Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
thing for their sons and daughters. Let us withdraw all objections to
its endowment, unless it is quite excessive endowment. Let the classical
be the senior service, and the classical professor, to use his own queer
way of putting things, _primus inter pares_. That will make four courses
altogether, the Classical, the Historical, the Biological, and the
Physical, for one or more of which all the secondary schools and
colleges in that great English-speaking community at which the New
Republic aims should be organized. [Footnote: One may, however, suggest
one other course as possible under special conditions. There is one sort
of art that requires not only a very rigorous and exhaustive training,
but also an early commencement, and that is music, at once the most
isolated and the most universal of arts. Exceptional gifts in the
direction of music will have appeared in the schooling stage, and it is
quite conceivable that the college phase for those who are destined for
a musical career should have as its backbone a “grind” in the theory
and practice of music, with languages and general culture relegated to a
Section ii.]
It may be objected that this is an idealized proposal, and that
existing conditions, which are, of course, the material out of which new
conditions are to be made do not present anything like this form. As a
matter of fact, if only the reader will allow for a certain difference
in terminology, they do. What I have here called Schooling is, so far as
the age of the pupils go, typically presented in Great Britain by what
is called the elementary school, and in America by the public school,
and certain schools that unanalytical people in England, mistaking
a social for an educational difference, seem disposed to class with
secondary schools, the inferior Grammar Schools, the cheaper private
schools, and what are called Preparatory Schools, [Footnote: As things
are, there is no doubt a considerable advantage in the child from a good
home going on to a good preparatory school instead of entering a public
elementary school, and the passage above must not be misread as
a sweeping condemnation of such establishments.] are really also
elementary schools. The latter have more social pretension and sometimes
far less efficiency than a Government Elementary School, but that is all
the difference. All these schools admit of a gradual approximation to
the ideal of schooling already set forth in the sixth of these papers.
Some are already within a measureable distance of that ideal. And above
these elementary schools, above the School grade proper, and answering
to what is here called College, there is a great variety of day and
evening schools of the most varied description which agree all of
them in the presentation of a second phase in the educational process
beginning about the age of thirteen to sixteen and going on to nineteen
and twenty. In Great Britain such institutions are sometimes called
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