BOOKS ON EDUCATION:--
_The Play Way_, by Caldwell Cook.
_The Path to Freedom in the School_, by Norman MacMunn.
_What Is and What Might Be_, by Edmond Holmes.
Montessori's three volumes.
_An Adventure in Education_, by J. H. Simpson.
BOOKS ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHOLOGY:
Freud's _Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology
of Everyday Life, Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory_.
Jung's _Psychology of the Unconscious, Studies
in Word Association, Analytical Psychology_.
Frink's _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_.
Maurice Nicoll's _Dream Psychology_.
Morton Prince's _The Unconscious_.
Pfister's _The Psycho-analytic Method_.
Ernest Jones' _Psycho-analysis_.
Ferenczi's _Contributions to Psycho-analysis_.
Wilfred Lay's _The Child's Unconscious Mind_.
Moll's _The Sexual Life of the Child_.
Adler's _The Neurotic Constitution_.
Bernard Hart's _The Psychology of Insanity_.
CROWD PSYCHOLOGY:--
_The Crowd in Peace and War_, Martin Conway.
_Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_, Trotter.
_The Crowd_, Gustave le Bon.
GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY:--
_Psychology and Everyday Life_, Swift.
_Textbook of Psychology_, James.
_The Boy and His Gang_, Puffer.
_Mental Conflicts and Misconduct_, Healy.
_The Individual Delinquent_, Healy.
_Rational Sex Ethics_, Robie.
_Social Psychology_, McDougall.
_The Play of Man_, Groos.
"That's too much for me," said Duncan. "I couldn't afford a quarter of
these books. What books would you recommend if you had to choose half a
dozen for a hard-up dominie?"
I thought for a little, and then I replied: "Bernard Hart's _The
Psychology of Insanity_, two bob; Frink's _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_,
a first-rate book on analysis, a guinea; _The Crowd in Peace and War_, by
Sir Martin Conway, eight and six; Healy's _Mental Conflicts and
Misconduct_, ten and six; and Wilfred Lay's _The Child's Unconscious
Mind_, ten and six."
"But," cried Duncan, "I don't want to set up an asylum! What's the good
of books on insanity and morbid fears to a teacher?"
I explained that the titles of Hart's and Frink's books were misleading,
although the difference between the mind of the lunatic and the mind of
the average man is merely one of degree. Bernard Hart shows that the
lunatic has the same faults as we have, only more so. Frink's book is
badly named; it is an excellent work on mind mechanisms. Any teacher who
reads these six books with understanding will never again use a strap on
a pupil. If I were Education Minister, I should present every school in
Britain with a copy of each of the six.
Macdonald asked if I had any books on hypnotism and suggestion.
"No," I said, "but I have read them through a library. I don't believe
in either because they do not touch root causes. We are all suffering
from bottled up infantile emotion, and analysis goes to the root of the
matter; it makes what is unconscious conscious, and enables the patient
to re-educate himself, to use the old repressed emotion up in his daily
life. Analysis means release. Suggestion does not touch the root
repressed emotion, and I fancy that after suggestion the symptom merely
changes. A man has a phobia of cats. By suggestion I can dispel his
fear of cats, but the fear is transferred to something else, and he then
has an exaggerated fear of catching tuberculosis. Unless the ancient
cause becomes conscious it is not released.
"We see suggestion working in our schools daily. By suggestion parents
and teachers force the child to inhibit his gross sexual wishes, and in a
short time the child accepts the ideals of his masters. At first he
inhibits a desire because father thinks it naughty; later he inhibits it
because he himself thinks it naughty. But the gross sexual wish lives on
in the unconscious . . . hence the neurosis, hence the respectable old
men who are imprisoned for showing gross pictures to children, hence the
frequent indecent assaults on children. All these unfortunate people are
suffering from the results of early suggestion--the suggestion that sex
is sin. That primitive sex impulses can be sublimated I admit, but the
teacher's job is not to preach that sex activities are evil; his job is
to help the child to use up his primitive sex energy in creative work."
* * * * *
What is education's chief aim? The reply generally given is that
education's aim is to help a child to live its life fully. Yet it seems
to me that that reply does not go far enough; I think that the aim should
be to help a child to live its cosmic life fully, to live for others.
Every human is egocentric, selfish. No human ever rises above
selfishness, only there are degrees of selfishness. I buy a motor-cycle
because I am selfish; and you found a hospital for orphans because you
are selfish. It is my pleasure to have a Sunbeam; it is yours to help
the poor. Your selfishness has become altruism; that is, in pleasing
yourself you have managed to please others. The aim in education is not
to abolish selfishness; it is to educe the selfishness that is
altruistic. Hence it may be said that education's chief aim is to teach
one how to love. No, that won't do; no one can teach another how to
love; the teacher's job is to evoke love. This he can do only by loving.
