same kind exist and flourish in those citadels of democracy, the Dominions. That is true. But what does not exist there is any recognized claim to status constituted by a particular school label. Between the independent' schools of the Dominions and the working of Dominion government and society there is nothing parallel to what exists in England. It would be inconceivable that, in Australia for instance, a Geelong boy should make claims similar to those which could be made by an Eton or Winchester boy here with the full expectation that they would be accepted. We must recognize once for all that a nation divided in the old way is no longer possible. True we shall need a ruling class, perhaps more urgently than ever. But it will be differently constituted, recruited by different criteria, and be much more fluid in its composition and more diversified in the social sources from which it is drawn. Thus the need for a much more whole-hearted and thorough-going realization of community is paramount, issuing in a genuinely common education at home and a much closer affinity between ourselves and the Dominions and the United States abroad. From all this certain conclusions appear to follow even though we cannot yet discern at all clearly the pattern of the future : 1. A broadening of the basis of recruitment of the public schools does not touch the issue so long as the central structure of privilege remains. Indeed there are signs that it would rather accentuate and extend the conflict. Such a change will have to come, of course, but only as part of a larger policy which faces squarely the main demands. 2. Although the vital issue is social rather than educational the solution of it will nevertheless probably involve modifications in the educational outlook of the public schools. In the customary statement of the doctrine traces can be found of the social'ideology' by which it is influenced. Knowledge for its own sake', 'Mental gymnastic' (in the sense that what you learn matters less than the discipline you acquire in learning it); the prestige value of useless classics; the exalting of characterformation above instruction; these all suggest an outlook upon a well-to-do world of considerable leisure, in which governing responsibilities are to be exercised in conditions where the necessary technical knowledge is provided by subordinates, and where it is not assumed that any fundamental changes will take place in the society which the training has in view. For how much longer can the public school continue to look out on such a world? For some time now it has been feeling and responding to the demand for something much more specific and professional; for a training that has in view well-organized and usable knowledge focused upon the demands of a professional function in an increasingly technical order. The demand will grow in emphasis and intensity and the old leisure' that the earlier education presupposed will tend to disappear. If, at the same time, the perquisites of privilege fall away and the schools come to stand or fall on their sheer educational merits there will be further stimulus to a more coherent and thoroughly modernized statement of the purely educational doctrine. An important aspect of this will have to be a justification of the boarding-school principle on its merits. If, as is probable, it has merits of its own apart from its special function in a certain kind of social order, the State may have to take more account of it in the reconsidering of national education generally. It is in this direction, in a continuing internal reform of the public school in a spirit of generous and thorough readaptation to a changed social order, that there is hope. But the obstacle in the path is one that affects not the public school alone, but the whole educational life of this country. It influences the critics quite as much as the defenders of the public schools, though in other ways and in other fields of action. We return here to the point made earlier that not money but far-reaching changes in social attitudes and social habits constitute the condition of solid advance in English education. To an observer who can still take a detached standpoint and is aware of criteria other than those which operate in this country it would seem that any educational discussion in England, provided it turns upon some substantial issue, tends always to resolve itself into a clash of interests. It is vitiated from the start by the play of interests', usually unavowed, and the educational issue seldom comes up for decision in a purely educational form. The Hadow Report is perhaps unique in our official literature in that it set out from a principle that was not just English but purely educational -that all education of the adolescent must be regarded as secondary. We know what practical experience has made of that and the Spens Report returns, with an almost audible sigh of relief, to the old ways. It is a far more 'English' document than its predecessor. more But how pervasive these social influences are in English thought and practice in all that is generally taken as education! Thus, no English school, especially at the secondary level, seems to be entirely happy unless, in its neighbourhood, there is a school of lower grade upon which it can look down. The elementary school, after more than a century, remains still unassimilated to the national life as a whole. Aspiring parents of what is called the lower middle class shun the taint of it and spend money that they can ill spare on an education that is reputed to have class in some obscure and uninspected private school. Keen young teachers, wishing after their training course to gain some valuable experience in the elementary school before passing on to the secondary, find a formidable monster in the way. Once