Citizenship has been an indefinite Fata Morgana to the elementary school-teacher: but self-expression has been a worse. Before the war we sailed serene under this flag of self-expression. Each child was to express himself: why, nobody thought necessary to explain. But infants were to express themselves, and nothing but themselves. Here was a pretty task for a teacher: he was to make his pupil express himself. Which self was left vague. A child was to be given a lump of soft clay and told to express himself, presumably in the pious hope that he might model a Tanagra figure or a Donatello plaque, all on his little lonely-o.
Now it is obvious that every boy’s first act of self-expression would be to throw the lump of soft clay at something: preferably at the teacher. This impulse is to be suppressed. On what grounds, metaphysically? since the soft clay was given for self-expression. To this just question there is no answer. Self-expression in infants means, presumably, incipient Tanagra figurines and Donatello plaques, incipient Iliads and Macbeths and “Odes to the Nightingale”: a world of infant prodigies, in short. And the responsibility for all this foolery was heaped on the shoulders of that public clown, the elementary school-teacher.
The war, however, brought us to our senses a little, and we ran the flag of citizenship up above the flag of self-expression. This was much easier for the teacher. At least, now, the ideal was service, not self-expression. “Work, and learn how to serve your country.” Service means authority: while self-expression means pure negation of all authority. So that teaching became a somewhat simpler matter under the ideal of national service.
However, the war is over, and there is a slump in national service. The public isn’t inspired by the ideal of serving its country any more: it has had its whack. And the idealists, who must run to give the public the inspiration it fancies at the moment, are again coming forward with trayfuls of infant prodigies and “self-expression.”
Now citizenship and self-expression are all right, as ideals for the education of the people, if only we knew what we meant by the two terms. The interpretation we give them is just ludicrous. Self- sacrifice in time of need: disinterested nobility of heart to enable each one to vote properly at a general election: an understanding of what is meant by income-tax and money interest: all vague and fuzzy. Nobody pretends to enlighten the teacher as to the mysteries of citizenship. Nobody attempts to instruct him in the relationship of the individual to the community. Nothing at all. There is a little gas about esprit de corps and national interest — but it is all gas.
None of which would matter if we would just leave the ideals out of our educational system. If we were content to teach a child to read and write and do his modicum of arithmetic, just as at an earlier stage his mother teaches him to walk and to talk, so that he may toddle his little way upon the face of the earth by himself, it would be all right. It would be a thousand times better, as things stand, to chuck overboard all your drawing and painting and music and modelling and pseudo-science and “graphic” history and “graphic” geography and “self-expression,” all the lot. Pitch them overboard, teach the three R’s, and then proceed with a certain amount of technical instruction, in preparation for the coming job. For all the rest, for all that concerns the child himself, leave him alone. If he likes to learn, the means of learning are in his hands. Brilliant scholars could be drafted into secondary schools. If he doesn’t like to learn, it is his affair. The quality of learning is not strained. Is not radical unlearnedness just as true a form of self-expression, and just as desirable a state, for many natures (even the bulk), as learnedness? Here we talk of free self-expression, and we proceed to force all natures into ideal and aesthetic expression. We talk about individuality, and try to drag up every weed into a rosebush. If a nettle likes to be a nettle, if it likes to have no flowers to speak of, why, that’s the nettle’s affair. Why should we force some poor devil of an elementary school-teacher to sting his fingers to bits trying to graft the obstreperous nettle-stem with rose and vine? We, who sail under the flag of freedom, are bullies such as the world has never known before: idealist bullies: bullying idealism, which will allow nothing except in terms of itself.
Every teacher knows that it is worse than useless trying to educate at least fifty per cent of his scholars. Worse than useless: it is dangerous: perilously dangerous. What is the result of it? Drag a lad who has no capacity for true learning or understanding through the processes of education, and what do you produce in him, in the end? A profound contempt for education, and for all educated people. It has meant nothing to him but irritation and disgust. And that which a man finds irritating and disgusting he finds odious and contemptible.
