FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[3]Hume'sTreatise of Human Nature, Bk. III. part ii. sec. 2.[4]Principles of Heredity, by G. Archdall Reid, p. 235.[5]Cf. Herbert Spencer,Education, especially chap. i.

[3]Hume'sTreatise of Human Nature, Bk. III. part ii. sec. 2.

[4]Principles of Heredity, by G. Archdall Reid, p. 235.

[5]Cf. Herbert Spencer,Education, especially chap. i.

We have seen that the process of education is the process of acquiring and organising experiences that will function in the determination of future conduct and ensure the more efficient performance of future action; or we may say that the process is one by which means are gradually established and fixed in the mind for the attainment of ends of value for the realisation of the varied and complex interests of life.

Now, this acquisition and organisation of experience is never entirely "left to the blind control of inherited impulse," nor is the child wholly left to gather and organise his experiences upon the incentive of any innate or acquired interest that may for the time engage his will. The various agencies of society—the home, the school, the shop and yard—are ever constantly seeking to establish such or such systems of ideas, and to prevent the formation of other systems. Hence it follows that education is not a mere natural process—not a process of acquiring experience in response to the demands of this or that natural need, but that it is a regulated process, controlled with the view of finally leading the child to acquire certain experiences, to organise certain systems of means for the attainment of such or such ends.

Moreover, at various periods in history, the end or ends of education, the kinds of experience thought necessary and valuable for the child to acquire have varied, and still vary, and must vary according to the nature of the civilisation into which the child is born and to which his educationmust somehow or other adjust him;i.e., there is no one type of experience, no one kind of education, which is equally suited to meet the needs of the child born in a modern industrial State and the child whose education must fit him hereafter to fulfil his duties as a member of a savage tribe.

Further, in determining the nature of the experiences useful to acquire, we must take into account not only the civilisation to which the child is to be adjusted, but we must also take note of the nature of the services which the given society requires of its adult members. These services vary in character, and there can be no one kind of education which equally fits the individual to perform efficiently any and every service. To postulate this would be to affirm that there is a kind of experience useful for the realisation indifferently of any and every purpose of adult life, and to affirm that a system of knowledge acquired and organised for the attainment of certain definite ends can be used for the furtherance of ends different in character and having no intrinsic connection with each other. Further, to assert that there is one type of education equally suited to train and to develop the reason-activity of the individual in every direction is to neglect the fact that individuals differ in innate capacity. These differences are due in part to differences in the extent and character of the receptive powers of individuals, and are to be traced, probably, to differences in the size and constitution of the sensory areas of the brain, and are due also in part to inborn differences in the capacity for acquiring and utilising experiences. As a consequence of these differences one individual will acquire and organise certain kinds of experience more readily than others.

But not only have the ends sought to be realised through the educational agencies of society varied in the past—not only do we find that the ideals at present vary in character according to the stage of civilisation which the particular country has reached—we also find that the agencies of society determining the character and end ofeducation also vary. For in the discussion of the ends sought to be attained by means of education, we must remember that these are not determined by the teacher, but by "the adult portion of the Community organised in the forms of the Family, the State, the Church, and various miscellaneous associations"[6]desirous of promoting the welfare of the community. At one time the Church largely determined the character and ends of education, but the tendency at the present time is for the State to control more and more the education of the rising generation. In some countries the entire control of all forms of education, primary, secondary, and technical, has come under the guidance of the State, and in our own country elementary education is now largely under the control of the State authorities, and the other forms of education tend increasingly to come under this control. Not only is this so, but the period during which the State exercises its control over the education of the child is gradually being lengthened.

Many causes are at work tending to produce these results in the first place, it is being clearly realised that there can be no thorough-going co-ordination of the various grades of instruction until all the agencies of education in each area are placed under one authority acting under the guidance of some central body responsible for the organisation and direction of the education of the district as a whole. Further, there can be no satisfactory settlement of the problem as to what particular function each distinct type of Higher School shall perform until the whole means of education are under one determining authority.

