Chapter IV

Education will perhaps be one of the most interesting fields of future scientific management. At present we know a few bits of a few sciences, and a handful of historical facts. We fill the picture out with theories and blunderingly try to make other people memorize these things. We call the process Education. We have invented a few devices for discovering what they forget, and call them Examinations. Recently we have invented a few tricks of exposing what they cannot do, and we call them Mental Tests. We wrap it all up in a tangle of loose philosophy, and we call it The Science of Education. We profess, it is true, some loftier pursuits. We are trying, we say, to teach our pupils to think. We try to mould their characters, and we try to produce good citizens.

But what does it all amount to in the end? The most successful way yet discovered of teaching people to think is for the teacher himself to think aloud, and hope that his pupils will catch the knack. How do we set about moulding the character of a child? By moral precept, good example, healthy sport, uplifting atmosphere, and an unprincipled application of punishment and reward. Our children are bored by precepts. They yawn in our presence and make fun of our precepts in our absence; they break out at the first opportunity and “sow their wild oats”, and then rediscover our old morality for themselves. The more adventurous invent a new one of their own, probably a finer thing than that we tried to teach. Our good examples produce two alternative effects. If the child happens to like us, he will imitate our actions, and morality becomes an empty mimicry. Perhaps, on the other hand, we have an unfortunate mannerism or some innocent resemblance to a forgotten terror, and the child dislikes us. The good example is taken as a pattern of the thing to be avoided. By counter-suggestion he takes the opposite course so far as in him lies. The sons of clergymen might provide us with material for a theory of moral education.

Our healthy sports――but why go on? It is not my intention to ridicule the best things that the wisdom of the ages has produced. My only contention is that our methods of education are hopelessly tentative, uncertain in their effects, justifiable only on the ground that we cannot yet see clearly anything else to do. But things will change. Already there _is_ a science of education, because people with scientific minds are thinking about the problems it presents. They are experimenting, and they are at least disclosing our ignorance. Experiments similar to those of Scientific Management are producing similar results. We are beginning to know important things about the mind, its natural development, and the method by which it works. Already we know a good deal about the conditions of remembering, enough at least to condemn, if we dared to think out the implications of our knowledge, many venerable educational practices. Some of the most important of our discoveries fall readily into line with the results of Industrial Psychology. There seems, for example, to be a natural rate of working appropriate in learning, appropriate rhythms of impression, rest and recall, by the operation of which knowledge becomes firmly embedded in the mind. When these rhythms are ignored, the evil effects of cramming are produced. Our educational methods in the school and in the university break and crush all these rhythms, and students pass out into the world with mutilated minds.

The rhythms of life, however, present in every field possibilities of extensive modification. That many needs demand a rhythmic satisfaction is well known, but there is scope for detailed investigation and experiment here. None of these natural periods seem to be absolutely fixed beyond all power of alteration. The rhythms of digestion probably vary with the fashions of the age and class, according as high teas or late dinners are in fashion. They might under certain conditions have depended upon the tides; and changes in our habits of taking nourishment would probably produce most interesting variations.

Why should we sleep throughout the night, and work throughout the day? Our habits in this respect were formed in the days before fire was stolen from the gods――and they are wasteful habits, too. Artificial light one day may easily come to be as cheap as water, and man will change his ways of taking rest. Some experimenters urge that the most valuable part of sleep is in the first few minutes. The remainder of the night we spend in dreams and in gradually waking up. Let us apply the principle of rest-pauses in a thorough-going way. Distributed periods of sleep might prove a great economy. People will be taught to recline say once in every two hours, and sleep for twenty minutes. Thus will be inaugurated the twenty-four hour day, and a race of energetic Napoleons will emerge.

But to return to general education. Why should the period of learning be concentrated wholly in the early years of life? Distributed periods of study will undoubtedly prove more effective, say two hours every day, or two days every week, or, if you like, two continuous months in the year throughout the whole of life. Thus might come the solution to a variety of problems. We have, first of all, the problems of education itself. At present we arrange the life of a child so that a period of intensive cramming is followed by the abrupt cessation of intellectual life at the time when the intellect is just beginning to mature. There is the problem of industrial fatigue, due more often to monotony than to arduous labour. Recent researches afford scientific support to the adage that a change of work is as good as a holiday. Educational pursuits will provide the necessary change. Already many working men spend their evenings at classes and their only holiday at a summer school.

