694 



NATURE 



[November io, 1923 



othtr nalionul cultures ; but it should, in its concrete 

 in(li\ iduulity, f)c the l>asis of his education. 



I^istly, I liave ur^fd that amonj,' the strains or 

 (urrcnts in a national tradition the highest value 

 h(li)nt,'s to those that are richest in the creative element. 

 Tlicse arc themselves traditions of activity, practical, 

 intellectual, aesthetic, moral, with a high degree of 

 individuality and continuity, and they mark out the 

 main lines in the development of the human spirit. 

 Do we not rightly measure the cjuality of a civilisation 

 by its activities in such directions as these ? If so, 

 must not such activities be typically represented in 

 every education which offers the means to anything 

 that can properly be called fullness of life ? 



If the force of the argument be admitted, the 

 principles of the curriculum take a clear and simple 

 shape. A school is a place where a child, with its 

 endowment of sensibilities and powers, comes to be 

 moulded by the traditions that have played the chief 

 part in the evolution of the human spirit and have the 

 greatest significance in the life of to-day. Here is the 

 touchstone by which the claims of a subject for a place 

 in the time-table can be infallibly tested. Does it 

 represent one of the great movements of the human 

 spirit, one of the major forms into which the creative 

 impulses of man have been shaped and disciplined ? If 

 it does, then its admission cannot be contested. If it 

 does not, it must be .set aside ; it may usefully be 

 included in some special course of technical instruction, 

 but is not qualified to be an element in the education 

 of the people. 



The same criterion may be applied to the methods 

 by which the subjects of the curriculum are taught. We 

 are constantly told that the " educational value " of a 

 subject lies in the mental discipline it affords, and, 

 from this point of view, a distinction is made between 

 its educational value and its import as an activity in 

 the greater world ; thus geometry is taught as a training 

 in logic, the use of tools as " hand and eye training," 

 and so forth. From the point of view I adopt that 

 distinction is unjustifiable and may be dangerously 

 misleading ; it has, I fear, often been a source of aridity 

 and unfruitfulness in school teaching. The mistake 

 consists in supposing that the disciplinary value can be 

 separated from the concrete historical character of the 

 subject as a stream of cultural tradition. The dis- 

 cipline of the school workshop consists in using the 

 tools of the craftsman for purposes cognate with his 

 and inspired by his achievements. Similarly the dis- 

 cipline of school geometry consists in steeping one's 

 mind in a certain noble tradition of intellectual activity 

 and in gradually acquiring the interests, mental habits, 

 and outlook that belong to it. To say this is not to 

 minimise the importance of discipline or to expel from 

 school studies the austerity which the grave old word 

 suggests. What is insisted on is that the several forms 

 of mental discipline are characters of concrete types of 

 creative activity, practical, aesthetic, intellectual, and 

 that they influence the mind of the learner iavourably 

 only in so far as he pursues those activities as adventures 

 of the human spirit, laborious yet joyous and satisfj-ing, 

 and pursues them after the manner of the great masters! 

 In short, true discipline comes simply by trying to do 

 fine things in the fine way. 



The foregoing principles are open to misconceptions 



NO. 2819, VOL. 112] 



against which it i^ <m. In the 



first pla< e, it may » i.i the educa- 



tion of the people u|Kin u >' u mtiy be magni- 



ficent but is certainly impr It is easy, no 



doubt, to form extravagant expectations, and by se< 1 

 ing to do too much to achieve nothing solid at all. liui 

 the argument is concerned far less with the standard 

 to which school studies may be pursued than with 

 their proper qualities and the spirit that should inspire 

 them. In particular, it is directed against the attitude 

 expressed recently by a public speaker who asked what 

 good is poetry to a lad who will spend his days in 

 following the plough and spreading manure upwn the 

 fields. Against this attitude it urges that a man's 

 education, whatever his economic destiny, should bring 

 him into fruitful contact with the finer elements 

 of the human tradition, those that have been and 

 remain essential to the value and true dignity of 

 civilisation. 



It may be objected, granted the soundness of the 

 ideal, that the shortness of school life makes it imprac- 

 ticable. It is true that a study, to be of real value, 

 must be carried far enough and followed long enough to 

 make a definite and lasting impression. It is also true 

 that some studies can scarcely produce their proper 

 effects until a certain level of maturity has been 

 reached. But what is to be deduced from these 

 admissions .-* Surely the conclusion, which the public 

 mind is slowly accepting, that so long as children leave 

 school for good at fourteen some of the best fruits of 

 education will be unattainable and the security of the 

 others precarious. It is not merely a question of length 

 of time, but also, and even mainly, of psychological 

 development. The more carefully youth is studied 

 the more significant for after-life the experience during 

 the years of adolescence is seen to be. Its importance 

 is not a modem discovery ; for even the primitive races 

 knew it, and the historic Churches have always taken 

 account of it in their teaching and discipline. The case 

 for universal education beyond the age of fourteen 

 depends ultimately upon the importance of shaping the 

 new capabilities of the adolescent in conformity with 

 the finer traditions of civilised life. Public opinion, 

 regretting the generous gesture of 1918, has not at the 

 moment accepted the larger view of the mission of 

 education ; but as the nation learns to care more for 

 the quality of its common manhood and womanhood 

 and understands more clearly the conditions upon 

 which that quality depends, the forward movement, 

 now unhappily arrested, will certainly be resumed. 

 For that better time we must prepare and build. 



There is another objection to which I should think 

 it unseemly to refer if it were not a stumbling-block to 

 so many persons of good will. A liberal public education 

 will, they fear, make people unwilling to do much of 

 the world's work which, though disagreeable, must 

 still be carried on. The common sense of Dr. Johnson 

 gave the proper reply a hundred and fifty years ago. 

 Being asked whether the establishment of a school on 

 his friend Bennet Langton's estate would not tend to 

 make the people less industrious, " No. sir," said 

 Johnson, " while learning to read and wTite is a dis- 

 tinction, the few who have that distinction may be the 

 less inclined to work ; but when everybody learns to 

 read and write it is no longer a distinction. A man 



