The Man of Letters as a Man of Business

f the broad facts of the educationa

like in this world. I propose to ask the question whether the whole world is not un

ational level very considerably, and I am going to consider what

ory. His factory has some distinctive product, and when he looks into his affairs he tries to find out whether he gets the utmost quantity of the product, whether he gets the best p

ion of human life. And it may be judged very largely by the question whethe

r a city or a period or a nation resolve the

he life it

he life i

t the time of Plato onward the possibility has been discussed of breeding human beings as we do horses and dogs. There is an enormous amount of what is called eugenic literatu

and horses for uniformity, for certain very limited specified points-speed, scent and the like. But human beings we should have to breed for variety: we cannot specify any particular poin

human beings we want much more subtle and delicate combinations of qualities. For any practical purposes we do not

health and physical welfare. There is, as you know, a vast literature now in existence, concerned with the health and welfare of children before and after birth, concerned with infantile life, with social conditions and social work di

r community and its individuals to consider. O

sort of things that we do to a prospective citizen in the school and the infant school but also anything in the nature of a school-like lesson that is done by the mother or nur

ng to do-what is it doin

what our own

re ways of expression, means of expressing ourselves, means of comprehending our thoughts in terms of other people's minds, and of understanding the expressions of others. That was the basis and substance of our schooling; a training in mental elucidation and in communication with other minds. But also as our school

is merely a specialization and

he child, with an instinctive imitativeness and docility, obeyed and learnt. And as the primitive family grew into a tribe, as functions specialized and the range of kno

g is, in fact, and always has been, the expansion and development of the primitive savage mind, which is still all that we inherit, to adapt it to the needs of a larger community. It makes out of the savage raw material which is our basal mental stuff, a citizen. I

herefore, the range of schooling

proposition. If it is sound, certain

ant now to ask if there has been any corresponding enlargement of the scope of the schooling-either of the community as a whole or of any special governing classes in the community-to keep pace with this tremendous extension

n of expense or any such practical difficulties. I will suppose that for the education of this fortunate young citizen whose case we are considering we have limitless means, the best possible tutors, th

lves a fairly sound knowledge of Latin grammar and at least some slight knowledge of the elements of Greek. Latin and Greek, which a

ation we are planning, two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue learnt early and thoroughly. These additional languages can be acquired easily if they are learnt in the right way. The easiest way to learn a language is to learn it when you are quite young. Many prosperous people in Europe nowadays contrive to bring up their children with two or three foreign languages, by employing f

rses and governesses or some equivalent for the nurses and governesses, and if we can organize the busines

and both employing a different grammatical nomenclature from that used in studying the mother tongue. The classes are encumbered with belated beginners. The child who has got languages from its governess, therefore, marks time-that is to say, wastes time in these subjects at school. The child well grounded in some foreign tongue is often a source of irritation to the teacher, and gets into trouble because it uses idiomatic expressions with which the

arded-and that is the acquisition in skeleton of quite a number of languages clustering round the key languages. If at the end of his schooling a boy knows English, French and German very well and nothing more, he is still a helpless foreigner in relation to large parts of the world. But if, in addition, he has an outline knowledge of Russian and Arabic or Turkish or Hindustani-it

I know how time and opportunity are wasted in school, and particularly in language teaching. Languages are not things that exist in water-tight compartments; each one illuminates the other and-unless it is taught with

at qualification-"gi

uction of a sort. It fell into the three more or less isolated subjects of arithmetic, algebra and Euclid. We carried on in these c

with the minds of more fortunate individuals, I cannot resist the persuasion that I was very badly done indeed in

certain bad habits and besetting sins-most people do. For instance, when I ran up a column of figures to add them I would pass from nine to seven quite surely and say sixteen; but if I went from seven to nine I had a vicious disposition to make it eighteen. Endless additions went wrong through that one error. I had fumbled into this vice and-this is my point-my school had no apparatus, and no

quite the same focal length and this often puts me out of the straight with a column of figu

it comes to anything in solid geometry-the intersection of a sphere by a cone, let us say, or something of that sort-I am hopelessly at sea. Deep

a grasp. Few of us ever made a proper use of models, and nearly all of us have miserably trained hands. Given proper facilities-and here again I ask you to note that proviso-given proper educational facilities, most of

r schooling there was an attempt to give us a view of the world about us

one respect, the next best thing to a good course. It was so thoroughly and hopelessly bad that it

s subject, with the addition of some elementary Biology and Physiology does now serve to give many young people in Great Britain something like a general view of the world as a whole. We need now to make a parallel push with the teaching of history. Upon this matter of the teaching of history I am a fanatic. I cannot think of an education as even half done unt

ee or four languages, including the mother tongue, and that perhaps four or five other additional languages shall have been studied, so to speak, in skeleton. I have added mathematics carried much higher and farther than most of our schools do to

