Thomas Henry Huxley was born May 4th, 1825, over a butcher's shop, in Ealing, England. His father a schoolmaster, Huxley himself had only two years of schooling, at the private school where his father taught. We must consider him largely self-taught until undertaking medical training at the Charing Cross Hospital at seventeen. Clearly, reading Hutton's Geology, Hamilton's Logic, and teaching himself German as a youth provided a background for his future. In 1845 he published his first scientific paper, and also became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Posted to the H.M.S. Rattlesnake, which was surveying the Great Barrier Reef, he found the time to study various marine creatures, the dissections of which were the basis of a number of research papers. In 1850 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. After three years of leave from the navy to conduct research, Huxley left the navy when the Admiralty would not pay to publish his papers. He became a lecturer in natural history at the Royal School of Mines, which was to be the beginning of a long devotion to the reform of education.
At the time of Huxley's birth, only of a quarter-million British subjects had the vote; the first railway line had yet to come; the very word 'scientist' wasn't coined until 1840.1 England could not boast of anything resembling an education system. Yet it was Huxley's goal to improve education, not just for the middle-classes, as most proposed, but for the masses as well. He favored the introduction of scientific education, but not merely a technical or vocational one.
Huxley was an educational reformer with his hand in many pots, so much so he was referred to by one of his friends as one who "takes two irons out of the fire, only to put three more in." Concerned with adult education, University reform and technical schools, teacher training, and elementary education, Huxley was constantly serving in various offices, presenting lectures and articles on the subject. What unifies these was a desire to improve the human condition, by encouraging each person to partake of their full humanity.
It seems to me that the best way to present Huxley is in his own words, as his very voluminous statements on education have limited their familiarity in recent times. In order to present his words in an organized way, I shall resort to the method of question and answer. Let us imagine the setting of the interview one of the upper levels of Hell, such as Dante populated with the virtuous Ancients,2 wherein Huxley has held residence since his death in 1895.
Interviewer: Excuse me, but aren't you T. H. Huxley? Would you consider answering some questions on education?
Huxley: "[W]hat a heart-breaking business teaching is--how much the can't-learns and won't-learns and don't-learns predominate over the do learns"3
I.: What do you attribute these problems to?
Huxley: "Stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, fit non nascitur, and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent attempt to create artificial ones ...."4
I.: What should education try to do instead?
Huxley: "No educational system can have a claim to permanence, unless it recognizes the truth that education has two great ends to which everything else must be subordinated. The one of these is to increase knowledge; the other is to develop the love of right and the hatred of wrong."5
I.: Could you define what education is to you?
Huxley: "[E]ducation is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this."6
I.: So the purpose of education is a moral aim?
Huxley: "I take it that the whole object of education is, in the first place, to train the faculties of the young in such a manner as to give their possessors the best chance of being happy and useful in their generation; and, in the second place, to furnish them with the most important portions of that immense capitalized experience of the human race which we call knowledge of various kinds."7
I.: What sorts of things would you consider vital for a student to learn?
Huxley: "I should, in the first place, secure that training of the young in reading and writing, and in the habit of attention and observation, both to that which is told them, and that which they see... But in addition to that, I should make it absolutely necessary for everybody, for a longer or shorter period, to learn to draw."8
I.: Drawing? Surely that must be a luxury?
Huxley: "[M]an alone can draw or make unto himself a likeness. This then is the great distinction of humanity, and it follows that the most pre-eminently human of creatures are those who possess this distinction in the highest degree"9
In other words, Huxley's basic assertion is that education is to fit students for life, that this life includes the arts, and they should know something of what came before them. Let us return to the interview.
I.: Education, or learning, is often equated with accumulating bits of the culture that presents it. Would you find that appropriate, and, how would you define "culture"?
Huxley:"[C]ulture certainly means something quite different from learning or technical skill. It implies the possession of an ideal, and the habit of critically estimating the value of things by comparison with a theoretic standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge alike of its possibilities and its limitations."10
I.: We have been having a number of curricular debates since your time. What should students know when they have finished a general program?
