[Editor's Table]
THE GOAL IN EDUCATION.
Many of our readers, we are sure, must have been impressed by the articles on The Philosophy of Manual Training lately contributed by Professor Henderson to the pages of this magazine. The thought underlying them is one to which we have ourselves often endeavored to give expression, namely, that the end of education is wholly misconceived unless we consider it as aiming to bring the individual into right relations, at as many points as possible, with the world in which he lives, and to place him in as full possession as possible of the varied powers and capacities of his nature. It is because he regards manual training as the most effective instrument for awakening the intellect in the first place, and then for establishing a proper balance between the mental and bodily activities, that Professor Henderson has advocated it with so much earnestness. All that he has said on the subject seems to us deserving of the closest attention.
In the old system of education language was regarded as the supreme and sufficient instrument of mental development; and in the great public schools of England this idea enjoyed the very highest degree of prestige and authority. By language in these establishments, the two classical languages of Greek and Latin were meant, the English language receiving very scant attention, and English literature none. If any one was so far in advance of the times as to express a doubt whether a knowledge of Greek and Latin was the only preparation needed for life, he was pointed to the brilliant men who had come from the forms and the playgrounds of Eton and Winchester and Harrow; and the discussion was considered closed. The fact is that the radical insufficiency of the system was masked to a great extent by the circumstance that it was mainly applied to a ruling class, who early in life obtained a more practical training in public affairs. Pitt was educated, as has been remarked, by that great statesman, his father, the Earl of Chatham, and Peel by a great manufacturer who took a keen interest in politics. Robert Walpole, leaving the university at an early age, had the society of his father, a most practical-minded country squire, whose original ambition had been to make him the greatest grazier in the kingdom. Many similar cases could be cited in which early introduction to society and to practical life made up for the deficiencies of scholastic training, and reflected, or seemed to reflect, on that training a much greater credit than it deserved.
It may be admitted, however, that as a preparation for a political or forensic career an old-fashioned classical education was not wholly without efficacy. It was systematic and orderly; it was rigid in its requirements; it presented difficulties which had to be overcome, and afforded the means for unmasking looseness and inaccuracy of thought; finally, it called into constant activity, though in a narrow field, the discriminative, and analytical faculties. Its weakness lay in this, that it did not reveal the nature of things, but promoted a dangerous habit of "moving about in worlds not realized," and of giving to words an importance which should only be conceded to verified and comprehended facts.
Nowadays we mix, or try to mix, a modicum of scientific knowledge with the education we impart. This is so far good. It affords a training in observation and verification, and opens up to the young sources of interest of which they may increasingly avail themselves in later years. Moreover, as the scientific instruction generally embraces more or less of physiology and hygiene, it places them on their guard against the formation of injurious habits, and shows them the conditions on which health depends. These are advantages which, so far as they go, it is impossible to appreciate too highly.
It takes more, however, than the admixture of a little physical science in a school curriculum to make, in a wide sense, the education that is required for life. What is further required is a proper adjustment of the mind toward life with its varied activities and its infinite possibilities of good and evil. When we see men of fine literary gifts growing more cynical as they advance in years, and treating the world to stronger and stronger doses of pessimism in their writings, we are compelled to believe that their adjustment to life must have been wrong. When we see men of science who year by year appear to have less and less in common with their fellow-creatures, and whose studies only develop on the intellectual side an ever-increasing passion for the infinitely minute and the vastly unimportant, and, on the moral, a morbid sensitiveness to all kinds of personal questions, we find it difficult to think that they were properly oriented at the start. It may not be given to every one to "see life steadily and see it whole"; but it ought to be possible for a well-trained mind to see it with an eye of calm, tolerant, and sympathetic contemplation. No education is complete which leaves out such knowledge of the world, and of the relation which the individual sustains to it, as shall at least tend to give a right purpose and direction to the individual life. "The world is very evil," is a pious utterance; but it is equally pious for each of us to ask how much of evil is lurking in ourselves. We conceive of a scientific education in the full sense as one which, while it imparts true ideas in regard to the physical history of the globe and the chemical elements that compose it, aims no less at unfolding the true constitution of society, the springs of human action, the strength and weakness of human character, the possibilities of good and evil that reside in every individual, the misery that waits on wrongdoing, and the happiness that flows from just and pure deeds. There is a way, we are persuaded, of presenting the world of humanity to the minds of the young which would tend to create in most—in the vast majority—a strong desire to take a helpful part in the work of their age and generation, and not to concentrate all their efforts on the business of self-advancement. It is merely a question of seeing the facts in a broadly human, which is after all the only true, light.
Let us have in education literature and analytical studies and science with its grand constructions and sanifying discipline—all the useful elements—but let the true goal of education be kept ever in view, which is, not to enable this individual or that to shoot to a pre-eminence over his fellows, but to place the individual in right relations with his fellows, to give to each a career of useful activity, and to prevent that dreary disappointment with life and all its works which overtakes so many in their declining years. Life has its burdens, but it is not vanity; and the normal action of human beings on one another should be to give to each separate existence a higher value and deeper sources of happiness.