CONTENTS
THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH EDUCATION
PROCRUSTES
I
INTRODUCTION
The Procrustean Bed
Andrew Undershaft.—“Every blessed foundling nowadays is snapped up in his infancy by Barnado homes, or School Board Officers, or Boards of Guardians; and if he shows the least ability he is fastened on by schoolmasters; trained to win scholarships like a racehorse; crammed with second-hand ideas; drilled and disciplined in docility and what they call good taste; and lamed for life so that he is fit for nothing but teaching.”—(Bernard Shaw).
During the Debate on the last Education Estimates (1925), Lord Hugh Cecil made a speech which most enthusiasts of education dismissed offhand as hopelessly reactionary. In the central part of his argument he deprecated the doctrine that education is to be equally distributed to all sorts of people, irrespective of their real capacity. He maintained that we must train children for the station to which, not by birth but by natural capacity, they properly belong. He would select the clever children and spend money liberally in giving them the fullest possible opportunities for higher study. But to the great body of children who are incapable of really using any higher teaching he would give a very low standard of education confined to the three R’s: the teaching of reading should be made the basis, for reading is the key to knowledge.
These views are certainly extreme; but, looked at impartially, they contain so much plain common-sense that it is rather remarkable that they provoked such bitter opposition. Of course, Lord Hugh Cecil laid himself open to two obvious charges: first, that he had no special knowledge of his subject, and, secondly, that his reforms were presumably intended for the children of masses and not those of his own class. But his opponents must take account of the statement made a few weeks later by the headmaster of Rugby, whose opinions cannot be discounted on these two grounds. Speaking as President of the Education Section of the British Association, Dr Vaughan disputed the assumption that the State should develop to the full the intellectual abilities of all its citizens. He considered that schooling is even now continued too long for some boys. He would give a thrice-generous remission after fourteen to those who had shewn no special aptitude for book-learning or any other form of direct education, on condition that they were kept within the spell of corporate life. Thus a distinguished practical schoolmaster corroborates the view of Lord Hugh Cecil that before providing unlimited educational facilities we should face the fact that many children are not amenable to the present educational process; and we ought therefore to consider whether we are promoting either their efficiency as citizens or their happiness as individuals by submitting them to a training for which they are not fitted. We are reminded that education has of recent years become a cult whose followers allow their zeal to blind them to stubborn realities.