Higher Education in Transport Needed
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Existing Sources of Instruction Too Limited in Outlook : Opportunity for Institute of Transport
THE need for higher education in transport was stressed by Sir Reginald Wilson in his presidential address to the Institute of Transport in London on Monday.
Individual undertakings could, he said, do a great deal in the spheres of organization, training, internal relations, technical development and so forth, to promote the status, personality and usefulness of a man engaged in transport, but higher education, as distinct from vocational training or technical education about transport, was necessary to fit the promising man for the heavy and disturbing responsibilities of a senior position.
" Unless transport educates itself and the members of its profession about its meaning, its objectives, its dilemmas and its means and methods, it cannot complain if the world of the public, the Press and the politicians is confused and unenlightened," Sir Reginald declared. . .
Sources of Education
Existing sources of education were too limited in their outlook. Transport was at Iasi establishing a readership and fellowships at Oxford, but "we are still an exceedingly long way from achieving a proper marriage between the academic brain and the practical man," he added.
There was no existing independent centre for the disinterested selection and evaluation of the raw material of transport thinking and for disseminating the results, unless it was the Institute of Transport. Although. the Institute's charter spoke of transport as being both a science and an art, the emphasis in their proceedings was on the science. More attention should be given to the art, in which the main elements were concerned with the outlook of the men involved.
" The biggest item in a transport service is the men who work it," said Sir Reginald. "They Cost the most; through them contact with the public is made; in view of the scattered nature of much transport activity, they must be sustained chiefly by their own personal discipline; the quality of the service is largely in their hands."
Closer Interworldng
Sir Reginald, whose subject was "The transport Man," opened by pointing out the continually closer interworking that was coming about between various transport agencies. "It is no longer a prime objective to ensure that the technical means of transport shall compete with each other as such; competition B28 in transport increasingly depends on offering the best combination of means for any given stream of traffic," he said.
Consequently, operators must understand one another, and there was a family relationship of interest, of attributes and even of peculiarities among all concerned in transport..
Examining the qualities required in a young entrant to transport, Sir .Reginald selected the responsibilities and values of service as the most important of eight characteristics. That quality encouraged arcat pride in work
and strengthened personal discipline.
From service and discipline it was only a small step to loyalty. It blossomed readily in transport so long as it was allowed to develop through the local unit to higher formations and was not strained by unnatural forms of organization and demands for unthinking acceptance of new and unproved theories of transport.
The outlook which these attributes engendered was being threatened from three directions.
(I) By the creation of great units of transport which became bureaucratic, and discouraged initiative and the spirit of service.
(2) Uncertainty and conflict within transport.
(3) The attitude of the world out • side transport.
There was a natural and persistent urge for regular transport services to integrate themselves, often despite the understandable desire of the owners of small units to avoid being swallowed up. Public pressure for it arose from the need to have services that suited the customer because they fitted properly together over ever-widening areas. The responsible undertaking became correspondingly large and there arose the danger that the man would • be conditioned to the machine.
Transport was going through a period of rethinking. New patterns of organizations were being sought and men brought up in one philosophy were finding it necessary to acquire another. The outlook of the individual became confused and his devotion to duty was likely to decline a little.
Sir Reginald thought that there was no monopoly sufficiently complete to do great harm to the fibre and outlook of the transport man. The effects on an operator's outlook of the attempts at public regulation of monopoly were more dangerous. The pattern of control was uneven between the various branches and ownerships of transport, and in some cases a multiplicity of controls tended to be bewildering.
The New Materialism
Unbridled competition did nobody good in the long run. Transport men ought to join together in an attempt to enlighten the public about the achievements and advantages of public transport, otherwise the public attitude towards them and their services would continue to be lukewarm.
Speaking of the attitude of the world outside transport, Sir Reginald said : " There is today a greater disposition to back-seat driving — with the usual results. Also, the customers and the public, who are also the masters, are rather less willing to abide by a consistent view of the functions, .obligations and objectives of their servants."
"The" rise of the new materialism " might be one of the greatest enemies of the ideal of service. Theremust be proper rewards, but man could not be expected to live entirely, or even mainly, by bread alone. Fortunately, there were still many transport men who believed in doing a good job because they tried ta live up to their own standards.
Higher Education
It was to the credit of all concerned that morale had remained high. It needed to be sustained in the future by a system of higher education. In support of his argument, Sir Reginald quoted an article in The Commercial Motor on August 30, which contained this sentence: "In road transport, those who bear responsibility for the continuing efficiency of the industry may well think that some co-operative scheme should be evolved."
Sir Reginald concluded: "If the proper study of mankind is man, then as members of this Institute we might well devote a greater share of our deliberations to the study of the transport man, and feel ourselves under an elementary and personal obligation, with such statesmanship and resources as we possess, to do what we can for his outlook—whether he aspires to command, or is content to be, quite simply, that excellent thing, the good transport servant."