acquire the taint of the elementary school and how many respectable secondary schools will look at you? Even those for whom, historically, the elementary school was designed have never taken it to themselves as they have taken the Trade Union and the Co-op'. It is amongst them but not of them, set down in their midst like a post office but never fully taken into their lives. Again, the Spens Report talks hopefully, and no doubt sincerely, of parity' as between the various types of secondary school that it proposes. But what hope is there of any such thing in the present condition of English society? Is not the same infection revealing itself in the discussions now proceeding on the matter of religious instruction in the schools? Any one who is in touch with the elementary teachers, especially as represented by the N.U.T., knows that there is very little opposition to religious instruction as such, and indeed much support for it in principle. But what excites suspicion and apprehension is the damnosa hereditas of a still-remembered past when the teacher felt that he and his school were being ordered through the religious organization of the country as instruments of a social discipline exercised in the interest of a dominant class'. The long struggle of emancipation has left its marks, and we must not complain if it creates difficulties now. At the moment, apparently, it is the provided' school that is filling the evacuation areas with lawless little pagans. One can almost overhear the comment in the country drawing-room: Well, my dear, you know what these Board schools are." It matters nothing that for the last forty years we have had no Board schools in England. The real point is the same, so why alter the phrasing? Or turn to Parliament. What prospect is there in that assembly of the settlement of an educational question on its educational merits? Instead, would not the clash of interests be there revealed at its height? The result of all this is that, unlike the United States, the Dominions, and Scotland, we have no popular philosophy of education in England. To the mass of the people the provision comes from above in a form not determined by them. The reason is plain: the divided state of the nation in this matter has deprived it of the single-minded popular leadership which it ought to have had, a point that Professor Laski makes with such telling effect. It is curious that features so glaring and so all-pervading can be so strenuously denied or so easily avoided in discussion. But there they are and now they can well become fatal. For in the conditions that we shall now have to face the thing will operate as a social poison. So far from being 'natural' and English', a healthy diversity' that protects us against regimentation, it becomes now a deadly infection. At the heart of it all stands the public school with the genuine honours of its past achievements upon it. Is it really willing now to become a chief breeding-centre of this social sepsis? One cannot believe it and I am sure that this will not happen. The honourable alternative will call for something very like heroism. But, though the actual steps are not clear yet, the way is the only real way of self-preservation. The public school may have to die in order to live again in a larger and richer national life. It has never yet failed to obey a genuine national call, and, great as will be the sacrifices that the present demand asks for, one feels that they will be made when once they are seen to be worth while. The reward will be the educațional leadership of a nation united as never before, and on a higher level than any it has yet known. It is not easy to see any other source from which really effective and genuinely uniting leadership can come. If the schools can rise to the level of the demand they will be surprised at the response they will evoke. If they cannot, not many of us will have any further use for them. Postscript. Since I have been summing up a discussion and not arbitrating a quarrel it is in order to say a word about the tone and temper in which the debate has been conducted. I cannot feel that the advantage in urbanity of manner has been wholly on the side of the defence. One defender can allow himself to speak of a weighty and representative opposition' as 'Messrs. Joad, Laski and company'. It is difficult to find any parallel to this sort of thing on the other side. But on both sides it would appear that urbanity and restraint are in direct proportion to the degree of understanding of the extent and gravity of the issues. F. C. E THE TEACHING OF FRENCH By L. E. GENISSIEUX, Acting Director, Institut Français du Royaume-Uni VER since Norman French was brought into this island by the Conqueror and his barons French has been for the islanders an indispensable langue de culture. Macaulay once wrote that France had been the interpreter between England and mankind. Linguistically, English, whose grammar is Germanic, is largely French in its vocabulary. Culturally, through the medium of French and of the French culture, Great Britain has tended more and more to turn away from the Germanism of Northern Europe and to absorb and assimilate the Franco-Mediterranean civilization. Quite naturally the French language has always been studied in Great Britain. Chaucer's Prioress spoke French, not indeed the French of Paris, which was to her unknowe but the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe. Spenser translated a sequence of sonnets from the French of Du Bellay. Shakespeare knew enough French to write the wooing scene in King Henry V. Milton found in Du Bartas inspiration for his great epic. Dryden and Pope read French fluently, even though the latter, it is known, pronounced it atrociously. No English writer of note down to our own times but has been more or less