FREE EDUCATION IN ENGLAND

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22414, 30 May 1938, Page 7

FREE EDUCATION IN ENGLAND

NEED FOR A “VIGOROUS DISCONTENT” ADDRESS TO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS LONDON, April 23. Universities were criticised for their tendency to become “regional minded’’ and to concentrate on their own extension by Dr. F. Lincoln Ralphs, of Sheffield, a former president of the National Union of Students, at the union congress at Nottingham. “Perhaps I am standing on too sacred ground when I say this,” he added. “University colleges tend to forget that the sole meaning of education is not summed up by the realisation of a charter, and that there are other things to do. Students’ interests are sometimes more urgently in need of attention than the cultivation of people' who are likely to realise the long-dreamed dream of a new university.” There was need for a complete and ■radical reorganisation of the education system, but the congress should understate its resolutions rather than alienate the people who, at the moment, might be prepared to assist them. Education in this country was a charity, and it suffered from all the defects of a charity. It was not possible for the ordinary child to go to a university on anything approaching equality. It would be an interesting experiment if every university student had to visit adult education classes, to observe the enthusiasm of certain sections of the working classes in making up for the education which the present system had denied them. The Reality of Politics Dr. Ralphs referred to the fear in universities of the word “politics.” There was not much room in a university assembly for an over indulgence of party politics, dogmas, and creeds, but if they dissociated their thought from politics they would live a life of unreality. Education was a political problem, and they must face it as such if they were to do anything concrete and practical. Their so-called free education was won after a fight. In fact they were nowhere near a state of free education, and it was their responsibility to work for it. “It seems tq me that we need, at the bottom, to have a thoroughly vigorous discontent with the education v/hich is provided for us. The amount expended upon the training of an adequate London policeman is considerably in excess of that which is spent on training a teacher. It is therefore for us, who have enjoyed a certain measure of free education, to accept the political responsibility of continuing that educational advance. It does not mean that you have got to join Socialist or Communist clubs; it means that you have got to get responsible minds working on educational reforms.”

Dr. Ralphs also referred to the compulsory lecture system, and said that if compulsion was hot exercised it meant that students must be attracted to lectures. In those circumstances the lecturer might becpme an enter-, tainer. , ,