EDUCATION AND THE GOOD LIFE




  EDUCATION
  AND THE
  GOOD LIFE

  BERTRAND RUSSELL

  [Illustration]

  BONI & LIVERIGHT
  NEW YORK      MCMXXVI




  COPYRIGHT 1926 :: BY
  BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

  [Illustration]

  First printing, May, 1926
  Second printing, May, 1926
  Third printing, June, 1926
  Fourth printing, July, 1926




CONTENTS


                                                      PAGE

    INTRODUCTION                                         7


  PART I

  EDUCATION AND THE GOOD LIFE

  CHAPTER

        I. POSTULATES OF MODERN EDUCATIONAL THEORY      15

       II. THE AIMS OF EDUCATION                        47


  PART II

  EDUCATION OF CHARACTER

      III. THE FIRST YEAR                               87

       IV. FEAR                                        101

        V. PLAY AND FANCY                              123

       VI. CONSTRUCTIVENESS                            136

      VII. SELFISHNESS AND PROPERTY                    147

     VIII. TRUTHFULNESS                                157

       IX. PUNISHMENT                                  166

        X. IMPORTANCE OF OTHER CHILDREN                178

       XI. AFFECTION AND SYMPATHY                      187

      XII. SEX EDUCATION                               209

     XIII. THE NURSERY-SCHOOL                          224


  PART III

  INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION

      XIV. GENERAL PRINCIPLES                          239

       XV. THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM BEFORE FOURTEEN       261

      XVI. LAST SCHOOL YEARS                           278

     XVII. DAY SCHOOLS AND BOARDING SCHOOLS            292

    XVIII. THE UNIVERSITY                              301

      XIX. CONCLUSION                                  314




INTRODUCTION


There must be in the world many parents who, like the present author,
have young children whom they are anxious to educate as well as
possible, but reluctant to expose to the evils of most existing
educational institutions. The difficulties of such parents are not
soluble by any effort on the part of isolated individuals. It is of
course possible to bring up children at home by means of governesses
and tutors, but this plan deprives them of the companionship which
their nature craves, and without which some essential elements of
education must be lacking. Moreover it is extremely bad for a boy or
girl to be made to feel “odd” and different from other boys and girls:
this feeling, when traced to parents as its cause, is almost certain to
rouse resentment against them, leading to a love of all that they most
dislike. The conscientious parent may be driven by these considerations
to send his boys and girls to schools in which he sees grave defects,
merely because no existing schools seem to him satisfactory--or, if any
are satisfactory, they are not in his neighbourhood. Thus the cause of
educational reform is forced upon conscientious parents, not only for
the good of the community, but also for the good of their own children.
If the parents are well-to-do, it is not necessary to the solution of
their private problem that _all_ schools should be good, but only that
there should be some good school geographically available. But for
wage-earning parents nothing suffices except reform in the elementary
schools. As one parent will object to the reforms which another parent
desires, nothing will serve except an energetic educational propaganda,
which is not likely to prove effective until long after the reformer’s
children are grown up. Thus from love for our own children we are
driven, step by step, into the wider sphere of politics and philosophy.

From this wider sphere I desire, in the following pages, to remain
aloof as far as possible. The greater part of what I have to say will
not be dependent upon the views that I may happen to hold as regards
the major controversies of our age. But _complete_ independence in
this regard is impossible. The education we desire for our children
must depend upon our ideals of human character, and our hopes as to
the part they are to play in the community. A pacifist will not desire
for his children the education which seems good to a militarist; the
educational outlook of a communist will not be the same as that
of an individualist. To come to a more fundamental cleavage: there
can be no agreement between those who regard education as a means
of instilling certain definite beliefs and those who think that it
should produce the power of independent judgment. Where such issues
are relevant, it would be idle to shirk them. At the same time, there
is a considerable body of new knowledge in psychology and pedagogy
which is independent of these ultimate questions, and has an intimate
bearing on education. Already it has produced very important results,
but a great deal remains to be done before its teachings have been
fully assimilated. This is especially true of the first five years of
life; these have been found to have an importance far greater than that
formerly attributed to them, which involves a corresponding increase
in the educational importance of parents. My aim and purpose, wherever
possible, will be to avoid controversial issues. Polemical writing is
necessary in some spheres; but in addressing parents one may assume
a sincere desire for the welfare of their offspring, and this alone,
in conjunction with modern knowledge, suffices to decide a very large
number of educational problems. What I have to say is the outcome of
perplexities in regard to my own children; it is therefore not remote
or theoretical, and may, I hope, help to clarify the thoughts of other
parents faced with a like perplexity, whether in the way of agreement
with my conclusions or the opposite. The opinions of parents are
immensely important, because, for lack of expert knowledge, parents are
too often a drag upon the best educationists. If parents desire a good
education for their children, there will, I am convinced, be no lack of
teachers willing and able to give it.

I propose, in what follows, to consider first the aims of education:
the kind of individuals, and the kind of community, that we may
reasonably hope to see produced by education applied to raw material
of the present quality. I ignore the question of the improvement
of the breed, whether by eugenics or by any other process, natural
or artificial, since this is essentially outside the problems
of education. But I attach great weight to modern psychological
discoveries which tend to show that character is determined by early
education to a much greater extent than was thought by the most
enthusiastic educationists of former generations. I distinguish between
education of character and education in knowledge, which may be called
instruction in the strict sense. The distinction is useful, though
not ultimate: some virtues are required in a pupil who is to become
instructed, and much knowledge is required for the successful practice
of many important virtues. For purposes of discussion, however,
instruction can be kept apart from education of character. I shall deal
first with education of character, because it is especially important
in early years; but I shall carry it through to adolescence, and deal,
under this head, with the important question of sex education. Finally,
I shall discuss intellectual education, its aims, its curriculum, and
its possibilities, from the first lessons in reading and writing to
the end of the university years. The further education which men and
women derive from life and the world I shall regard as lying outside my
scope; but to make men and women capable of learning from experience
should be one of the aims which early education should keep most
prominently in view.




PART I

EDUCATION AND THE GOOD LIFE




EDUCATION AND THE GOOD LIFE




CHAPTER I

POSTULATES OF MODERN EDUCATIONAL THEORY


In reading even the best treatises on education written in former
times, one becomes aware of certain changes that have come over
educational theory. The two great reformers of educational theory
before the nineteenth century were Locke and Rousseau. Both deserved
their reputation, for both repudiated many errors which were
wide-spread when they wrote. But neither went as far in his own
direction as almost all modern educationists go. Both, for example,
belong to the tendency which led to liberalism and democracy; yet
both consider only the education of an aristocratic boy, to which one
man’s whole time is devoted. However excellent might be the results
of such a system, no man with a modern outlook would give it serious
consideration, because it is arithmetically impossible for every child
to absorb the whole time of an adult tutor. The system is therefore
one which can only be employed by a privileged caste; in a just world,
its existence would be impossible. The modern man, though he may seek
special advantages for his own children in practice, does not consider
the theoretical problem solved except by some method of education
which could be open to all, or at least to all whose capacities render
them capable of profiting by it. I do not mean that the well-to-do
should, here and now, forego educational opportunities which, in the
existing world, are not open to all. To do that would be to sacrifice
civilization to justice. What I do mean is that the educational system
we must aim at producing in the future is one which gives to every boy
and girl an opportunity for the best that exists. The ideal system of
education must be democratic, although that ideal is not immediately
attainable. This, I think, would, nowadays, be pretty generally
conceded. In this sense, I shall keep democracy in view. Whatever
I shall advocate will be capable of being universal, though the
individual should not meantime sacrifice his children to the badness
of what is common, if he has the intelligence and the opportunity to
secure something better. Even this very attenuated form of democratic
principle is absent from the treatises of Locke and Rousseau. Although
the latter was a disbeliever in aristocracy, he never perceived the
implications of his disbelief where education was concerned.

This matter of democracy and education is one as to which clarity
is important. It would be disastrous to insist upon a dead level of
uniformity. Some boys and girls are cleverer than others, and can
derive more benefit from higher education. Some teachers have been
better trained or have more native aptitude than others, but it is
impossible that everybody should be taught by the few best teachers.
Even if the highest education were desirable for all, which I doubt,
it is impossible that all should have it at present, and therefore a
crude application of democratic principles might lead to the conclusion
that none should have it. Such a view, if adopted, would be fatal to
scientific progress, and would make the general level of education a
hundred years hence needlessly low. Progress should not be sacrificed
to a mechanical equality at the present moment; we must approach
educational democracy carefully, so as to destroy in the process as
little as possible of the valuable products that happen to have been
associated with social injustice.

But we cannot regard a method of education as satisfactory if it is one
which could not possibly be universal. The children of rich people
often have, in addition to their mother, a nurse, a nurserymaid,
and a share in the other domestic servants; this involves an amount
of attention which could never, in any social system, be given to
all children. It is very doubtful whether carefully tended children
really gain by being made unnecessarily parasitic, but in any case
no impartial person can recommend special advantages for the few,
except for special reasons, such as feeble-mindedness or genius. The
wise parent, at the present day, is likely to choose, if he can, some
method of education for his children which is not in fact universal,
and for the sake of experiment it is desirable that parents should
have the opportunity of trying new methods. But they ought to be such
as could be made universal, if found to produce good results, not
such as must from their very nature be confined to a privileged few.
Fortunately, some of the best elements in modern educational theory
and practice have had an extremely democratic origin; for example,
Madame Montessori’s work began with nursery-schools in slums. In
higher education, exceptional opportunity for exceptional ability is
indispensable, but otherwise there is no reason why any child should
suffer from the adoption of systems which might be adopted by all.

There is another modern tendency in education, which is connected
with democracy, but perhaps somewhat more open to question--I mean
the tendency to make education useful rather than ornamental. The
connection of the ornamental with aristocracy has been set forth
searchingly in Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”, but it is
only the educational aspect of this connection that concerns us. In
male education, the matter is bound up with the controversy between
a classical and a “modern” education; in the education of girls,
it is part of the conflict between the ideal of the “gentlewoman”
and the desire to train girls to be self-supporting. But the whole
educational problem, where women are concerned, has been distorted by
the desire for sex equality: there has been an attempt to acquire the
same education as that given to boys, even where it was by no means
good in itself. Consequently women educators have aimed at giving to
their girls such “useless” knowledge as is given to boys of the same
class, and have been bitter opponents of the notion that some part
of female education should be a technical training for motherhood.
These cross-currents make the tendency that I am considering in some
respects less definite where women are concerned, though the decay of
the ideal of the “fine lady” is one of the most noteworthy examples of
the tendency. In order to avoid confusing the issue, I shall for the
moment confine myself to male education.

Many separate controversies, in all of which other questions arise, are
in part dependent upon our present question. Should boys learn mainly
classics or mainly science? Among other considerations, one is that the
classics are ornamental and science is useful. Should education as soon
as possible become technical instruction for some trade or profession?
Again the controversy between the useful and the ornamental is
relevant, though not decisive. Should children be taught to enunciate
correctly and to have pleasant manners, or are these mere relics of
aristocracy? Is appreciation of art a thing of any value except in
the artist? Should spelling be phonetic? All these and many other
controversies are argued in part in terms of the controversy between
the useful and the ornamental.

Nevertheless, I believe the whole controversy to be unreal. As soon
as the terms are defined, it melts away. If we interpret “useful”
broadly and “ornamental” narrowly, the one side has it; in the contrary
interpretation, the other side has it. In the widest and most correct
sense of the word, an activity is “useful” when it has good results.
And these results must be “good” in some other sense than merely
“useful”, or else we have no true definition. We cannot say that a
useful activity is one which has useful results. The essence of what
is “useful” is that it ministers to some result which is not merely
useful. Sometimes a long chain of results is necessary before the final
result is reached which can be called simply “good”. A plough is useful
because it breaks up the ground. But breaking up the ground is not good
on its own account: it is in turn merely useful because it enables seed
to be sown. This is useful because it produces grain, which is useful
because it produces bread, which is useful because it preserves life.
But life must be capable of some intrinsic value: if life were merely
useful as a means to other life, it would not be useful at all. Life
may be good or bad according to circumstances; it may therefore also be
useful, when it is a means to good life. Somewhere we must get beyond
the chain of successive utilities, and find a peg from which the chain
is to hang; if not, there is no real usefulness in any link of the
chain. When “useful” is defined in this way, there can be no question
whether education should be useful. Of course it should, since the
process of educating is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But
that is not quite what the advocates of utility in education have in
mind. What they are urging is that the _result_ of education should be
useful: put crudely, they would say that an educated man is a man who
knows how to make machines. If we ask what is the use of machines, the
answer is ultimately that they produce necessaries and comforts for the
body--food, clothing, houses, etc. Thus we find that the advocate of
utility, in the sense in which his view is questionable, is a man who
attaches intrinsic value only to physical satisfactions: the “useful”,
for him, is that which helps us to gratify the needs and desires of
the body. When this is what is really meant, the advocate of utility
is certainly in the wrong if he is enunciating an ultimate philosophy,
though in a world where many people are starving he may be right as
a politician, since the satisfaction of physical needs may be at the
moment more urgent than anything else.

Much the same sort of dissection is necessary in considering the other
side of this controversy. To call the other side “ornamental” is, of
course, to concede a point to the advocate of utility, since “ornament”
is understood to be more or less trivial. The epithet “ornamental”
is quite justified as applied to the traditional conception of a
“gentleman” or a “lady”. The eighteenth-century gentleman spoke with a
refined accent, quoted the classics on appropriate occasions, dressed
in the fashion, understood punctilio and knew when a duel would
advance his reputation. There is a man in “The Rape of the Lock” who was

      of amber snuff-box justly vain,
  And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.

His education had been ornamental in the narrowest sense, and in our
age few of us are rich enough to be content with his accomplishments.
The ideal of an “ornamental” education in the old sense is
aristocratic: it presupposes a class with plenty of money and no need
to work. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies are charming to contemplate in
history; their memoirs and their country houses give us a certain kind
of pleasure which we no longer provide for our posterity. But their
excellences, even when real, were by no means supreme, and they were an
incredibly expensive product: Hogarth’s “Gin Lane” gives a vivid idea
of the price that was paid for them. No one nowadays would advocate an
ornamental education in this narrow sense.

But that is not the real issue. The real issue is: should we, in
education, aim at filling the mind with knowledge which has direct
practical utility, or should we try to give our pupils mental
possessions which are good on their own account? It is useful to know
that there are twelve inches in a foot, and three feet in a yard,
but this knowledge has no intrinsic value; to those who live where
the metric system is in use, it is utterly worthless. To appreciate
“Hamlet”, on the other hand, will not be much use in practical life,
except in those rare cases where a man is called upon to kill his
uncle; but it gives a man a mental possession which he would be sorry
to be without, and makes him in some sense a more excellent human
being. It is this latter sort of knowledge that is preferred by the man
who argues that utility is not the sole aim of education.

There appear to be three different substantial issues wrapped up in
the debate between advocates of a utilitarian education and their
opponents. There is first a form of the debate between aristocrats
and democrats, the former holding that the privileged class should be
taught to employ its leisure in ways that are agreeable to itself,
while the subordinate class should be taught to employ its labour in
ways that are useful to others. The opposition of the democrats to
this view tends to be somewhat confused: they dislike the teaching of
what is useless to the aristocrat, and at the same time argue that
the wage-earner’s education should not be confined to what is useful.
Thus we find a democratic opposition to the old-fashioned classical
education in the public schools, combined with a democratic demand
that working men should have opportunities for learning Latin and
Greek. This attitude, even though it may imply some lack of theoretical
clarity, is on the whole right in practice. The democrat does not
wish to divide the community into two sections, one useful and one
ornamental; he will therefore give more merely useful knowledge to
the hitherto merely ornamental classes, and more merely delightful
knowledge to the hitherto merely useful classes. But democracy, _per
se_, does not decide the proportions in which these ingredients should
be mixed.

The second issue is between men who aim only at material goods and
men who care for mental delights. Most modern well-to-do Englishmen
and Americans, if they were transported by magic into the age of
Elizabeth, would wish themselves back in the modern world. The society
of Shakespeare and Raleigh and Sir Philip Sydney, the exquisite
music, the beauty of the architecture would not console them for the
absence of bath-rooms, tea and coffee, motor-cars, and other material
comforts of which that age was ignorant. Such men, except in so far
as they are influenced by conservative tradition, tend to think that
the main purpose of education is to increase the number and variety of
commodities produced. They may include medicine and hygiene, but they
will not feel any enthusiasm for literature or art or philosophy.
Undoubtedly such men have provided a great part of the driving force
for the attack upon the classical curriculum established at the
renaissance.

I do not think it would be fair to meet this attitude by the mere
assertion that mental goods are of more value than such as are purely
physical. I believe this assertion to be true, but not the whole truth.
For, while physical goods have no very high value, physical evils may
be so bad as to outweigh a great deal of mental excellence. Starvation
and disease, and the ever-present fear of them, have overshadowed the
lives of the great majority of mankind since foresight first became
possible. Most birds die of starvation, but they are happy when food
is abundant, because they do not think about the future. Peasants
who have survived a famine will be perpetually haunted by memory and
apprehension. Men are willing to toil long hours for a pittance rather
than die, while animals prefer to snatch pleasure when it is available,
even if death is the penalty. It has thus come about that most men have
put up with a life almost wholly devoid of pleasure, because on any
other terms life would be brief. For the first time in history, it is
now possible, owing to the industrial revolution and its by-products,
to create a world where everybody shall have a reasonable chance of
happiness. Physical evil can, if we choose, be reduced to very small
proportions. It would be possible, by organization and science, to
feed and house the whole population of the world, not luxuriously, but
sufficiently to prevent great suffering. It would be possible to combat
disease, and to make chronic ill-health very rare. It would be possible
to prevent the increase of population from outrunning improvements in
the food supply. The great terrors which have darkened the subconscious
mind of the race, bringing cruelty, oppression, and war in their train,
could be so much diminished as to be no longer important. All this
is of such immeasurable value to human life that we dare not oppose
the sort of education which will tend to bring it about. In such an
education, applied science will have to be the chief ingredient.
Without physics and physiology and psychology, we cannot build the
new world. We can build it without Latin and Greek, without Dante and
Shakespeare, without Bach and Mozart. That is the great argument in
favour of a utilitarian education. I have stated it strongly, because I
feel it strongly. Nevertheless, there is another side to the question.
What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one
remembers how to use them? The war against physical evil, like every
other war, must not be conducted with such fury as to render men
incapable of the arts of peace. What the world possesses of ultimate
good must not be allowed to perish in the struggle against evil.

This brings me to the third issue involved in our controversy. Is it
true that only useless knowledge is intrinsically valuable? Is it true
that any intrinsically valuable knowledge is useless? For my part, I
spent in youth a considerable proportion of my time upon Latin and
Greek, which I now consider to have been almost completely wasted.
Classical knowledge afforded me no help whatever in any of the problems
with which I was concerned in later life. Like ninety-nine per cent
of those who are taught the classics, I never acquired sufficient
proficiency to read them for pleasure. I learned such things as the
genitive of “supellex”, which I have never been able to forget. This
knowledge has no more intrinsic value than the knowledge that there
are three feet to a yard; and its utility, to me, has been strictly
confined to affording me the present illustration. On the other hand,
what I learned of mathematics and science has been not only of immense
utility, but also of great intrinsic value, as affording subjects of
contemplation and reflection, and touchstones of truth in a deceitful
world. This is, of course, in part a personal idiosyncrasy; but I
am sure that a capacity to profit by the classics is a still rarer
idiosyncrasy among modern men. France and Germany also have valuable
literatures; their languages are easily learnt, and are useful in many
practical ways. The case for French and German, as against Latin and
Greek, is therefore overwhelming. Without belittling the importance of
the sort of knowledge which has no immediate practical utility, I think
we may fairly demand that, except in the education of specialists,
such knowledge shall be given in ways that do not demand an immense
expenditure of time and energy on technical apparatus such as grammar.
The sum of human knowledge and the complexity of human problems are
perpetually increasing; therefore every generation must overhaul its
educational methods if time is to be found for what is new. We must
preserve the balance by means of compromises. The humanistic elements
in education must remain, but they must be sufficiently simplified to
leave room for the other elements without which the new world rendered
possible by science can never be created.

I do not wish to suggest that the humanistic elements in education are
less important than the utilitarian elements. To know something of
great literature, something of world history, something of music and
painting and architecture, is essential if the life of imagination is
to be fully developed. And it is only through imagination that men
become aware of what the world might be; without it, “progress” would
become mechanical and trivial. But science, also, can stimulate the
imagination. When I was a boy, astronomy and geology did more for me
in this respect than the literatures of England, France and Germany,
many of whose masterpieces I read under compulsion without the faintest
interest. This is a personal matter: one boy or girl will derive
stimulus from one source, another from another. What I suggest is that,
where a difficult technique is indispensable to the mastering of a
subject, it is better, except in training specialists, that the subject
should be useful. In the time of the renaissance, there was little
great literature in modern languages; now there is a great deal. Much
of the value of the Greek tradition can be conveyed to people who do
not know Greek; and as for the Latin tradition, its value is not really
very great. I should, therefore, where boys and girls without special
aptitudes are concerned, supply the humanistic elements of education
in ways not involving a great apparatus of learning; the difficult
part of education, in the later years, I should, as a rule, confine to
mathematics and science. But I should make exceptions wherever a strong
bent or special ability pointed in other directions. Cast-iron rules
are above all things to be avoided.

In a mechanistic civilization, there is grave danger of a crude
utilitarianism, which sacrifices the whole æsthetic side of life to
what is called “efficiency”. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I must
confess that I view with alarm the theory that language is merely a
means of communication, and not also a vehicle of beauty. This tendency
is world-wide, but naturally it has advanced in America. In a more or
less authoritative book published by the Children’s Foundation,[1] I
find some remarks on the teaching of English which seem to exemplify
the tendency I deplore. For example:

“Twenty-five years ago pupils learnt from ten to fifteen thousand
words, but as a result of investigations carried on during the past
two decades, it has been found that the typical graduate of a high
school does not need in his school work, and will not need in later
life, to spell more than three thousand words at the outside, unless
he engages in some technical pursuit, when it may be necessary for him
to master a special and technical vocabulary. The typical American in
his correspondence rarely employs more than fifteen hundred different
words; many of us never use more than half this number. In view of
these facts, the course of spelling in the schools to-day is being
constructed on the principle that the words that will be actually
used in daily life should be mastered so that they can be spelled
automatically, and the technical and unusual words that were formerly
taught but that will probably never be used are being eliminated” (p.
384).

This seems to me a most singular inversion. It is still thought that
a man should know how to spell a word he is going to use, although
Shakespeare and Milton could not spell, and the importance of spelling
is purely and solely conventional. But for this trivial purpose there
is a willingness to sacrifice the teaching of a large vocabulary,
without which it is impossible to write well, or even to understand
good writing. The important thing is not to know how to _spell_ words,
but how to _use_ them; evidently this was not taught in the days
when boys learned to spell 15,000 words but men only used 1,500. The
way to learn to _use_ words is to read some good literature often
and carefully, intensively, not extensively. But careful reading is
positively discouraged. The same book says of school-children: “They
are trained to read as rapidly as possible so that they will not be
halted in the gaining of meaning by giving attention to separate words,
since explicit awareness of separate words in one’s reading delays and
often confuses the process of interpreting the thought contained in the
reading” (p. 420). I wonder what pupils so trained would make of

          Sabrina fair,
  Listen where thou art sitting
  Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
  In twisted braids of lilies knitting
  The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.

No doubt it will be said that the modern man has no time for such
trivialities as the appreciation of great poetry. Yet the very men who
say this are prepared to set aside a great deal of time in order to
teach young men how to kill each other scientifically. This is surely
the _reductio ad absurdum_ of a utilitarian philosophy.

So far, we have been considering what sort of knowledge should be
imparted. I come now to a different set of problems, concerned partly
with methods of teaching, partly with moral education and the training
of character. Here we are no longer concerned with politics, but with
psychology and ethics. Psychology was, until fairly lately, a merely
academic study, with very little application to practical affairs.
This is all changed now. We have, for instance, industrial psychology,
clinical psychology, educational psychology, all of the greatest
practical importance. We may hope and expect that the influence of
psychology upon our institutions will rapidly increase in the near
future. In education, at any rate, its effect has already been great
and beneficent.

Let us take first the question of “discipline”. The old idea of
discipline was simple. A child or boy was ordered to do something
he disliked, or abstain from something he liked. When he disobeyed,
he suffered physical chastisement, or, in extreme cases, solitary
confinement on bread and water. Read, for example, the chapter in “The
Fairchild Family” about how little Henry was taught Latin. He was told
that he could never hope to become a clergyman unless he learned that
language, but in spite of this argument the little boy did not apply
himself to his book as earnestly as his father desired. So he was shut
up in an attic, given only bread and water, and forbidden to speak to
his sisters, who were told that he was in disgrace and they must have
nothing to do with him. Nevertheless, one of them brought him some
food. The footman told on her, and she got into trouble too. After a
certain period in prison, the boy, we are told, began to love Latin and
worked assiduously ever after. Contrast with this Chekov’s story about
his uncle who tried to teach a kitten to catch mice. He brought a mouse
into the room where the kitten was, but the kitten’s hunting instinct
was not yet developed, and it paid no attention to the mouse. So he
beat it. The next day the same process was repeated, and the next and
the next. At last the Professor became persuaded that it was a stupid
kitten, and quite unteachable. In later life, though otherwise normal,
it could never see a mouse without sweating in terror and running away.
“Like the kitten,” Chekov concludes, “I had the honour of being taught
Latin by my uncle.” These two stories illustrate the old discipline and
the modern revolt against it.

But the modern educationist does not simply eschew discipline; he
secures it by new methods. On this subject, those who have not studied
the new methods are apt to have mistaken ideas. I had always understood
that Madame Montessori dispensed with discipline, and I had wondered
how she managed a roomful of children. On reading her own account of
her methods, I found that discipline still held an important place, and
that there was no attempt to dispense with it. On sending my little boy
of three to spend his mornings in a Montessori school, I found that he
quickly became a more disciplined human being, and that he cheerfully
acquiesced in the rules of the school. But he had no feeling whatever
of external compulsion: the rules were like the rules of a game, and
were obeyed as a means of enjoyment. The old idea was that children
could not possibly _wish_ to learn, and could only be compelled to
learn by terror. It has been found that this was entirely due to
lack of skill in pedagogy. By dividing what has to be learnt--for
instance, reading and writing--into suitable stages, every stage can
be made agreeable to the average child. And when children are doing
what they like, there is of course no reason for external discipline.
A few simple rules--no child must interfere with another child, no
child must have more than one sort of apparatus at a time--are easily
apprehended, and felt to be reasonable, so that there is no difficulty
in getting them observed. The child thus acquires self-discipline,
which consists partly of good habits, partly of the realization, in
concrete instances, that it is sometimes worth while to resist an
impulse for the sake of some ultimate gain. Everybody has always known
that it is easy to obtain this self-discipline in games, but no one had
supposed that the acquisition of knowledge could be made sufficiently
interesting to bring the same motives into operation. We now know
that this is possible, and it will come to be done, not only in the
education of infants, but at all stages. I do not pretend that it is
easy. The pedagogical discoveries involved have required genius, but
the teachers who are to apply them do not require genius. They require
only the right sort of training, together with a degree of sympathy and
patience which is by no means unusual. The fundamental idea is simple:
that the right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but
in habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than
undesirable activities. What is astonishing is the great success in
finding technical methods of embodying this idea in education. For
this, Madame Montessori deserves the highest praise.

The change in educational methods has been very much influenced by the
decay of the belief in original sin. The traditional view, now nearly
extinct, was that we are all born Children of Wrath, with a nature full
of wickedness; before there can be any good in us, we have to become
Children of Grace, a process much accelerated by frequent castigation.
Most moderns can hardly believe how much this theory influenced the
education of our fathers and grandfathers. Two quotations from the
life of Dr. Arnold by Dean Stanley will show that they are mistaken.
Dean Stanley was Dr. Arnold’s favourite pupil, the good boy Arthur in
“Tom Brown’s School Days”. He was a cousin of the present writer, who
was shown over Westminster Abbey by him as a boy. Dr. Arnold was the
great reformer of our public schools, which are viewed as one of the
glories of England, and are still conducted largely according to his
principles. In discussing Dr. Arnold, therefore, we are dealing, not
with something belonging to the remote past, but with something which
to this day is efficacious in moulding upper-class Englishmen. Dr.
Arnold diminished flogging, retaining it only for the younger boys,
and confining it, so his biographer tells us, to “moral offences, such
as lying, drinking, and habitual idleness”. But when a liberal journal
suggested that flogging was a degrading punishment, which ought to be
abolished altogether, he was amazingly indignant. He replied in print:

  I know well of what feeling this is the expression; it originates
  in that proud notion of personal independence which is neither
  reasonable nor Christian, but essentially barbarian. It visited
  Europe with all the curses of the age of chivalry, and is threatening
  us now with those of Jacobinism.... At an age when it is almost
  impossible to find a true manly sense of the degradation of guilt or
  faults, where is the wisdom of encouraging a fantastic sense of the
  degradation of personal correction? What can be more false, or more
  adverse to the simplicity, sobriety and humbleness of mind, which are
  the best ornament of youth, and the best promise of a noble manhood?

The pupils of his disciples, not unnaturally, believe in flogging
natives of India when they are deficient in “humbleness of mind”.

There is another passage, already quoted in part by Mr. Strachey in
“Eminent Victorians”, but so apt that I cannot forbear to quote it
again. Dr. Arnold was away on a holiday, enjoying the beauties of the
Lake of Como. The form his enjoyment took is recorded in a letter to
his wife, as follows:

  It is almost awful to look at the overwhelming beauty around me, and
  then think of moral evil; it seems as if heaven and hell, instead of
  being separated by a great gulf from one another, were absolutely on
  each other’s confines, and indeed not far from every one of us. Might
  the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as my delight in external
  beauty, for in a deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than in
  anything else, abides a saving knowledge of God! It is not so much to
  admire moral good; that we may do, and yet not be ourselves conformed
  to it; but if we really do abhor that which is evil, not the persons
  in whom evil resides, but the evil which dwelleth in them, and much
  more manifestly and certainly to our own knowledge, in our own
  hearts--this is to have the feeling of God and of Christ, and to have
  our Spirit in sympathy with the Spirit of God. Alas! how easy to see
  this and say it--how hard to do it and to feel it! Who is sufficient
  for these things? No one, but he who feels and really laments his
  own insufficiency. God bless you, my dearest wife, and our beloved
  children, now and evermore, through Christ Jesus.

It is pathetic to see this naturally kindly gentleman lashing himself
into a mood of sadism, in which he can flog little boys without
compunction, and all under the impression that he is conforming to
the religion of Love. It is pathetic when we consider the deluded
individual; but it is tragic when we think of the generations of
cruelty that he put into the world by creating an atmosphere of
abhorrence of “moral evil”, which, it will be remembered, includes
habitual idleness in children. I shudder when I think of the wars, the
tortures, the oppressions, of which upright men have been guilty, under
the impression that they were righteously castigating “moral evil”.
Mercifully, educators no longer regard little children as limbs of
Satan. There is still too much of this view in dealings with adults,
particularly in the punishment of crime; but in the nursery and the
school it has almost disappeared.

There is an opposite error to Dr. Arnold’s, far less pernicious, but
still scientifically an error, and that is the belief that children
are naturally virtuous, and are only corrupted by the spectacle of
their elders’ vices. This view is traditionally associated with
Rousseau; perhaps he held it in the abstract, but when one reads
“Emile” one finds that the pupil stood in need of much moral training
before he became the paragon that the system was designed to produce.
The fact is that children are not naturally either “good” or “bad”.
They are born with only reflexes and a few instincts; out of these,
by the action of the environment, habits are produced, which may be
either healthy or morbid. Which they are to be, depends chiefly upon
the wisdom of mothers or nurses, the child’s nature being, at first,
almost incredibly malleable. In the immense majority of children,
there is the raw material of a good citizen, and also the raw material
of a criminal. Scientific psychology shows that flogging on weekdays
and sermons on Sundays do not constitute the ideal technique for the
production of virtue. But it is not to be inferred that there is no
technique for this purpose. It is difficult to resist Samuel Butler’s
view that the educators of former times took a pleasure in torturing
children; otherwise it is hard to see how they can have persisted
so long in inflicting useless misery. It is not difficult to make a
healthy child happy, and most children will be healthy if their minds
and bodies are properly tended. Happiness in childhood is absolutely
necessary to the production of the best type of human being. Habitual
idleness, which Dr. Arnold regarded as a form of “moral evil”, will not
exist if the child is made to feel that its education is teaching it
something worth knowing.[2] But if the knowledge imparted is worthless,
and those who impart it appear as cruel tyrants, the child will
naturally behave like Chekov’s kitten. The spontaneous wish to learn,
which every normal child possesses, as shown in its efforts to walk and
talk, should be the driving force in education. The substitution of
this driving force for the rod is one of the great advances of our time.

This brings me to the last point which I wish to notice in this
preliminary survey of modern tendencies--I mean, the greater attention
paid to infancy. This is closely connected with the change in our
ideas as to the training of character. The old idea was that virtue
depends essentially upon _will_: we were supposed to be full of bad
desires, which we controlled by an abstract faculty of volition. It
was apparently regarded as impossible to root out bad desires; all we
could do was to control them. The situation was exactly analogous to
that of the criminal and the police. No one supposed that a society
without would-be criminals was possible; the most that could be done
was to have such an efficient police force that most people would be
afraid to commit crimes, and the few exceptions would be caught and
punished. The modern psychological criminologist is not content with
this view; he believes that the impulse to crime could, in most cases,
be prevented from developing by suitable education. And what applies to
society applies also to the individual. Children, especially, wish to
be liked by their elders and their companions; they have, as a rule,
impulses which can be developed in good or bad directions according
to the situations in which they find themselves. Moreover they are at
an age at which the formation of new habits is still easy; and good
habits can make a great part of virtue almost automatic. On the other
hand, the older type of virtue, which left bad desires rampant, and
merely used will-power to check their manifestations, has been found to
afford a far from satisfactory method of controlling bad conduct. The
bad desires, like a river which has been dammed, find some other outlet
which has escaped the watchful eye of the will. The man who, in youth,
would have liked to murder his father, finds satisfaction later on in
flogging his son, under the impression that he is chastising “moral
evil”. Theories which justify cruelty almost always have their source
in some desire diverted by the will from its natural channel, driven
underground, and at last emerging unrecognized as hatred of sin or
something equally respectable. The control of bad desires by the will,
therefore, though necessary on occasion, is inadequate as a technique
of virtue.

These considerations bring us to the province of psycho-analysis. There
is much in the detail of psycho-analysis which I find fantastic, and
not supported by adequate evidence. But the general method appears to
me very important, and essential to the creation of right methods of
moral training. The importance which many psycho-analysts attach to
early infancy appears to me exaggerated; they sometimes talk as if
character were irrevocably fixed by the time a child is three years
old. This, I am sure, is not the case. But the fault is a fault on the
right side. Infant psychology was neglected in the past; indeed, the
intellectualist methods in vogue made it almost impossible. Take such
a matter as sleep. All mothers wish their children to sleep, because
it is both healthy and convenient when they do. They had developed a
certain technique: rocking the cradle and singing lullabys. It was left
for males who investigated the matter scientifically to discover that
this technique is ideally wrong, for though it is likely to succeed on
any given day, it creates bad habits. Every child loves to be made a
fuss of, because its sense of self-importance is gratified. If it finds
that by not sleeping it secures attention, it will soon learn to adopt
this method. The result is equally damaging to health and character.
The great thing here is the formation of habit: the association of
the cot with sleep. If this association has been adequately produced,
the child will not lie awake unless it is ill or in pain. But the
production of the association requires a certain amount of discipline;
it is not to be achieved by mere indulgence, since that causes
pleasurable associations with lying awake. Similar considerations apply
to the formation of other good and bad habits. This whole study is
still in its infancy, but its importance is already very great, and
almost sure to become greater. It is clear that education of character
must begin at birth, and requires a reversal of much of the practice of
nurses and ignorant mothers. It is also clear that definite instruction
can begin earlier than was formerly thought, because it can be made
pleasant and no strain upon the infant’s powers of attention. In both
these respects educational theory has been radically transformed in
recent years, with beneficent effects which are likely to become more
and more evident as the years go by. Accordingly I shall begin, in
what follows, with a fairly detailed consideration of the training of
character in infancy, before discussing the instruction to be given in
later years.




CHAPTER II

THE AIMS OF EDUCATION


Before considering how to educate, it is well to be clear as to the
sort of result which we wish to achieve. Dr. Arnold wanted “humbleness
of mind”, a quality not possessed by Aristotle’s “magnanimous man”.
Nietzsche’s ideal is not that of Christianity. No more is Kant’s: for
while Christ enjoins love, Kant teaches that no action of which love
is the motive can be truly virtuous. And even people who agree as to
the ingredients of a good character may differ as to their relative
importance. One man will emphasize courage, another learning, another
kindliness, and another rectitude. One man, like the elder Brutus, will
put duty to the State above family affection; another, like Confucius,
will put family affection first. All these divergences will produce
differences as to education. We must have some conception of the kind
of person we wish to produce, before we can have any definite opinion
as to the education which we consider best.

