The Unfinished Programme of Democracy

by Richard Roberts

II

But most of all do we require to clear our minds concerning the goal we are seeking through education. It is true, as Professor Dewey has pointed out, that it is not possible to define an end for education; for in a profound sense, education has no end. A true education will be that which fits an individual to go on learning to the end of his life. The aim of education is more education. At the same time this education will not be for its own sake, or for the learning it helps the scholar to acquire. Here again Dr. Dewey helps us by reminding us that one aim of education is social efficiency. Plainly and beyond peradventure no education will serve a democracy which does not produce socially efficient persons.

But this word efficiency has become discredited by its recent use. We have heard something of efficiency engineers who have tried to reduce human faculty into mathematical formulæ for the purpose of speeding up and suitably supplementing the mechanical processes of industry. It amounts to no more than a systematic endeavour to fit the human agent to the machine so as to get more out of the machine. The result for the life of the human agent as a whole is hardly taken into account. And even if this myth of efficiency engineering has met the fate it deserved, its very appearance and name are symptomatic of the general direction of popular thought upon the main business of a community. Nor is this confined to the classes that are interested in getting the utmost out of the worker, or to the unreflecting public. The British National Union of Teachers at its Annual Conference in 1916 declared that “this great war, with its terrible wastage of human life and material has brought into bold relief the economic potentialities of the child. As never before, the nation now realises that efficient men and women are the best permanent capital the state possesses.”[^[56]] So that the business of education is to develop the economic potentialities of the child in order to provide capital for the state. It does not appear that the child has any rights in the matter at all. He is to be trained in order to become “the best permanent capital” of the state. It is to be hoped that two more years of war have brought a more fruitful vision to the National Union of Teachers.

[56]. Quoted in the Public (N.Y.), July 6th, 1918.

Yet the word efficiency is worth keeping, for it embodies the true conception of educational aim so long as it is rightly interpreted; and industrial efficiency must be allowed to enter into our interpretation of it. Industrial efficiency gains its preponderant emphasis in recent discussion because we are still in the toils of the disastrous illusion that the national ideal is national wealth. We think of the nation’s well-being in terms of its financial prosperity; and naturally we tend to subordinate all our social processes to this end. But the result of this tendency will be to create not a society, but a wealth-producing machine; and those human possibilities in which the final wealth of life lies, will have to fight a doubtful battle for their very existence, and at best can gain no more than a precarious foothold in the interstices of the money-making organisation.

From this bias education must be delivered—at whatever cost; and a doctrine of social efficiency enunciated which will be comprehensive enough to satisfy the requirements of the single mind and the social whole at the same time. In point of fact, these requirements are virtually identical, for that which makes a full man makes also for a full fellowship. The individual is to find himself in precisely those things which enable him to contribute his due to society. We need, therefore, to enquire somewhat broadly into the nature of the things in which the individual shall render his due to the commonality. We shall then be in a position to state in general terms what we should look to the educational process to provide.

Professor Dewey has laid down in this connection a principle of the utmost importance. He affirms that “we may produce in schools a projection in type of the society we should like to realise.”[^[57]] If we are to train the young for social life, the proper method is to surround them in childhood, so far as that may be, with the conditions of the ideal social life toward which we look. The school should be the societas perfecta in miniature. This naturally requires a very considerable departure in tone from the conditions which still prevail. The pontifical and authoritarian tradition of the mediæval school is still with us; and an attention is devoted to problems of discipline and order which is disproportionate to the real business of preparing for life in a democratic commonwealth, and is to a great extent from an angle and in a spirit alien to the purpose in hand. A considerable breach in this system has already been made by the new emphasis upon the value of self-determination in education from the earliest stages; but the relaxation of the traditional canons of discipline does not carry us far enough. Self-determination must be recognised not only as an individual right but as a group responsibility; and the practice of popular self-government should begin in the schools. It is symptomatic of the present tendency among educators of a liberal and radical type that in the prospectus of a school soon to be established, it is laid down that the internal government “shall be increasingly democratic, scholars and teachers sharing both legislation and administration,” and that the external government shall be vested in a council, representing the trustees, the faculty and the scholars. This is a sane and fruitful method of initiating boys and girls into the larger responsibilities of social life. Already the plan has been adopted in some existing schools with a considerable measure of success; and if the school is to be the organ of a genuine training in social efficiency, we need a wide extension of this method.

