E-text prepared by Al Haines
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD
by
VICTOR GOLLANCZ and DAVID SOMERVELL
Authors of "Political Education in a Public School"
London
Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
1919
TO
THE SCHOOL
WHICH BOTH WE
AND THOSE WHO DIFFERED FROM US
SOUGHT TO SERVE
PREFACE
In December, 1917, the present writers wrote a little book entitled
"Political Education in a Public School," in which they put forward
their views as to what the aims and methods of a modern liberal
education should be. They also described certain experiments which
they had been permitted to make in one of our old English Public
Schools, experiments which both illustrated the authors' principles and
tested their value. In July, 1918, that book was published.
But in the intervening seven months several things had happened. On
the one hand, "Political Education" had produced further striking
evidence of its power over boys' intellects and characters, evidence
altogether more striking than anything that had occurred up to the time
of writing the book. On the other hand, the movement in the full tide
of its success ran upon rocks and has been, for the time being at any
rate, utterly and completely destroyed. The authors have left the
school in which their experiments were made.
When the book was published, its reviewers in the press raised one by
one a series of problems which we had already encountered in a
practical shape in the course of our work, problems hardly touched on,
however, in our book, which was devoted to exposition rather than
argument. Such problems were: How far is political propaganda
inseparable from political education, and in what respects is such
propaganda desirable or undesirable? How can political differences
among the masters themselves be made to play a helpful rather than an
injurious part? Does the introduction of politics into the curriculum
open a way, as the very able reviewer in _The Westminster Gazette_
suggested, for Prussianism in its most insidious form, the conscription
of educated opinion? Are the old Public Schools the best medium for
political education, or should the new wine be poured into new bottles?
and lastly--for educational "subjects" are or should be but aspects of
a single whole--what of political education in relation to morality,
and to religion?
The present volume, therefore, essays a twofold task. The first two
chapters briefly recapitulate and continue the history of our work down
to its abrupt end. The latter chapters deal with such questions as
those mentioned above. One feature of the earlier volume survives in
its successor. The Appendix to that volume contained a selection of
articles written by boys for our political paper, _The School
Observer_. As an Appendix to this volume we print a few more articles
by boys whose work did not then appear. We are under no delusions as
to there being anything very extraordinary about these articles and
those printed in the previous volume. Abler work has been done by
abler boys in various schools at various times. They are interesting
as the combined effort of a group rather than as the work of
individuals. We reproduce them as the only concrete evidence available
of the character of one aspect of our experiment.
In the former volume we suppressed the name of the school out of
deference to the wishes of the Head Master, and though our own judgment
was against the concealment as a wholly superfluous piece of
mystification, we continue to respect his wishes.
One word of apology is needed for the use to which we have put the
utterances of our reviewers. The reviews revealed the interesting and
important fact that thoughtful people really felt strongly, one way or
the other, on the subject of political education. They constitute a
symposium of conflicting judgments upon an educational problem of which
they one and all recognize the importance, and as such their main
features are worth preserving.
Having said this much about the reviews it is necessary to add a word
more. The quotations we have chosen are, quite naturally, very largely
critical, and as such give no idea of the very warm welcome the general
policy of the book received. Not one in five among the reviewers was
hostile. One of them, however, the _Church Times_ reviewer, was
virulently hostile, and appeared to us not merely to dislike our
educational policy, which he had every right to do, but to blaspheme
against the very idea of a liberal education. As we have quoted from
no other "Church" paper, we should like to remark here that a number of
other such papers, representing various schools of religious thought,
gave the book a generous welcome.
Our experiments perished in the dark days of last spring. Within only
a month or two came the turn of the tide. It is bitter to reflect
that, could they but have survived until victory and peace brought a
return of political sanity, they might have weathered the storm and
conciliated some of their bitterest enemies, and reached safety.
Possibly, though gone, they have left their mark.
Meanwhile pneumonia has carried off, in the prime of early manhood,
their staunchest friend among our colleagues. He was not one who took
any but a very small part in the actual conduct of the experiments. He
once lectured to _The Politics Class_ on "Liberalism." But he had a
genius for sympathy, and always, when difficulties arose, it was to him
that we turned, because he had the gift of making us feel that it was
still worth while to persevere. Had we been wiser, he could perhaps
have served us still further by bringing us into touch with some of
those who differed from us, and helping to a mutual understanding. For
everyone was his friend. The dedication of this book had already been
chosen before he died, and we are unwilling to alter it, but perhaps we
may also venture to offer it as an unworthy tribute to the memory of
Alan Gorringe.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
PREFACE
I. THE RISE
II. THE COLLAPSE
III. PROPAGANDA
IV. CONTROVERSY
V. CAPTURE BY THE STATE
VI. THE MAKING OF "POLITICIANS"
VII. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND FREAK SCHOOLS
VIII. MORALITY
IX. RELIGION
X. CURRICULUM
XI. THE YOUNG GENERATION AND THE OLD
APPENDIX
"That such an experiment should have been permitted in one of the great
public (English) schools is a sign of the greatest promise for the
future."--_Aberdeen Free Press_.
"Of all the objectionable and inept proposals for reforming the
education of our public schools we must award the palm to the scheme of
teaching boys politics."--_Saturday Review_.
"We do not believe the authors have delivered all their
message."--_Scottish Educational Journal_.
THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD
CHAPTER I
THE RISE
The school in which political education was tried for a space of
something under two years is in no way a very remarkable school. It
has its sixteenth-century founder, "of pious memory," and its "second
founder," of memory almost more pious, in early Victorian days. That
second founder made the school famous as a centre of stalwart
evangelicalism. More recently its fame has been won chiefly in the
production of first-class cricketers. Until the early years of the
present century the school had also, we are told, a kind of inverted
fame as one of the "stupidest" of the public schools, as a dumping
ground for young hopefuls who could not pass entrance examinations
elsewhere. From that reputation, however, it had struggled fairly
successfully to free itself.
