Education and the Good Life

In previous chapters, we have considered the education in character and knowledge which, in a good social system, should be open to everybody, and should in fact be enjoyed by everybody, except for serious special reasons such as musical genius. (It would have been unfortunate if Mozart had been obliged to learn ordinary school subjects up to the age of eighteen.) But even in an ideal community there would, I think, be many people who would not go to the university. I am convinced that, at present, only a minority of the population can profit by a scholastic education prolonged to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two. Certainly the idle rich who at present infest the older universities very often derive no benefit from them, but merely contract habits of dissipation. We have therefore to ask on what principle we are to select those who should go to the university. At present, they are in the main those whose parents can afford to send them, though this principle of selection is being[302] increasingly modified by the scholarship system. Obviously, the principle of selection ought to be educational, not financial. A boy or girl of eighteen, who has had a good school education, is capable of doing useful work. If he or she is to be exempted for a further period of three or four years, the community has a right to expect that the time will be profitably employed. But before deciding who is to go to the university, we must have some view as to the function of the university in the life of the community. British universities have passed through three stages, of which, however, the second is not yet wholly displaced by the third. At first, they were training colleges for the clergy, to whom, in the Middle Ages, learning was almost wholly confined. Then, with the renaissance, the idea gained ground that every well-to-do person ought to be educated, though women were supposed to need less education than men. “The education of a gentleman” was given at the universities throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is still given at Oxford. For reasons which we considered in Chapter I, this ideal, which was formerly very useful, is now out-of-date; it depended upon aristocracy, and cannot flourish either in a democracy or in an industrial plutocracy. If there is to be an aristocracy,[303] it had better be composed of educated gentlemen; but it is better still to have no aristocracy. I need not argue this question, since it was decided in England by the Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in America by the War of Independence. It is true that we still have in England the forms of aristocracy, but the spirit is that of plutocracy, which is quite a different thing. Snobbery makes successful business men send their sons to Oxford to be turned into “gentlemen”, but the result is to give them a distaste for business, which reduces their children again to comparative poverty and the need of earning a living. The “education of a gentleman” has therefore ceased to be an important part of the life of the nation, and may be ignored in considering the future. The universities are thus reverting to a position more analogous to that which they occupied in the Middle Ages; they are becoming training schools for the professions. Barristers, clergymen and medical men have usually had a university education; so have the first division of the civil service. An increasing number of engineers and technical workers in various businesses are university men. As the world grows more complicated and industry becomes more scientific, an increasing number of experts are required, and in the main they are supplied by[304] the universities. Old-fashioned people lament the intrusion of technical schools into the haunts of pure learning, but it continues none the less, because it is demanded by plutocrats who care nothing for “culture”. It is they, much more than the insurgent democracy, who are the enemies of pure learning. “Useless” learning, like “art for art’s sake”, is an aristocratic, not a plutocratic, ideal; where it lingers, it is because the renaissance tradition is not yet dead. I regret the decay of this ideal profoundly; pure learning was one of the best things associated with aristocracy. But the evils of aristocracy were so great as easily to outweigh this merit. In any case, industrialism must kill aristocracy, whether we desire it or not. We may as well make up our minds, therefore, to save what we can by attaching it to new and more potent conceptions; so long as we cling to mere tradition, we shall be fighting a losing battle. If pure learning is to survive as one of the purposes of universities, it will have to be brought into relation with the life of the community as a whole, not only with the refined delights of a few gentlemen of leisure. I regard disinterested learning as a matter of great importance, and I should wish to see its place in academic life increased, not diminished. Both in England and in America, the main[305] force tending to its diminution has been the desire to get endowments from ignorant millionaires. The cure lies in the creation of an educated democracy, willing to spend public money on objects which our captains of industry are unable to appreciate. This is by no means impossible, but it demands a general raising of the intellectual level. It would be much facilitated if our learned men would more frequently emancipate themselves from the attitude of hangers-on of the rich, which they have inherited from a time when patrons were their natural source of livelihood. It is of course possible to confound learning with learned men. To take a purely imaginary example, a learned man may improve his financial position by teaching brewing instead