initial commit of ebook 25797HEADmain

7 files changed, 6894 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/25797-8.txt b/25797-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3866106
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25797-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3439 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The School and the World, by Victor Gollancz
+and David Somervell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The School and the World
+
+
+Author: Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2008  [eBook #25797]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD
+
+by
+
+VICTOR GOLLANCZ and DAVID SOMERVELL
+
+Authors of "Political Education in a Public School"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
+1919
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+THE SCHOOL
+
+WHICH BOTH WE
+
+AND THOSE WHO DIFFERED FROM US
+
+SOUGHT TO SERVE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In December, 1917, the present writers wrote a little book entitled
+"Political Education in a Public School," in which they put forward
+their views as to what the aims and methods of a modern liberal
+education should be.  They also described certain experiments which
+they had been permitted to make in one of our old English Public
+Schools, experiments which both illustrated the authors' principles and
+tested their value.  In July, 1918, that book was published.
+
+But in the intervening seven months several things had happened.  On
+the one hand, "Political Education" had produced further striking
+evidence of its power over boys' intellects and characters, evidence
+altogether more striking than anything that had occurred up to the time
+of writing the book.  On the other hand, the movement in the full tide
+of its success ran upon rocks and has been, for the time being at any
+rate, utterly and completely destroyed.  The authors have left the
+school in which their experiments were made.
+
+When the book was published, its reviewers in the press raised one by
+one a series of problems which we had already encountered in a
+practical shape in the course of our work, problems hardly touched on,
+however, in our book, which was devoted to exposition rather than
+argument.  Such problems were: How far is political propaganda
+inseparable from political education, and in what respects is such
+propaganda desirable or undesirable?  How can political differences
+among the masters themselves be made to play a helpful rather than an
+injurious part?  Does the introduction of politics into the curriculum
+open a way, as the very able reviewer in _The Westminster Gazette_
+suggested, for Prussianism in its most insidious form, the conscription
+of educated opinion?  Are the old Public Schools the best medium for
+political education, or should the new wine be poured into new bottles?
+and lastly--for educational "subjects" are or should be but aspects of
+a single whole--what of political education in relation to morality,
+and to religion?
+
+The present volume, therefore, essays a twofold task.  The first two
+chapters briefly recapitulate and continue the history of our work down
+to its abrupt end.  The latter chapters deal with such questions as
+those mentioned above.  One feature of the earlier volume survives in
+its successor.  The Appendix to that volume contained a selection of
+articles written by boys for our political paper, _The School
+Observer_.  As an Appendix to this volume we print a few more articles
+by boys whose work did not then appear.  We are under no delusions as
+to there being anything very extraordinary about these articles and
+those printed in the previous volume.  Abler work has been done by
+abler boys in various schools at various times.  They are interesting
+as the combined effort of a group rather than as the work of
+individuals.  We reproduce them as the only concrete evidence available
+of the character of one aspect of our experiment.
+
+In the former volume we suppressed the name of the school out of
+deference to the wishes of the Head Master, and though our own judgment
+was against the concealment as a wholly superfluous piece of
+mystification, we continue to respect his wishes.
+
+One word of apology is needed for the use to which we have put the
+utterances of our reviewers.  The reviews revealed the interesting and
+important fact that thoughtful people really felt strongly, one way or
+the other, on the subject of political education.  They constitute a
+symposium of conflicting judgments upon an educational problem of which
+they one and all recognize the importance, and as such their main
+features are worth preserving.
+
+Having said this much about the reviews it is necessary to add a word
+more.  The quotations we have chosen are, quite naturally, very largely
+critical, and as such give no idea of the very warm welcome the general
+policy of the book received.  Not one in five among the reviewers was
+hostile.  One of them, however, the _Church Times_ reviewer, was
+virulently hostile, and appeared to us not merely to dislike our
+educational policy, which he had every right to do, but to blaspheme
+against the very idea of a liberal education.  As we have quoted from
+no other "Church" paper, we should like to remark here that a number of
+other such papers, representing various schools of religious thought,
+gave the book a generous welcome.