In the second place, the higher education of the children of the nation is too important a matter to be left entirely to the care of the private individual, and its cost is too great in many cases to be wholly borne by each individual parent. But this provision, organisation, and control of the means of higher education by the State doesnot necessarily imply that it should be free—that the whole burden should be laid on the shoulders of the general taxpayer. Yet unless means are provided by which the poor but clever boy can realise himself, then there is so much loss to the community.

In the third place, the organisation of all forms of education and the more extended provision of higher and especially of technical training is necessary, if for no other reason than as a means of economic protection and economic security.

Lastly, the better organisation of our educational agencies is necessary as a means of securing a democracy capable of understanding the meaning of moral and civic freedom and of using this rightly.

But while the concrete nature of the ends to which our educational efforts are directed may vary in accordance with the needs of a changing and progressive civilisation, nevertheless the general nature of the ends sought to be attained by the education of the children of a nation is permanent and unchangeable. That is, we have to recognise a universal as well as a particular element in our educational ideals. Now, the universal aim of all education is, or rather should be, to correlate the child with the civilisation of his time; to lead him to acquire those experiences which will in after-life enable him to perform ably and rightly his duties as a worker, as a citizen, and as a member of an ethical and spiritual community organised for the securing of the well-being of the individual. And the higher the civilisation, the more difficult, the more complex, and the more lengthened must be this process of acquiring experiences necessary to fit the individual to his environment. Hence, whatever the particular nature of the environment may be, the aim of education must be the fitting of the individual to his natural and social environments. Hence also any organisation of the means of education must have as its threefold object the securing of the physical efficiency, of the economic efficiency, and the ethical efficiency ofthe rising generation. In short, as Mr. Bagley[7]puts it, the securing of the social efficiency of the individual must be the ultimate aim of all education. To be socially efficient implies that as the result of the process of education certain experiences, and the power of applying them, have been acquired by each individual, so that by this means he is enabled to perform some particular social service for the community of a directly or indirectly economic nature. For if, as the result of the educative process, we establish systems of means for the realisation of ends which have no social value, then so far we have failed to make the individual socially efficient. "The youth we would train has little time to spare; he owes but the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to his tutor, the remainder is due to action. Let us employ this short time in necessary instruction. Away with your crabbed, logical subtleties; they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be made better."[8]In these words Montaigne writes against the false ideal that the mere accumulation of knowledge apart from any purpose it may serve in enabling us better to understand either the world of nature or of history should be the aim of education, and throughout all education we must ever keep in mind that knowledge acquired must be capable of being used and applied for the realisation of some social purpose, otherwise it is so much useless lumber, to the individual a burden, soon dropped, to society valueless, since it can maintain and further no real interest of the community.

But to be socially efficient implies not merely that the individual should be fitted to perform some service economically useful to the community, it further implies that as the result of the process of education there should have been acquired certain capacities of action which restrain him from unduly interfering with thefreedom of others. He must acquire certain experiences which restrain him from hindering the full and free development of others; he must be trained to use his freedom rightly, to acquire those capacities for action which fit him to take his place in the moral cosmos of his time and generation. Further, as Mr. Bagley also points out, to be socially efficient implies in addition that the individual should contribute something further to the advancement of the civilisation into which he is born, and thus pass on to his successors an increasing heritage.

The threefold aim of all education, then, is to secure the physical, the economic, and the ethical efficiency of the future members of the community; and our educational agencies must throughout keep this threefold aspect in view.

To secure the physical efficiency of the child is necessary, in the first place, because a strong, healthy, vigorous body is a good in itself, apart from the fact that without sound health the other ends of life cannot, or can be only imperfectly realised. It is an erroneous point of view to maintain that many men have done good intellectual work in spite of physical ill-health, and even in cases where there was present some physical defect. The real thing to keep in mind is that these individuals do not represent the average, and that for the normal individual weak health or the presence of physical defect lessens his intellectual and moral vigour. We can, in the light of modern psychology, no longer regard mind and body as separate entities having a development independent of each other, but must regard them as conditioning and conditioned by each other.

