The Universities and Labor: An Educational Adventure in England and Her Overseas Dominions

I

ON almost any day in August for the past ten years, casual visitors to Oxford may have noticed on more than one college lawn small groups of workingmen and women in eager discussion with those who were obviously college tutors. They would have interpreted the meaning of these groups rightly, if they had regarded them as symbolical of a steadily growing unity on the part of workingmen and scholars, or as evidence of coöperation between the universities and the organizations of labor. They were indeed outward and visible signs of the effort which the spirit of society always makes when the actions of men attempt to defeat her unalterable intentions. These laboring men and women had been removed from the opportunities of scholarship; but at Oxford, in time secured from work, they had found their way, for a brief period, to their legitimate, if not exclusive task.

The groups on the college lawns may further be regarded as manifestations of the desire of scholarship to bring herself into right relationship with the indisputable facts and experience of practical life. All these views and interpretations may be illustrated in a single experience briefly told. On an August morning in 1909, the Professor of English Law at Oxford had lectured on the Workmen’s Compensation Act to a group of railway-men, weavers, and miners gathered together in Balliol College. After he had finished, it fell to his share, in accordance with the invariable custom in these classes, to listen to discussion and answer questions for a space of time at least equal to that which he himself had occupied. Almost at once a railway-man, with a wooden stump in place of a leg, rose and discussed from the point of view of the injured workman the effect of the act so far as he in his own person was concerned. In effect, he was a ‘living document.’ By this act of coöperation with the professor, the peculiar contribution to knowledge which he had the power to make was not lost as it usually is.

Within a certain range of subjects all workmen are ‘living documents.’ It is expressing a mere truism to say that any study which is not in contact with life and in process of continual correction by its experience tends to become unreal. The railway-man, in this instance, gained a new self-respect when he realized that he was able to add to the knowledge of the Professor, who, on his part, had achieved a new method of research, of vital ancl entrancing interest.

In the industrial town in which the railway-man lived, a University Tutorial Class had been formed, and it was by right of his membership in this class that he was enabled, and indeed assisted, to become, for a week at least, a student at Oxford. The week was to him the most notable period of his life, and, since it was the climax of a long period of study at home, the educational value of it, apart from the inspiration it supplied, could not be questioned.

Authoritative witness to the keenness of students like the railway-man, organized in University Tutorial Classes throughout the country is borne by a Board of Education report, signed by Professor L. T. Hobhouse and Mr. J. W. Headlam.

‘No one could attend these classes without being struck by the zeal and earnestness of the students, their happy relations with the lecturer, the general atmosphere of comradeship and good feeling in the classes, and the strong appreciation by the students of the benefits which they are deriving from the work. These impressions are not derived from any single class or type of classes. They are common to the diverse and widely scattered classes which we have visited.’

The report also calls attention to the keenness of students in writing essays.

‘One operative told us that, in order to get a time when the house was quiet for working in, he went to bed at seven, got up at midnight, worked for two hours, and then went to bed again.’

The recognized period of a class meeting is two hours, on twenty-four occasions during each of three consecutive years. No really good class ever keeps to the two hours. They break up, as a rule, only when compelled by necessity. There are limits to the time during which buildings with caretakers may remain open, but there always remains the street. A class in philosophy at Birmingham habitually continued its sessions on the sidewalk until an energetic policeman threatened to charge the tutor with causing an obstruction. On one occasion an economics class, after a pavement session, accompanied the tutor to the railway station; and the argument not being finished, some of the students entered the train with him and went as far as they dared. A similar incident is reported from New Zealand.

It would be easy to add to these instances of keenness in study, but it will be more to our profit to trace the origin, to reveal the principles, to estimate the influence, and to discover the direction of the movement.

II

The fact that the education of workingmen and women in England had developed just at those points where coöperation with scholars had taken place, led in 1903 to the formation of the Workers’ Educational Association, as a democratic, unsectarian, non-partisan body, consisting of working people and scholars, of universities and Labor organizations. In this way those who expressed the demand for education were unified with those who were best qualified to supply that demand.

The impetus, coming as it did from Labor, was sufficient to secure the rapid expansion of the movement, which was welcomed by scholars and administrators alike. By the year 1914 it possessed nearly 200 branches, was a federation of 2500 labor and educational bodies, and was at work in Australia and Canada.

