LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR] THE CRISIS IN EDUCATION SiR,—It was indeed good to read the spirited demand for a long-sighted policy in education which came from Sir Cyril Norwood in your issues of February 9th and 16th. What- ever may be felt about the details of his scheme, it is refreshing to get the problem stated by a person of his eminence. In both Sir Cyril Norwood's article and in correspondence arising out of a previous article on " The Future of the Public Schools " the point was made that the present financial diffi- culties could largely be solved and advantage gained for the community as a whole by the re-orientation of the Public Schools to include a number of what might be termed " Junior State Scholars " from the Public Elementary Schools. To put the matter on its lowest ground, funds would become available which cannot at present be touched and which might enable the great essentials of the English Boarding School system to be preserved. Put on the highest level, the com- munity would be able to tap some of the best resources of character and brain hidden in the yeoman and " craftsman" stock (in the widest sense) which has been for generations such a mainstay of English life.
One point, however, needs bold clarification if the idea is to be based on reality. I refer to the percentage of P.E.S. boys to be admitted. Dr. Norwood speaks of " not less than to per cent.," and I realise that he may deliberately be going cautiously at this stage. But after working for nearly fourteen years in a school run, broadly speaking, on Public School lines, but with some differing features—where half the boys come from Preparatory Schools and half from Public Elemen- tary Schools—I have no hesitation in stating that Sir Cyril's so per cent. must be a minimum of 4o per cent., and preferably 5o per cent.
It is true that this particular school is small and still the only one of its kind ; but it has been running for twenty years and the experience gained therein supports the conten- tion. It should be stated immediately that this 5o/5o form of "population" has long since ceased to have any internal interest ; it is accepted as normal both by staff and boys and the result is a solidarity as sound as that found in any ordinary Public School. Sir Cyril wisely suggests a simpler standard of living, in the sense that boys should be to a greater extent self-dependent in the matter of domestic service. In the school to which I refer this has been achieved by the aboli- tion of fagging and the substitution of house " duty groups," who take in turn the serving at table and the tidying of form rooms. Each boy cleans his own boots and makes his own bed, and prefects have no privileges in these matters. A system of school " allowances " in lieu of pocket-money and certain safeguards to remove the difference that might arise between boys in widely different material circumstances have been put into practice, and work invisibly to break down any distinctions that mere pecuniary advantages might produce.
Many men, both masters and past members of schools, will look back with at least mixed feelings if they were at a school where one house had a markedly different standard of living from the others ; where one house was retained for people of a particular creed ; or where day boys numbered less than 20 per cent. of the school. They will remember how seldom these units really fitted into the school as a whole. Each section is too conscious of the other, and in addition the minority is too conscious of itself. It may be stated with confi- dence that even a 25 per cent. recruitment would produce a body which would be too conscious of its minority. If the minority were able, and almost of necessity it would be, the feeling of numerical disability would almost certainly produce arrogance, a determination to " show what we can do." The result with the majority would almost certainly be a spurious contempt coupled at times with dislike. These are no in- gredients for a happy community. But in a 5o/5o arrange- ment each part of the community accepts the other without question—or put differently, the community as a whole is largely unconscious of its constituents. The important thing is to make the fusion complete. From my experience I would say that there is little hope of success for a school of the type outlined if there is to be a clear-cut minority in its constitution. The issue is quite clear. Either we are out to save the Public Schools for the sake of the country as a whole, and for the type of men they can produce, by reviving them in their capacity as public ; or we are out to save them financially by making use of a regrettable but necessary regulation in order to obtain public funds. If the former we must draw the numbers equally from Preparatory and Elementary Schools. In a community of this sort there will be no feelings among the boys themselves. Twenty years' experience on a small scale has made that plain ; and it has made it difficult to say who gains the most from the arrangement. A 5o/5o mixture calls for no kind of anxiety, and all the more obvious diffi- culties will prove, in practice, to be illusory.
It is true to say that since the last war there has been an increasing separation of the various strata in our population. Since 1918 many a housemaster has realised that fewer indi- viduals in his house have wide social contacts. Fewer boys, during the holidays, really know the people in their village or town, or in their father's works. This state of affairs is due to a number of factors, not the least of which are the advent of cheap motor-transport and the cinema. " Public Schools " containing a small and inevitably self-conscious minority would do nothing to relieve this situation, which is of more importance than is generally recognised. Moreover, it is within the bounds of possibility that the demands of the minority might become so insistent, in the wrong way, by reason of its inevitable feeling of insecurity, that in the end it might well bring down the system into which it had been taken. (After all, it might be pointed out, in anger, that the arbitrarily chosen minority was part of the real majority.) But Public Boarding Schools on a basis of equal numbers could not only save the best in our traditional education, but could also do much towards bringing together, in a new way, the sections of the community which have been drifting apart in the last zo years. The amount of character and brains which would be released for the benefit of the country is impossible to estimate. That there would be certain re-orientations in established traditions is obvious. It is equally obvious that we are likely to get them in any case—and if we can accept them with that elasticity and dislike of a row which is part of the English tradition, surely it will be all to the good.—Yours
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