Education and sacrifice

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Education and sacrifice
Creator: Snow, C.P.
Language: English
Source: Volume XV (Issue No.7) July 1963
Year: 1963
Subject: Education; Education and economics; Higher education; Aims and objectives of higher education
Rights
Abstract: There is something wrong with British society, and a good deal of it may be attributed to deficiencies in education
Fulltext: ■ There is something wrong with British society, and a good deal of it may be attributed to deficiencies in education. EDUCATION AND SACRIFICE C. P. Snow We are in a mess about our education. Or rather we have let ourselves settle into a pattern so crystallised that it is going to be preposterous ly Hard to break. Unless we break it soon — and I mean in years, not decades — we shall slide into genteel de cline. To break it is going to' mean sacrifice. It is going to mean the sacrifice of mo ney, which will have to go quite deep in our society, of privilege, of intellectual com fort, of self-esteem. To be gin with, we have got to see our education clearly, not through our fog of familiar ity, but as foreign observers do. First, a simple statement about it. There is too little of it. It is too narrow both in spread and concept. It divides us more than any education should. By and large, in fact, we are doing rather badly, and we don’t like ourselves because we are. Let us be crude. I am not imagining the extreme slow ness of our growth in nation al production. The figures are these: for 1938 let us take the national product as 100 in each case. In the United States it has since gone up to 225; in West Germany to 228; in the OEEC countries on average ‘ to 164, and here to under 150. If you take the base of 100 for the year 1950, West Germany is now 225, France 170, Italy 202, Netherlands 158, the OEEC countries on average 164, and this country 129. There is something wrong with us. A good deal of what is wrong, though of course not all, should be put down to our educational deficiencies. This part at least — if we have the spirit — we can put right. But we are a deeply con servative society. I do not 62 Panorama mean conservative primarily in a political sense. Some of the most dangerous conserva tive elements in our feeling come from people who would think of themselves as liberalminded. On the other hand there are many who are call ing themselves conservatives, who have a sense of the fu ture and who would make much sacrifice — not only of money, which is the easiest to make — to see us on the way to health. I have to warn you however, that a so ciety which is psychological ly conservative has three suc cessive techniques for dealing with a disconcerting truth. The first is the technique of the absurd denial. That is, when General de Gaulle announces that Great Britain is an island, the first response is to say: ‘No it isn’t.’ Or if one says that the number of persons getting PhD de grees is many times higher per h^ad of population in the US or the Soviet Union than it is in our country, the first response is blandly to deny the plain facts. Defensive Techniques This process, however, can not be maintained indefi nitely and it is suceeded by the second stage, which is the technique of the intricate de fensive. One wants to dis cuss something fairly straightforward, like the be nefits or otherwise of hang ing. Any really practised practitioner in the intricate defensive will start off by asking interesting questions about the kind of rope. One produces -Concrete evidence about American and Rus sian higher education. 'Ah yes,’ siiys one’s interlocutor. ‘But before we go any further, are you really certain about the second-year standard at the University of Irkutsk?’ Fi nally, there is the third stage. This is the technique of hopeless acceptance, when the game is given up and the need for previous action ac cepted — but alas, now it is too laxel This will happen /unless we are careful, in some of the bitter controver sies of our time 20 years hence. We must not let it happen in this. I think we should all agree that many of our academic friends have a peculiar mas tery of these techniques. I remember seeing them in full operation early in the July 63 war. It was obvious that, if we were going to use the ra dar systems first invented by Watson Watt, we should need a very large number of scientist educated to some thing like degree standard in electronics. It was obvious that, unless we trained these men, our chances of survival would be perceptibly reduc ed. On the other hand, there were some who saw the pro blem differently. I had an old friend, a good and ho nourable man, who played a considerable part in univer sity administration. I will call him Robinson. The first defence was, of course, to deny the need and to say that we could get on perfect ly well with about 500 scien tists. The second was to say that even if the need existed, the universities could not possibly do anything about it in three, four, or five years, or any time which was rele vant to the war. Fortunately, the third tech nique of hopeless acceptance — that is, that we ought to have done something earlier, but now it was too late — never really came into play. For we went into action our selves. The conditions of war had a way of clarifying men’s minds, so the arts we could bring to bear managed to prevail over the intricate defensive. In fact, we edu cated in four years consider ably more scientists and tech nicians than the men who fought on both sides at the Battle of Waterloo. But I have 'never forgotten\Robin son. He had only three words to describe any effort to alter universities. The mildest was ‘scandalous’. He would then go on to ‘disas trous’. When he became really moved, he said that our proposals were catastro