THE CHARACTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION.
/THE Government are certainly not backward in preparing for an eduoational reconstruction after the war. They have nothing to reproach themselves with in this respect. It is agreed upon all sides that we must be prepared to take up the industrial struggle on rearranged lines after the war, that our preparations must be made in advance, and that the character of our eduoation is one of the essential points on which a decision must be soon reached. A new President of the Board of Education has to be appointed, and we sincerely hope that the choice will be made very carefully, not with a view to finding a place for someone who cannot be provided for in any other Department, but because the Government have very clear and good reasons in their mind for making the appointment. In our opinion experience does not by any means prove that a man with a distinctly academic mind—a man who has some title to be regarded as an" educationist "- is necessarily the best man to be at the head of our Educational system. We want a man, cultivated indeed, but without any academic prejudices. We want someone with an open mind, who is not the victim of hard intellectual precon- ceptions; we want someone who recognizes that though books are the instruments of education, they are not the full ex- pression of education ; we want someone who understands that character is the most difficult but also the most profitable thing to train. It is a current saying that education must in future serve a national purpose and be part of our Imperial policy, but with that it has to be remembered that there is no more disastrous sort of education than that which makes boys and girls so narrowly conscious of the end they serve that they lose all individuality, all independence, and become servile types beaten out according to a model.
We fear that the public, who have never been so sensible as they are now that they desire a national system of educa- tion which will enable us to hold and push forward our com- mercial position, may become confused through the number and complexity of the Committees which are being created to preside over the educational reconstruction. Take such simple questions as these : Have we in our higher education relied too much on the Classics and particularly on Greek ? Have we stupidly or unfairly excluded Science in a mistaken pursuit of the Humanities ? Have we suffered through the neglect of modern languages ? Have we failed to teach geography and history to the ordinarily " well-educated " boy and girl ? Have we failed through an inherent defect of the system to teach Englishmen to write their own language correctly ? In conversation any day you may hear such questions asked. Discussion is conducted on a plane of incomplete information, and the answers to the questions are too often erroneous, or are the violent party-cries of men who champion the extreme schools of the Classics or what is called "Science." Yet it is of the greatest importance that the public should be well informed on such subjects because it is they who will have to give the electoral answer when the time comes; it is they whose sons and daughters are about to profit or lose by the decision, and it is they who have the future greatness of Britain in their keeping. Vi b wish that it had been possible for a Royal Commission to review the question of education as a whole, and to make recommendations. Their labour would not be wasted, because even though their recommendations were not found acceptable as a whole, they would at all events be able to present to the nation a standard or norm of educational principle which would have been invaluable as a starting-point. We note that the Government seem definitely to have decided against a Royal Commission but we still hope that the "reviewing committee" which has been decided upon will in effect fulfil the office of a Royal Commission. No doubt the field is so wide that several committees are necessary, and in these circumstances it seems improper to call a Royal Commission into existence alongside them. But the im- portant point, we repeat, is that somehow or other the conclu- sions of the various committees should be gathered up and presented as a clear and simple general conclusion which the ordinary person can understand. Only one person in ten thousand—if that is not too liberal an estimate—will read the independent reports.
