Procrustes

by M. Alderton Pink

Public educational policy during the last quarter of a century has provided for higher education mainly by the foundation of secondary schools of a single type, controlled by the local authorities; and those who demand more secondary education generally mean more schools of this kind. The secondary schools are filled partly by scholarship-holders who represent the cream of the elementary schools, and partly by fee-payers who, as they do not usually have to pass a stringent entrance-examination, may represent all grades of ability. Thus only a proportion (now up to 40 per cent.) of the pupils are specially selected; the remainder are doing more advanced work simply because their parents wish it and can pay part of the cost.

When the activities of these schools come under a critical review, certain facts will be difficult to explain away. In the first place, it will be noticed that, although the pupils are intended to remain at school until the age of sixteen at least, a relatively large proportion leave before that age. According to the “London Statistics” for 1923–24, there were present at the end of 1923 in the aided and maintained secondary schools of London, 9,118 pupils who were twelve or thirteen years of age, 8,700 who were fourteen or fifteen, 3,280 who were sixteen or seventeen, and 342 who were eighteen or over. In other words, only about one-third remained until the age of sixteen or more, and this in spite of the fact that parents give undertakings to keep their children at school until sixteen. Again, the curriculum of these schools is largely determined by the First School Examination (equivalent to University Matriculation), and every pupil who remains at school sufficiently long should normally take this examination. Now the report of the Board of Education for 1923–24 shows that in each of the last five years an average of 78,000 children have entered the grant-earning secondary schools of England and the highest number that has taken the First School Examination in any one year is roughly 35,000, of whom about a third failed. That is to say, about two-thirds of the pupils either fail to complete the school course or fail to reach the standard of intellectual attainment necessary to pass an external test.

When all allowance has been made for the fact that a certain number of pupils are withdrawn at an early age purely on account of economic circumstances, we have still to face the failure of the schools to retain the pupils and to enable them to pass what is presumably a fair test of the kind of training given. The conclusion can scarcely be avoided that there are some radical defects in the aims and methods of the schools.

It is often urged that the secondary schools are not at present getting the best material, that owing to economic circumstances or to the insufficient provision of secondary school accommodation many children who are fit to profit by higher instruction are at present excluded in favour of fee-payers who are not fit. But this is merely begging the question. We are still confronted with the problem of what we are to do with those pupils who do not take kindly to the secondary school curriculum but who, by their very presence in secondary schools, show their readiness to undergo some form of higher instruction. And what are we to do with the many children in the primary schools who, under a scheme of more extended financial assistance, might also remain at school until sixteen or later, and would also be square pegs in round holes in the ordinary secondary school?

We are forced, therefore, to ask whether the present secondary school curriculum is adapted to the needs of the varied types of pupils who enter or are likely to enter the schools. What are the aims? At present the secondary school’s main function is to give sufficient training in the humanities, in mathematics and science, to enable pupils to pass the entrance examination of a university. (We may for the purpose of the present argument disregard the social activities of the school.) In other words, its business is to produce scholars of the intellectual type fitted for university training. It is true that art, handicraft, domestic science, and physical exercises appear in the curriculum but they occupy more or less subordinate places. The secondary school course, on its academic side, is directed to one main end, and any pupil who enters such a school is regarded, irrespective of his natural aptitudes, as a prospective candidate for matriculation. Teachers may demur to the suggestion that their horizon is dominated by an examination: they may talk hopefully about a test which their pupils can take “in their stride.” But the fact remains that the work of the upper part of the school is determined by requirements of an external body. There is a conventional list of “subjects” which the pupil must study, and if his individuality does not fit in with this scheme so much the worse for him.

The secondary schools are therefore designed, in so far as they are designed for any specific purpose, as a training-ground for university students. But only three per cent. of the pupils ever reach the universities. And the statistics already given indicate that a large proportion show themselves to be unfitted for university training. Teachers in secondary schools do not, of course, need these statistics to bring home to them the fact that a considerable proportion of the pupils with whom they have to deal are misfits. They realise that there are other sorts of capacity besides those which enable pupils to pass the usual examinations. They constantly see in their pupils special interests and aptitudes which find little or no outlet in the ordinary academic routine. They so often have to shake hands with old boys or old girls who were duffers at ordinary school subjects, but who have since achieved success in business or industry that it has become a commonplace with them that failure at school does not necessarily mean failure in life. But this commonplace surely implies the tragic fact that school has not discovered what the “duffer” can do, but has consistently tried to make him do things for which he has no aptitude.

