Part 3

The effective organisation of trade-schools will entail a solution of the problem of apprenticeship. The apprenticeship-system has long been obsolete: it is condemned educationally because it involves the transference of the pupil from the school to the workshop at too early an age, and it is ineffective industrially because under modern factory-conditions there is no certainty that the apprentice will even receive proper technical training. The system is already dead in many trades, and in others it is kept alive only to enable the trade unions to limit the number of entrants into the industry. It cannot be long, however, before common needs force education and industry into some sort of concordat. The industrial firms need skilled workers; the educationists want those skilled workers to be trained in such a way that they may derive educational benefit from their technical pursuits. To meet the difficulty there are two obvious possibilities. The whole apprentice-system might be abolished, and the training of skilled workers might be carried out entirely in technical schools organised on the lines of the _écoles professionelles_ of France, which resemble factories in their equipment and which turn out fully-trained workers after a three years’ course. If, on the other hand, the rule of apprenticeship is retained, it should be possible to substitute education in Junior Technical Schools for the first two years of apprenticeship. Steps of this kind have already been taken in London, where it is usual for young workers to have their apprenticeship shortened by a period corresponding to their training in a trade school. But, of course, further advances in this direction can be taken only with the co-operation of the trade unions concerned. This may cause difficulty. Somewhat strangely, the educational spokesmen of the trade unions seem so much concerned about securing a university education for the sons of the “workers” that they have little interest in the matter of craft-instruction. But perhaps this attitude of the trade union leaders is no more strange than that of the employers who talk loudly of the need for increased efficiency if British manufacturers are to compete in the markets of the world, and yet do little or nothing to ensure that their young workers shall be given adequate training for the work they are to perform.

But we have still to consider the future of boys and girls of low mentality who, on leaving the primary school, will normally enter unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, and who are not likely to profit by full-time vocational training. It is these who present the most difficult problem to the educationist. It is hard to find the right way of approach to such children even under school-conditions; it is far harder to exert effective teaching-influence over them when they have been freed from disciplinary restraints. Yet it is imperative for the health of the community that young workers of this type should not be allowed to pass entirely out of educational control as soon as they leave the elementary school. For them, it would seem, the aid of Mr. Fisher’s Act will once more have to be invoked, and compulsory Continuation Schools will be established. At these classes the object will be not so much to teach the students any specific subjects as to keep them under disciplinary influences and to develop in them the sense of personal and civic responsibility. The short experience gained from the few continuation schools established immediately after 1918 made it clear that giving much purely cultural teaching to workers of low type in unskilled jobs, however desirable, is actually impracticable. Nor is it generally possible to give much direct vocational instruction. Physical training and handwork must be made important parts of the courses, and good work can be done through the formation of students’ clubs. In fact, those who have charge of Continuation classes will have to regard themselves less as teachers than as welfare-workers.

The scheme of development which has been mapped out clearly demands the creation of a link between education and industry such as does not at present exist. Boys and girls who, through lack of initiative or of any special predilection, have not found for themselves suitable employment by the time they are due to leave school will not be allowed to drift into the first blind-alley occupation that presents itself. The education authorities will have made full surveys of local industrial and business requirements and will thus be able to indicate suitable openings. Moreover, account will be taken of the applicant’s special abilities in recommending any particular post to him. The question of vocational guidance has for some years attracted a good deal of attention in America, and a considerable amount of work has been done in this direction. In this country, many local educational authorities (in particular, the London boroughs) are attempting to carry out schemes of juvenile vocational guidance through the After-Care Committees and the Juvenile Advisory Committee of the Employment Bureaux. In London, too, the Headmasters of the Secondary Schools have formed an Employment Committee which puts pupils in touch with firms who have vacancies.

More important in this connection is the investigation recently carried out by the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in conjunction with the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Under the direction of Dr Cyril Burt a careful study was made of all the children (to the number of a hundred) due to leave three selected London schools within a period of twelve months. All data obtainable from the schools were collected, the children were subjected to mental tests, the homes were visited, and each child was personally interviewed. In the light of the evidence thus obtained specific vocational recommendations were made. After an interval of two years the investigators again interviewed the children in their homes in order to test the results of the recommendations. It appeared that the children who had entered the industries suggested to them had proved more efficient than their fellows, and over 80 per cent. of them declared that they were satisfied with their position and prospects. On the other hand, of those who obtained employment different from the kind recommended, less than 40 per cent. were satisfied. The value of this experiment is, of course, limited by the smallness of its scale, but the results are certainly encouraging. One point that has been made clear is the need for full information as to the requirements of the various trades.

