That I, whose experience of teaching
is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter,
surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which
the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their
opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic
chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed
to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the
papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up
to a certain point, and provided the the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these
activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good
thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur
may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are
not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another,
been taught. Even if we learnt nothing--perhaps in particular if
we learnt nothing--our contribution to the discussion may have a
potential value.
I propose to deal with the subject of teaching, properly so-called. It
is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I propose will ever
be carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the training colleges,
nor the examination boards, nor the boards of governors, nor the ministries
of education, would countenance them for a moment. For they amount to
this: that if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted
to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of
our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four
or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose
sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages.
Before you dismiss me with the appropriate phrase--reactionary, romantic,
mediaevalist, laudator temporis acti, or
whatever tag comes first to hand--I will ask you to consider one or two
miscellaneous questions that hang about at the back, perhaps, of all
our minds, and occasionally pop out to worry us.
Disquieting Questions
When
we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went
up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were
held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs,
are we altogether comfortable about that artificial prolongation
of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical
maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the acceptance
of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number of psychological
complications which, while they may interest the psychiatrist, are
scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society. The stock
argument in favor of postponing the school-leaving age and prolonging
the period of education generally is there there is
now so much more to learn than there was in the Middle Ages. This
is partly true, but not wholly. The modern boy and girl are certainly
taught more subjects--but does that always mean that they actually
know more?
Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion
of literacy throughout
Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible
people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater
to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers
on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high
incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings,
and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen
of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our
public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt
a certain sinking of the heart?
Have you ever followed a discussion in the newspapers or elsewhere and
noticed how frequently writers fail to define the terms they use? Or
how often, if one man does define his terms, another will assume in his
reply that he was using the terms in precisely the opposite sense to
that in which he has already defined them?
Have you ever been faintly troubled by the amount of slipshod syntax
going about? And, if so, are you troubled because it is inelegant or
because it may lead to dangerous misunderstanding?
Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only
forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected), but
forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle
a new subject for themselves? Are you often bothered by coming across
grown-up men and women who seem unable to distinguish between a book
that is sound, scholarly, and properly documented, and one that is, to
any trained eye, very conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot
handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference,
betray a curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to
the particular question which interests them?
Do you often come across people for whom, all their lives, a
"subject" remains a "subject," divided by watertight
bulkheads from all other "subjects," so that they experience
very great difficulty in making an immediate mental connection between
let us say, algebra and detective fiction, sewage disposal and the price
of salmon--or, more generally, between such spheres of knowledge as philosophy
and economics, or chemistry and art?
A Few Examples
Are
you occasionally perturbed by the things written by adult men and
women for adult men and women to read?
We find a well-known biologist writing in a weekly paper to the effect
that:
"It is an argument against the existence of a Creator" (I think
he put it more strongly; but since I have, most unfortunately, mislaid
the reference, I will put his claim at its lowest)--"an argument
against the existence of a Creator that the same kind of variations which
are produced by natural selection can be produced at will by stock breeders." One
might feel tempted to say that it is rather an argument for the existence
of a Creator. Actually, of course, it is neither; all it proves is that
the same material causes (recombination of the chromosomes, by crossbreeding,
and so forth) are sufficient to account for all observed variations--just
as the various combinations of the same dozen tones are materially sufficient
to account for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the noise the cat makes
by walking on the keys. But the cat's performance neither proves nor
disproves the existence of Beethoven; and all that is proved by the biologist's
argument is that he was unable to distinguish between a material and
a final cause.
Here is a sentence from no less academic a source than a front- page
article in the (
The
Frenchman, Alfred Epinas, pointed out
that certain species (e.g., ants and wasps) can only face the horrors
of life and death in association.
I do not know what the Frenchman actually did say; what the Englishman
says he said is patently meaningless. We cannot know whether life
holds any horror for the ant, nor in what sense the isolated wasp
which you kill upon the window-pane can be said to "face" or
not to "face" the horrors of death. The subject of the
article is mass behavior in man; and the human motives have been
unobtrusively transferred from the main proposition to the supporting
instance. Thus the argument, in effect, assumes what it set out
to prove--a fact which would become immediately apparent if it
were presented in a formal syllogism. This is only a small and
haphazard example of a vice which pervades whole books--particularly
books written by men of science on metaphysical subjects.
