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THE CURSE OF EDUCATION
=Publisher's Announcement=
A NOTABLE BOOK
DRIFTING
Crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.
THIRD EDITION
'An able and suggestive book.'--_The Spectator._
'It is a sane, healthy indication of the weak spots in the country's
armour, and a practical attempt to indicate remedies.'--_The Sunday
Special._
'The author's contempt for the time-serving politician, who in this
country has, unfortunately, come to count for so much in all
governments--Tory or Liberal--will be shared by the thinking portion of
his fellow countrymen.'--_The Financial News._
'By such suggestions the author of "Drifting" does good service to the
country.'--_The Outlook._
LONDON: GRANT RICHARDS
9, Henrietta Street, W.C.
The
Curse of Education
BY
HAROLD E. GORST
London
Grant Richards
1901
PREFATORY NOTE
In calling this little book 'The Curse of Education,' I trust that I
shall not be misunderstood to disparage culture. The term 'education' is
used, for want of a better word, to express the conventional mode of
teaching and bringing up children, and of educating youth in this and
other civilized countries. It is with education systems, with the
universal method of cramming the mind with facts, and particularly with
the manufacture of uniformity and mediocrity by subjecting every
individual to a common process, regardless of his natural bent, that I
have chiefly to find fault. At a moment when the country is agitated
with questions of educational reform, I thought it might be useful to
draw attention to what I believe to be a fact, namely, that the
foundations of all existing education systems are absolutely false in
principle; and that teaching itself, as opposed to natural development
and self-culture, is the greatest obstacle to human progress that social
evolution has ever had to encounter.
HAROLD E. GORST.
LONDON,
_April, 1901._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY 1
II. SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 8
III. THE DESTRUCTION OF GENIUS 18
IV. HUMAN FACTORIES 26
V. THE GREATEST MISERY OF THE GREATEST NUMBER 35
VI. THE OUTPUT OF PRIGS 44
VII. BOY DEGENERATION 53
VIII. THE STRUGGLE OF THE EDUCATED 62
IX. WOMAN'S EMPIRE OVER MAN 68
X. YOUTH AND CRIME 77
XI. MENTAL BREAKDOWN 86
XII. EVIDENCE OF HISTORY 92
XIII. THE APOTHEOSIS OF CRAM 109
XIV. THE GREAT FALLACY 118
XV. REAL EDUCATION 126
XVI. THE OPEN DOOR TO INTELLIGENCE 135
THE CURSE OF EDUCATION
CHAPTER I
FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY
Humanity is rapidly becoming less the outcome of a natural process of
development, and more and more the product of an organized educational
plan. The average educated man possesses no real individuality. He is
simply a manufactured article bearing the stamp of the maker.
Year by year this fact is becoming more emphasized. During the past
century almost every civilized country applied itself feverishly to the
invention of a national plan of education, with the result that the
majority of mankind are compelled to swallow a uniform prescription of
knowledge made up for them by the State. Now there is a great outcry
that England is being left behind in this educational race. Other
nations have got more exact systems. Where the British child is only
stuffed with six pounds of facts, the German and French schools contrive
to cram seven pounds into their pupils. Consequently, Germany and France
are getting ahead of us, and unless we wish to be beaten in the
international race, it is asserted that we must bring our own
educational system up to the Continental standard.
Before going more deeply into this vital question, it is just as well to
consider what these education systems have really done for mankind.
There is a proverb, as excellent as it is ancient, which says that the
proof of the pudding is in the eating. No doubt learned theoretical
treatises upon the scope and aim of educational methods are capital
things in their way, but they tell us nothing of the effects of this
systematic teaching and cramming upon the world at large. If we wish to
ascertain them, we must turn to life itself, and judge by results.
To begin with, the dearth of great men is so remarkable that it scarcely
needs comment. People are constantly expressing the fear that the age of
intellectual giants has passed away altogether. This is particularly
obvious in political life. Since the days of Gladstone and Disraeli,
Parliamentary debate has sunk to the most hopeless level of mediocrity.
The traditions of men such as Pitt, Fox, Palmerston, Peel, and others,
sound at the present day almost like ancient mythology. Yet the supposed
benefits of education are not only now free to all, but have been
compulsorily conferred upon most nations. Nevertheless, even Prussian
pedagogues have never succeeded in producing another Bismarck; and
France has ground away at her educational mill for generations with the
result that the supply of Napoleons has distinctly diminished.
Look at the methods by which our public service is recruited.
Who are the men to whom the administration of all important departments
of Government is entrusted, and how are they selected?
They are simply individuals who have succeeded in obtaining most marks
in public competitive examinations--that is to say, men whose brains
have been more effectually stuffed with facts and mechanical knowledge
than were the brains of their unsuccessful competitors.
There is no question, when a candidate presents himself for a post in
the Diplomatic Service or in one of the Government offices, whether he
possesses tact, or administrative ability, or knowledge of the world.
All that is demanded of him is that his mind should be crammed with so
many pounds avoirdupois of Latin, Greek, mathematics, history,
geography, etc., acquired in such a way that he will forget, within a
couple of years, every fact that has been pestled into him. For every
vacancy in the various departments of the Administration there are
dozens, or even scores, of applicants; and the candidate selected for
the post is the one whose mind has been most successfully subjected to
this process of over-cramming, and consequently most effectually ruined
for all the practical purposes of life.
