Cambridge Essays on Education Part 3

Teachers have overcome their timidity in dealing with the difficulties presented by the Old Testament. Very few now hesitate to take the book of Genesis, and, at all events if they are dealing with a high form, they let the boys see that the conflict between science and religion is only apparent, and that the victory of science does not mean the defeat of religion. If they have been lucky enough to use Driver's book on Genesis they will have felt on sure ground and any learner who has half understood it will have a shield against some of the weapons that a.s.sailed and defeated his father's generation. No teacher now would be afraid of making clear the problems presented by the book of Daniel or the book of Job, but when the New Testament is approached much more diffidence is felt, and indeed ought to be felt. Diffidence ought not however to involve silence.

A wise teacher has said that it is not the miracles of Christ but his standard that keeps men away from his Church, and therefore outside the influence for which the Church stands. True though this may be of men as life goes on, of the young it is not the whole truth. In those critical years of a man's religion--between eighteen and twenty-five--it is the sudden or the slow-growing doubt about the miracles of the New Testament, as much as the lofty standard that the "Follow me" of Christ requires, that makes the profession and even the holding of a religious faith so hard. More and more are the schools trying to prepare those in their charge for the perils that threaten the physical health and the character of the young; but it is tragic that they should be so unwilling to face frankly the perils that will sap the man's faith, and so expose his soul to the a.s.saults of the world and the devil. It is very hard to put oneself in another's place; perhaps harder for the schoolmaster than for any other man, but when we are teaching such a subject as religion--a subject whose roots must perish if they cannot draw moisture from the springs of sincerity, we should try to imagine what must be the feelings of the thoughtful boy when he first discovers that the lessons which he has so often learnt and the Creeds that he has so often repeated were taken by his teachers in a sense which they carefully concealed from him. More harm is done by the economy of truth than by the suggestion of doubt.

It may be extraordinarily difficult to treat these problems of the New Testament with becoming reverence; but is it not true to say that the day when it becomes easy to any man to do so will be the day when he ought to stop dealing with them? The real irreverence, the only irreverence, is the glib confidence of the ignorant or the cynical concealment of one who knows but dare not tell. What idea of the New Testament does the average boy who leaves, say in the fifth form, carry away with him from his public school? He may know that certain facts are told in one Gospel and not in another; that there are certain inconsistencies in the accounts given by the different Synoptic Gospels of the same miracle, or what is apparently the same miracle. He may be able to explain the parables more fully than their author ever meant them to be explained; he may have at his fingers'

ends St Paul's journeys and even have been thrilled by St Paul's shipwreck, but he will probably have missed the meaning of the good news for himself and the power to treasure it for his life's strength.

This failure to appreciate and to accept the challenge of religion--a failure shown later on in life in a certain diffidence about foreign missions, and in the toleration of social conditions that deny Christ as flatly as ever Peter did--is not the fault of the schools alone.

The schools only reflect the world outside and the homes from which they are recruited. In neither is there as much light as there should be. The difficulty of the vicious circle dominates this as so many other problems. School reacts on the world, the world on the home[1]

and the home on school, the blame cannot be apportioned, need not be apportioned; how the circle can be broken it is much more important to determine. From time to time it has been broken, so decisively too that for a while the riddle seems solved, at all events the old way is abandoned for ever. Arnold's work at Rugby must have involved such a breach. His work has never had to be done all over again and there have been many to keep it in repair, but it needs to be extended now in the light of new problems, scientific, social and international.

For this, as for all other extensions, courage is needed. The courage to face the difficulties that modern research and modern thought involve and the courage to point out that our Lord, though in his short career he changed the bias of men's lives, never claimed to leave man a detailed guide for conduct or for happiness. It was to a simple society that he taught the laws of purity and love, he did not extend the range of their application beyond the needs of the Pharisee, the Sadducee, the Scribe, the peasant and the dweller in the little towns through which he shed the light of his presence. These laws sanctify the whole of life because they dominate the heart, from which all life must spring, but they do not answer all questions about all the subordinate provinces of life. The arts in their narrow sense, philosophy, even pleasure, they pa.s.s by. Man will not neglect the one or distort the other if he has really breathed the spirit of Christ, but at times the urgency of his Master's business will seem to shut them out of his life.