Another quotation from the same issue of the T.L.S. comes in fittingly
here to wind up this random collection of disquieting thoughts--this
time from a review of Sir Richard Livingstone's Some Tasks for Education:
More
than once the reader is reminded of the value of an intensive study
of at least one subject, so as to learn "the meaning of knowledge" and
what precision and persistence is needed to attain it. Yet there
is elsewhere full recognition of the distressing fact that a man
may be master in one field and show no better judgement than
his neighbor anywhere else; he remembers what he has learnt, but
forgets altogether how he learned it.
I would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which
offers an explanation of what the writer rightly calls the "distressing
fact"
that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education are not
readily transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired
them: "he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how
he learned it."
The Art of Learning
Is
not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable through
all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned--that
although we often succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we
fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they
learn everything, except the art of learning. It is as though we
had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play "The
Harmonious Blacksmith" upon the piano, but had never taught
him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized
"The Harmonious Blacksmith," he still had not the faintest
notion how to proceed from that to tackle "The Last Rose of Summer." Why
do I say, "as though"? In certain of the arts and crafts, we
sometimes do precisely this--requiring a child to "express himself" in
paint before we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There
is a school of thought which believes this to be the right way to set
about the job. But observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman
will go about to teach himself a new medium. He, having learned by experience
the best way to economize labor and take the thing by the right end,
will start off by doodling about on an odd piece of material, in order
to "give himself the feel of the tool."
Let us now look at the mediaeval scheme of education--the syllabus of
the Schools. It does not matter, for the moment, whether it was devised
for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed
to take over it. What matters is the light it throws upon what the men
of the Middle Ages supposed to be the object and the right order of the
educative process.
The Mediaeval Syllabus
The
syllabus was divided into two parts: the Trivium and Quadrivium. The second part--the Quadrivium--consisted
of "subjects," and need not for the moment concern us.
The interesting thing for us is the composition of the Trivium,
which preceded the Quadrivium and was
the preliminary discipline for it. It consisted of three parts: Grammar,
Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that order.
Now the first thing we notice is that two at any rate of these
"subjects" are not what we should call "subjects" at
all: they are only methods of dealing with subjects. Grammar, indeed,
is a
"subject" in the sense that it does mean definitely learning
a language--at that period it meant learning Latin. But language itself
is simply the medium in which thought is expressed. The whole of the Trivium was,
in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning,
before he began to apply them to "subjects" at all. First,
he learned a language; not just how to order a meal in a foreign language,
but the structure of a language, and hence of language itself--what it
was, how it was put together, and how it worked. Secondly, he learned
how to use language; how to define his terms and make accurate statements;
how to construct an argument and how to detect fallacies in argument.
Dialectic, that is to say, embraced Logic and Disputation. Thirdly, he
learned to express himself in language-- how to say what he had to say
elegantly and persuasively.
At the end of his course, he was required to compose a thesis upon some
theme set by his masters or chosen by himself, and afterwards to defend
his thesis against the criticism of the faculty. By this time, he would
have learned--or woe betide him--not merely to write an essay on paper,
but to speak audibly and intelligibly from a platform, and to use his
wits quickly when heckled. There would also be questions, cogent and
shrewd, from those who had already run the gauntlet of debate.
It is, of course, quite true that bits and pieces of the mediaeval tradition
still linger, or have been revived, in the ordinary school syllabus of
today. Some knowledge of grammar is still required when learning a foreign
language--perhaps I should say, "is again required," for during
my own lifetime, we passed through a phase when the teaching of declensions
and conjugations was considered rather reprehensible, and it was considered
better to pick these things up as we went along. School debating societies
flourish; essays are written; the necessity for "self-expression" is
stressed, and perhaps even over-stressed. But these activities are cultivated
more or less in detachment, as belonging to the special subjects in which
they are pigeon-holed rather than as forming one coherent scheme of mental
training to which all
"subjects" stand in a subordinate relation. "Grammar"
belongs especially to the "subject" of foreign languages, and
essay-writing to the "subject" called "English";
while Dialectic has become almost entirely divorced from the rest of
the curriculum, and is frequently practiced unsystematically and out
of school hours as a separate exercise, only very loosely related to
the main business of learning. Taken by and large, the great difference
of emphasis between the two conceptions holds good: modern education
concentrates on teaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking,
arguing, and expressing one's conclusions to be picked up by the scholar
as he goes along; mediaeval education concentrated on first forging
and learning to handle the tools of learning, using whatever subject
came handy as a piece of material on which to doodle until the use of
the tool became second nature.
