Education and the Good Life

education continues, he should be free to think that it is better to be a pirate than a professor. Power of concentration is a very valuable quality, which few people acquire except through education. It is true that it grows naturally, to a considerable extent, as young people[248] get older; very young infants seldom think of any one thing for more than a few minutes, but with every year that passes their attention grows less volatile until they are adult. Nevertheless, they are hardly likely to acquire enough concentration without a long period of intellectual education. There are three qualities which distinguish perfect concentration: it should be intense, prolonged, and voluntary. Intensity is illustrated by the story of Archimedes, who is said to have never noticed when the Romans captured Syracuse and came to kill him, because he was absorbed in a mathematical problem. To be able to concentrate on the same matter for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement, and even to the understanding of any complicated or abstruse subject. A profound spontaneous interest brings this about naturally, so far as the object of interest is concerned. Most people can concentrate on a mechanical puzzle for a long time; but this is not in itself very useful. To be really valuable, the concentration must also be within the control of the will. By this I mean that, even where some piece of knowledge is uninteresting in itself, a man can force himself to acquire it if he has an adequate motive for doing so. I think it is above all the control of attention by the will that is conferred by higher education. In this one respect, an old-fashioned education[249] is admirable; I doubt whether modern methods are as successful in teaching a man to endure voluntary boredom. However, if this defect does exist in modern educational practice, it is by no means irremediable. The matter is one to which I shall return later. Patience and industry ought to result from a good education. It was formerly thought that they could only be secured, in most cases, by the enforcement of good habits imposed by external authority. Undoubtedly this method has some success, as may be seen when a horse is broken in. But I think it is better to stimulate the ambition required for overcoming difficulties, which can be done by grading the difficulties so that the pleasure of success may at first be won fairly easily. This gives experience of the rewards of persistence, and gradually the amount of persistence required can be increased. Exactly similar remarks apply to the belief that knowledge is difficult but not impossible, which is best generated by inducing the pupil to solve a series of carefully graded problems. Exactness, like the voluntary control of attention, is a matter to which educational reformers perhaps tend to attach too little importance. Dr. Ballard (op. cit. Chap. XVI) states definitely that our elementary schools, in this respect, are not so good as they were,[250] although in most respects they are vastly improved. He says: “There is in existence a large number of tests given to school-children in the annual examinations of the ’eighties and early ’nineties, and the results of those tests were scheduled for purposes of grant.[22] When those same tests are set to-day to children of the same age the results are palpably and consistently worse. Account for it as we may, there can be no doubt whatever about the fact. Taken as a whole, the work done in our schools—our primary schools at least—is less accurate than it was a quarter of a century ago.” Dr. Ballard’s whole discussion of this subject is so excellent that I have little to add to it. I will, however, quote his concluding words: “After all deductions have been made, it [accuracy] is still a noble and inspiring ideal. It is the morality of the intellect: it prescribes what it ought to strive for in the pursuit of its own proper ideal. For the extent to which we are accurate in our thoughts, words, and deeds is a rough measure of our fealty to truth.” The difficulty which is felt by the advocate of modern methods is that accuracy, as hitherto taught, involves boredom, and that it is an immense gain if education can be made interesting. Here, however, we must make a distinction.[251] Boredom merely imposed by the teacher is wholly bad; boredom voluntarily endured by the pupil in order to satisfy some ambition is valuable if not overdone. It should be part of education to fire pupils with desires not easily gratified—to know the calculus, to read Homer, to perform well on the violin, or what not. Each of these involves its own kind of accuracy. Able boys and girls will go through endless tedium and submit willingly to severe discipline in order to acquire some coveted knowledge or skill. Those who have less native ability can often be fired by similar ambitions if they are inspiringly taught. The driving force in education should be the pupil’s wish to learn, not the master’s authority; but it does not follow that education should be soft and easy and pleasant at every stage. This applies, in particular, to the question of accuracy. The acquisition of exact knowledge is apt to be wearisome, but it is essential to every kind of excellence, and this fact can be made obvious to a child by suitable methods. In so far as modern methods fail in this respect, they are at fault. In this matter, as in many others, reaction against the old bad forms of discipline has tended to an undue laxity, which will have to give place to a new discipline, more internal and psychological than the old external authority. Of this new discipline, accuracy will be the intellectual expression. [252]There are various kinds of accuracy, each of which has its own importance. To take the