What Is and What Might Be

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

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When severity and constraint have done their work, when the spirit of
the child has been broken, when his vitality has been lowered to its
barest minimum, when he has been reduced to a state of mental and
moral serfdom, the time has come for the system of education through
mechanical obedience to be applied to him in all its rigour. In other
words, the time has come for Man to do to the child, what the God
whom he worships is supposed to have done to him,--to tell him in the
fullest and minutest detail what he is to do to be "saved," and to
stand over him with a scourge in his hand and see that he does it. In
the two great schools which God is supposed to have opened for Man's
benefit, freedom and initiative have ever been regarded (and with
good reason) as the gravest of offences. Literal obedience has
been exacted by the Law; blind obedience by the Church; passive
obedience--the obedience of a puppet, or at best of an automaton--by
both. The need for this insistence on the part of Law and Church is
obvious. If any lingering desire to think things out for himself, if
any intelligent interest in what he was taught, survived in the
disciple, the whole system of salvation by machinery would be in
danger of being thrown out of gear.

As it has been, and still is, in the schools which God has opened
for Man, so it has been, and still is, in the schools which Man
has opened for the child. Blind, passive, literal, unintelligent
obedience is the basis on which the whole system of Western education
has been reared. The child must distrust himself absolutely, must
realise that he is as helpless as he is ignorant, before he can begin
to profit by the instruction that will be given to him. His mind must
become a _tabula rasa_ before his teacher can begin to write on it.
The vital part of him--call it what you will--must become as clay
before his teacher can begin to mould him to his will.

The strength of the child, then, is to sit still, to listen, to say
"Amen" to, or repeat, what he has heard. The strength of the teacher
is to bustle about, to give commands, to convey information, to
exhort, to expound. The strength of the child is to efface himself in
every possible way. The strength of the teacher is to assert himself
in every possible way. The golden rule of education is that the child
is to do nothing for himself which his teacher can possibly do, or
even pretend to do, for him. Were he to try to do things by or for
himself, he would probably start by doing them badly. This is not to
be tolerated. Imperfection and incorrectness are moral defects; and
the child must as far as possible be guarded from them as from the
contamination of moral guilt. He must therefore trust himself to his
teacher, and do what he is told to do in the precise way in which
he is told. His teacher must stand in front of him and give such
directions as these: "Look at me," "See what I am doing," "Watch my
hand," "Do the thing this way," "Do the thing that way," "Listen to
what I say," "Repeat it after me," "Repeat it all together," "Say it
three times." And the child, growing more and more comatose, must
obey these directions and ask no questions; and when he has done what
he has been told to do, he must sit still and wait for the next
instalment of instruction.

What is all this doing for the child? The teacher seldom asks himself
this question. If he did, he would answer it by saying that the end
of education is to enable the child to produce certain outward and
visible results,--to do by himself what he has often done, either in
imitation of his teacher, or in obedience to his repeated directions;
to say by himself what he has said many times in chorus with his
class-mates; to disgorge some fragments of the information with which
he has been crammed; and so forth. What may be the value of these
outward results, what they indicate, what amount or kind of mental
(or other) growth may be behind them,--are questions which the
teacher cannot afford to consider, even if he felt inclined to
ask them. His business is to drill the child into the mechanical
production of quasi-material results; and his success in doing this
will be gauged in due course by an "examination,"--a periodic test
which is designed to measure, not the degree of growth which the
child has made, but the industry of the teacher as indicated by the
receptivity of his class.

