IS EDUCATION WASTED? by H. T. Edge, B. A. (Cantab.)
NO question is agitating us more than that of how to educate our young people. We know there is something wrong about our achievements in education, but we are often mistaken as to where the fault lies. The commonest mistake is to confound principles with practice and to blame the former where perhaps it is the latter which is at fault. We fail to carry out certain plans, and we blame the plans and want to make a clean sweep of them; when perhaps inefficiency in applying them is what is really the matter. In fact, it is probably inefficiency, rather than wrong principles, that is the matter with our educational doings, as it is in the case of so many others of our doings. Before we condemn a method, we should ask whether that method is being given a fair trial. If we sweep away the system, without removing the general inefficiency, then the same failure will attend our efforts to apply any new system that may be devised. We shall have exchanged one evil for another.
There is more than one side to every question; but many of the utterances on the educational difficulty give only one side. The result is views that are extreme and ill-considered. Let us take a case.
Much of education is considered by some critics to be superfluous and wasted, for the reason that it seems to bear no immediate and visible fruit. Hence they wish to abolish it. Yet it is always possible that it may bear fruit after all, but not of the kind they are able to see. Take, for instance, the case of a girl of ordinary type, without any definite characteristics whether good or bad. She is sent to school and college. She is taught algebra and geometry, Latin and Greek, music and painting, with many other subjects. She is reasonably clever and absorbs all this with interest and ease. She leaves college—and never again opens a book. The whole is quietly forgotten with as much nonchalance as it was acquired. Is all the time and money and effort, on the part of pupil and teachers, wasted?
Or let it be a boy, who has been taught similar subjects, but takes up a calling in which they are not used. Is the instruction wasted? The question arises in various forms, of which these two cases may be taken as typical examples.
If it is true that the education thus given is really wasted, what folly could be greater than that of continuing to impart it! Yet we know that somehow the view taken is too extreme; that it is not in accordance with the fitness of things that work involving so much zeal, enthusiasm, and other good qualities should fall fruitless; that people would not go on doing it if they did not have some intuition that the labor is not really in vain.
In short, may it not be possible that this is one of those cases in which a dilemma has arisen through the limitation of our knowledge of human nature and the laws of life; a dilemma resolvable by the wider knowledge shed by Theosophy? A knowledge of Reincarnation, the dual nature of man, and other related matters, clears up many of the enigmas of life, as for instance what becomes of all the abilities and experience which a man has garnered during life, when he dies. May not a similar knowledge shed light on the present problem also? If so, then our beliefs would be reconciled with our intuitions, and practices which logic has seemed to condemn might be vindicated in the light of fuller knowledge.
For one thing, a conviction of the continuity of individual existence beyond the grave, in other earth-lives, more or less similar to the present life, affects the whole question profoundly. For we may at once infer that knowledge accumulated now, but not immediately used, may be used later on. And indeed this idea quite agrees with what many analogies from Nature suggest. Youth is the time for study; maturer age brings other duties. Let us compare a lifetime with a day. In the morning a man studies many subjects; but after noon he shuts his books, never thinks of them again, and spends the remainder of the day in other occupations, followed by recreation and ending in sleep. Has his labor been wasted? Nay, for he will resume it next morning. Can we not apply this analogy to the case of the young person whose education has had, or seemed to have, no immediate practical result?
We thus see how limited views as regards the duration of life may influence the question. But there are other limitations in our views; let us see how these in turn may affect the question.
We are accustomed to pay too much attention to a man's capacity as a separate individual, and not enough to his capacity as a part of a whole. No being in the universe is entirely separate from other beings however much he may try to make himself so or imagine himself to be so. This is especially applicable to Mind. How much of our mind is our own? It has been argued that Mind is a kind of common atmosphere, in which all partake, and that thoughts are interchanged freely, the notion that they belong particularly to oneself being chiefly an illusion. The more this is true, the more it must be true that in teaching one person we are in reality teaching many persons, teaching mankind in general. Does a teacher teach persons or minds? To him it often seems as if he were developing Mind, and the distinction of personalities is apt to disappear. Yet this attitude on his part may not be mere carelessness and indifference to the interests of his pupils; it may be founded on an intuitive perception of the fact that personality does not count for so much and that his pupils also have a collective capacity, an aggregate value, which counts for a great deal.
