regards pain as theworst of evils, and endeavours always to remove the effects of follyand wrong-doing, without investigating the causes. That suchsentimentalism is often kind only to be cruel, and that it frequentlyrobs honest Peter to pay dishonest Paul, needs no demonstration. Sentimentalism does not believe that prevention is better than cure, and practical politicians know too well that a scientific treatment ofsocial maladies is out of the question in this country. Others becomefanatics, that is to say, worldlings who are too narrow and violent tounderstand the world. The root of the evil is that a whole range ofthe higher values is inaccessible to the majority, because they knownothing of intellectual wealth. And yet the real wealth of a nationconsists in its imponderable possessions--in those things wherein oneman's gain is not another man's loss, and which are not provedincapable of increase by any laws of thermo-dynamics. An inexhaustibletreasure is freely open to all who have passed through a good courseof mental training, a treasure which we can make our own according toour capacities, and our share of which we would not barter for anygoods which the law of the land can give or take away. "Theintelligent man, " says Plato, "will prize those studies which resultin his soul getting soberness, righteousness and wisdom, and will lessvalue the others. " The studies which have this effect are those whichteach us to admire and understand the good, the true and thebeautiful. They are, may we not say, humanism and science, pursued ina spirit of "admiration, hope and love. " The trained reason isdisinterested and fearless. It is not afraid of public opinion, because it "counts it a small thing that it should be judged by man'sjudgment"; its interests are so much wider than the incidents of aprivate career that base self-centred indulgence and selfish ambitionare impossible to it. It is saved from pettiness, from ignorance, andfrom bigotry. It will not fall a victim to those undisciplined anddisproportioned enthusiasms which we call fads, and which are apeculiar feature of English and North American civilisation. Suchreforms as are carried out in this country are usually effected not bythe reason of the many, but by the fanaticism of the few. A justbalance may on the whole be preserved, but there is not much balancein the judgments of individuals. 

Matthew Arnold, whose exhortations to his countrymen now seem almostprophetic, drew a strong contrast between the intellectual frivolity, or rather insensibility, of his countrymen and the earnestness of theGermans. He saw that England was saved a hundred years ago by the highspirit and proud resolution of a real aristocracy, which neverthelesswas, like all aristocracies, "destitute of ideas. " Our great families, he shows, could no longer save us, even if they had retained theirinfluence, because power is now conferred by disciplined knowledge andapplied science. It is the same warning which George Meredithreiterated with increasing earnestness in his late poems. What Englandneeds, he says, is "brain. "

 Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing Hotly for his dues this hour, Tell her that no drunken blessing Stops the onward march of Power, Has she ears to take forewarnings, She will cleanse her of her stains, Feed and speed for braver mornings Valorously the growth of brains. Power, the hard man knit for action Reads each nation on the brow; Cripple, fool, and petrifaction Fall to him--are falling now. 

And again:

 She impious to the Lord of hosts The valour of her off-spring boasts, Mindless that now on land and main His heeded prayer is active brain. 

These faithful prophets were not heeded, and we have had to learn ourlesson in the school of experience. She is a good teacher but her feesare very high. 

The author of _Friendship's Garland_ ended with a despairing appeal tothe democracy, when his jeremiads evoked no response from the upperclass, whom he called barbarians, or from the middle class, whom heregarded as incurably vulgar. The middle classes are apt to receivehard measure; they have few friends and many critics. We must go backto Euripides to find the bold statement that they are the best part ofthe community and "the salvation of the State"; but it is, on thewhole, true. And our middle class is only superficially vulgar. Vulgarity, as Mr Robert Bridges has lately said, "is blindness tovalues; it is spiritual death. " The middle class in Matthew Arnold'stime was no doubt deplorably blind to artistic values; its productionssurvive to convict it of what he called Philistinism; but it is nolonger devoid of taste or indifferent to beauty. And it has never beena contemptible artist in life. Mr Bridges describes the progress ofvulgarity as an inverted Platonic progress. We descend, he says, fromugly forms to ugly conduct, and from ugly conduct to ugly principles, till we finally arrive at the absolute ugliness which is vulgarity. This identification of insensibility to beauty with moral baseness wassomething of a paradox even in Greece, and does not fit the Englishcharacter at all. Our towns are ugly enough; our public buildingsrouse no enthusiasm; and many of our monuments and stained glasswindows seem to shout for a friendly Zeppelin to obliterate them. Butwe British have not descended to ugly conduct. Pericles and Platowould have found the bearing of this people in its supreme trial more"beautiful" than the Parthenon itself. The nation has shaken off itsvulgarity even more easily and completely than its slackness andself-indulgence. We have borne ourselves with a courage, restraint, and dignity which, a Greek would say, could have only been expected ofphilosophers. And we certainly are not a nation of philosophers. Wemust not then be too hasty in calling all contempt for intellectvulgar. We have sinned by undervaluing the life of reason; but we arenot really a vulgar people. Our secular faith, the real religion ofthe average Englishman, has its centre in the idea of a gentleman, which has of course no essential connection with heraldry or propertyin land. The upper classes, who live by it, are not vulgar, in spiteof the absence of ideas with which Matthew Arnold twits them; themiddle classes who also respect this ideal, are further protected bysound moral traditions; and the lower classes have a cheery sense ofhumour which is a great antiseptic against vulgarity. But though thePoet Laureate has not, in my opinion, hit the mark in callingvulgarity our national sin, he has done well in calling attention tothe danger which may beset educational reform from what we may calldemocratism, the tendency to level down all superiorities in the nameof equality and good fellowship. It is the opposite fault to thearistocraticism which beyond all else led to the decline of Greekculture--the assumption that the lower classes must remain excludedfrom intellectual and even from moral excellence. With us there is atendency to condemn ideals of self-culture which can be called"aristocratic. " But we need specialists in this as in every otherfield, and the populace must learn that there is such a thing as realsuperiority, which has the right and duty to claim a scope for itsfull exercise. 

The fashionable disparagement of reason, and exaltation of will, feeling or instinct would be more dangerous in a less scientific age. The Italian metaphysician Aliotta has lately brought together in onesurvey the numerous leaders in the great "reaction against science, "and they are a formidable band. Pragmatists, voluntarists, activists, subjective idealists, emotional mystics, and religious conservatives, have all joined in assaulting the fortress of science which half acentury ago seemed impregnable. But the besieged garrison continues touse its own methods and to trust in its own hypotheses; and theresults justify the confidence with which the assaults of thephilosophers are ignored. We are told that the scientific method isultimately appropriate only to the abstractions of mathematics. Butnature herself seems to have a taste for mathematical methods. A saneidealism believes that the eternal verities are adumbrated, nottravestied, in the phenomenal world, and does not forget how much ofwhat we call observation of nature is demonstrably the work of mind. The world as known to science is itself a spiritual world from whichcertain valuations are, for special purposes, excluded. To deny theauthority of the discursive reason, which has its proper province inthis sphere, is to destroy the possibility of all knowledge. Nor canwe, without loss and danger, or instinct or intuition above reason. Instinct is a faculty which belongs to unprogressive species. It isnecessarily unadaptable and unable to deal with any new situation. Consecrated custom may keep Chinese civilisation safe in a state oftorpid immobility for five thousand years; but fifty years of Europewill achieve more, and will at last present Cathay with thealternative of moving on or moving off. Instinct might lead us on ifprogress were an automatic law of nature, but this belief, thoughwidely held, is sheer superstition. 

We have to convert the public mind in this country to faith in trainedand disciplined reason. We have to convince our fellow-citizens notonly that the duty of self-preservation requires us to be mentally aswell equipped as the French, Germans and Americans, but that a trainedintelligence is in itself "more precious than rubies. " Blake said that"a fool shall never get to Heaven, be he never so holy. " It is at anyrate true that ignorance misses the best things in this life IfEnglishmen would only believe this, the whole spirit of our educationwould be changed, which is much more important than to change thesubjects taught. It does not matter very much what is taught; theimportant question to ask is what is learnt. This is why thecontroversy about religious education was mainly fatuous. The"religious lesson" can hardly ever make a child religious; religion, in point of fact, is seldom taught at all; it is caught, by contactwith someone who has it. Other subjects can be taught and can belearnt; but the teaching will be stiff collar-work, and the learningevanescent, if the pupil is not interested in the subject. And howlittle encouragement the average boy gets at home to train his reasonand form intellectual tastes! He may probably be exhorted to "do wellin his examination, " which means that he is to swallow carefullyprepared gobbets of crude information, to be presently disgorged inthe same state. The examination system flourishes best where there isno genuine desire for mental cultivation. If there were any widespreadenthusiasm for knowledge as an integral part of life the revoltagainst this mechanical and commercialised system of testing resultswould be universal. As things are, a clever boy trains for anexamination as he trains for a race; and goes out of training as fastas possible when it is over. Meanwhile the romance of his life iscentred in those more generous and less individual competitions in thegreen fields, which our schools and universities have developed tosuch perfection. In classes which have small opportunities forphysical exercises, vicarious athletics, with not a little betting, are a disastrous substitute. But the soul is dyed the colour of itsleisure thoughts. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. " This iswhy no change in the curriculum can do much for education, as long asthe pupils imbibe no respect for intellectual values at home, and findnone among their school-fellows. And yet the capacity for realintellectual interest is only latent in most boys. It can be kindledin a whole class by a master who really loves and believes in hissubject. Some of the best public school teachers in the last centurywere hot-tempered men whose disciplinary performances were ludicrous. But they were enthusiastic humanists, and keen scholars passed year byyear out of their class-rooms. 

The importance of a good curriculum is often exaggerated. But a badselection of subjects, and a bad method of teaching them, may condemneven the best teacher to ineffectiveness. Nothing, for example, canwell be more unintelligent than the manner of teaching the classics inour public schools. The portions of Greek and Latin authors construedduring a lesson are so short that the boys can get no idea of the bookas a whole; long before they finish it they are moved up into anotherform. And over all the teaching hangs the menace of the impendingexamination, the riddling Sphinx which, as Seeley said in a tellingquotation from Sophocles, forces us to attend to what is at our feet, neglecting all else--all the imponderables in which the true value ofeducation consists. The tyranny of examinations has an importantinfluence upon the choice of subjects as well as upon the manner ofteaching them; for some subjects, which are remarkably stimulating tothe mind of the pupil, are neglected, because they are not welladapted for examinations. Among these, unfortunately, are our ownliterature and language. 

It is therefore necessary, even in a short essay which professes todeal only with generalities, to make some suggestions as to the mainsubjects which our education should include. As has been indicatedalready, I would divide them into main classes--science and humanism. Every boy should be instructed in both branches up to a certain point. We must firmly resist those who wish to make education purelyscientific, those who, in Bacon's words, "call upon men to sell theirbooks and build furnaces, quitting and forsaking Minerva and the Musesand relying upon Vulcan. " We want no young specialists of twelve yearsold; and a youth without a tincture of humanism can never become

 A man foursquare, withouten flaw ywrought. 

Of the teaching of science I am not competent to speak. But as aninstrument of mind-training, and even of liberal education, it seemsto me to have a far higher value than is usually conceded to it byhumanists. To direct the imagination to the infinitely great and theinfinitely small, to vistas of time in which a thousand years are asone day; to the tremendous forces imprisoned in minute particles ofmatter; to the amazing complexity of the mechanism by which the organsof the human body perform their work; to analyse the light which hastravelled for centuries from some distant star; to retrace the historyof the earth and the evolution of its inhabitants--such studies cannotfail to elevate the mind, and only prejudice will disparage them. Theypromote also a fine respect for truth and fact, for order and outline, as the Greeks said, with a wholesome dislike of sophistry andrhetoric. The air which blows about scientific studies is like the airof a mountain top--thin, but pure and bracing. And as a subject ofeducation science has a further advantage which can hardly beoverestimated. It is in science that most of the new discoveries arebeing made. "The rapture of the forward view" belongs to science morethan to any other study. We may take it as a well-establishedprinciple in education that the most advanced teachers should beresearchers and discoverers as well as lecturers, and that the rankand file should be learners as well as instructors. There is nosubject in which this ideal is so nearly attainable as in science. 

And yet science, even for its own sake, must not claim to occupy thewhole of education. The mere _Naturforscher_ is apt to be a poorphilosopher himself, and his pupils may turn out very poorphilosophers indeed. The laws of psychical and spiritual life are notthe same as the laws of chemistry or biology; and the besetting sin ofthe scientist is to try to explain everything in terms of its origininstead of in terms of its full development: "by their roots, " hesays, "and not by their fruits, ye shall know them. " This is acontradiction of Aristotle [Greek: (_hê physis telos hestin_)], and of a greater than Aristotle. The training of the reason mustinclude the study of the human mind, "the throne of the Deity, " in itsmost characteristic products. Besides science, we must have humanism, as the other main branch of our curriculum. 

The advocates of the old classical education have been gallantlyfighting a losing battle for over half a century; they are nowpreparing to accept inevitable defeat. But their cause is not lost, ifthey will face the situation fairly. It is only lost if they persistin identifying classical education with linguistic proficiency. Thestudy of foreign languages is a fairly good mental discipline for themajority; for the minority it may be either more or less than a fairdiscipline. But only a small fraction of mankind is capable ofenthusiasm for language, for its own sake. The art of expressing ideasin appropriate and beautiful forms is one of the noblest of humanachievements, and the two classical languages contain many of thefinest examples of good writing that humanity has produced. But theaverage boy is incapable of appreciating these values, and the wasteof time which might have been profitably spent is, under our presentsystem, most deplorable. It may also be maintained that theconscientious editor and the conscientious tutor have between themruined the classics as a mental discipline. Fifty years ago, Englishcommentatorship was so poor that the pupil had to use his wits inreading the classics; now if one goes into an undergraduate's room, one finds him reading the text with the help of a translation, twoeditions with notes, and a lecture note-book. No faculty is being usedexcept the memory, which Bishop Creighton calls "the most worthless ofour mental powers. " The practice of prose and verse composition, oftenignorantly decried, has far more educational value; but it belongs tothe linguistic art which, if we are right, is not to be demanded ofall students. Are we then to restrict the study of the classics tothose who have a pretty taste for style? If so, the cause of classicaleducation is indeed lost. But I can see no reason why some of thegreat Greek and Latin authors should not be read, _in translations_, as part of the normal training in history, philosophy and literature. I am well aware of the loss which a great author necessarily suffersby translation; but I have no hesitation in saying that the averageboy would learn far more of Greek literature, and would imbibe farmore of the Greek spirit, by reading the whole of Herodotus, Thucydides, the _Republic_ of Plato, and some of the plays in goodtranslations, than he now acquires by going through the classical millat a public school. The classics, like almost all other literature, must be read in masses to be appreciated. Boys think them dull mainlybecause of the absurd way in which they are made to study them. 

I shall not make any ambitious attempt to sketch out a scheme ofliterary studies. My subject is the training of the reason. But twoprinciples seem to me to be of primary importance. The first is thatwe should study the psychology of the developing reason at differentages, and adapt our method of teaching accordingly. The memory is atits best from the age of ten to fifteen, or thereabouts. Facts anddates, and even long pieces of poetry, which have been committed tomemory in early boyhood, remain with us as a possession for life. Wewould most of us give a great deal in middle age to recover thatastonishingly retentive memory which we possessed as little boys. Onthe other hand, ratiocination at that age is difficult and irksome. Ayoung boy would rather learn twenty rules than apply one principle. Accordingly the first years of boyhood are the time for learning byheart. Quantities of good poetry, and useful facts of all kinds shouldbe entrusted to the boy's memory to keep: will assimilate themreadily, and without any mental overstrain. But eight or ten yearslater, "cramming" is injurious both to the health and to theintellect. Years have brought, if not the philosophic mind, yet at anyrate a mind which can think and argue. The memory is weaker and theprocess of loading it with facts is more unpleasant. At this stage thewhole system of teaching should be different. One great evil ofexaminations is that they prolong the stage of mere memorising to anage at which it is not only useless but hurtful. Another valuableguide is furnished by observing what authors the intelligent boy likesand dislikes. His taste ought certainly to be consulted, if our mainobject is to interest him in the things of the mind. The averageintelligent boy likes Homer and does not like Virgil; he is interestedby Tacitus and bored by Cicero; he loves Shakespeare and revels inMacaulay, who has a special affinity for the eternal schoolboy. 

My other principle is that since we are training young Englishmen, whom we hope to turn into true and loyal citizens, we shall presumablyfind them most responsive to the language, literature, and history oftheir own country. This would be a commonplace, not worth uttering, inany other country; in England it is, unfortunately, far from beinggenerally accepted Nothing sets in a stronger light the inertia andthoughtlessness, not to say stupidity, of the British character in allmatters outside the domain of material and moral interests, than ourneglect of the magnificent spiritual heritage which we possess in ourown history and literature. Wordsworth, in one of those noble sonnetswhich are now, we are glad to hear, being read by thousands in thetrenches and by myriads at home, proclaims his faith in the victory ofhis country over Napoleon because he thinks of her glorious past. 

 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold That Milton held. In everything we are sprung Of Earth's best blood, have titles manifold. 

It is a high boast, but it is true. But what have we done to fire theimagination of our boys and girls with the vision of our great andancient nation, now struggling for its existence? What have we taughtthem of Shakespeare and Milton, of Elizabeth and Cromwell, of Nelsonand Wellington? Have we ever tried to make them understand that theyare called to be the temporary custodians of very glorious traditions, and the trustees of a spiritual wealth compared with which the goldmines of the Rand are but dross? Do we even teach them, in anyrational manner, the fine old language which has been slowly perfectedfor centuries, and which is now being used up and debased by therubbishy newspapers which form almost the sole reading of themajority? We have marvelled at the slowness with which the massesrealised that the country was in danger, and at the stubbornness withwhich some of the working class clung to their sectional interests andambitions when the very life of England was at stake. In France thewhole people saw at once what was upon them; the single word _patrie_was enough to unite them in a common enthusiasm and sterndetermination. With us it was hardly so; many good judges think thatbut for the "Lusitania" outrage and the Zeppelins, part of thepopulation would have been half-hearted about the war, and we shouldhave failed to give adequate support to our allies. The cause is notselfishness but ignorance and want of imagination; and what have wedone to tap the sources of an intelligent patriotism? We are beingsaved not by the reasoned conviction of the populace, but by itsnative pugnacity and bull-dog courage. This is not the place to gointo details about English studies; but can anyone doubt that theycould be made the basis of a far better education than we now give inour schools? We have especially to remember that there is a realdanger of the modern Englishman being cut off from the living past. Scientific studies include the earlier phases of the earth, but notthe past of the human race and the British people. Christianity hasbeen a valuable educator in this way, especially when it includes anintelligent knowledge the Bible. But the secular education of themasses is now so much severed from the stream of tradition andsentiment which unites us with the older civilisations, that the verylanguage of the Churches is becoming unintelligible to them, and theinfluence of organised religion touches only a dwindling minority. And yet the past lives in us all; lives inevitably in its dangers, which the accumulated experience of civilisation, valued so slightlyby us on its spiritual side, can alone help us to surmount. A nationlike an individual, must "wish his days to be bound each to each bynatural piety. " It too must strive to keep its memory green, toremember the days of old and the years that are past. The Jews havealways had, in their sacred books, a magnificent embodiment of thespirit of their race; and who can say how much of their incomparabletenacity and ineradicable hopefulness has been due to the educationthus imparted to every Jewish child? We need a Bible of the Englishrace, which shall be hardly less sacred to each succeeding generationof young Britons than the Old Testament is to the Jews. England oughtto be, and may be, the spiritual home of one quarter of the humanrace, for ages after our task as a world-power shall have been broughtto a successful issue, and after we in this little island haveaccepted the position of mother to nations greater than ourselves. ButEngland's future is precious only to those to whom her past is dear. 

I am not suggesting that the history and literatures of othercountries should be neglected, or that foreign languages should formno part of education. But the main object is to turn out goodEnglishmen, who may continue worthily and even develop further aglorious national tradition. To do this, we must appeal constantly tothe imagination, which Wordsworth has boldly called "reason in hermost exalted mood. " We may thus bring a little poetry and romance intothe monotonous lives of our hand-workers. It may well be that theirdiscontent has more to do with the starving of their spiritual naturethan we suppose. For the intellectual life, like divine philosophy, isnot dull and crabbed, as fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo'slute. 

Can we end with a definition of the happiness and well-being, which isthe goal of education, as of all else that we try to do? Probably wecannot do better than accept the famous definition of Aristotle, whichhowever we must be careful to translate rightly. "Happiness, orwell-being, is an activity of the soul directed towards excellence, inan unhampered life. " Happiness consists in doing rather than being;the activity must be that of the soul--the whole man acting as aperson; it must be directed towards excellence--not exclusively moralvirtue, but the best work that we can do, of whatever kind; and itmust be unhampered--we must be given the opportunity of doing the bestthat is in us to do. To awaken the soul; to hold up before it theimages of whatsoever things are true, lovely, noble, pure, and of goodreport; and to remove the obstacles which stunt and cripple the mind;this is the work which we have called the Training of the Reason. 

III

THE TRAINING OF THE IMAGINATION

BY A. C. BENSON

Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge

It might be hastily assumed by a reader bent on criticalconsideration, that the subject of my essay had a certain levity orfancifulness about it. Works of imagination, as by a curiousjuxtaposition they are called, are apt to lie under an indefinablesuspicion, as including unbusinesslike and romantic fictions, of whichthe clear-cut and well-balanced mind must beware, except for the sake, perhaps, of the frankest and least serious kind of recreation. Considering the part which the best and noblest works of imaginationmust always play in a literary education, it has often surprised me toreflect how little scope ordinary literary exercises give for the useof that particular faculty. The old themes and verses aimed atproducing decorous centos culled from the works of classicalrhetoricians and poets. No boy, at least in my day, was everencouraged to take a line of his own, and to strike out freely acrosscountry in pursuit of imagined adventures. Even English teaching inits earlier stages seldom aimed at more than transcriptions of actualexperience, a day spent in the country, or a walk beside the sea. Only quite recently have boys and girls been encouraged to write poemsand stories out of their own imaginations; and even now there areplenty of educational critics who would consider such exercises asdilettante things lacking in practical solidity. 

But I desire in this essay to go further back into the roots of thesubject, and my first position is plainly this; that imagination, pureand simple, is a common enough faculty; not perhaps the creativeimagination which can array scenes of life, construct romanticexperiences, and embody imaginary characters in dramatic situations, but the much simpler sort of imagination which takes pleasure inrecalling past memories, and in forecasting and anticipatinginteresting events. The boy who, weary of the school-term, considerswhat he will do on the first day of the holidays, or who anxiouslyforebodes paternal displeasure, is exercising his imagination; and thetruth is that the faculty of imagination plays an immense part in allhuman happiness and unhappiness, considering that, whenever we takerefuge from the present in memories or in anticipations, we are usingit. The first point then that I shall consider is whether thisrestless and influential faculty ought not in any case to be_trained_, so that it may not either be atrophied or becomeover-dominant; and the second point will be the further considerationas to whether the faculty of creative imagination is a thing whichshould be deliberately developed. 

In the first place then, it seems to me simply extraordinary that solittle heed is paid in education to the using and controlling of whatis one of the most potent instinctive forces of the mind. We takecareful thought how to strengthen and fortify the body, we go on tospending many hours upon putting memory through its paces, and indeveloping the reason and the intelligence; we pass on from that toexercising and purifying the character and the will; we try to makevice detestable and virtue desirable. But meanwhile, what is thelittle mind doing? It submits to the drudgery imposed upon it, itaccommodates itself more or less to the conditions of its life; itlearns a certain conduct and demeanour for use in public. Yet all thetime the thought of the boy is running backwards and forwards insecrecy, considering the memories of its experience, pleasant orunpleasant, and comforting itself in tedious hours by framing littleplans for the future. I remember my old schoolmastering days, and thehours I spent with a class of boys sitting in front of me; howconstantly one saw boys in the midst of their work, with pen suspendedand page unturned, look up with that expression denoting that somevision had passed before the inward eye--which, as Wordsworth justlyobserves, constitutes "the bliss of solitude"--obliterating for amoment the surrounding scene. I do not mean that the thought was adistant or an exalted one--probably it was some entirely trivialreminiscence, or the anticipation of some coming amusement. But I donot think I exaggerate when I say that probably the greater part of ahuman being's unoccupied hours, and probably a considerable part ofthe hours supposed to be occupied, are spent in some similar exerciseof the imagination. What a confirmation of this is to be found in thephenomena of sleep and dreams! Then the instinct is steadily at work, neither remembering nor anticipating, but weaving together the resultsof experience into a self-taught tale. 

And then if one considers later life, it is no exaggeration to saythat the greater part of human happiness and unhappiness consists inthe dwelling upon what has been, what may be, what might be, and, alas, in our worst moments, upon what might have been "My unhappiestexperiences, " said Lord Beaconsfield, "have been those which neverhappened"; and again the same acute critic of life said that half theclever people he knew were under the impression that they were hatedand envied, the other half that they were admired and loved;--and thatneither were right!

The imaginative faculty then is a species of self-representation, thepower of considering our own life and position as from the outside;from it arise both the cheerful hopes and schemes of the sound mind, and the shadowy anxieties and fears of the mind which lacksrobustness. It certainly does seem singular that this deep andpersistent element in human life is left so untrained and unregarded, to range at will, to feed upon itself. All that the teacher does is toinsist as far as possible on a certain concentration of the mind onbusiness at particular times, and if he has ethical purposes atheart, he may sometimes speak to a boy on the advisability of notallowing his mind to dwell upon base or sensual thoughts; but howlittle attempt is ever made to train the mind in deliberate andcontinuous self-control!

The latest school of pathologists, in the treatment of obsessed orinsane persons, pay very close attention to the subjects of theirdreams, and attribute much nerve-misery to the atrophy, or suppressionby circumstances, of instincts which betray themselves in dreams. I aminclined to think that the educators of the future must somehowcontrive to do more--indeed they cannot well do less than is actuallydone--in teaching the control of that secret undercurrent of thoughtin which happiness and unhappiness really reside. Those who have livedmuch with boys will know what havoc suspense or disappointment oranxiety or sensuality or unpopularity can make in an immaturecharacter. It seems to me that we ought not to leave all this withoutguidance or direction, but to make a frontal attack upon it. I do notmean that it is necessary to probe too deeply into the imagination, but I believe that the subject should be frankly spoken about, andsuggestions made. The point is to get the will to work, and to inducethe mind, in the first place, to realise and practise its power ofself-command; and in the second place, to show that it is possible toevict an unwholesome thought by the deliberate welcoming andentertaining of a wholesome one. The best of all cures is to provideevery boy with some occupation which he indubitably loves. There area good many boys whose work is not interesting to them, and a certainnumber to whom the prescribed games are a matter of routine ratherthan of active pleasure. Indeed it may be said that hardly any boysenjoy either work or games in which they see no possibility of anypersonal distinction. It is therefore of great importance that everyboy whose chances of successful performance are small should beencouraged to have a definite hobby; for an occupation which the mindcan remember with pleasure and anticipate with delight supplies thefood for the restless imagination, which may otherwise become drearyfrom inaction, or tainted by thoughts of baser pleasure. Aschoolmaster only salves his conscience by supplying a stricttime-table and regular games. A house master ought to be most carefulin the case of boys whose work is languid and proficiency in gamessmall, to find out what the boy really likes and enjoys, and toencourage it by every means in his power. That is the best corrective, to administer wholesome food for the mind to digest. But I believethat good teachers ought to go much further, and speak quite plainlyto boys, from time to time, on the necessity of practising control ofthought. My own experience is that boys were always interested in anytalk, call it ethical or religious, which based itself directly upontheir own actual experience. I can conceive that a teacher who told aclass to sit still for three minutes and think about anything theypleased, and added that he would then have something to tell them, might have an admirable object-lesson in getting them to consider howswift and far-ranging their fancies had been; or again he mightpractise them in concentration of thought by asking them to think forfive minutes on a perfectly definite thing--to imagine themselves in awood, or by the sea, or in a chemist's shop, let us say, and thengetting them to put down on paper a list of definite objects whichthey had imagined. The process could be infinitely extended; but if itwere done with some regularity, it would certainly b possible to trainboys to concentrate themselves in reflection and recollectedobservation. Or again a quality might be propounded, such asgenerosity or spitefulness, and the boys required to construct animaginary anecdote of the simplest kind to illustrate it. This wouldhave the effect of training the mind at all events to focus itself, and this is just what drudgery pure and simple will not do. The aim isnot to train mere memory or logical accuracy, but to strengthen thatgreat faculty which we loosely call imagination, which is the power ofevoking mental images, and of migrating from the present into the pastor the future. 

I believe it to be a very notable lack in our theory of education thatso little attempt is made to bring the will to bear upon what may becalled the subconscious mind. It is that strange undercurrent ofthought which is so imprudently neglected which throws up on itsbanks, without any apparent purpose or aim, the ideas and images whichlurk within it. I do not say that such a training would immediatelygive self-control, but most peoples' worst sufferings are caused bywhat is called "having something on their mind"; and yet, so far as Iknow, in the process of education, no attempt whatever is made, exceptquite incidentally, to dispossess the strong man armed by the strongervictor, or to help immature minds to hold an unpleasant or a pleasantthought at arm's length, or to train them in the power of resolutelysubstituting a current of more wholesome images. The subconscious mindis too often treated as a thing beyond control, and yet thepathological power of suggestion, by which a thought is implanted likea seed in the mind, which presently appears to be rooted andflowering, ought to show us that we have within our reach anextraordinarily potent psychological implement. 

So far then on the more negative side. I have indicated my strongbelief that much may be done to train the mind in self-control. Indeedour whole education is built upon the faith that we can, perhaps notimplant new faculties, but develop dormant ones; and I am persuadedthat when future generations come to survey our methods and processesof education, they will regard with deep bewilderment the amazing factthat we applied so careful a training to other faculties, and yet leftso helplessly alone the training of the imaginative faculty, uponwhich, as I have said, our happiness and unhappiness mainly depend. Wemust, all of us be aware of the fact that there have been times in ourlives when all was prosperous, and when we were yet overshadowed withdreary thoughts; or again times when in discomfort, or under theshadow of failure, or at critical or tragic moments, we have had anunreasonable alertness and cheerfulness. All that is due to thesubconscious mind, and we ought at least to try experiments in makingit obey us better. 

I now pass on to consider a further possibility, and that is oftraining and developing a higher sort of creative imagination. It isall in reality part of the same subject, because it seems to becertain that most human beings suffer by the suppression or thedormancy of existing faculties. It is here, I believe, that much ofour intellectual education fails, from the tendency to direct so muchattention to purely logical and reasoning faculties, and to theresolute subtraction from education of pure and simple enjoyment. Iused to try many experiments as a schoolmaster, and I remember at onetime bribing a slow and unintelligent class into some sort ofconcentration by promising that I would tell a story for a few minutesat the end of school, if a bit of work had been satisfactorilymastered. It certainly produced a lot of cheerful effort; my story wassimple enough, description as brief and vivid as I could make it, andbrisk tangible incidents. But the silence, the luxurious abandonmentof small minds to an older and more pictorial imagination, the dancinglight in open eyes, did really give me for once a sense of power whichI never had in teaching Latin Prose or the Greek conditional sentence. I always told stories for an hour on Sunday evenings to the boys in myhouse, and though few of my intellectual and ethical counsels areremembered by old pupils, I never met one who did pot recollect thestories. 

