THE SACREDNESS OF PERSONALITY
_These principles (i.e., authority and docility) are limited by
the respect due to the personality of children which may not
be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love,
suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural
desire._
People are too apt to use children as counters in a game, to be
moved hither and thither according to the whim of the moment.
Our crying need to-day is less for a better method of education
than for an adequate conception of children,--children, merely as
human beings, whether brilliant or dull, precocious or backward.
Exceptional qualities take care of themselves and so does the
‘wanting’ intelligence, and both of these share with the rest in
all that is claimed for them in the previous chapters. Our business
is to find out how great a mystery a person is _quâ_ person. All
action comes out of the ideas we hold and if we ponder duly upon
personality we shall come to perceive that we cannot commit a
greater offence than to maim or crush, or subvert any part of a
person.
We have many ingenious, not to say affectionate, ways of doing
this, all of them more or less based upon that egoism which
persuades us that in proportion to a child’s dependence is our
superiority, that all we do for him is of our grace and favour,
and that we have a right, whether as parents or teachers, to do
what we will with our own. Have we considered that in the Divine
estimate the child’s estate is higher than ours; that it is ours
to “become as little children,” rather than theirs to become as
grown men and women; that the rules we receive for the bringing
up of children are for the most part negative? We may not despise
them, or hinder them, (“suffer little children”), or offend them by
our brutish clumsiness of action and want of serious thought; while
the one positive precept afforded to us is “feed” (which should be
rendered ‘pasture’) “my lambs,” place them in the midst of abundant
food. A teacher in a Yorkshire Council School renders this precept
as,--“I had left them in the pasture and came back and found
them feeding,” that is, she had left a big class reading a given
lesson and found them on her return still reading with eagerness
and satisfaction. _Maxima reverentia debetur pueris_ has a wider
meaning than it generally receives. We take it as meaning that we
should not do or say anything unseemly before the young, but does
it not also include a profound and reverent study of the properties
and possibilities present in a child?
Nor need we be alarmed at so wide a programme. The vice which
hinders us in the bringing up of children is that so heavily
censured in the Gospel. We are not simple; we act our parts and
play in an unlawful way upon motives. Perhaps after all the least
reprehensible pedagogic motive is that which is most condemned
and the terrorism of ‘Mr. Creakle’ may produce a grey record in
comparison with the blackness of more subtle methods of undermining
personality. We can only touch upon a few of these, but a part may
stand for the whole. For the action of fear as a governing motive
we cannot do better than read again our _David Copperfield_ (a
great educational treatise) and study ‘Mr. Creakle’ in detail for
terrorism in the schoolroom and ‘Mr. Murdstone’ for the same vice
in the home. But,--is it through the influence of Dickens?--fear
is no longer the acknowledged basis of school discipline; we have
methods more subtle than the mere terrors of the law. Love is one
of these. The person of winning personality attracts his pupils
(or hers) who will do anything for his sake and are fond and
eager in all their ways, docile to that point where personality
is submerged, and they live on the smiles, perish on the averted
looks, of the adored teacher. Parents look on with a smile and
think that all is well; but Bob or Mary is losing that growing time
which should make a self-dependent, self-ordered person, and is
day by day becoming a parasite who can go only as he is carried,
the easy prey of fanatic or demagogue. This sort of encroachment
upon the love of children offers as a motive, ‘do this for my
sake’; wrong is to be avoided lest it grieve the teacher, good is
to be done to pleasure him; for this end a boy learns his lessons,
behaves properly, shows good will, produces a whole catalogue of
schoolboy virtues and yet his character is being undermined.