All this needs learning by the old, and explaining to the young, for otherwise life will be one-sided, and when the day comes, as come it must to those who think, when a choice must be made, and there seems no alternative to following literally in Christ's footsteps and turning the back on much of the beauty and the thrill of the world, bewilderment will seize the chooser and at the best he will dedicate himself to a joyless and unattractive puritanism, or surrender himself to a rudderless voyage across the ocean of life. Religion at school must touch with its refining power the impulses, aesthetic and intellectual, that become powerful in late boyhood and early manhood.

If, as so often is the case, it ignores their existence, or endeavours to starve them, they may well a.s.sert themselves with fatal power, to coa.r.s.en and degrade the whole of life.

The scripture lesson will indeed miss its opportunity if it does not, in the later stages of a boy's career, set him thinking on these subjects, and help him to a wise appreciation of the holiness of beauty as well as of the beauty of holiness. To accomplish this task the language of the Bible itself gives n.o.ble help. All the qualities of great literature shine forth from it and it should put to shame and flight the tawdry and the melodramatic. It is an ill service not to make all familiar with the actual words of Holy Writ. Commentaries and Bible histories may be at times convenient tools, but they are only tools, and accurate knowledge of what they teach is no compensation for a want of respectful familiarity with the text itself.

Hardly less important for good and evil are the chapel services. They are much attacked. It has been argued that public worship is distasteful in later life because of the compulsory chapels of boyhood. If this were really so, evidence should be forthcoming that those who come from schools where there is no compulsory attendance at chapel, because there is no chapel to attend, are more eager to avail themselves of the opportunities offered by college chapels than are their more chapel ridden contemporaries. No one, however, can be quite satisfied that chapel services are as helpful as they might be. The difficulty is how to improve them. The suggestion that they should all be voluntary is at first sight attractive but there are two insuperable difficulties. The one is the power of fashion, for it might well become fashionable in a certain house not to attend chapel.

Those who know anything of the inside of schools know how such a fashion would deter many of the best boys from going, and martyrdom ought not to be part of the training of school life. The other difficulty is more subtle, but none the less real it originates in the boys' quite healthy fear of claiming merit. Those in authority, if wise, would not count attendance at chapel for righteousness, but some of the most sensitive boys might think that they would do so, and might stay away in consequence, and thus deprive themselves of something they really valued. Two or three, not many, might come from a wrong motive, and perhaps these would stay to pray, but they would be no compensation for the loss of the others.

From time to time it is possible to have voluntary services, and attendance at Holy Communion should always be voluntary, not only in name but in fact. On the whole it is better that a boy who neglects this duty should go on neglecting it, than that those who come should feel that their presence is noted with approval or the reverse.

But it is different with the daily service. Irksome it may sometimes be, not only to boys; but half its virtue lies in the fact that all are there in body and may sometimes be there in spirit too. The familiarity of the oft-repeated prayers and the oft-sung hymns leads to inattention perhaps, but seldom, it may be hoped, to callousness; religious emotion may only occasionally be stirred but the thread of natural piety, binding man to man and man to G.o.d, is strengthened, as fresh strands are added. At the least it may be claimed for the chapel services that they rescue from our hours of business some minutes each day in which our thoughts are free to make their way to the throne of G.o.d. Christ's promise to bring rest to those who come to him has been fulfilled in many a school chapel. Those of us who have had to pa.s.s through the valley of sorrow and temptation and loneliness--and who has not?--know that this is no mean claim. Boys, even men, often grumble at what they really value. To do so is our national defect, misleading to the onlooker. The truth is, we are so fearful of being accused of casting our pearls before swine, that we often pretend, even to ourselves, that what we know to be the most precious pearl in our possession is valueless.

Most masters and boys would agree that, in the few weeks preceding confirmation, the religious life is deepest and most sincere. There is a moving of the waters then, and many make the effort, and step in, and are made whole for the time at all events. As to what exactly goes on in the mind of anyone at such a time there can be no certainty.

There is the obvious danger of a reaction, and, guard against it as one may, it exists and sometimes leads to disaster; but there is another danger to which the schoolmaster is then liable, it is the danger of making confirmation an occasion for much talk on s.e.xual difficulties. The existence of these should be faced, but at any time rather than at confirmation, except so far as they occur quite naturally in dealing with the commandments.