Now we have here, I believe, a source of intellectual pleasure whichis consistently neglected and even despised. It is regarded as a mereluxury; but we do not make the mistake of substituting gymnastics forgames, and removing the pleasure of personal performance. Why can wenot also do something to encourage what old Hawtrey used sobeautifully to call "the sweet pride of authorship"? The worst of itall is that we look so much to tangible results. I do not mean that wemust try to develop Shakespeares, Shelleys, Thackerays; such airycreatures have a way of catering for themselves! I do riot at all wantto turn out a generation of third-rate writing amateurs. But many boyshave a distinct pleasure not only in listening to imaginations, andriding like the beetle on the engine, but in evoking and realisingsome little vision and creation of their own brains. Of course thereare boys to whom mental activity is all of the nature of a cross laidupon them for some purpose, wise or unwise. But there are also a goodmany shy boys, who will not venture to make themselves conspicuous byliterary and imaginative feats, and who yet if it were a matter ofcourse and wont, would throw themselves with intense pleasure intoliterary creation. The work done, for instance, at Shrewsbury, at thePerse School, at Carlisle Grammar School, in this direction--I daresayit is done elsewhere, but I have seen the work of these three schoolswith my own eyes--show what quite average boys are capable of in bothEnglish poetry and English prose. 

One of the best points of such a system of literary composition isthat even if slower boys cannot effect much, it gives a most wholesomeopening to the creative faculties of boys, whose minds, if stifled andcompressed, are most likely to work in unwholesome and tormentingdirections. 

My suggestion then becomes part of a larger plea, the plea for moredirect cultivation of enjoyment in education. Some of our worstmistakes in education arise from our not basing it upon the actualneeds and faculties of human nature, but upon the supposedconstitution of a child constructed by the starved imagination ofpedants and moralists and practical men. 

One of the first requisites in cultivating intellectual and artisticpleasure is to build up taste out of the actual perceptions of thechild. That is a factor which has been most stubbornly andunintelligently disregarded in education. Developments in characterare of the nature of living things; they cannot be superimposed theymust be rooted in the temperament and they must draw nurture andsustenance out of the spirit, as the seed imbibes its substance fromthe unseen soil and the hidden waters. But what has been constantlydone is to introduce the broadest effects and the simplest romance, directly and suddenly to the biggest masterpieces. The absence of allgradation and reconciliation has been characteristic of our literaryeducation. Of course there is an initial difficulty in the case of theclassics, that there is very little in either Greek or Latin whichreally appeals to an immature taste at all; and such books as mightappeal to inquisitive and inexperienced minds, such as Homer or the_Anabasis_ of Xenophon, are made unattractive by the method of givingsuch short snippets, and insisting on what used to be called thoroughparsing. Even _Alice in Wonderland_, let me say, could only prove adrearily bewildering book, if read at the rate of twenty lines alesson, and if the principal tenses of all the verbs had to berepeated correctly. It is absolutely essential, if any love ofliterature is to be superinduced, that something should be read fastenough to give some sense of continuity and range and horizon. Thepractice of dictionary-turning is sufficient by itself to destroyintellectual pleasure, but it used to be defended as a base sort ofbribe to strengthen memory: it was argued that boys would try toremember words to save themselves the trouble of looking them up. Butthis has no origin in fact. Boys used not to be encouraged to guess atwords, but to be punished for shirking work if they had not lookedthem out. It is to be hoped that English will be in the futureincreasingly taught in schools; but even so there is the danger ofconnecting it too much with erudition. The old _Clarendon PressShakespeare_ was an almost perfect example of how not to editShakespeare for boys; the introductions were learned and scholarly, the notes were crammed with philology, derivation, illustration. As amatter of fact there is a good deal that is interesting, even to smallminds, in the connection and derivation of words, if brisklycommunicated. Most boys are responsive to the pleasure of finding afamiliar word concealed under a variation of shape; but this should beconveyed orally. What is really requisite is that boys should betaught how to read a book intelligently. In dealing with classicalbooks, vocabulary must be always a difficulty, and I myself very muchdoubt the advisability in the case of average boys of attempting toteach more than one foreign language at a time, especially when indealing, say, with three kindred languages, such as Latin, French, andEnglish, the same word, such as _spiritus_, _esprit_, and _spirit_bear very different significations. The great need is that thereshould be some work going on in which the boys should not be consciousof dragging an ever-increasing burden of memory. Let me take aconcrete case. A poem like the _Morte d'Arthur_, or _The Lay of theLast Minstrel_, is well within the comprehension of quite small boys. These could be read in a class, after an introductory lecture as todate, scene, dramatis personae, with perfect ease, words explained asthey occurred, difficult passages paraphrased, and the whole action ofthe story could pass rapidly before the eye. Most boys have a distinctpleasure in rhyme and metre. Of course it is an immense gain if themaster can really read in a spirited and moving manner, and a trainingin reading aloud should form a part of every schoolmaster's outfit. Ishould wish to see this reading lesson a daily hour for all youngerboys, so as to form a real basis of education. Three of these hourscould be given to English, and three to French, for in French there isa wide range both of simple narrative stories and historical romances. The aim to be kept in view would be the very simple one of provingthat interest, amusement and emotion can be derived from books which, unassisted, only boys of tougher intellectual fibre could be expectedto attack. The personalities of the authors of these books should becarefully described, and the result of such reading, persevered insteadily, would be, what is one of the most stimulating rewards ofwider knowledge, the sudden realisation, that is, that books andauthors are not lonely and isolated phenomena, but that the literatureof a nation is like a branching tree, all connected and intertwined, and that the books of a race mirror faithfully and vividly the ideasof the age out of which they sprang. What makes books dull is theabsence of any knowledge by the reader of why the author was at thetrouble of expressing himself in that particular way at thatparticular time. When, as a small boy, I read a book of which thewhole genesis was obscure to me, it used to appear to me vaguely thatit must have been as disagreeable to the author to write it as it wasfor me to read it. But if it can be once grasped that books are theoutcome of a writer's interest or sense of beauty or emotion or joy, the whole matter wears a different aspect. 

The same principle applies with just the same force to history andgeography; both of these studies can be made interesting, if they arenot regarded as isolated groups of phenomena, but are approached fromthe boy's own experience as opening away and outwards from what isgoing on about him. The object is or ought to be slowly to extend theboy's horizon, to show him that history holds the seeds and roots ofthe present, and that geography is the life-drama which he sees abouthim, enacting itself under different climatic and physiographicalconditions. The dreariness and dreadfulness of knowledge to theimmature mind is because it represents itself as a mass of dry factsto be mastered without having any visible or tangible connection withthe boy's own experience. The aim should rather be to teach him tolook with zest and interest at what is going on outside his own narrowcircle, and to help him to move perceptively along the paths of timeand space which diverge in all directions from the scene where hefinds himself. 

It may be indisputably stated that all connected knowledge isstimulating, and that all unconnected knowledge is at best mechanical. Perhaps one of the most fruitful of all subjects is vivid biography, and no serious educator could perform a more valuable task than inproviding a series of biographies of great men, really intelligible toyouthful minds. As a rule, biographies of the first order require anamount of detailed knowledge in the reader which puts them out of thereach of ill-stored minds. But I have again and again found with boysthat simple biographical lectures are among the most attractive of alllessons. At one time, with my private pupils, I would take a book atrandom out of my shelves, read an interesting extract or two, and thensay that I would try to show why the author chose such a subject, whyhe wrote as he did, and how it all sprang out of his life andcharacter and circumstances. 

Of course the difficulty in all this is that the field of knowledge isso vast and various, while the capacities of boys are so small, andthe time to be spent on their education so short, that we quail beforethe attempt to grapple with the problem. We have moreover a vague ideathat the well-informed man ought to have a general notion of the worldas it is, the course of history, the literature of the ages; and atthe same time the scientists are maintaining that a general knowledgeof the laws and processes of nature is even more urgently needed. Icannot treat of science here, but I fully subscribe to the belief thata general knowledge of science is essential. But the result of ourbelieving that it is advisable to know so much, is that we attempt tospread the thinnest and driest paste of knowledge over the mind, andall the vivid life of it evaporates in the process. The thing is, frankly, far too big to attempt; and, we must henceforth set our facesagainst the attainment; of mere knowledge as either advisable orpossible. What we must try to do is to educate the faculties ofcuriosity, interest, imagination and sympathy; we must begin from theboy himself, and conduct him away from himself. What we really oughtto aim at is to give him the sense that he is surrounded by strangeand beautiful mysteries of nature, of which he can himself observecertain phenomena; that human history, as well as the great worldabout him, is crowded with interesting and animating figures who havelaboured, toiled, loved, acted, suffered, sinned, have felt theimpulse both of base and selfish desires, but no less of beautiful, exalted, and inspiring hopes. We want to convince the young that it isnot well to be narrow, close-fisted, insolent, suspicious, petty, self-satisfied. _Imaginative sympathy_, that is to be the end of allour efforts. If we aim only at producing sympathy, we may get a vaguesentimentalism which is just distressed by apparent suffering, andanxious to relieve it momentarily, without reflecting whether it isnot the outcome of perfectly curable faults of system and habit. If weaim only at imagination, then we get a barren artistic pleasure indramatic situations and romantic effects. What we ought to aim at isthe sympathy which pities and feels for others, as well as admires andimitates them; and this must be reinforced by the imagination whichcan concern itself with the causes of what otherwise are but vagueemotions. We want to make boys on the one hand detest tyranny andhigh-handedness and bigotry and ruthless exercise of power, and on theother hand mistrust stupidity and ignorance and baseness andselfishness and suspiciousness. The study of high literature isvaluable not as a mere exercise in erudition and linguistic nicety andcritical taste, but because the great books mirror best the highesthopes and visions of human nature. The precise extent of theintellectual range matters very little, compared with theperceptiveness and emotion by which the realisation of other lives, other needs, other activities, other problems are accompanied. 

I must not be supposed, in saying this, to be leaving out of sight thevirile exercise of logical and rational faculties; but that is anotherside of education; and the grave deficiency which I detect in the oldtheory was that practically all the powers and devices of educationwere devoted to what was called fortifying the mind and making it intoa perfect instrument, while there were left out of sight the motiveswhich were to guide the use of that instrument, and the boy was led tosuppose that he was to fortify his mind solely for his own advantage. This individualist theory must somehow be modified. The aim of theprocess I have described is not simply to indicate to the boy theamount of selfish pleasure which he can obtain from literarymasterpieces; it is rather to show the boy that he is not alone andisolated, in a world where it is advisable for him to take and keepall that he can; but that he is one of a great fellowship of emotionsand interests, and that his happiness depends upon his becoming awareof this, while his usefulness and nobleness must depend upon hisdisinterestedness, and upon the extent to which he is willing to sharehis advantages. The teaching of civics, as it is called, may be ofsome use in this direction, as showing a boy his points of contactwith society. But no instruction in the constitution of society isprofitable, unless somehow or other the dutiful motive is kindled, and the heroic virtue of service made beautiful. 

When then I speak of the training of the imagination, I really meanthe kindling of motive; and here again I claim that this must be basedon a boy's own experience. He understands well enough the possibilityof feeling emotion in relation to a small circle, his home and hisimmediate friends. But he is probably, like most young creatures, andindeed like a good many elderly ones, inclined to be suspicious of allthat is strange and foreign, and to anticipate hostility orindifference. What he would willingly share with a relation or friend, he eagerly withholds from an outsider. To cultivate his imaginativesympathy, to give him an insight into the ways and thoughts of othermen, to show to him that the same qualities which evoke his trust andlove are not the monopoly of his own small circle--this is just whatmust be taught, because it is exactly what is not instinctivelyevolved. 

The training of the imagination then is a deliberate effort topersuade the young to believe in the real nobility and beauty of life, in the great ideas which are moulding society and welding communitiestogether. It cannot be done in a year or a decade; but it ought to bethe first aim of education to initiate the imagination of the younginto the idea of fellowship, and to make the thought of selfishindividualism intolerable. It is not perhaps the only end ofeducation, but I can hardly believe that it has any nobler or moresacred end. 

IV

RELIGION AT SCHOOL

By W. W. VAUGHAN

The Master of Wellington College

"After all, how seldom does a Christian education teach one anythingworth knowing about Christianity. " These are the words of a man whomthe public schools are proud to claim, a man who has seen Christianeducation, whether given in the elementary or in the secondary schoolstested by the slow fires of peace, and by the quick devouring furnaceof war. They seem at first sight to be a verdict of "guilty" againstthe teachers or the system in which they play a part. That verdictwill not be accepted without protest by those incriminated, but eventhe protesters will feel some compunction, and now that they can nolonger question the heroic "student" as to what he means, and go tohim for advice as to the remedies for this failure, they should searchtheir hearts and their experience for the help he might have given, had he not laid down his arms and his life on the Somme last autumn. 

For long the need of help has been felt. The teaching of religion mayhave been less talked and written about, and less organised bysocieties and associations, than have been other subjects dealt withat school, but the problem of how best to make it a living force inyouth and an enduring force throughout the whole of life is oftenwrestled with at conferences of schoolmasters which do not publishtheir proceedings, and by little groups of men who feel the need ofone another's help. It is certainly always present in the minds, ifnot in the hearts, of every head master, boarding-house master andtutor in England. These know well what the difficulties are; theseknow that a short cut to any subject is often a long way round: that ashort cut to religion leads too often either to a slough of doubt orelse to a pharisaical hilltop, from which there is no path to thegreat mountains where the Holy Spirit really dwells. 

It is never well to insist too much on difficulties, but a barestatement of those that surround this subject is needed. There are thedifficulties of course common to every subject; the difficulty ofattracting the real teacher, keeping him as a teacher, improving himas a teacher when he has been attracted. Even those who start out ontheir career with a determination that the teaching of religion at allevents should have its full share of their time and thought, find thatas their teaching life goes on and fresh duties crowd in to usurp moreand more all their energies, that the time they can spare, and thethought they can give, either to the preparation of their divinitylessons, or to the enriching and cultivation of their own souls, shrink. Now and then they are cruelly disappointed at the result oftheir efforts as some conspicuous failure seems to prove theirteaching vain; they are often depressed by the apparent apathy of theleaders of the Church, by their manifest reluctance even to allowothers to make the new bottles which can alone hold the new wine. 

Schoolmasters belong to a devoted and to a comparatively learnedprofession. They should belong, especially those who feel theneeds--and all must to some extent--of the religious life of theschool, also to a learning profession; and their learning should gobeyond the experience of boyish failings, and boyish tragedies, andboyish virtues with which they are almost daily brought into contact;beyond the dictionaries and handbooks that enable the Bible lesson tobe well prepared; it should go out into the books that deal with thephilosophy and the history of religion--the books of Harnack andIllingworth, Hort and Inge, Bevan and Glover, and of others who makeus feel how narrow our outlook on our religion is. It would of coursebe foolish to drag our pupils with us exactly to the point to whichthese books may have brought us after many years' experience, but itis essential that we should know of the existence of such a distantpoint if we are to give to those we teach any idea of there beingbeyond the limits that they can reach at school a great and wonderfuland inspiring region which they, with the help of such leaders as havebeen mentioned can, nay must, explore for themselves if religion is tobe something more than mere emotion, fitful in its working, liable tosuccumb to all the stronger emotions with which life attacks thecitadel of the soul. 

Another difficulty is that the teacher of religion is being morecontinuously and searchingly tested than the teacher of any othersubject. The man who expatiates in the form-room on the beauties ofliterature, and is suspected of never reading a book is looked upon asmerely a harmless fraud by those he teaches. The man who preaches, whether officially in the pulpit or unofficially in the class-room orstudy, a high standard of conduct, and is unsuccessful in his ownefforts to attain it, depreciates for all the value of religion. Patience and industry and long-suffering and charitableness arevirtues that bear the hall mark of Christianity, but they are virtuesin which the best men fail continually, are conscious of their ownfailure and would plead for merciful judgment. If the parish priest isexposed to the criticism of those among whom he lives, a still fiercerlight beats upon the pulpit or the desk of the schoolmaster. Hisconsciousness of this sometimes leads him to reduce his teaching tothe limits of his practice, instead of extending the former and havingfaith in his power to bring the latter up to this level. Indeed, whenteachers and those who are taught are living so close together, both, from a not unworthy fear of insincerity, are liable to make themselvesand their ideals out to be worse than they are. It is sympathy alonethat can overcome this difficulty. Indeed, it is safe to say thatwithout sympathy--sympathy that understands difficulties, workingequally in those who are old and those who are young--religion atschool must be a very cautious and probably a very barren power. 

Again, the schoolmaster is tempted, and even when he is not temptedthe boys credit him with yielding to the temptation to treat religionas a super-policeman: something to make discipline easy andconsequently to make his own life smooth. It is no good explaining toooften that the aim is to get at religion through discipline, but thisaim should ever be before us. Man cannot too early in life realisethat discipline of itself is valueless. Its inestimable value in war, as in all the activities of life, is due to its being the necessarypreliminary preparation for courageous action, noble thought, wiseself-control and unselfish self-surrender. But above all thesedifficulties, dominating them all, affecting them all, perhapspoisoning them all, is the fact, not to be escaped though it is oftenignored, that so many of the traditions of school life, as of nationallife, seem founded on a basis opposed to Christ's teaching. It is veryhard to go through a day of our lives, or even a short railwayjourney, and not offend against the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Older people have never been able to solve this dilemma: the rulersfind it more difficult than the ruled. The whole of school life isstimulated by the principle of competition, and kept together by ahealthy and, on the whole, a kindly self-assertion which is hard toreconcile with the ideals that are upheld in the New Testament. Yet atschool, quite as much as in the World, competition and self-assertionare tempered by abundant friendliness and generosity; and at schoolif not in the world, there are an increasing number of individuals whohave so much spiritual power that they never need to exercise the moreworldly power that clashes with the Beatitudes. Of this power boysseldom talk, except to some specially sympathetic ear at somespecially heart-opening moment, but many are dumbly aware of it andthey cultivate it, often unconsciously but to the great gain of thosearound them, by prayer and faithful worship. But even these richernatures are uncomfortably conscious that there is a conflict betweenwhat Christ commands and what the world advises. That conflict willnot cease until faith has more power over our lives. It cannot grownaturally at school among boys, when it does not live in the nationamong men; but it would indeed be faithless to miss, through fear ofthe world's withering power, any opportunity of quickening purereligion among the young. Though these opportunities vary very much inthe day and the boarding school, they may be said to occur:

(1) In the scripture lesson;

(2) In the services whether held in chapel or, as is often the caseespecially in day schools, in the hall;

(3) In the preparation for confirmation;

(4) In all lessons in and out of school. 

There is a great difference of opinion as to what should be taught inthe scripture lesson, and who should teach it. It is easy enough toquote instances of extraordinary ignorance, to argue that, because aman who is in the trenches shocks his chaplain by his real oraffected neglect of the facts of Bible history or the dogmas of theChurch, therefore he has never had an opportunity of learning them;that same man would probably not give a much more impressive accountof the profane subjects in the school curriculum. There is, too, thefact that a man may have forgotten everything of a subject and yet mayhave learnt much from it. Every teacher knows this, if every schoolboydoes not. No one shrinks so much from revealing what he knows as theboy who is conscious that he has learnt a thing and is not sure thathe can show his knowledge accurately. No subject has been left so freefrom what is supposed to be the sterilising influence of examinationsas divinity. In many schools there have been one or two inspiringteachers of this subject who justify this system, but on the whole theresult does not confirm the opinion that all would be well if we couldhave complete freedom from examinations. If in the future the harvestin religion is to be more worthy of the seed that is sown and thetrouble of cultivation, we must face with more frankness, especiallyin the later years of a boy's life, all the difficulties that arepresented by the problems of the Bible and Church History. We musthave more courage in going beyond the syllabuses that are drawn up byuniversities and ecclesiastical societies. Both have to play forsafety, but they are dull cards that this stake requires. 

Teachers have overcome their timidity in dealing with the difficultiespresented by the Old Testament. Very few now hesitate to take the bookof Genesis, and, at all events if they are dealing with a high form, they let the boys see that the conflict between science and religionis only apparent, and that the victory of science does not mean thedefeat of religion. If they have been lucky enough to use Driver'sbook on Genesis they will have felt on sure ground and any learner whohas half understood it will have a shield against some of the weaponsthat assailed and defeated his father's generation. No teacher nowwould be afraid of making clear the problems presented by the book ofDaniel or the book of Job, but when the New Testament is approachedmuch more diffidence is felt, and indeed ought to be felt. Diffidenceought not however to involve silence. 

A wise teacher has said that it is not the miracles of Christ but hisstandard that keeps men away from his Church, and therefore outsidethe influence for which the Church stands. True though this may be ofmen as life goes on, of the young it is not the whole truth. In thosecritical years of a man's religion--between eighteen andtwenty-five--it is the sudden or the slow-growing doubt about themiracles of the New Testament, as much as the lofty standard that the"Follow me" of Christ requires, that makes the profession and even theholding of a religious faith so hard. More and more are the schoolstrying to prepare those in their charge for the perils that threatenthe physical health and the character of the young; but it is tragicthat they should be so unwilling to face frankly the perils that willsap the man's faith, and so expose his soul to the assaults of theworld and the devil. It is very hard to put oneself in another'splace; perhaps harder for the schoolmaster than for any other man, butwhen we are teaching such a subject as religion--a subject whose rootsmust perish if they cannot draw moisture from the springs ofsincerity, we should try to imagine what must be the feelings of thethoughtful boy when he first discovers that the lessons which he hasso often learnt and the Creeds that he has so often repeated weretaken by his teachers in a sense which they carefully concealed fromhim. More harm is done by the economy of truth than by the suggestionof doubt. 

It may be extraordinarily difficult to treat these problems of the NewTestament with becoming reverence; but is it not true to say that theday when it becomes easy to any man to do so will be the day when heought to stop dealing with them? The real irreverence, the onlyirreverence, is the glib confidence of the ignorant or the cynicalconcealment of one who knows but dare not tell. What idea of the NewTestament does the average boy who leaves, say in the fifth form, carry away with him from his public school? He may know that certainfacts are told in one Gospel and not in another; that there arecertain inconsistencies in the accounts given by the differentSynoptic Gospels of the same miracle, or what is apparently the samemiracle. He may be able to explain the parables more fully than theirauthor ever meant them to be explained; he may have at his fingers'ends St Paul's journeys and even have been thrilled by St Paul'sshipwreck, but he will probably have missed the meaning of the goodnews for himself and the power to treasure it for his life's strength. 

This failure to appreciate and to accept the challenge of religion--afailure shown later on in life in a certain diffidence about foreignmissions, and in the toleration of social conditions that deny Christas flatly as ever Peter did--is not the fault of the schools alone. The schools only reflect the world outside and the homes from whichthey are recruited. In neither is there as much light as there shouldbe. The difficulty of the vicious circle dominates this as so manyother problems. School reacts on the world, the world on the home[1]and the home on school, the blame cannot be apportioned, need not beapportioned; how the circle can be broken it is much more important todetermine. From time to time it has been broken, so decisively toothat for a while the riddle seems solved, at all events the old way isabandoned for ever. Arnold's work at Rugby must have involved such abreach. His work has never had to be done all over again and therehave been many to keep it in repair, but it needs to be extended nowin the light of new problems, scientific, social and international. For this, as for all other extensions, courage is needed. The courageto face the difficulties that modern research and modern thoughtinvolve and the courage to point out that our Lord, though in hisshort career he changed the bias of men's lives, never claimed toleave man a detailed guide for conduct or for happiness. It was to asimple society that he taught the laws of purity and love, he did notextend the range of their application beyond the needs of thePharisee, the Sadducee, the Scribe, the peasant and the dweller in thelittle towns through which he shed the light of his presence. Theselaws sanctify the whole of life because they dominate the heart, fromwhich all life must spring, but they do not answer all questions aboutall the subordinate provinces of life. The arts in their narrow sense, philosophy, even pleasure, they pass by. Man will not neglect the oneor distort the other if he has really breathed the spirit of Christ, but at times the urgency of his Master's business will seem to shutthem out of his life. 

All this needs learning by the old, and explaining to the young, forotherwise life will be one-sided, and when the day comes, as come itmust to those who think, when a choice must be made, and there seemsno alternative to following literally in Christ's footsteps andturning the back on much of the beauty and the thrill of the world, bewilderment will seize the chooser and at the best he will dedicatehimself to a joyless and unattractive puritanism, or surrender himselfto a rudderless voyage across the ocean of life. Religion at schoolmust touch with its refining power the impulses, aesthetic andintellectual, that become powerful in late boyhood and early manhood. If, as so often is the case, it ignores their existence, or endeavoursto starve them, they may well assert themselves with fatal power, tocoarsen and degrade the whole of life. 

The scripture lesson will indeed miss its opportunity if it does not, in the later stages of a boy's career, set him thinking on thesesubjects, and help him to a wise appreciation of the holiness ofbeauty as well as of the beauty of holiness. To accomplish this taskthe language of the Bible itself gives noble help. All the qualitiesof great literature shine forth from it and it should put to shame andflight the tawdry and the melodramatic. It is an ill service not tomake all familiar with the actual words of Holy Writ. Commentaries andBible histories may be at times convenient tools, but they are onlytools, and accurate knowledge of what they teach is no compensationfor a want of respectful familiarity with the text itself. 

Hardly less important for good and evil are the chapel services. Theyare much attacked. It has been argued that public worship isdistasteful in later life because of the compulsory chapels ofboyhood. If this were really so, evidence should be forthcoming thatthose who come from schools where there is no compulsory attendance atchapel, because there is no chapel to attend, are more eager to availthemselves of the opportunities offered by college chapels than aretheir more chapel ridden contemporaries. No one, however, can be quitesatisfied that chapel services are as helpful as they might be. Thedifficulty is how to improve them. The suggestion that they should allbe voluntary is at first sight attractive but there are twoinsuperable difficulties. The one is the power of fashion, for itmight well become fashionable in a certain house not to attend chapel. Those who know anything of the inside of schools know how such afashion would deter many of the best boys from going, and martyrdomought not to be part of the training of school life. The otherdifficulty is more subtle, but none the less real it originates in theboys' quite healthy fear of claiming merit. Those in authority, ifwise, would not count attendance at chapel for righteousness, but someof the most sensitive boys might think that they would do so, andmight stay away in consequence, and thus deprive themselves ofsomething they really valued. Two or three, not many, might come froma wrong motive, and perhaps these would stay to pray, but they wouldbe no compensation for the loss of the others. 

From time to time it is possible to have voluntary services, andattendance at Holy Communion should always be voluntary, not only inname but in fact. On the whole it is better that a boy who neglectsthis duty should go on neglecting it, than that those who come shouldfeel that their presence is noted with approval or the reverse. 

But it is different with the daily service. Irksome it may sometimesbe, not only to boys; but half its virtue lies in the fact that allare there in body and may sometimes be there in spirit too. Thefamiliarity of the oft-repeated prayers and the oft-sung hymns leadsto inattention perhaps, but seldom, it may be hoped, to callousness;religious emotion may only occasionally be stirred but the thread ofnatural piety, binding man to man and man to God, is strengthened, asfresh strands are added. At the least it may be claimed for thechapel services that they rescue from our hours of business someminutes each day in which our thoughts are free to make their way tothe throne of God. Christ's promise to bring rest to those who come tohim has been fulfilled in many a school chapel. Those of us who havehad to pass through the valley of sorrow and temptation andloneliness--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 ournational defect, misleading to the onlooker. The truth is, we are sofearful of being accused of casting our pearls before swine, that weoften pretend, even to ourselves, that what we know to be the mostprecious pearl in our possession is valueless. 

Most masters and boys would agree that, in the few weeks precedingconfirmation, the religious life is deepest and most sincere. There isa 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 goeson 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 asone may, it exists and sometimes leads to disaster; but there isanother danger to which the schoolmaster is then liable, it is thedanger of making confirmation an occasion for much talk on sexualdifficulties. The existence of these should be faced, but at any timerather than at confirmation, except so far as they occur quitenaturally in dealing with the commandments. 

It is a real disaster for a child to associate this time, when heshould be trying to shoulder enthusiastically his responsibilities asa citizen of God's Kingdom upon earth, with any particular sin. Hemust indeed overcome evil, but he must overcome it with good. It is ongood that his eyes should be fixed. It is towards the Lord of all thatis good that his heart should be uplifted. Anyone who has had to dowith this time knows what it means in a boy's religious life, howreluctant he is to speak of it, how perilous it is to disturb hisreluctance by inquisitive question or excessive exhortation. He knows, too, how much his own nature has gained by contact at such times withthe reverent stirrings of less world-stained souls, how wondrous hasbeen the spiritual refreshment that has come to him from theunconscious witness of the younger heart. 

For most boys it is a loss not to be confirmed at school, which forthe time is the centre of their energies, their hopes, theirdisappointments and their temptations; but the loss to the masters whoshare their preparation would be irreparable. They may sometimesblunder from want of knowledge and experience, but their will to helpis strong, and perhaps not least persuasive when chastened bydiffidence. 

But all these scripture lessons, chapel services and confirmationpreparation will be powerless to produce a Christian education, ifthey be not held together by every lesson and by the whole life of theschool. Industry and obedience, truthfulness and fidelity to duty, unselfishness and thoroughness, must form the soil without which noreligious plant can grow; and these are taught and learnt in thestruggle with Latin prose, or mathematics, or French grammar, orscientific formula; as well as in the cricket field, on the footballground, in the give and take, the pains and the pleasures of dailylife. 

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 fallshort of what we might accomplish did the spirit of Christianityreally inform our lives. 

To-day is our opportunity. The claims of education are being listenedto as they never have been in England. Money in millions is beingpromised, the value of this subject or that is being canvassed, themost venerable traditions are being shaken. It is a time of hope, buta time of danger too. All sorts of plans are being formed for breakingdown the partition walls that divide man from man, and class fromclass, and nation from nation; there is only one plan that will notleave 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 anarrow patriotism. 

The war has surely taught two lessons;--one that the efforts we madebefore 1914 to guard our country from spiritual and moral foes wereshamefully trivial compared with those we have made since to keep ourvisible foe at bay; the other that our responsibilities for thefuture, if we are to justify our claims to be the champions of justiceand weakness, can never be borne unless we learn ourselves, and teacheach generation as it grows up, to face the fierce light that shinesfrom heaven. All sorts of devices, ecclesiastical and political havebeen adopted to break up that light and make it tolerable for our weakeyes. Men have been so afraid of children being blinded by it thatthey have allowed them to sit, some in darkness, and others in thetwilight of compromise. 

It has been said that for the average man in the ancient world thereexisted two main guides and sanctions for his conduct of life, namelythe welfare of his city, and the laws and traditions of his ancestors. Has the average man much wiser guides or stronger sanctions now? Is amuch nobler appeal made to the children of England than was made tothe children of Athens? Just before Joshua led his people over theJordan, he instructed them how the ark of the covenant was to gobefore them and a space to be left between them and it, so that theymight know the way by which they must go, _for they had not passedthis way before_. Once again a river of decision has to be crossed, aroad has to be trodden along which men have not passed before. Whetherwe speak of reconstruction or a new start or use any other metaphor toshow our conviction that war has changed all things, the idea is thesame. We must see to it that the ark of the covenant is borne beforeour nation and our schools, along the way that is new and still fullof stones of stumbling. 