‘Suggestion’ goes to work more subtly. The teacher has mastered the
gamut of motives which play upon human nature and every suggestion
is aimed at one or other of these. He may not use the nursery
suggestions of lollipops or bogies but he does in reality employ
these if expressed in more spiritual values, suggestions subtly
applied to the idiosyncrasies of a given child. ‘Suggestion’ is too
subtle to be illustrated with advantage: Dr. Stephen Paget holds
that it should be used only as a surgeon uses an anæsthetic; but
it is an instrument easy to handle, and unconsidered suggestion
plays on a child’s mind as the winds on a weathercock. “Unstable
as water, thou shalt not excel” is the unfortunate child’s doom;
for how is it possible for stability of mind and character to
evolve under a continual play of changing suggestions? But this
it will be said is true of the unconsidered suggestion. What of
a carefully laid train, all leading in the same direction, to
produce perseverance, frankness, courage, any other excellent
virtue? The child is even worse off in such a case. That particular
virtue becomes detestable; no other virtue is inviting; and he is
acquiring no strength to stand alone but waits in all his doings
for promptings from without. Perhaps the gravest danger attending
this practice is that every suggestion received lays the person
open to the next and the next. A due respect for the personality of
children and a dread of making them incompetent to conduct their
own lives will make us chary of employing a means so dangerous, no
matter how good the immediate end.
Akin to suggestion is influence, which acts not so much by
well-directed word or inciting action as by a sort of atmosphere
proceeding from the teacher and enveloping the taught. Late in
the last century goody-goody books were written about the beauty
of influence, the duty of influence, the study of the means of
influence, and children were brought up with the notion that to
influence other persons consciously was a moral duty. No doubt
such influence is inevitable; we must needs affect one another,
not so much by what we do or say as by that which we are, and so
far influence is natural and wholesome. We imbibe it from persons
real and imaginary and we are kept strong and upright by currents
and counter-currents of unstudied influence. Supineness before a
single, steady, persistent influence is a different matter, and
the schoolgirl who idolises her mistress, the boy who worships his
master, is deprived of the chance of free and independent living.
His personality fails to develop and he goes into the world as a
parasitic plant, clinging ever to the support of some stronger
character.
So far we have considered incidental ways of trespassing upon
those rights of personality proper to children, but we have more
pervasive, if less injurious, ways of stultifying intellectual and
moral growth. Our school ethic rests upon, our school discipline is
supported by, undue play upon certain natural desires. It is worth
while to reflect that the mind also has its appetites, better known
as desires. It is as necessary that Mind should be fed, should grow
and should produce, as that these things should happen to Body,
and just as Body would not take the trouble to feed itself if it
never became hungry, so Mind also would not take in that which it
needs if it were not that certain Desires require to be satisfied.
Therefore schoolmasters do not amiss in basing their practice upon
the Desires whose very function appears to be to bring nourishment
to Mind. Where we teachers err is in stimulating the wrong Desires
to accomplish our end. There is the desire of approbation which
even an infant shows, he is not happy unless mother or nurse
approve of him. Later this same desire helps him to conquer a sum,
climb a hill, bring home a good report from school, and all this
is grist to the mill, knowledge to the mind; because the persons
whose approbation is worth having care that he should learn and
know, conquer idleness, and get habits of steady work, so that his
mind may be as duly nourished every day as is his body. Alas for
the vanity that attends this desire of approbation, that makes the
boy more solicitous for the grin of the stable-boy than for the
approval of his master! Nay, this desire for approval may get such
possession of him that he thinks of nothing else; he must have
approval whether from the worthless or the virtuous. It is supposed
that outbreaks of violence, robbery, assassinations, occur at times
for the mere sake of infamy, just as deeds of heroism are done for
the sake of fame. Both infamy and fame mean being thought about
and talked about by a large number of people; and we know how this
natural desire is worked by the daily press; how we get, now a film
actress, now a burglar, a spy, a hero, or a scientist set before
us to be our admiration and our praise.
Emulation, the desire of excelling, works wonders in the hands of
the schoolmaster; and, indeed, this natural desire is an amazing
spur to effort, both intellectual and moral. When in pursuit of
virtue two or a score are ‘emulously rapid in the race,’ a school
acquires a ‘good tone’ and parents are justified in thinking
it the right place for their boy. In the intellectual field,
however, there is danger; and nothing worse could have happened
to our schools than the system of marks, prizes, place-taking, by
which many of them are practically governed. A boy is so taken up
with the desire to forge ahead that there is no time to think of
anything else. What he learns is not interesting to him; he works
to get his remove.
