The suggestion that we are on a false track in seeking to multiply indefinitely the educational institutions of existing type naturally provokes strong opposition, for it runs counter to one of the most cherished democratic doctrines of to-day. Ever since the first extension of the franchise, publicists have been preaching that the success of democracy depends upon the diffusion of culture among the masses who have the ultimate control of affairs. And whenever fears have been expressed that popular government has fallen short of the original ideal we have been assured that all will be well as soon as the electorate is properly educated. The public has thus been taught to believe that it is the duty of the State (so long as the financial position permits) to increase to the utmost the facilities for training its citizens.
The need for more education has, in fact, become a political commonplace. It has been only too easy for statesmen who have little real interest in the matter to talk vaguely about the educational ladder from the elementary school to the university, because such talk provides plausible material for the platform-speaker whose business it is to rehabilitate a popular system which has not quite come up to expectations. In a somewhat disillusioned democratic world education has threatened to become a political nostrum to be unintelligently applied and to be foolishly regarded as a panacea.
It is, in fact, the latest of a series of expedients prompted by belief in the perfectibility of mankind. A century or so ago republican reformers imagined that all the ills the State is heir to would be cured if King George’s government were replaced by a government of Tom Paine’s. Later on, the radicals thought that the millennium would be reached when every adult had a vote. The present generation has been too readily fooled by the equally delusive hope that the new Utopia will be created when everybody receives a university education at public expense.
It is therefore all to the good that our leaders should occasionally remind us that education is not a magic weapon of unlimited power. It is time that the public mind was disabused of the notion that a perfect system of education would of itself prove the salvation of the State. The fallacy lies, of course, in the assumption that everybody is capable of being educated. Those who are personally in touch with schools see only too clearly how unwarrantable such an assumption is. While they realise that every child, dull or clever, benefits by being under discipline and by taking part in the social life of a school, they know also that a certain proportion of children undergo no mental development commensurate with the time and labour expended on their behalf. Thus even if we imagine a perfect educational process, carried out by teachers who are all men and women of light and leading, the result of that process will be ultimately conditioned by the quality of the human beings who pass through it. Just as democracy pre-supposes education, so education pre-supposes children who are educable. It would seem, therefore, that political and social reformers who are still looking for a panacea must go to the eugenists.
The public statement of considered views such as those of Lord Hugh Cecil and the Headmaster of Rugby is one of the signs that we are at length emerging from the mental attitude which expresses itself in the crude demand for more and more education to be doled out indiscriminately. It is indeed time that we got rid of the prevalent notion that schools are factories (chiefly brain-factories) which can pass any sort of human material through a standardised course and in so many years turn out satisfactory finished products. And the friends of education need not be alarmed at the new trend of opinion. All reasonable people now admit the theoretical principle that the State must provide adequate training for all future citizens; and the Labour Party is flogging a dead horse when it insists so laboriously that every child, irrespective of social status, should be given the fullest educational opportunities. Present-day informed discussion has advanced beyond the consideration of this almost platitudinous statement of principle to an enquiry of a much more important character. The question being now asked is not whether every child should be given education to the age of sixteen or beyond, but what kinds of education ought to be provided for the many thousands of children of varied types who will receive advanced training through the increased facilities to be provided in the future.
The stage of educational development upon which we are now entering will, in fact, be marked by greater realism in the attitude of both the authorities and the general public towards the problems to be solved. We are gradually coming to acknowledge the fairly obvious truth that not every child is a potential Prime Minister, or even a capable civil servant, or a manager of a business. When we have shed the more romantic of the democratic habits of thought we shall even publicly admit that a certain proportion of mankind (whether the offspring of dukes or of dustmen) are fitted by nature to be nothing better than hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that to give them more than a limited amount of ordinary schooling is to perform a work of sentimental supererogation. We shall also realise that the course of instruction which has now become stereotyped as secondary, however admirable in itself, is a course for which relatively few children are really suited. And when we have taken more account than at present of the profound differences in individual capacities we shall cease to think of an education as something extraneous to the person educated, and to regard the school-curriculum as a Procrustean bed, to suit the dimensions of which the child’s mentality can be extended or truncated as required.
II
THE SCHOOLS
Present-Day Problems and Tendencies
A survey of present tendencies makes it clear that the next few years will witness a general overhaul of the educational machine. Among both the general public and the teaching profession the feeling is becoming widespread that, quite apart from its obvious incompleteness, our present system suffers from certain fundamental defects. Damaging criticisms of the work of the schools are by no means infrequent in press-articles. The proceedings of the various teachers’ organizations are eloquent of the need for radical reforms. Business men are giving public expression to their concern about the inadequacy of school-training for economic requirements: the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, for instance, has recently passed a resolution containing a sweeping condemnation of the methods and aims of the elementary schools. Already an official enquiry is being conducted into the relationship between the schools and industry. These signs of an impending revision of our educational programme derive added importance from the consideration that for some years to come Chancellors of the Exchequer will be very unwilling to sanction increases in public expenditure. Education ministers will therefore have to make out a very good case for any new developments and will have to satisfy public opinion that they are not merely increasing material and personnel but are also promoting increased efficiency.
The inevitable enquiry into the working of our present system will necessarily concern itself mainly with post-primary training since it is in this direction that development is most urgently needed. It is almost universally admitted that the time is overdue for a largely increased provision of further education of children beyond the age of fourteen; for though the secondary schools, owing to faulty methods of admission, at present contain many pupils who are unfit for the training they receive, there are also outside these schools numbers of children who reach the required standard of ability but who are denied entry simply because there is no room for them.