And this is the point to which we are bringing the nation, inevitably. Everybody is educated: and what is education? A sort of untnanliness. Go down in the hearts of the masses of the people and this is what you’ll find: the cynical conviction that every educated man is unmanly, less manly than an uneducated man. Every little Jimmy Shepherd has dabbled his bit in pseudo-science and in the arts; he has seen a test-tube and he has handled plasticine and a camel’s-hair brush; he knows that a + a + b=.2a + b. What more is there for him to know? Nothing. Pfui to your learning.
A little learning is a dangerous thing: how dangerous we are likely to be finding out. A man who has not the soul, or the spirit, to learn and to understand, he whose whole petty education consists in the acquiring of a few tricks, will inevitably, in the end, come to regard all educated or understanding people as tricksters. And once that happens, what becomes of your State? It is inevitahly at the mercy of your bottle-washing Jimmy Shepherds and his parallel Nancys. For the uninstructible outnumber the instructible by a very large majority. Behold us then in the grimy fist of Jimmy Shepherd, the uninstructible Brobdingnag. Fools we are, we’ve put ourselves there: so if he pulls all our heads off, serves us right. He is Brobdingnagian because he is legion. Whilst we poor instructible mortals are Lilliputian in comparison. And the one power we had, the power of commanding reverence or respect in the Brobdingnag, a power God-given to us, we ourselves have squandered and degraded. On our own heads be it.
For a sensible system of education, then. Begin at the age of seven — five is too soon — and teach reading, writing, arithmetic as the only necessary mental subjects: reading to include geography, map- practice, history, and so on. Three hours a day is enough for these. Another hour a day might be devoted to physical and domestic training. Leave a child alone for the rest: out of sight and out of mind.
At the age of twelve, make a division. Teachers, schoolmasters, school-inspectors, and parents will carefully decide what children shall be educated further. These shall be drafted to secondary schools, where an extended curriculum includes Latin or French, and some true science. Secondary scholars will remain till the age of sixteen.
The children who will not be drafted to the secondary schools will, at the age of twelve, have their “mental” education reduced to two hours, whilst three hours will be devoted to physical and domestic training: that is, martial exercises and the rudiments of domestic labour, such as boot-mending, plumbing, soldering, painting and paper-hanging, gardening — all those minor trades on which domestic life depends, and in which every working man should have some proficiency. This is to continue for three years.
Then on the completion of the fourteenth year, these scholars will be apprenticed half-time to some trade to which they are judged fitting, by a consensus of teachers and parents and the scholars themselves. For two years these half-timers shall spend the morning at their own trade, and some two hours in the afternoon at martiai exercises and reading and at what we call domestic training, boot- mending, etc. At the age of sixteen they enter on their regular labours, as artisans.
The secondary scholars shall for two years, from the age of twelve to the age of fourteen, follow the curriculum of the secondary school for four hours a day, but shall put in one hour a day at the workshops and at physical training. At the completion of the fourteenth year a division
shall be made among these secondary scholars. Those who are apparently “complete,” as far as mental education can make them, according to their own nature and capacity, shall be drafted into some apprenticeship for some sort of semi-profession, such as school-teaching, and all forms of clerking. Like the elementary scholars, however, all secondary scholars put in two hours in the afternoon at reading and in the workshops or at physical training: one hour for the mental education, one hour for the physical. At the age of sixteen, clerks, school-teachers, etc., shall enter their regular work, or the regular training for their work.
The remaining scholars, of the third or highest class, shall at the age of sixteen be drafted into colleges. Those that have scientific bent shall be trained scientifically, those that incline to the liberal arts shall be educated according to their inclination, and those that have gifts in the pure arts or in the technical arts shall find artistic training. But an hour a day shall be devoted to some craft, and to physical training. Every man shall have a craft at which finally he is expert — or two crafts if he choose — even if he be destined for professional activity as a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a professor, and so on.
