Homer Lane was superintendent of the little Commonwealth in Dorset. He
attended the juvenile courts and begged the magistrates to hand over to
him the worst cases they had. He took the children down to Dorset and
gave them freedom. He refused to lay down any laws, and naturally the
beginning of the Commonwealth was chaos. Lane joined in the
anti-social behaviour; he became one of the gang. When the citizens
thought that their best way of expressing themselves was to smash
windows, Lane helped them to smash them. His marvellous psychological
insight will best be illustrated by the story of Jabez.
Jabez was a thoroughly bad character; he had been thief and highwayman,
a bully who could fight with science. He came to the Commonwealth and
was astonished. He found boys and girls working hard all day, and
making their own laws at their citizen meetings at night. Jabez could
not understand it, and not understanding he felt hostile.
The citizens lived in cottages, and one night Lane went over to the
cottage in which Jabez lived. They were having tea, and Lane sat down
beside Jabez.
"What are you always grousing about, Jabez?" he asked. "Don't you like
the Commonwealth?"
"No," said Jabez viciously.
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's too respectable for me," said Jabez, and his eyes wandered to the
table. "Them fancy cups and saucers! Wot's the good o' things like
that to me? I'd like to smash the whole lot o' them."
Lane rose from the table, walked to the fireplace, took up the poker
and handed it to Jabez.
"Smash them," he said.
Jabez had all eyes turned towards him. He seized the poker and smashed
his cup and saucer.
"Excellent!" cried Lane, "Jabez is making the Commonwealth a better
place," and he pushed forward another cup and saucer. These were at
once smashed, and Lane proceeded to shove forward the other dishes.
But by this time Jabez was beginning to feel queer. Breaking dishes
was good fun when you were breaking laws, but here there was no law to
break, and Jabez felt that he was doing a foolish thing. He wanted to
stop, but he could not see how he was to stop with dignity.
Fortunately one of the other inmates of the cottage came to his aid.
"It's all very well for you, Mr. Lane," she said, "but this isn't your
cottage, and you are making Jabez break our dishes."
Jabez hailed the idea with delight; he now had an excellent excuse for
stopping.
"Right you are!" cried Lane cheerfully, "Jabez will break something
else," and he took out his gold watch and placed it on the table.
"Smash that, Jabez."
"No," said Jabez, "I won't smash your watch."
Now Jabez had a saying that if a man were dared to do a thing and he
didn't do it he was a coward.
"I dare you to smash the watch."
Jabez seized the poker again.
"What! You dare me!"
"Yes, I dare you."
He looked at the watch for a few seconds; then he threw down the poker
and rushed from the room.
Poor Jabez was killed in France. I saw the letters that he wrote to
Lane from the front, and they were the letters of a decent, good boy.
The early history of Jabez was one of constant suppression. Authority
was always stepping in and saying: "Don't do that!" As a result Jabez
at the age of seventeen was psychically an infant. The infantile
desire to break things was suppressed, but it lived on in the
unconscious, and years later Jabez found himself behaving like a child
of three. The cure was to encourage him to act in his infantile way;
by smashing a few cups Jabez got rid of his long pent up infantile wish
to destroy. Discipline would have kept the childish wish underground;
freedom led to the expression of the wish.
Homer Lane is the apostle of Release. He holds that Authority is fatal
for the child; suppression is bad; the only way is to allow the child
freedom to express itself in the way it wants to. And because I count
among my friends boys and girls who once went to the Little
Commonwealth as criminals, I believe that Lane is right. I also
believe that the schools will come to see that he was right . . .
somewhere about the year 2500.
* * * * *
Conversation to-night in Dauvit's shop turned on Spiritualism. Dauvit
is a firm believer, and he often goes to Dundee and Aberdeen to attend
séances.
"It's just a lot o' blethers," said Jake Tosh contemptuously. "When
ye're deid ye're deid, and that's a' aboot it. Na, na, Dauvit, them
that sees ghosts is either drunk or daft."
