144 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



I know of dozens of young men of ability in this country who have 

 nothing useful to do. Many of them are kicking their heels waiting for 

 a job. I am sure that they would all volunteer to take up any work that 

 might be organised to produce wealth for themselves. I suggest that the 

 engineers and economists of this association should urge upon the Govern- 

 ment the necessity of organising a wealth-producing community in which 

 the voluntary work of thousands of young men might be directed to 

 making things for themselves — houses, clothing, fuel, food, and most of 

 the things they want. I have elsewhere ^ elaborated a scheme of the kind 

 by which we could in a few years completely do away with unemployment 

 and at the same time teach the world how things should be done. 



One of the main things wrong with the inhabitants of the world, 

 more serious than the inefficiency of their methods of providing them- 

 selves with material things, is the poverty of their outlook. The vast 

 majority fail completely to look at life from the right point of view. 

 They do not see its finest opportunities ; they are almost blind to its 

 greatest duties. The intellectual and spiritual sides of their nature are 

 undeveloped. This is partly due to the exhaustion of effort in their 

 struggle for existence, a struggle which ought to be lightened in the 

 way I have indicated. But this is not the only cause of the poverty of 

 outlook in the vast majority of mankind. It is in a great measure due 

 to the inefficiency of their teachers and especially of their religious 

 teachers. I had in the original draft of this address put down some 

 remarks on what the engineer and scientist had to say upon religious 

 teaching, for if they took a greater share in the management of the 

 world, this most important subject should not be left out of account. 

 This subject is, however, precluded from the discussions of this Associa- 

 tion, so I am reluctantly constrained to strike out what I would like 

 to say. 



The education of the young is a duty that must be approached with 

 great discretion. 



Each child must be regarded as a reasonable entity looking out upon 

 the world with interest and ready to absorb impressions from its surround- 

 ings. It is most important that the things that we put before it shall be 

 of such a kind that, when the child applies its reason, it shall arrive at a 

 correct result ; for it is only in that way that the young mind gains con- 

 fidence in its reasoning powers. It is a pity that in this country the first 

 efforts in a child's education should be concerned with so unreasonable 

 a thing as English spelling. The little mind applies the reasoning powers 

 which nature has given it and finds that the answer is wrong. Over and 

 over again it tries. Sometimes it is right, mostly it is wrong. Instead 

 of the reasoning powers being strengthened they are undermined, and the 

 majority of children learn to rely upon their memory or their guessing 

 faculties rather than on their reason. 



After twenty years' experience of the students who present themselves 

 for evening classes, I assert that not more than one-fifth of the inhabitants 



^ Paper read before the Seacombe Forum, March 1930. 



