Excerpt from Papers to Be Read
Local educational administrators, private correspondents of position, representatives of the teaching profession (apparently, if internal evidence is a guide, almost exclusively connected with elementary schools) were all in a gloomy mood when they answered the Principals questions, and the grand total of their accumulated testimony amounted to dissatisfaction, if not to pessimism. Modern education, he inferred (in what follows I do not quote his words, but translate the inferences of his address into words of my own), might quicken wits, but is giving slight ballast to character. It results, perhaps, in a volatile intelligence, but produces little of intellectual grasp. Somehow or other, and nobody can precisely say why, its results were disappointing, its future doubtful, its expense enormous. The National Education Bill had run up to nearly thirty million pounds a year. What was there to show for it Boys who were careless about their work, wanton levity of sudden strikes in the sphere of labour, self-indulgence and a passion for material things among the rich, a craving for wealth among those less well-to-do, a dimness of ideal, a faltering of judgment, an absorption in trivial amusements, these were the signs of some unwholesome habit in the body politic. The teachers, those who stand nearest to the actual work of education, instead of being buoyant with how or quietly confident in the growing success of their labours, were querulous, grumbling at the conditions of their lot, crying for the moon. The local educational administrators, the engineers who turn the handle of the great bureaucratic machine, seemed a little pleased with the conditions of their employment. They appear to have expressed the wish that more administrative power should be put into their hands. If they could only be made more powerful they seemed to think that the causes of their comparative failure would be removed. And they showed signs of some disagreement. The small town grumbled against the big towns; the boroughs grumbled against the counties; the Council School administrators grumbled against the Voluntary Managers. And if Principal Griffiths had sent out another sheaf of questions to the Roman Catholic clergy and the clergy of the Church of England he would have got from them another set of grumbles against the public administrators, who were taking patronage out of their hands and limiting the freedom of the older Voluntary School.
But when one came to look more closely into the texture of the evidence which Principal Griffiths had collected, one found that nobody on either side of the controversy had expressed a very clear idea of what he would have in the way of education if he were able fully to gratify his wish. Still less was there any sign, at any rate among those whom Principal Griffiths consulted, of the power of a social ideal, clearly conceived, ardently desired, dominating and directing the purpose of administration or instruction. This is the real weakness.-s of the situation. You can never have any successful system of education unless it has a definite end in view. It may be an old-fashioned purpose, already out of joint with the rising forces of the age, but if it is a purpose reverently observed and loyally cherished, it has power to transfigure the humblest effort and to produce fine results out of feeble materials. And if the ideal has in it the strength of the future, if it is.
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