Psychology applied to education : a series of lectures on the theory & practice of education / by James Ward ; edited by G. Dawes Hicks.

  • James Ward
Date:
1926
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psychology applied to education : a series of lectures on the theory & practice of education / by James Ward ; edited by G. Dawes Hicks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    So spake Walt Whitman, and so many of these seem to speak. No bad advice either, you may say, provided we have the sense to discriminate between “forward” and “backward,” and so much moral sense we think we have: ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Drange ist sich des rechten Weges wohl hewusst. I agree: at the same time I think less Drang and more reflexion would ensure a clearer insight. The ant and the bee may both get home at last, but the bee’s superior sense of direction saves it from the meanderings in which the ant often loses its way and itself into the bargain. At no time could the demand for some clear “idea of our destina¬ tion” well be more urgent than it is now. People on all hands are realizing that the old civilization is passing away; and the new social reconstruction that will replace it is being everywhere anxiously awaited. Now, as in all great epochs, ideas are in what chemists call “the nascent state”—set free from old, and ready for new, combinations. When Russia casts off her Czar and America lays aside its Monroe doctrine, visions may be hailed as inspired that but yesterday would have been hooted down as mad. For example, here in a well-known weekly paper I read: “The nation that first appreciates the ideal of Ibsen—that every child in the land should be brought up as a nobleman—will lead the world.” If I were attempting that other Fable of the Bees of which I spoke, this passage and the following might point the moral: I quote now from a recent pamphlet entitled What Labour wants from Education. “Hitherto,” says Mr M‘Tavish, the writer, “the working class has never been seriously consulted as to what it wants from education. [It is expected] to fit in with precon¬ ceived notions as to its proper place in a generally accepted scheme of things; and educational reform is only to concern itself with equipping the workers to be more efficient bees in the industrial hive A We must try to realize that there will be henceforth no “generally accepted scheme of things,” and that, therefore, the task of recon¬ structing will devolve on individuals no longer helped or hindered by vested interests. The more we realize this, the clearer the pro¬ blem of social eugenics will become. When a city has to be extended, the old plan is there to prejudice the new; but when the city has to be rebuilt, the old defects survive only as a warning. The law of progress, Sir Henry Maine taught us, has been a movement from Status to Free Contract: we may enlarge this and say that it has become a movement from Status towards Free Personality. Henceforth the one thing needful is that the men and women who
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