Either the old landmarks have disappeared or a new land has to beexplored. Somehow, all things have to be made new, for even thespiritual things have been destroyed or are found wanting. It is tothe schools, to the homes, to the mothers of England that the richestopportunity comes. If they can solve the difficulty of making theChristian education and the Christian life react upon one another thepartition walls between religion and conduct will be broken down forevery age. Intentionally or unintentionally, these walls have beenbuilt up, perhaps by the teachers and parents, certainly by theconventions of life. The result is that though there is more truereligion in the schools than is acknowledged by those outside and thanthose within care to boast of, and though the standard of conduct isnot ignoble, there is too little fusion; both components are brittle, they cannot stand the strain of sudden temptation, they lack enduringpower. No one will forget how in those first months of war, consolation was offered even from pulpits for all the horrors and thesadness and the waste of conflict in the thought that as a nation weshould be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all thevices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, thatour religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, athree years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord hadtaught us in three years of gentleness. If we are going to teach thesame lessons about war when peace is made, to keep alive the fires ofhate, and to keep smouldering the embers of suspicion, we shall beconfessing that a Christian education cannot teach us anything aboutChristianity. 

The student in arms would not have had us despair. Peace when it comeswill make demands on our fortitude. There will be many lying in theno-man's land between vice and virtue who will need to be rescued atgreat risk. There will be many forlorn hopes to be led againstdisease, the foster child of vice, that has gained strength under thecover of war. The disappointing days of peace will give an opportunityfor the development of Christian qualities fully as great as thebracing days of battle. Teachers will need to gird up their loins forthe task of giving a wise welcome to the thousands that an awakenedState will send to sit at their feet, and unless they can givespiritual food as well as worldly wisdom and paying knowledge, thesouls of the new-comers will be starved beyond the remedy of any freemeals. How to spiritualise education is the real problem, for it isonly by a spiritualised education that we can escape from theavalanche of materialism that is hanging over the European world justnow. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royalroad which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in thepast, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in thefuture by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of alldenominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficientand whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by thebest teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the onecondition that they have consciously or unconsciously dedicatedthemselves to the task. For a teacher to write much about it isimpossible, he must know how greatly he has failed. And he has not therecompense that comes to many who fail, in the shape of certainknowledge why success has been withheld. 

That his failure is shared by those who strive to make religion movethe world of men is no consolation. Indeed, that thought might makehim hopeless did it not suggest that the aims and methods of both maybe wrong. It is possible to have hoped too much from the schoolchapels being full, it is possible to fear too much from the churchesbeing empty. Piety is no doubt fostered by attendance at a religiousservice, but there is some distance between piety and true religion. It would probably not be untrue to say that Christian education hasseemed more concerned with the ceremonial duties of religion than withits spiritual enthusiasm, more eager about faith in some particularexplanation of the past than about faith in a re-creation of thefuture, more attentive to the machinery of the organisation of theChurch than to the words and commands of its Founder. As the Churchhas become more powerful in the world, it has lost its power overmen's hearts. To some it has seemed an institution for the relief ofpoverty, to others the support of the "haves" against the "have-nots, "but to too few has it been the home of spiritual adventures, themaintainer of spiritual values. Men have escaped from the relentlesssimplicity of the Master's commands by attention to the complicatedmachinery which disregard of them has made necessary. This may nothave been consciously marked by the young, but the atmosphere ofreligion that they have had to breathe has been the tired atmosphereof the ecclesiastical workshop, and not the bracing air of freeservice. Some restoration of the hopefulness of the early Christiansis needed; hopefulness is not now the note of what is taught, thoughwith it is sometimes confused the boisterous cheerfulness that iswrongly supposed to attract the young. The appeal of the Church mustbe based on looking forward, not backward, on hope, rather than onrepentance. 

The Church will have less to do with the world than it had in thepast, because it will have shaken off the fetters of the world: itwill not be always explaining to the young how they can enjoy theworld and yet deny the world: it will not need to explain itself sooften, to insist so pathetically on the superiority of its ownchannels of influence, but it will attract to itself, or rather to thework that it is trying to do--for it will have forgotten self--all theadventurous spirits who are prepared to risk pain and failure asfellow-workers in fulfilling the purposes of God in the world. What isworth knowing about Christianity is surely first and foremost that itis a leaven that might leaven the whole world; and that until thatleaven works in each individual heart, in each society, where two orthree are gathered together, Christ's presence cannot be claimed. Asthis knowledge is gained, it will be possible for the learner to knowin his heart, and not merely by heart, what is meant by the greatmysterious terms Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection; as thisknowledge is tested and proved true by experience of life, the meaningand power of prayer will become clearer. A clue will have been putinto the hand of each as he travels along the way which he has notpassed heretofore. It will not lead all by the same path but it willlead all towards that "great and high mountain, " whence "that greatcity, the Holy Jerusalem" may be seen. If the teacher is wise, whenthe mountain top is nigh and before that vision breaks upon hisfellow-traveller's sight, he will stand aside with thankful heart, andclose his task with the prayer that the Glory of God may shine morebrightly and more continuously on the newcomer, than it has shone onhim. 

[Footnote 1: Nothing is said here about the co-operation of the homewith the school. In religion as in all other matters it is assumed. The influence of the home cannot be exaggerated but schoolmasters mustresist the temptation to shift the burden of responsibility for anyfailure 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 fromthe responsibility of training for citizenship those who come underits influence, whether they be men or women. The problem is common toall institutions, although it may present itself in diverse formsappropriate to varying ages and experiences. It is primarily theproblem of all schools and places of education. 

The aim of education, according to Comenius, is "to train generallyall who are born to all that is human. " From that definition itfollows that the purpose of any school must be to bear its part indeveloping to the utmost the powers of body, mind and spirit for thecommon good. It must be to secure the application of the finestattributes of the race to the work of developing citizenship, which isthe art of living together on the highest plane of human life. 

Citizenship is, in reality, the focusing point of all human virtuesthough it is often illuminated by the consciousness of a city not madewith hands. It represents in a practical form the spirit of courage, unselfishness and sympathy consecrated to service in time of war andpeace. Generally speaking, in England and her Dominions, citizenshipis 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 ofmind but of spirit. The democratic community, above all othercommunities, must have within itself schools which at one and the sametime impart information concerning the theory and methods of itsgovernment and inspire consecration to social service rather than toindividual welfare, schools which reveal the transcendence of theinterests of the State as compared with the interests of anyindividual or group of individuals within it. The democratic State hasbeen compared to "one huge Christian personality, one mighty growth orstature of an honest man. " Out of this comparison arises the idea ofcitizenship reaching out beyond the boundaries of a single State--onehonest man among many--and thus responsibility is placed upon theschools to develop knowledge of, and sympathy with, the activities andaspirations of human life in many nations. The comity of nationsdepends directly upon the intellectual and spiritual honesty whichobtains in each of them, and true strength of nationality arises morefrom the exercise of these qualities than from extent of area or ofproductive power. 

Every subject taught in a school should serve the needs of the largercitizenship; if it fails to do so it is either wrongly taught orsuperfluous. 

Social welfare depends upon the right use of knowledge by theindividual, 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 ofthe development of community spirit in the schools and theintroduction of the direct teaching of citizenship. The methods arenot mutually exclusive; their operations are distinct. The schoolwhich does not develop community spirit, which does not fit into itsplace in the work of training the complete man, is obviouslyimperfect. The same cannot be said of the school which does notprovide direct instruction in citizenship; for teaching may be givenin so many indirect ways. Some consideration of what has happened inthis connection both in England and America will perhaps be mosthelpful, although the intangible nature of the results would renderdangerous any attempt to make definite pronouncements on their successor failure. 

Largely as the result of the realisation of the immediate relationshipbetween national education and national productivity there areabundant signs that the English educational system is about to bedeveloped. 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 theneeds of technical training need not cause disquiet among those whosedesire is for fulness of citizenship, if they are prepared to insistthat teachers shall be trained on broad and comprehensive lines andthat every vocational course shall include instruction in directcitizenship. The argument is ready to hand and simple. If all men andwomen must strive to work wisely and well, so also should they learnhow to participate in the government, local and national, which theirwork supports. Moreover the right study of a trade or professioninduces a perception of the inter-relationship of all human activity. 

On the other hand it is important that vocational work, at least sofar as it is carried out by manual training, should be introduced intoschemes of liberal education. In this connection it is worth recallingthat in a recent report, the Consultative Committee of the Board ofEducation expressed with complete conviction the opinion that manualtraining 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 understandingcontact between all brainworkers and the complete men who work withboth hands and brain" so strongly pleaded for by Professor Lethaby whoinsists that "some teaching about the service of labour must be gotinto all our educational schemes. "

It must be remembered that the question of vocational training affectschiefly the proposed system of compulsory continuation schooleducation up to the age of eighteen, which has yet to be establishedfor all boys and girls not in attendance at secondary schools or whohave not completed a satisfactory period of attendance[2]. 

The inadequacy of the period of education allotted to the vast mass ofthe population and the need for educational reform in many directionscan only be noted; both these matters however affect citizenshipprofoundly. 

It is upon the expectation of early development on the followinglines, indicated without detail, that our consideration of thepossibilities of schools in regard to citizenship must be based:

(1) A longer period of elementary school life during which no childshall be employed for other than educational purposes. 

(2) The establishment of compulsory continuation schools for all boysand girls up to the age of eighteen, the hours of attendance to beallowed out of reasonable working hours. 

(3) Complete opportunity for qualified boys and girls to continuetheir technical or humane studies from the elementary school to theuniversity. 

(4) A distinct improvement in the supply and power of teachers, chiefly as the result of better training in connection withuniversities and the establishment of a remuneration which will enablethem to live in the manner demanded by the nature and responsibilitiesof their calling. 

The two main aspects of the development of citizenship through theschools 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 thequalities of the good citizen. 

[Footnote 1: _Interim Report of the Consultative Committee of theBoard of Education on Scholarships for Higher Education, May_, 1916. ]

[Footnote 2: See _Final Report of the Departmental Committee onJuvenile Education in Relation to Employment after the War_, 1917, Cd. 8512. The Bill "to make further provision with respect to Education inEngland and Wales and for purposes connected therewith" [Bill 89], hadnot 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 muchgreater extent in America than in England. This is probably duelargely to the fact that the American need is the more obvious. Innormal times, there is a constant influx of people of differentnationalities to the United States whom it is the aim of thegovernment to make into American citizens. At the same time there isin America a greater disposition than in England to adapt abstractstudy to practical ends, to link the class-room to the factory, to thecity 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]. 

There are in America numerous societies, among them the NationalEducation Association, the American Historical Association, theNational Municipal League, the American Political Science Association, which are working steadily to make the study of civics an essentialfeature of every part of the educational system. Their prime purposesare summarised as follows:

 (1) To awaken a knowledge of the fact that the citizen is in a social environment whose laws bind him for his own good;

 (2) To acquaint the citizen with the forms of organisation and methods of administration of government in its several departments[2]. 

They claim that this can best be done by means of bringing the youngcitizen into direct contact with the significant facts of the life ofhis own local community and of the national community. To indicatethis more clearly they have applied to the study the name of"Community Civics. "

The argument that a sense of unreality may arise as a result of theapparent completeness of knowledge gained in the school is met by theclose contact maintained all the time with the community outside. 

There is unanimity of opinion that civics shall be taught from theelementary school onwards:

 "We believe, " runs the report of the Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association, "that elementary civics should permeate the entire school life of the child. In the early grades the most effective features of this instruction will be directly connected with the teaching of regular subjects in the course of study. Through story, poem and song there is the quickening of those emotions which influence civic life. The works and biographies of great men furnish many opportunities for incidental instruction in civics. The elements of geography serve to emphasise the interdependence of men--the very earliest lesson in civic instruction. A study of pictures and architecture arouses the desire for civic beauty and orderliness[3]. "

A recent inquiry by a Committee of the American Political ScienceAssociation makes it quite clear that the subject is actually taughtin the bulk of the elementary and secondary schools of the variousStates and that generally the results are satisfactory, or indicateclearly necessary reforms. The difficulty of providing suitabletext-books is partly met by the addition of supplementary localinformation. 

There are very few colleges and universities which do not providecourses in political science. 

No claim is made that the teaching of civics makes of necessity goodcitizens, but merely that it makes the good citizen into a betterone. The justification of the subject lies in its own content. 

 It is a study of an important phase of human society and, for this reason the same value as elementary science or history[4]. 

There is, moreover, throughout the various American reports, aninsistence on the power of the community ideal in the school and thenecessity for discipline in the performance of school duties and a dueappreciation of the importance of individual action in relation to theclass and to the school. 

In England there has been much general and uncoordinated advocacy ofthe direct teaching of citizenship, but, for various reasons, it doesnot appear to have been introduced generally into the schools, nordoes there appear to be any immediate likelihood of development in theexisting schools. 

The Civic and Moral Education League made definite inquiry, in 1915, of teachers and schools. They pronounced the results to bedisappointing, though they comforted themselves with theincontrovertible dictum that "the people who are doing most have leasttime to talk about it. " As the result of their inquiry, they drew up astatement of the aims of civics which in general and in detaildiffered little from the ideas accepted in America. 

If compulsory continued education is introduced, for boys and girlswho now have no school education after the elementary school, it is ofthe utmost importance that the direct study should be included insome form or other before the age of eighteen is reached, and it isin connection with this type of school rather than in connection withthe elementary or secondary school that constructive efforts should bemade. 

It must be remembered that Mr. Acland, when Minister for Education, introduced the subject into the Elementary Code of 1895 and provided adetailed syllabus. This was generally approved not only as the actionof a progressive administrator but as an evidence of the new spirit offreedom beginning to reveal itself in the educational system. 

There are some education authorities, like the County of Chester, which enact that the study of citizenship shall proceed side by sidewith religious education, but the majority leave it to the teachers todo all that is necessary by the adaptation of other subjects and thedevelopment of school spirit. 

The elaborate nature of Mr. Acland's syllabus tended to defeat itsobject, and some held it to be psychologically unsound, but there hasalso been lack of suitable text-books. In general, however, the wholesubject depends peculiarly upon the personality of the teacher whofeels no lack of text-books if he is alive to the interest of hislesson. 

In _Studies in Board Schools_[5], there is a delightful study of alesson on "Rates" to young citizens with the altruistic text, "All forEach, Each for All. " "Citizen Carrots, " a tired newspaper boy up everymorning at five, is revealed as responding with great enthusiasm tothis interesting lesson which commences with a drawing on ablackboard of a "regulation workhouse, a board school, a free library, a lamp post, a water-cart, a dustman, a policeman, a steam roller, anavvy or two, and a long-handled shovel stuck in a heap of soil. " Ahypothetical payer of rates, "Mrs Smith, " is revealed as getting agreat deal for her rates:

 She is protected from any harm; her property is safe; she can walk about the streets with comfort by day or night; her drains are seen to; her rubbish is taken away for her; she has books and newspapers to read; if she has ten children, she can have them well taught for nothing--so that if they are willing to learn, and attend school regularly, they can very easily make their own living when they grow up; if she is ill, she can go to the infirmary for medicine; and if, when she grows old, she is unable to pay rent or buy food or clothes, these things are provided for her. 

 "And please, sir, the Parks, " interjected the eager Carrots. 

If the definition of a good citizen propounded by Professor Mastermanis true--that he is one who pays his rates without grumbling--"CitizenCarrots, " whatever his disadvantages, is intellectually anyhow on theway to become such a citizen, and certainly in the sketch, "CitizenCarrots" is determined that the rates shall be expended properlybecause he himself will have a vote in later days. 

It is probable that lessons such as these are more frequent than thetime-tables would indicate. There are few head masters of elementaryschools who would disclaim the adequate teaching of citizenship intheir schools. They would explain that the treatment of history andgeography proceeding from local standpoints was effective in thisdirection, and it is the rule rather than otherwise for visits to bepaid to places of historic interest within reach of the schools. Advantage is also taken of such days as Empire Day to stimulateinterest in the State, as well as to impart knowledge concerning itsorganisation. All this is reinforced by the use of appropriate readingbooks which are instruments of indirect, but not necessarily lesseffective, instruction. 

The larger opportunities which secondary schools offer have not beentaken advantage of to induce the specific study of civics to anygreater extent that in the elementary schools, although many schoolsare able to devote at least a period each week to the consideration ofcurrent events, and, naturally, the teaching of history and geographyincludes much more completely the consideration of institutions bothat home and abroad. 

The idea of the regional or local survey is gaining ground and in somerespects it will prove to serve the same purpose as the "CommunityCivics" of the American high school. 

There have been attempts to introduce economics into the secondaryschool curriculum, but they have not persisted to any extent. In the_Memorandum of Curricula of Secondary Schools_ issued by the Board ofEducation in 1913, it is suggested that "it will sometimes bedesirable to provide, for those who propose on leaving school to enterbusiness, a special commercial course with special study of the moretechnical side of economic theory and some study of political andconstitutional history. " For the rest there is no mention of thesubjects intimately connected with government. It is clear that theBoard expects that out of the subjects of the ordinary curriculum, with such special efforts suggested by public interest as may fromtime to time occur, the student will gain a general knowledge of theaffairs of the community round about, some knowledge of the principlesof politics, clear ideas concerning movements for social reform, andsome acquaintance with international problems. If he does so, he willhave secured a useful introduction to the studies associated withadult life. 

An intelligent study of languages will help materially in thisdirection and, whilst this is specially true in the cases of Greek andLatin, there is no reason why modern languages should not serve thesame purpose. It is, however, often the case that the study of thehistory and institutions of modern countries is not associatedsufficiently with the study of their language. 

The public and grammar schools of England, as contrasted with thenewer secondary schools, are more especially the homes of classicalstudies, and it is through the working of these schools that theknowledge of institutions in ancient Greece and Rome will have itsgreatest effect on citizenship. 

The study of political science as a specific subject is gaining groundin universities, whilst the study of the Empire and its institutionshas naturally made rapid progress during the last few years. There mayalso be noted distinct tendencies, arising out of the experience ofthe war, towards the foundation of schools destined to deal with theinstitutions and the thought of foreign countries. In the schools ofeconomics and history there is fulness of attempt to study all thatcan be included under the generic title of civics which, after all, may be defined as political and social science interpreted inimmediate and practical ways. 

[Footnote 1: Peabody, _The Religion of an Educated Man_. ]

[Footnote 2: Haines, _The Teaching of Government_. ]

[Footnote 3: Haines, _The Teaching of Government. _]

[Footnote 4: Bourne, _The Teaching of History and Civics in theElementary and the Secondary School_. ]

[Footnote 5: Charles Morley, 1897. ]

II

INDIRECT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP

After all is said and done the ideal training for citizenship in theschools depends more upon the wisdom engendered in the pupil than uponthe direct study of civics. If the spirits of men and women are set ina right direction they will reach out for knowledge as for hidtreasure. "Wisdom is more moving than any motion; she passeth andgoeth through all things by reason of her pureness[1]. "

It happens also in natural sequence that the spirit developed in aschool will lead to the construction of institutions in connectionwith school life calculated to secure its adequate expression. 

Elementary schools, however, are much handicapped in this way. If itcomes about that work other than educational or recreative isforbidden to children during the years of attendance at school, andalso that the period of school life is lengthened, there will beopportunity for the development of games on a self-governing basis. Elementary school children have a large measure of initiative; allthey need is a real chance to exercise it. They would willingly maketheir schools real centres of child life. Many children at presenthave little else than narrow tenements and the streets, out of whichinfluences arise which war continually against the social influencesof the school. 

The opportunity afforded by well-ordered leisure would be accentuatedby the more complete operation of movements such as boys' brigades, boy scouts, girl guides, and Church lads' brigades, which are in theirseveral ways doing much to develop citizenship. Such bodies are now ineffect educational authorities, and classes are organised by them inconnection with the Board of Education. 

There have been many attempts to introduce self-governing experimentsinto elementary schools and, whilst they have often been defeated byreason of the immaturity of the children, yet some of them have metwith great success. The election of monitors on the lines of a generalelection is an instance of success in this direction. The ideas whichhave arisen from the advocacy of the Montessori system have inducedmethods of greater freedom in connection with many aspects ofelementary school life. The Caldecott Community, dealing withworking-class children in the neighbourhood of St. Pancras, has triedmany interesting experiments. That, however, of the introduction ofchildren's courts of justice had to be abandoned, but not until manyvaluable lessons in child psychology had been learnt. 

Side by side with the elementary school, there are rising in Englandexperiments similar to those undertaken by such organisations as theSchool City and the George Junior Republics of America. The mostnotable among them is the Little Commonwealth, Dorchester, which hasachieved astonishing results through the process of taking delinquentchildren and allowing them self-government. But, hopeful as theprospects are, their ultimate effect will be best estimated when theirpupils, restored in youth to the honourable service of the community, are taking their full share in life as adult citizens, and naturallyevery care is taken in the organisation of these institutions toensure that the transition from their sheltered citizenship to theoutside world shall not be of so abrupt a nature as to tend to renderunreal and remote the life in which the children have taken part. 

Nearly all of the more recent experiments in regard to the school andits kindred institutions are co-operative in principle and in method, but it is probably Utopian to conceive an educational method whichshall achieve the highest success without having included within itthe element of competition. If competition is a method obtainingoutside the school it is bound to reproduce itself within it. The onlypossible thing for the school to do is to restrict the influence ofcompetition to the channels where it can be beneficial. 

The method by which elementary school children pass to the secondaryschool is by means of competitive scholarships. In common with theConsultative Committee of the Board of Education it is necessary toaccept the fact that at present "the scholarship system is too firmlyrooted in the manner, habits and character of this country to bedislodged, even if it were thrice condemned by theory[2]. " But, in theinterests of citizenship, scholarships should be awarded as the resultof non-competitive tests, if only to secure that every child shallreceive the education for which he or she is fitted. 

The stress and strain imposed upon many who climb the ladder ofeducation, often occasioned by the inadequacy of the scholarship forthe purposes to which it is to be applied, tend to developcharacteristics which are so strongly individual as to be distinctlyanti-social. 

It is unfortunate that in many subjects of the curriculum it is notmerely bad form to help one's neighbour but distinctly a school sin, and this makes it necessary for a balance to be struck by theintroduction of subjects at which all can work for the good of theclass or the school. Manual work and local surveys are subjects ofthis nature and should be encouraged side by side with games of whichthere are three essential aspects:--the individual achievement, thewinning of the match or race, and "playing the game. " In reference tocitizenship the last of these is the only one which ultimatelymatters. 

It is generally admitted that the great public schools are those whichare most characteristic of English boy life at its best. Glorying asthey do in a splendid tradition, they have always had in addition theopportunity of adapting themselves to new needs. Their reform isalways under discussion and perchance they are waiting even now forsome Arnold or Thring to lead them in a new England, for new it willinevitably be. Even so, the sense of responsibility they havedeveloped has been translated into the terms of English governmentover half the world. 

The objective of the public school boy anxious to take a part ingovernment at home has always been parliament, or such localinstitutions as demand his service in accordance with the tradition ofhis family. The tendency to despise the homely duties of a citycouncillor or poor law guardian is, however, passing. There are fewschools which do not welcome visitors to speak to the boys who havefirst-hand acquaintance with the life of the poor or who are indeed ofthat life themselves. In this way boys get to realise, as far as it ispossible through sympathy, what it means to be out of work, what itmeans to be hungry for unattainable learning, what children have tosuffer, and, in addition to the practical interest which many boysimmediately develop, it cannot be doubted that many ideals for theconduct of social life in the future are conceived, even if dimly, forthe first time. Thanks to the unremitting efforts of large-minded headmasters, public school boys more and more realise that they arebeneficiaries of the spirit of a past day, not only in the sense ofthe creation of a noble tradition but actually in regard to thematerial provision of buildings and the financial support ofteaching. 

There is likely to be an extension of university education in the nearfuture. The ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge with theirgreat college system will be strengthened, as will be the universitieswhich were established at the end of the nineteenth and the beginningof the twentieth centuries. The demand for the better training ofteachers will result inevitably in the creation of more universities. The inadequate sum which this country has spent upon universityeducation up to the present will be greatly increased. 

As a direct result of the opportunity which university life gives toundergraduates for the development of self-governing institutions, there can be little doubt that the university must be regarded aboveall other schools and most institutions as powerful in the developmentof good citizenship. The public school tradition will be carrieddirectly into the older universities and in increasing measure intothe new universities as the best spirit of the public schoolsgradually permeates the whole system of our education even down to theelementary schools themselves. When these opportunities so lavishlyprovided for the development of student life in its self-governingaspects are realised and when above it all there stand great teachersin the lineage of those described by Cardinal Newman in his eulogy ofAthens--"the very presence of Plato" to the student, "a stay for hismind to rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of union withmen like himself, ever afterwards"--little else can be desired. Inevery university there must be such teachers, or universities willtend to fall to the level of the life about them. "You can infuse, "said Lord Rosebery at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire, "character, and morals and energy and patriotism by the tone andatmosphere of your university and your professors. "

From one point of view, all the old universities of Europe--Bologna, Paris, Prague, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. --must be regarded as definiteand conscious protests against the dividing and isolating--theanti-civic--forces of the periods of their institution. They representhistorically the development of communities for common interest andprotection in the great and holy cause of the pursuit of learning, andabove all things their story is the story of the growth of Europeanunity and citizenship. 

 The feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediaeval world were both alike threatened by the power that had so strangely sprung up in the midst of them. Feudalism rested on local isolation, on the severance of kingdom from kingdom and barony from barony, on the distinction of blood and race, on the supremacy of material or brute force, on an allegiance determined by accidents of place and social position. The University, on the other hand, was a protest against this isolation of man from man. The smallest school was European and not local[3]. 

The spirit which is characteristic of a university in its bestaspects, linked with the spirit which is inherent in the ranks ofworking people, has on more occasions than one set on foot movementsfor the education of the people. One of the most notable instances ofthis unity found expression at the Oxford Co-operative Congress of1882, when Arnold Toynbee urged co-operators to undertake theeducation of the citizen. By this he meant: "the education of eachmember of the community as regards the relation in which he stands toother individual citizens and to the community as a whole. " "We haveabandoned, " he said further, "and rightly abandoned the attempt torealise citizenship by separating ourselves from society. We willnever abandon the belief that it has yet to be won amid the stress andconfusion of the ordinary world in which we move. " From that day tothis co-operators have always had before them an ideal of education incitizenship and have organised definite teaching year by year. 

Another instance of even greater power lies in the co-operationbetween the pioneers of the University Extension Movement at Cambridgeand the working men, particularly of Rochdale and Nottingham, to befollowed later by that unprecedented revival of learning amongstworking people which took place in Northumberland and Durham in thedays before the great coal strike. At a later date, in 1903, the samekind of united action gave rise to the movement of the Workers'Educational Association, which has always conceived its purpose to bethe development of citizenship in and through education pursued incommon by university man and working man alike. The system ofUniversity Tutorial Classes originated by this Association has beenbased upon an ideal of citizenship, and not primarily upon adetermination to acquire knowledge, although it was clearly seen thatvague aspirations towards good citizenship without the harnessing ofall available knowledge to its cause would be futile. After exceptionhas been made for the body of young men and women who are determinedto acquire technical education for the laudable purpose of advancingboth their position in life and their utility to society, it is clearthat no educational appeal to working men and women will have theleast effect if it is not directed towards the purpose of enrichingtheir life, and through them the life of the community. The proof ofthis lies in the fact that, after they have striven together for yearsin Tutorial Classes, they ask for no recognition--in fact they havedeclined it when it has been offered--and have devoted their powers tovoluntary civic work and the work of the associations or unions towhich they belong, as well as in very many instances, to the spreadingof education throughout the districts in which they live. It islargely due to the leaven of educational enthusiasm which has thusbeen generated that there is a unanimous movement on the part ofworking people towards a complete educational system including withinit compulsory attendance at continuation schools during the day. 

The problems that hedge about continuation schools are many, but it isclear that they will be regarded by educationists and by at least someemployers as above all else training for citizenship based upon thevocation to which the boy or girl may be devoting himself or herselfin working hours. The narrowness of the daily occupation, divorced asit is from the whole spirit and intent of apprenticeship, will bebroadened directly the consideration of daily work is placed in thecontinuation school both on a higher plane and in a complete setting. 

The compulsory evening school will fail unless it induces a demand forrecreation of a pure kind which may be associated with the voluntaryevening school and continued along the lines of study into the yearsof adult life. And even if it is impossible for every student ofcapacity in the continuation school to pass into the university ortechnological college, it may be hoped that there need not fail to beopportunities for reaching the heights of ascertained knowledge in theUniversity Tutorial Class. In the future, as now, only in greaterdegree, such classes will be regarded as an essential part ofuniversity work, and will provide opportunity for the study of thosesubjects which are most nearly related to citizenship. 

It is one of the fundamental principles of the Workers' EducationalAssociation that every person, when not under the power of somehostile over-mastering influence, is ready to respond to aneducational appeal. Not indeed that all are ready or able to becomescholars, but that all are anxious to look with understanding eyes atthe things which are pure and beautiful. Tired men and women are madebetter citizens if they are taken, as they often are, to picturegalleries and museums, to places of historic interest and of scenicbeauty, and are helped to understand them by the power of asympathetic guide. It is by the extension of work of this sort, whichcan be carried out almost to a limitless extent that the true purposeof social reform will be best served. It is by such means that thepress may be elevated, the level of the cinema raised, the efforts ofthe demagogue neutralised. 

The Workers' Educational Association is based upon the work of theelementary school and of the associations of working people, notablythe co-operative societies and trade unions. The democratic methodsobtaining in those associations have themselves proved a valuablecontribution to citizenship, and have determined the democratic natureof all adult education. The right and freedom of the student to studywhat he wishes finds its counterpart in the reasonable demand that manshall live out his life as he wills, provided it moves in a truedirection and is in harmony with the needs and aspirations of hisfellows. 

It has seemed in this review of the relation of schools and places ofeducation to the development of citizenship that the fact of theoperation of social influences has been implicit at every point. Inany case there is, and can be, no doubt that the school, whilstinstant in its effect upon the mind of the time, is always beingeither hindered or helped by the conditions obtaining in the societyin which it is set. The relations existing between society and schoolare revealed in a process of action and reaction. Wilhelm vonHumboldt said that "whatever we wish to see introduced into the lifeof a nation must first be introduced into its schools. " Among otherthings, it is necessary to develop in the schools an appreciation ofall work that is necessary for human welfare. This is the crux of alleffort towards citizenship through education. In the long run therecan be no full citizenship unless there is fulness of intention todiscover capacity and to develop it not for the individual but for thecommon good. This is primarily the task of an educational system. If aman is set to work for which he is not fitted, whether it be the workof a student or a miner, he is thwarted in his innate desire to attainto the full expression of his being in and through association withhis fellow-men, whereas, when a man is doing the right work, that forwhich he has capacity, he rejoices in his labour and strivescontinually to perfect it by development of all his powers. Theexercise of good citizenship follows naturally as the inevitableresult of a rightly developed life. It may not be the citizenshipwhich is exercised by taking active and direct part in methods ofgovernment. The son of Sirach, meditating on the place of thecraftsman, said:

 All these trust to their hands: and every one is wise in his work. Without these cannot a city be inhabited ... They will maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in the work of their craft[4]. 