The truth is that inward and spiritual growth, even if it were
thought desirable to produce it and measure it, could not possibly be
measured. The real "results" of education are in the child's heart
and mind and soul, beyond the reach of any measuring tape or weighing
machine. It follows that if the work of the teacher is to be tested,
an external test must be applied. This means that external results,
results which can be weighed and measured, must be aimed at by both
teacher and child, and that the value of these as symbols of what is
inward and intrinsic must be wholly ignored. Not that the inward
results of education would in any case be seriously considered. When
education is based on the passivity of the child, nothing matters to
him or to his teacher except the accuracy with which he can reproduce
what he has been taught,--can repeat what he has been told, or do by
himself what he has been told how to do. What connection there may be
between these achievements and his mental state matters so little
that the bare idea of there being such a connection is, as a rule,
entirely lost sight of. The externalisation of religion in the West,
as evidenced by its ceremonialism and its casuistry, has faithfully
mirrored itself in the externality of Western education. The
examination system (which I will presently consider) keeps education
in the grooves of externality, and drives those grooves so deep as
to make escape from them impossible. Yet it does but give formal
recognition to, and in so doing crown and complete--as the keystone
crowns and completes the arch--the whole system of education in the
West. It is because what is outward and visible counts for everything
in the West, first in the life of the adult and then in the life of
the child, that the idea of weighing and measuring the results of
education--with its implicit assumption that the real results of
education are ponderable and measurable (a deadly fallacy which now
has the force and authority of an axiom)--has come to establish
itself in every Western land.

* * * * *

The tendency of the Western teacher to mistake the externals for the
essentials of education, and to measure educational progress in terms
of the "appearance of things," gives rise to many misconceptions,
one of the principal of which is the current confusion between
information and knowledge. To generate knowledge in his pupils is
a legitimate end of the teacher's ambition. In schools and other
"academies" it tends to become the chief, if not the sole, end; and,
things being what they are, the teacher may be pardoned for regarding
it as such. But what is knowledge? The vulgar confusion between
knowledge and information is the accepted answer to this question.
But the answer is usually given before the question has been
seriously considered. One who allowed himself to reflect on it,
however briefly or cursorily, would quickly realise that it is
possible to have intimate and effective knowledge of a subject
without being able to impart any information about it. Successful
action, as in arts, crafts, games, sports, and the like, must needs
have subtle and accurate knowledge behind it; but the possessor of
such knowledge is seldom able to impart it with any approach to
lucidity. On the other hand, it frequently happens that one who has a
retentive memory is able to impart information glibly and correctly,
without possessing any real knowledge of the subject in question.

The truth is that knowledge, which may perhaps be provisionally
defined as a correct attitude towards one's environment, has almost
as wide a range as that of human nature itself. At one end of the
scale we have the quasi-animal instinct which governs successful
physical action. At the other end we have the knowledge, of which,
and of the possession of which, its possessor is clearly, conscious.
Between these extremes there is an almost infinite series of strata,
ranging through every conceivable degree of subconsciousness. The
knowledge that is real and effective is absorbed into one or more of
the subconscious strata, from which it gradually ascends, under the
influence of attention and reflection, towards the more conscious
levels, gaining, as it ascends, in scope and outlook what it may
possibly lose in subtlety and nearness to action. When knowledge,
after passing upwards through many subconscious strata, rises to
what I may call the surface-level of consciousness, it is ready, on
occasion, to give itself off as information. This exhalation from the
surface of consciousness is genuine information, not to be confounded
with knowledge, to which it is related as the outward to the inward
state, still less to be confounded with that spurious information
which floats, as we shall presently see, like a film on the surface
of the mind, meaning nothing and indicating nothing except that it
has been artificially deposited, and that in due season it will be
skimmed off, if the teacher's hopes are fulfilled, for the
delectation of an examiner.

There are, of course, many cases in which the conscious acquisition
of information is a necessary stage in the acquisition of knowledge.
But in all such cases, if the information acquired is to have
any educative value, it must be allowed to sink down into the
subconscious strata, whence, after having been absorbed and
assimilated and so converted into knowledge, it will perhaps reascend
towards the surface of the mind, just as the leaves which fall in
autumn are dragged down into the soil below, converted into fertile
mould, and then gradually lifted towards the surface; or as the fresh
water that the rivers pour into the sea has to be slowly absorbed
into the whole mass of salt water before it (or its equivalent) can
return to the land as rain. When information which has been received
and assimilated rises to the surface of the mind, it will be ready,
when required to do so, to reappear as information, and perhaps
to return in that form to the source from which it came. But the
information which is given off will differ profoundly from that which
has been received, for between the two will have intervened many
stages of silent absorption and silent growth.