Of course an educator may be foolish, in the sense that he produces
results other than those at which he was aiming. Uriah Heep was the
outcome of lessons in humility at a Charity School, which had had an
effect quite different from what was intended. But in the main the
ablest educators have been fairly successful. Take as examples the
Chinese literati, the modern Japanese, the Jesuits, Dr. Arnold, and the
men who direct the policy of the American public schools. All these,
in their various ways, have been highly successful. The results aimed
at in the different cases were utterly different, but in the main the
results were achieved. It may be worth while to spend a few moments on
these different systems, before attempting to decide what we should
ourselves regard as the aims which education should have in view.

Traditional Chinese education was, in some respects, very similar to
that of Athens in its best days. Athenian boys were made to learn
Homer by heart from beginning to end; Chinese boys were made to learn
the Confucian classics with similar thoroughness. Athenians were
taught a kind of reverence for the gods which consisted in outward
observances, and placed no barrier in the way of free intellectual
speculation. Similarly the Chinese were taught certain rites connected
with ancestor-worship, but were by no means obliged to have the
beliefs which the rites would seem to imply. An easy and elegant
scepticism was the attitude expected of an educated adult: anything
might be discussed, but it was a trifle vulgar to reach very positive
conclusions. Opinions should be such as could be discussed pleasantly
at dinner, not such as men would fight for. Carlyle calls Plato “a
lordly Athenian gentleman, very much at his ease in Zion”. This
characteristic of being “at his ease in Zion” is also found in Chinese
sages, and is, as a rule, absent from the sages produced by Christian
civilizations, except when, like Goethe, they have deeply imbibed the
spirit of Hellenism. The Athenians and the Chinese alike wished to
enjoy life, and had a conception of enjoyment which was refined by an
exquisite sense of beauty.

There were, however, great differences between the two civilizations,
owing to the fact that, broadly speaking, the Greeks were energetic
and the Chinese were lazy. The Greeks devoted their energies to art
and science and mutual extermination, in all of which they achieved
unprecedented success. Politics and patriotism afforded practical
outlets for Greek energy: when a politician was ousted, he led a band
of exiles to attack his native city. When a Chinese official was
disgraced, he retired to the hills and wrote poems on the pleasures of
country life. Accordingly the Greek civilization destroyed itself, but
the Chinese civilization could only be destroyed from without. These
differences, however, seem not wholly attributable to education, since
Confucianism in Japan never produced the indolent cultured scepticism
which characterized the Chinese literati, except in the Kyoto nobility,
who formed a kind of Faubourg Saint Germain.

Chinese education produced stability and art; it failed to produce
progress or science. Perhaps this may be taken as what is to be
expected of scepticism. Passionate beliefs produce either progress or
disaster, not stability. Science, even when it attacks traditional
beliefs, has beliefs of its own, and can scarcely flourish in an
atmosphere of literary scepticism. In a pugnacious world which has
been unified by modern inventions, energy is needed for national
self-preservation. And without science, democracy is impossible: the
Chinese civilization was confined to the small percentage of educated
men, and the Greek civilization was based on slavery. For these
reasons, the traditional education of China is not suited to the modern
world, and has been abandoned by the Chinese themselves. Cultivated
eighteenth-century gentlemen, who in some respects resembled Chinese
literati, have become impossible for the same reasons.

Modern Japan affords the clearest illustration of a tendency which is
prominent among all the Great Powers--the tendency to make national
greatness the supreme purpose of education. The aim of Japanese
education is to produce citizens who shall be devoted to the State
through the training of their passions, and useful to it through
the knowledge they have acquired. I cannot sufficiently praise the
skill with which this double purpose has been pursued. Ever since
the advent of Commodore Perry’s squadron, the Japanese have been in
a situation in which self-preservation was very difficult; their
success affords a justification of their methods, unless we are to hold
that self-preservation itself may be culpable. But only a desperate
situation could have justified their educational methods, which would
have been culpable in any nation not in imminent peril. The Shinto
religion, which must not be called in question even by university
professors, involves history which is just as dubious as Genesis; the
Dayton trial pales into insignificance beside the theological tyranny
in Japan. There is an equal ethical tyranny: nationalism, filial piety,
Mikado-worship, etc., must not be called in question, and therefore
many kinds of progress are scarcely possible. The great danger of a
cast-iron system of this sort is that it may provoke revolution as the
sole method of progress. This danger is real, though not immediate, and
is largely caused by the educational system.

We have thus in modern Japan a defect opposite to that of ancient
China. Whereas the Chinese literati were too sceptical and lazy, the
products of Japanese education are likely to be too dogmatic and
energetic. Neither acquiescence in scepticism nor acquiescence in dogma
is what education should produce. What it should produce is a belief
that knowledge is attainable in a measure, though with difficulty; that
much of what passes for knowledge at any given time is likely to be
more or less mistaken, but that the mistakes can be rectified by care
and industry. In acting upon our beliefs, we should be very cautious
where a small error would mean disaster; nevertheless it is upon our
beliefs that we must act. This state of mind is rather difficult:
it requires a high degree of intellectual culture without emotional
atrophy. But though difficult it is not impossible; it is in fact the
scientific temper. Knowledge, like other good things, is difficult,
but not impossible; the dogmatist forgets the difficulty, the sceptic
denies the possibility. Both are mistaken, and their errors, when
wide-spread, produce social disaster.

The Jesuits, like the modern Japanese, made the mistake of
subordinating education to the welfare of an institution--in their
case, the Catholic Church. They were not concerned primarily with the
good of the particular pupil, but with making him a means to the good
of the Church. If we accept their theology, we cannot blame them: to
save souls from hell is more important than any merely terrestrial
concern, and is only to be achieved by the Catholic Church. But those
who do not accept this dogma will judge Jesuit education by its
results. These results, it is true, were sometimes quite as undesired
as Uriah Heep: Voltaire was a product of Jesuit methods. But on the
whole, and for a long time, the intended results were achieved: the
counter-reformation, and the collapse of Protestantism in France, must
be largely attributed to Jesuit efforts. To achieve these ends, they
made art sentimental, thought superficial, and morals loose; in the
end, the French Revolution was needed to sweep away the harm that they
had done. In education, their crime was that they were not actuated by
love of their pupils, but by ulterior ends.

Dr. Arnold’s system, which has remained in force in English public
schools to the present day, had another defect, namely that it was
aristocratic. The aim was to train men for positions of authority
and power, whether at home or in distant parts of the empire. An
aristocracy, if it is to survive, needs certain virtues; these were
to be imparted at school. The product was to be energetic, stoical,
physically fit, possessed of certain unalterable beliefs, with high
standards of rectitude, and convinced that it had an important mission
in the world. To a surprising extent, these results were achieved.
Intellect was sacrificed to them, because intellect might produce
doubt. Sympathy was sacrificed, because it might interfere with
governing “inferior” races or classes. Kindliness was sacrificed for
the sake of toughness; imagination, for the sake of firmness. In an
unchanging world, the result might have been a permanent aristocracy,
possessing the merits and defects of the Spartans. But aristocracy
is out-of-date, and subject populations will no longer obey even the
most wise and virtuous rulers. The rulers are driven into brutality,
and brutality further encourages revolt. The complexity of the modern
world increasingly requires intelligence, and Dr. Arnold sacrificed
intelligence to “virtue”. The battle of Waterloo may have been won
on the playing-fields of Eton, but the British Empire is being lost
there. The modern world needs a different type, with more imaginative
sympathy, more intellectual suppleness, less belief in bulldog courage
and more belief in technical knowledge. The administrator of the
future must be the servant of free citizens, not the benevolent ruler
of admiring subjects. The aristocratic tradition embedded in British
higher education is its bane. Perhaps this tradition can be eliminated
gradually; perhaps the older educational institutions will be found
incapable of adapting themselves. As to that, I do not venture an
opinion.

The American public schools achieve successfully a task never before
attempted on a large scale: the task of transforming a heterogeneous
selection of mankind into a homogeneous nation. This is done so ably,
and is on the whole such a beneficent work, that on the balance great
praise is due to those who accomplish it. But America, like Japan, is
placed in a peculiar situation, and what the special circumstances
justify is not necessarily an ideal to be followed everywhere and
always. America has had certain advantages and certain difficulties.
Among the advantages were: a higher standard of wealth; freedom from
the danger of defeat in war; comparative absence of cramping traditions
inherited from the Middle Ages. Immigrants found in America a generally
diffused sentiment of democracy and an advanced stage of industrial
technique. These, I think, are the two chief reasons why almost all
of them came to admire America more than their native countries. But
actual immigrants, as a rule, retain a dual patriotism: in European
struggles they continue to take passionately the side of the nation
to which they originally belonged. Their children, on the contrary,
lose all loyalty to the country from which their parents have come,
and become merely and simply Americans. The attitude of the parents is
attributable to the general merits of America; that of the children
is very largely determined by their school education. It is only the
contribution of the school that concerns us.

In so far as the school can rely upon the genuine merits of America,
there is no need to associate the teaching of American patriotism with
the inculcation of false standards. But where the Old World is superior
to the New, it becomes necessary to instil a contempt for genuine
excellences. The intellectual level in Western Europe and the artistic
level in Eastern Europe are, on the whole, higher than in America.
Throughout Western Europe, except in Spain and Portugal, there is
less theological superstition than in America. In almost all European
countries the individual is less subject to herd domination than in
America: his inner freedom is greater even where his political freedom
is less. In these respects, the American public schools do harm. The
harm is essential to the teaching of an exclusive American patriotism.
The harm, as with the Japanese and the Jesuits, comes from regarding
the pupils as means to an end, not as ends in themselves. The teacher
should love his children better than his State or his Church; otherwise
he is not an ideal teacher.

When I say that pupils should be regarded as ends, not as means, I
may be met by the retort that, after all, everybody is more important
as a means than as an end. What a man is as an end perishes when he
dies; what he produces as a means continues to the end of time. We
cannot deny this, but we can deny the consequences deduced from it. A
man’s importance as a means may be for good or for evil; the remote
effects of human actions are so uncertain that a wise man will tend to
dismiss them from his calculations. Broadly speaking, good men have
good effects, and bad men bad effects. This, of course, is not an
invariable law of nature. A bad man may murder a tyrant because he has
committed crimes which the tyrant intends to punish; the effects of
his act may be good, though he and his act are bad. Nevertheless, as a
broad general rule, a community of men and women who are intrinsically
excellent will have better effects than one composed of people who are
ignorant and malevolent. Apart from such considerations, children
and young people feel instinctively the difference between those who
genuinely wish them well and those who regard them merely as raw
material for some scheme. Neither character nor intelligence will
develop as well or as freely where the teacher is deficient in love;
and love of this kind consists essentially in _feeling_ the child as an
end. We all have this feeling about ourselves: we desire good things
for ourselves without first demanding a proof that some great purpose
will be furthered by our obtaining them. Every ordinarily affectionate
parent feels the same sort of thing about his or her children. Parents
want their children to grow, to be strong and healthy, to do well at
school, and so on, in just the same way in which they want things for
themselves; no effort of self-denial and no abstract principle of
justice is involved in taking trouble about such matters. This parental
instinct is not always strictly confined to one’s own children. In
its diffused form, it must exist in any one who is to be a good
teacher of little boys and girls. As the pupils grow older, it grows
less important. But only those who possess it can be trusted to draw
up schemes of education. Those who regard it as one of the purposes
of male education to produce men willing to kill and be killed for
frivolous reasons are clearly deficient in diffused parental feeling;
yet they control education in all civilized countries except Denmark
and China.

But it is not enough that the educator should love the young; it
is necessary also that he should have a right conception of human
excellence. Cats teach their kittens to catch mice and play with them;
militarists do likewise with the human young. The cat loves the kitten,
but not the mouse; the militarist may love his own son, but not the
sons of his country’s enemies. Even those who love all mankind may err
through a wrong conception of the good life. I shall try, therefore,
before going any further, to give an idea of what I consider excellent
in men and women, quite without regard to practicality, or to the
educational methods by which it might be brought into being. Such a
picture will help us afterwards, when we come to consider the details
of education; we shall know the direction in which we wish to move.

We must first make a distinction: some qualities are desirable in
a certain proportion of mankind, others are desirable universally.
We want artists, but we also want men of science. We want great
administrators, but we also want ploughmen and millers and bakers. The
qualities which produce a man of great eminence in some one direction
are often such as might be undesirable if they were universal. Shelley
describes the day’s work of a poet as follows:

  He will watch from dawn to gloom
  The lake-reflected sun illume
  The honey-bees in the ivy bloom,
  Nor heed nor see what things they be.

These habits are praiseworthy in a poet, but not--shall we say--in a
postman. We cannot therefore frame our education with a view to giving
every one the temperament of a poet. But some characteristics are
universally desirable, and it is these alone that I shall consider at
this stage.

I make no distinction whatever between male and female excellence. A
certain amount of occupational training is desirable for a woman who
is to have the care of babies, but that only involves the same sort
of difference as there is between a farmer and a miller. It is in no
degree fundamental, and does not demand consideration at our present
level.

I will take four characteristics which seem to me jointly to form
the basis of an ideal character: vitality, courage, sensitiveness,
and intelligence. I do not suggest that this list is complete, but I
think it carries us a good way. Moreover I firmly believe that, by
proper physical, emotional and intellectual care of the young, these
qualities could all be made very common. I shall consider each in turn.

Vitality is rather a physiological than a mental characteristic; it
is presumably always present where there is perfect health, but it
tends to ebb with advancing years, and gradually dwindles to nothing
in old age. In vigorous children it quickly rises to a maximum before
they reach school age, and then tends to be diminished by education.
Where it exists, there is pleasure in feeling alive, quite apart
from any specific pleasant circumstance. It heightens pleasures and
diminishes pains. It makes it easy to take an interest in whatever
occurs, and thus promotes objectivity, which is an essential of sanity.
Human beings are prone to become absorbed in themselves, unable to
be interested in what they see and hear or in anything outside their
own skins. This is a great misfortune to themselves, since it entails
at best boredom and at worst melancholia; it is also a fatal barrier
to usefulness, except in very exceptional cases. Vitality promotes
interest in the outside world; it also promotes the power of hard
work. Moreover it is a safeguard against envy, because it makes one’s
own existence pleasant. As envy is one of the great sources of human
misery, this is a very important merit in vitality. Many bad qualities
are of course compatible with vitality--for example, those of a
healthy tiger. And many of the best qualities are compatible with its
absence: Newton and Locke, for example, had very little. Both these
men, however, had irritabilities and envies from which better health
would have set them free. Probably the whole of Newton’s controversy
with Leibniz, which ruined English mathematics for over a hundred
years, would have been avoided if Newton had been robust and able to
enjoy ordinary pleasures. In spite of its limitations, therefore, I
reckon vitality among the qualities which it is important that all men
should possess.

Courage--the second quality on our list--has several forms, and all
of them are complex. Absence of fear is one thing, and the power of
controlling fear is another. And absence of fear, in turn, is one thing
when the fear is rational, another when it is irrational. Absence
of irrational fear is clearly good; so is the power of controlling
fear. But absence of rational fear is a matter as to which debate is
possible. However, I shall postpone this question until I have said
something about the other forms of courage.

Irrational fear plays an extraordinarily large part in the instinctive
emotional life of most people. In its pathological forms, as
persecution mania, anxiety complex, or what not, it is treated by
alienists. But in milder forms it is common among those who are
considered sane. It may be a general feeling that there are dangers
about, more correctly termed “anxiety”, or a specific dread of things
that are not dangerous, such as mice or spiders.[3] It used to be
supposed that many fears were instinctive, but this is now questioned
by most investigators. There are apparently a few instinctive
fears--for instance, of loud noises--but the great majority arise
either from experience or from suggestion. Fear of the dark, for
example, seems to be entirely due to suggestion. Most vertebrates,
there is reason to think, do not feel instinctive fear of their natural
enemies, but catch this emotion from their elders. When human beings
bring them up by hand, the fears usual among the species are found to
be absent. But fear is exceedingly infectious: children catch it from
their elders even when their elders are not aware of having shown it.
Timidity in mothers or nurses is very quickly imitated by children
through suggestion. Hitherto, men have thought it attractive in women
to be full of irrational terrors, because it gave men a chance to seem
protective without incurring any real danger. But the sons of these
men have acquired the terrors from their mothers, and have had to be
afterwards trained to regain a courage which they need never have lost
if their fathers had not desired to despise their mothers. The harm
that has been done by the subjection of women is incalculable; this
matter of fear affords only one incidental illustration.

I am not at the moment discussing the methods by which fear and anxiety
may be minimized; that is a matter which I shall consider later. There
is, however, one question which arises at this stage, namely: can we
be content to deal with fear by means of repression, or must we find
some more radical cure? Traditionally, aristocracies have been trained
not to show fear, while subject nations, classes, and sexes have been
encouraged to remain cowardly. The test of courage has been crudely
behavioristic: a man must not run away in battle; he must be proficient
in “manly” sports; he must retain self-command in fires, shipwrecks,
earthquakes, etc. He must not merely do the right thing, but he must
avoid turning pale, or trembling, or gasping for breath, or giving
any other easily observed sign of fear. All this I regard as of great
importance: I should wish to see courage cultivated in all nations,
in all classes, and in both sexes. But when the method adopted is
repressive, it entails the evils always associated with that practice.
Shame and disgrace have always been potent weapons in producing the
appearance of courage; but in fact they merely cause a conflict of
terrors, in which it is hoped that the dread of public condemnation
will be the stronger. “Always speak the truth except when something
frightens you” was a maxim taught to me in childhood. I cannot admit
the exception. Fear should be overcome not only in action, but in
feeling; and not only in conscious feeling, but in the unconscious
as well. The purely external victory over fear, which satisfies the
aristocratic code, leaves the impulse operative underground, and
produces evil twisted reactions which are not recognized as the
offspring of terror. I am not thinking of “shell-shock”, in which the
connection with fear is obvious. I am thinking rather of the whole
system of oppression and cruelty by which dominant castes seek to
retain their ascendancy. When recently in Shanghai a British officer
ordered a number of unarmed Chinese students to be shot in the back
without warning, he was obviously actuated by terror just as much as
a soldier who runs away in battle. But military aristocracies are not
sufficiently intelligent to trace such actions to their psychological
source; they regard them rather as showing firmness and a proper spirit.

From the point of view of psychology and physiology, fear and rage are
closely analogous emotions: the man who feels rage is not possessed
of the highest kind of courage. The cruelty invariably displayed in
suppressing negro insurrections, communist rebellions, and other
threats to aristocracy, is an offshoot of cowardice, and deserves the
same contempt as is bestowed upon the more obvious forms of that vice.
I believe that it is possible so to educate ordinary men and women that
they shall be able to live without fear. Hitherto, only a few heroes
and saints have achieved such a life; but what they have done others
could do if they were shown the way.

For the kind of courage which does not consist in repression, a number
of factors must be combined. To begin with the humblest: health and
vitality are very helpful, though not indispensable. Practice and
skill in dangerous situations are very desirable. But when we come to
consider, not courage in this and that respect, but universal courage,
something more fundamental is wanted. What is wanted is a combination
of self-respect with an impersonal outlook on life. To begin with
self-respect: some men live from within, while others are mere mirrors
of what is felt and said by their neighbours. The latter can never have
true courage: they must have admiration, and are haunted by the fear
of losing it. The teaching of “humility”, which used to be thought
desirable, was the means of producing a perverted form of this same
vice. “Humility” suppressed self-respect, but not the desire for the
respect of others; it merely made nominal self-abasement the means
of acquiring credit. Thus it produced hypocrisy and falsification of
instinct. Children were taught unreasoning submission, and proceeded
to exact it when they grew up; it was said that only those who have
learned to obey know how to command. What I suggest is that no one
should learn how to obey, and no one should attempt to command. I do
not mean, of course, that there should not be leaders in co-operative
enterprises; but their authority should be like that of a captain of
a football team, which is suffered voluntarily in order to achieve
a common purpose. Our purposes should be our own, not the result of
external authority; and our purposes should never be forcibly imposed
upon others. This is what I mean when I say no one should command and
no one should obey.

There is one thing more required for the highest courage, and that
is what I called just now an impersonal outlook on life. The man
whose hopes and fears are all centred upon himself can hardly view
death with equanimity, since it extinguishes his whole emotional
universe. Here, again, we are met by a tradition urging the cheap
and easy way of repression: the saint must learn to renounce Self,
must mortify the flesh and forego instinctive joys. This can be done,
but its consequences are bad. Having renounced pleasure for himself,
the ascetic saint renounces it for others also, which is easier. Envy
persists underground, and leads him to the view that suffering is
ennobling, and may therefore be legitimately inflicted. Hence arises
a complete inversion of values: what is good is thought bad, and what
is bad is thought good. The source of all the harm is that the good
life has been sought in obedience to a negative imperative, not in
broadening and developing natural desires and instincts. There are
certain things in human nature which take us beyond Self without
effort. The commonest of these is love, more particularly parental
love, which in some is so generalized as to embrace the whole human
race. Another is knowledge. There is no reason to suppose that Galileo
was particularly benevolent, yet he lived for an end which was not
defeated by his death. Another is art. But in fact every interest
in something outside a man’s own body makes his life to that degree
impersonal. For this reason, paradoxical as it may seem, a man of
wide and vivid interests finds less difficulty in leaving life than
is experienced by some miserable hypochondriac whose interests are
bounded by his own ailments. Thus the perfection of courage is found
in the man of many interests, who _feels_ his ego to be but a small
part of the world, not through despising himself, but through valuing
much that is not himself. This can hardly happen except where instinct
is free and intelligence is active. From the union of the two grows
a comprehensiveness of outlook unknown both to the voluptuary and to
the ascetic; and to such an outlook personal death appears a trivial
matter. Such courage is positive and instinctive, not negative and
repressive. It is courage in this positive sense that I regard as one
of the major ingredients in a perfect character.

Sensitiveness, the third quality in our list, is in a sense a
corrective of mere courage. Courageous behaviour is easier for a man
who fails to apprehend dangers, but such courage may often be foolish.
We cannot regard as satisfactory any way of acting which is dependent
upon ignorance or forgetfulness: the fullest possible knowledge and
realization are an essential part of what is desirable. The cognitive
aspect, however, comes under the head of intelligence; sensitiveness,
in the sense in which I am using the term, belongs to the emotions. A
purely theoretical definition would be that a person is emotionally
sensitive when many stimuli produce emotions in him; but taken thus
broadly the quality is not necessarily a good one. If sensitiveness is
to be good, the emotional reaction must be in some sense _appropriate_:
mere intensity is not what is needed. The quality I have in mind is
that of being affected pleasurably or the reverse by many things, and
by the right things. What are the right things, I shall try to explain.
The first step, which most children take at the age of about five
months, is to pass beyond mere pleasures of sensation, such as food
and warmth, to the pleasure of social approbation. This pleasure, as
soon as it has arisen, develops very rapidly: every child loves praise
and hates blame. Usually the wish to be thought well of remains one of
the dominant motives throughout life. It is certainly very valuable
as a stimulus to pleasant behaviour, and as a restraint upon impulses
of greed. If we were wiser in our admirations, it might be much more
valuable. But so long as the most admired heroes are those who have
killed the greatest number of people, love of admiration cannot alone
be adequate to the good life.

The next stage in the development of a desirable form of sensitiveness
is sympathy. There is a purely physical sympathy: a very young child
will cry because a brother or sister is crying. This, I suppose,
affords the basis for the further developments. The two enlargements
that are needed are: first, to feel sympathy even when the sufferer
is not an object of special affection; secondly, to feel it when the
suffering is merely known to be occurring, not sensibly present. The
second of these enlargements depends mainly upon intelligence. It may
only go so far as sympathy with suffering which is portrayed vividly
and touchingly, as in a good novel; it may, on the other hand, go so
far as to enable a man to be moved emotionally by statistics. This
capacity for abstract sympathy is as rare as it is important. Almost
everybody is deeply affected when some one he loves suffers from
cancer. Most people are moved when they see the sufferings of unknown
patients in hospitals. Yet when they read that the death-rate from
cancer is such-and-such, they are as a rule only moved to momentary
personal fear lest they or some one dear to them should acquire the
disease. The same is true of war: people think it dreadful when their
son or brother is mutilated, but they do not think it a million
times as dreadful that a million people should be mutilated. A man
who is full of kindliness in all personal dealings may derive his
income from incitement to war or from the torture of children in
“backward” countries. All these familiar phenomena are due to the fact
that sympathy is not stirred, in most people, by a merely abstract
stimulus. A large proportion of the evils in the modern world would
cease if this could be remedied. Science has greatly increased our
power of affecting the lives of distant people, without increasing
our sympathy for them. Suppose you are a shareholder in a company
which manufactures cotton in Shanghai. You may be a busy man, who has
merely followed financial advice in making the investment; neither
Shanghai nor cotton interests you, but only your dividends. Yet you
become part of the force leading to massacres of innocent people, and
your dividends would disappear if little children were not forced into
unnatural and dangerous toil. You do not mind, because you have never
seen the children, and an abstract stimulus cannot move you. That is
the fundamental reason why large-scale industrialism is so cruel, and
why oppression of subject races is tolerated. An education producing
sensitiveness to abstract stimuli would make such things impossible.

Cognitive sensitiveness, which should also be included, is practically
the same thing as a habit of observation, and this is more naturally
considered in connection with intelligence. Æsthetic sensitiveness
raises a number of problems which I do not wish to discuss at this
stage. I will therefore pass on to the last of the four qualities we
enumerated, namely, intelligence.

One of the great defects of traditional morality has been the low
estimate it placed upon intelligence. The Greeks did not err in this
respect, but the Church led men to think that nothing matters except
virtue, and virtue consists in abstinence from a certain list of
actions arbitrarily labelled “sin”. So long as this attitude persists,
it is impossible to make men realize that intelligence does more good
than an artificial conventional “virtue”. When I speak of intelligence,
I include both actual knowledge and receptivity to knowledge. The two
are, in fact, closely connected. Ignorant adults are unteachable;
on such matters as hygiene or diet, for example, they are totally
incapable of believing what science has to say. The more a man has
learnt, the easier it is for him to learn still more--always assuming
that he has not been taught in a spirit of dogmatism. Ignorant people
have never been compelled to change their mental habits, and have
stiffened into an unchangeable attitude. It is not only that they are
credulous where they should be sceptical; it is just as much that they
are incredulous where they should be receptive. No doubt the word
“intelligence” properly signifies rather an aptitude for acquiring
knowledge than knowledge already acquired; but I do not think this
aptitude is acquired except by exercise, any more than the aptitude
of a pianist or an acrobat. It is, of course, possible to impart
information in ways that do not train intelligence; it is not only
possible, but easy, and frequently done. But I do not believe that it
is possible to train intelligence without imparting information, or at
any rate causing knowledge to be acquired. And without intelligence our
complex modern world cannot subsist; still less can it make progress. I
regard the cultivation of intelligence, therefore, as one of the major
purposes of education. This might seem a commonplace, but in fact it is
not. The desire to instil what are regarded as correct beliefs has made
educationists too often indifferent to the training of intelligence.
To make this clear, it is necessary to define intelligence a little
more closely, so as to discover the mental habits which it requires.
For this purpose I shall consider only the aptitude for acquiring
knowledge, not the store of actual knowledge which might legitimately
be included in the definition of intelligence.

The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which
is found among animals in its elementary forms. Intelligence demands an
alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads
village neighbours to try to peer through curtains after dark has no
very high value. The wide-spread interest in gossip is inspired, not by
a love of knowledge, but by malice: no one gossips about other people’s
secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most
gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbours’
sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do
not stop to scrutinize the evidence closely. Curiosity properly so
called, on the other hand, is inspired by a genuine love of knowledge.
You may see this impulse, in a moderately pure form, at work in a
cat which has been brought to a strange room, and proceeds to smell
every corner and every piece of furniture. You will see it also in
children, who are passionately interested when a drawer or cupboard,
usually closed, is open for their inspection. Animals, machines,
thunderstorms, and all forms of manual work, arouse the curiosity of
children, whose thirst for knowledge puts the most intelligent adult
to shame. This impulse grows weaker with advancing years, until at
last what is unfamiliar inspires only disgust, with no desire for a
closer acquaintance. This is the stage at which people announce that
the country is going to the dogs, and that “things are not what they
were in my young days”. The thing which is not the same as it was in
that far-off time is the speaker’s curiosity. And with the death of
curiosity we may reckon that active intelligence, also, has died.

But although curiosity lessens in intensity and in extent after
childhood, it may for a long time improve in quality. Curiosity
about general propositions shows a higher level of intelligence than
curiosity about particular facts; broadly speaking, the higher the
order of generality the greater is the intelligence involved. (This
rule, however, must not be taken too strictly.) Curiosity dissociated
from personal advantage shows a higher development than curiosity
connected (say) with a chance of food. The cat that sniffs in a new
room is not a wholly disinterested scientific inquirer, but probably
also wants to find out whether there are mice about. Perhaps it is not
quite correct to say that curiosity is best when it is disinterested,
but rather that it is best when the connection with other interests is
not direct and obvious, but discoverable only by means of a certain
degree of intelligence. This point, however, it is not necessary for us
to decide.

If curiosity is to be fruitful, it must be associated with a certain
technique for the acquisition of knowledge. There must be habits of
observation, belief in the possibility of knowledge, patience and
industry. These things will develop of themselves, given the original
fund of curiosity and the proper intellectual education. But since our
intellectual life is only a part of our activity, and since curiosity
is perpetually coming into conflict with other passions, there is need
of certain intellectual virtues, such as open-mindedness. We become
impervious to new truth both from habit and from desire: we find it
hard to disbelieve what we have emphatically believed for a number of
years, and also what ministers to self-esteem or any other fundamental
passion. Open-mindedness should therefore be one of the qualities that
education aims at producing. At present, this is only done to a very
limited extent, as is illustrated by the following paragraph from “The
Daily Herald”, July 31, 1925:

  A special committee, appointed to inquire into the allegations of
  the subversion of children’s minds in Bootle schools by their school
  teachers, has placed its findings before the Bootle Borough Council.
  The Committee was of opinion that the allegations were substantiated,
  but the Council deleted the word “substantiated”, and stated that
  “the allegations gave cause for reasonable inquiry”. A recommendation
  made by the Committee, and adopted by the Council, was that in future
  appointments of teachers, they shall undertake to train the scholars
  in habits of reverence towards God and religion, and of respect for
  the civil and religious institutions of the country.

Thus whatever may happen elsewhere, there is to be no open-mindedness
in Bootle. It is hoped that the Borough Council will shortly send a
deputation to Dayton, Tennessee, to obtain further light upon the
best methods of carrying out their programme. But perhaps that is
unnecessary. From the wording of the resolution, it would seem as if
Bootle needed no instruction in obscurantism.

Courage is essential to intellectual probity, as well as to physical
heroism. The real world is more unknown than we like to think; from the
first day of life we practise precarious inductions, and confound our
mental habits with laws of external nature. All sorts of intellectual
systems--Christianity, Socialism, Patriotism, etc.--are ready, like
orphan asylums, to give safety in return for servitude. A free mental
life cannot be as warm and comfortable and sociable as a life enveloped
in a creed: only a creed can give the feeling of a cosy fireside while
the winter storms are raging without.

This brings us to a somewhat difficult question: to what extent
should the good life be emancipated from the herd? I hesitate to use
the phrase “herd instinct”, because there are controversies as to
its correctness. But, however interpreted, the phenomena which it
describes are familiar. We like to stand well with those whom we feel
to be the group with which we wish to co-operate--our family, our
neighbours, our colleagues, our political party, or our nation. This is
natural, because we cannot obtain any of the pleasures of life without
co-operation. Moreover, emotions are infectious, especially when they
are felt by many people at once. Very few people can be present at
an excited meeting without getting excited: if they are opponents,
their opposition becomes excited. And to most people such opposition
is only possible if they can derive support from the thought of a
different crowd in which they will win approbation. That is why the
Communion of Saints has afforded such comfort to the persecuted. Are
we to acquiesce in this desire for co-operation with a crowd, or shall
our education try to weaken it? There are arguments on both sides, and
the right answer must consist in finding a just proportion, not in a
whole-hearted decision for either party.

I think myself that the desire to please and to co-operate should be
strong and normal, but should be capable of being overcome by other
desires on certain important occasions. The desirability of a wish to
please has already been considered in connection with sensitiveness.
Without it, we should all be boors, and all social groups, from the
family upwards, would be impossible. Education of young children would
be very difficult if they did not desire the good opinion of their
parents. The contagious character of emotions also has its uses,
when the contagion is from a wiser person to a more foolish one. But
in the case of panic fear and panic rage it is of course the very
reverse of useful. Thus the question of emotional receptivity is by
no means simple. Even in purely intellectual matters, the issue is
not clear. The great discoverers have had to withstand the herd, and
incur hostility by their independence. But the average man’s opinions
are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself: in
science, at least, his respect for authority is on the whole beneficial.

I think that in the life of a man whose circumstances and talents are
not very exceptional there should be a large sphere where what is
vaguely termed “herd instinct” dominates, and a small sphere into which
it does not penetrate. The small sphere should contain the region of
his special competence. We think ill of a man who cannot admire a woman
unless everybody else also admires her: we think that, in the choice
of a wife, a man should be guided by his own independent feelings, not
by a reflection of the feelings of his society. It is no matter if his
judgments of people in general agree with those of his neighbours, but
when he falls in love he ought to be guided by his own independent
feelings. Much the same thing applies in other directions. A farmer
should follow his own judgment as to the capacities of the fields
which he cultivates himself, though his judgment should be formed
after acquiring a knowledge of scientific agriculture. An economist
should form an independent judgment on currency questions, but an
ordinary mortal had better follow authority. Wherever there is special
competence, there should be independence. But a man should not make
himself into a kind of hedgehog, all bristles to keep the world at a
distance. The bulk of our ordinary activities must be co-operative,
and co-operation must have an instinctive basis. Nevertheless, we
should all learn to be able to think for ourselves about matters that
are particularly well known to us, and we ought all to have acquired
the courage to proclaim unpopular opinions when we believe them to be
important. The application of these broad principles in special cases
may, of course, be difficult. But it will be less difficult than it
is at present in a world where men commonly have the virtues we have
been considering in this chapter. The persecuted saint, for instance,
would not exist in such a world. The good man would have no occasion
to bristle and become self-conscious; his goodness would result
from following his impulses, and would be combined with instinctive
happiness. His neighbours would not hate him, because they would not
fear him: the hatred of pioneers is due to the terror they inspire, and
this terror would not exist among men who had acquired courage. Only a
man dominated by fear would join the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascisti. In
a world of brave men, such persecuting organizations could not exist,
and the good life would involve far less resistance to instinct than
it does at present. The good world can only be created and sustained
by fearless men, but the more they succeed in their task the fewer
occasions there will be for the exercise of their courage.

A community of men and women possessing vitality, courage,
sensitiveness, and intelligence, in the highest degree that education
can produce, would be very different from anything that has hitherto
existed. Very few people would be unhappy. The main causes of
unhappiness at present are: ill-health, poverty, and an unsatisfactory
sex-life. All of these would become very rare. Good health could
be almost universal, and even old age could be postponed. Poverty,
since the industrial revolution, is only due to collective stupidity.
Sensitiveness would make people wish to abolish it, intelligence would
show them the way, and courage would lead them to adopt it. (A timid
person would rather remain miserable than do anything unusual.) Most
people’s sex-life, at present, is more or less unsatisfactory. This is
partly due to bad education, partly to persecution by the authorities
and Mrs. Grundy. A generation of women brought up without irrational
sex fears would soon make an end of this. Fear has been thought the
only way to make women “virtuous”, and they have been deliberately
taught to be cowards, both physically and mentally. Women in whom love
is cramped encourage brutality and hypocrisy in their husbands, and
distort the instincts of their children. One generation of fearless
women could transform the world, by bringing into it a generation of
fearless children, not contorted into unnatural shapes, but straight
and candid, generous, affectionate, and free. Their ardour would
sweep away the cruelty and pain which we endure because we are lazy,
cowardly, hard-hearted and stupid. It is education that gives us these
bad qualities, and education that must give us the opposite virtues.
Education is the key to the new world.

But it is time to have done with generalities and come to the concrete
detail in which our ideals are to be embodied.




PART II

EDUCATION OF CHARACTER




CHAPTER III

THE FIRST YEAR


The first year of life was formerly regarded as lying outside the
sphere of education. At least until the infant could speak, if not
longer, it was left to the entirely unchecked care of mothers and
nurses, who were supposed to know by instinct what was good for the
child. As a matter of fact, they did not know. An enormous proportion
of children died during the first year, and of the remainder many were
already ruined in health. By bad handling, the foundations had been
laid for disastrous habits of mind. All this has only recently been
realized. The invasion of the nursery by science is often resented,
because it disturbs the sentimental picture of mother and child. But
sentimentality and love cannot coexist; the parent who loves his or her
child will wish it to live, even if it should be necessary to employ
intelligence for the purpose. Accordingly we find this sentimentality
strongest in childless people and in people who, like Rousseau, are
willing to leave their children to the Foundling Hospital. Most
educated parents are eager to know what science has to say, and
uneducated parents, also, learn from maternity centres. The result is
shown in the remarkable diminution of infant mortality. There is reason
to think that, with adequate care and skill, very few children would
die in infancy. Not only would few die, but the survivors would be
healthier in mind and body.

