The Christiafl News-Letter Books, 'No.

3
~~
., n
'.

EDUCATION AND. SOCIAL

CHANGE

General Editor :
ALEc R. VIDLER, WARDEN oP Sr. DEINIOL's LmRARv, HAWARDEN
 GENERA~· PREFACE
THIS series of books is designed to assist thought upon the
relation of the Christian faith to present problems.· We live
in a changing society; it is .still an open question what the
outcome of ~hange will be. It is the duty of Christians to be
aware of wh~t is happening and, while the situation is still
fluid, to exercise their utmost influence upon the course of
·events. , In politi9s the old party lines are vanishing, and new
groups are being formed. Christians ought to play a decided
part both by thought and action in these developii)ents.
Those who are cbllaborating in the" Christian News-Letter"
and who are producing these pooks invite all men of goodwill
· to join with them in an attempt to understand the principles
at stake, and the policies which must be pursued. .
' .We have got as a nation to do much more hard thinking
than has been pur wont. It has been said that" the average
Englishman not only has no ideas, he hates an idea when he
meets one." During the last hundred years our general
security and the settled framework of our society have made
thought about fundamental principles to seem ·unnecessary;
but now that change is upon us we must ask the big and
difficult questions that have been neglected. There is no law
of nature which prevents Englishmen from doing this. We
shall, however, find it hard work, and the general reader, for
whom these books are intended, must not expect to be let off
lightly. This sustained effort of thought, in which it is hoped
individuals and groups in every rank of society will co-
operate, is likely to unmask truths which we should prefer to
ignore and duties which we should prefer not to have to
undertake.
EDUCATIO.N AND
SOCIAL ·CHANGE ·'

AN ENGLISH INTERPRETATION

BY'

F. CLARKE

LONDON
THE SHELDON PRESS
NORTHUMBERLAND AVE:rmE, W.C.t
NEW YOU: THB KACUILLAN COUP ANY
 ,Uniform with this hook
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRISTENDOM
By J. H. OLDHAM
EUROPE IN TRAVAIL
By JoaN MmoLETON MuRR"x
THE MESSAGE OF THE WORLD-WIDE CHURCH
By WILLIAM PATON
CHRISTIANITY AN'D JUSTICE
BY 0. C. QuicK

First publishld 1!}40

MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN

 PREFACE
THis little book has been prepared and published at the
request of a number of friends who felt strongly, even
before the outbreak of war, that England, no more than
any other country, could withdraw from the impact of
the great forces which, long gathering head, have now
deployed in strength upon mankind. They realized
that if a much changed order of life had to come, it
would be necessary both to think. out the criteria by·
which the elements and phases of change should be
tested, and to form some picture of the concrete results
of applying these criteria in the various departments of
the common life.
We do not need to be told to-day that not all of our
destiny is under our control. But in so far as we may
be able to direct the course of events we can do so only
on condition that we submit ourselves and the working'
presuppositions of our English society to a rigorous and
radical process 'of self-examination. Then the negative
task of clearing away irrelevancies, obsolete survivals,
and pseudo-principles that are no more than the dis-
guise of material interest, will make all the easier the
positive task of formulating more relevant and defensible
standards of action.
Such an effort may well run· against the grain of
much that is deeply ingrown in English life and habit.
But there is no justification (and much risk) in any mode
uf thought that makes the tension between old and new
: v'
~ PREFACE
more severe than it need be. The English tradition is
far from being exhausted and is of such a nature as to
be indefinitely adaptable without ceasing to be itself.
The form of the task is to re-think and re-interpret what
we have, rather than to think out sbmething entirely
new. For the course taken by English development
over long centuries makes the paradox profoundly true
that if we are conservative enough we can afford to be
thoroughly radical, not only without loss, but with much
gain.
·Honest and sustained intellectual effort along these
lines is a vital part of Home Defence, unless, 'indeed, we
are prepared to see much that we claim to· be fighting
for dissipated before our eyes.
This little book, in draft before the outbreak of war,
has been revised 'in the light of this necessity. It makes
no claim to originality, being rather the outcome of
much discussion and criticism .among friends, some of
whom have had long and _responsible experience in the
working of education in England. If it should prove to
have any relevancy or value in the present situation
that merit is due, very largely, to them. But they are
in no sense responsible for the book as it stands. With
all its errors and indiscretions the author alone · must
assume personal responsibility for it, and must in par·
ticular not be taken as speaking for any institution or
organization with which he may be associated.
F. CLARKE.
 . , C)
J

CONTENTS
....... uu
PREFACE.
"
INTRODUCTION •

I. THE HISTORICAL DETERKINANTS OF EN GUSH

'EDUCATION , 6
II. THE PREsENT SrroATION • 34
III. LINEs OF RE·ADAPTATION 47

vii
 INTRODUCTION
ONE of the profoundest and most acute of contemporary
students of modern society has given expression to the
view that " no educational activity or research is adequate
in the present stage of consciousness unless it is conceived
in terms.ti~ a sociology of education". ,
Such ~ mode of approach to the study of education
and the formulation of educational policy ,is, in England,
much more consistently adopted in practice than it is
explicitly avowed in theory. In actual fact, both thought
and practice are much more closely conditioned by
social realities which are themselves the result of historical
and economic forces, than by the highly generalized
principles which figure so prominently in th~ text-books.
Such conditioning factors are ,none the less potent in not
being explicitly recognized. '
It is the purpose of this book to suggest that the
time has come when they should ·be brought into full
consciousness and be looked at squarely for what they
are. In other words, we propose to accept unreservedly
what may be called the sociological standpoint and to
exhibit as well as we can its concrete application to the
field of English education. That is, we are to attempt
an interpretation, conscious and deliberate, in terms of a
social economic history, and then, in the light of that
interpretatio~, to estimate the capacity of the English
educational tradition to adapt ·itself without undue
friction or shattering to the ~emands of a changed order.
! EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The argument of the book is generated in a profound ·

belief:-

(1) That the demand will come : that it is even

now upon us.
(2) That the English tradition is still capable of
indefinite adaptation sufficient 'to meet it; that, like
the wise householder in the Gospel, it can yet bring
out of its treasure things new and old, and remain
itself while putting forth new powers and transforming
old organs to meet new situations.
. '
The second, at least, of these two articles of belief is
by no means self-evident, and may well be challenged by
apostles of one or other of the New Dispensations that
now compete for acceptance. It may be argued that
we too shall be met in our turn by catastrophe so sweep-
ing, or by pressure so intolerable, that the comforting
self-assurance of" It Never Can Happen Here" will no
longer hold, and that after the inevitable spell of destruc-
tive action we shall llettle down on totalitarian lines to
translate some uni'tary social credo into thorough-going
practice. Even so, would the tradition cease to be
operative? And would it not return with renewed
vigour as it did in I 66o and absorb Reform as it did after
I 832? Communism itself might come to wear a strangely
familiar dress. However that may be, the present
argument assumes that the tradition is capable of the
necessary degree of adaptation, granted a sufficient
occasion, and an adequate measure both of intelligence
to recognize and of will to execute the new applications
of ancient principles that will be called for.
As for the demand itself, it comes upon us now from
two main directions: from home and from abroad.
I'
 t'1 ,....
INTRODUCTION
IJ
3
The demand from within has indeed its strongly marked
English character, but is itself akin to those more im-
perious necessities which have brought about such vast
revolutionary movements in European countries. The
forces to which these countries have been driven to
respond with such violence and swiftness of transition
are at work here too. · We may make the wrong response
and bring disaster, hutto make no response is not possible.
To make it with less awareness than we might achieve
by taking timely thought is to · invite confusion and
accentua~ed conflict. For the problems that loom.
before us. and the forces that work among us are not
just Russian or German, Communist or Fascist; they
are, in the ultimate resort, historical, the impact of history
itself upon our generation, and therefore inescapable.
Even the dullest of us realizes now that this particular
war is something more than a conflict of vast military
forces across embatded frontiers. It is· a conflict, if you
like a confusion, of motives and ideas appearing in many
forms within the social structure of eyery·civilized people,
and reproduced in its measure in ,the. personal life of all
except the most insensitive clods among us. The prob-
lems are the problems of Everyman.
Within the educational field, then, we have, for two
main reasons, to face the task of thinking out new possi-
bilities of a long-growing tradition. On the one side
we have to work out our own response for our own
people to the necessities which the movement of history
has brought upon us as upon others. On the other side,
we have to recognize an increasing disposition in many
lands to look to England for some understanding of the
role of education in times of sweeping intellectual and
social transition, a disposition likely to be much inten-
&ified if some existing to:~l,itarian regimes .break down
4 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

and the supremely difficult effort has to be made of

restoring the life of their peoples to· the main currents
of Western liberal tradition. In such an undertaking
we could not, if we would, repudiate our share of respon~
sibility, little as we might feel disposed' to pursue it in
any pedagoguish spirit. But we should need to have
clear consciences about the state of our own educational
pastures, and from this point of view the two sides of the
demand appear as one.
The estimate we have now to attempt appears to fall
into three divisions: historical determinants, the present
situation, and possibilities of adaptation. Or, more fully
stated, the book is governed by three main objectives:-

(1) To provid.e some insight into the nature of the

social influences by which the forms of English educa~
tional institutions have been determined and their
practical objectives defined.
(2) To formulate some analysis of the present situa-
tion in England, including: the different types of
institution, the social forces they express and the kind
of social aim they are designed to serve, their relation-
ship both to one another and to " non-school " forms
of educating institutions, and generally the extent to
which they may be regarded at the moment as express~
ing certain common characteristics of the English mind
now face to face with the demand for change.
(3) To estimate the degree to which the existing
order is capable of adaptation to the demands that
have to be faced, the demands of aregime consciously
planned and directed towards the guaranteeing of
freedom for diversity of personality in a social order
much more thoroughly collectivist in its working than
any of which we have yet had experience.
 INTRODUCTION

It will be clear from the above that the main concern

of the book is the adaptation of institutions. Questions
of teaching method will arise, therefore, only incidentally,
questions of curriculum rather more directly, and ques-
tions of educational philosophy still more so. There is
no reason to think, at any rate not yet, that the English
habit of leaving details of method,' and very largely the
determination of curriculum, in the hands of the teachers
themselves, will seriously weaken. There .is no real
indication yet of any move towards bureaucratic dicta-
tion in these matters, and the public mind is not seriously
concerned about them. What it is increasingly con-
cerned about is the distribution of education, the mal-
adjustment of the various elements of the system both
among themselves and towards the needs and possi-
bilities of the common life, the undeveloped capacities
of this element, the exclusiveness of that, and the intro-
verted formalism of this other. The problems now under
debate thus raise issues of institutional form and func ..
tion. They are sociological rather than pedagogic, and
therefore fall properly within the fiel'd of public discussion
and action. ..•
This book, attempting as it does some very general
survey of such problems, may therefore properly be
addressed to the ordinary. citizen rather than more
exclusively to professionals. Its interest is centred in
national policy rather than in classroom technique.
 CHAPTER I
THE ffiSTORICAL DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

BoTH in form and spirit English educational institutions

offer a striking vindication of the principle from ;which
we set out. They reveal sociological determination
which is all the more convincing and real by ~eason of
its being taken so completely for granted. No writer on
education, however much he may strive after universality
of thought, can wholly shake· himself free from the
influences of time and place.' It is characteristic of
most English writers that they do not even make the
conscious effort. Often in the most ingenuous way they
give vigorous expression to quite English politico-social
ideals while believing themselves to be discussing pure
educational theory. ;1,
If the word " ideology , had not alrea,dy been ruined
for any precise use (having been employed so much
recently as equivalent to "creed" or "doctrine"), we
might cite English writers upon education as illuminating
examples of it. For strictly, it would seem, the word
applies to exactly this phenomenon-the undetected
influence upon what is supposed to be generalized
thought of the interests and attitudes of national, class
and other groups by which the writer or thinker has
been formed.
Sometimes, of course, in English writers, especially in
revolutionary times, the political. intent is conscious and
avowed, as it was with Milton in the 17th and Tom
 DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 7
Paine in the 18th century. And the Arnolds, father and
son, with prescient eye for things to come, thought and
wrote in the I gth century in the light of an explicitly
held social philosophy. But usually, unless they are con-
sciously writing as political pamphleteers, our English
authors show litde explicit awareness of the social pre-
suppositions of their thought. ·
Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education nowhere
indicates that what he is here concerned with is the
making of a Whig gendeman, and Herbert Spencer does
not tell us that in his Education he is sketching for us his
idea of a cultivated, somewhat radical,. and perhaps lop-
sided member of the industrial middle cla.Ss of Victorian
England.
Even more striking examples might be given of the
same trait in books-some of them systematic and
scholarly studies of education-that have been written
and published in England during the last thirty years
or so.
It cannot be denied that there is strength in such a
disposition as is here illustrated-;trength issuing from
the sublime confidence that is induced by an unconscious
universalizing of the distinctively English. Yet to-day
we cannot help feeling that that kind of strength is real
and to be trusted only in the days of an unchallenged
British Navy, a world-wide stable economic system, an
Empire whose destinies are more or less directed from
London, pre-aviation insularity for Great Britain, and
no wireless anywhere. When these conditions no longer
hold, as is the case now, the weakness of the disposition
becomes only too apparent. It is the weakness of a lack
of critical self-awareness, opposing as it does a formidable
obstacle both to intelligent readjustment at home and
to sympathetic understanding abroad. Continuance of
8 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

such a weakness in the conditions amid which we now.

