The Salvaging of CivilizationWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
The Salvaging of Civilization
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization, Modern -- 20th century; Education
And now let me recapitulate these demands I have made upon the process
of schooling--this process of teaching that begins in the nursery and
ends about the age of sixteen or seventeen. I have asked that it should
involve a practical mastery of three or four languages, including the
mother tongue, and that perhaps four or five other additional languages
shall have been studied, so to speak, in skeleton. I have added
mathematics carried much higher and farther than most of our schools do
to-day. I have demanded a sound knowledge of universal history, a
knowledge of general physical and general biological science, and I have
thrown in, with scarcely a word of apology, a good training of the eyes
and hands in drawing and manual work.
So far as the pupil goes, I submit this is an entirely practicable
proposal. It can be done, I am convinced, with any ordinary pupil of
average all-round ability, given--what is now almost universally
wanting--the proper educational facilities. And now I will go on to
examine the question of why these facilities are wanting. I want to ask
why a large class, if not the whole of our population, is not educated
up to the level of wide understanding and fully developed capacity such
a schooling as I have sketched out implies.
Well, the first fact obvious to every parent who has ever enquired
closely into the educational outlook of his offspring, the first fact we
have to face is this: there are not enough properly equipped schools
and, still more, not enough good teachers, to do the job. It is
proclaiming no very profound secret to declare that there is hardly such
a thing in the world to-day as a fully equipped school, that is to say a
school having all the possible material and apparatus and staffed
sufficiently with a bright and able teacher, a really live and alert
educationist, in every necessary subject, such as would be needed to
give this ideal education. That is the great primary obstacle, that is
the core of our present problem. We cannot get our modern community
educated to anything like its full possibilities as yet because we have
neither the teachers nor the schools.
Now is this a final limitation?
For a moment I will leave the question of the possibilities of more and
better equipped schools on one side. I will deal with the supply of
teachers. At present we do not even attempt to get good teachers; we do
not offer any approach to a tolerable life for an ordinary teacher; we
compel them to lead mean and restricted lives; we underpay them
shockingly; we do not deserve nearly such good teachers as we get. But
even supposing we were to offer reasonable wages for teachers; an
average all-round wage of £1,000 a year or so, and respect and dignity;
it does not follow that we should get as many as we should need--using
the methods that are in use to-day--to provide this ideal schooling for
most of our population, or, indeed, for any large section of our
population.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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