In the second place, the care of the physical health of the child is important, because any impairment or defect in the sense organs—the avenues of experience—implies a corresponding defect or want in mental growth, and as a consequence tends to render the individual economically and socially less efficient in after-life.

In the third place, and this truth is being gradually put into practice in the education of the weak-minded and of the physically defective, sound physical health is one of the conditions of right moral activity. This truth Rousseau emphasised when he declared: "that the weaker the body, the more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it obeys. All the sensual passions find lodgment in effeminate bodies, and the less they are satisfied the more irritable they become. The body must needs be vigorous to obey the soul: a good servant ought to be robust."

We shall inquire further into this question when we come to treat of the physical education of the child, but what we wish to point out is that one aim of all our educational efforts must be to secure the physical efficiency of the rising generation, on the grounds that sound physical health is a good in itself; is a means to the securing of the economic efficiency of the individual and of society; and is a condition of securing the ethical efficiency of the individual.

In the second place, the securing of the economic efficiency of the individual must be one of the aims of our educational efforts. This does not imply that our educational curriculum should be based on purely utilitarian lines, and that all subjects whose utilitarian value is not immediately apparent should be banished from the schoolroom. But it does imply that whether in the education of the professional man or of the industrial worker all instruction either directly or indirectly must have as its final result the efficiency of the individual as a worker. An education which fits the individual to use his leisure rightly may have as much effect in increasing the productive powers of the individual as that which looks more narrowly to his technical training. Further, we must remember that the larger number by far of the children of the modern State must in after-life become industrial workers, and that any system of education which neglects this fact,which makes no provision for the technical training of the children of the working classes, and has no adequate system of selecting and training those who by innate capacity are fitted to become the leaders in industry, is a system not in harmony with the characteristics of modern life, and that unless this economic efficiency is secured, then the opportunity for the development of the other ends of life cannot be secured.

Lastly, the securing of the ethical efficiency of the future members of the State must be one of our ultimate aims. The ethical aim of education may be said to be the supreme end, in the sense that it is the essential condition for the security, the stability, and the progress of society; and also from the fact that the ethical spirit of doing the work for the sake of the work should permeate all education.

In concluding this chapter what needs to be emphasised is that while the process of education remains ever the same, ever consists in acquiring and organising experience, in and through the working of reason incited to activity by the need of satisfying some natural or acquired interest, in order that future action may be rendered more efficient, and whilst the general nature of the ends to be attained may be said to be permanent and unchangeable, yet the particular and concrete ends at which we should aim in the education of our children is a practical question which every nation has, from time to time, to ask and answer afresh in the light of her national ideals and in view of her national aspirations. Nay, further, it is a question which with every necessary change in her internal organisation, and with every fundamental alteration in her relation to her external neighbours, has to be asked and answered anew by each and every State desirous of retaining her place amongst the nations of the world and of securing the welfare and happiness of her individual members. It is mainly because we as a nation have not realised this truth that our educational organisation has, neither in theexplicitness and clearness of its aims, nor in the distinction, gradation, and co-ordination of its means, attained the same thoroughness and self-consistency as that possessed by the educational systems of some of our Continental neighbours.

FOOTNOTES:[6]Cf. Professor Findlay,Journal of Education(Sept. 1899), also "Principles of Class Teaching," p. 2.[7]Cf.The Educative Process, chap. iii., esp. pp. 59, 60 (Macmillan).[8]Montaigne,The Education of Children, L. E. Rector, Ph.D. (International Education Series), Appleton, New York.

[6]Cf. Professor Findlay,Journal of Education(Sept. 1899), also "Principles of Class Teaching," p. 2.

[7]Cf.The Educative Process, chap. iii., esp. pp. 59, 60 (Macmillan).

[8]Montaigne,The Education of Children, L. E. Rector, Ph.D. (International Education Series), Appleton, New York.

