Can these defects in our educational system be remedied? I think they can. We must begin by the frankest, the most objectively scientific acceptance of the fact that human beings belong to different types. Congenitally, the cerebrotonic is not such a ‘good mixer’ as the viscerotonic, who may be so deeply absorbed in his rich emotional life as to be unwilling to concern himself with the intellectual pursuits at which the cerebrotonic excels. Again, the somatotonic is predestined by his psycho-physical make-up to be more interested in, and more proficient at, muscular than intellectual or emotional activity. Or take particular talents; these, it would seem, are often given and can be developed only at the expense of other talents. (For example, good mathematicians are often musical, but very rarely have any appreciation of the visual arts.)
Then there is the problem—still to some extent the subject of controversy—of the degrees of intelligence. Intelligence tests have been improved in recent years; but they will become fully significant only when the results of the tests are given in their proper context. The affirmation that A’s intelligence quotient is higher than B’s tells us, as it stands, very little; if it is to be really significant, we must know a number of other facts—whether, for example, A and B belong to the same psycho-physical type or to different types, whether they approximate to the pure type or are greatly mixed. And so on. The intelligence test, then, is an imperfect instrument; but, imperfect as it is, it has done something to give statistical form and content to the universally held conviction that some people are stupider than others. Having accepted the fact that human beings belong to different types, are gifted with different talents and have different degrees of intelligence, we must attempt to give each the education best calculated to develop his or her capacities to their utmost. In a rather crude and inefficient way, this is what we are attempting to do even now.
Clever boys pass examinations and are given scholarships that take them from primary to secondary schools and from secondary schools to universities. Handy boys are apprenticed or sent to technical schools to learn some skilled trade. And so on. A rough and ready system—a good deal rougher than readier. Its defects are twofold. First, the methods employed for choosing the candidates for the different kinds of education are far from satisfactory. And, second, the kinds of education to which successful candidates are subjected are even less satisfactory than the methods of choice.
About the examination system it is unnecessary for me to speak at length. Most educators agree in theory that a single crucial examination does not provide the best test of a person’s ability. Many of them have even passed from theory to practice and are giving up the single, crucial examination in favour of a series of periodical tests of knowledge and intelligence and the reports, over a span of years, of teachers and inspectors. Supplemented by an expert grading in terms of psycho-physical type, the second method of choosing candidates for the various kinds of education should prove quite satisfactory.
We must now consider the various kinds of education to which (according to their type) young people should be subjected.
We have seen that both the existing kinds of education, technical as well as academic or liberal, are unsatisfactory. The problem before us is this: to amend them in such a way that technical education shall become more liberal, and academic education a more adequate preparation for everyday life in a society which is to be changed for the better.
A liberal education is supposed to provide, first, a gymnastic, second, a frame of reference. In other words, it is supposed to be simultaneously a device for fostering intelligence and the source of a principle of integration.
In academic education as we know it to-day, the principle of integration is mainly scientific and historical. We can put the matter in another way and say that the frame of reference is logical and factual, and that the facts with which the logical intellect is trained to deal are mainly facts about the material universe and about humanity as a part of the material universe. (History, as taught in schools and colleges, is of two kinds: non-scientific history, which is merely a branch of nationalistic propaganda, and scientific history, which is almost a branch of physics. Scientific historians treat facts about human beings as though they were facts about the material universe. They write about men as though men were gas molecules that could be dealt with most effectively in terms of the law of averages.)
The man who goes through a course of our academic education may come out a parrot. In this case we say that the education has failed of its purpose. Or he may come out as an efficient specialist. In this case we say that the education has been only partially successful. Or else (and when this happens we think that education has worked very successfully) he may emerge as an intellectual—that is to say, a person who has learned to establish relations between the different elements of his sum of knowledge one who possesses a coherent system of relationships into† which he can fit all such new items of information as he may pick up in the course of his life. We can define this system of relationships in terms of what is known and say (what has been said above) that it is predominantly scientific and historical, logical and factual. We can also define it in terms of the knower and say that it is predominantly cognitive, not affective or conative.
The parrot repeats, but does not understand; the narrow specialist understands, but understands only his speciality; the accomplished intellectual understands the relations subsiding between many sectors of apprehended reality, but does so only theoretically. He knows, but is fired by no desire to act upon his knowledge and has received no training in such action. We see, then, that even the man whom we are accustomed to regard as the successful product of our academic education is an unsatisfactory person.
To the pupils of our technical schools, no principle of integration is given. Their teachers provide them with no frame of reference, no coherent system of relationships. They are taught a job and no more—equipped with a technique and just so much of the theory lying behind that particular technique as will make them efficient workers. They emerge into the world wholly unprepared to deal in an intelligent way with the facts of experience. The web of understanding which, in the mind of the accomplished intellectual, connects the atom with the spiral nebula and both with this morning’s breakfast, the music of Bach, the pottery of neolithic China, what you will—this network of cognitive relationships is all but completely lacking. Bits of information exist for the technically educated man, not as parts of one vast continuum, but in isolation, like so many stars dotted about in a gulf of black incomprehension. Or if there is a continuum, the chances are that it will be composed of ideas borrowed from a Bronze-Age theology, from anecdotal history, from philosophy as taught in the newspaper and the films. The successful product of technical education is as unsatisfactory as the successful product of academic education.
What is the remedy for this state of things? Some people have suggested that technical education should be liberalized, like academic education, in terms of general knowledge—above all, knowledge of scientific facts and theories. They have suggested that technicians should be given a principle of integration fundamentally similar to that employed by the intellectual—a principle of integration which the knower feels to be mainly cognitive and which, defined in terms of the known, is mainly scientific.
There are two good reasons for thinking that this suggestion is unsound. First of all, the great majority of those who undergo technical education are incapable of using this principle of integration and, being incapable of using it, are therefore uninterested in it. Even among those who go through a course of our academic education, only a few emerge as accomplished intellectuals. Most of them emerge as parrots or specialists. (A good proportion of these return to the schools as teachers and proceed to train up other parrots and specialists.)
Minds that delight in what may be called large-scale knowledge—knowledge, that is to say, of the relations subsisting between things and events widely separated in space or time and seemingly irrelevant one to another—are rare. Academic education is supposed to impart such knowledge and to infect men and women with the desire to possess it; but in actual fact few are so infected and few go out into the world possessing it. To provide people with a principle of integration which it is almost certain that they will not wish or be able to use is mere foolishness.
Nor is this all. We have seen that even the accomplished intellectual is a far from satisfactory person. His involvement with the world is only cognitive, not affective nor conative. Moreover, the framework into which he
