Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

to the German character, arises out of it and rein- forces it, and that, as the tree is, so is its fruit. The early part of Chapter V. contains the essen- tial basis of Mr. Holmes's theory. In it he con- trasts the training which comes from rules, from explicit formulae, from the attempt to pro- vide in advance for every situation that can occur, with the development by practice of what he calls those intuitive faculties by which we feel in- stinctively what the problems involve such as political sagacity, social tact, commonsense, con- science, the sense of proportion, the sense of humour, the sense of honour, the sense of value, imagination, sympathy, etc., [p. 115.] It is here here that he finds the essential difference in aim between German and British education and the essential difference in result between the German and the British character. The second assertion is one which has come to be generally admitted. But in the last chapter he comes to our system of education, and charges us with inconsistency. While no doubt the intuitive faculties of the Briton have led him at the back of his mind to realise the necessity of developing these same intuitive faculties in his children, Mr. Holmes accuses him of not having recognised this aim explicity. We, too, subject the child to coercive discipline and dogmatic pressure but long before he is grown up we give him his freedom and tell him to live his own life and work out his own salvation. Are we wise? [p. 251]. We think Mr, Holmes has exaggerated the charge the traditional university education has surely aimed at producing a man who will form his own opinions, even if he has thought too much of the more capable and left the rest severely alone. The traditional secondary school education has produced persons of initiative, even if its intellectual curriculum has not had its proper share in the process. The evil, we venture to assert, has not come from anything that is genuinely traditional. It has come rather, we fancy, whenever we have ceased to trust our instincts and traditions, and have begun definitely to think. Hence it has come specially whenever a new educational development has been required. When the State first recognised its duty in the matter of elementary education, it did not follow intuition it was timid. It modestly conceded that we were behind the other great nations of Europe, and it proceeded to imitate them. This is an attitude which we in these islands have not usually adopted in matters other than educational. We have on the whole been too unwilling to look elsewhere for ideas, and we have either led the world or fallen behind the world. The same thing which happened to elementary education has happened in regard to the state control of secondary education it happened in Wales after the passing of the Inter- mediate Education Act, in England after 1902. It has happened to some extent as regards the newer universities. Is it possible to point to a single feature of British education so far as it depends on State control which is not a mere imitation of some- thing foreign, generally German, and rather a feeble imitation ? This is not true as regards those matters which are independant of State action the prefect system, for instance, is strictly British a develop- ment of a mediaeval institution the relations of teacher and pupil or of teacher and student are independent of any foreign influence and perhaps these are the strongest points in our schools and universities. But the State has neither traditions nor imagination: in their place it substitutes pre- cedents and formulae. According to Mr. Holmes's views, a German necessarily asks a lead from the State, and perhaps the fact that when he has got it he believes it to be something sacred, puts some vitality into a State system. In these islands, where according to Mr. Holmes, though we love our country, we have little conception of the State-the State can never inspire, it can only set up machinery, and our natural inclination is to grumble at the machinery. We think that there is something in Mr. Holmes's contention that our education, especially at the lower stages, forgets the real training of resource and initiative in striving after mechanical acquisi- tions. But we trace the reason almost entirely to the State. Just at the time when a development in the opposite direction might have been expected, the Lowe Code tied down our elementary schools for thirty years to a routine grind. The Central Welsh Board has sinned in the same direction in the case of our Welsh secondary schools, and other examinations, for none of which schoolmasters are really responsible, have done the same for English secondary education. Everywhere we find the same tale we disbelieve in the State at the bottom of our hearts, and our disbelief reflects itself in our actions. Hence the State cannot succeed except in the most strictly limited sphere, because it is alien to our natural temperament. In all this I have made little attempt to differentiate between Welsh and English, because in this particular respect I cannot see any marked difference both are unlike the German, and I should hesitate to say which is the more unlike. Neither is it possible to make a discrimination between the existing state of things