Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects | Page 5

importance no instruction
whatever is given, as, for example, in the normal methods of
reproduction in plants and animals, in eugenics, and in the ruinous
consequences of disregarding sexual purity and honour. In one respect
his fundamental doctrine of freedom, carried into the domain of
physical exercise, has been extensively adopted in England, on the
Continent, and in America. He taught that although gymnastics,
military drill, and formal exercises of the limbs are better than nothing,
they can never serve in place of the plays prompted by nature. He
maintained that "for girls as well as boys the sportive activities to
which the instincts impel are essential to bodily welfare." This principle
is now being carried into practice not only for school-children, but for
operatives in factories, clerks, and other young persons whose
occupations are sedentary and monotonous. For all such persons, free

plays are vastly better than formal exercises of any sort.
The wide adoption of Spencer's educational ideas has had to await the
advent of the new educational administration and the new public
interest therein. It awaited the coming of the state university in the
United States and of the city university in England, the establishment of
numerous technical schools, the profound modifications made in
grammar schools and academies, and the multiplication in both
countries of the secondary schools called high schools. In other words,
his ideas gradually gained admission to a vast number of new
institutions of education, which were created and maintained because
both the governments and the nations felt a new sense of responsibility
for the training of the future generations. These new agencies have
been created in great variety, and the introduction of Spencer's ideas
has been much facilitated by this variety. These institutions were
national, state, or municipal. They were tax-supported or endowed.
They charged tuition fees, or were open to competent children or adults
without fee. They undertook to meet alike the needs of the individual
and the needs of the community; and this undertaking involved the
introduction of many new subjects of instruction and many new
methods. Through their variety they could be sympathetic with both
individualism and collectivism. The variety of instruction offered is
best illustrated in the strongest American universities, some of which
are tax-supported and some endowed. These universities maintain a
great variety of courses of instruction in subjects none of which was
taught with the faintest approach to adequacy in American universities
sixty years ago; but in making these extensions the universities have
not found it necessary to reduce the instruction offered in the classics
and mathematics. The traditional cultural studies are still provided; but
they represent only one programme among many, and no one is
compelled to follow it. The domination of the classics is at an end; but
any student who prefers the traditional path to culture, or whose parents
choose that path for him, will find in several American universities
much richer provisions of classical instruction than any university in
the country offered sixty years ago. The present proposals to widen the
influence of Oxford University do not mean, therefore, that the classics,
history, and philosophy are to be taught less there, but only that other

subjects are to be taught more, and that a greater number and variety of
young men will be prepared there for the service of the nation.
The new public interest in education as a necessary of modern
industrial and political life has gradually brought about a great increase
in the proportional number of young men and women whose education
is prolonged beyond the period of primary or elementary instruction;
and this multitude of young people is preparing for a great variety of
callings, many of which are new within sixty years, having been
brought into being by the extraordinary advances of applied science.
The advent of these new callings has favoured the spread of Spencer's
educational ideas. The recent agitation in favour of what is called
vocational training is a vivid illustration of the wide acceptance of his
arguments. Even the farmers, their farm-hands, and their children must
nowadays be offered free instruction in agriculture; because the public,
and especially the urban public, believes that by disseminating better
methods of tillage, better seed, and appropriate manures, the yield of
the farms can be improved in quality and multiplied in quantity. In
regard to all material interests, the free peoples are acting on the
principle that science is the knowledge of most worth. Spencer's
doctrine of natural consequences in place of artificial penalties, his
view that all young people should be taught how to be wise parents and
good citizens, and his advocacy of instruction in public and private
hygiene, lie at the roots of many of the philanthropic and reformatory
movements of the day.
On the whole, Herbert Spencer has