SECTION L of the British Association is of necessity one of the least specialised of all sections. Its interests spread far beyond professional limitations. It is a section where anyone who is so to speak a citizen at large may hope to play a part that is not altogether an impertinent intrusion. And it is in the character of a citizen at large that I have accepted the very great honour that you have offered me in making me the President of this Section. I have no other claim whatever upon your attention. Since the remote days when as a needy2 adventurer I taught as non-resident master in a private school, invigilated at London University examinations, raided the diploma examinations of the College of Preceptors for the money prises offered, and, in the most commercial spirit, crammed3 candidates for the science examinations of the University, I have spent very few hours indeed in educational institutions. Most of those were spent in the capacity of an inquiring and keenly interested parent at Oundle School. I doubt if there is any member of this section who has not had five times as much teaching experience as I have, and who is not competent to instruct me upon all questions of method and educational organisation4 and machinery5. So I will run no risks by embarking6 upon questions of that sort. But on the other hand, if I know very little of educational methods and machinery I have had a certain amount of special experience in what those methods produce and what the machinery turns out.
I have been keenly interested for a number of years, and particularly since the War, in public thought and public reactions, in what people know and think and what they are ready to believe. What they know and think and what they are ready to believe impresses me as remarkably7 poor stuff. A general ignorance — even in respectable quarters — of some of the most elementary realities of the political and social life of the world is, I believe, mainly accountable for much of the discomfort8 and menace of our times. The uninstructed public intelligence of our community is feeble and convulsive. It is still a herd9 intelligence. It tyrannises here and yields to tyranny there. What is called elementary education throughout the world does not in fact educate, because it does not properly inform. I realised this very acutely during the later stages of the War and it has been plain in my mind ever since. It led to my taking an active part in the production of various outlines and summaries of contemporary knowledge. Necessarily they had the defects and limitations of a private adventure, but in making them I learnt a great deal about — what shall I say — the contents of the minds our schools are turning out as taught.
And so now I propose to concentrate the attention of this Section for this meeting on the question of what is taught as fact, that is to say upon the informative10 side of educational work. For this year I suggest we give the questions of drill, skills, art, music, the teaching of languages, mathematics and other symbols, physical, aesthetic11, moral and religious training and development, a rest, and that we concentrate on the inquiry12: What are we telling young people directly about the world in which they are to live? What is the world picture we are presenting to their minds? What is the framework of conceptions about reality and about obligation into which the rest of their mental existences will have to be fitted? I am proposing in fact a review of the informative side of education, wholly and solely13-informative in relation to the needs of modern life.
And here the fact that I am an educational outsider — which in every other relation would be a disqualification — gives me certain very real advantages. I can talk with exceptional frankness. And I am inclined to think that in this matter of the informative side of education frankness has not always been conspicuous14. For what I say I am responsible only to the hearer and my own self-respect. I occupy no position from which I can be dismissed as unsound in my ideas. I follow no career that can be affected15 by anything I say. I follow, indeed, no career. That’s all over. I have no party, no colleagues or associates who can be embarrassed by any unorthodox suggestions I make. Every schoolmaster, every teacher, nearly every professor must, by the nature of his calling, be wary16, diplomatic, compromising; he has his governors to consider, his college to consider, his parents to consider, the local press to consider; he must not say too much nor say anything that might be misinterpreted and misunderstood. I can. And so I think I can best serve the purposes of the British Association and this section by taking every advantage of my irresponsibility, being as unorthodox and provocative17 as I can be, and so possibly saying a thing or two which you are not free to say but which some of you at any rate will be more or less willing to have said.
Now when I set myself to review the field of inquiry I have thus defined, I found it was necessary to take a number of very practical preliminary issues into account. As educators we are going to ask what is the subject-matter of a general education? What do we want known? And how do we want it known? What is the essential framework of knowledge that should be established in the normal citizen of our modern community? What is the irreducible minimum of knowledge for a responsible human being today? I say irreducible minimum — and I do so, because I know at least enough of school work to know the grim significance of the school time-table and of the leaving school age. Under contemporary conditions our only prospect18 of securing a mental accord throughout the community is by laying a common foundation of knowledge and ideas in the school years. No one believes today, as our grandparents — perhaps for most of you it would be better to say great-grandparents — believed, that education had an end somewhen about adolescence19. Young people then leave school or college under the imputation20 that no one could teach them any more. There has been a quiet but complete revolution in people’s ideas in this respect and now it is recognised almost universally that people in a modern community must be learners to the end of their days. We shall be giving a considerable amount of attention to continuation, adult and post-graduate studies in this section, this year. It would be wasting our opportunities not to do so. Here in Nottingham University College we have the only Professorship in Adult Education in England, and under Professor Peers the Adult Education Department which is in close touch with the Workers’ Educational Association has broadened its scope far beyond the normal range of Adult Education. Our modern ideas seem to be a continuation of learning not only for university graduates and practitioners22 in the so-called intellectual professions, but for the miner, the plough-boy, the taxi-cab driver, and the out-of-work, throughout life. Our ultimate aim is an entirely23 educated population.