have to maintain ourselves might well prove fatal. For
enemies may come to a clear awareness of the " ideo-
logical" background of our thought and policy earlier than
we do, and that would place in their hands a most effec-
tive weapon for the sap and mine of our position. Is it
enough merely to shrink with amazed horror from the
crude vigour with which the National Socialist renders
his own " ideology " explicit and imposes it forcibly
upon all forms of thought among his own people? We
have done something like it ourselves for centuries in
our educational thinking, though until now we have
been under no pressure to tell ourselves so. Now we
have to be quite clear about it, and make ourselves fully
aware_ of social and historical " ideology " at every point
of our thinking.· Otherwise we, shall have to say that
it is propaganda when you are thus explicitly aware and
education when you are not; propaganda when you
know what you are about, education when you don't. 1
As Dr. Lowe 8 has conclusively shown, the cult of
" Freedom " which•\.··has been so fashionable in self-
consciously " advanced " circles in Eijglish education
shows the same unlimited capacity for swallowing whole
the great mass of the facts of social determination. Seen
1 The plea that we must make ourselves aware of the conditioning
of our thoughts by historical and sociological factors-by our " in-
terests", in short-must not be taken as involving acceptance of any
thorough-going doctrine of relativism, such as is now becoming
fashionable. Pressed to the limit, such doctrines make science an
illusion, and the idea of a common humanity a disastrous absurdity.
But it does mean that in any theory of knowledge-sociological factors
have to be taken into account; that there is, in fact, a " sociology
of knowledge ". Those interested in pursuing the subject further
are referred to Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia (Routledge,
1936).
2 In his valuable and penetrating little essay The Price of Liberty

(Hogarth Press, 1937).

 t7S
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 9
in the light of Lowe's perfectly just insistence upon the
all-importance of social discipline and a large measure
of social conformity in the English order of things, the
prophets of " Freedom " appear like so many stage
Ariels, conveying to the spectator the illusion of freely
moving spirits only because the wires of social deter-
mination by which they are manipulated are undetected.
Only here and there does an advocate of such freedom
really challenge the accepted social discipline in his
actual practice. In such cases he is either dismissed as a
" freak "-fair game for satirists· even less Philistine than
those of Punch-or he is forgiven and tolerated on the
ground that he is a person whose social position justifies
the belief that he cannot really ~e serious and must be
permitted scope for a little of that freakish eccentricity
which so endears the English ruling class to the populace.
Signs of an awakening self-awareness are now mani-
festing themselves, and self-criticism takes on a much
more serious and even alarmed air than that which has
hitherto characterized the polite self-depreciation whereby
the Englishman has been wont to give expression to
his sense of " good form ". The new note is neither
markedly polite nor comfortably equable.
But it is still true that the really important facts of
English education remain for the mass in the region of ·
the " taken for granted ", As a particularly striking
example of this the Spens Report may be quoted. There
is all too much truth in the Irishism that the most signifi-
cant things in the Report are the things it does not say.
Yet so deep-rooted is social habit, so completely lacking
is any popular philosophy of education, that the pro-
found issues of social destiny which are implied by the
Report, though never explicitly raised in it, seem to
have escaped general notice. Discussion is concerned
B
IO EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

rather with the internals of school-organization, with

relatively· minor steps of liberalization, and with details
of adjustment of school-types. Though the Report is
directly concerned with secondary education throughout
its whole range, the leading secondary schools of the
country-those which claim to be in a special and
peculiar sense representatively national-are nowhere dis-
cussed within its pages and no attempt is made to relate
them organically to the system of schools, largely State-
provided, but somehow less " national ", in which the
mass of the population is educated.
So little attention has been given to this omission,
startling enough in any other country, so generally has
it been accepted as natural and proper, that one may
doubt whether it was even intentional. How vain it is
to look for the explanation of such phenomena in some
formal and abstract statement of educational prindple!
The explanation is, of course, not educational at all in
that sense, but sociological. The sources of such an
attitude are to be found in the social history of England
since the Reformation. ·
It is the purpose of this chapter to point out some of
these historical determinants. But here, ·at the risk of
labouring the obvious, it may be said in general terms
that if there is a master-key for the interpretation of
English educational phenomena, it is given in the word
Security.l The habit of thinking in terms of concrete
precedent rather than in terms of abstract principle (with
1 " Security " here may be taken in ·a twofold sense. There is
the physical security, only recently impaired, t>f the island position.
(How different are the social effects of national defence by a distant
and rarely visible navy from those of defence by a near and often
only too visible standing army!) There is also the economic security
guaranteed by a world-wide Empire, world-wide capital investment
and the other familiar features of 19th-century economy.
 ?n
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION {I ~J
all that this means for the preservation of continuity) ;
the cohesion of the social class-order, with its divisions
clearly marked yet connected by flexible ties, and with
the steps of the social scale well fenced and guarded; the
intensity and variety of group-life sustaining and bracing
rather than disintegrating the national unity of the
whole; the strong preference for a concrete though
limited liberty over an abstract but chilly equality-all
such characteristics owe their origin and persistence-
in part at least-to long centuries of internal peace and
external security. · It is, indeed, precisely the threatened
change in these historic conditions which gives point to
all our re-thinking so far as England is concerned.1
It will be easier to. disentangle the threads of the
educational tradition which has grown up in England
under these conditions if we follow some broad classifica-
tion of types of educational objective. Any classifica-
tion is arbitrary and imposed on the facts: none is wholly
satisfactory so as exactly to fit the facts. If we have to
choose one and adapt it as best we can, we may take
1 Some of the studies that will have to be undertaken can be

deduced from the discussion as it has proceeded so far. For example:

(1) "The Abstract in English Thought" (or "The Ideology
of English Abstraction"). Its purpose would be to enquire into
the experiential bases upon which thought proceeded in formu·
lating general principles of politics, economics, education, etc.
Thus a colleague at Cape Town once suggested that had the ·
" classical , economics been worked out in South Mrica instead
of in England, the three agents of production would have been
given as water (not land), labour and capital.
(2) "The Politics of Education." A study going back as far
as the Reformation and interpreting English educational thought
and practice in the light of social and economic forces. The 17th
century would prove particularly interesting.
(3) A whole series of monographs exhibiting the educational
" ideologies '' of different groups: e.g., Methodists, Chartists,
Country Gentry, etc. The absence of a clearly defined, distinctive
and generally accepted working-class ideology would probably be
conspicuous.
12 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

that of Max Weber as quoted by Mannheim. This

distinguishes :-

(1) Charismatic education.l

(2) Education for culture.
(3) Specialized education.

This is not unilluminating in its application to English

conditions. The charismatic, though never wholly
absent, is never dominant. But there is a side of the
English character, mystic and poetical, which is open to
a
the charismatic appeal. Adapting Mendelian term,
we may say that the charismatic is recessive in English
education. One would not expect to find it, at any rate
not officially, in an institution so alive to actuality and
so ready to preserve a common-sense balance by judicious
compromise as is the Anglican Church. Nor would one
look for it in the ruling class, except in an occasional
"sport" like Shelley. It belongs most essentially to
Dissent. The Methodists, especially in their early stages,
expressed it strongly, but lost it with the access of respect-
ability and worldly success, and an interest in practical
politics. The Non-Jurors were strongly touched by it,
and in modem times the Salvation Army gave it new
and characteristic expression in terms of the psychology
of the depressed classes. Its golden age was undoubtedly
the .I 7th century, when spiritual perception and the
intensity of spiritual experience reached unwonted heights
in England. Great Anglican divines and Cambridge
Platonists, as well as Quakers, Independents and the
1 We must keep the unfamiliar term, as no other word quite so
clearly conveys the idea. " Conversional " is too clumsy, and " in-
spirational" has been spoilt for any precise use. " Education by
infusion of grace " perhaps best conveys the idea to those reared in
a Christian tradition.
 8U
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 13
sectaries of Cromwell's army, provide abundant illustration
of its influence.
I hesitate, h~ving so little knowledge, to speak of its
presence in English poetry. But in many of the poets,
so it seems to me, it is never far away. The so-called
" metaphysical " poets are under its influence, and in
other forms it is traceable in Blake, Coleridge and
especially Shelley. About Wordsworth there is reason
for doubt, especially in view of his later years. It would
seem to be particularly futile to educate for charismatic
effects if, as the· great " Ode " suggests, magic ·departs
as experience accumulates. Something like Peter , Pan
appears to be the appropriate educational conclusion
(though a profounder insight is revealed in some parts
of the " Prelude").
Though the charismatic quality is thus seen to be by
no means absent from the English attitude towards life-
a thing not surprising in a people so given to the poetical
in all its forms-it finds curiously little expression in
actual educational effort. It exists, if at all, as a sort
of evanescent bloom on the solid plum of cultural and
practical training. Often no more than lip-service is
paid to the claims of high spiritual illumination and
to the attainment of personal consciousness of election;
often the impulse dies away in ossified routine, or iS
transformed into a flame of moral enthusiasm, as with
Thomas Arnold, or it enters into workable and even
profitable compromise with the world such as was
effected by the Quakers. If it survives at all, it does so
as a more than earthly light playing over a very earthly
educational scene and finding its source usually in some
inspired teacher who serves the tables of daily routine
none the less efficiently by reason of his peculiar gifts.
The 19th century, with its hesitations and timidities and
14 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

precarious compromises, was an age of frustration for

such spirits. In the 2oth the charismatic tends to lose
its Christian character altogether, and where the impulse
towards that type of education still persists it has passed
to the sectaries of esoteric cults or th.e impassioned
prophets of queer social idealisms. Yet it is by no
means dead, and if widespread upheaval should occur in
Western society so as to shake violently its foundations,
the disposition to reject " the world " and take refuge in
small companies of the elect, each awaiting its own
particular revelation, may again grow strong.
Thus we may conclude that· in England the charis-
matic type of education has been personal rather than
structural, accidental rather than pervasive. This too
is probably not unconnected with a state of general
security where, for men in the mass, there was little or
no danger of being driven from their social anchorages
and forced to take refuge in some spiritual Adullam.
We suggested above that strong indications of a charis-
matic attitude towards education can be traced in
English Dissent in some phases of its developmen.t. But
there is much else in the contribution which Dissent as
a whole has made to the English tradition. Dissenters
took a decided line of their own in their interpretation
of what was the dominant English conception-namely,
education for culture. Recently, increasing attention
has been paid to the schools and " academies " organized
by the Dissenters in the 17th and 18th centuries, and with
justice.l For these institutions, in their aims and out·
look, represent not a variant reading of the classical
tradition in which the ruling class was bred, but a
l The larger academies gave an education that could fairly be
regarded as of university standard. (See Miss I. Parker's DissenJing
Acadtmies in England. Cambridge, 1914.)
 DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

challenge to it. Shut out from teaching in universities

and schools under the control of the Established Church,
the Dissenters had to make what provision they could
for themselves, and risk breaking the law in doing so.
This they did, not by copying the grammar schools and
educating themselves as arrivistes, aspiring imitators from
afar of the governing-class tradition. They were, appar-
ently, as unready to do this as they were to sacrifice
conscience to expediency and facilitate access to grammar
school and university by abjuring Dissent. Instead, they
went back to an earlier precedent which had revealed
itself in England and on the Continent in the 17th century.
A strong wave of what we might well call " modernism "
swept over Europe about the middle of that century.
The Moravian Comenius was its leading exponent
in education. It reached its height in England during
the Civil War and the years of the Commonwealth and
Protectorate. Milton's Tractate of Education shows strong
traces of its influence.
In temper it was thoroughly realistic and one might
almost say anti-linguistic. Language was for it but the
gateway to a knowledge of" things useful to be known ".
Latin, of course, was necessary in such times as a medium
of learning. But it was that and very little more, and
the process of acquiring it was to be got over as speedily
as possible with a minimum of sticking in the " gram-
matick flats and shallows " of which Milton speaks, and
with a maximum of the pedagogical aids of which
Comenius himself was so fruitful an inventor.
If this school of thought had a key idea of culture,
the word to express it would be Science rather than
Language. Like the ruling class they thought of educa-
tion in terms of culture, but with a significant difference
in content. They were less concerned with a code of
16 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