The present writers started with the common assumption that the
"Classical" scheme of a liberal education had long broken down in
practice, and survived only as feudalism survived in eighteenth-century
France, because sufficient energy had not yet generated to create a new
scheme to replace it. In part it had already disappeared and given
place to the patchwork innovations of the earnest but painfully
cautious and conservative reformers who have ruled the schools since
the days of Dr. Arnold.[1] The classical system had become the
classical compromise, a clipped and truncated classics, fighting a
losing battle for air space amidst a crowd of inadequately provided
"new subjects"--history, literature, science, modern languages. In
some ways the last state was worse than the first. For the first state
had at least been based upon a great tradition and an ordered
philosophy of life, but in the last state there was no tradition, no
ordered philosophy; only a jumble and a scramble, and a passing of
examinations. Such a system or lack of system must fall a prey sooner
or later to some educational movement based on a coherent and
defensible doctrine.
Now, as it chances, such a movement is already in the field; we may
call it the "Cult of Efficiency." It proclaims a great many truths
about the necessity of increasing productivity, about the connection
between education and the world of business, and generally speaking
points to the achievements of Germany for our envious imitation; it
proclaims the commercial utility of Spanish and Russian, and ranges in
its advocacy from advanced chemistry to shorthand and book-keeping.
Much that writers on these lines have to urge against the present
system is perfectly sound and reasonable. Many of their claims will
have to be recognised in the educational system of the future. But the
admission of their claim as a whole, of the claim of "efficiency" to be
the true and rightful heir of the old classical education, would be, to
speak without exaggeration, the greatest disaster that could possibly
befall this country.
What was wanted then was a conception of education at once "liberal"
and "modern," and such the writers found in "politics," using that word
in its widest Platonic sense. The classical education set out to study
the ancient world, and in the case of most of its pupils achieved
little more than the dry elements of two dead languages. The study of
the modern world has so far usually meant no more than the study of how
to make a little money out of it; the trail of commercialism has been
drawn over our Modern Sides. Why should not the modern world be
studied in the same noble and disinterested spirit as that in which the
best of the old teachers studied the world of Greece and Rome? It is
surely worthy of such study. Only perhaps by such study in our schools
can its wounds be healed. The central subject of a liberal education
should be "To-day," the great difficulties amongst which we are all
groping, the great problems awaiting solution, the great movements,
capitalism and socialism, imperialism and internationalism, freedom and
authority, that are battling for mastery or negotiating for a workable
compromise. The value of the classics lies wholly in the contribution
that classical art, philosophy, and history can make to the enrichment
of our minds for the study of our own problems. The value of modern
history lies in the inspiration of its great men, and the warning of
its tragic experiences. The value of "Divinity" is only found when we
face the fundamental question, Are we to apply Christianity in our
political and economic relations to-day, or are we not? But over and
above this reorientation of subjects already scheduled in the orthodox
time-table, there is the new subject within which all these (except
Divinity, which is fundamental) must be regarded as merely
contributory, and that subject is "politics," the treatment, elementary
yet thorough, vigorous yet many sided, of the great questions of the
day, with all the diverse lines of thought along which each can be
approached. Here the fundamental "text-book" is the newspaper.
Growing up in such a world as this of 1918, how can it be anything but
sheer monasticism to divert the main part of a boy's intellectual
energies away from this subject to anything else? Our educational
"America is here or nowhere."
With this principle in view, and after various tentative experiments,
we obtained permission to found the _Politics Class_ described in our
previous book. Suffice it to say here that the class was a voluntary
body of some thirty or forty senior boys, that met once a week on a
half-holiday evening to hear informal lectures from one or other of us,
and occasionally from one or other of our colleagues, on questions of
the day. Sometimes the topic was purely general--"Competition and
Co-operation," "The Spirit of the Reformer," or the like. Sometimes a
historical topic was traced rapidly from its beginnings down to a
crisis of last week's newspaper, the discourse ending on the brink of
the future with a note of interrogation; such were brief courses of
lectures on "The Irish Question," and "The Russian Revolution." A
third type were those that confined themselves to an analysis of a
strictly contemporary situation, such as the lectures on the various
"peace terms" speeches that led up to the Versailles declaration of
February, 1918. No attempt was made to create any artificial
popularity for the class. The scene was the ordinary bleak class-room
with all its sad suggestiveness. Ordinary notes were taken in ordinary
note-books. No one, in fact, can have come from any motive but a
genuine desire to know what was deemed worth knowing.
Parallel with the foundation of the _Politics Class_ had come a
remodelling of the sixth form time-table. Indeed, not modern politics
but Greek philosophy had been the first subject to stir that almost
religious passion for a real understanding of things, without which
knowledge is in the old man mere pedantry and in the young man mere
grist for the examination mill. In the present educational chaos,
school sixth forms are quite bewilderingly fissiparous. Every one is a
"specialist" of some sort or other; specialism means "private work,"
and if private work enables the gifted few to escape into
self-education from the hampering attentions of the form master, it
gives the rest a terrible training in the habits of time-wasting and
evasion. Yet so long as sixth form orthodoxy is classical scholarship
work, the majority will rightly be found among the heretics, and that
is the "specialists." The remodelled sixth form time-table made at
least a move towards the recognition of the principle that, over and
above specialisms, there were certain subjects that were the common
concern of all educated men. A heterogeneous body drawn from all
corners of the school time-table met together for Modern History, for
Outlines of World History, and for General Principles of Science, and
(with some regrettable abstentions) for Political Science and
Economics. Some day it will appear ridiculous that these last subjects
should not have been deemed a necessity for all the "specialists" alike.
The real test of an educational system is not what the masters do for
the boys, but what the boys do for themselves, and in this matter only
one large undertaking fell within the scope of our previous book,
namely the paper, _The School Observer_, therein described and largely
quoted. The idea of this paper, a political journal on the lines of a
high-class weekly, published twice a term, with "Notes on Current
Events," political "leaders," literary and philosophic "middles," a
poem or so, and correspondence all complete--this laughably magnificant
idea came entirely from a little group of boys, and one at any rate of
the present writers was at first frankly sceptical. Well,--enthusiasm
has a way of beating scepticism, at any rate when youth is thrown into
the scale. We were quickly harnessed to our task as members of the
editorial committee. Our literary contributions were confined to a
part of the "Notes on Current Events," the portion of the paper that
naturally attracted least outside notice, and was rarely singled out
for praise. It is true that a discerning schoolmaster from another
school remarked that these notes displayed "restrained strength even
more remarkable in boys than the qualities of the other parts of the
paper." I am ashamed to say we smiled and held our peace.
