14 



DISCOVEnY 



Discovery and Education 



By A. L. Smith, M.A. 



Mailer 0/ fliil/(ol Collegt. Ox/or<( 



The war has presented us with three discoveries in 

 the sphere of education. We have found in the first 

 place that war could be a great education, and this 

 in the most literal sense ; that war training and war 

 itself could produce not merely improvement in 

 physique and strengthening of character, but also 

 could and often did — and this was the surprise — 

 develop the actual powers of the mind. This should 

 not have been a surprise ; for, after all, education is 

 only the development of the power of thinking, and as 

 more than one young soldier has found, " You have to 

 do a lot of thinking in the trenches." 



Long ago, in the infancy of democracy, it was said, 

 " Now we must educate our masters." Now that the 

 people are very manifestly our masters, the need is still 

 more manifest. "What! a burning desire for educa- 

 tion, true education, that is a love of knowledge for 

 its own sake or for the still higher sake of fitting the 

 student to serve his country ! Can there be such 

 a widespread passion now among the masses ? " This 

 question has been so put by a sceptical journalist. 

 He may receive some enlightenment if he consults the 

 evidence in the Report just issued by the Committee 

 on Adult Education (Cmd. 321), or if he inquires into 

 the experiment of the.XrmyCamps in the last two years. 

 This has been the second discovery. But (to quote 

 the journalistic critic again), assuming the desire, is 

 there the capability among the masses ? Here, again, 

 the answer comes from practical experience, experience 

 summarized in the Report. It is true that the thought- 

 ful and studious, who will naturally lead the opinions 

 of their fellows in mine, factory, or shop, can never 

 be more than a few thousands. But these thousands 

 are a leaven ; they are more in number than could 

 have been guessed ; that number is capable of rapid 

 and immediate expansion ; and outside these more 

 select students, there is a far greater circle of adult 

 men and women capable of far more than we imagined 

 in the way of intellectual interests. Till this war we 

 undervalued the military value of the rank and file 

 of our people because we did not realize their moral 

 capacity. Do not let us go on undervaluing their 

 intellectual capacity ; for the discovery of this has been 

 the third educational discovery of the war. 



The Government Committee on Adult Education, 

 which has been sitting for two years and has just 

 produced its Final Report (Cmd. 321), found that these 

 three facts were implicit in the experience we already 

 had before us. It found also that Adult Education 



was not a mere phrase or fad, or even a superfluous 

 luxury, but an absolute necessary of the nation's 

 future social and political life. In this we might also 

 loam from the enemy. The Germans pronounced 

 us a profoundly uneducated people who knew no 

 foreign languages, worked short hours, substituted 

 "good form" for efficiency, depreciated teachers, 

 had no respect for knowledge, were given over to sport 

 and games, holidays and " week-ends," not to mention 

 strikes and drink. The Germans used to declare that 

 it was their schoolmasters that won them the wars 

 of 1864, 1866, 1870 ; and they certainly showed in this 

 war what formidable strength can be produced by a 

 universal, scientific, systematic instruction resulting 

 in an extraordinary unanimity of national aim, and 

 an undeniable capacity of sacrifice for an ideal. 



True, the German machine lacked variety, buoyancy, 

 and individual initiative, qualities which only grow 

 in an atmosphere of freedom. What we have to learn 

 is how to combine freedom and individual initiative 

 with a more efficient system and organization. Only 

 thus can we face our present problems, which all come 

 back to better education as their basis and demand. 

 Thus world-peace depends in the last resort on the 

 proportion of intelligent citizens, British and American, 

 that appreciate the danger, and are willing to meet 

 some corresponding obligation. Or, if we take the 

 Imperial position, it has to be readjusted to two 

 opposing facts, the determination of the Dominions 

 to have a say in the future before going to war, and 

 their equal determination to submit to no diminution 

 of their own autonomy. How can these be reconciled 

 but by a public opinion educated out of its mistrust 

 of the term Empire, and educated up to the vast 

 potentialities implied in a World Commonwealth ? 



Then there are our home problems. Is the State 

 to buy up mines, railways, " the trade " ? Can 

 Democracy get its will really represented, or must it 

 have recourse to " direct action " ? How is " Labour 

 Unrest " to be turned into industrial harmony without 

 a better understanding on each side ? Is the tremen- 

 dous question of women's standing as industrial 

 competitors against men, with its incalculable results 

 on family life and sexual morality, to be settled by an 

 uneducated generation ? Or, to deal honestly yet 

 wisely with the two cankers of our society, drink and 

 prostitution, can we trust to anything but the education 

 of that social conscience which is now so callous ? 

 The politicians will not take up these problems till 

 there is a public demand, and that means a more 

 enlightened public — in other words, the extension of 

 a true education into adult life. 



The first step is to attack the obstacles which now 

 hamper adult education, such as excessive hours of 

 labour, fatigue, — whether due to monotony or to 



