THE OPEN DOOR TO INTELLIGENCE
It has been the chief aim in these pages, not to elaborate a scheme of
education on new principles, but to point out the utter folly of
persisting with a system that has worked a vast amount of evil, and
cannot be proved to have achieved any real good.
Our great men have not been the product of a school curriculum, or of an
academic training. In no single instance, as far as can be ascertained,
has nobility of character, or the possession of genius, or soundness of
judgment, or even beauty of diction in literature, been attributable to
the grind in grammatical rules, the fact-cramming, and the mental
gymnastics which go to make up what is called 'a liberal education.'
In science, where the highest intellectual qualities are brought into
play, most of the great discoverers have owed their entire scientific
knowledge to self-taught methods of investigation. And it is the same
thing in every field of research where the thinking faculties must reach
the supreme limit of development--namely, that nothing is traceable to
academic learning, and that everything is owing to the mental
initiative which is produced solely by self-inculcated habits of
reflection.
To give education systems the credit, or even a share in the credit, of
all the splendid achievements in politics, science, art, and literature
is sheer intellectual laziness. It is the curse of the age that few
people will trouble to question the existing order of things, and that
nobody--except those who make the manufacture of opinions their
profession--can be found to express an independent opinion on any
subject under the sun.
That is one reason why newspapers exist in their present form. The
leading article is primarily the invention of the stupid, conventional,
well-educated man whose profound knowledge of dates and irregular verbs
has, unfortunately, had the effect of preventing him from forming his
own judgment on public affairs. The Press, which must have been
originally established, like the famous _Peking Gazette_, for the
dissemination of news, has long ago discovered that people prefer to
obtain their opinions ready-made.
The wise argument we hear being urged in a railway-carriage or at a
dinner-table is merely an intellectual reach-me-down purchased at a
book-stall for the modest price of one penny. If there were only one
newspaper, and consequently only one leading article on a particular
topic, political discussion would die a natural death.
The political opinion to which the majestic alderman or the
classically-trained savant gives such profound utterance is the opinion,
not of himself, but of some poor devil who knows nothing of the
blessings of a university education, but who writes in a garret, or in
a dingy office off Fleet Street, to earn his bread and cheese.
Its value or political insight need not be disparaged on that account. I
would trust it a thousand times rather than I would trust the
opinion--if such a thing should have any existence--of the average
educated man whose brains have been jellified at school or college. The
point is not the value of the humble scribe's opinion, however, but the
fact that a man, of what would be called inferior educational
attainments, has to be engaged to do mental work that cannot be
performed by the brains of people who have enjoyed all the advantages
that a first-rate education is supposed to confer.
The vote of the working-man is scarcely more unintelligently applied at
election times than the vote of the educated man. On the contrary, the
former may be said to think independently, or at least to use an
independent instinct, whilst the latter is contented to believe in the
iniquity of one party or the virtue of another, according to the opinion
of the man in the garret. The working man wants beer, and he knows it.
The China question, the war in South Africa, the housing of the working
classes, the great education controversy--everything is beer to him. It
is the Government who cheapen beer, or who regulate the percentage of
arsenic to be used in brewing, that command his support--not Ministers
who promise to maintain British supremacy in the Far East, or who put
forward an attractive programme of domestic legislation.
The natural consequence of this wholesale production of dummy members of
society is that the strings of government are really pulled by the
intelligent few. Whatever the external constitution of Great Britain may
be, the real power does not lie with Parliament or with the Executive,
but is invariably wielded by one or more men of commanding ability.
Nominally, the administration is in the hands of the social aristocracy,
that is to say, of a few peer families and their innumerable relations.
Whichever of the two great parties in the State may happen to be in
power, the Government is invariably exploited by members of the peer
class, who practically divide the spoils of office amongst themselves
and their immediate entourage.
Although, however, the English nobility manage to usurp all the offices
of State, and to secure all the plums for themselves, it is not they who
really govern the country. No doubt the landed aristocracy are
politically the most fit to govern. They have no commercial or
industrial interests that may bring corrupt and undesirable influences
into public life. But they are unfitted for the position they ought to
occupy by a system of education that manufactures mediocrity, and
stifles the very qualities of imaginativeness and initiative which are
indispensable to sound statesmanship.
What is the inevitable result?
The self-made man, with all his splendid intellectual faculties
developed, with his independence of judgment, and his acquired habit of
thinking for himself instead of leaning on precedent and borrowed
wisdom, rides the dummy Government class with whip and spur. He lays on
the lash here and digs in the rowels there, goading on his steed in any
direction that chances to suit his purpose. He naturally places personal
ambition in front of national expediency, because his political career
is necessarily a constant fight against odds. Either he must rise
superior to the peer combination, as Disraeli succeeded in doing after a
struggle unparalleled in the annals of political history, or he will be
crushed by it.
But the necessities of his position render the self-made man a
particularly undesirable element in the administration of public
affairs. During the course of his successful upward struggle he has, in
nine cases out of ten, entangled himself in commercial or industrial
interests from which it is difficult or impossible for him to dissociate
himself. By this means, and through the necessarily adventurous
character of his political career, he can scarcely avoid becoming,
however undeserved the imputation may be, an object of suspicion. And
when once distrust of this kind has been allowed to permeate through our
public life, the degeneration of parliamentary government must follow.
