There has always been some form of education but there have not always been schools. Four hundred years ago few people in England went to school or learnt to read and write. But this lack of literacy does not mean the people were uneducated. In some ways they were better educated than their descendants today. The peasant in the village learnt the arts and skills of farming, together with much traditional wisdom about the earth and sky and living things. In the town the boy was apprentice to a master craftsman in whose household he lived with other apprentices; here he learnt not only the ways of business but also the rules and customs of his trade, and gained varied experience of human nature. For the girl, the home, with its kitchen, herb-garden offered a better domestic education than it does in these days of canned food and ready-made clothes. The whole people shared its peculiar culture and enjoyed a rich heritage of customs, games and music. The young could then learn all they needed by simply growing up in the community; but later in the development of society, schools, as we know them, became necessary.
In various ways schools are separated from the rest of the life of the community, and therefore there is the ever-present danger that this education may become artificial and remote from the real things of everyday life. When the purpose of the education of a school is merely book-knowledge, the cleavage between school and life need not matter so much. In certain conditions a form of education which had little to do with the business of life could endure for centuries, as it did in China. Today, however, when the school undertakes the responsibility of preparing its students for the life outside its walls, the separation of the school from life, and the unreality of the subjects studied, are matters of grave concern. It becomes necessary to bring the world into the school, and the school into the world.”