Five of the six issues of the paper appeared, and we had already
contracted with our advertisers for a second volume when the crash
came. In general, of course, the paper was much less important than
the _Politics Class_. The class was a necessity to political
education; the paper was a luxury. But it is a man's luxuries that
give the clue to his character, and it was the very fact that the paper
was always of the nature of a _jeu d'esprit_, a glorious game, a kind
of Fleet Street doll's-house affair, that gave a sense of gay adventure
to the pursuit of politics. When the paper had been suppressed, a boy
who had never contributed to it said to me, "What a shame!" and he
added very pensively, "It was all so extraordinarily romantic!"
But so far the movement had only touched the sixth form, and in a minor
degree such lower forms as the writers happened to meet in the course
of their professional duties. That was plainly not enough. If boys
are learning from their masters something that they really value, their
natures are so essentially communicative and sociable that they will be
eager to pass it on to their friends. This may seem a paradox, but it
is true enough. If of two boys in constant contact, A is learning
algebra and B is not, and if A refrains from talking algebra to B, one
of two causes must be the explanation of A's reticence. Either he does
not care about B or else he does not care about algebra, and since by
hypothesis he cares about B, we can only assume that he does not care
about algebra. A simple experiment will verify our conclusion. Drop
an indiscretion about a colleague during the algebra lesson, and B, C,
D and all the rest of them to a long way beyond Z will know all about
it before sunset. A, B, C, and D are interested in masters' opinions
of each other.
Now we would not claim for a moment that all educational subjects
should be required to pass this test of "interest," and rejected if
they do not.[2] That would be grotesque. But it seems to us that the
central subject of a liberal education, that subject to which all
others cohere and in relation to which all others are justified, ought
to make some such appeal to enthusiasm. Unless education produces
enthusiasm for something, there is no education, and that is why it has
so often been maintained that the real education of Public Schools is
in the playing fields, because there alone, for most boys, enthusiasm
is generated, if it is generated at all. (For most, one may remark in
passing, it is not generated even there. The notion that the average
boy is an enthusiast for cricket is as wide of the mark as would be the
idea that he was an enthusiast for Greek, Natural Science, or the
Church of England.)
Judged by this test of infectious enthusiasm, political education was
to produce in the early months of 1918, evidence of its educational
worth such as we never dreamt of, and here again the pioneer was not
ourselves but a boy, and that boy not one of the group that had started
the paper. This boy, who had recently become head of his House,
conceived the idea that politics could become the medium of the same
spirit of joyous and unforced co-operation as is traditionally (and
sometimes actually) associated with athletics. His idea of a school
house was of a vigorous and jolly community, living together on terms
of friendly equality such as reduced fagging and the oligarchial
"prefect system" to a minimum, and uniting in a real effort to keep
abreast with the great world outside by means of a co-operative study
of politics and the Press. The idea will seem mere foolishness and an
impossibility to many of those who did not see it actually at work. At
the best it will seem the kind of thing we may have read of in books
about "freak schools," where so much loss has obviously to be set
against whatever is gained. In this case, not only the idea, but all
the practical details came from the boy himself and the little band of
enthusiasts that gathered round him. Indeed, one feels a sense of
impropriety in describing what was essentially not our work, but his.
However, it was the fine flower of political education, and as such may
fitly close this chapter. "Houses," after all, and not "forms," are
the natural social units that compose a public school, and a scheme of
education that becomes in the best sense popular may, indeed must, take
its rise in the classroom, but will find its freest development in the
life of house reading-room and house study.
The chief among many "stunts," as they were called, was a political
society. The twenty-five members of this society, rather over half the
house, undertook to read between them nearly all the more important
newspapers, including one or two French papers. On Sunday the society
sat in conclave, the three or four leading events of the week were
taken each in turn, and the individual or group responsible for each
newspaper put forward the view of the event in question taken by his
own particular organ. These views were compared and debated, and
ultimately a brief synopsis was drawn up, consisting of the event
itself, with the chief typical utterances of the press on the subject
set out underneath, for purposes of comparison and contrast. These
were typed and posted on a board as "news of the week." Neither of us
ever attended a meeting of this society, and it is obvious, from the
fact that more than half the house joined in, that we are not concerned
here with the activities of a little set of intellectualists. In the
fullest sense in which the word is applicable in a public school, these
political activities were "democratic," and the effect on the "English"
work of some of the boys in middle forms was most remarkable. The
present writer recalls, for instance, a Middle Fifth essay of some
three thousand words on the complex, and in some ways repellent,
subject of "National Guilds." On how many successive nights the rule
against "sitting up" was broken over the composition of this work the
recipient of the essay forebore to inquire.
From this beginning other developments rapidly opened. A modest but
useful idea was a question paper, on which any one who liked could set
down questions that occurred to him in the course of his reading. The
House Library naturally felt the impact of the movement, and a
political section was started in which books about the Greeks and
Mill's "Liberty" stood side by side with the latest essay on
"Reconstruction." But it would be giving an altogether unworthy notion
of the movement if it were suggested that politics alone, in the
narrower sense, marked the limit of these activities. The best modern
plays and poetry began to appear on shelves whence rubbishy novels of a
past generation were removed to make room for them. Nor were older
books neglected. The general drift of interest was inevitably towards
the moderns; but the great poets of the past were also finding their
way in before the end came.
Then, of course, there was a gramophone, with its "popular" and
"classical" repertoires; and before the end came, the "classical" had
so far surpassed the "popular" in popularity that House piano recitals
had begun as well.
Another development was on lines that would have gladdened the heart of
Ruskin and Morris, though I do not know that either of these was
consciously recognised as an influence. A movement arose for
beautifying the studies, which began with pseudo-Japanese lamp-shades,
and moved upward through pretty curtains and tablecloths to framed
"Medici" pictures. Before the end there was hardly a study that had
not its big framed Medici, and often a selection of Medici postcards as
well.
