The Children: Some Educational Problems | Page 4

does to counteract and to supplant the evil
influences of a bad home or social environment. What truth there may

be in these charges and what must be done to remedy this state of
matters will be discussed when we consider later the existing
Elementary School system. Here it is sufficient to point out that one of
the causes at work to-day tending to arouse a renewed interest in
educational problems is the feeling now beginning to find expression
that the kind of universal elementary education provided somehow or
other fails, and has failed, to produce all that was in the beginning
expected of it--that it has in the past been too much divorced from the
real interests of life, and that it must be remodelled if it is to fit the
individual to perform his duty to society.
A third fault often found with our existing school system is that in the
case of the majority of the children the process of education stops at too
early an age. The belief is slowly spreading that if we are to educate
thoroughly the children of the nation so as to fit them to perform
efficiently the after duties of life, something of a more systematic
character than has as yet been done is required, in order to carry on and
to extend the education of the child after the Elementary school stage
has been passed. For it is evident that during the Primary School period
all that can be expected in the case of the larger number of children is
that the school should lay a sound basis in the knowledge of the
elementary arts necessary for all social intercourse, and for the
realisation of the simpler needs of life. A beginning may be made,
during this period, in the formation and establishment of systems of
knowledge which have for their aim the realisation of the more
complex theoretical and practical interests of after life, but unless these
are furthered and extended in the years in which the boy is passing
from youth to manhood, then as a consequence much of what has been
acquired during the early period fails to be of use either to the
individual or to society.
Again, it is surely unwise to give no heed to the systematic education of
the majority of the children during the years when they are most
susceptible to moral and social influences, and to leave the moral and
social education of the youth during the adolescent period to the
unregulated and uncertain forces of society.

Lastly, in this connection it is economically wasteful for the nation to
spend largely in laying the mere foundations of knowledge, and then to
adopt the policy of non-interference, and to leave to the individual
parent the right of determining whether the foundation so laid shall be
further utilised or not.
A fourth criticism urged against our educational system is that in the
past we have paid too little attention to the technical education of those
destined in after life to become the leaders of industry and the captains
of commerce. Our Higher School system has been too predominantly
of one type--it has taken too narrow a view of the higher services
required by the State of its members, and our educational system has
not been so organised as to maintain and farther the economic
efficiency of the State. For it may be contended that the economic
efficiency of the individual and of the nation is fundamental in the
sense that without this, the attainment of the other goods of life can not
or can be only imperfectly realised, and it is obvious that according to
the measure in which the economic welfare of the individual and of the
State is secured, in like measure is secured the opportunity for the
development and realisation of the other aims of the individual and of
the nation.
Thus the present unrest as regards our educational affairs may be
largely traced to the four causes enumerated. We have begun to realise
that our educational system lacks definiteness of aim, and that its
various parts are badly co-ordinated; that, in short, we do not as yet
possess a national system of education which ministers to and
subserves the life of the State as a whole. We are further beginning to
perceive that the provision of the means of higher education is too
important a matter to be left to the care of the private individual, and
that education must be the concern of the whole body of the people.
Hence it has been said that on the creation of a national system of
education, fitted to meet the needs of the modern State, depends largely
the future of Britain as a nation.
Again, all that was hoped for as the