Page:EB1911 - Volume 08.djvu/978

 Pontefract, in Yorkshire, where he received from Wulfstan, archbishop of York, and the Northumbrian “witan” confirmation of their submission. Shortly after they threw their pledges to the winds and took the Norwegian Eric Bloodaxe, son of Harold Fairhair (Harald Harfagar), as their king. Edred recklessly ravaged all Northumbria in revenge, burning Ripon during his march. On his return home Edred’s rearguard was attacked at Castleford, and the infuriated king once more turned to ravage Northumbria, which was only saved by its abandonment of Eric and by compensation made to Edred. Archbishop Wulfstan seems to have been a centre of disaffection in the north, and in 952 Edred caused him to be imprisoned in the castle of “Judanburh,” while in the same year the king, in revenge for the slaying of Abbot Eadelm, slew many of the citizens of Thetford. After the brief rule of Anlaf Cuaran in Northumbria, Eric was once more restored, probably in 950, only to be expelled again in 953 or 954, when Edred took the Northumbrian kingdom into his own hands. In the same year Wulfstan was liberated and appointed to the Mercian bishopric of Dorchester. Edred died on the 23rd of November 955 at Frome, in Somersetshire, and was buried in the old minster at Winchester. During the whole of his life Edred was troubled by ill-health, a fact which may help to explain some of the more passionate acts of violence attributed to him. The king was throughout his life on terms of personal intimacy with St Dunstan, and his public policy was largely guided by that prelate and by his own mother Eadgifu. So far as we know, Edred was never married.

 EDRIC, or, STREONA (d. 1017), ealdorman of the Mercians, was a man of ignoble birth who was advanced to high dignity through the favour of the English king Æthelred II. In 1007 he became ealdorman of the Mercians, and subsequently married Æthelred’s daughter Eadgyth. In the struggle between the English and the Danes he appears in the character of an arch-traitor. When Æthelred in 1009 proposed a great attack on the Danes, Edric dissuaded him from carrying it into effect. Again, on the invasion of England by Canute in 1015 Edric deserted Edmund Ironside and joined him. After the battle of Otford he returned to Edmund, but only by his treachery at the battle of Assandun to secure the utter defeat of the national cause. When peace was at length made, Canute restored to Edric the earldom of Mercia; but at Christmas 1017, fearing further treachery, he had him slain—“very rightly” says the Saxon Chronicle.

 EDUCATION. In the following treatment of this subject, the theory and early history of education is first dealt with, and secondly the modern organization of education as a national concern. Many definitions have been given of the word “education,” but underlying them all is the conception that it denotes an attempt on the part of the adult members of a human society to shape the development of the coming generation in accordance with its own ideals of life. It is true that the word has not infrequently been used in wider senses than this. For example, J. S. Mill included under it everything which “helps to shape the human being”; and, with some poetic licence, we speak of the education of a people or even of the whole human race. But all such usages are rhetorical extensions of the commonly accepted sense of the term, which includes, as an essential element, the idea of deliberate direction and training (Lat. educare, to bring up; educere, to draw out, lead forth). No doubt, all education is effected through the experiences of the educated, and much of it is indirect, consisting mainly in the determination of the form of experiences other than those of direct precept, compulsion and instruction. But it does not follow that all experiences are educative. Whether an experience is part of an individual’s education or not is determined by its origin. Whatever be its effect, it is educative in so far as its form has been arranged with greater or less deliberation by those who are concerned with the training of him whose experience it is. It follows that an education may be good or bad, and that its goodness or badness will be relative to the virtue, wisdom and intelligence of the educator. It is good only when it aims at the right kind of product, and when the means it adopts are well adapted to secure the intended result and are applied intelligently, consistently and persistently.

Education is, thus, a definitely personal work, and will vary between wide extremes of effectiveness and worth in any given society. For in all times and places there are wide differences in virtue, wisdom and capacity among those who have in their hands the care and nurture of the young. But the inference that, therefore, no comparative estimate of the education of different times and places can be made would be fallacious. For, despite all differences in conception and efficiency among individual educators, each expresses, more or less perfectly and clearly, the common conception and energy of his age and country. As these rise or fall the general level of the actual educative practice rises or sinks with them. The first essential for successful educative effort is, then, that the community as a whole should have a true estimate of the nature and value of education.

In any comparative estimate of different places and times, as tested by the standard just given, it must be borne in mind that, except in the most general and abstract form, we cannot speak of an ideally best education. Looking at the individual to be educated, we may say with Plato that the aim of education is “to develop in the body and in the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable,” but this leaves quite undecided the nature and form of that beauty and perfection, and on such points there has never been universal agreement at any one time, while successive ages have shown marked differences of estimate. We get nearer to the point when we reflect that individual beauty and perfection are shown, and only shown, in actual life, and that such life has to be lived under definite conditions of time, place, culture, religion, national aspirations and mastery over material conditions. Perfection of life, then, in the Athens of the age of Plato would show a very different form from that which it would take in the London or Paris of to-day. So an individualistic statement of the purpose of education leads on analysis to considerations that are not, in themselves, individualistic. The personal life is throughout a relation between individual promptings to activity and the environment in which alone such promptings can, by being actualized, become part of life. And the perfection of the life is to be sought in the perfection of the relations thus established. So far, then, as any conception of education can give guidance to the actual process it must be relative in every way to the state of development of the society in which it is given. Indeed, looked at in the mass, education may be said to be the efforts made by the community to impose its culture upon the growing generation. Here again is room for difference. The culture in question may be accepted as absolute at least in its essentials, and then the ideal of education will be to secure its stability and perpetuation, or it may be regarded as a stage in a process of development, and then the ideal will be to facilitate the advance of the next generation beyond the point reached by the present. So some ages will show a relatively fixed conception of the educative process, others will be times of unrest and change in this as in other modes of social and intellectual life.

It is in these latter times that the actual work of education is apt to lose touch with the culture of the community. For (q.v.) and  (q.v.), which are the ordinary channels through which adult culture reaches the young, are naturally conservative and bound by tradition. They are slow to leave the old paths which have hitherto led to the desired goal, and to enter on new and untried ways. If the opposition to change is absolute, there must come a time when the instruments of education are out of true relation to the desired end. For change in culture ideals means change in the specific form of the goal of education, and consequently the paths of educative effort need readjustment. When the goal of the past is no longer the goal of the present, to follow the ways which led to