Not only did it inspire agricultural laborers to study history persistently, sweated women to read and to enjoy Shakespeare in snatched time, and literally thousands of London workers to attend lectures on the history of Parliament given on Saturday afternoons in June, but it changed the whole conception of national educational facilities by replacing the metaphor of the ‘ladder’ from gutter to university as a means of education for the poor, by the broad and ample conception of a ‘highway’ open to all, poor and rich alike, who possess both the desire and the capacity to walk along it. Moreover, its continual insistence upon the necessity for England of an educational system which would secure the development of the gifts and characters of all for the common good, led to increased enthusiasm for education, especially on the part of organized Labor, and generated much of the power which made possible the Fisher Act of 1918.

It is improbable that the movement would have attracted so much support, or have had so much effect, if it had not adopted a spiritual idea of education, and based its work upon the old conception of education as a force directly developing and strengthening the being of man, making for health of body, clearness of mind, and purity of spirit.

Educated men, it said, can work no ill with the knowledge they have and of which they desire increasingly more, not merely for their own but for the common good. At once, with such a conception of the meaning and purpose of education, it placed the efficient scholar on no higher level than the skilled workman. They were regarded simply as different types, with overflowing gifts to share with one another.

Its most notable achievement, and that which has attracted most attention, was the creation of University Tutorial Classes, which we have already seen at work. This creation was chiefly due to the determination of a group of workingmen and women in 1907, at Rochdale, to achieve study in their leisure hours, at the highest level possible to them. They pledged themselves to attend on twenty-four evenings for two hours during each of three years, to write fortnightly essays, to do as much reading as possible, and generally to promote in every way the interests of the class.

Fortified by these sound decisions, they approached the University of Oxford through the Workers’ Educational Association, to which they belonged, and as a result secured as tutor Mr. R. H. Tawney, now a Fellow of Balliol and a member of the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies. Needless to say, the Rochdale students fulfilled their pledges to the letter and furnished one of the two classes, the other, also taught by Mr. Tawney, being at Longton in the Potteries, which formed an admirable basis for the well-known report on ‘Oxford and Working-Class Education,’ which is the charter of the movement.

This latter class continued steadily at work for seven years, and at the end of that time contained several of the original students. The others had left, mainly for the purpose of organizing and teaching — animated solely by the sheer love of spreading knowledge — a whole series of classes in the mining villages of North Staffordshire. The fact that artisans would travel long distances to attend classes held at mechanics’ institutes in the early years of the nineteenth century had always been a source of wonderment and pride to the advocates of education among the people. Now it is possible to point to laboring men who, for no fee and often at their own charges, are willing to travel many miles, arriving home past midnight, in order to help others, otherwise unprovided for, to study economics, history, and literature.

At the outset of the Workers’ Educational movement, the majority of interested observers believed that workingmen and women cared little about higher education for themselves; or, at least, that, having regard to the hours they worked, they could hardly be expected to study persistently and with effect.

The experience of sixteen years has proved these beliefs to be false. It is clear that quite ordinary men and women are keenly interested in things that matter; that at least a portion of them can be organized into classes; and that in any ordinary town it is possible to organize a class, or classes, for workingmen and women scholars, which may be regarded as part of the higher, if extra-mural, work of a university. Before 1903 the universities almost despaired of getting workingmen and women in any numbers to attend their ‘extension’ lectures, which were designed to be entertaining as well as informative. They would never have dreamed of asking students to pledge themselves to attend seventy-two twohour class meetings spread over three years, and to write regular essays. But workingmen and women, left to themselves and inspired by a sense of need, did this upon their own initiative, and every observer knows that they kept their pledges. Moreover, they did so simply because they believed in education as being essential to reasonable citizenship, and to the fulfillment of their own lives; consequently, they regarded certificates or diplomas as unnecessary, if not actually hurtful, to their purpose.

So it has come about that of the ten thousand students who have passed through these classes not one has even a piece of paper to show for it. From this it will be gathered that the idea of ‘getting on’ is far from their minds, and that they look for industrial advancement from quite other quarters, usually through the good offices of their trade-union or other form of combination. They wish to rise with their fellows — not to leave them behind. Their Tutorial Class is often an oasis set in a desert of dreary labor. It gives them the opportunity, hitherto denied, of realizing their personalities. Their school-days ended at anything from nine to thirteen years of age. An inquiry showed that few had been to school since. The statement of these facts demands in itself some explanation of the claim that these classes are of university level. That they are, no one who knows them doubts.

The Board of Education insists that ‘ The instruction must aim at reaching, within the limits of the subject covered, the standard of university work in Honors.’ It inspects them rigorously. The subjects studied are obviously not those which must be preceded by prolonged school education, but such as demand for their development the native capacity of experienced, intelligent men and women who have striven to act as good citizens.