It may be necessary, then, in the course of education, both to supply
and to demand information. But the information which is supplied must
be regarded as the raw material of knowledge, into which it is to be
converted by a subtle and secret process. And the information which
is demanded must be regarded as an exhalation (so to speak) from the
surface of a mind which has been saturated with study and experience,
and therefore as a proof of the possession of knowledge. To assume
that knowledge and information are interchangeable terms, that to
impart information is therefore to generate knowledge, that to give
back information is therefore to give proof of the possession of
knowledge,--is one of the greatest mistakes that a teacher can make.

But the mistake is almost universally made. Information being related
to knowledge, as what is outward to what is inward, it is but natural
that education in the West, which on principle concerns itself with
what is outward, and ignores what is inward, should have always
regarded, and should still regard, the supplying of information as
the main function of the teacher, and the ability of the child to
retail the information which has been supplied to him as a convincing
proof that the work of the teacher has been successfully done. In
nine schools out of ten, on nine days out of ten, in nine lessons out
of ten, the teacher is engaged in laying thin films of information on
the surface of the child's mind, and then, after a brief interval,
in skimming these off in order to satisfy himself that they had been
duly laid. He cannot afford to do otherwise. If the child, like the
man, is to be "saved" by passive obedience, his teacher must keep
his every action and operation under close and constant supervision.
Were the information which is supplied to him allowed to descend into
the subconscious strata of his being, there to be dealt with by the
secret, subtle, assimilative processes of his nature, it would
escape from the teacher's supervision and therefore from his control.
In other words, the teacher would have abdicated his function. He
must therefore take great pains to keep the processes by which the
child acquires knowledge (or what passes for such) as near to the
surface of his mind as possible; in rivalry of the nurse who should
take so much interest in the well-being of her charges that she would
not allow them to digest the food which she had given them, but would
insist on their disgorging it at intervals, in order that she might
satisfy herself that it had been duly given and received. It is no
doubt right that the teacher should take steps to test the industry
of his pupils; but the information which the child has always to keep
at the call of his memory, in order that he may give it back on
demand in the form in which he has received it, is the equivalent
of food which its recipient has not been allowed to digest.

The confusion between information and knowledge lies at the heart of
the religion, as well as of the education, of the West. In this, as
in other matters, the training of the child by his teacher has been
modelled on the supposed training of Man by God. It is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that the whole scheme of salvation by mechanical
obedience is pivoted on the assumed identity of information and
knowledge. In both the schools which Man has attended three things
have always been taken for granted. The first is that salvation
depends upon right knowledge of God. The second, that right knowledge
of God and correct information about God are interchangeable phrases.
The third, that correct information about God is procurable by, and
communicable to, Man. From these premises it has been inferred that
if Man can be duly supplied with correct information about God, and
can be induced to receive and retain it, he will be able to "save
his soul alive." The difference between the two schools is, that in
the Legal School the information supplied to Man has been largely
concerned with the _Will_ of God, so far as it bears on the life
of Man, and has therefore taken the form of a Code of formulated
commandments; whereas in the Ecclesiastical School it has mainly been
concerned with the _Being_ of God, as interpreted from his doings and
especially from his dealings with Man, and has therefore taken the
form of catechisms and creeds. And there is, of course, the further
difference that in the Legal School Man's acceptance of what he is
taught has taken the _practical_ form of doing what he is told to do,
detail by detail; whereas in the Ecclesiastical School it has been
mainly _oral_ (though also partly ceremonial), the business of the
disciple being to commit to memory the creed or catechism which has
been placed in his hands, and recite it, formula by formula, with
flawless accuracy. But the difference between the two schools is
wholly superficial, being, in fact, analogous to that between the
conventional teaching of Drawing, in which the pupil finds salvation
in doing what he is told to do, line by line, and stroke by stroke,
and the conventional teaching of History and Geography, in which the
pupil finds salvation in saying what he is told to say, name by name,
and date by date. The relation between the two great branches of
education, the education of Man by God, and the education of the
child by the man, is one, not of analogy merely, but also of cause
and effect. It is because the Jew thought to "save his soul alive" by
obeying, blindly and unintelligently, a multitude of vexatious rules,
that the teacher of to-day thinks to educate his pupils in Drawing by
telling them in the fullest detail (either in his own person or by
means of a diagram) what lines and strokes they are to make. And it
is because the Christian has thought to "save his soul alive" by
reciting with parrot-like accuracy the formulae of his creeds and
catechisms, that the teacher of to-day thinks to educate his pupils
in History and Geography by making them repeat from memory a series
of definitions, dates, events, names of persons, names of places,
articles of commerce, and the like. I do not say that the modern
teacher consciously imitates his models; but I say that he and they
have been inspired by the same conception of life, and that the
influence of that conception has been, in part at least, transmitted
by them to him.