All these things involved, of course, some considerable expenditure;
but the cost was met with an eagerness astonishing to the boys
themselves when they reflected that, a few months before, So-and-so
"had never cared about anything but the tuck shop."
Other houses began to catch the spirit of the thing--a trifle
reluctantly and tentatively, it must be admitted, for there is a good
deal of improper pride about a school house, and imitations have not
quite the glamour of originals. Also the whole movement was by this
time falling under a cloud, and it is now time to give some account of
the collapse.
[1] A brilliant "depreciation" of Arnold and his school has recently
appeared in Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians."
[2] Something more is said on this subject in Chapter X.
CHAPTER II
THE COLLAPSE
"Teachers though they are, Mr. Gollancz and Mr. Somervell do not seem
quite to realise ... what obstacles have to be overcome before the advice
given in their little book is generally taken."--_The Westminster
Gazette_.
Our account of the collapse of our experiment has to be written, as the
reader will easily understand, with a good deal of reserve. "The rise"
was the work of ourselves and our pupils. "The collapse" was the work of
others. It is not a question of "Dora"; it is not a question of the
common law of libel; there are certain older laws of courtesy and
forbearance which we would fain observe, for he who has not learnt to
observe these has hardly made a beginning with political education. So
let it be said to begin with that no one was to blame. Things followed
their predestined course, and every actor in the drama played the part
that was natural and proper to him. It was natural that the movement
should be destroyed by masters as that its success should be made by
boys. If any one is to blame it is ourselves. It was we who chose to
pour new wine into old bottles--the preference for old bottles is
explained in Chapter VI.--and when the custodians of the bottles awoke to
the fact and hastily poured the wine out again, fearing disaster, they
certainly thought they were acting for the best. Needless to say, we
have often discussed the question whether, had the movement run on other
lines, had we been content with rather less to begin with, had we
considered principle rather less and prudence rather more, had we added
the _rôle_ of diplomatist to the _rôle_ of missionary, had we hardened
our hearts against some of the best boys in order to soften the hearts of
some of the more tractable masters--had we done all these things, could
we have postponed or even permanently escaped the collapse? On the
whole, we come to the conclusion that, much as we regret many plain
mistakes of detail, in the main it is best that the bold course was
taken, We rode boldly, and, in the last months, we had to ride for a
fall. An experiment has been made by frontal attack, and with the
slenderest of resources. Now that all that is over, the time has come to
begin the slow and circuitous approach toward political education as a
normal institution.
The material of our experiment was boys and boys alone. Now, at first
sight, a school might seem to consist of boys, but in point of fact boys
are only one element in a complex organisation embracing boys, masters,
head master, bursar, governors, and parents. The boys are only there to
be educated, and education is a matter about which very few people have
any strongly cherished ideas. For very many, public school education is
a species of "doing time," whereby a child of fourteen is taken and
simply kept out of mischief (or, at any rate, kept away from home, where
he would be a nuisance), until at eighteen he is become a man. But the
other constituent parts of the school have serious commercial interests
at stake. For the masters the school is the means of livelihood, and the
livelihood afforded them is in many cases so niggardly that they very
rightly consider that the smallest financial mishap to the school might
plunge them below the line of bare subsistence. From a slightly
different angle, the eyes of the higher officials and the governors are
fixed upon the same point. A head master once remarked to me of one of
his governors, "Old X.'s only idea is that the school should pay five per
cent."
And the parents. It is an article of faith with the present writers that
parents are wiser, more tolerant and more open to ideas on educational
matters, than schoolmasters generally suppose. But parents live at a
distance, and only make themselves felt at moments of crisis, and then
the crisis is one which they probably only very imperfectly understand.
That is all the fault of the schools, for the schools have never made a
serious attempt to take the parents into partnership in the matter of
their sons' education. And here we are back against the root of all
evil, for the reason why this has not been done is that the schools have
not yet seriously faced the fact that a liberal education for the average
boy is an unsolved problem, for the solution of which they need all the
help they can possibly get. Of course this taking of the parent into
partnership would be no easy matter. Readers of that wise and humorous
tale, "The Lanchester Tradition," will remember the comical failure of
the head master's attempt at a "Parents' Committee." Still, all this
being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of
the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the
false image of the traditional parent has been created in the
schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is
always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not
necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto
on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that the
unmusical generally dislike a _new_ tune.
The opposition to political education developed along two lines. One of
them makes this story a microcosm of the world history of the years
1917-1918. The other is something peculiar to the English public
schools, and might have befallen at any period since Dr. Arnold
inaugurated their modern history.
When we began our experiments the "party truce," in the moral as distinct
from the formal sense, still held good. Outside the circles of strict
pacifism--and with pacifism in any but a merely abusive sense we never
had any concern--English people were agreed upon the great questions of
the war. Such differences of opinion as there were concerned only
questions of method and expediency, not questions of principle. The
"gospel" of August, 1914, had not yet become a battle-ground disputed by
fiercely earnest rival sects. We were Liberals in a general sense, but
we differed on a great many topics, and we were genuinely anxious, in the
words of one of our pupils in the school magazine, "not so much to
advocate any one particular remedy of any given problem as to lay before
the class the problems themselves and the principal reforms which have
been or are being suggested, so that thought and criticism may have full
scope for exercise." It would be unfair to ourselves to admit that we
abandoned that ideal, but the events of 1917 brought a new spirit into
the world. On the one hand, the early days of the Russian Revolution and
the demand for a peace "without annexations or indemnities," coupled with
the entry of America and the war speeches of President Wilson, seemed to
revive the flagging idealism of the Allies and lift it to a more
universal and exalted level than ever before. On the other hand, the
publication of the Secret Treaties and the many incomplete revelations
that followed thereon, laid bare the fact that quite another act of
motives were also at work among our leaders; that territorial greed and
diplomatic hypocrisy were enemies to be fought in our own midst as well
as on the battlefield. The issues of the war assumed a grander and a
more terrible aspect. More than ever before perhaps in the history of
the world--and we do not overlook the period of the so-called religious
wars--religion and politics fused. To us, at any rate, the calm
aloofness suggested by the quotation above became impossible. A cry
seemed to have gone forth, "Who is on the Lord's side? Who?" A great
gulf opened up between those who only a year before had believed
themselves to be for the time at any rate in one political camp. On one
side of that gulf we found ourselves, and on the other most of our
colleagues. It was not that we differed from them as to the necessity of
winning the war, and of putting forward every possible military effort
for that end. But everything depends on the uses to which the victory is
put, and the spirit in which it is approached, and there the differences
were profound.