formal accomplishments distinctive of an aristocratic

class and a governing tradition, and much more con- ·
·cerned with the specific attainments necessary for effec-
tive living at their own social level and in their own milieu
in what they knew to be a significantly changing world.
We must relate them, therefore, to the Royal Society,
to the inventions of the I 8th century, to the beginnings
of the Industrial Revolution· and to the modes of thought
which gave rise to the revolutions in America and in
France. It is no accident that Priesdey, one of their
most distinguished products, was at once a scientist of
note and an enthusiastic supporter both of the cause of
the American rebels and of the French revolutionaries.
The Dissenting Academies are thus of importance in
English educational history as representing a vigorous
and sustained effort to think out a " modern " curri-
culum and apply it in practice. While not departing
from the dominant idea of education for culture, and
while remaining thoroughly English in temper, they cut
loose from the prevailing tradition of classical training
and aristocratic accomplishments, looked at their own
actual world with open eyes, and worked out a curriculum
which would prepare for effective living in such' a world.
In it, as it developed, classics and the customary linguistic
studies had .no great place; instead, we find English,
history and modern languages with a good deal of
mathematics and science.
In such times this was revolutionary enough, sensible
and relevant as we should regard it now. Yet, in another
aspect it, too, was the continuance and development of a
tradition dating from as far back as the Reformation.
It is a Protestant tradition representing the educational
oudook of an enterprising middle-class that had broken
completely with Rome and was as objectively zealous in
 ~:.: ')
u'-'
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 17
business enterprise as it was firm in its adherence to
Reformation principles. It grew to power in Germany
and Holland and was dominant in England for a spell
in Cromwellian days.
The importance of this " break-off" as we must call
it, from the central classical tradition, is, for our present
purpose, twofold :-

(1) It was, in its own time, a successful attempt

carried out in practice to do what so urgently needs
to be done now, on a much vaster scale. That is, to
achieve nothing less than a re-interpretation of the
content of culture in an age to which much of the
traditional content has become irrelevant. We shall
develop, in the sequel, some of the implications of this
overmastering demand. All that we need note now
is that on a much smaller scale, but with real grasp
and effectiveness, a precisely similar task was carried
through by small groups of energetic Englishmen work-
ing under grave disabilities two centuries ago.
(2). The achievement, destined to no great extension
in a homeland where the more ancient and socially
powerful classical-aristocratic tradition retained much
vitality and was still capable of further adaptation,
was far more widely reproduced in the newly-founded·
United States and in what were to become the British
Dominions. The American Revolution was Crom-
wellian rather than classical in spirit, differing in this
respect from that of France. One needs to read con-
temporary writings on education in America-of which
there were a good many-to realize how closely akin
the thought was to that which had produced the
English Dissenting Schools and Academies. Anyone
who takes the trouble to compare the spirit and
18 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

organization of the Academy at Warrington, where

Priestley taught, with that founded in Philadelphia
by Benjamin Franklin, cannot fail to be struck by the
affinity. For a period, the older classical tradition
continued to maintain itself in many parts of the
States, and it fought a long losing battle. But in so
realistic a community the end was inevitable, and the
American High School to-day is a Franklin-Priestley
institution rather than a transplanted grammar school.
In the Dominions the history has been more mixed,
just as social motives have been more mixed. But here
again irresistible influences have worked towards the
triumph of the Priestley outlook, and it is now almost
universally dominant.

It seemed well to. devote some space to an account of

this particular strand in English educational history.
For we need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the
contention that " culture " may have another or more
modernistic meaning than that sanctioned and made
authoritative by the ruling classical tradition is a thing
of yesterday. It has a history going back as far as the
Reformation, and can perhaps even claim the great name
of Milton in its support. ,
Moreover, in times when intellectual understanding
and spiritual co-operation between Great Britain on the
one hand and the United States and the Doininions on
the other hand have become a commanding necessity,
it is well to remember that in those oversea lands it is
not the classical tradition but another and more modern-
istic English conception of culture that has become
doininant in education. May it not soon appear that
there are lurking sources of danger in a situation where
British statesmen, reared for the most part in one English
 ~C)
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH'EDUCATION 19 U t)
educational tradition, are called to have intimate deal-
ings with oversea statesmen reared in another English
tradition to' which all too little attention has been paid
in the country of its origin? Th~re will be less risk if
the different cultural factors are known and understood
in the light of their. historical setting, and duly allowed
for in the necessities of intercourse.
This test-example of dissenting activity may be taken
as evidence of the dominant English tendency to educate
for culture, even in a class that was excluded by law
and conscience from the full enjoyment of cultural privi-
lege. On the one side charismatic education was too
unworldly and unsubstantial for men who differed from
the main body of their fellows in little more than a
claim to exercise private judgment in matters of religious
belief and practice. (That is the point: religion was a
private matter that should make no difference in business
and politics, and became an intolerable nuisance only
when it escaped from privacy, as it sometimes did even
in England.) On the other side, to the ruling class
" special " education as such was " not the thing " for
gentlemen. Of course it was given. Without it no
ruling class could have been so competent and so success-
ful as that of England prov~ itself to be. But the aim
must not be too crudely and vulgarly avowed or the
gifted amateur lost caste as a professional. The ruler by
nature and grace became degraded to the level of the
mere expert. So the " special " education was acquired
partly as an element incorporated in the " training of a
gentleman" (such as languages and oratory), and partly
surreptitiously as it were : not on the school bill, we
might say. ·
The net result was that both dissenting groups and
ruling class accepted wholly the conception of education
20 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

for culture, and though they did not ignore " special "
education by any means, were disposed to regard it as
not wholly respectable. Either the cloak of culture must
be thrown over it in some way, or it must be acquired
sub rosa. 1
(In passing, it may be noted that ·this history has a
direct bearing upon some of the problems with which
the Spens Report is concerned. There are already signs
of a strong, though perhaps not very open, resistance on
the part of some secondary schools to the proposed new
Technical High Schools. Apart from a natural dislike
of competition, the motive appears to be some tradition-
born idea that somehow or other what the Technical
High School will offer will not be real education. For
the pupils will there be expected to acquire, openly and
shamelessly, knowledge direcdy useful for vocational pur-
poses-i.e., "special" education. It is to be feared that
in many quarters these new schools will be viewed not
as they should be, as an honest and resolute attempt to
adapt the concept of culture itself, to incorporate into
it, as all vital cultures have done, new permanent factors
that are bound to influence the shape of life and thought,
but as upstart rivals to the only true culture.
In much the same way some secondary schools resist
the idea of the " multi-lateral " school, claiming that
they themselves are already multi-lateral, as their curri-
cula offer a variety of options. Is there here no more
than failure to grasp the " multi-lateral " idea? Or is
there here again some tradition-born and half-analysed
suspicion, a suspicion that the Ark of the Covenant may
be handled by the unclean Gentile?)
t The phenomenon was, of course, common to all Western Europe
wherever a ruling class held sway. With respect to the actual
eontmt of a vocationally influenced culture, a comparison between
aristocratic England and republican Holland might be of interest.
 c. 1
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 2IQ ;J:

It is possible to argue that the dominant English

tradition since the Reformation has been one of educa-
tion for culture only if we make liberal allowance both
for variations in the form of the culture itself and for
elements and objectives which were vocational rather
than cultural. No English tradition is ever quite" pure",
and the plea for a classical education as the " real
thing ", a purely humanist training unsullied by technical
taints, is relatively modern. It owes mu:ch to Newman,
and there is, perhaps, some justification for Professor
MacMurray's suggestion (in The Boundaries of Science)
that the cult of " knowledge for its own sake " tends
to arise in a society which is quite ready to accept
the techniques of a new order, but not ready to accept
any essential change in the structure of an existing order,
nor to allow the displacement of a standard culture in
which it has a vested interest by one which would transfer
the social advantages to another class. If that is so,
then the plea for knowledge for its own sake becomes
socially suspect as the dress of an interested ideology. Just
as the freely-contracting "individual" of 19th-century
liberalism-so it may be argued-was the expression of
a bourgeois interest, so the ideal of a disinterested student
pursuing knowledge " for its own sake " may express
the interest of a regime which has the strongest
reasons for not wishing to see new knowledge used
instrumentally all along the line-that is, in social and
political reconstruction as well as in the provision of
scientific techniques. If it is ever true that so fine-
sounding an ideal should be in reality just a decorative
cloak to cover a not disinterested timidity, some explana-
tion is afforded of the devitalizing of curricula. In such
conditions studies are the material of a defensive fa~ade,
rather than the source of instruments of positive social
22 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

action. They come more and more to lack direct relevanry,

a lack which cannot wholly be concealed by modernistic .
changes in the spirit in which they are taught.
Whether, in answer to this, we should follow Dewey
in taking the view that all knowledge is instrumental
and nothing but instrumental, is a question upon which
we will not enter. Here we have only to note that the
modern justification of the classical tradition as " educa-
tion for its own sake" obscures two important qualifica-
tions that are revealed by the historic record. One is
that the classical-humanist education was deliberately
given, especially from the 18th century onwards, as an
appropriate training for a vocation-that of rulers. Locke
leaves us in no doubt of the vocational intent. For him
Latin is " necessary to a gentleman ".1 And so it was,
together with much else that the accepted training
included. ·
The other qualification is contained in the fact that
the classical curriculum in the form of the grammar-
school tradition provided the substance of education for
many who were certainly not of the ruling class. These
were the professional classes,. clergy, schoolmasters,
lawyers, physicians. The " clerkly" tradition of the
Middle Ages continued in this form, and has by no
means lost its vitality even to-day. So the element of
" special " education enters even in the great days of
education for culture, and the best-known Bidding
Prayer of the Anglican Church, with its reference to
men trained for service, is quite frank about it. 2
1 He goes on to express a blunt opinion that it is of little or no
use to anyone else, thus emphasizing the vocational character of his
criterion.
• Two more studies here suggest themselves. One would deal
historically with the social implications of training for the professions in
England, and would endeavour to relate the spirit and content of
 c5
b
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 23
As for the trading and manufacturing classes, the story
is still not clear until the tgth century is well on its way.
Further reference to them will come later. Enough has
been said to show how shot through with compromise
the prevailing English version of education for culture
has been.
This is not to deny that the prevailing classical form
certainly was education for culture and highly successful
as such when social conditions were favourable. But
it never lost its class character, it was never national in
any comprehensive sense and is not so to-day.
At the same time, it never lost its character of com-
promise with the " special " and vocational. When in
the 19th century a serious risk that it might do so arose,
the position was saved by the new middle class, finding
in such men as Arnold and Thring schoolmasters able
to weld effectively the spirit of the traditional humanism
with the complex demands of business and politics and
administration and professional services in an indus-

such training to the prevailing social structure and the interests of

its ruling elements. The four professions mentioned above have
usually shown strong conservative tendencies and a marked dis-
position to ally themselves with the ruling order. How far were
such tendencies the result of an education more or less consciously
designed to produce them? Are similar tendencies to be remarked
among, say, electrical and chemical engineers, members of quite
modern professions which are free from these historic influences?
The other study would concern itself with the trading and manu-
facturing classes. It would enquire how far thtir interests were met
by the traditional curriculum; what steps they took to bring about
departures from it and to demand school forms more directly adapted
to their needs; and in particular how these classes, at their upper
and middl~ levels, came to accept, in the rgtb century, the tradi-
tional education so completely as to occasion the rise of a whole
crop of new " public " schools. And how was the traditional
education itself affected in spirit and aim and content by this large
influx? Reform at Oxford and Cambridge would provide a signifi-
cant part of the story.
24 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

trialized nation which had now also to govern an Empire.

