NOVEMBER 23, 1916| 
NATURE 
459 
far as it is successful in its aim will bring the com- 
munal and co-operative spirit into the school work. 
In discussing the general atmosphere in which 
teaching is given, and the effect which by its constant, 
though often unnoticed, influence it produces upon 
the character, something must be said about the sug- 
gestion implied and offered by our present educational 
system, and the changes which are needed to remedy 
its evils. In the first place it is clear that the system 
rests on the belief that for most people all that is really 
required is a beggarly minimum. This is most of all 
apparent in that curious regulation which permits 
clever children who might profit by continued educa- 
tion to leave school earlier than others, while those 
who are more slow-witted and less likely to profit by 
prolonged education are kept at school for the full 
time. Clearly this regulation rests on and suggests 
the belief that there is a definable minimum to which 
all citizens should attain, but beyond which there is 
no vital necessity that they should pass. The point 
selected is unfortunate in the last degree, and that in 
two ways. First, it releases children from the dis- 
cipline of school just at the moment when discipline 
begins to be most essential. Down to the beginning 
_of adolescence what we need is something that may 
more fitly be called supervision, and for myself I have 
great sympathy with those who hold that under a 
general supervision there should be the utmost possible 
freedom for the child. But with adolescence there 
comes a temporary chaos in the psychological make-up, 
and during that period there is an urgent need, not 
only for supervision, but expressly for discipline as 
that word is commonly understood, namely, the im- 
position of restraint, forcible if need be, in order that 
certain impulses may not break loose and destroy the 
harmony of the whole nature. But the school-leaving 
age is unfortunate in another respect also. We teach 
the child to read, and then send him away from school 
at a time when it is too early to have begun the train- 
ing of his taste and judgment. We have made him 
a prey to all manner of chance influences, but have 
not supplied him with the power of selection between 
these, or the means of resisting those which his better 
judgment condemns. 
Something no’ doubt can be done by means of con- 
tinuation classes, provided that the time for them is 
taken out of the hours of employment, and not added 
on to these; but nothing will really meet the case 
except an all-round raising of the school-age. And 
even then we still need to get away from the concep- 
tion of a necessary minimum. What we have to aim 
at is the maximum attainable by each scholar, not 
the minimum that will make him a tolerable member 
of a civilised community. If we aim at a minimum, 
that will be what most of the scholars also aim at, 
But how are we to make this change? The obvious 
method is a large system of exhibitions, maintenance 
grants, and the like. But here, again, we come to 
another false suggestion. Any system of scholarships 
and ‘exhibitions is false in principle, because it in- 
evitably suggests to the child that it is to pursue its 
studies for the sake of its own advancement; the 
whole system coheres with the ideal of the educational 
ladder, by means of which men and women may climb 
from one section of society to another. Now it is un- 
doubtedly true that the State is bound to secure for 
its own interest that brain-capacity wherever found 
shall be fully developed, and that if a child of a dock 
labourer has capacities fitting him to be a great states- 
man or a great artist it is for the public interest that 
these capacities should be fully developed. But we 
have also to remember that when by education you 
lift a child from one section of society to another, you 
expose him to one of the most insidious of all tempta- 
NO. 2456, VOL. 98] 
tions, the temptation to despise his own people. And 
if once his native sympathies are thus broken up, it is- 
unlikely that he will grow any more. An educational 
system which depends upon the ladder is in a fair way 
to train a nation of self-seekers. Our demand, and 
here I know that I am speaking for the whole com- 
munity of labour, must be for the educational highway. 
Our aim must be, not chiefly to lift gifted individuals. 
to positions of eminence, but to carry the whole mass 
of the people forward, even though it be but a com- 
paratively little way. We want the whole system to 
be all the while suggesting that the child’s faculties 
are being trained, not for its own advancement, but 
for the benefit which the community is to receive. 
And the right way to suggest this, while also securing 
for the community the maximum benefit, is, as it 
seems to me, nothing less than a system of free educa- 
tion from the elementary school to the university, 
which, instead of offering exhibitions to enable those 
who are capable to proceed, will on the contrary ex- 
clude at certain wisely chosen stages those who are 
unable to benefit further by school education. At each 
of such stages there should be for those who are ex- 
cluded from further advance some form of apprentice- 
ship, and if the stage comes early this should be con- 
ducted so far as possible according to the principles 
of school life, with all its discipline as well as super- 
vision. 
The tutorial-class movement, which owes its origin 
to the Workers’ Educational Association, and for a 
full account of which I must refer to Mr. Mansbridge’s 
book, ‘* University Tutorial Classes,’ has made two 
important discoveries. The first is that there is a 
very great amount of literally first-class ability in the 
country going to waste for lack of opportunity. That 
many of us had formerly been convinced must be the 
case; it is now proved. The other discovery is this. 
A man who has had no secondary education at all can 
take up work of the university type when he is of full 
age if his mind has remained alert. I believe many 
continuation classes fail through ignorance or neglect 
of this fact. We always tend to restart the teaching 
process at the exact point which the student had 
reached when he left school. That is a mistake. The 
man or woman whose education ends at fourteen or 
thirteen, and who becomes desirous of more at twenty- 
one or later, has lost much in the way of knowledge; 
but if the mind has remained alert the development of 
faculty has gone on and the appropriate method of 
study is that of the university, not that of the secondary 
school. This is of the utmost importance. We shall 
not for many years to come secure such a raising of 
the school-age or such a remodelling of our system as 
shall guarantee the full development of every child’ 
and adolescent. Thousands will continue to be dropped 
by our educational system at fifteen, if not sooner. 
Of course, a healthy-minded boy who leaves school 
at fifteen means to have done with his books. He 
promptly throws them away unless he is Scotch, and 
then he sells them. But six or more years later he 
may wake up to his need for more knowledge and 
intellectual training. Our tendency has been to give 
him school teaching; that is wrong; he is of the age 
to which university teaching is adapted, and only in 
that will he find what he is wanting. 
Provided there has been established such a social life 
as I have described there will be less harm than other- 
wise resulting from some degree of specialisation in 
secondary schools. The students of different subjects 
will be mixing with one another, and will learn from 
one another a great deal of those subjects which they 
are not themselves definitely studying. Certainly one 
of the great advantages of the college system at the 
universities is that it gathers together in very intimate 