And thus the _Politics Class_ became a school of liberalism.[1] It was
no intolerant liberalism, for intolerant liberalism is not liberalism at
all. From first to last we stood for the examination of all points of
view. We were for reading the views of those we disagreed with, not for
abusing them unheard or burning their books unread. In so far as some of
our pupils carried liberalism to the point of intolerance, they lost the
spirit of the movement they professed to support. There were not many
against whom this charge could be brought. One of our most ardent
democrats, I remember, sent me during the time of his military training a
careful and painstaking examination of Mr. Mallock's latest big book.
The excuse of those that fell into intolerance must be, I suppose, that
they were young, and that they found themselves confronted by an
astonishing spectacle of intolerance in some of their "conservative"
masters.
When this change was taking place, we sought to redress the balance by
taking into partnership in the running of the _Politics Class_ a strongly
Conservative master. Such an arrangement would have been admirable had
the genuine educational spirit been there. It was not. The overture was
a failure and only added to our difficulties. To some men it seemed
better to root out the Liberal masters as "traitors" than to co-operate
with them as teachers.
On the eve of the final collapse, a similar experiment was tried with
_The School Observer_. The last number bears the names of two "editors,"
and contains both a Liberal and a Conservative "leader" written on the
same topic. The innovation was made at the last minute, and the
Conservative "leader" is not a genuine schoolboy production, but the
model may be a useful one for future work on the same lines.
But there was another influence making for the collapse. We quoted in
our previous book a head master who remarked at a school prize-giving
that the only questions worth asking are those that cannot get a definite
answer. Political education consists almost entirely of such questions.
Its sheet anchor is freedom of thought; its method is controversy; its
end is not in complete mastery of a box of intellectual tricks such as
will win full marks in an examination, but in the modesty of realised
ignorance and the enthusiastic search for fresh lights in the darkness.
Socrates was put to death by the Athenians because he would not desist
from asking them questions, and it is to be feared that some of our
pupils would have incurred the same fate had the customs of the time
permitted it. The taste for controversy on the fundamental subjects will
grip a youth like the taste for drink, as many who have passed through
undergraduate days at Oxford or Cambridge can remember. Suppose a boy
enters into political controversy with his form master, over the| giving
back of an essay, or with his house master at the luncheon table....
Now, there is a Divinity that doth hedge a schoolmaster, and the hedge
must be kept in somewhat careful repair. So long as we are concerned
with subjects like elementary Latin and Greek or Mathematics, we are
dealing with a body of knowledge in which, to take the examinations
standard, all the masters get full marks. All knowledge is contained in
a set of small school books which the masters, for their sins, know more
or less by heart backwards. Even history, if it is sufficiently badly
taught, may be grouped among such subjects, for, strange as it may seem,
it is quite possible to teach it in such a way that no boy feels impelled
to ask questions either insoluble in themselves or beyond the scope of
the master's immediate memory. There are schoolmasters who definitely
discourage or even forbid the asking of questions by the class. "Little
boys should be seen and not heard"--that worst of all educational
maxims--makes a larger contribution to the buttressing up of the present
system than is usually supposed. A lowering diet of irregular verbs
keeps the boy mind "docile," to use a word of ironically perverted
meaning, and prevents it from impinging embarrassingly upon the lightly
guarded regions of the master's intellectual entrenchments. In fact,
political education set up a new intellectual standard. It was a subject
in which no one, boy or master, got "full marks,"--scarcely even
President Wilson, perhaps, if you took his "work" as a whole! All were
learners, all were fellow workers together, and before the vast scope of
the task, differences of proficiency between the various workers seemed
hardly to matter.
Here, then, rises a difficult question. Ought the schoolmaster to
possess, or appear to possess, complete knowledge of the subject he
teaches? The present writer has taught a good variety of subjects during
nine years, and on the whole he has found his ignorance, not only of
politics, but of far more finite matters, a very helpful educational
instrument. As an emergency teacher of Latin on the modern side, for
instance, he found it a positive advantage that he had forgotten more of
the language than his pupils had ever learnt. His occasional quaint
errors did not always pass undetected, and their detection had probably
an educational stimulus for the form which outweighed the loss incurred
when his mistakes passed without notice. Nor did he feel greatly the
loss of intellectual stature. It was partly made good by the ingenuity
with which he explained how he had come to make the mistake. And if
there was loss in intellectual prestige, there was an increased sense of
intellectual comradeship. But this is a trifling and not wholly serious
digression.
Some masters stand for intellectual infallibility. These political
discussions disturbed them. They felt that their credentials as
schoolmasters were being examined and found wanting. They accused the
boys of priggery. It was a most false charge, for the boys were
enthusiasts, and enthusiasm is a form of self-forgetfulness as priggery
is a form of self-consciousness. Still priggery was the word. The
charge of "priggery" was added to the charge of "pacifism."
On these two lines the opposition developed and ultimately triumphed. It
was suggested that "the school would be empty in a couple of years," if
political education continued. Here, it would seem, our critics were
trading on their false idea of the parent, and believing what they wished
to believe. Take the statistics of entries, which is the only tangible
evidence on the subject, and the only conclusion you can draw is that
political education either had no effect at all, or that it slightly
increased the commercial well-being of the school. It was not on such
ground as this that political education was doomed. As we said at the
beginning of the chapter, the material of our experiments was the boys
and them alone. We had made a short cut. We had made no effort to
convert our colleague. We trusted to results for their conversion. But,
as the preceding narrative will have shown, the greater our success, the
greater became their irritation, when success was labelled "pacifism" and
"priggery." Without intending it, we had played "Pied Piper" upon some
of the best of the house masters' foster children. We had envisaged a
school as a single corporate society, boys and masters working together
with the maximum of frankness and equality for the common end, education.