The fact is that the ordinary secondary school is attempting—unsuccessfully, of course—to give the same treatment to pupils of various types who, owing to lack of sufficiently varied provision for higher education, now find themselves herded together. In any such school there is a certain number of pupils of good general ability who are capable of proceeding with credit to advanced work in the humanities or in science. These are the pupils for whom the secondary course is really intended. At the other extreme there is a certain number who are simply not profiting by academic training. Between these extremes there are, no doubt, a few who have a natural bent towards one of the arts; there are a good many of very pedestrian abilities who can by industry just keep abreast of their studies, though they are not attracted by academic ideals; and there are still others who are in difficulties because they are interested not in abstract ideas but in things. Pupils of these three classes are all, to a greater or less degree, misfits in the ordinary secondary school. The few intending to follow the arts and lacking wide intellectual interests should be devoting more time than is generally available to acquiring the technique of their art. The many of a little less than average capacity who have no real enthusiasm for things of the mind gain something, no doubt, from the course they pursue, but they would gain more from a practical curriculum containing fewer subjects and having a more direct bearing on their probable future careers. The remaining class, which includes those who think with their hands, is the one for which we now most conspicuously fail to make adequate provision. In this category is to be found the boy who is bored by the theory of electricity while being thoroughly interested in making a piece of electrical apparatus, and who will not willingly learn any more of the theory than is necessary to make the apparatus work. When we consider that a large proportion of people in the world have no bookish interests and are not attracted by pure science and yet are capable of bringing sound intelligence to bear on practical problems concerning concrete things, it is strange that educationists have done so little to meet their needs.

Another question arises. What is to be the occupation of the pupils leaving the secondary schools? Those who have remained at these schools until sixteen or more acquire a certain social tone which causes them to despise manual toil, and so they aim at the professions, the Civil Service, posts in banks and stores, and, failing all else, the perennially respectable junior clerkship in any kind of office. Clearly, boys who have at seventeen or eighteen successfully completed a course of literary and scientific training should be fitted for posts of responsibility in business or the professions. But the professions are already overcrowded, and positions are difficult to obtain. We are taking children from the homes of artisans, small tradespeople, and even unskilled workers, and giving them an education which makes them unwilling to take up the same occupation as their parents follow, but which leads to no certainty of better employment in the end. We are thus rapidly being brought face to face with the difficulty which confronted Germany before the War. The advantages attaching to scholastic attainment were such that every parent who could possibly do so gave his child a higher education so that he might obtain the coveted passport to the professions. The result was that the competition for the higher professional and official posts became intolerably keen, and the universities were turning out numbers of fully qualified men for whom they could find no suitable employment.

There would be less theoretical objection to the process of raising the pupils out of the economic class of their families into another class, if they were all of high capacity and suitable for administrative posts. But, actually, many of those who at present receive higher education are by no means fitted by native ability for important administrative work. In fact, the investigations of the psychologists go to show that out of the whole child population only a small proportion have the grade of intelligence needed for the highest posts. Dr Cyril Burt has carried out a survey of London school children, by means of intelligence-tests, to provide evidence for use in vocational guidance. He finds that the few children of the type who win scholarships to secondary schools and thence to the universities, and who are fitted to seek higher professional and Civil Service posts form about one per thousand of the child population. About two per cent. come into the second grade, which includes those who win scholarships to the secondary school but not to the university, and who are suitable for lower professional posts: they may become, for instance, elementary teachers, clerks holding responsible posts, or successful tradespeople. The third grade is composed of about ten per cent. of the children, and includes those who are suited to become, say, clerks doing work of an intelligent but moderately routine character, or manual workers engaged in highly skilled work. Below this comes a body of children of moderate ability forming about four-fifths of the whole. These may enter many of the ordinary commercial posts,—they may become small tradespeople, or shop-assistants: skilled manual-workers also belong to this group. The remaining children have an intelligence which fits them only for unskilled work. This classification is, admittedly, only tentative; but if it has any validity, it is clear that the percentage of children really fitted for professional work is relatively very low, and account must be taken of this fact in framing secondary courses.

Realising the difficulty of finding suitable employment for their pupils, and sensitive about the accusation that they aim at producing “black-coated workers” only, the Headmasters have considered the possibility of finding openings in industry. In 1924 the Council of the Headmasters’ Association sent a deputation to the Federation of British Industries on the matter. The deputation was told quite plainly that manufacturers, and particularly engineers, made a regular practice of taking boys at fourteen: they had very little opportunity to offer to the boy who remained at school long enough to take the First School Examination, and still less to the boy who passed a Higher School Examination. There is little prospect that manufacturers will be able to alter their practice in this respect. Obviously, therefore, with our present lack of co-ordination between our educational and industrial systems, a boy deprives himself of many chances of employment by staying at school beyond fourteen.