Nevertheless it is true that what I may call the main beams and girders of the mental framework must be laid down, soundly or unsoundly, before the close of adolescence. We live under conditions where it seems we are still only able to afford for the majority of our young people, freedom from economic exploitation, teachers even of the cheapest sort and some educational equipment, up to the age of 14 or 15, and we have to fit our projects to that. And even if we were free to carry on with unlimited24 time and unrestrained teaching resources, it would still be in those opening years that the framework of the mind would have to be made.
We have got to see therefore that whatever we propose as this irreducible minimum of knowledge must be imparted between infancy25 and — at most, the fifteenth or sixteenth year. Roughly, we have to get it into ten years at the outside.
And next let us turn to another relentlessly26 inelastic-seeming case — and that is, the school time-table. How many hours in the week have we got for this job in hand? The maximum school hours we have available are something round about thirty, but out of this we have to take time for what I may call the non-informative teaching, teaching to read, teaching to write clearly, the native and foreign language teaching, basic mathematical work, drawing, various forms of manual training, music and so forth27. A certain amount of information may be mixed in with these subjects but not very much. They are not what I mean by informative subjects. By the time we are through with these non-informative subjects, I doubt if at the most generous estimate we can apportion28 more than six hours a week to essentially29 informative work. Then let us, still erring30 on the side of generosity31, assume that there are forty weeks of schooling32 in the year. That gives us a maximum of 240 hours in the year. And if we take ten years of schooling as an average human being’s preparation for life, and if we disregard the ravages33 made upon our school time by measles34, chicken-pox, whooping-cough, coronations and occasions of public rejoicing, we are given 2,400 hours as all that we can hope for as our time allowance for building up a coherent picture of the world, the essential foundation of knowledge and ideas, in the minds of our people. The complete framework of knowledge has to be established in 200 dozen hours. It is plain that a considerable austerity is indicated for us. We have no time to waste, if our schools are not to go on delivering, year by year, fresh hordes35 of fundamentally ignorant, unbalanced, uncritical minds, at once suspicious and credulous36, weakly gregarious37, easily baffled and easily misled, into the monstrous38 responsibilities and dangers of this present world. Mere39 cannon-fodder and stuff for massacres40 and stampedes.
Out question becomes therefore: “What should people know — whatever else they don’t know? Whatever else we may leave over — for leisure-time reading, for being picked up or studied afterwards — what is the irreducible minimum that we ought to teach as clearly, strongly and conclusively42 as we know how?”
And now I — and you will remember my role is that of the irresponsible outsider, the citizen at large — I am going to set before you one scheme of instruction for your consideration. For it I demand all those precious 2,400 hours. You will perceive, as I go on, the scheme is explicitly44 exclusive of several contradictory45 and discursive46 subjects that now find a place in most curricula, and you will also find doubts arising in your mind about the supply and competence47 of teachers, a difficulty about which I hope to say something before my time is up. But teachers are for the world and not the world for teachers. If the teachers we have today are not equal to the task required of them, then we have to recondition our teachers or replace them. We live in an exacting48 world and a certain minimum of performance is required of us all. If children are not to be given at least this minimum of information about the world into which they have come — through no fault of their own — then I do think it would be better for them and the world if they were not born at all. And to make what I have to say as clear as possible I have had a diagram designed which I will unfold to you as my explanation unfolds. You have already noted49 I have exposed the opening stage of my diagram. You see I make a three-fold division of the child’s impressions and the matters upon which its questions are most lively and natural. I say nothing about the child learning to count, scribble50, handle things, talk and learn the alphabet and so forth because all these things are ruled out by my restriction51 of my address to information only. Never mind now what it wants to do — or wants to feel. This is what it wants to know. In all these educational matters, there is, of course, an element of overlap52. As it learns about things and their relationship and interaction its vocabulary increases and its ideas of expression develop. You will make an allowance for that.
