Leaders of the Future
Education and Leadership. By Eric James. (Harrap. La.)
" THE world grows Lilliput, the great men go." Thus Richard La Gallienne opened his sonnet on Mr. Gladstone's retirement. Dr. James analyses the forces in the contemporary world which not only welcome the decline of leadership but would hasten its demise. Leadership has grown suspect partly because of its abuse by Nazi and Fascist dictatorship: A worse enemy is the growth of equali- tarian sentiment. Zealous adherents to the philosophy which would have all men equal are reluctant to admit that there can exist trans- cendent ability and character which give a man the equipment with which to lead his -more commonplace contemporaries. Mr. Orwell's allegory of the pigs who began by subscribing to the tenet, " All animals are equal," but who later revised it in their own interest to " All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," has fallen on deaf ears. The grammar schools, which over the centuries have made an honourable contribution to the nation's leadership, are threatened with absorption in the comprehetisive school, where all may be equal in the ditch of mediocrity. Has a nation ever retained greatness which proclaimed " the century of
Dr. James proves that leadership is more than ever necessary in a democracy from which the hereditary principle has largely dis- appeared. Those who used to give public and unpaid service from their castles to the surrounding countryside now have to keep the wolf from the castles doors by acting as guides to those whose spokesman claimed " We are the masters now." A world, in which the growth olf science has outstripped morality, is threatened with capitulation to a purely materialistic conception of life. Dr. James shows that our only hope lies in producing leaders who secure adherence by the respect which their own qualities evoke. He wisely insists that if modern society is to accept leadership, it must be open to all classes alike, must rely on persuasion rather than on domina- tion, and must be widely diffused.
The High Master of Manchester Grammar School has directed a powerful searchlight on to much loose and perverse thinking about education, and his book is at once timely and important. Having had experience of day and boarding schools, he discusses the contri- bution of each to the national store of leadership. Pointing out that at three of the greatest of our schools, the staff-pupil ratio is about one in twelve ; the average for day grammar schools is about one to twenty," and remembering the better home backgrounds of their pupils, he argues that " the virtues of the great public schools arise far less from their boarding character than is sometimes supposed." Such a conclusion needs more proof than it receives here. Anyone who has had to consider the means and meaning of producing leaders in a day-school must have been brought up against the limitation of time and opportunity when boys are exposed to the school's influence for only a comparatively short time. A sense of belonging to a community which is more important than the individual's self- interest is harder to instil. Sir Cyril Norwood, who also knew both types of school, hit the nail on the head when he wrote, " The "system is good and sound, but it is to the discipline of the boarding schools as moonlight to sunlight, simply because the boarding school is responsible for the whole time of the boy, and the day school the common child " for its ideal ? Education for leadership must be selective, and teaching of quality, because it is limited in supply, must be given to those best able to profit from it. The advocates of the comprehensive school would sacrifice national interest in education to barren political theory.
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