WHAT EDUCATION IS
By G. W. WHITE
ULPHURETTED hydrogen blackens lead acetate on a filter- paperr : the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection:
s = I gt', and the equation may be proved by means of a device known as Fletcher's trolley. To most men and women these scientific truths, which are truly representative of elementary science as viewed in retrospect, are of no practical value either in the pursuance of their trade, profession or vocation, or in the crises of everyday life. A knowledge of the principles of electricity and magnetism is not essential for the replacement of a burnt-out fuse, and an expert chemist or biologist is likely to be as helpless in dealing with a refractory wireless set as a classic or historian. The practice of medicine, admittedly, demands a long and arduous technical training, but the medical student is called upon to learn in the early part of it much that has no direct bearing on the preservation of health or the treatment of disease. And yet it is commonly assumed that the value of a scientific education is primarily utilitarian. The case of mathematics is similar ; and as for languages, our first visit to France is apt to shatter any belief that we may have in the utilitarian value of French as taught in English schools. All Frenchmen (and still more all Frenchwomen) seem to speak with incredible rapidity, and the atmosphere of hotels and railway stations is not conducive to conversation about the gardener's pig.
The utilitarian value of science, of mathematics and of French, in short, is much less than is commonly supposed, and it is hardly necessary to consider the remaining subjects of the curriculum at present obtaining in secondary schools. It is obvious that games are of no commercial value except to the would-be professional ; one may grow turnips or manufacture biscuits without knowing a single historical fact ; and " What is the use of Latin? " is a question, as every schoolboy knows, expecting the answer "No." If the object of the existing curriculum is to impart useful information, it is singularly ill-adapted for the purpose. We must admit that uneducated men are able to hold their own in trade and commerce, and that, when all is said and done, the best place to learn the processes of cotton-manufacture is in a cotton-mill, the intricacies of the retail grocery trade behind the bacon-counter, and so on. So far from raising the school-leaving age, we ought to lower it and revert to a system of child-apprenticeship.
But what a prospect in an age when, we are told, pounds, shillings and pence have ceased to have any meaning, and where there is a clear prospect of increased leisure for all. " Is not the life more than meat," and must we train men to make good use only of their business hours? Even their business hours are likely to be more profitable if they understand in some measure the vagaries of human nature, which remain a more or less constant factor in a changing world. Do we choose our doctors or appoint our works managers solely for their technical skill, or do we think also of their ability to handle their patients or their workpeople tactfully and sympathetically? Personal experience, certainly, is the most thorough teacher ; but, like most people who are really thorough, he is slow, and we can learn a great deal of human nature at second- hand from literature, from history and from philosophy, especially from the literature, history and philosophy of those .nations which have lived most ardently, thought most keenly and felt most deeply.
Man's duty to others is not confined to his business hours. There is his family life and there is his life as a citizen, both of his own country and of the world. Education does not, as is often supposed, 1-egIn when a child goes to school ; it begins in the cradle, and a child's first years are among its most important. We cannot, as Plato suggested, remove children in their infancy from their parents' care ; even if we disregard the parents' point of view, it is apparent that one of the infant's greatest needs is the personal affection and understanding which no official education could give. But we could, and should, educate all boys and girls in their last years at school in the duties of parenthood instead of leaving to untrained minds and unskilled hands perhaps the most important tasks that a nation can ask its citizens to perform. Again, we boast that we are a democracy, and yet only from time to time is public opinion sufficiently educated to influence for good affairs of State. Is not universal adult suffrage without universal education in the duties of citizenship a mockery and an absurdity, and does not the success of Nazi methods make it clear that such education can be effective?
It makes it clear also that efficiency is not enough. If the task of education is to fit the individual for the service of humanity, may it not also be described as a guiding of the soul back to God? By God we do not necessarily mean the personal Deity of Christianity, but simply that unseen power, to which all men of goodwill, whatever their creed, acknowledge allegiance in their hearts ; that power in which inheres moral, intellectual and aesthetic goodness. The activities proper to the soul, willing, thinking, feeling and imagination, can be correctly performed only by a soul that has been developed by exercise. Do we expect the baby to walk without constant practice or the young athlete to dear five and a half feet without arduous training? The soul likewise must be taught to will the good, to think the true and to understand and create the beautifit. All these activities to some extent may be taught in the classroom ; but the first is best learned by example and in service to a community, and it is just in the opportunities it affords of this that a boarding-school has certain advantages over a day-school. The playing-fields also help to foster the more manly virtues, besides assisting in making the body a faithful and efficient servant of the mind ; but the character-forming aspect of games is generally exaggerated. The second is best taught by mathematics, by a language which has an essentially logical structure and which demands precision in rendering abstract ideas, and by historical research, though emphatically not by the mere absorption of historical generalisations at second-hand. The third demands the understanding presentation (to the adolescent mind) of what is best in all the fine arts, a presentation which must be first and foremost absolutely sincere ; secondly, patient and tolerant while remaining definite ; and thirdly, capable of transmitting enthusiasm. In all, the personality of, the teacher is of paramount importance.
These three forms of education are not alternatives, and must be supplemented by a thorough training of the body. All. are necessary if the harmony of the soul, without which it cannot know peace and happiness or realise its full power, is to be established and preserved. Our love of wisdom and beauty must not teach us effeminacy or extravagance ; we must cultivate self-control without producing the evils of repression ; courage must go hand in hand with meekness ; width must not be sacrificed to depth nor depth to width ; certainty must not breed intolerance nor tolerance lack of principle and indifference ; fitness of the body must not cause atrophy of the . spirit. Without balance "our stedfast purpose trembles like as the compass in a binnacle," and we cannot keep steadily on our course towards the Good. And balance is most easily maintained through the study and practice of philosophy, which is the crown or coping-stone without which no education is !pally complete. For men, as Plato taught, are like prisoners in a cave, so tied and bound that they cannot see anything but the smooth rock-face in front of them. Behind them is a great fire burning and between them and the fire a road along which objects are carried to and fro, so that their shadows are cast on the wall of the cave. To the prisoners these shadows are real, for they have never seen anything else, and if they are released and shown the things on the road, they cannot at first understand that they are more real than the shadows. When at length they are persuaded of this, and led up the steep slope of the cave to the world above, they are at first dazzled by the bright light of the sun, and it is some time before
they can look directly at the trees and flowers and still longer before they can bear to raise their eyes to the sun itself, which typifies the Good. Such is the process of education properly conceived. Have we, in planning our national policy, truly pondered these things and endeavoured to keep our own eyes fixed on the sun? Or are we in danger of gaining the whole world and losing our own souls?
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