deeply steeped in French culture. When our two countries fought against each other, when France, as has happened more than once, was conquered and helpless, even then, in spite of Crécy and Azincourt, of Blenheim, of Waterloo, this linguistic and cultural link between England and France has always subsisted. When the benefit of education was extended widely to all social classes and to both sexes, the study of French formed an ever larger part of the school curriculum and of the requirements for examinations. It can safely be predicted that this will continue. As a political power France is to-day-temporarily-as low as it has ever been. But the French language and the French culture will still be indispensable to Britons. The reasons are not far to seek. The acquisition of any language is, indeed, a salutary training for young minds. But the learning of French means something more. Because ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français, to learn French is to learn clear thinking. The chief intellectual merit of the French is not, as is too often said, their logic, but the clarity of their thoughts. Long before Descartes made them conscious of it, they were striving after idées claires et distinctes. In order to pursue these ideas, in order to express them, they had need of an instrument, accurate, sensitive, precise. They forged their language and placed it at the disposal of cultured minds all over the world, the language not only of diplomacy, but of all civilized effort. See in Proust, the latest great French writer, how marvellously adequate this language is to the task of analysing and expressing the subtlest shades of thought or feeling, the most fugitive sensorial impressions. And, when an Englishman learns the language of France, he must needs come into contact with her distinctive culture, the outcome of centuries of slow, deliberate growth. The Frenchman, intellectually speaking, is highly selfconscious. With the same care that generations of Frenchmen have bestowed on their cherished language, they have rationalized their outlook on life and what may be called their national philosophy. National in development, but universal in scope. Those abstract generalizations, those idées générales, of which the Frenchman is so passionately fond, without which, indeed, he cannot think his own thoughts, are meant by him to be applicable to all rational beings. French culture is the crucible in which are melted into a rich alloy and minted into a universal currency those precious ores, the particular contributions that the several human communities have to make to the common treasury of mankind. At a time when civilization is threatened by the brutal self-assertiveness of exasperated nationalism, should not this age-old French universalism come into its own? For does it not teach the Cartesian doctrine that le bon sens, that is to say, la faculté de discerner le vrai du faux, is la chose du monde la mieux partagée, in other words is common to all men? And, especially since the eighteenth century, has not France sought to draw the social consequences of this philosophy, and, a nation profoundly democratic, has she not preached to the world the political philosophy embodied in the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789-—“ Tous les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits "—and striven to apply it gradually to her own social structure? Through rational channels the Frenchman attains a concrete sense of that brotherhood of man which is the essence of Christianity. In fact, the philosophic assumption of anti-clerical France, when France was bitten by anti-clericalism, was not a negation of the Christian ideal, but its translation into the intellectual plane. France's creed rests on the universally valid belief in the absolute value of the individual human person, whose rights are only limited by the equal rights of each of his fellow-men. The reaffirmation of this belief might, it is submitted, satisfy the crying need of our troubled world for an ethical principle proclaiming its oneness, a spiritual driving force capable of inspiring all men. That is what France stands for, and that is why, even to-day, while her mutilated body is lying low, her spirit is still a bringer of light and of life. That is why a knowledge of her language and her culture will be, as it has been, a necessary attainment of the educated man to whatsoever race he may belong. To which may be added, for the Englishman, the political necessity of a Franco-British Union. Of this union the educational aspect was brought to the front in the six months that preceded France's disaster. Teachers will remember the deliberate efforts, officially sponsored, which were made from January to June, 1940, for educational co-operation between the two countries. What a gratifying response there was on the part of the teachers of French in Great Britain! How great the number of those who availed them selves of the facilities then put at their disposal to make France, and not only French, known to their scholars ! How many requests for books on France, for French magazines, for pictures and lantern slides and films! How eager the demand that the B.B.C. should develop its French broadcasts for schools! To all those for whom, in the middle of their enthusiasm, the sudden collapse of France came as a stunning blow, to those who, at the end of their teaching careers, saw at last the crowning of their life's work for Franco-British understanding, and who, after the crash, thought that their dream was shattered, their hopes ruined, their task rendered aimless, let a Frenchman say: Ce n'est pas la fin. There is more work to do yet, the same work as before, only more thoroughly, more earnestly, for the sake of the two countries jointly, and for the sanity of the