phic’. We became a little moved ourselves. Well then, let us begin, with what we do well. I once asked one of my wisest Am erican friends what he thought was the chief posi tive merit of our education. He is himself an academic, he knows us intimately, and has lived among us for years. His reply was this: if one had a really startling specific ta lent, the sort of talent which sticks out unmistakably from early childhood, such as a geniune gift for mathematics, he would rather be born in England than in any country 64 Panorama '•he knew, certainly his own. That was our saving grace. If he were any other kind of child, even' one whose talents were great though not so specific, he would much ra ther be born in the United States. I would like to suggest three other proficiencies of ours — though these are pro ficiencies which are inter woven with our shortcom ings. The first is that our honours degree at all univer sities — the standard varies very little, despite what snob bish persons think — is taken at a younger age and is in a specilized way more exacting than the first degree in other countries. That is, anyone who gets a first or a good second in any English uni versity at the age of 21 has been through a severe profes sional training. More severe, perhaps, than is reached else where until the age of 23 or so. I use the word ‘profes sional’ with care. In many respects he is less thoroughly and sensibly educated than his foreign contemporaries. But I do not want now to talk much about English specialization. There is no doubt that the English first degree, in its higher reaches, is a remarkable example of what can be done in the way of intensive instruction. The Cost of Private Schools This leads back, of course, to our second skill. At Our secondary schools, both pri vate and state, we also achieve extraordinary feats in the way of intensive in struction. There is no real equivalent to our scholarship forms in America and Rus sia, the countries whose edu cation I have studied with some care. At 18, the kind of student who is going to get a higher honours degiee is, in his own specialized field, normally much ahead of his contemporaries else where. Thirdly, we perhaps have something to teach others in certain aspects of primary education. W e start educating children at five, which is maybe too ear ly: but heroic feats are per formed, i n circumstances which do not bear examin ation, in a good many state primary schools. And we are astonishingly good at teach ing the clever children of those who can afford to pay hondsomely for the privilege, between the ages of six and July 65 13. There is no equivalent anywhere that I know of to our private schools for child ren between those ages. That is, of course, where our social division begins. We do all this, and it is not to be laughed off. But we do it at a heavy and, in the not too long run, at a crippling cost. At all levels from 15 upwards we educate so few of our people. Look at a few figures. I have said before that the only two countries about whose edu cation I can claim to know even a little at first hand are the US and the Soviet Union. I will start at the top of formal educational train ing. In his speech on 29, Jan uary on the state of the na tion, President Kennedy de voted much attention to Am erican shortcomings in edu cation, both in quality and in quantity. The President was specially worried because the number of PhDs graduating each year was too small: on ly a half of 1 per cent of each age group. This means something over 12,000 a year. I did not realize it was so large. The administration now appears to think that 20,000, or even 25,000, is the kind of figure which shoul/ be achieved very soon. And 'very soon’ in American terms does not mean 10 years ahead. The figure for Soviet PhDs — they call them Candidates, but they are exactly equivalent — is about 10,000 a. year andi is rapidly rising. Before I go any further, don’t fall into the English trap of thinking these doc torates inferior to ours. If you are tempted to do so, go and try to get one. In gen eral, I should guess that the average standard of quality of PhD theses in the US and the Soviet Union is some what higher than our own. They are taken a good deal more seriously, and usually require considerably more of a graduate student’s time. Five years is by no means an abnormal period to spend over one’s PhD in the US. In Cambridge, at any rate, it used to be fairly difficult to be turned down for one’s PhD once one had got start ed on one’s research. With all that said, what is the number of our PhDs each year? The curious thing is, no one seems to know. But our number of 66 Panorama PhDs is certainly less than 1,500 per year, and probably appreciably less. Multiply that by three or four, and you get a reasonable compa rison per head of population. This, remember, is right at the top of educational train ing, where our assumption is that we are at our best. Of our final number, a sub stantial proportion, as the Royal Society’s report has told us, are moving to the US. There is nothing sinis ter about this. All counrties are short of trained and able men, and are going to re main short for the foresee able future. Trained and able men tend to go where they can do the best work. Incidentally, nearly all these men are interested in edu cation. They are academics or other sorts of professional. One of our best hopes of get ting them back is to let them see that we are reshaping our education, and that we need them to help us do it. There are some other figures which are perhaps not well enough known. The revenue expenditure on universities is at present between £60 and £70 million a year. We ought to make allowance for the fact that in this country a good deal of higher education is car ried out outside the