If I hate my pupils I evoke hate from them; if I love them I evoke love
from them in return.
Is it possible to love your neighbour as yourself? It is when you know
yourself. You hate in others what you hate in yourself, and you love in
others what is lovable in yourself. So that in loving your neighbour you
are loving yourself.
If, then, the teacher's first aim is to evoke the love of his pupils, he
must know himself, and knowing must love himself. Every day pupils are
suffering because of the teacher's hatred of himself.
Dominie Brown rises in the morning surly and unhappy. He complains about
the bacon and eggs at breakfast . . . no, the red herring; dominies
cannot afford bacon and eggs . . . and Mrs. Brown makes unpleasant
remarks. Brown crosses the road to school with thunder on his face, and
the children shiver in terror all morning.
If Brown could sit down calmly to think out his bad mood, he would
realise that he was punishing the children because he was worsted in his
word battle with his wife. And _he would be quite wrong_. The truth
would be that he was punishing the children because he was at war with
himself. His early morning ugly mood betrayed a mental conflict. Hating
himself, he hated his wife; his hate evoked her hate . . . and thus the
circle was completed.
We might trace all the futilities, all the stupidities of mankind, all
the wars and crimes and injustices to man's ignorance of self. To know
all is to forgive all. Christ condemned no one because he was at peace
with himself. Yet, I suddenly remember that He whipped the
money-changers out of the Temple. This incident is comforting, for it
shows that the most lovable man who ever lived betrayed one human frailty
on one occasion at least. But now I am preaching again.
* * * * *
I went to see Charlie Chaplin in "Shoulder Arms" last night. Charlie is
an artist of high quality; for once I think as the crowd thinks. But I
leave the crowd when it comes to appreciating the "moving human dramas"
in five parts.
The cinema must be reckoned with in any educational scheme. One may
learn more about crowd psychology from attendance at cinemas than from
reading books on crowd psychology. The cinema is popular because it
encourages day-dreaming or phantasy. There are two kinds of thinking,
reality thinking and phantasy or day-dreaming. Phantasying is the easier
of the two; I can sit for hours building castles in Spain, and I never
grow tired; but if I have to sit down and think out the Theory of
Quadratics I soon become weary. In reality thinking the intellect is
active, but in day-dreaming emotion is in control. Day-dreaming gets
nowhere; the asylums are full of day-dreamers who spend their hours
constructing beautiful phantasies. In childhood phantasy is supreme.
Bobby turns the nursery into a jungle; the sofa is a tiger, the chairs
are lions, the rocking-horse is an elephant. It is all real to him. And
in later years Bobby often returns to his childish phantasying. We all
do. What young lover has not phantasied a burning mansion where his lady
love is imprisoned? Have we not all clambered up the water pipes and
rescued her from the flames?
The world of the theatre is a phantasy world. With the rising of the
curtain we forget our outside life; we live the part of the hero or the
heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of
spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street.
Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema
is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a
regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the
wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the
wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end. Life for
most of us means trials and sorrows and conflicts, and we long to return
to the nursery phase where life was what we wished it to be. The cinema
and the public-house are the most convenient doors by which we can
regress.
The "moving drama" is the other side of the industrial picture. Life for
the masses means dirt and disease, ugly factories, sordid homes, mean
streets. The moving drama takes the masses away from grim reality; they
see beautifully gowned women in drawing-rooms; they see the King
reviewing his regiments; they see wild and free cowboys chasing Red
Indians. For two hours they live . . . and then they go out again into
their world of mere existence. And it is all wrong, tragically wrong.
The cinema craze means that life is too ugly to face; it means that the
masses are fleeing from reality and to flee from reality is fatal.
Day-dreams are laudable only when they come true. If the masses
day-dreamed of an economic Utopia and forthwith set about building a New
Jerusalem, their phantasies would become realities; but the moving human
drama never leads to building; it is raw whisky swallowed to bring
oblivion. The moving human drama will live and flourish so long as
mankind tolerates the slavery of industrialism. It is a powerful weapon
for capitalism; like the church and the public-house, it keeps the
wage-slaves quiet.
* * * * *
To-night the conversation in Dauvit's shop turned to the subject of
honours.
"They tell me," said Jake Tosh, "that you can buy a knighthood, or a
peerage for that matter."