Questions of physical health, strictly speaking, lie outside the scope
of this book, and must be left to medical practitioners. I shall touch
on them only where they have psychological importance. But physical and
mental are scarcely distinguishable in the first year of life. Moreover
the educator in later years may find himself handicapped by purely
physiological mistakes in handling the infant. We cannot therefore
altogether avoid trespassing upon ground which does not of right belong
to us.

The new-born infant has reflexes and instincts, but no habits. Whatever
habits it may have acquired in the womb are useless in its new
situation: even breathing sometimes has to be taught, and some children
die because they do not learn the lesson quickly enough. There is one
well-developed instinct, the instinct of sucking; when the child is
engaged in this occupation, it feels at home with its new environment.
But the rest of its waking life is passed in a vague bewilderment,
from which relief is found by sleeping most of the twenty-four hours.
At the end of a fortnight, all this is changed. The child has acquired
expectations from regularly recurring experiences. It is already a
conservative--probably a more complete conservative than at any later
time. Any novelty is met with resentment. If it could speak, it would
say: “Do you suppose I am going to change the habits of a lifetime
at my time of life?” The rapidity with which infants acquire habits
is amazing. Every bad habit acquired is a barrier to better habits
later; that is why the first formation of habits in early infancy is
so important. If the first habits are good, endless trouble is saved
later. Moreover habits acquired very early feel, in later life, just
like instincts; they have the same profound grip. New contrary habits
acquired afterwards cannot have the same force; for this reason, also,
the first habits should be a matter of grave concern.

Two considerations come in when we are considering habit-formation in
infancy. The first and paramount consideration is health; the second
is character. We want the child to become the sort of person that will
be liked and will be able to cope with life successfully. Fortunately,
health and character point in the same direction: what is good for one
is good also for the other. It is character that specially concerns
us in this book; but health requires the same practices. Thus we are
not faced with the difficult alternative of a healthy scoundrel or a
diseased saint.

Every educated mother nowadays knows such simple facts as the
importance of feeding the infant at regular intervals, not whenever it
cries. This practice has arisen because it is better for the child’s
digestion, which is an entirely sufficient reason. But it is also
desirable from the point of view of moral education. Infants are far
more cunning than grown-up people are apt to suppose; if they find that
crying produces agreeable results, they will cry. When, in later life,
a habit of complaining causes them to be disliked instead of petted,
they feel surprised and resentful, and the world seems to them cold and
unsympathetic. If, however, they grow up into charming women, they will
still be petted when they are querulous, and the bad training begun
in childhood will be intensified. The same thing is true of rich men.
Unless the right methods are adopted in infancy, people in later life
will be either discontented or grasping, according to the degree of
their power. The right moment to begin the requisite moral training is
the moment of birth, because then it can be begun without disappointing
expectations. At any later time it will have to fight against contrary
habits, and will therefore be met by resentful indignation.

In dealing with the infant, therefore, there is need of a delicate
balance between neglect and indulgence. Everything necessary for health
must be done. The child must be picked up when it suffers from wind, it
must be kept dry and warm. But if it cries when there is no adequate
physical cause, it must be left to cry; if not, it will quickly develop
into a tyrant. When it is attended to, there should not be too much
fuss: what is necessary must be done, but without excessive expressions
of sympathy. At no period of its life must it be regarded as an
agreeable pet, somewhat more interesting than a lap-dog. It must from
the very first be viewed seriously, as a potential adult. Habits which
would be intolerable in an adult may be quite pleasant in a child.
Of course the child cannot actually have the habits of an adult, but
we should avoid everything that places an obstacle in the way of the
acquisition of these habits. Above all, we should not give the child
a sense of self-importance which later experience will mortify, and
which, in any case, is not in accordance with the facts.

The difficulty in the education of young infants is largely the
delicate balance required in the parent. Constant watchfulness and
much labour are needed to avoid injury to health; these qualities will
hardly exist in the necessary degree except where there is strong
parental affection. But where this exists, it is very likely not to be
wise. To the devoted parent, the child is immensely important. Unless
care is taken, the child feels this, and judges himself as important as
his parents feel him. In later life, his social environment will not
regard him so fondly, and habits which assume that he is the centre of
other people’s universe will lead to disappointment. It is therefore
necessary, not only in the first year, but afterwards also, that the
parents should be breezy and cheerful and rather matter-of-fact where
the child’s possible ailments are concerned. In old days, infants were
at once restricted and coddled: their limbs were not free, they were
too warmly dressed, they were hampered in their spontaneous activities,
but they were petted, sung to, rocked and dandled. This was ideally
wrong, since it turned them into helpless pampered parasites.[4] The
right rule is: encourage spontaneous activities, but discourage demands
upon others. Do not let the child see how much you do for it, or how
much trouble you take. Let it, wherever possible, taste the joy of a
success achieved by its own efforts, not extracted by tyrannizing over
the grown-ups. Our aim, in modern education, is to reduce external
discipline to a minimum; but this requires an internal self-discipline
which is much more easily acquired in the first year of life than at
any other time. For example: when you want a child to sleep, do not
wheel it up and down, or take it in your arms, or even stay where
it can see you. If you do this once, the child will demand that you
should do it next time; in an incredibly short space of time it becomes
a terrific business to get the child to sleep. Make it warm and dry
and comfortable, put it down firmly, and after a few quiet remarks
leave it to itself. It may cry for a few minutes, but unless it is ill
it will soon stop. If you then go to look, you will find that it is
fast asleep. And it will sleep far more with this treatment than with
petting and indulgence.

The new-born infant, as we observed before, has no habits, but only
reflexes and instincts. It follows that his world is not composed of
“objects”. Recurrent experiences are necessary for recognition, and
recognition is necessary before the conception of an “object” can
arise. The feel of the cot, the feel and smell of the mother’s breast
(or the bottle), and the mother’s or nurse’s voice will soon come to
be familiar. The visual appearance of the mother or the cot comes
somewhat later, because the new-born child does not know how to focus
so as to see shapes distinctly. It is only gradually, through the
formation of habits by association, that touch and sight and smell and
hearing come together and coalesce in the common-sense notion of an
object, of which one manifestation leads to the expectation of another.
Even then, for a time, there is hardly any feeling of the difference
between persons and things; a baby which is partly breast-fed and
partly bottle-fed will, for a time, have similar feelings towards
mother and bottle. During all this time, education must be by
purely physical means. Its pleasures are physical--chiefly food and
warmth--and its pains also are physical. Habits of behaviour arise
through seeking what is associated with pleasure and avoiding what is
associated with pain. A child’s crying is partly a reflex connected
with pain, partly an act performed in the pursuit of pleasure. At
first, of course, it is only the former. But since any real pain
that the child may be suffering must, if possible, be removed, it is
inevitable that crying should come to be associated with pleasant
consequences. The child therefore soon begins to cry because it
desires a pleasure, not because it feels a physical pain; this is one
of its first triumphs of intelligence. But try as it may, it cannot
give quite the same cry as when it is in actual pain. The attentive
ear of the mother knows the difference, and if she is wise she will
ignore the cry that is not an expression of physical pain. It is easy
and agreeable to amuse an infant by dandling it or singing to it.
But it learns with amazing rapidity to demand more and more of such
amusements, which soon interfere with necessary sleep--and sleep ought
to occupy almost all the day except meal-times. Some of these precepts
may seem harsh, but experience shows that they make for the child’s
health and happiness.

But while the amusements which grown-up people provide should be kept
within certain limits, those which the infant can enjoy for itself
should be encouraged to the utmost. From the first, it should have
opportunities to kick and practise its muscles. How our ancestors can
have so long persisted in the practice of swaddling-clothes is almost
inconceivable, it shows that even parental affection has difficulty
in overcoming laziness, since the infant whose limbs are free needs
more attention. As soon as the child can focus, it finds pleasure in
watching moving objects, especially things that wave in the wind. But
the number of possible amusements is small until the child has learned
to grasp objects that it sees. Then, immediately, there is an enormous
accession of pleasure. For some time, the exercise of grasping is
enough to secure the happiness of many waking hours. Pleasure in a
rattle also comes at this stage. Slightly earlier is the conquest of
the toes and fingers. At first, the movement of the toes is purely
reflex; then the baby discovers that they can be moved at will. This
gives all the pleasure of an imperialist conquering a foreign country:
the toes cease to be alien bodies and become incorporated in the
ego. From this time onward, the child should be able to find many
amusements, provided suitable objects are within his reach. And a
child’s amusements, for the most part, will be just what its education
requires--provided, of course that it is not allowed to tumble, or to
swallow pins, or otherwise injure itself.

The first three months of life are, on the whole, a somewhat dreary
time for the infant, except during the moments when it is enjoying
its meals. When it is comfortable, it sleeps; when it is awake, there
is usually some discomfort. The happiness of a human being depends
upon mental capacities, but these can find little outlet in an infant
under three months, for lack of experience and muscular control. Young
animals enjoy life much sooner, because they depend more upon instinct
and less upon experience; but the things an infant can do by instinct
are too few to provide more than a minimum of pleasure and interest.
On the whole, the first three months involve a good deal of boredom.
But the boredom is necessary if there is to be enough sleep; if much is
done to amuse the child, it will not sleep enough.

At about the age of two to three months, the child learns to smile, and
to have feelings about persons which are different from its feelings
about things. At this age, a social relation between mother and child
begins to be possible: the child can and does show pleasure at the
sight of the mother, and develops responses which are not merely
animal. Very soon a desire for praise and approval grows up; in my
own boy, it was first shown unmistakably at the age of five months,
when he succeeded, after many attempts, in lifting a somewhat heavy
bell off the table, and ringing it while he looked round at everybody
with a proud smile. From this moment, the educator has a new weapon:
praise and blame. This weapon is extraordinarily powerful throughout
childhood, but it must be used with great caution. There should not be
any blame at all during the first year, and afterwards it should be
used very sparingly. Praise is less harmful. But it should not be given
so easily as to lose its value, nor should it be used to overstimulate
a child. No tolerable parent could refrain from praising a child
when it first walks and when it first says an intelligible word. And
generally, when a child has mastered a difficulty after persistent
efforts, praise is a proper reward. Moreover it is well to let the
child feel that you sympathize with his desire to learn.

But on the whole an infant’s desire to learn is so strong that parents
need only provide opportunity. Give the child a chance to develop,
and his own efforts will do the rest. It is not necessary to teach a
child to crawl, or to walk, or to learn any of the other elements of
muscular control. Of course we teach a child to talk by talking to it,
but I doubt whether any purpose is served by deliberate attempts to
teach words. Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to
try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life,
is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties
must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to
stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle.
It is by what we do ourselves that we learn. What grown-up people
can do is to perform some simple action that the child would like to
perform, such as rattling a rattle, and then let the child find out how
to do it. What others do is merely a stimulus to ambition; it is never
in itself an education.

Regularity and routine are of the utmost importance in early
childhood, and most of all in the first year of life. In regard to
sleep, food, and evacuation, regular habits should be formed from the
start. Moreover familiarity of surroundings is very important mentally.
It teaches recognition, it avoids overstrain, and it produces a feeling
of safety. I have sometimes thought that belief in the uniformity
of nature, which is said to be a postulate of science, is entirely
derived from the wish for safety. We can cope with the expected, but
if the laws of nature were suddenly changed we should perish. The
infant, because of its weakness, has need of reassurance, and it will
be happier if everything that happens seems to happen according to
invariable laws, so as to be predictable. In later childhood, the
love of adventure develops, but in the first year of life everything
unusual tends to be alarming. Do not let the child feel fear if you
can possibly help it. If it is ill, and you are anxious, hide your
anxiety very carefully, lest it should pass to the child by suggestion.
Avoid everything that might produce excitement. And do not minister
to the child’s self-importance by letting it see that you mind if it
does not sleep or eat or evacuate as it should. This applies not only
to the first year of life, but still more to the subsequent years.
Never let the child think that a necessary normal action, such as
eating which ought to be a pleasure, is something that you desire,
and that you want it to do so to please you. If you do, the child soon
perceives that it has acquired a new source of power, and expects to
be coaxed into actions which it ought to perform spontaneously. Do not
imagine that the child has not the intelligence for such behaviour.
Its powers are small and its knowledge is limited, but it has just as
much intelligence as a grown-up person where these limitations do not
operate. It learns more in the first twelve months than it will ever
learn again in the same space of time, and this would be impossible if
it had not a very active intelligence.

To sum up: Treat even the youngest baby with respect, as a person who
will have to take his place in the world. Do not sacrifice his future
to your present convenience, or to your pleasure in making much of him:
the one is as harmful as the other. Here, as elsewhere, a combination
of love and knowledge is necessary if the right way is to be followed.




CHAPTER IV

FEAR


In the following chapters, I propose to deal with various aspects
of moral education, especially in the years from the second to the
sixth. By the time the child is six years old, moral education ought
to be nearly complete; that is to say, the further virtues which
will be required in later years ought to be developed by the boy or
girl spontaneously, as a result of good habits already existing and
ambitions already stimulated. It is only where early moral training has
been neglected or badly given that much will be needed at later ages.

I suppose that the child has reached the age of twelve months healthy
and happy, with the foundations of a disciplined character already well
laid by the methods considered in the preceding chapter. There will,
of course, be some children whose health is bad, even if parents take
all the precautions known to science at present. But we may hope that
their number will be enormously diminished as time goes on. They ought,
even now, to be so few as to be statistically unimportant, if existing
knowledge were adequately applied. I do not propose to consider what
ought to be done with children whose early training has been bad.
This is a problem for the schoolmaster, not for the parent; and it is
especially to the parent that this book is addressed.

The second year of life should be one of great happiness. Walking and
talking are new accomplishments, bringing a sense of freedom and power.
Every day the child improves in both.[5] Independent play becomes
possible, and the child has a more vivid sense of “seeing the world”
than a man can derive from the most extensive globe-trotting. Birds
and flowers, rivers and the sea, motor-cars and trains and steamers
all bring delight and passionate interest. Curiosity is boundless:
“want to see” is one of the commonest phrases at this age. Running
freely in a garden or a field or on the seashore produces an ecstasy of
emancipation after the confinement of crib and baby-carriage. Digestion
is usually stronger than in the first year, food is more varied, and
mastication is a new joy. For all these reasons, if the child is well
cared for and healthy, life is a delicious adventure.

But with the greater independence of walking and running there is
apt to come also a new timidity. The new-born infant can easily be
frightened; Dr. J. B. and Mrs. Watson found that the things which alarm
it most are loud noises and the sensation of being dropped.[6] It
is, however, so completely protected that it has little occasion for
the rational exercise of fear; even in real dangers it is helpless,
so that fear would not be of any use to it. During the second and
third year, new fears develop. It is a moot point how far this is
due to suggestion, and how far it is instinctive. The fact that the
fears do not exist during the first year is not conclusive against
their instinctive character, since an instinct may ripen at any
age. Not even the most extreme Freudian would maintain that the sex
instinct is mature at birth. Obviously children who can run about by
themselves have more need of fear than infants that cannot walk; it
would therefore not be surprising if the instinct of fear arose with
the need. The question is of considerable educational importance. If
all fears arise from suggestion, they can be prevented by the simple
expedient of not showing fear or aversion before a child. If, on the
other hand, some of them are instinctive, more elaborate methods will
be required.

Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, in his book “The Childhood of Animals”, gives
a large number of observations and experiments to show that there is
usually no inherited instinct of fear in young animals.[7] Except
monkeys and a few birds, they view the age-long enemies of their
species, such as snakes, without the slightest alarm, unless their
parents have taught them to feel fear of these animals. Children well
under a year old seem never to be afraid of animals. Dr. Watson taught
one such child to be afraid of rats by repeatedly sounding a gong
behind its head at the moment when he showed it a rat. The noise was
terrifying, and the rat came to be so by association. But instinctive
fear of animals seems quite unknown in the early months. Fear of the
dark, also, seems never to occur in children who have not been exposed
to the suggestion that the dark is terrifying. There are certainly
very strong grounds for the view that most of the fears which we used
to regard as instinctive are acquired, and would not arise if grown-up
people did not create them.

In order to get fresh light on this subject, I have observed my own
children carefully; but as I could not always know what nurses and
maids might have said to them, the interpretation of the facts was
often doubtful. So far as I could judge, they bore out Dr. Watson’s
views as to fear in the first year of life. In the second year, they
showed no fear of animals, except that one of them, for a time, was
afraid of horses. This, however, was apparently due to the fact that
a horse had suddenly galloped past her with a very loud noise. She is
still in her second year, and therefore for later observation I am
dependent on the boy. Near the end of his second year, he had a new
nurse who was generally timid and especially afraid of the dark. He
quickly acquired her terrors (of which we were ignorant at first);
he fled from dogs and cats, cowered in abject fear before a dark
cupboard, wanted lights in every part of the room after dark, and was
even afraid of his little sister the first time he saw her, thinking,
apparently, that she was a strange animal of some unknown species.[8]
All these fears might have been acquired from the timid nurse; in
fact they gradually faded away after she was gone. There were other
fears, however, which could not be accounted for in the same way,
since they began before the nurse came, and were directed to objects
which no grown-up person would find alarming. Chief of these was a
fear of everything that moved in a surprising way, notably shadows and
mechanical toys. After making this observation, I learned that fears
of this sort are normal in childhood, and that there are strong reasons
for regarding them as instinctive. The matter is discussed by William
Stern in his “Psychology of Early Childhood”, p. 494 ff, under the
heading “Fear of the Mysterious”. What he says is as follows:

  The special significance of this form of fear, particularly in early
  childhood, has escaped the notice of the older school of child
  psychologists; it has lately been established by Groos and by us.
  “Fear of the unaccustomed seems to be more a part of primitive nature
  than fear of a known danger” (Groos, p. 284). If the child meets
  with anything that does not fit in with the familiar course of his
  perception, three things are possible. Either the impression is so
  alien that it is simply rejected as a foreign body, and consciousness
  takes no notice of it. Or the interruption of the usual course of
  perception is pronounced enough to attract attention but not so
  violent as to effect disturbance; it is rather surprise, desire
  for knowledge, the beginning of all thought, judgment, enquiry.
  Or, lastly, the new suddenly breaks in upon the old with violent
  intensity, throws familiar ideas into unexpected confusion without
  a possibility of an immediate practical adjustment; then follows
  a shock with a strong affective-tone of displeasure, the fear of
  the mysterious (uncanny). Groos now has pointed out with keen
  insight that this fear of the uncanny is also distinctly founded on
  instinctive fear; it corresponds to a biological necessity which
  works from one generation to the next.

Stern gives many instances, among others fear of a suddenly opened
umbrella and “the frequent fear of mechanical toys”. The former, by
the way, is very strong in horses and cows: a large herd can be driven
into headlong flight by it, as I have verified. My own boy’s terrors,
under this head, were just such as Stern describes. The shadows that
frightened him were vague quickly-moving shadows thrown into a room
by unseen objects (such as omnibuses) passing in the street. I cured
him by making shadows on the wall and the floor with my fingers, and
getting him to imitate me; before long, he felt that he understood
shadows and began to enjoy them. The same principle applied to
mechanical toys: when he had seen the mechanism he was no longer
frightened. But when the mechanism was invisible the process was slow.
Some one gave him a cushion which emitted a long melancholy whine after
being sat upon or pressed. This alarmed him for a long time. In no case
did we entirely remove the terrifying object: we put it at a distance,
where it was only slightly alarming; we produced gradual familiarity;
and we persisted till the fear completely ceased. Generally the same
mysterious quality which caused fear at first produced delight when
the fear had been overcome. I think an irrational fear should never be
simply let alone, but should be gradually overcome by familiarity with
its fainter forms.

We adopted an exactly opposite process--perhaps wrongly--in the case
of two rational fears which were wholly absent. I live half the year
on a rocky coast where there are many precipices. The boy had no sense
whatever of the danger of heights, and would have run straight over
a cliff into the sea if we had let him. One day when we were sitting
on a steep slope that ended in a sheer drop of a hundred feet, we
explained to him quietly, as a merely scientific fact, that if he went
over the edge he would fall and break like a plate. (He had lately seen
a plate broken into many pieces by being dropped on the floor.) He
sat still for some time, saying to himself “fall”, “break”, and then
asked to be taken further from the edge. This was at the age of about
two and a half. Since then he has had just enough fear of heights to
make him safe while we keep an eye on him. But he would still be very
rash if left to himself. He now (three and nine months) jumps from
heights of six feet without hesitation, and would jump twenty feet
if we would let him. Thus the instruction in apprehension certainly
did not produce excessive results. I attribute this to the fact that
it was instruction, not suggestion; neither of us was feeling fear
when the instruction was given. I regard this as very important in
education. Rational apprehension of dangers is necessary; fear is not.
A child cannot apprehend dangers without _some_ element of fear, but
this element is very much diminished when it is not present in the
instructor. A grown-up person in charge of a child should never feel
fear. That is one reason why courage should be cultivated in women just
as much as in men.

The second illustration was less deliberate. One day when I was walking
with the boy (at the age of three years and four months) we found an
adder on the path. He had seen pictures of snakes, but had never before
seen a real snake. He did not know that snakes bite. He was delighted
with the adder, and when it glided away he ran after it. As I knew he
could not catch it, I did not check him, and did not tell him that
snakes are dangerous. His nurse, however, from that time on, prevented
him from running in long grass, on the ground that there might be
snakes. A slight fear grew up in him as a result, but not more than we
felt to be desirable.

The most difficult fear to overcome, so far, has been fear of the sea.
Our first attempt to take the boy into the sea was at the age of two
and a half. At first, it was quite impossible. He disliked the cold
of the water, he was frightened by the noise of the waves, and they
seemed to him to be always coming, never going. If the waves were big,
he would not even go near to the sea. This was a period of general
timidity; animals, odd noises, and various other things, caused alarm.
We dealt with fear of the sea piecemeal. We put the boy into shallow
pools away from the sea, until the mere cold had ceased to be a shock;
at the end of the four warm months, he enjoyed paddling in shallow
water at a distance from waves, but still cried if we put him into deep
pools where the water came up to his waist. We accustomed him to the
noise of the waves by letting him play for an hour at a time just out
of sight of them; then we took him to where he could see them, and made
him notice that after coming in they go out again. All this, combined
with the example of his parents and other children, only brought him
to the point where he could be _near_ the waves without fear. I am
convinced that the fear was instinctive; I am fairly certain there had
been no suggestion to cause it. The following summer, at the age of
three and a half, we took the matter up again. There was still a terror
of going actually into the waves. After some unsuccessful coaxing,
combined with the spectacle of everybody else bathing, we adopted
old-fashioned methods. When he showed cowardice, we made him feel that
we were ashamed of him; when he showed courage, we praised him warmly.
Every day for about a fortnight, we plunged him up to the neck in the
sea, in spite of his struggles and cries.[9] Every day they grew less;
before they ceased, he began to ask to be put in. At the end of a
fortnight, the desired result had been achieved: he no longer feared
the sea. From that moment, we left him completely free, and he bathed
of his own accord whenever the weather was suitable--obviously with the
greatest enjoyment. Fear had not ceased altogether, but had been partly
repressed by pride. Familiarity, however, made the fear grow rapidly
less, and it has now ceased altogether. His sister, now twenty months
old, has never shown any fear of the sea, and runs straight in without
the slightest hesitation.

I have related this matter in some detail, because, to a certain
extent, it goes against modern theories for which I have much respect.
The use of force in education should be very rare. But for the conquest
of fear it is, I think, sometimes salutary. Where a fear is irrational
and strong, the child, left to himself, will never have the experiences
which show that there is no ground for apprehension. When a situation
has been experienced repeatedly without harm, familiarity kills fear.
It would very likely be useless to give the dreaded experience _once_;
it must be given often enough to become in no degree surprising. If the
necessary experience can be secured without force, so much the better;
but if not, force may be better than the persistence of an unconquered
fear.

There is a further point. In the case of my own boy, and presumably in
other cases too, the experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily
delightful. It is easy to rouse the boy’s pride: when he has won praise
for courage, he is radiantly happy for the rest of the day. At a later
stage, a timid boy suffers agonies through the contempt of other boys,
and it is much more difficult then for him to acquire new habits. I
think therefore that the early acquisition of self-control in the
matter of fear, and the early teaching of physical enterprise, are of
sufficient importance to warrant somewhat drastic methods.

Parents learn by their mistakes; it is only when the children are grown
up that one discovers how they ought to have been educated. I shall
therefore relate an incident which shows the snares of overindulgence.
At the age of two and a half, my boy was put to sleep in a room
by himself. He was inordinately proud of the promotion from the
night-nursery, and at first he always slept quietly through the night.
But one night there was a terrific gale, and a hurdle was blown over
with a deafening crash. He woke in terror, and cried out. I went to
him at once: he had apparently waked with a nightmare, and clung to me
with his heart beating wildly. Very soon his terror ceased. But he had
complained that it was dark--usually, at that time of year, he slept
all through the dark hours. After I left him, the terror seemed to
return in a mitigated form, so I gave him a night-light. After that, he
made an almost nightly practice of crying out, until at last it became
clear that he was only doing it for the pleasure of having grown-up
people come and make a fuss. So we talked to him very carefully about
the absence of danger in the dark, and told him that if he woke he was
to turn over and go to sleep again, as we should not come to him unless
there was something serious the matter. He listened attentively, and
never cried out again except for grave cause on rare occasions. Of
course the night-light was discontinued. If we had been more indulgent,
we should probably have made him sleep badly for a long time, perhaps
for life.

So much from personal experience. We must now pass on to a more general
consideration of methods for eliminating fear.

After the first years, the proper instructors in physical courage
are other children. If a child has older brothers and sisters, they
will stimulate it both by example and by precept, and whatever they
can do it will attempt. At school, physical cowardice is despised, and
there is no need for grown-up teachers to emphasize the matter. At
least, that is the case among boys. It ought to be equally the case
among girls, who should have precisely the same standards of courage.
In physical ways, fortunately, school-girls are no longer taught to
be “lady-like”, and their natural impulses towards physical prowess
are allowed a fair amount of scope. There is still, however, some
difference between boys and girls in this respect. I am convinced there
ought to be none.[10]

When I speak of courage as desirable, I am taking a purely behaviorist
definition: a man is courageous when he does things which others might
fail to do owing to fear. If he feels no fear, so much the better; I
do not regard control of fear by the will as the only true courage, or
even as the best form of courage. The secret of modern moral education
is to produce results by means of good habits which were formerly
produced (or attempted) by self-control and will-power. Courage due to
the will produces nervous disorders, of which “shell-shock” afforded
numerous instances. The fears which had been repressed forced their
way to the surface in ways not recognizable to introspection. I do
not mean to suggest that self-control can be dispensed with entirely;
on the contrary, no man can live a consistent life without it. What I
do mean is, that self-control ought only to be needed in unforeseen
situations, for which education has not provided in advance. It would
have been foolish, even if it had been possible, to train the whole
population to have, without effort, the sort of courage that was
needed in the war. This was an exceptional and temporary need, of so
extraordinary a kind that all other education would have had to be
stunted if the habits required in the trenches had been instilled in
youth.

The late Dr. Rivers, in his book on “Instinct and the Unconscious”,
gives the best psychological analysis of fear with which I am
acquainted. He points out that one way of meeting a dangerous situation
is manipulative activity, and that those who are able to employ this
method adequately do not, at least consciously, feel the emotion of
fear. It is a valuable experience, which stimulates both self-respect
and effort, to pass gradually from fear to skill. Even so simple a
matter as learning to ride a bicycle will give this experience in a
mild form. In the modern world, owing to increase of mechanism, this
sort of skill is becoming more and more important.

I suggest that training in physical courage should be as far as
possible given by teaching skill in manipulating or controlling matter,
not by means of bodily contests with other human beings. The kind of
courage required for mountaineering, for manipulating an aeroplane, or
for managing a small ship in a gale, seems to me far more admirable
than the sort required in fighting. As far as possible, therefore,
I should train school-children in forms of more or less dangerous
dexterity, rather than in such things as football. Where there is an
enemy to be overcome, let it be matter rather than other human beings.
I do not mean that this principle should be applied pedantically, but
that it should be allowed more weight in athletics than is the case at
present.

There are, of course, more passive aspects of physical courage. There
is endurance of hurts without making a fuss; this can be taught to
children by not giving too much sympathy when they have small mishaps.
A great deal of hysteria in later life consists mainly of an excessive
desire for sympathy: people invent ailments in the hope of being petted
and treated softly. This disposition can usually be prevented from
developing by not encouraging children to cry over every scratch and
bruise. In this respect, the education of the nursery is still much
worse for girls than for boys. It is just as bad to be soft with girls
as with boys; if women are to be the equals of men, they must not be
inferior in the sterner virtues.

I come now to the forms of courage that are not purely physical. These
are the more important forms, but it is difficult to develop them
adequately except on a foundation of the more elementary kinds.

The fear of the mysterious has been already touched upon, in connection
with childish terrors. I believe this fear to be instinctive, and
of immense historical importance. Most superstition is due to it.
Eclipses, earthquakes, plagues, and such occurrences arouse it in a
high degree among unscientific populations. It is a very dangerous
form of fear, both individually and socially; to eradicate it in
youth is therefore highly desirable. The proper antidote to it is
scientific explanation. It is not necessary that everything which is
mysterious at first sight should be explained: after a certain number
of explanations have been given, the child will assume that there are
explanations in other cases, and it will become possible to say that
the explanation cannot be given yet. The important thing is to produce,
as soon as possible, the feeling that the sense of mystery is only due
to ignorance, which can be dispelled by patience and mental effort.
It is a remarkable fact that the very things which terrify children
at first by their mysterious properties delight them as soon as fear
is overcome. Thus mystery becomes an incentive to study, as soon as
it ceases to promote superstition. My little boy, at the age of three
and a half, spent many hours in absorbed solitary study of a garden
syringe, until he had grasped how the water came in and the air came
out, and how the converse process occurred. Eclipses can be explained
so as to be intelligible even to very tiny children. Whatever either
terrifies or interests the child should be explained if it is at all
possible; this transforms fear into scientific interest by a process
which is entirely along the lines of instinct and repeats the history
of the race.

Some problems, in this connection, are difficult, and require much
tact. The most difficult is death. The child soon discovers that plants
and animals die. The chances are that somebody he knows will die before
he is six years old. If he has at all an active mind, it occurs to him
that his parents will die, and even that he will die himself. (This
is more difficult to imagine.) These thoughts will produce a crop of
questions, which must be answered carefully. A person whose beliefs
are orthodox will have less difficulty than a person who thinks that
there is no life after death. If you hold the latter view, do not say
anything contrary to it; no consideration on earth justifies a parent
in telling lies to his child. It is best to explain that death is
a sleep from which people do not wake. This should be said without
solemnity, as if it were the most ordinary thing imaginable. If the
child worries about dying himself, tell him it is not likely to happen
for many, many years. It would be useless, in early years, to attempt
to instil a Stoic contempt for death. Do not introduce the topic, but
do not avoid it when the child introduces it. Do all you can to make
the child feel that there is no mystery about it. If he is a normal
healthy child, these methods will suffice to keep him from brooding.
At all ages, be willing to talk fully and frankly, to tell all that
you believe, and to convey the impression that the subject is rather
uninteresting. It is not good either for old or young to spend much
time in thinking about death.

Apart from special fears, children are liable to a diffused anxiety.
This is generally due to too much repression by their elders, and is
therefore much less common than it used to be. Perpetual nagging,
prohibition of noise, constant instruction in manners, used to make
childhood a period of misery. I can remember, at the age of five, being
told that childhood was the happiest period of life (a blank lie, in
those days). I wept inconsolably, wished I were dead, and wondered
how I should endure the boredom of the years to come. It is almost
inconceivable, nowadays, that any one should say such a thing to a
child. The child’s life is instinctively prospective: it is always
directed towards the things that will become possible later on. This
is part of the stimulus to the child’s efforts. To make the child
retrospective, to represent the future as worse than the past, is to
sap the life of the child at its source. Yet that is what heartless
sentimentalists used to do by talking to the child about the joys of
childhood. Fortunately the impression of their words did not last
long. At most times, I believed the grown-ups must be perfectly happy,
because they had no lessons and they could eat what they liked. This
belief was healthy and stimulating.

Shyness is a distressing form of timidity, which is common in England
and China, and parts of America, but rare elsewhere. It arises partly
from having little to do with strangers, partly from insistence upon
company manners. As far as is convenient, children should, after the
first year, become accustomed to seeing strangers and being handled by
them. As regards manners, they should, at first, be taught the bare
minimum required for not being an intolerable nuisance. It is better
to let them see strangers for a few minutes without restraint and then
be taken away, than to expect them to stay in the room and be quiet.
But after the first two years it is a good plan to teach them to amuse
themselves quietly part of the day, with pictures or clay or Montessori
apparatus or something of the kind. There should always be a reason for
quiet that they can understand. Manners should not be taught in the
abstract, except when it can be done as an amusing game. But as soon as
the child can understand he should realize that parents also have their
rights; he must accord freedom to others, and have freedom for himself
to the utmost possible extent. Children easily appreciate justice, and
will readily accord to others what others accord to them. This is the
core of good manners.

Above all, if you wish to dispel fear in your children, be fearless
yourself. If you are afraid of thunderstorms, the child will catch
your fear the first time he hears thunder in your presence. If you
express a dread of social revolution, the child will feel a fright all
the greater for not knowing what you are talking about. If you are
apprehensive about illness, so will your child be. Life is full of
perils, but the wise man ignores those that are inevitable, and acts
prudently but without emotion as regards those that can be avoided.
You cannot avoid dying, but you can avoid dying intestate; therefore
make your will, and forget that you are mortal. Rational provision
against misfortune is a totally different thing from fear; it is a part
of wisdom, whereas all fear is slavish. If you cannot avoid feeling
fears, try to prevent your child from suspecting them. Above all, give
him that wide outlook and that multiplicity of vivid interests that
will prevent him, in later life, from brooding upon possibilities of
personal misfortune. Only so can you make him a free citizen of the
universe.




CHAPTER V

PLAY AND FANCY


Love of play is the most obvious distinguishing mark of young animals,
whether human or otherwise. In human children, this is accompanied by
an inexhaustible pleasure in pretence. Play and pretence are a vital
need of childhood, for which opportunity must be provided if the child
is to be happy and healthy, quite independently of any further utility
in these activities. There are two questions which concern education in
this connection: first, what should parents and schools do in the way
of providing opportunity? and secondly, should they do anything more,
with a view to increasing the educational usefulness of games?

Let us begin with a few words about the psychology of games. This has
been exhaustively treated by Groos; a shorter discussion will be found
in William Stern’s book mentioned in the preceding chapter. There are
two separate questions in this matter: the first is as to the impulses
which produce play, the second is as to its biological utility. The
second is the easier question. There seems no reason to doubt the most
widely accepted theory, that in play the young of any species rehearse
and practise the activities which they will have to perform in earnest
later on. The play of puppies is exactly like a dog-fight, except that
they do not actually bite each other. The play of kittens resembles the
behaviour of cats with mice. Children love to imitate any work they
have been watching, such as building or digging; the more important the
work seems to them, the more they like to play at it. And they enjoy
anything that gives them new muscular facilities, such as jumping,
climbing, or walking up a narrow plank--always provided the task is
not too difficult. But although this accounts, in a general way, for
the usefulness of the play-impulse, it does not by any means cover all
its manifestations, and must not for a moment be regarded as giving a
psychological analysis.

Some psycho-analysts have tried to see a sexual symbolism in children’s
play. This, I am convinced, is utter moonshine. The main instinctive
urge of childhood is not sex, but the desire to become adult, or,
perhaps more correctly, the will to power.[11] The child is impressed
by his own weakness in comparison with older people, and he wishes
to become their equal. I remember my boy’s profound delight when he
realized that he would one day be a man and that I had once been a
child; one could see effort being stimulated by the realization that
success was possible. From a very early age, the child wishes to
do what older people do, as is shown by the practice of imitation.
Older brothers and sisters are useful, because their purposes can be
understood and their capacities are not so far out of reach as those of
grown-up people. The feeling of inferiority is very strong in children;
when they are normal and rightly educated, it is a stimulus to effort,
but if they are repressed it may become a source of unhappiness.