The scholars of the third class shall remain in their colleges till the age of twenty, receiving there a general education as in our colleges today, although emphasis is laid on some particular branch of the education. At the age of twenty these scholars shall be drafted for their years of final training — as doctors, lawyers, priests, artists and so on. At the age of twenty-two they shall enter the world.
All education should be State education. All children should start together in the elementary schools. From the age of seven to the age of twelve boys and girls of every class should be educated together in the elementary schools. This will give us a common human basis, a common radical understanding. All children, boys and girls, should receive a training in the respective male and female domestic crafts. Every man should finally be expert at some craft, and should be a trained free soldier, no matter what his profession. Every woman also should have her chosen, expert craft, so that each individual is master of some kind of work.
Of course a great deal will depend on teachers and headmasters. The elementary teachers will not be so terribly important, but they will be carefully selected for their power to control and instruct children, not for their power to pass examinations. Headmasters will always be men of the highest education, invested with sound authority. A headmaster, once established, will be like a magistrate in a community.
Because one of the most important parts in this system of education will be the judging of the scholars. Teachers, masters, inspectors and parents will all of them unite to decide the next move for the child. The child will be consulted — but the last decision will be left to the headmaster and the inspector — the final word to the inspector.
Again, no decision will be final. If at any time it shall become apparent that a child is unfit for the group he occupies, then, after a proper consultation, he shall be removed to his own natural group. Again, if a child has no capacity for arithmetic, we shall not persist for five years in drilling arithmetic into him. Some form of useful manual work will be substituted for the arithmetic lesson: and so on.
Such is a brief sketch of a sensible system of education for a civilized people. It may be argued that it puts too much power into the hands of schoolmasters and school-inspectors. But better there than in the hands of factory-owners and trades unions. The position of masters and inspectors will be discussed later.
Again, it may be argued that there is too much rule and government here. As a matter of fact, we are all limited to our own natures. And the aim above all others in this system is to recognize the true nature in each child, and to give each its natural chance. If we want to be free, we cannot be free to do otherwise than follow our own soul, our own true nature, to its fulfilment. And for this purpose primarily the suggested scheme would exist. Each individual is to be helped, wisely, reverently, towards his own natural fulfilment. Children can’t choose for themselves. They are not sufficiently conscious. A choice is made, even if nobody makes it. The bungle of circumstance decrees the fate of almost every child today. Which is why most men hate their fates, circumstantial and false as they are.
And then, as to cost: which is always important. Our present system of education is extravagantly expensive, and simply dangerous to our social existence. It turns out a lot of half-informed youth who despise the whole business of understanding and wisdom, and who realize that in a world like ours nothing but money matters. Our system of education tacitly grants that nothing but money matters, but puts up a little parasol of human ideals under which human divinity can foolishly masquerade for a few hours during school life, and on Sundays. Coming from under this parasol, little Jimmy Shepherd knows that he’s quite as divine as anybody else. He’s quite as much a little god as anybody else, because he’s been told so in school from the age of five till the age of fifteen, so he ought to know. Nobody’s any better than he is: he’s quite as good as anybody else, and, because he’s a poor dustman’s son, even more acceptable in the eyes of God. And therefore why hasn’t he got as much money? since money is all that he can make any use of. His own human divinity is no more use to him than anybody else’s human divinity, and once it comes to fighting for shillings he’s absolutely not going to be put off by any toffee about ideals. And there we are with little Jimmy Shepherd, aged fifteen. He’s a right dangerous little party, all of our own making: and his name is legion.
Our system of education today threatens our whole social existence tomorrow. We should be wise if by decree we shut up all elementary schools at once, and kept them shut. Failing that, we must look round for a better system, one that will work.
But if we try a new system, we must know what we’re about. No good floundering into another muddle. While education was strictly a religious process, it had a true goal. While it existed for governing classes, it had a goal. And universal elementary education has had a goal. But a fatal one.
We have assumed that we could educate Jimmy Shepherd and make him a Shelley or an Isaac Newton. At the very least we were sure we could make him a highly intelligent being. And we’re just beginning to find our mistake. We can’t make a highly intelligent being out of Jimmy Shepherd. Why should we, if the Lord created him only moderately intelligent? Why do we want always to go one better than the Creator?