It is a real disaster for a child to a.s.sociate this time, when he should be trying to shoulder enthusiastically his responsibilities as a citizen of G.o.d's Kingdom upon earth, with any particular sin. He must indeed overcome evil, but he must overcome it with good. It is on good that his eyes should be fixed. It is towards the Lord of all that is good that his heart should be uplifted. Anyone who has had to do with this time knows what it means in a boy's religious life, how reluctant he is to speak of it, how perilous it is to disturb his reluctance by inquisitive question or excessive exhortation. He knows, too, how much his own nature has gained by contact at such times with the reverent stirrings of less world-stained souls, how wondrous has been the spiritual refreshment that has come to him from the unconscious witness of the younger heart.

For most boys it is a loss not to be confirmed at school, which for the time is the centre of their energies, their hopes, their disappointments and their temptations; but the loss to the masters who share their preparation would be irreparable. They may sometimes blunder from want of knowledge and experience, but their will to help is strong, and perhaps not least persuasive when chastened by diffidence.

But all these scripture lessons, chapel services and confirmation preparation will be powerless to produce a Christian education, if they be not held together by every lesson and by the whole life of the school. Industry and obedience, truthfulness and fidelity to duty, unselfishness and thoroughness, must form the soil without which no religious plant can grow; and these are taught and learnt in the struggle with Latin prose, or mathematics, or French grammar, or scientific formula; as well as in the cricket field, on the football ground, in the give and take, the pains and the pleasures of daily life.

It is hard for us in England to imagine a purely secular education, the very buildings of many of our schools would protest against it; perhaps it is equally difficult for us to realise how far we fall short of what we might accomplish did the spirit of Christianity really inform our lives.

To-day is our opportunity. The claims of education are being listened to as they never have been in England. Money in millions is being promised, the value of this subject or that is being canva.s.sed, the most venerable traditions are being shaken. It is a time of hope, but a time of danger too. All sorts of plans are being formed for breaking down the part.i.tion walls that divide man from man, and cla.s.s from cla.s.s, and nation from nation; there is only one plan that will not leave the ground enc.u.mbered by ruins.

That is the plan of which good men in all ages have caught glimpses, and which the Son of Man set out for us to follow. The peril now lies, not in the fact of nothing being done, but in some starved idea of a narrow patriotism.

The war has surely taught two lessons;--one that the efforts we made before 1914 to guard our country from spiritual and moral foes were shamefully trivial compared with those we have made since to keep our visible foe at bay; the other that our responsibilities for the future, if we are to justify our claims to be the champions of justice and weakness, can never be borne unless we learn ourselves, and teach each generation as it grows up, to face the fierce light that shines from heaven. All sorts of devices, ecclesiastical and political have been adopted to break up that light and make it tolerable for our weak eyes. Men have been so afraid of children being blinded by it that they have allowed them to sit, some in darkness, and others in the twilight of compromise.

It has been said that for the average man in the ancient world there existed two main guides and sanctions for his conduct of life, namely the welfare of his city, and the laws and traditions of his ancestors.

Has the average man much wiser guides or stronger sanctions now? Is a much n.o.bler appeal made to the children of England than was made to the children of Athens? Just before Joshua led his people over the Jordan, he instructed them how the ark of the covenant was to go before them and a s.p.a.ce to be left between them and it, so that they might know the way by which they must go, _for they had not pa.s.sed this way before_. Once again a river of decision has to be crossed, a road has to be trodden along which men have not pa.s.sed before. Whether we speak of reconstruction or a new start or use any other metaphor to show our conviction that war has changed all things, the idea is the same. We must see to it that the ark of the covenant is borne before our nation and our schools, along the way that is new and still full of stones of stumbling.

Either the old landmarks have disappeared or a new land has to be explored. Somehow, all things have to be made new, for even the spiritual things have been destroyed or are found wanting. It is to the schools, to the homes, to the mothers of England that the richest opportunity comes. If they can solve the difficulty of making the Christian education and the Christian life react upon one another the part.i.tion walls between religion and conduct will be broken down for every age. Intentionally or unintentionally, these walls have been built up, perhaps by the teachers and parents, certainly by the conventions of life. The result is that though there is more true religion in the schools than is acknowledged by those outside and than those within care to boast of, and though the standard of conduct is not ign.o.ble, there is too little fusion; both components are brittle, they cannot stand the strain of sudden temptation, they lack enduring power. No one will forget how in those first months of war, consolation was offered even from pulpits for all the horrors and the sadness and the waste of conflict in the thought that as a nation we should be purged of selfishness, of luxury, of sensuality, of all the vices that peace engenders. That is surely a shameful confession, that our religion had been in vain. We had to wait for, and partake in, a three years' orgy of cruelty and violence to learn what our Lord had taught us in three years of gentleness. If we are going to teach the same lessons about war when peace is made, to keep alive the fires of hate, and to keep smouldering the embers of suspicion, we shall be confessing that a Christian education cannot teach us anything about Christianity.

