REAL EDUCATION
There is no such thing in existence as a system of genuine education. A
large number of institutions exist, as we have seen, for the purpose of
manufacturing and cramming, after an approved plan, the youth of the
upper and middle classes, and there is a well-organized system of sham
education spread throughout the country under the title of 'public
elementary schools.' That is the sum of modern educational effort.
The word 'education,' when used in the sense that is commonly applied to
it, could not be satisfactorily and adequately defined in less than a
post octavo pamphlet. It signifies an enormous number of things, from
pot-hooks to trigonometry. It means history, geography, physics,
chemistry, natural history, mineralogy, Latin, Greek, French,
arithmetic, algebra, Euclid, and goodness knows how many more things,
jammed in at so much a pound. It means taking a child, shaking
everything out of its head, and then stuffing every nook and corner with
facts it will never be able to remember, and with dates for which it
cannot have any use. It means risking the mental shipwreck of the clever
child, and making the stupid more dense. And it means popping the
individual into a mould, and dishing him up as a dummy.
What it does not mean, is developing the faculties of each individual.
There is, in fact, a wide difference between what education is and what
it should be. If every school and college throughout the country were
closed to-morrow, it would probably effect some negative good within an
appreciable measure of time, and it would certainly abolish much
positive harm that is being unceasingly produced by the present methods
of instruction. If no effort be made to develop the faculties of each
individual, then it is better to leave them alone to develop on their
own account. But nothing can be more pernicious than to take the youth
of the nation wholesale, and to destroy most of the good that is latent
in them, in order to manufacture them into something which Nature never
intended them to be.
This is not education, but fabrication. It is destruction, not
development. Real education would consist in assisting every individual
to develop the faculties with which Nature had endowed him, and to train
to their highest capacity any special talents that might reveal
themselves during the process. Above all things, real education would
encourage the utilization of the brain for purposes of thought and
reflection, instead of trying to make it a warehouse for storing
van-loads of useless knowledge.
It is absurd to assume that this simple educational aim is beyond the
reach of humanity. That its introduction into the practical affairs of
life would cause a stupendous revolution cannot be denied. But it does
not follow, on that account, that it should be conveniently consigned,
like many another pressing reform, to the pigeon-hole of the impossible.
The main thing that is required to carry out the true principle of
education is more individual common sense and less State interference.
The mischievous enactment that children should commence any process of
instruction at the tender age of five should be at once struck off the
statute-book. No doubt something would have to be done to remove young
children of the poorest class, in large towns at least, from the
influence of sordid homes for a certain period of the day. It does not
follow, however, that they should be subjected to the routine of an
elementary school and crammed with superficial and unsuitable knowledge.
Children want room to think; their minds have to grow up as well as
their bodies. Mental nourishment is quite as necessary as physical
nourishment; but it is nonsensical to apply them both in the same
fashion. The mind has to be fed in a totally different manner to the
body. The former is a delicate operation, that requires far more care
and common sense than is necessary for the boiling of milk or the
preparation of an infant food.
The child's mind is not a blank, upon which anything may be written at
will; it is scored invisibly with heredity and individual tendencies.
The function of the parent is to see that nothing is done to destroy
this delicate fabric, and to watch carefully for revelations of natural
bent and character, in order to encourage and develop them.
Anything in the shape of actual teaching or instruction ought to be
rigorously avoided. Facts should be regarded as poisons, to be used
sparingly and with discrimination. Every time that a fact is imparted an
idea is driven out. That should be carefully borne in mind. The
operation of the simplest fact upon the intelligence is highly complex.
It is not only a thing to imprint upon the memory, but it is also a
means of diverting thought into the channels of the commonplace. Every
fact closes up an avenue of the imagination.
To take an illustration, let us suppose someone to impart to a little
child the information that it is a physiological impossibility for
angels to have wings as well as arms. This prosaic piece of intelligence
would, in one moment, annihilate most of the romance of childhood. It
would be a blow from which the imagination might never recover. The
child would, by a rapid process of thought, lose all faith in fairyland,
and in the thousand and one fancies of the youthful brain that are the
mainspring of the development of the imagination.
Why is it that ninety-nine persons out of a hundred lose this faculty in
the earliest period of their childhood? It is simply because their
bringing-up has consisted in a persistent inoculation with the material
facts of life, and a correspondingly persistent elimination of all
imaginative ideas. 'Don't let the children believe such rubbish!' is a
constant ejaculation of the mechanical-minded person who does not
permit himself to suffer any illusions, and who has long since 'done
with romance and all that kind of twaddle.'
At any cost the imagination of the child should be encouraged and
developed. It is the richest vein in the whole mental machinery of man,
the faculty within which genius most frequently lurks, and where it can
be most easily and permanently destroyed. Grown-up people should
remember that an indiscreet answer to a childish question, or a snub
administered to an inquiring mind, is often sufficient to check thought.
It should be mainly the care of the parent to encourage the imagination
in young children, recollecting that up to a certain age its development
depends upon all the absurdities and fantastic notions of childhood
which the average adult is so fond of repressing.