Lastly there is the ever-growing problem of the prolongation of infancy. Under simpler conditions a child was adequately equipped for practical purposes by the age of ten or even younger. Now-a-days fourteen years is considered necessary, whilst the professional man is almost thirty before he is fit to earn a living――and still there is more to learn.

Given successful scientific research in this direction, back we go to the methods of the early days of the Industrial Revolution with children employed in every factory. Under rational supervision it may prove a great advance. The moral education which practical life alone can give will commence at the proper time. Children will be protected from the dangers of neglectful or over-solicitous parents. They will acquire at an early age the much-required sense of responsibility and independence, and their parallel work at school will acquire some semblance of significance and interest.

In addition to new rhythms and periods of study, new methods will be employed. Probably the curriculum itself will be the first thing to be revised. In spite of a good deal of relevant knowledge, no one has yet consistently thought out an answer to the question: What should a child be taught? Freed from the assumptions of faculty-psychology and from its present entanglements with external systems of examination, the course of studies prescribed for the ordinary child would omit much that is now included and include much that is now ignored. Moreover, the order of presentation both of subjects and of the material in each subject will undergo extensive alteration. Changes in this respect have already well begun, and changes blindly initiated move towards enlightenment.

Things are moving towards a triple control of the individual life, one that roughly corresponds to the old control of the Church and State, with the added partnership of organized industry. To the modern representative of the Church――whatever ultimate form this institution may take――belongs the function of guiding the individual for his own personal good. It is a service which the Church might easily have continued to perform, but for its insistence upon doctrinal terms. What was in effect a kind of strike of the religious ministry, met by boycott on the side of the general public, has led to the development of black leg service on the part of psychoanalysis and disinterested teachers. At present the organization manifests all the muddle of an emergency supply. Children in over-crowded schools cannot obtain adequate individual guidance, and the work of the psychoanalyst is curative only in exceptional cases, and not, as it should be, universally preventive. Nevertheless, feeling moves in the direction of agreement that something more must be done, though as yet nothing like a constructive policy of personal guidance has emerged.

The activities of the State in this connection are likely to increase. In earlier days a man could be born, could live and die in comparative privacy. Now, official notice is taken at least of his birth, his marriage, his income, most of his crimes, some at least of his diseases; and his death, too, is registered. The registration of particulars about the individual will extend to educational records, abilities and disabilities, and of all that is relevant to his social life. Much of this will be done by institutions of the kind which our present “vocational bureaus” dimly and crudely foreshadow. Ultimately a public service more or less State-controlled will be developed to mediate between Education and Industry. When life becomes more fully organized into a system of interlacing rhythms, the unit of the secondary Educational System will be an institution embracing factory, school, and clinic under a single board of control with its industrial, educational and medical representatives; and the threefold plan will no doubt be adopted in both the higher and lower grades.

Early in life some of the main tendencies and abilities of the child will be diagnosed and he will be sent to the appropriate school and industry. Doubtful and obscure cases will, with the “allround” types, be sent for a “general education”, in the course of which, however, they will come under more careful examination. By the age of ten or twelve the child’s future course should in outline and general character be fairly clearly known, and by sixteen he will have become more or less specialized to a certain type of course. Not, however, completely specialized. To meet the problem of trade-fluctuations and consequent unemployment, and as a preventive of industrial monotony, each person will probably be taught a variety of pursuits, achieving a balance appropriate to each case of mental and manual work. The system of multiple vocations would probably be operated in conjunction with some form of industrial conscription; for increased wisdom in government should by this time have undermined popular prejudice on this score.

At the prospect of such extensive changes in our educational institutions one wonders what is going to happen to our ancient and venerable universities. They might, consistently with all that has been said, preserve their functions as specialized seats of learning; but it is more likely that long before a rational system of education has been evolved they will have changed their character beyond all recognition. In optimistic, but perhaps short-sighted, moments, it is commonly supposed that with the increasing demand for education their future is assured, and that they will assume ever-increasing importance and enjoy ever-growing popularity and respect.

