The Salvaging of Civilization

by H. G. Wells

This leaves us with the mental life only of our community and its individuals to consider. On that I propose to concentrate this discussion.

Now the human mind in its opening stages in a civilized community passes through a process which may best be named as schooling. And under schooling I would include not only the sort of things that we do to a prospective citizen in the school and the infant school but also anything in the nature of a school-like lesson that is done by the mother or nurse or tutor at home, or by playmates and companions anywhere. Out of this schooling arises the general mental life. It is the structural ground-stuff of all education and thought.

Now what is this schooling to do—what is it doing to the new human being?

Let us recall what our own schooling was.

It fell into two pretty clearly defined parts. We learnt reading and writing, we made a certain study of grammar, the method of language, perhaps we learnt the beginnings of some other language than our own; we learnt some arithmetic and perhaps a little geometry and algebra; we did some drawing. All these things were ways of expression, means of expressing ourselves, means of comprehending our thoughts in terms of other people's minds, and of understanding the expressions of others. That was the basis and substance of our schooling; a training in mental elucidation and in communication with other minds. But also as our schooling went on there was something more; we learnt a little history, some geography, the beginnings of science. This second part of education was not so much expression as wisdom. We learnt what was generally known of the world about us and of its past. We entered into the common knowledge and common ideas of the world.

Now, obviously, this schooling is merely a specialization and expansion of a parental function.

In the primitive ages of our race the parent, and particularly the mother, out of an instinctive impulse and practical necessity, restrained and showed and taught, and the child, with an instinctive imitativeness and docility, obeyed and learnt. And as the primitive family grew into a tribe, as functions specialized and the range of knowledge widened, this primitive schooling by the mother was supplemented and extended by the showing of things by companions and by the maxims and initiations of old men.

It was only with the development of early civilizations, as the mysteries of writing and reading began to be important in life, that the school, qua school, became a thing in itself. And as the community expanded, the scope of instruction expanded with it. Schooling is, in fact, and always has been, the expansion and development of the primitive savage mind, which is still all that we inherit, to adapt it to the needs of a larger community. It makes out of the savage raw material which is our basal mental stuff, a citizen. It is a necessary process of fusion if a civilized community is to keep in being. Without at least a network of schooled persons, able to communicate its common ideas and act in intelligent co-operation, no community beyond a mere family group can ever hold together.

As the human community expands, therefore, the range of schooling must expand to keep pace with it.

I want to base my inquiry upon that proposition. If it is sound, certain very interesting conclusions follow.