Take as an example of inadequate information the uncertain facts which form the basis of most discussions on Classics versus Science. It is popularly supposed that Germany has abandoned the Humanities in favour of scientific teaching, and that she owes her great commercial progress to the change. We have, however, the authority of Dr. Rice Holmes for saying that Classics are learned 'by a larger proportion of the popu- lation in Germany than in Great Britain. He says, moreover (we quote from a recent letter to the Times), that fewer hours are allotted to natural science in German than in British schools. Even in the German "modern schools" only a fraction of time, varying from two to six hours a week, is spent on natural science. The Germans, of course, aim at producing a scientific habit of mind. It is not necessarily paradoxical to say that this habit is best produced by the Humanities. After all, a boy who is going to succeed in the world is only beginning to learn when he leaves school. If his mind has become a fertile seed-bed his education has accomplished its purpose ; otherwise it has not, whatever form his education may nominally have taken. We heard recently of a British man of science who exclaimed, rather recklessly perhaps, that a man of science was "useless if he doesn't know Greek." He meant that he preferred a scientific mind to an unscientific mind crammed with scientific facts. We hear much of the "waste of time" in learning Classics, but a tyranny of con- vention may be established in any sphere of study. You may waste as much time on natural science as on anything else if you learn improperly. Our readers may remember the book by Mr. Paul Elmer More, which we noticed in the Spectator on May 20th, 1916. He quotes American records to show that students of the Classics surpass their unclassical rivals in any field where a fair test can be applied, and refers to the testimony of Professor Webster, a famous physicist, who says of Latin and Greek : "Many of us still believe that such a training makes the best possible training for a scientist." At all events, let us have the facts before we proceed to judgment.
Let us now look very briefly at what the Government have done already. The Reconstruction Committee have undertaken "the general supervision and review" of the changes which may be required in our system of education. That step apparently disposes of the suggestion that there should be a Royal Commission. Special committees are to inquire into particular fields of study. There will be a committee to inquire into the teaching of natural science. Another committee will inquire into the teaching of modern languages. Mr. Henderson at the end of last month announced that the Recon- struction Committee would fulfil its task by appointing a "reviewing committee." Probably Lord Crewe was only expanding Mr. Henderson's idea when he said a few days later that there would be a committee to "review generally the whole field of education, composed partly of members of the Government and partly of public men who have had Parlia- mentary experience." Lord Crewe may possibly have yet another committee in view, but on the whole we think that he was referring to the "reviewing committee" which is to be constituted by the Reconstruction Committee. It is to this "reviewing committee" that we look to focus the whole matter and lay a clear case before the nation which can be comprehended and acted upon. It is essential that this focussing committee should be representative. We wonder why Parliamentary experience should be stipulated as a qualification for membership. We should like to see on the committee two or three men who have been engaged in education as a profession all their lives. The Headmisters of public schools are being hotly challenged. Let them have an opportunity to defend their position. We should like to see a great master of industry chosen, also a distinguished sailor, and a distinguished soldier, and representatives of religion. There would very likely be a majority and a minority report, and the issue would, therefore, be slightly involved. But after all we are accustomed to majority and minority reports even on comparatively simple questions. All we ask for is that as simple a statement as is possible should be laid before the nation. The nation is badly in need of the facts and also of guidance.
We take it for certain that neither the extreme Classical school nor the extreme Scientific school stands for what the nation needs. We want a conscious direction of education towards the patriotic service of our country as a beautiful and noble ideal in itself ; but we must so achieve it as not to injure the independence and the integrity of character which our public schools, for example, have produced beyond all question. We should avoid, like the plague, the German motive which makes professors and teachers the State drill sergeants of the intellect. This means in practice that State control should never he applied where it is not proved to be necessary. The personal liberty of teachers, as everyone knows who has had the good fortune to be inspired by some never-to-be- forgotten master, is essential. Our readers would do well to refer to a little pamphlet called Public School Reform (the Hon. Secretary, Public School Reform, St. Clere, Kemsing, Kent), which describes the reception of a deputation to urge reform by a Committee of Headmasters of Public Schools. We do not commit ourselves to the whole policy of that deputation, but they presented their case with temperateness and reasonableness, and were met in a like spirit by the Headmasters, who, though sympathetic towards the deputa- tion, were the very reverse of being insensible to the en- lightening and anti-material influence of the Humanities. That spirit may be saved, as we have often said, without making a boy grind slowly and incessantly at grammar though he be devoid of all natural aptitude for it. There is common ground for the Humanities and the " Science " schools. The nation, anxious to find the most useful educa- tion for its sons, thirsts to be told just where that land lies.
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