I have spent a hard day forking hay along with Margaret Thomson.
Margaret is twenty and bonny, but she is very, very shy. She attended my
Evening class last winter, and she appears to be afraid to speak to me.
I tried to get her to converse again and again to-day, but it was of no
use. I think that she fears to make a mistake in grammar or to
mispronounce a word.
I hear her voice outside at the horse-trough. She is bantering old Peter
Wilson, and talking thirteen to the dozen. Her laugh is a most
delightful thing. I wonder did Touchstone like Audrey's laugh!
The Thomsons are carrying out in farming the principles I set myself to
carry out in education. They treat their beasts with the greatest
kindness. There isn't a wild animal in the place. Spot the collie is a
most lovable creature; the sheep are all tame, and the cows are quiet
beasts; the bull has a bold eye, but he is as gentle as a lamb. The
horses come to the kitchen door from the water-trough, and little Nancy
Thomson feeds them with bread. Every member of the family comes into
personal immediate contact with the animals, and the animals seem to
love the family. There is no fear in this farmyard.
Mrs. Thomson is a kind-hearted soul. She never goes down to the village
unless to the kirk on Sunday. She works hard all day, but she is always
cheerful. "I like to see them comin' in aboot," she says, and she seems
to find the greatest pleasure in preparing the family's meals. On a
Saturday bairns come up from the village, and she gives them "pieces"
spread thick with fresh butter and strawberry jam. "I'm never happy
unless there's a squad o' bairns roond me," she said to me to-day.
Frank Thomson is what the village would call a funny sort o' a billie.
His eyes are always twinkling, and he tries to see the funny side of
life. He hasn't much humour, but he has a strong sense of fun, and he
loves to chaff the youngsters.
"Weel, Wullie," is his invariable greeting when his boy returns from
school in the evening, "Weel, Wullie, and did ye get yer licks the day?"
On a Saturday Frank always has a troop of girls hanging on to his coat
tails, and he is always playing practical jokes on them--locking them in
the stable or covering them with straw.
"Goad!" he will cry, "ye're an awfu' pack o' tormentors; just wait er Aw
tell the dominie aboot ye!" and they yell at him.
Mrs. Thomson tells me that he is inordinately proud of having me for a
cattleman, and at the cattle mart he boasts about having an M.A. as
feeder. I took two stots into the mart yesterday, and when they entered
the ring a wag cried: "Are they weel up in the Greek, think ye, Frank?"
and the farmers roared.
"Oh, aye," shouted Frank, "they're weel crammed up wi' a'thing that's
guid!"
I think that the Scotch Education Department should insist on every
teacher's going farming every three years. Inside the profession you
lose perspective. The educational papers are full of articles about
geography and history and drawing, but teachers seldom show that they
are looking beyond the mere curriculum. The training colleges supply the
young teacher with what they call Mental Philosophy or Psychology, but
it is quite possible for an honours graduate in mental philosophy to
have no philosophy at all.
The question for the teacher is: What am I aiming at? Macdonald is
aiming at what he calls a bright show before the inspector. To be just
to the man I admit that he is honestly trying to educate these bairns
according to his lights. He wants to produce good scholars, but when I
ask him what he considers the goal of humanity he is at sea.
He tells me that education should not be made to produce little
Socialists as I seemed to try to do. But I deny that I ever tried to
make my bairns Socialists. I told them the elemental truth that a
parasite is an enemy of society; I told them that the world was out of
joint. And I gave them freedom to develop their personalities in the
hope that, freed from discipline and fear and lies, they might become a
better generation than mine has been.
The Macdonalds of life have failed to produce thinking that is free; I
merely say: Let the children have a say now; stop thrusting your stupid
barbaric Authority down their little throats; let the bairns be free to
breathe. Give up all the snobbish nonsense about manners and respect and
servility you ram into the child; if he refuses to lift his hat to you,
who the devil are you that you should coerce him into doing it?
I think that some of the more important villagers were annoyed at the
bairns' obvious lack of respect, or at least the semblance of respect.
But they looked for faults. They told me of escapades after school
hours, of complaints of bosses against boys who had been with me. I
asked George Wilson, the mason, whether he would expand his criticism to
include the minister. "Do you blame Mr. Gordon for every drunk and every
theft in the village? He has been here for thirty years, and, on your
reasoning, he has been a failure."
"Aw dinna pay rates for keepin' up the kirk," he replied, "but I pay
rates to keep up the schule, and Aw have a claim to creeticise the wye
ye teach the bairns."
I see now that I never had a chance against the enemy. They could point
to what they called faults ... Johnnie didn't know his History, Lizzie
did too much sketching, Peter wasn't deferential. I could point to
nothing. I had abolished fear, I had made the school a place of joy, I
had encouraged each child's natural bent ... and the village smiled
scornfully and said: "We ken nae difference."
I found myself worrying over the opinions of small men who are of no
importance in the world of ideas; stupid fools led me into taking up an
eternal position of defence. And I fumed inwardly, for I am not always a
ready talker.
But now I am able to smile at the men who baited me a few weeks ago.
They don't count. In the great world beyond the hills there are people
who take the large broad view of education, and some day education will
really be a "leading forth" not a "putting in."
* * *