In short, the new education is as harsh as the old, whether or no it is
as high. The freest fad, as much as the strictest formula, is stiff with
authority. It is because the humane father thinks soldiers wrong that
they are forbidden; there is no pretense, there can be no pretense, that
the boy would think so. The average boy’s impression certainly would
be simply this: “If your father is a Methodist you must not play with
soldiers on Sunday. If your father is a Socialist you must not play
with them even on week days.” All educationists are utterly dogmatic and
authoritarian. You cannot have free education; for if you left a child
free you would not educate him at all. Is there, then, no distinction
or difference between the most hide-bound conventionalists and the most
brilliant and bizarre innovators? Is there no difference between the
heaviest heavy father and the most reckless and speculative maiden aunt?
Yes; there is. The difference is that the heavy father, in his heavy
way, is a democrat. He does not urge a thing merely because to his
fancy it should be done; but, because (in his own admirable republican
formula) “Everybody does it.” The conventional authority does claim some
popular mandate; the unconventional authority does not. The Puritan who
forbids soldiers on Sunday is at least expressing Puritan opinion;
not merely his own opinion. He is not a despot; he is a democracy, a
tyrannical democracy, a dingy and local democracy perhaps; but one that
could do and has done the two ultimate virile things--fight and appeal
to God. But the veto of the new educationist is like the veto of
the House of Lords; it does not pretend to be representative. These
innovators are always talking about the blushing modesty of Mrs. Grundy.
I do not know whether Mrs. Grundy is more modest than they are; but I am
sure she is more humble.
But there is a further complication. The more anarchic modern may again
attempt to escape the dilemma by saying that education should only be
an enlargement of the mind, an opening of all the organs of receptivity.
Light (he says) should be brought into darkness; blinded and thwarted
existences in all our ugly corners should merely be permitted to
perceive and expand; in short, enlightenment should be shed over
darkest London. Now here is just the trouble; that, in so far as this
is involved, there is no darkest London. London is not dark at all; not
even at night. We have said that if education is a solid substance, then
there is none of it. We may now say that if education is an abstract
expansion there is no lack of it. There is far too much of it. In fact,
there is nothing else.
There are no uneducated people. Everybody in England is educated; only
most people are educated wrong. The state schools were not the first
schools, but among the last schools to be established; and London had
been educating Londoners long before the London School Board. The error
is a highly practical one. It is persistently assumed that unless
a child is civilized by the established schools, he must remain a
barbarian. I wish he did. Every child in London becomes a highly
civilized person. But here are so many different civilizations, most of
them born tired. Anyone will tell you that the trouble with the poor is
not so much that the old are still foolish, but rather that the young
are already wise. Without going to school at all, the gutter-boy would
be educated. Without going to school at all, he would be over-educated.
The real object of our schools should be not so much to suggest
complexity as solely to restore simplicity. You will hear venerable
idealists declare we must make war on the ignorance of the poor;
but, indeed, we have rather to make war on their knowledge. Real
educationists have to resist a kind of roaring cataract of culture. The
truant is being taught all day. If the children do not look at the large
letters in the spelling-book, they need only walk outside and look at
the large letters on the poster. If they do not care for the colored
maps provided by the school, they can gape at the colored maps provided
by the Daily Mail. If they tire of electricity, they can take to
electric trams. If they are unmoved by music, they can take to drink. If
they will not work so as to get a prize from their school, they may work
to get a prize from Prizy Bits. If they cannot learn enough about law
and citizenship to please the teacher, they learn enough about them to
avoid the policeman. If they will not learn history forwards from the
right end in the history books, they will learn it backwards from the
wrong end in the party newspapers. And this is the tragedy of the whole
affair: that the London poor, a particularly quick-witted and civilized
class, learn everything tail foremost, learn even what is right in the
way of what is wrong. They do not see the first principles of law in a
law book; they only see its last results in the police news. They do not
see the truths of politics in a general survey. They only see the lies
of politics, at a General Election.
But whatever be the pathos of the London poor, it has nothing to do with
being uneducated. So far from being without guidance, they are guided
constantly, earnestly, excitedly; only guided wrong. The poor are not
at all neglected, they are merely oppressed; nay, rather they are
persecuted. There are no people in London who are not appealed to by the
rich; the appeals of the rich shriek from every hoarding and shout
from every hustings. For it should always be remembered that the queer,
abrupt ugliness of our streets and costumes are not the creation of
democracy, but of aristocracy. The House of Lords objected to the
Embankment being disfigured by trams. But most of the rich men who
disfigure the street-walls with their wares are actually in the House
of Lords. The peers make the country seats beautiful by making the town
streets hideous. This, however, is parenthetical. The point is, that the
poor in London are not left alone, but rather deafened and bewildered
with raucous and despotic advice. They are not like sheep without a
shepherd. They are more like one sheep whom twenty-seven shepherds are
shouting at. All the newspapers, all the new advertisements, all the
new medicines and new theologies, all the glare and blare of the gas and
brass of modern times--it is against these that the national school must
bear up if it can. I will not question that our elementary education is
better than barbaric ignorance. But there is no barbaric ignorance. I
do not doubt that our schools would be good for uninstructed boys. But
there are no uninstructed boys. A modern London school ought not merely
to be clearer, kindlier, more clever and more rapid than ignorance and
darkness. It must also be clearer than a picture postcard, cleverer than
a Limerick competition, quicker than the tram, and kindlier than
the tavern. The school, in fact, has the responsibility of universal
rivalry. We need not deny that everywhere there is a light that must
conquer darkness. But here we demand a light that can conquer light.
*****