Training in Education
It should be mentioned at the beginning that in Britain at least, the concept of education has been bedevilled by a false etymology. Education is thought to come from the prefix e- meaning ‘out’ and the Latin verb ducere, ‘to lead’; educere therefore means ‘to lead out’ and it is supposed that education, coming from this Latin verb, means ‘leading out’ or ‘drawing out’. It is supposed that a desire for knowledge is inherent in the child, and needs only to be drawn out’. Give the child the facilities, said Bertrand Russell, following Morris and others, and he will spontaneously learn all he needs. He will learn to read naturally, because he is surrounded by writings, and will be curious to know what they say. It is further assumed that the process must be agreeable, interesting, and amusing. If it is not, that is a failure to provide ‘what the child needs’.
This is not borne out by experience. Westerners in the Far East, for instance, surrounded by Chinese writings, very rarely attempted to learn the characters; they used to tell each other that it was impossible, though the stupidest Japanese boy learnt them. In any case, ‘education’ does not come ‘e – ducere’; the abstract noun from e-ducere is ‘eduction’ meaning indeed ‘leading out’. ‘Education’ comes from the Latin ‘educare’ meaning to train, to educate.
In this true sense, education can be compared to training one’s own body and mind. One whose body is not well because of a wrong life-style, has to become well by training first the body. He loves the body and wants to make it well, but the methods used are not always kindly. not always what the body finds agreeable, interesting, or amusing. The training methods, of course, should be accredited, and known to produce desirable results, and then if it means getting up earlier and going for a run, and having cold baths to improve the skin and get the adaptive functions going well, and cutting out some of the things which the so-called Happy Eaters eat and drink, the body will not like it for quite a time. The true love is to persist with it, and not say, ‘Oh, my body doesn’t like this’. The true love for the body is not always in kindly actions. Force may have to be used, until after about three months the first results, in the form of a new vitality, begin to appear. Then the body recognizes that the harshness was in fact love.
It is the same with most children. If the occasional seemingly harsh methods are not applied, the children when they grow older will not forgive the parents for failing to bring them up in a disciplined way, so that they could control themselves. The children will think, and even say: ‘You knew: I did not know. Why didn’t you force me to learn these things? You knew they would be for my ultimate good; you knew they would not be for ever. You should have applied them. Now I cannot control myself, and I have no independence’.
Take a definite example. Seventy years ago, children were made to learn long lists of dates: Agincourt 1415, Magna Carta 1215. (These are sometimes sarcastically given as typical examples of irrelevancy to modern life.) I can remember being able to reel off the dates of the kings and queens of England, with that of one important event in their reign.) It is true that most of these have little relevance to later life. But it means, that the pupil knows how to memorize facts and figures. And if he becomes a salesman when he grows up, he may have to spend a couple of days memorizing the descriptions and prices in a new catalogue. He will be able to do it if he has learnt the method at school. Untrained people, set to learn a list or perhaps a long poem, read it through a few times and then cover it with a card and try to remember the first one. They slide the card down one line to check, and then try the next one. When they make a mistake, they go back to the beginning again.
If it is a poem, they learn the first verse perfectly. Then they go on to the second, till they can repeat the two verses correctly. Then the third verse, and so on. Each time, they begin at the beginning. By the end, the first verse has been repeated say thirty times, and the last verse just a few times.
This is an inefficient method, which results in a good familiarity with the first part of the list, and steadily weakening recall for the later parts. The efficient method is not to go back to the beginning after an error, but to go on. This seems to be slower, because for some time very few are recalled; but in fact, the whole list is being learnt together, and quite suddenly there is perfect recall. But it takes practice, and faith; these generally have to be learnt at school. When the method has been learned, it is a great advantage in life.
