PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION.
MR. BRYCE—he may have chosen his new title before these lines are in our readers' hands—has promptly been made to turn his well-earned leisure to account. A man who has had his excellent opportunities of studying educa- tional problems in America, and who brought to the task his wide knowledge of European history, could not expect to be allowed more rest than such as considerations of health demanded. These seem to have been satisfied on the homeward voyage, for Mr. Bryce has already been the chief speaker on more than one occasion of public interest. His address to the Conference of Educational Associations on Friday week dealt with certain new aspects of the subject which have lately become prominent, and he treated them with a full sense of their importance. There are times when those who take part in educational discussions seem to think that if young people can but be taught a sufficient number of subjects for a sufficient number of years, the use to which they put their knowledge is a very secondary matter. At all events, it is one which
they can be left to settle for themselves. All that the State has to see to is that the list of subjects to be studied shall grow longer every year, and that the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses shall show an equally expansive power of teaching them. Mr. Bryce is not content to be a blind follower of this particular fashion. When he has ascertained that nearly thirty millions of public money are spent on public education, ho refuses to accept these figures without further inquiry. Before more money is granted the State ought to "take stock of the whole present situation and make sure that the present expenditure is being wisely and economically applied." Economy is now a word of fear to an educa- tional enthusiast. He takes it to mean contentment with what has already been achieved, whereas to him each fresh outlay is chiefly interesting because it may supply occasions for a further demand.
Mr. Bryce parts company with advanced educationists on another point. He pleads for more attention to secondary instruction. That is " the most vital thing for the progress of a nation." Our whole history is not determined by the number of children who are kept at school till they are fourteen, and then turned out to forget what they have learned as soon as possible. A nation moves forward "less by its average citizens than by its strongest and finest minds. To make the most of these minds, ten per cent. or less of the whole, and to send on to the University the very strongest and finest among these—this is the best investment a nation can make." It is a real gain to educational theory, as applied to the England of to-day, to have this fact stated by so high an authority as Mr. Bryce. It is the few rather than the many who are likely to profit by the beat teaching, and if this minority be but ten per cent. of the material upon which education has to work, it is all the more important that no pains shall be spared to make the most of it. That "proper synthesis of the scientific and the humanistic subjects " which Mr. Bryce warns us has not yet been reached will be more and more needed as the classes to whom it is to be applied grow in number and variety. It is not enough simply to multiply Universities as Lord Haldane would have us do. While they should be numerous enough to meet the wants of different types of mind and different economic conditions, "we must beware of lowering the standard of a University." The new foundations will naturally attract that large body of able young men who have to enter upon the business of life about the age when those of a different class are going up to Oxford or Cambridge. There is inferior reason why students of the new Universities should be nferior either in intellect or in training to those of the old ones. But the discovery "what subjects and what sort of teaching of those subjects are best calculated to train men to think" must be aided by a careful attention to the age and the future pursuits of those who will have to do the thinking. Mr. Bryce regards it as one of the conspicuous merits of the Universities of the United States that they have " gone far ahead of us in establishing a hold on the business com- munity." They have proved, that is, that there are other subjects than those recognized in the older Universities which are calculated to train men to think, if they are handled in the right way. A far larger proportion of the graduates "pass into the ranks of commerce and industry, and find their University training of the highest value, to them therein." That should be the function of the new Universities in this country. They too " might provide more fully than they do now for such subjects as political economy, the science of administration, commercial geography, and the elements of finance." But if they are to play this part these new Universities must rise to the height of their vocation. The new subjects may receive a different proportion of time and attention from that allotted to them in the old Universities, but the spirit in which they are handled must be the same. What must be present equally in both is "the highest kind of teaching and the most stimulative atmosphere."
There is another conclusion which equally follows from Mr. Bryce's estimate of the amount of educational material which is likely to profit by the teaching provided by the new Universities. What is to be done with the ninety per cent. to whom it would be useless ? This part of the question was handled by Mr. Pease at the Mansion House gathering of London employers on Monday. The object of this meeting was to explain and support the continuation classes lately set up by the Education Committee of the London County Council. There can be no question as to the need of something of the kind. At present education stops for the immense majority of the population at the age of fourteen. "In the advanced districts only one in three of the children leaving elementary schools goes forward to continuation schools, and in backward areas only one in a hundred." This might be a less depressing picture if the elementary education were all that it aims at being. But the evidence that it is nothing of the kind is considerable both in amount and in character. In the Educational Supple- ment of the Times for the 6th of this month Dr. F. A. Sibley writes what ought to be a very disturbing letter. The indirect effects of the State schools, he declares, have been "the decay of home life and parental authority, the decay of self-reliance, the decay of physical well-being, and of the solidarity of society." This is a pretty comprehensive indictment, and if it stood alone we might be tempted to dismiss it as too improbable to deserve examination. But it does not stand alone. Dr. Sibley brings witnesses to prove his charges. He quotes Sir John. Gorst as saying that, "in the opinion of the majority of those who care for the welfare of the people and are experts in education," the greater part of the money spent on education " might as well be thrown into the sea." Mr. Holmes, the late Chief Inspector of Elementary Schools, goes further than this. He declares that the education given in thousands of elementary schools is " in the highest degree anti-educational." It does not merely arrest the growth of the faculties, it irretrievably starves and stunts them. The unfortu- nate taxpayers and ratepayers who fmd the money for these costly experiments have a good right to ask the Board of Education why these grave charges have met neither with disproof nor with confession and amend- ment. Instead of clearing themselves by equally well authenticated counterstatements, they have contented themselves with piling on additional subjects and making the compulsory school period longer. Their ambition has seemingly been to make an elementary school as much like a high school as radically dissimilar conditions will allow.
The Education Committee of the London County Council has seemingly become alive to the unsatisfactory nature of this part of its work, and is preparing to make a fresh effort in the direction of evening schools. If this experi- ment is to succeed, it is plain that it must keep clear of the rock on which the half-time system was wrecked. When the school day was divided between the head and the lands, a morning or an afternoon in the classroom was coupled with an afternoon or a morning in the work- shop. The London County Council is now about to try another experiment, not indeed identical with this one, but sufficiently like it to suggest sonic doubts whether it will be more fortunate. Mr. Pease is so far well advised
that he makes no secret of the condition on which the scheme depends for success. That condition is the co-operation of the employers of boy labour. The half- timers were too often equally useless in school and at work, and unless the reduction in the hours of labour for young people attending continuation schools is sufficient to make their school time really profitable, the continuation plan will become as discredited as its pre, decessor. In an excellent letter to the Times Lord Chelmsford has set out the facts with the utmost plain- ness. The working hours of boys under seventeen in London are absolutely incompatible with attendance at evening schools. Out of one thousand five hundred and forty cases investigated by one of the County Council Committees, about twelve hundred worked between sixty and seventy hours a week. When men are over- worked they can strike ; when boys are overworked they have no remedy. This argues great shortsightedness, it may be said, on the part of employers, but mental short- sightedness is a defect seldom apparent to those who suffer from it, and there will always, we fear, be many employers who will prefer the certainty of long hours in the present to the possible gains of getting better results in the future out of the boys they overwork in the present. They are more likely, perhaps, to be influenced by the warning with which Lord Chelmsford ends his letter. The experiment the London County Council is now trying "is the last word in voluntary effort, and if it fails those who are responsible for education in London must inevitably come to Parliament for compulsory powers involving a limitation of the hours of boy labour." Certainly legislation has often been resorted to on far less valid, grounds.
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