IS EDUCATION ANY GOOD?

Otago Witness, Issue 3556, 9 May 1922, Page 28

IS EDUCATION ANY GOOD?

A REBEL SPEECH. AN ADVOCATE OF DISORDER. £ SCIENCE AND CLASSICS. (Feom Oob Own Corbespondent.) Sir W. Herringham (president of the Education Guild of Great Britain and Ireland) gave a scholarly address on university education at last week’s conference in London. While yielding to none in the intensity of his belief in the classes as the necessary foundation of a true interest in literature, he paid a very high tribute to the science work which the universities are doing to-day, not only in the matter of training, but in research and discovery. While all would admit that the aim of all education, especially of a university, was to fit a man for the conduct of life, the means to this end had been differently conceived at different times. Whereas in his young days there were in all England and Wales only three universities, with a yearly entry of under 2000 men, there were now 11 universities ar.d three university colleges, with an entry of 9000 men and women. -CLASSICS AND LITERATURE. Fifty years ago there were only three faculties open for a first degree. Now almost all the newer universities granted first degrees in medicine, engineering, and commerce, two also in metallurgy, and the University of London ir» agriculture, horticulture, household and social science, estate management, minyig, engineering, and economics. Education, therefore, had become frankly professional. There were at present included in secondary education three main subjects—literature, which was commonly represented by the classics, mathematics, and science; arid their effects upon the mind were quite different. At the unversity science was one continuous training in the formation of general priciples from particular instances —a training .in inductive reasoning. They were also a great introduction to the law of cause and effect. Mathematics were a training in inductive reasoning, which was of immense importance in practical life. Mathematics were also a great training in imagination. Literature was originally introduced not for the sake of studying the structure and development of the language, but chiefly for the works found written in them and the beauty, of the language in which they were written. Humanists selected the classics as the great example of literature because of their beauty, - and as an introduction not only to literature, but to other forms of art. It was the reintroduction of the spirit of beauty which had been banished by the monastic forms of education. No one could claim that the study of art was an exercise in either inductive or deductive reasoning. Yet the appreciation of beauty was a real activity of the mind, without which life could not be complete or healthy. HOW THE STATE BENEFITED. Recent changes had affected the literary branch of education more than any other, and it was their business to rejoice that so many more men and women were now desiring a university education, and that universities had been broad-minded enough to recognise their needs. If the study of literature were to be eliminated it would be a great loss to the nation, and there was no such introduction to the study of literature as the classics. There was nothing but rejoicing for them in the changes in the teaching of science. It was now allowed that university education was a fit subject for the spending of public money. The Etate got an enormous body of trained practitioners in chemistry, physics, engineering, forestry, agriculture, medicine, and so forth, and there wae no more important work than the training of teachers. He would rank above all these the functions universities exercised in discovery. During the war great pathological problems were sent back to the universities,' and it was in the laboratories that they were elucidated—such things as the effects of poison gas, surgical shock, and gas gangrene, all of which were new problems. From 1838 to 1851, out of every million people born 500,000 were dead before the age of 45. Bv 1881 that age had risen to 48, and by 1891 it was 52. That was due to scientific discovery. CORRELATION OF SCHOOLS. Sir W. Herringham was in the chair when a discussion took place on “What is the good of present day education?” A remarkable speech was delivered by Mr Cb D. H. Cole (author of ‘‘Self-Government in" Industry”). He was preceded by an experienced schoolmaster, Mr E. J. Sainsbury, whose life’s work has been the further education of bright children from the elementary schools, and who claimed that the schools inculcated habits of punctuality, regularity, thoroughness, discipline, and inMr Cole was very scornful about these “virtues,” declaring that they were just the virtues he was trying to get the people to abandon, the virtues of “slavery,” and he wanted to se.e the virtues of rebels developed. These virtues were those derived by the employer class. He said he wanted the teachers' to make rebels, to do which they must themselves become rebels. He denounced the school virtues as those of older, while what he wanted was disorder. Mr Sainsbury described as one of the primary essentials at the present-time, if education was to succeed, the establishment of a closer relationship between all classes of schools and all types of teachers. (Cheers.) If that could be accomplished very much of the overlapping which went, on in education would be remedied. Overlapping the truncation of education at the present time seemed to suggest that the whole system of education was wrong. There were children at secondary schools doing elementary work, while there were children in elementary schools doing work of almost matriculation standard, yet the former were always said to be receiving secondary education and the latter elementary education. Primary education had been a comparative failure from certain points of view; but how could children of 12 or 13 be expected to derive the least benefit from real education? What real education could a child on leaving school at that age be said to possess? The vast majority of children left school at 14, and, received no education of any kind after that. What could be said for such m system as tiiat? And yet they were