The result is best typified, not at all in Tom Brown of
Rugby, but in men like Sir Robert Morant, a great civil
servant in the direct line of descent from the Chadwicks
and Kaye Shuttleworths of the R~form Era in the
'thirties. Middle class in origin, and with a profes-
sionalism of spirit and expertise quite alien to the amateur
temper of a ruling aristocracy, they were nevertheless
trained in the traditional curriculum. But with a differ·
ence: their teachers were no longer " pure " scholars,
linguistic savants or literary "appreciators", but politici,
men deeply concerned with the social and political
problems of contemporary life, steeped in philosophy,
and well able to generalize the mature thought of the
ancient world in terms of contemporary necessity. The
Oxford of the days of Jowett and T. H. Green and the
establishment of a rigorous system of selection for the
higher civil service belong to the same phase of social·
cultural history. Government had become too complex
and specialized for the day-to-day handling of its details
by aristocratic amateurs. But the ruling class did not
surrender the function, it turned to a new source of
supply for the necessary professionals, taking care, how-
ever, that these should be trained in that same classical
tradition by which they themselves had been formed.
What was not so clearly noticed in this development
was its effect upon the educational attitude towards the
classical tradition itself. The vocational (or " special ")
import that it had never wholly lacked was strengthened.
Without ceasing to be linguistic and literary, it became
more philosophical, with attention concentrated both on
the substance of ancient thought and achievement and
on the relevance of these to the contemporary situation.
Moreover, its philosophical content was studied in close
 DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 25
relation with modern European philosophy. In a word,
we may say that the whole tradition was re-assimilated to
the needs and conditions of a complex industrial and
imperial society that was becoming steadily democratized
in politics without losing its character as a social aris-
tocracy. The "cultural, and the "special" were thus.
re-welded in the light of changed social necessity, and ,
the type it has produced in such numbers entirely merits
the confidence and admiration it has evoked. It is a
type, cultivated, steeped in philosophy and history, aware
of its world politically and intellectually, and interested,
in a deeper sense than either the scholar or the aristocratic
amateur could claim to be. Yet it combines effectively
the qualities of both, and has in addition the advantage
of professional experience.
Does not the rise of such a type illustrate admirably
the English refusal in education to concentrate upon the
production of a narrowly specialized expert, whether
scholar or technician? It will have culture, but it will
also have competence and power to discharge a skilled
task responsibly. There is strength in such a position,
Philistine enough to be a little contemptuous of a " pure "
culture that can do nothing in particular, .and cultivated
enough to have a healthy distaste for "mere, efficiency
without style or grace of action. _
If this really is the English attitude, reluctant to
countenance any policy which isolates culture from
practical effectiveness, does it not afford some hope that
we may be equal to the great task which now challenges
all our powers of educational synthesis? We have not
merely to absorb into an expanded conception of culture
the technical developments of the last fifty years and all
the consequences for life and society that they have
brought. We have rather to achieve a real synthesis
c
 26 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

between two conceptions of culture, both of them inherent

in the intellectual movement which dates from the Re-
naissance. Now and again, in times of upheaval and
widespread scepticism about traditional values, they have
come into sharp conflict. In times of social peace ~nd
prosperity, on the other hand, the conflict is apt to retire
into the study and become just a theme of debate between
opposing writers. But now the issue will have to be
' fairly joined, and a synthesis effected which will deter-
mine not only educational policy but social and adminis-
trative policy as well.
The two conceptions here in question may be de-
scribed sufficiently for our pu.rposes as the literary (or
classical) and the scientific (or "modern"). The one
goes back to Plato for its inspiration, a11-d, thoroughly
Greek in spirit as it is, lends itself to the education of an
aristocratic order. The other; though it too has its
affiliations with Greek thought, is, in its experimental
spirit and its devotion to what Francis Bacon calls
"studies for the relief of man's estate", a product of the
Renaissance. -
The continued existence of " sides " in English public
schools and of sep".rately organized first degrees of B.A. .
and B.Sc., in most English universities, shows that we
have not really effected a synthesis. And it is still
possible in England to take a queer kind of apologetic
pride in " knowing nothing about science ", and to suffer
no hindrance in social and political advancement in
consequence. One cannot help feeling that the whole
national attitude towards science in education needs to
undergo drastic revision. Science has to be thought ?f
not as a mysterious and highly complex cult, pursued by
highly specialized " scientists "; not as a many-sided
magician producing wonders for the populace and
 DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 27
profits for the enterprising; nor yet as a technical neces-
sity of modern life for which, however reluctantly, any
self-respecting school must make some provision. It is
rather modern life itself in one of its most fundamental
aspects, and therefore an essential basis of a modem
education for everybody. Not the whole basis by any
means, but an essential part of the whole.
The achievement of a true synthesis and the applying
of it to education may involve considerable changes not
only in the content of studies but also in methods of
teaching. Further, the distribution of scholarships at the
university level will have to come under review.
From the standpoint of this wider perspective, it should
be possible to estimate how far, and in what sense, the
proposal of the Spens Report for the establishment of
Technical High Schools is a real contribution towards
a solution, or rather whether it is a further step away
from the needed synthesis. And when we contemplate
the pressing problem of an effective relating of techniques
and technicians to the real needs of a modern society
through the medium of government, we catch a glimpse
of the task which lies before the universities.
It is a task much greater than, though akin to, that
which they achieved in the xgth century when they
adapted the traditional classical training to the pro-
duction of professional public servants who were at once
efficient and cultivated. But it is a task which, in a
very special sense, falls to the universities of this country.
But this is over-running the next chapter. Let us re-
emphasize the main point, that, while the conception of
education for culture has been dominant in England, it
was never wholly dissociated from the conception of a
" special " education for clearly-defined practical func-
tions. A comprehensive re-definition carried through in
28 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

the mid-Igth century brought the two conceptions into

still closer unity and probably prepared the way for a
further synthesis, not yet fully achieved, of the cultural
with the technical. The agents in this highly important
achievemeqt of Victorian society were: (I) School-
masters like Arnold and Thring, capable of re-inter-
preting the traditional content of the classical curriculum
in the light of contemporary needs. (2) The universities,
especially Oxford. (3) The new generation of public
schools. (4) The "reform" spirit in government,
affecting as it did both political parties. (5) " Publicist "
writers like Matthew Arnold and others-all too few of
them-who faced squarely both problems at once: the
problem of culture and the problem of social and govern-
mental efficiency., Whether contemporary writers in our
own age can rise to the same heights of vision and show
the same courage in casting off, where necessary, inhibi-
tions of class and prejudices of culture, is a question upon
the answer to which much may depend.
When we turn to " special " education as practised
in England, not surreptitiously and in disguise as for a
ruling class but direct and avowed, we come upon a
significant sociological fact. '.'Special" education is
that which is provided for the poor and for the mass of
the people in the interests not of culture but of usefulness.
Until quite recently an ancient popular culture, with
naturalistic and Christian elements indiscriminately inter-
mingled, was strong ir. England. It is the culture of the
fairies, the legends, the folk-songs and dances, the seasonal
customs, the nature lore and the proverbial wisdom of
rural England. Till about the middle of the 17th century or
a little later one may say that it was at the base of English
life and a fruitful source of material for literature. Shake-
peare'i work is full of it. Milton's sophistication could
 DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION- 29
not resist it. Bunyan drew from it the struc~ural sub-
·stance of his great allegory, and it was a I 7th-century
bishop who wrote the poem beginning, u Farewell,
rewards and fairies". It survived Puritanism and it
survived the sophistication of the 18th century and the
:Whig Oligarchy. True, it achieved this latter feat at
the expense of becoming to the school-educated elite
something sentimental and pathetically picturesque, as
it was to Gray in the "Elegy". In that phase it is
painfully like the view of the countryside as seen by the
town week-ender from the windows of his rustic cottage
as he writes to The Times about rural desecration-
a scenic background which exists primarily for the
satisfying of his own aestheticism.
But though it survived Puritanism and aristocratic
cosmopolitanism and sophistication, it could not survive
the Industrial Revolution and the institution of a national
system of schools. It never entered the schools at all
until quite recently, when it was already practically
dead, and certainly unintelligible to the large mass of
urbanized children. {The cynic may say that this is
typical, that nothing ever does enter the school curriculum
until it is already manageably inanimate.) Now, having
lost most of its native social and historical associations, it
has become little more than a field of quasi-archaeological
study by groups of enthusiasts organized for the purpose.
What survives of it may well be its musical Idiom, caught
and preserved just in time by Cecil Sharp, and incor-
porated in modern English music. For the rest it has
already passed into history, and those of us who are
fortunate enough to have acquired some tincture of it
from early associations know that we cannot pass it on
in living form to our children. Dickens might have been
a pioneer in the exposition of a corresponding folk-
30 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

culture of the towns. But the school, the cinema, the

radio and the popular Press have defeated any such hope,
and the " people " must either share a common culture
with their betters or have none at all.
It is such considerations as these which give weight to
the urgency of the need in England for a genuine popular
philosophy of education such as exists in the United States
and in some at least of the British Dominions. We shall
return to this later. But here it may be stated that the
mass of the English people have never yet evolved genuine
schools of their own. Schools have always been pro-
vided for them from above, in a· form and with a content
of studies that suited the ruling interests. It is not sur-
prising, then) that the avowed purpose of such schools
until quite rece:qtly was to induce usefulness rather than
culture. Existing popular culture was wholly set aside
as idle and trivial, and the "utilizable skills" of reading,
writing and arithmetic together with simple craftwork
and much moral teaching (with a strong emphasis on
the virtue of obedience) provided the staple. Even today
the legends and fairy-stories are a little suspect in many
schools as out of keeping with usefulness and moralizing
tendency. The Charity Schools of the 17th and 18th
centuries and the elementary schools of the I gth century
were all alike devoted to the same end, and the elementary
school of today, struggling towards a more adequate
cultural conception, is still under the influence of this
damnosa hereditas operating strongly even in minds that
would call themselves liberal.
The passing of the Education Act of 1902, while it
opened up a route to the secondary school and the
university to the elementary-school pupil, at the same
time offered the prospect of a new spaciousness and
breadth of culture to the elementary school itself. The
 n9
(j.
DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION 31
first issue of Suggestions to Teachers in Elementary Schools,
published by the Board of Education not long after the
passing of the Igo2 Act, may be taken as a manifesto
declaring the generous humanism which now governed
the official attitude. The establishment, under the
" Hadow " scheme, of a senior phase of elementary
education, together with the raising of the school-leaving
age to 15 and the erection of school buildings planned
to provide scope for the new humanism, have served to
make the elementary school still more potent as the seed·
ground of a genuine popular culture. Further, a body
of teachers is coming into existence well qualified to
interpret and convey the essentials of such a culture in
terms of the life of the area which the school serves.
But the effects of a long past during which it was the
rule that the many should be schooled for the service and
convenience of the few are not thus easily to be thrown
off, even if that past is no longer with us, as some would
contend that it ,still is. Hitherto there has appeared no
sure sign of the growth of a genuine popular philosophy
of education which would seize upon the elementary
school and make it the instrument of its own clearly
conceived social and cultural purposes. The good things
still come as gifts from above.. Some will even give
expression to uneasy doubts whether the habit of looking
to the governing class (" they " who do this and do that
to us and for us) for benefits and concessions is not so
deeply ingrained as to be ineradicable. Are the "people"
they ask, really interested in the elementary school as they
might be interested in a trade union or a club or a " co-
op ", as a thing of their own to be shaped to their social
purposes? Or is it only " getting on " in which they
are interested, as they seem to show still more plainly in
their attitude towards the secondary school?
32 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