The times are different and the needs of people have changed, but thetrue test of a citizen may be more in the healthiness of dominatingpurpose than in the possession and satisfaction of a variety ofdesires. To "maintain the state of the world" is no mean ambition. 

If it is difficult for a man to become the good citizen when employedon work for which he is unfitted, it is even more difficult for theman to do so who is set to shoddy work or to work which damages thecommunity. 

The task laid upon the school is heavy, but it does not stand alone. The family and the Church are its natural allies in the modern State. 

All alike will make mistakes, but, if they clearly set before them theintention to do their utmost to free the capacity of all for theaccomplishment of the good of all, wisdom will increase and manytragedies in life will be averted. 

Thus lofty ideals have presented themselves, but they will secureuniversal admission apart from the immediate practical considerationswhich bulk so largely and often so falsely in the minds of men, andwhich are frequently suggested by limitations of finance and lack offaith in the all-sufficient power of wisdom. 

It is in the consecration of a people to its highest ideals that thetrue city and the true State become realised on earth and the measureof its consecration, in spite of all devices of teaching or traininghowever wise, determines the true level of citizenship at any time inany place. 

[Footnote 1: _Wisdom of Solomon_, vii. 24. ]

[Footnote 2: _Interim Report of the Consultative Committee of theBoard of Education on Scholarships for Higher Education_, 1916. ]

[Footnote 3: J. R. Green, _A Short History of the English People_. ]

[Footnote 4: _Ecclesiasticus_, xxxviii. 31-34. ]

SOME BOOKS ON CITIZENSHIP

[1]American Political Science Assoc. The Teaching of Government. 1916. Macmillan. 5s. 0d. Net. 

[1]BAKER, J. H. Educational Aims and Civic Needs. 1913. Longmans. 3s. 6d. Net. 

[1]BALCH, G. T. The Method of Teaching Patriotism in Public Schools. 1890. New York: Van Nostrand. 

[1]BOURNE, H. E. The Teaching of History and Civics. 1915. Longmans. 6s. 0d. Net. 

[1]DEWEY, JOHN. Democracy and Education. 1916. Macmillan. 6s. 0d. Net. 

[1]DEWEY JOHN. The School and Society. 1915. Chicago Univ. Press. 4s. 0d. Net. 

[1]DEWEY, JOHN and EVELYN. Schools of To-Morrow. 1915. Dent. 5s. 0d. Net. 

FINDLAY, J. J. The School. 1912. Williams and Norgate. 1s. 3d. Net. 

[1]HALL, G. STANLEY. Educational Problems. 2 vols. 1911. Appleton. 31s. 6d. Net. Ch. 24. Civic Education. 

[1]HENDERSON, C. H. Education and the Larger Life. 1902. Boston:Houghton. 6s. 0d. 

[1]HUGHES, E. H. The Teaching of Citizenship. 1909. Boston: Wilde. 6s. 0d. 

HUGHES, M. L. V. Citizens To Be. 1915. Constable. 4s. 6d. Net. 

[1]JENKS, J. W. Citizenship and the Schools. 1909. New York: Holt. 6s. 0d. 

KERSCHENSTEINER, GEORG. Education for Citizenship. Tr. A. J. Pressland. 1915. Harrap. 2s. 0d. Net. The Schools and the Nation. 1914. Macmillan. 6s. 0d. Net. 

[1]MONROE, PAUL. (Ed. ) Cyclopedia of Education. 5 vols. Macmillan. 105s. 0d. Net. 

MORGAN, ALEXANDER. Education and Social Progress. 1916. Longmans. 3s. 6d. Net. 

Oxford and Working Class Education. Clarendon Press, 1s. Net. 

PATERSON, ALEXANDER. Across the Bridges. 1912. Arnold. 1s. 0d. Net. 

SADLER, M. E. (Ed. ). Continuation Schools in England and Elsewhere. 1908. Manchester University Press. 8s. 6d. Net. 

SCOTT, C. A. Social Education. 1908. Ginn. 6s. 0d. Net. 

WALLAS, GRAHAM. The Great Society. 1914. Macmillan. 7s. 6d. Net. 

See also:

Board of Education. Reports. 

Civics and Moral Education League Papers, 6 York Buildings, Adelphi, W. C. 2. 

[Footnote 1: American. ]

VI

THE PLACE OF LITERATURE IN EDUCATION

By NOWELL SMITH

Head Master of Sherborne School

Education is a subject upon which everyone--or at least everyparent--considers himself entitled to have opinions and to expressthem. But educational treatises or the considered views of educationalexperts have a very limited popularity, and in fact arouse littleinterest outside the circle of the experts themselves. Even theaverage teacher, who is himself, if only he realised it, inside thecircle, pays little heed to the broader aspects of education, chiefly, no doubt, because in the daily practice of the art of education hecannot step aside and see it as a whole; he cannot see the wood forthe trees. The indifference of laymen however is mainly due to thefact that educational theory, like other special subjects, inevitablyacquires a jargon of its own, an indispensable shorthand, as it were, for experts, but far too abstract and technical for outsiders. 

And his technical language too often reacts upon the actual ideas ofthe educational theorist, who tends to lose sight of the variety ofconcrete boys and girls in his abstract reasonings, necessary as theseare. We are apt to forget that what is sauce for the goose may not besauce for the gander, and still more perhaps that what is sauce forthe swan may not be sauce for either of these humbler but deservingfowl. But it is certain that in discussing education we oughtconstantly to envisage the actual individuals to be educated. Otherwise our "average pupil of fifteen plus" is only too likely tobecome a mere monster of the imagination, and the intellectual_pabulum_, which we propose to offer, suited to the digestion of nohuman boy or girl in "this very world, which is the world of all ofus. "

In considering, then, the place of literature in education, I proposeto keep constantly before my eyes the people with whose education I ampersonally familiar, namely, myself, my children, and the varioustypes of public school boy which I have known as boy, asundergraduate, as college tutor and as schoolmaster. I say varioustypes of public school boy; for although there still is a publicschool type in general which is easily recognisable by certain markedsuperficial characteristics, the popular notion that all public schoolboys are very much alike in character and outlook is a mere delusion. 

Again, I propose, when I speak of literature, to mean literature, andnot a compendious term for anything that is not science. Theopposition that has in modern times been set up between science on theone hand and a jumble of studies labelled either literary or"humanistic" studies on the other is to my mind wholly unfounded inthe nature of things, and destructive of any liberal view ofeducation. It may perhaps be held that literature in its most literalsense is a name for anything that is expressed by means ofintelligible language--a use of the word which certainly admits of nocomparison with the meaning of science, but which also leads to noideas of any educational interest. But I take the word literature inits common acceptation; and, while admitting that I can give noprecise and exhaustive definition, I will venture to describe it asthe expression of thought or emotion in any linguistic forms whichhave aesthetic value. Thus the subject-matter of literature is onlylimited by experience: as Emile Faguet says somewhere--withoutclaiming to have made a discovery--_la littérature est une chose quitouche à toutes choses_. And the tones of literature range from Isaiahto Wycherley, from Thucydides to Tolstoy; its forms from Pindar to afolk song, from Racine to Rudyard Kipling, from Gibbon to Herodotus orFroissart. And while no two people would agree in drawing the line ofaesthetic value which should determine whether any given verbalexpression of thought or emotion was literature or not--a fact whichis not without importance in the choice of books for forming the tasteof our pupils--yet, for the purpose of discussing the place andfunction of literature in education, we all know well enough what wemean by the word in the general sense which I have attempted todescribe. 

As this is not a tractate on education as a whole, I must risksomething for the sake of brevity, and will venture to lay downdogmatically that the objects of literary studies as a part ofeducation are (1) the formation of a personality fitted for civilisedlife, (2) the provision of a permanent source of pure and inalienablepleasure, and (3) the immediate pleasure of the student in the processof education. None of these objects is exclusive of either of theothers. They cannot in fact be separated in the concrete. But they aresufficiently different to be treated distinctly. 

(1) Hardly anyone would deny that some knowledge and appreciation ofliterature is an indispensable part of a complete education. The fullmember of a civilised society must be able to subscribe to thefamiliar _Homo sum; nihil humanum a me alienum puto_. And literatureis obviously one of the greatest, most intense, and most prolificinterests of humanity. There have always been thinkers, from Platodownwards, who for moral or political reasons have viewed the power ofliterature with distrust: but their fear is itself evidence of thatpower. Thus literature is a very important part both of the past andof contemporary life, and no one can enter fully into either withoutsome real knowledge of it. A man may be a very great man or a verygood man without any literary culture; he may do his country and theworld imperishable services in peace or war. But the older the worldgrows, the rarer must these unlettered geniuses become. Literature inone form or another--too often no doubt put to vile uses--has becomeso much part of the very texture of civilised life that a wide-awakemind can scarcely fail to take notice of it. And in any case we neednot consider that kind of special genius which education does littleeither to make or mar. No one is likely seriously to deny that fortaking a full and intelligent part in the normal life of a civilisedcommunity--in love and friendship, in the family and in society, inthe study and practice of citizenship of all degrees--some literaryculture is absolutely necessary; nor indeed that, subject to a duebalance of qualities and acquirements, the wider and deeper theliterary culture the more valuable a member of society the possessorwill be. The lubricant of society in all its functions, whether ofbusiness or leisure, is sympathy, and a sufficient quantity, as itwere, of sympathy to lubricate the complex mechanism of civilised lifecan only be supplied by a widespread knowledge of the best, and agreat deal more than the best, of what has been and is being thoughtand said in the world. Personal intercourse with one another and acommon apprehension of God as our Father are even more powerfulsources of sympathy; but literature provides innumerable channels forthe intercommunication and distribution of these sources, withoutwhich the sympathies of individuals may be strong and lively, but willalmost always be narrowly circumscribed. It is very true that to knowmankind only through books is no knowledge of mankind at all; but eversince man discovered how to perpetuate his utterances in writing ithas been increasingly true that literature is the principal means ofwidening and deepening such knowledge. 

This object of literary studies, the formation of a personalityfitted for civilised life, may be summed up in the familiar gracefulwords of Ovid, who was thinking almost entirely of literature when hewrote

 ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros. 

And it is only the lack, in so many of the greatest writers, and theneglect, in so many educators and educational systems, of that duebalance of qualities and acquirements of which I spoke just now, whichhave induced in superficial minds a distrust and often a contempt ofliterature as a subject of education. The good citizen or man of theworld--in the best sense of the phrase--must not be the slave ofliterary proclivities to the ruin of his functions as father orhusband or friend or man of action and affairs. The world of letters, if lived in too exclusively, is an unreal world, though without it theactual world is almost meaningless. Now the _genus irritabile vatum_, even when their thoughts, as Carlyle put it, "enrich the blood of theworld, " have very generally appeared to the plain man of goodwill asvery defective in the art of living. If their aspirations have beenabove the standards of their day, their practice has often been belowthem in such essentially social qualities as probity, faithfulness, consideration for others. Moreover their outlook upon life, intenseand inspiring though it be, is often a very partial one. Even so, itdoes not follow that because a poet or a philosopher is not in everyrespect "the compleat gentleman, " a citizen _totus teres atquerotundus_, his works are not profitable for the building up of thatcharacter. If it did, we must by parity of reasoning discard thediscoveries of a misanthropic inventor and the theories of a bigamouschemist. We go to Plato and Catullus, to Shakespeare and Shelley, forwhat they have to give: if we go with our own pet notions of what thatought to be, we are naturally as disgusted as Herbert Spencer was withHomer and Tolstoy with Shakespeare. Tolstoy is indeed a case in point. He is one of the giants of literature, whose masterpieces are alreadyclassics; and this position is unaffected by the various judgmentsthat may be formed either of his critical or of his practical wisdom. 

The lack then of a due balance of qualities and acquirements in somany authors, and we may add other artists, is a cause, but nojustification, of that belittlement and even distrust of the literaryside of education which are on the whole marked features of theEnglish attitude to-day. But a more potent cause and a realjustification of this attitude is the neglect of due balance ofqualities and acquirements by so many educators and educationalsystems. Great educators have themselves rarely been narrow-mindedmen; but the traditions they have founded have gone the way of alltraditions. 

What begins as an inspiration hardens into a formula. The ideals ofthe Renascence were caricatured in their offspring of the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries. Not only did the evolution of modern lifewith its cities, its printing press, its gunpowder, its steam engineand the rest, destroy the need of the well-to-do to be trained in thepractical arts of chivalry, of the chase, of husbandry, even of musicand design, so that the bodily activities of boys became relegated tothe sphere of mere games and pastimes; but as books usurped more andmore of the hours of boyhood, so the instructors of youth fell moreand more into the fatally easy path of formal and grammaticaltreatment. The subject-matter of education was indeed literature, andthe very noblest literatures, mainly those of Greece and Rome: butthere was little of literary or humane interest about the study of it;its meaning and spirit were concealed from all but the few who couldsurmount the fences of linguistic pedantry and artificial techniquewith which it was surrounded. 

I do not know when the expression "the dead languages" was invented:but certainly Latin and Greek have been treated as very dead languagesby the great majority of teachers for a very long time. And as "modernsubjects, " history, geography, modern languages and literatures, gradually thrust their way into the curriculum, each was subjected asfar as possible to the same mummification. There is a theory stillwidely held among teachers that the value of a subject or of a methodof instruction depends upon the amount of drudgery which it involvesor the degree of repulsion which it excites. The theory rests upon aconfusion between the ideas of discipline and punishment, which itselfis probably due to the strongly Judaistic tone of our so-calledChristianity. At any rate, far too many schoolmasters suffer fromconscientious scruples about allowing the spirits of freedom, initiative, curiosity, enjoyment, to blow through their class-rooms. 

There has been, always to some extent, but with gathering force inrecent years, a natural revolt against this mixture of puritanism, scholasticism, and dilettantism, which made the intellectual side ofpublic school education such a failure except for the few who wereborn with the spoon of scholarship in their mouths. The irruption ofthat turbulent rascal, natural science, has perhaps had most to dowith humanising our humanistic studies. It was a great step when boyswho could not make verses were allowed to make if it was but a smell;and even breaking a test-tube once in a while is more educative thanbreaking the gender-rules every day of the week. Many of my friends, who label themselves humanists, are in a panic about this, and lookupon me sadly as a renegade because I, who owe almost everything to a"classical education, " am ready (they think) to sell the pass of"compulsory Greek" to a horde of money-grubbing barbarians who willturn our flowery groves of Academe into mere factories of commercialefficiency. But fear is a treacherous guide. They are the victims ofthat abstract generalisation of which I spoke at the outset. I checktheir forebodings by reference to concrete personalities, myself, mychildren, and the hundreds of boys I have known. And I see more andmore plainly, as I study the infinite variety of our mental lineamentsand the common stock of human nature and civilised society whichunites us, that literature is a permanent and indispensable and eveninevitable element in our education; and that moreover it can onlyhave free scope and growth in the expanding personality of the youngin a due and therefore a varying harmony with other interests. I andmy children and my schoolboys have eyes and ears and hands--and evenlegs! We have, as Aristotle rightly saw, an appetite for knowledge, and that appetite cannot be satisfied, though it may be choked, by asole diet of literature. We have desires of many kinds demandingsatisfaction and requiring government. We have a sense of duty andvocation: we know that we and our families must eat to live and tocarry on the race. We resent, in our inarticulate way, these sneers atour Philistinism, commercialism, athleticism, materialism, fromdim-eyed pedants on the one hand and superior persons on the other, who have evidently forgotten, if they ever saw, the whole purport ofthat Greek literature the name of which they take in vain. No! _Lalittérature est une chose qui touche à toutes choses_; but if we areto shut our eyes to all the "things" which evoke it, it becomes whatit is to so many, whose education has been in name predominantlyliterary, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifyingnothing. "

(2) The argument has already insensibly led us to treat by implicationthe second, and indeed the third of our assumed objects. But in ourmodern insistence upon social relations and citizenship--a very properinsistence, still too much warped and hampered by selfishness andprejudice--there is a real danger of our forgetting how much of ourconscious existence is passed, in a true sense, at leisure and alone. It is our ideal on the one side to be "all things to all men": and forany approach to this ideal, as we have seen, the knowledge andsympathy born of literature are indispensable. But on the other sideno man or woman is completely fitted out without provision for theblank spaces, the passages and waiting rooms, as it were, to saynothing of the actual "recreation rooms" of the house of life. Andthere is no provision so abundant, so accessible to all, so permanent, so independent of fortune, and at once so mellowing and fortifying, asliterature. Our happiness or discontent depends far more, than onanything else, on the habitual occupation of our mind when it is freeto choose its occupation. And, since thought is instantaneous, eventhe busiest of us has far more of that freedom than he knows what todo with unless he has a mental treasury from which he can at willbring forth things new and old. It is impossible to exaggerate theimportance of hobbies in a man's own life--and of course indirectly inhis relations with his fellows. A single hobby is dangerous. You rideit to death or it becomes your master. You need at least a pair ofthem in the stable. What they are must depend, you say, upon thetemperament, the bent of the individual. True: but our mainresponsibility as educators consists in our "bending of the twig. " Itis not temperament nor destiny which renders so many men and womenunable to fill their leisure moments with anything more exhilaratingthan, gossip, grumbling, or perpetual bridge. Perhaps the greatestblessing which a parent or a teacher can confer on a boy or girl isdiscreet, unpriggish, and unpatronising, encouragement and guidance inthe discovery and development of hobbies: and if I may venture on apiece of advice to anyone who needs it, I should say: "Try to securethat everyone grows up with at least two hobbies; and whatever one ofthem may be, let the other be literature, or some branch ofliterature. "

 Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow. 

(3) At this point I can imagine someone, who recognises the importanceof literary culture in the equipment of a man or woman of the world, and perhaps feels even more strongly the truth summed up in theselines of Wordsworth, expressing the doubt whether the second at leastof these objects can be secured, or will not rather be precluded, byadmitting the study of literature as such into the school curriculum. This doubt, which I have heard expressed by many lovers of literature, notably by the late Canon Ainger, is not lightly to be disregarded. Itis to be met, however, in my opinion, by keeping clearly before oureyes the third of the objects which we assumed to be aimed at byliterary studies as a branch of education--the immediate pleasure ofthe student. The two objects which we have already discussed areulterior objects, which should be part of the fundamental faith ofthe teacher; but while the teacher is in contact with his pupils theyshould be forgotten in the glowing conviction that the study ofliterature is, at that very moment, the most delightful thing in theworld. Of course we all know, or should know, that this is the onlyattitude of mind for the best teaching in any subject whatever. Ittakes a great deal more than enthusiasm to make a competent teacher;and it is easy to prepare pupils successfully for almost any writtenexamination without any enthusiasm for anything except success. But, cramming apart, a bored teacher is inevitably a boring one: and whileunfortunately the converse is not universally true and an enthusiasticteacher may fail to communicate his enthusiasm, yet it is quitecertain that you cannot communicate enthusiasm if you are notpossessed of it. 

But this enthusiasm, indispensable for the best teaching of anything, is, so to speak, doubly indispensable for even competent teaching ofliterature. On the one hand the ulterior objects of the study, ofwhich I have tried to indicate the importance, are of an impalpablekind. I doubt if there is any subject of the curriculum which it wouldbe so difficult to commend to an uninterested pupil by an appeal tosimple utilitarian motives. On the other hand there clings toliterature, and particularly to poetry, which is the quintessence ofliterature, an air of pleasure-seeking, of holiday, of irresponsibilityand detachment from the work-a-day world, which must captivate thestudent, or else the study itself will seem very poor fooling comparedwith football or hockey. If the attitude of the teacher reflects the oldquestion of the Latin Grammar "Why should I teach you letters?" he wouldbetter turn to some other subject which his pupils will more easilyrecognise as appropriate to school hours. 

 What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her--

unless indeed he be a candidate for Responsions?

"Ah! it is just as I expected, " says my friend Orbilius at this point:"this literature-lesson of yours is to be mere play, a 'soft-option'for our modern youth, who is not to be made to stand up to the tusslewith Latin prose or riders in geometry. " Softly, my friend! It isquite true that those twin engines of education, classics andmathematics, are adapted partly by long practice, but partly, as I toobelieve, by their very nature, to discipline the youthful mind tohabits of intellectual honesty, of accuracy, of industry andperseverance. It is true that they accomplish some of thisdiscipline--though at what a cost!--in the hands of indifferentteachers. It is true that every other subject of the usual curriculumis much more obviously liable than they are to the dangers ofidleness, unreality, false pretence; and that the scoffs, forinstance, about "playing with test-tubes, " "tracing maps, " "dishing uphistory notes, " are in fact too often deserved. But in the firstplace, if the object to be attained is a worthy one, it is ourbusiness to face the dangers of the road, and not to give up theobject. If a knowledge and love of literature is part of thebirthright of our children, and a part which, as things are, verymany of them will never obtain away from school, then we teachers muststrive to give it them, even if the process seems shockingly frivolousto the grammarian or the geometrician. And, secondly, it is not truethat the study of literature, even in the mother tongue, cannot be adiscipline and a delight together. The two are very far fromincompatible: indeed that discipline is most effective which is almostor quite unconsciously self-imposed in the joyous exercise of one'sown faculties. The genuine footballer and the genuine scholar willboth agree with Ferdinand the lover, that

 There be some sports are painful, and their labour Delight in them sets off. 

And the "labour" of the boy or girl who is really wrapped up in a playof Shakespeare or is striving to express the growing sense of beautyin fitting forms of language, is no less truly spiritual disciplinebecause it is felt not as pain but as interest and delight. 

It is fortunately no part of my business to endeavour to instructteachers in the methods of imparting the love and knowledge ofliterature. But the value of literary studies in education depends somuch upon the spirit in which they are pursued that I may perhaps bepermitted a few more words on the practical side of the subject. Ihave already repeated the truism that no one can impart enthusiasm whois not himself possessed of it: but even the lover of literaturesometimes lacks that clear consciousness of aim, and that sympatheticunderstanding of the personality of his pupil; which are bothessential to successful teaching. Just as the clever young graduate istempted to dictate his own admirable history notes to a class of boys, or to puzzle them with the latest theories in archaeology orphilosophy, so the literary teacher is apt to dazzle his pupils withbrilliant but to them unintelligible criticism, or to surfeit themwith literary history, or to impose upon them an inappropriateliterary diet because it happens to suit his maturer taste or even hiscaprice. No one is likely to deny that such errors are possible; but Ishould not venture to speak so decidedly, if I were not aware ofhaving too often fallen into them myself. And the only safeguard forthe teacher is the familiar "Keep your eye on the object"--and that ina double sense. We must have a clear conception of our aim, and also aliving sympathy with our pupils. I have attempted to indicate the aim, the equipment of boy or girl for civilised life and for spiritualenjoyment. It will be sympathy with our pupils which will chieflydictate both the method and the material of our instruction. In theearly stages of education this sympathy is generally to be foundeither in parents, if they are fond of literature, or in the teacher, who is usually of the more sympathetic sex. The stories and poetryoffered to children nowadays seem to be, as a rule, sympathetically, if sometimes rather uncritically, chosen. The importance of voice andear in receiving the due impression of literature is recognised; andthe value of the child's own expression of its imaginations and itssense of rhythm and assonance is understood. Probably more teachersthan Mr. Lamborn supposes would heartily subscribe to the faith whichglows in his delightful little book _The Rudiments of Criticism_, though there must be very few who would not be stimulated by readingit. 

It is when we come to the middle stage, at any rate of boyhood--for ofgirls' schools I am not qualified to speak--that there is a good dealto be done before the cultivation of literary taste, and all that thiscarries with it, will be successfully pursued. In the past, the Latinand Greek classics were, for the few who really absorbed them, both apotent inspiration and an unrivalled discipline in taste: but it isnoteworthy how few even of the _élite_ acquired and retained thatlively and generous love of literature which would have enabled themto sow seeds of the divine fire far and wide--"of joy in widestcommonalty spread. " Considering the intensity with which the classicshave been studied in the old universities and public schools of theUnited Kingdom, the fine flower of scholarship achieved, the suretouch of style and criticism, one cannot help being amazed at the lowstandard of literary culture in the rank and file of the classes fromwhich this _élite_ has been drawn. How rare has been the power, oreven apparently the desire, of a Bradley or a Verrall or a Murray, tocarry the flower of their classical culture into the fields of modernliterary study! And how few and fumbling the attempts of ordinaryclassical teachers to train their pupils in the appreciation of ourEnglish literature!

In recent years a new type of literary teachers has been rising, whoowe little, at any rate directly, to the old classical training; andalthough their zeal is often undisciplined and "not according toknowledge, " with them lies the future hope of literary training in ourschools. They bring to their task an enthusiasm which was too oftenlacking in the "grand old fortifying classical curriculum"; but it isto be hoped that, as the importance of their subject becomes more andmore recognised, they will achieve a method which will embody all thatwas valuable, while discarding much that was narrow and pedantic, inclassical teaching. And in particular may they all realise, as manyalready do, what the classical teacher, however unconsciously, held asan axiom, that in order to enter into the spirit of literature, toappreciate style, to understand in any true sense the meaning of greatauthor's, it is not enough for pupils to listen and to read, and thenperhaps to write essays about what they have heard and read. They mustalso _make_ something, exercise that creative, and at the same timeimitative, artistic faculty, which surely is the motive power of mostof our progress, at least in early life. Nothing has struck me moreforcibly than the intense interest which boys will take in their owncrude efforts at writing a poem or a story or essay, while they arestill quite unable to appreciate with discrimination, or even to enjoywith any sustained feeling, the poetry or prose of the great masters. Not that there is anything surprising in this. I know very well thatit was writing Latin verses that taught me to appreciate Virgil, andwriting juvenile epics that led me up to Milton. But it is an order ofprogress which we schoolmasters are apt to overlook, expecting ourpupils to appreciate what we know to be good work before they havethat elementary, but most fruitful, experience which can only comefrom handling the tools of the craft. The creative and imitativeimpulse will die down in the great majority; and we shall not make themistake of continuing to exact formal "composition" from maturerpupils, who no longer find it anything but a drag upon their progressalong the unfolding vistas of knowledge and appreciation. Our objectis not to increase the number of writers, already far too large, butto increase the number of readers, which can never be too large, toraise the standard of literary taste, and so to spread pure enjoymentand all the benefits to society which joy, and joy alone, confers. Inspired with such an aim, common sense and sympathy will enable us toovercome the difficulties and avoid the pitfalls which undoubtedlybeset the teaching of that most necessary, most delightful, but mostelusive and imponderable subject, the appreciation of literature. 

VII

THE PLACE OF SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

By W. BATESON

Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution

That secondary education in England fails to do what it might isscarcely in dispute. The magnitude of the failure will be appreciatedby those who know what other countries accomplish at a fraction of thecost. Beyond the admission that something is seriously wrong there islittle agreement. We are told that the curriculum is too exclusivelyclassical, that the classes are too large, the teaching too dull, theboys too much away from home, the examination-system too oppressive, athletics overdone. All these things are probably true. Each causecontributes in its degree to the lamentable result. Yet, as it seemsto me, we may remove them all without making any great improvement. All the circumstances may be varied, but that intellectual apathywhich has become so marked a characteristic of English life, especially of English public and social life, may not improbablycontinue. Why nations pass into these morbid phases no one can tell. The spirit of the age, that "polarisation of society" as Tarde[1]used to call it, in a definite direction, is brought about by no causethat can be named as yet. It will remain beyond volitional control atleast until we get some real insight into social physiology. That theattitude or pose of the average Englishman towards education, knowledge, and learning is largely a phenomenon of infectiousimitation we know. But even if we could name the original, perhapsreal, perhaps fictional, person--for in all likelihood there was suchan one--whom English society in its folly unconsciously selected as amodel, the knowledge would advance us little. The psychology ofimitation is still impenetrable and likely to remain so. The simpleinterpretation of our troubles as a form of sloth--a travelling alonglines of least resistance--can scarcely be maintained. For first therehave been times when learning and science were the fashion. Whethersociety benefited directly therefrom may, in passing, be doubted, butcertainly learning did. Secondly there are plenty of men who under thepressure of fashion devote much effort to the improvement of theirform in fatuous sports, which otherwise applied would go aconsiderable way in the improvement of their minds and in wideningtheir range of interests. 

Of late things have become worse. In the middle of the nineteenthcentury a perfunctory and superficial acquaintance with recentscientific discovery was not unusual among the upper classes, and thescientific world was occasionally visited even by the august. Theseslender connections have long since withered away. This decline in thepublic estimation of science and scientific men has coincided with agreat increase both in the number of scientific students and in theprovision for teaching science. It has occurred also in the periodduring which something of the full splendour and power of science hasbegun to be revealed. Great regions of knowledge have been penetratedby the human mind. The powers of man over nature have been multiplieda hundredfold. The fate of nations hangs literally on the issue ofcontemporary experiments in the laboratory; but those who govern theEmpire are quite content to know nothing of all this. Intercommunicationbetween government departments and scientific advisers has of coursemuch developed. That, even in this country, was inevitable. Otherwisethe Empire might have collapsed long since. Experts in the sciencesare from time to time invited to confer with heads of Departments andeven Cabinet Ministers, explaining to them, as best they may, therudiments of their respective studies, but such occasionalnight-school talks to the great are an inadequate recognition of theposition of science in a modern State. Science is not a material to bebought round the corner by the dram, but the one permanent andindispensable light in which every action and every policy must bejudged. 

To scientific men this is so evident that they are unable to imaginewhat the world looks like to other people. They cannot realise that bya majority of even the educated classes the phenomena of nature andthe affairs of mankind are still seen through the old screens ofmystery and superstition. The man of science regards nature as ingreat and ever increasing measure a soluble problem. For the laymansuch inquiries are either indifferent and somewhat absurd, or, if theyattract his attention at all, are interesting only as possible sourcesof profit. I suspect that the distinction between these two classes ofmind is not to any great degree a product of education. 

It is contemporary commonplace that if science were more prominent inour educational system everybody would learn it and things would comeall right. That interest in science would be extended is probable. There is in the population a residuum of which we will speak later, who would profit by the opportunity; but that the congenitallyunscientific, the section from which the heads of government temporaland spiritual, the lawyers, administrators, politicians, the classesupon whose minds the public life of this country almost whollydepends, would by imbibition of scientific diet at any period of life, however early, be essentially altered seems in a high degree unlikely. Of the converse case we have long experience, and I would ask thosewho entertain such sanguine expectations, whether the results ofadministering literature to scientific boys give much encouragement totheir views. This consideration brings us to the one hard, physiological fact that should form the foundation of all educationalschemes: the congenital diversity of the individual types. Educationhas too long been regarded as a kind of cookery: put in such and suchingredients in given proportions and a definite product will emerge. But living things have not the uniformity which this theory ofeducation assumes. Our population is a medley of many kinds which willcontinue heterogeneous, to whatever system of education they aresubmitted, just as various types of animals maintain their severalcharacteristics though nourished on identical food, or as you may seevarious sorts of apples remaining perfectly distinct though grafted onthe same stock. Their diversity is congenital. 