univer sities. For instance, we spend about £16 million a year on teacher’s training colleges, and £3 million a year on advanced technolo gical institutions. Let us err on the generous side and add in another £13 million for expenditure on further edu cation, which in some coun tries might be done in col leges. This makes a total of £100 million a year. The American expenditure on college education alone is £2,000 million a year. As in this country, the greater' part of this sum comes from public funds. But it is a bit of a shock to find that annual private gifts to uni versities and colleges in the US amount to about £400 million a year, that is, four times our total expenditure on higher education. Soviet expenditure on higher edu cation is roughly equivalent to American. The number of students receiving higher education in the US, the Soviet Union and Great Britain is roughly what these figures suggest. July 67 In the US approximately one third of each age group enters college at 18. The number of students receiv ing higher education is about 3 million. The comparable number in the Soviet Union is about 2 million. With us, the number at universities is 110,000; and probably we should add something like 50,000 to this, to include students at technical colleges, teacher’s training colleges, and others working for pro fessional qualifications. It is true that the wastage at Am erican universities and collegs is very high. The num ber of students who gradu ate is about half the number who enter. But I have a good deal of sympathy with the American atttiude, which is t;hat it is better to open your doors to a number of students who are going to profit much, in order not to close those doors against stu dents who are going to pro fit a great deal. The Soviet wastage is about the same as ours. It is slightly baffling to visit the fifth-year class at a Mos cow or Leningrad institute and find its numbers have actually grown, not shrunk, from the first year. This is, however, simply because there is a good deal of move ment between universities, as in Germany, and good students in, for example, physics from all over the Union have a knack of arriv ing in Moscow for their fi nal year or two. What is our defence against these facts? First, I think, refusal to realize how uneducated we are. The on ly stratum where we are rich, in ability is in jobs which are being done by boys leaving school at 15 on wards, who either did not want to go to a university or could not get in. Much of our middle-grade clerical or minor administrative work is done much better than in America and Russia, and probably as well as anywhere in the world. But that is a wretched consolation. We may not realize the half of our danger for -another 10 or 20 years, when the results of American and Russian eucation have had time to show. Educating a whole people, as they are trying to, is a long business. Often the results seem disappointing. The Americans have already 68 PANORAMA Deen at it for two or three generations. It is important to remem ber that university education in any recognizable modern sense, with provision for or ganized research, is much older in the United States than with us. Similarly, So viet education did not start in 1945, although it was then, by a heroic decision, given the highest priority. I believe that visitors to either country can now get the first intimation of what this investment in education is going to bring. Ours is a comfortable country, one of the most comfortable of all countries to live in. It comes as a little of a shock, if one gets out of New York and centres of recent immigrat ion and settles down some where else in America for a few months, to Tealize that through great stretches of their population they are ap preciably better educated than we are. Our final line of argu ment is that we don’t believe in mass education; we believe in educating an elite. Yes, but a tiny one; much small er than we think. We often speak, and have managed to persuade ourselves, as if our minute army of 110,000 stu dents at universities were all starred first, the perfect pro duct of the English compe titive and specialized edu cation. If that were true, though it would be socially dangerous in the extreme, we should be getting on in prac tical terms a good deal bet ter than we are. In fact, the number o f students whom our singular system of education suits and who really succeed in it, is quite small. If one guessed about one fifth of the whole, that would probably be a consi derable exaggeration. Together with our illusion about elite education, we say something else much more mischievous. It is that we have collected all the talent that exists in the country. There is no one else who could possibly benefit by our university education. I can not conceive how this ever came to be said. It means, first of all, that the English are much stupider than everybody else, since, as we have seen, other countries carry the highest level of education to a far larger proportion of their people July 69 than we do. It means some thing else, which is very wicked. It is roughly that the children of the working class, together with female children of all classes, are beyond hope, predestined to ignorance, not capable of any serious higher education at all. Once again, the facts speak for themselves. Man ual workers are still the bulk of our male population and hold about 70 per cent of all jobs, yet only a small frac tion of the university popu lation of this island is drawn from their children, prob ably less than 25 per cent. At Oxford -and Cambridge, as is now well known, the number of students from working class homes is bizar rely small — something over 10 per cent for Oxford, and less for Cambridge: This cannot be right, unless you believe that the