"That's just yer ignorance, Jake," said Dauvit. "Do ye ken whaur
Brazil is?"
"Wha is he?" asked Jake puzzled.
"It's no a he; it's a place. I asked ye that question just to prove
that a man that doesna ken his ain world canna speak wi' ony authority
o' the next world. Yer mind's ower narrow, Jake; ye've no vision."
"Na, na, Dauvit," laughed Jake, "it winna do. Spooks and things is
just a curran nonsense, and no sane man wud believe in them. What do
you say, dominie?"
"I am willing to believe that the dead do communicate," I said.
Jake was thoroughly amused.
"It's a queer thing," he said musingly, "that the more eddication a man
has the more he believes in rubbish. Here's Dauvit here, a man that
reads Shakespeare and Burns and Carlyle, and the dominie there that
went through a college, and the both o' you believe things that I
stoppit believin' when I was sax year auld. Then there's Sir Oliver
Lodge, and Conan Doyle. Oh, aye, the Bible was quite richt when it
said: Much learning hath made them mad."
"What do you think happens to the dead, Jake?" I asked.
"As the tree falleth so it lies," quoted Jake. "There's only the twa
places after death; if ye're good ye go to Heaven; if ye're bad ye go
to Hell. And that's why I say that thae messages from the deid are
rubbish, cos if a man's in Heaven he's no going to leave a place like
that to come doon to speak to a daft auld cobbler like Dauvit in a wee
room doon in Dundee. And if a man's in Hell the Devil will tak good
care that he doesna get oot."
I wondered to find that Dauvit had no answer to this. I guessed that
Dauvit's silence was due to his early training. He was brought up in
the old stern Scots way, and although he has now rejected the old
beliefs intellectually, his unconscious still clings to them
emotionally. I fancy that if I were very very ill I might go back to
my childish fear of Hell-fire, for, in illness old emotions return, and
intellect flees. Dauvit would no doubt react in the same way.
* * * * *
Many people seem to have a decided fear of psycho-analysis. A mother
writes me from London saying that she would like to send her girl to my
new school, only she is afraid that I shall attempt to analyse the
children.
The fear of psycho-analysis comes from the general belief that Freud
traces every neurosis to early sex experiences. Whether Freud is right
or not does not concern the teacher; he deals with normal children, and
to try to analyse a normal child appears to me to be unnecessary. The
teacher's job is to see that the children are free from fear and free
to create; if he does his task well he is preventing neurosis.
A neurosis is the outcome of repression; the neurotic is a person whose
libido or life force is bottled up; he can be cured only by letting his
pent up emotions free. The aim of education is to allow emotional
release, so that there will be no bottling up, and no future neurosis;
and this release comes through interest. The boy who hates algebra and
has to work examples is getting no release whatever, for his mind is
divided; his attention goes to his quadratic equations, but his
interest is elsewhere.
Hence I do not think analysis is necessary when children are being
freely educated. In an exceptional case a little analysis will do
good. If I see a child unhappy, moody, anti-social, a thief, a bully,
I consider it my job to make an attempt to find out what is at the back
of his mind. With a young boy it is not advisable to tell him the
whole truth about himself; the teacher discovers the truth by watching
the child at play, by studying his wishes as expressed in his writing,
by noting his attitude to his playmates. When he has made his
diagnosis the teacher can then make the necessary changes in the boy's
environment.
I recall the case of Tommy, aged ten. His class was constructing a
Play Town after the fashion set by Caldwell Cook in his delightful book
_The Play Way_. Tommy worked with enthusiasm, too much enthusiasm, for
he pinched the girls' sand for his railway track. The girls objected,
and a regular wordy battle took place. Tommy felt that he was beaten,
and he ceased work.
I was not very much surprised when the girls came and told me that
Tommy was shying bricks at the railway line he had been so keen on
constructing. Tommy was brought up before the assembled class, and
they voted unanimously that he be forbidden to approach within ten
yards of Play Town. Tommy grinned maliciously. That night the town
appeared to have been the victim of an earthquake.