SOCIALISM AND EDUCATION
The attitude of Socialists towards education is a peculiar one. They
see in it apparently less an agency for distributing knowledge and
discovering ability than an instrument for the propagation of
Socialism and an institution for relieving parents of all cost and
responsibility for the maintenance and the bringing up of their
children. Hence most Socialists, in discussing education, consider it
rather from the point of view of those who are desirous of State
relief than from the point of view of those who wish for good
education.
Among the "Immediate Reforms" demanded by the Social-Democratic
Federation, the following embody its education programme: "Elementary
education to be free, secular, industrial, and compulsory for all
classes. The age of obligatory school attendance to be raised to
sixteen. Unification and systematisation of intermediate and higher
education, both general and technical, and all such education to be
free. Free maintenance for all attending State schools. Abolition of
school rates; the cost of education in all State schools to be borne
by the national Exchequer."[816] An influential Socialist writer
demands: "Education should be fee-less from top to bottom of the
ladder, the universities included."[817] In accordance with the
Socialist views regarding the relation of the sexes, which are
described in Chapter XXV. "Socialism and Woman, the Family and the
Home,"[818] most Socialists demand co-education and identical
education for both sexes. "Under Socialism boys and girls will receive
exactly the same training and exercise in the fundamentals of a
liberal education. Success in examinations of whatever character shall
bring equal reward and distinction. There will be no separation into
boys' classes and girls' classes. The instruction being the same, they
shall receive it at the same time."[819] "Education will be the same
for all and for both sexes. The sexes will be separated only in cases
in which functional differences make it absolutely necessary."[820]
Socialists see in the schools chiefly a means whereby to abolish
parental responsibilities and to secure "free State maintenance" for
all children. In claiming free State maintenance, Socialists grossly
exaggerate with regard to the number of underfed children. "It is
doubtful if half the children at present attending school are
physically fit to be educated, and medical men of eminence have
unhesitatingly expressed the opinion that the alarming increase of
insanity, which is one of the most terrible characteristics of modern
social life, is largely, if not entirely, due to the attempt to
educate those who are too ill-nourished to stand the mental strain
that even the most elementary school-training involves. As a remedy
for this, the Social-Democratic Federation advocates a complete system
of free State maintenance for all children attending school. This is
an essential corollary of compulsory education. Only complete free
maintenance will meet the requirements of the case."[821] "All
children, destitute or not, should be fed, and fed without charge, at
the expense of the State or municipality. We propose that the regular
school course should include at least one meal a day. Thus only can
we make sure that all the children who need feeding will be fed."[822]
"To cram dates into the poor little skulls of innocent children when
you ought to be cramming dates down their throats is not a right thing
to do, especially when you remember that the most precious thing in
this world is a human life, and when you realise that you are
murdering systematically thousands of children every year because they
cannot get proper food--they cannot even get pure milk in the great
cities of our land. One of our first duties in this nation is to see
that every child has a right to the best and most ample provision for
its physical needs. That should be the primary charge upon the nation.
I am not here to-night to discuss the great question of the State
maintenance of children. Personally I am absolutely in favour of
it."[823] Experience of other nations has taught that the institution
of free meals for necessitous school-children is immediately and very
grossly abused by unscrupulous parents easily able to feed their
children. From Milan, for instance, we learn that "When in 1900 this
service began, meals were given on only 133 days out of a possible 174
days of school attendance. The outlay was then set down at 98,300
francs. During the second year, however, free meals were served on 153
days and cost 149,337 francs. In 1903 the free meals cost the
municipality 247,766 francs and 277,603 in 1904. The outlay will now
exceed 300,000 francs, and the number of pupils who manage to
establish their claim to be fed gratuitously is ever increasing."[824]
British experiments of free feeding on a smaller scale have shown that
"In the large majority of cases the children who are sent to school
hungry are so sent, not by honest and poor parents, but by those who
have an imperfectly developed sense of parental responsibility and are
willing to shuffle out of the duty of providing for their children if
they think anybody else will undertake it for them. These parents are
not in need of assistance--they are perfectly well able to feed their
own children; but if free meals can be had for the asking, they are
not too proud to tell the child to ask. It relieves the mother of the
trouble of preparing a meal for the child, and the money saved can be
used for some more attractive form of personal expenditure."[825] At
