PURPOSE IN EDUCATION. 



expected, for the education supplied can only be in accordance 

 with public demand, and it is for the public to make up its mind 

 on these points. The public shows no signs of any definite ideal, 

 but it is fairly insistent in its demands. At the present moment 

 there is a steadily-increasing demand for more vocational educa- 

 • tion. Such a statement may be considered as tantamount to an 

 admission that present-day education in South Africa is not 

 vocational to any great extent. As a matter of fact it makes no 

 such admission. The demand for more vocational education is 

 due to a misapprehension. The outcry merely means that a 

 number of people want their children to have a vocational train- 

 ing of a different type to that already offered. The goal of all 

 secondary schools in this country is the matriculation certificate, 

 and this is the sine qua iioii for entry to the professions. It is 

 true that it does not deal largely with the knowledge required for 

 the professions, but in the majority of cases it is sought merely 

 because it is the key that unlocks the door to a privileged en- 

 closure. For that reason it is just as vocational as a commercial 

 education. 



The desire for vocational training indicates a mental attitude 

 that places production in the forefront of man's social activities. 

 Even if educational authorities insist on so-called cultural subjects 

 being included in the curriculum it is because the adult with the 

 better trained mind will, other things being equal, be the better 

 producer, and not because he requires education for his other 

 social activities. The following remarks of Air. H. H. Bassett 

 are to the point : — 



Public school boys, instead of drifting into the Civil Service and out 

 again into the stock exchange, banking, and insurance, or into art and 

 literature, as is happening every year now, would pass from the public 

 schools or universities to the workshops of the great engineering, ship- 

 building, and manufacturing firms. Six to seven years is ample time 

 to acquire a practical knowledge of a trade ; many university young men. 

 succeeding to the mills and factories of their fathers have acquired a 

 thorough practical grasp of the business within three or four years. The 

 university man is trained to learn and learns quickly. 



And again, 



Starting four or five years behind the average man, the university 

 man is nevertheless quick to overtake his handicap where he is forced to 

 apply himself to commerce. It is for this reason that the man who has 

 been trained in a university and also on the practical side of a trade is 

 about the best asset that commercial Britain could possess. 



Statements similar to the above have been made over and over 

 again. Surely, however, on any view of life worthy of man. 

 production is only a means to an end, and not an end in itself. 

 We should produce in order that we may live, and not vice versa, 

 but this over-emphasis on vocational training would lead one to 

 suppose that the latter is the ideal state. 



It is not a distorted ideal of course that causes the demand 

 for vocational education, but sheer necessity. Nevertheless it 

 is the existence of distorted views in high places that causes the 