And now I bring down my diagram to expose the first stage of positive and deliberate teaching. We begin telling true stories of the past and of other lands. We open out the child’s mind to a realisation that the sort of life it is living is not the only life that has been lived and that human life in the past has been different from what it is today and on the whole that it has been progressive. We shall have to teach a little about law and robbers, kings and conquests, but I see no need at this stage to afflict53 the growing mind with dates and dynastic particulars. I hope the time is not Far distant when children even of 8 or 9 will be freed altogether from the persuasion54 that history is a magic recital55 beginning “William the Conqueror56, 1066”. Much has been done in that direction. Much remains57 to be done. Concurrently58, we ought to make the weather and the mud pie our introduction to what Huxley christened long ago Elementary Physiography. We ought to build up simple and clear ideas from natural experience.
We start a study of the states of matter with the boiling, evaporation59, freezing and so on of water and go on to elementary physics and chemistry. Local topography can form the basis of geography. We shall have to let our learner into the secret that the world is a globe-and for a time I think that has to be a bit of dogmatic teaching. It is not so easy as many people suppose to prove that the world is spherical60 and that proof may very well be left to make an exercise in logic61 later on in education. Then comes biology. Education I rejoice to see is rapidly becoming more natural, more biological. Most young children are ready to learn a great deal more than most teachers can give them about animals. I think we might easily turn the bear, the wolf, the tiger and the ape from holy terrors and nightmare material into sympathetic creatures, if we brought some realisation of how these creatures live, what their real excitements are, how they are sometimes timid, into the teaching. I don’t think that descriptive botany is very suitable for young children. Flowers and leaves and berries are bright and attractive, a factor in aesthetic education, but I doubt if, in itself, vegetation can hold the attention of the young. Sometimes I think we bore young children with premature62 gardens. But directly we begin to deal with plants as hiding-places, homes and food for birds and beasts, the little boy or girl lights up and learns. And with this natural elementary zoology63 and botany we should begin elementary physiology64. How plants and animals live, and what health means for them. There I think you have stuff enough for all the three or four hundred hours we can afford for the foundation stage of knowledge. Outside this substantial teaching of school hours the child will be reading and indulging in imaginative play — and making that clear distinction children do learn to make between truth and fantasy — about fairyland, magic carpets and seven-league boots, and all the rest of it. So far as my convictions go I think that the less young children have either in or out of school I of what has hitherto figured as history, the better. I do not see either the charm or the educational benefit of making an important subject of and throwing a sort of halo of prestige and glory about the criminal history of royalty65, the murder of the Princes in the Tower, the wives of Henry VIII, the families of Edward I and James I, the mistresses of Charles II, Sweet Nell of Old Drury, and all the rest of it. I suggest that the sooner we get all that unpleasant stuff out of schools, and the sooner that we forget the border bickerings of England, France, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Bannockburn, Flodden, Crécy and Agincourt, the nearer our world will be to a sane66 outlook upon life. In this survey of what a common citizen should know I am doing my best to elbow the scandals and revenges which once passed as English history into an obscure corner or out of the picture altogether. But I am not proposing to eliminate history from education — far from it. Let me bring down my diagram a stage further and you will see how large a proportion of our treasure of 2,400 hours I am proposing to give to history. This next section represents about 800 to 1,000 pre-adolescent hours. It is the schoolboy-schoolgirl stage. And here the history is planned to bring home to the new generation the reality that the world is now one community. I believe that the crazy combative67 patriotism68 that plainly threatens to destroy civilisation69 today is very largely begotten70 in their school history lessons. Our schools take the growing mind at a naturally barbaric phase and they inflame71 and fix its barbarism. I think we underrate the formative effect of this perpetual reiteration72 of how we won, how our Empire grew and how relatively73 splendid we have been in every department of life. We are blinded by habit and custom to the Way it infects these growing minds with the chronic74 and nearly incurable75 disease of national egotism. Equally mischievous76 is the furtive77 anti-78patriotism of the leftish teacher. I suggest that we take on our history from the simple descriptive anthropology79 of the elementary stage to the story of the early civilisations.