The end of education is, as we have seen, the securing of the future social efficiency of the rising generation, and the method in every case is through the evoking of the reason-activity of the individual to organise and establish in the minds of the young and immature, systems of ideas which will hereafter function as means in the attainment of ends of definite social worth.

The question now arises as to whether the provision and organisation of the agencies of education may be safely left to the care and self-interest of the individual parent, or whether on principle such provision is a duty which devolves upon the State.

The principle of the State provision of the means of elementary education has now practically been admitted, and whether wisely or unwisely, the larger part by far of the cost of this provision now falls upon the shoulders of the general and local taxpayer.E.g., in England in 1902 there were six hundred and thirty-three thousand fee-paying children in the Public Elementary Schools, and over five millions receiving their education free.[9]Further, by the Education Act (England) of 1902 and by the Education and Local Taxation Account (Scotland) Act of the same year the principle of the State aid for the provision of the means of secondary and technical education may be said also practically to have been recognised. By the former Act certain Imperial fundsderived from the income on Probate and Licence duties were handed over to the Councils of counties and boroughs for expenditure on the provision of the means of education other than elementary, and at the same time these bodies were empowered, if they thought it necessary, to impose a limited rate for the same purpose. In Scotland at the same time a certain part of Scotland's share of the "whisky" money was set aside for the provision of secondary education in urban and rural districts, and Secondary Education Committees were appointed in the counties and principal boroughs charged with the allocation of the funds towards the aid and increase of the provision of higher education in their respective districts.

But while this has been done, the question as to whether and to what extent the State should undertake the provision of the means of higher education is still one on which there is no general agreement. If it is the duty of the State to see that the provision of the means of education, elementary, secondary, technical, and university, is adequate to the attainment of the end of securing the future social efficiency of all the members of the community, then it must be admitted that the means at present provided for this purpose are totally inadequate, and that the method followed in furnishing this provision is not of a kind to ensure that the funds granted are spent in the manner best calculated to extend the agencies and to increase the efficiency of the higher education of the children of the nation. This latter objection applies more especially in the case of Scotland. In that country certain nominated bodies who are responsible only to themselves and to the Scotch Education Department are entrusted with the expenditure of the monies received for the extension of the means of higher education, and since these bodies stand in no intimate connection with the representative bodies entrusted with the control of elementary education, no efficient co-ordination of the two grades of education is possible. Further, in some cases sectional interests rather thanthe educational interests of the district as a whole are the main motives at work in determining the distribution of the funds amongst the various bodies claiming to participate in its benefits. The uncertainty of the amount of income available for this purpose, and the limitation in England of the power of rating, might also be urged in objection to this peculiarly English method of providing the means for the higher education of the youth of the country.

Similar reasons to those urged prior to 1870 in favour of the State provision of elementary education may be urged in favour of the extension of the principle to higher education. These reasons are nowhere more clearly stated than in the writings of John Stuart Mill.

In discussing the functions of government, Mill lays down that education is one of those things which it is admissible on principle that a Government should provide for the people, and although in adducing the reasons for the State undertaking this duty he is concerned mainly with the provision of the means of elementary education, yet looking to the altered social conditions of our own time, and taking into account the difference in the economic relations which exist now between Great Britain and her Continental rivals, the arguments advanced by Mill are no less applicable now to the extension of the principle of State provision. Let us consider these arguments.

In the first place, Mill declares that there are "certain primary elements and means of knowledge that all human beings born into the community must acquire during childhood." If their parents have the power of obtaining for them this instruction and fail to do so, they commit a double breach of duty. The child grows up an imperfect being, socially inefficient, and members of the community are liable to suffer seriously from the consequences of this ignorance and want of education in their fellow-citizens.

In the second place, Mill urges that unlike that the giving of other forms of help, the provision of education is notone of the things in which the tender of help perpetuates the state of things which renders help necessary. Instruction strengthens and enlarges the active faculties; its effect is favourable to the growth of the spirit of independence—it is help towards doing without help.

