What Is and What Might Be

E >> Edmond Holmes >> What Is and What Might Be

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

In this drift towards anarchy the school is playing its part. I do
not wish to suggest that the boys and girls of this or any other
Western country are beginning to ask their teachers for their
credentials, or are likely to rise in rebellion against them. The
preparation for anarchy that is going on in the school is not only
quite compatible with what is known as "strict discipline," but is
also, in part at least, the effect of it. What is happening is that
in an acutely critical age the _regime_ of mechanical obedience to
external authority which has been in force in the West for nearly
2000 years, and which is now taking its victims straight towards
anarchy, is being carefully rehearsed in our schools of all types and
grades. During the years when human nature is most pliable (owing to
its richness in sap), most easily trained, and most amenable to
influence, good or evil, the child's spontaneous effort to outgrow
himself and so escape from his lower self,--an end which is not to be
reached except by the path of free self-expression,--is persistently
thwarted till at last it dies away; blind and literal obedience to
external authority, for which the consent of his higher faculties
is not asked, and in the giving of which they are not allowed to
take part, is persistently exacted from him till at last his
higher faculties cease to energise, and his lower nature begins to
monopolise the rising sap of his life; in order to enforce the blind
obedience that is asked for, an appeal is made, by an elaborate
system of external rewards and external punishments, to his selfish
desires and ignoble fears; while the examination system, with
its inevitable accompaniments of prizes and class-lists, makes a
special appeal to his competitive instincts,--instincts which are
anti-social, and may even, in extreme cases, become anti-human in
their tendency. And when authority has thus been presented to him, in
a form which he has never been expected to welcome, and when, by the
same process, the growth of his higher self has been arrested, and
his anarchical instincts--his selfishness and self-assertion--have
been systematically cultivated, the critical spirit and temper will
be deliberately aroused in him, especially if he happens to attend
one of those secondary schools which are regarded as highly efficient
because their lists of University distinctions and other "successes"
are inordinately long; for the education given to him in such a
school by his scholarship-hunting teachers is of necessity so bookish
and so one-sided that his intellectual, dialectically critical
faculties are apt to become hypertrophied, while other faculties
which might have kept these in check are neglected and starved. The
product of such a system of education,--benumbed or paralysed on many
sides of his being by the repressive _regime_ to which he has so long
been subjected, but vigorously alive on the sides of egoism and
intellectual criticism,--will be an anarchist _in posse_ (unless,
indeed, his vitality has been depressed by his school-life below the
point at which reaction becomes possible);--an anarchist _in posse_,
even though, in his terror of anarchism in others, he should become a
pillar of the Established Church of his country, a J.P. of his town
or county, and an active member of the nearest Conservative
Association.

In Utopia, on the other hand, where selfishness is outgrown and
forgotten, and where the spirit of comradeship and brotherhood
pervades the school, there can be no preparation for anarchy, if only
for the reason that there is no authority--no despotic authority,
forcibly imposing its will on the school _ab extra_--to be
potentially dethroned. For all her scholars, Egeria is the very
symbol and embodiment of love, the centre whence all happy,
harmonious, life-giving, peace-diffusing influences radiate, and to
which, when they have vitalised the souls of the children and
transformed themselves into sentiments of loyalty and devotion, they
all return. I am not exaggerating a whit when I say that the Utopian
school is an ideal community, a community whose social system,
instead of being inspired by that spirit of "competitive selfishness"
which makes "each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost" its
motto, seems to have realised the Socialistic dream of "Each for all,
and all for each."

