SECTIONVI.EDUCATION.

The Teacher’s Equipment—Oxford University and the Working People,two articles—Justice to Young Workers—A Race between Education and Ruin.

By Canon Barnett.March, 1911.

By Canon Barnett.

March, 1911.

1From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.

Liberalsmust be somewhat disappointed that a Liberal Government has done so little for education. The reforms for which they stand—their hopes for the nation—depend on the increase of knowledge and intelligence among the people. The establishment of Free Trade, wise economy and wise expenditure, and the support of the statesmanship which makes for peace, all presuppose an instructed electorate. But the present Government has passed no measure to strengthen the foundation on which Liberalism rests; attempts, indeed, were made to settle the religious difficulty, but ever since those attempts were wrecked by the House of Lords, Ministers have been content to do nothing, although outside the religious controversy they might have launched other attempts laden with important reforms and safe to reach their port. The administration of the law as it stands has doubtless been vigorous; able and public-spiritedofficials have seen that everything which the law requires has been done, and every possible development effected, but the Liberal Government has done nothing to improve the Law. Minister of Education succeeds Minister of Education, years of opportunity roll by, while children still leave school at an age when their education has hardly begun, while compulsory continuation schools still wait to be started, while great—not to say vast—endowments are absorbed in the objects of the wealthier classes, while the provision for the equipment of teachers is unsatisfactory.

The equipment of the teachers is confessedly the most important item in any programme of education, as it is upon the teacher rather than upon the building or the curriculum that the real progress of education depends. That equipment, as far as elementary schools are concerned, is now given in training colleges, and especially in residential colleges. Young men and women, that is to say, who have been through a secondary school, and also shown some aptitude for teaching, receive, largely at Government expense, two years’ instruction and training in colleges which are managed either by religious denominations or by local educational authorities. In the colleges the staff is mostly occupied in giving the knowledge which forms part of a general education, and very little time is spent in training or in the study of problems of the child life.

The system is unsatisfactory on many grounds. (1) The rivalry between denominational and undenominational colleges stirs the keenest partisanship. When in his annual statement Mr. Runciman began to talk about the number of students in the different colleges he had, he said with some irony, “to drop the subject, knowing how far the religiouscontroversy is likely to interest this House”. (2) The system is most costly, and every year, including building grants, an amount of something like half a million of money is paid for the training—or, to speak more accurately, for the ordinary education of young men and women who may feel no call for teaching and cannot be really bound to take it up for their life’s work. (3) It breeds a feeling of indignation among those who do not get employment, and there is now an agitation because the State does not find work for those whom it has selected to receive a special training, and bound, even though it be by an ineffective bond, to follow a particular calling. (4) It brings together a body of students whose outlook to the future is identical, it encourages, therefore, narrow views, and breeds the exclusive professional spirit in a profession whose usefulness depends on its power to assimilate the thought of the time and to sacrifice its interest for wider interests. The training college system as a means of equipping teachers for their work is not satisfactory, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was well justified when he said: “The thing which mattered most in the educational work in England to-day was the question of the training colleges”.

The reforms suggested generally follow the lines of further expenditure on buildings or on staff, but such expenditure would not remove the objections. The money annually spent is very large—equal to the gross income of Oxford University—and if more were spent there is no very effective way of securing that the best among the teachers so trained would remain in the profession; the men would still take up more remunerative work, and the women would still marry. The rivalry between denominational and undenominationalwould continue, and the protest of conscientious objectors—religious or secular—as each further expense was proposed would increase difficulties. If the number turned out of the training colleges were larger there would be a more widely spread sense of wrong among the unemployed, who would with difficulty recognize that something else was wanting in a teacher than the certificate of a training college. But most fatal of all to the proposed extension or improvement of the system, is the objection that the more and the stronger the colleges become, the more deeply would the professional spirit be entrenched, and the more powerful would be the influence of the teaching class in asserting its rights.

The reform might, I submit, follow the line of restriction and proceed towards the ultimate abolition of the residential colleges in their present form. The way is comparatively simple. Let the children from elementary schools be helped—as, indeed, they now are—by scholarships to enter secondary schools, and go on to University colleges, or to the Universities. Equal opportunity for getting the best knowledge would thus be open to children of all classes. Let any over the age of nineteen who have passed through a college connected with some University, or otherwise approved as giving an education of a general and liberal character, be eligible to apply for a teachership, and if, after a period of trial in a school—say for three or six months—they, on the report of the inspector and master, have shown an aptitude for teaching, then let them, at the expense of the State, be given a year’s real training in the theory and practice of teaching. Teachers are, it must be remembered, born and not made. One man or woman who, without anyexperience, is placed over a class will at once command attention, while another with perhaps greater ability will create confusion. Those who are not born to it may indeed learn the tricks of discipline, and, like a drill-sergeant, command obedience and keep order. Many of the complaints which are heard about the unintelligence and the want of interest in children who have come from schools where to the visitor’s eye everything seems right are due, I believe, to the fact that the teachers have not been born to the work. They have trusted to the rules they have learnt and not to the gift of power which is in themselves. They teach as the scribes and not with authority. Let, therefore, the men and women who have this power be those whom the State will train; let it give them not, as at present, a few weeks in a practising school, but experience in a variety of schools in town and in country, and under masters with different systems; let them be made familiar with the last thoughts on child life, and with all the many different theories of education. The State will in this way draw from all classes in the community the men and the women best fitted to teach, and it will give them a training worthy the name. The teachers will have the best equipment for their work.

The advantages of this proposal to get rid of the training colleges as they now are may be summarized: (1) There will be an end of the religious difficulty where at present it is most threatening. The children with scholarships will go to the schools and University colleges they elect just as do the children who are aiming at other careers. The State in the training it provides will have nothing to do with the special training required for giving religious knowledge—as such training would naturally be given by the different denominations at their own expense. (2) The half million of money annually spent on training colleges would not berequired for the training now proposed. It cannot, however, be said that the money would be returned to the taxpayers; education—if the nation is to be saved—must become more and more costly, but it may be said that the greater part of this sum and the existing buildings would be used for the general education of persons taken from all classes of the community and preparing to walk in all sorts of careers. (3) There would be no body of men and women with the grievance that, having been selected at an early age, trained as teachers, and bound to a profession, no work was provided. Every one would have had the best sort of education for any career, and only one year, after a fair time for choice and probation, would have been given to special training. (4) The danger of professionalism would be lessened. Men and women educated in schools and colleges alongside of other students with other aims, would, by their association, gain a wider outlook on life, and would be freed from the influences which tend now to force them into an organization for the defence of their rights. If afterwards they did join such organizations they would do so with a wider consciousness of their relation to a body larger than their own, and to a knowledge greater than they themselves had acquired.

A substantial number of young persons do even under present conditions spend their three years with the Government scholarship at Universities or University colleges, and the experience thus gained illustrates the advantage to intending students of mixing with persons intended for other careers.

Here, then, I submit, is a way of reform in what is confessedly the most important part of our system of education. It might be undertaken at no extra expense, and with small dislocation of existing institutions. The one thing necessary is zeal for education among our political leaders. The beststudents of the social problem tell us the remedy for the unrest is education, and anyone considering the signs of the times in England will say also that there must be more education if employers and employed, if statesmen and people, if the pulpit and the pew are to understand one another. The chief Minister in any Government, the Minister on whose zeal and ability all the others depend for the ultimate success of their work, is the Minister of Education. If he is zealous he will find a way of equipping the teachers.

Samuel A. Barnett.

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