We are dealing80 here with material that was not even available for the schoolmasters and mistresses who taught our fathers. It did not exist. But now we have the most lovely stuff to hand, far more exciting and far more valuable than the quarrels of Henry II and à Becket or the peculiar81 unpleasantnesses of King James or King John. Archaeologists have been piecing together a record of the growth of the primary civilisations and the developing roles of priest, king, farmer, warrior82, the succession of stone and copper83 and iron, the appearance of horse and road and shipping84 in the expansions of those primordial85 communities. It is a far finer story to tell a boy or girl and there is no reason why it should not be told. Swinging down upon these early civilisations came first the Semitic-speaking peoples and then the Aryan-speakers, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, followed one another, Christendom inherited from Rome and Islam from Persia, and the world began to assume the shapes we know today. This is great history and also in its broad lines it is a simple history — upon it we can base a lively modern intelligence, and now it can be Put in a form just as comprehensible and exciting for the school phase as the story of our English kings and their territorial86, dynastic and sexual entanglements87. When at last we focus our attention on the British Isles88 and France we shall have the affairs of these regions in a proper proportion to the rest of human adventure. And our young people will be thinking less like gossiping court pages and more like horse-riders, seamen89, artist-artisans, roadmakers, and city-builders, which I take it is what in spirit we want them to be. Measured by the great current of historical events, English history up to quite recent years is mere hole-and-corner history.
And I have to suggest another exclusion90. We are telling our young people about the real past, the majestic91 expansion of terrestrial events. In these events the little region of Palestine is no more than a part of the highway between Egypt and Mesopotamia. Is there any real reason nowadays for exaggerating its importance in the past? Nothing really began there, nothing was worked out there. All the historical part of the Bible abounds92 in wild exaggeration of the importance of this little strip of land. We were all brought up to believe in the magnificence of Solomon’s temple and it is a startling thing for most of us to read the account of its decorations over again and tum its cubits into feet. It was smaller than most barns. We all know the peculiar delight of devout93 people when, amidst the endless remains of the great empires of the past, some dubious94 fragment is found to confirm the existence of the Hebrews. Is it not time that we recognised the relative historical insignificance95 of the events recorded in Kings and Chronicles, and ceased to throw the historical imagination of our young people out of perspective by an over-emphasised magnification of the national history of Judea; To me this lack of proportion in our contemporary historical teaching seems largely responsible for the present troubles of the world. The political imagination of our times is a hunch96-back imagination bent97 down under an exaggeration. It is becoming a matter of life and death to the world to straighten that backbone98 and reduce that frightful99 nationalist hunch.
Look at our time-table and what we have to teach. If we give history four-tenths of all the time we have for imparting knowledge at this stage that still gives us at most something a little short of 400 hours altogether. Even if we think it desirable to perplex another generation with the myths of the Creation, the Flood, the Chosen People and so forth, even if we want to bias100 it politically with tales of battles and triumphs and ancient grievances101, we haven’t got the time for it — any more than we have the time for the really quite unedifying records of all the Kings and Queens of England and their claims on this and that. So far as the school time-table goes we are faced with a plain alternative. One thing or the other. Great history and hole-in-corner history? The story of mankind or the narrow, self-righteous, blinkered stories of the British Islands and the Jews? There is a lot more we have to put into the heads of our young people over and above History. It is the main subject of instruction but even so, it is not even half of the informative work that ought to be got through in this school stage. We have to consider the collateral102 subject of geography and a general survey of the world. We want to sec our world in space as well as our world in time. We may have a little map-making here, but I take it what is needed most are reasonably precise ideas of the various types of country and the distinctive103 floras104 and faunas105 of the main regions of the world. We do not want our budding citizens to chant lists of capes106 and rivers, but we do want them to have a real picture in their minds of the Amazon forests, the pampas, the various phases in the course of the Nile, the landscape of Labrador mountains, and so on, and also we want something like a realisation of the sort of human life that is led in these regions. We have enormous resources now in cheap photography, in films, and so forth, that even our fathers never dreamt of — to make all this vivid and real. New methods are needed to handle these new instruments, but they need not be overwhelmingly costly107. And also our new citizen should know enough of topography to realise why London and Rio and New York and Rome and Suez happen to be where they are and what sort of places they are.
Geography and History run into each other in this respect and, on the other hand, Geography reaches over to Biology. Here again our schools lag some fifty years behind contemporary knowledge. The past half-century has written a fascinating history of the succession of living things in time and made plain all sorts of processes in the prosperity, decline, extinction108, and replacement109 of species. We can sketch110 the wonderful and inspiring story of life now from its beginning. Moreover, we have a continually more definite account of the sequence of sub-man in the world and the gradual emergence111 of our kind. This is elementary, essential, interesting and stimulating112 stuff for the young, and it is impossible to consider anyone a satisfactory citizen who is still ignorant of that great story.