I shall perhaps be asked _what provision is made in Utopia for
enabling the children to go through the drudgery of school-life, to
master the "3 R's," to "get up" the various subjects which the Code
prescribes, and so forth_. To this question there is but one answer:
the best possible provision. "Qui veut la fin veut les moyens." In
the life of organised play which the children lead, attractive ends
are ever being set before them. If they are to achieve these ends,
they must take the appropriate means. What children in other schools
might regard as drudgery, the Utopian takes in his stride. Reading,
writing, and arithmetic are means to ends beyond themselves, ends
which are constantly presenting themselves to the Utopian. If he is
to gratify his communicative instinct, he must learn to read and
write. If he is to gratify his dramatic instinct, he must, _inter
alia_, read with intelligence books of reference which would be
considered too advanced for the ordinary school-child. If he is to
gratify his inquisitive and constructive instincts, he must learn
to count, measure, and calculate. For whatever means may have to
be taken, must be taken by him. Egeria, as he knows well, will
do nothing for him which he can reasonably be expected to do for
himself. There are subjects, such as drawing, dancing, and singing,
which are, or at any rate ought to be, intrinsically delightful,
as being natural channels of self-expression. There are other
subjects, such as history, geography, and English, which can be made
delightful by being treated dramatically. The word "drudgery" has no
meaning for the Utopian child. A group of children in the highest
class recently committed to memory the whole "Trial Scene" of the
_Merchant of Venice_--some 300 lines or so of blank verse--in order
that they might give themselves the pleasure of acting it. They
accomplished this feat in a little more than a month. In the ordinary
elementary school the child who has committed 150 lines to memory
in the course of a year has done all that is required of him. The
getting up of a subject is drudgery only when the child can see no
meaning in what he is doing, only when the getting up of the subject
is regarded as an end in itself. In Utopia no subject, apart from
those which I have spoken of as intrinsically delightful, is taught
for its own sake. Subjects are taught there either as the means to
desired ends, or because they afford opportunities for the training
of the expansive instincts, the gratification of which is a pure
pleasure to every healthy child.

But not only does the Utopian child, with his eyes always fixed on
desirable ends, find a pleasure in doing things which other children
are wont to regard as drudgery, but he has the further advantage of
being able to master with comparative facility what other children
find difficult as well as distasteful. From first to last, the
training given in Utopia makes, as we have seen, for the development
of faculty. In my last chapter I set forth in detail some of the ways
and means by which Egeria tries to cultivate the expansive instincts
of her pupils. Behind all these ways and means stands the master
method--or shall I say the master principle?--of self-expression.
Recognising, as she does, that each of the expansive instincts is a
definite expression of the soul's spontaneous effort to grow, and a
clear indication of a particular direction in which Nature wishes the
soul to grow,--and recognising, as she also does, that the business
of growing must be done by the growing organism and cannot be
delegated to any one else,--Egeria entrusts the work of
self-realisation to the child himself, and makes no attempt to
relieve him of an obligation which no one but himself can discharge.

Now self-realisation is a twofold process. In the absence of a fitter
and more adequate word, I have applied the term _perceptive_ to those
faculties by means of which we lay hold upon the world that surrounds
us, and draw it into ourselves and make it our own. And I have
contended that this group of faculties has, as its counterpart
and correlate, another group of faculties which I have called
_expressive_,--the faculties by means of which we go out of ourselves
into the world that surrounds us, and give ourselves to it and try to
identify ourselves with it,--and that the relation between these two
groups is so vital and so intimate that each in turn may be regarded
as the very life and soul of the other. In words which I have already
used, the perceptive faculties, at any rate in childhood, grow
through the interpretation which expression gives them, and in no
other way, and the expressive faculties grow by interpreting
perception, and in no other way. That these two groups of faculties
are, as it were, the reciprocating engines by means of which the
vital movement which we call self-realisation is effected, is the
conviction on which Egeria's whole scheme of education may be said to
be pivoted. In Utopia self-expression is the medium through which the
expansive instincts are encouraged to unfold themselves. And this
life of self-expression has as its necessary counterpart the
continuous development of the perceptive faculties along the whole
range of the child's nature.