In play, we have two forms of the will to power: the form which
consists in learning to do things, and the form which consists in
fantasy. Just as the balked adult may indulge in daydreams that have
a sexual significance, so the normal child indulges in pretences that
have a power-significance. He likes to be a giant, or a lion, or a
train; in his make-believe, he inspires terror. When I told my boy the
story of Jack the Giant Killer, I tried to make him identify himself
with Jack, but he firmly chose the giant. When his mother told him the
story of Bluebeard, he insisted on being Bluebeard, and regarded the
wife as justly punished for insubordination. In his play, there was
a sanguinary outbreak of cutting off ladies’ heads. Sadism, Freudians
would say; but he enjoyed just as much being a giant who ate little
boys, or an engine that could pull a heavy load. Power, not sex, was
the common element in these pretences. One day, when we were returning
from a walk, I told him, as an obvious joke, that perhaps we should
find a certain Mr. Tiddliewinks in possession of our house, and he
might refuse to let us in. After that, for a long time, he would stand
on the porch being Mr. Tiddliewinks, and telling me to go to another
house. His delight in this game was unbounded, and obviously the
pretence of power was what he enjoyed.

It would, however, be an undue simplification to suppose that the
will to power is the sole source of children’s play. They enjoy the
pretence of terror--perhaps because the knowledge that it is a pretence
increases their sense of safety. Sometimes I pretend to be a crocodile
coming to eat my boy up. He squeals so realistically that I stop,
thinking he is really frightened; but the moment I stop he says, “Daddy
be a crocodile again”. A good deal of the pleasure of pretence is sheer
joy in drama--the same thing that makes adults like novels and the
theatre. I think curiosity has a part in all this: by playing bears,
the child feels as if he were getting to know about bears. I think
every strong impulse in the child’s life is reflected in play: power
is only dominant in his play in proportion as it is dominant in his
desires.

As regards the educational value of play, everybody would agree in
praising the sort that consists in acquiring new aptitudes, but many
moderns look with suspicion upon the sort that consists in pretence.
Daydreams, in adult life, are recognized as more or less pathological,
and as a substitute for efforts in the sphere of reality. Some of
the discredit which has fallen upon daydreams has spilled over on to
children’s pretences, quite mistakenly, as I think. Montessori teachers
do not like children to turn their apparatus into trains or steamers
or what not: this is called “disordered imagination”. They are quite
right, because what the children are doing is not really play, even
if to themselves it may seem to be nothing more. The apparatus amuses
the child, but its purpose is instruction; the amusement is merely a
means to instruction. In real play, amusement is the governing purpose.
When the objection to “disordered imagination” is carried over into
genuine play, it seems to me to go too far. The same thing applies to
the objection to telling children about fairies and giants and witches
and magic carpets and so on. I cannot sympathize with the ascetics of
truth, any more than with ascetics of other kinds. It is commonly said
that children do not distinguish between pretence and reality, but I
see very little reason to believe this. We do not believe that Hamlet
ever existed, but we should be annoyed by a man who kept reminding us
of this while we were enjoying the play. So children are annoyed by
a tactless reminder of reality, but are not in the least taken in by
their own make-believe.

Truth is important, and imagination is important; but imagination
develops earlier in the history of the individual, as in that of
the race. So long as the child’s physical needs are attended to, he
finds games far more interesting than reality. In games he is a king:
indeed he rules his territory with a power surpassing that of any
mere earthly monarch. In reality he has to go to bed at a certain
time, and to obey a host of tiresome precepts. He is exasperated when
unimaginative adults interfere thoughtlessly with his _mise-en-scène_.
When he has built a wall that not even the biggest giants can scale,
and you carelessly step over it, he is as angry as Romulus was with
Remus. Seeing that his inferiority to other people is normal, not
pathological, its compensation in fantasy is also normal and not
pathological. His games do not take up time which might be more
profitably spent in other ways: if all his hours were given over to
serious pursuits, he would soon become a nervous wreck. An adult who
indulges in dreams may be told to exert himself in order to realize
them; but a child cannot yet realize dreams which it is right that he
should have. He does not regard his fancies as a permanent substitute
for reality; on the contrary, he ardently hopes to translate them into
fact when the time comes.

It is a dangerous error to confound truth with matter-of-fact. Our life
is governed not only by facts, but by hopes; the kind of truthfulness
which sees nothing but facts is a prison for the human spirit. Dreams
are only to be condemned when they are a lazy substitute for an effort
to change reality; when they are an incentive, they are fulfilling a
vital purpose in the incarnation of human ideals. To kill fancy in
childhood is to make a slave to what exists, a creature tethered to
earth and therefore unable to create heaven.

This is all very well, you may say, but what has it to do with giants
eating children, or Bluebeard cutting off his wives’ heads? Are these
things to exist in your heaven? Must not imagination be purified and
ennobled before it can serve any good purpose? How can you, a pacifist,
allow your innocent boy to revel in the thought of destroying human
life? How can you justify a pleasure derived from instincts of
savagery which the human race must outgrow? All this I imagine the
reader has been feeling. The matter is important, and I will try to
state why I hold to a different point of view.

Education consists in the cultivation of instincts, not in their
suppression. Human instincts are very vague, and can be satisfied in a
great variety of ways. Most of them require, for their gratification,
some kind of skill. Cricket and baseball satisfy the same instinct,
but a boy will play whichever he has learnt. Thus the secret of
instruction, in so far as it bears upon character, is to give a man
such kinds of skill as shall lead to his employing his instincts
usefully. The instinct of power, which in the child is crudely
satisfied by identification with Bluebeard, can find in later life a
refined satisfaction by scientific discovery, or artistic creation,
or the creation and education of splendid children, or any one of a
thousand useful activities. If the only thing a man knows is how to
fight, his will to power will make him delight in battle. But if he has
other kinds of skill, he will find his satisfaction in other ways. If,
however, his will to power has been nipped in the bud when he was a
child, he will be listless and lazy, doing little good and little harm;
he will be “_a Dio spiacente ed a’ nemici sui_.” This kind of milksop
goodness is not what the world needs, or what we should try to produce
in our children. While they are small and cannot do much harm, it is
biologically natural that they should, in imagination, live through
the life of remote savage ancestors. Do not be afraid that they will
remain at that level, if you put in their way the knowledge and skill
required for more refined satisfactions. When I was a child, I loved
to turn head over heels. I never do so now, though I should not think
it wicked to do so. Similarly the child who enjoys being Bluebeard
will outgrow this taste, and learn to seek power in other ways. And
if his imagination has been kept alive in childhood by the stimuli
appropriate to that stage, it is much more likely to remain alive in
later years, when it can exercise itself in the ways suitable to a man.
It is useless to obtrude moral ideas at an age at which they can evoke
no response, and at which they are not yet required for the control
of behaviour. The only effect is boredom, and imperviousness to those
same ideas at the later age when they might have become potent. That is
one reason, among others, why the study of child psychology is of such
vital importance to education.

The games of later years differ from those of early childhood by the
fact that they become increasingly competitive. At first, a child’s
play is solitary; it is difficult for an infant to join in the games of
older brothers and sisters. But collective play, as soon as it becomes
possible, is so much more delightful that pleasure in playing alone
quickly ceases. English upper-class education has always attributed an
enormous moral importance to school games. To my mind, there is some
exaggeration in the conventional British view, although I admit that
games have certain important merits. They are good for health, provided
they are not too expert; if exceptional skill is too much prized the
best players overdo it, while the others tend to lapse into spectators.
They teach boys and girls to endure hurts without making a fuss, and
to incur great fatigue cheerfully. But the other advantages which are
claimed for them seem to me largely illusory. They are said to teach
co-operation, but in fact they only teach it in its competitive form.
This is the form required in war, not in industry or in the right
kind of social relations. Science has made it technically possible
to substitute co-operation for competition, both in economics and in
international politics; at the same time it has made competition (in
the form of war) much more dangerous than it used to be. For these
reasons, it is more important than in former times to cultivate the
idea of co-operative enterprises in which the “enemy” is physical
nature, rather than competitive enterprises in which there are human
victors and vanquished. I do not want to lay too much stress upon
this consideration, because competitiveness is natural to man and must
find some outlet, which can hardly be more innocent than games and
athletic contests. This is a valid reason for not preventing games, but
it is not a valid reason for exalting them into a leading position in
the school curriculum. Let boys play because they like to do so, not
because the authorities think games an antidote to what the Japanese
call “dangerous thoughts”.

I have said a great deal in an earlier chapter about the importance
of overcoming fear and producing courage; but courage must not be
confounded with brutality. Brutality is pleasure in forcing one’s will
upon other people; courage is indifference to personal misfortunes. I
would teach boys and girls, if opportunity offered, to sail small ships
in stormy seas, to dive from heights, to drive a motor-car or even an
aeroplane. I would teach them, as Sanderson of Oundle did, to build
machines and incur risks in scientific experiment. As far as possible,
I would represent inanimate nature as the antagonist in the game; the
will to power can find satisfaction in this contest just as well as
in competing with other human beings. The skill acquired in this way
is more useful than skill in cricket or football, and the character
developed is more in accordance with social morality. And apart from
moral qualities, the cult of athletics involves an under-estimation
of intelligence. Great Britain is losing her industrial position, and
will perhaps lose her empire, through stupidity, and through the fact
that the authorities do not value or promote intelligence. All this
is connected with the fanatical belief in the paramount importance of
games. Of course it goes deeper: the belief that a young man’s athletic
record is a test of his worth is a symptom of our general failure
to grasp the need of knowledge and thought in mastering the complex
modern world. But on this topic I will say no more now, as it will be
considered again at a later stage.

There is another aspect of school games, which is usually considered
good but which I think on the whole bad; I mean, their efficacy in
promoting _esprit de corps_. _Esprit de corps_ is liked by authorities,
because it enables them to utilize bad motives for what are considered
to be good actions. If efforts are to be made they are easily
stimulated by promoting the desire to surpass some other group. The
difficulty is that no motive is provided for efforts which are not
competitive. It is amazing how deeply the competitive motive has eaten
into all our activities. If you wish to persuade a borough to improve
the public provision for the care of children, you have to point out
that some neighbouring borough has a lower infant mortality. If you
wish to persuade a manufacturer to adopt a new process which is clearly
an improvement, you have to emphasize the danger of competition. If you
wish to persuade the War Office that a modicum of military knowledge is
desirable in the higher commands--but no, not even fear of defeat will
prevail in this case, so strong is the “gentlemanly” tradition.[12]
Nothing is done to promote constructiveness for its own sake, or to
make people take an interest in doing their job efficiently even if no
one is to be injured thereby. Our economic system has more to do with
this than school games. But school games, as they now exist, embody the
spirit of competition. If the spirit of co-operation is to take its
place, a change in school games will be necessary. But to develop this
subject would take us too far from our theme. I am not considering the
building of the good State, but the building of the good individual, in
so far as this is possible in the existing State. Improvement in the
individual and improvement in the community must go hand in hand, but
it is the individual that specially concerns the writer on education.




CHAPTER VI

CONSTRUCTIVENESS


The subject of this chapter is one which has already been considered
incidentally in connection with play, but it is now to be considered on
its own account.

The instinctive desires of children, as we have seen, are vague;
education and opportunity can turn them into many different channels.
Neither the old belief in original sin, nor Rousseau’s belief in
natural virtue, is in accordance with the facts. The raw material of
instinct is ethically neutral, and can be shaped either to good or
evil by the influence of the environment. There is ground for a sober
optimism in the fact that, apart from pathological cases, most people’s
instincts are, at first, capable of being developed into good forms;
and the pathological cases would be very few, given proper mental and
physical hygiene in the early years. A proper education would make it
possible to live in accordance with instinct, but it would be a trained
and cultivated instinct, not the crude unformed impulse which is all
that nature provides. The great cultivator of instinct is skill: skill
which provides certain kinds of satisfaction, but not others. Give a
man the right kinds of skill, and he will be virtuous; give him the
wrong kinds, or none at all, and he will be wicked.

These general considerations apply with special force to the will to
power. We all like to effect _something_, but so far as the love of
power is concerned we do not care what we effect. Broadly speaking,
the more difficult the achievement the more it pleases us. Men like
fly-fishing, because it is difficult; they will not shoot a bird
sitting, because it is easy. I take these illustrations, because in
them a man has no ulterior motive beyond the pleasure of the activity.
But the same principle applies everywhere. I liked arithmetic until I
learnt Euclid, Euclid until I learnt analytical geometry, and so on. A
child, at first, delights in walking, then in running, then in jumping
and climbing. What we can do easily no longer gives us a sense of
power; it is the newly-acquired skill, or the skill about which we are
doubtful, that gives us the thrill of success. That is why the will to
power is so immeasurably adaptable according to the type of skill which
is taught.

Construction and destruction alike satisfy the will to power, but
construction is more difficult as a rule, and therefore gives more
satisfaction to the person who can achieve it. I shall not attempt to
give a pedantically exact definition of construction and destruction; I
suppose, roughly speaking, we construct when we increase the potential
energy of the system in which we are interested, and we destroy when
we diminish its potential energy. Or, in more psychological terms,
we construct when we produce a predesigned structure, and we destroy
when we liberate natural forces to alter an existing structure,
without being interested in the resulting new structure. Whatever
may be thought of these definitions, we all know in practice whether
an activity is to be regarded as constructive or destructive, except
in a few cases where a man professes to be destroying with a view to
rebuilding and we are not sure whether he is sincere.

Destruction being easier, a child’s games usually begin with it, and
only pass on to construction at a later stage. A child on the sand with
a pail likes grown-up people to make sand-puddings, and then knock them
down with his spade. But as soon as he can make sand-puddings himself,
he delights in doing so, and will not permit them to be knocked down.
When a child first has bricks, he likes to destroy towers built by
his elders. But when he has learnt to build for himself, he becomes
inordinately proud of his performances, and cannot bear to see his
architectural efforts reduced to a heap of ruins. The impulse which
makes the child enjoy the game is exactly the same at both stages, but
new skill has changed the activity resulting from the impulse.

The first beginnings of many virtues arise out of experiencing
the joys of construction. When a child begs you to leave his
constructions undestroyed, you can easily make him understand that he
must not destroy other people’s. In this way you can create respect
for the produce of labour, the only socially innocuous source of
private property. You also give the child an incentive to patience,
persistence, and observation; without these qualities, he will not
succeed in building his tower to the height upon which he had set
his heart. In play with children, you should only construct yourself
sufficiently to stimulate ambition and to show how the thing is done;
after that, construction should be left to their own efforts.

If a child has access to a garden, it is easy to cultivate a more
elaborate form of constructiveness. The first impulse of a child in a
garden is to pick every attractive flower. It is easy to check this
by prohibition, but mere prohibition is inadequate as an education.
One wants to produce in the child the same respect for the garden that
restrains the grown-ups from picking wantonly. The respect of the
grown-up is due to realization of the labour and effort required to
produce the pleasing result. By the time a child is three years old, he
can be given a corner of the garden and encouraged to plant seeds in
it. When they come up and blossom, his own flowers seem precious and
wonderful; then he can appreciate that his mother’s flowers also must
be treated with care.

The elimination of thoughtless cruelty is to be effected most easily by
developing an interest in construction and growth. Almost every child,
as soon as he is old enough, wants to kill flies and other insects;
this leads on to the killing of larger animals, and ultimately of
men. In the ordinary English upper-class family, the killing of birds
is considered highly creditable, and the killing of men in war is
regarded as the noblest of professions. This attitude is in accordance
with untrained instinct: it is that of men who possess no form of
constructive skill, and are therefore unable to find any innocent
embodiment of their will to power. They can make pheasants die and
tenants suffer; when occasion arises, they can shoot a rhinoceros or a
German. But in more useful arts they are entirely deficient, as their
parents and teachers thought it sufficient to make them into English
gentlemen. I do not believe that at birth they are any stupider
than other babies; their deficiencies in later life are entirely
attributable to bad education. If, from an early age, they had been led
to feel the value of life by watching its development with affectionate
proprietorship; if they had acquired forms of constructive skill; if
they had been made to realize with apprehension how quickly and easily
a slow product of anxious solicitude can be destroyed--if all this had
formed part of their early moral training, they would not be so ready
to destroy what others have similarly created or tended. The great
educator in this respect in later life is parenthood, provided the
instinct is adequately aroused. But in the rich this seldom happens,
because they leave the care of their children to paid professionals;
therefore we cannot wait till they become parents before beginning to
eradicate their destructive tendencies.

Every author who has had uneducated housemaids knows that it is
difficult (the public may wish it were impossible) to restrain their
passion for lighting the fire with his manuscripts. A fellow-author,
even if he were a jealous enemy, would not think of doing such a
thing, because experience has taught him the value of manuscripts.
Similarly the boy who has a garden will not trample on other people’s
flower-beds, and the boy who has pets can be taught to respect animal
life. Respect for human life is likely to exist in any one who has
taken trouble over his or her own children. It is the trouble we
take over our children that elicits the stronger forms of parental
affection; in those who avoid this trouble the parental instinct
becomes more or less atrophied, and remains only as a sense of
responsibility. But parents are far more likely to take trouble over
their children if their own constructive impulses have been fully
developed; thus for this reason also it is very desirable to pay
attention to this aspect of education.

When I speak of constructiveness, I am not thinking only of material
construction. Such occupations as acting and choral singing involve
co-operative non-material construction; they are pleasant to many
children and young people, and should be encouraged (though not
enforced). Even in purely intellectual matters it is possible to have
a constructive or a destructive bias. A classical education is almost
entirely critical: a boy learns to avoid mistakes, and to despise those
who commit them. This tends to produce a kind of cold correctness, in
which originality is replaced by respect for authority. Correct Latin
is fixed once for all: it is that of Vergil and Cicero. Correct science
is continually changing, and an able youth may look forward to helping
in this process. Consequently the attitude produced by a scientific
education is likely to be more constructive than that produced by the
study of dead languages. Wherever avoidance of error is the chief thing
aimed at, education tends to produce an intellectually bloodless type.
The prospect of doing something venturesome with one’s knowledge ought
to be held before all the abler young men and young women. Too often,
higher education is regarded as conferring something analogous to
good manners, a merely negative code by which solecisms are avoided.
In such an education, constructiveness has been forgotten. The usual
type produced is, as might be expected, niggling, unenterprising, and
lacking in generosity. All this is avoided when positive achievement is
made the goal of education.

In the later years of education, there should be a stimulation of
social constructiveness. I mean, that those whose intelligence is
adequate should be encouraged in using their imaginations to think out
more productive ways of utilizing existing social forces or creating
new ones. Men read Plato’s “Republic”, but they do not attach it to
current politics at any point. When I stated that the Russian State in
1920 had ideals which were almost exactly those of the “Republic”, it
was hard to say whether the Platonists or the Bolsheviks were the more
shocked. People read a literary classic without any attempt to see
what it means in terms of the lives of Brown, Jones and Robinson. This
is particularly easy with a Utopia, because we are not told of any road
which leads to it from our present social system. The valuable faculty,
in these matters, is that of judging rightly as to the next step.
British nineteenth-century Liberals had this merit, though the ultimate
results to which their measures were bound to lead would have horrified
them. A great deal depends upon the kind of image that dominates a
man’s thinking, often quite unconsciously. A social system may be
conceived in many ways; the commonest are a mould, a machine, and a
tree. The first belongs to the static conceptions of society, such as
those of Sparta and traditional China: human nature is to be poured
into a prepared mould, and to set in a preconceived shape. Something
of this idea exists in any rigid moral or social convention. The man
whose outlook is dominated by this image will have a political outlook
of a certain kind--stiff and unyielding, stern and persecuting. The man
who conceives of society as a machine is more modern. The industrialist
and the communist alike belong to this class. To them, human nature is
uninteresting, and the ends of life are simple--usually the maximizing
of production. The purpose of social organization is to secure these
simple ends. The difficulty is that actual human beings will not
desire them; they persist in wanting all kinds of chaotic things
which seem worthless to the tidy mind of the organizer. This drives
the organizer back to the mould, in order to produce human beings who
desire what he thinks good. And this, in turn, leads to revolution.

The man who imagines a social system as a tree will have a different
political outlook. A bad machine can be scrapped, and another put in
its place. But if a tree is cut down, it is a long time before a new
tree achieves the same strength and size. A machine or a mould is what
its maker chooses; a tree has its specific nature, and can only be made
into a better or worse example of the species. Constructiveness applied
to living things is quite different from constructiveness applied to
machines; it has humbler functions, and requires a sort of sympathy.
For that reason, in teaching constructiveness to the young, they should
have opportunities of exercising it upon plants and animals, not only
upon bricks and machines. Physics has been dominant in thought since
the time of Newton, and in practice since the industrial revolution;
this has brought with it a rather mechanical conception of society.
Biological evolution introduced a new set of ideas, but they were
somewhat overshadowed by natural selection, which it should be our
aim to eliminate from human affairs by eugenics, birth-control, and
education. The conception of society as a tree is better than the mould
or the machine, but it is still defective. It is to psychology that
we must look to supply the deficiency. Psychological constructiveness
is a new and special kind, very little understood as yet. It is
essential to a right theory of education, politics, and all purely
human affairs. And it should dominate the imaginations of citizens,
if they are not to be misled by false analogies. Some people dread
constructiveness in human affairs, because they fear that it must be
mechanical; they therefore believe in anarchism and the “return to
nature”. I am trying in this book to show, in concrete instances, how
psychological construction differs from the construction of a machine.
The imaginative side of this idea ought to be made familiar in higher
education; if it were, I believe that our politics would cease to be
angular and sharp and destructive, becoming instead supple and truly
scientific, with the development of splendid men and women as its goal.




CHAPTER VII

SELFISHNESS AND PROPERTY


I come now to a problem analogous to that of Fear, in that we are
concerned with an impulse which is strong, partly instinctive, and
largely undesirable. In all such cases, we have to be careful not to
thwart a child’s nature. It is useless to shut our eyes to his nature,
or to wish that it were different; we must accept the raw material
which is provided, and not attempt to treat it in ways only applicable
to some different material.

Selfishness is not an ultimate ethical conception; the more it is
analysed, the vaguer it becomes. But as a phenomenon in the nursery
it is perfectly definite, and presents problems with which it is
very necessary to cope. Left to himself, an older child will seize a
younger child’s toys, demand more than his share of grown-up attention,
and generally pursue his desires regardless of the younger child’s
disappointments. A human ego, like a gas, will always expand unless
restrained by external pressure. The object of education, in this
respect, is to let the external pressure take the form of habits,
ideas and sympathies in the child’s own mind, not of knocks and blows
and punishments. The idea which is needed is that of justice, not
self-sacrifice. Every person has a right to a certain amount of room
in the world, and should not be made to feel wicked in standing up for
what is due to him. When self-sacrifice is taught, the idea seems to be
that it will not be fully practised, and that the practical result will
be about right. But in fact people either fail to learn the lesson, or
feel sinful when they demand mere justice, or carry self-sacrifice to
ridiculous extremes. In the last case, they feel an obscure resentment
against the people to whom they make renunciations, and probably allow
selfishness to return by the back door of a demand for gratitude. In
any case, self-sacrifice cannot be true doctrine, because it cannot be
universal; and it is most undesirable to teach falsehood as a means to
virtue, because when the falsehood is perceived the virtue evaporates.
Justice, on the contrary, can be universal. Therefore justice is the
conception that we ought to try to instil into the child’s thoughts and
habits.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to teach justice to a solitary
child. The rights and desires of grown-up people are so different from
those of children that they make no imaginative appeal; there is
hardly ever direct competition for exactly the same pleasure. Moreover,
as the grown-up people are in a position to exact obedience to their
own demands, they have to be judges in their own case, and do not
produce upon the child the effect of an impartial tribunal. They can,
of course, give definite precepts inculcating this or that form of
convenient behaviour: not to interrupt when their mother is counting
the wash, not to shout when their father is busy, not to obtrude
their concerns when there are visitors. But these are inexplicable
requirements, to which, it is true, the child submits willingly enough
if otherwise kindly treated, but which make no appeal to his own sense
of what is reasonable. It is right that the child should be made to
obey such rules, because he must not be allowed to be a tyrant, and
because he must understand that other people attach importance to their
own pursuits, however odd those pursuits may be. But not much more
than external good behaviour is to be got by such methods; the real
education in justice can only come where there are other children.
This is one of many reasons why no child should long be solitary.
Parents who have the misfortune to have an only child should do all
that they can to secure companionship for it, even at the cost of a
good deal of separation from home, if no other way is possible. A
solitary child must be either suppressed or selfish--perhaps both by
turns. A well-behaved only child is pathetic, and an ill-behaved one
is a nuisance. In these days of small families, this is a more serious
trouble than it used to be. It is one of the grounds for advocating
nursery-schools, as to which I shall have more to say in a later
chapter. But for the moment I shall assume a family of two at least,
not very widely separated in age, so that their tastes are largely the
same.

Where there is competition for a pleasure which can only be enjoyed by
one at a time, such as a ride in a wheelbarrow, it will be found that
the children readily understand justice. Their impulse, of course, is
to demand the pleasure for themselves to the exclusion of the others,
but it is surprising how quickly this impulse is overcome when the
grown-ups institute the system of a turn for each. I do not believe
that a sense of justice is innate, but I have been astonished to see
how quickly it can be created. Of course, it must be real justice;
there must not be any secret bias. If you are fonder of some of the
children than of others, you must be on your guard to prevent your
affections from having any influence on your distribution of pleasures.
It is of course a generally recognized principle that toys must be
equal.

It is quite useless to attempt to suppress the demand for justice by
any kind of moral training. Do not give more than justice, but do not
expect the child to accept less. There is a chapter in “The Fairchild
Family” on “The Secret Sins of the Heart” which illustrates the methods
to be avoided. Lucy has maintained that she has been good, so her
mother tells her that even when her behaviour is all right her thoughts
are wrong, and quotes: “The heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked” (Jeremiah, xvii, 9). So Mrs. Fairchild gives Lucy
a little book in which to record the “desperately wicked” things that
are in her heart when outwardly she is good. At breakfast, her parents
give a ribbon to her sister and a cherry to her brother, but nothing to
her. She records in her book that at this point she had a very wicked
thought, that her parents loved her brother and sister better than
they loved her. She had been taught, and she believed, that she ought
to cope with this thought by moral discipline; but by this method it
could only be driven underground, to produce strange distorted effects
in later years. The proper course would have been for her to express
her feeling, and for her parents to dispel it either by giving her a
present, too, or by explaining, in a way she could understand, that she
must wait for another time, as no further present was available at the
moment. Truth and frankness dispel difficulties, but the attempt at
repressive moral discipline only aggravates them.

Closely connected with justice is the sense of property. This is a
difficult matter, which must be dealt with by adaptable tact, not by
any rigid set of rules. There are, in fact, conflicting considerations,
which make it difficult to take a clear line. On the one hand, the
love of property produces many terrible evils in later years; the fear
of losing valued material possessions is one of the main sources of
political and economic cruelty. It is desirable that men and women
should, as far as possible, find their happiness in ways which are not
subject to private ownership, _i.e._, in creative rather than defensive
activities. For this reason, it is unwise to cultivate the sense of
property in children if it can be helped. But before proceeding to act
upon this view, there are some very strong arguments on the other side,
which it would be dangerous to neglect. In the first place, the sense
of property is very strong in children; it develops as soon as they
can grasp objects which they see (the hand-eye co-ordination). What
they grasp, they feel is theirs, and they are indignant if it is taken
away. We still speak of a property as a “holding”, and “maintenance”
means “holding in the hand”. These words show the primitive connection
between property and grasp; so does the word “grasping”. A child
which has no toys of its own will pick up sticks or broken bricks or
any odds and ends it may find, and will treasure them as its very own.
The desire for property is so deep-seated that it cannot be thwarted
without danger. Moreover property cultivates carefulness and curbs the
impulse of destruction. Especially useful is property in anything that
the child has made himself; if this is not permitted, his constructive
impulses are checked.

Where the arguments are so conflicting, we cannot adopt any clear-cut
policy, but must be guided to a great extent by circumstances and the
child’s nature. Nevertheless, something can be said as to the means of
reconciling these opposites in practice.

Among toys, some should be private and some common. To take an extreme
case, a rocking-horse would of course always be common. This suggests
a principle: where a toy can be equally enjoyed by all, but only by
one at a time, it should be common if it is too large or expensive to
be duplicated. On the other hand, toys more adapted to one child than
to another (because of difference of age, for example) may properly
belong to the one to whom they give the most pleasure. If a toy wants
careful handling which an older child has learnt to give, it is fair
that a younger child should not be allowed to get hold of it and
spoil it. The younger child should be compensated by private property
in the toys specially appropriate to its age. After two years old, a
broken toy should not be immediately replaced if it has been broken
by the child’s carelessness; it is just as well that the loss should
be felt for a while. Do not let a child always refuse the use of its
own toys to other children. Whenever it has more than it can actually
use, it should not be allowed to protest if another child plays with
those that it is not using. But here I should except toys which the
other child is likely to break, and toys out of which their owner has
constructed some edifice which is a source of pride. Until the edifice
is forgotten, it should, if possible, be allowed to stand, as a reward
of industry. Subject to these provisos, do not let the child develop a
dog-in-the-manger attitude; it must never be allowed to prevent another
child’s enjoyment wantonly. It is not very difficult to teach a modicum
of decent behaviour in these respects, and it is quite worth the
necessary firmness. Do not allow a child to snatch things from another
child, even when it would be within its legal rights in doing so. If an
older child is unkind to a younger one, show a similar unkindness to
the older one, and explain immediately why you do so. By such methods
it is not difficult to establish that degree of kindness in children to
each other which is necessary to prevent constant storms and tears.
On occasion, a certain amount of sternness may be necessary, amounting
to a mild form of punishment. But on no account must a habit of
tyrannizing over the weak be allowed to develop.

While permitting a certain number of cherished possessions, it is
well to encourage the habit of using toys, such as bricks, to which
the child only has the exclusive right while he is using them. The
Montessori apparatus is common to all the children, but so long as a
child is using one piece of apparatus no other child must interfere.
This develops a sense of limited tenant-right, dependent upon work;
such a sense does not run counter to anything that is desirable in
later years. For very young children, this method is hardly applicable,
because they are not yet sufficiently constructive. But as they acquire
skill it becomes more and more possible to interest them in the process
of building. So long as they know they can have the material for
construction whenever they like, they will not much mind others having
it too, and the reluctance to sharing which they may feel at first is
soon dispelled by custom. Nevertheless, when a child is old enough, he
should, I think, be allowed to own books, because that will increase
his love of books and therefore stimulate reading. The books that are
his own property should, as far as possible, be good books, such as
Lewis Carroll and Tanglewood Tales, not mere trash. If the children
want trash, it should be common property.

The broad principles involved are: First, do not produce in the child
a sense of thwarting from not having enough property; this is the way
to produce a miser. Secondly, allow the child private property when it
stimulates a desirable activity, and, in particular, where it teaches
careful handling. But subject to these limitations turn the child’s
attention, as far as you can, to pleasures not involving private
ownership. And even where there is private ownership, do not allow the
child to be mean or miserly when other children wish to be allowed to
play with his things. As to this, however, the object is to induce the
child to lend of his own free will; so long as authority is required,
the end aimed at has not been achieved. In a happy child, it should not
be difficult to stimulate a generous disposition; but if the child is
starved of pleasures, he will of course cling tenaciously to those that
are attainable. It is not through suffering that children learn virtue,
but through happiness and health.




CHAPTER VIII

TRUTHFULNESS


To produce the habit of truthfulness should be one of the major aims
of moral education. I do not mean truthfulness in speech only, but
also in thought; indeed, of the two, the latter seems to me the more
important. I prefer a person who lies with full consciousness of what
he is doing to a person who first subconsciously deceives himself
and then imagines that he is being virtuous and truthful. Indeed, no
man who thinks truthfully can believe that it is _always_ wrong to
speak untruthfully. Those who hold that a lie is always wrong have to
supplement this view by a great deal of casuistry and considerable
practice in misleading ambiguities, by means of which they deceive
without admitting to themselves that they are lying. Nevertheless, I
hold that the occasions when lying is justifiable are few--much fewer
than would be inferred from the practice of high-minded men. And almost
all the occasions which justify lying are occasions where power is
being used tyrannically, or where people are engaged in some harmful
activity such as war; therefore in a good social system they would be
even rarer than they are now.

Untruthfulness, as a practice, is almost always a product of fear. The
child brought up without fear will be truthful, not in virtue of a
moral effort, but because it will never occur to him to be otherwise.
The child who has been treated wisely and kindly has a frank look in
the eyes, and a fearless demeanour even with strangers; whereas the
child that has been subject to nagging or severity is in perpetual
terror of incurring reproof, and terrified of having transgressed some
rule whenever he has behaved in a natural manner. It does not at first
occur to a young child that it is possible to lie. The possibility of
lying is a discovery, due to observation of grown-ups quickened by
terror. The child discovers that grown-ups lie to him, and that it is
dangerous to tell them the truth; under these circumstances he takes to
lying. Avoid these incentives, and he will not think of lying.

But in judging whether children are truthful, a certain caution is
necessary. Children’s memories are very faulty, and they often do not
know the answer to a question when grown-up people think they do. Their
sense of time is very vague; a child under four will hardly distinguish
between yesterday and a week ago, or between yesterday and six hours
ago. When they do not know the answer to a question, they tend to say
yes or no according to the suggestion in your tone of voice. Again,
they are often talking in the dramatic character of some make-believe.
When they tell you solemnly that there is a lion in the back garden,
this is obvious; but in many cases it is quite easy to mistake play for
earnest. For all these reasons, a young child’s statements are often
objectively untrue, but without the slightest intention to deceive.
Indeed, children tend, at first, to regard grown-ups as omniscient,
and therefore incapable of being deceived. My boy (three and three
quarters) will ask me to tell him (for the pleasure of the story) what
occurred to him on some interesting occasion when I was not present;
I find it almost impossible to persuade him that I don’t know what
happened. Grown-up people get to know so many things in ways the child
does not understand, that he cannot set limits to their powers. Last
Easter, my boy was given a number of chocolate Easter eggs. We told him
that if he ate too much chocolate he would be sick, but, having told
him, we left him alone. He ate too much, and was sick. He came to me as
soon as the crisis was over, with a beaming face, saying, in a voice
almost of triumph, “I was sick, Daddy--Daddy told me I should be sick.”
His pleasure in the verification of a scientific law was astonishing.
Since then, it has been possible to trust him with chocolate, in spite
of the fact that he seldom has it; moreover he implicitly believes
everything we tell him about what food is good for him. There has been
no need of moral exhortation or punishment or fear in bringing about
this result. There has been need, at earlier stages, of patience and
firmness. He is nearing the age where it is usual for boys to steal
sweet things and lie about it. I dare say he will steal sometimes, but
I shall be surprised if he lies. When a child does lie, parents should
take themselves to task rather than him; they should deal with it by
removing its causes, and by explaining gently and reasonably why it is
better not to lie. They should not deal with it by punishment, which
only increases fear and therefore the motive for lying.

Rigid truthfulness in adults towards children is, of course, absolutely
indispensable if children are not to learn lying. Parents who teach
that lying is a sin, and who nevertheless are known to lie by their
children, naturally lose all moral authority. The idea of speaking the
truth to children is entirely novel; hardly anybody did it before the
present generation. I greatly doubt whether Eve told Cain and Abel the
truth about apples; I am convinced that she told them she had never
eaten anything that wasn’t good for her. It used to be the thing
for parents to represent themselves as Olympians, immune from human
passions and always actuated by pure reason. When they reproached
the children, they did it more in sorrow than in anger; however they
might scold, they were not “cross”, but talking to the children for
their good. Parents did not realize that children are astonishingly
clear-sighted: they do not understand all the solemn political reasons
for humbug, but despise it straightforwardly and simply. Jealousies
and envies of which you are unconscious will be evident to your child,
who will discount all your fine moral talk about the wickedness of the
objects of these passions. Never pretend to be faultless and inhuman;
the child will not believe you, and would not like you any the better
if he did. I remember vividly how, at a very early age, I saw through
the Victorian humbug and hypocrisy with which I was surrounded, and
vowed that, if I ever had children, I would not repeat the mistakes
that were being made with me. To the best of my ability, I am keeping
this vow.

Another form of lying, which is extremely bad for the young, is to
threaten punishments you do not mean to inflict. Dr. Ballard, in his
most interesting book on “The Changing School”,[13] has stated this
principle rather emphatically: “Don’t threaten. If you do, let nothing
stop you from carrying out your threat. If you say to a boy, ‘Do that
again and I’ll murder you’, and he does it again, then you must murder
him. If you don’t he will lose all respect for you” (p. 112). The
punishments threatened by nurses and ignorant parents in dealing with
infants are somewhat less extreme, but the same rule applies. Do not
insist, except for good reason; but when you have once begun insisting,
continue, however you may regret having embarked upon the battle. If
you threaten a punishment, let it be one that you are prepared to
inflict; never trust to luck that your bluff will not be called. It is
odd how difficult it is to get this principle understood by uneducated
people. It is particularly objectionable when they threaten something
terrifying, such as being locked up by the policeman or carried off
by the bogey-man. This produces first a state of dangerous nervous
terror and then a complete scepticism as to all statements and threats
by grown-up people. If you never insist without carrying the matter
through, the child soon learns that on such occasions resistance is
useless, and he obeys a mere word without giving further trouble. But
it is essential to the success of this method that you should not
insist unless there is some really strong reason for doing so.

