REVIVING COUNTRY LIFE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 212, 4 June 1929, Page 18

REVIVING COUNTRY LIFE

4 WORK OF VILLAGE SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AN IMPORTANT CONFERENCE' A conference on educational policy in its relation to rural reconstruction was held recently at the London School of Economics. It was convened by the Rural Reconstruction Association with the support of the National Union of Teachers, the Town Planning Institute, the Joint Committee of four secondary associations, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, National Union of Women Teachers and other associations. - Sir Michael Sadler, who presided at one of the sessions of the conference, said that the flaw in English educational policy was our. failure, to think out in ■clear words what we wanted England in future to be. What kind of life, in what kind of commonwealth, did, we foresee as the lot of English children and of their chilren after them? From this question we flinched. And because we flinched from it we were building great ships without rudders. Expensive uncertainty lay like a blight on rural education in England. Immense energy had been thrown into English educational administration during the last 30 years. The devotion lavished on it was beyond praise. Vast sums had. been spent on reconditioning it. By many people this financial aid had been cheerfully given. By others it had been given reluctantly as Dane-geld. as a sop to democracy. Great things had been achieved, but they were only the scaffolding of something which had not yet been deliberately designed. Wo in England had shirked the ultimate questions and had hidden our timidity behind administrative zeal. We evaded the. duty of thinking out what exactly we meant English education to do for England. We attempted to find excuses for, our failure. We argued that the future was so uncertain that it was useless to try to define it. But this defence was inconsistent with what we had done. It might have justified a decision to spend no more, on education until the log cleared. It did not justify colossal and increasing expenditure poured out without a plan. The real reasons for our .failure to steer education along a definite course,' charted by a clear social. philosophy, were irresolution and fear. . . t ■ The Cinderellas.

On no part of English education had the results of this lack of candour and courage borne, more heavily than on the village schools. They were the Cinderellas of the sisterhood. They had been kept low. Much less thought had. been given to their needs than had been given to the needs of secondary schools. Yet their needs lay at the heart of. the social problem of England. We were afraid to probe them. We shrank from what a diagnosis would disclose. Nevertheless, all over England there were signs that there was vitality, in rural life and that the village schools, which were essential to village life, were strong enough to bear a heavy operation, and that many of them could rise to a great opportunity of increasing their usefulness to tho community. Country lifa everywhere rested on the precious but humble foundation of daily labour. No one who could help -it would doom his children to daily labour unless he thought that there was a prospect of permanence of employment in the sphere of labour which he and they found most accessible and congenial. Under present conditions-the economic future of English farming was so uncertain that if he were a farm labourer with boys to settle in life he should not dare, it he could help it, to bring them up to follow his own calling but should want them to qualify ate motor mechanics, electricians, or shop assistants, or to emigrate, He should also feel that the hard-won new rates of agricultural wages were threatened by the financial plight of many English farmers, and that union rules as to hours of labour would have a precarious life if English agriculture failed to find prosperity. . In short, the prospects of rural education in England were overclouded by the uncertain prospects of English farming. Our educational policy in a vital poyit was hesitating, timid, and undefined because our social philosophy, upon which all educational policy must rest, was hallhearted, two-minded, and vacillating. On agricultural economies he to speak with any authority. But he believed that hard work paid for by high wages, high wages really earned by hard work, were essential conditions of national welfare in modern England,. both in agriculture and in every other calling. And he was persuaded that, unless the future of English agriculture was secured by bold legislation, even the present rates of wages would not long continue to be 1 were signs that the spirit of England, oh which the labours of statesmen depended, was becoming prepared for -i new "order of things m English aoncuUure. 0 Mr. H. Morris, the Secretary for Education in Cambridgeshire, rendered a national service by publishing his proposals for a village College in 1920. His plan and the work of his County Education Committee would prove, be believed, to have been prophetic. Many other illustrations might be given of the new hopes which flicker here and there over the educational horizon of rural or semi-rural England. He confined himself to two. Professor J. W. Scott, or Cardiff, had made thousands of people think by his essay on unemployment and by his plans for homecrofting. What Miss Edith Geddees and her colleagues had already achieved by the Cheltenham Homecrofts was significant and encouraging. . All the more encouraging because at Oddington, a Gloucestershire village in the Cotswolds which he had tho. happiness of knowing rather well, the ideas which Professor Scott had formulated had spontaneously sprung up through there being in the village a remarkable unity of public spirit, wise leadership in its social life, a first-rate elementary school under a gifted headmistress,* and compact allotments within a few stone’s throws of the cottagers’ homes. Again, a most interesting experiment, called Hugh’s Settlement, which was due to the vision and generous zeal of Mr. B. H. Nixon, was to berrevived next year near Andover, in Hampshire. It was proposed to attack the problem of directly connecting education with the development of human values by the plan of making children, who were the nation’s chief wealth, concrete remunerative investments. This principle .of beneficial capitalisation would light/n the parents’ burdens and deserved thoughtful' attention and consideration. But we should, he hoped, never allow ourselves for one moment to forget that the highest duty of education was to make young England healthy, to open windows in the mind, and to imbue the heart -with love, courage, awe and beauty.