+
+Our experiments perished in the dark days of last spring.  Within only
+a month or two came the turn of the tide.  It is bitter to reflect
+that, could they but have survived until victory and peace brought a
+return of political sanity, they might have weathered the storm and
+conciliated some of their bitterest enemies, and reached safety.
+Possibly, though gone, they have left their mark.
+
+Meanwhile pneumonia has carried off, in the prime of early manhood,
+their staunchest friend among our colleagues.  He was not one who took
+any but a very small part in the actual conduct of the experiments.  He
+once lectured to _The Politics Class_ on "Liberalism."  But he had a
+genius for sympathy, and always, when difficulties arose, it was to him
+that we turned, because he had the gift of making us feel that it was
+still worth while to persevere.  Had we been wiser, he could perhaps
+have served us still further by bringing us into touch with some of
+those who differed from us, and helping to a mutual understanding.  For
+everyone was his friend.  The dedication of this book had already been
+chosen before he died, and we are unwilling to alter it, but perhaps we
+may also venture to offer it as an unworthy tribute to the memory of
+Alan Gorringe.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+       PREFACE
+    I. THE RISE
+   II. THE COLLAPSE
+  III. PROPAGANDA
+   IV. CONTROVERSY
+    V. CAPTURE BY THE STATE
+   VI. THE MAKING OF "POLITICIANS"
+  VII. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND FREAK SCHOOLS
+ VIII. MORALITY
+   IX. RELIGION
+    X. CURRICULUM
+   XI. THE YOUNG GENERATION AND THE OLD
+       APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+"That such an experiment should have been permitted in one of the great
+public (English) schools is a sign of the greatest promise for the
+future."--_Aberdeen Free Press_.
+
+"Of all the objectionable and inept proposals for reforming the
+education of our public schools we must award the palm to the scheme of
+teaching boys politics."--_Saturday Review_.
+
+"We do not believe the authors have delivered all their
+message."--_Scottish Educational Journal_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RISE
+
+The school in which political education was tried for a space of
+something under two years is in no way a very remarkable school.  It
+has its sixteenth-century founder, "of pious memory," and its "second
+founder," of memory almost more pious, in early Victorian days.  That
+second founder made the school famous as a centre of stalwart
+evangelicalism.  More recently its fame has been won chiefly in the
+production of first-class cricketers.  Until the early years of the
+present century the school had also, we are told, a kind of inverted
+fame as one of the "stupidest" of the public schools, as a dumping
+ground for young hopefuls who could not pass entrance examinations
+elsewhere.  From that reputation, however, it had struggled fairly
+successfully to free itself.
+
+The present writers started with the common assumption that the
+"Classical" scheme of a liberal education had long broken down in
+practice, and survived only as feudalism survived in eighteenth-century
+France, because sufficient energy had not yet generated to create a new
+scheme to replace it.  In part it had already disappeared and given
+place to the patchwork innovations of the earnest but painfully
+cautious and conservative reformers who have ruled the schools since
+the days of Dr. Arnold.[1]  The classical system had become the
+classical compromise, a clipped and truncated classics, fighting a
+losing battle for air space amidst a crowd of inadequately provided
+"new subjects"--history, literature, science, modern languages.  In
+some ways the last state was worse than the first.  For the first state
+had at least been based upon a great tradition and an ordered
+philosophy of life, but in the last state there was no tradition, no
+ordered philosophy; only a jumble and a scramble, and a passing of
+examinations.  Such a system or lack of system must fall a prey sooner
+or later to some educational movement based on a coherent and
+defensible doctrine.
+
+Now, as it chances, such a movement is already in the field; we may
+call it the "Cult of Efficiency."  It proclaims a great many truths
+about the necessity of increasing productivity, about the connection
+between education and the world of business, and generally speaking
+points to the achievements of Germany for our envious imitation; it
+proclaims the commercial utility of Spanish and Russian, and ranges in
+its advocacy from advanced chemistry to shorthand and book-keeping.