* * * * *

That education in the West should ultimately be controlled by a
system of formal examination, may be said to have been predestined by
the general trend of religious thought and belief. Wherever literal
obedience is regarded as the first, if not the last, condition of
salvation, the tendency to measure worth and progress by the outward
results that are produced will inevitably spring up and assert
itself. In this tendency we have the whole examination system in
embryo. When Israel, with characteristic thoroughness, had embodied
in Pharisaism the logical inferences from his religious conceptions,
a merciless examination system came into being, in which every
one was at once examiner and examinee, and in which the whole of
human life was dragged out (as far as that was possible) into the
fierce light of public criticism, and placed under vigilant and
unintermittent supervision. When Pharisaism was revived, with many
modifications but with no essential change of character, under the
name of Puritanism, the tendency to arraign human life at the bar of
public opinion reasserted itself, and gave rise, as in New England
and covenanting Scotland, to an intolerable spiritual tyranny. In
Catholic countries the believer is subjected in the Confessional to a
periodical oral examination, in which he passes in review the outward
aspect of his inward and spiritual life, detailing for the benefit of
his confessor his sins of ceremonial omission or laxity, and such
lapses from moral rectitude as admit of being formulated in words and
accurately valued in terms of expiatory penance. Even in the Anglican
Church, which has too great a regard for the Englishman's traditional
love of personal freedom to be unduly inquisitorial, the clergyman is
apt to measure the spiritual health and progress of his parishioners
by the frequency with which they attend church and "Celebration,"
while the Bishop measures the spiritual health and progress of each
parish by the number of its communicants and the frequency with which
they communicate, statistics under both heads being (I am told)
regularly forwarded to him from all parts of his diocese.

It was inevitable, then, the relation between that sooner or later
the education of the young should come under the control of a
system of formal religion and education being what it was and is,
examination, and that it should be as much easier to apply the system
to education than to religion as it is easier to test knowledge (in
the conventional sense of the word) than conduct. It is to the vulgar
confusion between knowledge and information that we owe the formal
examination, as it is now conducted in most Western countries. In a
society which mistakes the externals for the essentials of life, it
is but natural that the teacher, with the full consent of the parents
of his pupils, should regard the imparting of knowledge as the end
and aim of his professional life, and that the parents should demand
some guarantee that knowledge has been successfully imparted to their
children. If by knowledge were meant a correct attitude of mind, the
teacher would realise that the idea of testing it in any way which
would satisfy the average parent was chimerical; and his clients, if
they continued to ask for a guarantee of successful teaching, would
require something widely different from that which has hitherto
contented them. But when information is regarded as the equivalent of
knowledge, the testing of the teacher's work becomes a simple matter,
for it is quite easy to frame an examination which will ascertain,
with some approach to accuracy, the amount of information that is
floating on the surface of the child's mind; and it is also easy to
tabulate the results of such an examination,--to find a numerical
equivalent for the work done by each examinee, and then arrange the
whole class in what is known as the "order of merit," and accepted
as such, without a moment's misgiving, by all concerned.

