The Future of Education

TIIE people of Britain are now claiming Education as a right. This is a new fact in the light of which all those who set out to take the horoscope of Education in this country should frame their conjectures. Whether we all know what Education means, or what precisely it should give us, is immaterial. As a nation we have come to believe in the idea that a wholeiome society is based upon the School ; and a Government which should set out seriously to abridge the educational opportu- nities open to the general body of British citizens would have strong opposition to encounter. Even the farmers, always reputed to be obscurantist, send their daughters to the Secondary School, and, in some cases, find wives among the teachers.

The change of heart is the more remarkable when we reflect upon the rarity of the teaching gift. To provide effectual teaching for a population of forty-five millions is a task beyond the reach of any Government in the world. The vast mass of teaching given in the State Schools of every nation is necessarily mediocre, and it is only a small proportion of the

present generation who have had direct experience of. the ,

inspiring thing which teaching may be made to become in the hands of a real master.

A few years hence all this may be changed, not by an altera- tion in the proportion of quick wits in the teaching profession, but by mechanical measures for diffusing the light of our brightest stars. Wireless should make it possible for every school child in the. country to hear once a week the voice of a

great teacher; and when we reflect upon the state of our _ .

village children, many of whom are condemned to spend nine years of their lives under the supervision of a single woman and her assistant, the significance of such a change is made obvious.

Let us not, however, exaggerate. While the broadcast lesson brings a fresh voice into the class-room and may be the means of firing the imagination of an intelligent child, just by reason of the contrast which such a lesson given by a master of method must present to the ordinary routine of the school, there are strict limits to its usefulness. The ordinary child finds it difficult to attend to the human voice for a quarter of an hour. Much of the lesson will be lost. Only the older children (and but a few of those) will really profit ; but what the new voice may mean to them cannot be estimated. Many lives may and will be changed by it.

The value of the new mechanical method increases as we pass from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adult life. In the sphere of adult education broadcasting con- stitutes a revolution. Here is its best and most fruitful field. Already Miners' Welfare Centres and other agencies for adult education are feeling the value of this extraordinary invention.

The educational opportunities of the gramophone have yet to be given, a thorough trial. They seem to be very great. The advantage of the gramophone is that the lesson can be interrupted, repeated, taken at any time of the day or night to suit the learner's convenience. A student in a solitary London garret can learn Spanish of a brilliant teacher from a record taken in Chicago. There is no end to the educational possibilities of such an instrument. In a few years' time young men and women in the highlands of Kenya or in the Indian Universities may be listening to the College lectures given in. Oxford or Cambridge by, our foremost men in science or-scholarship- The.problem of levelling up the _educational

opportunities of the Empire will be partially solved ; the decline in the purity of the English speech will be partially arrested. Circulating libraries of gramophone records will supply our scattered settlers from Nairobi to Vancouver with poems as our poets- read them, philosophies as our philosophers think them aloud, and with the best available instruction in any fiell of science or literature which may take the fancy of the student.

It is true that mechanism can never replace personality. The voice of the absent (even if all the resources of television be employed) has none of the disciplinary value of the human being, present, active, and liable to every eruption of intel- lectual excitement or emotion. During the gymnastic period of youth and adolescence these valuable mechanical inven- tions can only hold a subordinate place. But when character and mind are fixed they may have a primary value.

The core of a sound education must always remain some form of hard intellectual discipline, but the older methods went too far in the direction of a monotonous drill, and are now in an increasing degree being supplemented by sense training, handwork, and by the gift to the children themselves of a greater measure of educational liberty. In our English schools we have happily avoided the unwise extremes t9 which many of the apostles of the Montessori methods and the Dalton plan in Austria and the United States have pushed their advocacy. It is sufficient to say that a good English Elementary School to-day is a very living thing and capable of enlisting the interests of the great majority of the children.

A welcome change, too, has come over the political land- scape. The educational controversies during the latter part of the nineteenth century were almost entirely concerned with the problem of religious teaching. Should dualism be allowed to persist in elementary education ? Should there be two types of Elementary School, equally supported from public sources, one giving denominational and the other urdenomi- national religious teaching ? The fighting on these points was so fierce and protracted as to obscure the more important aspects of educational policy, the size of classes, the length of school life, the training and salaries of the teachers, the pro- vision of books and practical instruction, the nature of the curriculum. It cost us a war to relieve the atmosphere. In the educational debates of 1918 and 1919 the religious question was carefully avoided, and in the educational literature of to-day it holds a subordinate place.

Let it not, however, be assumed that this paralysing con- troversy is sent to an eternal rest. At any moment it may be revived. The dual system, which is necessarily cumbersome to administer, stands upon its trial. If it be found to obstruct the development of higher elementary education through central schools and otherwise it will certainly have to go ; but, if Churchmen are wise enough to recognize, as many of them do, that they must co-operate in the task of making the whole school system of the country as efficient as possible, no political party would be well advised to open up the old feud. For there are many more important objects to be obtained in the field of education. Of these the chief is the prolonga- tion of educational opportunities either in full-time or in part-time schools during the period of adolescence. But here the friend of education is inexorably confronted by the dragons who guard the public Treasury.

H. A. L. FISHER'