ROAD TO THE NORTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26043, 5 January 1946, Page 6

ROAD TO THE NORTH

SOCIAL CHANGES IN SCOTLAND

By Macnair Reid, Scottish journalist and feature writer.

Dr Samuel Johnson, when he was particularly nettled on one occasion, said that the only road a Scotsman knew was the road that led him to the south. As so often happens to the perpetrator of such an epigram. Dr Johnson himself is almost contained in it. For if Boswell, his biographer, had not taken the road south (which he travelled principally to meet the doctor and other literary folk) Johnson would not be the iiterary figure he is to-day. Another Scot. Thomas Carlyle, called the biography, “The Johnsoniad of Boswell’’!

restricted accommodation, and teachers inadequately trained for the job. Scotland’s almost romantic tradition in education rested on the principle of individual tuition going on within the framework of class instruction This was in the days of smaller classes and narrower curricula; but men are realising that it remains a fundamental principle in education, and Scotland is after it once again! Swedish readers need not be introduced to Scotland’s achievement in the organisation of youth hostels, The movement is immensely popular—and immensely promising for the sociologist. Many mansions will yet be added to the organisation’s authority, and by the summer of 1946 we should see a network of hostels in occupation from the Cheviots to the fastnesses of Caithness and Southerland. One such mansion has recently been handed over in the Highlands, not to the Youth Hostel Organisation, but to the education authorities. The plan is Ifhat students of agriculture should enjoy a year's residence there studying all aspects of farming and dairy produce, in addition to having lectures on cultural subjects. Better Railway Facilities Recently at a Labour conference the Railway Clerks’ Association moved a resolution, which was accepted, that a Scottish Tourist Board should be established by the Government. It is very probable that some such board will be instituted. There is a committee examining the matter at the moment, but its final report has not yet been published. Certainly, by next summer the railway companies will have new-conditioned coaches on the road, restaurant cars, and improvements even on some pre-war conveniences. The slogan, ,f ls your journey really necessary? ” may be retained for the addition “ —Yes, to see Scotland first! ” This year, from Galloway to Caithness, there was not a corner vacant during the “ season.” The Highlands were packed out. Hotels on the East Coast, from Aberdeen to Berwick, could have booked three times the number of people they were able to accommodate. The tourist traffic is a potential in Scotland’s economy that will be tapped more and more as years pass. Her millions of war-time visitors, housed mostly in camps and billets, have departed across the seas, and to the South, leaving definite word that they are coming back—and bringing their families with them,-this, time, to enjoy a holiday without the constriction of military duties or uniform! Many of these people will surely keep their word. Employment in the Country One further social tendency may be mentioned as having arisen, perhaps, from spiritual experience during the war, or the physical urgencies of warwork and its weariness. It is a tendency among young men and women of the cities to seek -employment in the country. It is too indefinite to assume any shape of such a phenomenon as any movement towards decentralisation by the people themselves would amount to, but it is there, perhaps particularly with the professional, artistic and skilled-worker classes.

But Dr Johnson was right—and remained right for generations after—in indicating that" the road to the south held a peculiar fascination for young Scotsmen. It is because of this that Scotsmen have played so large a part in the political and economic history of Britain. They have also played a very prominent part in the building up of Britain's Empire, for that road to the south led to England’s great ports as .well as to London. And Scotsmen travelled from these to the ends of the earth. No*, there is a tendency—very slight as yet. of course—for Scotsmen who have been in the south and abroad to take the road back to the north. There is a more marked tendency for talented young Scotsmen to stay at home. The road to the south is fraught with as many difficulties as the roads around their own cities or towns or countryside. A Promising Movement This, perhaps, is the most heartening social sign in Scotland to-day. If it develops and becomes a conscious movement among the young and ablebodied, experienced people, it will give a greater impetus to social reforms than any Government or authority could afford. It has been true of Scotland always, of course, that in these public and social affairs that have a local direction she has compared favourably with any other nation, and in some particulars excelled them all. Scotland’s tradition in education, for instance, is rightly famed throughout the progressive countries of the world. The administration of Scots law is, and has always been, austerely meticulous, upon which the integrity of the individual could depend. It is only in those aspects of her social and economic life where she has got mixed up in the larger corresponding elements of English life that retrogression is seen. This truth is becoming known to Scotsmen now, and so the Scottish have political and pseudopolicital, social, cultural and educative societies springing up and flourishing. A point not often made, which deserves an airing, is that in those aspects that show retrogression there is no evidence of purposeful oppression or conscious exploitation by Englishmen. The unfortunate event has come about, willy-nilly, through the sheer weight of influence and the power of numbers, and the ordinary Englishman would be as distressed as anyone were he informed of the facts. These facts are part of the common political and economic problem which the present, post-war Government at Westminster must face. Anything that is done with them will arise out of the nation’s fundamental need and not from special pleading by a particular locality.

The feeling is growing among these that life in such a town as Oban, Inverness, Berwick, Stonehaven, or Forfar, would be ampler, leisure would be more happily used, and health would be improved, if the promise is fulfilled, and light industries are created in the Highlands, at the source of the great electric power to be harnessed under the many new schemes on foot, we shall see an exodus from the big cities to these new zones of industry. Such a prospct would have seemed a hopeless dream to Scottish economists and sociologists a few years ago. It may easily lead not only to a quickening of Scotland's national life and and a rediscovery of Scotland by her own sons and daughters, it may restore a sane balance in population and distribution, and this would have effects throughout the fabric of social life. Not least to benefit from it would be the over-harassed education authorities. And it might give Glasgow, in particular, a,chance to regain a pace of extension and development which its city fathers could maintain.

New Education Act But in those traditional departments where Scottish methods and Scottish control still obtain, there is only progress to be recorded. The new Education Act is merely.a modernised plan for education and its peculiar problems to-day. Scotsmen will set about putting these plans into action with traditional skill and energy. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note the re-emergence, through the new Act, of a principle that was once of the very basis of Scottish education. That principle is that “ education should be suited to the age, ability and aptitude of the child, but it remains for education authorities, in consultation with the teaching profession, to plan their curricula to put the principle into effect.”

This statement was made recentlyby Dr Stewart Mackintosh, Glasgow's Director of Education. He pointed out that the obstacles facing educationists in this were the large sizes of classes,