Now, to whatever cause it may be ascribed, there can be no doubt that
the general level throughout the various branches of the public service
is one of mediocrity. We are not surrounded, faithful and devoted as our
public servants are universally admitted to be, by administrative
geniuses. Facts point altogether the other way. Great national
catastrophes, like the blunders and miscalculations that have
characterized the conduct of the war in South Africa, have always
resulted in making the most uncomfortable revelations concerning the
inefficiency of more than one important department of Government.
The War Office has long since become a public scandal, and if the truth
were known about the inner domesticity of more than one great
Administrative office, the susceptibilities of the nation would be still
further shocked and outraged. Fortunately, however--or it may be
unfortunately--Government linen is usually washed at home; and it is
only in times of great emergency that the truth leaks out, to the
general consternation.
When this does happen there is a great outcry about the inefficiency of
this or that branch of the public service. The Government in power wait
to see if the agitation dies a natural death; and if it is successfully
kept up, a sort of pretence at reform takes place. There is a
re-shuffle. Fresh names are given to old abuses; incompetent officials
exchange posts; and a new building is erected at the public expense.
Then all goes on as heretofore.
Nobody seems to think of making an inquiry into the constitution of the
public service itself. But until this is done no real reform of any
permanent value can possibly be effected. It is not the nomenclature of
appointments, the subdivision of departmental work, and such matters of
detail, that stand in need of the reformer. The titles and duties of the
several officials are of secondary importance. It is not in them that
the evils of bad administration are to be located.
The fault lies with the officials themselves, who are the victims of the
stupid system which has placed them in the position they occupy. The
education they have received has, in the first case, unfitted them for
the performance of any but mechanical and routine work; and the strain
of a competitive examination, involving the most unintellectual and
brain-paralyzing process of cram, has probably destroyed the faculty of
initiative, which should be, but is not, a distinguishing characteristic
of the administrative official.
Herein lies the secret of all opposition to progress. It is the
permanent official who needs reforming. He is the embodiment of routine
and conservatism, because he is the embodiment of mediocrity. Progress
means ideas, and mediocrity does not deal in them. It has been
furnished, instead, by a systematic course of instruction, with a
sufficient equipment of the ideas of other people to last its lifetime.
Whilst we fill our public service with specially prepared mediocrity,
the administrative departments will remain reactionary. And as long as
education is synonymous with cramming on an organized plan, it will
continue to produce mediocrity.
The army affords at the present moment an admirable object-lesson in
this connection. The results of cramming young men as a preparation for
a profession which demands, more than any other, individual initiative
and independence, have become painfully apparent upon the field of
battle. One of our foremost generals has come home from the campaign
declaring the necessity of both officers and men being trained to think
and act for themselves. That is one, perhaps the chief, of the great
lessons which this war has taught us. But here, again, no useful reform
can be achieved by alterations in the drill-book, through lectures by
experienced generals, or by the issue of army orders. It is our entire
system of education which is again at fault.
Boys are stuffed with facts before they go to Sandhurst, and when they
get there they are crammed in special subjects. The whole object of the
process is to enable candidates to pass examinations, and not to produce
good officers. The effect here is the same as elsewhere. A quantity of
useless and some useful knowledge is drilled into the pupil in such a
manner that the mind retains nothing that has been put into it. And, to
make matters worse, all this is done at the expense of retarding the
proper development of faculties which would be of incalculable value to
the soldier.
Most of the blunders of the war are, in fact, attributable to want of
common sense, and common sense consists in the capacity of an individual
to think for himself and to exercise his judgment. Educational methods
which, in the majority of cases, appear to destroy this faculty
altogether are clearly pernicious. Common sense is the most valuable
gift with which man can be endowed. It is the very essence of genius,
for it consists in the application of intelligence to every detail, and
the highest order of intellect can accomplish no more than that. Yet it
is the rarest of all attributes, for the very reason that it is
deliberately destroyed by conventional methods of bringing up children
and instructing youth. Therefore, before we can hope to obtain a supply
of self-reliant officers and men, we must see some radical change in the
very principles upon which modern methods of education are founded.
Wherever we go we find this curse of mediocrity. In the professions, at
the Bar, in the pulpit, amongst physicians, it is apparent everywhere.
There are clever men, of course; but the very fact that their names
spring at once prominently to mind is in itself a proof that ability is
exceptional.
Some people, of course, accepting the world as they find it, may think
it very unreasonable to expect able men to be plentiful in all walks of
life. That is, to my mind, the chief pathos of the situation. It has
come to be accepted that the world must be filled with a great majority
of very commonplace people, even amongst the educated classes.
No doubt it is filled at the present moment with a very vast
preponderance of conventional minds manufactured to meet the supposed
requirements of our complicated civilization. But I deny that this need
be the case. On the contrary, we are surrounded on all sides by ability,
by great possibilities of individual development, even by genius.
And our education systems are busily engaged in the work of destroying
this precious material, substituting facts for ideas, forcing the mind
away from its natural bent, and manufacturing a machine instead of a
man.