Cambridge Essays on Education Part 5

[Footnote 3: Haines, _The Teaching of Government._]

[Footnote 4: Bourne, _The Teaching of History and Civics in the Elementary and the Secondary School_.]

[Footnote 5: Charles Morley, 1897.]

II

INDIRECT TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP

After all is said and done the ideal training for citizenship in the schools depends more upon the wisdom engendered in the pupil than upon the direct study of civics. If the spirits of men and women are set in a right direction they will reach out for knowledge as for hid treasure. "Wisdom is more moving than any motion; she pa.s.seth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness[1]."

It happens also in natural sequence that the spirit developed in a school will lead to the construction of inst.i.tutions in connection with school life calculated to secure its adequate expression.

Elementary schools, however, are much handicapped in this way. If it comes about that work other than educational or recreative is forbidden to children during the years of attendance at school, and also that the period of school life is lengthened, there will be opportunity for the development of games on a self-governing basis.

Elementary school children have a large measure of initiative; all they need is a real chance to exercise it. They would willingly make their schools real centres of child life. Many children at present have little else than narrow tenements and the streets, out of which influences arise which war continually against the social influences of the school.

The opportunity afforded by well-ordered leisure would be accentuated by the more complete operation of movements such as boys' brigades, boy scouts, girl guides, and Church lads' brigades, which are in their several ways doing much to develop citizenship. Such bodies are now in effect educational authorities, and cla.s.ses are organised by them in connection with the Board of Education.

There have been many attempts to introduce self-governing experiments into elementary schools and, whilst they have often been defeated by reason of the immaturity of the children, yet some of them have met with great success. The election of monitors on the lines of a general election is an instance of success in this direction. The ideas which have arisen from the advocacy of the Montessori system have induced methods of greater freedom in connection with many aspects of elementary school life. The Caldecott Community, dealing with working-cla.s.s children in the neighbourhood of St. Pancras, has tried many interesting experiments. That, however, of the introduction of children's courts of justice had to be abandoned, but not until many valuable lessons in child psychology had been learnt.

Side by side with the elementary school, there are rising in England experiments similar to those undertaken by such organisations as the School City and the George Junior Republics of America. The most notable among them is the Little Commonwealth, Dorchester, which has achieved astonishing results through the process of taking delinquent children and allowing them self-government. But, hopeful as the prospects are, their ultimate effect will be best estimated when their pupils, restored in youth to the honourable service of the community, are taking their full share in life as adult citizens, and naturally every care is taken in the organisation of these inst.i.tutions to ensure that the transition from their sheltered citizenship to the outside world shall not be of so abrupt a nature as to tend to render unreal and remote the life in which the children have taken part.

Nearly all of the more recent experiments in regard to the school and its kindred inst.i.tutions are co-operative in principle and in method, but it is probably Utopian to conceive an educational method which shall achieve the highest success without having included within it the element of compet.i.tion. If compet.i.tion is a method obtaining outside the school it is bound to reproduce itself within it. The only possible thing for the school to do is to restrict the influence of compet.i.tion to the channels where it can be beneficial.

The method by which elementary school children pa.s.s to the secondary school is by means of compet.i.tive scholarships. In common with the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education it is necessary to accept the fact that at present "the scholarship system is too firmly rooted in the manner, habits and character of this country to be dislodged, even if it were thrice condemned by theory[2]." But, in the interests of citizenship, scholarships should be awarded as the result of non-compet.i.tive tests, if only to secure that every child shall receive the education for which he or she is fitted.

The stress and strain imposed upon many who climb the ladder of education, often occasioned by the inadequacy of the scholarship for the purposes to which it is to be applied, tend to develop characteristics which are so strongly individual as to be distinctly anti-social.

It is unfortunate that in many subjects of the curriculum it is not merely bad form to help one's neighbour but distinctly a school sin, and this makes it necessary for a balance to be struck by the introduction of subjects at which all can work for the good of the cla.s.s or the school. Manual work and local surveys are subjects of this nature and should be encouraged side by side with games of which there are three essential aspects:--the individual achievement, the winning of the match or race, and "playing the game." In reference to citizenship the last of these is the only one which ultimately matters.

It is generally admitted that the great public schools are those which are most characteristic of English boy life at its best. Glorying as they do in a splendid tradition, they have always had in addition the opportunity of adapting themselves to new needs. Their reform is always under discussion and perchance they are waiting even now for some Arnold or Thring to lead them in a new England, for new it will inevitably be. Even so, the sense of responsibility they have developed has been translated into the terms of English government over half the world.

