The Place of Further Education in the Public Services
| Published date | 01 December 1951 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1951.tb01430.x |
| Author | Harold Hartely |
| Date | 01 December 1951 |
The
Place
of
Further Education
in
the
Public Services
By
SIR HAROLD HARTLEY,
K.C.V.O.,
F.R.S.,
Hon.
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
The Fourth
Will
Harvey* Memorial Lecture, given at Shefield, 29th September, 1951.
N
my choice of a subject for this
I
tribute to Will Harvey’s memory
I
was guided by my conviction of its
importance and by curiosity to know
what was being done. Further
Education in the Public Services-
the Armed Forces, the Civil Service
and the Nationalised Industries-is
vital to the successful solution of the
many new problems they have to face.
Today, too, the Public Services
account for nearly 20 per cent.
of
our
working population, based
on
the
following rough estimates-Armed
Forces
800,000
-
Civil Service
675,000-National Government Ser-
vice (Dockyards, Ordnance Factories
etc.) 745,000-Nationalised Indus-
tries 2,300,000-in all
4,400,000
out
of
a working population of 23,200,000,
as compared with 750,000 in the
Armed Forces and Civil Service in
1925.
The years that have passed since
Harvey left Fircroft are probably
the most eventful in human history.
I
am sure he would have been
interested in the far-reaching and
rapid changes
in
society that separate
the problems of Further Education
of today from those of the Adult
Education Report of 1919.
In 1923 we were still thinking
optimistically of a return to pre-war
conditions, to recovering that steady
unbroken economic progress of the
19th century. But the conditions
that had made the 19th century
ended with it; as the Americans
said
‘‘
the frontier was reached.”
There were
no
longer fertile virgin
lands, with climates suited to the
European, waiting to be exploited.
It
is true that a new frontier had
opened-the progress
of
science had
given man a new understanding
of
nature and placed new powers in his
hand.
The progress of engineering, too,
had given man new standards
of
production. But neither
in
the
national or international field did
these new techniques bring peace and
happiness. While technical progress
had improved conditions of life
immeasurably in the more advanced
countries, the greater complexity
of
society, and the substitution of
mechanised production for the crafts-
man with his long apprenticeship,
had destroyed the old feeling
of
stability and the old loyalties that
meant
so
much to the individual.
Elton Mayo put
it
so clearly in the
last book he wrote before his death
The
Social
Problems
of
an
In-
dustrial
Czwilisation.
In
his
chapter
on The Seamy Side
of
Progress
”
he contrasts the old established society
with the complex organisation and
shifting pattern of the adaptive
*Will Harvey was a medical student at Balliol from 1905 to 1910. His interest
in
adult education took
him
to Fircroft as a tutor in 1913 and he returned as Warden from
1920 to 1923 when he had
to
resign owing to ill-health.
This
was largely the result
of
an act
of
gallantry when he was serving in the Royal Navy as a Surgeon Lieutenant
in 1918, for which he was awarded the Albert Medal. He wrote several remarkable
books of short stories-Midnight House, 1910, Midnight Tales, 1946, and The
Am
of
Mrs. Egan, 1951,
two
published posthumously. He died in
1937.
363
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