236 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



At the same time I am not unmindful that this address is being delivered 

 to the Educational Science section of the British Association, and that to 

 some the connection between educational science and practical problems 

 which to a large extent are common to local government as a whole rather 

 than peculiar to educational administration may well appear remote. 

 I am not quite sure what educational science connotes but I imagine 

 it may comprehend not only the philosophical principles upon which 

 educational practice is or ought to be based but also experiment and 

 research into method. The administrative machine, particularly in the 

 public education service, is an instrument which, if improperly employed, 

 may well distort the first and hamper the second. For that reason alone 

 it deserves an occasional inspection by the educational scientist whatever 

 his particular interest may be. Moreover, in recent years the British 

 Association has attached special importance to the impact of science on 

 society. For the great majority of teachers, pupils and parents in this 

 country the medium through which this impact is felt so far as education 

 is concerned is the Local Education Authority, 



Furthermore this question of local administration, uninspiring as it may 

 appear, may not be without its significance in relation to current issues of 

 world-wide importance. Only the other day I heard a prominent member 

 of a local education authority quoting, or as I believe misquoting, a still 

 more eminent personage to the effect that ' local government is the last 

 bulwark of democracy.' Exactly what he meant by the word ' last' is 

 obscure, and as nautical metaphors are notoriously tricky things there is 

 a possibility that he may have meant bulkhead rather than bulwark. 

 I take it, however, that his meaning was that, if democracy is going to 

 founder, the immediate cause will probably be found not so much in the 

 legislative eccentricities of Parliament as in the inefficiency of local 

 administration. It is when men begin to feel miserable that the value of 

 political liberty begins to slump, and it is when intelligent men feel the 

 pinch worst that revolutions begin to happen. It may be a hasty and in- 

 adequate generalisation, but there seems to me to be much in the view that 

 the totalitarian state has arisen from the economic and spiritual destitution 

 of the professional classes. I must, however, resist the temptation to 

 platitudinise on this popular problem and try to confine myself to certain 

 tendencies in the administration of local government, and of education in 

 particular, which can have at most only an indirect bearing on the much 

 wider question of the relation of the State to the individual. 



Political thinkers throughout the ages have frequently defined or 

 described the function of administration. Of all their attempts the one 

 which appeals most to an harassed official is the late Lord Fisher's 

 cynical aphorism that it consists in the intelligent anticipation of agitation. 

 From a somewhat less negative point of view it may be regarded as com- 

 pounded of deliberation and execution, of which the latter should but 

 does not always follow the former. In very simple terms, administration 

 is neither more nor less than a method of transacting business, and 

 particularly public business, as cheaply and as quickly as is compatible 

 with doing it reasonably well. Even this lacks precision and is by no 

 means free from ambiguity. Where for instance is the standard to be 