And finally, we have the science of inanimate matter. In a world of machinery, optical instruments, electricity, radio and so forth we want to lay a sound foundation of pure physics and chemistry upon the most modern lines — for everyone. Some of this work will no doubt overlap the mathematical teaching and the manual training and steal a little badly needed time from them. And finally, to meet awakening113 curiosity and take the morbidity114 out of it, we shall have to tell our young people and especially our young townspeople, about the working of their bodies, about reproduction and about the chief diseases, enfeeblements and accidents that lie in wait for them in the world.
That, I think, completes my summary of all the information we can hope to give in the lower school stage. And as I make it I am acutely aware of your unspoken comment. With such teachers as we have — teachers trained only to reaction, overworked, underpaid, hampered115 by uninspiring examinations, without initiative, without proper leisure. Young and inexperienced or old and discouraged. You may do this sort of thing, here and there, under favourable116 conditions, with the splendid élite of the profession, the 10 per cent who are interested, but not as a general state of affairs. Well, I think that it is a better rule of life, first to make sure of what you want and then set about getting it, rather than to consider what you can easily, safely and meanly get, and then set about reconciling yourself to it. I admit we cannot have a modern education without a modernised type of teacher. A teacher enlarged and released. Many of our teachers — and I am not speaking only of elementary schools — are shockingly illiterate117 and ignorant. Often they know nothing but school subjects; sometimes they scarcely know them. Even the medical profession does not present such extremes between the discouraged routine worker and the enthusiast118. Everything I am saying now implies a demand for more and better teachers-better paid, with better equipment. And these teachers will have to be kept fresh. It is stipulated119 in most leases that we should paint our houses outside every three years and inside every seven years, but nobody ever thinks of doing up a school teacher. There are teachers at work in this country who haven’t been painted inside for fifty years. They must be damp and rotten and very unhealthy for all who come in contact with them. Two-thirds of the teaching profession now is in urgent need of being either reconditioned or superannuated120. In this advancing world the reconditioning of both the medical and the scholastic121 practitioner21 is becoming a very urgent problem indeed, but it is not one that I can deal with here. Presently this section will be devoting its attention to adult education and then I hope the whole question of professional and technical refreshment122 will be ventilated.
And there is another matter also closely allied123 to this question of the rejuvenation124 of teachers, at which I can only glance now, and that is the bringing of school books up to date. In this informative section of school work there is hardly a subject in which knowledge is not being vigorously revised and added to. But our school work does not follow up the contemporary digesting of knowledge. Still less do our school libraries. They are ten, fifteen years out of date with much of their information. Our prison libraries by the by are even worse. I was told the other day of a virtuous125 prisoner who wanted to improve his mind about radio. The prison had a collection of technical works made for such an occasion and the latest book on radio was dated 1920. There is, I have been told, an energetic New School Books Association at work in this field, doing what it can to act in concert with those all too potent126 authorities who frame our examination syllabuses127. I am all for burning old school books. Some day perhaps we shall have school books so made that at the end of ten or twelve years, let us say, they will burst into flames and inflict128 severe burns upon any hands in which they find themselves. But at present that is a little Utopian. It is even more applicable to the next stage of knowledge to which we are now coming.
This stage represents our last 1,000 hours and roughly I will call it the upper form or upper standard stage. It is really the closing phase of the available school period. Some of the matter I have marked for the history of this grade might perhaps be given i.n Grade B and vice129 versa. We have still a lot to do if we are to provide even a skeleton platform for the mind of our future citizen. He has still much history to learn before his knowledge can make an effective contact with his duties as a voter.
You see I am still reserving four-tenths of the available time, that is to say nearly 400 hours for history. But now we are presenting a more detailed130 study of such phenomena131 as the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Russia, the history of the Baltic, the rise and fall of the Spanish power, the Dutch, the first and second British Empires, the belated unifications of Germany and Italy. Then as I have written we want our modern citizen to have some grasp of the increasing importance of economic changes in history and the search for competent economic direction and also of the leading theories of individualism, socialism, the corporate132 state, communism.
For the next five-and-twenty years now the ordinary man all over the earth will be continually confronted with these systems of ideas. They are complicated systems with many implications and applications. Indeed they are aspects of life rather than systems of ideas. But we send out our young people absolutely unprepared for the heated and biased133 interpretations134 they will encounter. We hush135 it up until they are in the thick of it. And can we complain of the consequences? The most the poor silly young things seem able to make of it is to be violently and self-righteously Anti- something or other, Anti-Red, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Fascist. The more ignorant you are the easier it is to be an Anti. To hate something without having something substantial to put against it. Blame something else. A special sub-section of history in this grade should be a course in the history of war, which is always written and talked about by the unwary as though it had always been the same thing, while as a matter of fact — except for its violence — it has changed profoundly with every change in social, political and economic life. Clearly parallel to this history our young people need now a more detailed and explicit43 acquaintance with world geography, with the different types of population in the world and the developed and undeveloped resources of the globe. The devastation136 of the world’s forests, the replacement of pasture by sand deserts through haphazard137 cultivation138, the waste and exhaustion139 of natural resources, coal, petrol, water, that is now going on, the massacre41 of important animals, whales, penguins140, seals, food fish, should be matters of universal knowledge and concern.