These issues must be taken up later. Here we are

concerned only with a history and its obstinately resistant
effects.
The place. and prospects of technical education in the
development of English society will be· considered later.
It is "special" education in a rather new sense, stili free
from the limiting influence of class associations and full
of yet unrealized promise as a ·powerful agent in the
creation and propagation of a class-transcending culture.
Reference must be made, before closing this chapter,
to one other unhappy consequence of the semi-servile,
non-cultural level upon which the education of the
masses of the people proceeded for so long. Shut off
almost entirely by lack of access to higher education
from careers above the normal working-class level, they,
quite naturally took the new facilities provided under
the Act of 1902 as offering the chance not of achieving a
generous humanistic culture, but of rising in the social
and economic scale. Indeed, what else could have been
expected? So now we have the spectacle of a frustrated
secondary school, designed to provide a liberal culture
for selected pupils and seized upon by ambitious parents
as a sure, if thorny, path of advancem'ent for their off-
spring. This is one of the ironies of history, surely. The
offer to suitably equipped members of the masses of a
share in what had hitherto been the culture of the privi·
leged is seized upon and converted into a new form of
the old " special " education. " Getting-on " seems to
be a half-sister of servility. No wonder there are those
who believe that the hope of a genuine common culture
at a reasonably high level is more likely to be realized
through the senior schools, the technical schools and
diverse facilitie~ for adult education, than by a secondary
school frustrated from one side by its out-of-date and
 DETERMINANTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION
90
33 '
out-:of-place apeing of the old "privileged" tradition,
and from another side by parental ambition which sees
in the " ladder " steps not to Parnassus but to a secure
job and a villa in Suburbia.
The position of the secondary school is, indeed, crucial,
and we shall have to return to it. The function it serves
as an in~trument of social selection is quite indispensable,
and this must be performed at the secondary stage of
education. More than any other institution the secondary
school carries the weight of the problem of reconciling
the "push " of legitimate ambition with the claims of
culture. The problem is never perhaps wholly soluble,
but there are encouraging signs that the secondary
schools are increasingly aware of its pressure and be-
coming better equipped to face it.
 CHAPTER II
THE PRESENT SITUATION

IN the preceding discussion it has been found necessary

to refer occasionally in some detail to the facts of the
present situation as illustrating the effects produced by
historic forces. It will now be convenient to develop
these references in the form of a survey of the interplay
of influences as it presents itself to a contemporary eye.
We may begin with a brief catalogue of the institutional
forms of educational provision at- present functioning in
England:- ·
(I) A national system of " elementary " schools,
derived from the Igth century and now (a) expanding
and specializing itself at both ends, at the lower end by
the growth of nursery schools and re-integrated infants
schools, and at the upper end by the development of
senior schools (I I + to Is) under the' Hadow re-organ-
ization, leaving the junior school (7 to I I +) in between:
(b) re-interpreting' itself as an institution for the com.·
munication of a basic common culture rather than as one
for the guarantee of lower-class usefulness, and finding in
the process an urgent need for the prolonging of systematic
education well into the years of adolescence.
(2) An extraordinarily complex system of" secondary"
schools (i.e., "secondary" in the technical administra-
tive sense, which from any purely educational point of
view is as illogical as it is ill-defined. The Spens Report
could not fail to recognize this).
34
 01
t/ .1.
THE PRESENT SITUATION 35
The diversity here presented is in no sense educational.
It is important that this should be understood. For
"secondary" education in England is suffering severely,
as the Spens Report again recognizes, from a grave lack
of genuine educational diversity.\ The newer schools,
staffed in many cases by men bred in the old tradition,
and often under the influence of governors of the same
cultural stock, have tended to follow only too faithfully
the model of the ancient schools, " public " and " gram-
mar , • In this they have not been discouraged, if not
actively encouraged, by their lower middle-class and
upper working-class clientele. In British colonies,.especially
in Africa, strong suspicion is revealed of any attempt to
adapt secondary education to. local needs and conditions
as concealing a design to rob aspiring pupils and parents
of the hope of achieving " caste ". The same suspicion
was strong until recently even in England, towards
attempts to work out special secondary curricula suitable
for the education of girls. Now today it is active among
the classes of the population whose hopes C?f achiev'ing
status are founded upon the new facilities that were
opened up by the Act of 1902. Overwhelmingly the
driving force is the desire for status rather than for educa'
tion as such. Within broad limits any kind of curriculum
will be accepted so long as the successful study of it
achieves this. It is not easy, in view of all the circum-
stances, to condemn the attitude of the socially aspiring
in such a matter. They are not to blame either for a
very natural ambition or for accepting the conditions,
not determined at all by them, under which alone the
ambition can be satisfied.
The result has been a certain failure on the part of
the secondary school to seize its full opportunity. Ob-
sessed too often with an idea of " education for its own
36 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

sake " which in point of fact derived very largely from

the peculiar position of a small leisured class, and a
notion of the " true" content of a liberal education
which failed to take note of the extent to which this
curriculum was really designed to serve the vocational
needs of a ruling class of cultivated amateurs, 'it has so
far not fully grasped its true social purpose. As we
might expect, this is less true of the girls' schools than
of those fpr boys, but it is truer than it ought to be for
all alike.
It should have been recognized that if the new aspirants
were to become members of a ruling class at all it would
be a ruling class of quite a new kind, ·needing, a new
kind of discipline; that the social origin and conditions
of home experience of this great new body of pupils
differed widely from those of pupils of the older " privi-
leged " schools and therefore called for a different
educational treatment; and that, in general, the situa-
tion called for a determined effort in a society so con-
stituted to transcend a distinction between culture and
vocation which was itself an integral and necessary
element in an older class inheritance. As for the parents,
so long as the all-important issue of the achievement of
status was not compromised they would have accepted a·
curriculum which gave to John or Mary a truly relevant
education, even though it' departed somewhat widely
from the traditional curriculum, provided that John and
Mary could obtain the School Certificate equally well
on either course.
So the problem of relevant adjustment still faces us after
nearly forty years' experience of the new conditions.
Happily the Spens Report reveals a clear grasp of the
situation and quite justly apportions to the Board of
Education a large share of the blame for the failure.
 THE PRESENT SITUATION 37
For it was the Board's own Regulations of 1904 which
gave official sanction to the view that the new schools
were to follow so closely the model of the old.1
It is necessary to make this much clear at once in
view of the crucial importance of the new "·secondary "
schools for the coming order. We can now return to the
task of discriminating roughly the. various types of
" secondary " school. The differences, as has been
noted, are much less educational than they ought to be.
They are rather social, historical, and administrative.
We may thus distinguish:-
(a) The "public" schools, falling perhaps into the
two groups of the greater and the less, with the boun-
dary line at the lower end sufficiently vague, except in
so far as it is marked by membership of the Head-
masters' Conference. These schools regard themselves
as " national " in a special and almost exclusive sense
and are disposed to regard public service as limited to
the ranges-the upper ranges generally-in which they
themselves are interested. They are intensely jealous
of their private and independent status, and have
hitherto been little disposed to assimilate themselves to
1 The criticism here formulated must not be construed as placing
the responsibility solely upon those directly in charge of the schools.
The preceding chapter will have failed in its purpose if it has not
shown that the result here criticized was inherent in' the English
social situation itself. The secondary schools have themselves
played a great part in the trapsforrning of that situation, perhaps
as great as they were allowed /to play, and it was only natural that
they should have begun by very largely accepting it. Thirty years
or more ago there were few Englishmen who did not, in real fact,
accept it. .
Not the least of the many values of the Spens Report is the clear
realization it exhibits that an epoch has ended and that English
secondary schools are now in a position to form an adequate idea
of their permanent function in English society. We return to this
in the following chapter. '
38 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

the State-controlled system which they have tended

to regard as being " for the people "- rather than
" national "-. Liberal movements towards the break·
down of exclusiveness and a wider conception of the
truly national are by no means lacking, but they seem
unable to make much headway against the weight of
an oppressive inheritance, or against the pressure of
the clientele for the social privilege which the ,schools
are regarded as able to guarantee. In their present .
condition the public schools are much more the tied
prisoners of their own history than the stage villains
they are sometimes represented to be, bent on slaughter·
ing in its infancy the unwanted child of an upstart
democracy. '
(b) The Sta.te-controlled schools.. These again fall
into various groups. Many are provided and main-
tained by local authorities. Many others, chiefly old
grammar schools re-habilitated, are classed as schools
" aided " by local authorities. Still others remain
administratively independent of the local authority
and receive grants direct from the Board of Education.
But all alike, as sharing in public funds, are required
to reserve a certain number of " special places "
for pupils selected at I I + from the elementary
schools.
Allowing for certain local and special differences we
may regard the members of this group as very much
alike educationally, bound together as they are by the
strong common tie of the School Certificate, a goal to
which the great bulk of their pupils aspire.

(N.B.-Grave dissatisfaction is widely felt with the

mode of selection for special places. Proposals for
reform are discussed in the next chapter.)
 (!C)
e}d
THE PRESE,NT SITUATION 39
(c) The "private" schools. This again is a some-
what motley group. It includes all those schools which
regard themselves as " secondary " (though taking
often many pupils not of adolescent age) but are
neither " public" nor State-controlled. A good many
of them are inspected and, if satisfactory, "certified
efficient " by the Board; a few are " freak " schools;
of many very little is known. ' .
It is difficult to see how, in a re-constituted order of
things, any of these schools can be left altogether free
of public supervision: · ,
(d) Junior Technical Schools. These may be in-
cluded here, though their claim to " secondary ''
status is sometimes contested. They take pupils
(mainly boys, but some girJs) at the age of 13 + and
prepare them in a three years' course for a specific
trade or group of trades, taking care at the same time
of the claims of general culture. Though their number
is small-they exist only in large cities-their import-
ance as an educational experiment is increasingly
recognized. What they are trying to do is now better
understood, being nothing less than that transcending
in practice of the vocational-cultural distinction which
we now see to be of such urgent importance. The
experience gained by these schools provided the Spens
Committee with grounds for proposing the further
experiment of Technical High Schools. Of this pro-
posal something must be· said later. '

(3) Institutions of "Further" Education. Of- these

there is a bewildering variety, covering either part-time
or full-time courses. They include: technical education,
senior and junior; evening institutes, senior and junior;
adult education of a more systematic and continuous
 40 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

kind than that given in evening institutes; day con-

tinuation schools; art schools; and some other varieties.
All of these are in some form or other "recognized"-
that is, they are supported by local education authorities
and rank for grant-aid from the Board of Education.
Their relation to the full-time " ordinary " school system
varies. Technical courses are closely related, most even-
ing institute courses can.hardly be said to be related at
all. Much of the provision has come into existence to
meet demands of almost endless variety, including not
only play-acting and keep-fit classes, but even such
interests as pigeon-fancying.
(4) Informal organizations. The term is used to
include a very numerous and widely varied body of com-
munity activities, not necessarily designed for an expressly
educational purpose, not usually aided from public funds
or controlled by public authority, but having nevertheless
real educational value and importance. These include
such organizations as Boy Scouts and Girl Guides,
women's institutes, young farmers' clubs, community
centres in town and village, B.B.C. listening groups,
dramatic societies, ramblers' clubs and many others in
, rich abundance. Co-ordinating machinery, like that of
the National Council of Social Service and the recently
created Youth Organization, exists to preserve some
unity of direction and to promote mutual help.
Most of these organizations are new in that they arise
in response to novel situations brought about by a
rapidly changing social and economic order. The needs
to which they are a response are deeply felt rather than
clearly defined, and though the various types are, as a
rule, each served by some loose form of national co-
ordination, little has yet been done to bring about co-
ordination as between the different types or to relate
 THE PRESENT SITUATION