Hence the all-round capacity of the Utopian child. The development of
his perceptive faculties which his life of self-expression tends to
produce, takes many forms. One of these, and one which in some sort
underlies and interpenetrates all the rest, is the outgrowth of what
I may call the _intuitional_ faculty,--a general capacity for getting
into touch with any new environment in which the child may find
himself, of subconsciously apprehending its laws and properties, of
feeling his way through its unexplored land. It is by means of this
capacity for putting forth a new _sense_ in response to the stimulus
of each new environment, that the Utopian child is able to master
with comparative ease the various subjects which he is expected to
learn. And not with ease only, but with effect. It is, as we have
seen, through the action of an appropriate sense, and in no other
way, that the information which is supplied to the scholar, when he
is learning this or that subject, is converted into _knowledge_, and
is so made available both for the further understanding of the given
subject and for the nutrition of the scholar's own inner life.

From every point of view, then, the Utopian scholar has a marked
advantage, in respect of the things with which education is supposed
to be mainly concerned--the mastery of subjects and the acquisition
of knowledge--over the product of the conventional type of school.
Whatever the Utopian may have to learn, is a pleasure to him either
for its own sake or as a means to some desirable end. Whatever he may
have to learn, he learns with comparative ease, because his
perceptive faculties have been systematically trained, and he is
therefore at home, in greater or lesser degree, in any new
environment. And whatever he may have to learn, he learns with
effect, because he is able to digest the information that he
receives, and convert it into knowledge, and so retain it in the form
in which it will best conduce both to his further progress in that
particular branch of study and to the general building up of his
mind.

In the ordinary result-hunting school the scholar fares very
differently from this. As a rule, he takes but little pleasure in his
work, for subjects which have their chief value as means to desirable
ends are presented to him as ends in themselves, and as such are
rightly regarded by him as meaningless and therefore as intolerably
dull; while subjects which are either intrinsically attractive, as
being natural channels of self-expression, or potentially attractive
as providing opportunities for self-expression, have no attraction
for him, as in neither case is self-expression on his part permitted.
Again, he finds great difficulty in mastering the subjects on his
time-table, or even in making the first step towards mastering them,
for, owing to his perceptive faculties as a whole having been
starved by the repressive _regime_ which denied them the outlet
of expression, he has not evolved the power of putting forth an
appropriate sense in response to the stimulus of a new environment,
and is therefore helpless in the presence of what is unfamiliar or
unexpected. One of his faculties, his memory, has indeed been
hypertrophied by being unduly exercised, and his capacity for
receiving information is in consequence unhealthily great; but
because he lacks, in this case or in that, the _sense_ which might
enable him to digest the information received and convert it into
knowledge, the food with which he has been crammed speedily passes
through him, undigested and unassimilated, and the hours which he has
spent in acquiring information will have done as little for his
progress in the given subject as for the general growth of his mind.

The difference between the two schemes of education--that which
exacts mechanical obedience, and that which seeks to foster
growth--may be looked at from another point of view. Under the
former, interference with what I may call the subconscious processes
of Nature is at its maximum. Under the latter, at its minimum. In
order to realise what this means let us suppose that such
interference were possible where fortunately it is and must ever be
impossible,--in the first and second years of the child's life.
Fortunately for the child, it is impossible for us to educate him,
in any formal sense of the word, until he has mastered his mother
tongue. Were it otherwise, his mother tongue would never be mastered.
Before he reaches the age of two the child accomplishes the
marvellous feat of acquiring an entirely new language. While he is
learning it Nature is his only teacher, and under her tuition he
masters the new language without the least strain and with complete
success. But let us suppose that it was possible for a teacher of the
conventional type to give minute directions to a child by some other
medium of expression than that of language. And let us suppose that
such a teacher made up her mind that she, and not Nature, was to
teach the child his mother tongue. One can readily imagine what would
happen. The teacher would probably have a theory that no child should
begin to talk till he was two or even two and a half years old; and
if so, the child would be kept in a state of enforced dumbness till
he reached that age. In any case, he would be strictly forbidden
to speak till his teacher gave him formal permission to do so.
Half-an-hour in the morning, and half-an-hour in the afternoon would
probably be set aside for the language lesson. For so many weeks or
months the child would be strictly limited to words of two or three
letters. For so many more weeks or months, to words of four or five
letters. Things which had names of more than the prescribed number
of letters would be kept away from the child; or, if that was
impossible, he would not be allowed to talk about them. For half a
year perhaps he would be limited to the use of nouns and verbs.
Prepositions might then be introduced into his vocabulary; and,
later, adjectives and adverbs. And so on; and so on. And the outcome
of all this elaborate training would be that the child would never
learn to talk his mother tongue.

