Munroe, David

English

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Isolaiionand Integration in Educationby PROFESSOR DAVID MUNROEHow is education coping with the "explosion of knowledge" which is a feature of the Twentieth Century? Is not increasing specialisation leading to isolation? The writer suggests how this isolation may be broken down and the field of knowledge integrated.'J 'H E importance of the individual and the need for respecting individual differences are prin­ciples that have become widely aecepted in West­ern society without being well understood. We take pride in the worth of the individual, trac­ing this concept to the early Christians. We speak of individual freedom as a sacred and pe­culiar tenet of democracy, recognising its ori­gin in English Puritanism, or revolutionary France or on the North Ameriean frontier. We boast of rugged individualism, relating it in a somewhat confusing manner to capitalism and to the age of the eommon man. The speeialist has been promoted to a position of authority in politics, in culture, in economics, in science, in I industry, in education, in spite of frequent re­minders that he is fallible even in the field of his specialism. For several generations we have been busily occupied with isolating certain aspects of knowledge, with pursuing our studies in depth rather than in breadth. We have spent many years in pulling the world and its peoples apart: perhaps it is time we began to put them together again.Explosion of KnowledgeThe explosion of knowledge that has occurr­ed during the past three centuries has moved usProfessor Munroe is well known in South Africa where he has been the guest of the Council of Education, Witwatersrand. He is Principal of Macdonald College, McGill University, Montreal.a long way from the world in which Francis Bacon took all knowledge for his province; and we are being constantly reminded of the truth of a statement by one of his contemporaries that “ no man is an island.”  Yet much of our pre­occupation in the past three centuries, particular­ly in the past forty or fifty years, has been to encourage and justify intense specialisation. Whether in chemistry or cricket, genetics or golf, the amateur has given place to the profes­sional and it is now to the specialist, the expert, that we look for authoritative answers and per­fection in performance.Part of the problem may be recognised in the patronising sophistication of the Victorian clas­sicist. The cult of Ciceronianism which devel­oped after the Renaissance rejected any claim to parity between classical and modern studies. The classics were not only the best, they were the only path to respectable scholarship, and to many other things as well. This attitude has con­tinued. Sir Richard Livingstone has reminded us that, of the seventeen Prime Ministers of England who have served since the accession of Queen Victoria, all but four could lay valid claim to classical scholarship. Some of his readers may feel that this fact may partly ex­plain some of the grave failures of Victorian statesmanship. But perhaps the most frank and fatuous statement of these sentiments is that of a Victorian bishop who said “ The advantages of a classical education are twofold: it enables us to look down with contempt on those who have not shared its advantages, and also it fits us for places of emolument not only in this world, but in the next.”  This was one side of the argument. In mid-century Herbert Spen­ser contended that scientific studies would be more useful than the classics. His arguments were clear, and in many ways convincing, but he took a position at the opposite extreme and many of his supporters showed comparable in­tolerance. So the battle lines were drawn and the conflict has continued.Isolation and ControlSir Charles Snow, in his Rede Leeliire of 1959, spoke trenchantly about the need for a truce or a treaty. He deplored the lack of a common language hy which the scientist and the humanist may communicate with one an­other. This warning is carried even further hy Dr. Robert Oppenheimer who points out that the isolation is evident not only between the men representing each group at the top, hut also with­in each group itself, since the research worker very often cannot speak easily to the teacher or to the man in the street. He pleads for the creation of some channel through which special­ised knowledge may he conducted into a "com ­mon pool” , and he believes that this has been done more successfully in England than in North America. From these two warnings the perils of isolation of various fields of knowledge seem perfectly clear. Fragments have not only become detached, they have developed such awkward proportions that they cannot now he fitted into a recognisable whole. When this happens man has become the slave of the knowledge he sought to master.Another aspect of isolation is seen in the tra­dition that education is a privilege which must or may he restricted to certain social classes or to certain cultural or racial groups. This concept had the blessing of the Greeks, and the opinions of Plato and Aristotle have been woven into the very fabric of European thought. In contrast to the Hebrew tradition, which prescrib­ed a inininuiin level of education for everyone, the Greeks isolated the polite from the vulgar, the free man from the slave. The one might claim the right to an education : the other not.Throughout the Middle Ages, this tradition prevailed in a slightly different form in Europe, where the worlds of the knight, the scholar and the guildsnian were separate and the distinction was reinforced hy the harrier between the liberal studies and vocational training. It was only after the Protestant Reformation, when liter­acy became a re<|uirenient for church niemher- ship, that the attitude was modified and class discrimination was slightly reduced. New in- lluences appeared during the Industrial Revolu­tion and the class structure had to he adjusted to the redistribution of wealth and power. Re­percussions were evident in almost all the West­ern countries. Education was offered to various groups on a strictly individual basis. Therewere schools for the rich and the poor, the me­chanic and the rustic, hoys and girls, for the political and professional elite and for the masses. Thus education was used to support and solidify isolation of group from group.The perils of this practice arc perfectly appar­ent. Restrictions are seldom self-imposed, al­most always they are an attempt hy a privileged minority to restrict the freedom of a larger group. The boundaries are always difficult to determine and they are even more difficult to maintain. They are an attempt to establish a "status <juo”  and this isolation becomes more and more vulnerable as we arc faced with crises like an explosion of knowledge, an explosion of population and a technological revolution.The harriers of subject and class, of know­ledge and social structure are legacies of the past; those that spring from political motives are, in the field of education at least, of more recent origin. ^lass education is a modern phe­nomenon and it is only in recent years that its power has been fully recognised. The respon­sibility of the state as the only agency with ade<|iiate financial resources to provide education for all its citizens gives rise to the temptation that each state will attempt