The student in arms would not have had us despair. Peace when it comes will make demands on our fort.i.tude. There will be many lying in the no-man's land between vice and virtue who will need to be rescued at great risk. There will be many forlorn hopes to be led against disease, the foster child of vice, that has gained strength under the cover of war. The disappointing days of peace will give an opportunity for the development of Christian qualities fully as great as the bracing days of battle. Teachers will need to gird up their loins for the task of giving a wise welcome to the thousands that an awakened State will send to sit at their feet, and unless they can give spiritual food as well as worldly wisdom and paying knowledge, the souls of the new-comers will be starved beyond the remedy of any free meals. How to spiritualise education is the real problem, for it is only by a spiritualised education that we can escape from the avalanche of materialism that is hanging over the European world just now. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one condition that they have consciously or unconsciously dedicated themselves to the task. For a teacher to write much about it is impossible, he must know how greatly he has failed. And he has not the recompense that comes to many who fail, in the shape of certain knowledge why success has been withheld.

That his failure is shared by those who strive to make religion move the world of men is no consolation. Indeed, that thought might make him hopeless did it not suggest that the aims and methods of both may be wrong. It is possible to have hoped too much from the school chapels being full, it is possible to fear too much from the churches being empty. Piety is no doubt fostered by attendance at a religious service, but there is some distance between piety and true religion.

It would probably not be untrue to say that Christian education has seemed more concerned with the ceremonial duties of religion than with its spiritual enthusiasm, more eager about faith in some particular explanation of the past than about faith in a re-creation of the future, more attentive to the machinery of the organisation of the Church than to the words and commands of its Founder. As the Church has become more powerful in the world, it has lost its power over men's hearts. To some it has seemed an inst.i.tution for the relief of poverty, to others the support of the "haves" against the "have-nots,"

but to too few has it been the home of spiritual adventures, the maintainer of spiritual values. Men have escaped from the relentless simplicity of the Master's commands by attention to the complicated machinery which disregard of them has made necessary. This may not have been consciously marked by the young, but the atmosphere of religion that they have had to breathe has been the tired atmosphere of the ecclesiastical workshop, and not the bracing air of free service. Some restoration of the hopefulness of the early Christians is needed; hopefulness is not now the note of what is taught, though with it is sometimes confused the boisterous cheerfulness that is wrongly supposed to attract the young. The appeal of the Church must be based on looking forward, not backward, on hope, rather than on repentance.

The Church will have less to do with the world than it had in the past, because it will have shaken off the fetters of the world: it will not be always explaining to the young how they can enjoy the world and yet deny the world: it will not need to explain itself so often, to insist so pathetically on the superiority of its own channels of influence, but it will attract to itself, or rather to the work that it is trying to do--for it will have forgotten self--all the adventurous spirits who are prepared to risk pain and failure as fellow-workers in fulfilling the purposes of G.o.d in the world. What is worth knowing about Christianity is surely first and foremost that it is a leaven that might leaven the whole world; and that until that leaven works in each individual heart, in each society, where two or three are gathered together, Christ's presence cannot be claimed. As this knowledge is gained, it will be possible for the learner to know in his heart, and not merely by heart, what is meant by the great mysterious terms Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection; as this knowledge is tested and proved true by experience of life, the meaning and power of prayer will become clearer. A clue will have been put into the hand of each as he travels along the way which he has not pa.s.sed heretofore. It will not lead all by the same path but it will lead all towards that "great and high mountain," whence "that great city, the Holy Jerusalem" may be seen. If the teacher is wise, when the mountain top is nigh and before that vision breaks upon his fellow-traveller's sight, he will stand aside with thankful heart, and close his task with the prayer that the Glory of G.o.d may shine more brightly and more continuously on the newcomer, than it has shone on him.

[Footnote 1: Nothing is said here about the co-operation of the home with the school. In religion as in all other matters it is a.s.sumed.