Then our new citizens have to understand something of the broad elements in our modern social structure. They should be given an account of the present phase of communication and trade, of production and invention and above a.l.l they need whatever plain knowledge is available about the conventions of property and money. Upon these interrelated conventions human society rests, and the efficiency of their working is entirely dependent upon the general state of mind throughout the world. We know now that what used to be called the inexorable laws of political economy and the laws of monetary141 science, are really no more than rash generalisations about human behaviour, supported by a maximum of pompous142 verbiage143 and a minimum of scientific observation. Most of our young people come on to adult life, to employment, business and the rest of it, blankly ignorant even of the way in which money has changed slavery and serfdom into wages employment and of how its fluctuations144 in value make the industrial windmills spin or flag. They are not even warned of the significance of such words as inflation or deflation, and so the wage-earners are the helpless prey145 at every turn towards prosperity of the savings-snatching financier. Any plausible146 monetary charlatan147 can secure their ignorant votes. They
Informative Content of Education 8 5 know no better. They cannot help themselves. Yet the subject of property and money — together they make one subject because money is only the fluid form of property — is scarcely touched upon in any stage in the education of any class in our community. They know nothing about it; they are as innocent as young lambs and born like them for shearing148.
And now here you will see I have a very special panel. This I have called Personal Sociology. Our growing citizen has reached an age of self- consciousness and self-determination. He is on the verge149 of adolescence. He has to be initiated150. Moral training does not fall within the scope of the informative content of teaching. Already the primary habits of truthfulness151, frankness, general honesty, communal152 feeling, helpfulness and generosity will or will not have been fostered and established in the youngster’s mind by the example of those about him. A mean atmosphere makes mean people, a too competitive atmosphere makes greedy, self-glorifying people, a cruel atmosphere makes fierce people, but this issue of moral tone does not concern us now here. But it does concern us that by adolescence the time has arrived for general ideas about one’s personal relationship to the universe to be faced. The primary propositions of the chief religious and philosophical153 interpretations of the world should be put as plainly and impartially154 as possible before our young people. They will be asking those perennial155 questions of adolescence — whence and why and whither. They will have to face, almost at once, the heated and exciting propagandas of theological and sceptical partisans156 — pro’s and anti’s. So far as possible we ought to provide a ring of cleat knowledge for these inevitable157 fights. And also, as the more practical aspect of the question, What am I to do with my life? I think we ought to link with our general study of social structure a study of social types which will direct attention to the choice of a métier. In what spirit will you face the world and what sort of a job do you feel like? This subject of Personal Sociology as it is projected here is the informative equivalent of a confirmation158 class. It says to everyone: “There are the conditions under which you face your world.” The response to these questions, the determination of the will, is however not within our present scope. That is a matter for the religious teacher, for intimate friends and for the inner impulses of the individual. But our children must have the facts.
Finally, you will see that I have apportioned159 some time, roughly two-tenths of our 1,000 hours, in this grade to the acquisition of specialised knowledge. Individuality is becoming conscious of itself and specialisation is beginning.
Thus I budget, so to speak, for our 2,400 hours of informative teaching. We have brought our young people to the upper form, the upper standard. Most of them arc now going into employment or special training and so taking on a role in the collective life. But there remain some very essential things which cannot be brought into school teaching, not through any want of time, but because of the immaturity160 of the growing mind. It we are to build a real modern civilisation we must go on with definite informative instruction into and even beyond adolescence. Children and young people are likely to be less numerous proportionally in the years ahead of us in all the more civilised populations and we cannot afford to consume them in premature employment after the fashion of the preceding centuries. The average age of our population is rising and this involves an upward extension of education. And so you will see I suggest what I call an undergraduate or continuation school, Grade D, the upper adolescent stage, which I presume will extend at last to every class in the population, in which at least half the knowledge acquired will be specialised in relation to interest, aptitude161 and the social needs of the individual. But the other half will still have to be unspecialised, it will have to be general political education. Here particularly comes in that education for citizenship162 to which this Educational Section is to give attention later. It seems to me altogether preposterous163 that nowadays our educational organisation should turn out new citizens who are blankly ignorant of the history of the world during the last twenty-five years, who know nothing of the causes and phases of the Great War and are left to the tender mercies of freakish newspaper proprietors164 and party organisers for their ideas about the world outlook, upon which their collective wills and actions must play a decisive part.
