"Between you and me," I said mysteriously, "I had to paint it blue."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Yea, man!"
"Government orders," I said carelessly, and began to throw stones at a
tree trunk at the other side of the road.
"Government orders?" He looked very much surprised.
"Yes," I said airily. "You see, it's like this. The Coalition
Government isn't very firmly placed these days, and, well, I'm an agent
for it. Of course, you know that it is really a Tory government, and my
bike, as it were, invites the electorate to vote True Blue."
"Yea, man! I thocht that you was maybe ane o' thae temperance lads frae
Americky."
"Ah!" I said solemnly, "that reminds me; Pussyfoot tried to induce me to
make my tour a sort of joint thing. He suggested that I might carry on
my Tory work, and at the same time take part in the blue ribbon campaign.
Of course I refused."
"Of coorse," he nodded.
"Officially I am doing Coalition work," I continued conversationally,
"but I have motives of my own."
"You don't say!"
"Oh, yes. I am a great admirer of Lord Fisher and the Blue Water school,
sometimes spoken of as the Blue Funk school. Again, I find that the
Great War has left many people in the blues, and by means of homeopathy I
cure 'em; I mean to say that they come to their doors and laugh at my
blue bike. My blue dispels their blues."
The old man did not seem to follow this.
"Of course," I went on, "the Bluebells of Scotland have something to do
with my selection of the colour."
"A verra nice sang," he commented.
"An excellent song! Then there is the well-known phrase 'Once in a Blue
Moon,' and innumerable songs about the pale moonlight. Also I once knew
a man who had the blue devils."
I tried to think of other phases of blueness, but my stock was almost
exhausted.
"Of course," I added, "I am not forgetting the other blues, the Oxford
blues, Reckitt's Blue, Blue Coupons, and--and--I'm afraid I can't think
of any other blues just at the moment."
The old man drew the back of his hand over his mouth.
"There's the 'Blue Bonnets' up at the tap o' the brae," he suggested
thirstily.
"Good idea!" I cried, "come on!" and together we climbed the brae.
* * * * *
A friend of mine in London has written me asking if I will write an
article on Co-education for an educational journal, in which she is
interested. I replied: "I can't see where the problem comes in; to a
Scot co-education is not a thing that has to be supported by argument; he
accepts it as he accepts the law of gravitation."
I wonder why English people are so afraid of co-education. To this day
schools like Bedales, King Alfred's, Harpenden, and Arundale are reckoned
as crank schools. The great middle-class of England believes in
segregation. Even Dr. Ernest Jones, the most prominent Freudian
psycho-analyst in England, appears to be afraid of it.
I can only conjecture that Jones agrees with the middle and upper classes
in associating sex with sin. I have never tried to think out my reasons
for believing in co-education; possibly the true reason is that having
grown up in a co-education atmosphere, co-education has become a part of
me just as my Scots accent has. In other words, I may have a
co-education complex. If that is so, my arguments will be mere
rationalisations, but I give them for what they are worth.
We are all born with a strong sex instinct, and this instinct must find
expression in some way. We know that the sex energy can be sublimated,
that is, raised to a higher power. For instance, the creative sex urge
may be directed to the making of a bookcase, or the making of a century
at cricket. But I know of no evidence to prove that all the instinct can
be sublimated. An adolescent may spend his days at craftwork and games,
but he will have erotic dreams at nights. All the drawing and painting
in the world will not prevent his having emotion when he looks at the
face of a pretty girl.
In our segregation schools boys and girls see nothing of each other. The
unsublimated sex instinct finds expression in homosexuality, that is the
emotion that should go to the opposite sex is fixed on a person of the
same sex. I admit that we are all more or less homosexual; otherwise
there could be no friendship between man and man, or woman and woman. In
our boarding schools the sex instinct often takes the road of
auto-eroticism.
In a co-education school the sex impulse is directed to one of the
opposite sex. This attachment is nearly always a romantic ideal
attachment. I have never known a case that went the length of kissing;
among little children at a rural school, yes; at the age of seven I
kissed my first sweetheart; but among adolescents I find that neither the
boy nor the girl has the courage to kiss. Theirs is a sublimated
courtship; they never use the word Love; they talk about "liking
So-and-so."
That at many co-education schools this romantic attachment is more or
less an underground affair is due to the moral attitude of teachers.
They pride themselves on the beautiful sexless attachments of their
pupils; they give moral lectures on the subject of kissing, and naturally
every pupil in school at once becomes painfully self-conscious on the
subject. The truth is that many co-educationists do not in their hearts
believe in the system; they still see sin in sex.
To be a thorough success the co-education school must include sex
education in its curriculum. The children of the most advanced parents
seldom get it at home, and they come to school with the old attitude to
sex. Sex education does not mean telling children where babies come
from; it should dwell mostly on the psychological side of the question.
The child ought to learn the truth about its sex instinct. Most
important of all, the child who has indulged in auto-eroticism ought to
be helped to get rid of his or her sense of guilt. This sense of guilt
is the primary evil of self-abuse; abolish it, and the child is on the
way to a self-cure.
How many children can go to their teacher and make confession of sex
troubles? Very few. It is the teachers' fault; they set themselves up
as moralists, and a moralist is a positive danger to any child.
Not long ago I was addressing a meeting of teachers in south London. At
question time a woman challenged me.
"You have condemned moralists," she said; "do you mean to say that you
would never teach a child the difference between right and wrong?"
"Never," I answered, "for I do not know what is right and what is wrong."
"Then I think you ought not to be a teacher," she said.
"I know what is right for me, and wrong for me," I went on to explain,
"but I do not know what is right and wrong for you. Nor do I presume to
know what is right or wrong for a child."
I was pleasingly surprised to find that the meeting roared approval of my
reply.
* * * * *
Macdonald had to attend a funeral to-day, and he asked me if I would take
his classes for an hour. I gladly agreed.
"Give them a lesson on psychology," he said; "it will maybe improve their
behaviour."
I went over to the school at two o'clock, and Mac introduced me, although
I had already made friends with most of the children in the playground
and the fields. Mac then went away and I sat down at his desk.
"We'll have a talk," I said, "just a little friendly talk between you and
me. I want to hear your opinions on some things."
They looked at me with interest.
"Why," I said, "why do you sit quiet in school?"
Andrew Smith put up his hand.
"Please, sir, 'cause if we don't the mester gies us the strap."
"A very sound reason, too," I commented. "And now I want to ask you why
you sometimes want to throw papers or slate-pencils about the room."
"Please, sir, we never do that," said little Jeannie Simpson.
"The mester wud punish us," said another girl.
"But," I cried, "surely one of you has thrown things about the room?"
Tom Murray, the bad boy of the school (according to Mac), put up his hand.
"Please, sir, I did it once, but the mester licked me."
"Why did you do it, Tom?"
Tom thought hard.
"I didna like the lesson," he said simply.