According to the proposal of the reformers the natural sciences shouldbe universally taught and be given "capital importance" in theexaminations for the government services, but, cordially as we mayapprove the suggestion, we ought to consider what exactly its adoptionis likely to effect. The intention of the proposal is doubtless thatour public servants, especially the highest of them, shall, whilepreserving the great qualities they now possess, add also a knowledgeof science and especially scientific habits of mind. Such is the"ample proposition that hope makes. " Does experience of men accordwith it at all? Education, whether we like it or not, is a selectiveagency. I doubt whether the change proposed will sensibly alter thecharacters of the group on whom our choice at present falls. Rather, if forced upon an unwilling community, must it act by substitutinganother group. The most probable result would not be that the type ofmen who now fill great positions would become scientific, but ratherthat their places would be taken by men of an altogether distinctmental type. At the present time these two types of men meet butlittle. They scarcely know each other. Their differences are profound, affecting thoughts, ways of looking at things, and mental interests ofevery kind. If either could for a moment see the world with the visionof the other he would be amazed, but to do so he would need at leastto be born again, and probably, as Samuel Butler remarked, ofdifferent parents. No doubt the abler man of either type could learnwith more or less effort or unreadiness the subject-matter andprinciples of the other's business, but any one who has watched thehabits of the two classes will perceive that for them in any realsense to exchange interests, or that either should adopt the scheme ofproportion which the other assigns to the events of nature and oflife, a metamorphosis well nigh miraculous must be presupposed. 

The Bishop of London speaking lately on behalf of the National Missionsaid that nature helped him to believe in God, and as evidence for hisbelief referred to the fact that we are not "blown off" this earth asit rushes through space, declaring that this catastrophe had beenaverted because "Some one" had wrapped seventy miles of atmosphereround our planet[2]. Does any one think that the Bishop's slip was infact due to want of scientific teaching at Marlborough? His chances ofknowing about Sir Isaac Newton, etc. , etc. , have been as good as thoseof many familiar with the accepted version. I would rather supposethat such sublunary problems had not interested him in the least, andthat he no more cared how we happen to stick on the earth's surfacethan St Paul cared how a grain of wheat or any other seed germinatesbeneath it, when he similarly was betrayed into an unfortunateillustration. 

So too on the famous occasion--always cited in these debates--when aHome Secretary defended the Government for having permitted theimportation of fats into Germany on the ground that the discovery thatglycerine could be made from fat was a recent advance in chemistry, hewas not showing the defects of a literary education so much as a wantof interest in the problems of nature, and the subject-matter ofscience at large. It is to be presumed indeed that neither fats, norglycerine, nor the dependent problem how living bodies are related tothe world they inhabit, had ever before seemed to him interesting. Norcan we suppose they would, even if chemistry were substituted forGreek in Responsions. 

The difficulty in obtaining full recognition for science lies deeperthan this. It is a part of public opinion or taste which may wellsurvive changes in the educational system. Blunders about science likethose illustrated above are soon excused. Few think much the worse ofthe perpetrators, whereas a corresponding obliviousness to language, history, literature, and indeed to learning other than their own whichwe of the scientific fraternity have agreed to condone in our membersis incompatible with public life of a high order. Both classes havetheir disabilities. That of the scientific side is well expressed inan incident which befell the late Professor Hales. Examining in theLittle-Go _viva voce_, he asked a candidate, with reference to someline in a Greek play, what passage in Shakespeare it recalled to him, and received the answer "Please, sir, I am a mathematical man. " Some, no doubt, would rather ignore gravitation. When, for example, onehears, as I did not long since, several scientific students own inperfect sincerity that they could not recall anything about Ananiasand Sapphira and another, more enlightened, say that he was sureAnanias was a name for a liar though he could not tell why, one isdriven to admit that ignorance of this special but not uncommon kinddoes imply more than inability to remember an old legend. We may bereluctant to confess the fact, but though most scientific men havesome recreation, often even artistic in nature, we have with rareexceptions withdrawn from the world in which letters, history and thearts have immediate value, and simple allusions to these topics findus wanting. Of the two kinds of disability which is the more grave?Truly gross ignorance of science darkens more of a man's mentalhorizon, and in its possible bearing on the destinies of a race is farmore dangerous than even total blindness to the course of humanhistory and endeavour; and yet it is difficult to question the popularverdict that to know nothing of gravitation though ridiculous isvenial, while to know nothing of Ananias is an offence which can neverbe forgiven. 

That is the real difficulty. The people of this country havedefinitely preferred the unscientific type, holding the othervirtually in contempt. Their choice may be right or wrong, but that itis reversible seems unlikely. Such revolutions in public opinion arerare events. Democracy moreover inevitably worships and is swayed bythe spoken word. As inevitably, the range and purposes of sciencedaily more and more transcend the comprehension--even the educatedcomprehension--of the vulgar, who will of course elevate the nimbleand versatile, speaking a familiar language, above dull andinarticulate natural philosophers. 

In these discussions there is a disposition to forget how very largelynatural science is already included in the educational curriculum bothat schools and universities. Schools subsidised by the Board ofEducation are obliged to provide science-teaching. The public schoolshave equipment, in some cases a superb equipment, for teaching atleast physics and chemistry. At the newer universities there are greatand vigorous schools of science. Of the old universities Cambridgestands out as a chief centre of scientific activity. In severalbranches of science Cambridge is without question pre-eminent. Theendowments both of the university and the colleges are freely used forthe advancement of the sciences. Not only in these material ways arescientific studies in no sense neglected, but the position of thesciences is recognised and even envied by those who follow other kindsof learning. The scientific schools of Cambridge form perhaps thedominant force among the resident body of the university, and exceptby virtue of some great increase in the endowments, it would beimpossible to extend further the scientific side of Cambridge andstill maintain other forms of intellectual activity in such proportionas to preserve that healthy co-ordination which is the life of a greatuniversity. 

At Oxford the case is no doubt very different. The measure in whichthe sciences are esteemed appears only too plainly in the smallproportion of Fellowships filled by men of science. Progress hasnevertheless begun. At the remarkable Conference called in May, 1916, to protest against the neglect of science it was noticeable that thespeakers were, in overwhelming majority, Oxford men[3]. 

Among the educational institutions of England there is no generalneglect to provide teaching of natural science and much of thelanguage used in reference to the problem of reform is not really inaccord with fact. Probably no boy able to afford a good secondaryschool, certainly none able to proceed to a university, is debarredfrom scientific teaching merely because it does not "form an integralpart" of the curriculum. This alone suffices to prove that the realcause of the deplorable neglect of science is to be sought elsewhere. The fundamental difficulty is that which has been already indicated, that public taste and judgment deliberately prefers the type known asliterary, or as it might with more propriety be designated, "vocal. "In the schools there is no lack of science teaching, but the smallpercentage of boys whose minds develop early and whose generalcapacity for learning and aptitude for affairs mark them out asleaders, rarely have much instinct for science, and avoid suchteaching, finding it irksome and unsatisfying. These it is, who goingafterwards to the universities, in preponderating numbers to Oxford, make for themselves a congenial atmosphere, disturbed only by faintripples of that vast intellectual renascence in which the new shape ofcivilisation is forming. With self-complacency unshaken, they assumein due course charge of Church and State, the Press, and in generalthe leadership of the country. As lawyers and journalists they do ourtalking for us, let who will do the thinking. Observe that theirstrength lies in the possession of a special gift, which under theconditions of democratic government has a prodigious opportunity. Uncomfortable as the reflection may be, it is not to be denied thatthe countries in which science has already attained the greatestinfluence and recognition in public affairs are Germany and Japan, where the opinions of the ignorant are not invited. But facts must berecognised, and our government is likely to remain in the hands ofthose who have the gift of speech. A general substitution ofscientific men for the "vocal" could scarcely be achieved, even if thechange were desirable. The utmost limit of success which theconditions admit is some inoculation of scientific interest and ideasupon the susceptible members of the classes already preferred. That alarge proportion of those persons are in the biological senseresistant to all such influences must be expected. Granting howeverthat a section perhaps even the majority, of our [Greek: beltistoi]may prove unamenable to the influences of science no one can doubtthat under the present system of education a proportion of notunintelligent boys in practice have little option. From earliest youthclassics are offered to them as almost the sole vehicle of education. They do sufficiently well in classics, as they probably would on anyother curriculum, to justify themselves and their advisers in thinkingthat they have made a good beginning to which it is safer to stick. The system has a huge momentum, and so, holding to the "great wheel"that goes up the hill, they let it draw them after. In their protestagainst the monotony of the courses provided for young boys thereformers are right. The trouble is not that science is not taught inthe schools, but that in schools of the highest type, with certainexceptions, the young boys are not offered it. 

Realising the determinism which modern biological knowledge hascompelled us to accept, we suspect that the power of education tomodify the destinies of individuals is relatively small. Abrogatinglarger hopes we recognise education in its two scientific aspects, asa selective agency, but equally as a provision of opportunity. In viewtherefore of the congenital diversity of the individual types, thatprovision should be as diverse and manifold as possible, and the veryfirst essential in an adequate scheme of education is that to theminds of the young something of everything should be offered, somepart of all the kinds of intellectual sustenance in which the minds ofmen have grown and rejoiced. That should be the ideal. Nothing ofvaried stimulus or attraction that can be offered should be withheld. So only will the young mind discover its aptitudes and powers. Thisideal education should bring all into contact with _beauty_ as seenfirst in literature, ancient and modern, with the great models of artand the patterns of nobility of thought and of conduct; and no lessshould it show to all the _truth_ of the natural world, the changelesssystems of the universe, as revealed in astronomy or in chemistry, something too of the truth about life, what we animals really are, what our place and what our powers, a truth ungarbled whether byprudery or mysticism. 

But presented with this ideal the schoolmaster will reply thatsomething of everything means nothing _thorough_. I know the objectionand what it commonly stands for. It is the cloak and pretext for thataccursed pedantry and cant which turns every sort of teaching to ablight. Thoroughness is the excuse for giving boys grammar andaccidence in the name of Greek: diagrams, formulae and numericalexamples in the name of science. Stripped of disguise this love ofthoroughness is nothing but an indolent resolve to make things easyfor the teacher, and, worse still, for the examiner. Live teaching ishard work. It demands continual freshness and a mind alert. Thedullest man can hear irregular verbs, and with the book he knowswhether they are said right or wrong, but to take a text and showwhat the passage means to the world, to reconstruct the scene and theconditions in which it was written, to show the origins and the fruitsof ideas or of discoveries, demand qualities of a very differentorder. The plea for thoroughness may no doubt be offered in perfectsincerity. There are plenty of men, especially among those who desirethe office of a pedagogue, whose field of vision is constricted to aslit. If they were painters their work would be in the slang of theday, "tight. " One small group of facts they see hard and sharp, without atmosphere or value. Their own knowledge having no capacityfor extension, no width or relationship to the world at large, theycannot imagine that breadth in itself may be a merit. Adepts in apetty erudition without vital antecedents or consequences, they wouldwillingly see the world shrivel to the dimensions of their ownlandscape. 

Anticipating here the applause of the reforming party, to avoidmisapprehension let it be expressly observed that pedantry of thissort is in no sense the special prerogative of teachers of classics. We meet it everywhere. Among teachers of science the type abounds, andfrom the papers set in any Natural Sciences Tripos, not to speak ofscholarship examinations of every kind, it would be possible toextract question after question that ought never to have been set, referring to things that need never have been taught, and knowledgethat no one but a pedant would dream of carrying in his head for aweek. 

The splendid purpose which science serves is the inculcation ofprinciple and balance, not facts. There is something horrible andterrifying in the doctrine so often preached, reiterated of course byspeaker after speaker at the "Neglect of Science" meeting, thatscience is to be preferred because of its utility. If the choice werereally between dead classics and dead science, or if science is to bevivified by an infusion of commercial, utilitarian spirit, then athousand times rather let us keep to the classics as the staple ofeducation. They at least have no "use. " At least they hold the keys tothe glorious places, to the fulness of literature and to thethoughtful speech of all kindred nations, nor are they demeaned withsordid, shop-keeper utility. This was plainly in the mind of the PoetLaureate, who speaking at the meeting I have referred to, said wellthat "a merely utilitarian science can never win the spiritual respectof mankind. " The main objection that the humanists make to theintroduction of natural science as a necessary subject of education, is, he declared, that science is not spiritual, that it does not workin the sphere of ideas. He went on very properly to show how perverseis such a representation of science, but, alas, in furtherrecommendation of science as a safe subject of instruction he addedthat the antagonism of science to religion is ended, and that thecontest had been a passing phase. Reading this we may wonder whetherwe are in fairness entitled to Dr Bridges's approval. "Tastes sweetthe water with such specks of earth?" Since he spoke of the"unscientific attitude" of Professor Huxley as a thing of the past, candour obliges us to insist emphatically that the struggle continuesand must perpetually be renewed. Huxley was opposing the teaching ofscience to that of revelation. In these days the ground has shifted, and supernatural teachings make preferably their defence by an appealto intuition and other obscure phenomena which can be trusted to defyinvestigation. Against all such apocryphal glosses of evidential truthscience protests with equal vehemence, and were Huxley here he wouldtreat Bergson and his allies with the same scorn and contumely that hemeted out to the Bishop of Oxford on the notorious occasion to whichDr Bridges made reference. As well might we decorate our writings withPlantin title-pages, showing the author embraced by angels andinspiring muses, as recommend ourselves in these disguises. 

Agnosticism is the very life and mainspring of science. Not merely asto the supernatural but as to the natural world must science believenothing save under compulsion. Little of value has a man got fromscience who has not learned to be slow of faith. Those early lessonsin the study of the natural world will be the best which most franklydeclare our ignorance, exciting the mind to attack the unknown byshowing how soon the frontier of knowledge is reached. "We don't know"should be ever in the mouth of the teacher, followed sometimes by "wemay find out yet. " Not merely to the investigator but to the pupil theinterest of science is strongest in the growing edges of knowledge. The student should be transported thither with the briefest possibledelay. Details of those parts of science which by present means ofinvestigation are worked out and reduced to general expressions aredull and lifeless. Many and many a boy has been repelled, gatheringfrom what he hears in class that science is a catalogue of names andfacts interminable. 

In childhood he may have felt curiosity about nature and the commonimpulse to watch and collect, but when he begins scientific lessons hediscovers too often that they relate not even to the kind of factwhich nature is for him, or to the subjects of his early curiosity andwonder, but to things that have no obvious interest at all, measurements of mechanical forces, reaction-formulae, and similarmaterials. 

All these, it is true, man has gradually accumulated with infinitelabour; upon them, and of such materials has the great fabric ofscience been reared: but to insist that the approaches to scienceshall be open only to those who will surmount these gratuitousobstacles is mere perversity. Men's minds do not work in that way. Howmany would discover the grandeur of a Gothic building if they wereprevented from seeing one until they could work out stresses andstrains, date mouldings, and even perhaps cut templates? Most of us, to be sure, enjoy the cathedrals more when we acquire some suchknowledge, and those who are to be architects must acquire it, but wecan scarcely be astonished if beginners turn away in disgust fromscience presented on those terms. 

It is from considerations of this kind that I am led to believe thatfor most boys the easiest and most attractive introduction to scienceis from the biological side. Admittedly chemistry is the morefundamental study, and some rudimentary chemical notions must beimparted very early, but if the framework subject-matter be animalsand plants, very sensible progress in realising what science means andaims at doing will have been made before the things of daily life areleft behind. These first formal lessons in science should continue andextend the boy's own attempts to find out how the world is made. 

I shall be charged with running counter both to common sense and toauthority in expressing parenthetically the further conviction that, in biology at least, laboratory work is now largely overdone. Whetherthis is so at schools I cannot tell, but at the universities wholemornings and afternoons spent in making elaborate preparations, drawings and series of sections, are frequently wasted. These courseswere devised with the highest motives. Students were to "find outeverything for themselves. " Generally they are doing nothing of thekind. It may have been so once, but with text-books perfected andteaching stereotyped, the more industrious are slavishly verifyingwhat has been verified repeatedly, or at best acquiring manipulativeskill. The rest are doing nothing whatever. They would be betteremployed taking a walk, devilling for some investigator, browsing inmuseums or libraries, or even arguing with each other. Certainly a fewlessons in the use of indexes and books of reference would be far morevaluable. Students of every grade must of course do some laboratorywork, and all should see as much material as possible. My protest issolely against those long, torpid hours compulsorily given to labourwhich will lead to nothing of novelty, and serves only to teach whatcan be got readily in other ways. There are a few whose souls cravesuch employment. By all means let them follow it. 

But whatever is good for maturer students, biology for schoolboysshould be of a less academic cast. 

The natural history of animals and plants has the obvious merit thatit prolongs the inborn curiosity of youth, that its subject-matter isuniversally at hand, accessible in holidays and in the absence ofteachers or laboratories, and best of all that through biologicalstudy the significance of science appears immediately, disclosing thetrue story of man's relation to the world. From natural history thetransition to the other sciences, especially to chemistry and physics, is easy and again natural. In the study of life many of thefundamental conceptions of those sciences are met with on thethreshold, and boys whose aptitudes are rather of the physical orderwill at once feel the impulse to follow nature from that aspect. Biology is the more inclusive study. A man may be a good chemist andmiss the broad meaning of science altogether, being sometimes indeedmore devoid of such comprehension than many a philosopher fresh fromClassical Greats. 

In appealing for a progress from the general to the particular I amnot blind to the dangers. Biology for the young readily degeneratesinto a mawkish "nature-study, " or all-for-the-best claptrap aboutadaptation, but a sure remedy is the strong tonic of agnosticism, teaching one of the best lessons science has to offer, the resoluterejection of authority. 

Some take comfort in the hope that all subjects may be taught asbranches of science, but the fact that must permanently postponearrival at this educational Utopia is that a great proportion ofteachers are not and can never be made scientific. Nothing proceedingfrom such persons will by the working of any schedule, regulation, oreven Order of the Board be ever made to bear any colourableresemblance to science. Moreover as has already been indicated, thereare plenty of pupils also who will flourish and probably reach theirhighest development taught by unscientific men, pupils whose mindswould be sterilised or starved by that very nourishment which to ourthinking is the more generous. Were we a homogeneous population onediet for all might be justifiable, but as things are, we should offerthe greatest possible variety. 

From Rousseau onwards educationists, deriving their views, I suppose, from some metaphysical or theological conception of human equality, speak continually of the "mind of the child" as if the young of ourspecies conformed to a single type. If the general spread ofbiological knowledge serves merely to expose that foolish assumptionthere would be progress to record. Dr Blakeslee[4], a well-knownAmerican biologist, lately gave a good illustration of this. In apaper on education he showed photographs of two varieties of maize. The ripe fruits of both are colourless if their sheaths be unbroken. The one, if exposed to the light before ripening, by rupture of itssheath, turns red. The second, otherwise indistinguishable, acquiresno red colour though uncovered to the full sun. If these maizes weretwo boys, not improbably the one would be caned for failing to respondto treatment so efficacious in the case of the other. When we hearthat such a man has developed too exclusively one side of his nature, with what propriety do we assume that he had any other side todevelop? Or when we say that such-and-such a course of study tends tomake boys too exclusively literary, or scientific, or what not, do wenot really mean that it provides too exclusively for those whoseaptitudes are of these respective kinds? Living in the midst of amongrel population we note the divers powers of our fellows and wethoughtlessly imagine that if something different had happened to us, we can't say what, we should have been able to rival them. A littlehonest examination of our powers shows how vain are such suppositions. The right course is to make some provision for all sorts, sinceunscientific teaching and unscientific persons will remain with usalways. 

Teaching of this universal and undifferentiated sort, provided for allin common, should be continued up to the age at which pupils begin toshow their tastes and aptitudes, in general about 16, after whichstage such latitude of choice should be given as the resources of theschool can provide. 

Of what should the undifferentiated teaching consist? Coming from acultivated home a boy of 10 may be expected to have learned therudiments of Latin, and at least one modern language, preferablyFrench, _colloquially_, arithmetic, outlines of geography, tales fromPlutarch and from other histories. Going to a preparatory school hewill read easy Latin texts _with translations_ and notes; Frenchbooks, geography including the elements of astronomy, beginning alsoalgebra and geometry. At 12 dropping French except perhaps a readingonce a week, he will begin Greek, by means of easy passages again withthe translations beside him, continuing the rest as before. Transferred at 14-1/2 to a public school he will go on with Latin, starting Latin prose, Greek texts, again read fast with translations. He will now have his first formal introduction to science in the guiseof biology, leading up to lessons and demonstrations in chemistry andphysics. At about 16-1/2 he may drop classics _or mathematics_according as his tastes have declared themselves, adding modernlanguages instead, continuing science in all cases, greater or less inamount according to his proclivities. 

Boys with special mathematical ability will of course need specialtreatment. Moreover provision of German for all has avowedly not beenmade. For all it is desirable and for many indispensable. But as thenumber who read it for pleasure, never very large, seems likely todiminish, German may perhaps be reserved as a tool, the use of whichmust be acquired when necessary. 

Such a scheme, I submit, makes no impossible demand on the time-table, allowing indeed many spare hours for accessory subjects such asreadings in English or history. Note the main features of thisprogramme. The time for things worth learning is found by dropping_grammar_ as a subject of special study. There are to be no lessons ingrammar or accidence as such, nor of course any verse compositionsexcept for older boys specialising in classics. _Mathematics_ also istreated as a subject which need not be carried beyond the rudimentsunless mathematical or physical ability is shown. For other boys itleads literally nowhere, being a road impassable. 

All the languages are to be taught as we learn them in later life, when the desire or necessity arises, by means of easy passages withthe translation at our side. Our present practice not only fails toteach languages but it succeeds in teaching how _not_ to learn alanguage. Who thinks of beginning Russian by studying the "aspects" ofthe verbs, or by committing to memory the 28 paradigms which Germangrammarians have devised on the analogy of Latin declensions?Auxiliary verbs are the pedagogue's delight, but who begins Spanish bytrying to discriminate between _tener_ and _haber_, or _ser_ and_estar_, or who learns tables of exceptions to improve his French?These things come by use or not at all. 

If languages are treated not as lessons but as vehicles of speech, andif the authors are read so that we may find out what they say and howthey say it, and at such a pace that we follow the train of thought orthe story, all who have any sense of language at all can attend andwith pleasure too. What chance has a boy of enjoying an author when heknows him only as a task to be droned through, thirty lines at a time?Small blame to the pupil who never discovers that the great authorswere men of like passions with ourselves, that the Homeric songs weremade to be shouted at feasts to heroes full of drink and glory, thatHerodotus is telling of wonders that his friends, and we too, want tohear, that in the tragedies we hear the voice of Sophocles dictating, choked with emotion and tears; that even Roman historians wrotebecause they had something to tell, and Caesar, dull proser that heis, composed the _Commentaries_ not to provide us with style orgrammatical curiosities, but as a record of extraordinary events. Toget into touch with any author he must be read at a good pace, and byreading of that kind there is plenty of time for a boy before hereaches 17 to make acquaintance with much of the best literature bothof Greek and Latin. 

Education must be brought up to date; but if in accomplishing that, welose Greek, it will have been sacrificed to obstinate formalism andpedagogic tradition. The defence of classics as a basis of educationis generally misrepresented by opponents. The unique value of theclassics is not in any begetting of literary style. We are thinking ofreaders not of writers. Much of the best literature is the work ofunlettered men, as they never tire of telling us, but it is for theenjoyment and understanding of books and of the world that continuitywith the past should be maintained. John Bunyan wrote sterling prose, knowing no language but his own. But how much could he read? Whatjudgments could he form? We want also to keep classics and especiallyGreek as the bountiful source of material and of colour, decorationfor the jejune lives of common men. If classics cease to be generallytaught and become the appanage of a few scholars, the gulf between theliterary and the scientific will be made still wider. Milton will needmore explanatory notes than O. Henry. Who will trouble about usscientific students then? We shall be marked off from the beginning, and in the world of laboratories Hector, Antigone and Pericles willsoon share the fate of poor Ananias and Sapphira. 

I come now to the gravest part of the whole question. We plead for thepreservation of literature, especially classical literature, as thestaple of education in the name of beauty and understanding: but noless do we demand science in the name of truth and advancement. Giventhat our demand succeeds, what consequences may we expect? Nothingimmediate, as I fear. In opening the discussion it was argued thateven if scientific knowledge be widely diffused, any great change inthe composition of the ruling classes is scarcely attainable underpresent conditions of social organisation. Even if science stand equalwith classics in examinations for the services the general tenor ofthe public mind will in all likelihood be undisturbed. Yet it is forsuch a revolution that science really calls, and come it will in anycommunity dominated by natural knowledge. Science saves us fromblunders about glycerine, shows how to economise fuel and to makeartificial nitrates, but these, though they decide national destinies, are merely the sheaf of the wave-offering: the harvest is behind. Fornatural knowledge is destined to give man not only a direct control ofthe material world but new interpretations of higher problems. Thoughwe in England make a stand upon the ancient way, peoples elsewherewill move on. Those who have grasped the meaning of science, especially biological science, are feeling after new rules of conduct. The old criteria based on ignorance have little worth. "Rights, "whether of persons or of nations, may be abstractions well-founded inlaw or philosophy, but the modern world sooner or later will annulthem. 

The general ignorance of science has lasted so long that we havevirtually two codes of right and duty, that founded on natural truthand that emanating from tradition, which almost alone finds publicexpression in this country. Whether we look at the cruelty whichpasses for justice in our criminal courts, at the prolongation ofsuffering which custom demands as a part of medical ethics, at thisvery question of education, or indeed at any problem of social life, we see ahead and know that science proclaims wiser and gentler creeds. When in the wider sphere of national policy we read the declaredideals of statesmen, we turn away with a shrug. They bid us exaltnational sentiment as a purifying and redeeming influence, and in thenext breath proclaim that the sole way to avert the ruin now menacingthe world is to guarantee to all nations freedom to develop, "unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid. " So, forsooth, are we to end war. Nature laughs at such dreams. The life of one is the death of another. Where are the teeming populations of the West Indies, where thecivilisations of Mexico or of Peru, where are the blackfellows ofAustralia? Since means of subsistence are limited, the fancy that onegroup can increase or develop save at the expense of another is anillusion, instantly dissipated by appeal to biological fact, nor woulda biologist-statesman look for permanent stability in a multiplicationof competing communities, some vigorous, others worthless, but allgrowing in population. Rather must a people familiar with science seehow small and ephemeral a thing is the pride of nations, knowing thatboth the peace of the world and the progress of civilisation are to besought not by the hardening of national boundaries but in thesubstitution of cosmopolitan for national aspiration. 

[Footnote 1: _Les Lois de l'Imitation_, 1911, p. 87. ]

[Footnote 2: Reported in _Evening Standard_, 11 Sept. 1916. ]

[Footnote 3: Two Cambridge men spoke, one being Lord Rayleigh, theChairman, and ten Oxford men, besides one originally Cambridge, forseveral years an Oxford professor. ]

[Footnote 4: _Journ. Of Heredity_, VIII. 1917, p. 53. ]

VIII

ATHLETICS

By F. B. MALIM

Master of Haileybury College

At a conference held by the Froebel Society in January, 1917, thesubject for discussion was the employment of women teachers in boys'schools. With some of the questions considered, whether women shouldhave shorter hours than men, whether they are capable of enforcingdiscipline, and the like, I am not now concerned; but I was interestedto hear from one speaker after another that a woman was at a realdisadvantage in a boys' school, because she could not take part in thegames. The speakers did not come from the public schools, whosedevotion to athletics constitutes, we are sometimes told, a publicdanger, but mainly from primary and secondary day schools in London. But none the less it was assumed that a boy's games are an essentialpart of his education. The same assumption is made by the managers ofboys' clubs and similar organisations which are endeavouring to carryon the education of boys who have left the elementary schools at theage of fourteen. In spite of the great difficulty of finding groundsto play on in the neighbourhood of great towns, cricket and footballare encouraged by any possible means among the working lads of ourindustrial centres. Games are more and more being regarded as adesirable element in the education of the British boy, and areprovided for him and organised for him by those responsible for hisenvironment. But this is quite a modern development. I have been toldby one who was at Marlborough in the very early days of that school, that so far were the authorities from providing any means of playingcricket, that the boys themselves were obliged to subscribe small sumsfor the purchase of the necessary material. The book containing thenames of the subscribers fell into the hands of the head master, whogated for the term all boys on the list, assuming without inquiry thatthey were the clients of a juvenile bookmaker. 

When we ask why we have come to regard games as a part of a boy'seducation, we shall naturally answer first that a full education isconcerned with the proper development of the body. For this purpose wemay employ the old fashioned gymnastic exercises, the modern Swedishexercises or outdoor games. And of these the greatest is games. "Sofar, " says Dr. Saleeby, "as true race culture is concerned, we shouldregard our muscles merely as servants or instruments of the will. Since we have learnt to employ external forces for our purposes, themere bulk of a muscle is now a matter of little importance. Of theutmost importance, on the other hand, is the power to coordinate andgraduate the activity of our muscles, so that they may become highlytrained servants. This is a matter however not of muscle at all, butof nervous education. Its foundation cannot be laid by mechanicalthings, like dumb-bells and exercises, but by games in which will andpurpose and co-ordination are incessantly employed. In other words theonly physical culture worth talking about is nervous culture. Theprinciples here laid down are daily defied in very large measure inour nurseries, our schools and our barrack yards. The play of a child, spontaneous and purposeful, is supremely human and characteristic. Although when considered from the outside, it is simply a means ofmuscular development, properly considered it is really the means ofnervous development. Here we see muscles used as human muscles shouldbe used, as instruments of mind. In schools the same principles shouldbe recognised. From the biological and psychological point of view, the playing field is immensely superior to the gymnasium[1]. "

It would be a mistake to under-estimate the value of the Swedishsystem of physical exercises. Its object is not the abnormaldevelopment of muscle, but the production of a healthy, alert and wellbalanced body. The military authorities in the last three years havebeen confronted with the problem of restoring promptness of movement, erectness of carriage, poise and flexibility to numbers of men whosemuscles have been given a one-sided development by the constantperformance of one kind of manual work, or have grown flabby by longsitting at a desk, and the task would have been much less successfullytackled without the aid of the Swedish methods. In schools theseexercises may be used with real benefit given two conditions, smallclasses and a really skilled instructor. For the value a boy derivesfrom the exercises, to a very large extent depends upon himself, onthe concentration of his own will. It is almost impossible to makesure in a large class that this concentration is given, and any kindof exercise done without purpose or resolution rapidly degeneratesinto the most useless gesticulations. But though we may use physicalexercises as an aid, I should be sorry to see them ever regarded as asubstitute for games. Even supposing that they were an adequatesubstitute in the development of the body (which I doubt) they cannotclaim to have an effect at all comparable to that of games in thedevelopment of character. Sometimes the most extravagant claims areput forward on behalf of athletics as a school of character, almost asextravagant as are the terms in which at other times the "brutalathlete" is denounced. I don't think it is found by experience thatathletes cherish higher ideals or are more humble-minded than theirless muscular fellows; I doubt if they become more charitable in theirjudgments or more liberal in their giving. We must carefully limit theclaims we make, and then we shall find that we have surer grounds togo on. What virtues can we reasonably suppose to be developed bygames? First I should put physical courage. It certainly requirescourage to collar a fast and heavy opponent at football, to fall onthe ball at the feet of a charging pack or to stand up to fast bowlingon a bumpy wicket. Schoolboy opinion is rightly intolerant of a"funk, " and we should not attach too small a value to this first ofthe manly virtues. Considering as we must the virtues which we are todevelop in a nation, we realise that for the security of the nationcourage in her young men is indispensable. That it has been bred inthe sons of England is attested by the fields of Flanders and thebeaches of Gallipoli. We shall therefore give no heed to those whodecry the danger of some schoolboy games. For we shall remember thatjust as few things that are worth gaining can be won without toil, sothere are some things which can only be won by taking risks. Fewthings are less attractive in a boy than the habit of playing forsafety; in the old prudence is natural and perhaps admirable, in theyoung it is precocious and unlovely. But we need not introduceunnecessary risk by the matching of boys of unequal size and age. Thepractice, for example, of house games in which the boys of one houseplay together, without regard to size or skill, is very much inferiorto an organisation of games by means of "sets, " graded solely by theproficiency which boys have shown. In each set boys are matched withothers whose skill approximates to their own; they are not overpoweredby the strength of older boys and can get the proper enjoyment fromthe display of such skill as they possess. 

