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that the progress of the human race depends ; without it each generation would 

 have to start fresh from the beginning, and we should still be in the position 

 of primitive 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 increas- 

 ing complexity of life made it important for the rising generation to acquire 

 skill and knowledge which mere imitation and experience could not give. When 

 this happened 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 oux 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 professional 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 shouid 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 ' Education ' 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 I'imcs about the employment of the older boys in the 

 elementary 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 poiait 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 con- 

 troversy 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 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 emergency put forward since, but 

 not in the particular newspaper controversy in question, nor, I think, in connec- 

 tion 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 

 preventing the boy from doing the work. To keep him at school, if he wa.s 

 conscious that his services were needed elsewhere, could not but tend to con- 

 centrate 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 



