"What did you think of the wedding, Jean?"
"Jean grat," said Gladys, "and so did Jan. What was ye greetin' aboot?"
"Aw dinna ken," said Jean simply. "Aw saw Maggie's mother greetin' so
Aw just began to greet too. What was yer mother greetin' for, Maggie?"
"I don't know, Jean."
"Aw think she had the teethache," said Jim, "cos Aw heard the minister
say to her to try a drap o' whiskey."
"It wasna the teethache," said Annie scornfully, "but Aw ken why she
grat."
"To mak fowk think she was so fond o' Maggie that she didna want her to
ging awa," suggested Gladys.
"Na it wasna," said Annie, "she maybe was thinkin' o' Maggie's auldest
sister Jean that dee'd when she was saxteen."
"G'wa," cried Jim, "it's the fashion to greet at a marriage and a
burial, but ye dinna greet at a christenin'."
"Why no?" asked Jean.
"Cos ye wudna be heard: the bairn greets a' the time."
Janet glanced at Margaret.
"That'll be the next party," she said brightly, "the christenin'. Did ye
keep the top storey o' the cake, Maggie?"
Margaret blushed at this.
Janet seized her by the shoulders.
"Ye needna tak a reid face, for Aw ken fine that ye did keep a bit o'
the cake for the christenin'. Ye'll no need to keep it long or it'll get
hard!"
"Jan," cried Jean, reprovingly "ye shud na say sic things!"
"Why no? The minister said something aboot a family when he was
marryin' them."
"Aye," said Jean, "but a minister's no like other fowk. If Mester Gordon
says 'Hell' or 'damnation' in the pulpit it's religion, but if you say
it it's just a swear."
"Aw was at the manse when the minister fell over my barrow," said Jim,
"and he said 'Hell!' Was that religion or a swear?"
"Aw wud ca' it a lee," said Jean with a sniff; "only ministers and
married fowk shud speak aboot bairns, and ye shud ken better, Jan."
Janet looked at me timidly.
"Did Aw do any wrong?"
"Of course you didn't, you dear silly! Jean is a wee prude. Why
shouldn't you talk about bairns if you want to? The subject of bairns is
the only important subject in the world, Jan, and if you find anyone who
thinks the subject improper you can bet your boots that they've got a
dirty mind. Jean is simply trying to follow the conventions of all the
stupid grown-ups in the village."
These bairns are all innocent. When I looked at Jim's composition book
the other day I read an essay with the title "The Church." Jim did not
describe the church: he described an event in the church--his own
marriage. He was an officer on short leave from the Front. He described
the ceremony, then he went on:--"I spent my honeymoon in Edinburgh and a
wire came telling me to go back to the trenches. Three weeks later I
was wounded and sent home and found that my wife had had a baby."
I wrote at the end of the essay "The speeding-up methods of America are
bad enough when applied to industry, but...."
They are innocent souls, and already Jean is affected by the damnable
conspiracy of silence. And the amusing thing is that there is nothing to
be silent about.
* * *
The Educational Institute has sent a deputation to London to confer with
the Secretary for Scotland on educational reform. The deputies dwelt on
larger areas, the raising of the school age, and the raising of the
salaries of the profession. Mr. Tennant answered them at length in
guarded language. Part of _The Scotsman_ report runs thus:--
"Asked by Mr. MacGillivray for his views on the suggestion that the
school age should be raised to fifteen, the Secretary for Scotland said
that, however desirable that might be in the interests of the child, it
was a highly controversial proposal, upon which employers and in many
cases parents, and even the State, would have a great deal to say. The
expenditure involved would, he was afraid, make such a proposal
prohibitive at present."
It is significant to note that he places the employers first, just as in
his previous remarks on education he places trade first.... "People
realised that if we were going to compete in the great markets of the
world, in ideas, in the progress of invention, and in the general
progress of mankind and civilisation, we must improve our machinery for
the training and equipment of the human being."
The Educational Institute of Scotland, like the Trade Unions, is very
humble in its demands. Why, in the name of heaven, ask for larger areas?
Mr. Tennant rightly replied that it was news to him that the County
Council is a more progressive body than the small School Board.
Introduce larger areas and your village pig-dealer and shoemaker give
place to your county colonel and manufacturer ... the men who are
interested in the maintenance of discipline and of wage-slavery. What
the Institute should really do is to give up thinking and talking of
education for this generation. The leading members come from our large
city schools, and if they haven't yet realised that their damned schools
are factories for turning out slaves they ought to be jolly well ashamed
of themselves.
I visited a large city school a few days ago. It had nine hundred
pupils, and it was four stories high. The playground was a small
concrete corner; the discipline was like prison discipline; the rooms
were dingy soul-destroying cages. How dare the teachers of Scotland ask
that the school age be raised to fifteen when our city schools are
barracks like that? I would have the age lowered to six if these prisons
are to continue.
One of the delegates, Mr. Cowan, showed that he was looking at
education in a broad light. "Education," he said, "if it is to be real,
is bound up with the questions of housing, public health, medical
treatment, and the like; ... hence education should be in the hands of
some body that would view the matter as a whole ... viz., the County
Council."
He might have added that education is primarily bound up with
profiteering. Our city schools are necessarily adjuncts to our factories
and our slums; the dominie is clearly the servant of the capitalist ...
and the poor devil doesn't know it. It's absolutely useless to talk of
larger areas and larger salaries and larger children; the fundamental
fact is that capital calls the tune, and larger areas will do as much
for education as tinkering with the saddle spring of a motor-bike will
do for a seized engine bearing.
