CHAPTER XVILAST SCHOOL YEARS
Afterthe 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 perhapsthese 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 hintsof 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 anaperçuof 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 thework 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 arenot 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 takerefuge 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 earlychildhood, 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 wasstill 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 inculcationof 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 ofsomecorrection; 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 theteacher 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.