"Subjects" of some kind there must be, of course. One cannot
learn the theory of grammar without learning an actual language, or learn
to argue and orate without speaking about something in particular. The
debating subjects of the Middle Ages were drawn largely from theology,
or from the ethics and history of antiquity. Often, indeed, they became
stereotyped, especially towards the end of the period, and the far-fetched
and wire-drawn absurdities of Scholastic argument fretted
Angels on a Needle
A
glib speaker in the Brains Trust once entertained his audience (and
reduced the late Charles Williams to helpless rage) by asserting
that in the Middle Ages it was a matter of faith to know how many
archangels could dance on the point of a needle. I need not say,
I hope, that it never was a "matter of faith"; it was simply
a debating exercise, whose set subject was the nature of angelic
substance: were angels material, and if so, did they occupy space?
The answer usually adjudged correct is, I believe, that angels are
pure intelligences; not material, but limited, so that they may have
location in space but not extension. An analogy might be drawn from
human thought, which is similarly non-material and similarly limited.
Thus, if your thought is concentrated upon one thing--say, the point
of a needle--it is located there in the sense that it is not elsewhere;
but although it is "there," it occupies no space there,
and there is nothing to prevent an infinite number of different people's
thoughts being concentrated upon the same needle-point at the same
time. The proper subject of the argument is thus seen to be
the distinction between location and extension in space; the matter on
which the argument is exercised happens to be the nature of angels
(although, as we have seen, it might equally well have been something
else); the practical lesson to be drawn from the argument is not
to use words like "there"
in a loose and unscientific way, without specifying whether you mean
"located there" or "occupying space there."
Scorn in plenty has been poured out upon the mediaeval passion for hair-splitting;
but when we look at the shameless abuse made, in print and on the platform,
of controversial expressions with shifting and ambiguous connotations,
we may feel it in our hearts to wish that every reader and hearer had
been so defensively armored by his education as to be able to cry: Distinguo.
Unarmed
For
we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor
was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left
them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film
and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall
secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They
do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them
off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words
in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.
We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored
tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are
sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering
of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations
become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence
to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip-service
and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the
school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools;
the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and
yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated,
because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence
can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.
What, then, are we to do? We cannot go back to the Middle Ages. That
is a cry to which we have become accustomed. We cannot go back--or can
we? Distinguo. I should like every term in that
proposition defined. Does "go back" mean a retrogression in
time, or the revision of an error? The first is clearly impossible per
se; the second is a thing which wise men do every day. Obviously
the twentieth centyury is not and cannot be the fourteenth; but if
"the Middle Ages" is, in this context, simply a picturesque
phrase denoting a particular educational theory, there seems to be no a
priori reason why we should not "go back" to it--with modifications--as
we have already "gone back" with modifications, to, let us
say, the idea of playing Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, and not
in the
"modernized" versions of Cibber and Garrick, which once seemed
to be the latest thing in theatrical progress.
Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression
is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities,
and furnish ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom
we may experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines
chosen by ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents;
we will staff our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar
with the aims and methods of the Trivium;
we will have our building and staff large enough to allow our classes
to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will postulate a Board
of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we turn out.
Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern Trivium "with
modifications" and we will see where we get to.
But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate
them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing
to unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is
by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning. We will,
therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring
of our pupils only that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.
The Three Ages
My
views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor enlightened.
Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know best and the
only child I can pretend to know from inside) I recognize three states
of development. These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call
the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic--the latter coinciding,
approximately, with the onset of puberty. The Poll-Parrot stage is
the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable;
whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished.
At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of
things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices
in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible
polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert
age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some
extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking
to "catch people out"
(especially one's elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its
nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the eighth
grade. The Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age.
It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes
in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence;
and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings
of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already
knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference
to all others. Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts
itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to
the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.
Let us begin, then, with Grammar. This, in practice, means the grammar
of some language in particular; and it must be an inflected language.