So now, having gone a very long way downhill on a very dangerous road, and having got ourselves thoroughly entangled in a vast mob which may at any moment start to bolt down to the precipice Gadarene-wise, why, the best we can do is to try to steer uphill.
We’ve got first to find which way is uphill. We’ve got to shape our course by some just idea. We shaped it by a faulty idea of equality and the perfectibility of man. Now for the true idea: either that or the precipice edge.
III
It is obvious that the old ideal of Equality won’t do. It is landing us daily deeper in a mess. And yet no idea which has passionately swayed mankind can be altogether wrong: not even the most fallacious-seeming. Therefore, before we can dispose of the equality ideal, the ideal that all men are essentially equal, we have got to find how far it is true.
In no sense whatever are men actually equal. Physically, some are big and some are small, some weak, some strong; mentally, some are intelligent, some are not, and the degrees of difference are infinite: spiritually, some are rare and fine, some are vulgar; morally, some are repulsive and some attractive. True, all men have noses, mouths, stomachs, and so on. But then this is a mere abstraction. Every nose, every stomach is different, actually, from every other nose and stomach. It is all according to the individual. Noses and stomachs are not interchangeable. You might perhaps graft the end of one man’s nose on the nose of another man. But the grafted gentleman would not thereby have a dual identity. His essential self would remain the same: a little disfigured, perhaps, but not metamorphosed. Whatever tricks you may perform, of
grafting one bit of an individual on another, you don’t produce a new individual, a new type. You only produce a disfigured, patched-up old individual. It isn’t like grafting roses. You couldn’t graft bits of Lord Northcliffe on a thousand journalists and produce a thousand Napoleons of the Press. Every journalist would remain himself: a little disfigured or mutilated, maybe.
It is quite sickening to hear scientists rambling on about the interchange of tissue and members from one individual to another. They have at last reached the old alchemistic fantasy of producing the homunculus. They hope to take the hind leg of a pig and by happy grafting produce a marvellous composite individual, a fused erection of living tissue which will at last prove that man can make man, and that therefore he isn’t divine at all, he is a purely human marvel, only so extraordinarily clever and marvellous that the sun will stop still to look at him.
When science begins to generalize from its own performances it is puerile as the alchemists were, at last. The truth about man, before he falls into imbecility, is that each one is just himself. That’s the first, the middle truth. Every man has his own identity, which he preserves till he falls into imbecility or worse. Upon this clue of his own identity every man is fashioned. And the clue of a man’s own identity is a man’s own self or soul, that which is incommutable and incommunicable in him. Every man, while he remains a man and does not lapse into disintegration, becoming a lump of chaos; is truly himself, only himself, no matter how many fantastic attitudes he may assume. True it is that man goes and gets a host of ideas in his head, and proceeds to reconstruct himself according to those ideas. But he never actually succeeds in this business of reconstructing himself out of his own head, until he has gone cracked. And then he may prance on all fours like Nebuchadnezzar, or do as he likes. But whilst he remains sane the buzzing ideas in his head will never allow him to change or metamorphose his own identity: modify, yes; but never change. While a man remains sane he remains himself and nothing but himself, no matter how fantastically he may attitudinize according to some pet idea. For example, this of equality. St. Francis was ready to fall in rapture at the feet of the peasant. But he wasn’t ready to take the muck-rake from the peasant’s hands and start spreading manure at twopence a day, an insignificant and forgotten nobody, a serf. Not at all. St. Francis kept his disciples and was a leader of men, in spite of all humility, poverty, and equality. Quite right, because St. Francis was by nature a leader of men, and what has any creed or theory of equality to do with it? He was born such: it was his own intrinsic being. In his soul he was a leader. Where does equality come in? Why, by his poverty, St. Francis wished to prove his own intrinsic superiority, not his equality. And if a man is a born leader, what does it matter if he hasn’t got twopence, or if he has got two million? His own nature is his destiny, not his purse.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1049
