What Is and What Might Be

What Is and What Might Be, by
Edmond Holmes

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Title: What Is and What Might Be A Study of Education in General
and Elementary Education in Particular
Author: Edmond Holmes
Release Date: February 10, 2007 [EBook #20555]
Language: English
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WHAT IS AND WHAT MIGHT BE
A STUDY OF EDUCATION IN GENERAL AND ELEMENTARY

EDUCATION IN PARTICULAR
BY
EDMOND HOLMES
AUTHOR OF "THE CREED OF CHRIST," "THE CREED OF
BUDDHA," "THE SILENCE OF LOVE," "THE TRIUMPH OF
LOVE," ETC.
LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY 1912
First published, May 1911. Second impression, July 1911. Third
impression, September 1911. Fourth impression, November 1911. Fifth
impression, January 1912. Sixth impression, October 1912.
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|Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. All |
|other inconstancies in spelling or punctuation are as in the original.|
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PREFACE
My aim, in writing this book, is to show that the externalism of the
West, the prevalent tendency to pay undue regard to outward and
visible "results" and to neglect what is inward and vital, is the source of
most of the defects that vitiate Education in this country, and therefore
that the only remedy for those defects is the drastic one of changing our
standard of reality and our conception of the meaning and value of life.
My reason for making a special study of that branch of education which
is known as "Elementary," is that I happen to have a more intimate
knowledge of it than of any other branch, the inside of an elementary
school being so familiar to me that I can in some degree bring the eye
of experience to bear upon the problems that confront its teachers. I do
not for a moment imagine that the elementary school teacher is more
deeply tainted than his fellows with the virus of "Occidentalism." Nor
do I think that the defects of his schools are graver than those of other

educational institutions. In my judgment they are less grave because,
though perhaps more glaring, they have not had time to become so
deeply rooted, and are therefore, one may surmise, less difficult to
eradicate. Also there is at least a breath of healthy discontent stirring in
the field of elementary education, a breath which sometimes blows the
mist away and gives us sudden gleams of sunshine, whereas over the
higher levels of the educational world there hangs the heavy stupor of
profound self-satisfaction.[1] I am not exaggerating when I say that at
this moment there are elementary schools in England in which the life
of the children is emancipative and educative to an extent which is
unsurpassed, and perhaps unequalled, in any other type or grade of
school.
I am careful to say all this because I foresee that, without a "foreword"
of explanation, my adverse criticism of what I have called "a familiar
type of school" may be construed into an attack on the elementary
teachers as a body. I should be very sorry if such a construction were
put upon it. No one knows better than I do that the elementary teachers
of this country are the victims of a vicious conception of education
which has behind it twenty centuries of tradition and prescription, and
the malign influence of which was intensified in their case by thirty
years or more[2] of Code despotism and "payment by results."
Handicapped as they have been by this and other adverse conditions,
they have yet produced a noble band of pioneers, to whom I, for one,
owe what little I know about the inner meaning of education; and if I
take an unduly high standard in judging of their work, the reason is that
they themselves, by the brilliance of their isolated achievements, have
compelled me to take it. I will therefore ask them to bear with me,
while I expose with almost brutal candour the shortcomings of many of
their schools. They will understand that all the time I am thinking of
education in general even more than of elementary education, and using
my knowledge of the latter to illustrate statements and arguments
which are really intended to tell against the former. They will also
understand that at the back of my mind I am laying the blame of their
failures, not on them but