The grammatical structure of an uninflected language is far too analytical
to be tackled by any one without previous practice in Dialectic. Moreover,
the inflected languages interpret the uninflected, whereas the uninflected
are of little use in interpreting the inflected. I will say at once,
quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar.
I say this, not because Latin is traditional and mediaeval, but simply
because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and
pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent.
It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages,
as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the
literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all
its historical documents.
Those whose pedantic preference for a living language persuades them
to deprive their pupils of all these advantages might substitute Russian,
whose grammar is still more primitive. Russian is, of course, helpful
with the other Slav dialects. There is something also to be said for
Classical Greek. But my own choice is Latin. Having thus pleased the
Classicists among you, I will proceed to horrify them by adding that
I do not think it either wise or necessary to cramp the ordinary pupil
upon the Procrustean bed of the Augustan Age, with its highly elaborate
and artificial verse forms and oratory.
Latin should be begun as early as possible--at a time when inflected
speech seems no more astonishing than any other phenomenon in an astonishing
world; and when the chanting of "Amo, amas, amat" is as ritually
agreeable to the feelings as the chanting of "eeny, meeny, miney, moe."
During this age we must, of course, exercise the mind on other things
besides Latin grammar. Observation and memory are the faculties most
lively at this period; and if we are to learn a contemporary foreign
language we should begin now, before the facial and mental muscles become
rebellious to strange intonations. Spoken French or German can be practiced
alongside the grammatical discipline of the Latin.
The Use of Memory
In English, verse
and prose can be learned by heart, and the pupil's memory should
be stored with stories of every kind--classical myth, European legend,
and so forth. I do not think that the classical stories and masterpieces
of ancient literature should be made the vile bodies on which to
practice the techniques of Grammar--that was a fault of mediaeval
education which we need not perpetuate. The stories can be enjoyed
and remembered in English, and related to their origin at a subsequent
stage. Recitation aloud should be practiced, individually or in chorus;
for we must not forget that we are laying the groundwork for Disputation
and Rhetoric.
The grammar of History should consist, I think, of dates, events,
anecdotes, and personalities. A set of dates to which one can peg all
later historical knowledge is of enormous help later on in establishing
the perspective of history. It does not greatly matter which dates: those
of the Kings of England will do very nicely, provided that they are accompanied
by pictures of costumes, architecture, and other everyday things, so
that the mere mention of a date calls up a very strong visual presentment
of the whole period.
Geography will similarly be presented in its factual aspect, with
maps, natural features, and visual presentment of customs, costumes,
flora, fauna, and so on; and I believe myself that the discredited and
old-fashioned memorizing of a few capitol cities, rivers, mountain ranges,
etc., does no harm. Stamp collecting may be encouraged.
Science, in the Poll-Parrot period, arranges itself naturally
and easily around collections--the identifying and naming of specimens
and, in general, the kind of thing that used to be called "natural
history," or, still more charmingly, "natural philosophy." To
know the name and properties of things is, at this age, a satisfaction
in itself; to recognize a devil's coach-horse at sight, and assure one's
foolish elders, that, in spite of its appearance, it does not sting;
to be able to pick out Cassiopeia and the Pleiades, to be aware that
a whale is not a fish, and a bat not a bird--all these things give a
pleasant sensation of superiority; while to know a ring snake from an
adder or a poisonous from an edible toadstool is a kind of knowledge
that also has practical value.
The grammar of Mathematics begins, of course, with the multiplication
table, which, if not learnt now, will never be learnt with pleasure;
and with the recognition of geometrical shapes and the grouping of numbers.
These exercises lead naturally to the doing of simple sums in arithmetic.
More complicated mathematical processes may, and perhaps should, be postponed,
for the reasons which will presently appear.
So far (except, of course, for the Latin), our curriculum contains nothing
that departs very far from common practice. The difference will be felt
rather in the attitude of the teachers, who must look upon all these
activities less as
"subjects" in themselves than as a gathering-together of material
for use in the next part of the Trivium.
What that material is, is only of secondary importance; but it is as
well that anything and everything which can be usefully committed to
memory should be memorized at this period, whether it is immediately
intelligible or not. The modern tendency is to try and force rational
explanations on a child's mind at too early an age. Intelligent questions,
spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive an immediate and rational
answer; but it is a great mistake to suppose that a child cannot readily
enjoy and remember things that are beyond his power to analyze--particularly
if those things have a strong imaginative appeal, an attractive jingle,
or an abundance of rich, resounding polysyllables.