It is by methods analogous in all respects to this that many of the
subjects on the time-table are taught in thousands of our schools.
The teacher seems to imagine that he knows, fully and precisely, how
each subject ought to be taught; and instead of standing aside, and
trying to learn how Nature wishes this or that subject to be taught
(if Nature can be said to take any interest in "subjects"), and then
trying to co-operate with her subconscious tendencies, he makes out
his elaborate scheme of instruction, sets before the child as the
goal of his efforts the production of certain formal results, and
drives him towards these with whip and bridle, satisfied that if he
succeeds in producing them, the subject will have been duly mastered.
And all the time he will not have given a thought to what is
happening to the child's inner life. Yet it is more than probable
that the teacher's disregard of, and therefore incessant interference
with, the subconscious processes of Nature has quite as disastrous
results in the teaching of composition, let us say, or drawing, as it
would certainly have in the hypothetical case of the teaching of the
child's mother tongue.

But in truth the Utopian conception of what constitutes efficiency
differs so radically from the current conception, that little is to
be gained by comparing them. If I am asked by those who value outward
and visible results for their own sake, whether the training given in
Utopia is "efficient," I can but answer: "Yes, but efficient in a
sense which you cannot even begin to understand,--efficient in the
sense of developing faculty and fostering life, whereas the price
paid for your boasted efficiency is the starvation of faculty and the
destruction of life."

* * * * *

"_But how_," it will be asked, "_are the Utopian children, one and
all, induced to exert themselves? The standard of activity in the
school is, on your own showing, exceptionally high. Much is expected
of the children. Yet there are no rewards for them to hope for, and
no punishments for them to fear. How, then, are those who are by
nature less energetic or less persevering than the rest to be induced
to rise to the level of the teacher's expectation?_" By implication
this question has been answered again and again. But it deserves a
direct answer, and I will try to give it one.

To begin with, it is incorrect to say that there are no rewards or
punishments in Utopia. Outward rewards and outward punishments are
entirely unknown there; but there are inward rewards to be had for
the seeking, and there are inward punishments to be feared, though it
must be admitted that the fear of them seldom overshadows, even for
a passing moment, the sunlit life of the Utopian child. What induces
the Utopian child to work is, in brief, delight in his work. He is
allowed and even encouraged to energise along the lines which his
nature seems to have marked out for him, and in response to the
stress of forces which seem to be welling up from the depths of his
inner life. Exertion of this kind is in itself a delight. Nature has
taken care to make all the exercises by which growth is fostered, at
any rate in the days of childhood when growth is most rapid and
vigorous, intrinsically attractive. Had she done otherwise she would
have failed to make due provision for the growth of Man's being
during the years which precede the outgrowth of self-consciousness,
and the possibility of self-discipline, of the narrower and sterner
kind.

And not only are the exercises by which healthy and harmonious growth
is secured intrinsically attractive, but also the sense of well-being
which accompanies such growth is an unfailing source of happiness. In
Utopia the end for which the children are working is not an external
reward or prize to be conferred on them if they achieve certain
prescribed results, but rather the actual goal to which the path that
they have entered is taking them,--a goal which is ever lighting the
path with its foreglow, and which is therefore at once an infinitely
distant lodestar and an ever present delight. For the consummation of
any process of growth is always the perfection, the final well-being,
of the thing that grows; and therefore in each successive stage of
the process there is a truer prefigurement of the perfection which
is being gradually achieved, and a fuller sense of that well-being
which, at its highest level, is perfection's other self.

