To my mind, a glance at the subjects now taught in schools ought to
convince any reasonable person that the object of the lessons is to keep
children out of mischief, and not to qualify them for their part in life
as responsible citizens of a free State. It is not possible to maintain
freedom in any State, no matter how perfect its original constitution,
unless its publicly active citizens know a good deal of constitutional
history, law, and political science, with its basis of economics. If
as much pains had been taken a century ago to make us all understand
Ricardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world
would have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the
greatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive
knowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either
place-hunters, anarchists, or sheep shepherded by wolves.
But it will be observed that these are highly controversial subjects.
Now no controversial subject can be taught dogmatically. He who knows
only the official side of a controversy knows less than nothing of its
nature. The abler a schoolmaster is, the more dangerous he is to his
pupils unless they have the fullest opportunity of hearing another
equally able person do his utmost to shake his authority and convict him
of error.
At present such teaching is very unpopular. It does not exist in
schools; but every adult who derives his knowledge of public affairs
from the newspapers can take in, at the cost of an extra halfpenny, two
papers of opposite politics. Yet the ordinary man so dislikes having his
mind unsettled, as he calls it, that he angrily refuses to allow a paper
which dissents from his views to be brought into his house. Even at his
club he resents seeing it, and excludes it if it happens to run counter
to the opinions of all the members. The result is that his opinions are
not worth considering. A churchman who never reads The Freethinker very
soon has no more real religion than the atheist who never reads The
Church Times. The attitude is the same in both cases: they want to hear
nothing good of their enemies; consequently they remain enemies and
suffer from bad blood all their lives; whereas men who know their
opponents and understand their case, quite commonly respect and like
them, and always learn something from them.
Here, again, as at so many points, we come up against the abuse of
schools to keep people in ignorance and error, so that they may be
incapable of successful revolt against their industrial slavery. The
most important simple fundamental economic truth to impress on a
child in complicated civilizations like ours is the truth that whoever
consumes goods or services without producing by personal effort the
equivalent of what he or she consumes, inflicts on the community
precisely the same injury that a thief produces, and would, in any
honest State, be treated as a thief, however full his or her pockets
might be of money made by other people. The nation that first teaches
its children that truth, instead of flogging them if they discover
it for themselves, may have to fight all the slaves of all the other
nations to begin with; but it will beat them as easily as an unburdened
man with his hands free and with all his energies in full play can beat
an invalid who has to carry another invalid on his back.
This, however, is not an evil produced by the denial of children's
rights, nor is it inherent in the nature of schools. I mention it only
because it would be folly to call for a reform of our schools without
taking account of the corrupt resistance which awaits the reformer.
A word must also be said about the opposition to reform of the vested
interest of the classical and coercive schoolmaster. He, poor wretch,
has no other means of livelihood; and reform would leave him as a
workman is now left when he is superseded by a machine. He had therefore
better do what he can to get the workman compensated, so as to make the
public familiar with the idea of compensation before his own turn comes.