In the third place, he declares that the question of the provision of elementary education is not one between its provision by the Government on the one hand, and its provision through voluntary agencies on the other. The full cost of the education of the children of the lower working classes in Great Britain as in other countries has never been wholly paid for out of the wages of the labourer, and hence the question lies between the State provision of education and its provision by certain charitable agencies. As a rule, when provided by the latter, it is both inefficient in quantity and poor in quality.

Lastly, Mill lays down that in the matter of education the intervention of Government is necessary, because neither the interest nor the judgment of the consumer is a sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity.

But at the same time he strenuously insists that there should be no monopoly of education by the State. It is not desirable, he declares, that a government should have complete control over the education of the people. To possess such a control and actually to exert it would be despotic. The State may, however, require that all its people shall have received a certain measure of education, but it may not prescribe from whom or where they may obtain it.

At the present day, and under the changed economic conditions which now prevail, it can no longer be asserted that the imparting of the mere elements of knowledge is adequate either to secure the future social efficiency of the children of the lower classes of society or that such a modicum of instruction as is provided by our Elementary Schools is sufficient to protect the community from the ignorance of its ill educated and badly trained members. The "hooliganism" of many of our large cities is due toour system of half educating, half training the children of the slums, of laying too much stress on the acquisition of certain mechanical arts in our Primary Schools and in conceiving them as ends in themselves. Further, our system of primary education fails on its moral side, and this in two ways. It seems unaware of the fact that all moral education is an endeavour to implant in the minds of the young desires that shall impel them hereafter to good rather than to evil, and that this end can only be attained in so far as the natural instinctive tendencies of the child's nature which make for good are cultivated and trained, and in so far as those other instinctive tendencies which make for social destruction are inhibited by having their character altered so as to be directed into channels which make for the social welfare. In the second place, we leave off the education of the children at too early an age. We hand over the children of the poorer classes during the most critical period of their lives to the influences of the streets and of the bad home, counteracted only by the efforts of the slum visitor or the missionary. After furnishing them with the mere instruments of knowledge, we entrust either to them or their parents the liberty of using, misusing, or non-using the instruments provided. Moreover, we do nothing of a systematic nature to instil into the youth of our poorer citizens the fact that they are members of a corporate community and future citizens of a State, and that hereafter they have duties towards that State the performance of which is the only rational ground of their possession of rights as against the State.E.g., in many of our slums we have the best examples of individualism run mad, of the conception that the individual is a law unto his private self, and that all government is something alien, something forced upon the individual from the outside and impinging upon his private will, instead of law being what it really is, an expression of the social conditions under which the welfare of the individual and of society may be attained.

Further, it must be maintained that our present policyin education is economically wasteful. To spend, as we do yearly, larger and larger sums of money on the elementary education of our children, and then, in a large number of cases, to fail to reach the ends of securing either the social efficiency of the individual or the protection of society against the ignorance of its members, is surely, to say the least, unwise. Again, if we really set before us this aim of the social efficiency of the future individual, we must do something to carry on the education of the children of the poorer classes after the Elementary School stage has been passed.

