III
THE SCHOOLS
Future Developments
From the considerations adduced and the trend of opinion indicated in the previous chapter, we are able to give a reasonable forecast of practical developments in the next few years. In general terms we may say that our educational system will be made purposive where it is now haphazard, and that it will be brought into definite connection with the economic life of the country. Education will be regarded as a preparation for livelihood as well as for life,—as a training for working citizens rather than for a leisured class. Further, the waste of human effort will be avoided as far as possible by constantly observing the individual child and guiding him along lines which offer him the best chance of intellectual progress, and which give the best opportunities for a career in life. This, of course, implies that the types of instruction available will be much more numerous and varied than they are at present. No pupil whose schooling is provided wholly or partly at public expense will be allowed to proceed to courses for which, in the opinion of the competent authority, he is unfitted, though no obstacles will be placed in the way of a transfer from one course to another if circumstances warrant it. The individual capacity of the pupil will be made the starting-point for the teacher: the heresy which gives our present system the character of a Chicago canned-meat factory will be abandoned. As a corollary we shall give less exclusive reverence to purely bookish attainments and we shall realise that training in craftsmanship may be as productive to one individual, and hence to the State, as training in the differential calculus is to another.
We may assume that in the not too remote future every child of the required mental capacity will receive education to the age of sixteen at least. Of course, financial stringency will delay progress for some years. When the necessary school-accommodation is available every pupil in an institution under public control will be tested at a suitable age, probably at eleven plus. The results of the carefully devised examination will be collated with the report of his teachers and it will be decided whether he is fit to be given further instruction of a secondary character, and, if so, what form of training will suit his special needs. Methods of examination will be so far improved that few serious mistakes will be made in assessing the capacity of pupils. In any case, this regular test will not be regarded as final and irrevocable; the boy or girl who at a later age gives evidence of the need for a revised judgment will receive special treatment.
Pupils of the required standard will be drafted into the secondary schools at eleven plus. Those who remain in the primary schools until fourteen will be of roughly two grades; those whose ability fits them for work of some skill in trades or in the humbler ranks of business, and those of very low intelligence who are naturally destined for unskilled occupations. The former will pass from the elementary schools into some form of vocational training; the latter will go straight into industry and will receive no further teaching other than what may be given in some kind of continuation class.
Thus the principle of excluding all children of low mentality from secondary education in institutions under public control will be definitely accepted. This step will not be taken, of course, without much opposition. Political irrelevancies will come into play as soon as it is suggested. The cry will go up that, whereas the rich child, no matter what his capacity, will continue to be given a public school education, the poor child of the same mental capacity will be deprived of such an indulgence. Of course, the children of the two classes will not receive equal treatment. But so long as the State allows the existence of schools which it does not control, so long as it allows parents to contract out of the educational system, it will not be able to prevent wealthy people from spending their money on their brainless children, if they choose to do so. Clearly, however, if the State provides a costly system of free, or largely free, education, it will have the right to exercise its power of excluding from some or all of the benefits of that system, children (of whatever social position) who will not profit by it. Moreover, by requiring the same standard of ability from both scholarship-holders and fee-payers the authorities will remove the present iniquity by which, owing to insufficient free places, able children of poor parents are debarred from secondary schools while incompetent children of parents who can afford to pay a fraction of the cost secure admission.
Another objection likely to be put forward is that geniuses who blossom late will be lost to the world, if such drastic methods of exclusion are adopted. It is urged that the potentiality of a boy or girl cannot always be finally determined at the age of fourteen. This may be true; but it is also true that in at least ninety-nine per cent. of cases a competent teacher who has observed a child for some years can gauge his capacity sufficiently accurately at that age; and, in any case, the child has by that time been given the tools of learning in the ability to read and write. Moreover, your genius frequently does not take kindly to academic routine, and not seldom he looks with amused contempt at the efforts of the mediocre pedagogue to keep him in the recognised paths of learning. The biographers have been at pains to establish the fact that Shakespeare attended the Grammar School at Stratford. But we cannot doubt that “Hamlet” would have been written even if Shakespeare had never suffered the ferule and the Latin grammar of the Stratford dominie. The knowledge of people and places which Dickens picked up while running the streets was of more service to him as a novelist than anything he might have learned under the eye of a master who should have tried, with doubtful success, to instil into him a proper respect for history and a right appreciation of poetry. In fact, it may be reasonably doubted whether any child of latent genius, or even talent, will be blighted for ever through failure to receive the blessings of the academic course.
To come to details of the various types of schools in the future. With regard to secondary education, we may anticipate that to meet varied needs three different courses will be provided. A curriculum of roughly the same type as the present will be retained for those boys and girls of the highest grades of intelligence; that is to say, those who have the ability to proceed to university studies and who, in favourable circumstances, intend to do so. This curriculum will, however, be relieved of some of the subjects which at present overcrowd it through the attempt to provide an “omnibus” course by grafting the various “modern” studies on the old classical and mathematical courses.
Side by side with instruction of this type there will be at least two other types provided for pupils who can profit by full-time higher training until the age of sixteen or beyond. One course will be of a definitely practical character designed for the needs of those who are fitted to occupy leading positions in industry. Handwork will form a prominent feature, and a broad technical training will be given on cultural lines. The work will not be directly vocational in intention, nor will book-learning of the usual kind be entirely neglected: the object will be to provide a training of the greatest educational value for students of a certain type. The syllabus will be determined to some extent by the nature of local industries. In the big towns it will be a fairly simple matter to relate the technical teaching to the dominant manufacturing processes carried on in the area. In country districts it will be the business of these courses to foster that interest in rural industries which is at present so disastrously lacking. Already a certain number of secondary schools in the country are making a definite attempt to organise their teaching on lines intended to be of the greatest value to those pupils who intend to take up occupations connected with agriculture or horticulture. The fact that more has not been done in this direction is explained in a significant sentence in a pamphlet issued by the Board of Education on the subject.—“Hitherto the majority of parents have unfortunately been inclined to regard entry into commerce or into some clerical occupation as the only fitting sequel to a secondary school training, and there has been, therefore, little or no demand on their part that the education given to their children in the secondary school should be related to rural life and needs.” As a preliminary to the successful establishment of secondary schools with a technical bias it will thus be necessary to convince parents that suitable careers exist for their children in industry. Such schools must be recognised as the normal stepping-stones to the higher industrial positions, either directly or by way of the Technical or Agricultural College of university rank.
A third course will be designed for pupils who are likely to benefit from continued education after fourteen, but who are not suited to the purely academic studies and have no marked practical bent: they are probably destined for the fairly skilled commercial posts. The work in this course will be largely of a concrete character and will be definitely connected with economic life; but again it will not be directly vocational. The syllabus will consist in the main of what are known as the “ordinary school subjects”; but the pupils will concentrate on fewer subjects than is customary at present, and emphasis will be laid on those aspects which are most within the grasp of boys and girls who lack any great interest in ideas as such.
Pupils will be drafted into one or other of the various courses not primarily because they intend to enter this or that profession or business (though this might be given due consideration at the wish of the parent), but because their previous school-history will have shown that their all-round development can be best assured in one of these courses rather than in the others.