s now almost universally wanting-the proper educational facilities. And now I will go on to examine the question of why these facilities are wanting. I want to ask why a large

ry profound secret to declare that there is hardly such a thing in the world to-day as a fully equipped school, that is to say a school having all the possible material and apparatus and staffed sufficiently with a bright and able teacher, a really live and alert educationist, in every nec

s a final

r an ordinary teacher; we compel them to lead mean and restricted lives; we underpay them shockingly; we do not deserve nearly such good teachers as we get. But even supposing we were to offer reasonable wages for teachers; an average all-round wage of ￡1,0

eping in at this point-"using t

s of more than one passable teacher for a hundred children and of more than one really inspired and inspiring teacher for five hundred children. No doubt you could get a sort of teacher for every score or even for every dozen children, a commonplace person who could be trained to do a few simple educational things, but I am speaking now of good teachers who have the mental subtlety, the sympathy and the devotion necessary for effici

tional literature is fairly extensive. I know in particular the literature of educational reform. And I do not recall that I have ever encountered any recognition of this fundamental difficulty in the way of educational development. The liter

pervaded by certain fixed ideas. There is a sort of standing objection to any machining of education. There is, we are constantly told, to be no syllabus of instruction, no examinations and no controls, no prescribed text-books or diagrams because these things limit the genius of the teacher. And this goes on with a blissful invincible disregard of the fact that in nine hundred and ninety-ni

etent teacher over the maximum number of pupils, and that can be done only by the same methods of economy that are practised in every other large-scale production-by the standardization of everything that can be standardized, and by the us

rarely prosperous enough to maintain more than one or two good teachers. The rest of the staff shrinks from scrutiny. You will find these schools adorned with attractive diagrams drawn by the teachers, and strikingly original models and apparatus made by the teachers, and if you look closely into the matter or consult an intelligent pupil, you will find there are never enough diagrams and apparatus to see a course through. If you press that matt

ssary to reorganize education in the world upon entirely bolder, more efficient, and more economical lines. We are inexorably limited as to the number of good teachers we can get into the educational organization, and we are limited as

ee-fourths of his energies. In such a place staff and pupils meet chiefly to waste each other's time. This is the first and principal point at which we can stanch the wastage of teaching energy that now goes on. Everywhere about the world nowadays, the schoolhouse is set up and equipped by a private person o

ery much the same everywhere, and the best way of teaching every ordinary school subject, the best possible lesson and the best possible succession of lessons, ought to have been worked out to the last point, and the courses ought to have been stereotyped long ago. Yet if you go into any school to-day, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred you will find an

ou must remember that if the schools of the world were thought of as a whole and dealt with as a whole, these things could be produced wholesale at a cost out of comparison cheaper than they are made to-day. There is no reason whatever why school equipment should not be a world market. A lesson upon the geography of Sweden needs precisely the same maps, the same pictures of scenery, types of people, animals, cities, and so forth, whether that lesson is given in China or Peru or Morocco

nstead of the teacher having to pretend, as he usually pretends now, to a complete knowledge of the foreign language he can really only smatter, he would become the honest assistant of the real teaching instrument-the gramophone. Here, again, it is a case for big methods or none-a case for mass production. A mass production of gramophone records for language teaching throughout the wo

ss worn and damaged scientific apparatus which is supposed to be used for demonstrating the elementary facts of chemistry, physics and the like. There is a belief that the science teachers-and they do their best with the time and skill and material at their disposal-rig up experimental displays of the more illuminating experimental facts with this damaged litter. Many of us can recall the realities of the sort of demonstration I mean.

n the world-he can do what has to be done with the best apparatus, in the best light; anything that is very minute or subtle you can magnify or repeat from another point of view; anything that is intricate you can record with extreme slowness; you can show the facts a mile off or six inches off, and all that your actual class teacher need do now is to spend five minutes on getting out the films he wants, ten m

chool, a school richly equipped with modern apparatus and economizing the labour of teaching to an extent at present undreamt of, in which, a

t the world. It sounds monotonous. It will rob the world of variety-and so on and so on. But indeed it will not be monotonous at all. That lesson will be new and fresh and good to every pupil who receives it. And remember it is by our hypothesis the best possible form and a

it is the same sun. I have still to be persuaded that our planet would be more various and interesting if it were lit by two or three thousand uncertain, spasmodic and d

ts own teacher and buying its own books and diagrams and material and so forth in small quantities at high prices, I want to see a great central organization, employing teachers of genius, working in consultation and co-operation and producing lesson notes, diagrams, films, phonograph records, cheaply, abundantly, on a big

uction that we can hope to get a civilized community in the world at an e

a universal application of the best and most effective methods of teaching, just as we insist upon the best and most effective methods of street traction and town lighting-then I