Procrustes

by M. Alderton Pink

“’Tis not a melancholy utinam of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod—not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but,—for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.”—Sir Thomas Browne.

It will be observed that our survey of probable future developments in the lower branches of education is hopeful. These are good reasons for optimism: the trend of opinion which will mould the schools of the future is already clearly in evidence; our obvious defects to-day are defects of organisation, and these can be remedied by any capable administrator; the seeds of the growths we have foreseen have already been planted; and, finally, economic exigencies will provide the drive necessary to overcome the dilatoriness inseparable from public activity. But we must confess that we are much concerned about the universities. There are tendencies in university life to-day that give ample cause for misgiving,—the more so because they spring rather from vital weakness reflecting the intellectual vices of our age than from defective methods and organisation.

Not that our universities do not show very obvious defects in method and organisation. (We are considering now especially the new universities. Just as in our survey of secondary education we made no reference to the public schools, which have their own tradition, and which will remain outside a state-system, so we may now leave out of account Oxford and Cambridge, which have their own teaching-methods and which again are not likely to be amenable to state-interference. Moreover, the inevitable extension of higher education will be seen in the creation of more universities of the new type, as well as in the enlargement of those already in existence, and thus Oxford and Cambridge are likely to turn out an ever-diminishing proportion of the total number of graduates in this country). Criticism may well be levelled at the insufficient importance attached to social life in the modern universities. It is much too easy for young men and women to attend courses of lectures for three years or so and amass a certain quantity of information on given subjects without coming in contact with any intellectual influences outside the class room. This danger is, of course, inevitable when the students are not resident in a college. A remedy is being provided to some extent by the erection of hostels, and much more may be done in this direction; but there is still a difficulty arising from the fairly large proportion of students who live at home in the university-town. As part of the same problem must be mentioned the insufficient attention given to games. This is due not merely to the frequent absence of adequate playing-fields, which might be remedied, but to the fact that college lectures take place during the whole of the day and are so arranged that no considerable body of students is free for the whole of more than one afternoon a week. In other words, college work is organised solely with a view to academic requirements.

And then there is the teaching by means of lectures. As a method this was rendered obsolete as soon as books were rapidly and cheaply printed, and yet, whereas Oxford and Cambridge have long pursued a more excellent way, the new universities have strangely revived and perpetuated the mediaeval practice. A century-and-a-half ago Dr Johnson was emphatic about the futility of lectures. (“People have nowadays got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures. You might teach making of shoes by lectures!”). It is delightful to imagine his remarks if he could walk through a modern college and see dozens of lecturers each droning from his rostrum,—in these days when library shelves and publishers’ store-rooms are stuffed with reliable text-books on every conceivable subject. Surely no system of teaching can have ever been devised with so little regard for ordinary efficiency. Batches of students are set to take imperfect notes of a probably imperfectly delivered lecture by a man who has either taken his material from books that they ought to read themselves, or is dictating what is really an original text-book, which obviously, in the interests of economy in time and labour, to say nothing of accuracy, ought to be printed. It is to be feared that under present arrangements a college lecturer fulfils the whole of the duties officially required of him if he thus turns himself into a gramophone for so many hours per week. If university-teaching meant no more than this, and if the lecture were its only channel, we should feel bound to urge that the present wasteful duplication of lectures in various university-centres should be avoided by enlisting the aid of wireless, and that standard lectures should be broadcast to students throughout the kingdom in their own homes.

The educational efficacy of the universities of this and other countries is being weakened, however, by a more insidious disease,—a disease of which the defective teaching-methods and the excessive absorption in purely academic pursuits are merely outward symptoms. The intellectual and moral malady of this present age has infected our seats of learning so that they appear to be abandoning the ideal of a liberal education and to be substituting the narrow aim of the acquisition of specialised knowledge. The modern university must be a centre of research: the danger is that it will neglect to be also a centre of education.