+Much that writers on these lines have to urge against the present
+system is perfectly sound and reasonable.  Many of their claims will
+have to be recognised in the educational system of the future.  But the
+admission of their claim as a whole, of the claim of "efficiency" to be
+the true and rightful heir of the old classical education, would be, to
+speak without exaggeration, the greatest disaster that could possibly
+befall this country.
+
+What was wanted then was a conception of education at once "liberal"
+and "modern," and such the writers found in "politics," using that word
+in its widest Platonic sense.  The classical education set out to study
+the ancient world, and in the case of most of its pupils achieved
+little more than the dry elements of two dead languages.  The study of
+the modern world has so far usually meant no more than the study of how
+to make a little money out of it; the trail of commercialism has been
+drawn over our Modern Sides.  Why should not the modern world be
+studied in the same noble and disinterested spirit as that in which the
+best of the old teachers studied the world of Greece and Rome?  It is
+surely worthy of such study.  Only perhaps by such study in our schools
+can its wounds be healed.  The central subject of a liberal education
+should be "To-day," the great difficulties amongst which we are all
+groping, the great problems awaiting solution, the great movements,
+capitalism and socialism, imperialism and internationalism, freedom and
+authority, that are battling for mastery or negotiating for a workable
+compromise.  The value of the classics lies wholly in the contribution
+that classical art, philosophy, and history can make to the enrichment
+of our minds for the study of our own problems.  The value of modern
+history lies in the inspiration of its great men, and the warning of
+its tragic experiences.  The value of "Divinity" is only found when we
+face the fundamental question, Are we to apply Christianity in our
+political and economic relations to-day, or are we not?  But over and
+above this reorientation of subjects already scheduled in the orthodox
+time-table, there is the new subject within which all these (except
+Divinity, which is fundamental) must be regarded as merely
+contributory, and that subject is "politics," the treatment, elementary
+yet thorough, vigorous yet many sided, of the great questions of the
+day, with all the diverse lines of thought along which each can be
+approached.  Here the fundamental "text-book" is the newspaper.
+Growing up in such a world as this of 1918, how can it be anything but
+sheer monasticism to divert the main part of a boy's intellectual
+energies away from this subject to anything else?  Our educational
+"America is here or nowhere."
+
+With this principle in view, and after various tentative experiments,
+we obtained permission to found the _Politics Class_ described in our
+previous book.  Suffice it to say here that the class was a voluntary
+body of some thirty or forty senior boys, that met once a week on a
+half-holiday evening to hear informal lectures from one or other of us,
+and occasionally from one or other of our colleagues, on questions of
+the day.  Sometimes the topic was purely general--"Competition and
+Co-operation," "The Spirit of the Reformer," or the like.  Sometimes a
+historical topic was traced rapidly from its beginnings down to a
+crisis of last week's newspaper, the discourse ending on the brink of
+the future with a note of interrogation; such were brief courses of
+lectures on "The Irish Question," and "The Russian Revolution."  A
+third type were those that confined themselves to an analysis of a
+strictly contemporary situation, such as the lectures on the various
+"peace terms" speeches that led up to the Versailles declaration of
+February, 1918.  No attempt was made to create any artificial
+popularity for the class.  The scene was the ordinary bleak class-room
+with all its sad suggestiveness.  Ordinary notes were taken in ordinary
+note-books.  No one, in fact, can have come from any motive but a
+genuine desire to know what was deemed worth knowing.
+
+Parallel with the foundation of the _Politics Class_ had come a
+remodelling of the sixth form time-table.  Indeed, not modern politics
+but Greek philosophy had been the first subject to stir that almost
+religious passion for a real understanding of things, without which
+knowledge is in the old man mere pedantry and in the young man mere
+grist for the examination mill.  In the present educational chaos,
+school sixth forms are quite bewilderingly fissiparous.  Every one is a
+"specialist" of some sort or other; specialism means "private work,"
+and if private work enables the gifted few to escape into
+self-education from the hampering attentions of the form master, it
+gives the rest a terrible training in the habits of time-wasting and
+evasion.  Yet so long as sixth form orthodoxy is classical scholarship
+work, the majority will rightly be found among the heretics, and that
+is the "specialists."  The remodelled sixth form time-table made at
+least a move towards the recognition of the principle that, over and
+above specialisms, there were certain subjects that were the common
+concern of all educated men.  A heterogeneous body drawn from all
+corners of the school time-table met together for Modern History, for
+Outlines of World History, and for General Principles of Science, and
+(with some regrettable abstentions) for Political Science and
+Economics.  Some day it will appear ridiculous that these last subjects
+should not have been deemed a necessity for all the "specialists" alike.
