October 21, 1915] 



NATURE 



213 



things, and as much of this knowledge as possible 

 they should have acquired at first hand from direct 

 sense impressions. Last, but by no means least, the 

 works manager and his immediate assistants need 

 to interest themselves in the social and economic 

 welfare — including the further education, recreation, 

 and housing — of all their employees, and this interest 

 will help to form the nucleus of those single wide 

 interests which are to include all the activities of 

 members of class B. 



Foremen and leading hands have hitherto been 



fenerally recruited from among skilled tradesmen, 

 hey are therefore presumed to be qualified them- 

 selves to perform every task they have to supervise, 

 and even to perform it better than the men who are 

 actually doing the work. Upon this presumption is 

 based the claim that the shop foreman must be paid 

 a higher wage than any workman under him. This 

 view, accepted as it generally is by employers and 

 employed alike, is responsible for no small restriction 

 of output. But it is based on a misconception, since 

 the foreman is paid for supervising men, and the 

 workman for manipulating material — two quite in- 

 commensurate processes. There are, however, signs 

 of change. Technically trained foremen whose wages 

 may (to start with) be much less than those of the 

 men they have to look after, are already being em- 

 ploved, especially in shops where much repetition 

 work is done. Yet it remains true that the qualities 

 now most sought for in foremen and leading hands 

 are those of the craftsman whose interest is centred 

 in his manual work. 



The operative skilled tradesman whom, for this 

 reason, we have placed in the same class as his fore- 

 man is distinguished from the machine man in class 

 D in that the operative in class C has a variety of 

 skilled work to do, while the members of class D 

 who may do skilled work, repeat the same process 

 over and over again until its performance is governed 

 by habit, so that it almost ceases to receive attention. 

 On the one hand, ideas connected with doing, like 

 ideas associated with a strong instinct, are peculiarly 

 liable to receive attention, so that the work of the 

 skilled tradesman in class C is well able to form a 

 strong centre for his single wide interest. On the 

 other hand, ideas connected with the repetition work 

 of class D tend to become circumscribed and cut off 

 from other interests. There is, however, reason to 

 believe that repetition work is not altogether un- 

 interesting to a certain type of mind. It is, indeed, 

 actually preferred by some people, including many 

 women. Such work may, therefore, form a substantial, 

 if not a dominant, part of an interest that is not rich 

 in exciting ideas. The remaining part of the single 

 wide interest is of special importance in the case of 

 class D. When an eight-hours day is universal it 

 may be that the artisan or labourer who leaves work 

 with much of his day still before him and feeling 

 pleasantly exercised rather than unduly tired by his 

 somewhat monotonous but by no means exacting 

 labour, will devote himself increasingly to national 

 and municipal affairs. With that end in view we must 

 see to it that the average member of class D receives 

 — not only in maturity through the Workers' Edu- 

 cational Association, but also in youth through voca- 

 tional part-time classes — the kind of training which 

 shall best develop a single interest, wide enough to 

 include the highest ideals of patriotism ns well as 

 loyalty to a particular industrial class. 



IV. 



We have next to consider how to develop in a 

 sufficient number of suitably selected persons the 

 qualities which we have indicated as specially needed 

 in each class of industrial occupation. 

 NO. 2399, VOL. 96] 



Childhood up to, say, twelve years of age has few 

 organised interests. Accordingly, the need for a 

 coherent curriculum, aiming at developing a single 

 wide interest, does not obtrude itself until adolescence 

 begins. The future member of classes A and B will 

 normally spend much of his adolescence in a secondary 

 school. Of these schools it is convenient to distin- 

 guish two types, named "Higher" and "Lower" 

 respectively in the accompanying diagram. 



The chief function of the secondary school, the 

 school for adolescents, is to foster the growth of true 

 religion — "not theology nor yet ethics, but per- 

 sonal and experimenetal " — and around this centre to 

 build up, out of the miscellaneous information ob- 

 tained in childhood and the coherent curriculum which 

 the secondary school should itself provide, the begin- 

 nings of that single wide interest which should con- 

 tinue to grow throughout maturity. The skill in 

 thinking which the secondary school must also culti- 

 vate is best practised upon a number of closely asso- 

 ciated ideas — a coherent interest — because, unless the 

 idea before consciousness at any moment calls up 

 many others, from which the will can select that 

 which is next to receive attention, this faculty cannot 

 be practised; and without practice skill in thinking 

 cannot be developed. 



The broad foundation metaphor, of which Dr. 

 Kerschensteiner '^ has made such fine fun, is probably 

 responsible for the fact that most secondary schools 

 aim in theory, and some lower secondary schools (un- 

 fortunately) in practice also, at comprehensiveness 

 rather than at coherence of interest : they have failed 

 to realise that coherence at seventeen is the surest 

 way to comprehensiveness at twenty-seven. Concen- 

 tration has, however, been practised by the classical 

 sides of English public schools. But in many of the 

 newer secondary schools six or seven distinct subjects 

 are taught out of all relation to one another by as 

 many separate specialists, and the form master him- 

 self is almost unknown ! 



The future member of class A should remain at 

 his higher secondary school and enter the university 

 at, or soon after, the age of eighteen. It is true that 

 the future engineer often spends some time in works 

 between school and college; but there is a growing 

 consensus of opinion that this period should not be 

 too long. Perhaps from Christmas until the follow- 

 ing October would be ideal if both school-leaving 

 and university-entrance scholarships could be awarded, 

 as those of some Oxford and Cambridge colleges 

 already are, just before Christmas. 



It is to the university that we shall principally look 

 in the future for an essential part of the specific 

 training of members of class A, for the men with 

 creative minds, inventors of new appliances and pro- 

 cesses, men who shall not merely be able to follow 

 existing practice but also to cope with new problems 

 and even to lead in new lines of advance. And our 

 university courses, if they succeed in producing men 

 of this type, will do so, not because of the knowledge 

 they impart, wide though it be, but because of the 

 stress they lay on the acquisition of skill in thinking 

 along with knowledge. It is skill in thinking — skill 

 in applying old knowledge to new situations — rather 

 than knowledge itself without such skill, that now, 

 as always, marks the really practical man. If, in 

 fact, his university course can, in Huxley's phrase, 

 give him "real, precise, thorough, and practical know- 

 ledge of fundamentals," the candidate for member- 

 ship of class A may well wait for subsequent works 

 experience, post-graduate evening classes, and private 

 reading, to develop further his technical information 

 to a marketable standard. Whatever letters he may 



11 O. Stanley Hall, " Adolccence,'' vol. ii., p. 326. 

 1- "Scboolsand the Naiioii," p. 275. 