of organic chemistry; he gains, but learning suffers. If the learned man had a more genuine love of learning, he would not be politically on the side of the brewer who endows a professorship of brewing. And if he were on the side of democracy, democracy would be more ready to see the value of his learning. For all these reasons, I should wish to see learned bodies dependent upon public money rather than upon the benefactions of rich men. This evil is greater in America than in England, but it exists in England, and may increase. Leaving aside these political considerations, I[306] shall assume that universities exist for two purposes: on the one hand, to train men and women for certain professions; on the other hand, to pursue learning and research without regard to immediate utility. We shall therefore wish to see at the universities those who are going to practise these professions, and those who have that special kind of ability which will enable them to be valuable in learning and research. But this does not decide, by itself, how we are to select the men and women for the professions. At present, it is very difficult to enter upon such a profession as law or medicine unless one’s parents have a certain amount of money, since the training is expensive and earnings do not begin at once. The consequence is that the principle of selection is social and hereditary, not fitness for the work. Take medicine as illustrative. A community which wished to have its doctoring done efficiently would select for medical training those young people who showed most keenness and aptitude for the work. At present this principle is applied partially, to select among those who can afford the training; but it is quite probable that many of those who would make the best doctors are too poor to take the course. This involves a deplorable waste of talent. Let us take another example of a somewhat different kind. England[307] is a very thickly populated country, which imports most of its food. From a number of points of view, but especially from that of safety in war, it would be a boon if more of our food were produced at home. Yet no measures are taken to see that our very limited area is efficiently cultivated. Farmers are selected mainly by heredity: as a rule, they are the sons of farmers. The others are men who have bought farms, which implies some capital but not necessarily any agricultural skill. It is known that Danish methods of agriculture are more productive than ours, but no steps are taken to cause our farmers to know about them. We ought to insist that every person allowed to cultivate more than a small holding should have a diploma in scientific agriculture, just as we insist on a motorist having a licence. The hereditary principle has been abandoned in government, but it lingers in many other departments of life. Wherever it exists, it promotes the inefficiency to which it formerly led in public affairs. We must replace it by two correlative rules: first, that no one shall be allowed to undertake important work without having acquired the necessary skill; secondly, that this skill shall be taught to the ablest of those who desire it, quite independently of their parents’ means. It is obvious that these two rules would enormously increase efficiency. [308]University education should therefore be regarded as a privilege for special ability, and those who possess the skill but no money should be maintained at the public expense during their course. No one should be admitted unless he satisfies the tests of ability, and no one should be allowed to remain unless he satisfies the authorities that he is using his time to advantage. The idea of the university as a place of leisure where rich young men loaf for three or four years is dying, but, like Charles II, it is an unconscionable time about it. When I say that a young man or woman at the university should not be allowed to be idle, I must hasten to add that the tests of work must not consist in a mechanical conformity to system. In the newer universities in England and America there is a regrettable tendency to insist upon attendance at innumerable lectures. The arguments in favour of individual work, which are allowed to be strong in the case of infants in a Montessori school, are very much stronger in the case of young people of twenty, particularly when, as we are assuming, they are keen and exceptionally able. When I was an undergraduate, my feeling, and that of most of my friends, was that lectures were a pure waste of time. No doubt we exaggerated, but not much. The real reason for lectures is that they are obvious work, and therefore business men[309] are willing to pay for them. If university teachers adopted the best methods, business men would think them idle, and insist upon cutting down the staff. Oxford and Cambridge, because of their prestige, are to some extent able to apply the right methods; but the newer universities are unable to stand up against business men, and so are most American universities. The teacher should, at the beginning of the term, give a list of books to be read carefully, and a slight account of other books which some may like and others not. He should set papers, which can only be answered by noticing the important points in the books intelligently. He should see the pupils individually when they have done their papers. About once a week or once a fortnight, he should see such as care to come in the evening, and have desultory conversation about matters more or less connected with their work. All this is not very different from the practice at the older universities. If a pupil chooses to set himself a paper, different from that of the teacher but equally difficult, he shall be at liberty to do so. The industry of the pupils can be