The salesman’s catalogue does have an interest for him, but quite often in life we need to learn by heart things which have no significance for us; it is extremely boring. This was one reason for setting boring things as memory tasks at school. The several pages of irregular forms of Latin and French verbs, some of them rarely encountered, or the fact that the Old Testament prophet Elijah was a Tishbite, were deliberately set as exercises in bare application, with no stimulus. Sometimes it seemed that examples were chosen of almost comical pointlessness. ‘French nouns ending in -i or -o are masculine: example Le cri du dodo. As the dodo bird became extinct in Mauritius , its possible cry is hardly a concern.
The Victorian view (which persisted well into the 20th century) was, that education must not be all interesting. You had to learn how to do boring things efficiently, because later on in life you would have to do boring things again and again. Most of life, for most people, would have many grey and uninteresting tasks. And you had to learn how to do them without becoming demoralized: ‘Oh why do I have to do this? I don’t want to do this.’
But granting that, I think that much of the Victorian teaching was extremely unimaginative. Instead of boring us with the Tishbite or the grave accent on the French word ‘decolleter’ meaning to bare the neck, they could have made us train the memory on lists of the geological periods, or foreign currencies, or even or the table of elements, which would have been equally boring, but could have come to life much later in life.
Some of the mechanically learned information did in fact turn out to have a use. The derided date of Agincourt does help to understand the background of some of Shakespeare’s plays. The English won it partly because the English bowmen, practising in the villages, had learnt how to make a longer draw, to the ear instead of to the cheek, thus increasing their range to out-shoot the Continental archers. (The Japanese developed a draw to the shoulder; still more range, but in general less accuracy.)
Then Magna Carta in 1215 tells us that even at that early date, ‘The English church should be free’.
So, although much of the material was no more than dumbbells to develop memory, some could be fruitful.
There is an unspoken assumption that to cram the mind with facts and figures – as it is put – must be at the expense of creativity. The idea is based on a sort of crude idea of the brain as a sponge which can become soaked and unable to receive any more. In fact, only a fraction of the powers of memory are used today in the West. Thackeray recited the whole of Milton’s Paradise Lost from memory during a storm at sea. In Indian philosophy, it was expected that the basic text, and usually one commentary, should be in the memory, and that a scholar should be able to quote instantly from any passage of it in debate.
This sort of memory does not add to the amount remembered, for the mind is remembering anyway masses of trivialities which in fact he does not want to remember. An ordinary man has just as much in his memory as the trained Indian scholar, but it has minute details of the appearance and behaviour or an older boy who used to tease and frighten him, and obsessive long-held unreal fantasies. Training develops the capacity to master facts in an orderly way, giving instant access to a systematic arrangement of potentially useful information. The last point, that the information should be potentially of value, was sometimes ignored by 19th century educators. The comparison with physical training will show that the Spartan-style training should be based on respect, indeed on love. When in later years those former children find that what bored or antagonized them was ultimately a help to them, they will appreciate the training, instead of reluctantly conceding that ‘it taught us how to tackle boring things, I suppose.’
Training is only the first part of fitting one for life: it is sharpening the tools of the mind. That says nothing about creativity, for instance. A clear memory is essential for calm analysis and persistence is essential for completing any substantial project. The doctrine of spontaneous effortless creation, with no training, is beginning to wear thin, though still wide-spread. A Professor of Music told a student: ‘Don’t come to me for lessons in composition. I should have to teach you how to compose like Arensky or someone like that. Go your own way: you can be free, to do exactly as you like.’ This was reported with approval by a newspaper. The question which is never asked, is: ‘And were these ‘free’ compositions any good?’ These days, words like ‘good’ are banned from the vocabulary of criticism, but again, these days the paucity of listeners is generally a sufficient answer.
Memory learning does not stifle creativity. Chopin and Wagner, arguably among the most original composers who ever lived, were experts in the works of their predecessors. Chopin, playing a fugue of Bach (then becoming appreciated again after 80 years of neglect) forgot the conclusion and improvised a new one of his own.
As the Chinese phrase puts it: ‘If the artist does not go through the training, the things of Heaven may indeed take shape within his heart, but they do not take shape under his hands.’
© Trevor Leggett