The Story of a Great Schoolmaster

by H. G. Wells

You, gentlemen, are concerned with education: you are much concerned with the education which will promote the welfare of the leaders and workers in your industry; and the welfare of the people in your districts. Industrialism has tumbled upon us, and it is an untamed, unruly being, the laws of which are not yet known, and need study. For some thirty-five years—a long spell—I have, in places removed far away from the voices of industry, devoted my time towards the introduction into Public Schools of those Scientific and Technical studies which, as I understand it, lie at the basis of industrial life. I have always had before me the work of organising Technical Subjects so that they might give all that is best to give of spiritual and intellectual training. And our object is to send forth from school boys that will be in sympathy with the work that they have to do, that they will be privileged to do, and to send them forth equipped for it. You have the same purpose. Your wish is that the boys and girls of your country should have every chance of developing into effective workers in the community, and that they should take a zealous intellectual interest in their work—that they should love their work, love to do it well, ever anxious to mount to higher things.

And one of the difficulties of the immediate future will be to reorganise industrial conditions so that each worker may have the chance of stretching his faculties and of getting the work that will give him reasonably full play for his abilities. The fact that able and clever men are, in the present system, kept too long at work which does not stretch their brains, is a cause of unrest. Fortunately there is a growing consensus of opinion that more freedom for opportunity and for advancement is seriously necessary, and this sympathetic opinion will lead towards a solution. It is also well within the work of a school to promote this sympathy by sending out boys with those intellectual and scientific tastes and knowledge which will react upon themselves and attract them to the workers.

There are two other questions which I will mention before I come to the actual work which may be done in schools. One of the main aims of a good school is to see that each boy and girl is cared for, that each one has every opportunity for development. We must not cast out, or send our weak ones away, we must keep them in school—we must find out what kind of work will appeal to them, so that they, too, may move upwards, gain in self-respect, and love their life. And we claim that this is what we would have done in all factories, or in any occupation. It is the essential duty of every nation. We are anxious that no worker should be stunted mentally or physically by the kind of work he has to do. This again is a difficult as it is an urgent problem. It is one which can be studied in schools, and there is no doubt that the attempts of a school to provide avenues of advance for all kinds of boys will tend to bring the right spirit into industrial and agricultural life....'

§ 4

So much for the Bradford discourse. Here is the gist of a discourse given to the Reconstruction Council in London a year later.

'The object of this paper is to describe in practical working terms an organisation of schools which shall be based on a close association with the manifold needs and labours of the community life. At the outset I may say that the proposals will refer—even if not specifically so stated—to all types of schools, from the elementary to the Public Schools. It will be seen that the change needs a change in the ideals which have usually prevailed in schools of the past. In the community life the one urgent thing to be done to-day is to reorganise industry and the conditions of labour. This reorganisation may require quite organic or even anarchic changes—and for these changes the ideals of boys and girls must be changed, and to prepare for this change is the urgent work of the schools.

'Before I come to the proposals for reconstruction of schools, I will state very briefly some facts in industry which are now meeting with acceptance:

'1. Modern industrial life has come in with a tumultuous rush, in a haphazard, ungoverned way, through the activities of forceful, capable, and industrious leaders who have made use of the scientific discoveries of another type of men.

'2. The shrinkage of the world, and the growth of population which followed, has led to fierce competition; and this spirit of competition has ruled everywhere.