One of the strongest points in the German system of education, as compared and contrasted with our own, is the care which is taken of the higher education of the children of the working classes during the period when it is most important that some control should be exercised over the youth of the country, throughout the time when the boy is most open to temptation, and when the moral forces of society are potent for good and evil in shaping and forming his character. The great majority of the children in a modern State are and must be destined for industrial service; the great majority of the children of the working classes must, at or about the age of fourteen, leave the Primary School and enter upon the learning of some trade. But manifestly at this early stage the larger number are not fitted to guide and control their own lives; and if moral education aims, as it ought to aim, at fitting the individual for freedom, at fitting him to guide and direct his own life in the light of a self-accepted and a self-directed ideal, then some measure of control, of guidance, and of regulation is necessary in the years when the child is passing from youth to manhood. Now, it is this fact, this truth, which the Germans as a nation have realised. They declare that it is neither wise nor prudent nor for the ultimate benefit of the State to leave the vast majority of the youth without guidance, and sometimes even without proper moral control exercised over them during the great formativeperiod of their lives. Nay, further, they believe that a State which neglects its duty here is not doing what it ought to do for the future moral good, for the future economic welfare, and for the future happiness of its individual members. Hence, in several of the German States, the State control over the child does not cease when at fourteen years of age he leaves the Elementary School, but is continued until the age of seventeen; and this is effected by the establishment of compulsory Evening Schools. In particular, by a law which came into force in Berlin on the 1st April 1905, every boy and girl in that city, with certain definitely specified exceptions, must attend at an Evening Continuation School for a minimum of not less than four hours and a maximum of not more than six hours per week. Moreover, this enactment has been rendered necessary not to level up the majority, but to level up the minority. This development is a development for which the voluntary Evening Continuation School prepared the way; and compulsory attendance has become possible on account of the willingness of the German youth to learn, and of his desire to make himself proficient in his particular trade or profession. Further, the school authorities, in this matter of compulsory attendance at an Evening Continuation School, have with them the hearty co-operation of the great body of employers; and the burden of seeing that the pupil attends regularly is not put upon the parent but upon the employer. By these means, and by other agencies of a voluntary character, every care is taken that the Berlin youth shall have the opportunity of finding that employment for which by nature he is best suited, and that thereafter he shall learn thoroughly the particular trade or calling he may enter upon.

Contrast what we do, or rather what we do not do, in this matter of providing higher education for the sons and daughters of the working classes. In our large towns the great majority of our boys and girls leave the Elementary School at or before the age of fourteen. Inmany cases the instruction given during this period soon passes away, and leaves little permanent result behind. Evening Continuation Schools are indeed provided, but only a small proportion of our youth takes advantage of this means of further instruction. The larger number of the children of the lower working classes drift, for a year or two, into various forms of unskilled employment, chosen in most cases because the immediate pecuniary reward is here greater than in the case of learning a trade; and after spending two or three years in employments which do nothing to educate them, some drift, by accident, into this or that particular trade, while the others remain behind to swell the number of the unskilled. During this period nothing of an organised nature is done to secure the physical efficiency of the youth of our working classes; nothing or almost nothing is done to secure his future industrial efficiency; and, as a consequence, year after year, as a nation, we go on fostering an army of loafers, increasing the ranks of the unskilled workers, and even in our skilled trades adding to the number of those who are mere process workers, at the expense of producing workers acquainted both theoretically and practically with every department of their particular calling. No wonder that the delegates of the brass-workers[10]of Birmingham, contrasting what they have seen in Berlin with what they daily see in their own trade at home and in their own city, bitterly declare that the Berlin youth has from infancy been under better care and training at home, at school, at the works, and in the Army; and consequently, as a man, he is more fitted to be entrusted with the liberty which the Birmingham youth has perhaps from childhood only abused.

Space does not permit me to go at fuller length into this question, but before leaving the particular problem let me put the issue plainly, because it is an issue which we as a nation must soon clearly realise, and must answer in either one or other of two ways. We may go on asat present, insisting that a certain amount of elementary education is compulsory for all, and leaving it a matter for the individual parent and the individual youth to take advantage of the means of higher education provided voluntarily, and as a rule without any great direct cost to them. In this way, trusting to the voluntary agencies at work in society, we may hope that either through enlightened self-interest, or through a higher conception of the duty of the individual to the State, or through a loftier moral ideal becoming prevalent and actual in society, an increasing number of parents will see that the means provided for the higher education of their children are duly taken advantage of, and that the majority of the youth will make it their aim to use these means to secure their physical and industrial efficiency. If we adopt this course, then it must be the duty of the school authorities of the various districts to see that Evening Schools of various types suited to the needs of the various classes of students are duly provided, and that no insurmountable obstacles are placed in the way of those desirous and anxious to take advantage of the means of higher education. Further, it must become the duty of the employers of the country to see that the youth are encouraged in every way to take advantage of instruction designed with the above-named end in view, and moreover the general public must do all in their power to co-operate with and to aid the endeavours of school authorities and employers of labour. In this way, as has been the case in Berlin, the voluntary system of Evening Continuation and Trade Schools may gradually and in time pave the way for the compulsory Evening School. Without doubt this were the better way, if it could be effected and that quickly.