After two classes had been running for two years and six classes for one year, the essays written were sent to Oxford for examination. In the judgment of the present Master of Balliol, who expressed himself as astonished, not so much at the quality as at the ‘quantity of the quality,’ twenty-five per cent of the essays were equal to those written by graduates who obtained First-Class Honors in the final schools of Modern History at Oxford. A professor of history in a northern university characterized as ’moonshine’ the claim that such students could do honors work, examined the essays, was satisfied, and went back to teach, or rather to study with, a class.

This high level of achievement has doubtless fallen in the later classes. It is inevitable that greater care and force should be spent on the construction of pioneer or experimental classes. Nevertheless, there are in every well-organized class a few first-class students who reveal themselves as such, either in the writing of essays or in discussion. In any case, as we have seen, a class must aim at attaining an honors standard, or it would not make good its claim to the government grant. The fact that the same kind of results was noted in the case of New Zealand groups goes to prove that this power of scholarship is widespread and a normal characteristic of the movement.

The method is that of Socrates.

’How shall a man learn except from one who is his friend?'

‘The lecture is one, the discussion is one thousand.5

Left to themselves, unspoiled by theory, workingmen went straight to the mark. It is to the credit of the universities for all time that they encouraged and assisted them. ’We began by accusing Oxford,5 said a New York paper, commenting on the report ’Oxford and Working-Class Education’;

’we end by excusing ourselves.'

If a class is properly organized, the normal results will inevitably follow. It is fatal to induce a student to join a class if he is not keen and eager to study the specific subject. Rather, at the right moment, would-be students should have presented to them the disadvantages and responsibilities of membership. At times weakness has crept in because of the desire of a university to have a certain number of classes, in order that they might find sufficient work for a specific tutor. Sometimes this has resulted in a hurriedly organized class, or in some modification of the subject which the students desired to study. Any attempt to force development, or to interfere with the desire of the students, must lead inevitably to inferior results. As for the tutor, he must be one who is willing to explore and develop his subject anew with the help of his thirty experienced colleagues. He is ideally an editor of opinions, a provider of knowledge, a fountain of inspiration. He must have the spirit of the students, and be quick to use, for the benefit of his class, any knowledge which goes deeper than his own. No class really loves its tutor until it has taught him things. A dogmatic attitude is disastrous. The most experienced of the tutors said, ’My class is beginning to believe all I say. I had better pass on.'

The output of the class is the experience and knowledge of all fused into a unity. Thus the evil effect of bias on the part of a tutor is lessened, if not avoided. With sure instinct, workingmen prefer as tutors those who have had an experience different from their own. Thus, theoretically at least, they would prefer a public-school and a university man to one who had been a workingman himself. In practice there is, and can be, no hard-and-fast rule. The spirit and personality of the tutor are the all-important matters.

The work of teaching keen adult students is hard and strenuous. Only those who are devoted to it could face the prospect of doing it as an exclusive occupation for many years. On the other hand, there is a fascination and adventure about it all which induces many leading university men, including those occupying chairs, to try to take at least one class, or to teach in the Summer Schools; and there is little doubt that this will become even more common. Certainly, few men occupied on the humanistic side of university studies will consider their work to be complete unless it involves them in some relationship with workingmen and women scholars. The abandon, the keenness, the freedom expressed in a Tutorial Class seem to come from an altogether different world from that in which the ordinary undergraduate moves, although this is not so true in reference to the experienced undergraduates who are crowding to the universities now that the war is over.

The payment of tutors, as laid down in the report on ’Oxford and WorkingClass Education,’was to be eighty pounds per session of twenty-four lessons. It was thought that a man could teach five classes in each week. Experience proved that only the strongest could do this, and that four, or even three, especially if accompanied by a very little internal university work, was a reasonable task if it were to be performed well.

In the majority of universities, the payment is as low as sixty pounds, and of this the Board of Education provided thirty pounds in annual grant for some years; but latterly they have increased the amount to forty-five pounds. The balance of the money needed is provided by local education authorities and the universities themselves, aided by grants from labor bodies, although these have been small, and from voluntary sources, such as the Gilchrist Educational Trust and interested individuals.

The administration of the classes lies in the hands of a joint committee at each university. This, following the Oxford model, is composed of an equal number of academic and of labor representatives. The latter, although nominated by the Workers’ Educational Association, are appointed by the university and are therefore part and parcel of it, acting on its behalf. The committees have executive power, and their existence has done much to ensure the continual confidence of labor in the administration, besides securing to the university a means of understanding the peculiar difficulties of the students.

The universities and university colleges of England and Wales have combined to construct a Central Joint Advisory Committee, which is unique in that it supplies the first instance of a committee, or even of a meeting, attended by representatives of all the English universities.

