Education in Transition

An Interim Report

H.C. Dent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136270659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

First published in 1998. This is Volume X of twenty-eight in the Sociology of Education series and presents a sociological study of the impact of war on English education from 1939 to 1943. Initially written in 1944. The relationship between the educational system of the social order is being increasingly realized, with the conclusion that education is one of the instruments for promoting the development of society, so if a new order is desired then a new order of education is also required. This book looks at the effects of the war and evacuation of children on the educational system via four processes: the disintegration, recuperation, adaptation and ferment.

Chapter IV
Ferment

Six Categories

In presenting any outline of the great movement for reform in education which has arisen during the years of war it would be ungracious and unjust not to pay tribute first to those rare minds which for long previously had striven to penetrate into the future and to discern something of the shape of things to come. Nor less is tribute due to those who by courageous experiment—pursued oftentimes in face of discouragement, handicap, and obstacle—paved the way to reforms which are today either in being or universally advocated, but which have been made practicable only by reason of their initiative and resolute endeavour.

To mention names would be invidious. Many, perhaps most, of these pioneers—of both kinds—have remained unknown to more than local fame. Let thanks be recorded, without distinction, to all.

It is impossible to say just when the idea became articulate that there must be after the war a new order in English education. By the end of 1940 it was being canvassed in many quarters, though as yet in terms rather of vague aspiration than of practical politics. But months before this forward-looking educationists had begun to try to hammer out the principles upon which reform should be based, and even to put forward proposals having some measure of definition.

In 1941 the ferment spread rapidly, and it soon became possible to see definite forms and patterns emerging. There were early to be distinguished six main categories of thought: the philosophical, the religious, the professional (i.e. representative of the views of teachers and administrators of education), the political, the industrial, and that of the general public outside these specialized groupings.

Save for the last, which has remained diffuse, incoherent, and to a large extent inarticulate, these categories, though constantly impinging upon each other and often to no slight degree overlapping, have yet been throughout differentiated. The ultimate aims which have inspired their representatives have been different, and so too has been the emphasis each has laid upon certain aspects of reform.

It would appear the most helpful plan to consider these categories under separate headings, in the hope that the reader may thus be enabled to obtain a clearer picture of the extraordinary variety of influences, aims, and emphases which have gone to make up the reform movement, to assess the nature and value of the contribution made by each category to the sum-total of thought, and to form his own judgment as to the probable effect of that thought upon the future of education and of society in Britain.

As my analysis of these matters is an entirely subjective one, it is of course liable to be biased, and I certainly cannot expect that everyone will agree with it. All I will say is that any bias I may have introduced is entirely unintentional, and that I trust this will be corrected by the factual story of the movement which follows in this chapter.

One exception will be made to the procedure of treatment under separate headings. The professional and political categories have throughout acted and reacted upon each other so continuously and in so intimate a fashion that to deal with them apart would be almost meaningless. They are accordingly placed together under a single heading.

Philosophical thought has concentrated in the main upon endeavouring to elucidate what should be the purpose and the scope of education in a fully democratic society. It has paid some attention—though I think not enough—to the content of the curriculum, but has concerned itself little with the structure and administration of the educational system. This I hold to be a defect, for I believe purpose, content, and structure to be indissolubly related, and that consequently none of the three can properly be examined without full reference to the others.

In seeking to discover the purpose of education, philosophical thought has inevitably found itself driven back to examination of the nature and purpose of a fully democratic society. It has made valuable explorations in this hitherto almost unexplored field, but, with the exception of one or two thinkers—notably Karl Mannheim and Sir Fred Clarke—the philosophers have tended rather to overlook the importance of the setting—that of mass industrialization—in which our democracy of tomorrow will have to be worked out. Consequently, their deductions concerning the relationship between education and the social order as a whole have not got much beyond the stage of statement of general principles applicable to any kind of democracy. Little attempt has been made so far to examine in detail the implications of these principles in the light of modern socioeconomic trends, and so to translate the principles into terms of action relevant to the state of society today.

For example, it is generally agreed that education should be the basic activity of the state in a democratic Society, and universally agreed that the potentialities of each individual member of the community should be developed to the full. These principles demand for their implementation staggeringly revolutionary action; but hardly a single thinker has yet dared to advance proposals which would come anywhere near implementing them to the full.

Religious thought has, unhappily, been hopelessly confused, and consequently lamentably undirective, because of an almost universal failure to distinguish between three quite distinct and separate issues; the purely religious one, the denominational, and the administrative.

Even on the religious issue there has been a regrettable lack of clarity of thought. To seek to base all education upon Christian principles and to permeate it through and through with the spirit that was in Christ Jesus is a very noble aim—perhaps the noblest by which man at this era in our civilization can be inspired. Had the religious thought of the past three years consistently and undeviatingly pursued this aim, its contribution to educational reform would have been invaluable, for it is beyond question that the direst need of man today is for a compulsive and overriding sense of spiritual purpose and direction.

Unhappily, even where this aim has been pursued single-mindedly (and this has been exceedingly rare) almost without exception there has been made, not the correct assumption that it is desirable that education shall be based on Christian principles and permeated with the Christian spirit, but the dogmatic assertion that it must be. Consequently, little attempt has been made to do what most needs to be done—to demonstrate that Christianity offers a purpose, a directive, and criteria of conduct, such as to compel the allegiance of men and women seeking to live their lives on a higher moral and spiritual level.

The denominational and administrative issues are almost inextricably interrelated in the minds of most people. They are of course rooted in the very fabric of our educational history. They derive from the fact that it was denominational bodies which first provided educational facilities on a large scale for the mass of the people and thus established for themselves an interest and an ownership which could not in justice be expropriated and which the denominations would not relinquish when the State system was founded.

