EDUCATION

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26319, 13 January 1951, Page 3

EDUCATION

Modem Trends in Education. By M. L. Jacks, M.A., Director of the Department of Education at Oxford University. Andrew Melrose Ltd. 158 pp.

Mr Jacks takes the hopeful view of the contemporary educational situation. ‘Education.” as he says in his opening sentence, “has suddenly come to life. For a hundred years it has led among us a moribund existence, vitalised at long intervals by sparks of animation.’’ He is of those who believe that religion, philosophy and science have failed us, and that salvation in the modern world lies through education—education in combination with social reform. He sees shining new horizons opening up before us in the world of education, with the extension of adult education, the growth of the principle of egalitarianism in education, and “the development of a nation-wide and effective educational machine.’’ He is one of the planners, and his book is disturbingly full of such terms as “the educational machine” and “education —a kev industry.” Like all planners, he is much attracted to schemes of vocational guidance. His optimism over the rosy future of the machine is here and there tempered by warnings of possible pitfalls, but he is mainly filled with the higher hope, seeing the Education Act of 1944 as an earnest of the great future ahead. Apparently he is untroubled by the recent sad decline in educational standards throughout the English-speaking world, and has not observed (or will not observe) the neglect of the intelligent child in the midst of the welter of planning for the average child. That a sound education is now harder to obtain than it was in the “bad old days” is a thought whicn would be anathema to him. In spite of all (his. Mr Jacks’s book is interesting as a statement of contemporary educational complexities: he can describe the main trends and experiments very well, even though his spectacles are rose-Mnted.