Social organisation is equally a matter for definite information. “We are all socialists165 nowadays.” Everybody has been repeating that after the late Lord Rosebery for years and years. Each for all and all for each. We are all agreed upon the desirability of the spirit of Christianity and of the spirit of Democracy, and that the general interest of the community should not be sacrificed to Private Profit. Yes — beautiful, but what is not realised is that Socialism in itself is little more than a generalisation about the undesirability166 of irresponsible ownership and that the major problem before the world is to devise some form of administrative167 organisation that will work better than the scramble168 of irresponsible owners. That form of administrative organisation has not yet been devised. You cannot expropriate the private adventurer until you have devised a competent receiver for the expropriated industry or service. This complex problem of the competent receiver is the underlying169 problem of most of our constructive170 politics. It is imperative171 that every voter should have some conception of the experiments in economic control that are in progress in Great Britain, the United States of America, Italy, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere. Such experiments are going to affect the whole of his or her life profoundly. So, too, are the experiments in monetary and financial organisation. Many of the issues involved go further than general principles. They are quantitative172 issues, questions of balance and more or less. A certain elementary training in statistical173 method is becoming as necessary for anyone living in this world of today as reading and writing. I am asking for this much contemporary history as the crowning phase, the graduation phase of our knowledge-giving. After that much foundation, the informative side of education may well be left to look after itself.
Speaking as a teacher of sorts myself, to a gathering174 in which teachers probably predominate, I need scarcely dilate175 upon the fascination176 of diagram drawing. You will understand how reluctant I was to finish of at Grade D and how natural it was to extend my diagram to two more grades and make it a diagram of the whole knowledge organisation of a modern community. Here then is Grade E, the adult learning that goes on now right through life, keeping oneself up to date, keeping in touch with the living movements about us. I have given a special line to those reconditioning courses that must somehow be made a normal part in the lives of working professional men. It is astonishing how stale most middle-aged177 medical men, teachers and solicitors178
And beyond Grade E I have put a further ultimate grade for the fully179 adult human being. He or she is learning now, no longer only from books and newspapers and teachers, though there has still to be a lot of that, but as a worker with initiative, making experiments, learning from new experience, an industrialist180, an artist, an original writer, a responsible lawyer, an administrator181, a statesman, an explorer, a scientific investigator182. Grade F accumulates, rectifies183, changes human experience. And here I bring in an obsession184 of mine with which I have dealt before the Royal Institution and elsewhere. You see, indicated by these arrows, the rich results of the work of Grade F flowing into a central world-encyclopaedic-organisation, where it will be continually summarised, clarified, and whence it will be distributed through the general information channels of the world.
So I complete my general scheme of the knowledge organisation of a modern community and submit it to you for your consideration.
I put it before you in good faith as a statement of my convictions. I do not know how it will impress you and I will not anticipate your criticisms. It may seem impossibly bold and “Utopian.” But we are living in a world in which a battleship costs ￡8,000,000, in which we can raise an extra ￡400,000,000 for armaments with only a slight Stock Exchange qualm, and which has seen the Zeppelin, the radio, the bombing aeroplane come absolutely out of nothing since 1900. And our schools are going along very much as they were going along thirty-seven years ago.
There is only one thing I would like to say in conclusion. Please do me the justice to remember that this is a project for Knowledge Organisation only and solely. It is not an entire scheme of education I am putting before you. It is only a part and a limited part of education — the factual side of education — I have discussed. There are 168 hours in a week and I am dealing with the use of rather less than six during the school year of less than forty weeks — for ten years. It is no good saying as though it was an objection either to my paper or to me, that I neglect or repudiate185 spiritual, emotional and aesthetic values. They are not disregarded, but they have no place at all in this particular part of the educational scheme. I have said nothing about music, dancing, drawing, painting, exercise and so on and so forth. Not because I would exclude them from education but because they do not fall into the limits of my subject. You no more want these lovely and elementary things mixed up with a conspectus of knowledge than you want playfulness in an ordnance186 map or perplexing whimsicality on a clock face. You have the remaining 162 hours a week for all that. But the spiritual, emotional, aesthetic lives our children are likely to lead, will hardly be worth living unless they are sustained by such a clear, full and sufficient backbone of knowledge as I have ventured to put before you here.
