CHAPTER IV
THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION—THE PROVISION OF EDUCATION
The end of education is, as we have seen, the securing of the future social efficiency of the rising generation, and the method in every case is through the evoking of the reason-activity of the individual to organise and establish in the minds of the young and immature, systems of ideas which will hereafter function as means in the attainment of ends of definite social worth.
The question now arises as to whether the provision and organisation of the agencies of education may be safely left to the care and self-interest of the individual parent, or whether on principle such provision is a duty which devolves upon the State.
The principle of the State provision of the means of elementary education has now practically been admitted, and whether wisely or unwisely, the larger part by far of the cost of this provision now falls upon the shoulders of the general and local taxpayer. E.g., in England in 1902 there were six hundred and thirty-three thousand fee-paying children in the Public Elementary Schools, and over five millions receiving their education free.[9] Further, by the Education Act (England) of 1902 and by the Education and Local Taxation Account (Scotland) Act of the same year the principle of the State aid for the provision of the means of secondary and technical education may be said also practically to have been recognised. By the former Act certain Imperial funds derived from the income on Probate and Licence duties were handed over to the Councils of counties and boroughs for expenditure on the provision of the means of education other than elementary, and at the same time these bodies were empowered, if they thought it necessary, to impose a limited rate for the same purpose. In Scotland at the same time a certain part of Scotland's share of the "whisky" money was set aside for the provision of secondary education in urban and rural districts, and Secondary Education Committees were appointed in the counties and principal boroughs charged with the allocation of the funds towards the aid and increase of the provision of higher education in their respective districts.
But while this has been done, the question as to whether and to what extent the State should undertake the provision of the means of higher education is still one on which there is no general agreement. If it is the duty of the State to see that the provision of the means of education, elementary, secondary, technical, and university, is adequate to the attainment of the end of securing the future social efficiency of all the members of the community, then it must be admitted that the means at present provided for this purpose are totally inadequate, and that the method followed in furnishing this provision is not of a kind to ensure that the funds granted are spent in the manner best calculated to extend the agencies and to increase the efficiency of the higher education of the children of the nation. This latter objection applies more especially in the case of Scotland. In that country certain nominated bodies who are responsible only to themselves and to the Scotch Education Department are entrusted with the expenditure of the monies received for the extension of the means of higher education, and since these bodies stand in no intimate connection with the representative bodies entrusted with the control of elementary education, no efficient co-ordination of the two grades of education is possible. Further, in some cases sectional interests rather than the educational interests of the district as a whole are the main motives at work in determining the distribution of the funds amongst the various bodies claiming to participate in its benefits. The uncertainty of the amount of income available for this purpose, and the limitation in England of the power of rating, might also be urged in objection to this peculiarly English method of providing the means for the higher education of the youth of the country.
Similar reasons to those urged prior to 1870 in favour of the State provision of elementary education may be urged in favour of the extension of the principle to higher education. These reasons are nowhere more clearly stated than in the writings of John Stuart Mill.
In discussing the functions of government, Mill lays down that education is one of those things which it is admissible on principle that a Government should provide for the people, and although in adducing the reasons for the State undertaking this duty he is concerned mainly with the provision of the means of elementary education, yet looking to the altered social conditions of our own time, and taking into account the difference in the economic relations which exist now between Great Britain and her Continental rivals, the arguments advanced by Mill are no less applicable now to the extension of the principle of State provision. Let us consider these arguments.