CHAPTER XII
THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL
We have seen that on its intellectual side the Primary School has two main functions to perform in the education of the child. In the first place, the school must endeavour to secure that the elementary arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic are well organised and well established in the mind of the child. The more effectively the language and number systems are organised and established the more efficiently will they function in the performance of future action. Moreover, it is only when they have become so organised as to function automatically that they reach their highest efficiency as instruments for the further extension of knowledge or of practice.
In the second place, the Primary School must train the pupil to the use of these systems as instruments for the realisation of other and concrete ends or interests. E.g., the number system may be used in the furtherance of the measuring interest, the weighing interest, and so on. The two dangers we have to avoid are on the one hand the barren formalism of treating the acquisition of these arts as ends in themselves, and on the other of supposing that the real interests can be intelligently understood merely through the instrumentality of the elementary arts and that they do not require independent treatment of themselves.
If the child is destined to go no farther than the Elementary School stage, then at least the concluding year of the school should be mainly devoted to training him to the use of the primary instrumental arts in the establishment of systems of knowledge necessary for the realisation of the simpler practical ends of life.
If, however, the child is selected for a course of higher education, the educative process becomes different in nature. In the first-named case we are content to give the child practice in the application of an already established system to concrete problems. In the second case we endeavour, using the elementary systems as means, to establish other systems of knowledge as means to the attainment of still further ends. We may, e.g., on the basis of the vernacular language build up a foreign language system as a means either to commercial intercourse or to literary culture. In short, the aim of the Secondary School is, using the elementary systems as the basal means, to organise and establish other systems of means for the attainment of the more complex interests of after-life, practical and theoretical. The object of establishing a system of knowledge is not to pass examinations,—this is the schoolmaster's error,—but to render future action more efficient, to further in after-life some complex interest of a practical or theoretical nature. To the few, indeed, the establishment and systematisation of knowledge may be an end in itself. To the many, the systematisation and establishment is and ought to be undertaken as a means to the more efficient furtherance of some practical end. Further, the only justification for the seeking of knowledge for its own sake is that thereby it may be better understood, better established and better systematised, and so become better fitted to make practice more efficient.
Hence the question as regards secondary education resolves itself into the question as to the nature of the systems of knowledge which we should endeavour to establish systematically in the mind of the child, and before we can answer this question we must know the length of time which the child can afford to spend at the Higher School and his possible vocation in after-life. For if education is the process by which the child is led to acquire and organise experiences so as to render future action more efficient, we must know something of the nature of this action, something of the nature of the future social services for which his education is to train him, and the school period must be of sufficient length to enable the required systems to be established permanently and thoroughly.
Neglect of these two obvious considerations has led in the past and even in the present leads to two errors in our organisation of the means of secondary education. In the first place, until quite recently, we have been too much inclined to the opinion that secondary education was all of one type, and even where this error has been recognised, as in Germany, the tendency still exists to emphasise unduly the particular type of education which has as its main ingredients the ancient classical languages. We spend years in the attempt to reconstruct and establish in the mind of the youth a knowledge of these language systems, and in a large number of cases we fail to attain adequately even this end. We build up laboriously systems of means which in after-life function directly in the attainment of no end, and as a consequence, in many cases, the dissolution of the system is as rapid as its acquisition was slow. At the time of the Renascence and when first introduced into the curriculum of the Secondary School, these languages, and especially Latin, did then possess a high functional value, since they were the indispensable means to the furtherance of knowledge and to social intercourse. To-day they possess little functional value, and their claim for admission into the school curriculum is chiefly based upon their so-called training and disciplinary values.
Let us consider this for a moment: in the reconstruction of, say, the Latin language, the pupil is being trained in the reconstruction and re-establishment of a language system whose methods and rules of construction are much more complex and intricate than those of any living language, and whose forms are so designed as to bring out exactly varied shades of meaning. Hence, in its acquisition the pupil receives practice in the exact discrimination of the meaning of words, and in their accurate placing and reconstruction within the sentence—the unit of expression—in order to bring out the exact interpretation of the thought or statement of fact intended by the writer.
Further, we may train the pupil during the school period to self-apply the language system in the further interpretation of relatively unknown passages. In short, we can train him in the processes of language construction and of language application. Moreover, in considering this question, we must take into account that during the school period the main interest must necessarily be directed to the acquisition and establishment of the system itself, that little attention can be directed towards the content for its own sake, and that the establishment of the system so that it shall function automatically in the interpretation of the content is a stage which is attained in comparatively few cases, and then only after many years of study.