them in any organic way to the regular national system

of educational facilities. Such links of the latter kind
as do exist connect, on the official side, with some form
or other of" further , education.
The whole of this rich modern growth is full of interest
and is now receiving serious attention from students of
social change. It testifies to continuing social vitality, to
a continuing power of adaptation and creation in response
to need. The relations in which it is to stand to more
systematic (school) provision for education remain still
undetermined. But developments seem to be moving
towards the creation of some kind of Ministry of Culture,
not indeed to reduce the natural jungle to a trim totali-
tarian garden, but to minimize wasted effort, to increase
effectiveness, and above all to interpret and direct
institutional action of whatever kind that has a distinct
educational bearing so that it may contribute towards
the ends of a genuine common culture. English habit
would not take kindly to the institution of such an
authority. But the needs of freedom itself in a planned
society may require such action, and there seems to be
nothing in the idea that is wholly irreconcilable with
established English ways.
When we add to the above list the cinema, the radio
and the theatre, we get a fuller measure both of the
range of the possibilities and of the problem of co-
ordination and harmonized inspiration. But the B.B.C.
is there to witness that in one important field at least
the principle of central guidance has been conceded.
Since the B.B.C., on one important side of its organiza-
tion, works in close touch with the schools and with
bodies directing adult education, the development of its
activities will need to be studied with particular care
just because of the great possibilities that may open out
D
42 . EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE
if the principles of its action can be applied to other far-
reaching cultural agents. With the B.B.C. in such vigour
and with such fruitful contacts it will be flying in the
face of experience to allege that central guidance of
cultural agencies is as impossible in England as it is
alleged to be undesirable. ·
(N.B.-The universities are omitted from the above
account, as it is felt that they call for separate treatment.
Moreover the course of change which they follow will be
determined even more by developments in the general
s'chool system than by any independent play of social
influences upon them. The charge that the universities,
through matriculation demands and in other ways,
exercise " tyranny " over the schools arises from a mis-
reading of the forces. So-called " tyranny " is, in sub-
stance, a respons~ to the real desire of the community.
It is not the universities that have caused the matricula-
tion certificate to be so widely demanded for entrance
to employment, and the schools could at any time over·
throw a " tyranny " that they were not, at heart, prepared
to accept.)
It is not proposed here to discuss methods of adminis-
tration. They will need to be reviewed, of course, but
in general they are so well established and so congenial
to English habit that they are likely to adapt themselves
readily enough to new tasks and new needs.
In closing this chapter one illustration may be given to
throw light on what some would call the rich diversity,
others the caste structure, of English educational tradi-
tion. If by the term " educational system " is meant a
series of school stages or separated avenues by which one
may pass to the university, then England has at least
three rather sharply segregated education systems. These
are:-
 0~
THE PRESENT SITUATION 43 tJ U
(I) Home governess: preparatory school; public
school.
(2) Elementary school: State-aided secondary school.
(3) Private school or schools.
These are routes entirely separate from one another,
touching nowhere until they reach the university. Com·
posites of two of them are possible, such as-
Private school: State-aided secondary school (com..
mon).
Preparatory school: State-aided secondary school
(less common).
Elementary school: public school (virtually un-
known),
So far as we are aware there are no studies. of English
social structure and class distinction which have set
themselves to estimate with some precision the real
social effects of these diverse routes to the goal. If their
diversity arose, as it is sometimes claimed to arise, from
healthy desire for originality and adventure in educa-
tional effort, this might well be cause for congratulation
rather than misgiving. But it can hardly be seriously
maintained that this is so. The segregation is surely to
be explained on social grounds, and it might well be
argued that the three routes traced above might be
expressed as :-
(I) The Free Front Door.
(2) The Side Entrance.
(3) The Front Door on Conditions.
Criticism of such a state of things is probably mis-
directed if it fastens upon the mere fact of the existence
of alternative routes. There is nothing inherently anti-
44 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

social in such _an arrangement taken by itself. Indeed,

it is easy to see that it may hold out positive advantages not
offered by a single " end-on " system of grades such as
finds favour aU over North America. English habit
would not take kindly to such a system in any case.
What is open to criticism is the comparative absence
of cross connexions between the different routes, the
virtual exclusion of the great mass of pupils in the senior
schools from any of them, and the fact that certain of
the routes lead more surely and· directly than others to
social advancement and positions of authority, even
apart from any purely educational superiority that these
more favoured routes may be able to claim. We can
hardly continue to contemplate an England where the
mass of the people coming on by one educational path
are to be governed for the most part by a minority
advancing along' a quite separate and more favoured
path.
Nothing quite like this exists in any British Dominion
or in the United States. Indeed, it would be hardly
intelligible in such lands. Its continuance is probably
doing more harm to English social unity and to English
relations with the world than many other much more
noticed and openly criticized influences. Yet what an
illustration it is of the English disregard of the " taken
for granted " that such a phenomenon, so far from being
closely studied as a profoundly important index of
English life and education, is seldom even referred to
in any but highly professional circles!
The immediate problems of co-ordination, re-direction
and re-inspiration which have to be faced can be better
discussed in the wider perspective of the next chapter.
The most urgent of them is that of selection, of determin·
ing at the age, say, of I I + who shall proceed to full
 THE PRESENT SITUATION

" secondary " education and who shall continue in some

form of " post-primary " education of lesser esteem.
There is widespread dissatisfaction with the present form
+
of selective examination at I I and, very significantly,
a growing conviction that what is of primary importance
is not so much reconstruction of the machinery of selec-
tion to fulfil its present purpose, as a complete recon-
sideration of the question as to what selection is to be
(or. In other words, the question " Who is to be taught
what by whom and how? " must be asked in respect of
the whole child population, and with especial point and
precision at the beginning of adolescence. Selection thus
loses its present "sheep and goats" character and
becomes rather a systematic sorting by criteria of aptitude
and ability as distinct from prerogatives of class. For a
community one of whose central problems is now the
democrati<,ing of aristocrary-that is, the preservation of
aristocratic quality and temper and standards in its
government and social functioning while using only
democratic criteria in its devices for social selection-
the issue is all-important. We shall return to it later.1
Cognate with this is the task of providing a suitable
diversity of forms of educational treatment at the adoles-
cent stage with both parity of status and ease of transfer
as between one type and another. The· Spens Report.
makes important recommendations on this head. But
as these seem to presuppose that educational readjust-
ments such as it suggests precede rather than follow corre-
sponding social change, the practicability of its sugges-
tions is open to doubt. It is surely a little naive to
1 Wf! say " one of whose central problems " so as not to overlook
the even greater problem of preserving unity and fellowship and
public-spirited service in a democracy as a whole which thus organizes
1tself for the progressive and continuous evocation of its own
aristocracy.
4_.6 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

imagi~e that in the present state of English society real

parity of status can be established between the " modern "
school for the unselected goats and the " grammar "
school for the carefully selected sheep.
A third pressing task, now that the school-leaving age
has been raised to 15, is to fix a suitable ·terminus a~ quem
for the senior school. This will not be easy, as the
pupils who pass through these schools-the great majority
of the child population-are. very mixed, representing
many types of interest and levels of ability, and there is
a strong and salutary desire not to introduce any set
leaving examination into these schools. A solution may
be found in a better integrated system of " further "
education the facilities and opportunities of which might
exercise much the same steadying and consolidating
influence upon the senior school as do the demands of
the universities an'd the professional bodies upon the
" grammar " school.
Finally, there is the great task of adapting the regular
school system to the still-developing structure of technical
e.ducation. The way to that is hardly clear yet, but the
importance of the task is now becoining better under·
stood.
 97

CHAPTER III
LINES OF RE-ADAPTATION

THE question now to be faced is the inevitable one that

many people are beginning to ask themselves more or
less explicitly. The resources of English life and culture,
English government, English industry, English education,
have in the past shown fruitful capacity for adaptation
to the challenges of new tasks and new situations. With
more or less of improvization and with more or less of
significant reaction back upon society, they have served
to weather this storm and that and to come through one
ordeal of change after another while still preserving the
same recognizable traits, sustaining the same kind of
society and reacting to the same sort of impulses. But
now the old security has gone and ·the demands to be
met, involving as they •do not only adjustment to far-
reaching technical change but comprehensive " extra-
national " adjustment to a whole world which in becom-
ing one is transforming our ideas of national sovereignty
and Empire alike, will certainly call for changes in social
relationships that can hardly take effect without much
friction and conflict. How far can the existing educa-
tional order be adapted so as to facilitate these changes~
and to sustain and nourish the new order as it comes
into being?
The discussion which follows must be regarded as
wholly tentative, for there are many incalculables in the
situation, and while the statement of a view may call for
41
 48 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

courage, it calls also for caution, lest hasty revolutionary

impulses should lead to the destruction of much that is
valuable and capable of incorporation into the new
order.
1
Whether the form of society here contemplated is
" classless " or not is a question over which we need not
linger. The answer to it will depend, obviously, upon
what we are to mean by " class ". If the term is to
mean a group the members of which carry privileges
disproportionate to their functions, whether too much or
too little, we may say at once that we look for a class·
less society. But is it not precisely this habit of thinking
about education in terms of class which has made our
educational categories and terminology the chaotic thing
they are? Our thinking is likely to be much more
relevant both to actual social necessities and to the values
of education as arr instrument of social control and trans·
formation if we keep it clear of any distracting ideas of a
rigid class.structure.
Our handling of the topic of this chapter may take the
form of a setting out of the main changes which, as it
appears, the educational system will have to undergo if
. the traditions it embodies are to be re-valued and re·
interpreted so as to preserve and enhance social cohesion
and to generate the social power which the necessities of
a changed order will call for. We can set them out
under a few comprehensive headings:-

(I) Unification of the System over the Whole Range.

In view of the characteristically English fears which
may be aroused by the use of that ominous word " uni·
fication ", we would affirm at once that it means just
what it says-a making one of that which is now far from
 (JQ
vu
LINES OF RE•ADAPT ATION 49 I

being one. It does not mean the s~bjection of all educa-

tion alike to the bureaucratic control of a central State
authority. Such a thing seemS" so little possible in
England, of all countries, that one is led to wonder
why the fear of it should so often find such veh~ment
expression.
It is not possible~ here to give more than a broad
indication of the main framework of the unifying that we
have in view. Its leading idea may perhaps be expressed
as the adaptation of a modified form of the principle of
l'ecole unique (as the French call it), with due regard for
English concern for a wide diversity of school types. In
other words, the adaptation in England of -a common
" endwon " principle providing for equal access to suit·
able forms of education must be qualified by certain
essential guarantees of freedom, such as the freedom of
individual schools to use and develop their resources in
accordance with their own expert judgement of the needs
to be met, and the freedom of parents within reasonable
limits to select the schools to which they will send their
children. Mere multiplication of separate schools is not
desired so much as the securing of a system where
all essential needs are freely met, and within which
adaptation of provision to educational need is sure and
easy.
With this proviso, and with some reservations as to
details to be made later, we now suggest that the time
has come to bid once for all a wholly unsentimental fare-
well to the term " elementary " as applied to any branch
of English Education. So long as we continue to use
the word not only will the old hampering and increasingly
obsolete " class , associations continue to infect our
thinking, but we shall be prevented from viewing with
clear eyes that great field of secondary education in which
50 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

our main task of re~onstruction lies. The Had ow Report

and the Spens Report should have taught us by now to
think of secondary education as one whole design planned
to cover the requirements of the entire adolescent popu-
lation. Thus if the school-leaving age is fixed at 15,
and provision is then made for continued educative
control after that up to the age of 18, this further pro-
vision should still be regarded as falling within secondary
education even though it may contemplate forms of
training not carried on in. a school at all.
Our thinking should, indeed, set out from this concep-
tion. Instead of stretching an " elementary " system
and producing a " senior" school that is something quite
other than that highly selective senior school to which
above we give the name secondary, we should begin our
planning with the essential problem of adolescence and
adapt the earlier· stages of education to the form of
provision we choose for the later stage. What is hap-
pening now, however, is that inherited habit, still em-
bodied in the existing school system, tends to intervene
between us and a clear sight of the needs of adolescence
as a whole. If, putting the matter at its lowest, the
achievement of a genuine common culture at a fairly
high level is becoming a matter of life or death to us,
and if that achievement implies common norms of educa-
tion in freely accessible schools, why do we hysitate?
The dropping of the term " elementary " and all that it
connotes would do much to remove the scales from our
eyes so that we should recognize the " senior " school
as secondary and the " secondary " school as only one
kind of senior.
Once this conception is firmly grasped (and it is easy
to delude ourselves that we have grasped it when we
have not really done so), a further suggestion that is
 LINES OF R.E·ADAPTATION

even more startling presents itself. Why should the

" break " between junior and senior stages come at I I +?
Is not the idea that it should do so also influenced by
inherited habit and the associations that cling about the
word " elementary"? Suppose we were starting all
afresh with no inherited " elementary " presuppositions
but with the knowledge that schooling was to continue
for everybody up to at least the age of IS. Should we
still fix the " break" at 1 I +, and perhaps find some
version of the psychology and physiology of adolescence
to justify it? Or should we not rather set ourselves to
extract the maximum of educational value out of those
precious ten years from 5 to IS, treated as one whole, and
arrange for " breaks " at points determined by the
nature of the progression in the education itself? Ex-
perience unaffected by " elementary " presuppositions
and undistorted by special pleading about the " onset "
of adolescence would seem to suggest that for the normal
child with normal schooling the age of 9 is a more
appropriate point for a break than that of I 1. By this
time he will have gained command of the rudimentary
tools of knowledge and his physical system is in a stage
of hardening and consolidation which makes him capable
of a high degree of sustained energy. Moreover, if the
essentials of a worthy common culture together with at
least the beginning of personal and vocational specializa-
tion are to be satisfactorily achieved, a six-year period
of " senior " schooling is none too long. Experience in
schools other than the " public elementary " has shown
that at about the age of 9 a boy can make a start with
his French, his elementary mathematics and elementary
science, can begin to broaden the range of his reading
and to broaden and refine his powers of craftsmanship
and manual skill.
52 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