For the Utopian, then, to walk in the path of self-realisation is its
own reward; and to wander from that path is its own punishment. But
as the forces of Nature are all co-operating to keep the child in
the path of self-realisation, and as Egeria has allied herself with
those forces and is working with them in every possible way, the
rewards which the Utopian wins for himself are very many, while the
punishments which he inflicts on himself are very few. In other
words, the pressure on him to exert himself is so strong, his
opportunities for exerting himself (under Egeria's sympathetic rule)
are so many, and the pleasure of exerting himself is found to be so
great, that the temptation to be idle or rebellious can scarcely be
said to exist.

It is indeed in respect of the motives to exertion which they
respectively supply, that the superiority of the Utopian to the
conventional type of education is perhaps most pronounced. I have
said that Egeria allies herself with the expansive forces of Nature.
The teacher of the conventional type has to fight against those
forces. Let us assume that the two teachers are on a level in respect
of their capacity for influencing and stimulating their pupils,
and let us indicate that level by the algebraical symbol _x_. Then
the difference between the motive force which Egeria exerts, and
the motive force which her rival exerts, is the difference between
_x_ + _y_, and _x_ - _y_, _y_ being used to symbolise the aggregate
motive force of the expansive tendencies of the child's inner nature.
Such a difference is incalculable. The scheme of education which is
based on distrust of the child's nature and belief in its intrinsic
sinfulness and stupidity, necessarily arrays against itself the
hidden forces of that maligned and despised nature, and must needs
overcome their resistance before it can hope to achieve its proposed
end. While Egeria is helping Nature to provide suitable channels for
the various expansive tendencies that are at work in the child, and
to guide them all into the central channel of self-realisation, her
rival is engaged in digging a canal (to be filled, when finished,
with dead, stagnant water) which is so designed that not only will no
use be made by it of the life stream of the child's latent energies,
but also costly culverts and other works will have to be constructed
for it in order to divert and send to waste that troublesome
current.

The waste of motive force which goes on under any scheme of education
through mechanical obedience, is indeed enormous. And what is most
lamentable is that the energies of the teacher are being largely
wasted in the effort to neutralise the latent energies of the child.
No wonder that, in order to produce his meagre and illusory,
"results," the teacher should have to resort to motive forces which,
by appealing to the lower side of the child's nature, will enable
him to bear down the resistance, and, in doing so, to impede the
outgrowth of the higher,--to the hope of external rewards and the
threat of external punishments. And no wonder that, owing to the
teacher having to work unceasingly against the grain of the
child's nature, of these two demoralising forces, the fear of
punishment--which, if not the more demoralising, is certainly the
more wasteful of energy--should bulk the more largely in the eyes
of the child.

In fine, then, whereas the conventional type of education is so
wasteful of motive force that it dissipates the greater part of the
teachers' and the scholars' energies in needless friction,--in
Utopia, on the other hand, there is such an economy of motive force
that the very joy which, under its scheme of education, always
accompanies the child's expenditure of energy, and which might be
regarded as merely a waste by-product, becomes in its turn a powerful
incentive to further exertion.

* * * * *

"_But is there not too much joy in Utopia? Is not the sky too
cloudless? Is not the atmosphere too clear? Does the Utopian never
act from a sense of duty? Has he never to do anything that is
distasteful to him?_" This objection raises an interesting question.
Is the function of the sense of duty to enable us to do distasteful
things? And if so, are we to regard it as the highest of motives to
moral action? In the days when Kant's idea of the "moral imperative"
was in the ascendant, the belief got abroad that the essence of
virtue was to do what you hated doing. Looking back to my Oxford
days, I recall some doggerel lines, of German origin, in which this
belief finds apt expression. A disciple who is in trouble about his
soul says to his master:

"Willing serve I my friends, but do it, alas! with affection,
And so gnaws me my heart, that I'm not virtuous yet."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20