"Now, let's see what ambition you have," I said hopefully. The result
was good; three teachers, two nurses, one typist, one lady doctor,
one . . . lady. This was Maggie Clark. She just wanted to be like one
of thae ladies in the picters with a motor car.
"And husband?" I asked.
"No, I dinna want a man, but I wud like a lot of bairns," she said, and
there was a snigger from the boys who had got their sex education from
the ploughmen at the Brig of evenings.
Another girl remarked that Maggie's ambition was a selfish one.
"But are you not all selfish?" I asked.
The class indignantly denied it.
"Right," I said, "what do you say to a composition exercise?"
They obediently got out their composition books, but I told them that my
exercise was an easy one. I tore up a few pages into slips and
distributed them.
"Now," I said, "suppose I give you five pounds to do what you like with.
Write down what you would do with it, fold the paper, and hand it in to
me."
They eagerly agreed, and at the end of five minutes I had a hatful of
slips. I then drew a line down the centre of the blackboard. On one
side I wrote the word Selfish; on the other Unselfish. The class groaned
and laughed.
"Now," I said cheerfully, "this will prove whether the class is unselfish
or not," and I unfolded the first slip.
"But you'll say we are selfish!" said a boy.
"I have nothing to do with it," I said; "you are to decide by vote.
First person . . . 'I would buy a bicycle': selfish or unselfish?"
"Selfish!" roared the class, and I put a mark in the first column.
"Next paper . . . 'Scooter, knife, and the rest on ice-cream.'"
"Selfish!" and I put down another mark.
"Next: . . . 'Buy a pair of boots' . . . selfish or unselfish?"
The class had to stop and think here.
"Selfish!" said a few.
"Unselfish," said others, "'cos he wud be helpin' his mother."
"Then we'll vote on it," I said, and by a majority of two the act was
declared to be unselfish.
We then had a run of knives, tops, candy, cycles, and no vote was
necessary. Then came a puzzler.
"I would send every penny to the starving babies of Germany."
"Unselfish!" cried the class in one voice. I was just about to put the
mark in the unselfish column when a boy said: "That's selfish, cos she'd
feel proud of being so--so unselfish."
"How do you know it is a she?" I asked.
"'Cause I ken it's Jean Wilson," he answered promptly; "she has took a
reid face."
There followed a breezy debate on Jean's act.
"It is selfish," said Mary, "because when you do a kind action you feel
pleased with yourself, and it was selfish because if it hadna pleased her
she wud never ha' done it."
I asked for a vote and to my astonishment the act was declared selfish by
a majority of three. I suspect that conventional Hun Hatred had
something to do with the voting.
The voting over I totted up the marks.
"You have judged yourselves," I said, "and according to your own showing
you as a class are 87 per cent. selfish and 13 per cent. unselfish."
This essay in composition was not original; I got the idea from Homer
Lane, who claimed that it was the best introduction to school psychology.
"It is the best way to make children think of their own behaviour," he
said, and my experiment has shown this.