But emulation does not stand alone as Vicegerent in our schools;
another natural desire whose unvarnished name is avarice labours
for good government and so-called progress cheek by jowl with
emulation. “He must get a scholarship,”--is the duty of a small boy
even before he goes to school, and indeed for good and sufficient
reasons. Sometimes the sons of rich parents carry off these prizes
but as a rule they fall to those for whom they are intended, the
sons of educated parents in rather straitened circumstances, sons
of the clergy, for example. The scholarship system is no more
than a means of distributing the vast wealth left by benefactors
in the past for this particular purpose. Every Grammar School has
its own scholarships; the Universities have open scholarships and
bursaries often of considerable value; and a free, or partially
free, education is open to the majority of the youth of the upper
middle class on one condition, that of brains. It is small wonder
that every Grammar and Public School bases its curriculum upon
these conditions, knows exactly what standard of merit will secure
the ‘Hastings,’ knows the boys who have a chance, and orders their
very strenuous work towards the end in view. It is hard to say what
better could be done and yet this deliberate cult of cupidity is
disastrous; for there is no doubt that here and there we come upon
impoverishment of personality due to enfeebled intellectual life;
the boy did not learn to delight in knowledge in his schooldays and
the man is shallow in mind and whimsical in judgment.
It is hopeless to make war from without on a system which affords
very effectual help in the education of boys who are likely later
to become of service to the country; but Britain must make the
most of her sons and many of these men are capable of being more
than they are. It is from within the schools that help must come
and the way is fairly obvious. Most schools give from eleven in
the lowest to eight hours in the highest Forms to ‘English’ that
is, from twenty to sixteen consecutive readings a week might be
afforded in a wide selection of books,--literature, history,
economics, etc.,--books read with the concentrated attention which
makes a single reading suffice. The act of narrating what has
been read might well be useful to boys who should be prepared for
public speaking. By a slight alteration of this kind, in procedure
rather than in curriculum or time-table, it is probable that our
schools would turn out many more well-read, well-informed men and
convincing speakers than they do at present. Such a method, even
if applied to ‘English’ only, would tend to correct any tendency
in schools to become mere cramming places for examinations, would
infect boys with a love of knowledge and should divert the natural
desire for acquisition into a new channel, for few things are more
delightful than the acquisition of knowledge.
We need not delay over that desire of power, ambition, which plays
its part in every life; but the educator must see that it plays
no more than its part. Power is good in proportion as it gives
opportunities for serving; but it is mischievous in boy or man
when the pleasure of ruling, managing, becomes a definite spring
of action. Like each of the other natural desires, that for power
may ruin a life that it is allowed to master; ambition is the cause
of half the disasters under which mankind suffers. The ambitious
boy or man would as soon lead his fellows in riot and disorder
as in noble effort in a good cause; and who can say how far the
labour unrest under which we suffer is inspired and inflamed
by ambitious men who want to rule if only for the immediate
intoxication of rousing and leading men? It is a fine thing to say
of a multitude of men,--“I can wind them round my little finger”;
and the much-burdened Head of a school must needs beware! If the
able, ambitious fellow be allowed to manage the rest, he cheats
them out of their fair share of managing their own lives; no boy
should be allowed to wax feeble to make another great; the harm to
the ambitious boy himself must be considered too, lest he become an
ignoble, manœuvring person. It is within a teacher’s scope to offer
wholesome ambitions to a boy, to make him keen to master knowledge
rather than manage men; and here he has a wide field without
encroaching on another’s preserve.
Another desire which may well be made to play into the
schoolmaster’s hands is that of society, a desire which has much
to do with the making of the naughty boys, idle youths and silly
women of our acquaintance. It is sheer delight to mix with our
fellows, but much depends on whom we take for our fellows and why;
and here young people may be helped by finger-posts. If they are so
taught that knowledge delights them, they will choose companions
who share that pleasure. In this way princes are trained; they
must know something of botany to talk with botanists, of history
to meet with historians; they cannot afford to be in the company
of scientists, adventurers, poets, painters, philanthropists or
economists, and themselves be able to do no more than ‘change the
weather and pass the time of day’; they must know modern languages
to be at home with men of other countries, and ancient tongues to
be familiar with classical allusions. Such considerations rule the
education of princes, and every boy has a princely right to be
brought up so that he may hold his own in good society, that is,
the society of those who ‘know.’
