Education To-day by John DeweyReview by: E. M. RJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 91, No. 4627 (NOVEMBER 27th, 1942), pp. 13-14Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41363070 .

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NOV. 27, 1942 EXAMINATIONS I3

The extent to which those two functions of the Society should be more closely brought together is not, I think, generally recognised. As an illustration of that, and of Sir Edward Crowe's remark that the examinations are better known as the " R.S.A. exams.," I should like to read you a postcard which was received this morning : "Will you be good enough to send me full particulars and forms of application for examinations in " a certain subject. " I have to take the examination, and whether I can take the examinations for the Chamber of Commerce or the Royal Society of Articles I do not know."

I happen to come from a place in this country which may be known in London and where the Royal Society of Arts examinations are taken ; and they are taken because the people there - it is a little place called Manchester - feel that the examinations are sound, that they can rely on them being properly conducted, and that everything connected with them is " above board " and satisfactory. But as a young man - along time ago - I took those examinations, aad, while I knew that there was a Royal Society of Arts, what the Royal Society of Arts was I had not the slightest idea. Sir Edward Crowe has done us a favour this afternoon by show- ing that there is a relationship between the Royal Society of Arts itself and the examina- tions that it holds.

The motion was carried with^acclamation, and the meeting then terminated.

OBITUARY

Sir Stenson Cooke, Secretary of the Automobile Association, who died on November 19th at the age of 68, had been a Fellow of the Society since 1930.

Born in 1874, he was educated privately. In 1905 he virtually created the Automobile Association and remained its Secretary until the time of his death. Prior to the outbreak of the last war, he served in the London Rifle Brigade as cadet, subaltern and captain, and in 1 9 14 he enlisted with a large contingent of the staff of the Association in the 8th Bat- talion, the Essex Regiment. He became ßtaS captain at the War Office in 191 5, and was made major a year later. Subsequently he was placed in the office of Controller of Supplies at the Ministry of National Service.

The greater part of Stenson Cooke's life was devoted to the building up of the Auto- mobile Association into the largest and most

powerful motoring organisation in the world. At the outset the Association was a purely protective body founded to help the pioneers of motoring. From this small beginning, with fewer than 100 members and less than £100 in funds, Cooke developed the A.A. into the huge organisation which exists to-day, with a membership of over 700,000 and an annual revenue exceeding one million pounds. Apart from being of great value to motorists throughout the British Isles, the A.A. has been influential in bringing about many reforms in connection with road transport generally.

Cooke's main interest, apart from his life's work for the Association, lay in fencing, and he won his first foils competition when he was only 19. In 19 1 г he was a member of the British team at the Olympic Games. Among other fencing distinctions gained by him, he won both the officers' sabres and foils com- petitions at the Royal Tournament at Olympia, and as a fencing international was one of the few people allowed to wear the Tudor Rose badge. He was the author of many short stories, and his book This Motoring which described the inception and growth of the Automobile Association, ran into 18 editions. He was Vice-President of the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme and held several foreign decorations besides that of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He received his Knighthood in 1933.

NOTES ON BOOKS

Education To-day. By John Dewey. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. 1941. 5s.

This little book of 86 pages by Professor Dewey, the eminent American educationist and sociologist, with a long and interesting " Foreword " by Joseph Ratner, is full of sound advocacy and should find a place in educational libraries and on the bookshelves of teachers, school inspectors and administrators. Ex- cept the " Foreword," there is no new matter in the book. But it is wonderfully up-to-date and it comes as a surprise to find that Dewey's six chapters range in age from 45 t° 34 years. Dewey's influence in the educational world, both here and in America, has been important and much that he advocates has long been adopted by en- lightened teachers. There are, however, still a large number of teachers who adopt what Ratner calls the " pipe line " theory, the controlling idea of which is " that the pupil is

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14 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS Nov. 27, I942

the empty vessel at the lower end and the teacher (by optimistic convention) the full vessel at the upper end." It is particularly to these teachers that Dewey's six chapters should be of great value.

For Dewey, education is not a preparation for life. It is life or growth. When Society moved from century to century substantially unchanged, there was some practical sense to the idea of education as transmission, but with the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, Dewey said 45 years ago : " it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be 20 years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise sort of conditions." To-day that is truer than it was in 1897.

In his first chapter, " My Pedagogic Creed," he tries to show how education may be made a process of living and not a prepara- tion for future living. Thus he says " I believe that . . . the school life should grow gradually out of the home life ; that it should take up and continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home." The logical outcome of this idea, which is most interestingly developed in his Pedagogic Creed, is the necessity for the inclusion of Manual Training in the school curriculum. In the fourth chapter, Dewey argues with much force that " manual training can never take its proper place in the elementary curriculum as long as the chief aim is measured by the actual result produced or by the gain in technical skill that comes to the producer." He recognises that these have their place, but adds "To give play, to give expression to his motor instincts, and to do this in such a way that the child shall be brought to know the larger aims and processes of living, is the problem." Forty-one years ago, when this was written, manual training had a very small place in the elementary school curriculum, and in more senses than one such training as was given was very wooden. The position is very different to- day : manual training of all kinds now finds a place in the curriculum from the kinder- garten up to 14 years of age at least. But still only the best teachers can get anything our of it beyond the acquisition of technical skill. The difficulty about Deweyan education to any education other than traditional education is that it requires infinitely more thought and effort on the part of teachers.

Dewey's belief in activity, rather than passivity, on the part of the pupil is further developed in the important chapter " Demo-

cracy in Education ' ' written as long ago as 1 903 . The last chapter, " Religion in Our Schools/ '

meaning American schools, is an apologia for the absence of even the rudiments of religious teaching in State-maintained schools. Dewey is not at all convincing in his arguments here, and they would not be accepted in this country, especially at the present time, when there is such a strong and widespread view that not only must religious teaching be continued in our schools but it must be strengthened and improved. E E. M M. R R. E E. M M. R R.

Snowdonia through the Lens. By W. A. Poucher. Chapman & Hall, 1 94 1. iSs.

In this handsome volume Mr. Poucher follows the same system as in his previous book Lakeland through the Lens . There he combined an itinerary with illustrative photographs. Here he combines photographs with an itinerary. Many of the photographs were taken in winter time and, as always in mountainous districts, this adds greatly to the beauty, dignity and interest of the pictures.

The illustrations are again in gravure and a bluish-black ink has been used for printing them. As I have said before, for snow and ice nothing can equal first-class half-tone reproduction and examination of books containing the best mountain photographs will reveal the fact that they are all printed by the lattei process.

The gravure process causes a certain muddiness to appear in certain of the pictures in this volume, as in the frontispiece and in Llyn Dince (plate 14), whilst in Leiwedd (plate 48) a degradation of the snow has resulted from the same cause.

There are some dramatic snow and ice pictures such as Winter Pattern (plate 29) and Snow Texture (plate 9) and effective mountain and sky pictures such as Reflections (plate 61), which satisfy the eye of a moun- taineer, whilst the photograph of the Swallow Falls (plate 3) is a fine rendering of a difficult subject.

The pictures do not all reach the samp standard. Lone Tree (plate 6) is not a very happy study and other of the pictures such as Yr Elen (plate 25) are uninteresting. Naturally, some are merely topographical since they needs must be descriptive of the routes taken.

There is an interesting tabular analysis giving full particulars of all the pictures including the month of year, camera, lens, aperture, filter, film and developer. The

E E. M M. R R.

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