Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
School is only one necessary strand in an enormous body of formative
influence. At first that mass of formative influence takes the outline
of the home, but it broadens out as the citizen grows until it reaches
the limits of his world. And his world, just like his home, resolves
itself into three main elements. First, there is the traditional
element, the creation of the past; secondly, there is the contemporary
interplay of economic and material forces; and thirdly, there is
literature, using that word for the current thought about the world,
which is perpetually tending on the one hand to realize itself and to
become in that manner a material force, and on the other to impose fresh
interpretations upon things and so become a factor in tradition. Now
the first of these elements is a thing established. And it is the
possibility of intervening through the remaining two that it is now our
business to discuss.
VI. SCHOOLING
We left the child whose development threads through this discussion
ripe to begin a little schooling at the age of five. We have cleared the
ground since then of a great number of things that have got themselves
mixed up in an illegitimate way with the idea of school, and we can now
take him on again through his “schooling” phases. Let us begin by asking
what we require and then look to existing conditions to see how far
we may hope to get our requirements. We will assume the foundation
described in the fourth paper has been well and truly laid, that we
have a number of other similarly prepared children available to form
a school, and that we have also teachers of fair average intelligence,
conscience, and aptitude. We will ask what can be done with such
children and teachers, and then we may ask why it is not universally
done.
Even after our clarifying discussion, in which we have shown that
schooling is only a part, and by no means the major part, of the
educational process, and in which we have distinguished and separated
the home element in the boarding-school from the schooling proper, there
still remains something more than a simple theme in schooling. After all
these eliminations we remain with a mixed function and mixed traditions,
and it is necessary now to look a little into the nature of this
mixture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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