+
+The real test of an educational system is not what the masters do for
+the boys, but what the boys do for themselves, and in this matter only
+one large undertaking fell within the scope of our previous book,
+namely the paper, _The School Observer_, therein described and largely
+quoted.  The idea of this paper, a political journal on the lines of a
+high-class weekly, published twice a term, with "Notes on Current
+Events," political "leaders," literary and philosophic "middles," a
+poem or so, and correspondence all complete--this laughably magnificant
+idea came entirely from a little group of boys, and one at any rate of
+the present writers was at first frankly sceptical.  Well,--enthusiasm
+has a way of beating scepticism, at any rate when youth is thrown into
+the scale.  We were quickly harnessed to our task as members of the
+editorial committee.  Our literary contributions were confined to a
+part of the "Notes on Current Events," the portion of the paper that
+naturally attracted least outside notice, and was rarely singled out
+for praise.  It is true that a discerning schoolmaster from another
+school remarked that these notes displayed "restrained strength even
+more remarkable in boys than the qualities of the other parts of the
+paper."  I am ashamed to say we smiled and held our peace.
+
+Five of the six issues of the paper appeared, and we had already
+contracted with our advertisers for a second volume when the crash
+came.  In general, of course, the paper was much less important than
+the _Politics Class_.  The class was a necessity to political
+education; the paper was a luxury.  But it is a man's luxuries that
+give the clue to his character, and it was the very fact that the paper
+was always of the nature of a _jeu d'esprit_, a glorious game, a kind
+of Fleet Street doll's-house affair, that gave a sense of gay adventure
+to the pursuit of politics.  When the paper had been suppressed, a boy
+who had never contributed to it said to me, "What a shame!" and he
+added very pensively, "It was all so extraordinarily romantic!"
+
+But so far the movement had only touched the sixth form, and in a minor
+degree such lower forms as the writers happened to meet in the course
+of their professional duties.  That was plainly not enough.  If boys
+are learning from their masters something that they really value, their
+natures are so essentially communicative and sociable that they will be
+eager to pass it on to their friends.  This may seem a paradox, but it
+is true enough.  If of two boys in constant contact, A is learning
+algebra and B is not, and if A refrains from talking algebra to B, one
+of two causes must be the explanation of A's reticence.  Either he does
+not care about B or else he does not care about algebra, and since by
+hypothesis he cares about B, we can only assume that he does not care
+about algebra.  A simple experiment will verify our conclusion.  Drop
+an indiscretion about a colleague during the algebra lesson, and B, C,
+D and all the rest of them to a long way beyond Z will know all about
+it before sunset.  A, B, C, and D are interested in masters' opinions
+of each other.
+
+Now we would not claim for a moment that all educational subjects
+should be required to pass this test of "interest," and rejected if
+they do not.[2]  That would be grotesque.  But it seems to us that the
+central subject of a liberal education, that subject to which all
+others cohere and in relation to which all others are justified, ought
+to make some such appeal to enthusiasm.  Unless education produces
+enthusiasm for something, there is no education, and that is why it has
+so often been maintained that the real education of Public Schools is
+in the playing fields, because there alone, for most boys, enthusiasm
+is generated, if it is generated at all.  (For most, one may remark in
+passing, it is not generated even there.  The notion that the average
+boy is an enthusiast for cricket is as wide of the mark as would be the
+idea that he was an enthusiast for Greek, Natural Science, or the
+Church of England.)
