L.— EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 229 



Educational Association, whose history shows what a clear aim, pursued 

 with faith and wisdom, can create in a region without form and void. In 

 1935 there were 59,000 students in W.EA. classes. The figure is remark- 

 able, till we remember that there are forty-three millions in this island, 

 and that the crowd at a Cup Tie Final is twice as large. The W.E.A. 

 is not to blame for that ; nor indeed are the masses. It provided for their 

 intelligentsia, and wisely concentrated on this need, instead of frustrating 

 its own work by pursuing a variety of inconsistent aims. But necessarily 

 it has left untouched the vast mass of the population. 'A liberal estimate 

 gives 500,000 adults at the very most as the total influenced in any direct 

 way by any kind of organised educational activity.' 6 If so, here is a 

 sparsely populated territory, like America before the pioneers crossed the 

 Alleghanies, with territories of unexplored wealth waiting to be 

 cultivated. 



It may of course be true that the vast mass are not only untouched but 

 untouchable, destined for ever to be the helots of the nation, exiles by 

 nature from all but the outermost court of education. We should 

 hesitate to adopt so pessimistic a conclusion. But we might feel that it 

 was true if the experience of Denmark had not shown it to be false. I 

 have no time to dwell on the Danish Folk High School. Sufficient to 

 remember that 30 per cent, of the small farmer and working-class population 

 in that country attend, voluntarily and in part at their own expense, these 

 adult schools, where the course lasts for some 5 months, and the education 

 is humanistic in the sense that it is neither technical nor utilitarian. The 

 Danes have been successful with the very classes with whom we have 

 failed — those for whom the W.E.A. does not provide. If they are capable 

 of this, why not we ? If 30 per cent, of their working classes demand a 

 humanistic education, there is plenty to be done here. Their achieve- 

 ment is the measure of our failure and the indication of what can be done. 

 Why have we not done it ? 



My concern is to urge the indispensability of adult education, not to 

 produce a programme of it. This would be a fitting work for the 

 Consultative Committee, which has done so much to shape the earlier 

 stages of national education. The first task would be to review what is 

 being already done, in order to harmonise, develop and complete it ; to 

 define clearly what adult education should be ; and to consider in what 

 forms it can be best digested by those for whom it is meant. I make a 

 few suggestions on two of these points. 



I believe that the Danes have a better understanding of the technique 

 of the education of the average man. We have taken too narrow and rigid 

 a view of it. Education for the masses has been conceived as an extension 

 of the existing higher education to the working-man. That was excellent 

 for the intelligentsia of the working-class, but for the majority it was too 

 academic, too ' highbrow.' The Extension Movement and the W.E.A. 

 have carried University studies and methods to a wider public. So far, 

 so good. They reached a certain public, and gave it something which it 

 needed and was capable of assimilating. But in so doing they limited 

 8 The Handbook and Directory of Adult Education (1929). P- 29. 



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