MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL ON EDUCATION O n Education.. By Bertrand Russell.
(Allen and Unwin 62.) Tins is an essentially practical book: Mr. Russell has written rather as the absorbed and intelligent father than as a well- known British philosopher. His book, he tells us in the introduction, is intended to be of real use to ordinary parents who are bothered about the proper way in which to bring up their children, and feel uneasily that modern science and modern psychology have made important discoveries which could help them in their task ; Mr. Russell, with great clarity of diction, has, in this little easily read book, made the essentials of this body of recently ascertained knowledge accessible to the layman. The latter half of his book is an admirable blending of practical and theoretical knowledge. • He gives us the views of the modern psychologist and then relates them closely to his own everyday experience with his two children.
This part of the book is close, detailed, and is, in a sense, a text-book, but to the general reader it cannot be as inter- esting as the first two chapters. In these two chapters Mr. Russell defines his view as to the nature and aims of education. It is impossible to summarize them, since they themselves are a terse summary of what any other writer but Mr. Russell would have expressed in a hundred thousand words. Mr. Russell holds the balance very justly between what may be called utilitarian education and " pure " education (i.e., an education as an aim in itself). He sums up as follows Physical evil can, if we choose, be reduced to very small propor- tions. It would be possible, by organisation and science, to feed and house the whole population of the world, not luxuriously, but sufficiently to prevent great suffering. It would be possible to combat disease, and to make chronic ill-health very rare. It would be possible to prevent the increase of population from outrunning improvements in the food supply. The great terrors which have darkened the subconscious mind of the race, bringing cruelty, oppression, and war in their train, could be so much diminished as to be no longer important. All this is of such immeasurable value to human life that we dare not oppose the sort of education which will tend to bring it about. In such an education, applied science will have to be the chief ingredient. Without physics and physiology and psychology, we cannot build the new world. We can build it without Latin and Greek, without Dante and Shakespeare, without Bach and Mozart. That is the great argument in favour of a utili- tarian education. I have stated it strongly, because I feel it strongly. Nevertheless, there is another side to the question. What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them ? The war against physical evil, like every other war, must not be conducted with such fury as to render men incapable of the arts of peace. What the world possesses of ultimate good must not be allowed to perish in the struggle against evil."
He then goes on to point out how intensely important it is that we should realize what we are doing when we wield the weapon of education, for, as he shows, education is a far more potent instrument in the formation of the young than most people are willing to admit. He instances four great systems of education, the Chinese, the Jesuit, the Japanese and the English Public School system, and he shows that each system did succeed in producing large numbers of the type of individual which it set out to produce. The Chinaman became elegantly sceptical, shrewdly pacifist, intellectually indolent, and his civilization proved far the most enduring that has ever been established, but failed to unlock the secrets of modern science. The Japanese with their tyranny of State-formed opinion have succeeded in moderniz- ing Japan in a single generation, but at the cost of freedom and variety of thought. The Jesuits stemmed the advance of Protestantism and established the counter reformation in at least half of Europe, while Dr. Arnold succeeded in turning out large numbers of young men of a. type admirably suited to man the administrative and judicial offices of the huge British Empire. Thus, on the one hand, says Mr, Russell, we have the Chinese system which produced a race too sceptical' and therefore too static, and in the case of the other systems a type which was too credulous of the dogmas with which they had been imbued.
In any case the moral is this : it is immensely important for us to realize that education does, in the great majority of cases, accomplish what it sets out to accomplish. There- fore we must make up our minds very carefully indeed as to what the ultimate aim of our educational system should be. Whether parents will consider that Mr. Russell is a good mentor in educational matters is a question we must leave our readers to decide, but there is no denying the interest and importance of this book.
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