Larger salaries will attract better men and women to the profession,
says the Institute representative, and I ask wearily: "What difference
will that make? You'll merely get honours graduates to do the
profiteer's dirty work more effectively. You can't reform the schools
from within. The prisons are built, and you will merely tempt your
highly specialised teacher into a soul-destroying hell. The slums and
the sweating will go on as usual next door; your city children will be
starved and ragged and diseased as of yore."
I think it a pity that this deputation ever went to the Scots Secretary
at all. Why should the teaching profession go begging favours from the
State? The wise business men who rule us will smile grimly and
say:--"The blighters gave themselves away when they asked for larger
salaries." They won't appreciate the fact that the deputies were honest
men with a real desire for a better education.
I should like to suggest to the Institute that it might have written a
nice letter to Mr. Tennant. Why, bless me, I'll have a shot at composing
one myself! Here goes!
"Dear Mr. Tennant,
"We aren't asking any favours this time; we are simply writing you
a friendly letter telling you what we are going to do.
"Firstly, we are now beginning to make a determined attempt to take
over the control of Scots Education ... and we'll succeed even if
we have to go on strike for our rights. Our Educational Institute
will become the Scots Guild of Teachers ... a sort of polite Trade
Union, you know, just like the Medicine Union and the Law
Union--only more so. Is that quite clear?
"Well, our Guild, when it is strong enough, will come up to town
one fine morning to see the Cabinet. Our words will be something
like these: 'We are the Teachers' Guild of Scotland, old dears, and
we've come to tell you that we're going to run the show now.'
"Of course the Cabinet will get a shock at first. Then they will
laugh and say: 'We wish you luck! By the way how do you propose to
get the money?' And when we answer that we expect to get it from
the State they will roar with mirth. We shall wait politely till
the laugh is over, and then we shall calmly tell them our proposal
... rather, our demand. We shall demand money from the State to
carry on the whole thing. Education isn't a profiteering affair,
and we must draw every penny from the people ... just as the State
does now.
"Then a member (Lloyd George in all probability) will remark: 'Yes,
yes, gentlemen, but don't you see that all your demand amounts to
is a change of management? You want to abolish the Education
Department and substitute your President for my friend Sir John
Struthers.'
"We shall shout 'No!' very very viciously at this ... you've heard
them shout 'No' when they sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow?'
Well, then, we'll shout it just like that, and then we'll explain
thus:--
"We aren't going in for a change of management: we are going to
build a new house. We are done with grants and Form 9 B's and
inspectors and Supplementary Classes for ever. We are going to
spend.... Oh! such a lot of money. You'll be surprised when you
know what we are going to do. You know Dundee? Mr. Churchill there
made it famous.... well, Dundee, is one of the dirtiest slums in
creation. At present it has lots of big grey schools. We are going
to knock 'em down. After that we are going to build bonny wee
schools out in the country; schools that won't hold more than a
hundred pupils. There will be lovely gardens and ponds and
rabbit-houses; there will be food and--.' At this stage the Cabinet
will telephone for the lunacy experts.
"Do we make ourselves clear, Mr. Tennant? As you know well the
State will be terribly unwilling to give us more money. If we make
our schools decent places the poor profiteers will be in the soup,
won't they? Our present schools do no harm; the discipline of the
classroom prepares a bright lad for the discipline of the wagery
shop, and, of course, a girl accustomed to the atmosphere of a city
school won't object to the ventilation obtaining in the factory.
When we insist on taking the kiddies to bonny wee schools the
profiteer will realise with dismay that his factory and his
slum-hovels will have to adapt themselves to the new attitude of
the kids.
"Mind you, we quite admit that we're going to have a hell of a
fight. We even go the length of saying that we may be beaten at
first; for we have no economic power, and the men with the economic
power will crush us if they can. Our only weapon will be the
strike, but even the strike will, in a manner, be playing into the
profiteers' hands; 'Geewhiz!' they'll cry, 'the teachers are on
strike ... now for cheap child labour!' Our only hope is that the
citizens will realise the importance of a dominies' rebellion.
"Now, we don't want you to take this letter as a personal insult,
or even as a vote of censure. You may be of opinion that Scots
education is quite safe in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland,
and you may imagine that we've got profiteering on the brain. We
have. But we can't agree with you that education is safe in the
hands of the Secretary for Scotland. Why, you might get another
post to-morrow, and your colleague Runciman might step into your
job. And it was only the other day that he was defending
war-profits on the ground that they were forming a fund to compete
with neutral trade after the war. The worst of you political
fellows is that you've all got profiteering on the brain, just like
us ... only, it's a natural healthy growth in your case, while in
our case it is a malignant tumour. We've got profiteering thrust
upon us, so to speak; you fellows were born with it.
"Well, well, isn't this rotten weather, what?
"Best wishes to Mrs. Tennant.
"Yours sincerely,
"The Educational Institute of Scotland."
* * *
Jim came to the bothy last night, and his face was troubled.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Aw--Aw didna gie ye a marriage present," he stammered, "Aw didna hae
ony money."
"The present Margaret and I want from you doesn't cost money," I said;
"we want you to write a description of the wedding."
He brightened at once.
"Can Aw tell lees?" he asked eagerly.
"Please yourself," I said, and he went away cheerful.
This morning the description came by post. I think I shall make it the
last entry in my diary.
* * *