On the other hand, there is a widespread feeling that

the last two years in the "junior'' school as at present
organized (down to 1 I +), though they are far from
being wasted, are not as usefully occupied as they might
be (sometimes, indeed, they are spent in feverish cram-
ming for secondary school scholarships!). With the
break coming at 9 rather than 11 +, there would be a
prospect of more advantageous economy in the use of
these two .years. The break, let it be noted, implies a
change of schooling rather than a change of school. There
will continue to be schools, perhaps an increasing number
of them, which retain pupils throughout the years 9 to 18,
taking in other pupils at various recognized levels. But
the point to emphasize here is not so much the need for
a diversity of schools, as the need for substantial agree·
ment on the stages of education whatever the school
may be. ·
A further break, or at least a pause for review, would
come at about 13. From 9 to 13 the scheme of studies
would have necessarily to remain broadly uniform for all
alike, with however increasing watchfulness, taking all
the conditions into account, to discover the lines of
further education most suitable for each pupil. At 13
there would be a drafting of some to the junior technical
school, some to the technical high school if it comes
into being, some, especially those destined for the univer·
sity and the professions, to grammar schools which will
already have taken in some pupils at 9 and will keep
many until I 8 or more. And if the public schools should
be willing to draw their own recruits from the common
national pool (the units of which will already have had
four years of relevant preparation), and if they are put
in a position to do so, the age of 13 should suit them
well enough.
 LINES OF RE-ADAPTATION
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.53
+
On the other hand, if the break at I I really is de-
creed by Nature and not secreted as it were by the
workings of English social chemistry, then we must
accept it. If we are to be logical and obedient in our
educational arrangements to Nature's laws,' we must
also accept the, consequences. " Secondary" schools
must be forbidden to. receive pupils before that age
(whereupon many of them will go off to private schools)
and the public schools must bring their entrance quali-
fication down to that age (and so disturb very seriously
the age-group balance of their school-body and increase
enormously its internal problems).
Looked at from the point of view here taken the break
+
at I 1 seems to be obviously calculated to make the
worst of both worlds, junior and senior. Does not every
consideration, especially prophetic consideration of the
demands of the future, call for a reversal of the prevailing
division of the years, to four junior and six senior instead
of the other way about?
This, then, is the framework of ideas governing a com-
pulsory minimum of common full-time education from
5 to IS· We ask for a complete and final abandonment
of the word " elementary " and all the ideas which, in
England, have accompanied the use of it; for the division
of the ten years into four junior and six senior years,
and for a point of review at I 3 when pupils whose full-
time education is to continue beyond the compulsory
minimum will be allocated to the appropriate school or
section of a school.. It is devoutly to be hoped that the
public schools may, in time, come to share in the general
sorting process at this point.
Even if these ideas are generally accepted (as they will
probably not be), they will take time to carry into
execution. But we should at least hope to see some
 54 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

degree of adaptation along these lines where existing

conditions do not raise insuperable difficulties.
It has seemed well to sketch thus broadly the main
organism fre~ from complicating details. We must now
go on to note some consequential adjustments of, and
developments from, this central mass: These can be
set out only very briefly here, though it is recognized
both that any one of them might provide material for a
considerable book and that many matters~ of detail cannot .
here be touched upon at all.
· Three aspects of adjustment call for particular men-
tion:-
(a) The '~ Full '~ Secondary School.-That is, a school
taking its pupils as early as 9 years of age and retaining
them until 18 or more. It would be organized into pre·
paratory or junior (9 to 13), middle (13 to IS) and upper
(15 to 18) schools.· Pupils would enter from other schools
at 13 to IS ann would normally be intending to pass on
through the upper school. The great development of
Sixth Forms in recent years opens. the way to the organ-
ization of an upper school of this kind rich in diversity
of opportunity and increasingly related, at its upper
end, to the requirements of the universities and the
professions.
The relegation of School Certificate to the status of an
internal examination, taken along with the fuller de-
velopment of the upper school, should free the " middle "
school from the cramping influences of an external
examination designed on pre-university lines, encourage
a greater diversity of curricula, and make possible a
much closer integration of present-day " secondary "
and " senior " types.
The technical high school, if it comes into being,
should fall into this class rather than into that of technical
 LINES OF RE·ADAPTATION
1.01
55 1

institutions as such. It will differ from the more academic

type of school in having as a rule no preparatory sectio~,
and in being closely related in all its work both to industry
and to the large technical colleges. But it must be
essentially a secondary rather than a professional school,
devoted to its peculiar significant task of the humanizing
of techniques, a pioneer in the work of incorporating
new technical elements, with all their implications, into
a developing common culture.
As for the junior technical school as it now exists, there
would seem to be no case for any radical change in its
work and status if a general scheme of organizing educa-
tion on lines such as those indicated above were followed.
It would share in the selection of pupils at the 13 point
and would retain them until 16 unless, as is likely, it
developed ~n upper school and retained some at least of
its pupils until 18.
(b) " Transfer."-It has already been made clear that a
good deal of transfer from school to school will be in..
valved, especially at the review point of 13. But transfer
is not necessarily and in itself a good thing. An increase
in the number of" full" secondary schoo,ls and a pro-
cess of assimilation between the present " senior " schools
and what is here called " middle "· secondary would
reduce the need for it.
Perhaps too much has already been said in the Spens
Report and elsewhere about the attainment of" parity"
as between the various types of secondary school. The
debate is apt to be barren and unreal except in so far as
social cachets and " caste , urges interfere with the
sovereign claims of relevancy of training. Just as the State
uses its power and influence to protect the young against
such things as disease, under-nourishment and economic
exploitation, so it should use them to protect all alike
S6 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE,

from the misdirection and maladjustments that may arise

from unsuitable training.
It is less likely to succeed by a frontal attack on snob-
beries and prejudices than by unceasing emphasis in all
its procedure on what we have called relevancy of training.
Many a parent does not find it easy to allow a just
estimate of the real interests and ambitions of his child
to override his own social ambitions on the child's behalf.
It is in the interests both of the child and the community
that the State, in its attitude and actions, should give
him strong inducement to do so.
This seems to be a convenient point at which to say
something about the public schools. It is misdirected
criticism which concentrates the attack on them on
points of purely educational alertness and competence.
The truth is that many of them are even more sensitive
than some other schools to new demands and possi·
bilities. They are in general alive and vigorous educa·
tionally and are continually adding to their already rich
facilities. The real point of criticism is not that the
education they offer is bad, but that it is so good and
so much needed that it ought to be more generally
accessible. Their standards of truth and honour are
high and real, even though in application they may go
a litde awry through intellectual limitation or the un·
conscious influence of class-prejudice. In such a world
as this, that alone is no small treasure. Also there have
been many signs of late of a quickening and expanding
social sense, together with a weakening of complacency
.and uncritical self-admiration.
The real demand that the public schools and their
pupils have now to make upon themselves is one for the
frank acceptance of full exposure. They need to realize
.how much of their achievement and prestige is to be
 1.t~..~
') ')
LINES OF RE•ADAPTATION 57
ascribed to social privilege rather than to sheer educa-
tional virtue; to realize also what they lose by under-
exposure. For privilege is always attended by its
nemesis. In a society so organized as to offer a generous
uncovenanted bonus for a white skin or for good fortune
of birth the penalty upon the receiver is, in the long run,
debilitation and a false estimate of his own powers.
The public-school boy starts life with peculiar advantages
not necessarily because he is inherently superior but just
because he is a public-school boy. There would be
justice in this if the public schools came fully within the
area of national selection, taking their pupils out of the
common pool as a result of the sorting process referred
to above. If they continue to stand out they will become
more and more the object of resentment as wishing to be
u.dvantaged both ways, and as narrowing the range of
" national service " unduly to exalt their own prestige
and to serve their peculiar sectional interests.
The choice before them is indeed a hard one. But
in the society that is taking shape they cannot be both
class-schools and broadly national. The choice may be,
indeed, painfully like that set before the rich young
ruler, but they will go away very sorrowful indeed if
they choose wrong. There is no honest defence, no
democratic defence, indeed no genuine aristocratic defence,
for the continuance of their present position. To con-
tinue it against all the forces that are coming into play
will both intensify social conflict and weaken the power
of Britain to co-operate with the other free peoples of
the world, even with those in the British Commonwealth
itself.
That for the negative side. On the positive side
cannot one feel that there is a great store of ability
locked up and as it were potbound in the public schools,
E
 58 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

awaiting release for full exercise in the wide and truly

national field? When the staffs of public schools do
find themselves free to take this comprehensive view and
take the full measure of the field within which their
powers and energies should be available, one may look
for a great access of strength to 'English education
generally. ,
(c) "Continued" Education.-It has long been clear to
those who have studied the needs of youth and of a
modern society in relation to youth that ten years of
full-time schooling, even if all the time is used to full
effect, cannot be sufficient to achieve all the results that
education must now aim to produce. For consider what
has to be done: attainment of a sufficiently high level of
acquirement to participate with mutual advantage in
the common cul~ure; command of techniques, both those
which are general to the community and those which
are special for the individual vocation; knowledge of the
nature and sources of power in the modern world (a great
matter· this, touching much of science, mathematics and
geography as well as history and "civics") ; insight into
the motives and forces of individual and community
action, together with trained moral perception and the
integration of all that is learnt into the stable volitional
structure that we call Character: these are only some of
the objectives that have to be striven for.
Some parts of the task cannot even be attempted
before the age of I 5, not for lack of time but for lack
of maturity and breadth of experience in the pupil.
Also there are valuable forms of educative experience
whlch no school alone can really provide, such as adequate
contact with a variety of social types and the kind of
naked exposure to testing circumstances which is all the
less likely as school itself becomes more generously pro-
 LINES OF RE.;ADAPTATION
103
59
tective. And for many a boy and girl the restraints of
even a good school begin to chafe a little around the
age of I 5· Such pupils may be needing the discipline
of the stern restraints which come from a more raw and
unmediated contact with the world.
Considerations such as these point to the need for the
maintaining of some form of educative control up to at
least the age of I8. The coming of compulsory military
service will have a significant relation to the fulfilling of
such a need. The establishment of a national youth
organization is a further recent and important step
towards it.
It would be disastrous if we thought of the necessary
organization in terms only of the compulsory " Con-
tinuation Schools " that were set up by the " Fisher "
Act of tgi8. This did embody the principle, it is true,
but a far wider diversity of provision is needed now.
What is wanted is a generous and flexible system of wise
and friendly tutelage drawing freely upon every kind of
social resource that can be brought into its service. It
might even be found discreet not to talk about " schools "
at all in this connexion more than is unavoidable.
We do not propose to detail here the many forms of
existing social power that might thus be drawn upon.
Though they are numerous, new forms may nevertheless
have to be invented. Fortunately, there is every promise
that the whole range of possibilities will now be sur-
veyed. So we need say no more here except to express
the confident hope:-

(i) That the survey will be exhaustive and complete

both in its grasp of the nature of the service to be
provided and of the potentialities of available resources.
(ii) That it will not build its plans on the assump-
60 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

tion that the existing system of compulsory full-time

education will remain as it is. If it does do so, it will
not achieve its full objective.
N.B.-Nomenclature.
Before proceeding farther, it seems· well to insert here
a warning about the havoc that may be wrought in our
thinking by the tyranny of routine terms. Mention has
already been made of the cramping and distorting effects
of such terms as "elementary" and "Continuation
School ". But " secondary " is quite as bad, and there
is almost no limit to the disastrous play that could be
made with " technical , . Just as it would improve our
political thinking if we could dispense for a while with
the sounding hollowness of words like " democracy , ,
" international '.', " pacifism ", " collective security , as
they are very generally employed, so it would improve
our thinking about education if we could shake off the
narrow provincialism that so often goes with the glib
use of the official administrative terms. We might then
see more clearly the growing boys and girls of the nation
in the light of their real needs in the sort of world they
will have to live in. Rather daringly, and perhaps a
little mischievously, it may even be suggested that one
effect of so doing might be a significant change in the
relationship of the various. bodies of organized teachers
which now reflect still too faithfully the sectionalisms
that arise from the dominance of official terms.

(2) Transcending of the Cultural-Vocational Distinction.