And as we desire our games to foster the spirit that faces danger, sowe shall wish them to foster the spirit that faces hardship, thespirit of endurance. That is why I think that golf and lawn tennis arenot fit school games; they are not painful enough. I am afraid weought on the same ground to let racquets go, though for training inalertness and sheer skill, in the nice harmony of eye and handracquets has no equal. But cricket, football, hockey, fives can all bepainful enough; often victory is only to be won by a clinching of theteeth and the sternest resolve to "stick to it" in face of exhaustion. This is the merit of two forms of athletics which have been oftenestthe subject of attack, rowing and running. Both of course should becarefully watched by the school doctor; for both careful training isnecessary. But a sport which encourages boys to deny themselvesluxuries, to scorn ease, to conquer bodily weariness by the exerciseof the will, is not one which should be banished because for some thespirit has triumphed to the hurt of the flesh. In a self-indulgent agewhen sometimes it has seemed that the gibe of our enemies is true, that the most characteristic English word is "comfort, " it is good toretain in our schools some forms of activity in which comfort is neverconsidered at all. The Ithaca which was [Greek: hagathê koyrotrophos]was also [Greek: trêcheia]. 

Again no boy can meet with real athletic success who has not learnt tocontrol his temper. It is not merely that public opinion despises theman who is a bad loser; but that to lose your temper very often meansto lose the game. It may be true that a Rugby forward does notdevelop his finest game until an opponent's elbow has met his nose andgiven an extra spice to his onslaught. But in the majority of conteststhe man who keeps his head will win. Notably this is true in boxing, afine instrument of education, whatever may be the objections to theprize ring. So dispassionate a scientist as Professor Hall in hismonumental work on Adolescence, describes boxing as "a manly art, asuperb school for quickness of eye and hand, decision, full of willand self-control. The moment this is lost, stinging punishmentfollows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessiveirascibility, and has been found to have a most beneficial effect upona peevish or unmanly disposition. "

But perhaps the best lesson that a boy can learn from his games, isthe lesson that he must play for his side and not for himself. He doesnot always learn it; the cricketer who plays for his average, thethree-quarters who tries to score himself, are not unknown, thoughboyish opinion rightly condemns them. Popular school ethics arethoroughly sound on this point, and it is the virtue of inter-schooland inter-house competitions, that in them a boy learns what it is toforget self and to think of a cause. There is a society outsidehimself which has its claim upon him, whose victory is his victory, whose defeat is his defeat. Whether victory comes through him orthrough another, is nothing so long as victory be won; later in lifemen may play games for their health's sake or for enjoyment, but theylose that thrill of intense patriotism, the more intense because ofthe smallness of the society that arouses it, with which they battledin the mud of some November day for the honour of their school orhouse. Small wonder that when school-fellows meet after years ofseparation, the memories to which they most gladly return, are thememories of hard-won victories and manfully contested defeats. 

But victory must be won by fair means. There is a story (possiblywithout historical foundation) that a foreign visitor to Oxford saidthat the thing that struck him most in that great university was thefact that there were 3000 men there who would rather lose a game thanwin it by unfair means. It would be absurd to pretend that that spiritis universal: the commercial organisation of professional football andthe development of betting have gone a long way to degrade a noblesport. But the standard of fair play in school games is high, and itis the encouragement of this spirit by cricket and football thatrenders them so valuable an aid in the activities of boys' clubs inartisan districts. It has been argued that the prevalence of thisgenerous temper among our troops has been a real handicap in war; thatwe have too much regarded hostilities as a game in which there werecertain rules to be observed, and that when we found ourselves matchedagainst a foe whose object was to win by any means, fair or foul, thesoldiers who were fettered by the scruples of honour were necessarilyinferior to their unscrupulous foe. It has perhaps yet to be provedthat in the long run the unchivalrous fighter always wins, and I doubtwhether any of us would really prefer that even in war we should setaside the scruples of fair play. But in the arts and pursuits of peacethat man is best equipped to play a noble part who realises that thereare rules in the great game of life which an honourable man willrespect, that there are advantages which he must not take. How oftendoes some rather inarticulate hero, who has refused some temptingprospect or spurned some specious offer, explain his act ofself-denial by the simple phrase of his boyhood, "I thought it wasn'tquite playing the game. " Schoolboy honour is not always a faultlessthing; sometimes it means the hiding of real iniquity. But the honourof the playing field is a generous code, and to have learnt its rulesis to have learnt the best that the public opinion of a boy communitycan teach. 

The chairman of a great engineering firm recently told theIncorporated Association of Headmasters, that when he went to Oxfordto get recruits for his firm, he did not look for men who had got aFirst in Greats, but for men who would have got a First, if they hadworked. For these men had probably given a good deal of their time torowing or games and had thereby learnt something of the art of dealingwith men. The student who sticks to his books learns many lessons, butnot this. To be captain of a house or of a school, and to do it wellis to practise the art of governing on a small scale. A soretemptation to the schoolmaster is to interfere too much in schoolgames. He sees obvious mistakes being made, wrong tactics beingadopted, the wrong sides chosen, and he longs to interfere. He isanxious for victories, and forgets that after all victories are a verysecondary business, that games are only a means, not an end, that ifhe does not let the boys really govern and make their mistakes, thegame is failing to provide the training that it ought to give. It isundoubted that schools which are carefully coached by competentplayers, where the responsibility is largely taken out of thecaptain's hands, are more likely to win their matches. But much islost, though the game may be won. The strong captain who goes his ownway, chooses his own side, frames his own tactics and inspires thewhole team with his own spirit, has had a practical training in themanagement of men which will stand him in good stead in the greateraffairs of life. "We are not very well satisfied" said a War Officeofficial, "with the stamp of young officer we are getting. Many ofthem never seem to have played a game in their lives, though they arefirst-rate mathematicians. " And there is no doubt that whether for waror peace mathematics is not a substitute for leadership. 

Courage, endurance, self-control, public spirit, fair play, leadership, these are the virtues which we find may be encouraged bythe practice of games at school. It is not a complete list of theChristian virtues, perhaps rather we might call them Pagan virtues, but it is a fine list for all that. And the best of it is that theyare as it were unconsciously learnt, acquired by practice, not byinculcation. The boy who follows virtue for its own sake would be, Ifear, a sad prig, but the boy who follows a football for the sake ofhis house, may develop virtue and enjoy the process. 

But what are we to put on the other side of the account? If it be truethat athletics is a fine school for character, what is the ground forthe frequent complaint that the public schools make a "fetish" ofathleticism? What precisely is the complaint? It is this, that boysregard, and are encouraged to regard their games as the most importantside of their school life, that their interest in them is sooverpowering that they have no interest left for the development ofthe intellect or the acquisition of knowledge, that prominentathletes, not brilliant scholars, are the heroes of a boy community, and that in consequence many men of the better nourished classes, after they have left school, look upon their amusements as the mainbusiness of life, give to them the industry and concentration whichshould be bestowed upon science, letters or industry, and swell theranks of the amiable and incompetent amateur. It is argued thatschools are converted into pleasant athletic clubs, and that boys, instead of learning there to work, merely learn to play. Now this is aserious indictment; it is a good thing to learn to play, but it is notthe only thing a school should teach. Riding, shooting and speakingthe truth may have been an adequate curriculum for an ancient Persian, but it would not provide a sufficient equipment to enable a man toface the stress of modern competition, or to understand thedevelopments of the science and industry of to-day. 

Is too much time given to the playing of games? In winter time Ishould say No. I suppose that if we include teaching hours andpreparation, a boy spends some six hours a day on his intellectualwork, or if you prefer, he is supposed to spend that time. A game offootball two or three times a week, does not last more than an hourand a quarter; if you add a liberal allowance for changing and baths, two hours is the whole time occupied. A game of fives or a physicaldrill class need not demand more than an hour. The game that reallywastes time--and I am sorry to admit it--is cricket. I am not thinkingso much of the long waits in the pavilion when two batsmen on a sideare well set, and the rest have nothing to do but to applaud. I see noway out of that difficulty, so long as wickets are prepared as theyare now by artistic groundsmen. I am thinking rather of the excessivepractice at nets. An enthusiastic house captain is apt to believe thatby assiduous practice the most unlikely and awkward recruit can beconverted into a useful batsman, and the result is that he will driveall his house day after day to the nets, until they begin to loathethe sight of a cricket ball. 

We should recognise that cricket is a game for the few; the majorityof boys can never make good cricketers. And happy are those schoolswhich are near a river and can provide an alternative exercise in thesummer, which does not require exceptional quickness of eye and wristand does provide a splendid discipline of body and spirit. In thesummer it is well to exempt all boys from cricket, who have really ataste for natural history or photography. Summer half-holidays areemphatically the time for hobbies, and it is a serious charge againstour games if they are organised to such a pitch that hobbies arepractically prohibited. The zealous captain will object that such"slacking" is destroying the spirit of the house. We must endeavour topoint out to him that the unwilling player never makes a good player, and that such a boy may be finding his proper development in thepursuit of butterflies, a development which he would never gain byunsuccessful and involuntary cricket. House masters too are apt tocomplain that freedom for hobbies is subversive of discipline, and toquote the old adage about Satan and idle hands. That there is risk, isnot to be denied. But you cannot run a school without taking risks. Our whole system of leaving the government largely in the hands ofboys is full of risks. Sometimes it brings shipwreck; more often itdoes not. For in the majority of cases the policy of confidence isjustified by results. 

There is one way of wasting time that is heartily to be condemned, thewaste involved in looking on. I am inclined to think that if allathletic contests took place without a ring of spectators, we shouldget all the good of games and very little of the evil. Certainlyprofessional football would lose its blacker sides if there were nogate money and no betting. Few men or boys are the worse for playinggames; it is the applause of the mob that turns their heads. But I amafraid I am not logical enough to say that I would forbid boys towatch matches against another school; the emotions that lead to the"breathless hush in the Close" are so compounded of patriotism andjealousy for the honour of the school, that they are far from ignoble. But I would not have boys compelled to watch the games against clubsand other non-school teams. Above all, if they watch, they must have arun or a game to stir their own blood. The half-holiday must not bespent in shivering on a touchline and then crowding round a fire. 

That the athlete is a school hero and the scholar is not, is mostcertainly true. The scholar may once in a way reflect glory on theschool by success in an examination, but generally he is regarded as aself-regarding person, who is not likely to help to win the matches ofthe year. But the hero-worship is not undiscriminating; conceit, selfishness, surliness will go far to nullify the influence ofphysical strength and skill. Boys' admiration for physical prowess isnatural and not unhealthy. The harm is done by the advertisement givento such prowess by foolish elders. Foremost among such unwiseinfluences I should put the press. Even modest boys may begin to thinktheir achievements in the field are of public importance when theyfind their names in print. Some papers publish portraits of prominentplayers, or a series of articles on "Football at X--" or "Theprospects of the Cricket Season at Y--". The suggestion that there isa public which is interested in the features of a schoolboy captain, or wishes to know the methods of training and coaching which have ledto the success of a school fifteen, is likely to give boys an entirelyexaggerated notion of their own importance and to justify in theirminds the dedication of a great deal of time to the successes whichreceive this kind of public recognition. 

Next there is the parent. Our ever active critics are apt to forgetthat schools are to a large extent mirrors, reflecting the tone andopinion of the homes from which boys come. The parent who says whenthe boy joins the school, "I do not mind whether he gets in the sixth, but I want to see him in the eleven, " is by no means an uncommonparent. I have no objection to his wanting to see his boy in theeleven, the deplorable thing is that he is indifferent to intellectualprogress. I have heard an elder brother say, "Tom has not got into hishouse eleven yet, but he brought home a prize last term. I havewritten to tell him he must change all that, we can't have himdisgracing the family. " When a candidate has failed to qualify foradmission to the school at the entrance examination, I have hadletters of surprised and pained protest, pointing out that Jack is anexceptionally promising cricketer. It is assumed that we should beonly too glad to welcome the athlete without regard to his standard ofwork. If we could get the majority of parents to recognise theschoolmaster's point of view, that while games are an importantelement of education, they are only one element, and that there areothers which must not be neglected, we should have made a real stepforward towards the elimination of the excessive reverence paid tothe athlete. 

After the press and the parent comes millinery. Perhaps it is Utopianto suggest that "caps" can be entirely abolished; but the enterpriseof haberdashers and the weakness of school authorities have led to amultiplication of blazers, ribbons, caps, jerseys, stockings, badges, scarves and the like, which certainly tend to mark off the successfulplayer from his fellows, and to make him a cynosure of the vulgar andan object of complacent admiration to himself. Success in games shouldbe its own reward. In some cases it certainly is. And the paradox isthat very often it is those who are least bountifully endowed bynature who profit most. Some there are who have such natural gifts ofstrength and dexterity, that from the first they can excel at anygame. Triumphs come to them without hard struggle, and they breathethe incense of applause. But others have a clumsier hand, a slowerfoot, and yet they have a determination to excel, a resolution insticking to their task that brings them at the last to a fair measureof skill. Such a boy is already rewarded by the toughening of the willthat perseverance brings: he does not need a ribbon on his sweater. Togive the other, the natural athlete, a coloured scarf, is to run therisk of making him over-value the gifts he owes to nature. 

There is no reason why a boy who excels in games should not excel inwork. The two are not competing sides of education, they arecomplementary. The schoolmaster's ideal is that his boys should gainthe advantages of both. The athlete who neglects his work, grows upwith a poorly furnished mind and an untrained judgment. The studentwho neglects his games, grows up without the nervous development thatfits his body to be the instrument of his will, and without theknowledge of men and the habit of dealing with men which areindispensable in many callings. It has been proved again and againthat it is possible to get the advantages of both these sides ofschool life. There is no reason why the playing of school games shouldbe anything but a help to the intellectual development of a boy. 

But the constant talking about games is by no means harmless, thoughit is true boys might be talking of worse things. It is related that aFrench educational critic was once descanting to an English headmaster on the monotony of the conversation of English public schoolboys: "they talk of nothing but football. " But when he was asked, "Andof what do French school boys generally talk?" he was silent. But if"cricket shop" saves us from worse topics, it certainly is destructiveof rational conversation on subjects of more general interest. Ingreat boarding schools we collect a population of boys under quiteabnormal conditions, cut off for the greater part of their social lifefrom intercourse with older people. It is, I think, a generalexperience that boys who have been at day schools and are the sons ofintelligent parents, have their minds more awakened to the questionsof the day in politics, or art, or literature than boys of equalability who have been at a boarding school. They have had theadvantage of hearing their father and his friends discussing topicswhich are outside the range of school life. Boarding schools are oftenbuilt in some country place away from the surging life of towns, wherethe noise of political strife and the roar of the traffic of the worldare but dimly heard. In such seclusion the life of the school, particularly the active life of the playing fields, occupies the focusof a boy's consciousness. The geographical conditions tend to narrowthe range of his interests, and he remains a boy when others aregrowing to be men. Those who have the wider tastes, are deterred fromtalking about them by the ever present fear of "side. " They will talkfreely to a master of architecture or music or Japanese prints, butthey are chary of betraying these enthusiasms to their fellows. Andmasters are not free from blame: I suppose we all of us sometimes bowdown in the house of Rimmon, and when the conversation languishes atthe tea-table, fall back on a discussion of the last house match. Itis the line of least resistance, and after a strenuous day's work itis not easy to maintain a monologue about Home Rule. Not the least ofthe boons of the war is that it has ousted games from the foremostplace as a topic of conversation. I have not noticed that they areless keenly played, although the increase of military work hasdiminished the time given to them; but they have ceased to monopolisethe thoughts of boys. The problem then of reducing the absorption ingames is the problem of finding and providing other absorbinginterests. We cannot, fortunately, always have the counter-irritantof war. Where we fail now, is that the intellectual training of a boydoes not interest him enough in most cases to give him subjects ofconversation out of school. We give some few new interests by means ofsocieties, literary, antiquarian or scientific. But the main problemis to make every boy see that the work he does in school is connectedwith his life, that it is meant to open to him the shut doors aroundhim through which he may go out into all the highways and byways ofthe world. 

Do school games produce the man who regards games as the main businessof life? We must emphasise "main. " It is certain that they doencourage Englishmen to devote some part of their working life tohealthy exercise--and few, I suppose, would wish them to do otherwise. The Indian civilian does not make a worse judge for playing polo, noris Benin worse administered since golf-links were laid out there. Butthere are men who never outgrow the boyish narrowness of view thatgames are the things that matter most. These remain the rulingpassion, because no stronger passion comes to drive it out. For thisthe schools must bear part of the blame, for they have not taughtclearly enough that athletics are a means but not an end. Not all theblame, for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates theidler, and has no reproach for the man who says "I live only forhunting and golf. " And here as elsewhere, I believe we are judged moreby a few failures than by many successes. We can all of us in ourexperience recall many an honest athlete who is now doing splendidservice to Church or State, doughty curates, self-sacrificing doctors, soldiers who are real leaders of men. When they became men they putaway childish things, but they have not forgotten what they owe to thediscipline of their boyish games. Games are not the first thing inlife for them now, but they have no doubt that they can do their workbetter from an occasional afternoon's play. They see things in theirright proportion, because they know that the first thing is to have ajob and do it well. If we can teach boys to begin to understand thattruth while they are at school, we shall have exorcised the bogey ofathleticism. I should expect to find (though I do not know) that theauthorities at Osborne and Dartmouth do not need to bother their mindsabout that bogey. Their boys play games with all a sailor'sheartiness, but their ambition is not to be a first-class athlete, butto be a first-class sailor, and the games take their proper place. Itmay be desirable to reduce the time devoted to games, though as I havesaid I doubt if there is any need to do so, except for cricket. It maybe that we should give more time to handicraft, or military drill. Butthese things will not change the spirit. What we need to do is to makeclearer the object of education in which athletics form a part, thatthere may be more sense of reality in the boy's school time, moreunderstanding that he is at school to fit himself manfully and capablyto play his part on the wider stage of life. 

[Footnote 1: C. W. Saleeby, _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pp. 62, 63. ]

IX

THE USE OF LEISURE

By J. H. BADLEY

Head Master of Bedales School

To teach a sensible use of leisure, healthy both for mind and body, isby no means the least important part of education. Nor is it by anymeans the least pressing, or the least difficult, of school problems. "Loafing" at times that have no recognised duties assigned them, isgenerally a sign of slackness in work and play as well; and if we donot find occupation for thoughts and hands, the rhyme tells us whowill. The devils of cruelty and uncleanness will be ready to enter theempty house, and fill it at least with unwholesome talk, andthoughtless if not ill-natured "ragging. " Yet work and games, whateverkeenness we arouse and encourage in these, cannot fill a boy's wholetime and thoughts--or, if they do, his life, whether he is student orathlete, or even the occasional combination of both, is still a narrowone and likely to get narrower as years go by. If life to theuneducated means a soulless round of labour varied by the public-houseand the "pictures, " so to the half-educated it is apt, except in wartime, to mean the office and the club, with interests that do not gobeyond golf and motoring and bridge. If our lives are emptier and ourinterests narrower than they need be, it is partly the result of anarrow and unsatisfying education, which leaves half our powersundeveloped and interests untouched, and too often only succeeds ingiving us a distaste for those which it touches. Both for the sake ofthe present, therefore, to avoid the dangers of unfilled leisure, andstill more for the sake of the future, the wise schoolmaster does allhe can to foster, in addition to keenness in the regular work andgames, interests, both individual and social, of other kinds as well. He will make opportunities for various handicrafts: he will try tostimulate lines of investigation not arranged for in theclass-routine; he will encourage the formation of societies both fordiscussion and active pursuits, for instruction and entertainment. Itis the purpose of this essay to suggest what, along these lines, ispossible in the school. 

But the reasons so far given for the encouragement of leisure-timeinterests are mainly negative. In order to realise to the full theimportance of this side of education, we must look rather at theirpositive value. From whichever point of view one looks at it, physical, intellectual, or social, this value is not small. Some ofthese interests contribute directly to health in being outdoorpursuits; and these, in not letting games furnish the only motive andmeans of exercise, can help to establish habits and motives of nolittle help in later life, when games are no longer easy to keep up. And even in the years when the call of games is strongest, somerivalry of other outdoor pursuits is useful as a preventive ofabsorption in athleticism, easily carried to excess at school so as toshut out finer interests and influences. It was a consciousness ofthis that led Captain Scott, in the letter written in those last hoursamong the Antarctic snows, thinking of his boy at home, and theeducation that he wished for him, to write: "Make the boy interestedin natural history, if you can; it is better than games: theyencourage it in some schools. "

Besides health--and health, we must remember, is not only a bodilymatter, but depends on mental as well as bodily activity, and on theenjoyment of the activity that comes from its being mainlyvoluntary--the pursuits that we are considering can do much to trainskill of various kinds. The class-work represents the minimum that weexpect a boy to know; but there is much that necessarily lies outsideit of hardly less value. Many a boy learns as much from the hobby onwhich he spends his free time as from the work he does in class. Sometimes, indeed, such a free-time hobby reveals the bent that mightotherwise have gone undiscovered, and determines the choice of aspecial line of work for the future career. 

But the chief value of such interests lies rather in their influenceon other work, and on the general development of character. In givingscope for many kinds of skill, they are helping the intellectualtraining; and however ready we may be to pay lip-service to theprinciple of learning by doing, and to admit the educationalimportance of the hand in brain-development, in most of our schoolwork we still ignore these things, so far as any practicalapplication of them is concerned. One is sometimes tempted to wonderif in the future there may not be so complete a reaction from ourpresent ideas and methods as to make what are now regarded as merehobbies the main matter of education, and to relegate much of thepresent school course, as the writing of verses has already beenrelegated, to the category of optional side-shows. At any rate thesefree-time interests can supply a very useful stimulus to much of theroutine work. In these a boy may find himself for the first time, anddiscover, despite his experience in class, that he is no fool. Or atleast he may find there a centre of interest, otherwise lacking, roundwhich other interests can group, and to which knowledge obtained invarious class-subjects can attach itself, and so get for him a meaningand a use. And further, if we do not make the mistake of narrowing therange of choice, and allow, at any rate at first, a succession ofinterests, the very range and variety of these pursuits is an antidoteagainst the tendency to early specialisation, encouraged byscholarship and entrance examinations, which is one of the dangersagainst which we need to be on our guard. If, therefore, without meredissipation of interest, we can widen the range of mental activitiesand encourage, by discussions, essays, lectures and so forth, readinground and outside the subjects dealt with in class, this is all to thegood. 

And all this has a social as well as an individual aspect. Themeetings for the purposes just mentioned, as well as those forentertainment, have, like games, a real educational value, and domuch to cement the comradeship of common interests and common aimsthat is one of the best things school has to give. And not only amongthose of the same age. These are things in which the example andinfluence of the older are particularly helpful to the younger. Theycan become, like the games, and perhaps to an even greater extent, oneof the interests that help to bind together past and present membersof a school. And they afford an opportunity for masters to meet boyson a more personal and friendly footing, and to get the mutualknowledge and respect which are all-important if education is to be, in Thring's definition, a transmission of life through the living tothe living. That the organisation of leisure-time pursuits is of theutmost help to the school as well as to the boy, is the unanimousverdict of the schools in which it has long been a tradition. Themaster who has had charge, for the past five-and-twenty years, of thisorganisation in one such school writes that there they consider suchpursuits as the very life-blood of the school, and the only rationalmethod of maintaining discipline. 

If what has here been said is admitted, it is plain that to teach, byevery means in our power, the use of leisure, is one of the mostimportant things a school has to do. We might, therefore, turn at onceto the consideration of the various means for such teaching thatexperience has shown to be practicable in the school. But before doingso, there is yet another reason, the most far-reaching of all, to beurged for regarding this as a side of education fully as necessary, at the present time above all, as those sides that none wouldquestion. Great as is the direct and immediate value of the interestsand occupations thus to be encouraged, their indirect influence ismore valuable still, if they teach not only handiness andadaptiveness, but also call forth initiative and individuality, and sohelp to develop the complete and many-sided human personality which isthe crown and purpose of education as of life. We do not now think ofeducation as merely book-learning, nor even as concerned only withmind and body, or only as fitting preparation for skilled work andcultured leisure; but rather as the development of the whole humanbeing, with all his possibilities, interests, and motives, as well aspowers, his feelings and imagination no less than reason and will. Ina word, education is training for life, with all that this connotes, and, as we learn to live only by living, must be thought of not merelyas preparation for life, but as a life itself. Plainly, if we give ita meaning as wide as this, a great part of education lies outside theschool, in the influences of the home surroundings and, after school, of occupation and the whole social environment. But during the schoolyears--and they are the most impressionable of all--it is the schoollife that is for most the chief formative influence; and now morenecessarily so than ever. When, a few generations back, life wasstill, in the main, life in the country, and most things were stillmade at home or in the village, the most important part of educationlay, except for a few, outside the school. Now it is the other way. Town life, the replacing of home-made by factory-made goods, thedisappearance of the best part of home life before the demands ofindustry on the one side and the growth of luxury on the other--thesethings are signs of a tendency that has swept away most of thepractical home-education, and thrown it all upon the school. And theschools have even yet hardly realised the full meaning of this change. Instead of having to provide only a part of education--the speciallyintellectual and, in the public schools at least, the physicalside--we have now to think of the whole nature of the growing boy orgirl, and, by the environment and the occupations we provide, toappeal to interests and motives, and give occasion for the right useof powers, that may otherwise be undeveloped or misused. A schoolcannot now consist merely of class-rooms and playing fields. This isrecognised by the addition of laboratories and workshops, gymnasium, swimming-bath, lecture-hall, museum, art-school, music-rooms--all nowessentials of a day school as much as of a boarding school. But manyof these things are still only partially made use of, and are apt tobe regarded rather as ornamental excrescences, to be used by the fewwho have a special bent that way, at an extra charge, than as anintegral part of education for all. All the interests and means oftraining that they represent, and others as well, need to be broughtmore into the daily routine; to some extent in place of the tooexclusively literary, or at least bookish, training, that has hithertobeen the staple of education, but more, perhaps, since it is notpossible to include in the regular curriculum _all_ that is of value, as optional subjects and free-time occupations, though organised aspart of the school course. For it is not only the few who already knowtheir bent who need opportunity to be made for following it, butrather those who will not discover their powers without practice, ortheir interests without suggestion or encouragement. In this respectthe war has brought opportunities of no little value to the school, not only in the absorbing interest in the war itself and the desirefor knowledge and readiness for effort that it awakens, but also inthe demands it has made for practical work of many kinds that boys andgirls can do, and the lessons of service that it has taught. Work onthe land and in the shops, for those whose school time is already tooshort, is a curtailment, only to be made as a last resort, of the kindof learning they will have no other opportunity to acquire; but itgives to the public schoolboy the feeling of reality that most of hisschool work lacks. Such opportunities of doing what is seen to beproductive and necessary work, are, like the making of things forthose at the front, and for the wounded, both in themselves and in themotives that inspire them, a valuable part of education that shouldnot be forgotten when the present need for them is over. 

If, then, by the fullest use of leisure occupations, we are, likeCanning, to call in a new world to redress the balance of the old, what, in actual practice, is possible in the school? For an answer tothis question one has only to see what is done in the schools of theSociety of Friends, in which the use of leisure in these ways hasalways been a strongly marked feature long before it was taken up byothers, with a tradition, indeed, in the older schools, of sixty or ahundred years of accumulated experience behind it. Instead of singlingout, for description of the use it makes of leisure, any one school inwhich it might be supposed that there were special conditions present, it will be best to enumerate the various activities that have longbeen practised in several different schools. Of those selected for thepurpose not all are connected with the Society of Friends; some arefor boys and some for girls only, and some co-educational; but alikein being boarding schools, and in keeping their boys and girls from anearly age until, at the end of their school life, they go on to theuniversity or to their business or professional training. A few of thepursuits to be mentioned are obviously more appropriate for boys, others for girls; but the differences between those that are followedin schools for boys and those for girls are surprisingly small, and togive separate lists would only involve much needless repetition. 