Another undesirable form of humbug is to treat inanimate objects as if
they were alive. Nurses sometimes teach children, when they have hurt
themselves by bumping into a chair or table, to smack the offending
object and say, “naughty chair” or “naughty table”. This removes a most
useful source of natural discipline. Left to himself, the child soon
realizes that inanimate objects can only be manipulated by skill, not
by anger or cajolery. This is a stimulus to the acquisition of skill,
and a help in realizing the limits of personal power.

Lies about sex are sanctioned by time-honoured usage. I believe them to
be wholly and utterly bad, but I shall say no more on this subject now,
as I propose to devote a chapter to sex education.

Children who are not suppressed ask innumerable questions, some
intelligent, others quite the reverse. These questions are often
wearisome, and sometimes inconvenient. But they must be answered
truthfully, to the best of your ability. If the child asks you a
question connected with religion, say exactly what you think, even if
you contradict some other grown-up person who thinks differently. If
he asks you about death, answer him. If he asks you questions designed
to show that you are wicked or foolish, answer him. If he asks you
about war, or capital punishment, answer him. Do not put him off
with “you can’t understand that yet”, except in difficult scientific
matters, such as how electric light is made. And even then, make it
clear that the answer is a pleasure in store for him, as soon as he
has learnt rather more than he now knows. Tell him rather more than he
can understand, not rather less; the part he fails to understand will
stimulate his curiosity and his intellectual ambition.

Invariable truthfulness to a child reaps its reward in increased trust.
The child has a natural tendency to believe what you say, except when
it runs counter to a strong desire, as in the case of the Easter eggs
which I mentioned just now. A little experience of the truth of your
remarks even in these cases enables you to win belief easily and
without emphasis. But if you have been in the habit of threatening
consequences which did not happen, you will have to become more and
more insistent and terrifying, and in the end you will only produce
a state of nervous uncertainty. One day my boy wanted to paddle in a
stream, but I told him not to, because I thought there were bits of
broken crockery which would cut his feet. His desire was keen, so he
was sceptical about the crockery; but after I had found a piece and
shown him the sharp edge, he became entirely acquiescent. If I had
invented the crockery for my own convenience, I should have lost his
confidence. If I had not found any, I should have let him paddle.
In consequence of repeated experiences of this sort, he has almost
entirely ceased to be sceptical of my reasons.

We live in a world of humbug, and the child brought up without humbug
is bound to despise much that is commonly thought to deserve respect.
This is regrettable, because contempt is a bad emotion. I should
not call his attention to such matters, though I should satisfy his
curiosity whenever it turned towards them. Truthfulness is something
of a handicap in a hypocritical society, but the handicap is more than
outweighed by the advantages of fearlessness, without which no one
can be truthful. We wish our children to be upright, candid, frank,
self-respecting; for my part, I would rather see them fail with these
qualities than succeed by the arts of the slave. A certain native pride
and integrity is essential to a splendid human being, and where it
exists lying becomes impossible, except when it is prompted by some
generous motive. I would have my children truthful in their thoughts
and words, even if it should entail worldly misfortune, for something
of more importance than riches and honours is at stake.




CHAPTER IX

PUNISHMENT


In former days, and until very recently, the punishment of children,
both boys and girls, was taken as a matter of course, and was
universally regarded as indispensable in education. We have seen in an
earlier chapter what Dr. Arnold thought about flogging, and his views
were, at the time, exceptionally humane. Rousseau is associated with
the theory of leaving things to nature, yet in “Emile” he occasionally
advocates quite severe punishments. The conventional view, a hundred
years ago, is set forth in one of the “Cautionary Tales”, in which a
little girl makes a fuss because they are putting on her white sash
when she wants her pink one.

  Papa, who in the parlour heard
    Her make the noise and rout,
  That instant went to Caroline,
    To whip her, there’s no doubt.

When Mr. Fairchild found his children quarrelling, he caned them,
making the cane keep time to the verse “Let dogs delight to bark and
bite”. He then took them to see a corpse hanging in chains on a gibbet.
The little boy was frightened, and begged to be taken home, as the
chains rattled in the wind. But Mr. Fairchild compelled him to look for
a long time, saying that this spectacle showed what happened to those
who had hatred in their hearts. The child was destined to become a
clergyman, and presumably had to be taught to depict the terrors of the
damned with the vividness of one who has experienced them.

Nowadays, few people would advocate such methods, even in Tennessee.
But there is considerable divergence of opinion as to what should take
their place. Some people still advocate a fair amount of punishment,
while others consider that it is possible to dispense with punishment
altogether. There is room for many shades between these two extremes.

For my part, I believe that punishment has a certain very minor place
in education; but I doubt whether it need ever be severe. I include
speaking sharply or reprovingly among punishments. The most severe
punishment that ought ever to be necessary is the natural spontaneous
expression of indignation. On a few occasions when my boy has been
rough with his younger sister, his mother has expressed anger by an
impulsive exclamation. The effect has been very great. The boy burst
into sobs, and would not be consoled until his mother had made much
of him. The impression was very profound, as one could see from
his subsequent good conduct towards his sister. On a few occasions
we have resorted to mild forms of punishment when he has persisted
in demanding things we had refused him, or in interfering with his
sister’s play. In such cases, when reason and exhortation have failed,
we take him to a room by himself, leave the door open, and tell him
he can come back as soon as he is good. In a very few minutes, after
crying vigorously, he comes back, and is invariably good: he perfectly
understands that in coming back he has undertaken to be good. So far,
we have never found any need of severer penalties. If one can judge
from the books of old-fashioned disciplinarians, the children educated
by the old methods were far naughtier than the modern child. I should
certainly be horrified if my boy were half as badly behaved as the
children in “The Fairchild Family”; but I should think the fault lay
more with his parents than with himself. I believe that reasonable
parents create reasonable children. The children must feel their
parents’ affection--not duty and responsibility, for which no child is
grateful, but warm love, which feels delight in the child’s presence
and ways. And except when it is quite impossible, a prohibition must
be explained carefully and truthfully. Small misfortunes, such as
bruises and slight cuts, should sometimes be allowed to happen rather
than interfere with rash games; a little experience of this kind makes
children more willing to believe that a prohibition may be wise. Where
these conditions are present from the first, I believe children will
seldom do anything deserving of serious punishment.

When a child persistently interferes with other children or spoils
their pleasures, the obvious penalty is banishment. It is imperatively
necessary to take steps of some kind, because it would be most unfair
to let the other children suffer. But there is no use in making the
refractory child feel guilty; it is much more to the purpose to make
him feel that he is missing pleasures which the others are enjoying.
Madame Montessori describes her practice as follows:

  As to punishments, we have many times come in contact with children
  who disturbed the others without paying attention to our corrections.
  Such children were at once examined by the physician. When the case
  proved to be that of a normal child, we placed one of the little
  tables in a corner of the room, and in this way isolated the child;
  having him sit in a comfortable little armchair, so placed that he
  might see his companions at work, and giving him those games and
  toys to which he was most attracted. This isolation almost always
  succeeded in calming the child; from his position he could see the
  entire assembly of his companions, and the way in which they carried
  on their work was an _object lesson_ much more efficacious than any
  words of the teacher could possibly have been. Little by little,
  he would come to see the advantages of being one of the company
  working so busily before his eyes, and he would really wish to go
  back and do as the others did. We have in this way led back again to
  discipline all the children who at first seemed to rebel against it.
  The isolated child was always made the object of special care, almost
  as if he were ill. I myself, when I entered the room, went first of
  all directly to him, as if he were a very little child. Then I turned
  my attention to the others, interesting myself in their work, asking
  questions about it as if they had been little men. I do not know what
  happened in the soul of these children whom we found it necessary to
  discipline, but certainly the conversion was always very complete and
  lasting. They showed great pride in learning how to work and how to
  conduct themselves, and always showed a very tender affection for the
  teacher and for me.[14]

The success of this method depended upon several factors not present in
old-fashioned schools. There was first the elimination of those whose
bad conduct was due to some medical defect. Then there was tact and
skill in applying the method. But the really vital point was the good
conduct of the majority of the class: the child felt itself opposed to
the public opinion which it naturally respected. This is, of course,
an entirely different situation from that of the schoolmaster who has
a class bent on “ragging”. I do not propose to discuss the methods
which he should employ, because they would never be needed if education
were properly conducted from the start. Children like to learn things,
provided they are the right things properly taught. The same mistake
is made in imparting knowledge as is made, at an earlier stage, in
regard to food and sleep: something which is really an advantage to
the child is made to appear like a favour to the adult. Infants easily
come to think that the only reason for eating and sleeping is that
grown-ups desire it; this turns them into dyspeptic sufferers from
insomnia.[15] Unless a child is ill, let it leave its food and go
hungry. My boy had been coaxed into eating by his nurse, and had grown
more and more _difficile_. One day when we had him for his mid-day
meal, he refused to eat his pudding, so we sent it out. After a while,
he demanded it back, but it turned out that the cook had eaten it.
He was flabbergasted, and never made such pretences with us again.
Exactly the same method should apply to instruction. Those who do not
want it should be allowed to go without, though I should see to it
that they were bored if they were absent during lesson-time. If they
see others learning, they will presently clamour to be taught: the
teacher can then appear as conferring a benefit, which is the truth
of the situation. I should have in every school a large bare room to
which pupils could go if they did not want to learn, but if they went
there, I should not allow them to come back to lessons that day. And
they should be sent there as a punishment if they behaved badly in
lesson-time. It seems a simple principle that a punishment should be
something you wish the culprit to dislike, not something you wish him
to like. Yet “lines” are a common punishment where the professed aim is
to produce a love of classical literature.

Mild punishments have their utility for dealing with mild offences,
especially such as are concerned with manners. Praise and blame are
an important form of rewards and punishments for young children, and
also for older boys and girls if conferred by a person who inspires
respect. I do not believe it possible to conduct education without
praise and blame, but in regard to both a certain degree of caution is
necessary. In the first place, neither should be comparative. A child
should not be told that he has done better than so-and-so, or that
such-and-such is never naughty: the first produces contempt, the second
hatred. In the second place, blame should be given much more sparingly
than praise; it should be a definite punishment, administered for some
unexpected lapse from good behaviour, and it should never be continued
after it has produced its effect. In the third place, praise should
not be given for anything that should be a matter of course. I should
give it for a new development of courage or skill, and for an act of
unselfishness as regards possessions, if achieved after a moral effort.
All through education, any unusually good piece of work should be
praised. To be praised for a difficult achievement is one of the most
delightful experiences in youth, and the desire for this pleasure is
quite proper as an added incentive, though it should not be the main
motive. The main motive should always be an interest in the matter
itself, whatever the matter may happen to be.

Grave faults of character, such as cruelty, can seldom be dealt with
by means of punishment. Or rather, punishment should be a very small
part of the treatment. Cruelty to animals is more or less natural to
boys, and requires, for its prevention, an education _ad hoc_. It is
a very bad plan to wait until you find your boy torturing an animal,
and then proceed to torture the boy. This only makes him wish he had
not been caught. You should watch for the first beginnings of what
may afterwards develop into cruelty. Teach the boy respect for life;
do not let him see you killing animals, even wasps or snakes. If
you cannot prevent it, explain very carefully why it is done in this
particular case. If he does something slightly unkind to a younger
child, do the same to him at once. He will protest, and you can explain
that if he does not want it done to him he must not do it to others.
In this way the fact that others have feelings like his own is brought
vividly to his attention.

It is obviously essential to this method that it should be begun
early, and applied to minor forms of unkindness. It is only very small
injuries to others that you can retort in kind upon the child. And when
you can adopt this plan, do not let it seem that you are doing it as a
punishment, but rather as an instruction: “See, that is what you did to
your little sister.” When the child protests, you say: “Well, if it was
unpleasant, you mustn’t do it to her.” So long as the whole incident
is simple and immediate, the child will understand, and will learn
that other people’s feelings must be considered. In that case, serious
cruelty will never develop.

All moral instruction must be immediate and concrete: it must arise
out of a situation which has grown up naturally, and must not go
beyond what ought to be done in this particular instance. The child
himself will apply the moral in other similar cases. It is much easier
to grasp a concrete instance, and apply analogous considerations to
an analogous instance, than to apprehend a general rule and proceed
deductively. Do not say, in a general way, “Be brave, be kind”, but
urge him to some particular piece of daring, and then say, “Bravo, you
were a brave boy”; get him to let his sister play with his mechanical
engine, and when he sees her beaming with delight, say, “That’s right,
you were a kind boy.” The same principle applies in dealing with
cruelty: Look out for its faint beginnings, and prevent them from
developing.

If, in spite of all your efforts, grave cruelty develops at a later
age, the matter must be taken very seriously, and dealt with like
an illness. The boy should be punished in the sense that unpleasant
things should happen to him, just as they do when he has measles, but
not in the sense that he should be made to feel wicked. He should be
isolated for a while from other children and from animals, and it
should be explained to him that it is not safe to let him associate
with them. He should be made to realize, as far as possible, how he
would suffer if he were cruelly treated. He should be made to feel
that a great misfortune had befallen him in the shape of an impulse to
cruelty, and that his elders were endeavouring to shield him from a
similar misfortune in the future. I believe that such methods would be
completely successful in all except a few pathological cases.

Physical punishment I believe to be never right. In mild forms, it does
little harm, though no good; in severe forms, I am convinced that it
generates cruelty and brutality. It is true that it often produces no
resentment against the person who inflicts it; where it is customary,
boys adapt themselves to it and expect it as part of the course
of nature. But it accustoms them to the idea that it may be right
and proper to inflict physical pain for the purpose of maintaining
authority--a peculiarly dangerous lesson to teach to those who are
likely to acquire positions of power. And it destroys that relation
of open confidence which ought to exist between parents and children,
as well as between teachers and pupils. The modern parent wants his
children to be as unconstrained in his presence as in his absence;
he wants them to feel pleasure when they see him coming; he does not
want a fictitious Sabbath calm while he is watching, succeeded by
pandemonium as soon as he turns his back. To win the genuine affection
of children is a joy as great as any that life has to offer. Our
grandfathers did not know of this joy, and therefore did not know that
they were missing it. They taught children that it was their “duty” to
love their parents, and proceeded to make this duty almost impossible
of performance. Caroline, in the verse quoted at the beginning of this
chapter, can hardly have been pleased when her father went to her, “to
whip her, there’s no doubt”. So long as people persisted in the notion
that love could be commanded as a duty, they did nothing to win it as a
genuine emotion. Consequently human relations remained stark and harsh
and cruel. Punishment was part of this whole conception. It is strange
that men who would not have dreamed of raising their hand against a
woman were quite willing to inflict physical torture upon a defenceless
child. Mercifully, a better conception of the relations of parents and
children has gradually won its way during the last hundred years, and
with it the whole theory of punishment has been transformed. I hope
that the enlightened ideas which begin to prevail in education will
gradually spread to other human relations as well, for they are needed
there just as much as in our dealings with our children.




CHAPTER X

IMPORTANCE OF OTHER CHILDREN


So far, we have been considering what parents and teachers can do
themselves towards creating the right kind of character in a child.
But there is a great deal that cannot possibly be done without the
help of other children. This becomes increasingly true as the child
gets older; indeed contemporaries are never more important than at the
university. In the first year of life, other children are not important
at all in the earlier months, and only a slight advantage in the last
three months. At that stage, it is slightly older children that are
useful. The first child in a family is usually slower in learning
to walk and talk than subsequent children, because grown-ups are so
perfect in these accomplishments that they are difficult to imitate. A
child of three years old is a better model for a child one year old,
both because the things it does are more what the younger child would
wish to do, and because its powers do not seem so superhuman. Children
feel that other children are more akin to them than adults are, and
therefore their ambition is more stimulated by what other children
do. Only the family provides the opportunity for this early education
by older children. Most children who have a choice wish to play with
children rather older than themselves, because then they feel “grand”;
but these older children wish to play with still older children, and
so on. The consequence is that, in a school, or in the streets of a
slum, or anywhere else where a large choice is possible, children play
almost entirely with their contemporaries, because the older ones will
not play with the younger ones. In this way it comes about that what
is to be learnt from older children must be learnt mainly in the home.
This has the drawback that in every family there must be one oldest
child, who fails to get the benefits of the method. And as families
grow smaller, the percentage of oldest children grows larger, so that
the drawback is an increasing one. Small families are in some ways a
disadvantage to children, unless supplemented by nursery-schools. But
nursery-schools will form the subject of a later chapter.

Older children, younger children, and contemporaries all have their
uses, but the uses of older and younger children, for the reasons
just given, are mainly confined to the family. The great use of
older children is to provide attainable ambitions. A child will make
tremendous efforts to be thought worthy of joining in an older child’s
game. The older child behaves in an offhand natural way, without
the consideration and make-believe which is bound to form part of a
grown-up person’s games with children. The same lack of consideration
in a grown-up would be painful, both because the grown-up has power
and authority, and because he plays to please the child, not to please
himself. A child will be cheerfully submissive to an older brother or
sister, in a way which would be impossible towards an adult except
as a result of excessive discipline. The lesson of co-operation in a
subordinate role is best learnt from other children; when grown-ups try
to teach it, they are faced with the opposite dangers of unkindness and
pretence--unkindness if they demand real co-operation, pretence if they
are content with the appearance of it. I do not mean that either real
or pretence co-operation is to be always avoided, but that it has not
the spontaneity which is possible between an older and a younger child,
and therefore cannot be combined for hours on end with pleasure to both
parties.

All through youth, slightly older people continue to have a special use
in teaching--not formal teaching, but the sort which occurs outside
working hours. A slightly older boy or girl remains always a very
effective stimulus to ambition, and, if kind, can explain difficulties
better than an adult, from the recent recollection of overcoming them.
Even at the university, I learnt much from people a few years senior
to me, which I could not have learnt from grave and reverend signors.
I believe this experience is general wherever the social life of the
university is not too rigidly stratified by “years”. It is, of course,
impossible where, as too often happens, the older students consider it
_infra dig_ to have anything to do with the younger ones.

Younger children also have their uses, especially in the years
from three to six; these uses are chiefly in connection with moral
education. So long as a child is with adults, it has no occasion for
the exercise of a number of important virtues, namely, those required
by the strong in dealing with the weak. A child has to be taught not
to take things by force from a younger brother or sister, not to
show excessive anger when the junior inadvertently knocks over his
tower of bricks, not to hoard toys he is not using which the other
desires. He has to be taught that the junior can be easily hurt by
rough handling, and to feel compunction when he has wantonly caused
tears. In protecting a younger child, one can speak to the senior with
a sharpness and suddenness which would not otherwise be justified,
but which have their uses through the strong impression produced by
their unexpectedness. All these are useful lessons, which it is hardly
possible to give naturally in any other way. It is a folly and a waste
of time to give abstract moral instruction to a child; everything must
be concrete, and actually demanded by the existing situation. Much
that, from an adult point of view, is moral education, feels to the
child just like instruction in handling a saw. The child feels that he
is being shown how the thing is done. That is one reason why example is
so important. A child who has watched a carpenter at work tries to copy
his movements; a child who has seen his parents behaving always with
kindness and consideration tries to copy them in this respect. In each
case, prestige is attached to what he wants to imitate. If you gave
your child a solemn lesson in the use of a saw, but yourself always
tried to use it as a chopper, you would never make a carpenter of him.
And if you urge him to be kind to his little sister, but are not kind
to her yourself, all your instruction will be wasted. For that reason,
when you have to do something that makes a little child cry, such as
cleaning its nose, you should be careful to explain to the older child
why it is necessary to do it. Otherwise he is quite likely to rise up
in defence of the younger child, and fight you to make you stop being
cruel. If you allow him to remain under the impression that you are
cruel, you will have lost the power to curb his own impulses towards
tyranny.

Although both older and younger children are important, contemporaries
are far more so, at any rate from the age of four onwards. Behaviour
to equals is what most needs to be learnt. Most of the inequalities in
the existing world are artificial, and it would be a good thing if our
behaviour ignored them. Well-to-do people imagine themselves superior
to their cooks, and behave to them in a different way from that in
which they behave in society. But they feel inferior to a Duke, and
treat him in a way which shows a lack of self-respect. In both cases
they are wrong: the cook and the Duke should both be felt and treated
as equals. In youth, age makes a hierarchy which is not artificial;
but for that very reason the social habits which will be desirable in
later life are best learnt by associating with contemporaries. Games of
all kinds are better among equals, and so is school competition. Among
schoolfellows, a boy has that degree of importance which is accorded
to him by their judgment; he may be admired or despised, but the issue
depends upon his own character and prowess. Affectionate parents
create a too indulgent milieu; parents without affection create one
where spontaneity is repressed. It is only contemporaries who can give
scope for spontaneity in free competition and in equal co-operation.
Self-respect without tyranny, consideration without slavishness, can
be learnt best in dealing with equals. For these reasons, no amount of
parental solicitude can give a boy or girl the same advantages at home
as are to be enjoyed in a good school.

Apart from these considerations, there is another, perhaps even more
important. The mind and body of a child demand a great deal of play,
and after the first years play can hardly be satisfactory except with
other boys and girls. Without play, a child becomes strained and
nervous; it loses the joy of life and develops anxieties. It is, of
course, possible to bring up a child as John Stuart Mill was brought
up, to begin Greek at the age of three, and never know any ordinary
childish fun. From the mere standpoint of acquiring knowledge, the
results may be good, but taken all round I cannot admire them. Mill
relates in his Autobiography that during adolescence he nearly
committed suicide from the thought that all combinations of musical
notes would one day be used up, and then new musical composition
would become impossible. It is obvious that an obsession of this sort
is a symptom of nervous exhaustion. In later life, whenever he came
upon an argument tending to show that his father’s philosophy might
have been mistaken, he shied away from it like a frightened horse,
thereby greatly diminishing the value of his reasoning powers. It
seems probable that a more normal youth would have given him more
intellectual resilience, and enabled him to be more original in his
thinking. However that may be, it would certainly have given him more
capacity for enjoying life. I was myself the product of a solitary
education up to the age of sixteen--somewhat less fierce than Mill’s,
but still too destitute of the ordinary joys of youth. I experienced in
adolescence just the same tendency to suicide as Mill describes--in my
case, because I thought the laws of dynamics regulated the movements
of my body, making the will a mere delusion. When I began to associate
with contemporaries, I found myself an angular prig. How far I have
remained so, it is not for me to say.

In spite of all the above arguments, I am prepared to admit that there
are a certain number of boys and girls who ought not to go to school,
and that some of them are very important individuals. If a boy has
abnormal mental powers in some direction, combined with poor physique
and great nervousness, he may be quite incapable of fitting into a
crowd of normal boys, and may be so persecuted as to be driven mad.
Exceptional capacities are not infrequently associated with mental
instability, and in such cases it is desirable to adopt methods which
would be bad for the normal boy. Care should be taken to find out if
abnormal sensitiveness has some definite cause, and patient efforts
should be made to cure it. But these efforts should never involve
terrible suffering, such as an abnormal boy may easily have to endure
from brutal companions. I think such sensitiveness generally has
its source in mistakes during infancy, which have upset the child’s
digestion or its nerves. Given wisdom in handling infants, I think
almost all of them would grow into boys and girls sufficiently normal
to enjoy the company of other boys and girls. Nevertheless, some
exceptions will occur, and they may easily occur among those who have
some form of genius. In these rare cases, school is undesirable, and a
more sheltered youth is to be preferred.




CHAPTER XI

AFFECTION AND SYMPATHY


Many readers may think that I have hitherto unaccountably neglected
affection, which is, in some sense, the essence of a good character.
I hold that love and knowledge are the two main requisites for right
action, yet, in dealing with moral education, I have hitherto said
nothing about love. My reason has been that the right sort of love
should be the natural fruit resulting from the proper treatment of the
growing child, rather than something consciously aimed at throughout
the various stages. We have to be clear as to the kind of affection to
be desired, and as to the disposition appropriate to different ages.
From ten or twelve years old until puberty, a boy is apt to be very
destitute of affection, and there is nothing to be gained by trying
to force his nature. Throughout youth, there is less occasion for
sympathy than in adult life, both because there is less power of giving
effective expression to it, and because a young person has to think of
his or her own training for life, largely to the exclusion of other
people’s interests. For these reasons, we should be more concerned to
produce sympathetic and affectionate adults than to force a precocious
development of these qualities in early years. Our problem, like all
problems in the education of character, is a scientific one, belonging
to what may be called psychological dynamics. Love cannot exist as
a duty: to tell a child that it _ought_ to love its parents and its
brothers and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse. Parents who wish
to be loved must behave so as to elicit love, and must try to give to
their children those physical and mental characteristics which produce
expansive affections.

Not only must children not be commanded to love their parents, but
nothing must be done which has this result as its object. Parental
affection, at its best, differs from sex-love in this respect. It is
of the essence of sex-love to seek a response, as is natural, since,
without a response, it cannot fulfil its biological function. But it
is not of the essence of parental love to seek a response. The natural
unsophisticated parental instinct feels towards the child as towards
an externalized part of the parent’s body. If your great toe is out
of order, you attend to it from self-interest, and you do not expect
it to feel grateful. The savage woman, I imagine, has a very similar
feeling towards her child. She desires its welfare in just the same
way as she desires her own, especially while it is still very young.
She has no more sense of self-denial in looking after the child than
in looking after herself; and for that very reason she does not look
for gratitude. The child’s need of her is sufficient response so long
as it is helpless. Later, when it begins to grow up, her affection
diminishes and her demands may increase. In animals, parental affection
ceases when the child is adult, and no demands are made upon it; but
in human beings, even if they are very primitive, this is not the
case. A son who is a lusty warrior is expected to feed and protect his
parents when they are old and decrepit; the story of Æneas and Anchises
embodies this feeling at a higher level of culture. With the growth
of foresight, there is an increasing tendency to exploit children’s
affections for the sake of their help when old age comes. Hence the
principle of filial piety, which has existed throughout the world and
is embodied in the Fifth Commandment. With the development of private
property and ordered government, filial piety becomes less important;
after some centuries, people become aware of this fact, and the
sentiment goes out of fashion. In the modern world, a man of fifty may
be financially dependent upon a parent of eighty, so that the important
thing is still the affection of the parent for the child rather than
of the child for the parent. This, of course, applies chiefly to
the propertied classes; among wage-earners, the older relationship
persists. But even there it is being gradually displaced as a result
of old-age pensions and similar measures. Affection of children for
parents, therefore, is ceasing to deserve a place among cardinal
virtues, while affection of parents for children remains of enormous
importance.

There is another set of dangers, which has been brought to the fore by
the psycho-analysts, though I think their interpretation of the facts
may be questioned. The dangers I am thinking of are those connected
with undue devotion to one or other parent. An adult, and even an
adolescent, ought not to be so overshadowed by either father or mother
as to be unable to think or feel independently. This may easily happen
if the personality of the parent is stronger than that of the child. I
do not believe that there is, except in rare morbid cases, an “Œdipus
Complex”, in the sense of a special attraction of sons to mothers and
daughters to fathers. The excessive influence of the parent, where
it exists, will belong to the parent who has had most to do with the
child--generally the mother--without regard to difference of sex. Of
course, it may happen that a daughter who dislikes her mother and sees
little of her father will idealize the latter; but in that case the
influence is exerted by dreams, not by the actual father. Idealization
consists of hanging hopes to a peg: the peg is merely convenient,
and has nothing to do with the nature of the hopes. Undue parental
influence is quite a different thing from this, since it is connected
with the actual person, not with an imaginary portrait.

An adult with whom a child is in constant contact may easily become so
dominant in the child’s life as to make the child, even in later life,
a mental slave. The slavery may be intellectual, or emotional, or both.
A good example of the former is John Stuart Mill, who could never bring
himself, in the last resort, to admit that his father might have been
mistaken. To some degree, intellectual slavery to early environment is
normal; very few adults are capable of opinions other than those taught
by parents or teachers, except where there is some general drift that
carries them along. The children of Mohammedans are Mohammedans, the
children of Buddhists are Buddhists, and so on. It may be maintained
that intellectual slavery is natural and normal; I am inclined to
admit that it can only be avoided by an education _ad hoc_. This form
of excessive parental and scholastic influence ought to be avoided
carefully, since, in a rapidly changing world, it is exceedingly
dangerous to retain the opinions of a by-gone generation. But for the
present I shall consider only slavery of the emotions and the will,
since that is more directly bound up with our present topic.

The evils considered by psycho-analysts under the heading “Œdipus
Complex” (which I regard as misleading) arise from an undue desire on
the part of parents for an emotional response from their children.
As I said a moment ago, I believe that the parental instinct in its
purity does not desire an emotional response; it is satisfied by the
dependence of the young, and the fact that they look to parents for
protection and food. When the dependence ceases, parental affection
also ceases. This is the state of affairs among animals, and for their
purposes it is entirely satisfactory. But such simplicity of instinct
is scarcely possible for human beings. I have already considered
the effect of military and economic considerations, as shown in
the preaching of filial piety. I am now concerned with two purely
psychological sources of confusion in the working of the parental
instinct.

The first of these is of a sort which occurs wherever intelligence
observes the pleasures to be derived from instinct. Broadly speaking,
instinct prompts pleasant acts which have useful consequences, but the
consequences may not be pleasant. Eating is pleasant, but digestion
is not--especially when it is indigestion. Sex is pleasant, but
parturition is not. The dependence of an infant is pleasant, but the
independence of a vigorous grown-up son is not. The primitive maternal
type of woman derives most pleasure from the infant at the breast, and
gradually less pleasure as the child grows less helpless. There is
therefore a tendency, for the sake of pleasure, to prolong the period
of helplessness, and to put off the time when the child can dispense
with parental guidance. This is recognized in conventional phrases,
such as being “tied to his mother’s apron-strings”. It was thought
impossible to deal with this evil in boys except by sending them away
to school. In girls it was not recognized as an evil, because (if they
were well-to-do) it was thought desirable to make them helpless and
dependent, and it was hoped that after marriage they would cling to
their husbands as they had formerly clung to their mothers. This seldom
happened, and its failure gave rise to the “mother-in-law” joke. One
of the purposes of a joke is to prevent thought--a purpose in which
this particular joke was highly successful. No one seemed to realize
that a girl brought up to be dependent would naturally be dependent
upon her mother, and therefore could not enter into that whole-hearted
partnership with a man which is the essence of a happy marriage.

The second psychological complication comes nearer to the orthodox
Freudian point of view. It arises where elements appropriate to
sex-love enter into parental affection. I do not mean anything
necessarily dependent upon difference of sex; I mean merely the
desire for a certain kind of emotional response. Part of the
psychology of sex--that part, in fact, which has made monogamy a
possible institution--is the desire to come first for some one, to
feel that oneself is more important than any other human being to
the happiness of at least one person in the world. When this desire
has produced marriage, it will only produce happiness if a number
of other conditions are realized. For one reason or another, a very
large proportion of married women in civilized countries fail to have
a satisfying sex-life. When this happens to a woman, she is apt to
seek from her children an illegitimate and spurious gratification of
desires which only men can gratify adequately and naturally. I do not
mean anything obvious: I mean merely a certain emotional tension, a
certain passionateness of feeling, a pleasure in kissing and fondling
to excess. These things used to be thought quite right and proper in
an affectionate mother. Indeed, the difference between what is right
and what is harmful is very subtle. It is absurd to maintain, as some
Freudians do, that parents ought not to kiss and fondle their children
at all. Children have a right to warm affection from their parents; it
gives them a happy, care-free outlook upon the world, and is essential
to healthy psychological development. But it should be something that
they take for granted, like the air they breathe, not something to
which they are expected to respond. It is this question of response
that is the essence of the matter. There will be a certain spontaneous
response, which is all to the good; but it will be quite different
from the active pursuit of friendship from childish companions.
Psychologically, parents should be a background, and the child should
not be made to act with a view to giving his parents pleasure. Their
pleasure should consist in his growth and progress; anything that he
gives them in the way of response should be accepted gratefully as a
pure extra, like fine weather in spring, but should not be expected as
part of the order of nature.

It is very difficult for a woman to be a perfect mother, or a perfect
teacher of young children, unless she is sexually satisfied. Whatever
psycho-analysts may say, the parental instinct is essentially different
from the sex instinct, and is damaged by the intrusion of emotions
appropriate to sex. The habit of employing celibate female teachers
is quite wrong psychologically. The right woman to deal with children
is a woman whose instinct is not seeking from them satisfactions for
herself which they ought not to be expected to provide. A woman who
is happily married will belong to this type without effort; but any
other woman will need an almost impossible subtlety of self-control. Of
course, the same thing applies to men in the same circumstances, but
the circumstances are far less frequent with men, both because their
parental instincts are usually not very strong, and because they are
seldom sexually starved.

It is as well to be clear in our own thoughts as regards the attitude
we are to expect from children to parents. If parents have the right
kind of love for their children, the children’s response will be just
what the parents desire. The children will be pleased when their
parents come, and sorry when they go, unless they are absorbed in
some agreeable pursuit; they will look to their parents for help in
any trouble, physical or mental, that may arise; they will dare to be
adventurous, because they rely upon their parents’ protection in the
background--but this feeling will be hardly conscious except in moments
of peril. They will expect their parents to answer their questions,
resolve their perplexities, and help them in difficult tasks. Most of
what their parents do for them will not enter into their consciousness.
They will like their parents, not for providing their board and
lodging, but for playing with them, showing them how to do new things,
and telling them stories about the world. They will gradually realize
that their parents love them, but this ought to be accepted as a
natural fact. The affection that they feel for their parents will be
quite a different kind from that which they feel for other children.
The parent must act with reference to the child, but the child must act
with reference to himself and the outer world. That is the essential
difference. The child has no important function to perform in relation
to his parents. His function is to grow in wisdom and stature, and so
long as he does so a healthy parental instinct is satisfied.

I should be very sorry to convey the impression that I want to diminish
the amount of affection in family life, or the spontaneity of its
manifestations. That is not at all what I mean. What I do mean is that
there are different kinds of affection. The affection of husband and
wife is one thing, that of parents for children is another, and that
of children for parents is yet another. The harm comes when these
different kinds of natural affection are confused. I do not think the
Freudians have arrived at the truth, because they do not recognize
these instinctive differences. And this makes them, in a sense, ascetic
as regards parents and children, because they view any love between
them as a sort of inadequate sex-love. I do not believe in the need of
any fundamental self-denial, provided there are no special unfortunate
circumstances. A man and woman who love each other and their children
ought to be able to act spontaneously as the heart dictates. They will
need much thought and knowledge, but these they will acquire out of
parental affection. They must not demand from their children what they
get from each other, but if they are happy in each other they will feel
no impulse to do so. If the children are properly cared for, they will
feel for their parents a natural affection which will be no barrier to
independence. What is needed is not ascetic self-denial, but freedom
and expansiveness of instinct, adequately informed by intelligence and
knowledge.

When my boy was two years and four months old, I went to America, and
was absent three months. He was perfectly happy in my absence, but was
wild with joy when I returned. I found him waiting impatiently by the
garden gate; he seized my hand, and began showing me everything that
specially interested him. I wanted to hear, and he wanted to tell; I
had no wish to tell, and he had none to hear. The two impulses were
different, but harmonious. When it comes to stories, he wishes to hear
and I wish to tell, so that again there is harmony. Only once has this
situation been reversed. When he was three years and six months old,
I had a birthday, and his mother told him that everything was to be
done to please me. Stories are his supreme delight; to our surprise,
when the time for them came, he announced that he was going to tell
me stories, as it was my birthday. He told about a dozen, then jumped
down, saying “no more stories to-day”. That was three months ago, but
he has never told stories again.

I come now to the wider question of affection and sympathy in general.
As between parents and children, there are complications owing to the
possibility of abuse of power by parents; it was necessary to deal with
these complications before attacking the general question.

There is no possible method of _compelling_ a child to feel sympathy or
affection; the only possible method is to observe the conditions under
which these feelings arise spontaneously, and then endeavour to produce
the conditions. Sympathy, undoubtedly, is partly instinctive. Children
are worried when their brothers or sisters cry, and often cry too. They
will take their part vehemently against the grown-ups when disagreeable
things are being done to them. When my boy had a wound on his elbow
which had to be dressed, his sister (aged eighteen months) could hear
him crying in another room, and was very much upset. She kept on
repeating “Jonny crying, Jonny crying”, until the painful business was
finished. When my boy saw his mother extracting a thorn with a needle
from her foot, he said anxiously, “It doesn’t hurt, Mummy”. She said
it did, wishing to give him a lesson in not making a fuss. He insisted
that it didn’t hurt, whereupon she insisted that it did. He then burst
into sobs, just as vehement as if it had been his own foot. Such
occurrences must spring from instinctive physical sympathy. This is the
basis upon which more elaborate forms of sympathy must be built. It is
clear that nothing further is needed in the way of positive education
except to bring home to the child the fact that people and animals
can feel pain, and do feel it under certain circumstances. There is,
however, a further negative condition: the child must not see people he
respects committing unkind or cruel actions. If the father shoots or
the mother speaks rudely to the maids, the child will catch these vices.

