Middle Class Education

Extract

From time to time Educational Authorities have set up Committees whose members have individually and collectively advocated a liberal school syllabus to produce a definite and desirable result: but it is often convenient to invite and publish criticism; one can go one’s own way afterwards without disturbance. Education may have two aims : either it can endeavour to produce good citizens; or it can turn out a product malleable to the industrial tools. The first course is called ‘liberal education’ ; the second is simply called ‘education,’ and it is the mode generally employed in modern schools.

The Charlotte Mason and the P.N.E.U. schemes are still in experimental stages, and are for the most part confined to elementary and progressive preparatory schools. There are other schemes of an unorthodox nature which receive less and less attention as time goes on. It is true that ideas promulgated by these systems are adopted in many secondary schools, but in the main they are included for purposes of variety or as links between two grades of teaching.