world. PLANNING AND EDUCATION By Dr. H. G. STEAD, Education Officer, Chesterfield Education Committee I based upon a planned economic T becomes increasingly obvious that the post-war world system. The need for such planning is generally accepted and only a few visualize a return to a total or partial state of laissez-faire. It is further becoming apparent that the object of this planning must be production for use by all the community and not for profit by a few. It seems clear, too, that this implies state or communal control or ownership of raw materials and means of production. What is not so generally recognized yet is that it means changes in social techniques which must be prepared for and which are part of the essential function of education. The scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century and their application to the problems of production resulted in the growth of towns on a scale quite unforeseen. On the other hand, the discovery of new means of communication and the extension of old ones knit the residents of each district more closely together, and at the same time united the various towns, both of one country at first, and more recently throughout the world, in a system from which there was no escape, even if there was a wish to find one. Men have constructed a society in which individual men can no longer live to themselves; mass production demands planning and communal control. The social techniques of an old age cannot satisfy the needs of a new one. This admission that there must be planning and control does not mean that there will be no controversy about it when the war ends. The present struggle is significant because basically it concerns the answers to be given to two vital questions. These are : (a) By whom is the planning to be done and the control exercised? (b) For what purpose is the planning to be carried out and the control exercised? Upon the answers to these questions men take their sides in the present conflict. One answer leads directly to some form or other of totalitarian government; the other leads to a socially democratic government. But planning involves thought and foresight, and preparation. What steps must be taken now if the changes are to be planned and controlled? Planning means the loss of some economic freedom, and the willingness to accept co-operatively this loss involves the breaking down of certain social complexes. But, in return for the loss of this freedom by certain individuals, there is a gain of security for all the community. Security from aggression by other individuals, from aggression by other communities, and security from fears and anxieties which arise within ourselves-these are factors in the necessary background against which alone life can be effectively and happily lived. This relinquishment of some economic freedoms will be accompanied, in a planned world, by an extension of individuality in other spheres. This is what is meant by the democratic way of life. Instead of economic liberty there is economic security, and this security is that background to life which alone can ensure freedom in all those spheres which are properly the province of individual effort. At present effort is expended in the struggle for security; often the effort is so great that there is little or no energy left for the real business of living. Planning and economic security should result inevitably in a freeing of effort for the constructive and creative work of life. This implies, amongst many other things, a change in the relationship between the individual and the group. At present the individual tends either to belong to the group or to remain external to it. If he belongs to the group (be it political, or religious, or social, or cultural) he develops a vested interest in the group, resents any criticism of it, and is guided in his relations towards it by prejudice and emotion rather than by reason. If he is external to the group he is either indifferent to it, or is opposed to it and destructively critical of it. The need of the new order of society that is now developing is for individuals who are in membership of the group and yet retain the ability to criticize it constructively and to amend it where necessary. These general reflections serve to bring us to close quarters with the problem of planning in so far as it affects education. In reality there are two problems: (a) The position of education in the planned society. (b) The planning of educational facilities. (a) Education in the planned society. The function of education in a planned society depends upon the answer to the question-what is the object of the proposed planning? It is clear that the purpose of education will be dependent upon the social aim of the community. A planned community cannot allow services to be isolated. It cannot allow competition between different services, nor their well-being to depend upon the forcefulness of the head of the service. In a planned society all services have to be considered and the function of each in regard to the aim of the planning carefully considered. The present tendency to injure the educational service in order that other services can be built up is not an example of rational directed planning, but of competition between different services. It is neither planning nor efficiency to build up one service at the expense of others. Post-war planning must be more rational than this. It must take account of the educational needs of the community and of needs in other directions, too. It must consider the resources available and decide how they can best be utilized. Production for use instead of for profit will see the end of the statement which has destroyed the hopes of educationists so often in the past, "We cannot afford it." What is necessary will be able to be afforded, and