Disraeli spent the greater part of his political life in manoeuvring
for the premiership. When his object had been successfully attained, all
his great qualities were turned to the advantage of the State. But up to
that point he was compelled, in order to survive in his colossal
struggle against the aristocratic element in politics, to play for his
own hand.
That must always be the case with the self-made man. His first objective
must be his own self-preservation, and if he wishes to gain power he is
bound to exploit the political situation, regardless of the best
interests of the country, because every man's hand is against him until
the summit of his ambition has been reached.
Schools and colleges in which the mind is crammed instead of being
developed cannot produce statesmen. They can manufacture in unlimited
quantities the type of well-intentioned, honourable mediocrity with
which our public service is stocked. But as long as this process is
continued, the real power in the administration of the affairs of the
Empire will remain virtually in the hands of a few able individuals of
the wrong calibre. There will be a dummy Prime Minister, and a dummy
Cabinet; but the wires will be worked by the self-made man who must
place himself first and his country second, with consequences usually
disastrous to the national welfare.
There is no intended disparagement of the self-made man. He is, and
always has been, the best intellectual product of the age. The greatest
statesmen, philosophers, scientists, writers, and other men of genius
have been self-made or self-cultured. But it does not follow because
great statesmen have been self-made men, that it is for the good of the
country that its rulers should be drawn from that class. As has already
been pointed out, the self-made man usually creates far more mischief in
the course of his upward political struggle, than is compensated for
afterwards when he has secured his position and can turn his talents to
the account of his country, instead of for the purpose of securing his
own personal advancement.
There is, it must be remembered, a national emergency for which we have
to prepare. Our extended Imperial obligations, and the sharp commercial
competition which has caused some of the great Powers to sacrifice
individuality wholesale in order to mobilize an army of traders, make it
imperative that measures should be taken to preserve the Anglo-Saxon
race.
The thing to avoid at this moment is imitation of tactics that will send
every nation adopting them backward in evolution. To secure a temporary
commercial triumph at the enormous sacrifice of the natural development
of the individual, would be a fatal and short-sighted policy that could
only end in national ruin. We have not yet reached the worst depths of
the education fallacy, but we are complacently drifting in that
direction.
State interference in educational matters may be an excellent thing when
the whole energies of the central authorities happen to be exerted in
mitigation of the evils of the national system. But it must be borne in
mind that political parties and the heads of departments are constantly
changing in this country. The reformer of to-day may to-morrow be
superseded by a retrogressive-minded mediocrity; and there would be no
guarantee that the beneficial influence of the one would not be
annihilated afterwards by the pernicious intermeddling of the other.
Instead of casting about for means of securing a State monopoly of the
ruinous type of education supplied by our schools and colleges, it would
be more conducive to the salvation of the country if the whole energies
of the nation were directed towards revolutionizing the system of
instruction itself.
If schoolmasters can accomplish nothing better than the manufacture of
set types of humanity, the progress of mankind would be promoted more
rapidly without their assistance.
What is, after all, the main object of education?
It is to assist everybody to develop his faculties and talents, so that
he may be fitted for the position in life which Nature intended him to
occupy.
Nobody can assert for an instant that the conventional methods of
instructing youth either achieve, or even appear to aim at achieving,
this end. The school does not pretend to discover or to encourage
individual talents. It offers to pound so much Latin grammar,
mathematics, history, geography, etc., into each pupil, and to turn him
out at the end of the process with exactly the same mental equipment as
that acquired by the rest of his school-fellows.
The principal aim of this book has been to draw attention to the
incongruities and evils brought about by this sham and worthless system
of education. That the world contains many illustrious examples of
culture and genius is no proof that the slightest benefit has been
derived by anybody from parsing Ovid or cramming facts and dates. 'The
best part of every man's education,' said Sir Walter Scott, 'is that
which he gives to himself'; and it might be added, with literal truth,
that it is the only part which is of the slightest service in developing
the mind with which he has been naturally endowed.
All that I have presumed to advocate is that the door should be left
open to intelligence.
The education systems of the present day are particularly felicitous in
keeping it firmly closed. It is only by dodging the schoolmaster and the
coach that youthful talent stands a chance of being brought to maturity.
The greatest achievements are not the work of senior wranglers and
Balliol scholars: they have been accomplished by class-room dunces, like
Clive and Wellington; by school idlers, such as Napoleon, Disraeli,
Swift, and Newton; or by self-taught men like Stephenson, John Hunter,
Livingstone, and Herschel.
It cannot be doubted that the institution of a rational method of
developing the mind of the individual would sweep away all these
anomalies. There are thousands of men in responsible positions who would
willingly exchange their entire stock of classical or mathematical
knowledge for a modicum of common sense and judgment. If everybody were
encouraged to think for himself, the Empire would have no lack of good
servants to carry on the traditions of the past; and the dummy unit of
administration would give place to a self-reliant man, capable of moving
with the times, and of serving the public interest according to its
wants, instead of clinging merely to routine and precedent.
Nearly all the misery suffered by humanity has been produced by
artificial means. Providence did not intend this world to be a place of
purgatory for the majority of mankind. We are what we have made
ourselves, and not what evolution intended us to be. It is in our power
to mitigate much of the evil we have ignorantly manufactured for our own
discomfiture, if we only attack it at the roots. And the greatest curse
humanity has laid upon itself is that arbitrary interference with the
natural development of the mind which is misnamed 'education.'
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
End of Project Gutenberg's The Curse of Education, by Harold E. Gorst