to create its own narrow framework for education, using this to spread its own propaganda. Prussia was the first of the modern European states to perfect this technique. France developed a similar pattern in the 19lh century. Other governments have done likewise, the Nazi and Communist states most successfully of all. In each instance isolation of this kind has been based on rigid control, the substitution of propaganda for free im|uiry, and a desperate effort to insulate the citizen against outside influences. When this is attempted on a large scale hy several states there is obvious danger both because it pro­motes rivalry and misunderstanding hut even more because it seeks to fetter rather than free the minds of men.Counters to IsolationFortunately there have been other movements which have in some measure consistently coun­teracted the forces of isolationism. There were the Sophists in ancient Greece who were prepar­ed to teach anything to anybody, so long as they were paid to do so. They were accused of being mercenaries and charlatans, and many of them probably were; yet they must have done a greatdeal to unify knowledge and to put it within the reach of tlie average citizen. And then there w'ere the great medieval universities, teaching the seven liberal arts in Latin and attracting their students from all over Europe. They also did much to unify know'ledge and. except in a few instances, while they did little to increase or extend it, they contributed to a tradition of sturdy independence which neither king nor bishop could challenge lightly. This has re­mained part of our heritage today and one would hope that we might find the sort of lea- tlership we need today in our universities, where freedom is linked wdth a h<dd attempt, not only to extend knowledge, hut to unify, to synthesise, to intepret, to apply it.There are dangers, of course. The vitdation of the German universities in the nineteen-thir­ties by Nazi rutblessness stands as a warning of what can happen when universities fall prey to political or ideological control. The univer­sity must maintain its right to admit its mem­bers. both staff and students, on their intellec­tual and moral merits without discrimination for race, religion or politics. And. with the increasing need for financial support from gov­ernments, it is not ahvays easy to maintain these rights. Thus it becomes necessary for the uni­versities themselves to define their rights and to defend them, rallying to their cause all those citizens who respect the integrity of the human mind and spirit. It was in this cause that Ben­jamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson gave their leadership in the formative years of the United States; it was with this vision tliat Ru­therford travelled from New Zealand and Canada to Cambridge and Einstein made his pilgrimage from Berlin to Princeton ; it is this flame that continues to burn in all the great universities, distinguishing them from their unfortunate sis­ters who have become isolated by religious or economic or political control.The university tradition links us with the past but there are other unifying movements which have developed in very recent years. There was the Committee for Intellectual Co-operation which was established under the League of Na­tions. This was in a sense an ancestor of UNE.SCO whose programme has been directed very elearly towards breaking down isolation be­tween academic disciplines, between the levels and types of education, between nations, races and ideologies. These efforts have been reason­ably successful, although, of necessity, they have been widely dispersed, sometimes superficial, loosely co-ordinated and occasionally even mis­directed. At least it is perfectly clear that if UNESCO had not been prepared to undertake many of these tasks it would have been necessary to establish such a body to take its place.And other bodies are now contributing as well. In 1959 the representatives of all the ter­ritories in the British Commonwealth met at Oxford for the first Commonwealth Education Conference. As a result of these discussions a scholarship plan was set in operation and assist­ance was offered to the underdeveloped territories through exchange of various types of teaching personnel. The response has been very encour­aging and a second conference is now being planned in New Delhi in January 1962. Mean­while various foreign aid and travel programmes have been offered by other countries, particu­larly by the United States. All these are evi­dence of the appetite for education, in every cor­ner of the world, and of the willingness of the older nations to share their resources. They are proof also of the growing realisation that unity of knowledge and equality of opportunity are recognised almost universally as principles by which our efforts must be guided.These efforts are timely for we live in a chang­ing world and it is a question whether the pace or the universality of change is the more remark­able. It is estimated that the doubling time of knowledge is now between eight and ten years, which means, of course, that men and women in every part of the world are more occupied and more affected by things that are new than by things that are old. This is true not only in the world of gadgets and technology hut also in the world of ideas and values. It has been estimated that twenty-five per cent of our child­ren will spend most of their working life in jobs that have not yet been invented and we know that many of our own contemporaries have been victims of changing industrial, commercial and social needs. So long as it is used wisely and constructively, education holds the key to our adjustment in this sort of w'orld hut this bringsus face to face with an inevitable choice. We may choose to enjoy our comforts and protect our privileges in what Sir Charles Snow has called our “ existentialist societies”  without much thought or foresight about the conse­quences. This, he says, is the prevailing trend in most Western countries where the memories of past conquests and the myth of present se­curity have produced a sort of political paraly­sis and social frustration. However there is another choice. Many of our neighbours have chosen deliberately to direct their planning to­wards the future and they are prepared to make painful sacrifices today and tomorrow so as to ensure success at the end of a decade or a cen­tury. To help them in this course education is being used systematically and prudently to unify and integrate the fields of knowledge, to control and shape the character of society and to spread  ^a sinister gospel across the boundaries of racial groups and nations. Thus it becomes a ques­tion of great importance whether we use educa­tion as a brake to control, a wall to separate, an opiate to seduce or use it as a dynamic force to meet the challenge of these exciting times.THE TEACHERS TRAINING COLLEGE A G R E E SIT’S BOURNE FOR FLOORSALL THE COLLEGE FLOORS ARE SEALED AND MAINTAINED ; , . WITHBOURNE FLOOR PRODUCTS AND HAVE  ^ BEEN FOR YEARSFLOOR TREATMENTS (S.A.) (Pty.) LTD. P.O. Box 108, BRAMLEY, TVL. Tel. 40-5231extraordinarily good teain  p a c k e t s . .  . in  tea  b a g s

Isolation and integration in education

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Isolation and integration in education

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