"Yea, man!" said Willie Simpson, the joiner and undertaker from
Tillymains.
"So there's no muckle chance o' you getting ane, Willie," said Dauvit.
The joiner smoked thoughtfully for a while.
"Na, Dauvit," he said, "there's little chance o' an undertaker gettin' a
title. You would think na that the man that coffined the likes o' Lloyd
George wud get a knighthood."
Dauvit cackled.
"Honours are sold, as Jake says; they are never given for public
services."
I am afraid the joke was lost on most of the assembly. Jake failed to
see it. It is said that Jake has been known to laugh at a joke only
once, and that was when the earth gave way beneath the minister's feet
when he was conducting a service at a grave-side, and he fell into the
open grave.
"Undertakin'," continued the joiner, "is a verra queer trade."
Jake shivered.
"I dinna ken how ye can do it," he said; "man, it wud gie me the
scunners."
"Man, ye soon get accustomed to it," said the joiner. "Of course, it has
its limitations; ye canna verra weel advertise in the front page o' _The
Daily Mail_, but, man, it's what ye micht call a safe trade."
"How safe?" I asked.
"Oh, ye never need to worry aboot yer custom; it's aye there. Noo in
other lines the laws o' supply and demand are tricky. I mind a gey
puckle years syne there was a craze for walkin'-sticks wi' ebony handles.
Weel, I went doon to Dundee and bocht ten pund worth o' ebony, and afore
the wood was delivered the fashion had changed, and the men were all
buyin' cheese-cutter bonnets, so here was I left wi' ten pund worth o'
ebony on my hands . . . and if I hadna sold it to Davie Lamb the
cabinet-maker for thirteen pund I micht ha' lost the money. Noo, in my
trade there's no sudden change o' fashion as ye micht say; the demand is
what ye micht call constant, and that's what makes me say it is a safe
trade."
Dauvit winked to me surreptitiously.
"Noo, joiner," he said, "will ye tell me wan thing? I want to ken the
inner workin's o' an undertakker's mind. When somebody is verra ill,
what's your attitude? I mean to say, do ye sort o' look on the illness
wi' hope or what? When ye see a fine set-up man on the road, do ye look
at him wi' a professional eye and say to yersell: 'Sax feet by twa; a
bonny corp!'?"
"I'm no so bad as that, Dauvit," he laughed, "though I dinna mind sayin'
that I've sometimes been a wee bit disappointed when somebody got better.
On the other hand, when big Tamson was badly, I keepit prayin' that he
wud get better."
"An unbusinesslike thing to do," I laughed.
"Aweel," said the joiner, "big Tamson weighed aboot saxteen stone, and at
the time I hadna the wood."
"I dinna like to hear aboot things like that," said Jake Tosh nervously;
"things like that give me the creeps, and besides it's no a proper way to
speak."
Dauvit turned to me.
"Man, dominie, it's a queer thing, but the more religious a man is the
less he likes to hear aboot death. Jake here is an elder o' the auld
kirk; he's on the straight and narrow path; he's going straight to heaven
when he dees . . . and I never saw onybody so feared o' death as Jake is.
How wud ye explain that?"
"I think," I replied, "that it is due to the fact that Jake has been
brought up in the fear of the Lord."
"Exactly," nodded Dauvit. "It's my belief that most religious fowk are
religious not becos they want specially to play harps in the next world,
but becos they dinna want to be roasted."
Dauvit's philosophy comes pretty near that of Edmond Holmes. In _What Is
and What Might Be_ Holmes argues that our education system is founded on
the Old Testament. Man is a sinner, prone to evil; a stern angry God
chastises him when he transgresses. Education treats children as
sinners; it punishes the wrongdoer. I believe Holmes is right, only he
does not trace back education far enough. The God of the Old Testament
was a man-made God (Jung says that man makes his God in his own image;
his God is his ego-ideal).
The genesis of education is not the God of the Old Testament; it is the
unconscious wish of the primitive men who invented that God. The
religion of the Old Testament is a father complex religion; God is the
hated and feared father, the authority who punishes, the provider of food
and clothing, the maker of laws. Authority always makes the governed
inferior and dependent; the man with a father complex cannot stand alone;
he must always flee to his father or father substitute when he meets a
difficulty. Thus does the Christian act; he seeks the Father; he places
his burden on the Lord; he avoids responsibility. The Hebraic religion
and our modern education both demand that the individual shall avoid
responsibility; the good Christian and the good schoolboy must obey the
Law. I think that if the world is to be free the church and the school
must aim at breaking the power of the Father.
* * * * *
"Look here, Mac," I said last night, "I am going to pay you for my board."