The influence of the home cannot be exaggerated but schoolmasters must resist the temptation to shift the burden of responsibility for any failure on to other shoulders.]

V

CITIZENSHIP

By A. MANSBRIDGE

Founder of the Workers' Educational a.s.sociation

I

DIRECT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP

There is no inst.i.tution in national life which can free itself from the responsibility of training for citizenship those who come under its influence, whether they be men or women. The problem is common to all inst.i.tutions, although it may present itself in diverse forms appropriate to varying ages and experiences. It is primarily the problem of all schools and places of education.

The aim of education, according to Comenius, is "to train generally all who are born to all that is human." From that definition it follows that the purpose of any school must be to bear its part in developing to the utmost the powers of body, mind and spirit for the common good. It must be to secure the application of the finest attributes of the race to the work of developing citizenship, which is the art of living together on the highest plane of human life.

Citizenship is, in reality, the focusing point of all human virtues though it is often illuminated by the consciousness of a city not made with hands. It represents in a practical form the spirit of courage, unselfishness and sympathy consecrated to service in time of war and peace. Generally speaking, in England and her Dominions, citizenship is developed in harmony with an ideal of democracy.

"The progress of democracy is irresistible," says De Tocqueville, "because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency to be found in history."

But its right working is dependent entirely upon uplift not only of mind but of spirit. The democratic community, above all other communities, must have within itself schools which at one and the same time impart information concerning the theory and methods of its government and inspire consecration to social service rather than to individual welfare, schools which reveal the transcendence of the interests of the State as compared with the interests of any individual or group of individuals within it. The democratic State has been compared to "one huge Christian personality, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man." Out of this comparison arises the idea of citizenship reaching out beyond the boundaries of a single State--one honest man among many--and thus responsibility is placed upon the schools to develop knowledge of, and sympathy with, the activities and aspirations of human life in many nations. The comity of nations depends directly upon the intellectual and spiritual honesty which obtains in each of them, and true strength of nationality arises more from the exercise of these qualities than from extent of area or of productive power.

Every subject taught in a school should serve the needs of the larger citizenship; if it fails to do so it is either wrongly taught or superfluous.

Social welfare depends upon the right use of knowledge by the individual, however restricted or developed that knowledge may be, whether it be acquired in elementary school or university.

There has been much discussion concerning the relative importance of the development of community spirit in the schools and the introduction of the direct teaching of citizenship. The methods are not mutually exclusive; their operations are distinct. The school which does not develop community spirit, which does not fit into its place in the work of training the complete man, is obviously imperfect. The same cannot be said of the school which does not provide direct instruction in citizenship; for teaching may be given in so many indirect ways. Some consideration of what has happened in this connection both in England and America will perhaps be most helpful, although the intangible nature of the results would render dangerous any attempt to make definite p.r.o.nouncements on their success or failure.

Largely as the result of the realisation of the immediate relationship between national education and national productivity there are abundant signs that the English educational system is about to be developed. The ordinary argument has been well put:

A new national spirit has been aroused in our people by the war; if we are to recover and improve our position at the end of the war, that national spirit must be maintained; for unless every man and woman comes to know and feel that industry, agriculture, commerce, shipping, and credit, are national concerns, and that education is a potent means for the promotion of these objects among others, we shall fail in the great effort of national recuperation. In plainer words, our great firms will not make money, wages will fall, and wage-earners will be out of work[1].

The possibility of the extension of the educational system to meet the needs of technical training need not cause disquiet among those whose desire is for fulness of citizenship, if they are prepared to insist that teachers shall be trained on broad and comprehensive lines and that every vocational course shall include instruction in direct citizenship. The argument is ready to hand and simple. If all men and women must strive to work wisely and well, so also should they learn how to partic.i.p.ate in the government, local and national, which their work supports. Moreover the right study of a trade or profession induces a perception of the inter-relationship of all human activity.

On the other hand it is important that vocational work, at least so far as it is carried out by manual training, should be introduced into schemes of liberal education. In this connection it is worth recalling that in a recent report, the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education expressed with complete conviction the opinion that manual training was indispensable in places of secondary education:

We consider that our secondary education has been too exclusively concerned with the cultivation of the mind by means of books and the instruction of the teacher. To this essential aim there must be added as a condition of balance and completeness that of fostering those qualities of mind and that skill of hand which are evoked by systematic work.