Education, as popularly conceived, includes as its chief ingredients a
Child, a Building, Text-Books, and a Teacher. Obviously, one of them
must be to blame for its going wrong. Let us see if it is the Child. We
will put him on the witness stand:
Q. Who are you?
A. I am a foreigner in a strange land.
Q. What!
A. Please, sir, that’s what everybody says. Sometimes they call me a
little angel; the poet Wordsworth says that I come trailing clouds
of glory from Heaven which is my home. On the other hand, I am often
called a little devil; and when you see the sort of things I do in
the comic supplements, you will perhaps be inclined to accept that
description. I really don’t know which is right, but both opinions seem
to agree that I am an immigrant.
Q. Speak up so that the jury can hear. Have you any friends in this
country?
A. No, sir--not exactly. But there are two people, a woman and a man,
natives of this land, who for some reason take an interest in me. It
was they who taught me to speak the language. They also taught me many
of the customs of the country, which at first I could not understand.
For instance, my preoccupation with certain natural--[the rest of the
sentence stricken from the record].
Q. You need not go into such matters. I fear you still have many things
to learn about the customs of the country. One of them is not to allude
to that side of life in public.
A. Yes, sir; so those two people tell me. I’m sure I don’t see why. It
seems to me a very interesting and important--
Q. That will do. Now as to those people who are looking after you: Are
your relations with them agreeable?
A. Nominally, yes. But I must say that they have treated me in a very
peculiar way, which has aroused in me a deep resentment. You see, at
first they treated me like a king--in fact, like a Kaiser. I had only
to wave my hand and they came running to know what it was I wanted. I
uttered certain magic syllables in my own language, and they prostrated
themselves before me, offering me gifts. When they brought the wrong
gifts, I doubled up my fists and twisted my face, and gave vent to loud
cries--and they became still more abject, until at last I was placated.
Q. That is what is called parental love. What then?
A. I naturally regarded them as my slaves. But presently they rebelled.
One of them, of whom I had been particularly fond, commenced to make me
drink milk from a bottle instead of from--
Q. Yes, yes, we understand. And you resented that?
A. I withdrew the light of my favour from her for a long time. I
expressed my disappointment in her. I offered freely to pardon her
delinquency if she would acknowledge her fault and resume her familiar
duties. But perhaps I did not succeed in conveying my meaning clearly,
for at this time I had no command of her language. At any rate, my
efforts were useless. And her reprehensible conduct was only the first
of a series of what seemed to me indignities and insults. I was no
longer a king. I was compelled to obey my own slaves. In vain I made
the old magic gestures, uttered the old talismanic commands--in vain
even my doubling up of fists and twisting of face and loud outcries;
the power was gone from these things. Yet not quite all the power--for
my crying was at least a sort of punishment to them, and as such I
often inflicted it upon them.
Q. You were a naughty child.
A. So they told me. But I only felt aggrieved at my new helplessness,
and wished to recover somewhat of my old sense of power over them.
But as I gradually acquired new powers I lost in part my feeling of
helplessness. I also found that there were other beings like myself,
and we conducted magic ceremonies together in which we transformed
ourselves and our surroundings at will. These delightful enterprises
were continually being interrupted by those other people, our parents,
who insisted on our learning ever more and more of their own customs.
They wished us to be interested in their activities, and they were
pleased when we asked questions about things we did not understand. Yet
there were some questions which they would not answer, or which they
rebuked us for asking, or to which they returned replies that, after
consultation among ourselves, we decided were fabulous. So we were
compelled to form our own theories about these things. We asked, for
instance--
Q. Please confine your answers to the questions. That is another
matter not spoken of in public; though to be quite frank with you,
public taste seems to be changing somewhat in this respect.