Levende Talen. Jaargang 1933

Departments of Education in English Universities.

It had been suggested that it might be useful to teachers in Holland if I described for them our English way of training teachers for secondary and grammar schools. In the description,

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doubtless, I shall find myself emphasising points which seem to me particularly relevant to the conditions prevailing in Holland; and consequently, my emphasis may be distorted by the little knowledge I have of the Dutch educational system - a little knowledge, we know, is a dangerous thing.

My nominal subject is our English way of training teachers for secondary and grammar schools. It should, however, be remembered that our English system makes no official distinction between the qualifications required of elementary and secondary (or grammar) school teachers, and appointments to secondary schools are made entirely at the discretion of the governing bodies of the schools, who, of course, are guided by whatever sort of qualifications the candidate may possess, but who may appoint whomever they choose, whatever may be his qualifications. Up to recent years it was customary for teachers who had a university degree to look for employment in secondary schools, and for those without a university training to find their careers in an elementary school. Postwar conditions have considerably altered the situation: and whilst it remains almost inevitable that a non-university student cannot hope for employment in any but an elementary school, it is now fairly common for university graduates (either because they have little hope of secondary posts, or, much more rarely, because they feel a genuine call to non-secondary types of teaching) to compete for posts in elementary or in our new ‘central’ schools, institutions still experimental, which are between elementary and secondary. This breaking down of pre-war custom complicates the story of our training institutions. Before the war, there were broadly two kinds of training colleges for teachers. The first kind consisted of those which were quite detached from Universities, and which aimed exclusively at training the elementary school teacher. The second kind was made up of those which were directly attached to Universities, and although officially they were not organised exclusively for the training of secondary school teachers, students trained in them almost invariably hoped for and obtained employment in secondary schools. It is solely with this second kind of training institution that I am concerned in this article; and although I have stated that nowadays the product of them is as likely to go into an elementary as into a secondary school, it still remains that they are our only institutions specially organised to train teachers in secondary

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schools, even if their curriculum has nowadays to be arranged so that their pupils may be fitted to teach in either elementary or secondary schools. I shall, therefore, regard them in this article, as institutions for the training of secondary school teachers. Certainly almost every one who enters into this kind of training institution hopes to become a secondary school teacher. The man or woman who from the beginning seeks to become an elementary school teacher, does not, as a rule, think of acquiring a university education. At the end of his or her pupil-days in a secondary school, he or she proceeds to the kind of Training College which has no connection with a University.

It is otherwise with the boy or girl who hopes to become a secondary school teacher. A University training is essential. When they reach school-leaving age, pupils who desire and are regarded as likely to become teachers of that sort, are subsidised by the Government to enable them to pursue a University education: and are enrolled as members of the kind of Training institution which is connected with a University. The choosing of these pupils from the large number of applicants is in the hands of the head of such a training institution. In making his choice, he may seek, (and in Manchester invariably does seek) the co-operation of his colleagues within the University, that is, of professors who have no professorial interest in schoolteaching as such, but who are interested in the academic development of their own subject of study.

It is the work of these University Training institutions I am trying here to describe. As they are part of a University, it is customary to call them, not Training Colleges, but Training Departments. They rank, in universities like Manchester, just as does any other department, say the department of English or French or Mathematics. The conventional title for the head of them is Professor of Education (whence the Training Department is also frequently called the Department of Education). He enjoys all the rights and privileges of a professor, just as does the Professor of English or of French or of Mathematics.

So far as I am aware, the Dutch Universities have no parallel institution. Possibly Holland, like Germany, has here and there a chair of Pedagogics; but the function of the academic study of pedagogics in Germany is altogether different from the part

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played by departments of Education in English universities. The continental system is to measure a man's qualification to teach simply by his scientific knowledge of the subject he proposes to teach. The Staatsexamen, i.e. the German teacher's certificate, for instance, appears simply to certify that the successful candidate has a sufficient knowledge of this or that subject. But in England, a teacher's ‘certificate’ is mainly a certification that he has proved his ability to teach this and that subject. The phrase ‘teacher's certificate’ is only used of the qualifications usually required in Elementary schools: in this case the candidate for the certificate has to show knowledge of certain specified subjects at an elementary stage, and has also to pass a theoretical and practical examination in the art of teaching. For secondary school teachers, the qualification is not called a ‘certificate’, but a ‘diploma’. This diploma is awarded by the University and not by the Board of Education: the Board of Education simply recognises the University diploma as the official mark of success. It is not compulsory for teachers in secondary schools to have a diploma, but it is increasingly difficult nowadays, perhaps almost impossible, to get a post in a secondary school without the ‘diploma’. The diploma, it is vital to note, is no certificate at all of the candidate's knowledge of the subjects he is to teach. It is exclusively a certificate of his ability in the art of teaching. His knowledge of the subject or subjects he is to teach, is attested in other ways, almost invariably by his University degree. No one can be a candidate for a Diploma until he has obtained a University degree. In fact, the normal academic course of a man proposing to become a secondary school teacher is this - he spends three years in the University, studying his particular subject or subjects - English, French, Physics, and so on: then, having graduated, he remains within the University, but passes on to the Training or Education Department for his fourth year, and works for his Diploma. He need not necessarily go to the Education Department in the same university as that in which he has graduated: he may be admitted to the Education Department in any other University. Technically, a University student may have been a member of the Education Department throughout the whole of his four years in the University. Most, indeed, of those who become members are members for four years, simply because they are subsidised

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by the Government, on the recommendation of Education departments, for the whole of their four years as University students. But, in the main, apart from a benevolent watching of their progress - the Education departments leave the whole of the work of the first three years to the non-vocational departments of the University - that is, for three years the student, like every other University student, is pursuing a course of study in one or other of the normal branches of humane or scientific learning. The fourth year, i.e. the postgraduate year, is devoted entirely to the study prescribed by and pursued in the department of Education.