+
+Judged by this test of infectious enthusiasm, political education was
+to produce in the early months of 1918, evidence of its educational
+worth such as we never dreamt of, and here again the pioneer was not
+ourselves but a boy, and that boy not one of the group that had started
+the paper.  This boy, who had recently become head of his House,
+conceived the idea that politics could become the medium of the same
+spirit of joyous and unforced co-operation as is traditionally (and
+sometimes actually) associated with athletics.  His idea of a school
+house was of a vigorous and jolly community, living together on terms
+of friendly equality such as reduced fagging and the oligarchial
+"prefect system" to a minimum, and uniting in a real effort to keep
+abreast with the great world outside by means of a co-operative study
+of politics and the Press.  The idea will seem mere foolishness and an
+impossibility to many of those who did not see it actually at work.  At
+the best it will seem the kind of thing we may have read of in books
+about "freak schools," where so much loss has obviously to be set
+against whatever is gained.  In this case, not only the idea, but all
+the practical details came from the boy himself and the little band of
+enthusiasts that gathered round him.  Indeed, one feels a sense of
+impropriety in describing what was essentially not our work, but his.
+However, it was the fine flower of political education, and as such may
+fitly close this chapter.  "Houses," after all, and not "forms," are
+the natural social units that compose a public school, and a scheme of
+education that becomes in the best sense popular may, indeed must, take
+its rise in the classroom, but will find its freest development in the
+life of house reading-room and house study.
+
+The chief among many "stunts," as they were called, was a political
+society.  The twenty-five members of this society, rather over half the
+house, undertook to read between them nearly all the more important
+newspapers, including one or two French papers.  On Sunday the society
+sat in conclave, the three or four leading events of the week were
+taken each in turn, and the individual or group responsible for each
+newspaper put forward the view of the event in question taken by his
+own particular organ.  These views were compared and debated, and
+ultimately a brief synopsis was drawn up, consisting of the event
+itself, with the chief typical utterances of the press on the subject
+set out underneath, for purposes of comparison and contrast.  These
+were typed and posted on a board as "news of the week."  Neither of us
+ever attended a meeting of this society, and it is obvious, from the
+fact that more than half the house joined in, that we are not concerned
+here with the activities of a little set of intellectualists.  In the
+fullest sense in which the word is applicable in a public school, these
+political activities were "democratic," and the effect on the "English"
+work of some of the boys in middle forms was most remarkable.  The
+present writer recalls, for instance, a Middle Fifth essay of some
+three thousand words on the complex, and in some ways repellent,
+subject of "National Guilds."  On how many successive nights the rule
+against "sitting up" was broken over the composition of this work the
+recipient of the essay forebore to inquire.
+
+From this beginning other developments rapidly opened.  A modest but
+useful idea was a question paper, on which any one who liked could set
+down questions that occurred to him in the course of his reading.  The
+House Library naturally felt the impact of the movement, and a
+political section was started in which books about the Greeks and
+Mill's "Liberty" stood side by side with the latest essay on
+"Reconstruction."  But it would be giving an altogether unworthy notion
+of the movement if it were suggested that politics alone, in the
+narrower sense, marked the limit of these activities.  The best modern
+plays and poetry began to appear on shelves whence rubbishy novels of a
+past generation were removed to make room for them.  Nor were older
+books neglected.  The general drift of interest was inevitably towards
+the moderns; but the great poets of the past were also finding their
+way in before the end came.
+
+Then, of course, there was a gramophone, with its "popular" and
+"classical" repertoires; and before the end came, the "classical" had
+so far surpassed the "popular" in popularity that House piano recitals
+had begun as well.
+
+Another development was on lines that would have gladdened the heart of
+Ruskin and Morris, though I do not know that either of these was
+consciously recognised as an influence.  A movement arose for
+beautifying the studies, which began with pseudo-Japanese lamp-shades,
+and moved upward through pretty curtains and tablecloths to framed
+"Medici" pictures.  Before the end there was hardly a study that had
+not its big framed Medici, and often a selection of Medici postcards as
+well.
+
+All these things involved, of course, some considerable expenditure;
+but the cost was met with an eagerness astonishing to the boys
+themselves when they reflected that, a few months before, So-and-so
+"had never cared about anything but the tuck shop."