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1
advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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embarking
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| 乘船( embark的现在分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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informative
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| adj.提供资料的，增进知识的 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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imputation
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| n.归罪，责难 | |
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practitioner
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| n.实践者，从事者；(医生或律师等)开业者 | |
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practitioners
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| n.习艺者，实习者( practitioner的名词复数 )；从业者（尤指医师） | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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relentlessly
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| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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apportion
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| vt.（按比例或计划）分配 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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erring
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| 做错事的，错误的 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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schooling
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| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
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ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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credulous
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| adj.轻信的，易信的 | |
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37
gregarious
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| adj.群居的，喜好群居的 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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massacres
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| 大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 )； 惨败 | |
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massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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scribble
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| v.潦草地书写，乱写，滥写；n.潦草的写法，潦草写成的东西，杂文 | |
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51
restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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52
overlap
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| v.重叠，与…交叠；n.重叠 | |
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53
afflict
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| vt.使身体或精神受痛苦，折磨 | |
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54
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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56
conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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58
concurrently
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| adv.同时地 | |
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evaporation
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| n.蒸发，消失 | |
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spherical
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| adj.球形的；球面的 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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zoology
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| n.动物学，生态 | |
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physiology
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| n.生理学，生理机能 | |
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royalty
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| n.皇家，皇族 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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combative
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| adj.好战的；好斗的 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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71
inflame
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| v.使燃烧；使极度激动；使发炎 | |
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72
reiteration
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| n. 重覆, 反覆, 重说 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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chronic
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| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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anti-
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| pref.[前缀]表示反抗，排斥 | |
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anthropology
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| n.人类学 | |
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80
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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entanglements
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| n.瓜葛( entanglement的名词复数 )；牵连；纠缠；缠住 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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seamen
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| n.海员 | |
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exclusion
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| n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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abounds
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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96
hunch
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| n.预感，直觉 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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grievances
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| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
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collateral
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| adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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floras
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| n.（某地区或某时期的）植物群，植物区系，植物志( flora的名词复数 ) | |
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faunas
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| 动物群 | |
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capes
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| 碎谷； 斗篷( cape的名词复数 )； 披肩； 海角； 岬 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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emergence
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| n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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113
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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114
morbidity
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| n.病态；不健全；发病；发病率 | |
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hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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117
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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118
enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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119
stipulated
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| vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的 | |
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superannuated
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| adj.老朽的，退休的；v.因落后于时代而废除，勒令退学 | |
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scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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123
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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124
rejuvenation
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| n. 复原，再生, 更新, 嫩化, 恢复 | |
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virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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127
syllabuses
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| 教学大纲，课程提纲( syllabus的名词复数 ) | |
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inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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biased
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| a.有偏见的 | |
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interpretations
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| n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解 | |
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135
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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devastation
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| n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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138
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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penguins
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| n.企鹅( penguin的名词复数 ) | |
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monetary
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| adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的 | |
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pompous
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的 | |
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143
verbiage
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| n.冗词；冗长 | |
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fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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charlatan
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| n.骗子；江湖医生；假内行 | |
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shearing
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| n.剪羊毛，剪取的羊毛v.剪羊毛( shear的现在分词 )；切断；剪切 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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truthfulness
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| n. 符合实际 | |
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152
communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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153
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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impartially
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| adv.公平地，无私地 | |
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perennial
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| adj.终年的；长久的 | |
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partisans
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| 游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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158
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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apportioned
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| vt.分摊，分配（apportion的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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immaturity
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| n.不成熟；未充分成长；未成熟；粗糙 | |
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161
aptitude
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| n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资 | |
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162
citizenship
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| n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份) | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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164
proprietors
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| n.所有人，业主( proprietor的名词复数 ) | |
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165
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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166
undesirability
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| n.不受欢迎 | |
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167
administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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168
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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171
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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172
quantitative
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| adj.数量的，定量的 | |
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173
statistical
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| adj.统计的，统计学的 | |
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174
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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175
dilate
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| vt.使膨胀，使扩大 | |
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176
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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177
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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178
solicitors
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| 初级律师( solicitor的名词复数 ) | |
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179
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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180
industrialist
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| n.工业家，实业家 | |
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181
administrator
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| n.经营管理者，行政官员 | |
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182
investigator
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| n.研究者，调查者，审查者 | |
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183
rectifies
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| 改正，矫正( rectify的第三人称单数 )； 精馏 | |
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184
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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185
repudiate
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| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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186
ordnance
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| n.大炮，军械 | |
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