The objective of the public school boy anxious to take a part in government at home has always been parliament, or such local inst.i.tutions as demand his service in accordance with the tradition of his family. The tendency to despise the homely duties of a city councillor or poor law guardian is, however, pa.s.sing. There are few schools which do not welcome visitors to speak to the boys who have first-hand acquaintance with the life of the poor or who are indeed of that life themselves. In this way boys get to realise, as far as it is possible through sympathy, what it means to be out of work, what it means to be hungry for unattainable learning, what children have to suffer, and, in addition to the practical interest which many boys immediately develop, it cannot be doubted that many ideals for the conduct of social life in the future are conceived, even if dimly, for the first time. Thanks to the unremitting efforts of large-minded head masters, public school boys more and more realise that they are beneficiaries of the spirit of a past day, not only in the sense of the creation of a n.o.ble tradition but actually in regard to the material provision of buildings and the financial support of teaching.

There is likely to be an extension of university education in the near future. The ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge with their great college system will be strengthened, as will be the universities which were established at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The demand for the better training of teachers will result inevitably in the creation of more universities.

The inadequate sum which this country has spent upon university education up to the present will be greatly increased.

As a direct result of the opportunity which university life gives to undergraduates for the development of self-governing inst.i.tutions, there can be little doubt that the university must be regarded above all other schools and most inst.i.tutions as powerful in the development of good citizenship. The public school tradition will be carried directly into the older universities and in increasing measure into the new universities as the best spirit of the public schools gradually permeates the whole system of our education even down to the elementary schools themselves. When these opportunities so lavishly provided for the development of student life in its self-governing aspects are realised and when above it all there stand great teachers in the lineage of those described by Cardinal Newman in his eulogy of Athens--"the very presence of Plato" to the student, "a stay for his mind to rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of union with men like himself, ever afterwards"--little else can be desired. In every university there must be such teachers, or universities will tend to fall to the level of the life about them. "You can infuse,"

said Lord Rosebery at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire, "character, and morals and energy and patriotism by the tone and atmosphere of your university and your professors."

From one point of view, all the old universities of Europe--Bologna, Paris, Prague, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.--must be regarded as definite and conscious protests against the dividing and isolating--the anti-civic--forces of the periods of their inst.i.tution. They represent historically the development of communities for common interest and protection in the great and holy cause of the pursuit of learning, and above all things their story is the story of the growth of European unity and citizenship.

The feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediaeval world were both alike threatened by the power that had so strangely sprung up in the midst of them. Feudalism rested on local isolation, on the severance of kingdom from kingdom and barony from barony, on the distinction of blood and race, on the supremacy of material or brute force, on an allegiance determined by accidents of place and social position. The University, on the other hand, was a protest against this isolation of man from man. The smallest school was European and not local[3].

The spirit which is characteristic of a university in its best aspects, linked with the spirit which is inherent in the ranks of working people, has on more occasions than one set on foot movements for the education of the people. One of the most notable instances of this unity found expression at the Oxford Co-operative Congress of 1882, when Arnold Toynbee urged co-operators to undertake the education of the citizen. By this he meant: "the education of each member of the community as regards the relation in which he stands to other individual citizens and to the community as a whole." "We have abandoned," he said further, "and rightly abandoned the attempt to realise citizenship by separating ourselves from society. We will never abandon the belief that it has yet to be won amid the stress and confusion of the ordinary world in which we move." From that day to this co-operators have always had before them an ideal of education in citizenship and have organised definite teaching year by year.

Another instance of even greater power lies in the co-operation between the pioneers of the University Extension Movement at Cambridge and the working men, particularly of Rochdale and Nottingham, to be followed later by that unprecedented revival of learning amongst working people which took place in Northumberland and Durham in the days before the great coal strike. At a later date, in 1903, the same kind of united action gave rise to the movement of the Workers'

Educational a.s.sociation, which has always conceived its purpose to be the development of citizenship in and through education pursued in common by university man and working man alike. The system of University Tutorial Cla.s.ses originated by this a.s.sociation has been based upon an ideal of citizenship, and not primarily upon a determination to acquire knowledge, although it was clearly seen that vague aspirations towards good citizenship without the harnessing of all available knowledge to its cause would be futile. After exception has been made for the body of young men and women who are determined to acquire technical education for the laudable purpose of advancing both their position in life and their utility to society, it is clear that no educational appeal to working men and women will have the least effect if it is not directed towards the purpose of enriching their life, and through them the life of the community. The proof of this lies in the fact that, after they have striven together for years in Tutorial Cla.s.ses, they ask for no recognition--in fact they have declined it when it has been offered--and have devoted their powers to voluntary civic work and the work of the a.s.sociations or unions to which they belong, as well as in very many instances, to the spreading of education throughout the districts in which they live. It is largely due to the leaven of educational enthusiasm which has thus been generated that there is a unanimous movement on the part of working people towards a complete educational system including within it compulsory attendance at continuation schools during the day.

The problems that hedge about continuation schools are many, but it is clear that they will be regarded by educationists and by at least some employers as above all else training for citizenship based upon the vocation to which the boy or girl may be devoting himself or herself in working hours. The narrowness of the daily occupation, divorced as it is from the whole spirit and intent of apprenticeship, will be broadened directly the consideration of daily work is placed in the continuation school both on a higher plane and in a complete setting.