Unfortunately, however, it is equally easy to prepare children for an
examination of this, the normal type. As children have receptive
memories, it is easy for the teacher to lay films of information
on the surface of their minds. As they have capacious and fairly
retentive memories, it is easy for the teacher, especially if he is a
strict disciplinarian, to make his pupils retain the greater part of
what they have been taught. To skim off and give back to the teacher
(or examiner) portions of the floating films of information, is a
knack which comes with practice, and which the average child easily
acquires. The teacher will, of course, demand that his school shall
be examined on a clearly-defined syllabus; and the examiner, in his
own interest, will gladly comply with this demand. The examiner will
go further than this. If he happens to be employed by the State or by
a Local Authority, and has, therefore, many schools of the same type
to examine, he will, in order to save himself unnecessary trouble,
prescribe the syllabus on which all the schools in his area are to
be examined. This means that he will dictate to the teacher what
subjects he is to teach, how much ground he is to cover in each year
(or term), in what general order he is to treat each subject, and on
what general principles he is to teach it. Intentionally he will do
all this. Unintentionally he will do far more than this. As he wishes
his examination to be a test and not a mere formality, as he wishes
to sift the examinees and not to set the seal of approval on all of
them indiscriminately, he will take care that some at least of his
questions are different from what the teacher might expect them to
be. Also, as he is himself a rational being, he will probably
endeavour to test intelligence as well as memory; and, with this end
in view, he will set questions, the precise nature of which it will
be difficult for the teacher to forecast. But the teacher will make a
practice of studying the questions set in the periodical examinations
and of preparing his pupils accordingly, equipping them (if he is an
expert at his work) with a stock of superficial intelligence as well
as of information, and putting them up to whatever knacks, tricks,
and dodges will enable them to show to advantage on the examination
day. In his desire to outwit the teacher, the examiner will turn and
double like a hare who is pursued by a greyhound. But the teacher
will turn and double with equal agility, and will never allow himself
to be outdistanced by his quarry.

The more successful the teacher is in keeping up with the examiner,
the more fatal will his success be to his pupils and to himself.
In the ardour of the chase he is being lured on into a region of
treacherous quicksands; and the longer he is able to maintain the
pursuit, the more certain is it that he will lose himself at last
in depths and mazes of misconception and delusion. It is only by
stripping himself of his own freedom and responsibility that the
teacher is able to keep pace with the examiner, and each turn
or double that he makes involves a fresh surrender of those
prerogatives. In consenting to work on a prescribed syllabus he has
given up the idea of planning out his work for himself. In attempting
to adapt his teaching to the questions set by the examiner, he is
allowing the latter to dictate to him, in the minutest detail, how
each subject is to be taught. In other words, in order to achieve the
semblance of success, he is delivering himself, mind and soul, into
the hands of the examiner, and compelling the latter, perhaps against
his will, to become a Providence to him and to order all his goings.
This means that his distrust of himself is as complete as his
distrust of the child, and that his faith in the efficacy of
mechanical obedience has led him to seek salvation for himself,
as well as for his pupils, by following that fatal path.

It is in this way that a formal examination reacts upon and
intensifies the sinister tendencies of which it is at once a product
and a symptom. The examination system is, as I have said, the
keystone of the arch of Western education, crowning and completing
the whole structure, and at the same time holding it together, and
preventing it from falling, as it deserves to fall, into a ruinous
heap. Education, as it is now interpreted and practised in the West,
could not continue to exist without the support of the examination
system; but the price that it pays, and will continue to pay, for
this deadly preservative, is the progressive aggravation of all its
own inherent defects. The plight of an organism is indeed desperate
when the very poison which it ought, if healthy, to eliminate from
its system, has become indispensable to the prolongation of its life.

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