Huxley: "Such an education should enable an average boy of fifteen or sixteen to read and write his own language with ease and accuracy, and with a sense of literary excellence derived from the study of our classic writers; to have a general acquaintance with the history of his own country and with the great laws of social existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have been pleasure rather than work."11
I.: Math and science are seen as important proficiencies, but no clear goals seem to have been set for them in the schools. What are your thoughts on the subject?
Huxley: "There are other forms of culture besides physical science; and I should be profoundly sorry to see the fact forgotten, or even a tendency to starve, or cripple, literary, or aesthetic, culture for the sake of science."12
I.: Very well: let us presume the student seeks scientific training in addition to a general cultural education program. What might you recommend?
Huxley: "If the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is essential that such training should be real: that is to say, that the mind of the scholar should be brought into direct relation with fact, that he should not merely be told a thing, but made to see by the use of his own intellect and ability that the thing is so and not otherwise."13
I.: So you would suggest laboratory work when possible? But how much science, and which ones would you include?
Huxley: "[T]he great aim should be to teach only so much science as can be taught thoroughly; and to ground in principles and methods rather than attempt to cover a large surface of details."14
Huxley thus would suggest a curriculum that includes literature, history, art instruction, probably some algebra along with rudimentary geometry, as well as experimental science. The most likely blend would include physical geography with meteorology and astronomy, biology, physics and chemistry. The student would be able to reason from limited information as to how to proceed in novel situations, and recognize poorly reasoned arguments. Given we expect two more years of school attendance, it could be conjectured we might reasonably add world history and information technology. Additionally, Huxley thought knowing at least one foreign language, if not two, was important, even for tradesmen. Otherwise it was too easy to be left out of new advances.
I.: What do you think about vocational education?
Huxley:"[A] few voices are lifted up in favor of the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true now, as ever it was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.... [T]hese people...venture to doubt whether the glory, which rests upon being able to undersell all the rest of the world, is a very safe kind of gloryÑwhether we may not purchase it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical industry, but good for nothing else."15
In 1858, Huxley was professor of natural history at the School of Mines, Naturalist to the Geological Survey, Curator to the Palaeontological Collections, Examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy to the University of London, as well as a member of diverse Societies and Clubs.16 He believed that there were several forms of education necessary for full involvement, being: elementary school for general preparation, technical training for various callings (consisting of science and art instruction, technological instruction, and the training of teachers for both fields), as well as testing procedures and facilities for physical and moral improvement.17 Given these capacities, the interview turns to Huxley's ideas of educational methods and teacher training.
I: Many courses in pedagogy in my time are essentially composed of observational field experiences. Does this seem useful to you?
Huxley: "Teaching in England is pretty much a matter of chance, and the mass of people are ignorant of the fact that there is such a thing as a scientific method in teaching."18
I: One offshoot of the scientific method, as it became practiced after you, is the habit of allowing the quicker pupils to tutor their fellows. How does this sound to you?
Huxley: "When does the unhappy pupil teacher, or over drilled student of a training college, find any time to think?"19
I: Furthering the question of thought, many students of education complain that they are overtrained in their content areas, since it has been estimated that only a tenth of what is learned will ever actually be taught. How do you respond?
Huxley: "There are a great many people who imagine that elementary teaching might be properly carried out by teachers provided with only elementary knowledge. Let me assure you that that is the profoundest mistake in the world. There is nothing so difficult to do as to write a good elementary book, and there is nobody so hard to teach properly and well as people who know nothing about a subject."20
I.: If, as you say, it is difficult to teach one who knows nothing on a topic, is it right to test that individual? Might success be claimed when a pupil progresses from knowing nothing, to knowing something?
Huxley: "Examination--thorough, searching examination--is an indispensable accompaniment of teaching; but I am almost inclined to commit myself to the very heterodox proposition that it is a necessary evil....Examination, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master; and there seems to me to be some danger of its becoming our master."21
I.: Currently we use a lot of standardized tests and some call for even more, for better accountability.