Such efforts at linking the schools with the office and the workshop are at present tentative and sporadic; but they are significant of future developments,――developments which will be hastened by the growing determination during these years of trade depression to prevent the waste and deterioration of our youths, so far as it can be prevented by better organisation. There can be little doubt that within the next few years we shall be forced, if not by practical wisdom, at least by economic necessity, into creating a universal scheme which shall relieve the employers of the need for haphazard advertisement in recruiting their junior staffs, and which shall ensure that everything possible is done to facilitate the entry of a youth into that particular job in which he can do work of most value to himself and to the community.

IV

THE UNIVERSITIES

The Academic Mind of To-Day and To-Morrow.

“’Tis not a melancholy _utinam_ of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod――not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but,――for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.”――_Sir Thomas Browne._

It will be observed that our survey of probable future developments in the lower branches of education is hopeful. These are good reasons for optimism: the trend of opinion which will mould the schools of the future is already clearly in evidence; our obvious defects to-day are defects of organisation, and these can be remedied by any capable administrator; the seeds of the growths we have foreseen have already been planted; and, finally, economic exigencies will provide the drive necessary to overcome the dilatoriness inseparable from public activity. But we must confess that we are much concerned about the universities. There are tendencies in university life to-day that give ample cause for misgiving,――the more so because they spring rather from vital weakness reflecting the intellectual vices of our age than from defective methods and organisation.

Not that our universities do not show very obvious defects in method and organisation. (We are considering now especially the new universities. Just as in our survey of secondary education we made no reference to the public schools, which have their own tradition, and which will remain outside a state-system, so we may now leave out of account Oxford and Cambridge, which have their own teaching-methods and which again are not likely to be amenable to state-interference. Moreover, the inevitable extension of higher education will be seen in the creation of more universities of the new type, as well as in the enlargement of those already in existence, and thus Oxford and Cambridge are likely to turn out an ever-diminishing proportion of the total number of graduates in this country). Criticism may well be levelled at the insufficient importance attached to social life in the modern universities. It is much too easy for young men and women to attend courses of lectures for three years or so and amass a certain quantity of information on given subjects without coming in contact with any intellectual influences outside the class room. This danger is, of course, inevitable when the students are not resident in a college. A remedy is being provided to some extent by the erection of hostels, and much more may be done in this direction; but there is still a difficulty arising from the fairly large proportion of students who live at home in the university-town. As part of the same problem must be mentioned the insufficient attention given to games. This is due not merely to the frequent absence of adequate playing-fields, which might be remedied, but to the fact that college lectures take place during the whole of the day and are so arranged that no considerable body of students is free for the whole of more than one afternoon a week. In other words, college work is organised solely with a view to academic requirements.

And then there is the teaching by means of lectures. As a method this was rendered obsolete as soon as books were rapidly and cheaply printed, and yet, whereas Oxford and Cambridge have long pursued a more excellent way, the new universities have strangely revived and perpetuated the mediaeval practice. A century-and-a-half ago Dr Johnson was emphatic about the futility of lectures. (“People have nowadays got a strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures. You might teach making of shoes by lectures!”). It is delightful to imagine his remarks if he could walk through a modern college and see dozens of lecturers each droning from his rostrum,――in these days when library shelves and publishers’ store-rooms are stuffed with reliable text-books on every conceivable subject. Surely no system of teaching can have ever been devised with so little regard for ordinary efficiency. Batches of students are set to take imperfect notes of a probably imperfectly delivered lecture by a man who has either taken his material from books that they ought to read themselves, or is dictating what is really an original text-book, which obviously, in the interests of economy in time and labour, to say nothing of accuracy, ought to be printed. It is to be feared that under present arrangements a college lecturer fulfils the whole of the duties officially required of him if he thus turns himself into a gramophone for so many hours per week. If university-teaching meant no more than this, and if the lecture were its only channel, we should feel bound to urge that the present wasteful duplication of lectures in various university-centres should be avoided by enlisting the aid of wireless, and that standard lectures should be broadcast to students throughout the kingdom in their own homes.