Before describing the ideals and practices of an Education department, one or two general implications of what I have already said, may be made explicit. English Universities recognise that knowledge of a subject and ability to teach it, are by no means the same thing. Cynics may at once say that one only needs to attend a professor's lectures to recognise that. And it may indeed be that our English recognition of the difference is partly a consequence of conditions which obtain in English universities, but in scarcely any other nation's universities. As most Continental universities are an integral part of a State system of education, most continental professors in universities have at some period of their lives, been teachers in schools. This is far less common in English universities. In other ways, too, English universities are officially less directly connected with secondary and grammar schools. So, though England, like the rest of the world, recognises that a university is both a place of learning and an organisation for education, it tends to emphasise a University's duty to learning, rather than its function to educate, and it is especially anxious to differentiate between the pursuit of knowledge and the acquisition of vocational qualifications. Consequently, in the main, a University professor is concerned with the pursuit of knowledge in the particular branch of learning which he professes. He is not at all concerned with the problem of how pupils younger than his own students must be introduced to rudiments more elementary than those he himself endeavours to impart to his own students.

That means, however, if only as a practical and vocational necessity, that some sort of training in school teaching must be

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given to those who propose to teach the subjects, which at a higher level, they have learnt in a university. It might be held, of course, that training of this sort is what one picks up later in the years when one is trying to teach; or alternatively, that the only training necessary is to be given a few practical tips by an experienced practitioner. But English universities, establishing Education departments, have thereby indicated that, in their view, the problem is a much bigger and more vital one. The English solution would appear to have clear advantages both from the side of learning and from that of teaching. The fact that the training to teach is the business of a special department of education, relieves every other department from all but the purely scientific pursuit of knowledge, and the exposition of it as an element of culture. And the recognition of a department of Education alongside other university departments, means that in the considered view of the University, the problems of teaching are themselves worthy to be the subject of scientific investigation and experiment in the same spirit as that which directs the study of, say, literature or chemistry.

Almost invariably the professor of education is a man whose scientific or academic attainments are at least equal to those of professors in any other subject. Frequently his own branch of scientific study is psychology, or perhaps philosophy. But the vital thing is that, whatever his branch of learning, he must be a scholar of professorial quality, trained to mastery in the particular discipline of one or other recognised department of humane or scientific knowledge. Besides this, however, - and, of course, taking it for granted that teaching itself, apart from the particular thing taught, has become his chief interest - he must have other qualifications, and in particular, a first hand knowledge of different types of schools and experience of actual teaching within them.

But rather than continue with a general description, it would perhaps be better if I illustrated the outline and function of an English University Education Department by describing the one I know best, the Department of Education in Manchester University.

The Department consists of a Professor and eight lecturers. The Professor, himself educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, was formerly a lecturer in Classics; afterwards,

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having determined to make education his scientific interest, he trained himself to the task by becoming successively a teacher in schools, an inspector of schools, and an educational administrator. The lecturers are also chosen for their dual qualifications in learning and in mastery of teaching. The main work of the Department is to handle the students (about 120 as a rule) who come to them, after graduation, for the one year course in Education. These students are, of course, very varied in equipment and in quality - ranging from First Class Honours graduates in one or other of the branches of study in the Faculties of Arts and Science - to the ordinary pass graduate in either Arts or Science. For their fourth year's work they are divided into groups - generally corresponding with the subjects in which they have graduated - and each group is allocated to one member of the staff of the Education Department, who becomes in effect the ‘tutor’ to that particular group. The scheme of work is comprised in two main divisions. About half the academic year, the practical half, is spent actually teaching (or observing) in schools. The other half, the theoretic half, is spent in receiving instruction through lectures and classes in the University. In this theoretic half, a certain number of lecture courses - e.g. on Principles of Teaching, and on Hygiene, are delivered to all the students in the year; but a large part of the instruction is given by means of discussion classes on particular problems actually encountered by members of the separate groups in their own teaching. The other, the practical half of the year's work - the school practice as it is called - is only possible through the co-operation of local education authorities. But Manchester is fortunate in that the county and municipal authorities allow our Education Department to make use of any of the schools it finds suitable. The students are allocated to one of some forty schools in and about Manchester. They become additional temporary members of the staff of the school and spend their time teaching in them under the supervision both of a permanent member of the school's staff (usually an experienced teacher) and of that member of the University Education Department's staff who happens to be their tutor.

That, briefly, is how one part of the Education Department's work is executed - the part which may be called the one devoted to the practical job of training teachers.

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But no less important is the other side, the function of the Department of Education to further the study - not of the separate subjects which teachers teach in schools, but of Education itself. Almost indispensable for the proper prosecution of this, is the possession of a Demonstration School, - to do for Education what his laboratory does for a chemist - a school, that is, which is actually providing an education for children, but which is governed by the University, and may therefore, be organised to provide facilities for whatever piece of research or experiment in teaching the Department of Education may desire to conduct. A multitude of problems remain for investigation in this or some such way - e.g. the operation of the Dalton plan, or of the ‘direct method’ in language study, etc.

There are, too, more broadly historical problems - the history of this, that, or the other method of teaching - and so on. The zeal of the University to encourage these more advanced developments of the study of Education is apparent in its institution of a special degree - the Master in Education (M. Ed.) which is awarded to the candidate who presents a thesis making some definite contribution to the knowledge of education as a subject in itself.

In conclusion, I fear that in trying to describe a peculiarly English academic institution, I have been both lengthy and not too clear. But I hope I have left no doubt whatever on one point - namely, my belief that the English system, recognising Education as a University department is thereby at one ana the same time, furthering the cause of pure science and also that of Education.

h.b. charlton.