It seems impossible for many people to distinguish between the interest and the ownership, yet they are in reality quite separable. The separate issues can be stated in two simple questions: (1) Have parents (not the Churches, but the parents) the right to expect that in the schools provided by the community denominational religious instruction shall be given? (2) Have denominations the right to ownership of buildings and a say in the administration of schools which are integral parts of the publicly provided system of education?

I have my own answers to these questions; but any answers I might give would be merely expressions of an individual opinion, and so of slight value and little interest. In a democratic society the only answers which can be regarded as valid and conclusive are those given by the community as a whole. Scotland has given such answers; England has not yet managed to do so. We shall not do so until we are prepared to distinguish between the two issues, and to consider them, not only as separate but as on different levels.

As will be seen from the narrative in this chapter, professional thought was in the first instance stimulated to intense activity by political statements and action. It was most unfortunate that this resulted (though it need not have done) in the level of professional thought being decided by the politician, who naturally thought mainly in terms of legislative and administrative action, and not in terms of the social philosophy which should direct action. The fundamental defects of professional thought have throughout been that it has been recapitulatory rather than progressive, that it has concentrated upon the structural aspect of reform, and that it has shown a fatal fondness for compromise. Its proposals have never lived up to the principles upon which they were supposed to be based. In all these respects it has taken its cue from the political platform, and in the game of ball which has been played for the past two years or more between the politician and the professional, the former has consistently dictated the boundaries and the standard of play. At no time have the representatives of organized education insisted that the level of the discussion should be raised to a higher plane and made to embrace the whole range of educational problems.

"The wrong battle is being fought," the late Dr. H. G. Stead said to me a few weeks before his death. His words were profoundly true. Professional thought has succeeded in achieving a remarkable unanimity of opinion on a great many important questions, chiefly in the sphere of structural reform, but it has hardly begun to touch the fundamental problems of education in a democratic society. It has as yet no real answer to the question of purpose; it has been content to pay more or less sincere lip-service (much of it admittedly sincere) to slogans the full meaning of which it has not troubled to analyse out. It has evaded the question of the scope of education, in that, first, it will not tackle seriously the problem of the relationship between the education of the young and their initiation into the world of adult labour and citizenship, and second because it burkes the issue of a comprehensive system of adult education—though this is beyond doubt the most immediately urgent educational issue before the nation at the moment. It has shied away from the problem of the content of the curriculum, because the internal vested interests which are antipathetic to change are too well placed strategically and too strongly entrenched to allow consideration of the radical changes that are required. And it has almost completely ignored, except in respect of the matter of entry thereto, the entire field of university and comparable forms of higher education.

This drastic criticism must not be taken to imply any lack of appreciation of the genuine contribution towards reform which professional thought has undoubtedly made. It has been the spearhead of that body of opinion which has convinced the public that there are grave defects and deficiencies in both the publicly provided system of education and in the educational set-up as a whole. While it has never had the courage to state frankly and fully the implications of the principle which it has made its battle-cry—"equality of opportunity"—it has succeeded in getting the idea generally accepted that there must be a very considerable levelling up of opportunity. Though it has not yet fully grasped the idea that the educational process is a continuous and all-pervasive one embracing the whole of life and conditioning every activity of the individual and of society, it has established a widespread conviction that education is immensely important, that its period must be considerably extended, and that the process, to be effective, must be linked up and co-ordinated with the other social services.

In brief, professional thought has laid a foundation for educational advance. If all the reforms it has so strenuously advocated were to be carried into effect simultaneously we should at least be in a position to consider a genuine and substantial educational advance. It may be that this process of recapitulatory reform, of stopping the gaps and repairing the defects in our existing system, was inevitable, that public opinion (which ultimately must be decisive) could not have been brought up to the pitch of demanding both reform and advance at one and the same time. I believe it could, and I am profoundly concerned lest this preoccupation of professional thought with recapitulation shall have induced public opinion to be satisfied with too little. These are no days for compromise, especially in education; for the future of our country literally depends upon the quality of our post-war education.

What of the sixth category? I have had some opportunity to assess the state of mind of the ordinary citizen, for I have travelled the length and breadth of Great Britain during the past three years, and have met him at meetings, in conferences, and at training centres; and have listened to his conversations in railway trains, hotels, clubs, the Forces, factories, business establishments, and private houses. I admit that in the main I have met only the interested citizen, the one who is making some effort to understand this business called education because he believes for one reason or another that it is much more important to him and his children than ever he imagined until quite recently. I know there is a vast mass of people who are not interested—at least not openly and actively interested— though I believe that even among them there is latent, and not too deep below the surface, an uneasy feeling that all is not well which could be without difficulty quickened to a live interest.

Two characteristics are outstanding in the interested average citizen; a desire for extension of educational opportunity which is pathetic in its intensity, and an ignorance which is equally if not more pathetic. He does not know in any detail what he wants, and he has no reason beyond the purely utilitarian one for wanting it. For him the educationist's slogan "For every child a chance in life" means, quite openly, "For my child a better job in life". It is a tragic reflection upon the state of our socicty, but it is completely understandable in the individual, as the following section in this chapter shows only too clearly. And it is not only understandable; it merits every sympathy.

But the matter cannot be left there. We cannot press for educational reform on a purely material basis—important though that aspect is. Nor do I think we need act as though the matter must be left there. Social security is the indispensable prerequisite for the success of educational reform; but given that, given even the guaranteed promise of that, I am confident that the great mass of the people of England would re...