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THE AGKICULTUKAL >;EWS. 



OCTOBEK 19, 1918. 



•ot the kind. It is a social problem. I6 means the 

 provision of the chance of acquiring the knowledge best 

 suited to the requirements of each individual, and of all 

 collectively. Education in fact does not consist alone 

 in imparting a knowledge of subjects which it may be 

 desirable in the abstract that people should be taught, 

 but still more definitely the imparting of what they 

 ai-e capable of assimilating, and of what they are 

 Tviiling to learn. Looked at in this way, it is evident 

 that compulsion, in the strict sense of the word, is 

 inapplicable to education. 



It would appear therefore that if the education of 

 the future is to be as successful, as we all hope it will 

 be, we must abandon the old attempt at compulsion. 

 That is to say the action of a learned minority, who 

 think themselves possessed of the right or the power 

 to impose their type of intellectual attainment on the 

 •community in general, must be abandoned. 



Those whom we style the uneducated masses are 

 jeally not imlitferent to education, but they distrust to 

 a large extent the particular sort of education that has 

 been offered them in the past, as being of no particidar 

 value to them. Moreover, they resent the notion that 

 the community is divided into two classes — an edu- 

 cated and an uneducated — and that the former are 

 the masters of a school in which the latter are the 

 pupils, bound to leam what they are taught, and to 

 believe what they are ordered. Their notion of educa- 

 -tion, and it seems a sound one, is that it must take 

 the tonn of teaching them to make the best of the life 

 they have to live. The education that has been offered 

 them has little or nothing to do with that life. It is 

 at best an ornament. There seems to be a tine idea 

 - at the back of such notions, namely, that anyone's life 

 hard though it may be, may be transformed into a fine 

 and noble life, if only the individual were educated for 

 that object. This applies to agricultural communities 

 most especially. 



l'rofes.sor Jacks, in the course of his article, 

 instances the < iermans. The (iermans are the greatest 

 exponents of compulsory education the world has ever 

 seen. In their own eyes they are the educated class 

 of the universe, and their policy accordingly is to 

 impose their culttire on the rest of mankind, (iermany 

 is to be not merely the master, but the fcchoolmasterof 

 all nations. She alone knows what is gooil for them. She 

 alone is to wear the cap and gown, and to wield the rod. 

 'The others are to be torceii to accept her culture, and 

 to accept it with delight and gratitude. This is com- 

 pulsory education carried to its logical conclusion. The 



answer of the world to these would-be German masters 

 in the school of mankind is that we all want education, 

 but we are not taking the kind you want to cram down 

 our throats. 



By giving up the notions and abandoning the 

 policy which makes education an attempt by one class 

 to force its culture on another which does not want 

 that particular kind of culture, we might surely find 

 a better way. It seems possible, especially under the 

 conditions of our time, that a type of culture might be 

 found, of which it might be said that it is education not 

 by compulsion, but by consent. In such a system teachers 

 and taught might be at one in what they value, and in 

 what they desire. Both might become co-operating 

 partners in the pursuit of a common aim. 



In this connexion, Professor Jacks remarks that a 

 few simple principles need to be grasped and applied. 

 First, that every man is essentially what his labour 

 makes him, and that unless he is educated by his 

 labour he is not educated at all. A proposition which 

 would seem to hold true about every man, no matter 

 what his station, frotr. the highest to the lowest. The 

 educated man is the man who understands everything 

 about his own job. and enough about other people's jobs 

 to enable him to co-operate with them intelligently in 

 the social machine. To thi*! principle may be added 

 the further indisputable truths: that the happy man is 

 the man who enjoys his job, and that the only good 

 man is the man who does his job to the best of his 

 ability. 



From these principles we get a view of the ulti- 

 mate object of real education. The aim unist be not 

 merely to educate labour, but to ,see that all labour 

 becomes an education. In fact, education is not 

 merely a schoolmaster's problem, though it includes 

 that, but a social problem, only to be .solved in connex- 

 ion with a wide and broad conception of the needs, 

 aims, and value of every human life 



Now, if we come to apply these principles to West 

 Indian conditions, we see the mistakes of the past. 

 The interests of these islands are almost entirely agri- 

 cultural. In the system of education followed hitherto 

 the plan has rather been scholastic or couunercial, both 

 in primary and secondary or higher grade schools. The 

 results have been, only too generally, that the pupils 

 have not been really educattd, that is in the sen,se of 

 placing them in accord with the conditions of their 

 lives. It must be borne in mind that it is by no mean.s 

 advocated that too early vocational td -.cation should be 



