72 



NATURE 



[September i6, 1915 



when we take education in its widest sense it concerns 

 everybody, and almost everybody is bound to have 

 views about it. Each generation as a whole is 

 responsible for handing on to the next the control 

 over matter and mind, and the power of co-operation, 

 which it has itself inherited from its forbears and 

 added to, and which it must put its successors in a 

 position to add to further. It is on this that the 

 progress of the human race depends; without it each 

 generation would have to start afresh from the begin- 

 ning, and we should still be in the position of primi- 

 tive man. 



But the larger and more important part of education 

 in this wide sense is done first in the nursery, and 

 then, as the child gets beyond babyhood, by means of 

 its own observation and imitation of its elders ; while 

 much is done by experience gained in mixing with 

 others of its own age, and much by the exercise of 

 responsibility. The education thus obtained, combined 

 with precepts and with tales handed down orally, 

 . sufficed for our ancestors until the increasing com- 

 plexity of life made it important for the rising genera- 

 tion to acquire skill and knowledge which mere imita- 

 tion and experience could not give. When this hap- 

 pened division of labour took place in this as in other 

 departments of life, and led to the introduction of the 

 professional educator — that is, the educational expert 

 who has the art of imparting the needed knowledge 

 and skill, or at least of shortening the. process of 

 acquiring them. We may observe that his services are 

 now required by all, and not, as was once the case, 

 only by those preparing for the learned professions. 

 This work of the professional educator is what our 

 Section of the British Association is mainly concerned 

 with, and the methods to be employed are best judged 

 by the professional educators themselves. But the 

 co-ordination of their work with the whole process of 

 education, its place in the production of good citizens, 

 must, as I have said, be judged, not by the profes- 

 sional educators alone, but by the whole body of the 

 nation. The general public must not only be regarded 

 as capable of exercising judgment on educational 

 matters, but should be encouraged to feel that it is 

 its duty to do so. 



If we judge by the amount of talk which goes on 

 about education, it would perhaps seem that the public 

 is fully aware of its responsibilities. And yet I think 

 there are indications that in some respects it fails to 

 grasp them, and is disposed to depend too much on 

 the professional educator; allowing itself to be 

 confused by our habit of using the same word "educa- 

 tion " in both the wider sense, of which we have been 

 speaking, and also in the narrower sense of book- 

 learning. The sense of proportion seems to me to be 

 sometimes seriously lost from this cause. 



I was impressed with an example of this exhibited a 

 little while ago in a correspondence in the Times 

 about the employment of the older boys in the elemen- 

 tary schools of country districts to do some of the 

 work on the farms in place of farm-hands who have 

 enlisted. One group of the correspondents, looking 

 at the question from the point of view of agriculture, 

 thought the advantage derived by the boy from his 

 last year of school training was of small value to the 

 country compared with the work he could do on the 

 farm. The other group, looking at the question from 

 the point of view of the school, thought it monstrous 

 that what they called the "education" of the boy 

 should be in any way curtailed. I am not at the 

 moment concerned with the controversy itself, nor am 

 I taking the side of either group of disputants. There 

 is, of course, much to be said on both sides, and the 

 decision should probably vary with the locality, and 

 the work, and the farmer, and the boy. But what 

 struck me was that all the disputants seemed to 

 NO. 2394, VOL. 96] 



regard education as beginning and ending at school. 

 None appeared to think of it in its wider sense. None 

 referred to the great effect it might have on the boy's 

 future life and character to feel that in a grave 

 national crisis he had "done his bit" — an effect which 

 would perhaps be all the greater if he felt he was 

 sacrificing something to make up for which special 

 effort might be needed later. I have seen the view of 

 the gain to boys and girls from helping in the emer- 

 gency put forward since, but not in the particular 

 newspaper controversy in question, nor, I think, in 

 connection with the loss of a year of schooling. 



And there was another aspect of the question which 

 did not seem to excite attention. I mean the possibly 

 bad educational effect, in the wide sense, of prevent- 

 ing the boy from doing the work. To keep him at 

 school, if he was conscious that his services were 

 needed elsewhere, could not but tend to concentrate 

 his attention on himself and the importance of his 

 own schooling, and could not but tend to produce 

 to some extent the deplorable temper of mind which 

 leads some young people, a little older than the 

 schoolboys over whom the controversy raged, to 

 regard self-development as the aim and object of 

 existence. This is certainly not the attitude of a good 

 citizen — and to produce good, citizens should, as we 

 probably all agree, be the principal aim of education. 



The particular difficulty to which I have referred 

 seems inseparable from compulsory education, and 

 probably cannot be altogether got over. The thought- 

 ful girl of twelve, not absorbed in herself, must some- 

 times wonder whether her school-work is really as 

 valuable as the help she could give her mother in 

 some special difficulty or strain, except on the assump- 

 tion that her own development ranks above all other 

 objects. 



Of course, the higher the relative value we put on 

 scholastic education the less important will the loss 

 of other educational influences appear to us. And 

 perhaps at this point I had better frankly confess — 

 what is, I fear, another defect in my qualifications as 

 president of the Educational Section — namely, that I 

 am not an enthusiast about education in the same 

 sense that most of my hearers probably are. 1 read 

 the other day in a review of the life of an American 

 educationist that — 



"He was penetrated with two characteristics which 

 are the saving clause of the American and every other 

 democracy, a reverence for learning and a flaming 

 belief in education as the condition of success in any 

 scheme of popular self-government." 



In the reverence for learning I am with him, but 

 I could not describe my belief in education — education, 

 that is, in the sense here meant, namely, school and 

 college education — as "flaming." I cannot, for in- 

 stance, believe, as some seem to do, that by keeping 

 children a year longer at school we should regenerate 

 mankind, or at least secure as a matter of course 

 great improvement. Why, you may ask, if I am 

 not an enthusiastic believer in education, have I spent 

 so much of my life — my time, my energy, my means 

 — in helping to provide opportunities of university 

 education for women ? The answer is that I do believe 

 very much in giving to as many people as possible 

 educational opportunities — meaning by that in the first 

 place the means of preparing for their work in life. 

 Those who are going to teach, for instance, mu<t 

 obviously learn first, and, as I have just reminded 

 you, women's opportunity of doing this was lament- 

 ablv deficient half a century ago. 



But secondly — and this is not at all less Important— 

 I mean by educational opportunity the means of 

 satisfying intellectual curiosity, every spark of which 

 should be fostered. For it is to intellectual curiosity 

 that progress in knowledge, including physical science. 



