great task of this generation, in my view, is to save democracy, to
preserve it and to inspire it. The ideal of democracy is a very fine
one, but no ideals can run of themselves, and if democracy is to be
preserved and yield the fruits that those who believe in it would
fain see, the only way it can be done is by all the individuals,
according to their power, equipping themselves sufficiently to keep
the whole mass sweet and true, and to preserve in their plenitude and
sanity the ideals that inspire them. I have used this figure of
speech before, but I want to use it again. All government of the
people can be represented, as it were, on the circumference of a
wheel, and government runs in very, varying degree from the most
complete and absolute autocracy, step by step, to chaos, and you find
instances in history of governments passing through every phase on
that circumference; often autocracy will end in chaos, and chaos
will, with equal infallibility, lead back once again to autocracy.
Now we are at a point in that wheel, and that point is Democracy,
with representative government. We have to remember that the price
of liberty is eternal vigilance, and, I may add, eternal knowledge,
eternal sympathy, and eternal understanding; and it is our duty in
this generation to keep the State steady at the point to which we
have attained, knowing full well the risks that lie on either hand by
slipping back in the one direction of the wheel or the other, the one
direction drawing to a curtailment of our liberty, the other
direction being that in which liberty tends to licence.
Now, surely, when we want to educate ourselves for the purpose of
citizenship, whatever the immediate course of study may be, whether
it be history or economics, whether it be humane letters, whether it
be mathematics, the object of such education must always be the same,
and to my mind the purpose of such education--a purpose which we try
to put in our mind--is always twofold; it is, in the first place, to
clear the mind of cant, and in the second place not to rest content
with having learnt enough to follow the syllogism, knowing perfectly
well that to follow the syllogism alone is a short cut to the
bottomless pit, unless you are able to detect the fallacies that lie
by the wayside. If you can clear the mind of cant and detect the
fallacy, whatever guise it may be wearing, I think you have made a
long step forward in the education that every citizen in a democracy
that may hope to endure must have. I think that we all of us realise
to-day that no civilised community is bound necessarily and by an
inscrutable fate to progress, that there are such things in
civilisation as checks, that there is such a thing as retrogression,
and that the mere existence of a civilised community is no guarantee
either for its continuance or for its progress--in other words, that
unless we are the faithful guardians of such civilisation as we have
already attained to, we run the risk of seeing the whole of the
progress that has been made with such infinite labour up to our own
time gradually slipping back and back and back.
No one had harder words to say than Lord Morley about teaching
carried on in any other spirit than that which I have endeavoured to
describe. Teaching, above all things in this world, ought to be
absolutely honest and absolutely free. The teacher should never be
the servant of the State in this way, that he preaches and teaches
what he thinks the Government would like to have him do, whether that
Government come from the Right or from the Left or from the Centre.
The whole object of the teacher should be to set forth the truth as
he conceives it, and the whole object of the pupil should be so to
prepare and develop his mind that he may, as occasion arises, when he
leaves here, find himself prepared by will and competent by training
to exercise a right judgment in all things.
Lord Morley, when he had laid stress on the everlasting importance of
sifting the value of evidence and recognising how the bias of human
nature so often prevented men from acquiring the necessary ability so
to sift evidence, referred to those who taught with bias and for
propaganda in this way: "There are limits to our patience with the
quackish fungoids," and it is the "quackish fungoids," wherever they
may be found, that you have to go out into the world to fight.
"Quackish fungoids" are found in all sections of the community and in
all schools of thought. They are not inherent in any one class.
They are not necessarily inherent in any one party; but they are
growths which must be cleared away if progress is to be made in our
country, and they are growths which the training you receive here
will enable you to do your part in clearing away when you leave these
pleasant surroundings for the stress and the struggle of the larger
world outside.
We have to learn--and it is no easy lesson--to submit all the
passions and prejudices which the best of us find to be component
parts of ourselves at times to the stern and acid test of the
discipline of truth. That is not an easy lesson to learn, or more
people would have learned it; but I think one of the most hopeful
signs of the times to-day is that all over the kingdom--north and
south and east and west--there are men and women who, in dreaming of
a better and higher future for their country, are yet well aware that
that future cannot be attained by dreams alone, and they want so to
qualify and equip themselves that in that struggle for better things
they may be able to play a potent and a worthy part. There is no
better and there is no higher ambition, and I am perfectly certain
that it is to help that ambition that Sir Philip Stott was moved to
do what he has done, a great work for which every one in this room is
indeed grateful, a work for which, if I am right, generations yet
unborn may arise and call him blessed.
