EDUCATING A DEMOCRACY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 10

EDUCATING A DEMOCRACY

When educated persons come together for the purpose of discussing the best means of educating a democracy in the nature of its job, and the best way of doing so, it is a sign that at least some people arc seriously concerned about democracy’s future and fate. The more this question is discussed, and the wider the field of the discussion. the more likely it is that the best elements of what we call democratic government will survive. Many people talk about democratic government in a way that plainly shows they do not understand what it really means. The popular conception is that it is a form of government under which personal liberty, freedom of opinion, and social justice can flourish best: hence it is to be infinitely preferred to such forms of State totalitarianism as exist for the time being in Italy, Russia and Germany, where these privileges are subject to more or less’ restriction. But before discussing ways and means of educating a democracy enjoying, such privileges, we ought to ask ourselves whether they actually exist in the form and to the extent that we fondly imagine. The fact is that the difference between freedom in a democratic State and its condition under a totalitarian State is simply a matter of degree. Nowhere does it exist in its dictionary sense. It has been remarked somewhere that democracy is not so much a form of government as a form of being governed—a somewhat subtle distinction. In a democracy the sovereign power is in the hands of the people, and the success of it depends upon the qualifications of the people to handle such a tremendous responsibility. Obviously they will be better qualified if they are better educated, but education too far removed from the realities of life and living, and concentrated unduly on the acquisition of knowledge by memory exercises rather than upon cultivating the powers of thinking—a condition precedent to the ability to form independent judgments—will not provide such a qualification. A person mentally enslaved by textbook formulae is no less an automaton than an attendant at a mass production machine, but there is this important difference between the two: The tendency of the first is to discard study as scon as lie has become certificated through the mill-process of the examination system; of the second, to seek enlightenment through study in a. desperate attempt to escape from his mechanical enslavement. In neither case, however, is the result satisfactory,, because the first has given up attempting to think, while the other is very apt to think along whatever narrow groove he may have been led into by the propaganda of some “ism” or other.

These reflections are prompted by the perusal of an interesting set of papers read at the January conference of the Australian Institute of Political Science, and now published in book form, Educating a Democracy (Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney). The papers are supplemented by condensed notes of the discussions which followed, and the whole makes a helpful contribution to the current controversies on ideals in government. The participants included university teachers, the headmaster of a grammar school, and a public librarian. There was a general agreement that democracy, “as a way of living together,’ demands that education should be continued far beyond the period during which the citizen is subjected to the influence of the schools and universities. “Given a resolute adherence to one social ideal,” says the editor (Professor Portus, of the University of Adelaide), “schools and universities can turn out Fascists, Nazis, or Communists, but schools and universities alone cannot produce democrats. The essence of education in a democracy is a free commerce in ideas, that must persist all through life. Democracy demands of its citizens a continuing and critical self-adjustment.” If that is the nature of our responsibility, then two qualifications are obviously essential to the efficient discharge of it—character, and ability to think. On this point Mr. N. 11. Mac Neil, Headmaster of the Knox Grammar School, made a statement of no little significance. He said that Australia--and this is true also of New Zealand—in adopting the British system of education to its own requirements had overlooked the central idea from which that system derived its strength. “When we took over the British system,” he said, “we failed to recognise that its integral factor was character-training based on religion. So we did not see that by insisting on secular education we were dispensing with the only principle that gave the British system any cohesion. We approach school subjects from identically the same angle as the schools of Britain, and greatly daring, but little discerning, have dispensed with their general objective,” The speaker jloubfed whether religion could at this late stage be placed in any Australian State system as a basis of its education, but the question to be answered was, what general principle should be adopted to give the right set to the course of public education? Failing religion, “this can be nothing less than the principle that education must be in touch with the life and the needs of our community, and concerned to discover the best means of serving it.”

Present educational systems seem to encourage a dead uniformity that tends to affect all democracies. “Equality of opportunity,” says Mr. Mac Neil, “is so liable in a democracy to slip over into equality of everything else, including opinions. In the long run, the big problem that democracies have to face is the tyranny of the public opimon which they generate—a far more tyrannous thing than the tyranny of an individual.” This is a constant danger, because mass opinion manifested in herd-like movements is entirely opposed to that free exercise of independent judgment through which alone democracy can find justification and salvation.