main kinds: There is muscular accuracy, æsthetic accuracy, accuracy as to matter-of-fact, and logical accuracy. Every boy or girl can appreciate the importance of muscular accuracy in many directions; it is required for the control of the body which a healthy child spends all its spare time in acquiring, and afterwards for the games upon which prestige depends. But it has other forms which have more to do with school-teaching, such as well-articulated speech, good writing, and correct performance on a musical instrument. A child will think these things important or unimportant according to his environment. Æsthetic accuracy is difficult to define; it has to do with the appropriateness of a sensible stimulus for the production of emotion. One way of teaching an important form of it is to cause children to learn poetry by heart—e.g., Shakespeare, for purposes of acting—and to make them feel, when they make mistakes, why the original is better. I believe it would be found that, where æsthetic sensibility is wide-spread, children are taught conventional stereotyped performances, such as dances and songs, which they enjoy, but which must be done exactly right on account of tradition. This makes them sensitive to small differences, which is essential to accuracy. Acting,[253] singing, and dancing seem to me the best methods of teaching æsthetic precision. Drawing is less good, because it is likely to be judged by its fidelity to the model, not by æsthetic standards. It is true that stereotyped performances also are expected to reproduce a model, but it is a model created by æsthetic motives; it is copied because it is good, not because copying is good. Accuracy as to matter-of-fact is intolerably boring when pursued on its own account. Learning the dates of the kings of England, or the names of the counties and their capitals, used to be one of the terrors of childhood. It is better to secure accuracy by interest and repetition. I could never remember the list of capes, but at eight years old I knew almost all the stations on the Underground. If children were shown a cinema representing a ship sailing round the coast, they would soon know the capes. I don’t think they are worth knowing, but if they were, that would be the way to teach them. All geography ought to be taught on the cinema; so ought history at first. The initial expense would be great, but not too great for governments. And there would be a subsequent economy in ease of teaching. Logical accuracy is a late acquisition, and should not be forced upon young children. Getting the multiplication table right is, of[254] course, accuracy as to matter-of-fact; it only becomes logical accuracy at a much later stage. Mathematics is the natural vehicle for this teaching, but it fails if allowed to appear as a set of arbitrary rules. Rules must be learnt, but at some stage the reasons for them must be made clear; if this is not done, mathematics has little educative value. I come now to a question which has already arisen in connection with exactness, the question, namely, how far it is possible or desirable to make all instruction interesting. The old view was that a great deal of it must be dull, and that only stern authority will induce the average boy to persist. (The average girl was to remain ignorant.) The modern view is that it can be made delightful through and through. I have much more sympathy with the modern view than with the old one; nevertheless, I think it is subject to some limitations, especially in higher education. I shall begin with what I think true in it. Modern writers on infant psychology all emphasize the importance of not urging a young child to eat or sleep: these things ought to be done spontaneously by the child, not as a result of coaxing or forcing. My own experience entirely bears out this teaching. At first, we did not know the newer teaching, and tried the older methods. They were very unsuccessful,[255] whereas the modern methods succeeded perfectly. It must not be supposed, however, that the modern parent does nothing about eating and sleeping; on the contrary, everything possible is done to promote the formation of good habits. Meals come at regular times, and the child must sit through them without games whether he eats or not. Bed comes at regular times, and the child must lie down in bed. He may have a toy animal to hug, but not one that squeaks or runs or does anything exciting. If the animal is a favourite, one may play the game that the animal is tired and the child must put it to sleep. Then leave the child alone, and sleep will usually come very quickly. But never let the child think you are anxious he should sleep or eat. That at once makes him think you are asking a favour; this gives him a sense of power, which leads him to demand more and more coaxing or punishment. He should eat and sleep because he wants to, not to please you. This psychology is obviously applicable in great measure to instruction. If you insist upon teaching a child, he will conclude that he is being asked to do something disagreeable to please you, and he will have a psychological resistance. If this exists at the start, it will perpetuate itself; at a later age, the desirability of getting through examinations may become[256] evident, and there will be work for that purpose, but none from sheer interest in knowledge. If, on the contrary, you can first stimulate the child’s desire to know, and then, as a favour, give him the knowledge he wants, the whole situation is different. Very much less external discipline is required, and attention is secured without difficulty. To succeed in this method, certain conditions are necessary, which Madame Montessori successfully produces among the very young. The tasks must be attractive and not too difficult. There must, at