The Mistress-Science
This
reminds me of the grammar of Theology. I shall add it to the curriculum,
because theology is the mistress-science without which the whole
educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis.
Those who disagree about this will remain content to leave their
pupil's education still full of loose ends. This will matter rather
less than it might, since by the time that the tools of learning
have been forged the student will be able to tackle theology for
himself, and will probably insist upon doing so and making sense
of it. Still, it is as well to have this matter also handy and ready
for the reason to work upon. At the grammatical age, therefore, we
should become acquainted with the story of God and Man in outline--i.e.,
the Old and New Testaments presented as parts of a single narrative
of Creation, Rebellion, and Redemption--and also with "the Creed,
the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments." At this early
stage, it does not matter nearly so much that these things should
be fully understood as that they should be known and remembered.
It is difficult to say at what age, precisely, we should pass from the
first to the second part of the Trivium.
Generally speaking, the answer is: so soon as the pupil shows himself
disposed to pertness and interminable argument. For as, in the first
part, the master faculties are Observation and Memory, so, in the second,
the master faculty is the Discursive Reason. In the first, the exercise
to which the rest of the material was, as it were, keyed, was the Latin
grammar; in the second, the key- exercise will be Formal Logic. It is
here that our curriculum shows its first sharp divergence from modern
standards. The disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen is entirely
unjustified; and its neglect is the root cause of nearly all those disquieting
symptoms which we have noted in the modern intellectual constitution.
A secondary cause for the disfavor into which Formal Logic has fallen
is the belief that it is entirely based upon universal assumptions that
are either unprovable or tautological. This is not true. Not all universal
propositions are of this kind. But even if they were, it would make no
difference, since every syllogism whose major premise is in the form
"All A is B" can be recast in hypothetical form. Logic is the
art of arguing correctly: "If A, then B." The method is not
invalidated by the hypothetical nature of A. Indeed, the practical utility
of Formal Logic today lies not so much in the establishment of positive
conclusions as in the prompt detection and exposure of invalid inference.
Relation to Dialectic
Let us now quickly review our material and see how it is to be related to Dialectic. On the Language side, we shall now have our vocabulary and morphology at our fingertips; henceforward we can concentrate on syntax and analysis (i.e., the logical construction of speech) and the history of language (i.e., how we came to arrange our speech as we do in order to convey our thoughts).
Our
Mathematics--algebra, geometry, and the more advanced kinds
of arithmetic--will now enter into the syllabus and take its place
as what it really is: not a separate "subject" but a
sub- department of Logic. It is neither more nor less than the
rule of the syllogism in its particular application to number and
measurement, and should be taught as such, instead of being, for
some, a dark mystery, and, for others, a special revelation, neither
illuminating nor illuminated by any other part of knowledge.
History, aided by a simple system of ethics derived from the grammar
of theology, will provide much suitable material for discussion: Was the
behavior of this statesman justified? What was the effect of such an enactment?
What are the arguments for and against this or that form of government?
We shall thus get an introduction to constitutional history--a subject
meaningless to the young child, but of absorbing interest to those who
are prepared to argue and debate. Theology itself will furnish material
for argument about conduct and morals; and should have its scope extended
by a simplified course of dogmatic theology (i.e., the rational structure
of Christian thought), clarifying the relations between the dogma and the
ethics, and lending itself to that application of ethical principles in
particular instances which is properly called casuistry. Geography and
the Sciences will likewise provide material for Dialectic.
The World Around
Us
But
above all, we must not neglect the material which is so abundant
in the pupils' own daily life.
There is a delightful passage in Leslie Paul's The Living Hedge which
tells how a number of small boys enjoyed themselves for days arguing
about an extraordinary shower of rain which had fallen in their town--a
shower so localized that it left one half of the main street wet and
the other dry. Could one, they argued, properly say that it had rained
that day on or over the town or only in the town? How many drops of water
were required to constitute rain? And so on. Argument about this led
on to a host of similar problems about rest and motion, sleep and waking, est and non est, and the infinitesimal division of time. The whole
passage is an admirable example of the spontaneous development of the
ratiocinative faculty and the natural and proper thirst of the awakening
reason for the definition of terms and exactness of statement. All events
are food for such an appetite.