It is a difficult question how and when to make a child aware of the
evil in the world. It is impossible to grow up ignorant of wars and
massacres and poverty and preventable disease which is not prevented.
At some stage, the child must know of these things, and must combine
the knowledge with a firm conviction that it is a dreadful thing to
inflict, or even permit, any suffering which can be avoided. We are
here confronted by a problem similar to that which faces people who
wish to preserve female chastity; these people formerly believed in
ignorance till marriage, but now adopt more positive methods.

I have known some pacifists who wished history taught without reference
to wars, and thought that children should be kept as long as possible
ignorant of the cruelty in the world. But I cannot praise the “fugitive
and cloistered virtue” that depends upon absence of knowledge. As soon
as history is taught at all, it should be taught truthfully. If true
history contradicts any moral we wish to teach, our moral must be
wrong, and we had better abandon it. I quite admit that many people,
including some of the most virtuous, find facts inconvenient, but that
is due to a certain feebleness in their virtue. A truly robust morality
can only be strengthened by the fullest knowledge of what really
happens in the world. We must not run the risk that the young people
whom we have educated in ignorance will turn to wickedness with delight
as soon as they discover that there is such a thing. Unless we can give
them an aversion from cruelty, they will not abstain from it; and they
cannot have an aversion from it if they do not know that it exists.

Nevertheless, the right way of giving children a knowledge of evil is
not easily found. Of course, those who live in the slums of big cities
get to know early all about drunkenness, quarrels, wife-beating, and
so on. Perhaps this does them no harm, if it is counteracted by other
influences; but no careful parent would deliberately expose a very
young child to such sights. I think the great objection is that they
rouse fear so vividly as to colour the whole of the rest of life. A
child, being defenceless, cannot help feeling terror when it first
understands that cruelty to children is possible. I was about fourteen
when I first read “Oliver Twist”, but it filled me with emotions of
horror which I could scarcely have borne at an earlier age. Dreadful
things should not be known to young people until they are old enough
to face them with a certain poise. This moment will come sooner with
some children than with others: those who are imaginative or timid must
be sheltered longer than those who are stolid or endowed with natural
courage. A mental habit of fearlessness due to expectation of kindness
should be firmly established before the child is made to face the
existence of unkindness. To choose the moment and the manner requires
tact and understanding; it is not a matter which can be decided by a
rule.

There are, however, certain maxims which should be followed. To
begin with, stories such as Bluebeard and Jack the Giant Killer do
not involve any knowledge of cruelty whatever, and do not raise the
problems we are considering. To the child, they are purely fantastic,
and he never connects them with the real world in any way. No doubt the
pleasure he derives from them is connected with savage instincts, but
these are harmless as mere play-impulses in a powerless child, and they
tend to die down as the child grows older. But when the child is first
introduced to cruelty as a thing in the real world, care must be taken
to choose incidents in which he will identify himself with the victim,
not with the torturer. Something savage in him will exult in a story
in which he identifies himself with the tyrant; a story of this kind
tends to produce an imperialist. But the story of Abraham preparing
to sacrifice Isaac, or of the she-bears killing the children whom
Elisha cursed, naturally rouses the child’s sympathy for another child.
If such stories are told, they should be told as showing the depths
of cruelty to which men could descend long ago. I once, as a child,
heard a sermon of an hour’s duration, entirely devoted to proving that
Elisha was right in cursing the children. Fortunately, I was old
enough to think the parson a fool; otherwise I should have been driven
nearly mad with terror. The story of Abraham and Isaac was even more
dreadful, because it was the child’s father who was cruel to him. When
such stories are told with the assumption that Abraham and Elisha were
virtuous, they must either be ignored or utterly debase a child’s moral
standards. But when told as an introduction to human wickedness, they
serve a purpose, because they are vivid, remote, and untrue. The story
of Hubert putting out little Arthur’s eyes, in “King John”, may be used
in the same way.

Then history may be taught, with all its wars. But in telling about
wars, sympathy at first should be with the defeated. I should begin
with battles in which it is natural to feel on the side of the beaten
party--for instance, the battle of Hastings in teaching an English boy.
I should emphasize always the wounds and suffering produced. I should
gradually lead the child to feel no partisanship in reading about wars,
and to regard both sides as silly men who had lost their tempers, and
ought to have had nurses to put them to bed till they were good. I
should assimilate wars to quarrels among the children in the nursery.
In this way, I believe children could be made to see the truth about
war, and to realize that it is silly.

If any actual instance of unkindness or cruelty comes under the child’s
notice, it should be fully discussed, with all the moral values which
the adult himself attaches to the incident, and always with the
suggestion that the people who acted cruelly were foolish, and did not
know any better because they had not been well brought up. But I should
not call the child’s attention to such things in his real world, if
they were not spontaneously observed by him, until after he had grown
familiar with them in history and stories. Then I should gradually
introduce him to a knowledge of evil in his surroundings. But I should
always give him the feeling that the evil can be combated, and results
from ignorance and lack of self-control and bad education. I should not
encourage him to be indignant with malefactors, but rather to regard
them as bunglers, who do not know in what happiness consists.

The cultivation of wide sympathies, given the instinctive germ, is
mainly an intellectual matter: it depends upon the right direction
of attention, and the realization of facts which militarists and
authoritarians suppress. Take, for example, Tolstoy’s description of
Napoleon going round the battlefield of Austerlitz after the victory.
Most histories leave the battlefield as soon as the battle is over;
by the simple expedient of lingering on it for another twelve hours,
a completely different picture of war is produced. This is done, not
by suppressing facts, but by giving more facts. And what applies to
battles applies equally to other forms of cruelty. In all cases, it
should be quite unnecessary to point the moral; the right telling of
the story should be sufficient. Do not moralize, but let the facts
produce their own moral in the child’s mind.

It remains to say a few words about affection, which differs from
sympathy in being inevitably and essentially selective. I have spoken
already of affection between parents and children; it is affection
between equals that I now wish to consider.

Affection cannot be created; it can only be liberated. There is a kind
of affection which is partly rooted in fear; affection for parents has
this element, since parents afford protection. In childhood affections
of this sort are natural, but in later life they are undesirable, and
even in childhood affection for other children is not of this sort.
My little girl is intensely devoted to her brother, although he is
the only person in her world who ever treats her unkindly. Affection
as to an equal, which is the best kind, is much more likely to exist
where there is happiness and absence of fear. Fears, conscious or
unconscious, are very apt to produce hatred, because other people
are regarded as capable of inflicting injuries. With most people,
as things are, envy is a barrier to wide-spread affection. I do not
think envy can be prevented except by happiness; moral discipline is
powerless to touch its subconscious forms. Happiness, in turn, is
largely prevented by fear. Young people who have a chance of happiness
are deterred by parents and “friends”, nominally on moral grounds,
but really from envy. If the young people have enough fearlessness,
they will ignore the croakers; otherwise, they will allow themselves
to be made miserable, and join the company of envious moralists. The
education of character that we have been considering is designed to
produce happiness and courage; I think, therefore, that it does what is
possible to liberate the springs of affection. More than this cannot
be done. If you tell children that they ought to be affectionate, you
run the risk of producing cant and humbug. But if you make them happy
and free, if you surround them with kindness, you will find that they
become spontaneously friendly with everybody, and that almost everybody
responds by being friendly with them. A trustful affectionate
disposition justifies itself, because it gives irresistible charm,
and creates the response which it expects. This is one of the most
important results to be expected from the right education of character.




CHAPTER XII

SEX EDUCATION


The subject of sex is so surrounded by superstitions and taboos that
I approach it with trepidation. I fear lest those readers who have
hitherto accepted my principles may suspect them when they are applied
in this sphere; they may have admitted readily enough that fearlessness
and freedom are good for a child, and yet desire, where sex is
concerned, to impose slavery and terror. I cannot so limit principles
which I believe to be sound, and I shall treat sex exactly as I have
treated the other impulses which make up a human character.

There is one respect in which, quite independently of taboos, sex is
peculiar, and that is the late ripening of the instinct. It is true,
as the psycho-analysts have pointed out (though with considerable
exaggeration), that the instinct is not absent in childhood. But its
childish manifestations are different from those of adult life, and
its strength is much less, and it is physically impossible for a boy
to indulge it in the adult manner. Puberty remains an important
emotional crisis, thrust into the middle of intellectual education, and
causing disturbances which raise difficult problems for the educator.
Many of these problems I shall not attempt to discuss; it is chiefly
what should be done before puberty that I propose to consider. It is
in this respect that educational reform is most needed, especially in
very early childhood. Although I disagree with the Freudians in many
particulars, I think they have done a very valuable service in pointing
out the nervous disorders produced in later life by wrong handling of
young children in matters connected with sex. Their work has already
produced wide-spread beneficial results in this respect, but there is
still a mass of prejudice to be overcome. The difficulty is, of course,
greatly increased by the practice of leaving children, during their
first years, largely in the hands of totally uneducated women, who
cannot be expected to know, still less to believe, what has been said
by learned men in the long words necessary to escape prosecution for
obscenity.

Taking our problems in chronological order, the first that confronts
mothers and nurses is that of masturbation. Competent authorities
state that this practice is all but universal among boys and girls in
their second and third years, but usually ceases of itself a little
later on. Sometimes it is rendered more pronounced by some definite
physical irritation which can be removed. (It is not my province to
go into medical details.) But it usually exists even in the absence
of such special reasons. It has been the custom to view it with
horror, and to use dreadful threats with a view to stopping it. As a
rule these threats do not succeed, although they are believed; the
result is that the child lives in an agony of apprehension, which
presently becomes dissociated from its original cause (now repressed
into the unconscious), but remains to produce nightmares, nervousness,
delusions and insane terrors. Left to itself, infantile masturbation
has, apparently, no bad effect upon health[16], and no discoverable
bad effect upon character; the bad effects which have been observed in
both respects are, it seems, wholly attributable to attempts to stop
it. Even if it were harmful, it would be unwise to issue a prohibition
which is not going to be observed; and from the nature of the case, it
is impossible to make sure that the child will not continue after you
have forbidden him to do so. If you do nothing, the probability is that
the practice will soon be discontinued. But if you do anything, you
make it much less likely that it will cease, and you lay the foundation
of terrible nervous disorders. Therefore, difficult as it may be,
the child should be let alone in this respect. I do not mean that you
should abstain from methods other than prohibition, in so far as they
are available. Let him be sleepy when he goes to bed, so that he will
not lie awake long. Let him have some favourite toy in bed, which may
distract his attention. Such methods are quite unobjectionable. But if
they fail, do not resort to prohibition, or even call his attention to
the fact that he indulges in the practice. Then it will probably cease
of itself.

Sexual curiosity normally begins during the third year, in the shape
of an interest in the physical differences between men and women, and
between adults and children. By nature, this curiosity has no special
quality in early childhood, but is simply a part of general curiosity.
The special quality which it is found to have in children who are being
conventionally brought up is due to the grown-up practice of making
mysteries. When there is no mystery, the curiosity dies down as soon as
it is satisfied. A child should, from the first, be allowed to see his
parents and brothers and sisters without their clothes whenever it so
happens naturally. No fuss should be made either way; he should simply
not know that people have feelings about nudity. (Of course, later
on he will have to know.) It will be found that the child presently
notices the differences between his father and mother, and connects
them with the differences between brothers and sisters. But as soon as
the subject has been explored to this extent, it becomes uninteresting,
like a cupboard that is often open. Of course, any questions the child
may ask during this period must be answered just as questions on other
topics would be answered.

Answering questions is a major part of sex education. Two rules cover
the ground. First, always give a truthful answer to a question;
secondly, regard sex knowledge as exactly like any other knowledge. If
the child asks you an intelligent question about the sun or the moon
or the clouds, or about motor-cars or steam-engines, you are pleased,
and you tell him as much as he can take in. This answering of questions
is a very large part of early education. But if he asks you a question
connected with sex, you will be tempted to say, “hush, hush”. If you
have learnt not to do that, you will still answer briefly and dryly,
perhaps with a trifle of embarrassment in your manner. The child
at once notices the _nuance_, and you have laid the foundations of
prurience. You must answer with just the same fulness and naturalness
as if the question had been about something else. Do not allow yourself
to feel, even unconsciously, that there is something horrid and dirty
about sex. If you do, your feeling will communicate itself to him. He
will think, necessarily, that there is something nasty in the relations
of his parents; later on, he will conclude that they think ill of the
behaviour which led to his existence. Such feelings in youth make happy
instinctive emotions almost impossible, not only in youth, but in adult
life also.

If the child has a brother or sister born when he is old enough to ask
questions about it, say after the age of three, tell him that the child
grew in his mother’s body, and tell him that he grew in the same way.
Let him see his mother suckling the child, and be told that the same
thing happened to him. All this, like everything else connected with
sex, must be told without solemnity, in a purely scientific spirit. The
child must not be talked to about “the mysterious and sacred functions
of motherhood”; the whole thing must be utterly matter-of-fact.

If no addition to the family occurs when the child is old enough to ask
questions about it, the subject is likely to arise out of being told
“that happened before you were born”. I find my boy still hardly able
to grasp that there was a time when he did not exist; if I talk to him
about the building of the Pyramids or some such topic, he always wants
to know what he was doing then, and is merely puzzled when he is told
that he did not exist. Sooner or later he will want to know what “being
born” means, and then we shall tell him.

The share of the father in generation is less likely to come up
naturally in answer to questions, unless the child lives on a farm.
But it is very important that the child should know of this first from
parents or teacher, not from children whom bad education has made
nasty. I remember vividly being told all about it by another boy when I
was twelve years old; the whole thing was treated in a ribald spirit,
as a topic for obscene jokes. That was the normal experience of boys in
my generation. It followed naturally that the vast majority continued
through life to think sex comic and nasty, with the result that they
could not respect a woman with whom they had intercourse, even though
she were the mother of their children. Parents pursued a cowardly
policy of trusting to luck, although fathers must have remembered how
they gained their first knowledge. How it can have been supposed that
such a system helped sanity or sound morals, I cannot imagine. Sex
must be treated from the first as natural, delightful and decent. To
do otherwise is to poison the relations of men and women, parents and
children. Sex is at its best between a father and mother who love each
other and their children. It is far better that children should first
know of sex in the relations of their parents than that they should
derive their first impressions from ribaldry. It is particularly bad
that they should discover sex between their parents as a guilty secret
which has been concealed from them.

If there were no likelihood of being taught badly about sex by other
children, the matter could be left to the natural operation of the
child’s curiosity, and parents could confine themselves to answering
questions--always provided that everything became known before puberty.
This, of course, is absolutely essential. It is a cruel thing to let
a boy or girl be overtaken by the physical and emotional changes of
that time without preparation, and possibly with the feeling of being
attacked by some dreadful disease. Moreover, the whole subject of sex,
after puberty, is so electric that a boy or girl cannot listen in a
scientific spirit, which is perfectly possible at an earlier age.
Therefore, quite apart from the possibility of nasty talk, a boy or
girl should know the nature of the sexual act before attaining puberty.

How long before this the information should be given depends upon
circumstances. An inquisitive and intellectually active child must be
told sooner than a sluggish child. There must at no time be unsatisfied
curiosity. However young the child may be, he must be told if he asks.
And his parents’ manner must be such that he will ask if he wants to
know. But if he does not ask spontaneously, he must in any case be
told before the age of ten, for fear of being first told by others in
a bad way. It may therefore be desirable to stimulate his curiosity by
instruction about generation in plants and animals. There must not be
a solemn occasion, a clearing of the throat, and an exordium: “Now, my
boy, I am going to tell you something that it is time for you to know.”
The whole thing must be ordinary and every-day. That is why it comes
best in answer to questions.

I suppose it is unnecessary at this date to argue that boys and girls
must be treated alike. When I was young, it was still quite common
for a “well-brought-up” girl to marry before knowing anything about
the nature of marriage, and to have to learn it from her husband; but
I have not often heard of such a thing in recent years. I think most
people recognize nowadays that a virtue dependent upon ignorance is
worthless, and that girls have the same right to knowledge as boys. If
there are any who still fail to recognize this, they are not likely to
read the present work, so that it is not worth while to argue with them.

I do not propose to discuss the teaching of sexual morality in the
narrower sense. This is a matter as to which a variety of opinions
exist. Christians differ from Mohammedans, Catholics from Protestants
who tolerate divorce, freethinkers from mediævalists. Parents will all
wish their children taught the particular brand of sexual morality
in which they believe themselves, and I should not wish the State to
interfere with them. But without going into vexed questions, there is a
good deal that might be common ground.

There is first of all hygiene. Young people must know about venereal
disease before they run the risk of it. They should be taught about it
truthfully, without the exaggerations which some people practise in the
interests of morals. They should learn both how to avoid it, and how
to cure it. It is a mistake to give only such instruction as is needed
by the perfectly virtuous, and to regard the misfortunes which happen
to others as a just punishment of sin. We might as well refuse to help
a man who has been injured in a motoring accident, on the ground that
careless driving is a sin. Moreover, in the one case as in the other,
the punishment may fall upon the innocent; no one can maintain that
children born with syphilis are wicked, any more than that a man is
wicked if a careless motorist runs over him.

Young people should be led to realize that it is a very serious matter
to have a child, and that it should not be undertaken unless the child
has a reasonable prospect of health and happiness. The traditional view
was that, within marriage, it is always justifiable to have children,
even if they come so fast that the mother’s health is ruined, even
if the children are diseased or insane, even if there is no prospect
of their having enough to eat. This view is now only maintained by
heartless dogmatists, who think that everything disgraceful to humanity
redounds to the glory of God. People who care for children, or do not
enjoy inflicting misery upon the helpless, rebel against the ruthless
dogmas which justify this cruelty. A care for the rights and importance
of children, with all that is implied, should be an essential part of
moral education.

Girls should be taught to expect that one day they are likely to be
mothers, and they should acquire some rudiments of the knowledge that
may be useful to them in that capacity. Of course both boys and girls
ought to learn something of physiology and something of hygiene.
It should be made clear that no one can be a good parent without
parental affection, but that even with parental affection a great deal
of knowledge is required as well. Instinct without knowledge is as
inadequate in dealing with children as knowledge without instinct. The
more the necessity of knowledge is understood, the more intelligent
women will feel attracted to motherhood. At present, many highly
educated women despise it, thinking that it does not give scope for the
exercise of their intellectual faculties; this is a great misfortune,
since they are capable of being the best mothers, if their thoughts
were turned in that direction.

One other thing is essential in teaching about sex-love. Jealousy
must not be regarded as a justifiable insistence upon rights, but as
a misfortune to the one who feels it and a wrong towards its object.
Where possessive elements intrude upon love, it loses its vivifying
power and eats up personality; where they are absent, it fulfils
personality and brings a greater intensity of life. In former days,
parents ruined their relations with their children by preaching love
as a duty; husbands and wives still too often ruin their relations
to each other by the same mistake. Love cannot be a duty, because it
is not subject to the will. It is a gift from heaven, the best that
heaven has to bestow. Those who shut it up in a cage destroy the beauty
and joy which it can only display while it is free and spontaneous.
Here, again, fear is the enemy. He who fears to lose what makes the
happiness of his life has already lost it. In this, as in other things,
fearlessness is the essence of wisdom.

For this reason, in teaching my own children, I shall try to prevent
them from learning a moral code which I regard as harmful. Some people
who themselves hold liberal views are willing that their children
shall first acquire conventional morals, and become emancipated only
later, if at all. I cannot agree to this, because I hold that the
traditional code not only forbids what is innocent, but also commends
what is harmful. Those who have been taught conventionally will almost
inevitably believe themselves justified in indulging jealousy when
occasion arises; moreover they will probably be obsessed by sex either
positively or negatively. I shall not teach that faithfulness to our
partner through life is in any way desirable, or that a permanent
marriage should be regarded as excluding temporary episodes. So long as
jealousy is regarded as virtuous, such episodes cause grave friction;
but they do not do so where a less restrictive morality is accepted
on both sides. Relations involving children should be permanent if
possible, but should not necessarily on that account be exclusive.
Where there is mutual freedom and no pecuniary motive, love is good;
where these conditions fail, it may often be bad. It is because they
fail so frequently in the conventional marriage that a morality which
is positive rather than restrictive, based upon hope rather than fear,
is compelled, if it is logical, to disagree with the received code in
matters of sex. And there can be no excuse for allowing our children
to be taught a morality which we ourselves believe to be pernicious.

Finally, the attitude displayed by parents and teachers towards sex
should be scientific, not emotional or dogmatic. For example, when it
is said of a mother speaking to her daughter; “Let her tell nature’s
plan, _in a spirit of reverence_”; and of a father instructing his
son: “The father should, in a spirit of reverence, explain nature’s
plan for the starting of a new life”--such sayings may be passed over
by the reader as embodying nothing questionable. But to my mind there
should be no more occasion for “reverence” than in explaining the
construction of a steam-engine. “Reverence” means a special tone of
voice from which the boy or girl infers that there is some peculiar
quality about sex. From this to prurience and indecency is only a
step. We shall never secure decency in matters of sex until we cease
to treat the subject as different from any other. It follows that we
must not advance dogmas for which there is no evidence, and which most
impartial students question, such as: “After maturity is reached the
ideal social relationship of the sexes is _monogamous_ wedlock, to
which relationship both parties should live in absolute fidelity” (ib.
p. 310). This proposition may or may not be true; at present there is
certainly no evidence sufficient to _prove_ it true. By teaching it as
something unquestionable, we abandon the scientific attitude, and do
what we can to inhibit rational thought upon a most important matter.
So long as this dogmatism persists in teachers, it is not to be hoped
that their pupils will apply reason to any question upon which they
feel strongly. And the only alternative to reason is violence.




CHAPTER XIII

THE NURSERY-SCHOOL


In previous chapters, I have tried to give an outline of what can be
done for the young child in the way of creating the habits which will
give happiness and usefulness in later life. But I have not discussed
the question whether parents are to give this training, or whether
it is to be given in schools designed for the purpose. I think the
arguments in favour of the nursery-school are quite overwhelming--not
only for children whose parents are poor, ignorant, and overworked,
but for all children, or, at the very least, for all children who live
in towns. I believe that the children at Miss Margaret McMillan’s
nursery-school in Deptford get something better than any children of
well-to-do parents can at present obtain. I should like to see the
same system extended to all children, rich and poor alike. But before
discussing any actual nursery-school, let us see what reasons there are
for desiring such an institution.

To begin with, early childhood is of immeasurable importance both
medically and psychologically. These two aspects are very closely
intertwined. For example: fear will make a child breathe badly, and
breathing badly will predispose it to a variety of diseases.[17] Such
interrelations are so numerous that no one can hope to succeed with a
child’s character without some medical knowledge, or with its health
without some psychology. In both directions, most of the knowledge
required is very new, and much of it runs counter to time-honoured
traditions. Take for example the question of discipline. The great
principle in a contest with a child is: do not yield, but do not
punish. The normal parent sometimes yields for the sake of a quiet
life, and sometimes punishes from exasperation; the right method, to
be successful, requires a difficult combination of patience and power
of suggestion. This is a psychological example; fresh air is a medical
example. Given care and wisdom, children profit by constant fresh air,
day and night, with not too much clothing. But if care and wisdom are
absent, the risk of chills from wet or sudden cold cannot be ignored.

Parents cannot be expected to possess the skill or the leisure required
for the new and difficult art of dealing with young children. In
the case of uneducated parents, this is obvious; they do not know
the right methods, and if they were taught them they would remain
unconvinced. I live in an agricultural district by the sea, where
fresh food is easy to obtain, and there are no extremes of heat or
cold; I chose it largely because it is ideal for children’s health.
Yet almost all the children of the farmers, shopkeepers, and so on,
are pasty-faced languid creatures, because they are indulged in food
and disciplined in play. They never go to the beach, because wet feet
are thought dangerous. They wear thick woollen coats out-of-doors even
in the hottest summer weather. If their play is noisy, steps are taken
to make their behaviour “genteel”. But they are allowed to stay up
late, and are given all kinds of unwholesome tit-bits of grown-up food.
Their parents cannot understand why my children have not died of cold
and exposure long ago; but no object lesson will convince them that
their own methods are capable of improvement. They are neither poor
nor lacking in parental affection, but they are obstinately ignorant
owing to bad education. In the case of town parents who are poor and
overworked, the evils are of course far greater.

But even in the case of parents who are highly educated, conscientious,
and not too busy, the children cannot get as much of what they need
as in a nursery-school. First and foremost, they do not get the
companionship of other children of the same age. If the family is
small, as such families usually are, the children may easily get too
much attention from their elders, and may become nervous and precocious
in consequence. Moreover, parents cannot have the experience of
multitudes of children which gives a sure touch. And only the rich can
provide the space and the environment that best suits young children.
Such things, if provided privately for one family of children,
produce pride of possession and a feeling of superiority, which are
extraordinarily harmful morally. For all these reasons, I believe
that even the best parents would do well to send their children to a
suitable school from the age of two onwards, at least for part of the
day--provided such a school existed in their neighbourhood.

There are, at present, two kinds of schools, according to the status
of the parents. There are Froebel schools and Montessori schools for
well-to-do-children, and there are a small number of nursery-schools
for very poor children. Of the latter, the most famous is Miss
McMillan’s, of which the above-mentioned book gives an account which
should be read by every lover of children. I am inclined to think that
no existing school for well-to-do children is as good as hers, partly
because she has larger numbers, partly because she is not troubled by
the fussiness which middle-class snobbery obtrudes upon teachers. She
aims at keeping children, if possible, from one year old till seven,
though the education authorities incline to the view that the children
ought to go to an ordinary elementary school at the age of five.
The children come at eight in the morning, and stay till six in the
evening; they have all their meals in the school. They spend as much as
possible of their time out-of-doors, and indoors they have an abnormal
amount of fresh air. Before a child is admitted, he or she is medically
examined, and if possible cured at the clinic or in the hospital if
not healthy. After admission, the children become and remain healthy
with very few exceptions. There is a large, lovely garden, and a good
deal of the time is spent in playing there. The teaching is broadly on
Montessori lines. After dinner the children all sleep. In spite of the
fact that at night, and on Sundays, they have to be in poverty-stricken
homes, perhaps in cellars with drunken parents, their physique and
intelligence become equal to the best that middle-class children
achieve. Here is Miss McMillan’s account of her seven-year-old pupils:

  They are nearly all tall, straight children. All are straight,
  indeed, if not tall, but the average is a big, well-made child with
  clean skin, bright eyes, and silky hair. He or she is a little
  above the average of the best type of well-to-do child of the upper
  middle class. So much for his or her physique. Mentally he is alert,
  sociable, eager for life and new experience. He can read and spell
  perfectly, or almost perfectly. He writes well and expresses himself
  easily. He speaks good English and also French. He can not only help
  himself, but he or she has for years helped younger children: and
  he can count and measure and design and has had some preparation
  for science. His first years were spent in an atmosphere of love
  and calm and _fun_, and his last two years were full of interesting
  experiences and experiment. He knows about a garden, and has planted
  and watered, and taken care of plants as well as animals. The
  seven-year-old can dance, too, and sing and play many games. Such
  are the children who will soon present themselves in thousands at
  the Junior Schools’ doors. What is to be done with them? I want to
  point out, first of all, that the elementary school teachers’ work
  will be changed by this sudden uprush of clean and strong young life
  from below. Either the Nursery-School will be a paltry thing, that
  is to say a new failure, or else it will soon influence not only
  elementary schools but also the secondary. It will provide a new kind
  of children to be educated, and this must react sooner or later, not
  only on all the schools, but on all our social life, on the kind of
  government and laws framed for the people, and on the relation of our
  nation to other nations.

I do not think these claims exaggerated. The nursery-school, if it
became universal, could, in one generation, remove the profound
differences in education which at present divide the classes, could
produce a population all enjoying the mental and physical development
which is now confined to the most fortunate, and could remove the
terrible dead-weight of disease and stupidity and malevolence which
now makes progress so difficult. Under the Education Act of 1918,
nursery-schools were to have been promoted by Government money;
but when the Geddes Axe descended it was decided that it was more
important to build cruisers and the Singapore Dock for the purpose
of facilitating war with the Japanese. At the present moment, the
Government is spending a million a year to induce people to poison
themselves with preservatives in Canadian butter rather than eat pure
butter from Denmark. To secure this end, our children are condemned to
disease and misery and unawakened intelligence, from which multitudes
could be saved by a million a year spent on nursery-schools. The
mothers now have the vote; will they some day learn to use it for the
good of their children?[18]

Apart from these wider considerations, what has to be realized is that
the right care of young children is highly skilled work, which parents
cannot hope to do satisfactorily, and that it is quite different work
from school-teaching in later years. To quote Miss McMillan again:

  The Nursery child has a fairly good physique. Not only do his
  neighbours in the slums fall far short of him: his “betters” in good
  districts, the middle-class children, of a very good type, fall
  short of him. It is clear that something more than parental love
  and “parental responsibility” are wanted. Rules of thumb have all
  broken down. “Parental love” without knowledge has broken down. Child
  nurture has not broken down. It is very highly skilled work.

As regards the finances:

  A Nursery-School of 100 children can be run to-day at an annual cost
  of £12 per head, and of this sum the parents in the poorest quarters
  can pay one-third. A Nursery-School staffed by students will cost
  more, but the greater part of the increased cost would be paid as
  fees and maintenance of future teachers. An open-air nursery and
  training centre, numbering in all about 100 children and thirty
  students, costs as nearly as makes no difference £2,200 per annum.

One more quotation:

  One great result of the Nursery-School will be that the children
  can get faster through the curriculum of to-day. When they are
  half or two-thirds through the present elementary school life they
  will be ready to go on to more advanced work.... In short, the
  Nursery-School, if it is a _real_ place of nurture, and not merely
  a place where babies are “minded” till they are five, will affect
  our whole educational system very powerfully and very rapidly. It
  will quickly raise the possible level of culture and attainment in
  all schools, beginning with the junior schools. It will prove that
  this welter of disease and misery in which we live, and which makes
  the doctor’s service loom bigger than the teacher’s, can be swept
  away. It will make the heavy walls, the terrible gates, the hard
  playground, the sunless and huge class-room look monstrous, as they
  are. It will give teachers a chance.

The nursery-school occupies an intermediate position between early
training of character and subsequent giving of instruction. It carries
on both at once, and each by the help of the other, with instruction
gradually taking a larger share as the child grows older. It was in
institutions having a similar function that Madame Montessori perfected
her methods. In certain large tenement houses in Rome, a large room
was set apart for the children between three and seven, and Madame
Montessori was put in charge of these “Children’s Houses”.[19] As
in Deptford, the children came from the very poorest section of the
population; as in Deptford, the results showed that early care can
overcome the physical and mental disadvantages of a bad home.

It is remarkable that, ever since the time of Séguin, progress in
educational methods with young children has come from study of idiots
and the feeble-minded, who are, in certain respects, still mentally
infants. I believe the reason for the necessity of this detour was that
the stupidities of mental patients were not regarded as blameworthy,
or as curable by chastisement; no one thought that Dr. Arnold’s recipe
of flogging would cure their “laziness”. Consequently they were
treated scientifically, not angrily; if they failed to understand,
no irate pedagogue stormed at them and told them they ought to be
ashamed of themselves. If people could have brought themselves to take
a scientific instead of a moralizing attitude towards children, they
could have discovered what is now known about the way to educate them
without first having to study the mentally deficient. The conception
of “moral responsibility” is “responsible” for much evil. Imagine two
children, one of whom has the good fortune to be in a nursery-school,
while the other is left to unalleviated slum-life. Is the second
child “morally responsible” if he grows up less admirable than the
first? Are his parents “morally responsible” for the ignorance and
carelessness which makes them unable to educate him? Are the rich
“morally responsible” for the selfishness and stupidity which have been
drilled into them at expensive schools, and which make them prefer
their own foolish luxuries to the creation of a happy community? All
are victims of circumstances; all have had characters warped in infancy
and intelligence stunted at school. No good purpose is served by
choosing to regard them as “morally responsible”, and holding them up
to reprobation because they have been less fortunate than they might
have been.

There is only one road to progress, in education as in other human
affairs, and that is: Science wielded by love. Without science, love
is powerless; without love, science is destructive. All that has been
done to improve the education of little children has been done by
those who loved them; all has been done by those who knew all that
science could teach on the subject. This is one of the benefits we
derive from the higher education of women: in former days, science
and love of children were much less likely to coexist. The power of
moulding young minds which science is placing in our possession is a
very terrible power, capable of deadly misuse; if it falls into the
wrong hands, it may produce a world even more ruthless and cruel than
the haphazard world of nature. Children may be taught to be bigoted,
bellicose, and brutal, under the pretence that they are being taught
religion, patriotism, and courage, or communism, proletarianism, and
revolutionary ardour. The teaching must be inspired by love, and must
aim at creating love in the children. If not, it will become more
efficiently harmful with every improvement in scientific technique.
Love for children exists in the community as an effective force; this
is shown by the lowering of the infant death-rate and the improvement
of education. It is still far too weak, or our politicians would not
dare to sacrifice the life and happiness of innumerable children to
their nefarious schemes of bloodshed and oppression; but it exists and
is increasing. Other forms of love, however, are strangely lacking.
The very individuals who lavish care on children cherish passions
which expose those same children, in later life, to death in wars
which are mere collective insanities. Is it too much to hope that love
may gradually be extended from the child to the man he will become?
Will the lovers of children learn to follow their later years with
something of the same parental solicitude? Having given them strong
bodies and vigorous minds, shall we let them use their strength and
vigour to create a better world? Or, when they turn to this work, shall
we recoil in terror, and plunge them back into slavery and drill?
Science is ready for either alternative; the choice is between love and
hate, though hate is disguised beneath all the fine phrases to which
professional moralists do homage.




PART III

INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION




CHAPTER XIV

GENERAL PRINCIPLES


The building up of character, which has been our theme hitherto, should
be mainly a matter for the earlier years. If rightly conducted, it
ought to be nearly complete by the age of six. I do not mean that a
character cannot be spoilt after that age; there is no age at which
untoward circumstances or environment will not do harm. What I mean is
that, after the age of six, a boy or girl who has been given the right
early training ought to have habits and desires which will lead in the
right direction if a certain care is taken with the environment. A
school composed of boys and girls rightly brought up during their first
six years will constitute a good environment, given a modicum of good
sense in the authorities; it ought not to be necessary to give much
time or thought to moral questions, since such further virtues as are
required ought to result naturally from purely intellectual training. I
do not mean to assert this pedantically as an absolute rule, but as a
principle guiding school authorities as regards the matters upon which
they ought to lay emphasis. I am convinced that, if children up to
the age of six have been properly handled, it is best that the school
authorities should lay stress upon purely intellectual progress, and
should rely upon this to produce the further development of character
which is still desirable.

It is a bad thing for intelligence, and ultimately for character, to
let instruction be influenced by moral considerations. It should not
be thought that some knowledge is harmful and some ignorance is good.
The knowledge which is imparted should be imparted for an intellectual
purpose, not to prove some moral or political conclusion. The purpose
of the teaching should be, from the pupil’s point of view, partly to
satisfy his curiosity, partly to give him the skill required in order
that he may be able to satisfy his curiosity for himself. From the
teacher’s point of view, there must also be the stimulation of certain
fruitful kinds of curiosity. But there must never be discouragement of
curiosity, even if it takes directions which lie outside the school
curriculum altogether. I do not mean that the curriculum should be
interrupted, but that the curiosity should be regarded as laudable, and
the boy or girl should be told how to satisfy it after school hours, by
means of books in the library for example.

But at this point I shall be met by an argument which must be faced at
the outset. What if a boy’s curiosity is morbid or perverted? What if
he is interested in obscenity or in accounts of tortures? What if he is
only interested in prying into other people’s doings? Are such forms of
curiosity to be encouraged? In answering this question, we must make a
distinction. Most emphatically, we are not to behave so that the boy’s
curiosity shall continue to be limited to these directions. But it does
not follow that we are to make him feel wicked for wishing to know
about such things, or that we are to struggle to keep knowledge of them
away from him. Almost always, the whole attraction of such knowledge
consists in the fact that it is forbidden; in a certain number of
cases, it is connected with some pathological mental condition which
needs medical treatment. But in no case is prohibition and moral horror
the right treatment. As the commonest and most important case, let
us take an interest in obscenity. I do not believe that such a thing
could exist in a boy or girl to whom sex knowledge was just like any
other knowledge. A boy who obtains possession of indecent pictures is
proud of his skill in having done so, and of knowing what his less
enterprising companions have failed to find out. If he had been told
openly and decently all about sex, he would feel no interest in such
pictures. If, nevertheless, a boy were found to have such an interest,
I should have him treated by a doctor skilled in these matters. The
treatment should begin by encouraging him to utter freely even his
most shocking thoughts, and should continue with a flood of further
information, growing gradually more technical and scientific, until
the whole matter bored him to extinction. When he felt that there was
nothing more to know, and that what he did know was uninteresting, he
would be cured. The important point is that the knowledge in itself
is not bad, but only the habit of brooding on one particular topic.
An obsession is not cured, at first, by violent efforts to distract
attention, but rather by a plethora of the subject. Through this, the
interest can be made scientific instead of morbid; and when that has
been achieved, it takes its legitimate place among other interests, and
ceases to be an obsession. This, I am convinced, is the right way to
deal with a narrow and morbid curiosity. Prohibition and moral horror
can only make it worse.