This country of ours has been the birthplace and the home of some of
the greatest movements that have yet arisen for human freedom and
human progress, and the strength of our race is not yet exhausted.
We have confused ourselves in Great Britain of recent years by a
curious diffidence, and by a fear of relying upon ourselves. The
result has been that many of those who have been eager for the
progress of our country have only succeeded in befogging themselves
and their fellow-countrymen, by filling their bellies with the east
wind of German Socialism and Russian Communism and French
Syndicalism. Rather should they have looked deep into the hearts of
their own people, relying on that common sense and political sense
that has never failed our race, from which sufficient sustenance
could be drawn to bring this country once more through all her
troubles. There will be found that sense which, far from following
at the tail of exploded Continental theorists, is ready once more to
lead the way of the world as she was destined to do from the
beginning of time, and to show other peoples, many peoples who have
not yet learned what real political freedom is, that the mother of
political freedom is still capable of guiding the way to her children
and her children's children.
Do not let us ever be confused by the advance in material prosperity
and material knowledge, and let us never confuse mere acceleration
with civilisation. Civilisation is a far deeper and more profound
thing than that, and there is a very real danger, in an age when
science makes such wonderful advances and can bring so much in the
way of material comfort and material knowledge before people without
any trouble on their part to acquire it or understand--there is at
that time a very great danger that the higher, the more spiritual,
the only lasting qualities of civilisation may be submerged in the
lower and inferior, so that the last state of that community may be
worse than the first.
Then, I think, there is one other great advantage to be derived from
the whole-hearted pursuit of knowledge, which has been the impelling
force that has brought you from all over the United Kingdom to take
advantage of the course which you can obtain here. I think you
learn--not by being taught, but by that instinct which comes with
wider knowledge--you learn a healthy distrust of rhetoric. If there
is any class to be regarded with suspicion in a democracy it is the
rhetorician--the man who plays on half-educated people with fallacies
which they are incapable of detecting. More than one democracy has
been wrecked by that. We do not want to see a democracy like ours,
in which we have faith, and which we believe is destined to do such
great things for the world, wrecked on any such ignoble rocks. When
I was about eighteen years of age, I remember reading a verse of
Froude's, in his _Short Studies_, which made a profound impression
upon me at that age, because, when I was a boy, as is the case with
many other boys, I was rather the slave of fine language and
beautiful expression, and I suddenly came with a shock on the words:
"Oratory is the harlot of the arts." There is profound truth in
that, and I should like very much, if I had time, to give the members
that as a text for an essay. It would be very interesting to see the
illustrations which historical students might give in proof of the
words of that thesis.
There are few things, again, to which, at the present day, we should
pay more attention than this--and this again needs education, and the
education which you are giving yourselves to enable you to accomplish
the end in view--and that is to judge of the value of evidence. I
suppose there is no man to whom the cause of the education of the
people in this country--and very largely adult education--is nearer
the heart than it was to a great Englishman who has just died, I mean
Lord Morley. Lord Morley spoke on this subject nearly fifty years
ago, and he came back to it again and again; so recently as just
before the war, speaking to the Manchester students, he used these
words, which I feel I must read to you:
"Generous aspiration, exalted enthusiasm, is made to do duty for
renewed scrutiny. The ardent spirits see every fact or circumstance
that makes their way and are blind to every other. Inflexible
preconceptions holding the helm, they exaggerate. Their sense of
proportion is bad."
There can be no greater object of true education than to teach and to
preserve a sense of proportion, and it seems to me that the great
advantage you have here over what I may call the definitely
propagandist schools is that you have every opportunity of learning
to exercise a trained sense of proportion, because the teachers here
are chosen in exactly the same way as the teachers are chosen in the
free and open universities. They are chosen because they are masters
of their subjects. They are chosen not to give propaganda; they are
chosen to speak the truth, and those who are responsible for the
conduct of this college know that it is only by giving students the
opportunity of exercising to the full the ability that is in them
that they will be able to choose the truth honestly and freely, and
will exercise their minds to the solution of the problems to which
they have to devote themselves, without bias and without preconceived
notions. They will clear their minds of cant, and try to see things
as they are.
We all of us want understanding--understanding of ourselves and
understanding of our brothers and sisters--and that true
understanding is the salt that savours the whole life of the
community. It was never more needed than it is to-day, and those who
understand will realise that there is no greater need in the world,
abroad and at home, than peace, peace from the warfare of arms and
peace of spirit. Those are the things I intend to fight for during
the time that I am Prime Minister, whether that time be long or
short, and it is with that object--the object of peace above and
before all things--that I am endeavouring to-day to deal with the
situation in Europe.