An umpire's decision; the degree to which one may transgress the spirit
of a regulation without being trapped by the letter: on such questions
as these, children are born casuists, and their natural propensity only
needs to be developed and trained--and especially, brought into an intelligible
relationship with the events in the grown-up world. The newspapers are
full of good material for such exercises: legal decisions, on the one
hand, in cases where the cause at issue is not too abstruse; on the other,
fallacious reasoning and muddleheaded arguments, with which the correspondence
columns of certain papers one could name are abundantly stocked.
"Pert Age" Criticism
Wherever
the matter for Dialectic is found, it is, of course, highly important
that attention should be focused upon the beauty and economy of a
fine demonstration or a well-turned argument, lest veneration should
wholly die. Criticism must not be merely destructive; though at the
same time both teacher and pupils must be ready to detect fallacy,
slipshod reasoning, ambiguity, irrelevance, and redundancy, and to
pounce upon them like rats.
This is the moment when precis-writing may
be usefully undertaken; together with such exercises as the writing of
an essay, and the reduction of it, when written, by 25 or 50 percent.
It will, doubtless, be objected that to encourage young persons at the
Pert age to browbeat, correct, and argue with their elders will render
them perfectly intolerable. My answer is that children of that age are
intolerable anyhow; and that their natural argumentativeness may just
as well be canalised to good purpose as allowed
to run away into the sands. It may, indeed, be rather less obtrusive
at home if it is disciplined in school; and, anyhow, elders who have
abandoned the wholesome principle that children should be seen and not
heard have no one to blame but themselves.
Once again, the contents of the syllabus at this stage may be anything
you like. The "subjects" supply material; but they are all
to be regarded as mere grist for the mental mill to work upon. The pupils
should be encouraged to go and forage for their own information, and
so guided towards the proper use of libraries and books for reference,
and shown how to tell which sources are authoritative and which are not.
Imagination
Towards
the close of this stage, the pupils will probably be beginning to
discover for themselves that their knowledge and experience are insufficient,
and that their trained intelligences need a great deal more material
to chew upon. The imagination-- usually dormant during the Pert age--will
reawaken, and prompt them to suspect the limitations of logic and
reason. This means that they are passing into the Poetic age and
are ready to embark on the study of Rhetoric. The doors of the storehouse
of knowledge should now be thrown open for them to browse about as
they will. The things once learned by rote will be seen in new contexts;
the things once coldly analyzed can now be brought together to form
a new synthesis; here and there a sudden insight will bring about
that most exciting of all discoveries: the realization that truism
is true.
The Study of Rhetoric
It
is difficult to map out any general syllabus for the study of Rhetoric:
a certain freedom is demanded. In literature, appreciation should
be again allowed to take the lead over destructive criticism; and
self-expression in writing can go forward, with its tools now sharpened
to cut clean and observe proportion. Any child who already shows
a disposition to specialize should be given his head: for, when the
use of the tools has been well and truly learned, it is available
for any study whatever. It would be well, I think, that each pupil
should learn to do one, or two, subjects really well, while taking
a few classes in subsidiary subjects so as to keep his mind open
to the inter-relations of all knowledge. Indeed, at this stage, our
difficulty will be to keep
"subjects" apart; for Dialectic will have shown all branches
of learning to be inter-related, so Rhetoric will tend to show that all
knowledge is one. To show this, and show why it is so, is pre-eminently
the task of the Mistress science. But whether theology is studied or
not, we should at least insist that children who seem inclined to specialize
on the mathematical and scientific side should be obliged to attend some
lessons in the humanities and vice versa. At this stage, also,
the Latin grammar, having done its work, may be dropped for those who
prefer to carry on their language studies on the modern side; while those
who are likely never to have any great use or aptitude for mathematics
might also be allowed to rest, more or less, upon their oars. Generally
speaking, whatsoever is mere apparatus may now be allowed to fall into
the background, while the trained mind is gradually prepared for specialization
in the "subjects" which, when the Trivium is
completed, it should be perfectly will equipped to tackle on its own.
The final synthesis of the Trivium--the presentation
and public defense of the thesis--should be restored in some form; perhaps
as a kind of "leaving examination" during the last term at
school.