separation of our pople into castes has been so genetically complete that most of the working class are predestined to be stupid. Women get almost exact ly the same treatment as the proletariat. Out of each four students at our univer sities, only one is a woman. This is grotesque. We, of all countries, can’t afford to waste half our talent. Even if we could, it would be wicked to discriminate on sexual grounds. In fact, there is only one reply to the grosser troubles about our higher education. Put the wrong right. And that means, without the kind of finesse which plays with lit tle truths in order to conceal big ones, immediately in creasing its extent. There must be more of it. Starting not 10 years ahead, but now. Our Distorted Priorities The trouble is, we talk a lot and do so little. We are all setting much hope upon the efforts of the Robbins Committee. We have set up ‘some new, small and promis ing universities. But the years are passing by, and other countries are acting while we sit and watch. Un less we act too, and far more decisively than has been con templated, we shall, in 10 years’ time, be giving higher education to a lesser propor tion of our 18-year-olds than we do now. That would be a remarkable achievement. But let us take heart: it is 70 Panorama likely to happen. I believe that public opinion is now getting to some extent in formed; parents and children are beginning to realize what they ought to demand; per haps they will have the fight ing-power to get it. But whatever we manage to do, the one certain thing is that it will still be too little. Once a country has got its priorities distorted, over a very long period, it is maddeninigly difficult t o make them sensible again — unless one is living in a rev olutionary situation, which we are not. In our kind of society, the power of politi cal action or of government decision is usually more li mited than we think. Since 1945, there have been a num ber of years when we in this country spent appreciably more on egg subsidy than we did on universities. No one in cold blood sat down and decided that this was a rational order of priorities. It just happened. Our pat tern of higher education has also just happened. It will take immense political judg ment and will — probably more than our situation can permit — to alter it enough. But, even if we can’t, that is no excuse for doing nothing. It will be realistic and sober to say that we can double our university popu lation in 10 years. The cost will not be excessive. No one now doubts that the abi lity is there, even if we con tinue to allow our university education to be dominated, as at present, by the special ized honors degree. That is an argument which will con tinue as we get into action, just as others- will. How much stress do we lay on this faculty or that? How can we get students of high talent into the technologies (we are very bad at this) and how de we develop the tech nologies into a first-rate hu mane education? We should answer some of these ques tions if, in the process of ex panding our universities, we diversified them more. The most economical method of expansion not only in mo ney, but in staff and build ings, is by magnifying exist ing institutions; and no doubt, for harsh practical reasons, that will have to be our major way. But my own impulse would be to experi July 71 ment with as much variety as we can contrive. Until quite recently — un til Keele and Sussex and the newest foundations — the English and Welsh univer sities have modelled them selves on 'Oxford and Cam bridge, as if there were no other concepts of uni versity education at all: al though they had only to look northTof the border to see a radically different system, sprung from roots as deep but in the best sense more democratic, more flexible and more capable of adapt ing itself to a world which we must foresee. Perhaps the strongest single impression of Ameri can universities and colleges today is their variety. Most English people tend to think of them as being of enor mous size. Some are. The University of California has getting on for. 50,000 under graduates, just about as ma ny as the total student popu lation of this island in any pre-war year. Most of the California unde rgraduates are taught in two gigantic campuses, at Berkely and Los Angeles. Like all other known methods of university education, this has its dis advantages; but it has also spectacular advantages. By all the criteria by which we justify our own, the Univer sity of Calfornia is one of the greatest in the world. That is, its record of original re search stands comparison with any university — and that may be an understate ment. Its top rank of stu dents equally stands compa rison with any. If any uni versity ever educated an elite, then California does; and this as a result of a supreme effort of mass education. These great state univer sities — California, Wiscon sin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and several more — are going to become more important, not less. Through their sheer size and through their public support, they have resources which no other universities can com pete with. There are al ready many fields of re search which they alone can touch. I suspect that for many of the ablest and most adventurous o f undergra duates their size is not in the least frightening, but a source of energy. It’s an English mistake, 72 Panorama however, to think that all American institutions are large. As usual, they go to all extremes. Some of their most famous colleges are tiny. Haverford and Kenyon run to 500 students or so; Am herst to 900. These are all liberal arts colleges — which doesn’t mean that science and engineering are not taught. They are, and very well. The title simply means that normally the colleges will not arrange