Welsh Journals

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so undesirable an anomaly. He had not been long on the throne before it became known that professors and teachers who looked for advancement must maintain a loyal and patriotic attitude, in other words must lend themselves to further the Kaiser's policy at home and abroad. The Kaiser, in fact, has used Education as Elizabeth used the Church, for the manufacture of public opinion. He tunes the University chairs, as she tuned the Cathedral pulpits. And the autocratic temper is not limited to Imperial potentates, though indeed its Autocratic presence is hardly necessary, temper not inasmuch as a strong sense of unknown in official duty may often be quite democratic sufficient to produce a steady communities pressure for the removal of those excrescences and anomalies which, though they are the signs of vigorous life, yet offend the eye of the educational organiser. Indeed it is hardly possible for such an official to avoid undesirable interference without putting a good deal of restraint upon his natural instinct for the business of the organiser is to organise, and if he sits still while local idiosyncrasy is expressing itself in an unsymmetrical way, he has an uneasy feeling that he is neglecting his duty This is why every central office constantly tends to widen its sphere of work, and to increase the number of the regulations it issues to its dependants and of the reports which it demands of them in return. y. In education there is the further that the organiser may Schools danger that the organiser may Schools have strong views of his own either on questions of curriculum or on others of a more general character, quite possibly sound views, and that in his laudable eagerness to raise the standard of teaching or to produce a right attitude towards public questions he may unduly encroach on the freedom of teaching and the independence of the teacher. We shall do well to be on our guard against the tendency to tune the schools, which would benefit as little from the process as the Elizabethan Church or the modern German University. That there is amongst Tendency to ourselves a tendency to over-cen- ooer-centrali- tralisation is, I think, beginning sation to be admitted there has of late been a disposition which should be jealously watched to transfer power from the Local School Governors to the County Authorities, and from these again to the Central Welsh Board. If our education is to encourage initiative, indepen- dence and originality, we must be content to put up with many things which we do not like, lest in re- moving them we seriously impair the power for good of those who have devised them. Men who are kept in leading strings gradually Effect on lose the capacity and even the de- Teachers sire for initiative and responsi- bility. They may actually come to resent as an injury any attempt to give them greater liberty of action. Witness the outcry re- cently raised by the Headmasters of the Welsh Intermediate Schools, when the Board of Education proposed that they should be given a larger voice in the control of the Junior Certificate Examination. Such are some of the dangers Educational against which we shall have to progress already be on our guard. But these in- achieved in stances should not blind us to Wales the enormous progress which Wales has made in our lifetime. If our school system needs repair and renewal, as no doubt it does, it has already accomplished a great work in Wales, and has also given a lead to our neighbours across (Ma's Dyke. We have no need to adopt an apologetic tone. Let us only keep before us the high ideal of education which animated its founders, valuing it not so much for the social or pecuniary advantages it may bring, as for the en- larged activities and greater usefulness to one's generation which it renders possible. That Wales has splendid material for a higher educational system to work upon will be the universal testimony of all who have taught in the Principality. Qualities of the TIle intensity of the Welsh intellect Welsh intellect has always been recognised, but usually with the qualification that it only plays within narrow limits; that Welsh thought, in short, though keen. tends to be pro- vincial. That there is an clement of truth in this may be conceded. It would be strange if a race pent up for centuries within a narrow area and struggling to preserve its individuality against the encroachments of a wealthy and powerful neighbour did not suffer a certain narrowing of its interests and sympathies. But such narrowness is the effect of circumstances, and history shews that it does not long survive them. As a dynasty the Welsh Tudors were some of the most virile and far-sighted monarchs this kingdom has ever had. There was nothing provincial about their outlook. And what do we see at the present moment ? This war is a world struggle between empires in which kingdoms rank but as provinces. Is it not remarkable that of the small number of politicians who have from the out-