The maintenance of this distinction, tracing its descent
from a slave-based economy, can be no longer tenable
in a modern industrial democracy where (i) all are to be
" free "; (ii) freedom itself becomes increasingly depen·
 LINES OF' RE·ADAPTATION
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/.1

dent not only upon technical mastery but upon the

humanization of techniques. It is necessary that the
working social philosophy should include within itself
both an understanding of the techniques themselves, in
the proper scientific sense, and an intelligent idea of the
appropriate subordination of each to the common social
purpose. The choice lies between a world which, like
Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", has surrendered
its hold upon real culture in order that it may apply
techniques to the more exquisite satisfaction of animal
appetites, and a world which adapts its techniques to the
enrichment and wider dissemination of a growing con-
temporary culture. To any vital and organic society its
vocations are structural, not accessory. Slave-based societies
fail because there is too little interpenetration of culture
with vocation. Culture is sustained in such societies not
by the significant and contributory vocational activity of
those who share the culture but by technical contribu-
tions of a slave-class or proletariat which is largely
excluded from it. Where integration is satisfactory a
culture may indeed be known and recognized by its
vocations, as we understand the Middle Ages or the
culture of a long-vanished society by examining the
memorials of craftsmanship that its workers have left.
So least of all can an industrialized democracy afford
to countenance so fatal a dichotomy. The compromise
which English aristocratic humanism worked out between
the classical curriculum and the vocations of ruling is
not applicable to such a society. It needs something
more modern, more relevant, more direct, and above
all less vitiated by class influences (a proletarian prejudice
is as much to be condemned in this connexion as an
aristocratic one).
Experiments in the working-out of " trial forms " of
62 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

such a desired transcendence may fall to the lot of various

institutions in England. Thus:

(a) A suitable exit-ramp from the senior school needs

to be constructed. Where conditio~s are favourable,
the senior schools are already relating their work quite
intimately to the dominant vocational activities of the
neighbourhood, and in many cases their curricula well
repay study as examples of attempts at vocationalized-
culture or culturally-interpreted vocation, whichever
way we like to put it. But this in itself is not enough.
The blade still lacks its cutting edge. In present
circumstances the edge may be either not put on at all,
or put on in a fashion which damages the cultural sub ..
stance of the blade. So we need a well-diversified
provision for '.'junior technical education " appro-
priately related to the needs and attainments of pupils
as they leave the senior school at I 5·
(b) The technical high school as proposed by the
Spens Committee needs to be established at first in
the limited form which the Committee suggests. It
will have to be ready to stand up to some prejudice
on the part of those who have no understanding of its
purpose and no sense of the urgency of the need for
it. So a struggle may be involved in giving it a fair
chance. in its own field, neither pushed into a " work-
shop'' corner, nor treated as a mere variant of the
grammar school. It must be sui generis, the bearer of
the burden of an urgent social experiment as·well as a
pioneer type of school.
(c) With increasing understanding of the needs as
the changing social-economic situation develops, the
whole system of technical education can come under
review with an eye to the more effective co-ordination
 LINES OF RE·ADAPTATION

of its parts and more precise definition of its relation

to the " ordinary " schools.
(d) The "ordinary" schools, especially in the later
stages, will, in their own courses, set themselves in-
creasingly to the integration of vocation with culture.
The necessary freedom is already secured. In the
existing " elementary " schools the will is present and
understanding of procedure grows. The " secondary "
schools, embarrassed heirs of another tradition, move
more slowly and with misgiving. But they are moving,
in some cases moving so fast as to convince them-
selves that they can take care of the whole vocational
need of their pupils, sharpening the blade as well as
forging it. If such an idea is really held to any con-
siderable extent it may well prove harmful.

(3) The Consistent Application to Curricula of the Test of

Relevancy.
Relevance of material-that is, in relation to aptitudes
of pupils, needs of social well.being, and especially to
the conditions determining freedom in a modern industrial
democracy.
The most momentous example of such testing is that
which the traditional classical curriculum must undergo.
Large volumes would be needed for an adequate treat-
ment of this issue. Here we need only note that repre-
sentatives of the tradition are not as a rule themselves
well placed to apply the test with objective dispassionate-
ness. They would find it difficult to shake off the
influeoce of associations of this particular curriculum
with class-supremacy and they still tend to accept un-
critically, and even with a certain unction, the belief in
knowledge for its own sake. Sometimes they are de-
64 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

fici~nt in generous and responsive social sense and in

understanding of the contemporary situation, while a
perfectly genuine and not ungrounded fear of vulgarity
and th~ cruder form of blatant utilitarianism often
frightens them into obscurantist conclqsions.
It is society at large that will have to decide the issue,
and there appears to be not much doubt what the
decision will be. This curriculum does not meet the
contemporary tests of relevancy sufficiently well to justify
the retention of its dominant position. In the first place,
the claims for a common culture are too insistent, and
for the great mass of the population the classical curri·
culum is quite without relevancy, except in so far as in
the courses in English and history provision is made for
intelligent study of the ancient inheritance. Then the
thrust towards a. new and more comprehensive, if not
highly equalitarian, form of national unity will tend to
become irresistible, bearing down in its progress the
social barricade of which the old studies provided so
much of both the decoration and the substance.
And finally the requirements of a technical age cannot
be gainsaid, especially as they can be met, if wisely
handled, with profit rather than with loss to culture,
while the atmosphere of a technically planned society
will prove uncongenial to studies which have so strong a
savour of a feudal order. The ancient languages and
literature will still be the subject of specialized study by
selected pupils. The secondary school course should
acquaint all pupils alike with some of the literature in
translation, and those who plead that Greek rather than
Latin is the more relevant study for these times may well
prove justified. But the full classical curriculum in its
old form seems destined to lose very soon its place of
predominance.
 LINES OF RE•ADAPTATION
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65
Towards the field of " technical " curricula suspicions
will be directed and will have to be watched. Already
there are suggestions that the technical high school is
unwanted, as the secondary school, it is argued, can,
with a little adaptation and a little co-operation with
existing technical colleges, do all that is necessary and
without any risk to culture. This is one danger. The
converse one may take the form of an attempt to assimi·
late the new type of school to the grammar-school type,
just as the new secondary schools after I go2 were assimi-
lated to the public-school type. These dangers are by
no means imaginary. In so far as they continue to
threaten, the true significance of vocation in this modern
society has not been grasped.
So the courses of the new technical high schools will
need to be drawn with courage and imagination and
with a clear and single eye to relevancy. Buildings, staff
and equipment must. take form accordingly and then, if
necessary, the new citadel must be defended with all
resolution.
One main-spring of danger, all along the line, is
undoubtedly a dogmatic and over-academic orthodoxy,
occasionally so ingrown as to be quite incorrigible.

(4) Change of Basic Attitudes.

This is too wide and too ill-defined an issue for any
full consideration here. But such changes will have to
take place if the necessary social and administrative
adjustments are to come into effect. Important among
them is a changed attitude towards State action, some-
what along the lines advocated by Matthew Arnold. In
many fields of social action the change in this regard has
already gone far. Even in respect of national education
66 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

it is accepted by the ruling interest in so far as it applies

to schools attended by the mass of the people. At the
boundary line of schools of the upper level it stops short.
One still hears the old denunciations of education in a
strait jacket, of Whitehall bureaucracy an.d of the blessings
of unregulated diversity. And this in an England where
the State has been operating vigorously in education
during the last forty years with the result that no two
counties are alike in the individual interpretation they
have each worked out of a common national policy for
the mass.
We feel tempted to follow up some other obvious
changes in social attitude such as are likely to have
important effects. The psycho-social causes of a falling
birth-rate, striking change during the last forty years in
the public attitude towards Empire, and the drift of
" internationalist " feeling, are all examples. But these
and others must be left as material for a separate study.
The development of a popular philosophy of education
is perhaps the most relevant example that could be given
of an urgently needed change in basic attitudes. It is
unlikely, in England, that such a philosophy would be
sharply antagonistic to that which has been dominant
hitherto. Its function would be to preside over the pro-
cess of unifying the values of culture and usefulness, and
to secure that, in so far as the educational system is an
instrument of social selection, the criteria it applies
shall be purely educational and used with no irrelevant
bias.

(5) The Nature of Social Cohesion.

We have been thinking of education throughout in a
predominantly social aspect, as a process conducted and
 LINES OF RE-ADAPT AT ION
107
67
conditioned by social forces, all of which have a history,
and aiming at the further development of the poten-
tialities of worthy living in a community. We have
looked at English educational institutions in the light of
their determination by historical forces and have sketched
out lines along which they might be adapted, with
generous foresight, to meet the needs of social cohesion
in the much more pressing and dangerous form which
these are about to take.
In short, it may be said that we have been guided by
a conception such as :Milton in his grand style expresses
so eloquently in the famous Tractate: " I call therefore
a complete and generous education that which fits a
man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all
the offices both private and public of peace and war."
Generously interpreted (as it is clearly meant to be),
this glowing statement would appear to give us all we
n~ed, but this little book would be even more lacking in
unity than it is if we did not add that Milton himself
in his great definition still does not touch directly the
deepest and most essential things. Society of course
must be served, and education is there to provide for its
cohesion and continuance. But we have still to ask:
How does it cohere? and why should it need to cohere?
The ultimate concern of education is with the answers
to these questions. The answers lie deeper than the
customary level of politics, in regions of which most
current sociological doctrines take little account.
Let us look first at the second question: Why should
English society continue to cohere? The answer is so
simple in form and so religious in expression that to
some it may appear mere evasion, to others mere unction.
It is: "For the making of souls." One recalls Keats'
comment repudiating the idea that this world is a vale
68 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

of tears and insisting that it is rather cc a vale of soul·

making ". Many things, including some suffering, are.
necessary to that process, but it is the en~ for which
society and all its functions exist. Let us not claim too
hastily that even the totalitarians deny .this . .'That is at
any rate their concern. It is for us, as English, to know
what we mean by it and to see in it the criterion of .all
social action whatsoever. The eneniy is not only the
totalitarian. He may also tak11, the form of a'.iministra-
tive efficiency for its own sake, of idolatry of mere instru-
ments, of an undetected provincialism that subordinates
the greater loyalty to the less and sets institutions and
" interests " above men. Against all these, faithfulness
to what we mean by a "soul" and recognition of the
sovereignty of that demand over us is the only safeguard.
To the other question: How does society cohere?
a variety of answers has been given. Some would say
"Just by habit," to which the response might be, "like
the herded animals ". Others would say " By aunitary
credo and Acts of Uniformity., To that· most of us
would reply that this is to nullify the purpose in the
choice of the instrument. Still more " realistically ",
others would say that society is held together by force,
and by ruthless force if necessary.
In answer to this we need not deny that there must
be a sword in reserve, that there must be limits to tolera·
tion in the most liberal of societies, and even that, where
nothing else will serve-if that ever is the case-force
without stint may have to be used. But what a grim
universe it is to fashion man in such a way that though
society. is indispensable to him he hates the necessities
of it and has to be driven by ruthless force to accept
them! Yet something like that is being widely said
to-day.
 LINES OF RE•ADAPTATION
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6g
Or again, it may be urged that Law holds society
together. How far does man-made law really constitute
a security for the rights of men-that is, law by. itself?
Can it be guaranteed as a protection against the invasion
of one by another? And what if it should act1:1ally
sanction such invasion? Does that then become right
and proper? And in that case what becomes of the
criterion of social action that we have laid down?
These are days of social experiment on a vast scale
and under conditions of extreme pressure. Some of the
. doctrines that are put forward to explain the nature of
social cohesion are now ·being subjected to test, and we
have an opportunity of estimating their validity. In a
year or two's time the opportunity may be better still.
Do any of them really draw the sting of Cain's passionate
cry: "Am I my brother's keeper? " Why should I be?
The answer is not so easy as it is often made to appear,
though it looks simple enough. We shall not secure unity
by an education which sets itself assiduously to " teach
the laws of social cohesion" in a set scheme of social
studies, though that is valuable enough. Some indeed of
the recommendations one hears on this matter sound
like proposals to understand the nature of commerce by
an investigation of the working of a ship's engines. They
take the machine for its justification.
Perhaps the answer is that there can be no answer in
set terms, so deep do the forces lie. But if we may
venture a tentative answer in terms so simple and plati..
tudinous that they seem absurd, we would say " By
faith and love ". The terms look empty enough until
they receive their proper content. No definition or
social science or system of law can confer that content.
It can be given only by life anrl sound education and
the grace of God.
70 EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

It may be; then, that the most essentially religious

thing in us is that by virtue of .which we cohere as 'a
society,' and that here is the heart of education's business.
Lastly, let us remember that the· bonds which ,will
hold a regenerate England together a~e greater than
England itself, as man is greater than his ow.n institu- ·
tions. Here is our real security. A realizq.tion-of it is
the true safeguard against all the dangers of a complacent
or exclusive nationalism. If the. furnace of war serves to
mould and establish that faith i.n us we shall not have
gone through it in vain. ·