organized research courses for the PhD. The undergradate courses are usually as various is in a large university, and as fully staffed. That is, of course, an expensive method of teaching; the amount of in dividual tuition would star tle those who boast of the Oxford and Cambridge tu torial system. It produces some most impressive results. For a great many students — and for some of the most valuable — it seems the most effective undergraduate edu cation now available. Some of my friends who agree with me on most of these topics, disagree on this; I won’t budge I suppose we can’t manage to afford a couple of liberal arts colleges, just to try them out? No govern ment would feel that it was enough, in the way of num bers, for its money; but they would be an admirable ob ject for a benefaction. As we increase our univer sities, we have the _ chance of variety. And we have got to break some of our stereo types now. Some could be broken b y administrative action without a penny spent. The Colleges of Ad vanced Technology, which are universities in every thing but name, should be called universities. They will equip themselves with their own education in the arts, just as MIT and. Cal. Tech, do; for these techno logical educators, of whom B. V. Bowden is the most eloquent spokesman, believe passionately in what can be done by the interweaving of technological and humane learning. Give them their head: they are one of our sources of strength and hope. But why are the Colleges of Advanced Technology denied the name of universities? Who had the stupefying idea of labelling their gra duating award with the gro July 73 tesque appellation of Dip. Tech.? Labels ought not to matter overmuch. In the US almost the whole of higher educat ion is conducted at universi ties and colleges, and the la bel one gets, when one passes the course, is that of a bache lor’s degree. This label is attached to some courses which are not, by English standards, academic, as well as to many which are. The convention is nationwide, and is understood. The con vention in the Soviet Union is more like our own. There are only 40 universities, most of which are of middling size. The great bulk of So viet higher education is not done at institutions bearing the name of a university, but at a medley of others, some very large, like the Polytech nics; some small and concen trated, like the Gorky Lite rary Institute. From many of these one graduates, with various kinds of complex for mulae. There is no single la bel like the bachelor’s degree, but no on appears to mind. All that matters is that any one who graduates anywhere —whatever his label — can go on to post-graduate educat ion and is in the field for responsible jobs. If you study the careers of, say, the present generation of high ranking Russian diplomats, you will find they were train ed at engineering colleges, pedagogical institutes, all kinds of institutions. Their selection and use of person nel, at this level, must be far more flexible than ours. This loose and adaptable system, with much higher education outside universi ties (in the parrow sense) would suit this country very well, from every point of view but one. The label of a bachelor's degree ought to matter: it matters only when it becomes something of a class label; and that is precisely what with us it has become. The invention of the label Dip. Tech, was the English vice carried in excelsis, the fine flower of our instinct to create a helot class if humanly possible, even in learning.. Salvation for the Few On primary and secondary education I want only to say some of the simplest things. This is not because I think they are less important than higher education. On the 74 Panorama contrary, for a good society, they are probably more so. It is simply that recently I haven’t seen much of them at first hand. But there are some facts which stick out painfully into all of us. First, money. We spend about £800 million on education as a whole. The US spends approximately 10 times as much; and so, as far as one can estimate, does the Soviet Union. Comparing head with head, we are under spending. Secondly, as in higher education, the child ren of manual workers, and girls everywhere, get less in struction after the age of 15 than anyone else; not quite so grossly as in higher edu cation, but grossly enough to be human non-sense. Third ly, the national drift to a narrow concepcion of acade mic excellence, which reaches its operative point in the degree, spreads right down through our schools. Our 15-18 years-ol(J education is geared to be a preparation for the honours degree and no thing else. Ana this concen tration begins far earlier. It is shown, in a genesis which is both dramatic and absurd, in the 11-plus. The 1944 Act had a lot to commend it; but only a mandarin so ciety would have carried it into action in the way we did. We rather like the 11plus because it tells us what we are only too ready to believe, that there are a few destined for salvation and a multitude who can be court eously forgotten. This is not a process which we can view with any pride. It is wasteful in the opposite sense to. the American waste fulness. They waste through being too indiscriminate; we waste through being too mean. It is not a 'humane process. If you have done any selecting at any age, you would hate to select at 11 — even if you believed in the purpose for which the choice was being made. Of course, at 11 you could pick out a startum of academic flyers — that is fairly easy. You could pick out another stratum of children not equipped' for any kind of academic train ing, though they are also God’s creatures. In between comes a gigantic belt; and, if you are going to choose with in this belt at 11, you might as well toss up for it. (Concluded next issue) July 75