We hear complaints of the cast-iron system of British society; but
how much of it is due to the ignorance which makes it only possible
to men and women to talk to those of their own clique, soldiers
with soldiers, schoolmasters and schoolboys with their kind? The
boy who wants to be able to talk to people who ‘know’ has no
unworthy motive for working.
We have considered the several desires whose function is to
stimulate the mind and save us from that _vis inertiæ_ which is our
besetting danger. Each such desire has its place but the results
are disastrous if any one should dominate. It so happens that
the last desire we have to consider, the desire of knowledge, is
commonly deprived of its proper function in our schools by the
predominance of other springs of action, especially of emulation,
the desire of place, and avarice, the desire of wealth, tangible
profit. This divine curiosity is recognised in ordinary life
chiefly as a desire to know trivial things. What did it cost? What
did she say? Who was with him? Where are they going? How many
postage stamps in a line would go round the world? And curiosity
is satisfied by incoherent, scrappy information which serves no
purpose, assuredly not the purpose of knowledge whose function is
to nourish the mind as food nourishes the body. But so besotted is
our educational thought that we believe children regard knowledge
rather as repulsive medicine than as inviting food. Hence our
dependence on marks and prizes, athletics, alluring presentation,
any jam we can devise to disguise the powder. The man who wilfully
goes on crutches has feeble incompetent legs; he who chooses to
go blindfold has eyes that cannot bear the sun; he who lives on
pap-meat has weak digestive powers, and he whose mind is sustained
by the crutches of emulation and avarice loses that one stimulating
power which is sufficient for his intellectual needs. This atrophy
of the desire of knowledge is the penalty our scholars pay because
we have chosen to make them work for inferior ends. Our young men
and maidens do not read unless with the stimulus of a forthcoming
examination. They are good-natured and pleasant but have no wide
range of thought, lofty purpose, little of the magnanimity which is
proper for a citizen. Great thoughts and great actions are strange
to them, though the possibility is still there and they may yet
shew in peace such action as we have seen and wondered at during
the War. But we cannot always educate by means of a great war;
the penalties are too heavy for human nature to endure for long.
Therefore the _stimuli_ to greatness, magnanimity, which the war
afforded we must produce in the ordinary course of education.
But knowledge is delectable. We have all the ‘satiable curiosity’
of Mr. Kipling’s Elephant even when we content ourselves with
the broken meats flung by the daily press. Knowledge is to us as
our mother’s milk, we grow thereby and in the act of sucking are
admirably content.
The work of education is greatly simplified when we realize
that children, apparently all children, want to know all human
knowledge; they have an appetite for what is put before them, and,
knowing this, our teaching becomes buoyant with the courage of
our convictions. We know how Richelieu shut up colleges throughout
France, both Jesuit and secular, “in order to prevent the mania
of the poor for educating their children which distracts them
from the pursuits of trade and war.” This mania exists with us,
not only in the parents but in the children, the mania of hungry
souls clamouring for meat, and we choke them off, not by shutting
up schools and colleges, but by offering matter which no living
soul can digest. The complaints made by teachers and children of
the monotony of the work in our schools is full of pathos and all
credit to those teachers who cheer the weary path by entertaining
devices. But mind does not live and grow upon entertainment; it
requires its solid meals.