But if in this matter we have delayed too long—if we have allowed our educational policy in the past to be guided by a one-sided and narrow individualism—if for too lengthened a period we have permitted our political action to be determined by the false ideal that,in the matter of providing for and furthering his education as a citizen and as an industrial worker, liberty for each individual consists in allowing him to choose for himself, regardless of whether or not that choice is for his own and the State's ultimate good, then it may be necessary in the immediate future to take steps to remove or remedy this defect in our present educational organisation. For it is necessary—essentially necessary—on various grounds that the education of the boys and girls of our working classes should not cease absolutely at the Elementary School stage,[11]but that, with certain definite and well-considered exceptions, all should continue for several years thereafter to fit themselves for industrial and social service. If this result can be effected by moral means, good and well; if not, legal compulsion must, sooner or later, be resorted to. For it is, as it has always been, a fundamental maxim of political action that the State should and must compel her members to utilise the means by which they may be raised to freedom.

The second line of argument which Mill follows in his advocacy of the State provision of education is that instruction is one of the cases in which the aid given does not foster and re-create the evil which it seeks to remedy. Education which is really such does not tend to enervate but to strengthen the individual. Its effect is favourable to the growth of independence. "It is a help towards doing without help."

On similar grounds, we may urge that it is the duty of the State to see that the means for the higher educationof the youth of the country are adequate in quantity and efficient in quality. The better technical training of our workmen is necessary if we are to secure their economic self-sufficiency and fit them to become socially useful as members of a community. One aim therefore underlying any future organisation of education must be to secure the industrial efficiency of the worker and to ensure that the results of science shall be utilised in the furtherance of the arts and industries of life. This can only be effected by the better scientific training, by the more intensive and the more thorough education of those children of the nation who by natural ability and industry are fitted in after-life to guide and control the industries of the country.

Mr. Haldane,[12]during the past few years, in season and out of season, has called the attention of the public of Great Britain to the fact that in the organisation and equipment of their system of technical education Germany is much in advance of this country, and that the German people have thoroughly and practically realised that, if they are to compete successfully with other nations, then one of the aims of their educational system must be to teach the youth how to apply knowledge in the furtherance and advancement of the economic interests of life. With this end in view we have the establishment throughout the German States of numerous schools and colleges having as their chief aim the application of knowledge to the arts and industries. In our own country this branch—this very important branch—of education has been left, for the most part, to the care of private individuals, and although the State has done something in recent years to encourage and develop this side of education, yet much more requires to be done; and, above all, it is desirable that whatever is done in the future should be done in a regular, systematic, and organised manner and with definite aims in view.

But it is not merely in the higher reaches of Germaneducation that the industrial aim is kept in view. It pervades and permeates the whole system from the lowest to the highest stages. Even in the Primary School the requirements of practical life are not left out of sight. In school, said a former Prussian Director of Education, "children are to learn how to perform duties, they are to be habituated to work, to gain pleasure in work, and thus become efficient for future industrial pursuits. This has been the aim from the earliest times of Prussian education; and to this day it is plainly understood by all State and local administrative officers, as well as by all teachers and the majority of the parents, that the people's school has more to do than merely teach the vehicles of culture—reading, writing, and arithmetic"—that the chief aim is rather "the preparation of citizens who can and will cheerfully serve their God and their native country as well as themselves."

