I am going to define education simply as the process of making a man of a man, First, note that the thing is a process, that-is, something that takes time. In understanding any process the most important consideration is its end, and this we have said to be the perfection in his own kind of the person educated. We must notice further that any being of which it can be said that it is perfectible, in its own kind, can be perfect only in a relative and not in an absolute way. What is perfectible, even when perfect, will lack the perfection of having always been perfect. It will be perfect only in a particular kind, since what becomes must always be of a particular kind. God alone is perfect absolutely and hence the notion of education is not applicable to him, as it is to the pseudo-god of W. James. Further, what is perfect of its own kind or in a relative way, cannot be the sufficient reason for its own perfection. It must exist in view of that whose perfection is wholly contained in its own act of existence, that is in God. We may thus say that education is the process of making a man of a man because God is God. In other words, being a man makes no sense apart from God, being like whose perfection is the only perfection which a perfectible being can have.

To know what education is, therefore, we must know something about what man is and in order to know what man is we must know something about what God is . . .

A Priest remarked recently that the education authorities had no intention of taking away their schools from Catholics, but merely of making it impossible for them to be continued. In that he was only expressing what has become obvious to everyone who has had much to do with the administration of the Education Act of 1944.

First, there are questions of conscience to trouble the teacher. Morally he or she is responsible to the parents; legally to the education authority. Already problems are being posed that make for conflict between the two loyalties. The teacher’s duty is clear; the choice may not appear similar to that which faced St John Fisher and St Thomas More, but it becomes so when it is a question of refusal to sacrifice principles that are rooted in the Faith. The penalty for refusing may not be so great, but as time goes on the testing may well become more severe.

There has been reason for disturbance in the proposed Schools ‘Record Card’. This has been described as a ‘secret dossier’. It was recommended by the Report of the Committee on the Juvenile Employment Service, and its basic suggestions were accepted by the Government, and have begun to be implemented by some local authorities. The Report required comprehensive information about every child, including not only his or her attainments but details about character, use of leisure, and a report on the home and parents. This was described as ‘a highly confidential document’. One form issued bore the heading that it would ‘under no circumstances be communicated to parents’.

A woman must always remember that, she is a woman. She must dress like a woman, talk like a woman and walk like a woman. For the enrichment of her personal life, her personal happiness, she must observe the purely feminine attributes and feminine virtues. . . . We have neglected the special education which girls need to become good mothers and good wives and we must give it to them.—Olga Mishakova, Secretary General of the Russian Youth Organisation.

It may well be that economic necessity makes a supply of female helots an inevitable part of our industrial life.—John Newsom, County Education Officer for Hertfordshire.

All education is due for overhauling; and that of women, being least concerned with the vital needs of its victims, is justly answerable for the most uneasiness. Papal pronouncements having frequently dealt with the kindred points of heaven and home as the magnetic poles of civilisation, there is no need to reiterate the teaching of the Church on the subject. But because the integrity of the English home is to all intents and purposes a forlorn hope, and the English heaven strikes one as being unlikely of attainment without it, the reviewer proposes to survey two books, one American, one English, and neither of them Catholic, which exhibit a novel awareness of our danger and offer some practicable suggestions for averting it. In the brief space at her disposal, she has almost entirely ignored the unhelpful aspects of the books in question.

What I have long wanted to say may have been said before by many people better qualified than I to say it, but it has not been said often enough. There are too many critics and potential pioneers ready to rush into print to condemn existing school systems and propose exciting new ones: there are too few who consider their attitude towards three fundamental questions.

First of these questions is, What are we educating boys for?-— or—Do we aim at turning out boys to live in the world as it is, or as we think it ought to be, or as we hope it will be?

The question is the more important because many parents will think it silly. They provide so little or so impoverished a home-life for their children that the only discipline boys now experience is what they are subjected to at school, and if parents’ ambition is that their children shall be fitted to share in the prevalent laxness of modern life, our present system of education with its irksome rides and obligations offers unsuitable training.

If parents wish their children to change the world they must realise their own obligations: they must cease to baulk the efforts of the schools by permitting indiscipline in their homes; they must co-operate with those upon whom they thrust the burden of bringing up their children, and I fear that few of them would come out well if reports were written on their conduct in this respect during the holidays.