"Hullo, sonny, what are you on?"
"My novel," he said, and showed me the beginning of chapter XII.
A young man came forward, a slim youth with twinkling eyes.
"E. F. O'Neill?"
"A. S. Neill?"
We shook hands, and then he began to talk. I wanted to tell him that
his school was a pure delight, but I couldn't get a word in edgeways.
If anything, he was over-explanatory, but I pardoned him, for I
realised that the poor man's life must be spent in explaining himself
to unbelievers. I disliked his tacit classing of me with the infidel,
and I indignantly took the side of the infidel and asked him questions.
Then he gave me of his best.
He is a great man. I don't think he has any theoretical knowledge, and
I believe that anyone could trip him up over Freud or Jung, Montessori
or Froebel, Dewey or Homer Lane; but the man seems to know it all by
instinct or intuition. To him creation is everything. I was half
afraid that he might have the typical crank's belief in imposing his
taste on the pupils, and I mentioned my doubt.
"No," he said, "we have a gramophone with fox-trots, ragtimes,
Beethoven and Melba, and the children nearly always choose the best
records."
Love of beauty is a real thing in this school. The playground is full
of bonny corners with flowers and bushes. The school writing books are
bound in artistic wallpaper by the children, and hand-made frames
enclose reproductions of good pictures on the walls.
I saw no corporate teaching, and I should have asked O'Neill if he had
any. If he hasn't I think he is wrong, for the other way--the
learn-by-doing individual way--starves the group spirit. The
class-teaching system has many faults, and O'Neill seems to have
abolished spoon-feeding, but the class has one merit--it is a crowd.
Each child measures himself against the others, not necessarily in
competition. Perhaps it is the psychological effect of having an
audience that I am trying to praise. Yes, that is it: the
individual-work way is like a rehearsal of a play to empty seats; the
class-way is like a performance before a crowded house. It is a
projection of one's ego outward.
"This method," said O'Neill, "may be out-of-date in a month."
I think highly of him for these words alone. He has no fixed beliefs
about methods of study; he himself learns by doing, and to-morrow will
be cheerfully willing to scrap the method he is using to-day. If the
ideal teacher is the man who is always learning, then O'Neill comes
pretty near that ideal. I wish that every teacher in Britain could see
his school.
The big problem for the heretical teacher is the problem of order, or
rather of disorder. When a child is free from authority, he usually
leaves his path untidy; he leaves his chisels on the bench or the
ground; he strews the floor with papers; he throws his books all over
the room. Now O'Neill's school was not untidy, and I marvelled.
"Oh, the kiddies look after that," he explained. "They have voluntary
workers among themselves who do all that, and if a child does not do
his job, the others naturally complain: 'Why did you take it on if you
aren't going to do it properly?'"
But somehow I am not convinced; I want to know more about this
business. To find so highly developed a social sense in small children
runs dead against all my experience. I must write to O'Neill for
further information.
* * * * *
On re-reading the pages of this book I feel like throwing it on the
fire. I find myself disagreeing with the statements I made a few weeks
ago. When I began to write it I was a more or less complete Freudian,
and in an airy fashion I explained away my actions. Why should pale
blue be my favourite colour? I asked myself this when I painted my
cycle blue, and I found a ready answer in a reminiscence . . . my first
sweetheart wore a blue tam-o'-shanter. This is called the "nothing
but" psychology. Do I dream of a train? Quite simple! It is merely
"nothing but" a sexual symbol!
Life is too complex for a "nothing but" psychology. Last night a girl
told me a sexual dream she had had, but when she gave her associations
we found that the deep meaning of the dream had nothing to do with sex.
Freud says that about every dream is the mark of the beast, but then I
think he believes in original sin.
I have been thinking a lot recently about the psychology of flogging.
It is generally stated that the flogger is a sexual pervert, a Sadist,
and undoubtedly there are pathological cases where men find sexual
gratification in inflicting or in watching the infliction of pain. In
the pathological case the gratification is conscious, but I believe
that many respectable parents and teachers find an unconscious
gratification. It is absurd to say to a man like Macdonald: "Your
punishing is 'nothing but' Sadism." Yet I think that a little test
might decide the matter. If the accused flogger is shocked or
indignant at the idea I should be inclined to think that the accusation
was a just one.
If I say to Simpson: "Excuse my mentioning it, old man, but I don't
think you love your wife," he will laugh heartily, for he has been
married for a month only, and is still very much in love. His laugh
shows that his love is real; my rude remark touches no chord in his
unconscious. But suppose I make a similar remark to Smith, who has
been very much married for ten years! He will hit me in the eye,
thereby betraying the fact that my remark touched what his unconscious
knows to be true. His blow is physically directed to me, but
psychically he is hitting to defend his conscious from his unconscious.
Hence if a flogger is angry when I accuse him of being a Sadist, I
guess that he is a Sadist.