We had not allowed for the fact that a school cannot become such a
corporate society, unless the staff has become such at the same time.
Like three-quarters of the reformers of history, we had, in our own
despite, become rebels. And so all was over. There is now no _Politics
Class_, no _School Observer_ in the school of their foundation, though
two other schools of fame have started papers on similar lines, with
handsome acknowledgments to our example. There are no political
societies in the Houses. Two or three of our pupils have left before
their time, and we, the authors, are no longer schoolmasters, only
"educationists,"--it is a change for the worse.
[1] Generally speaking, the liberalism of _The Manchester Guardian_ or of
President Wilson's speeches.
CHAPTER III
PROPAGANDA
"A point hardly touched on in the book is the difficulty of teaching
politics without the disadvantages of partisanship. It is worth
discussion."--_Manchester Guardian_.
"If 'politics'--even politics as an art culled from the classics, from
_pro-German_[1] economists and historians, from poets such as Shelley,
and from _German_[1] higher critics of the Bible--were taught to fifth
form boys with crude impressionable minds, the result would be
Bolshevism. We agree that under careful guidance much of ultimate
political value can be taught from history and literature. But it must
be done with infinite care, and opinions must be excluded from the
teaching. That is the difficulty."--_Contemporary Review_.
"Clever boys will learn their politics for themselves."--_Saturday
Review_.
"The public schools have for years past covered their quiet
infiltration of Conservative principles with a camouflage of strict
neutrality. Teachers though they are, the authors do not seem quite to
realise what a formidable protective device this banning of the modern
history which we call politics has been, and what obstacles have to be
overcome before the advice given in their little book is generally
taken."--_Westminster Gazette_.
Two great objections have to be met if Politics is to become the
central subject in our public school education. The desirability of
such a change may be urged from many points of view; and the practical
results obtained during the course of our recent experiment seemed to
us even more valuable than preliminary theorising had led us to expect.
Once make a boy think about the life of his own time and the great
principles whose fight for mastery he is witnessing; once make him
wonder about the actual machinery by which his world is moved; once set
him speculating about the meaning of the universe and of his own
existence; and you have created such a spirit of eager enthusiasm and
inquiry, that at last that development of the individual personality is
achieved which, as every great educationist since Plato has told us,
must be the aim of all who desire to be more than mere teachers.
Modern History, Politics, Sociology, Economics, Ethics, even
_Metaphysics_--we may class all these under the broad heading of
Politics, for one and all they deal with the life and destiny of the
individual as a member of human society and a part of the Universe.
There is no human being who, at least while he is young, does not feel
a keen interest in such things; the deepest waters are stirred and the
classroom becomes the meeting-place of minds engaged in an exciting
adventure instead of being, as is so often now the case, a prison cell
in which all a boy's spontaneity and joy of life are crushed out beyond
recall.
Yet the two objections remain, and to one of them we address ourselves
in this chapter.[2] When the possibility of political teaching is
considered, the first thought that leaps to the mind is: Can the
subject be taught without the introduction of propaganda? and is not
Politics just the one subject in which propaganda is above everything
undesirable? Now it may be pointed out that the present system of
public school education is itself a form of political propaganda none
the less effective for being concealed. A boy is sent to a public
school with a set of political notions imbibed from his parents and the
circle in which he moves, and during the whole period of his boyhood,
no genuine effort is made to develop his powers of independent thought
and so to enable him to revise his inherited opinions. A certain
stimulus no doubt is given to his mental activity by setting him
mathematical problems to solve and passages in the classical authors to
construe; but his thought on political and social questions remains a
thing apart, unstirred, atrophied. What else is this but political
propaganda? And when it is reinforced by a thousand subtle hints in
and out of the classroom, hints suggesting that, of course, there can
be no two opinions about so-and-so and his supporters, it becomes one
of the most potent instruments of mental darkness that has ever been
allowed to function in a rational community.
But the objection to propaganda is not to be met by a "Tu quoque." It
is one which raises the most fundamental issues of educational theory.
To develop, we are told, and not to mould, is the aim of education; and
every genuine educationist will eagerly agree. Yet you cannot develop
in a vacuum. You must impart some background for the young mind, give
it some material on which to work. How, then, can the compromise be
effected? How can we inculcate and yet at the same time aim above
every thing at the development of an individuality, which may and
indeed must, be so very different from our own? The answer is not
really hard to find. What we inculcate, the background we give, must
be considered by us as merely a stop-gap, a poor temporary support
which the child may fling away when he can support himself. And even
while we are giving the support, we must at every moment be developing
the power which will as soon as possible dispense with it.
If this _caveat_ is borne in mind and honestly observed, propaganda,
whether in political, philosophical, or religious teaching, becomes not
only defensible but actually desirable. Nothing can be more fatal than
to give the impression that it does not very much matter which of
several conflicting principles or policies a boy adopts; that there are
after all equally strong arguments on both sides, and that the adhesion
of the world to one philosophy of life and code of conduct rather than
another will make no very vital difference to anybody. Yet if the
teacher presents his subject in a perfectly balanced and passionless
manner such a result will inevitably follow. The boy will notice his
master's lack of enthusiasm, and consequently remain unenthusiastic
himself; and not only will that intellectual eagerness remain
undeveloped, which is as a spark to set his whole nature ablaze, but
also he will feel none of that moral passion for principles which is
the crying need of the world to-day. A master in another school, which
had adopted the idea of a Politics Class, heard of the excitement and
controversy which ours was occasioning, and remarked adversely on our
methods. "We teach Politics too," he said, "but we are careful that
the boys should never be able to discover on which side our own
sympathies lie. Consequently there is no excitement and no
controversy. Politics are thought of in just the same way as any other
school subject." We can well believe it. Our whole idea, of course,
is that they should not be so thought of; that they should be regarded
rather as a matter of most vital interest and importance both for the
boy himself and for the world as a whole. We would have a boy feel an
attachment to principles as romantic and absorbing as his affections
for his dearest friend, not coldly cancel one principle against the
other as if he were doing a sum in mathematics.