In the third place, the question of the provision of the means of higher education is not one between its provision on the one hand by means of the Government, and on the other by means of purely voluntary agencies. Higher education,e.g., in Scotland has rarely been provided and paid for at its full cost by the individual parent or by associations of individual parents, but has been maintained, in some cases in a high degree of efficiency, by endowments left for this purpose. These endowments are now in many cases insufficient to meet the demand made for education, and the stream of private benevolence in providing the means of education has either ceased to flow or flows in an irregular and uncertain fashion. Further, the incomes of even the moderately well-to-do of our middle classes are not sufficient to bear the whole cost of the more expensive education required to fit their sons and daughters for the after-service of the community. Hence, just as in Mill's time the question of the provision of elementary education lay between the State provision and the provision by means of charitable agencies, so to-daythe problem of the provision of secondary and technical education is between its adequate provision and organisation by the State, and its inadequate, uncertain provision by means of the endowments of the past and by the charitable agencies of the present. Manifestly, in the light of modern conditions, with the economic competition between nation and nation becoming keener and keener, and knowing full well that the future belongs to the nation with the best equipped and the best trained army of industrial workers, we can no longer rest content with any haphazard method of providing the means of higher education: whatever the cost may be, we must realise that the time has come to put our educational house in order and to establish and organise our system of higher education so that it will subserve each and every interest of the State. This can only be effected in so far as the nation as a whole realises the need for the better education of the children, and takes steps to secure that this shall be provided, and that there shall be afforded to each the opportunity of fitting himself by education to put his talents to the best use both for his own individual good and the good of the community. Lastly, as Mill urges, the self-interest of the individual is neither sufficient to ensure that the education will be provided, nor in many cases is his judgment sufficient to ensure the goodness of the education provided by voluntary means.

But, in addition to the reasons urged by Mill for the State provision and control of the means of elementary education, and these reasons are, as we have seen, as urgent and as cogent to-day for the extension of the principle to the provision of the means of secondary and technical education, still further reasons may be advanced.

In the first place, there can be no co-ordination of the different stages of education until all the agencies of instruction in each area or district are placed under one central control. Until this is effected we must have at times overlapping of the agencies of instruction. In some cases there may also be waste of the means ofeducation. In every case there will be a general want of balance between the various parts of the system.

In the second place, one object of any organisation of the means of education should be the selection of the best ability from amongst the children of our Elementary Schools and the further education of this ability at some one or other type of Intermediate or Secondary School. In order that this may be economically and efficiently effected, the instruction of the Elementary School should enable the pupil at a certain age to fit himself into the work of the High School, and our High Schools' system should be so differentiated in type as to furnish not one type of such education but several in accordance with the main classes of service required by the community of its adult members. Manifestly such a co-ordination of the means and such a grading of the agencies of education, if not impossible on the voluntary principle, is at least difficult of complete realisation.

Hence, on the ground that the higher education of the young is necessary for the securing of their after social efficiency, on the ground that it is necessary for the economic and social security of the community, on the ground that aid in higher education is a help towards doing without help and that its provision in many cases cannot be fully met by the voluntary contribution of the individual, we may urge the need for the State's undertaking its adequate and efficient provision.

Further, we must remember that the State must take a "longer" view of the problem of education than is possible for the individual. At best the latter looks but one generation ahead. He is content to secure the education and the future welfare of his children. In the life of the State this is not sufficient. She must look to the needs of the remote future as well as of the immediate present, and hence her educational outlook must be wider and go farther than that of any mere private individual. Lastly, if we understand the true nature and function of the State, we need have no fear that the State shouldcontrol the education of all the people. What we have to fear on the one side is the bureaucratic control of education, and on the other its control and direction by one class in the interests of itself. The State exists for—the reason of its very being is to secure—the welfare of the individual, and the State approaches its perfection when its organisation is fitted to secure and ensure the widest scope for the full and free development of each individual.

The evil of bureaucracy can be removed only by our representative bodies becoming more effective voices of the social and moral will of the community, just as the evil of class control can only be effectually abolished by the rise and spread of the true democratic spirit, ever seeking that the agencies of the State shall be directed towards the removing of the obstacles which hinder the full realisation of the life of each of its members.

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