The Educational Needs of Democracy
- Author:
Alexander, Ph.D., Ed.B., M.A.,
University of London Press. 3s.
It is to the final chapter?” The Educational Frontier “?of Mr. Alexander’s book that v’e are most drawn.
” Society has charged the schools “, the author states, ” with the responsibility of making youth fit for society. Perhaps it is time we started making society fit for youth to live in.” And again: “There is need for a much greater correlation between life inside school and li’e outside school, so that when the pupils go out into the world, they may not find themselves a completely alien atmosphere.”
Therein lies the crux of the problem. True culture has always come from a deep realization of the quality of service in vocation and fronri studies co-ordinated to that end. Just so lofj^ then as society regards the senior school ch? and his parents not as equal participants in social and economic life but as unskilled hands on the overstocked labour market of a world economically unchristian in its aim, just so long will senior scholars passively resist education and defy culture. This chapter on ” The Educational Frontier ” deserves expansion and a prior place in the book.
The major part of the book is given over to analysis of the verbal and practical factors in the constitution of intelligence. Individual intel- ligences, apart from the general factor which intelligence tests, measured in the main, are either predominantly practical or predominantly verbal. The reaction of practical intelligences to a verbal curriculum may appear almost defective. The book is therefore a plea for a re-classification of senior schools so as to distinguish the two types and afford suitable activity for each. It offers a valuable argument for a curriculum of practical activities rather than dilute academics for backward children.
Practical and realistic education in apprecia- tion and criticism of highly complex modern life cannot come from a class teacher, however enlightened he may be. It must come by direct effort from all the elements of the social organism, Workshop, cinema, transport, office, hospital, and bank, and the teacher must be organizer, student and co-ordinator of the efforts of all these. It will take a lot of working out?but the Present period of social breakdown is surely a good beginning time. R.T.
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