But it is time that we explained exactly what we mean when we say that
a master should not shrink from propaganda in political teaching. We
do not by any means intend that he should state only his own point of
view, and pass over the arguments that may be urged against it. That
would be the merest parody of education. Rather do we mean that he
should adopt a threefold method. He should put forward his own view
with all the enthusiasm that he feels for it (we have been called
"missionaries" by way of abuse, but find nothing but honour in the
word); simultaneously, he should impress on his pupils the fact that it
after all is only his view, and urge them not merely to accept but to
examine and criticise; and finally, he should explain with complete
honesty every point that has been, or possibly could be, raised against
it. We call this method "propaganda," because a fire is imparted to
the statement of one side which cannot, from the nature of the case, be
imparted to that of the other; but it is propaganda in which there is
no touch of dishonesty or obscurantism.
We have said that, while he is presenting his case, the master should
be urging his pupils to examine and criticise it. But he should do
more than this; if he is a Liberal, he should spend much of his time in
a direct propaganda of the great Liberal principles--freedom of thought
and discussion; the sanctity of the individual conscience; the
paramount importance of moral and intellectual independence. In this
way he will be creating a habit of mind which will _naturally_
criticise; and so by his propaganda of general liberalism he will
annihilate the vantage-point he would otherwise occupy in his
propaganda of particular principles and policies.
We speak of "liberal education," and surely the epithet is meaningless
unless it be taken to imply that conversion to those general principles
is the very bed-rock of education. But others think otherwise, and so
we would point out the broad distinction which must be drawn between
propaganda of the simple liberal and propaganda of the simple
reactionary principle--on the one hand freedom of thought, on the other
acceptance of ideas not one's own. Our liberal propaganda carries with
it the instrument of its own overthrow. If you can inspire a boy with
a desire to put all things to the test of his own free conscience, you
are empowering him to criticise everything you teach--even that very
liberty of opinion, a belief in which you have been so anxious to
create. But with reactionary propaganda it is quite otherwise. By it
a static habit of mind is produced--a habit of mind which, except by
way of a mercifully not uncommon revolt, is a pawn in the hands of its
present teacher, and that public opinion which in time to come will
take its teacher's place.
A word may be added on the means best calculated to produce the free
mind at which we are aiming. Use, of course, can and should be always
made of the fundamental arguments (all to be found in Mill) in favour
of liberty of opinion. But there is one case in which the employment
of a subsidiary method may give even more valuable results. Where a
boy holds tenaciously to an opinion which you think to be evil, argue
against it unceasingly; show him the errors of it; point out
passionately the beauty of its alternative. The stronger his
conviction, the better; indeed, deliberately choose his deepest-seated
prejudice--attack him in the very heart of what you regard as his
error. Then, when at last he sees that the opinion which he had
thought of as the only possible one is in reality wrong, and that
another which he had loathed is in reality right, a tremendous
intellectual conversion will have taken place; his own case will
constantly act as a warning to him whenever he is again tempted to
prejudice or narrowness of outlook.
[1] The italics are ours. Why were these two words inserted, we wonder.
[2] The other is dealt with in Chapter V.
CHAPTER IV
CONTROVERSY
"While a formidable strife between masters of different creeds might be
engendered, it is arguable that the finest political spirit might be
fostered by approaching the problems under the conditions of fairness and
courtesy on which the public schools pride themselves."[1]--_Manchester
Guardian_.
"Tolerance, to be more than a pale and negative virtue, needs to be based
on an understanding of these different points of view, which means,
again, bringing an educated mind to bear on them."--_Westminster Gazette_.
"Boys always will be boys" they say, and the saying can be interpreted in
many ways. "Masters always will be masters" is a more sobering
reflection. The reputation of schoolmasters for sweet reasonableness has
never stood, perhaps, particularly high. Even supposing that, with a
staff of angels, such a scheme of teaching as that sketched in the
preceding chapter were desirable, will not the actual result be something
very different? Will not "a formidable strife between masters of
different creeds be engendered," and will not the spectacle of that
strife, and a possible participation in it, be the very worst possible
training for the new generation?
The difficulty is one that has got to be faced, and the present writers,
at any rate, are not at all likely to overlook it. As was shown in
Chapter II., our experiments collapsed not because our colleagues
differed from us in political opinion, but because, differing from us in
political opinion, they also differed from us in educational theory. Had
the experiment collapsed simply because they differed from us in
political opinion, it would be no use pursuing the subject of political
education further; for a staff in which all the masters held the same
political views would be unlikely to exist, and in any case altogether
undesirable. We may take it for granted that the staff will consist of
men of diverse political opinions. Indeed we may go further and take it
for granted that in a school in which political education flourishes,
those diversities, though certainly less bitter, will be more clearly
marked than at present. In such a school the masters, for the most part,
will be keenly interested in politics, for the school must be a single
society of men and boys in real intellectual co-operation. What is good
for the boys will be good for the masters. Perverse metaphors comparing
masters and boys to hounds and hares will be seen as the symptom of a
radically false educational philosophy.
If political education becomes not merely an experiment but an integral
part of the timetable, the staff as a whole, not necessarily all the
masters, but all those concerned with what are at present ironically
called "the humanities," will be taking a part in it. But how can this
be worked? We are here faced with a problem such as none of the ordinary
school subjects has ever raised, at any rate in this acute form.
Everything depends upon the educational philosophy of the staff.
Everything depends upon the extent of their belief in freedom of opinion.
The case for freedom of opinion, like the case for self-government, has
suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted
that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it.
Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality. "Britons never
shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter. Very
likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed
by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the sailors he was
glorifying were mostly victims of the press-gang. It is but a step from
a press-gang to a Press Bureau. Most Englishmen are not very anxious to
tolerate any opinions but their own, if the subject be one that they deem
of vital importance. Very few have the faith of the great apostles of
freedom, the conviction that right opinion can only triumph through fair
and open conflict with the wrong.