Although improvement of character should not be the aim of instruction,
there are certain qualities which are very desirable, and which are
essential to the successful pursuit of knowledge; they may be called
the intellectual virtues. These should result from intellectual
education; but they should result as needed in learning, not as virtues
pursued for their own sakes. Among such qualities the chief seem to me:
curiosity, open-mindedness, belief that knowledge is possible though
difficult, patience, industry, concentration and exactness. Of these,
curiosity is fundamental; where it is strong and directed to the right
objects, all the rest will follow. But perhaps curiosity is not quite
so active as to be made the basis of the whole intellectual life.
There should always also be a desire to _do_ something difficult; the
knowledge which is acquired should appear in the pupil’s mind as skill,
just like skill in games or gymnastics. It is, I suppose, unavoidable
that the skill should be in part merely that required for artificial
school tasks; but wherever it can be made to appear necessary for
some non-scholastic purpose which appeals to the pupil, something
very important has been accomplished. The divorce of knowledge from
life is regrettable, although, during school years, it is not wholly
avoidable. Where it is hardest to avoid, there should be occasional
talks about the utility of the knowledge in question--taking “utility”
in a very broad sense. Nevertheless, I should allow a large place to
pure curiosity, without which much of the most valuable knowledge (for
instance, pure mathematics) would never have been discovered. There is
much knowledge which seems to me valuable on its own account, quite
apart from any use to which it is capable of being put. And I should
not wish to encourage the young to look too closely for an ulterior
purpose in all knowledge; disinterested curiosity is natural to the
young, and is a very valuable quality. It is only where it fails that
I should appeal to the desire for skill such as can be exhibited in
practice. Each motive has its place, but neither should be allowed to
push the other aside.

I am aware that I have been assuming that some knowledge is desirable
on its own account, not merely on account of its utility. This view
is often challenged. I find it said by Professor O’Shea[20] that in
European and Oriental schools “a person is not regarded as educated,
or at least not cultured, unless he has amassed a considerable body of
knowledge of ancient flavour. But in our country we are rapidly coming
to the view that culture does not depend upon the mere possession of
facts, whether ancient or modern. The cultured individual is one who
has acquired knowledge and skill which make him of service to society,
and habits of conduct which make him agreeable in association with
his fellows.[21] Knowledge which does not function in the life of
the individual in his relations with others, to-day is not regarded
by American teachers as of value for culture any more than for
disciplinary purposes.”

Of course this account of how the Old World regards culture is a
caricature. No one would maintain that _mere_ knowledge of facts
confers culture. But it would be argued that culture implies a certain
freedom from parochialism, both in space and time, and that this
involves a respect for excellence even if it is found in another
country or another age. We are apt to exaggerate our superiority not
only to foreigners, but to the men of former times, and this makes
us contemptuous of everything in which they were better than we are,
which includes the whole æsthetic side of life. And I should say that
culture involves a certain power of contemplation, for thinking or
feeling without rushing headlong into energetic action. This leads
me to a certain hesitation in adopting the theory of what is called
“dynamic” education, which “requires pupils actually to _do_ what they
are learning” (ib. p. 401). Undoubtedly this method is right with
young children, but education is not complete until more abstract
and intellectual methods have become possible. To “do” the nebular
hypothesis or the French Revolution would take a long time, not to
mention danger from the guillotine. A person who has been adequately
educated has learned to extract the meaning from abstractions when
necessary, and to manipulate them as abstractions so long as that will
serve his purpose. A mathematician who had to stop to realize the
meaning of each step in his transformations would never get through
his work; the essential merit of his instrument is that it can be
used without this labour. In higher education, therefore, the dynamic
method seems inadequate. I cannot help thinking that its popularity in
America is partly due to the notion that all excellence consists in
doing, rather than in thinking and feeling. This notion is implicit in
the definition of culture which I quoted just now, and is natural in
a mechanical age, since a machine can only do, and is not expected to
think or feel. But the assimilation of men to machines, whatever may
be thought of it metaphysically, is hardly likely to give us a just
standard of values.

Open-mindedness is a quality which will always exist where desire for
knowledge is genuine. It only fails where other desires have become
entangled with the belief that we already know the truth. That is why
it is so much commoner in youth than in later life. A man’s activities
are almost necessarily bound up with some decision on an intellectually
doubtful matter. A clergyman cannot be disinterested about theology,
nor a soldier about war. A lawyer is bound to hold that criminals
ought to be punished--unless they can afford a leading lawyer’s fee. A
schoolmaster will favour the particular system of education for which
he is fitted by his training and experience. A politician can hardly
help believing in the principles of the party which is most likely to
give him office. When once a man has chosen his career, he cannot be
expected to be perpetually considering whether some other choice might
not have been better. In later life, therefore, open-mindedness has its
limitations, though they ought to be as few as possible. But in youth
there are far fewer of what William James called “forced options”,
and therefore there is less occasion for the “will to believe”. Young
people ought to be encouraged to regard every question as open, and to
be able to throw over any opinion as the result of an argument. It is
implied in this freedom of thought that there should not be complete
freedom of action. A boy must not be free to run off to sea under the
influence of some story of adventure in the Spanish Main. But so long
as his education continues, he should be free to _think_ that it is
better to be a pirate than a professor.

Power of concentration is a very valuable quality, which few people
acquire except through education. It is true that it grows naturally,
to a considerable extent, as young people get older; very young
infants seldom think of any one thing for more than a few minutes, but
with every year that passes their attention grows less volatile until
they are adult. Nevertheless, they are hardly likely to acquire enough
concentration without a long period of intellectual education. There
are three qualities which distinguish perfect concentration: it should
be intense, prolonged, and voluntary. Intensity is illustrated by the
story of Archimedes, who is said to have never noticed when the Romans
captured Syracuse and came to kill him, because he was absorbed in a
mathematical problem. To be able to concentrate on the same matter for
a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement, and even to
the understanding of any complicated or abstruse subject. A profound
spontaneous interest brings this about naturally, so far as the object
of interest is concerned. Most people can concentrate on a mechanical
puzzle for a long time; but this is not in itself very useful. To be
really valuable, the concentration must also be within the control
of the will. By this I mean that, even where some piece of knowledge
is uninteresting in itself, a man can force himself to acquire it if
he has an adequate motive for doing so. I think it is above all the
control of attention by the will that is conferred by higher education.
In this one respect, an old-fashioned education is admirable; I
doubt whether modern methods are as successful in teaching a man to
endure voluntary boredom. However, if this defect does exist in modern
educational practice, it is by no means irremediable. The matter is one
to which I shall return later.

Patience and industry ought to result from a good education. It was
formerly thought that they could only be secured, in most cases, by the
enforcement of good habits imposed by external authority. Undoubtedly
this method has some success, as may be seen when a horse is broken
in. But I think it is better to stimulate the ambition required for
overcoming difficulties, which can be done by grading the difficulties
so that the pleasure of success may at first be won fairly easily.
This gives experience of the rewards of persistence, and gradually
the amount of persistence required can be increased. Exactly similar
remarks apply to the belief that knowledge is difficult but not
impossible, which is best generated by inducing the pupil to solve a
series of carefully graded problems.

Exactness, like the voluntary control of attention, is a matter
to which educational reformers perhaps tend to attach too little
importance. Dr. Ballard (_op. cit._ Chap. XVI) states definitely that
our elementary schools, in this respect, are not so good as they were,
although in most respects they are vastly improved. He says: “There
is in existence a large number of tests given to school-children in
the annual examinations of the ’eighties and early ’nineties, and the
results of those tests were scheduled for purposes of grant.[22] When
those same tests are set to-day to children of the same age the results
are palpably and consistently worse. Account for it as we may, there
can be no doubt whatever about the fact. Taken as a whole, the work
done in our schools--our primary schools at least--is less accurate
than it was a quarter of a century ago.” Dr. Ballard’s whole discussion
of this subject is so excellent that I have little to add to it. I
will, however, quote his concluding words: “After all deductions have
been made, it [accuracy] is still a noble and inspiring ideal. It is
the morality of the intellect: it prescribes what it ought to strive
for in the pursuit of its own proper ideal. For the extent to which we
are accurate in our thoughts, words, and deeds is a rough measure of
our fealty to truth.”

The difficulty which is felt by the advocate of modern methods is
that accuracy, as hitherto taught, involves boredom, and that it is
an immense gain if education can be made interesting. Here, however,
we must make a distinction. Boredom merely imposed by the teacher
is wholly bad; boredom voluntarily endured by the pupil in order to
satisfy some ambition is valuable if not overdone. It should be part
of education to fire pupils with desires not easily gratified--to know
the calculus, to read Homer, to perform well on the violin, or what
not. Each of these involves its own kind of accuracy. Able boys and
girls will go through endless tedium and submit willingly to severe
discipline in order to acquire some coveted knowledge or skill. Those
who have less native ability can often be fired by similar ambitions
if they are inspiringly taught. The driving force in education should
be the pupil’s wish to learn, not the master’s authority; but it does
not follow that education should be soft and easy and pleasant at
every stage. This applies, in particular, to the question of accuracy.
The acquisition of exact knowledge is apt to be wearisome, but it
is essential to every kind of excellence, and this fact can be made
obvious to a child by suitable methods. In so far as modern methods
fail in this respect, they are at fault. In this matter, as in many
others, reaction against the old bad forms of discipline has tended to
an undue laxity, which will have to give place to a new discipline,
more internal and psychological than the old external authority. Of
this new discipline, accuracy will be the intellectual expression.

There are various kinds of accuracy, each of which has its own
importance. To take the main kinds: There is muscular accuracy,
æsthetic accuracy, accuracy as to matter-of-fact, and logical accuracy.
Every boy or girl can appreciate the importance of muscular accuracy
in many directions; it is required for the control of the body which a
healthy child spends all its spare time in acquiring, and afterwards
for the games upon which prestige depends. But it has other forms
which have more to do with school-teaching, such as well-articulated
speech, good writing, and correct performance on a musical instrument.
A child will think these things important or unimportant according
to his environment. Æsthetic accuracy is difficult to define; it
has to do with the appropriateness of a sensible stimulus for the
production of emotion. One way of teaching an important form of it is
to cause children to learn poetry by heart--_e.g._, Shakespeare, for
purposes of acting--and to make them feel, when they make mistakes,
why the original is better. I believe it would be found that, where
æsthetic sensibility is wide-spread, children are taught conventional
stereotyped performances, such as dances and songs, which they enjoy,
but which must be done exactly right on account of tradition. This
makes them sensitive to small differences, which is essential to
accuracy. Acting, singing, and dancing seem to me the best methods of
teaching æsthetic precision. Drawing is less good, because it is likely
to be judged by its fidelity to the model, not by æsthetic standards.
It is true that stereotyped performances also are expected to reproduce
a model, but it is a model created by æsthetic motives; it is copied
because it is good, not because copying is good.

Accuracy as to matter-of-fact is intolerably boring when pursued on its
own account. Learning the dates of the kings of England, or the names
of the counties and their capitals, used to be one of the terrors of
childhood. It is better to secure accuracy by interest and repetition.
I could never remember the list of capes, but at eight years old I knew
almost all the stations on the Underground. If children were shown a
cinema representing a ship sailing round the coast, they would soon
know the capes. I don’t think they are worth knowing, but if they
were, that would be the way to teach them. All geography ought to be
taught on the cinema; so ought history at first. The initial expense
would be great, but not too great for governments. And there would be a
subsequent economy in ease of teaching.

Logical accuracy is a late acquisition, and should not be forced upon
young children. Getting the multiplication table right is, of course,
accuracy as to matter-of-fact; it only becomes logical accuracy at a
much later stage. Mathematics is the natural vehicle for this teaching,
but it fails if allowed to appear as a set of arbitrary rules. Rules
must be learnt, but at some stage the reasons for them must be made
clear; if this is not done, mathematics has little educative value.

I come now to a question which has already arisen in connection with
exactness, the question, namely, how far it is possible or desirable
to make all instruction interesting. The old view was that a great
deal of it must be dull, and that only stern authority will induce the
average boy to persist. (The average girl was to remain ignorant.) The
modern view is that it can be made delightful through and through. I
have much more sympathy with the modern view than with the old one;
nevertheless, I think it is subject to some limitations, especially in
higher education. I shall begin with what I think true in it.

Modern writers on infant psychology all emphasize the importance of not
urging a young child to eat or sleep: these things ought to be done
spontaneously by the child, not as a result of coaxing or forcing. My
own experience entirely bears out this teaching. At first, we did not
know the newer teaching, and tried the older methods. They were very
unsuccessful, whereas the modern methods succeeded perfectly. It must
not be supposed, however, that the modern parent does nothing about
eating and sleeping; on the contrary, everything possible is done to
promote the formation of good habits. Meals come at regular times, and
the child must sit through them without games whether he eats or not.
Bed comes at regular times, and the child must lie down in bed. He may
have a toy animal to hug, but not one that squeaks or runs or does
anything exciting. If the animal is a favourite, one may play the game
that the animal is tired and the child must put it to sleep. Then leave
the child alone, and sleep will usually come very quickly. But never
let the child think you are anxious he should sleep or eat. That at
once makes him think you are asking a favour; this gives him a sense of
power, which leads him to demand more and more coaxing or punishment.
He should eat and sleep because he wants to, not to please you.

This psychology is obviously applicable in great measure to
instruction. If you insist upon teaching a child, he will conclude that
he is being asked to do something disagreeable to please you, and he
will have a psychological resistance. If this exists at the start, it
will perpetuate itself; at a later age, the desirability of getting
through examinations may become evident, and there will be work for
that purpose, but none from sheer interest in knowledge. If, on the
contrary, you can first stimulate the child’s desire to know, and then,
as a favour, give him the knowledge he wants, the whole situation
is different. Very much less external discipline is required, and
attention is secured without difficulty. To succeed in this method,
certain conditions are necessary, which Madame Montessori successfully
produces among the very young. The tasks must be attractive and not
too difficult. There must, at first, be the example of other children
at a slightly more advanced stage. There must be no other obviously
pleasant occupation open to the child at the moment. There are a number
of things the child may do, and he works by himself at whichever he
prefers. Almost all children are perfectly happy in this régime, and
learn to read and write without pressure before they are five years old.

How far similar methods can advantageously be applied to older children
is a debatable question. As children grow older, they become responsive
to more remote motives, and it is no longer necessary that every detail
should be interesting in itself. But I think the broad principle that
the impulse to education should come from the pupil can be continued
up to any age. The environment should be such as to stimulate the
impulse, and to make boredom and isolation the alternative to learning.
But any child that preferred this alternative on any occasion should be
allowed to choose it. The principle of individual work can be extended,
though a certain amount of class-work seems indispensable after the
early years. But if external authority is necessary to induce a boy or
girl to learn, unless there is a medical cause, the probability is that
the teacher is at fault or that previous moral training has been bad.
If a child has been properly trained up to the age of five or six, any
good teacher ought to be able to win his interest at later stages.

If this is possible, the advantages are immense. The teacher appears
as the friend of the pupil, not as his enemy. The child learns faster,
because he is co-operating. He learns with less fatigue, because there
is not the constant strain of bringing back a reluctant and bored
attention. And his sense of personal initiative is cultivated instead
of being diminished. On account of these advantages, it seems worth
while to assume that the pupil can be led to learn by the force of his
own desires, without the exercise of compulsion by the teacher. If, in
a small percentage of cases, the method were found to be a failure,
these cases could be isolated and instructed by different methods. But
I believe that, given methods adapted to the child’s intelligence,
there would be very few failures.

For reasons already given in connection with accuracy, I do not believe
that a really thorough education can be made interesting through and
through. However much one may wish to know a subject, some parts of it
are sure to be found dull. But I believe that, given suitable guidance,
a boy or girl can be made to feel the importance of learning the dull
parts, and can be got through them also without compulsion. I should
use the stimulus of praise and blame, applied as the result of good or
bad performance of set tasks. Whether a pupil possesses the necessary
skill should be made as obvious as in games or gymnastics. And the
importance of the dull parts of a subject should be made clear by
the teacher. If all these methods failed, the child would have to be
classified as stupid, and taught separately from children of normal
intelligence, though care must be taken not to let this appear as a
punishment.

Except in very rare cases, the teacher, even at an early age (_i.e._,
after four, say) should not be either parent. Teaching is work
requiring a special type of skill, which can be learnt, but which most
parents have not had the opportunity of learning. The earlier the age
of the pupil, the greater is the pedagogical skill required. And apart
from this, the parent has been in constant contact with the child
before formal education began, so that the child has a set of habits
and expectations towards the parent which are not quite appropriate
towards a teacher. The parent, moreover, is likely to be too eager and
too much interested in his child’s progress. He will be inordinately
pleased by the child’s cleverness and exasperated by his stupidity.
There are the same reasons for not teaching one’s own children as have
led medical men not to treat their own families. But of course I do not
mean that parents should not give such instruction as comes naturally;
I mean only that they are, as a rule, not the best people for formal
school lessons, even when they are well qualified to teach other
people’s children.

Throughout education, from the first day to the last, there should
be a sense of intellectual adventure. The world is full of puzzling
things which can be understood by sufficient effort. The sense of
understanding what had been puzzling is exhilarating and delightful;
every good teacher should be able to give it. Madame Montessori
describes the delight of her children when they find they can write;
I remember a sense almost of intoxication when I first read Newton’s
deduction of Kepler’s Second Law from the law of gravitation. Few joys
are so pure or so useful as this. Initiative and individual work give
the pupil the opportunity of discovery, and thus afford the sense of
mental adventure far more often and more keenly than is possible where
everything is taught in class. Wherever it is possible, let the student
be active rather than passive. This is one of the secrets of making
education a happiness rather than a torment.




CHAPTER XV

THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM BEFORE FOURTEEN


The questions: what should be taught? and how should it be taught?
are intimately connected, because, if better methods of teaching are
devised, it is possible to learn more. In particular, more can be
learnt if the pupils wish to learn than if they regard work as a bore.
I have already said something about methods, and I shall say more in a
later chapter. For the present, I shall assume that the best possible
methods are employed, and I shall consider what ought to be taught.

When we consider what an adult ought to know, we soon realize that
there are things which everybody ought to know, and other things which
it is necessary that some should know, though others need not. Some
must know medicine, but for the bulk of mankind it is sufficient to
have an elementary knowledge of physiology and hygiene. Some must
know higher mathematics, but the bare elements suffice for those to
whom mathematics is distasteful. Some should know how to play the
trombone, but mercifully it is not necessary that every school-child
should practise this instrument. In the main, the things taught at
school before the age of fourteen should be among those that every
one ought to know; apart from exceptional cases, specialization ought
to come later. It should, however, be one of the aims of education
before fourteen to discover special aptitudes in boys and girls, so
that, where they exist, they may be carefully developed in the later
years. For this reason, it is well that everybody should learn the bare
beginnings of subjects which need not be further pursued by those who
are bad at them.

When we have decided what every adult ought to know, we have to decide
the order in which subjects are to be taught; here we shall naturally
be guided by relative difficulty, teaching the easiest subjects first.
To a great extent, these two principles determine the curriculum in the
early school years.

I shall assume that, by the time a child is five years old, he knows
how to read and write. This should be the business of the Montessori
school, or whatever improvement upon it may hereafter be devised.
There, also, the child learns a certain accuracy in sense-perception,
the rudiments of drawing and singing and dancing, and the power to
concentrate upon some educational occupation in the middle of a
number of other children. Of course the child will not be very perfect
in these respects at five years old, and will need further teaching
in all of them for some years to come. I do not think that anything
involving severe mental effort should be undertaken before the age
of seven, but by sufficient skill difficulties can be enormously
diminished. Arithmetic is a bugbear of childhood--I remember weeping
bitterly because I could not learn the multiplication table--but if it
is tackled gradually and carefully, as it is by means of the Montessori
apparatus, there is no need of the sense of blank despair which its
mysteries used to inspire. In the end, however, there must be a good
deal of rather tiresome mastering of rules if sufficient facility is
to be acquired. This is the most awkward of early school subjects
to fit into a curriculum intended to be interesting; nevertheless,
a certain degree of proficiency is necessary for practical reasons.
Also, arithmetic affords the natural introduction to accuracy: the
answer to a sum is either right or wrong, and never “interesting” or
“suggestive”. This makes arithmetic important as one element in early
education, quite apart from its practical utility. But its difficulties
should be carefully graded and spread out thin; not too much time at a
stretch should be devoted to them.

Geography and history were, when I was young, among the worst taught
of all subjects. I dreaded the geography lesson, and if I tolerated
the history lesson it was only because I have always had a passion
for history. Both subjects might be made fascinating to quite young
children. My little boy, though he has never had a lesson, already
knows far more geography than his nurse. He has acquired his knowledge
through the love of trains and steamers which he shares with all boys.
He wants to know of journeys that his imaginary steamers are to make,
and he listens with the closest attention while I tell him the stages
of the journey to China. Then, if he wishes it, I show him pictures of
the various countries on the way. Sometimes he insists upon pulling
out the big Atlas and looking at the journey on the map. The journey
between London and Cornwall in the train, which he makes twice a year,
interests him passionately, and he knows all the stations where the
train stops or where carriages are slipped. He is fascinated by the
North Pole and the South Pole, and puzzled because there is no East
Pole or West Pole. He knows the directions of France and Spain and
America over the sea, and a good deal about what is to be seen in those
countries. None of this has come by way of instruction, but all in
response to an eager curiosity. Almost every child becomes interested
in geography as soon as it is associated with the idea of travel. I
should teach geography partly by pictures and tales about travellers,
but mainly by the cinema, showing what the traveller sees on his
journey. The knowledge of geographical facts is useful, but without
intrinsic intellectual value; when, however, geography is made vivid
by pictures, it has the merit of giving food for imagination. It is
good to know that there are hot countries and cold countries, flat
countries and mountainous countries, black men, yellow men, brown men,
and red men, as well as white men. This kind of knowledge diminishes
the tyranny of familiar surroundings over the imagination, and makes it
possible in later life to _feel_ that distant countries really exist,
which otherwise is very difficult except by travelling. For these
reasons, I should give geography a large place in the teaching of very
young children, and I should be astonished if they did not enjoy the
subject. Later on, I should give them books with pictures, maps, and
elementary information about different parts of the world, and get
them to put together little essays about the peculiarities of various
countries.

What applies to geography applies even more strongly to history,
though at a slightly more advanced age, because the sense of time is
rudimentary at first. I think history can profitably be begun at about
five years old, at first with interesting stories of eminent men,
abundantly illustrated. I myself had, at that age, a picture-history
of England. Queen Matilda crossing the Thames at Abingdon on the ice
made such a profound impression upon me that I still felt thrilled
when I did the same thing at the age of eighteen, and quite imagined
that King Stephen was after me. I believe hardly any boy of five years
old would fail to be interested by the life of Alexander. Columbus
perhaps belongs more to geography than to history; I can testify that
he becomes interesting before the age of two, at least to children who
know the sea. By the time a child is six years old, he ought to be ripe
for an outline of world history, treated more or less on Mr. Wells’s
or Mr. Van Loon’s lines, with the necessary simplifications, and with
pictures, or the cinema if possible. If he lives in London, he can see
the strange beasts in the Natural History Museum; but I should not
take him to the British Museum before the age of ten or thereabouts.
It is necessary to be careful, in teaching history, not to obtrude
aspects which are interesting to us until the child is ripe for them.
The two aspects which are first interesting are: the general pageant
and procession, from geology to man, from savage man to civilized man,
and so on; and the dramatic story-telling interest of incidents which
have a sympathetic hero. But I think we should keep in our own minds,
as a guiding thread, the conception of gradual chequered progress,
perpetually hampered by the savagery which we inherit from the brutes,
and yet gradually leading on towards mastery of ourselves and our
environment through knowledge. The conception is that of the human
race as a whole, fighting against chaos without and darkness within,
the little tiny lamp of reason growing gradually into a great light
by which the night is dispelled. The divisions between races, nations
and creeds should be treated as follies, distracting us in the battle
against Chaos and Old Night, which is our one truly human activity.

I should give first the illustrations of this theme, and only
afterwards, if ever, the theme itself. I should show savage man
cowering in the cold, gnawing the raw fruits of the earth. I should
show the discovery of fire, and its effects; in this connection, the
story of Prometheus would be in place. I should show the beginnings
of agriculture in the Nile Valley, and the domestication of sheep
and cows and dogs. I should show the growth of ships from canoes
to the largest liners, and the growth of cities from colonies of
cave-dwellers to London and New York. I should show the gradual
growth of writing and of numerals. I should show the brief gleam of
Greece, the diffused magnificence of Rome, the subsequent darkness,
and the coming of science. The whole of this could be made interesting
in detail even to very young children. I should not keep silence
about wars and persecutions and cruelties, but I should not hold
up military conquerors to admiration. The true conquerors, in my
teaching of history, should be those who did something to dispel the
darkness within and without--Buddha and Socrates, Archimedes, Galileo
and Newton, and all the men who have helped to give us mastery over
ourselves or over nature. And so I should build up the conception of a
lordly splendid destiny for the human race, to which we are false when
we revert to wars and other atavistic follies, and true only when we
put into the world something that adds to our human dominion.

In the early years at school, there should be a time set apart for
dancing, which is good for the body and a training for the æsthetic
sense, besides being a great pleasure to the children. Collective
dances should be taught after the elements have been learnt; this is a
form of co-operation which young children easily appreciate. Similar
remarks apply to singing, though it should begin a little later than
dancing, both because it does not afford the same muscular delight, and
because its rudiments are more difficult. Most children, though not
all, will enjoy singing, and after nursery rhymes they should learn
really beautiful songs. There is no reason to corrupt their taste
first and try to purify it afterwards. At the best, this makes people
precious. Children, like adults, differ enormously in musical capacity,
so that the more difficult singing classes would have to be reserved
for a selection among the older children. And among them singing ought
to be voluntary, not enforced.

The teaching of literature is a matter as to which it is easy to make
mistakes. There is not the slightest use, either for young or old, in
being well-informed _about_ literature, knowing the dates of the poets,
the names of their works, and so on. Everything that can be put into
a handbook is worthless. What is valuable is great familiarity with
certain examples of good literature--such familiarity as will influence
the style, not only of writing, but of thought. In old days the Bible
supplied this to English children, certainly with a beneficial effect
upon prose style; but few modern children know the Bible intimately.
I think the good effect of literature cannot be fully obtained without
learning by heart. This practice used to be advocated as a training for
the memory, but psychologists have shown that it has little, if any,
effect in this way. Modern educationists give it less and less place.
But I think they are mistaken, not because of any possible improvement
of memory, but on account of the effect upon beauty of language in
speech and writing. This should come without effort, as a spontaneous
expression of thought; but in order to do so, in a community which has
lost the primitive æsthetic impulses, it is necessary to produce a
habit of thought which I believe is only to be generated by intimate
knowledge of good literature. That is why learning by heart seems to me
important.

But mere learning of set pieces, such as “the quality of mercy” and
“all the world’s a stage”, seems tedious and artificial to most
children, and therefore fails of its purpose. It is much better that
learning by heart should be associated with acting, because then it
is a necessary means to something which every child loves. From the
age of three onwards, children delight in acting a part; they do it
spontaneously, but are overjoyed when more elaborate ways of doing it
are put in their way. I remember the exquisite amusement with which I
acted the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, and declaimed:

  I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
  Than such a Roman.

Children who take part in performing _Julius Cæsar_ or _The Merchant
of Venice_ or any other suitable play will not only know their own
parts, but most of the other parts as well. The play will be in their
thoughts for a long time, and all by way of enjoyment. After all, good
literature is intended to give pleasure, and if children cannot be got
to derive pleasure from it they are hardly likely to derive benefit
either. For these reasons, I should confine the teaching of literature,
in early years, to the learning of parts for acting. The rest should
consist of voluntary reading of well-written stories, obtainable in
the school library. People nowadays write silly sentimental stuff for
children, which insults them by not taking them seriously. Contrast
the intense seriousness of “Robinson Crusoe”. Sentimentality, in
dealing with children and elsewhere, is a failure of dramatic sympathy.
No child thinks it charming to be childish; he wants, as soon as
possible, to learn to behave like a grown-up person. Therefore a book
for children ought never to display a patronizing pleasure in childish
ways. The artificial silliness of many modern children’s books is
disgusting. It must either annoy a child, or puzzle and confuse his
impulse towards mental growth. For this reason, the best books for
children are those that happen to suit them, though written for
grown-up people. The only exceptions are books written for children but
delightful also to grown-up people, such as Lear and Lewis Carroll.

The question of modern languages is one which is not altogether easy.
In childhood it is possible to learn to speak a modern language
perfectly, which can never be achieved in later years; there are
therefore strong grounds for teaching languages at an early age, if
at all. Some people seem to fear that knowledge of one’s own language
suffers if others are learnt too soon. I do not believe this. Tolstoy
and Turgenev were quite competent in Russian, though they learnt
English, French and German in infancy. Gibbon could write in French
as easily as in English, but this did not spoil his English style.
All through the eighteenth century, all English aristocrats learnt
French in early youth as a matter of course, and many also learnt
Italian; yet their English was vastly better than that of their modern
descendants. A child’s dramatic instinct prevents it from confusing one
language with another, provided it speaks them to different people. I
learnt German at the same time as English, and spoke it to nurses and
governesses up to the age of ten; then I learnt French, and spoke it
to governesses and tutors. Neither language ever confused itself with
English, because it had different personal associations. I think that
if a modern language is to be taught, it should be taught by a person
whose native language it is, not only because it will be better taught,
but because children feel less artificiality in talking a foreign
language to a foreigner than in talking it to a person whose natural
language is the same as their own. I think, therefore, that every
school for children ought to have a French mistress, and if possible a
German mistress too, who should not formally instruct the children in
her language, except quite at first, but should play games with them
and talk to them, and make the success of the games depend upon their
understanding and answering. She could start with _Frère Jacques_ and
_Sur le pont d’Avignon_, and go on gradually to more complicated games.
In this way the language could be acquired without any mental fatigue,
and with all the pleasure of play-acting. And it can be acquired then
far more perfectly and with less waste of valuable educational time
than at any subsequent period.

The teaching of mathematics and science can only be begun towards
the end of the years that we are considering in this chapter--say at
the age of twelve. Of course I assume that arithmetic has already
been taught, and that there have been popular talks about astronomy
and geology, about prehistoric animals, famous explorers, and such
naturally interesting matters. But I am thinking now of formal
teaching--geometry and algebra, physics and chemistry. A few boys and
girls like geometry and algebra, but the great majority do not. I
doubt if this is wholly due to faulty methods of teaching. A sense for
mathematics, like musical capacity, is mainly a gift of the gods, and I
believe it to be quite rare, even in a moderate degree. Nevertheless,
every boy and girl should have a taste of mathematics, in order to
discover those who have a talent for it. Also, even those who learn
little profit by the knowledge that there is such a subject. And by
good methods almost everybody can be made to understand the elements
of geometry. Of algebra I cannot say the same; it is more abstract
than geometry, and essentially unintelligible to those whose minds are
incapable of detachment from the concrete. A taste for physics and
chemistry, properly taught, would probably be found to be less rare
than a taste for mathematics, though still existing only in a minority
of young people. Both mathematics and science, in the years from
twelve to fourteen, ought only to be pursued to the point at which it
becomes clear whether a boy or girl has any aptitude for them. This,
of course, is not immediately evident. I loathed algebra at first,
although afterwards I had some facility in it. In some cases, it would
still be doubtful at the age of fourteen whether there was ability or
not. In these cases, tentative methods would have to be continued for
a while. But in most cases a decision could be made at fourteen. Some
would definitely like the subjects and be good at them, others would
dislike them and be bad at them. It would very seldom happen that a
clever pupil disliked them or a stupid pupil liked them.

What has been said about mathematics and science applies equally to
the classics. Between twelve and fourteen, I should give just so much
instruction in Latin as would suffice to show which boys and girls
had a love of the subject and facility for it. I am assuming that
at fourteen education should begin to be more or less specialized,
according to the tastes and aptitudes of the pupil. The last years
before this moment arrives should be spent in finding out what it will
be best to teach in subsequent years.

All through the school years, education in outdoor things should
continue. In the case of well-to-do children, this can be left to the
parents, but with other children it will have to be partly the business
of the school. When I speak of education in outdoor things, I am not
thinking of games. They, of course, have their importance, which is
sufficiently recognized; but I am thinking of something different:
knowledge of agricultural processes, familiarity with animals and
plants, gardening, habits of observation in the country, and so on.
I have been amazed to discover that town-bred people seldom know
the points of the compass, never know which way the sun goes round,
cannot find out which side of the house is out of the wind, and are
generally destitute of knowledge which every cow or sheep possesses.
This is the result of life exclusively in towns. Perhaps I shall be
thought fanciful if I say that it is one reason why the labour party
cannot win rural constituencies. But it certainly is the reason why
town-bred people are so utterly divorced from everything primitive
and fundamental. It has to do with something trivial and superficial
and frivolous in their attitude to life--not of course always, but
very often. The seasons and the weather, sowing and harvest, crops and
flocks and herds, have a certain human importance, and ought to be
intimate and familiar to everybody if the divorce from mother earth is
not to be too complete. All this knowledge can be acquired by children
in the course of activities which are of immense value to health,
and deserve to be undertaken for that reason alone. And the pleasure
of town children in the country shows that a profound need is being
satisfied. So long as it is not satisfied, our educational system is
incomplete.




CHAPTER XVI

LAST SCHOOL YEARS


After the summer holidays in the fifteenth year, I shall assume that a
boy or girl who so desires is allowed to specialize, and that this will
be done in a large proportion of cases. But where there is no definite
preference, it will be better to prolong an all-round education. And
in exceptional cases specializing may begin earlier. All rules, in
education, should be capable of being broken for special reasons. But I
think that, as a general rule, pupils of more than average intelligence
should begin to specialize at about fourteen, while pupils of less than
average intelligence should usually not specialize at all at school,
unless in the way of vocational training. I am refraining, in this
book, from saying anything on this subject. But I do not believe that
it ought to begin before fourteen, and I do not think that, even then,
it ought to take up the whole of the school time of any pupil. I do
not propose to discuss how much time it should take up, or whether it
should be given to all pupils or only to some. These questions raise
economic and political issues which are only indirectly connected with
education, and which cannot be discussed briefly. I therefore confine
myself to the scholastic education in the years after fourteen.

I should make three broad divisions in school: (1) classics, (2)
mathematics and science, (3) modern humanities. This last should
include modern languages, history, and literature. In each division it
might be possible to specialize somewhat more before leaving school,
which I shall suppose does not occur before eighteen. Obviously all
who take classics must do both Latin and Greek, but some may do more
of the one, and some more of the other. Mathematics and science should
go together at first, but in some sciences it is possible to achieve
eminence without much mathematics, and in fact many eminent men of
science have been bad mathematicians. I should, therefore, at the
age of sixteen, allow a boy or girl to specialize in science or to
specialize in mathematics, without entirely neglecting the branch not
chosen. Similar remarks apply to modern humanities.

Certain subjects, of great utilitarian importance, would have to be
taught to everybody. Among these, I should include anatomy, physiology
and hygiene, to the extent that is likely to be required in adult daily
life. But perhaps these subjects ought to come at an earlier stage,
since they are naturally connected with sex education, which ought to
be given, as far as possible, before puberty. The objection to putting
them very early is that they ought not to be forgotten before they are
needed. I think the only solution is to give them twice over, once,
very simply and in bare outline, before puberty, and again later in
connection with elementary knowledge about health and disease. I should
say that every pupil ought to know something also about Parliament and
the Constitution, but care must be taken to prevent teaching on this
subject from degenerating into political propaganda.

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of
teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given. As to this,
the main problem is to make the work interesting without making it too
easy. Exact and detailed study should be supplemented by books and
lectures on general aspects of the studies concerned. Before sitting
down to a Greek play, I would have the students read a translation, by
Gilbert Murray or some other translator with a poetic gift. Mathematics
should be diversified by an occasional lecture on the history of
mathematical discovery, and on the influence of this or that piece of
mathematics upon science and daily life, with hints of the delightful
things to be found in higher mathematics. Similarly the detailed study
of history should be supplemented by brilliant outlines, even if they
contained questionable generalizations. The students might be told
that the generalizations are doubtful, and be invited to consider
their detailed knowledge as supporting or refuting them. In science,
it is good to read popular books which give an _aperçu_ of recent
research, in order to have some idea of the general scientific purpose
served by particular facts and laws. All these things are useful as
incentives to exact and minute study, but are pernicious if they are
treated as substitutes for it. Pupils must not be encouraged to think
that there are short cuts to knowledge. This is a real danger in
modern education, owing to the reaction against the old severe drill.
The mental work involved in the drill was good; what was bad was the
killing of intellectual interests. We must try to secure the hard work,
but by other methods than those of the old disciplinarian. I do not
believe this is impossible. One finds in America that men who were idle
as undergraduates work hard in the law school or the medical school,
because at last they are doing work which strikes them as important.
That is the essence of the matter: make the school work seem important
to the pupils, and they will work hard. But if you make the work too
easy, they will know, almost by instinct, that you are not giving
them what is really worth having. Clever boys and girls like to test
their minds on difficulties. With good teaching and the elimination of
fear, very many boys and girls would be clever who now seem stupid and
lethargic.

