The Great Divide in the Schools
By A. D. C. PETERSON*
NOTHING baffles educational delegations from other countries so much as the inability of the English to answer plain questions about what goes on in their higher secondary schools. The explanation that by and large (why, the visiting Frenchman asks himself, do they always qualify every statement?) each individual headmaster designs his curriculum for himself is found hardly credible; that he can then enter his pupils for a national examination conducted by any one of nine different examining boards seems either a nightmare or another example of the British genius. In either case it makes rational com- parison with his own orderly system of national education very difficult. This is sometimes a pity, because discussion • of the 'reform of the pro- grammes' has become a favourite European topic; and if no Englishman can say what his country's programmes are or by what mechanism 'they can be reformed the English tend to get left out. The Russian questioner who, after listening patiently to a long exposition of how our grammar-school curriculum works, put the ques- tion, 'But how do you ever change anything under your system?', may have been stumped by the reply, `By democratic processes, of course'; but I doubt if he was satisfied.
The only way out of this difficulty is to give up trying to be comprehensive. There will be exceptions to every, detail of the Great Divide between Science and Arts in our grammar and public schools which I propose to give; but `by and large' I believe it to be a true picture of the present education of our ablest boys and, to a lesser extent, girls., The Divide has' been with us for a long time. Thirty years ago classical 'scholars of most public schools never had the chance of a single science lesson, and there are still exceptional cases where this is true today. The startling features of the last ten years, however,, have been the increas- ingly early age at which the critical decision be- tween Arts and Science is taken in .grammar schools, and the rapid swing in the Sixth Form away from Arts and towards Science. Sixth Form specialisation in , boys' grammar schools usually means devoting three-fifths of your working time to 'lessons' on one side or other of the Divide, rather more than one-fifth to further private read- ing on the same side, and rather less than one- fifth to Religious Knowledge and 'General Edu- cation.' Really one-sided specialisation of this kind does not, of course, begin until entry to the Sixth (for university candidates usually between the ages of fifteen and sixteen), but in probably the majority of grammar schools the decision between the Arts Side and the Science Side is really made' two years before this, in the Fourth Form, where the embryo scientists begin to follow a more detailed separate course in Physics, Chemistry or Biology, and the embryo Arts men start on Greek or German. In a few schools a decision of a sort, or perhaps it would be fairer to say an option, is expected at the age of eleven. It is possible, of course, to change your mind, but once the ways have parted in the Fourth • Director of the Department of Education, Oxford University. Form, changes of mind become increasingly rarer.
It is this early choice which most surprises our visitors. The English tradition of specialisation they can understand and, indeed, admire. The average European is beginning to wonder whether it does not provide an answer to his great problem of an overloaded currienlum. Many Americans are beginning to wonder whether it would not do more than their traditional leisurely programmes of desultory sampling to extend the able pupil. It is true that it does seem to many people both in Europe and in America to be pushing a valuable principle rather too far, that a boy of fifteen should be compelled to abandon altogether the serious study either of Mathematics or of the literature of his own country : but that a boy should make this choice, or have it made for him, at the age of thirteen seems plain silly.
The last few years have seen a growing aware- ness both at the universities and among head- masters in this country also that something is wrong with the system. Two of its important and dangerous by-products, however, are less com- monly noticed. The first is the part that it may have played and be playing in producing a shortage of young mathematics and science teachers, which a London grammar school head- master described , as threatening a 'national calamity in five years.' Teachers, by and large, become teachers and especially good teachers because they are people of a certain temperament, people who are interested in their fellow men and who enjoy 'putting across' their enthusiasm in a fairly large group either of children or of adults. No doubt many actors, barristers, commanding officers, politicians and so forth are of the same temperamental type. Most research scientists are not. They prefer back rooms. If at fifteen you compel all your ablest pupils to choose between an education which excludes, almost entirely, the human interest and one which excludes, almost entirely, the mathematical and material, it seems reasonable to suppose that the great majority of potential teachers will go, sometimes reluctantly, on to the Arts side. They may be good mathe- maticians or interested in technology, but they are not prepared to abandon 'altogether the 'humane' subjects. It seems possible indeed that the same reason which is responsible for our shortage of science teachers may also be respon- sible for the shortage of technically qualified officers in the Services.
The second by-product, not yet upon ,us but clearly threatened, is the extinction of many of the Arts subjects in the smaller grammar schools. A few years ago the division between Science and Arts in the Sixth .Form was sixty/forty in the grammar schools and fifty/fifty in the public schools. Now it is not uncommon) to find gram- mar schools where it is two to one in favour of Science, and even four to one has been suggested as a possible figure in the North, within the next five years. The public schools, aided by the Industrial Fund, have more than kept pace with this change. If the swing were to go as far as that with our present system unchanged, a small school with a Sixth Form of forty would have only eight boys on the Arts side. It would no longer be economic to offer a choice between, say, Latin, French, German, History, Geography and English Literature, and one can see the Arts Sixth in Such a school being told that they must, all eight of them, take a standard course' of French, History and English.
But is it impossible that the system should be changed? The purpose of education in the Sixth Form is, surely, to train the judgment in all its forms, not to fill the memory with the most highly specialised range of 'facts. Studying a subject 'in depth' means thinking hard in it, not remem- bering a lot of facts about it. Admittedly one must have some facts to think about, but it is surely not necessary that they should all be remembered for reproduction six months hence. Once that is recognised, could we not attempt in England a compromise between the continental system. and our present one-sided specialisation? If the content of memorised knowledge in specialised subjects required for competitive entry to the universities could be reduced, in return for a wider range of real thinking, could we not move towards a system by which the average boy kept up four subjects in the Sixth and the ablest boys live, instead of the present three and four? If that were done it would be possible, for most of them, to postpone the erec- tion of the Science/Arts barrier until they reached the university or at least until their third year in the Sixth.
I am not suggesting that we should overload the timetable by making everyone do everything, as they tend to do in Europe. By all means let the future engineer give up Latin and the future lawyer Chemistry. But is there nothing on the Ails side, no literature, history, drama or music, in which the future engineer is not sufficiently interested to be able to carry it on in the same class and to the same level as the Arts man? And are our historians and linguists really in- capable of Mathematics or bored with modern Physics? Such evidence as there is, either from their performances at '0' level or from their choices at Keele, does not seem to suggest it. Such a change in outlook would admittedly be much more radical than a mere increase in the snippets of 'general education' added to one 'side' or other in the Sixth. It might also be much more effec- tive. Strangely enough, it would also be easier to work, particularly in the small schools. The staff and the classes for this range of Arts and Science subjects are already there, and often enough there is room for more pupils in sets on each side of the barrier. To introduce more 'general sub- jects' needs more and often differently qualified staff, who may be available in the big schools but often are not in the small ones.
The change would have to be brought about by democratic processes, of course. University faculties or colleges would have to be persuaded to give equal consideration to the physicist who had not carried his Physics quite so far but had done advanced work at school in, say, Russian and Geography as well as Physics and Mathe- matics. A classic whose proses were not quite so good might have to be taken partly on the basis of his work in Mathematics. But if enough people want them to, even democratic processes can move quite fast. And 'enough people' in this case probably means first and foremost enough individual headmasters.
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