HR. HOLMES ON EDUCATION.*
Ma. HOLMES is one of those unfortunate men who are not content to let well alone. Some three years back he wrote a book on education, entitled What Is and What Might Be, which was very favourably noticed in these columns (August 19th, 1911), and which has since passed through several editions. It was a book which contained much able, though severe, criticism of existing methods, and was rendered especially noteworthy by an almost idyllic picture which the author drew—not from fancy, but from actual life--of a village school and the work accomplished in it by a simple schoolmistress ; while throughout the writer showed such a fine enthusiasm that no reader could fail to catch something of his living fire. But along with its high merits it had also marked defects. For, on the whole, it was critical rather than constructive, and vague where definiteness was most needed, -while Mr. Holmes continually obtruded into the discussion certain peculiar opinions of his own ; and it is of these opinions that he has now written a "Defence." His eccentricities are, it appears, very dear to him, and accordingly be enters on a series of controversies with his various critics, so that the reader, who looks to learn something about education, finds himself dragged into a long dispute with "Anthropos" about " Herbartianism," and than into another with Canon Scott Holland about " Original Sin," after which comes a chapter on Professor Eucken's failure to understand "cosmic life," and another on Dr. Geraldine Hodgson's mistaken views as to the causes of "The Decadence of England," while, for any one who at this point (p. 235) is not already sufficiently depressed, there follow two final chapters on "The Valley of the Shadow of Death" and " Tbe Sin against the Holy Spirit." Nor is this the end, for there still remain a number of appendices dealing with " Sundry Criticisms" or the like ; and as no work on education is nowadays complete unless it contains some contemptuous reference to the Public Schools, Mr. Holmes, who has previously spoken of them as " driving boys in blinkers" and • In Defence of What Might Be. By Edmond Holmes. London : Constable and Co. Eia. 6d. net.]
crushing " the spirit of adventure," naturally honours them with a special appendix headed " Education and The Passing of Empire." For it appears that an Indian official, "speaking with the authority of thirty years' experience," has written a book with that happy title to "warn us that, unless we reform education in England, our Empire in India will pass," and Mr. Holmes quotes with full approval the "stern and sweeping condemnation" which is there passed on " all " the lads who are now sent to the East. " The great book of humanity has," we are told, " been sealed to them "; they are "mental automata, who have lost their soul and got in its place maxims, with the aid of which they seek to govern the world " ; " they have been so drilled and instructed that they can only deal with books . . . life has been closed to them," and therefore we are doomed. English schoolboys "can only deal with books " I It is a charge so novel and so astounding that before it all experience is dumb.
With regard, however, to this particular point of "The Passing of Empire," Mr. Holmes wrote before events had wholly falsified his fears, and he would now, we are sure, allow that, spite of a vicious education, Public-School boys do retain some virtues, and even some "spirit of adventure." But he seems to have a real liking for creating similar bugbears just in order that be may belabour them, and through half his book he is busy over this vain business. For does he really believe that one teacher in ten thousand is troubled about the doctrine of " Original Sin," or actually treats his pupils as "children of wrath " and "enemies of God " ? Has he ever known such a teacher? And if not, why devote a whole chapter to the slaying of a ghost P Or why disquiet us with the phantom called "Herbartianism"? Herbart was, it seems, like Mr. Holmes, an enthusiast for education, but unhappily he said that the function of a teacher was " to build up," whereas Mr. Holmes says it is "to foster growth," and there- fore his opponent becomes a monster to be exorcised and driven into outer darkness. No doubt he might quote the authority of St. Paul in defence of his metaphor, but, despite the Apostle's fondness for the term "edification," Mr. Holmes will have nothing to do with the " building" business. No base mechanical processes for him, and let it be anathema for all teachers who bring up chunks of know- ledge, set them atop of one another, and call it " doing the work of edifying." The human soul, he tells us, refuses to be manufactured ; what it asks is to be allowed to "grow,' to " realize its hidden potentialities," and " to unfold the infolded type," like some fair flower, such as the poet dreamed of- " quern mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber." And therefore Mr. Holmes discourses at length on the benefi- cent operations of Nature, evolution, germ development, and the like—at times reinforcing his argument by reference to "psycho-philosophical speculation and psycho-physiological research "—being apparently under the impression that he is telling us something new, although, when Horace long ago wrote Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam, he expressed in five words exactly the same theory that now seems to require five thousand. But even so we are not yet done with this troublesome metaphor of " growth." For having got hold of the comparison with a plant, Mr. Holmes pursues it to the end. What a plant needs most is, we are told, " freedom " to grow as Nature bids it; and similarly what a boy most
needs is freedom for the "healthy, happy, and harmonious" development of his faculties, and therefore down with that other bugbear called " Discipline"! No doubt every gardener knows that even plants need discipline, or otherwise they will run riot after their own fashion, and Virgil, who knew what he was writing about, tells the vine-dresser that there are times when be must "exercise stern authority" (dura imperia) ; but metaphors are very masterful things, and so Mr. Holmes is all against any "constraint" which would " do violence to the child's budding nature," while, having seen infants, under the Montessori system, allowed to " play " much as they choose, and thus developing a remarkable spon- taneous activity, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that such a school, say, as Eton might prudently adopt a like method.
But we cannot deal with all the spirits of evil which Mr. Holmes conjures up. Otherwise we should have to confront the fiend called "Competition," whose festivals are "prize-days," the motto on whose banner is "Each
for himself, and the devil take the hindmost," and to whom schoolmasters pay daily honour when they urge boys to get to the top of the form, and so do their best to flood society with successive generations of egoists and individualists." Enough, however, has, we think, been said to show that in this new volume Mr. Holmes has done very little practically to promote the interests of education. For no one who knows anything about teaching can be unaware that the points on which he dwells do present real and formidable difficulties ; and what the teacher needs is not controversy or invective, but wise and experienced guidance. He does not, for instance, want to hear about " Original Sin," but how best to deal with the actual evils that face him in his daily life; not to be lectured about freedom, but told how to acquire the rare art of uniting two things which the Roman historian spoke of as " incompatible "—liberty and command. Above all, he would gladly—and for the public welfare most profitably—hear something not of his failings, but of his worth. For, put the case how you will, advance what theories you please, in the end good teaching can come only from the good teacher; and yet to-day the teacher's calling is still, as- it has ever been, looked upon at best with a sort of patronizing contempt; nor while this is the case, while teaching is regarded as the business chiefly of second-rate men, can the quality of education be other than second-rate also. " Make the tree good, and his fruit good," la, after all, a sound maxim, and when Mr. Holmes set on his title-page a saying of Plato's that it is a statesman's "first" ante, " to have careful charge of the young," following it up by another which claims that " both the man appointed as chief director of education and those who appoint him must realize that this office is far the most important among the chief offices of State," we were hopeful that he proposed to deal worthily with a vital issue. But, unhappily, Plato only interested him because he compared " young children " to "young plants," and so he quickly put aside the large theme which that great thinker suggested, in order to pursue the vain task of wrangling about metaphors and exorcising phantoms.
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