Research is the intellectual idol of our time. The fiery zeal for discovery which animates us resembles that which was abroad five centuries ago in Europe. Indeed, we of to-day are borne along by the second wave of the great tide of the Renaissance. The great awakening of the human spirit, due, in part, to the rediscovery of ancient literature and art, urged men to the passionate pursuit of truth and beauty. Research and creative activity went hand in hand. The inspiration which produced the great scholars, painters, and architects lasted for a season. Then the vital energy was dissipated: scholarship degenerated into gerund-grinding, literature into stylistic display, and art into lifeless imitation. But meanwhile the newly-liberated spirit of enquiry was turning from the past and seeking fresh objects of study in natural phenomena. Slowly and tentatively, at first, the human intellect explored the fringes of those vast fields of knowledge which had lain almost untouched since the time of the Greeks. Then, in the last century, the scattered sparks suddenly flamed into a great outburst of scientific discovery, and the western mind was amazed by the undreamed-of treasures spread before it. Here was a second Renaissance, the child of the first and informed with the same spirit of divine curiosity, but working in a new direction. The prime object of the nineteenth century investigator was to accumulate observed facts about the material universe, to find theories to interpret those facts, and perhaps ultimately to lay bare the innermost secrets of Nature. More and more wonders were discovered; and each new wonder pointed the road to fresh territories awaiting the pioneer. There must be formed a great army of explorers. The recruitment and the training of this army was naturally carried on in the universities. The aims and methods of science acquired enormous prestige. The spirit of research pervaded every department of academic activity.

In the reorganised universities of nineteenth-century Germany, the new spirit found its most complete expression. The professor was given a two-fold function: he was to teach, and also to advance his particular study or science. To-day teaching is often made subordinate to research. A characteristic product of the German academic system is the “seminar,” which is for the student of humanistic learning what the laboratory is to the scientist: in the seminar the student is given training in methods of original investigation. The course of study is highly specialised and leads to the degree of “doctor of philosophy,” for which he must present a dissertation contributing to the advance of knowledge. The close association of American students with Germany has led to the importation of German university methods and ideals into the United States. In England, too, there has been an ever-increasing tendency to approximate our standards to those of Germany. The Honours courses, at any rate at the new universities, become increasingly specialised, and more and more insistence is being laid on the necessity for original research as the crown of an academic career.

Thus the universities are living in an intellectual atmosphere manufactured by the scientists. The great craving is for knowledge,—knowledge of natural processes, and knowledge of man’s past history. This craving manifests itself at every turn. Apart from the labours of scientists, historians, and archaeologists in what Johnson calls the “academic bowers,” we read daily of search-parties (many of whom are organised by European or American universities) proceeding to the ends of the earth,—this one bringing to light the treasures of Egyptian royal tombs, another revealing a hitherto unknown civilisation of the ancient world, a third finding dinosaur’s eggs, a fourth studying the characteristics and the history of a savage tribe. A leading newspaper recently informed us proudly that no fewer than two hundred exploring parties are setting out this year on various quests—more than ever before in the history of the world. The interest in these efforts is not confined to the few. Accounts of marvellous discoveries and inventions bring romance to the millions in our industrial civilisation. The popular press knows the appeal of big headlines over an article giving a highly coloured account of the latest results of research; and the bookstalls are crowded with magazines devoted to the Wonders of Science and giving the City clerk and typist, hungry for knowledge, an Illustrated Outline of this, that, or the other field of information.

Whither is this enthusiasm for knowledge leading us? What benefits will accrue to the individual or to society when, with untold labour, we have learned a fraction more about the history of man or penetrated a few steps further into the illimitable arcana of nature? These are questions which those engaged in investigation and those whose delight is to hear some new thing alike hardly pause to ask. It is assumed that all knowledge of fact is valuable, and therefore is to be pursued for its own sake. To many this will seem a self-evident proposition. Such people may be reminded that curiosity about the material world has not always been a characteristic of the western nations. For many centuries man was not in the least interested to know whether the earth went round the sun or the sun round the earth: he was content to take on trust the evidence of his senses. It is even a matter for debate whether the sum of human happiness has been increased by the knowledge that has come from Galileo’s labours. It is a perennial human weakness to pursue one aim to the unreasonable exclusion of others, to mistake the means for the end. The great humanists were so possessed by ideals which they found in the antique world that they sought to achieve them even at the expense of personal and social morality; their successors mistook the husk for the kernel and allowed pedantry to displace scholarship. We of this age are being diverted from other aims and allowing our intellectual life to be narrowed by an unreasoning zeal for research. We are influenced too much by the delusion that the making of “a contribution to knowledge” is the beginning of wisdom.