This is not the place to talk about foreign politics. The Imperial
Conference meets next week, and it must be that at one of their early
meetings the whole question of the present situation in Europe and in
the world must be set forth and debated. I would only say here these
few words. When this Government came into office, now some ten or
eleven months ago, there was an atmosphere of restraint, almost of
distrust, between France and ourselves; and I have no doubt that if
Mr. Bonar Law had been spared to us as Prime Minister a little
longer, he, with his knowledge, with his instinct, with his
transparent honesty, would have dissipated that atmosphere once and
for all. But he left us before that task was accomplished, and it
was my good fortune in an interview which I had last week with the
President of the Council in Paris to help, as I believe, to restore
that atmosphere of confidence which had for some time been lost. No
more and no less. But I think there is now, both in Paris and in
London, a recognition of the importance of the Entente--in this way,
that without it a European settlement is far more difficult. Indeed,
the events of the last two or three weeks have proved that, to those
who have eyes to see, the best hope of settlement lies in intimate
relationship between France and this country, and if anything
occurred that might keep our two countries apart, then I fear it
would make the problems which we have to face incomparably more
difficult than they are to-day.
You have been extraordinarily kind to me in the reception you have
given me here, a reception which touched my heart, and I just want to
tell you before I sit down what a close sympathy I have with you in
the work you are doing here. I am a sort of half-educated fellow
myself. I worked fairly well at school. I did nothing at the
University. I have been trying hard ever since to try to catch it
up. You have come here to try to catch it up. I wish you all
success and happiness in that task. There is no joy in this world
like learning. The great joy of life is that it is a task which is
never done. Go on learning all your life. I am learning now, and I
mean to go on learning if I live to be a hundred. There is nothing I
look forward to so much when I am out of office as to start learning
again in real earnest. Until that day comes I am afraid I shall have
to leave the learning to you, but I do wish you the best of luck in
this high task you have undertaken. Do not let yourselves be
dispirited when you get into the world again, but hold fast to what
you believe to be true and what you believe to be right wherever it
leads you, and whatever difficulties you may encounter. Whatever
troubles you may have you will, at all events, always have the
comfort of a conscience which will tell you that you have tried to
act up to the highest lights that are in you, and you will feel that
you are playing your part in helping to bring your country, your
fellow-men and women, through one of the most difficult times that
she has ever had to face in her history, and that you are laying, or
trying to lay, the foundations of a happier, healthier and saner life
for those with us now and for those who will come after us.
TEACHERS AND TAUGHT
AT THE ANNUAL DINNER OF THE LONDON TEACHERS'
ASSOCIATION
28_th November_, 1924
Great as your necessities may be, mine are greater. I was invited to
be your guest when I was but a private individual, before I became
Prime Minister. I would add that forty years ago all the king's
horses and all the king's men would have failed to have drawn me into
the presence of a company of schoolmasters, and in relation to them I
once had every qualification as a passive resister and a practiser of
very skilled "ca'canny." But times have altered, and I with them,
and I am proud to be your guest to-day, to stand before you, not as
an educational expert, nor--God forbid!--as an intellectual, but
merely to convey to this representative body of London teachers my
own appreciation as head of the Government and that of my colleagues
of the work that the whole body of teachers throughout the country
are doing for the people of this country. Nor do I propose to do
what is so common, and to take a gloomy and pessimistic view of the
state of our country and of education. I am not going to tell you
that in foreign countries they do these things better, and I would
observe in passing that we have had some respite recently from that
continuous praise of German systems of education to which we were so
accustomed in our younger days, and which ceased with such startling
suddenness ten years ago.
The progress of education in our own country has, indeed, been
remarkable, having regard to the fact that we have only occupied
ourselves seriously with the problem for two generations. I know as
well as you that there are still too many, far too many, insanitary
schools, and that there are many ill-nourished and defective
children; but let us remember that the standard by which we judge
these matters to-day has risen immeasurably from the standard adopted
by our parents.
You have only to read Sir George Newman's reports of recent years to
see the progress that has been made, and, while we can still point to
shortcomings, to apathy and negligence on the part of parents here,
local authorities there, and possibly even sometimes of a Government
or a teacher, yet we have to remember that the average health of the
children is, and has been, steadily improving, and you have a
steadily diminishing quantity in the number and the danger of the
children's ailments. Thanks to the co-operation with you of the
medical and nursing agencies, of the devoted services of many
voluntary agencies, and thanks, too, to the increasing co-operation
between teachers and parents, there has never been so much organised
effort in this country on behalf of child welfare as there is to-day.