All through education, initiative should come from the pupil as far as
possible. Madame Montessori has shown how this can be done with very
young children, but with older children different methods are required.
It is, I think, generally recognized by progressive educationists that
there should be much more individual work and much less class-work
than has been customary, though the individual work should be done in
a room full of other boys and girls similarly engaged. Libraries and
laboratories should be adequate and roomy. A considerable part of the
working day should be set apart for voluntary self-directed study, but
the pupil should write an account of what he or she is studying, with
an abstract of any information acquired. This helps to fix things in
the memory, to make reading have a purpose instead of being desultory,
and to give the teacher just that amount of control which may be
necessary in each case. The cleverer the pupil, the less control is
required. With those who are not very clever it will be necessary to
give a great deal of guidance; but even with them it should be by way
of suggestion, inquiry, and stimulus rather than by command. There
should, however, also be set themes, giving practice in ascertaining
the facts about some prescribed subject, and in presenting them in an
orderly manner.

In addition to regular work, boys and girls ought to be encouraged to
take an interest in current controversial questions of importance,
political, social, and even theological. They should be encouraged to
read all sides in such controversies, not only the orthodox side. If
any of them have strong feelings on one side or the other, they should
be told how to find out facts which support their view, and should be
set to debate with those who hold the opposite view. Debates, conducted
seriously with a view to ascertaining the truth, could be of great
value. In these, the teacher should learn not to take sides, even if he
or she has strong convictions. If almost all the pupils take one side,
the teacher should take the other, saying that it is only for purposes
of argument. Otherwise, his part should be confined to correcting
mistakes as to facts. By such means, the pupils could learn discussion
as a means of ascertaining truth, not as a contest for rhetorical
victory.

If I were at the head of a school for older boys and girls, I should
consider it equally undesirable to shirk current questions and to do
propaganda about them. It is a good thing to make pupils feel that
their education is fitting them to cope with matters about which the
world is excited; it gives them a sense that scholastic teaching is
not divorced from the practical world. But I should not urge my own
views upon the pupils. What I should do is to put before them the ideal
of a scientific attitude to practical questions. I should expect them
to produce arguments that are arguments, and facts that are facts. In
politics, especially, this habit is as rare as it is valuable. Every
vehement political party generates a cocoon of myth, within which its
mentality peacefully slumbers. Passion, too often, kills intellect;
in intellectuals, on the contrary, intellect not infrequently kills
passion. My aim would be to avoid both these misfortunes. Passionate
feeling is desirable, provided it is not destructive; intellect is
desirable, with the same proviso. I should wish the fundamental
political passions to be constructive, and I should try to make the
intellect serve these passions. But it must serve them genuinely,
objectively, not only in the world of dreams. When the real world is
not sufficiently flattering we all tend to take refuge in an imaginary
world, where our desires are gratified without great effort. This
is the essence of hysteria. It is also the source of nationalist,
theological, and class myths. It shows a weakness of character which
is almost universal in the present world. To combat this weakness
of character should be one of the aims of later school education.
There are two ways of combating it, both necessary, though in a sense
opposites. The one is to increase our sense of what we can achieve in
the world of reality; the other is to make us more sensitive to what
reality can do in the way of dispelling our dreams. Both are comprised
in the principle of living objectively rather than subjectively.

The classic example of subjectivity is Don Quixote. The first time he
made a helmet, he tested its capacity for resisting blows, and battered
it out of shape; next time he did not test it, but “deemed” it to be
a very good helmet. This habit of “deeming” dominated his life. But
every refusal to face unpleasant facts is of the same kind: we are all
Don Quixotes more or less. Don Quixote would not have done as he did
if he had been taught at school to make a really good helmet, and if
he had been surrounded by companions who refused to “deem” whatever he
wished to believe. The habit of living in fancies is normal and right
in early childhood, because young children have an impotence which
is not pathological. But as adult life approaches, there must be a
more and more vivid realization that dreams are only valuable in so
far as they can be translated, sooner or later, into fact. Boys are
admirable in correcting the purely personal claims of other boys; in
a school, it is difficult to cherish illusions as to one’s power in
relation to schoolfellows. But the myth-making faculty remains active
in other directions, often with the co-operation of the masters. One’s
own school is the best in the world; one’s country is always right and
always victorious; one’s social class (if one is rich) is better than
any other class. All these are undesirable myths. They lead us to deem
that we have a good helmet, when in fact some one else’s sword could
cut it in two. In this way they promote laziness and lead ultimately to
disaster.

To cure this habit of mind, it is necessary, as in many other cases,
to replace fear by rational prevision of misfortune. Fear makes people
unwilling to face real dangers. A person afflicted with subjectivity,
if awakened in the middle of the night by the cry of “fire”, might
decide that it must be his neighbour’s house, since the truth would be
too terrifying; he might thus lose the moment when escape was still
possible. This, of course, could only occur in a pathological case; but
in politics the analogous behaviour is normal. Fear, as an emotion, is
disastrous in all cases where the right course can only be discovered
by thinking; we want, therefore, to be able to foresee possibilities of
evil without feeling fear, and to use our intelligence for the purpose
of avoiding what is not inevitable. Evils which are really inevitable
have to be treated with sheer courage; but it is not of them that I am
speaking.

I do not want to repeat what I said about fear in a former chapter;
I am concerned with it now only in the intellectual sphere, as an
obstacle to truthful thinking. In this sphere, it is much easier to
overcome in youth than in later life, because a change of opinion is
less likely to bring grave misfortune to a boy or girl than to an
adult, whose life is built upon certain postulates. For this reason,
I should encourage a habit of intelligent controversy among the older
boys and girls, and I should place no obstacles in their way even if
they questioned what I regarded as important truths. I should make it
my object to teach thinking, not orthodoxy, or even heterodoxy. And I
should absolutely never sacrifice intellect to the fancied interest
of morals. It is generally held that the teaching of virtue demands
the inculcation of falsehood. In politics, we conceal the vices of
eminent statesmen of our own party. In theology, we conceal the sins
of Popes if we are Catholics, and the sins of Luther and Calvin if we
are Protestants. In matters of sex, we pretend before young people that
virtue is much commoner than it is. In all countries, even adults are
not allowed to know certain kinds of facts which the police consider
undesirable, and the censor, in England, does not allow plays to be
true to life, since he holds that the public can only be cajoled into
virtue by deceit. This whole attitude implies a certain feebleness.
Let us know the truth, whatever it is; then we can act rationally.
The holders of power wish to conceal the truth from their slaves,
in order that they may be misled as to their own interests; this is
intelligible. What is less intelligible is that democracies should
voluntarily make laws designed to prevent themselves from knowing
the truth. This is collective Quixotism: they are resolved not to be
told that the helmet is less good than they wish to believe. Such
an attitude of abject funk is unworthy of free men and women. In my
school, no obstacle to knowledge shall exist of any sort or kind. I
shall seek virtue by the right training of passions and instincts,
not by lying and deceit. In the virtue that I desire, the pursuit
of knowledge, without fear and without limitation, is an essential
element, in the absence of which the rest has little value.

What I am saying is no more than this: that I should cultivate the
scientific spirit. Many eminent men of science do not have this spirit
outside their special province; I should seek to make it all-pervasive.
The scientific spirit demands in the first place a wish to find out
the truth; the more ardent this wish, the better. It involves, in
addition, certain intellectual qualities. There must be preliminary
uncertainty, and subsequent decision according to the evidence. We must
not imagine in advance that we already know what the evidence will
prove. Nor must we be content with a lazy scepticism, which regards
objective truth as unattainable and all evidence as inconclusive. We
should admit that even our best-founded beliefs probably stand in need
of _some_ correction; but truth, so far as it is humanly attainable,
is a matter of degree. Our beliefs in physics are certainly less false
now than they were before the time of Galileo. Our beliefs as to child
psychology are certainly nearer to the truth than Dr. Arnold’s were.
In each case, the advance has come through substituting observation
for preconceptions and passions. It is for the sake of this step that
preliminary uncertainty is so important. It is necessary, therefore,
to teach this, and also to teach the skill required for marshalling
evidence. In a world where rival propagandists are perpetually blazing
falsehoods at us, to induce us to poison ourselves with pills or each
other with poison gases, this critical habit of mind is enormously
important. Ready credulity in the face of repeated assertions is one of
the curses of the modern world, and schools should do what they can to
guard against it.

Throughout the later school years, even more than earlier, there
should be a sense of intellectual adventure. Pupils should be given
the opportunity of finding out exciting things for themselves after
their set tasks were done, and therefore the set tasks should not be
too heavy. There must be praise whenever it is deserved, and although
mistakes must be pointed out, it should be done without censure.
Pupils should never be made to feel ashamed of their stupidity. The
great stimulus in education is to feel that achievement is possible.
Knowledge which is felt to be boring is of little use, but knowledge
which is assimilated eagerly becomes a permanent possession. Let the
relation of knowledge to real life be very visible to your pupils, and
let them understand how by knowledge the world could be transformed.
Let the teacher appear always the ally of the pupil, not his natural
enemy. Given a good training in the early years, these precepts will
suffice to make the acquisition of knowledge delightful to the great
majority of boys and girls.




CHAPTER XVII

DAY SCHOOLS AND BOARDING SCHOOLS


Whether a boy or girl should be sent to a boarding school or a day
school is, to my mind, a question which must be decided in each case
according to circumstances and temperament. Each system has its own
advantages; in some cases the advantages of one system are greater, in
others those of the other. I propose, in this chapter, to set forth the
kind of arguments which would weigh with me in deciding about my own
children, and which, I imagine, would be likely to weigh with other
conscientious parents.

There are first of all considerations of health. Whatever may be true
of actual schools, it is clear that schools are capable of being
made more scientifically careful in this respect than most homes,
because they can employ doctors and dentists and matrons with the
latest knowledge, whereas busy parents are likely to be comparatively
uninformed medically. Moreover, schools can be put in healthy
neighbourhoods. In the case of people who live in big towns, this
argument alone is very powerful in favour of boarding schools. It is
obviously better for young people to spend most of their life in the
country, so that if their parents have to live in towns it may be
desirable to send the children away for their schooling. This argument
may perhaps cease, before long, to have much validity: the health of
London, for example, is steadily improving, and might be brought up
to the standard of the country by the artificial use of ultra-violet
light. Nevertheless, even if illness could be brought as low as in the
country, a considerable nervous strain would remain. Constant noise is
bad for both children and adults; the sights of the country, the smell
of damp earth, the wind and the stars, ought to be stored in the memory
of every man and woman. I think, therefore, that life in the country
for the greater part of the year will remain important for the young
whatever improvements may be effected in urban health.

Another argument, though a much smaller one, in favour of boarding
schools is that they save the time otherwise spent in going and coming.
Most people do not have a really good day school at their doors, and
the distance to be traversed may be considerable. This argument is
strongest in the country, as the other was strongest for town dwellers.

When it is desired to try any innovation in educational methods, it is
almost inevitable that it should first be tried in a boarding school,
because it is unlikely that the parents who believe in it will all
live within one small area. This does not apply to infants, because
they are not yet wholly in the grip of the education authorities;
consequently Madame Montessori and Miss McMillan were able to try their
experiment upon the very poor. Within the recognized school years, on
the contrary, only the rich are allowed to try experiments with their
children’s education. Most of them, naturally, prefer what is old and
conventional; the few who desire anything else are geographically
widely distributed, and do not anywhere suffice to support a day
school. Such experiments as Bedales are only possible for boarding
schools.

The arguments on the other side are, however, very considerable. In a
school, many aspects of life do not appear: it is an artificial world,
whose problems are not those of the world at large. A boy who is only
at home during the holidays, when everybody makes a fuss over him, is
likely to acquire far less knowledge of life than a boy who is at home
every morning and evening. This is, at present, less true of girls,
because more is demanded of them in many homes; but in proportion as
their education is assimilated to that of boys, their home life also
will become similar, and their present greater knowledge of domestic
affairs will disappear. After fifteen or sixteen, it is good for
boys and girls to have a certain share in parental occupations and
anxieties--not too much, it is true, since that would interfere with
education, but still some, lest they should fail to realize that the
old people have their own life, their own interests, and their own
importance. In the school, only young people count, and it is for them
that everything is done. In holidays, the atmosphere of home is apt
to be dominated by the young people. Consequently they tend to become
arrogant and hard, ignorant of the problems of adult life, and quite
aloof from their parents.

This state of affairs is apt to have a bad effect upon the affections
of young people. Their affection for their parents becomes atrophied,
and they never have to learn to adjust themselves to people whose
tastes and pursuits are different from their own. I think this tends
towards a certain selfish completeness, a feeling of one’s own
personality as something exclusive. The family is the most natural
corrective of this tendency, since it is a unit composed of people of
different ages and sexes, with different functions to perform; it is
organic, in a way which a collection of homogeneous individuals is not.
Parents love their children largely because they give so much trouble;
if parents give no trouble to their children, their children will not
take them seriously. But the trouble they give must be legitimate: it
must be only such as is necessary if they are to do their work and have
any life of their own. Respect for the rights of others is one of the
things young people ought to learn, and it is more easily learnt in
the family than elsewhere. It is good for boys and girls to know that
their father can be harassed by worries and their mother worn out by a
multiplicity of details. And it is good that filial affection should
remain alive during adolescence. A world without family affection
tends to become harsh and mechanical, composed of individuals who
try to domineer, but become cringing if they fail. I fear that these
bad effects are to a certain extent produced by sending children to
boarding schools, and I regard them as sufficiently serious to offset
great advantages.

It is of course true, as modern psychologists insist, that the
excessive influence of father or mother is a very harmful thing. But
I do not believe it is likely to exist where children have gone to
school from the age of two or three, as I have suggested that they
should. Day school from an early age affords, to my mind, the right
compromise between parental domination and parental insignificance. So
far as concerns the set of considerations with which we have just been
occupied, this seems clearly the best course, given a good home.

In the case of sensitive boys, there is a certain risk in leaving
them to the exclusive society of other boys. Boys of about twelve
are, for the most part, at a rather barbarous and insensitive stage.
Quite recently, at a leading English school, there was a case of a
boy suffering grave bodily injury for being sympathetic to the Labour
Party. Boys who differ from the average in their opinions and tastes
are likely to suffer seriously. Even at the most modern and progressive
boarding schools in existence, pro-Boers had a bad time during the
Boer war. Any boy who is fond of reading, or does not dislike his
work, is pretty sure to be ill-treated. In France, the cleverest boys
go to the _Ecole Normale Supérieure_ and do not mix any longer with
the average. This plan certainly has advantages. It prevents the
intellectuals from having their nerve broken and becoming sycophants
of the average Philistine, as happens to many of them in this country.
It avoids the strain and misery which an unpopular boy must suffer. It
makes it possible to give to clever boys the kind of teaching which
suits them, which goes at a much more rapid pace than is possible for
the less intelligent. On the other hand, it isolates the intellectuals
from the rest of the community in later life, and makes them,
perhaps, less able to understand the average man. In spite of this
possible disadvantage, I think it on the whole better than the British
upper-class practice of torturing all boys who have exceptional brains
or exceptional moral qualities, unless they happen also to be good at
games.[23]

However, the savagery of boys is not incurable, and is in fact much
less than it was. “Tom Brown’s School Days” gives a black picture,
which would be exaggerated if applied to the public schools of our own
day. It would be still less applicable to boys who had had the kind of
early training which we considered in previous chapters. I think also
that co-education--which is possible at a boarding school, as Bedales
shows--is likely to have a civilizing effect upon boys. I am chary
of admitting native differences between the sexes, but I think that
girls are less prone than boys to punish oddity by serious physical
cruelty. At present, however, there are very few boarding schools to
which I should venture to send a boy if he were above the average in
intelligence, morals, or sensitiveness, or if he were not conservative
in politics and orthodox in theology. For such boys, I am convinced
that the existing school system for the sons of rich parents is bad.
And among such boys are included almost all who have any exceptional
merit.

Of the above considerations, both for and against boarding schools,
there are only two that are essential and unalterable, and these two
are on opposite sides. On the one side there is the benefit of the
country and air and space; on the other, the family affections and
the education derived from knowledge of family responsibilities. In
the case of parents who live in the country, there is a different
argument in favour of boarding schools, namely, the improbability of
a really good day school in their neighbourhood. I do not think it is
possible, in view of these conflicting considerations, to arrive at
any general conclusion. Where children are so strong and vigorous that
considerations of health need not be taken very seriously, one argument
for boarding schools fails. Where they are very devoted to their
parents, one argument for day schools fails, since the holidays will
suffice to keep family affection alive, and term time may just prevent
it from becoming excessive. A sensitive child of exceptional ability
had better not go to boarding school, and in extreme cases had better
not go to school at all. Of course, a good school is better than a bad
home, and a good home is better than a bad school. But where both are
good, each case must be decided on its merits.

So far, I have written from the standpoint of a well-to-do parent,
to whom individual choice is possible. When the matter is considered
politically, from the point of view of the community, other
considerations enter in. We have on the one hand the expense of
boarding schools, on the other the simplification of the housing
problem if children are away from home. I hold strongly that, apart
from a few rare cases, every one ought to have a scholastic education
up to the age of eighteen, and exclusively vocational training should
only begin after that age. Although much might be urged both ways on
our present topic, the financial consideration will, for a long time to
come, decide the question, in the case of most wage-earners’ sons and
daughters, in favour of day schools. Since there is no clear ground for
thinking this decision wrong, we may accept it, in spite of the fact
that it is not made on educational grounds.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE UNIVERSITY


In previous chapters, we have considered the education in character and
knowledge which, in a good social system, should be open to everybody,
and should in fact be enjoyed by everybody, except for serious special
reasons such as musical genius. (It would have been unfortunate if
Mozart had been obliged to learn ordinary school subjects up to the age
of eighteen.) But even in an ideal community there would, I think, be
many people who would not go to the university. I am convinced that, at
present, only a minority of the population can profit by a scholastic
education prolonged to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two. Certainly
the idle rich who at present infest the older universities very often
derive no benefit from them, but merely contract habits of dissipation.
We have therefore to ask on what principle we are to select those
who should go to the university. At present, they are in the main
those whose parents can afford to send them, though this principle of
selection is being increasingly modified by the scholarship system.
Obviously, the principle of selection ought to be educational, not
financial. A boy or girl of eighteen, who has had a good school
education, is capable of doing useful work. If he or she is to be
exempted for a further period of three or four years, the community has
a right to expect that the time will be profitably employed. But before
deciding who is to go to the university, we must have some view as to
the function of the university in the life of the community.

British universities have passed through three stages, of which,
however, the second is not yet wholly displaced by the third. At first,
they were training colleges for the clergy, to whom, in the Middle
Ages, learning was almost wholly confined. Then, with the renaissance,
the idea gained ground that every well-to-do person ought to be
educated, though women were supposed to need less education than men.
“The education of a gentleman” was given at the universities throughout
the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is still
given at Oxford. For reasons which we considered in Chapter I, this
ideal, which was formerly very useful, is now out-of-date; it depended
upon aristocracy, and cannot flourish either in a democracy or in an
industrial plutocracy. If there is to be an aristocracy, it had better
be composed of educated gentlemen; but it is better still to have no
aristocracy. I need not argue this question, since it was decided in
England by the Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in
America by the War of Independence. It is true that we still have in
England the forms of aristocracy, but the spirit is that of plutocracy,
which is quite a different thing. Snobbery makes successful business
men send their sons to Oxford to be turned into “gentlemen”, but the
result is to give them a distaste for business, which reduces their
children again to comparative poverty and the need of earning a living.
The “education of a gentleman” has therefore ceased to be an important
part of the life of the nation, and may be ignored in considering the
future.

The universities are thus reverting to a position more analogous to
that which they occupied in the Middle Ages; they are becoming training
schools for the professions. Barristers, clergymen and medical men have
usually had a university education; so have the first division of the
civil service. An increasing number of engineers and technical workers
in various businesses are university men. As the world grows more
complicated and industry becomes more scientific, an increasing number
of experts are required, and in the main they are supplied by the
universities. Old-fashioned people lament the intrusion of technical
schools into the haunts of pure learning, but it continues none the
less, because it is demanded by plutocrats who care nothing for
“culture”. It is they, much more than the insurgent democracy, who are
the enemies of pure learning. “Useless” learning, like “art for art’s
sake”, is an aristocratic, not a plutocratic, ideal; where it lingers,
it is because the renaissance tradition is not yet dead. I regret the
decay of this ideal profoundly; pure learning was one of the best
things associated with aristocracy. But the evils of aristocracy were
so great as easily to outweigh this merit. In any case, industrialism
must kill aristocracy, whether we desire it or not. We may as well make
up our minds, therefore, to save what we can by attaching it to new
and more potent conceptions; so long as we cling to mere tradition, we
shall be fighting a losing battle.

If pure learning is to survive as one of the purposes of universities,
it will have to be brought into relation with the life of the community
as a whole, not only with the refined delights of a few gentlemen
of leisure. I regard disinterested learning as a matter of great
importance, and I should wish to see its place in academic life
increased, not diminished. Both in England and in America, the main
force tending to its diminution has been the desire to get endowments
from ignorant millionaires. The cure lies in the creation of an
educated democracy, willing to spend public money on objects which our
captains of industry are unable to appreciate. This is by no means
impossible, but it demands a general raising of the intellectual level.
It would be much facilitated if our learned men would more frequently
emancipate themselves from the attitude of hangers-on of the rich,
which they have inherited from a time when patrons were their natural
source of livelihood. It is of course possible to confound learning
with learned men. To take a purely imaginary example, a learned man may
improve his financial position by teaching brewing instead of organic
chemistry; he gains, but learning suffers. If the learned man had a
more genuine love of learning, he would not be politically on the side
of the brewer who endows a professorship of brewing. And if he were on
the side of democracy, democracy would be more ready to see the value
of his learning. For all these reasons, I should wish to see learned
bodies dependent upon public money rather than upon the benefactions
of rich men. This evil is greater in America than in England, but it
exists in England, and may increase.

Leaving aside these political considerations, I shall assume that
universities exist for two purposes: on the one hand, to train men and
women for certain professions; on the other hand, to pursue learning
and research without regard to immediate utility. We shall therefore
wish to see at the universities those who are going to practise these
professions, and those who have that special kind of ability which will
enable them to be valuable in learning and research. But this does
not decide, by itself, how we are to select the men and women for the
professions.

At present, it is very difficult to enter upon such a profession as
law or medicine unless one’s parents have a certain amount of money,
since the training is expensive and earnings do not begin at once.
The consequence is that the principle of selection is social and
hereditary, not fitness for the work. Take medicine as illustrative.
A community which wished to have its doctoring done efficiently would
select for medical training those young people who showed most keenness
and aptitude for the work. At present this principle is applied
partially, to select among those who can afford the training; but it
is quite probable that many of those who would make the best doctors
are too poor to take the course. This involves a deplorable waste of
talent. Let us take another example of a somewhat different kind.
England is a very thickly populated country, which imports most of
its food. From a number of points of view, but especially from that of
safety in war, it would be a boon if more of our food were produced
at home. Yet no measures are taken to see that our very limited area
is efficiently cultivated. Farmers are selected mainly by heredity:
as a rule, they are the sons of farmers. The others are men who have
bought farms, which implies some capital but not necessarily any
agricultural skill. It is known that Danish methods of agriculture
are more productive than ours, but no steps are taken to cause our
farmers to know about them. We ought to insist that every person
allowed to cultivate more than a small holding should have a diploma
in scientific agriculture, just as we insist on a motorist having a
licence. The hereditary principle has been abandoned in government, but
it lingers in many other departments of life. Wherever it exists, it
promotes the inefficiency to which it formerly led in public affairs.
We must replace it by two correlative rules: first, that no one shall
be allowed to undertake important work without having acquired the
necessary skill; secondly, that this skill shall be taught to the
ablest of those who desire it, quite independently of their parents’
means. It is obvious that these two rules would enormously increase
efficiency.

University education should therefore be regarded as a privilege for
special ability, and those who possess the skill but no money should be
maintained at the public expense during their course. No one should be
admitted unless he satisfies the tests of ability, and no one should be
allowed to remain unless he satisfies the authorities that he is using
his time to advantage. The idea of the university as a place of leisure
where rich young men loaf for three or four years is dying, but, like
Charles II, it is an unconscionable time about it.

When I say that a young man or woman at the university should not
be allowed to be idle, I must hasten to add that the tests of work
must not consist in a mechanical conformity to system. In the newer
universities in England and America there is a regrettable tendency
to insist upon attendance at innumerable lectures. The arguments in
favour of individual work, which are allowed to be strong in the case
of infants in a Montessori school, are very much stronger in the case
of young people of twenty, particularly when, as we are assuming,
they are keen and exceptionally able. When I was an undergraduate, my
feeling, and that of most of my friends, was that lectures were a pure
waste of time. No doubt we exaggerated, but not much. The real reason
for lectures is that they are obvious work, and therefore business men
are willing to pay for them. If university teachers adopted the best
methods, business men would think them idle, and insist upon cutting
down the staff. Oxford and Cambridge, because of their prestige, are to
some extent able to apply the right methods; but the newer universities
are unable to stand up against business men, and so are most American
universities. The teacher should, at the beginning of the term, give
a list of books to be read carefully, and a slight account of other
books which some may like and others not. He should set papers, which
can only be answered by noticing the important points in the books
intelligently. He should see the pupils individually when they have
done their papers. About once a week or once a fortnight, he should see
such as care to come in the evening, and have desultory conversation
about matters more or less connected with their work. All this is not
very different from the practice at the older universities. If a pupil
chooses to set himself a paper, different from that of the teacher but
equally difficult, he shall be at liberty to do so. The industry of the
pupils can be judged by their papers.

There is, however, one point of great importance. Every university
teacher should be himself engaged in research, and should have
sufficient leisure and energy to know what is being done in his subject
in all countries. In university teaching, skill in pedagogy is no
longer important; what is important is knowledge of one’s subject and
keenness about what is being done in it. This is impossible for a man
who is overworked and nervously exhausted by teaching. His subject is
likely to become distasteful to him, and his knowledge is almost sure
to be confined to what he learnt in youth. Every university teacher
ought to have a Sabbatical year (one in every seven), to be spent in
foreign universities or in otherwise acquiring knowledge of what is
being done abroad. This is common in America, but European countries
have too much intellectual pride to admit that it is necessary. In this
they are quite mistaken. The men who taught me mathematics at Cambridge
were almost wholly untouched by the Continental mathematics of the
previous twenty or thirty years; throughout my undergraduate time, I
never heard the name of Weierstrass. It was only by subsequent travel
that I came in contact with modern mathematics. This was no rare or
exceptional circumstance. Of many universities at many periods similar
things could be said.

There is in universities a certain opposition between those who care
most for teaching and those who care most for research. This is almost
entirely due to a wrong conception of teaching, and to the presence of
a number of students whose industry and capacity are below the level
which ought to be exacted as a condition of residence. The idea of the
old-fashioned schoolmaster persists to some extent at universities.
There is a desire to have a good moral effect on students, and a wish
to drill them in old-fashioned worthless information, largely known to
be false but supposed to be morally elevating. Students ought not to
be exhorted to work, but they should not be allowed to remain if they
are found to be wasting their time, whether from idleness or from lack
of ability. The only morality which can be profitably exacted is that
of work; the rest belongs to earlier years. And the morality of work
should be exacted by sending away those who do not possess it, since
evidently they had better be otherwise employed. A teacher should not
be expected to work long hours at teaching, and should have abundant
leisure for research; but he should be expected to employ this leisure
wisely.

Research is at least as important as education, when we are considering
the functions of universities in the life of mankind. New knowledge
is the chief cause of progress, and without it the world would soon
become stationary. It could continue, for a time, to improve by the
diffusion and wider use of existing knowledge, but this process, by
itself, could not last long. And even the pursuit of knowledge, if
it is utilitarian, is not self-sustaining. Utilitarian knowledge
needs to be fructified by disinterested investigation, which has no
motive beyond the desire to understand the world better. All the great
advances are at first purely theoretical, and are only afterwards found
to be capable of practical applications. And even if some splendid
theory never has any practical use, it remains of value on its own
account; for the understanding of the world is one of the ultimate
goods. If science and organization had succeeded in satisfying the
needs of the body and in abolishing cruelty and war, the pursuit of
knowledge and beauty would remain to exercise our love of strenuous
creation. I should not wish the poet, the painter, the composer or
the mathematician to be preoccupied with some remote effect of his
activities in the world of practice. He should be occupied, rather,
in the pursuit of a vision, in capturing and giving permanence to
something which he has first seen dimly for a moment, which he has
loved with such ardour that the joys of this world have grown pale
by comparison. All great art and all great science springs from the
passionate desire to embody what was at first an unsubstantial phantom,
a beckoning beauty luring men away from safety and ease to a glorious
torment. The men in whom this passion exists must not be fettered by
the shackles of a utilitarian philosophy, for to their ardour we owe
all that makes man great.




CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION


At the end of our journey, let us look back over the road, to obtain a
bird’s-eye view of the country we have traversed.

Knowledge wielded by love is what the educator needs and what his
pupils should acquire. In earlier years, love towards the pupils is the
most important kind; in later years, love of the knowledge imparted
becomes increasingly necessary. The important knowledge at first is
knowledge of physiology, hygiene, and psychology, of which the last
more especially concerns the teacher. The instincts and reflexes with
which a child is born can be developed by the environment into the
most diverse habits, and therefore into the most diverse characters.
Most of this happens in very early childhood; consequently it is at
this period that we can most hopefully attempt to form character.
Those who like existing evils are fond of asserting that human nature
cannot be changed. If they mean that it cannot be changed after six
years old, there is a measure of truth in what they say. If they mean
that nothing can be done to alter the instincts and reflexes with
which an infant is born, they are again more or less in the right,
though of course eugenics could, and perhaps will, produce remarkable
results even here. But if they mean, as they usually do, that there
is no way of producing an adult population whose behaviour will be
radically different from that of existing populations, they are flying
in the face of all modern psychology. Given two infants with the same
character at birth, different early environments may turn them into
adults with totally different dispositions. It is the business of early
education to train the instincts so that they may produce a harmonious
character, constructive rather than destructive, affectionate rather
than sullen, courageous, frank, and intelligent. All this can be done
with a great majority of children; it is actually being done where
children are rightly treated. If existing knowledge were used and
tested methods applied, we could, in a generation, produce a population
almost wholly free from disease, malevolence, and stupidity. We do not
do so, because we prefer oppression and war.

The crude material of instinct is, in most respects, equally capable
of leading to desirable and to undesirable actions. In the past,
men did not understand the training of instinct, and therefore were
compelled to resort to repression. Punishment and fear were the great
incentives to what was called virtue. We now know that repression is
a bad method, both because it is never really successful, and because
it produces mental disorders. The training of instincts is a totally
different method, involving a totally different technique. Habits and
skill make, as it were, a channel for instinct, leading it to flow one
way or another according to the direction of the channel. By creating
the right habits and the right skill, we cause the child’s instincts
themselves to prompt desirable actions. There is no sense of strain,
because there is no need to resist temptation. There is no thwarting,
and the child has a sense of unfettered spontaneity. I do not mean
these statements to be taken in an absolute sense; there will always be
unforeseen contingencies in which older methods may become necessary.
But the more the science of child psychology is perfected, and the more
experience we acquire in nursery-schools, the more perfectly the new
methods can be applied.

I have tried to bring before the reader the wonderful possibilities
which are now open to us. Think what it would mean: health, freedom,
happiness, kindness, intelligence, all nearly universal. In one
generation, if we chose, we could bring the millennium.

But none of this can come about without love. The knowledge exists;
lack of love prevents it from being applied. Sometimes the lack of
love towards children brings me near to despair--for example, when I
find almost all our recognized moral leaders unwilling that anything
should be done to prevent the birth of children with venereal disease.
Nevertheless, there is a gradual liberation of love of children, which
surely is one of our natural impulses. Ages of fierceness have overlaid
what is naturally kindly in the dispositions of ordinary men and
women. It is only lately that many Christians have ceased to teach the
damnation of unbaptized infants. Nationalism is another doctrine which
dries up the springs of humanity; during the war, we caused almost all
German children to suffer from rickets. We must let loose our natural
kindliness; if a doctrine demands that we should inflict misery upon
children, let us reject it, however dear it may be to us. In almost all
cases, the psychological source of cruel doctrines is fear; that is one
reason why I have laid so much stress upon the elimination of fear in
childhood. Let us root out the fears that lurk in the dark places of
our own minds. The possibilities of a happy world that are opened up by
modern education make it well worth while to run some personal risk,
even if the risk were more real than it is.

When we have created young people freed from fear and inhibitions and
rebellious or thwarted instincts, we shall be able to open to them the
world of knowledge, freely and completely, without dark hidden corners;
and if instruction is wisely given, it will be a joy rather than a task
to those who receive it. It is not important to increase the amount of
what is learnt above that now usually taught to the children of the
professional classes. What is important is the spirit of adventure and
liberty, the sense of setting out upon a voyage of discovery. If formal
education is given in this spirit, all the more intelligent pupils will
supplement it by their own efforts, for which every opportunity should
be provided. Knowledge is the liberator from the empire of natural
forces and destructive passions; without knowledge, the world of our
hopes cannot be built. A generation educated in fearless freedom will
have wider and bolder hopes than are possible to us, who still have to
struggle with the superstitious fears that lie in wait for us below
the level of consciousness. Not we, but the free men and women whom we
shall create, must see the new world, first in their hopes, and then at
last in the full splendour of reality.

The way is clear. Do we love our children enough to take it? Or shall
we let them suffer as we have suffered? Shall we let them be twisted
and stunted and terrified in youth, to be killed afterwards in futile
wars which their intelligence was too cowed to prevent? A thousand
ancient fears obstruct the road to happiness and freedom. But love can
conquer fear, and if we love our children nothing can make us withhold
the great gift which it is in our power to bestow.


THE END




FOOTNOTES:

[1] “The Child: His Nature and His Needs.” Prepared under the editorial
supervision of M. V. O’Shea, Professor of Education, University of
Wisconsin, 1924. I shall allude to this book as “O’Shea”.

[2] Probably many of Dr. Arnold’s pupils suffered from adenoids, for
which medical men do not usually prescribe flogging, although they
cause habitual idleness.

[3] On fear and anxiety in childhood, see _e.g._ William Stern,
“Psychology of Early Childhood”, Chap. XXXV. (Henry Holt, 1924).

[4] If it be objected that, after all, the world progressed, the reply
is that it did not progress nearly as fast as it might have done, or as
it will do if children are wisely handled.

[5] This is perhaps not strictly accurate. Most children have periods
of apparent stagnation, which cause anxiety to inexperienced parents.
But probably throughout these periods there is progress in ways that
are not easily perceptible.

[6] “Studies in Infant Psychology”, _Scientific Monthly_, December,
1921, p. 506.

[7] I came to know of these passages from a quotation in Dr. Paul
Bousfield’s “Sex and Civilization”, where the same point of view is
strongly advocated.

[8] I think this fear was the same as the fear of mechanical toys. He
saw her first asleep, and thought she was a doll; when she moved he was
startled.

[9] The method adopted with me at the same age was to pick me up by the
heels and hold my head under water for some time. This method, oddly
enough, succeeded in making me like the water; nevertheless I do not
recommend it.

[10] See Bousfield, “Sex and Civilization”, _passim_.

[11] Cf. “The Nervous Child” by Dr. H. C. Cameron (3rd ed., Oxford,
1924), p. 32 ff.

[12] See _e.g._ “The Secret Corps”, by Captain Ferdinand Tuohy, Chap.
VI, (Murray, 1920).

[13] Hodder and Stoughton, 1925.

[14] “The Montessori Method” (Heinemann, 1912), p. 103.

[15] See Dr. H. C. Cameron, “The Nervous Child”, Chaps. IV and V.

[16] In very rare instances, it does a little harm, but this is easily
cured and is not more serious than the results of thumb-sucking.

[17] On this subject, _cf._ “The Nursery-School”, by Margaret McMillan
(Dent, 1919), p. 197.

[18] Although Miss McMillan is American, I understand that the
importance of nursery-schools is even less appreciated in America than
in England. As, however, there are not the financial difficulties which
exist in Europe, it may be hoped that the movement will soon become
wide-spread in the United States. There is no mention of it in O’Shea’s
book, though the need of it is evident from his remarks on p. 182.

[19] See Montessori, “The Montessori Method” (Heinemann, 1912), p. 42
ff.

[20] O’Shea, p. 386.

[21] Are we to infer that culture consists in carrying a hip-flask? The
definition seems applicable.

[22] In those days, in England, the State bore only part of the expense
of the school; this part was called a “grant”, and depended upon the
success of the children in examinations.

[23] The arguments in favour of segregating the able children are well
stated in O’Shea, Chap. XIV.




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