Between School and University
Among many interesting recommendations made in the first interim report of the British Association's Committee on Post-war University Education is one that would profoundly affect the lives of youths between the ages of eighteen and nineteen. • It is suggested that a year of national or international service should be interposed between school and university, so that undergraduates' studies would not normally begin until the age of nineteen. Such service does not, of course, necessarily mean military service, which may not long remain universal after the war, but might include a great variety of activities, including some connected with European re- construction. The question at once arises as to whether the Com- mittee has put this year of service at the right stage in a student's career. Should this year, in which it is suggested he should acquire practical experience of the affairs of the world, come between school and university, or immediately after the university? A complete break between school and university teaching might involve serious dislocation, and an interruption of studies such that the freshman would have to spend some time in picking up what he had forgotten. Would it not be more judicious to put the year of "service" at the end of a university course? That would give stimulating experience in the interval between an academic career and professional life, an interval which is particularly needed by all who are to be engaged in teaching or in the civil service. The plan might be simplified if school life ended and university life began at eighteen instead of—as had become usual—at about nineteen.
Previous page
