Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

obligation to provide work and then would diminish self-help, produce over-population, lower the rate of wages, heighten the rate of taxation, descend into competition with private business, and, after all, perhaps multiply the unemployed.

Oxford, Nov. 26.

THE EDUCATION BILL

Previous to 1899 public education was supervised by a Vice-President of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education; the Committee also had charge of the Science and Art Department. The Act of 1899 abolished the office of Vice-President, and united the Science and Art Department in a single control office to be called the Board of Education. This Board was to have a President and a Parliamentary Secretary. The Act also provided for the transfer to the Board of the powers of the Charity Commissioners in relation to educational endowments; and for the association with the Board of a Consultative Committee, of which not less than two-thirds were to be persons qualified to represent the views of universities and other

bodies interested in education.

FROM The Times, FRIDAY, MAY 26, 1899.

The Government has one good reason for an Education Bill. It is certainly desirable that the functions at present exercised by the Education Department, the Science and Art Department, and to some extent the Charity Commission should be combined in one Board of Education. But the Bill further contemplates the establishment of a consultative committee. Now the reason for this committee is not the same as the reason for the Board. The Board is required to combine existing functions of existing departments; but the committee is designed for new functions, and primarily for the registration of teachers and for their training as a condition of registration. It is supposed that a teacher ought to have studied beforehand not only his subject, but also the art of teaching; and, further, that, in the words of the Commission on Secondary Education (1895), he

[ocr errors]

should be possessed of the science of the processes which the learner's mind follows'. Professor Jebb has explained this psychological knowledge', as he calls it, in a speech addressed to the National Union of Teachers at Cambridge, and reported by you on April 5. But his explanation involves four assumptions-first, that there is a psychological knowledge of the processes of the human mind; secondly, that this is so advanced a science that its laws are capable of being made rules for an art of educating a learner's mind; thirdly, that this science and this art are easily to be acquired by all teachers; fourthly, that primary teachers are already teaching in the light of this psychological knowledge.

Now, after having been engaged in this sort of study for the past thirty years, I venture to assert that psychology is still in search of the knowledge required, but has not yet found it. It is a science full of unsolved problems, and of questions waiting for answers. What is mind? What is its relation to body? What are the resemblances and differences between the minds of men and of animals? What

do we apprehend by our senses? What is the relation of sensation to perception? What is the origin of knowledge, how far a posteriori, how far a priori, how far affected by evolution? What is the analysis of imagination and memory? What is the association of ideas, and how far does it affect our beliefs? What are the functions of logical reasoning? What is the relation of thought and language? What is feeling, passion, emotion? What is the analysis of desire? What is will? Is it free? What is conscience? What are the relative shares of feeling and reason in morals? What is a man's self, or personality, or personal identity? Is man body, or soul, or both? What is his future state? It is not that I have a word to say against a serious study of these questions. But it is, as Locke said, a study which

requires arts and pains, and the questions have not received their final answers. There are all sorts of different answers, and there is no answer given by one philosopher which will not be immediately disputed by another. There are many psychological opinions, with hardly any psychological knowledge. There is no body of laws about mind in such a condition as to be converted into a system of rules of education, and no master-key to the processes which the learner's mind follows'. Psychology, therefore, cannot be made easy for the scholastic profession, and the primary teachers in elementary schools are certainly not possessed of psychological knowledge. What, then, is the so-called training of teachers? So far as it is psychological it is cram of a few text-books, in which opinions are learnt dogmatically, without time for that doubt and decision between various views which is necessary in dealing with such hard questions. In short, a consultative committee for such a training of teachers would be a propaganda of sophistry, if sophistry means the appearance of knowledge without its reality.

This pretence of a psychological knowledge which does not exist, and, if it did, could not be acquired in a short time by all registered teachers, is not the only evil of the proposed consultative committee. The committee itself, in order to represent primary, technical, and higher education, both of men and of women, must be a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Professor Jebb says that the interests of primary education will be duly represented'. This must be so, for the committee is to represent all kinds of education. For the same reason, women must also be eligible to represent female education. But the consequence will be that the higher education of public schools for boys will be liable to the influence of women and primary teachers in elementary

A a

schools. I think it will also be admitted that the educational faddist would find his place on such a committee. It is to be hoped that Parliament will be wise in time and not establish so pernicious an institution, in which the representatives of Oxford and Cambridge and the great public schools would be outnumbered by a combination of primary teachers, women, State officials, and educationists. Different committees for different departments of education might have been more tolerable and more effective to prevent the uniformity, which is dreaded, but would not be prevented, by those who favour a single consultation committee under a single Board of Education.

It has been stated over and over again that the Central Board of Education will entail the establishment of new local authorities; and Professor Jebb adds that' primary education will find adequate representation on these bodies'. Quite so, and the effect would be enormously to intensify the evil of giving primary teachers and their representatives power over the public schools. What use will they make of that power, and what will be the kind of thing which will take place when education is managed by a central board with a consultative committee and new local authorities? The answer is ready for us in a motion carried by the National Union of Teachers on the proposal of Dr. Macnamara-That the whole of the finances necessary for the support of public education should be provided from public sources, and should be expended subject to public control.' This motion, which was carried almost unanimously, represents the real aim of the educationist-a State monopoly of education. In the struggle for it the same comedy or tragedy which has been enacted in primary will be reenacted in the higher education of this country. There will be the same competition between State

aided schools and voluntary schools, in which the long purse of the State must win in the end. There will be a repetition of the religious difficulties which have overshadowed the consideration of a good education. There will be a still more tainted atmosphere of educational politics in which each party tries to outdo the other in democratizing education. Worse than all, there will be a still further extravagance of expenditure.

The expenditure of the State on primary education is now enormously in excess of Mr. Forster's original forecast, and yet nobody seems to realize that we are about to take another financial leap in the dark over the whole of education. The Commission on Secondary Education recommended that the system of local authorities under a central board should have powers to aid, acquire, establish, endow, and inspect secondary schools, powers to found scholarships and give subsidies, powers of rating and of borrowing money. Parliament has lately established a new system of pensions for primary teachers. Professor Jebb, in a letter published by you on April 6, adds that Government ought to raise the age for attendance at primary schools and provide facilities for the passage of children from primary to secondary schools. At the meeting of the National Union of Teachers Miss Bryant said that women should be paid as well as men were paid for the same work, and Mrs. Polkinghorne moved and carried that grants for infants should be at the same rate per head as for older scholars. All these schemes mean money, and taken together an incalculable expenditure of public money on every nook and corner of education.

What will be the cost, and how will it be met? The Commission on Secondary Education, when it came to financial arrangements', frankly confessed that it could not count the cost, and as frankly

« VorigeDoorgaan »