Birmingham, for example, numerous applications were made by the
teachers to the relieving officers on behalf of children under their
care, but when inquiries were made into the circumstances of the
parents it was found that many of them were earning over thirty
shillings a week, and in one case the parent was in constant
employment with an average wage of _3l. 17s. 6d._ a week.[826] In
Bolton, where during the winter of 1904-5 a charitable society
provided free meals for children in certain centres of the town, it
was found that the parents of some of the children who were partaking
of the free meals so provided, and even reported as being underfed,
were in receipt of as much as from _2l._ to _3l._ a week.[827] In
Fulham (London) "More than one hundred names were sent to the Boards
of Guardians of children who were adjudged to be underfed and were
receiving meals from public charity. In hardly one of these cases did
the relieving officer consider the complaint well founded. One family
was found by him to be earning an income of _4l. 4s._ a week, and yet
the children were sent to share in the charitable meals."[828] "Some
of the parents who sent their children to the Johanna Street school in
Lambeth said that they did not give their children food before going
to school as they knew that if they did not do so they would receive
it at the school, as the children of other people got food there and
they did not see why theirs should not too."[829] The fact that
Socialists grossly exaggerate in giving the proportion of underfed
school children, and in ascribing the cause of underfeeding solely to
the poverty of parents, is clear to all who have studied the problem
of poverty. Mr. Cyril Jackson, the chief inspector of public
elementary schools, for instance, in summarising the evidence of the
women inspectors appointed to inquire into the age of admission of
infants into elementary schools, says: "The question of underfed
children cannot fail to be touched in the course of such an inquiry.
It is interesting to find a general agreement that it is unsuitable
rather than insufficient feeding that is responsible for sickly
children. Want of sufficient sleep, neglect of personal cleanliness,
badly ventilated homes, are contributory causes of the low physical
standard reached."[830]
Some Socialists, though only a few, have been honest enough to express
similar views. A Fabian tract, for instance, says: "We have said that
universal free feeding appears to be the only way in which the evil of
improper (as distinct from insufficient) feeding can be removed. At
present many children whose parents get fairly good wages cannot feed
their children properly, either because they do not know what is the
best food to give, or because they have not the time or the skill to
prepare it. Manifestly the case of these will not be met by any system
which feeds only the patently starved and destitute child. But it will
be met both directly and indirectly by a universal system; directly,
because the children, whatever they get at home, will at least get
proper food at school; indirectly, because it will serve to educate
the next generation of mothers in the knowledge of what is the best
and most economical way of providing for their families. This is not
the place to go into the very large question of what is the ideal diet
for a child. All that need be insisted on here is that the provision
should be bought and prepared under expert advice, and that
consideration of cheapness should never be allowed to count as against
the needs of nourishment. Every child should receive at least one
solid meal in the middle of the day, and perhaps a glass of hot milk
on arrival in the morning."[831]
The "hungry children" argument is a valuable one for purposes of
agitation, and it is used by the Socialists to the fullest extent. The
workers are told: "The children are too ill provided for to be
educated. This is not because the worker is idle or thriftless, but
actually because he is too industrious and produces so much that his
labour as a producer is at a discount. It is objected that to provide
free State maintenance for all the children would be to destroy
parental responsibility. But it is too late in the day to urge this
objection, seeing that the State has taken upon itself the education
of the children and is prepared to undertake, and does undertake,
their maintenance and bringing-up when the parents are so careless of
their responsibilities as to neglect them entirely."[832] "The
old-fashioned prejudice fostered by the capitalists and their
hangers-on that it is degrading to accept anything from the State is
fast dying out"[833]--That workmen who are daily told by their leaders
that it is unreasonable to expect that they should bring up their
children frequently desert their family is natural. Every year many
thousands of wives and children are deserted. At every police station
the names of such men may be seen posted up, and those desertions are
undoubtedly largely due to Socialistic teaching.
The real object of the Socialists in demanding free maintenance for
the children is not humanity. In making that demand they do not even
think of the welfare of the children, as the following extracts will
prove, which clearly reveal the real object of their demands. "Free
maintenance for children should be accepted by trade unionists as
tending to raise the standard of comfort. All should demand it with
the object of personally benefiting themselves."[834] "In nine cases
out of ten it is the hungry child who breaks the back of the strike.