will be provided. The planned democratic society will insist that its educational system shall do two things in preparing children to take their places as citizens of such a society. In the first place they must be willing and co-operative members of such a society. This means that they will have to relinquish willingly certain freedoms hitherto held to be rights. On the other hand, they will have to be constructive and creative individuals within the proper sphere for such activity. This dual demand constitutes a new task for the schools. In recent years all the emphasis has been upon individuality. This is probably due to the time-lag which always exists between the philosophy of the age and that of the schools. But now the tempo of life has increased and such a time-lag is fraught with real dangers to the community. Education must make a jump and must produce democratically minded citizens for a planned society. This means citizens prepared to surrender freedom in some fields because it is the necessary condition of greater freedom in others. The amount of research which is necessary before planning can be effective is very great. But the difficulty of the task must not deter us. Much more needs to be known as to types of ability and the relationship which should exist between one type of educational provision and another. The educational system must be planned in the light of the needs of the planned society. In a planned democratic society education will not have a favoured place nor will it be the Cinderella of the services. It will be the instrument by which the function of the society is made explicit to its developing citizens. It will not be dependent for its welfare upon whether there is an economic boom or slump, for economic planning can abolish these. It will have a planned function in the life of the society, and within this general function will have freedom to plan its particular part of the communal aim. (b) The planning of educational facilities. If there is to be a planned society after the war it is immediately evident that a dual task is imposed upon the educational services during the war. In the first place it is essential to maintain and extend all those activities which will aid in the development of citizens who will have an outlook conducive to the rapid and smooth establishment of the planned society. In the second place it will be necessary to consider now the changes which a planned society will make imperative in the educational facilities of the community. The first problem has not received the attention it deserves. The calling of teachers to various forms of war service has created staffing difficulties in most schools and there are complaints that the system of specialization can no longer be operative. Further, these same staffing difficulties are held to mean less individual work and more group instruction. That these are very real difficulties may be readily admitted, but they may drive us to experiments which will bring results of lasting value. For present conditions make more communal activities in the schools essential, and these can, if rightly used, furnish a means of preparing the pupils for one side of a planned society-that in which they are willing and knowledgeable co-operators. Again, it would not be detrimental to the future well-being of Europe if all types of post-primary schools began now to centre their courses round the past, present, and future boundaries, production, and history of European countries. History, literature, geography, drama, could all be included under the general heading of the Humanities. One class or one form could take a country and specialize in it. The music of the country (gramophone records are available) could be studied and so could its religion. Lectures and dramatized versions of historical facts could serve for group work. Calculation could also be found a place and so could science and language. Craft work and art work are involved, and a unifying principle for a war-time curriculum is provided. It would mean a war-time time-table-one with less rigid divisions between the subjects. But this is an advantage rather than otherwise, for it becomes increasingly clear that the pre-war time-table is unworkable in war-time. But the supreme advantage is that it would ensure that at the end of the war there was a body of young citizens possessing some knowledge of the problems confronting their world and some idea of how to set about their solution. And, while this task is being carried out from day to day, all educationists must direct their attention to the second task-that of replanning the educational facilities of the country. We must not be content to cry "Hadow" or 'Spens" or any other name. The problem is a new one and must be thought out from first principles. Hadow and Spens can give us guidance, and the work done under the inspiration of the Hadow Reports has given us a better jumping-off ground than we should have had without them. We must as a first step replan our educational areas. The Government must revise its system of grants. We need such a system of education that there will be available at the conclusion of any one stage facilities suitable for all those capable of progressing to the next stage. We must see to it that the needs of the community for services of various kinds are satisfied. Above all, there must be provided adequate means whereby those competent to conduct research and experiment in all fields-sociology, physical science, chemistry, medicine, biology, &c., are selected and put in a position to carry out their work undisturbed by economic or other worries. Equally important is it that there should be means whereby the results of their work shall be used for the benefit of all and not for the profit of the few. This means the use of