The words and phrases of a language are always to some extent
revelations of the mind of the race that has moulded the language. How
often does an Irish vocable light up as with a lantern some immemorial
Irish attitude, some whole phase of Irish thought! Thus, the words which
the old Irish employed when they spoke of education show that they had
gripped the very heart of that problem. To the old Irish the teacher was
_aite_, “fosterer,” the pupil was _dalta_, “foster-child,” the system
was _aiteachas_, “fosterage”; words which we still retain as _oide_,
_dalta_, _oideachas_.
And is it not the precise aim of education to “foster”? Not to inform,
to indoctrinate, to conduct through a course of studies (though these be
the dictionary meanings of the word), but, first and last, to “foster”
the elements of character native to a soul, to help to bring these to
their full perfection rather than to implant exotic excellences.
Fosterage implies a foster-father or foster-mother--a person--as its
centre and inspiration rather than a code of rules. Modern education
systems are elaborate pieces of machinery devised by highly-salaried
officials for the purpose of turning out citizens according to certain
approved patterns. The modern school is a State-controlled institution
designed to produce workers for the State, and is in the same category
with a dockyard or any other State-controlled institution which produces
articles necessary to the progress, well-being, and defence of the
State. We speak of the “efficiency,” the “cheapness,” and the
“up-to-dateness” of an education system just as we speak of the
“efficiency,” the “cheapness,” and the “up-to-dateness” of a system of
manufacturing coal-gas. We shall soon reach a stage when we shall speak
of the “efficiency,” the “cheapness,” and the “up-to-dateness” of our
systems of soul-saving. We shall hear it said “Salvation is very cheap
in England,” or “The Germans are wonderfully efficient in prayer,” or
“Gee, it takes a New York parson to hustle ginks into heaven.”
Now, education is as much concerned with souls as religion is. Religion
is a Way of Life, and education is a preparation of the soul to live its
life here and hereafter; to live it nobly and fully. And as we cannot
think of religion without a Person as its centre, as we cannot think of
a church without its Teacher, so we cannot think of a school without its
Master. A school, in fact, according to the conception of our wise
ancestors, was less a place than a little group of persons, a teacher
and his pupils. Its place might be poor, nay, it might have no local
habitation at all, it might be peripatetic: where the master went the
disciples followed. One may think of Our Lord and His friends as a sort
of school: was He not the Master, and were not they His disciples? That
gracious conception was not only the conception of the old Gael, pagan
and Christian, but it was the conception of Europe all through the
Middle Ages. Philosophy was not crammed out of text-books, but was
learned at the knee of some great philosopher; art was learned in the
studio of some master-artist, a craft in the workshop of some
master-craftsman. Always it was the personality of the master that made
the school, never the State that built it of brick and mortar, drew up a
code of rules to govern it, and sent hirelings into it to carry out its
decrees.
I do not know how far it is possible to revive the old ideal of fosterer
and foster-child. I know it were very desirable. One sees too clearly
that the modern system, under which the teacher tends more and more to
become a mere civil servant, is making for the degradation of education,
and will end in irreligion and anarchy. The modern child is coming to
regard his teacher as an official paid by the State to render him
certain services; services which it is in his interest to avail of,
since by doing so he will increase his earning capacity later on; but
services the rendering and acceptance of which no more imply a sacred
relationship than do the rendering and acceptance of the services of a
dentist or a chiropodist. There is thus coming about a complete reversal
of the relative positions of master and disciple, a tendency which is
increased by every statute that is placed on the statute book, by every
rule that is added to the education code of modern countries.
Against this trend I would oppose the ideal of those who shaped the
Gaelic polity nearly two thousand years ago. It is not merely that the
old Irish had a good education system; they had the best and noblest
that has ever been known among men. There has never been any human
institution more adequate to its purpose than that which, in pagan
times, produced Cuchulainn and the Boy-Corps of Eamhain Macha and, in
Christian times, produced Enda and the companions of his solitude in
Aran. The old Irish system, pagan and Christian, possessed in
pre-eminent degree the thing most needful in education: an adequate
inspiration. Colmcille suggested what that inspiration was when he said,
“If I die it shall be from the excess of the love that I bear the Gael.”
A love and a service so excessive as to annihilate all thought of self,
a recognition that one must give all, must be willing always to make the
ultimate sacrifice--this is the inspiration alike of the story of
Cuchulainn and of the story of Colmcille, the inspiration that made the
one a hero and the other a saint.