For the sake of clearness, it may be well to group the variousactivities according as they are mainly outdoor or indoor occupations. In the outdoor group, games and sports need not be included, as being, in most cases, as much a part of the ordinary school course as theclass-work. They only become free-time pursuits, in the sense hereintended, in so far as practice for them is optional, and a largeamount of free time spent upon it. Thus, for example, while swimmingis, or should be, compulsory for all, and a regular time found for itin the school time-table, it is entirely a voluntary matter to go in, as in many schools a large number do, for the tests of the RoyalHumane Society. Apart from games, the outdoor pursuit that occupiesthe largest place is probably, in most of these schools, some branchof natural history (which may perhaps be held to include geology aswell as the study of plant and animal life)--not so much by the makingof collections, though this usually serves as a beginning, as by thekeeping of diaries, notes of observations illustrated by drawings andphotographs, and experimental work, in connection, perhaps, with workdone in science classes. Similarly in the study of archaeology, visitsto places of interest--there are always many old churches withinreach, if not other buildings of equal interest--give matter forwritten notes as well as for drawings and photographs; and in at leastone case, the fact that the neighbourhood is rich in Roman remains hasgiven opportunity, under the guidance of a keen classicalarchaeologist, for the laying bare of more than one Roman villa, andfor making interesting additions to the school museum. Besides theiruse in the service of other pursuits, sketching and photography alsohave many votaries for their own sake, though the former is usuallymore dependent on encouragement from above. Then there is gardening. The tenure of a plot of ground is a joy to many children; and in theopinion of the writer, some experience, and some experimental work, in the growing of the most necessary food plants, as well as flowers, should form part of the education of all at a certain stage, whetherin school time or in free time. For some, where the conditions arefavourable, this can be extended to the care of fruit-trees, bees, poultry, and to some kinds of farm-work. The needs of war-time havebrought something of this into many schools, to the real gain ofeducation, now and later, if it can be retained, at least as apossibility of choice. So also with the care of the playing fields:the more that the work needed for a game is thrown upon the playersthemselves, the more does it contribute to education. And so too withconstructive work of any kind that, with some help of suggestion ordirection, is within the compass even of comparatively unskilledlabour. A lengthy list could be given of things accomplished in thisway, with an educational value all the greater for their practicalpurpose, from Ruskin's famous road down to the last field levelled andpavilion built or shed put up, by voluntary effort and in time foundby the workers without encroaching on regular school work. And lastly, an outdoor occupation for free time which, in the earlier days ofschool life, we shall do well to encourage--both for its own value andthe manifold interests that it encourages and lessons that it teaches, and also for its bearing on questions of national service that willremain to be answered after the war--is the wide range of activitiescomprised in scouting, undoubtedly one of the chief educationaladvances of our time. Whatever differences of views there may be onthe wider questions of military service for national defence, and ofmaking military training a specific part of education, few can denythat, with a view to national service of _some_ kind, the use made bySir Robert Baden-Powell of instincts natural to all at a particularstage of growth, by an organisation which can be kept entirely freefrom the failings of militarism, is a development of the utmosteducational, as well as national, value. If a school already develops, by other means, all the activities trained by scouting, and utilisesin other ways the instincts and motives to which it makes appeal, there may be little or nothing to be gained by its adoption. But ofhow many schools can this be said? For the rest it undoubtedly offersa way of doing, at the stage of growth for which it is best fitted, much of what, if there is any truth in what has been urged above, is, from the point of view of individual development, of greaterimportance now than ever before. If, in addition to this, it will gofar to solve the problem of national service, and to remove the needfor conscription in the continental form, there is every reason togive it a prominent place in the activities encouraged, if notinsisted upon, at school. 

Let us now turn to the group of indoor pursuits, which, if they havenot quite so direct a bearing upon health, are in another way evenmore important; for a large part of leisure, even at school and stillmore, in all probability, afterwards, falls at times and underconditions that make some indoor occupation necessary, and the wasteor misuse of these times is likely to be greater. In this groupcertain things need be no more than mentioned, as either applying, atany given time, only to a few picked individuals, or else likely, inthe majority of schools, to be made a regular part of the schoolroutine; such as, of the one kind, the editing of the school magazine, or membership of the school fire-brigade with the frequent practicesthat this involves; or, of the other kind, special gymnastics(including such things as boxing and fencing), or lectures andconcerts and other entertainments given to the school, asdistinguished from those given by members of it, the preparation forwhich gives occupation beforehand to much of their leisure. Of thefree-time pursuits more properly so called, in which many can share, the commonest are probably the various school societies. Most schoolshave one or more debating societies, with meetings at regularintervals throughout the winter terms, for the discussion of questionsof general or special interest; the difficulty being more often tofind a subject than speakers. Many also have Essay or Literarysocieties, for reading papers and discussing the books and writerstreated of, which involve a considerable amount of previous reading. Besides these most schools now have similar societies, in addition tothose for carrying out the field-work already mentioned, for holdinglectures and discussions on various branches of science. Some alsohave a musical society for gaining fuller acquaintance with the worksof the chief composers; and a dramatic society for reading and actingplays as occasion allows. Allied with these interests is voluntarylaboratory work in some branch of science, both by individuals andgroups, which may not unfairly be dignified with the name of research, even if it is only the re-discovery of what has been worked out byothers. In some schools special provision is made for encouragingoptional work of this kind in astronomy; in others it may be wirelesstelegraphy, or the use of vegetable dyes, and so forth. In some ofthis work even the younger can take part; and of the many reasons forits encouragement not the least is the wide field it opens toindividual initiative. 

Besides all these more specially intellectual interests, and of stillwider appeal, various kinds of handicrafts afford abundant occupation, some for the longer and some also for the shorter periods of leisure. Wood-work, carving, work in metal or leather, pottery, basket-plaiting, bookbinding, needlework and embroidery, knitting, netting hammocks andso forth--the only limit to the number of such crafts is the limit tothe knowledge and energy of those who can start and direct them, andto the space available, as some can only be carried on in rooms reservedfor such work. So, too, with various kinds of art-work--drawing, modelling, lettering, making posters for entertainments; or music, bothindividual and concerted, orchestra practice, part-singing, glee-clubsand so on; or morrice and other folk-dances, now happily being widelyrevived. And lastly there are indoor games, some of which, like chess(cards are probably best confined to the sanatorium), have a hightraining value, and others afford a useful occasional outlet to highspirits; and entertainments got up by some society, or perhaps by asingle form, for the rest of the "house" or school, such as a concertor play or even an occasional fancy-dress dance, the preparation forwhich will happily occupy free time for as long beforehand as isallowed, and does much to encourage ingenuity, especially if strictconditions are imposed that all that is required must be made for thepurpose and not bought. 

But by this time many questions will have arisen in the mind of thereader, especially if much of what has been enumerated lies outsidehis school experience; questions that demand an immediate answer. Evenif all this free-time work and play may have a certain value, how cantime be found for it without encroaching on the regular work and gameswhich, after all, must be the main concern of the school? And evensupposing that time could be found for both, will not all thisvoluntary activity and pleasure-work absorb the interests and energiesthat ought to be given to the more serious, if less attractive, studies? And again, how can all this wide range of activity becontrolled? Who is going to teach, or look after, all these things?How are they to be kept going? Are they, or any of them, to becompulsory, or is a boy or girl to be allowed to do anything ornothing, or to flit, butterfly-fashion, from one to another, learningnothing except to fritter away energy in endless mental dissipation?

Only a brief answer can be attempted to these questions. It mightindeed be given in the answer to the old puzzle, _solvitur ambulando_;for, given a clear aim and common sense, most difficulties ineducation disappear as one goes on. It is, in fact, a question ofeducational values; that settled, matters of detail soon settlethemselves. From what has been said above, it will be plain that thewriter is one of those who think these voluntary free-time activitiesof such value that they are willing, in order to make room for them, to jettison some of the traditions that have gathered about schoolwork and games. Let the morning hours be reserved for the severerkinds of class work, but let the afternoons be mainly given to activepursuits of other kinds as well as games; and on one of them at leastlet expeditions in pursuit of the outdoor interests above outlined bean alternative to the games chosen by the keen players, or compulsoryfor those without an equivalent hobby. Then, too, in the evenings letpreparation be varied with handicrafts (the result will be anintellectual gain rather than loss), and time be reserved for themeetings of societies or for entertainments. It may be well to sayhere that while every one of the things above mentioned is an actualfact in some school, in none, probably, are all attempted at once, nor, of course, do any of their members take up many of these pursuitsat the same time; but it is surprising how much can be done bytreating a part of some afternoons and evenings in the week as leisuretime for these pursuits. When this is done, there is usually aparticular member of the Staff whose task it is, either permanently orin rotation, to see what is being done, to give suggestions andencouragement to beginners, and to see, if necessary, that freedomdoes not mean disorder. Naturally, in the case of handicrafts, othersalso take part as actual teachers or at least as fellow-workers; butthough it is generally helpful for members of the Staff to join in allsuch work and in discussions, the aim of it all is likely to be morefully attained if as much as possible of the organisation anddirection is left to members of the school. So, too, with the questionof compulsion. Not all have so strong a bent as to know what they wantto do, and sometimes interests come only by actual experience. It iswell, therefore, to have an understanding that, at certain times, allmust follow some one of the possible occupations; but the more it canbe left to the individual choice, and the wider the range of choice, the better for the purpose we have in view. Not all country ramblesneed have a definite object, nor all time be actively filled thatmight be left for reading. But without a definite object few will makea habit of walking, or learn to know and love the country; and notall, especially where there is a multiplicity of other interests, willform the habit of reading unless regular times are set apart for it, times when books must be read and not merely magazines. How farfreedom of change from one occupation to another is desirable islargely an individual question. The younger need to try many thingsbefore they can settle down to one, in order to discover their realinterests and to exercise their faculties. But it is well to have astrict limit to the number of things that may be taken up at once, anda fixed length of time to be given to each before it may be replacedby another. With the older, this, as a rule, settles itself, on theone hand by growing interest in one or two directions, and on theother by the increasing demands of the school work and approachingexaminations. It is the younger, therefore, who need mostencouragement. In schools where, as said above, there is a longtradition of such free-time work, there is the less need for anythingbeyond suggestions and general supervision. Yet even in these it isfound helpful to have, at the beginning of the year, talks upon thesubject by some member of the Staff, or an old boy perhaps who hasdevoted himself to some particular branch, in order to explain whatcan be done and the standard to be maintained. In several of themprizes are offered every year, either by the school or by the OldScholars' Association or by individual old scholars, for good work inmany of the categories mentioned above; these in some schools beingthe only prizes given. In some cases they are money prizes, as incertain kinds of work the tools or materials used are costly; inothers the prizes are not given to individuals, but in the form of a"trophy" to the form or "house" that shows up the best record for theterm or year; in others, again, the need of prizes is not felt, butinterest and keenness to maintain a good standard are kept up by thepublic show, held each year, of work done in leisure time. And, it maybe added, a great stimulus in itself is the wider freedom that can beearned by those who follow certain branches of study, in the way, forinstance, of expeditions, on foot or by bicycle, to places where theycan be pursued. 

But with all this there is, of course, the danger that so much energymay be absorbed in these pursuits that little is left for the ordinaryschool work. In some few cases, where there is a strong natural bentand the free-time pursuit is a serious object of study, this may be athing not to be discouraged, as it will provide the truest means ofeducation. But in most cases care is needed to see that the dueproportion is kept, and especially that mere amusement is not allowedto occupy the whole of leisure, still less to distract thought andeffort from serious work. By making entertainments, which might, iftoo frequent or too elaborate, have this effect, dependent on theschool work being well done, this danger can be minimised. For therest, if free-time work is found to take the first place in a boy'sthoughts, may not this be a sign that the ordinary curriculum andmethods of teaching are capable of improvement, and that more use ofthese natural interests may with advantage be made in class time aswell? Not that work of any kind can be all pleasure or alwaysoutwardly interesting; there is plenty of hard spade-work needed inany study seriously followed, in class or out. But if in educationkeenness is the first essential and personality the final aim, interest and freedom must have a larger place than is usually allowedthem in the class-room if the real education is not to centre in theself-chosen and self-directed pursuits of leisure. 

One word more. It must not be supposed that all that has beendescribed is only possible, or only needed, in the boarding school oronly for a specially leisured class. If, as has here been urged, these activities and interests form an integral part of education inits fullest meaning, they are just as necessary in the day school andcannot be left to chance and the home to see to. And of all the neededreforms in elementary education, amongst the most needed is thegreater utilisation of the active interests and instincts of children, in a training that would have a wider outlook and a closer bearing, through practical experience, both on the work of life and the use ofleisure. 

X

PREPARATION FOR PRACTICAL LIFE

By SIR J. D. McCLURE

Head Master of Mill Hill School

I

It is, perhaps, the chief glory of the Ideal Commonwealth that eachand every member thereof is found in his right place. His professionis also his vocation; in it is his pride; through it he attains to the_joie de vivre_; by it he makes his contribution to the happiness ofhis fellows and to the welfare and progress of the State. Thecontemplation of the Ideal, however, would seem to be nature's anodynefor experience of the Actual. In practical life, all attempts, howeverearnest and continuous, to realise this ideal are frustrated by one ormore of many difficulties; and though the Millennium follows hard uponArmageddon, we cannot assume that in the period vaguely known as"after the war" these difficulties will be fewer in number or less inmagnitude. Some of the more obvious may be briefly considered. 

In theory, every child is "good for something"; in practice, allefforts to discover for what some children are good prove unavailing. The napkin may be shaken never so vigorously, but the talent remainshidden. In every school there are many honest fellows who seem to haveno decided bent in any direction, and who would probably do equallywell, or equally badly, in any one of half-a-dozen differentemployments. Some of these boys are steady, reliable, not undulyaverse from labour, willing--even anxious--to be guided and to carryout instructions, yet are quite unable to manifest a preference forany one kind of work. 

Others, again, show real enthusiasm for a business or profession, butdo not possess those qualities which are essential to success therein;yet they are allowed to follow their supposed bent, and spend thepriceless years of adolescence in the achievement of costly failure. Many a promising mechanic has been spoiled by the ill-consideredattempts to make a passable engineer; and the annals of everyprofession abound in parallel instances of misdirected zeal. In sayingthis, however, one would not wish to undervalue enthusiasm, nor todeny that it sometimes reveals or develops latent and unsuspectedtalents. 

The life-work of many is determined largely, if not entirely, by whatmay be termed family considerations. There is room for a boy in thebusiness of his father or some other relative. The fitness of the boyfor the particular employment is not, as a rule, seriously considered;it is held, perhaps, to be sufficiently proved by the fact that he ishis father's son. He is more likely to be called upon to recognise thespecial dispensations of a beneficent Providence on his behalf. It isnatural that a man should wish the fruits of his labour to benefit hisfamily in the first instance, at any rate; and the desire to set hischildren well on the road of life's journey seems entirely laudable. It is easy to hold what others have won, to build on foundations whichothers have laid, and to do this with all their experience andgoodwill to aid him. Hence when the father retires he has the solidsatisfaction of knowing that

 Resigned unto the Heavenly Will, His son keeps on the business still. 

It cannot be denied that this policy is often successful; but it isequally undeniable that it is directly responsible for the presence ofmany incompetent men in positions which none but the most competentshould occupy. There are many long-established firms hastening todecay because even they are not strong enough to withstand thedisastrous consequences of successive infusions of new (and young)blood. 

Many, too, are deterred from undertaking congenial work by reason ofthe inadequate income to be derived therefrom, and the unsatisfactoryprospects which it presents. Let it suffice to mention the teachingprofession, which fails to attract in any considerable numbers theright kind of men and women. A large proportion of its members did notbecome teachers from deliberate choice, but, having failed in theirattempt to secure other employment, were forced to betake themselvesto the ever-open portals of the great Refuge for the Destitute, andbecome teachers (or, at least, become classified as such). True thereare a few "prizes" in the profession, and to some of the _rudedonati_ the Church holds out a helping hand; but the lay memberscannot look forward even to the "congenial gloom of a ColonialBishopric. "

Others, again, are attracted to employments (for which they may haveno special aptitude) by the large salaries or profits which are to beearned therein, often with but little trouble or previous training--orso, at least, they believe. The idea of vocation is quite obscured, and a man's occupation is in effect the shortest distance from povertywhich he cannot endure, to wealth and leisure which he may not knowhow to use. 

It frequently happens, too, that a young man is unable to affordeither the time or the expense necessary to qualify for the professionwhich he desires to enter, and for which he is well adapted by histalents and temperament. Not a few prefer in such circumstances to"play for safety, " and secure a post in the Civil Service. 

It is plain from such considerations as these that all attempts torealise the Utopian ideal must needs be, for the present at least, butvery partially successful. Politics are not the only sphere in which"action is one long second-best. " Even if it were possible at thepresent time to train each youth for that calling which his own giftsand temperament, or the reasoned judgment of his parents, selected ashis life-work, it is very far from certain that he would ultimatelyfind himself engaged therein. English institutions are largely basedon the doctrine of individual liberty, and those statutes whichestablish or safeguard individual rights are not unjustly regarded asthe "bulwarks of the Constitution. " But the inalienable right of afather to choose a profession for his son, or of the son to choose onefor himself, is often exercised without any real inquiry into theconditions of success in the profession selected. Hence the frequentcomplaints about the "overcrowding of the professions" either incertain localities or in the country at large. The Bar affords aglaring example. "There be many which are bred unto the law, yet isthe law not bread unto them. " The number of recruits which any onebranch of industry requires in a single year is not constant, and, insome cases, is subject to great fluctuations; yet there are few or nostatistics available for the guidance of those who are speciallyconcerned with that branch, or who are considering the desirability ofentering it. The establishment of Employment Exchanges is a tacitadmission of the need of such statistics, and--though lesscertainly--of the duty of the Government to provide them. Yet even ifthey were provided it seems beyond dispute that, in the absence ofstrong pressure or compulsion from the State, the choice ofindividuals would not always be in accordance with the national needs. The entry to certain professions--for instance that of medicine--ismost properly safeguarded by regulations and restrictions imposed bybodies to which the State has delegated certain powers and duties. Itmay happen that in one of these professions the number of members isgreatly in excess, or falls far short of the national requirements;yet neither State nor Professional Council has power to refuseadmission to any duly qualified candidate, or to compel certainselected people to undergo the training necessary for qualification. It is quite conceivable, however, that circumstances might arise whichwould render such action not merely desirable but absolutely essentialto the national well-being; indeed it is at least arguable that suchcircumstances have already arisen. The popular doctrine of the earlyVictorian era, that the welfare of the community could best be securedby allowing every man to seek his own interests in the way chosen byhimself, has been greatly modified or wholly abandoned. So far are wefrom believing that national efficiency is to be attained byindividual liberty that some are in real danger of regarding the twoas essentially antagonistic. The nation, as a whole, supported theLegislature in the establishment of compulsory military service; itdid so without enthusiasm and only because of the general convictionthat such a policy was demanded by the magnitude of the issues atstake. Britons have always been ready, even eager, to give their livesfor their country; but, even now, most of them prefer that theobligation to do so should be a moral, rather than a legal one. Thedoctrine of individual liberty implies the minimum of Stateinterference. Hence there is no country in the world where so much hasbeen left to individual initiative and voluntary effort as in England;and, though of late the number of Government officials has greatlyincreased, it still remains true that an enormous amount of importantwork, of a kind which is elsewhere done by salaried servants of theState, is in the hands of voluntary associations or of men who, thoughappointed or recognised by the State, receive no salary for theirservices. Nor can it be denied that the work has been, on the whole, well done. A traditional practice of such a kind cannot be (and oughtnot to be) abandoned at once or without careful consideration; yet thechanged conditions of domestic and international politics render somemodification necessary. 

If the Legislature has protected the purchaser--in spite of thedoctrine of "caveat emptor"--by enactments against adulteration offood, and has in addition, created machinery to enforce thoseenactments, are not we justified in asking that it shall also protectus against incompetence, especially in cases where the effects, thoughnot so obvious, are even more harmful to the community than thosewhich spring from impure food? The prevention of overcrowding inoccupations would seem to be the business of the State quite as muchas is the prevention of overcrowding in dwelling-houses and factories. The best interests of the nation demand that the entrance to theteaching profession--to take one example out of many--should besafeguarded at least as carefully as the entrance to medicine or law. The supreme importance of the functions exercised by teachers is farfrom being generally realised, even by teachers themselves; yet uponthe effective realisation of that importance the future welfare of thenation largely depends. Doubtless most of us would prefer that thesupply of teachers should be maintained by voluntary enlistment, andthat their training should be undertaken, like that of medicalstudents, by institutions which owe their origin to private or publicbeneficence rather than to the State; nevertheless, the obligation tosecure adequate numbers of suitable candidates and to provide fortheir professional training rests ultimately on the State. Theobligation has been partially recognised as far as elementaryeducation is concerned, but it is by no means confined to that branch. 

It is well to realise at this point that the efficient discharge ofthe duty thus imposed will of necessity involve a much greater degreeof compulsion on both teachers and pupils than has hitherto beenemployed. The terrible spectacle of the unutilised resources ofhumanity, which everywhere confronts us in the larger relations of ournational life, has been responsible for certain tentatives which haveeither failed altogether to achieve their object, or have been butpartially successful. Much has been heard of the educationalladder--incidentally it may be noted that the educational sieve isequally necessary, though not equally popular--and some attempts havebeen made to enable a boy or girl of parts to climb from theelementary school to the university without excessive difficulty. Tosupplement the glaring deficiencies of elementary education afew--ridiculously few--continuation schools have been established. That these and similar measures have failed of success is largely dueto the fact that the State has been content to provide facilities, buthas refrained from exercising that degree of compulsion which alonecould ensure that they would be utilised by those for whose benefitthey were created. "Such continuation schools as England possesses, "says a German critic, "are without the indispensable condition ofcompulsion. " The reforms recently outlined by the President of theBoard of Education show that he, at any rate, admits the criticism tobe well grounded. A system which compels a child to attend schooluntil he is fourteen and then leaves him to his own resources can dolittle to create, and less to satisfy, a thirst for knowledge. Duringthe most critical years of his life--fourteen to eighteen--he is leftwithout guidance, without discipline, without ideals, often withouteven the desire of remembering or using the little he knows. He isled, as it were, to the threshold of the temple, but the fast-closeddoor forbids him to enter and behold the glories of the interior. Yearby year there is an appalling waste of good human material; andthousands of those whom nature intended to be captains of industry arerelegated, in consequence of undeveloped or imperfectly trainedcapacity, to the ranks, or become hewers of wood and drawers of water. Many drift with other groups of human wastage to the unemployed, thence to the unemployable, and so to the gutter and the grave. Thepoor we have always with us; but the wastrel--like the pauper--"is awork of art, the creation of wasteful sympathy and legislativeinefficiency. "

We must be careful, however, in speaking of "the State" to avoid theerror of supposing that it is a divinely appointed entity, endowedwith power and wisdom from on high. It is, in short, the nation inminiature. Even if the Legislature were composed exclusively of thehighest wisdom, the most enlightened patriotism in the country, itsenactments must needs fall short of its own standards, and be butlittle in advance of those of the average of the nation. It must stillacknowledge with Solon. "These are not the best laws I could make, butthey are the best which my nation is fitted to receive. " We cannotblame the State without, in fact, condemning ourselves. The absence ofany widespread enthusiasm for education, or appreciation of itspossibilities; the claims of vested interests; the exigencies of PartyGovernment; and, above all, the murderous tenacity of individualrights have proved well-nigh insuperable obstacles in the path of trueeducational reform. On the whole we have received as good laws as wehave deserved. The changed conditions due to the war, and the changedtemper of the nation afford a unique opportunity for wiser counsels, and--to some extent--guarantee that they shall receive careful andsympathetic consideration. 

It may be objected, however, that in taking the teaching profession toexemplify the duty of the State to assume responsibility for bothindividual and community, we have chosen a case which is exceptionalrather than typical; that many, perhaps most, of the other vocationsmay be safely left to themselves, or, at least left to develop alongtheir own lines with the minimum of State interference. It cannot bedenied that there is force in these objections. It should suffice, however, to remark that, if the duty of the State to secure theefficiency of its members in their several callings be admitted, thequestion of the extent to which, and the manner in which control isexercised is one of detail rather than of principle, and may thereforebe settled by the common sense and practical experience of the partieschiefly concerned. 

A much more difficult problem is sure to arise, sooner or later, inconnection with the utilisation of efficients. Some few years ago thepresent Prime Minister called attention to the waste of power involvedin the training of the rich. They receive, he said, the best thatmoney can buy; their bodies and brains are disciplined; and then "theydevote themselves to a life of idleness. " It is "a stupid waste offirst-class material. " Instead of contributing to the work of theworld, they "kill their time by tearing along roads at perilous speed, or do nothing at enormous expense. " It has needed the bloodiest war inhistory to reveal the splendid heroism latent in young men of thisclass. Who can withhold from them gratitude, honour, nay evenreverence? But the problem still remains how are the pricelessqualities, which have been so freely devoted to the national welfareon the battlefield, to be utilised for the greater works of peacewhich await us? Are we to recognise the right to be idle as well asthe right to work? Is there to be a kind of second Thellusson Act, directed against accumulations of leisure? Or are we to attempt thediscovery of some great principle of Conservation of Spiritual Energy, by the application of which these men may make a contribution worthyof themselves to the national life and character? Who can answer?

But though it is freely admitted on all hands that some check uponaggressive individualism is imperatively necessary, and that it is nolonger possible to rely entirely upon voluntary organisations howeveruseful, there are not a few of our countrymen who view with graveconcern any increase in the power and authority of the State. Theypoint out that such increase tends inevitably towards the despotism ofan oligarchy, and that such a despotism, however benevolent in itsinception, ruthlessly sacrifices individual interests and liberty tothe real or supposed good of the State; that even where constitutionalforms remain the spirit which animated them has departed; thatofficialism and bureaucracy with their attendant evils become supreme, and that the national character steadily deteriorates. They warn usthat we may pay too high a price even for organisation and efficiency;and, though it is natural that we should admire certain qualitieswhich we do not possess, we ought not to overlook the fact that thosemethods which have produced the most perfect national organisation inthe history of the world are also responsible for orgies of brutalitywithout parallel among civilised peoples. That such warnings areneedful cannot be doubted; but may it not be urged that they indicatedangers incident to a course of action rather than the inevitableconsequences thereof? In adapting ourselves to new conditions we mustneeds take risks. No British Government could stamp out voluntaryismeven if it wished to do so; and none has yet manifested any suchdesire. The nation does not want that kind of national unity of whichGermany is so proud, and which seems so admirably adapted to herneeds; for the English character and genius rest upon a conception offreedom which renders such a unity foreign and even repulsive to itstemper. Whatever be the changes which lie before us, the worship ofthe State is the one form of idolatry into which the British peopleare least likely to fall. 

II

The recent adaptation of factories and workshops to the production ofwar material is only typical of what goes on year by year in peace time, though, of course, to a less degree and in less dramatic fashion. Notonly are men constantly adapting themselves and their machinery tochanged conditions of production, but they are applying the experienceand skill gained in the pursuit of one occupation to the problems ofanother for which it has been exchanged. The comparative ease with whichthis is done is evidence of the widespread existence of that gift whichour enemies call the power of "muddling through, " but which has beentermed--without wholly sacrificing truth to politeness--the "concurrentadaptability to environment. " The British sailor as "handy man" has fewequals and no superiors, and he is, in some sort, typical of the nation. The testimony of Thucydides to Themistocles ([Greek: kratistos dê oytosaytoschediazein ta deonta egeneto]) might with equal or even greatertruth be applied to many Englishmen to-day. As this power [Greek:aytoschediazein ta deonta] in the present war saved the Allies fromdefeat at the outset, so we hope and believe it will carry them on tovictory at the last. Yet it becomes a snare if it leads its possessor toneglect preparation or despise organisation, for neither of which can itever be an entirely satisfactory substitute, albeit a very costly one. At the same time we should recognise that any system of training whichseriously impairs this power tends to deprive us of one of the mostvaluable of our national assets. It follows that, for the majority atleast, exclusive or excessive specialisation in training--vocational orotherwise--so far from being an advantage, is a positive drawback; for, as we have seen, a large proportion of our youth manifest no marked bentin any particular direction, and of those who do but a small proportionare capable of that hypertrophy which the highest specialisationdemands. 

It is important to remember that, though school life is a preparationfor practical life, vocational education ought not to begin until acomparatively late stage in a boy's career, if indeed it begins at allwhile he remains at school. On this it would seem that allprofessional bodies are agreed; for the entrance examinations, whichthey have accepted or established are all framed to test a boy'sgeneral education and not his knowledge of the special subjects towhich he will afterwards devote himself. The evils of prematurespecialisation are too well known to require even enumeration, andthey are increased rather than diminished if that prematurespecialisation is vocational. The importance of technical training asthe means whereby a man is enabled rightly to use the hours of workcan hardly be exaggerated; but the value of his work, his worth to hisfellows, and his rank in the scale of manhood depend, to at least anequal degree, upon the way in which he uses the hours of leisure. Itis one of the greatest of the many functions of a good school to trainits members to a wise use of leisure; and though this is not alwaysachieved by direct means the result is none the less valuable. Inevery calling there must needs be much of what can only be to all saveits most enthusiastic devotees--and, at times, even to them--dullroutine and drudgery. A man cannot do his best, or be his best, unlesshe is able to overcome the paralysing influences thus brought to bearupon him by securing mental and spiritual freshness and stimulus; inother words his "inward man must be renewed day by day. " There aremany agencies which may contribute to such a result; but schoolmemories, school friendships, school "interests" take a foremost placeamong them. Many boys by the time they leave school have developed aninterest or hobby--literary, scientific or practical; and the hobbyhas an ethical, as well as an economic value. Nor is this all. Excessive devotion to "Bread Studies, " whether voluntary orcompulsory, tends to make a man's vocation the prison of his soul. Professor Eucken recently told his countrymen that the greater theirperfection in work grew, the smaller grew their souls. Any rationalinterest, therefore, which helps a man to shake off his fetters, helpsalso to preserve his humanity and to keep him in touch with hisfellows. Dr A. C. Benson tells of a distinguished Frenchman whoremarked to him, "In France a boy goes to school or college, andperhaps does his best. But he does not get the sort of passion for thehonour and prosperity of his school or college which you English seemto feel. " It is this wondrous faculty of inspiring unselfish devotionwhich makes our schools the spiritual power-houses of the nation. Thislove for an abstraction, which even the dullest boys feel, is thebeginning of much that makes English life sweet and pure. It is thesame spirit which, in later years, moves men to do such splendidvoluntary work for their church, their town, their country, and evenin some cases leads them "to take the whole world for their parish. "

However much we may strive to reach the beautiful Montessori ideal, the fact remains that there must be some lessons, some duties, whichthe pupil heartily dislikes and would gladly avoid if he could; butthey must be done promptly and satisfactorily, and, if not cheerfully, at least without audible murmuring. Eventually he may, and often does, come to like them; at any rate he realises that they are not setbefore him in order to irritate or punish him, but as part of hisschool training. It will be agreed that the acquirement of a habit ofdoing distasteful things, even under compulsion, because they are partof one's duty is no bad preparation for a life in which most daysbring their quota of unpleasant duties which cannot be avoided, delegated, or postponed. 

At the present time, however, there is a real danger--in some quartersat least--of unduly emphasising the specifically vocational, or"practical" side of education. The man of affairs knows little ornothing of young minds and their limitations, of the conditions underwhich teaching is done, or of the educational values of the variousstudies in a school curriculum. He is prone to choose subjects chieflyor solely because of their immediate practical utility. Thus in hisview the chief reason for learning a modern language is that businesscommunications will thereby be facilitated. One could wish that hewould be content to indicate the end which he has in view, and whichhe sees clearly, and leave the means of obtaining it to the judgmentand experience of the teacher; for in education, as in other spheresof action, the obvious way is rarely the right way, and very often theway of disaster. Yet it is a distinct gain to have the practical manbrought into the administration of educational affairs; for teachersare, as a rule, too little in contact with the world of commerce toknow much of the needs and ideas of business men. The Board ofEducation has already established a Consultative Committee ofEducationists. Why should not a similar standing Committee, consistingof representatives of the Chambers of Commerce of the country be alsoappointed? Such a Committee could render, as could no other body, invaluable service to the cause of education. 

