"I should like to see you give a lesson," he said.
"With pleasure," I replied.
"What sort of lesson will it be?" he asked, "geography or history?"
"I don't know," I said, and I turned to my bairns.
"Why do rabbits have white tails?" I asked, and from that we wandered on
through protective coloration and heredity to wolves and their fear of
fire. We finished up with poetry, but I don't recollect how we got to
it. When I had finished he pondered for a little.
"It's all wrong," he said. "That boy in the corner was half asleep; four
of these girls weren't really attending to you, and two girls left the
room."
"My fault," I said. "I took them to subjects they weren't interested
in."
"No," he said decidedly, "it was only your fault in not forcing them to
sit up and attend."
"But why should I?" I asked wearily. "Schooling is the beginning of the
education we call life, and I want to make it as true to life as
possible. In after life no one compels my attention or yours. We can
sleep in church and we can sleep at a political meeting. We learn lots
of things but we are interested in them. Tell me, what boy in this room
answered best?"
He pointed to a boy of twelve.
"I agree," I said, and I called the boy to my desk.
"Hugh," I said, "kindly tell this gentleman how long you have been at
school."
"A week, sir," he replied.
"What school did you come from?" asked the visitor.
"I never was at any school in my life," he said, "my father lives in a
caravan and I never was long enough in a place to go to school."
I explained that Hugh had come voluntarily to me saying: "My father
can't read or write, and I can't either, but I want to be able to read
about the war and things like that."
"I don't know what to make of it," said my visitor.
"It is a great lesson on education," I said. "He feels that he wants to
read ... and he comes to school seeking knowledge. And that's what I
want to supersede compulsion. If I had my way no boy would learn to read
a word until he desired to read; no boy would do anything unless he
wanted to do it."
Then he brought forward the old argument that freedom like that was
handicapping them for after life; they would not face difficulties.
"Hugh was up against a greater difficulty than most boys ever come up
against," I said, "and he faced it bravely and confidently. When you
are free from authority you have a will of your own; you know exactly
what you want and you set your teeth and get it. You are on your own,
you have acquired responsibility. Given a dictating teacher or parent a
boy will do the minimum on his own responsibility. Good lord! if I make
all these youngsters sit up and attend strenuously to my speaking I am
not training them to face difficulties; I am simply bullying them,
making them a subject race."
"You are training character."
"I would be training children to obey, and the first thing a child
should learn is to be a rebel. If a man isn't a rebel by the time he is
twenty-five, God help him! Character simply means a man's nature, and I
refuse to change a man's nature by force; I leave the experiment to the
judges and prison warders."
I want to ask every dominie who believes in coercion what he thinks of
the results of many years' coercion. Obviously present-day civilisation
with its criminal division of humanity into parasites and slaves is all
wrong.
"But," a dominie might cry, "can you definitely blame elementary
education for that?"