2a6 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



of it, because they do not know at first-hand the subject-matter which 

 it studies.' Ao56aocpot dvrl ao<pcov yeyovbiBc;, ' They have the appear- 

 ance of wisdom but not its reality,' as Plato said of these who absorb 

 information from books without digesting it. 



However this may be, if we accept the two principles which I have 

 been stressing and agree that a certain maturity of mind is necessary for 

 humanistic studies and that full understanding of them is impossible 

 without experience of life, some practical conclusions follow. The first 

 is that an education which ends at the age of 14 is not education at all. It 

 might be plausibly argued that nearly all the money spent on elementary 

 education is wasted, because the system is, on the face of it, absurd. If 

 you taught a child the letters of the alphabet and then stopped you would 

 probably consider that you had thrown time away in teaching him the 

 ABC. Yet that is what we do in our elementary education. Elementary 

 education is not complete in itself. It is preparatory. It prepares the 

 pupil to go on to something else, and puts his foot on the first step of the 

 ladder of knowledge. But in fact the vast majority go on to nothing else, 

 they never climb higher on the ladder than the first step. How many pupils 

 whose education ceases when they leave an elementary school maintain 

 afterwards anything that can be called intellectual interest ? How many 

 think with any real seriousness about the problems of politics on which as 

 electors they are expected to decide ? How many read books worth 

 reading ? How many read books at all ? 4 And if not, what have they 

 gained adequate to the vast sums spent on them ? The chief uses of our 

 present elementary system are to enable a minority to proceed to further 

 education, and the rest to read the Daily Mail, Express and Herald. I 

 am not criticising our elementary schools or their teachers, or denying 

 the necessity of elementary education for all. But unless it leads on to 

 something else, it is as useful as a ladder which has no rungs beyond one 

 or two at its bottom or as a railway from London to Blackpool which ends 

 at Bletchley. To cease education at 14 is as unnatural as to die at 14. 

 The one is physical, the other intellectual, death. 



But the defects of our present system will not be remedied by raising 

 the school age to 15, or even to 16. Death at these ages is still premature. 

 The pupil will still be unripe for the studies without which an intelligent 

 democracy cannot be created. I am not arguing against the raising of the 

 school age. It may help our economic difficulties by reducing the supply 

 of children in the labour market. It will keep children longer under 

 influences of discipline and guidance with which they can ill dispense at 

 14. But the value of the raised school age is moral and economic rather 

 than intellectual. The mind will gain something from it. The character 



* It is not easy to draw inferences from the statistics of public libraries. The 

 following figures of books issued in a year per head (approximately) of the popu- 

 lation by the Urban Libraries of certain counties are characteristic but not en- 

 couraging : Cornwall 3, London (Metropolitan Boroughs) 5, Glamorgan 6, Lanark- 

 shire 5 . One must, of course, allow for children under 1 6 and for those who possess 

 adequate libraries of their own, but also remember that many of these books were 

 novels. 





