The United Kingdom and Human Rights - College of Social ...

The Effect of Education on Values 203
years, and continues in the 11 years of formal schooling
now compulsory. I cannot do better in emphasising the
role of education than to quote that great public health
reformer, Sir John Simon:
"Education, in the full sense of the word, is the one
far-reaching true reformer, for which in all domains
the sufferers have to work and hope: not the mere
elementary school-business of reading and writing, nor
even merely those bits of learning with some superaddition
of a bread-winning technical proficiency; but
education which completes for self-help and for social
duty, by including wisdom and goodness among its
objects; the education which teaches standards of
moral wrong and right, gives height to character and
aim, acts orthopaedically on the twisted mind, and
applies its own hygienic discipline to the shaking-palsy
of purposeless life. Education in that sense is not
something which one man can receive passively from
another, as he might receive an inunction or a legacy,
but is something which his own nature must actively
go forth to meet. It in truth is as a process of
fertilisation, a process in which one generation of
minds can only awaken the germs of another, a
process in which fructification requires time." 15
In short, education is a continuing process teaching
about moral right and wrong, inculcating values and
provoking responses in the "pupil." Values should not
be received passively by way of "frontal teaching" the
modern jargon for Simon's Victorian metaphor of
receiving a "legacy or an inunction," but should occur
by encouraging pupils to grow intellectually. This is
what good educationalists have always done and
underlies current phraseology about education and
communication being joint human endeavours. That is
not mere rhetoric, but a genuine expression of both