The scope of Rhetoric depends also on whether the pupil is to be turned
out into the world at the age of 16 or whether he is to proceed to the
university. Since, really, Rhetoric should be taken at about 14, the
first category of pupil should study Grammar from about 9 to 11, and
Dialectic from 12 to 14; his last two school years would then be devoted
to Rhetoric, which, in this case, would be of a fairly specialized and
vocational kind, suiting him to enter immediately upon some practical
career. A pupil of the second category would finish his Dialectical course
in his preparatory school, and take Rhetoric during his first two years
at his public school. At 16, he would be ready to start upon those "subjects" which
are proposed for his later study at the university: and this part of
his education will correspond to the mediaeval Quadrivium.
What this amounts to is that the ordinary pupil, whose formal education
ends at 16, will take the Trivium only; whereas
scholars will take both the Trivium and the Quadrivium.
The University at
Sixteen?
Is
the Trivium, then, a sufficient education
for life? Properly taught, I believe that it should be. At the end
of the Dialectic, the children will probably seem to be far behind
their coevals brought up on old-fashioned "modern" methods,
so far as detailed knowledge of specific subjects is concerned. But
after the age of 14 they should be able to overhaul the others hand
over fist. Indeed, I am not at all sure that a pupil thoroughly proficient
in the Trivium would not be fit to proceed
immediately to the university at the age of 16, thus proving himself
the equal of his mediaeval counterpart, whose precocity astonished
us at the beginning of this discussion. This, to be sure, would make
hay of the English public-school system, and disconcert the universities
very much. It would, for example, make quite a different thing of
the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.
But I am not here to consider the feelings of academic bodies: I am concerned
only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with
the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern
world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject;
and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery
of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended
by the person who has not the tools at his command. To learn six subjects
without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach
to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes
the approach to every subject an open door.
Educational Capital
Depleted
Before
concluding these necessarily very sketchy suggestions, I ought to
say why I think it necessary, in these days, to go back to a discipline
which we had discarded. The truth is that for the last three hundred
years or so we have been living upon our educational capital. The
post-Renaissance world, bewildered and excited by the profusion of
new "subjects" offered to it, broke away from the old discipline
(which had, indeed, become sadly dull and stereotyped in its practical
application) and imagined that henceforward it could, as it were,
disport itself happily in its new and extended Quadrivium without passing through the Trivium.
But the Scholastic tradition, though broken and maimed, still lingered
in the public schools and universities: Milton, however much he protested
against it, was formed by it--the debate of the Fallen Angels and
the disputation of Abdiel with Satan have the tool-marks of the Schools upon
them, and might, incidentally, profitably figure as set passages
for our Dialectical studies. Right down to the nineteenth century,
our public affairs were mostly managed, and our books and journals
were for the most part written, by people brought up in homes, and
trained in places, where that tradition was still alive in the memory
and almost in the blood. Just so, many people today who are atheist
or agnostic in religion, are governed in their conduct by a code
of Christian ethics which is so rooted that it never occurs to them
to question it.
Forgotten Roots
But one cannot live on capital forever. However firmly a
tradition is rooted, if it is never watered, though it dies hard,
yet in the end it dies. And today a great number--perhaps the majority--of
the men and women who handle our affairs, write our books and our
newspapers, carry out our research, present our plays and our films,
speak from our platforms and pulpits--yes, and who educate our young
people--have never, even in a lingering traditional memory, undergone
the Scholastic discipline. Less and less do the children who come
to be educated bring any of that tradition with them. We have lost
the tools of learning--the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the
saw, the chisel and the plane-- that were so adaptable to all tasks.
Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs, each of
which will do but one task and no more, and in using which eye and
hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work as a
whole or "looks to the end of the work."
What use is it to pile task on task and prolong the days of labor, if
at the close the chief object is left unattained? It is not the fault
of the teachers--they work only too hard already. The combined folly
of a civilization that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to
shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure that is built
upon sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils
themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply
this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction
fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
Copyrighted and used with permission
from David Higham Associates Limited,
5-8 Lower John Street, Golden Square, London WIF 9HA.
Original source from The Lost
Tools of Learning essay published in the National Review and
reprinted by Intercollegiate Studies