Mac protested vigorously.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
I went to the kitchen and made the offer to his wife, and she also
protested.
This morning I cycled to Dundee and bought a knife-cleaner and a vacuum
cleaner. They arrived to-night, and Mrs. Mac gave a gasp of delight.
Mac tried to frown, but he could not manage it. Both protested against
what they called my idiotic kindness, but their protests were
half-hearted.
It is a strange thing that money itself is considered a sordid thing.
Why should Mac refuse five pounds with anger, and accept a ten pound gift
with pleasure? If anyone wants to study the psychological meaning of
money I recommend Chapter XL. in Dr. Ernest Jones' _Psycho-analysis_. In
the unconscious, at any rate, money is assuredly "filthy lucre."
* * * * *
A teacher should know very little about the subject he professes to
teach. In my London school I succeeded a line of excellent teachers of
drawing. I had not been long in the school when Di, aged 15, looked over
my shoulder one day and said: "Rotten! You can't draw for nuts!"
A week later Malcolm looked at a water colour of mine.
"You've got a horrible sense of colour," he said brightly.
Then I began to wonder why everyone in school was much more keen on
drawing and painting than they had ever been in the days of the skilled
teachers. The conclusion I came to was that my bad drawing encouraged
the children. I remembered the beautiful copy-book headlines of my
boyhood, and I recalled the hopelessness of ever reaching the standard
set by the lithographers. No child should have perfection put before
him. The teacher should never try to teach; he should work alongside the
children; he should be a co-worker, not a model.
Most teachers set themselves on a pedestal. They think that they lose
dignity if they are not able to answer every question that a child puts
to them. One result is that the child develops a dangerous inferiority
complex. I knew one boy who was a duffer at mathematics. His weakness
was due to the inferiority he felt when he saw the learned mathematical
master juggle with figures as easily as a conjurer juggles with billiard
balls. The little chap lost all hope, and when he worked problems he
worked solely to escape punishment.
The difficulty is that if a teacher works at a subject year after year he
is bound to become an expert. The only remedy I can think of is to make
each teacher take up a new subject at the beginning of every school year.
By the time that he had been master of Mathematics, History, Drawing,
English, French, German, Latin, Geography, Chemistry, Physics,
Psychology, Physiology, Eurhythmics, Music, Woodwork, it would be time to
retire . . . with a pension or a psychosis. The late Sir William Osier
said that a man was too old at forty; my experience leads me to conclude
that many a teacher is too old at twenty.
I sometimes think that every man has a certain definite psychic age fixed
for him by the Almighty before he is born. I know a man of seventy who
is psychically five years old, and he will never grow older. I know a
boy of ten who is psychically sixty years old, and he will never grow
younger.
Psycho-analysis is doing a lot of good, but I fear that it may do a lot
of harm, for, one fine day Professor Freud or Dr. Jung will get hold of
Peter Pan, take him by the back of the neck, and say: "My lad, you've got
a fixation somewhere; you are the super-regression-to-the-infantile
specimen; you've got to be analysed." And then Peter will grow up and
read _The Daily News_ and own an allotment and a season ticket.
When we know all about psychology, the world will be rather dull. The
Freudians have said that the play of _Hamlet_ is the result of
Shakespeare's Oedipus Complex. If Shakespeare had not had an unconscious
hatred of his father, _Hamlet_ would never have been written. In other
words, if Bacon had discovered the psychology of the unconscious,
Shakespeare might have been analysed and forthwith might have gone in for
keeping bees instead of writing plays.
It is the neurotic who leads the world; he is a rebel and he is an
idealist. Yet when you analyse him you find what a poor devil he is.
His noble crusade against vivisection is due to the abnormal strain of
cruelty he is repressing in himself; his passion for Socialism comes from
his infant fear of and rebellion against his father. The ardent
suffragette who smashes windows in a just cause is merely doing so
because the vote is a symbol of freedom from an arrogant husband.
What I want to know is this: In the year 5000, when everyone is free from
repressions and suppressions, will there be any rebels to spur humanity
on? But then if humanity is free from unconscious urges there will be no
need for rebels, for there will be no crime or prison or wars or
politicians. Every man will be a superman.
I firmly believe that Freud's discovery will have a greater influence on
the evolution of humanity than any discovery of the last ten centuries.
Freud has begun the road that leads to superman, and, although Jung and
Adler and others have begun to lead sideroads off the main track, the
sideroads are all leading forward. Theirs is a great message of hope.
And yet, nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ gave the world a New
Psychology . . . and none of us have tried to apply it to our souls.