Sibylla or, The revival of prophecy
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