THE STRUGGLE OF THE EDUCATED
So far we have chiefly discussed the effect produced upon the individual
by a compulsory course of study. It has been seen that he suffers in a
number of ways, through being subjected, from his earliest childhood, to
a more or less inflexible method of training. All of these, however,
have been directly attributable to his education. We may now consider,
before pursuing the subject any further, certain disabilities that may
be traced to the same cause, but which are brought about indirectly.
It is bad enough, as most of us will have perceived, to compel a boy to
learn certain things whether they are congenial to him or not. But it is
preposterous that the same stock of knowledge should be forced upon all
alike. This is, however, exactly what is being done in every educational
establishment throughout the Empire, with the most disastrous
consequences to the victims of the system.
Let us turn once more to the map of life for an illustration.
The average educated man begins to learn his alphabet at the age of four
or five. During the following years he receives the necessary grounding
to prepare him for the lower forms of a public school. At eleven, or
thereabouts, he commences his school career. Throughout the whole of
this period he is put through a course of study identical in every
respect with that pursued by his schoolfellows. Every boy in the school
is crammed with the same facts, and in the same way. The sixth-form boy
is exactly like the rest of his class, exactly like the sixth-form boy
of ten years ago, and probably exactly like the sixth-form boy of ten
years hence. Not only does he possess precisely the same knowledge as
his companions, hold the same opinions, and enjoy the same mental
horizon, but he has acquired uniform tastes and habits. In other words,
the school has stamped upon him a common individuality shared by all its
pupils.
After he has left school the same process is carried on at the
university. Here he is crammed again with the same facts, the same
rules, and the same ideas, borrowed from the same people, that are being
dinned into scores of other young men who are working for their degree.
Having gone conscientiously through this routine, he takes his degree
with the rest.
This aim being accomplished, his educational career is over. He has
graduated; that is to say, he has obtained a certificate to the effect
that he has acquired a certain regulation stock of knowledge.
What happens next?
The unhappy graduate suddenly makes the discovery that his university
qualification is not the ready passport to employment that he had
fondly imagined it to be. Unless he has a reasonable chance of a curacy
and chooses to enter the Church, or can scrape together a few pupils to
coach, or has the means to go on reading for the Bar or cramming for the
public examinations, his prospects of immediate starvation are
excessively favourable.
It was remarked some years ago by a writer who had spent a great deal of
time in investigating life at common lodging-houses in the poorer
districts of the Metropolis, that a startling number of university men
seemed to drift into them. Yet these are the men who are supposed to
have qualified themselves most highly for the holding of good positions.
In some way, therefore, it is clear that this academic training has
disadvantages which serve to handicap its victims severely in practical
life. It cannot be mere accident that those who, according to all
educational tradition, are classed as the most fit for responsible
employment necessitating good mental ability, actually labour under
obvious disabilities in this connection.
Nobody can urge that there is not enough work of a nature demanding high
attainments to go round. Literature itself offers an enormous field for
the exhibition of special talent; and there are many other walks in life
where mental superiority is sadly needed, and which should therefore
provide ample work and remuneration for those who show capability and
resource. But in spite of all these openings some of our scholars are
driven to eke out a miserable pauper's existence in the common
lodging-house, or even in extreme cases to solicit parish relief.
The explanation of this strange anomaly lies simply in the fact that the
educational mill not only manufactures dummies, but makes them all
exactly alike. In the higher types of schools and colleges there is
generally a choice of three patterns--the classical dummy, the modern
language dummy, and the scientific dummy. But each pattern is very like
the other, for all the practical purposes of this life; that is to say,
they are all equally useless and equally unfitted for the task of moving
forward with the times.
The result of fitting out everybody with a common stock of knowledge is
to institute a disastrous form of intellectual competition. Thousands of
young men are being equipped annually by our schools and universities
for the performance of precisely the same functions. Intelligence
brought wholesale to the market in this stereotyped form is in much the
same unhappy condition as unskilled labour. There is a supply far in
excess of the demand, and consequently employment cannot be found for
all.
Perhaps the profession of literature and journalism affords the aptest
illustration of the utter folly and uselessness of producing these
machine-made scholars, all filled chock-full with the same ideas, facts,
figures, and dates. Here, as in reality everywhere else, there is need
of originality, intellectual independence, insight, judgment, and
imagination. Journalism wants ideas; facts are amply provided by the
news agency and the reporter. The gates of literature are opened wide
for striking and vigorous thought, trenchant criticism, and imaginative
flights of fancy.
What has the average academically-trained man to offer? He has an
assortment of second-hand ideas borrowed from Plato and Socrates, from
Ovid and Virgil and Horace; he can echo Voltaire, Goethe, Kant,
Shakespeare, Dante; he can dish up Aristotle, Pythagoras, Bacon,
Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Davy, Faraday and Darwin. He can borrow
illustrations from classical mythology; he knows the Dynasties of
ancient Egypt; and he is able to furnish, without reference to history,
the exact date upon which King John signed Magna Charta, and the precise
number of battles fought in the Wars of the Roses.
Such are the literary accomplishments of numberless university
graduates, and it is small wonder that they often lead to the workhouse.
The demand for the dressed-up ideas of the poets, philosophers, and
scientists of a former generation is not great. Those who like their
literature at second hand prefer snippets from the Newgate Calendar to
the wise saws of Bacon; and they would rather have their blood stirred
by quotations from 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' or 'Pay, pay,
pay,' than read a paraphrase of the combined wisdom of all the
philosophers of the nineteenth century.
The same argument holds good in relation to other professions and
occupations. The university graduate has no practical accomplishments.
He may be an ornamental, but he is certainly not _ipso facto_ a useful,
member of society. The only thing for which he is pre-eminently fitted
is to assist others, by means of extension lectures and cramming, to be
his companions in misfortune. But this can hardly be designated a
beneficial sphere of activity, and he is handicapped in all he
undertakes by the fact that thousands of others possess the same
educational equipment as himself.
Why should every educated man be like the other? There is absolutely no
reason for it. The similarity is purely artificial. Nature never
intended all men to be cast in the same mould, and it is only the
perversity of man himself that has brought the human race down to such a
level. The stupidity of giving every scholar the same mental outfit is
so self-evident as scarcely to need further comment. Even following the
modern plan of stuffing minds instead of developing them, one would have
thought that common sense would dictate the necessity of manufacturing
as much variety as possible.
The whole trend of evolution is to differentiate; and if natural laws
were not completely disregarded by education systems, the absurdity of
filling the world with two or three human species instead of a hundred
thousand would never have been perpetrated. As long as this arbitrary
interference with Nature is continued, educated men will not cease to be
a drug in the market. Its immediate effect is not to endow the
individual with special qualities, but to handicap him heavily for the
real business of life.
Competition amongst the 'well-educated' is not the result of
over-population or of a too liberal supply of competent men. It is
caused by uniformity of attainment; and until this is generally
realized, one of the most pressing social problems cannot hope to find a
solution.