[57]. Democracy and Education, p. 370.

But beyond this discipline in self-government, the school has to undertake the fitting of the child for other kinds of social contribution.

(a) He must be trained to contribute his share to the supply of the physical needs of the community. Obviously, in a school, the direct and complete application of this principle is impossible. It is laid down in the prospectus before referred to that “all must share, teacher and scholar alike, in the labour that lies at the basis of human life and unites all men through their common need”; and it is ordained that “the kitchen, the crafts-room and the garden shall rank equally with the classroom.” It is proposed to give the scholars “direct experience of agricultural processes and the preparation of the main articles of food, spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing, carpentry, building, pottery, printing and any other crafts directly contributing to the life of the community.” Naturally, no child is required to become expert in all these occupations; but his training in them will presently serve to reveal his special aptitudes and to determine his own personal choice.

It is not contemplated in this particular experiment that machinery will be introduced to any considerable extent; and while it is stated that machinery will not be excluded, it is obvious that it is regarded with some dubiety, if not hostility. But it is necessary to accept the position that the machine industry is here with us and is here to stay; and a proper perception of its true function will save us from assuming a fallacious attitude in regard to it. While the incentive to the development and improvement of large scale mechanical processes has been the pursuit of profit, the real office of these processes is to diminish the purely mechanical and menial operations which are necessary to life, and consequently to release a larger volume of human energy for tasks of a more independent and creative nature. There are certain necessities of life concerning which our requirements are that they should be good in quality and abundant in quantity—and as no question but of utility arises in relation to them, they may be assigned to the large-scale machine industry. This, however, does not in the least absolve us from including in our school curriculum a provision for the habituation of children to mechanical processes of this kind. But because these processes are necessarily monotonous and irksome, every effort should be made to introduce into them what elements of interest may be attached to them; and to reduce to the lowest possible point the current tendency to make the worker a mere accessory of the machine.

Miss Helen Marot has recently described proposals for an educational experiment which aims at the association of discipline in industrial production with the educational process. This particular experiment takes the form of producing wooden toys; and while, as Miss Marot sees, the production of toys has anyhow an intrinsic interest, the details which are given show how radically the atmosphere of the machine industry might be changed by giving it a place in the school curriculum. Miss Marot’s assumption that the machine industry can be so transformed by democratic control as to satisfy the creative instinct has already been adversely criticised in these pages; but the present discussion is not affected by criticism of that particular point. What it is to our purpose to observe is that mechanical processes may be relieved of some of their present irksomeness by supplying them with their appropriate background. First of all, it is necessary that the worker should be acquainted with the whole process of manufacture in order that he may participate in his own special task with a measure of intelligent interest; and this will involve a degree of familiarity with the technical problems of management, with accounting and costing, with the internal conditions of the industry and the plant, and with the larger economics of the enterprise. But in addition to all this more immediate business of habituation to routine, provision is made for the development of artistic judgment and execution and for the acquisition of knowledge relating to the craft itself—consisting in this case of “authentic accounts and inspirational stories of industrial life, especially of the lumber, wood-working and the toy industry.”

Obviously not all trades command the interest which can be created around toy-making. In the manufacture of articles of utility which are produced by processes of a highly standardised kind, it would be less easy to introduce elements of romance and sentiment. Still much can and should be done in every trade; and admission to any particular trade should be preceded by some discipline of this kind. If ever industry is organised on the basis of national Guilds, surely one function of the Guilds will be to establish national trade schools in which a generous training of this kind can be given and which shall be closely co-ordinated to the entire scheme of public education.