From King Alfred to Freud
The Next Step in National Education. The Report of a Com-
mittee. (University of London Press. 3s. 6d.) •
The Next Step in National Education is a volume prepared by a committee of educationists whose sole and sufficient purpose was to serve the cause of Youth. Its members were the late Lord Haldane, Messrs. R. F. Cholmeley, Percy Alden, F. W. Goldstone, Sir Benjamin Gott, Mr. Albert Mansbridge and Professor Nunn, with Messrs. G. S. M. Ellis and A. J. Lynch as joint honorary secretaries. Its findings come close on the heels of the famous Education of the Adolescent, and confirm and emphasize from an independent standpoint the conclusions arrived at by Sir W. H. Hadow and his Consultative Committee of the Board of Education.
The general application of full-time schooling up to the age of sixteen *(Which both- the Hadoii Report and thiS Committee recommend) would bring one million additional pupils into the schools and lessen our unemployment by approximatelY half that figure. At present, however, there are many real difficulties in the way of such a refo'nn, which can beat be introduced by stages. By 1933 at latest the leaving age should be raised to fifteen ; further extension must depend on factors as outwardly divergent as Our birth rate, our prosperity and the spreading of the conviction that our happiness depends on better education.
This book is evidence that the continuity of English education, which has grown and broadened from the times of King Alfred (our first Minister of Education) to the present time, is still a vital force among the best minds of the com- munity. In particular we would congratulate Mr. Cholmeley on his frontispiece-diagram, which shows graphically, and better than mere words could do, the darkness in which we leave 420,000 children by cutting them off from the benefits of education at the age of fourteen, just when they would derive the greatest advantage from what has gone before.
The Approach to Teaching is a manual by men who are practical experts in their high calling. Every page is full of good advice, and if we have a word of criticism it is not for what we find, but for what we miss. We miss, for instance, any allusion to or description of the Mason 'Method. Surely, now that it has been adopted in so many county schools, some adequate description of it should be given ? Again, the four short pages devoted to " Elementary Science '' seem to us too hasty a glance at a subject which is of great and growing importance in every school. The authors admit it is a vast field : we suggest that they might have explored it a little more thoroughly. However, this is a book that should be in the hands of every young teacher. The authors sound a needed note of protesfagaingt the cheap and common criticism of " the competitive spirit." Competition makes up a large part of life beyond the school. and it is right that it
should hairra Certain not too prominent place in the curriculum of a child.
Miss Low,. an enthusiastic psycho-analyst of the Freudian persuasion, tells us of a little boy who could not learn geography (p. 112), and was found to have an Oedipus- complex (p, 115) and to suffer from repressed jealousy for his baby brother (p. 117). After being analysed he grew normal (p. 121) and " quite efficient " and tractable in his, geography class. No doubt King Alfred would never have burnt the cakes if some psycho-analyst had been able to show him his fantasy-life„ Although we would certainly hesitate to, recommend psycho-analysis for children as a general rule,. we agree with Miss Low's clever criticism of mental tests. To ask children " Why are cats useful ? " and to expect them to say (a) " Because they catch mice instead of (b) " Because they are beautiful," or (c) " Because they are black," is not only foolish but unscientific. Even to an adult, as Miss Low points out, answer (b) may be as valid as answer (a), and to a child (c) may be as correct as either (a) or (b).
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