Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thoughtWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thought
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization; Communication and traffic; Social prediction; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
And having set themselves in these ways to raise the quality of human
birth, the New Republicans will see to it that the children who do at
last effectually get born come into a world of spacious opportunity. The
half-educated, unskilled pretenders, professing impossible creeds and
propounding ridiculous curricula, to whom the unhappy parents of to-day
must needs entrust the intelligences of their children; these
heavy-handed barber-surgeons of the mind, these schoolmasters, with
their ragtag and bobtail of sweated and unqualified assistants, will be
succeeded by capable, self-respecting men and women, constituting the
most important profession of the world. The windy pretences of "forming
character," supplying moral training, and so forth, under which the
educationalist of to-day conceals the fact that he is incapable of his
proper task of training, developing and equipping the mind, will no
longer be made by the teacher. Nor will the teacher be permitted to
subordinate his duties to the entirely irrelevant business of his
pupils' sports. The teacher will teach, and confine his moral training,
beyond enforcing truth and discipline, to the exhibition of a capable
person doing his duty as well as it can be done. He will know that his
utmost province is only a part of the educational process, that equally
important educational influences are the home and the world of thought
about the pupil and himself. The whole world will be thinking and
learning; the old idea of "completing" one's education will have
vanished with the fancy of a static universe; every school will be a
preparatory school, every college. The school and college will probably
give only the keys and apparatus of thought, a necessary language or so,
thoroughly done, a sound mathematical training, drawing, a wide and
reasoned view of philosophy, some good exercises in dialectics, a
training in the use of those stores of fact that science has made. So
equipped, the young man and young woman will go on to the technical
school of their chosen profession, and to the criticism of contemporary
practice for their special efficiency, and to the literature of
contemporary thought for their general development....
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