BRITISH AND AMERICAN EDUCATION COMPARED
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Whether your educational system for the upper classes is too strongly entrenched to admit of dislodgement I don't know, but the interesting series of letters from head-masters would indicate some misgivings as to its results. It is evident that " the rift in your population," the accentuation of class distinctions, is not lessening and that the Public School-University sequence precludes any serious contact between the upper and lower elements.
The situation invites discussion. Would the suggestion
that an approximation to the American school system is desirable be looked upon as an impertinence ? Adapted somewhat to English customs it might be the crucible needed for the melting down of too rigid class distinctions. I recognize the fact that it would be a stupendous under- taking to scatter efficient grammar and high schools all over England with the profusion that prevails in America, but that such schools, once established, would attract the sons and daughters of widely different classes is surely possible.
In our " East " there are many private schools for boys and some establishments like Groton and Hotchkiss are perhaps comparable to Eton and Harrow, but the number of students attracted to these schools is negligible compared with the thousands that go up through the grade and high schools direct to the University. In the West, particularly on the Pacific coast, aside from a few girls' schools and a very few boys' schools, the entire education of the youth is at public expense with a consequent mixing of classes, rich and poor, cultured and otherwise.
Even a " rich " boy soon meets the keen competition, in the University, of students of a different class, many of whom are sternly in earnest because they are earning their way through college and can't afford to waste their oppor• tunities. The " poor " students raise the standard of study and it is the same students who become our best citizens— men like Herbert Hoover, whose work in Belgium is perhaps something more than a memory, and the present Chancellor Emeritus of Stanford University, Dr. David Starr Jordan.
This mixing of classes when youth is still malleable and not yet disillusioned produces a more homogeneous population with a minimizing of class distinction and a mutual understanding of viewpoint. Later, when the more fortunate young men become employers of labour, their relations with their employees arc apt to be founded as much on heart as on head. The teaching of civics " in Public Schools is not going to do the trick.
Take the question of agricultural education as advocated , by Sir Frank Fox in his efforts to improve British farming. A matter of wonder to me when living in England was the
slight attention paid to this type of education. At my former University, Cornell, there are more students taking a four-year course in agriculture, if Sir Frank Fox's figures are accepted, than are to be found in all England, and if the short course of three months in winter, directed more especially to the teaching of farmers' sons, is included there are probably well over 5,000 students registered there in agriculture alone. Moreover, there are forty-eight State Universities scattered over the country all provided with agricultural courses.
No wonder, therefore, that farming is gradually becoming more efficient throughout the States, reaching its maximum of efficiency in California, where one finds the most scientific farming and certainly the most intelligent marketing methods that I think are to be found anywhere. Until England accepts changed methods of labour control, field culture and market- ing, it would seem to have a rather hopeless outlook. American farming, like English farming, is at present in the doldrums, but from a different cause. Through scientific control we are producing more cotton and corn than the world can consume.
I write as one who has lived under the charm of English culture and to whom the English countryside is even more alluring than is California, and I wish to assure you that there are thousands in America who don't even know of the existence of the English-Speaking Union who admire your high rectitude and who know that because of it you will surely win out in the end.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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