Business and the Schools BY SIR FRANCIS GOODENOUGH (Chairman of

the British Association for Commercial Education).

THE subject entrusted to me in this very welcome

series of articles is of primary importance ; for, if business does not consider and determine what it wants of the schools and specify its requirements clearly, it cannot blame the schools if they produce an unsuitable article. Nor, otherwise, can business and the schools co-operate as they should " for the purpose of ensuring that the educational needs of this mercantile nation arc met effectively, without detriment to the intellectual and cultural development of its individual citizens." That quotation (in which the italics are mine) is from the final report of a Committee, of which I was chairman, almost wholly composed of representatives of business, which sat from 1928 to 1931 to consider this very question of What business wants of the schools.* The first essential is that it should be realized alike by business and by the schools that there are distinct and very different grades of staff required in the com- mercial operation of a business, and that every firm should have a definite policy of recruitment for each grade, and a clear knowledge of the sources from which the right type of recruit can be obtained for each.

Business requires (a) leaders for the formulation of policy and the control of administration ; (10 senior officers for organization, administration and supervision ; (c) trained salesmen to secure business ; and (d) competent office employees to record transactions, conduct corre- spondence and keep accounts.

In the past, when people have talked about commercial education they have had in mind chiefly the fourth and least important of these groups. They have thought almost exclusively of the teaching of shorthand, typing, book-keeping and correspondence—of the office arts, in short ; or else of banking, insurance, auditing, transport and so forth, all ancillary to commerce but not commerce itself.

The office arts indeed have the same relation to com- merce proper as scoring in the pavilion or arranging club matches has to cricket. Commerce is making the runs, playing the game itself—negotiating the contracts, getting the orders, for the office to record and add up. It is organizing and providing the good service that gains and keeps the customer's goodwill—a far more difficult and important affair than keeping his account in the ledger.

It is with the problem of how the schools can help businesi to secure its leaders, its senior officers and its competent men of commerce that we are concerned here. That of providing office staff is already well solved, save in so far as the foundations of our general elenientary education need strengthening.

Throughout our reports my Committee laid great stress upon the importance, alike in the secondary as in the elementary schools, of "sound general education." We made recommendations for improving the practice of the schools in giving such general education. We emphasized the need for a better conathand of the English language, " for ready and pleasing expression both in the spoken and in the written word, as well as some knowledge of English literature," by elementary as well as secondary school pupils. We made suggestions for improving the teaching of arithmetic, history and geography. We emphasized the importance of modern languages and of science• and economics. But, above • The Committee on Education for Salesmanship published three unanimous reports, 1929, 1930 and 1931, which can be obtained from 11.151. Stationery Office, total cost 2s. 2d. all, again and again we specified " good general educa- tion " ; we deprecated premature specialization ; and we made no recommendations for the establishment of " forcing houses " for the rapid production of business

experts. •

Our idea of "a sound general education" was described as one that would develop in a man " activ ity of thought, receptivity to ideas and the capacity to speak and write correctly and acceptably in his own and other languages, as well as provide him with the essential foundations of a knowledge and understanding of the world."

But that did not mean that we were indifferent to the materials or methods used in building those essential

foundations of a sound general education. I, for one,

while yielding to none in my desire for the intellectual and cultural development of our youth, am by no means

indifferent to whether or not a boy who is going into

commerce has spent his years up to sixteen, or beyond, largely in acquiring a specialized knowledge of the classics. I do not deny that many men who have taken

high honours in classics have achieved conspicuous success in commerce. I have heard often from my good and much to be lamented friend, Roberts of Cambridge,

of the famous telegram to him from Calcutta : " Wanted a tramway superintendent. Classics preferred." But I confess I was little impressed by it, or by the high com- mercial achievements of men of classical education, for I am far from convinced that high achievement in com-

merce is a certain sequitur from a classical education..

It may well be in spite of it. I regard such achievement rather as a consequence of innate individual intellectual

capacity and personality that would have been developed

at least equally—and possibly more fully—by a course of intellectual and cultural study having closer relation to the world in which we live and move and have out being, and having far greater practical value in after life, than a familiarity with the classics.

What business asks of the schools is to teach our youth how to observe the facts of life, how to form judgements based on facts, how to think and act for themselves, how to exercise initiative, how to take responsibility, how to take risks ; to believe in duty

and discipline and work ; how to lead and manage and develop others—in brief, how to be men—and while doing so to give them the foundations of knowledge that will make them capable citizens in their day and generation.

Of what those foundations might consist is briefly indicated in the following quotation from our final report,•

but it is by no means our only suggestion ; for we were

careful to emphasize the undesirability of forcing any student to undertake studies contrary to his natural bent at the time he has to choose his degree course. I can only ask those who are seriously studying this great question to read the report as a whole • . . . It is, in our opinion, both possible and most desirable to•

give instruction in what may be called descriptive economies, which would include a survey of the principles of commercial organization, statistics and finance, of the actual movements of trade and of the industrial, commercial and economic history of the British Empire and foreign countries.. . . Descriptive economies in this sense would merge imperceptibly into history and geography when they are treated on the lines which we have already suggested,

and would be closely connected with the study of modem languages.

The study of the geography, history, staple trades, trading customs and facilities, methods of transpoit., social habits and customs and economic development of a foreign country, accompanied

• Final report Of Committee on Education for Salesmanship, p. 50,

throughout by the acquirement of facility in the language of that country, would make a valuable course, fog a.senier,student in a Secondary School. . . ." --

Finally, what business wants of the schools is recog- nition by them of the importance (a) of close and frequent consultation and co-operation with commerce and industry, in order to ensure on the part of the educa- tionist the fullest possible understanding of the qualities of mind and character demanded in those who aspire

to careers in business ; (b) of taking, -effective .steps constantly to keep business - men informed of what education is doing and can do for them ; and (c) of

taking all opportimiticg of 'and themselves with the conduct and conditions and needs of those vital Perth

of the nation's activities comprised in the term "business.;'. •

Next week: Training for Leisure, by Hugh. Lyon-, head- master of Rugby.