We do not ignore the blemishes and the spots, but let me remind you
again that we regard them through a far higher magnifying lens than
we used to; but that need not prevent us from advancing all the time.
I am credibly informed that the children to-day actually enjoy going
to school. That is a revolution for which no historian or
sociologist has given you adequate recognition. I do it to-night,
but I confess that if I am correctly informed you have succeeded in
working a miracle which would have been incredible in my younger days.
I agree with Mr. Samuel in this, that no one who lived through the
Great War, and was in a position to observe what was taking place,
will ever forget the qualities displayed by the men and women of this
country, men and women who had had no other education than the
elementary schools had afforded them. There are some words of Mr. H.
G. Wells which are well worth remembering in this connection. He
says that education is one of the newest of the arts and sciences.
The idea of particular exceptional people pursuing learning has been
familiar to the whole world for scores of centuries, but the idea of
preparing the minds of whole classes or communities for co-operation
and common action by a training in common ideas is a comparatively
new one. And that is the gigantic task to which you, and, I may add,
we, are all committed. We are living in days in which the powers
that used to be inherent in birth and privilege are passing rapidly
away. You have a franchise vested in millions where it used to be
vested in thousands, and we live in an age when the preservation of
such civilisation as we have already succeeded in attaining to can
only be maintained by the spread and continuance of education of the
people. And it has never been more urgent to wage the war of reason
against the passion that may be stimulated by mob psychology.
Scientific men--and I am afraid I must confess I am not a scientific
man--are rather pessimistic, and one of our leading biologists has
recently declared that the more representative Parliament becomes,
the more unintelligent, as things are, it is and will be. That was,
as a matter of fact, written before the election. But I never allow
myself to be depressed by the utterances of theorists, and I mean to
go on, in conjunction with Lord Eustace, Mr. Samuel, and all of you,
to try to make things better. You have handicaps to fight against,
handicaps of the bad environment where your children are raised,
handicaps of heredity. We can do something to help you, and we
intend to do it.
But I always think that those who speak of us who try to direct
affairs of State, and of you, use the wrong analogy when they speak
of us as builders and architects. Our task is more homely, and, if I
may go to the country for my illustration, our work is more the work
of the gardener. We have to do our utmost to secure for the child
what the gardener does for his plants--the best soil and the best
exposure. We must remove the noxious weeds, we must do root pruning,
we must prepare and enrich the soil. But we have to wait in faith
for what comes later, and that is the flowers and the fruit, and we
must remember that we can never hope to gather grapes from thistles.
I said the Government might do something to help. I said in the
Albert Hall some months ago that I wished to see secondary and
university education brought within reach of all children who were
fitted to take advantage of them, and I stand by that.
I hope that before we reach the middle of this century the country
will have dealt effectively with the problem of the children between
the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is not simply a school problem;
it is a school problem and an industrial problem. We must by
voluntary agencies and by our own work deal with that problem, or we
run the risk of allowing a generation to grow up in the country which
can only be a peril to itself, and a peril to the nation.
But all the State can do will be of little avail if you have no
regard to the one thing that matters,--as always, the personal
equation. That, in this case, is the general body of the teachers
who are both in love with their work and properly equipped for it.
It is for that reason that I welcome the improvement in the pay of
the whole profession which came into force in this country of recent
years. The personality of the teacher is the crucial fact of the
whole work of education. It is you who have to transmit to the
children some appreciation of the growth of the human spirit, some
insight into our national traditions of liberty and fair play, into
the material achievements of science, and into the wider problems set
by racial and national divisions of mankind; and somewhere through
those lessons, through you, there must reach the children some of the
"murmurs and the scents of the infinite sea."
It is not for you, fortunately, to undertake the political education
of the children, but it is for you to see that if they have to hear
of these things they hear both sides, and they hear them
dispassionately, because you cannot prostitute your position to
sectarian ends. The primary concern of those who have such a sacred
trust as you have is the unfolding of the child's personality, and
not the victory of party.
We all know that industrialism has its ugly side; we all know we
cannot maintain our population without strenuous competition, and we
have a hard task in harmonising the claims of industry and the claims
of an enlightened humanism. The harshest features of poverty we may
hope to get rid of, and to provide against the worst crises of life,
and perhaps in time to lift the level of our people; but none of
those things are of avail unless we can raise their character. Mr.
Bertrand Russell wrote truly when he said: "It is true that poverty
is a great evil, but it is not true that material prosperity is in
itself a great good. If it is to have any real value to society, it
must be made the means of advancement of those highest gifts that
belong to the life of the mind"--and I would say the life of the soul.