The League of Nations
International Education
TUE exigencies of the daily round and common task make it inevitable that Education Congresses and Conferences take place in the middle of the holiday season ; when, indeed, the majority of those who most need enlightenment are out of sight and hearing. How many of our teachers and school- masters feel any need themselves to be educated out of the comfortable scholastic grooves into which they fit so naturally after the normal public school and university training ? And, after all, it is members of the lay public rather than the professionals who must be reached. Most of us will admit that, without owning to any scholastic bent, we would fain improve our knowledge and understanding of the world, although we might not be partial to the label of" education."
That the zealous and public-spirited should be for ever preaching to the converted is a great pity (it is a phenomenon by no means confined to the educational field), and we have in adult education the golden opportunity. It is for each one of us to see that extension lectures, tutorial classes, &c., are closely related to the university of life. Otherwise they are as dangerous to the mental health of the community as the excessive specialization of certain modern universities.
ADULT EDUCATION.
These reflections are prompted by a study of the proceedings of the World Conference on Adult Education, the first of its kind, held at Cambridge during the last week. With all deference to the enthusiasts, 400 in number, who have come from all over the world to discuss "the principles and problems of adult education "—" the relation of humanistic to technical instruction," &c., it does seem as if this grist to the educational mill were but gristle to the hungry multitude, which looks up to be fed. Far be it from us to disparage the admirable and courageous efforts of the pioneers of adult education in this country, of whom Dr. Albert Mansbridge is the acknowledged chief. Our political atmosphere, in this country, at any rate, would certainly not be what it is but for the union of labour and learning that has been the peculiar significant form in which adult education has developed. But even within this narrow conception of adult education we have to confess that its effect has been confined mainly to the influence of a few personalities like R. H. Tawney, Henry Clay, G. D. H. Cole, &c., who have "gone into the people" as the Russians say ; the rest of us, on the surface, seem imper- vious as ever to our urgent need for education, for such intelli- gent experience as will open the windows of our minds and let in the fresh air.
Because of that artificial contrast between character and intellect, of which a correspondent wrote in the Spectator last week, the need is probably more acute and the problem more difficult of solution here than in other countries. That public school education of which we are all so proud—and rightly so—is tantamount to a deliberate limitation of our interests and activities, and, it must be confessed, imparts from the earliest years a bias against thinking. Now, so long as Great Britain was in the hey-day of prosperity and building up an Empire to be administered from the store of character and experience of a more or less select governing class, that education fulfilled its purpose admirably. To-day the need everywhere, but most of all in this country, is for hard think- ing, if civilization itself is to be preserved from its own destruc- tion. The world has moved on, the Victorian " cosmos" is no more, and it is no longer possible, even were it desirable, for Great Britain to pursue the narrow " patriotic " path proper to an age which conceived the world as made up of nice little separate sovereign States, each moving in its own orbit in a vacuum.
THE NEW PATRIOTISM.
Not that we share Mr. H. G. Wells' opinion as to the profound incompatibility between patriotism and world- peace. His logic is unanswerable, but patriotism properly conceived—i.e., the sentiment of nationality divorced from the policy of " every sovereign State attempting to be a world State "—is a thing to be neither ignored nor destroyed, but sublimated and kept within moral limits. Professor Zimmern is much nearer to the mark when he suggests that "no one can render true service in the cause of international co-operation, if he has not first thoroughly absorbed in his own mind and soul the meaning of nationality."
It is to that service that all of us to-day are dedicated,- a fact which must determine our whole mental outlook. Let us consider what is already being done in this direction. Inter- national education should be now a reality at every stage of our growth. The child, who up till now has with the years grown conscious first of the family unit, then of the school, the town, the nation, is now to be placed in the way of appre- hending that still larger unit, the world of States. For this we must press on with the exchange of teachers, which grows more popular every year, and with every device which can improve the teaching—in the schools and outside—of subjects such as history, geography, literature, and languages. Foreign travel, unless it be undertaken intelligently, i.e., with a readi- ness to absorb new impressions and consider new scales of values, is worse than useless. Professor Gilbert Murray had the courage to say as much in his opening address to the third World Congiess of Educational Associations at Geneva a month ago.
EXPERIMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION.
The experiment of an " international " school at Bedales, Petersfield, where during the last few weeks there has been a further gathering of English, French, and German boys receiving their schooling together (a special summer course), is also noteworthy. Another school has been working on similar lines for some years near Geneva. Nok should we overlook an older, different, but no less interesting experiment in Victoria College, Alexandria, where boys of different nationality, race, and colour have been trained successfully on public school lines. The opportunities for international education in the social -sciences, history, law, geography, &c., for young men and girls of student age are too well known to need much comment here : such institutions as the School of International Studies directed by Alfred Zimmern and the Institute of International Studies under M. Paul Mantoux, both at Geneva, should interest otheis besides the specialist in international affairs.
Finally, it is good to know from the report of the Eleventh Session of the Committee on Intellectual Co-operation that in all countries public-spirited teachers are pushing ahead with the education of young people in the aims of the League. In view of the extent to which the League's work covers subjects of primary interest to humanity, it is a little difficult to understand why a paper should have been read at the Advertising Convention in Berlin recently, suggesting that the public is still unaware of that work. Still more extra- ordinary is it that Mr. H. G. Wells should have told the world, in his broadcast " talk " in July, that "we don't go to the League to accomplish any cantmon human ends, we go to argue our national and imperial case." Mr. Wells is sadly behind the times in his information as to the League's activities, If he is not prepared to remedy by reading this lacuna in his knowledge, why should he not resort to the medium of the gramophone which he has done so much to popularize ? There are now lecture records published by the International Educational Society—the title itself is significant—including a lucid account of the Mandates system of the League by Lord Lugard, and of the social and humanitarian work of the League by Dame Rachel Crowdy. If these are not "common human" ends, we should like to know what these Open Conspirators really want. Blue prints for a world revolution make a fascinating toy for the academic thinker or the " scientist " in his laboratory. But practical difficulties in world-construction can only be overcome, if they are recognized, traced to their origins in fact, and solved, as they are being solved, not by exalted amateur idealists, but by cool, practised hands such as are operating every department at Geneva. Perhaps one day Mr. Wells will revise his—at present unfair—opinion of the pedestrian inter- nationalism of the League of Nations, which we seek to describe on this page.
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