knowledge in the furtherance of the aim of society and so in increasing welfare and happiness for all. It is impossible here to attempt to lay down in any detail the steps which such educational planning should take. All that can be done is to point out its urgency and importance, and to hope that all educationists will collaborate in working out the details, and will come to the end of the war not content to revert to the old order of things which led to it but determined to go forward to a more rational order of society and with their route maps ready. THE TEACHING LIFE III. RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD Tentered the sphere of my experience. By "MARTHA MOSS " HEY were almost two years gone in decay before they They had begun the study of French with one teacher, had continued it with another, and in the last term of their second year were committed to my care. A remote Highland village, an understaffed school, and a total lack of up-to-date modern language equipment had perhaps occasioned the flight of my predecessors; I know not. But they fled, and fled far. And they left for me a Class II consisting of six boys and five girls who had imbibed a portion of earth's most poisonous French grammar and who were thus, to all appearances, not far from their intellectual decease. These were they : Rebecca, in whom there still glowed little sparks of life; diligent child of an ambitious Lowland crofter whom some curious misfortune had stranded in the Highlands. Disillusioned by many years of green, ungathered harvests, he had concentrated his yearnings on four small daughters whom he wished to see good at their books". Ian, the son of a distant dissenting preacher; a handsome, fair-haired boy, strictly brought up, full of inhibitions, sulky, awkward, taciturn. Ronald, whose Gaelic parentage precluded him from ever knowing what a consonant was. Elma, smiling and good-natured, whose total lack of acquaintanceship with the contents of the said poisonous grammar-book made her the most apt pupil when the latter was scrapped. The undistinguished others were Rita, a giggler; Andie, a red-headed crofter lad chiefly noticeable by his thunderous boots and his yearly crop of freckles; Alice, the slave of the book; Nellie, the possessor of an outstanding bunch of tough, ginger-coloured frizzy hair, and a pair of vacant blue eyes excellently matched by a dropping chin; Walter, a sickly boy just home from hospital; Gordon, a happy dunce. And Ton'l. Don't forget Ton'l. A hairy-kneed monster, a cave-man in whose eyes gleamed the primeval forest. Ton'l, on those rare occasions when there were no peats to cart, nor potatoes to plant, nor stacks to build, on those rare occasions when he had really nothing better to do, came to school. And, if you please, Ton'l's father would have Ton'l learn French. So Ton'l would sit himself down with complacency and withdraw from the ruins of a gamebag some nondescript tatters which had once been books -but have no fear, Ton'l wasn't even on nodding terms with what they set forth. I shall never forget our first day together. Well, this year they are Class III. They are now eight in number. Nellie has left school, Gordon has been sent packing to the woodwork class, the inevitable haven of all happy dunces, and Ton'l, gloriously black from head to foot, has put dungarees over his peaty tweeds and mucks contentedly among the ruinous cars in the garage. The village is little changed since the vacation, but up and down our street march companies of Indian troops in ochre turbans grotesquely completed by waterproof capes. Ian, Ronald, Andie, and Walter, who of old spent all their intervals leaning over the blacksmith's half-door, are now to be seen in an admiring semi-circle of boys and girls watching the daily parade of our defenders. By the beginning of term I am disillusioned as to the abilities of Class III, but, with the tenacity of all the quixotic race to which I belong, I have attached myself to the lost cause and I am still trying to make them speak. We begin with a flourish, for, by sheer bullying of the powers that be, I have secured Direct Method books, attractive, interesting ones which cause a mild wrinkle of surprise on those placid brows. And then into the fight goes my whole armament, blow upon blow. We perform small plays in which a wooden doctor questions a stone patient in an accent calculated to kill Frenchmen at the rate of twenty per second. But in the midst of my despair, am I not sensitive to a ghost of a smile on the face of my once-silent Ian? We talk-oh, call that an exaggeration if you will !—we stammer and stutter about the things in the room, about the stories which we are now reading, for the first time, without translation. We spread a large picture over an easel-a dreadful daub it is, with too many objects, too crude colouring, the sort of picture which is no picture at all, but what better have we? We set the boys in competition against the girls, and —well, yes, Ian and Andie would not be standing up with those fierce expressions if they were not, in some mysterious way, coming to life. The competition grows hotter, the hands flick into the air, the eyes sparkle and the tongues are loosed. Is it possible? Is it possible that with these, the pariahs of the French department, things are really happening? Am I-oh, human vanity!-having success? One day they are clamouring at the door. They never clamoured before. They clatter to their places and demand a song. We have a verse or two of En Passant par la Lorraine, and then they ask for Il Pleut, Bergère. When we read our lesson, they laugh at the funny parts, quite audibly. I never knew them to see a French joke before. We then begin to construct, for the wall of our class-room, an economic map of France like the one at the end of our |