Another way in which we limit our outlook, and thus obtain a false perspective, is in regarding too intently the immediate (and, as we say, "practical") outcome of education. There is such a thing as a general education, an education not directed to any immediate or definite end, but having in view the general culture and refinement of the pupils. It is true, of course, that this argument can be used, and is used, to justify kinds of teaching which really are undesirable; it is true that in aiming at a general education, we may overdo the process; it is true that such overdoing puts a weapon into the hands of our opponents and goes some way towards justifying their arguments. But aside from these abuses, the principle itself remains true. There must be a certain amount of general culture, culture of a kind that has no immediate practical end in view.
Let us try to imagine the results of applying some of the wrongly called "practical" methods to an extreme degree. This boy is to be a shoemaker: teach him shoemaking and nothing else. This girl is to sew or cook: teach her sewing and cooking, but nothing else. At that rate society would become a world of machines, and general culture and love of knowledge would disappear.
Finally, to name a fourth limitation in our outlook, there is the error of mistaking the principle itself for its application, the system for the way in which it is carried out, the institution for the use that is made of it. Thus we often lay the blame in the wrong place. Before we sweep away a system, let us find out whether it is the system that is at fault or the application of it; otherwise we may find equally faulty results proceeding from any new system which we may adopt. Is it inefficiency which is at the root of the evil? If so, let us remedy the inefficiency and then it will be time to see about changing the system.
The education question, like so many other questions, is in a state of chaos. Something is the matter, but people do not know just what it is. The suggested cures are many. Rash experiments are made. The remedies threaten to be worse than the disease. One thing seems generally agreed upon—that our education does not confer perfect efficiency. What we really need is a general education that will give efficiency in reading, writing, speaking, ciphering; in power of attention, memory, concentration; in adaptability, readiness of resource; obedience, order, self-command. No need to enumerate all the requirements; everybody knows what they are and what is needed. Efficient people are needed everywhere; but, above all, people with self-command and free from weaknesses. If we could but turn out this kind of product, much less in the way of technical schools would be needed; for such pupils would be so apt and teachable that they could readily master anything. The difficulties as to the nature of the curriculum, whether it should include Greek and Latin, and, if so, how much; what history should be taught, and how it should be taught; whether theoretical grammar should be taught, or whether the pupil should acquire grammar unconsciously from his reading—all these and many more problems would settle themselves, or at least our point of view concerning them would be altogether altered. As it is, most of these problems resolve themselves into the one problem of how to produce good fruit from a neglected tree. So long as the pupils have not been trained in the control of their faculties, moral and mental, it is difficult to teach them anything, no matter which method you adopt. And if they have been properly trained in their early years, the question of what to teach them sinks into comparative unimportance, because they will be able to make use of all their opportunities.
The root of the whole difficulty, therefore, is this: that people have no definite philosophy of life to serve as a foundation for efforts. With religious beliefs all undermined and mixed up, and nothing to take their place but various theories wrongly labeled "scientific," it is no wonder if folk should find themselves incompetent to solve the educational problem. We need to understand first what a man is and what is his destiny; we need to think of the Soul as having existed before it entered its present body, and as being destined to exist again after it has left that body. We need to know the difference between the higher and the lower nature in a person, and how the two are interblended. Then we should not have rash schemes which ignore this distinction and propose to let the lower nature run wild. We should then know how to give the higher nature its freedom without letting the lower nature run wild.
It all comes to this: that tools are not of use without men to handle them; and that in our scheming we are trying to devise tools which will turn unskilled workmen into skilled. The primary factor in education is the man itself. The question begins at birth—even before birth. When the time comes, as come it must, when people will find themselves compelled by necessity to recognize the efficacy of Theosophy, then many problems will be solved. Theosophy means a getting back to simple yet profound truths—such simple truths as can be applied to any circumstances. These alone can grapple successfully with the problems.