The compulsory evening school will fail unless it induces a demand for recreation of a pure kind which may be a.s.sociated with the voluntary evening school and continued along the lines of study into the years of adult life. And even if it is impossible for every student of capacity in the continuation school to pa.s.s into the university or technological college, it may be hoped that there need not fail to be opportunities for reaching the heights of ascertained knowledge in the University Tutorial Cla.s.s. In the future, as now, only in greater degree, such cla.s.ses will be regarded as an essential part of university work, and will provide opportunity for the study of those subjects which are most nearly related to citizenship.

It is one of the fundamental principles of the Workers' Educational a.s.sociation that every person, when not under the power of some hostile over-mastering influence, is ready to respond to an educational appeal. Not indeed that all are ready or able to become scholars, but that all are anxious to look with understanding eyes at the things which are pure and beautiful. Tired men and women are made better citizens if they are taken, as they often are, to picture galleries and museums, to places of historic interest and of scenic beauty, and are helped to understand them by the power of a sympathetic guide. It is by the extension of work of this sort, which can be carried out almost to a limitless extent that the true purpose of social reform will be best served. It is by such means that the press may be elevated, the level of the cinema raised, the efforts of the demagogue neutralised.

The Workers' Educational a.s.sociation is based upon the work of the elementary school and of the a.s.sociations of working people, notably the co-operative societies and trade unions. The democratic methods obtaining in those a.s.sociations have themselves proved a valuable contribution to citizenship, and have determined the democratic nature of all adult education. The right and freedom of the student to study what he wishes finds its counterpart in the reasonable demand that man shall live out his life as he wills, provided it moves in a true direction and is in harmony with the needs and aspirations of his fellows.

It has seemed in this review of the relation of schools and places of education to the development of citizenship that the fact of the operation of social influences has been implicit at every point. In any case there is, and can be, no doubt that the school, whilst instant in its effect upon the mind of the time, is always being either hindered or helped by the conditions obtaining in the society in which it is set. The relations existing between society and school are revealed in a process of action and reaction. Wilhelm von Humboldt said that "whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of a nation must first be introduced into its schools." Among other things, it is necessary to develop in the schools an appreciation of all work that is necessary for human welfare. This is the crux of all effort towards citizenship through education. In the long run there can be no full citizenship unless there is fulness of intention to discover capacity and to develop it not for the individual but for the common good. This is primarily the task of an educational system. If a man is set to work for which he is not fitted, whether it be the work of a student or a miner, he is thwarted in his innate desire to attain to the full expression of his being in and through a.s.sociation with his fellow-men, whereas, when a man is doing the right work, that for which he has capacity, he rejoices in his labour and strives continually to perfect it by development of all his powers. The exercise of good citizenship follows naturally as the inevitable result of a rightly developed life. It may not be the citizenship which is exercised by taking active and direct part in methods of government. The son of Sirach, meditating on the place of the craftsman, said:

All these trust to their hands: and every one is wise in his work.

Without these cannot a city be inhabited ... they will maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in the work of their craft[4].

The times are different and the needs of people have changed, but the true test of a citizen may be more in the healthiness of dominating purpose than in the possession and satisfaction of a variety of desires. To "maintain the state of the world" is no mean ambition.

If it is difficult for a man to become the good citizen when employed on work for which he is unfitted, it is even more difficult for the man to do so who is set to shoddy work or to work which damages the community.

The task laid upon the school is heavy, but it does not stand alone.

The family and the Church are its natural allies in the modern State.

All alike will make mistakes, but, if they clearly set before them the intention to do their utmost to free the capacity of all for the accomplishment of the good of all, wisdom will increase and many tragedies in life will be averted.

Thus lofty ideals have presented themselves, but they will secure universal admission apart from the immediate practical considerations which bulk so largely and often so falsely in the minds of men, and which are frequently suggested by limitations of finance and lack of faith in the all-sufficient power of wisdom.

It is in the consecration of a people to its highest ideals that the true city and the true State become realised on earth and the measure of its consecration, in spite of all devices of teaching or training however wise, determines the true level of citizenship at any time in any place.

[Footnote 1: _Wisdom of Solomon_, vii. 24.]

[Footnote 2: _Interim Report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education on Scholarships for Higher Education_, 1916.]

[Footnote 3: J.R. Green, _A Short History of the English People_.]

[Footnote 4: _Ecclesiasticus_, x.x.xviii. 31-34.]

SOME BOOKS ON CITIZENSHIP

[1]American Political Science a.s.soc. The Teaching of Government. 1916.

Macmillan. 5s. 0d. net.

[1]BAKER, J.H. Educational Aims and Civic Needs. 1913. Longmans. 3s.

6d. net.