Let us, however, for a moment consider the instructive parallel of the Holy Catholic Church, the unfortunate history of which is a byword at the present day. The causes of its decline do not, I think, include one that is frequently suggested. Men are not to-day less religious or less in need of its holy offices. The change has come about not by decreased demands but by competition and an augmented supply. Men still need the things of which the Church once held an almost complete monopoly. They need some sort of philosophy, some personal guidance in the difficult art of the moral life, and many other things which once the Church alone could give.

The invention of the Press made possible the novelist. The novelist found himself adopted as guide, philosopher, and friend. The younger generation now-a-days acquires its general outlook from the novelists and playwrights, who exercise an almost sacerdotal influence. Personal guidance is offered by the psychoanalyst. He exercises the priestly functions of the confessional and of exorcizing demons; whilst Coué and his disciples offer a new technique of prayer. The validity of these practices is not here my subject, but the fact that people are getting what they want. Such new ways of meeting old demands are continually being found, and may not the Universities soon find themselves in the position of the Church? Several things would make the suggestion plausible.

In the first place, education is already being purveyed as a commercial product. Quite apart from the self-educators produced fortnightly by the Press, there are Mind-training Institutes and Correspondence Colleges. Universities at the present time can afford to ignore this competition. They have, they think, the pull in traditional prestige, the advantages of the tutorial system, the general atmosphere of culture, and they have, we trust, at present the most distinguished scholars. But traditional prestige is a slippery foundation for any institution now-a-days. The test that is being applied is that of practical efficiency. Already happy-go-lucky methods in University finance are being examined by Royal Commissions and by financial experts. The next thing will be that they will start to scrutinize the educational methods being employed. Already, moreover, the newer institutions are being forced to mould themselves upon the model of an up-to-date business office. Soon they will adopt those well-proven adjuncts of commercial progress――modern methods of advertisement, for instance.

When the printing press arose, priests, no doubt, preserved their self-assurance by reliance upon the peculiar efficiency of the spoken word. They clung to the sermon and scorned the weapon of the pamphleteers. When comparing themselves with the Correspondence Colleges, the Universities resort to a similar argument. One day, however, the Correspondence Colleges will realize the possibilities in wireless as an adjunct to their methods.

When with the assistance of its influential board of directors some national broadcasting company finally secures its charter, the following situation will arise. Phenomenal salaries will attract the most distinguished exponents of the various arts and sciences to the central broadcasting stations. District Colleges staffed by automatic invigilators will call the roll of students at the various lectures. These will be delivered by a loud speaker synchronized with a televisual cinema projecting the lecturer’s blackboard and other illustrative material.

The economy effected by conducting classes of say half a million or equally easily ten million students will enable anyone to follow courses by all the most distinguished exponents of his subject. European students in psychology, for example, will attend say at 9 a.m. for Professor Stout, followed at 10 by Dr Sigmund Freud, and at 11 by Professor G. E. Moore. Nor need these distinguished men repeat their lectures until they have something new to say, for dictaphones will be included among the listeners-in, and another relay of undergraduates will acquire their wisdom from the broadcast-phonograph.

Such a soulless business organization, it will be objected, could never replace our present establishments of culture. But here, again, I feel the objection is of purely transitory force. Progressive differentiation which I have mentioned as an important aspect of evolution has produced the antithesis of commerce and cultured life. Differentiation, however, is to a great extent counterbalanced by processes of integration; and such integration we can see in progress in the business world.

The commercial applications of art besides influencing the dividends of our railway companies must be exercising a cultural effect upon their boards of directors; and culture filters through in many ways. The justly renowned polish of the Oxford graduate is finding a lucrative field of expression in modern salesmanship. An up-to-date salesman now-a-days speaks considerably better English than his customer, and the average waiter is better mannered than the proprietor of the hôtel. It is inconceivable that the employer will continue to be quite uninfluenced by his cultured and refined subordinates. Perhaps this is the secret of the growth of those Learned Societies the purport of which we understand is to supply that liberal education demanded now by busy business men. When the captains of industry have mastered this business of being cultured and have seen its possibilities in practical affairs their own peculiar talents will be applied in ever wider spheres; of which education will probably be the first.