In the third place, and this truth is being gradually put into practice in the education of the weak-minded and of the physically defective, sound physical health is one of the conditions of right moral activity. This truth Rousseau emphasised when he declared: "that the weaker the body, the more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it obeys. All the sensual passions find lodgment in effeminate bodies, and the less they are satisfied the more irritable they become. The body must needs be vigorous to obey the soul: a good servant ought to be robust."
We shall inquire further into this question when we come to treat of the physical education of the child, but what we wish to point out is that one aim of all our educational efforts must be to secure the physical efficiency of the rising generation, on the grounds that sound physical health is a good in itself; is a means to the securing of the economic efficiency of the individual and of society; and is a condition of securing the ethical efficiency of the individual.
In the second place, the securing of the economic efficiency of the individual must be one of the aims of our educational efforts. This does not imply that our educational curriculum should be based on purely utilitarian lines, and that all subjects whose utilitarian value is not immediately apparent should be banished from the schoolroom. But it does imply that whether in the education of the professional man or of the industrial worker all instruction either directly or indirectly must have as its final result the efficiency of the individual as a worker. An education which fits the individual to use his leisure rightly may have as much effect in increasing the productive powers of the individual as that which looks more narrowly to his technical training. Further, we must remember that the larger number by far of the children of the modern State must in after-life become industrial workers, and that any system of education which neglects this fact, which makes no provision for the technical training of the children of the working classes, and has no adequate system of selecting and training those who by innate capacity are fitted to become the leaders in industry, is a system not in harmony with the characteristics of modern life, and that unless this economic efficiency is secured, then the opportunity for the development of the other ends of life cannot be secured.
Lastly, the securing of the ethical efficiency of the future members of the State must be one of our ultimate aims. The ethical aim of education may be said to be the supreme end, in the sense that it is the essential condition for the security, the stability, and the progress of society; and also from the fact that the ethical spirit of doing the work for the sake of the work should permeate all education.
In concluding this chapter what needs to be emphasised is that while the process of education remains ever the same, ever consists in acquiring and organising experience, in and through the working of reason incited to activity by the need of satisfying some natural or acquired interest, in order that future action may be rendered more efficient, and whilst the general nature of the ends to be attained may be said to be permanent and unchangeable, yet the particular and concrete ends at which we should aim in the education of our children is a practical question which every nation has, from time to time, to ask and answer afresh in the light of her national ideals and in view of her national aspirations. Nay, further, it is a question which with every necessary change in her internal organisation, and with every fundamental alteration in her relation to her external neighbours, has to be asked and answered anew by each and every State desirous of retaining her place amongst the nations of the world and of securing the welfare and happiness of her individual members. It is mainly because we as a nation have not realised this truth that our educational organisation has, neither in the explicitness and clearness of its aims, nor in the distinction, gradation, and co-ordination of its means, attained the same thoroughness and self-consistency as that possessed by the educational systems of some of our Continental neighbours.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Cf. Professor Findlay, Journal of Education (Sept. 1899), also "Principles of Class Teaching," p. 2.
[7] Cf. The Educative Process, chap. iii., esp. pp. 59, 60 (Macmillan).
[8] Montaigne, The Education of Children, L. E. Rector, Ph.D. (International Education Series), Appleton, New York.