Let them feel assured that their children's dinner is secure, and they
will continue the struggle to a victorious end."[835] "Free
maintenance for children would be a tax on that surplus wealth which
the capitalists and the aristocracy share between them. To the worker
free maintenance for his children would be equivalent to an additional
income. His standard of living would rise. No doubt the capitalist
would reduce his wages as much as possible, but the worker would then
be able to fight him on more equal terms. His children being well
cared for, he would be able to hold out against the capitalist for an
indefinite period."[836] "We counsel the workers to accept the offer
as a small payment on account of a huge debt, but to accept it with no
more gratitude than is shown by the class which is maintained in
luxury, parents and children alike, by the collective industry of the
workers. By dint of organisation they may be able very soon to exact
payment of a more substantial sum--State maintenance, to wit."[837]
The doctrines above given have unfortunately been accepted by many
organised workers. A resolution of the Trades Union Congress at
Leeds, in September 1904, asserted:
"That having regard to the facts (_a_) that twelve millions of the
population are living in actual poverty, or close to the poverty line;
(_b_) that physical deterioration of the people is the inevitable
result of this; (_c_) that it is impossible to teach starving and
underfed children, this Congress urges the Government to introduce,
without further delay, legislation instructing education authorities
to provide at least one free meal a day for children attending
State-supported schools."
A resolution passed at the Scottish Miners' Conference on December 30,
1904, stated:
"That this Conference is in favour of State maintenance of children,
but that in the meantime we identify ourselves with the movement in
favour of free meals for school children."
Resolutions passed by the National Labour Conference on the State
maintenance of children, at the Guildhall, City of London, Friday,
January 20, 1905, declared:
"That this Conference of delegates from British Labour Organisations,
Socialist and other bodies, declares in favour of State maintenance of
children as a necessary corollary of universal compulsory education
and as a means of partially arresting that physical deterioration of
the industrial population of this country which is now generally
recognised as a grave national danger. As a step towards such State
maintenance this Conference, supporting the decision of the last
Trades Union Congress upon this question, calls upon the Government to
introduce without further delay such legislative measures as will
enable the local authorities to provide meals for children attending
the common schools, to be paid for out of the National Exchequer; and
in support of this demand calls attention to the evidence given by Dr.
Eichholz, the official witness of the Board of Education on the
Committee on Physical Deterioration, in which he stated that the
question of food is at the base of all the evils of child degeneracy,
and that if steps were taken to ensure the proper adequate feeding of
the children the evil will rapidly cease."
A Socialist has worked out in a widely read book the cost of free
education and State maintenance, which will require a yearly
expenditure of _458,750,000l._, a sum four times as large as the
entire national Budget. This outlay does not deter him. Combining the
State schools with State workshops, he promises that they will yield a
profit of exactly _105,850,000l._ a year.[838] This scheme should
recommend itself to Chancellors of the Exchequer in search of a few
millions.
Another imaginative Socialist would make the abolition of all existing
languages part of his educational scheme: "Socialism will steadfastly
aim at the adoption of a universal language, be it English or volapuk.
All the modern languages--and for the matter of that, the ancient
also--are but jungles of verbiage which retard, rather than
facilitate, human thought and progress. They have grown up anyhow; but
what we now want is a made language, constructed on scientific
principles, and so easy of comprehension that any intelligent person
can acquire it in a few months."[839]
Across the educational, as most other, proposals of British Socialists
should be written in large letters, Utopia!
FOOTNOTES:
[816] See Appendix.
[817] Davidson, _Democrat's Address_, p. 5.
[818] See p. 330.
[819] Ethel Snowden, _The Woman Socialist_, pp. 39, 40.
[820] Bebel, _Woman_, p. 218.
[821] Quelch, _The Social-Democratic Federation_, p. 8.
[822] Fabian Tract, _After Bread, Education_, No. 120, p. 9.
[823] Kirtlan, _Socialism for Christians_, p. 8.
[824] _Free Feeding of School Children_, p. 23.
[825] Cox, _Socialism_, p. 16.
[826] _Local Government Board Report_, Cd. 3105, p. 495.
[827] _Ibid._ p. 506.
[828] _Times_, March 17, 1906.
[829] Cox, _Socialism_, pp. 16, 17.
[830] _Cd._ 2726, p. iii.
[831] Fabian Tract, _After Bread, Education_, No. 120, p. 14.
[832] Quelch, _Social-Democratic Federation_, p. 9.
[833] _Socialism and Trade Unionism_, p. 5.
[834] _Socialism and Trade Unionism_, p. 5.
[835] Fabian Tract, _After Bread, Education_, No. 120, p. 11.
[836] _Socialism and Trade Unionism_, p. 5.
[837] Watts, _State Maintenance for Children_, p. 4.
[838] Richardson, _How It Can Be Done_, pp. 50-61.
[839] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 166.