The educational efficacy of the universities of this and other countries is being weakened, however, by a more insidious disease,――a disease of which the defective teaching-methods and the excessive absorption in purely academic pursuits are merely outward symptoms. The intellectual and moral malady of this present age has infected our seats of learning so that they appear to be abandoning the ideal of a liberal education and to be substituting the narrow aim of the acquisition of specialised knowledge. The modern university must be a centre of research: the danger is that it will neglect to be also a centre of education.

Research is the intellectual idol of our time. The fiery zeal for discovery which animates us resembles that which was abroad five centuries ago in Europe. Indeed, we of to-day are borne along by the second wave of the great tide of the Renaissance. The great awakening of the human spirit, due, in part, to the rediscovery of ancient literature and art, urged men to the passionate pursuit of truth and beauty. Research and creative activity went hand in hand. The inspiration which produced the great scholars, painters, and architects lasted for a season. Then the vital energy was dissipated: scholarship degenerated into gerund-grinding, literature into stylistic display, and art into lifeless imitation. But meanwhile the newly-liberated spirit of enquiry was turning from the past and seeking fresh objects of study in natural phenomena. Slowly and tentatively, at first, the human intellect explored the fringes of those vast fields of knowledge which had lain almost untouched since the time of the Greeks. Then, in the last century, the scattered sparks suddenly flamed into a great outburst of scientific discovery, and the western mind was amazed by the undreamed-of treasures spread before it. Here was a second Renaissance, the child of the first and informed with the same spirit of divine curiosity, but working in a new direction. The prime object of the nineteenth century investigator was to accumulate observed facts about the material universe, to find theories to interpret those facts, and perhaps ultimately to lay bare the innermost secrets of Nature. More and more wonders were discovered; and each new wonder pointed the road to fresh territories awaiting the pioneer. There must be formed a great army of explorers. The recruitment and the training of this army was naturally carried on in the universities. The aims and methods of science acquired enormous prestige. The spirit of research pervaded every department of academic activity.

In the reorganised universities of nineteenth-century Germany, the new spirit found its most complete expression. The professor was given a two-fold function: he was to teach, and also to advance his particular study or science. To-day teaching is often made subordinate to research. A characteristic product of the German academic system is the “seminar,” which is for the student of humanistic learning what the laboratory is to the scientist: in the seminar the student is given training in methods of original investigation. The course of study is highly specialised and leads to the degree of “doctor of philosophy,” for which he must present a dissertation contributing to the advance of knowledge. The close association of American students with Germany has led to the importation of German university methods and ideals into the United States. In England, too, there has been an ever-increasing tendency to approximate our standards to those of Germany. The Honours courses, at any rate at the new universities, become increasingly specialised, and more and more insistence is being laid on the necessity for original research as the crown of an academic career.

Thus the universities are living in an intellectual atmosphere manufactured by the scientists. The great craving is for knowledge,――knowledge of natural processes, and knowledge of man’s past history. This craving manifests itself at every turn. Apart from the labours of scientists, historians, and archaeologists in what Johnson calls the “academic bowers,” we read daily of search-parties (many of whom are organised by European or American universities) proceeding to the ends of the earth,――this one bringing to light the treasures of Egyptian royal tombs, another revealing a hitherto unknown civilisation of the ancient world, a third finding dinosaur’s eggs, a fourth studying the characteristics and the history of a savage tribe. A leading newspaper recently informed us proudly that no fewer than two hundred exploring parties are setting out this year on various quests――more than ever before in the history of the world. The interest in these efforts is not confined to the few. Accounts of marvellous discoveries and inventions bring romance to the millions in our industrial civilisation. The popular press knows the appeal of big headlines over an article giving a highly coloured account of the latest results of research; and the bookstalls are crowded with magazines devoted to the Wonders of Science and giving the City clerk and typist, hungry for knowledge, an Illustrated Outline of this, that, or the other field of information.