III

It is difficult to estimate with any degree of precision the influence of the classes on English life. There are not wanting those who attribute the remarkable steadiness of English labor throughout the war, at least in part, to the influence of these classes and the activity of the Workers’ Educational movement. Such persons derive much comfort from the fact that, in spite of much unrest, labor is not without men trained in the best schools, who will consequently enable it, not merely to avoid unthinking displays of power, but to secure reasonable and necessary development of industrial and political life, adapted to the needs of democracy.

Canon Barnett, the founder of English Settlements, was given to saying that the movement came twenty years too late. That was, perhaps, merely his way of expressing his sense of its importance; for the birth of a movement happens only when the moment is ripe. All the necessary forces must meet at one and the same time for the purpose.

Quite apart from the development of knowledge among students, the movement has had profound effect on teachers and, through them, on the universities. A new generation of economists, and indeed of historians, has arisen, which is widely different in temper from that of the Victorian Age. It was to these men that the government turned at the opening of the war. In August, 1914, those who were engaged in teaching work at the Cambridge Summer School were summoned to Whitehall as being men peculiarly fitted by their experience to understand the new problems precipitated by the war, which, to a large degree, affected workingmen and women in special ways. Needless to say, they have achieved notable success in the work intrusted to them.

Throughout the war period, mainly owing to the devotion of the older men and the women, the movement has maintained a comparatively high level. In general there was in England a real intellectual ferment which tended to strengthen well-organized education, although weaker effort fell rapidly to pieces. The number of University Tutorial Classes at the outbreak of war was 155, while plans were laid for over 200 in the session of 1914 and 1915. The weakest session proved to be that of 1916-17, when the number fell to 98. It, however, rose to 120 in 1917-18, and to 154 in 1918-19. The average number in each class was about twenty throughout the whole period. Roughly speaking, the level of essay work was well maintained. In Australia and New Zealand the movement has developed steadily, in spite of the fact that it was established there only in 1913. There are now three thousand student members in Australia alone, and the various governments grant £12,000 a year to the work.

The English-speaking armies have without exception developed far-reaching educational schemes for adults, and were the better able to do so because the principles of adult education had been so clearly revealed in practice by the Workers’ Educational Association.

In the British, Australian, and New Zealand armies there has been a frank and admitted adoption of the Tutorial Class method. This is not the case in the Canadian and United States forces; although both have given attention to the movement, it has not been actively at work in North America. A gathering of the United States Young Men’s Christian Association secretaries felt at the outset of a conference on the subject that it had no specific message for them. At the close, one of them said, with the manifest approval of his colleagues, that, if they ’could induce American universities and American Labor to work together on the same lines, it would be the salvation of America.’ That was doubtless an exaggeration of the situation, but no community can afford to let the powerful forces of education and labor develop otherwise than in conscious coöperation.

It is early yet to attempt to estimate the effect of the army schemes, but they cannot fail to increase the demand for education on the part of adults who are returning from war with the democratic spirit much more evident in all their ways. Consequently there will be an extraordinary development of activity, which will be aided by the greater willingness of the English people to spend money upon education, including that which finds its inspiration and support in universities.

Those who have regarded the progress of Democracy as irresistible have always feared that the form would be achieved long before the education of the people was sufficient for its reasonable working. This will inevitably be the case, for the necessary education can be achieved only through experience; but people can be well prepared or ill prepared. England is at least fortunate in that she has taken some steps, such as those we have considered, to secure the education of her citizens; and since their direction has been determined by both students and teachers acting in common, they are bound to lead to permanent results.

The fact that there are, within her borders alone, many thousand students who, while working at their trade, have passed through classes of a university honors standard is of far-reaching importance. Students such as these are as leaven which leavens the lump. They exercise influence even when they do not actually teach others. Many of them are trade-union officials prominent in the present attempts which England is making to secure industrial progress through industrial peace. All of them, in their degree and place, will take their part in shaping and reshaping English institutions, both new and old. Every organization, voluntary or statutory, whether its effect be judged to be good or bad, is now coming under the stern criticism of a democracy which does not so much exhibit reverence for the past as hope for the future. It has a passionate desire to make sure that the social, political, and economic fabric shall, in the coming days, minister to great and generous aspirations of brotherhood and world-unity.

The fear of an uneducated democracy is the nightmare of the reformer.

A people with democratic tendencies must develop a due proportion of students, or fail to realize its ideals. It is indeed in happy case if it develops them in a mental and spiritual atmosphere, generated by scholars and workmen acting in conscious unity, fusing academic and practical experience. The educational adventure we have considered, becoming more attractive and powerful as the days pass, has secured at least the beginnings of this development for England and her overseas dominions, and perchance may accelerate it in other countries which have adopted different methods to secure the same necessary result.