The Gloucestershire teachers, under Mr. Household’s direction,
have entered so fully into the principles implied in the method,
that I am tempted to illustrate largely from their experience.[17]
But they by no means stand alone. Hundreds of other teachers have
the same experiences and describe them as opportunity offers. The
finding of this power which is described as ‘sensing a passage,’
is as the striking of a vein of gold in that fabulously rich
country, human nature. Our ‘find’ is that children have a natural
aptitude for literary expression which they enjoy in hearing or
reading and employ in telling or writing. We might have guessed
this long ago. All those speeches and sayings of untamed warriors
and savage potentates which the historians have preserved for us,
critics have declined as showing too much cultivated rhetoric to
have been possible for any but highly educated persons. But the
time is coming when we shall perceive that only minds like those of
children are capable of producing thoughts so fresh and so finely
expressed. This natural aptitude for literature, or, shall we say,
rhetoric, which overcomes the disabilities of a poor vocabulary
without effort, should direct the manner of instruction we give,
ruling out the talky-talky of the oral lesson and the lecture;
ruling out, equally, compilations and text-books; and placing
books in the hands of children and only those which are more or
less literary in character that is, which have the terseness and
vividness proper to literary work. The natural desire for knowledge
does the rest and the children feed and grow.
It must be borne in mind that in proportion as other desires
are stimulated that of knowledge is suppressed. The teacher who
proposes marks and places as worthy aims will get work certainly
but he will get no healthy love of knowledge for its own sake and
no provision against the _ennui_ of later days. The monotony I
have spoken of attends all work prompted by the _stimuli_ of marks
and places; such work becomes mechanical, and there is hardly
enough of it prepared to last through the course of a boy’s school
life. The master of a Preparatory School remarks,--“It must be a
well-known fact (I am not speaking of the exceptional but of the
average boy) that new boys are placed too low. We find--it is a
common experience--that if we send up a boy whether he be a good
mathematician, a good classic, a good English scholar or a good
linguist, a couple of years will pass by before he is doing at the
Public School the work he was doing when he left us.” The Public
Schoolmaster makes the same sort of complaint; he says, that “At
twenty the boy is climbing the same pear-tree that he climbed at
twelve,” that is to say, work which is done in view of examinations
must be of the rather narrow mechanical kind upon which it is
possible to set questions and mark answers with absolute fairness.
Now, definite progress, continual advance from day to day with no
treading of old ground, is a condition of education.
There is an uneasy dread in some minds lest a liberal education
for all, the possibility which is now before us, should cause a
social _bouleversement_, such an upheaval as obtained in the French
Revolution. But this fear arises from an erroneous conception. The
doctrine of equal opportunities for all is no doubt dangerous. It
is the intellectual rendering of the ‘survival of the fittest’ and
we have had a terrible object lesson as to how that doctrine works.
The uneasy, ambitious spirit comes to the front, gets all the
chances, dominates his fellows, and thinks no upheaval too great a
price for the advancement of himself and his notions. Men of this
type come to the top through the avenue of examinations. Ambition
and possibly greed are seconded by dogged perseverance. As was said
of Louis XIV, such men elevate their practice into a theory and
arrogate to their habits the character of principles of government.
And these pseudo-principles inflame the populace because they
promise place and power to every man in the state, with no sense of
the proportion he bears to the rest. Probably the ‘labour unrest’
of to-day is not without connexion with the habit of working in
our schools for prizes and places. The boy who works to be first
and to get something out of it does not always become the quiet,
well-ordered citizen who helps to cement society and carries on the
work of the State.
Knowledge pursued for its own sake is sedative in so far as it
is satisfying; and the splendid consciousness that every boy in
your Form has your own delight in knowing, your own pleasure in
expressing that which he knows, shares your intimacy with this and
the other sage and hero, makes for good fellowship and magnanimity
and should deliver the citizen from a restless desire to come to
the front. It is possible that a conscientious and intelligent
teacher may be a little overwhelmed when he considers all that goes
to a man, all that goes to each of the boys under his care. It is
true that,--
“There lives
No faculty within us which the Soul
Can spare: and humblest earthly weal demands
For dignity not placed beyond her reach
Zealous co-operation of all means
Given or required to raise us from the mire
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits
By gross utilities enslaved; we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past
If for the future aught of good must come.”
Wordsworth is no doubt right. There is no faculty within the soul
which can be spared in the great work of education; but then every
faculty, or rather power, works to the one end if we make the
pursuit of knowledge for its own sake the object of our educational
efforts. We find children ready and eager for this labour and their
accomplishment is surprising.