The Salvaging of Civilization

by H. G. Wells

Now here again I want to put the same sort of questions I have put about schooling.

Is the college stage of our present educational system anywhere near its maximum possible efficiency? And could it not be extended from its present limited range until it reached practically the whole adolescent community?

Let me deal with the first of these questions first.

Could we not do much more than we do to make the broad issues of various current questions plain and accessible to our students in the college stage?

For example, there is a vast discussion afoot upon the questions that centre upon Property, its rights and its limitations. There is a great literature of Collectivist Socialism and Guild Socialism and Communism. About these things our young people must know. They are very urgent questions; our sons and daughters will have to begin to deal with them from the moment they leave college. Upon them they must form working opinions, and they must know not only what they themselves believe but, if our public affairs are not to degenerate into the squalid, obstinate, hopeless conflicts of prejudiced adherents, they must know also what is believed by other people whose convictions are different from theirs.

You may want to hush these matters up. Many elderly people do. You will fail.

All our intelligent students will insist upon learning what they can of these discussions and forming opinions for themselves. And if the college will not give them the representative books, a fair statement of the facts and views, and some guidance through the maze of these questions, it means merely that they will get a few books in a defiant or underhand way and form one-sided and impassioned opinions.

Another great set of questions upon which the adolescent want to judge for themselves, and ought to judge for themselves, are the religious questions.

And a third group are those that determine the principles of sexual conduct.

I know that in all these matters, on both sides of the Atlantic, a great battle rages between dogma and concealment on the one hand and open ventilation on the other.