The cause of freedom, then, fares badly enough in the world outside, when
we are only concerned with its application to those who have reached
"years of discretion." Inside the school the difficulties are admittedly
greater, and freedom has hitherto had a poor chance. Yet without
freedom, though there may be instruction, there can hardly be education.
In so far then as the staff fall short in this vital matter of
toleration, they must themselves go to school and learn; and he is
probably a poor teacher who is not himself ever learning something more.
Here perhaps the head master might find one of his finest opportunities.
The conscientious modern head master often finds it hard to rise above
the mass of administrative work attached to his office. He resembles
Philip II. of Spain, of whom it was said that he was always trying to be
his own private secretary. Meanwhile his assistants go their own ways,
each narrowing into his own little intellectual groove. The result, at
any rate in the more remote and less distinguished schools--that is to
say, the vast majority--is a society far from idyllic. Even if politics
were to engender "a formidable strife," the discords would not be
breaking in upon any very beautiful harmonies. Two novels have recently
been written by schoolmasters about their profession, and even if "Mr.
Perrin and Mr. Traill" may be discounted as the ill-natured revenge of a
clever man who had mistaken his profession, "The Lanchester Tradition"
has, we believe, been generally hailed as a truthful record. Masters at
many schools have exclaimed, "How on earth does this Rugby man come to
know all about _us_?" Teaching is spiritual work or it is nothing, and
the head master ought to be, as the greatest head masters have been, a
true leader of his staff in spiritual things.
Our profession is the most insanely individualistic in the world.
Probably the teaching of every subject would be improved by the
establishment of a really organised co-operation between the various
masters teaching it, and "politics," with its strong human appeal would,
with a leader worthy of his position, be the best place to begin.
Masters would meet for a genuine educational purpose--and the last thing
ever discussed at the masters' meetings we have attended has been
educational principles--they would learn to see into each others' minds
and methods, enlarge their intellectual sympathies and understand their
differences. Thus a real corporate intellectual life of the staff might
begin. Often at present this does not exist, and its absence is fatal to
the school as a seriously intellectual institution.
And surely the need for the tolerant staff can hardly be exaggerated.
And here we are thinking not so much of the war and its controversies as
of the days that will follow. After the war a baser motive than even the
crudest jingo patriotism will claim a monopoly over the political thought
of public schoolboys for the defence not of "country," but of property.
The unorthodox will be denounced not as "pacifists," but as "socialists,"
and the enemy will be not the Kaiser, but perhaps the Prime Minister of a
Labour Government. But just as the only hope for the world after the war
seems to lie in a League of Nations, so the only hope for England lies in
the co-operation of all classes in a common search for industrial
justice. The public schools are "class preserves" of the rich, and their
opportunity for good, as for harm, will be almost boundless. "To turn
out the young of the capitalist class with all their capitalist
prejudices intact will be sheer dereliction of duty on the part of public
schoolmasters." So wrote a great teacher of the older generation. The
obvious way of destroying those prejudices as prejudices is by an
enthusiastic and capable exposition of various forms of socialism. This
can best be done by socialist masters. But, supposing the socialist
teaching is false, why should those who are not Socialists fear for the
result? It is a necessary part of the scheme that they on their side
should make a reasoned defence of a reformed capitalism. If this is done
"the young of the capitalist class" may be turned out Socialists or
anti-Socialists, but at least they will go out into the world men of some
economic understanding, with views based on reasoning, and by further
reasoning or experience liable to be changed, not men with inherited
prejudice intact.
If we assume in our staff a general inclination towards freedom of
opinion, everything becomes possible. A hundred questions of
organisation arise, essentially practical questions, and more easily
solved by concrete experiment than by literary methods. It may, however,
be worthy while to glance at a few of these.
Masters will always be human; and political education must be so
organised as to suggest in every way that the masters of divergent views
are co-operating in a general scheme of political education such as no
one of them alone could impart, not competing for the political
allegiance of the boys. A school is not a bye-election in permanent
session. Thus, though a controversial element is bound to come into
political education, we would mitigate this element by not allowing any
one form to go to more than one master for political work. The boy will
pass from form to form, and thus the conservatism of a summer term will
be tempered by the radicalism of the following winter. But these
political compartments will not be particularly air-tight in any case.
The house master will be a permanent influence, and when a keen-witted
boy has just got out of the form of a sympathetic master, it is unlikely
that they will altogether lose touch with one another.
At the top of the school, however, the controversial element should be
more frankly accepted. We believe in the permanent institution of a
voluntary _Politics Class_ in which the best boys will hear again the
best of the masters who have taught them on their way up the school.
Between such a _Politics Class_ and a really efficient school Debating
Society it might be hard to draw a precise line. One would play into the
hands of the other.
The "judicial" teacher, the man who from an Olympian elevation surveys
the political strivings of past and present alike, and analyses,
catalogues, and defines, creating all the while an impression of luminous
impartiality, may, of course, do much good work. The present writer
would be the last man to deny it when he remembers his own debt to a
teacher of that kind. None the less, we believe that it is the other
kind of teaching that is really needed in the schools of the well-to-do
to-day.[2] The political problems of our time are of intense and
terrible importance: on their solution this way or that depends the
happiness or the misery of uncounted millions; and it is so largely on
the way that the young of the privileged classes learn to look at them
that their solution depends. "Judicial" teaching creates the impression
that so long as you "know the case" for or against a policy, it does not
matter whether you believe it, and as for acting upon it, or making
sacrifices for it, there is no question of doing anything so "extreme."
Education _must_ create enthusiasm.
It must also make for many-sidedness, and so we arrive at the function of
the staff, the many-sided staff of enthusiasts. Let each one believe
himself, if he is young enough to do so, the monopolist of political
truth. Let each one differ from all his colleagues on every subject
under the sun, except two, the infinite possibilities of the boys he
teaches, and the infinite importance of freedom of opinion.
[1] Is there a little irony here?
[2] Whether any particular single school can afford to experiment in such
teaching is, of course, another matter altogether. Gallio is a less
troublesome colleague than Paul, and Paul will waste his breath if he
complains of the obvious fact that such things are so. But he has a
better ground of complaint when he sees himself silenced, while Sosthenes
is allowed to carry on as vigorously as he pleases.