From a recent article by Professor Leacock we learn that some twentyyears ago there was a considerable change in the Canadian schools anduniversities. "The railroad magnate, the corporation manager, thepromoter, the multiform director, and all the rest of the group knownas captains of industry, began to besiege the universities clamouringfor practical training for their sons. " Mr Leacock tells of a "greatand famous Canadian public school, " which he attended, at whichpractical banking was taught so resolutely that they had wire gratingsand little wickets, books labelled with the utmost correctness, andall manner of real-looking things. It all came to an end, and now itappears that in Canada they are beginning to find that the great thingis to give a schoolboy a mind that will do anything; when the timecomes "you will train your banker in a bank. " It may be that everybodyhas not recognised this, and that the railroad magnates and the restof them are not yet fully convinced; but Mr Leacock declares that themost successful schools of commerce will not now attempt to teach themechanism of business, because "the solid, orthodox studies of theuniversity programme, taken in suitable, selective groups, offer themost practical training in regard to intellectual equipment, that theworld has yet devised. "

To the same purport is the evidence given by Mr H. A. Roberts, Secretary of the Cambridge Appointments Board (see _Minutes ofEvidence taken before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 22ndNovember 1912-13th December 1912_, pp. 66-73). The whole of thistestimony deserves careful study. For some few years past the headsof the great business firms, in this country and abroad, have beenapplying in ever increasing numbers to Cambridge (and to Oxford also, though in this case statistics do not appear to be available) for mento take charge of departments and agencies; to become, in fact, "captains of industry. " In the year before the war (1913-14) about 135men were transferred from Cambridge University to commercial poststhrough the agency of the Board[1]. One might naturally suppose thatthe majority of these were science men; on the contrary, owing nodoubt to the greater number of other posts open to them, they werefewer than might have been expected. Graduates from every Tripos arefound in the 135 in numbers roughly proportional to the numbers in thevarious Tripos lists. Shortly before the war an advertisement of animportant managership of some works--in South America, if I rememberrightly--ended with the intimation that, other things being equal, preference would be given to a man who had taken a good degree inClassical Honours. 

That most of such men are successful in their occupations might bedeemed to be proved by the steady increase in the number ofapplications made for their services. There is, however, more definiteevidence available. A member of one of the largest business firms inthe country testified to the same Royal Commission that of the 46Cambridge men who had been taken into his employment during theprevious seven years 43 had done excellently well, two had left beforetheir probationary period was ended to take up other work; and oneonly had proved unsatisfactory. This evidence could easily besupplemented did space permit. It is clear, then, that in manycallings what is wanted--to begin with, at any rate--is not so muchtechnical knowledge as trained intelligence. 

Another reason for thus choosing university men is not difficult todiscover. When Mr W. L. Hichens (Chairman of Cammell, Laird and Co. )addressed the Incorporated Association of Headmasters in January lasthe declared that in choosing university graduates for business helooked out for the man who might have got a First in Greats orhistory, if he had worked--a man who had other interests as well, whowas President of the Common Room, who had been pleasant in the CommonRoom, or on the river, or rowed in his college "Eight, " or had donesomething else which showed that he could get on with his fellow-men. In business getting on means getting on with men. 

The experience of Mr Hichens is so valuable that I cannot do betterthan quote further. "A big industrial organisation such as my firm, has, or should have three main sub-divisions--the manufacturingbranch, the commercial branch, and the research or laboratorybranch.... I will not deal with the rank and file, but with the bettereducated apprentices, who expect to rise to positions ofresponsibility. On the workshop side, we prefer that the lads shouldcome to us between sixteen and seventeen, and, if possible (afterserving an apprenticeship in the shops and drawing office), that theyshould then go to a university and take an engineering course. 

"On the commercial side also we prefer to get the boys between sixteenand seventeen. We have recently, however, reserved a limited number ofvacancies for university men. The research department also is, in themain, recruited from university men. But there is this difference, that, whereas the research men should have received a scientifictraining at the university we require no specialised education in thecase of university men joining the commercial side. Specialisededucation at school is of no practical value. There is ample timeafter a boy has started business to acquire all the technicalknowledge that his brain is capable of assimilating. What we want whenwe take a boy is to assure ourselves that he has ability and moralstrength of character, and I submit that the true function ofeducation is to teach him how to learn and how to live--not how tomake a living. We are interested naturally to know that a boy has anaptitude for languages or mathematics, but it is immaterial to uswhether he has acquired his aptitude, say for learning languages, through learning Latin and Greek or French and German. The educationalvalue is paramount, the vocational negligible. If, therefore, modernlanguages are taught because they will be useful in later life, whileLatin and Greek are omitted because they have no practical use, although their educational value may be greater, you will bebartering away the boy's rightful heritage of knowledge for a mess ofpottage. "

There are doubtless many different opinions as to the best way oftraining boys to become engineers, and in giving the results of hisexperience Mr Hichens does not claim that he is voicing the unanimousand well-considered judgments of the whole profession. His statementthat "specialised education at school is of no practical value to us"would certainly be challenged by those schools which possess a strong, well-organised engineering side for their elder boys. But there wouldbe substantial unanimity--begotten of long and often bitterexperience--in favour of his plea that a sound general education up tothe age of sixteen or seventeen at any rate, is an indispensablecondition of satisfactory vocational training. "I venture to think, "says Mr Hichens, "that the tendency of modern education is often inthe wrong direction--that too little attention is given to thefoundations which lie buried out of sight, below the ground, and toomuch to a showy superstructure. We pay too much heed to the parentswho want an immediate return in kind on their money, and forget thateducation consists in tilling the ground and sowing the seed--forget, too, that the seed must grow of itself. "

It would appear from what has already been said that though thenecessity for vocational training exists in most, if not in all cases, the time in a boy's life at which such training ought to begin is farfrom being the same for all callings. Even where there is generalagreement as to the normal age, exceptional circumstances orexceptional ability may justify the postponement of vocationalinstruction to a much later period than would usually be desirable. Thus the fact that two of the most distinguished members of themedical profession graduated as Senior Wrangler and Senior Classicrespectively, will not justify the average medical student in waitinguntil he is twenty-three before commencing his professional training. If it be true that in some quarters "specialised education" has beendemanded for young boys, it is equally true that many youths passthrough school and enter the university without any clear idea ofwhither they are tending. This uncertainty may be due to a belief that"something is sure to turn up, " to the magnitude of their allowancesand the ease of their circumstances, occasionally, perhaps, toexcessive timidity or underestimation of their powers; but, fromwhatever cause it springs, such an attitude of mind is deplorable initself, and fraught with grave moral dangers. It ought to be possiblein the case of a boy of sixteen or seventeen to say with some approachto certainty, for what employments he is quite unsuitable, and toindicate the general direction, at least, in which he should seek hislife-work. The _onus_ of choice is too often laid upon the boyhimself; and the form in which the question is put--What would you_like_ to be?--makes him the judge not only of his own desires andabilities, but also of the conditions of callings with which he can, at best, be but imperfectly acquainted. There is here fine scope forthe co-operation of parents and teachers not only with each other butwith the various professional and business organisations. It isgenerally supposed to be the duty of a head master to observe andstudy the boys committed to his care. It is equally important that heshould extend that study and observation to their parents--as an actof justice to the boys, if for no other reason. But there are otherreasons. There is knowledge to be gotten from every parent--or atleast from every father--about his profession or business--knowledgewhich, as a rule, he is quite willing to impart. If, in addition, ahead master avails himself of the opportunities of getting into touchwith men of affairs, leaders of commerce, professional men of allkinds, his advice to parents as to suitable careers for their sonsbecomes enormously more valuable. At the very least he may save themfrom some of the more flagrant forms of error; for instance, he mayconvince them that there are other and more valuable indications offitness for engineering than the ability to take a bicycle to pieces, and a desire "to see the wheels go round"; and that a boy who is "goodat sums" will not, of necessity, make a good accountant. In short, hemay prevent them from mistaking a hobby for a vocation. 

[Footnote 1: In this connection it may be noted that 43 per cent. Ofthe members of Trinity College--where the normal number ofundergraduates in residence is over 600--on leaving the universitydevote themselves to business. ]

III

It ought to be clearly stated that in writing of schools I have had inmind those which are usually known as public schools; for in thegeneral preparation for practical life the public school boy enjoysmany advantages which do not fall to the lot of his less-favouredbrother in the elementary school. Not only does his education continuefor some years longer, but it is conducted along broader lines, andgives him a greater variety of knowledge and a wider outlook. Hecomes, too, as a rule, from those classes of the community in whichthere are long standing traditions of discipline, culture, and whatmay be called the spirit of _noblesse oblige_. These traditions donot, of themselves, keep him from folly, idleness, or even vice; butthey do help him to endure hardship, to submit to authority, tocultivate the corporate spirit, to maintain certain standards ofschoolboy honour, and, as he himself would say, "to play the game. "Though in the class-room it may be that appeals are largely made toindividualism and selfishness, yet on the playing fields he learnssomething of the value of co-operation and the virtue ofunselfishness. From the very first he begins to develop a sense ofcivic and collective responsibility, and, in his later years atschool, he finds that as a prefect or monitor he has a direct share inthe government of the community of which he is a member, and a directresponsibility for its welfare. Nor does this sense of corporate lifedie out when he leaves, for then the Old Boys' Association claims him, and adds a new interest to the past, while maintaining the oldinspiration for the future. 

With the elementary school boy it is not so. To him, as to hisparents, the primal curse is painfully real: work is the sole and notalways effectual means of warding off starvation. He realises that assoon as the law permits he is to be "turned into money" and mustneeds become a wage-earner. As a contributor to the family exchequerhe claims a voice in his own government, and resists all the attemptsof parents, masters, or the State itself to encroach upon his liberty. He begins work with both mind and body immature and ill-trained. Therehas been little to teach him _esprit de corps_; he has never felt thesobering influence of responsibility; the only discipline he hasexperienced is that of the class-room, for the O. T. C. And organisedgames are to him unknown; and when he leaves there is very rarely anyAssociation of Old Boys to keep him in touch with his fellows or theschool. Here and there voluntary organisations such as the Boy Scoutshave done something--though little--to improve his lot; but, in themain, the evils are untouched. To find the remedy for them is not theleast of the many great problems of the future. 

The improvement of any one branch of industry ultimately means theimprovement of those engaged therein. Scientific agriculture, forexample, is hardly possible until we have scientific agriculturists. In like manner real success in practical life depends on the temperand character of the practitioner even more than upon his technicalequipment. There are, however, three great obstacles to the progressof the nation as a whole, obstacles which can only be removed verygradually, and by the continuous action of many moral forces. We arefar too little concerned with intellectual interests. "No nation, Iimagine, " says Mr Temple, "has ever gone so far as England in itsneglect of and contempt for the intellect. If goodness of charactermeans the capacity to serve our nation as useful citizens, it isunobtainable by any one who is content to let his mind slumber. " Thenagain we suffer from the low ideal which leads us to worship success. From his earliest years a boy learns from his surroundings, if not byactual precept, to strive not so much to be something as somebody. Thelove of power rather than fame may be the "last infirmity of nobleminds, " but it is probably the first infirmity of many ignoble ones. Herein lies the justification of the criticism of a friendly alien. "You pride yourselves on your incorruptibility, and quite rightly; forin England there is probably less actual bribery by means of moneythan in any other country. _But you can all be bribed by power_. "Lastly (to quote Mr Hichens yet once more), "Strong pressure is beingbrought to bear to commercialise our education, to make it a payingproposition, to make it subservient to the God of Wealth and thusconvert us into a money-making mob. Ruskin has said that 'no nationcan last that has made a mob of itself. ' Above all a nation cannotlast as a money-making mob. It cannot with impunity--it cannot withexistence--go on despising literature, despising science, despisingart, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating itssoul on pence. "

XI

TEACHING AS A PROFESSION

By FRANK ROSCOE

Secretary of the Teachers Registration Council

The title of this chapter is prophetic rather than descriptive foralthough teachers often claim for their work a professional status andfind their claim recognised by the common use of the phrase "teachingprofession" yet it must be admitted that teachers do not form a trueprofessional body. They include in their ranks instructors of alltypes, from the university professor to the private teacher or"professor" of music. Their terms of engagement and rate ofremuneration exhibit every possible variety. Their fitness toundertake the work of teaching is not tested specifically, save in thecase of certain classes of teachers in public elementary schools, noris there any general agreement as to the proper nature and scope ofsuch a test, could one be devised. Usually, it is true, theprospective employer demands evidence that the intending teacher hassome knowledge of the subject he is to teach. He may seek to satisfyhimself that the applicant has other desirable qualities, personal andphysical, which will fit him to take an active and useful part inschool work. These inquiries, however, will have little or noreference to his skill in teaching, apart from what is calleddiscipline or form management. 

The characteristics of a true profession are not easily defined, butit may be assumed that they include the existence of a body ofscientific principles as the foundation of the work and the exerciseof some measure of control by the profession itself in regard to thequalifications of those who seek to enter its ranks. Taken together, these two characteristics may be said to mark off a true professionfrom a business or trade. The skilled craftsman or artisan may belongto a union which seeks to control the entrance to its ranks, but thedifference between the member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineersand the member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers is that theformer belongs to a body chiefly concerned with the application ofcertain methods while the latter belongs to one which is concernedwith those methods, not only in their application but also in theirorigin and development. It is recognised that there is a body ofscientific knowledge underlying the practice of engineering, and thevarious professional institutions of engineers seek to extend thisknowledge, while claiming also the right to ascertain thequalifications of those who desire to become members of theirprofession. The same is true in different ways with regard to theprofessions of law and medicine. It is to be noted also that withinthese professions the admitted member is on a footing of equality withall his colleagues save only so far as his professional skill andeminence entitle him to special consideration. 

It will be seen at once that there are great difficulties to beovercome before teaching can be truly described as a profession. Thediversity of the work is so great that it may be held that teaching isnot one calling but a blend of many. It is difficult to find anycommon link between the university professor, the head master of agreat public school, an instructor in physical training, and akindergarten teacher. It is not easy to bring together the head masterof a preparatory school, working in complete independence, and thehead master of a public elementary school, dealing with pupils ofabout the same age as those in the preparatory school, but controlledand directed by an elected public authority under the generalsupervision of the Board of Education. Yet despite these apparentdivergences of aim all teachers may be regarded as pursuing the sameend. They are engaged in bringing to bear upon their pupils certainformal and purposeful influences with the object of enabling them toplay their part in the business of life. Such formal influences areseconded by countless informal ones. School and university alone donot make the complete man and it is an important part of the teacher'stask to second his direct and purposeful teaching by the influence ofhis own personality and conduct, and by securing that the form orschool is in harmony with the general aim of his work. 

Skill in imparting instruction is by no means the whole of theequipment required by a teacher. It is indeed possible to give "a goodlesson" or a series of "good lessons" and yet to fail in the real workof teaching. In some branches far too much stress has been laid onthe more purely technical and mechanical attributes of good teachingas distinct from the finer and more permanent qualities such asintellectual stimulus, the awakening of a spirit of inquiry, and thedevelopment of a true corporate sense. By way of excuse it may be saidthat teaching has tended to become a form of drill chiefly in thoseschools where the classes have been too large to permit of anythingbetter than rigid discipline and a constant attention to the learningof facts. Teachers in such circumstances are gravely handicapped inall the more enduring and important parts of their work. Very largeschools and classes of an unwieldy size tend to turn the teacher intoa mere drill sergeant. 

While full provision should always be made for the exercise of theteacher's individuality there must be sought some unifying principlein all forms of teaching work. Unless it is agreed that the impartingof instruction demands special skill as distinct from knowledge of thesubject-matter we shall be driven to accept the view that the teacher, as such, deserves no more consideration than any casual worker. Noclaim to rank as a profession can be maintained on behalf of teachersif it is held that their work may be undertaken with no morepreparation than is involved in the study of the subject or subjectsthey purpose to teach. A true profession implies a "mystery" or atleast an art or craft and some knowledge of this would seem to beessential for teachers if they are to have professional status. 

The difficulty in this connection is that the principles of teachinghave not yet been worked out satisfactorily. Our knowledge of theoperations of the mind develops very slowly and those who carry outinvestigations in this field of research are few in number. Theirconclusions are not necessarily related to teaching practice but covera wider field. The study of applied psychology with special referenceto the work of the teacher needs to be encouraged since it will serveto enlarge that body of scientific principle which should form thebasis of teaching work. It is by no means necessary, or evendesirable, that teachers should be expected to spend their time inpsychological research. Their business is to teach and this requiresthat they should devote themselves to applying in practice the truthsascertained and verified by the psychologists. For this purpose itwill be necessary that they should know something of the method bywhich these truths are sought and proved. It is also an advantage forteachers to learn something of the history of education, not as aseries of biographies of so-called Great Educators but rather with theobject of learning what has been suggested and attempted in formertimes. Such a knowledge furnishes the teacher with the necessary powerto deal with new proposals and with the many "systems" and "methods"which are continually arising. Instead of becoming an eager advocateof every novelty or adopting an attitude of indiscriminate scepticismhe will be in some measure able to estimate the true merit of newproposals, and his knowledge of mental operations will serve as anaid in judging whether they have any germ of sound principle. Thealternative plan of leaving the teacher to learn his craft solely bypractice often has the result of confining him too closely to narrowand stereotyped methods, based either on the imperfect recollection ofhis own schooldays, or on the method of some other teacher. Imitationis cramping and serves to destroy the qualities of initiative andadaptability which are indispensable to success in teaching. 

It will be noted that no extravagant demand is put forward on behalfof what is called training in teaching. The methods of traininghitherto practised have been based too frequently on the assumptionthat it is possible to fashion a teacher from the outside, as it were, by causing him to attend lectures on psychology and teaching methodand to hear a course of demonstration lessons. This plan may failcompletely since it is possible to write excellent examination answerson the subjects named and even to give a prepared lesson reasonablywell without being fitted to undertake the charge of a form. It shouldbe recognised that the practice of teaching can be acquired only inthe class-room under conditions which are normal and thereforeentirely different from those existing in the practising school of atraining college. When this truth is fully apprehended we may expectto find that the young teacher is required to spend his first year ina school where the head master and one or more members of the regularstaff are qualified to guide his early efforts and to establish thenecessary link between his knowledge of theory and his requirementsin practice. 

The Departments of Education in the universities should be encouragedto develop systematic research into the principles of teaching andshould be in close touch with the schools in which teachers arereceiving their practical training. 

The plan suggested will be free from the reproach often levelledagainst the existing method of training teachers, namely, that it istoo theoretical and produces people who can talk glibly abouteducation without being able to manage a class. It will also recognisethe truth that the young teacher has much to learn in regard to theart or craft of teaching and that there are certain general principleswhich he must know and follow if he is to be successful in his chosenwork. The application of these principles to his own circumstances isa matter of practice, for in teaching, as in any other art, theelement of personality far outweighs in its importance any matter offormal technique or special method. The ascertained and acceptedprinciples underlying all teaching should be known and thereafter theteacher should develop his own method, reflecting in his practice thebent of his mind. 

The recognition of a principle does not of necessity involveuniformity in practice. Freedom in execution is possible only withinthe limits of an art. The problem is to define these limits in such aliberal manner as will allow for variety and individual expression. The saying that teachers are born, not made, is one which may be madeof those who practise any art, but the poet or painter can exercisehis innate gifts only within certain limits and with regard to certainrules. It is no less fatal to his art for him to abandon all rulesthan it is for him to accept every rule slavishly and apply it tohimself without intelligence. 

The acceptance of the principle that there is an art or at least acraft of teaching is a condition precedent to any attempt to maketeaching a profession in reality as well as in name. 

The further requirement is that those who are engaged in teachingshould have some power of controlling the conditions under which theywork and more especially of testing the qualifications of those whodesire to join their ranks. This demands a recognition of theessential unity of all teaching work and a consequent effort to bringall teachers together as members of one body, possessing a certainunity or solidarity in spite of its apparent diversities. To form sucha body is a task of great difficulty since the various types ofteachers have in the past tended to separate themselves into groups, each having its own association and machinery for the protection ofits own interests. Apart from the teaching staffs of the variousuniversities, there are in England and Wales over fifty associationsof teachers, ranging from the National Union of Teachers with overninety thousand subscribing members to bodies numbering only a fewscore adherents. These associations reflect the great diversity ofteaching work already described, but all alike are seeking to promotefreedom for the teacher in his work and to advance professionalobjects. Such aspirations have been in the minds of teachers for manyyears and from time to time attempts have been made to realise them byestablishing a professional Council with its necessary adjunct of aRegister of qualified persons. Seventy years ago the College ofPreceptors, with its grades of Associate, Licentiate and Fellow, suggesting a comparison with the College of Physicians, wasestablished with the object of "raising the standard of the professionby providing a guarantee of fitness and respectability. " The CollegeRegister was to contain the names of all those who were qualified toconduct schools, and admission to the Register was controlled by theCollege itself in order to provide a means of excluding all who werelikely to bring discredit upon the calling of a teacher by reason oftheir inefficiency or misconduct. The scheme thus launched was, however, not comprehensive, since it concerned chiefly the teacherswho conducted private schools and did not contemplate the inclusion ofthose who were engaged in universities, public schools, or theelementary schools working under the then recently established schemeof State grants. Teachers in schools of this last description wereapparently intended by the government of the day to be regarded ascivil servants, appointed and paid by the State. Subsequentlegislation modified this arrangement, but teachers in schoolsreceiving government grants are still subject to a measure of control, and those in public elementary schools are licensed by the Statebefore being allowed to teach. It will be seen that the effort toorganise a teaching profession was hampered from the start by thefact that teachers were not entirely free to set up their ownconditions, since the State had already taken charge of one branch, while further difficulties arose from the varied character ofdifferent forms of teaching work and from the circumstance that someof these forms were traditionally associated with membership ofanother profession, that of a clergyman. 

Hence it was that despite several attempts to institute a Register ofTeachers and to organise a profession the difficulties seemed to beinsurmountable. Between the years 1869 and 1899 several bills wereintroduced in Parliament with the object of setting up a Register ofTeachers but all met with opposition and were abandoned. The Board ofEducation Act of 1899 gave powers for constituting by Order in Councila Consultative Committee to advise the Board on any matter referred tothe Committee and also to frame, with the approval of the Board, regulations for a Register of Teachers. It was not until 1902 that anOrder in Council established a Registration Council and laid downregulations for the institution of a Register. The Council thusestablished consisted of twelve members, six of whom were nominated bythe President of the Board of Education while one was elected by eachof the following bodies: the Headmasters' Conference, the Headmasters'Association, the Head Mistresses' Association, the College ofPreceptors, the Teachers' Guild, and the National Union of Teachers. The members of the Council were to hold office for three years, andafterwards, on 1 April, 1905, the constitution of the Council was tobe revised. The duty assigned to the Council was that of establishingand keeping a Register of Teachers in accordance with the regulationsframed by the Consultative Committee and approved by the Board ofEducation. Subject to the approval of the Board the Council wasempowered to appoint officers and to pay them. The income was to beprovided by fees for registration and the accounts were to be auditedand published annually by the Board to whom the Council was alsorequired to submit a report of its proceedings once a year. 

Under this scheme a Register was set up, with two columns, A and B. Inthe former were placed the names of all teachers who had obtained thegovernment certificate as teachers in public elementary schools. Thisinvolved no application or payment by such teachers, who were thusregistered automatically. Column B was reserved for teachers insecondary schools, public and private. Registration in these cases wasvoluntary and demanded the payment of a registration fee of one guineain addition to evidence of acceptable qualification in regard toacademic standing and professional training. Although teachers ofexperience were admitted on easier terms the regulations were intendedto ensure that, after a given date, everybody who was accepted forregistration should have passed satisfactorily through a course oftraining in teaching. As designed in the first instance Column Bfurnished no place for teachers of special subjects and it becamenecessary to institute supplemental Registers in regard to music andother branches which had come to form part of the ordinary curriculumof a secondary school. 

The scheme thus provided a Register divided into groups according tothe nature of the accepted applicant's work. Such an arrangementpresented many difficulties since it ignored all university teachersand assigned the others to different categories depending in someinstances on the type of school in which they chanced to be workingand in others on the subject which they happened to be teaching. 

A professional Register constructed on these lines had the seemingadvantage of supplying information as to the type of work for whichthe individual teacher was best fitted. On the other hand it was heldthat the division of teachers into categories was unsound in principleand the teachers in public elementary schools were not slow to resentthe suggestion that they belonged to an inferior rank and wereproperly to be excused the payment of a fee. They pointed out thatmany of their number held academic qualifications which were higherthan those required to secure admission to Column B wherein someeleven thousand teachers had been registered, of whom not more thanone half were graduates. The views thus expressed were shared by manyother teachers and it speedily became manifest that the proposedRegister could not succeed. In the Annual Report of 1905 the Councilstated that under existing conditions it was not practicable to frameand publish an alphabetical Register of Teachers such as appeared tobe contemplated in the Act of 1899. In June, 1906, the Board ofEducation published a memorandum stating the reasons which had led itto take the opportunity afforded by impending legislation to abolishthe Register, and in the Education Bill of 1906 a clause was insertedwhich removed from the Consultative Committee the obligation to framea Register of Teachers. This clause was strongly opposed by manyassociations of teachers. It was urged by these bodies that althoughone scheme had failed yet a Register was still possible and desirable. It was held by many that the task assigned to the Registration Councilhad been an impossible one since the conditions of supervision andcontrol imposed under the Act of 1899 left the Council very littlefreedom and wholly precluded the establishment of a self-governingprofession. The general opinion seemed to be that any future Registermust be in one column avoiding any attempt to divide those registeredinto different classes and that any future Council must be asindependent and widely representative as possible. This opinion foundexpression and official sanction in a memorandum issued by the Boardof Education in 1911 after several conferences had been held for thepurpose of promoting a new registration scheme. The memorandum statedthat: "It should not be so much the kinds of teachers likely to bemost rapidly or easily admitted to the Register that should speciallydetermine the composition of the Council but rather the larger andmore general conception of the unification of the TeachingProfession. " This new and wider idea served to govern the formation ofthe Teachers Registration Council which was established by an Orderin Council of February, 1912. The body constituted by this Orderconsists wholly of teachers and includes eleven representatives ofeach of the following classes: the Teaching Staffs of Universities, the Associations of Teachers in Public Elementary Schools, theAssociations of Teachers in Secondary Schools, and the Associations ofTeachers of Specialist Subjects. The Council thus numbers forty-fourand it is ordered that the chairman shall be elected by the Councilfrom outside its own body. At least one woman must be elected by eachappointing body which sends more than one representative to theCouncil provided that the body includes women among its members. Itwill be seen that the constitution aimed at forming a Council whollyindependent and thoroughly representative. This quality was furtherensured by the establishment of ten committees, representing variousforms of specialist teaching and providing that any conditions ofregistration framed by the Council should be submitted to thesecommittees before publication. 

The first Council under this scheme was formed in 1912 and held officefor three years as prescribed by the Order in Council. The chairmanwas the Right Honourable A. H. Dyke Acland and the members included theVice-Chancellors of several universities and representatives offorty-two associations of teachers. The first duty of the Council wasto devise conditions of registration and these were framed during1913, being published at the end of that year. They provide in thefirst place that up to the end of 1920 any teacher may be admitted toregistration who produces evidence of having taught undercircumstances approved by the Council for a minimum period of fiveyears. Regard for existing interests led to the setting up of a periodof grace before the full conditions of registration came into force. After 1920, however, these become more stringent and require thatbefore being admitted to registration the teacher shall produceevidence of knowledge and experience, while all save universityteachers are also required to have undertaken a course of training inteaching. Under both the temporary and later arrangement the minimumage for registration is twenty-five and the fee is a single payment ofone guinea. There is no annual subscription. 

The second Council was elected in 1915 and appointed as its chairmanDr Michael E. Sadler, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. Upto the middle of July, 1916, the number of teachers admitted to theRegister was 17, 628 and the names of these were included in the_Official List of Registered Teachers_ issued by the Council at thebeginning of 1917. The Register itself is too voluminous forpublication since it comprises all the particulars which an acceptedapplicant has submitted. All registered teachers receive a copy oftheir own register entry together with a certificate of registration. It will be seen that the task of receiving and consideringapplications for registration forms an important part of the Council'swork. But it is by no means its chief function. As is shown in theBoard of Education memorandum already quoted the Council is intendedto promote the unification of the teaching profession. The Registeris nothing more than the symbol of this unity and the Council ischarged with the important task of expressing the views of teachers asa body on all matters concerning their work. This is shown in thespeech made by the Minister of Education at the first meeting of theCouncil. After welcoming the members he added:

"The object of the Council would be not only the formation of aRegister of Teachers. There were many other spheres and fields ofusefulness for a Council representative of the Teaching Profession. Hehoped that they would be able to speak with one voice as representingthe Teaching Profession, and that the Board would be able to consultwith them. So long as he was head of the Board they would always bemost anxious to co-operate with the Council and would attach dueweight to their views. He hoped that they on their side would realisesome of the Board's difficulties and that the atmosphere of friendlyrelationship which he trusted had already been established wouldcontinue. "

The functions of the Council are thus seen to extend beyond the merecompilation of a Register of Teachers and to include constantco-operation with those engaged in educational administration. In viewof the desire which is now generally expressed for a closer unionbetween the directive and executive elements in all branches ofindustry it is safe to assume that the Teachers' Council will growsteadily in importance, especially if it is seen to have the supportof all teachers. 

Meanwhile it furnishes the framework of a possible teachingprofession and gives promise of securing for the teacher a definitestatus by establishing a standard of attainment and qualification. More than this will be required, however, if the work of teaching isto be placed on its proper level in public esteem. Those who undertakethe work must be led to look for something more than material gain. The teacher needs a sense of vocation no less than the clergyman ordoctor. It has been said that "teaching is the noblest of professionsbut the sorriest of trades" and the absence of any real enthusiasm forthe work inevitably produces an attitude of mind which is alien to thespirit of a real teacher. The material reward of the teacher hasaccurately reflected the want of public esteem attaching to his work. For the most part a meagre pittance has been all that he couldanticipate and this has led to a steady decline in the number ofrecruits. A profession should furnish a reasonable prospect of acareer and a fair chance of gaining distinction. Such opportunitieshave been far too few in teaching to attract able and ambitious youngmen in adequate number. The remedy is to open every branch ofeducational work and administration to those who have provedthemselves to be efficient teachers. The national welfare demands thatthose who are to be charged with the task of training future citizensshould be drawn from the most able of our young people, to whomteaching should offer a career not less attractive than othercallings. In particular the teacher should be regarded as a member ofa profession and trusted to carry out his duties in a responsiblemanner. Excessive supervision and inspection will tend to discourageand eventually destroy that quality of initiative which isindispensable in all teaching. Freed from the monetary cares which nowoppress him, definitely established as a member of a profession havingsome voice in its own concerns, encouraged to exercise his art underconditions of the greatest possible freedom, and provided withreasonable opportunity for advancement, the teacher will be able totake up his work in a new spirit. We may then demand from new-comers asense of vocation and expect with some justification that teacherswill be able to avoid the professional groove which is hardly to beescaped and which is quite inevitable if the conditions of one's workpreclude opportunity for maintaining freshness of mind and a varietyof personal interest. Such limitations as accompany inadequatesalaries, lack of prospects and absence of professional status convertteaching into "a dull mechanic art" and deprive it of its chiefelements of enjoyment, namely the free exercise of personality and therecurring satisfaction of seeing minds develop under instruction, sothat we are conscious of our part in helping the future citizens tomake the most of their lives. It is this power of impressing one's ownpersonality on the pliable mind of youth which brings at once thegreatest responsibility and the highest reward to the teacher andattaches to his task a true professional character since it may not beundertaken fittingly by any who cherish low aims or despise theirwork.