Whither is this enthusiasm for knowledge leading us? What benefits will accrue to the individual or to society when, with untold labour, we have learned a fraction more about the history of man or penetrated a few steps further into the illimitable arcana of nature? These are questions which those engaged in investigation and those whose delight is to hear some new thing alike hardly pause to ask. It is assumed that all knowledge of fact is valuable, and therefore is to be pursued for its own sake. To many this will seem a self-evident proposition. Such people may be reminded that curiosity about the material world has not always been a characteristic of the western nations. For many centuries man was not in the least interested to know whether the earth went round the sun or the sun round the earth: he was content to take on trust the evidence of his senses. It is even a matter for debate whether the sum of human happiness has been increased by the knowledge that has come from Galileo’s labours. It is a perennial human weakness to pursue one aim to the unreasonable exclusion of others, to mistake the means for the end. The great humanists were so possessed by ideals which they found in the antique world that they sought to achieve them even at the expense of personal and social morality; their successors mistook the husk for the kernel and allowed pedantry to displace scholarship. We of this age are being diverted from other aims and allowing our intellectual life to be narrowed by an unreasoning zeal for research. We are influenced too much by the delusion that the making of “a contribution to knowledge” is the beginning of wisdom.

Will the universities rid themselves of the incubus of research, or at least relegate it to a separate department so that the main efforts of the professors and lecturers may be concentrated on other matters? On the answer to this question the future of the universities depends. It must be decided whether the primary business of the university teacher is to teach or to carry on the investigations in which he is privately interested; whether the business of the student is to become educated or to become a specialist; whether, in short, there is any necessary relationship between the two branches of university activity,――research and education. At present there is little indication of how these problems will be settled: as yet they are scarcely mentioned in academic circles in this country. Criticism of university methods and ideals is heard among people who have left professorial tutelage, and book-reviewers are occasionally entertaining at the expense of typical products of the academic mind; but for the most part the standards of the dons are taken for granted. The late Sir Walter Raleigh, it is true, did not conceal his antipathy to the “serious business of scholarship,” but his brother professors must have considered him a sad dog.

While English universities give no sign of interest in fundamental problems affecting their well-being, a ray of hope comes from America. In the recent annual report of Columbia University, the president, Dr Nicholas Murray Butler, speaking with all the authority of his distinguished position, faces critical issues with a frankness that is possible, perhaps, only in America. He is concerned about the dearth of great minds in spite of the spread of educational facilities, and he asks whether the universities have not destroyed the ideal of a liberal education, and with it the liberally educated man himself, through allowing the choice of less valuable subjects and laying too much stress on early specialisation. In spite of the efforts of two generations to make science an instrument of education, and in spite of the inherent excellence of the scientific method, he has grave doubts about the results. He finds the cause of his dissatisfaction in the methods and aims of the teachers of the sciences. “If these subjects are to be presented only for the purpose of training specialists, and if the methods to be followed are those that, while appropriate for investigation, have no relation whatever to interpretation, then it may well be that in another generation general interest in the natural and experimental sciences and general knowledge of their meaning and significance will have greatly declined.... The example of the ancient classics ought to suffice. They were killed largely by those who taught them.” On the subject of research Dr Butler is equally outspoken. “The word research,” he says, “has come to be something like the blessed word Mesopotamia. It is used to reduce everyone to silence, acquiescence, and approbation. The fact of the matter is that something between seventy-five per cent. and ninety per cent. of what is called research in the various universities and institutes of the land is not properly research at all, but simply the re-arrangement or re-classification of existing data or well-known phenomena.” He reminds his readers that “an original investigation may, and usually does, add a good deal to the knowledge of the individual investigator without adding anything to the knowledge of the human race.”

Dr Butler attacks the principles on which present-day science-teaching in the universities is carried out: such an indictment applies with equal, if not with greater force, to the teaching of the humanities, into which scientific methods have intruded themselves with disastrous results. It is natural that the historian of to-day should adopt the character of the scientific investigator; but surely something is wrong when university and other presses issue volume after volume of historical study of a kind which, judged by any of the wider canons, can have no conceivable value. Too often the specialists forget that the many intriguing little puzzles that they try to solve are intriguing little puzzles and nothing more. The researcher in the natural sciences can always plead that his discoveries, however insignificant at the moment, may take on great importance in connection with work in other fields. The researcher in history can hardly put forward the same plea. The scientific or pseudo-scientific spirit applied to history has tended to destroy the sense of values.