The Salvaging of CivilizationWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
The Salvaging of Civilization
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization, Modern -- 20th century; Education
Now I take it that both from the point of view of individual happiness
and from the point of view of the general welfare, this development of
the citizenship of a man, this placing of a man in his own world, is of
primary importance. It is the necessary basis of all right education; it
is the fundamental purpose of the school, and I do not believe an
individual can be happy or a community be prosperous without it. The
Bible and the religions based on it gave that idea of a place in the
world to the people it taught. But do we provide that idea of a place in
the world for our people to-day? I suggest that we do not. We do not
give them a clear vision of the universe in which they live, and we do
not give them a history that invests their lives with meaning and
dignity.
The cosmogony of the Bible has lost grip and conviction upon men's
minds, and the ever-widening gulf of years makes its history and its
political teaching more and more remote and unhelpful amidst the great
needs of to-day. Nothing has been done to fill up these widening gaps.
We have so great a respect for the letter of the Bible that we ignore
its spirit and its proper use. We do not rewrite and retell Genesis in
the light and language of modern knowledge, and we do not revise and
bring its history up to date and so apply it to the problems of our own
time. So we have allowed the Bible to become antiquated and remote,
venerable and unhelpful.
There has been a great extension of what we call education in the past
hundred years, but while we have spread education widely, there has been
a sort of shrinkage and enfeeblement of its aims. Education in the past
set out to make a Christian and a citizen and afterwards a gentleman out
of the crude, vulgar, self-seeking individual. Does education even
pretend to do as much to-day? It does nothing of the sort. Our young
people are taught to read and write. They are taught bookkeeping and
languages that are likely to be useful to them. They are given a certain
measure of technical education, and _they are taught to shove_. And
then we turn them out into the world to get on. Our test of a college
education is--Does it make a successful business man?
Well, this, I take it, is the absolute degradation of education. It is a
modern error that education exists for the individual. Education exists
for the community and the race; it exists to subdue the individual for
the good of the world and his own ultimate happiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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