By the exercise of prudence and some show of sympathy, it would then be
possible to bring a child up to the age of seven or eight without
damaging its mind or destroying its faculties. From that point onwards
the child's education ought to depend upon the individual himself. There
should be no such thing as instruction, in the sense which implies the
cramming of the brain with information, or such mental gymnastics as
conjugating irregular verbs and hunting for the least common multiple.
The position of teacher and pupil would have to be practically reversed.
The pupil would lead, and the teacher follow. In fact, the latter should
become an adviser rather than instructor, the child selecting those
studies, or those arts or crafts, which are to be made the principal
objective of its education, whilst to the mentor would fall the role of
encouraging and assisting the course of study or practice at a morally
safe distance.
Boys and girls would then not learn, but investigate. The process of
learning should be got rid of altogether, being a clumsy, dronish way of
acquiring knowledge, and one that tends to keep the brain in a perpetual
state of dependence.
Ignorance, one ought to remember, is a valuable incentive to
investigation. Young people should be left as much as possible to find
things out for themselves. Education should resemble a person groping
forward in the dark; and only so much light ought to be let in upon the
process as seems desirable in each individual case. In that way, at
least, the pupil would learn to think for himself; and even if little
more were accomplished than this, it would be of ten thousand times
greater value to the individual, and to the community at large, than the
acquisition of a large stock of facts at the price of losing all power
of reflection and initiative.
Let me give an illustration of what I will call the opposing methods of
education.
We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that the only available book
for the instruction of a class of boys was that excellent but abstruse
work known as 'Bradshaw's Railway Guide.' The modern schoolmaster would
draw up an exhaustive and complicated scheme. So much time would be
devoted to parsing every sentence through the book. The figures would be
added up, and subtracted, and divided. He would concoct neat little
mathematical problems: If the 11.40 express from Paddington travelled to
Swindon at fifty miles an hour and broke down half-way, at what o'clock
would the 12.15 parliamentary train overtake it? and so forth. But--most
valuable exercise of all--long tables of trains would be learnt off by
heart, with the names of stopping places and the prices of the
first-class tickets.
A genuine educationist would set to work in a much simpler fashion. He
would tell the boys to look out a good train from Birmingham to
Newcastle. Each boy would be free to tackle the problem in his own
fashion, and the task--if successfully accomplished--would do much
towards developing the thinking faculties.
In any system of real education it would be impossible for the
schoolmaster to dictate the subjects to which the pupil should give his
attention, and it would be equally impossible for the parent to say 'I
intend my son to enter such-and-such a profession.' Nobody can settle
beforehand what talents the child is to develop. That is a private
matter in which no third person has any right to interfere between the
child itself and Nature.
Modern education consists entirely of interference. There is, in the
first place, the interference of the parent, who insists upon an
artistic boy becoming a banker, puts an incipient tradesman into the
army, or tries to make a scholar out of a mechanic. Then there comes the
interference of the schoolmaster, who has his favourite recipe of Latin
verses, quadratic equations, and what not, to stuff into every head he
can get hold of for a few terms. Lastly appears the Government, which
declares that nobody shall enter the army, or navy, or civil service,
without devoting his best years to being crammed in such a scandalous
fashion, that it is a toss-up whether he breaks down altogether under
the ordeal, or simply forgets, a few months after the consummation of
the process, all that has been pitchforked into his brain.
When a baby is brought into the world the parents spend the first year
of its life in wondering and speculating about its future. Will it be a
great author, or a Bishop, or a Lord Chancellor? If its mouth twitches
when anyone slams a door, or it gurgles happily when a note is struck on
the piano, they declare it has genius for music; and if it amuses itself
later on by crude efforts to draw distorted figures with distorted faces
and distorted arms and legs, they jump to the conclusion that they have
produced an infant Correggio.
Why does all this anxiety about the child's individuality disappear the
moment its intelligence begins to dawn? One must suppose, at any rate,
that it does, because the parent immediately sets about getting all the
originality knocked out of his offspring, and does not grudge the
payment of heavy fees to secure this object.
The dreams about the Lord Chancellorship, or the gold medal at the
musical academy, vanish as if by magic. There is no more talk about
bishoprics or artistic fame. The parents settle down to the conventional
task of having the child fitted for something it has no desire to be;
and the notion that the particular faculties they observed--or thought
they observed--during its early infancy should or could be developed
never appears to enter their heads for a moment.
Some children develop later than others; but with proper care and
encouragement it would be possible not to lead, but to follow, each
child to its own bent. The child must show the way--that is the essence
of real education, and it involves a complete upheaval of the principles
upon which systems of instruction are at present founded.
There is only one way in which people are now able to obtain a genuine
education, and it goes by the name--applied with more or less
contempt--of self-culture. The process consists simply in the individual
choosing his own subjects and studying them as best he can. No doubt the
method could be immensely extended and improved, for the self-cultured
man has no mentor to guide him when he is in perplexity, and would
profit by experienced advice.
But even were this not the case, it would be far better to abolish
schools and universities and to let everybody shift for himself, than to
insist upon subjecting the youth of the nation to a system that
ingeniously manufactures failures for every walk in life, and
accomplishes practically nothing else.