The Evening Student
13) N. K. BOOT THIS week, for many thousands of Londoners between the ages of sixteen and a hundred, term starts. Every day last week, which was enrolment week, patient neophytes waited for the opportunity to inscribe their names on the books of the many academic institutions which a benevolent L.C.C. runs for the pro- motion of miscellaneous knowledge among adults. The particular form of education purveyed by the L.C.C. used to be known as "night schools," but nowadays that description is as outmoded as the use of " horseless carriage " to describe a motor-car. The correct term is " evening classes," and though the distinction may appear unimportant it in fact represents a step-up in the self-consciousness of those who attend. Schools have a juvenile connotation ; these classes are for adults, and their sympathies are, via the diploma courses, with the universities. For similar reasons of prestige members of the staff tend to be known not as " instructors " but as " lecturers." These points of etiquette are, however, about all that a candidate for higher education needs to know before he or she embarks.
Two clearly defined streams go to make up the main flood of evening students. One stream is severely practical in its object ; at the end of the course is a specific goal, an examination to be passed, usually, or a background of knowledge acquired which will open up a new profession to the initiated. Those in the second stream have only oblique thoughts of financial betterment ; for them the love of knowledge is its own justification. To a large extent the two streams move in isolation from each other, the one to Commercial Colleges and the other to Literary Institutes, though in certain cases both kinds are housed under the same roof.
The largest single group in the first stream are civil servants, temporary or established, applying themselves to such subjects as general knowledge and mathematics, whereby promotion may be won to a higher grade in their calling. These men and women, as might be expected, work hard until the time of their examination and then stop ; the classes which they have been attending expire.
It is in the world of Literary Institutes that adult education achieves its most luxuriant growth. Al the City Literary Institute, for example, which is the largest of its sort in London, there are 35o classes for the student to choose from, and fifty more are organised in firms and ministries outside the Institute's premises. A seeker after knowledge who ventures inside these doors without a very clear idea of what he is after is bound to be bewildered. Perhaps he has thoughts of doing a bit of economics or international affairs (with the hope of making more sense of the newspapers), or perhaps he wants to brush up his hesitating French before next summer's holidays. But when he inspects the curriculum he finds ft studded with strange and fascinating subjects, calculated to seduce him from the humdrum path. What about heraldry, for example, or puppetry, or clear thinking, or Welsh or Ancient Egypt ? The choice is as wide as the ocean. Not that there is any need to stick to one subject. At the City Literary Institute there are eighty classes a night, and it is perfectly possible for a student to prepare
himself a five-day weekly programme covering, say: Monday, Planning a City ; Tuesday, Prehistoric Britain and her Neighbours ; Wednesday, English Poetry—Shakespeare to Eliot ; Thursday, French ; Friday, Public Speaking (advanced). And if this is not enough, additional subjects can be squeezed in before the main items ; the Inferno of Dante (in Italian) on Tuesday, maybe, or recorder-playing on Wednesday.
The danger of indigestion from this rich fare is obvious, although the staffs of the Institutes go to great trouble to ensure that new- comers do not embark on courses for which they are unsuited. All the same, choosing a course of study can have some of the exciting empiricism of choosing a Derby winner, and in the humanities there are many candidates who waver and fall out before the summer comes round. If they do fall out, they stand to lcise very little. The fee for a full course of one year's lectures in one subject is only 75. 6d., and three or more courses only come to iss. (those which prepare for university diplomas cost rather more).
It is reasonable to suppose that if the courses were more expensive they would be more appreciated. As it is, they are run for a token payment only by means of two questionable expedients—underpaying the lecturers, and a heavy subsidy from the rate- and tax-payers. The scale of payment for lecturers comes somewhere between those for sitters-in and engine-drivers: the average fee for a session of an hour and a half or two hours is 28s., out of which the recipient has to pay any expense (fares, for example), to say nothing of income- tax. It is inevitable, therefore, that the instructors tend to be people who are either very fond of teaching or very hard up. Quite often it may happen that they start for the second reason and carry on for the first, fired by the enthusiasm of their classes. But there is no doubt that instructors arc exploited. The rate- and tax-payers con- tribute their heavy quota via the L.C.C. Education Committee, which is responsible for running all the evening classes in London, exercising general control over curriculum and administration.
It is as difficult to say exactly who comes to these classes as it is to say exactly who walks down Oxford Street. Everybody attends them. For many education was a plant which shrivelled at the age of fourteen, and they are excited by the realisation that it might be made to smell sweet again. • Others come year after year, perhaps to the same class, because their evenings are lonely or because there are empty spaces in their lives to be filled by serious purpose. Others come by chance, or to keep a friend company. Others are never quite certain why they have come. But for most of them it is true to say that these classes are little mental allotments which they cultivate in their leisure hours. The one broad exception to the generally wide range of students is that the working-man is seldom among them, although his children often are.
Well, there it is. Thousands of men and women, young and old, engaged'in the exacting process of self-improvement. It is a sight which would have gladdened the eyes of John Ruskin or the first Lord Avebury. And yet there is something missing, something impersonal, about the whole process. You can learn a lot at evening classes, just as you can (if you are lucky) get a good meal at a cafeteria ; but you can get a better meal in other ways—at home, for example, if you make an intelligent use of the ingredients. Part of the trouble is the shortage of buildings. Most of the colleges and institutions have to function in L.C.C. schools, which means that they have no topographical individuality. Even those which are lucky enough to have their own buildings, like the City Literary Institute, have to let it out for other purposes in the day-time. Thus it is hard for the students to feel that they are part of a corporation, in spite of the libraries and canteens at their disposal and the spare- time clubs which they can join. Then there is the separation between what are best described as profitable and unprofitable knowledge which is insisted on by the L.C.C. This policy of separation is directly opposed to the tradition on which evening classes have been built up. The original polytechnics started with the idea of teaching useful arts to the working classes ; then they were encouraged to mellow the minds of the artisan with the study of the humanities. Now they are being split apart again. The time has surely come when all these obviously very popular activities should be reviewed to ensure that they are developing along sound lines.
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