Huxley: "In the first place, I do not believe that any one who is not, or has not been, a teacher is really qualified to examine advanced students. And in the second place, Examination is an Art, and a difficult one, which has to be learned like all other arts."22
Huxley was very involved in teacher education, helping with the College of Preceptors, visiting various training colleges and speaking on the behalf of the Teachers' Training and Registration Society. He served as President of the National Association of Science Teachers, and was involved with the parliamentary Select Committee on Scientific Instruction and the National Association for the Promotion of Technical Instruction.23
After the School of Mines was moved to South Kensington (which in 1881 became the Normal School of Science and Royal School of Mines), he taught science to prospective teachers during the term, and practicing teachers during vacations. Perhaps this is the first outreach and extension program.24 He was also busy preparing textbooks and courses of instruction, on everything from domestic science and physiography, from basic health to medical training. In 1869, he even taught science in a London slum, to prove it could be done.25
He stated over and over that teachers must really know their subjects, least they fear straying from the jargon and thus stick to rote instruction. During the years of 1870-1872 he served on the London School board, as chair of the Scheme of Education Committee. The findings of this committee was to establish a system of Infant (up to seven), Junior (7-10) and Senior (older) schools, with the last segregated by sex, with a single management for the four to five schools that made a full sequence. It also suggested that funds should be found to allow some students attend secondary education.26
I.: How did you explain your favoring of extensive education for the poor?
Huxley:"[E]very penny levied by an Education Rate and rightly employed, now, means hundreds of pennies taken off the Police Rates and the Poor Rates of the future; and thousands of pennies saved and gained by the increase of frugality, the amendment of the habits of life, and the development of the power of production, of the poorer classes of the people."27
I.: Would you believe this would also hold for higher education?
Huxley: "[N]o educational system in this country will be worthy of the name of national or will fulfill the great object expected of it, unless it be one which establishes a great educational ladder, the bottom of which shall be the gutter, and the top of which shall be [the] Universities"28
I.: Since your time, many previously apprenticed positions have become trained at University. What do you think?
Huxley: "A medical school is strictly a technical school--a school in which a practical profession is taught-- while a university ought to be a place in which knowledge is obtained without direct reference to professional purposes."29
I.: Since your time we have had a proliferation of higher educational institutions. How would you define a University?
Huxley: "Any corporation of men associated together for the purpose of teaching all forms of precise and accurate knowledge, the object of which was to give the highest intellectual culture that could be given, and to encourage the pursuit of knowledge in perfect freedom and without let or hindrance from any subsidiary consideration, was performing the function of a university, and was one whatever be its name."30
I.: What sorts of subjects should be taught at a University? Huxley: "In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University, the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge."31
I.: There has been a trend in the upper levels of higher education to be dismissive of the arts and humanities.
Huxley: "I am the last person to question the importance of genuine literary education, or to suppose that intellectual culture can be complete without it. An exclusively scientific training will bring about a mental twist as surely as an exclusively literary training. The value of the cargo does not compensate for a ship's being out of trim..."32
It seems fair to conclude that Huxley considered the University as a specialized form of liberal education. Yet he understood that it was not the only form of higher education needful for a modern world. He considered necessary both a system of evening schools for those needing to leave school for the workforce, as well as a system of technical institutes to provide more specialized knowledges to industrialists and skilled tradesmen. To wit:
[An Imperial Institute], a port of call for all those concerned in the advancement of industry. . . a sort of neutral ground on which the capitalist and the artisan would be equally welcome. . . a place in which the fullest stores of industrial knowledge would be accessible to the public; in which the higher questions of commerce and industry would be systematically studied and elucidated; and where, as in a industrial university, the whole technical education of the country might find its centre and crown.33
I.: From your particular current vantage point, how would you characterize a scientist's living Hell?
Huxley: "It has become impossible for any man to keep pace with the progress of the whole of any important branch of science. It looks as if the scientific, like other revolutions, meant to devour its own children; as if the growth of science tended to overwhelm its votaries; as if the man of science of the future were condemned to diminish into a narrow specialist as time goes on."34
I.: As I prepare to return to the surface, what parting words of wisdom might I carry back to the lands of the living?
Huxley: "Unless we are led to see that we are citizens and men before anything else, I say that it will go very badly with men of science in future generations, and they will run the risk of becoming scientific pedants when they should be men, philosophers, and good citizens."35
