Cambridge Essays on Education | Page 5

school and upon the pupils. The love of knowledge is so natural and
awakens so early in the normal child, that even if it be somewhat less
keen among English than among French or Scottish children, we may
well believe our deficiencies to be largely due to faulty and
unstimulative methods of teaching, and may trust that they will
diminish when these methods have been improved.
If it be true that the English public generally show a want of interest in
and faint appreciation of the value of education, the stern discipline of
war will do something to remove this indifference. The comparative
poverty and reduction of luxurious habits; which this war will bring in

its train, along with a sense of the need that has arisen for turning to the
fullest account all the intellectual resources of the country so that it
may maintain its place in the world,--these things may be expected to
work a change for the better, and lead parents to set more store upon
the mental and less upon the athletic achievements of their sons.
Be this as it may, no one to-day denies that much remains to be done to
spread a sense of the value of science for those branches of industry to
which (as especially to agriculture) it has been imperfectly applied, to
strengthen and develop the teaching of scientific theory as the
foundation of technical and practical scientific work, and above all to
equip with the largest measure of knowledge and by the most
stimulating training those on whom nature has bestowed the most
vigorous and flexible minds. To-day e see that the heads of great
businesses, industrial and financial, are looking out for men of
university distinction to be placed in responsible posts--a thing which
did not happen fifty years ago--because the conditions of modern
business have grown too intricate to be handled by any but the best
trained brains. The same need is at least equally true of many branches
of that administrative work which is now being thrust, in growing
volume, upon the State and its officials.
If we feel this as respects the internal economic life of our country, is it
not true also of the international life of the world? In the stress and
competition of our times, the future belongs to the nations that
recognise the worth of Knowledge and Thought, and best understand
how to apply the accumulated experience of the past. In the long run it
is knowledge and wisdom that rule the world, not knowledge only, but
knowledge applied with that width of view and sympathetic
comprehension of men, and of other nations, which are the essence of
statesmanship.
[Footnote 1: This has been clearly seen and admirably stated by the
present President of the Board of Education.]
[Footnote 2: Take for instance this little fragment of Alcman:
Greek: _Ou m heti, parthenikai meligaryest imerophônoi, Gyia pherein
dynatai. Bale dê Bale kêrylos eiên, Hos t hepi kymatos hanthos ham
alkyonessi potêtai Nêleges hêtor hechôn haliporphyros eiaros hornis._
What can be more exquisite than the epithets in the first line, or more
fresh and delicate and tender in imaginative quality than the three last?

A modern poet of equal genius would treat the topic with equal force
and grace, but the charm, the untranslatable charm of antique simplicity,
would be absent.]

I
THE AIM OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM
By J. L. PATON
High Master of Manchester Grammar School
The last century, with all its brilliant achievement in scientific
discovery and increase of production, was spiritually a failure. The
sadness of that spiritual failure crushed the heart of Clough, turned
Carlyle from a thinker into a scold, and Matthew Arnold from a poet
into a writer of prose.
The secret of failure was that the great forces which move mankind
were out of touch with each other, and furnished no mutual support. Art
had no vital relation with industry; work was dissociated from joy;
political economy was at issue with humanity; science was at daggers
drawn with religion; action did not correspond to thought, being to
seeming; and finally the individual was conceived as having claims and
interests at variance with the claims and interests of the society of
which he formed a part, in fact as standing out against it, in an
opposition so sharply marked that one of the greatest thinkers could
write a book with the title "Man versus the State." As a result, nation
was divided against nation, labour against capital, town against country,
sex against sex, the hearts of the children were set against the fathers,
the Church fought against the State, and, worst of all, Church fought
against Church.
The discords of the great society were reflect inevitably in the sphere of
education. The elementary schools of the nation were