told they were spending money in an extravagant way on education. Consider what education would be given in classes of 50 and 60, such as existed in many elementary schools. Every child has the right, whatever his position in life might be, to the fullest measure of real education that it was possible to give. This was not possible in such large classes. Character in school could only be formed by the inculcation of good habits, and the schools had inculcated punctuality, regularity of attendance, habits of industry, thoroughness, and discipline. They were also now teaching the children to “play the game,” following the tradition of the great public schools. Their duty was to teach the child how to learn rather than how to earn. The piimary school could lay only the foundations. “SLAVE” VIRTUES. Mr G. D. H. Cole described Mr Sainsbury’s list of virtues as a list of the most appalling virtues he knew, the very virtues he (Mr Cole) was trying to drive out of the people. Punctuality, regularity, discipline, industry, thoroughness, these were a set of “slave” virtues. He granted to see developed the virtues of the rebel. . If the worl4 was one with which they could reasonably be satisfied, then we -could develop Mr Sainsbury’s virtues. The teacher was trying to inculcate habits instead of the variation of habits. The teaching he had was “rotten.” He was at St. Paul’s School and at Oxford and was for several years a Fellow of his college. Yet he had not the slightest idea of the difference between mechanics and biology- Happily he missed the boarding school where he would have had far too much of the inculcation of habits. As he was at a day school nobody tried to teach his esprit de corps or cameraderie, and for that he was thankful. He urged them, for Heaven’s sake, not to model the life of the elementary school on that of the Public School, for that meant repression of individuality. Teachers’ salaries ought to be doubled, but even then the desired improvement in teaching must be brought about by the teachers themselves, and the best way would be the assumption by the teachers of more responsibility for the running of the schools. They must have self-government. The virtues Mr Sainsbury outlined were virtues the employees liked, but he wanted to see rebellion. He wanted the teachers to make rebels, and to do that the teachers themselves must become rebels first. The first thing for the teachers to realise was that the future of education was in their hands, that they could make or mar it. They could only do that by asserting themselves and being prepared to fight. They would then be likely to inculcate the principles of disorder, and disorder was what he wanted in society to-day. Mr H. A. Gerny (member of the Commerce Degrees Committee, Universitv of London) said many considered that only the universities produced first-class scholars. Such a view could be due only to want of knowledge of the world as it is. The basic problem of true education was primarily and almost entirely one of the child. In the development of its personality the child ought to be alloyed to retain its inborn spontaneity and to carry it tlirough all its adult life. It was the self-reliant person who was needed —one who thoroughly enjoyed life because life was good and because there was so much of interest in it. He was constantly amazed at the limited knowledge of the English language possessed by young people seeking an entrance into commercial life, and often wondered why it was. Why love of language or languages is pot generally held to be of the same importance, as mathematics, or the sciences as a preparation for commerce. Teachers had not yet realised what the real life force of the individual was, and developed it. The chairman said that while Mr Sainsbury pleaded for habits of order, Mr Cole was for disorder. Both were equally determined to bend the unfortunate child to their view of life, but Mr Gerny had intreduced the idea of pleasures in life. “ I do not live to serve,” continued Sir Wilmot, “but because I like to live,' I want to understand and enjoy things, and I want others to do the same.” A NEAT RETORT. Mr Frank Roscoe (Teachers’ Registration Council) proposing a vote of thanks for the chairman, said Sir Wilmot had to go away because he still lived in a “slave State,” where engine-drivers hud been educated in habits of punctuality. (Laughter and cheers.)