SHORTAGE OF MEN

Evening Star, Issue 22086, 20 July 1935, Page 12

SHORTAGE OF MEN

m BIGGEST JOBS EDUCATION TOO SPECIALISED An attack, on specialisation in the schools of to-day is made by the youngest head master of a public school in Britain, Mi J. F. Wolfenden, who at the age of 27 two years ago was appointed to take charge of Uppingham. Mr Wolfenden has 30 masters and 500 boys in his charge, and when he_ was asked, upon taking this post, what ideas he had for the future, he replied: “ I shall spend my first year in learning my job.. After all, I have never been head master before, and it would be stupid to think of changing to begin with.” SPECIALISED KNOWLEDGE. Ho has now surveyed the general ■ scheme of education as we know it today in this country in a contribution to the ‘ Parents Review.’ On specialisation he says this: “ Lately there has come an increasing demand for specialised knowledge both in school children and in undergraduates. The; universities are recognising this; and in several of them departments or agriculture and engineeripg and glass technology, and such like, are springing up or have sprung up, simply to meet the demand for specialised knowledge of that sort at a higher level. “ The same thing is happening in -all our schools of all sorts. “ Each movement is going to increase in force as time goes on. As machinery continues to take the place of men there will be fewer and fewer jobs and more specialised knowledge demanded of the . candidates for them. “But 1 am not at all sure that this demand for early and intensive specialisation is a good thing. It is a development which needs carefully watching .from the educational point of view, ONE-SIDED MEN. “ There seems to be no time left in the modern world for disinterested edu- - cation. By that I mean education fn things which have no obvious money value. And that, surely, is a danger,ous thing. It is dangerous from the 3»road, theoretical point of view. “We are in danger of producing one-sided specialists, who may not b© educated men air all—if I am right that education ought to be for the whole of life, and not only for one part of it. “ It,is dangerous from the industrial point of view, too. “ The danger is that the schools of • the - country are producing too many well-informed subordinates but very few ; leaders. I have had it put to me by men of business in this way: ‘We can get lots of people for the three or four or' five hundred-a-year jobs. In fact,

we can get more of them than we can use. But what we cannot get is people to fill the. three or four or five thou-sand-a-year jobs.’ “ They can find plenty of subordinates, but no leaders. . “ Where are the leaders? “I suspect that of them have been caught in this specialisation net, and never been given the chance to develop the qualities which leadership demands. “If specialisation means learning more and more about less and less, it is surely not- surprising that breadth of outlook and .adaptability of mind get lost in it. And these are the qualities which, high places in business and industry call for. We shall have to keep our eyes open and see that this specialisation- cry does not defeat its own end.” MORE, MACHINES. Mr Wolfenden sees ahead a time of increased and increasing competition “ in which there are fewer jobs going.” The reason for this is that in every single walk of life man is giving place to the machine. More machines and fewer men, says Mr Wolfenden, is the keynote of modern industrial development. “ Hence the shortage of jobs. Hence also the greater amount of spare time which is at the disposal of each one of us. ‘ Spare time,’ and hitter words,” says Mr Wolfenden, “to hundreds of thousands to-day—hundreds of thousands who would give anything they have-for a, little less of this ironical spare time which lies so heavily upon their hands. 1 “ Have we quite realised that this enforced idleness is going to a thousandfold? Have we quite realised that in the future every single one of us is going to have on his hands far more time than we can at present imagine? “ There can be no possible doubt about it. “ Shorter working weeks of shorter working days are going to give us all far more leisure. “ The work and play of the children of the coming generation will take nothing like so much of their time or energy. CREATIVE USE OF LEISURE. “ I want to see the children of the new generation educated in the creative use of leisure. “ I say ‘ creative ’ and not ‘ recreative,’ for I think that recreation can be left to look after itself. I do not think we ne.ed be afraid that recreation will be crowded out. It is creation that the world needs now, and will need more than ever in the future. “ In this age of mechanisation and standardisation and mass production that we live jn man’s creative activity is being overlooked and forgotten. Men and women are forgetting how to make things. And if we are not careful our children will have forgotten altogether that individual artists ever have created individual things. “ The children of the future will

have increasingly monotonous work to do, which will take less and less of their time and . energy; but to compensate for that they will have an increasingly greater amount of time in which to do what they like. And I hope that, in this leisure of theirs, there will blossom again the creativeness which seems to be getting lost in our present world. “ I know pretty well what sort of youngster I should like mine to he. A MINIMUM. “ I want him to know far more than I did at his age about other people, how they are paid, how they live, and what they do with their time. And I want him to be able to bold down a .job without having to sell his soul to to do it. I want him to bo given the chance to use the spare time I expect him to have in such a way that the world is the richer for his being in it. But that, of course, is not the whole of what I want him to be. It is a minimum. And I hope that you_ who have children to be educated will not accept anything less than this. “ We think we have a difficult world to live in; and it is easy enough for us who are still young to criticise our elders for having got us into this mess. But those of us who are still young know that the world cannot be changed in 10 minutes, or even 10 days. “ I do not believe in trying to turn things upside down. I would far rather build on whnt we have got. We have much to be thankful for in the tradition of English education. The days are gone when we could afford to he educated just to exist gracefully ; life is far more real and earnest than that. “Education must be for life.”