+
+Other houses began to catch the spirit of the thing--a trifle
+reluctantly and tentatively, it must be admitted, for there is a good
+deal of improper pride about a school house, and imitations have not
+quite the glamour of originals.  Also the whole movement was by this
+time falling under a cloud, and it is now time to give some account of
+the collapse.
+
+
+
+[1] A brilliant "depreciation" of Arnold and his school has recently
+appeared in Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians."
+
+[2] Something more is said on this subject in Chapter X.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COLLAPSE
+
+"Teachers though they are, Mr. Gollancz and Mr. Somervell do not seem
+quite to realise ... what obstacles have to be overcome before the advice
+given in their little book is generally taken."--_The Westminster
+Gazette_.
+
+
+Our account of the collapse of our experiment has to be written, as the
+reader will easily understand, with a good deal of reserve.  "The rise"
+was the work of ourselves and our pupils.  "The collapse" was the work of
+others.  It is not a question of "Dora"; it is not a question of the
+common law of libel; there are certain older laws of courtesy and
+forbearance which we would fain observe, for he who has not learnt to
+observe these has hardly made a beginning with political education.  So
+let it be said to begin with that no one was to blame.  Things followed
+their predestined course, and every actor in the drama played the part
+that was natural and proper to him.  It was natural that the movement
+should be destroyed by masters as that its success should be made by
+boys.  If any one is to blame it is ourselves.  It was we who chose to
+pour new wine into old bottles--the preference for old bottles is
+explained in Chapter VI.--and when the custodians of the bottles awoke to
+the fact and hastily poured the wine out again, fearing  disaster, they
+certainly thought they were acting for the best.  Needless to say, we
+have often discussed the question whether, had the movement run on other
+lines, had we been content with rather less to begin with, had we
+considered principle rather less and prudence rather more, had we added
+the _rôle_ of diplomatist to the _rôle_ of missionary, had we hardened
+our hearts against some of the best boys in order to soften the hearts of
+some of the more tractable masters--had we done all these things, could
+we have postponed or even permanently escaped the collapse?  On the
+whole, we come to the conclusion that, much as we regret many plain
+mistakes of detail, in the main it is best that the bold course was
+taken, We rode boldly, and, in the last months, we had to ride for a
+fall.  An experiment has been made by frontal attack, and with the
+slenderest of resources.  Now that all that is over, the time has come to
+begin the slow and circuitous approach toward political education as a
+normal institution.
+
+The material of our experiment was boys and boys alone.  Now, at first
+sight, a school might seem to consist of boys, but in point of fact boys
+are only one element in a complex organisation embracing boys, masters,
+head master, bursar, governors, and parents.  The boys are only there to
+be educated, and education is a matter about which very few people have
+any strongly cherished ideas.  For very many, public school education is
+a species of "doing time," whereby a child of fourteen is taken and
+simply kept out of mischief (or, at any rate, kept away from home, where
+he would be a nuisance), until at eighteen he is become a man.  But the
+other constituent parts of the school have serious commercial interests
+at stake.  For the masters the school is the means of livelihood, and the
+livelihood afforded them is in many cases so niggardly that they very
+rightly consider that the smallest financial mishap to the school might
+plunge them below the line of bare subsistence.  From a slightly
+different angle, the eyes of the higher officials and the governors are
+fixed upon the same point.  A head master once remarked to me of one of
+his governors, "Old X.'s only idea is that the school should pay five per
+cent."
+
+And the parents.  It is an article of faith with the present writers that
+parents are wiser, more tolerant and more open to ideas on educational
+matters, than schoolmasters generally suppose.  But parents live at a
+distance, and only make themselves felt at moments of crisis, and then
+the crisis is one which they probably only very imperfectly understand.
+That is all the fault of the schools, for the schools have never made a
+serious attempt to take the parents into partnership in the matter of
+their sons' education.  And here we are back against the root of all
+evil, for the reason why this has not been done is that the schools have
+not yet seriously faced the fact that a liberal education for the average
+boy is an unsolved problem, for the solution of which they need all the
+help they can possibly get.  Of course this taking of the parent into
+partnership would be no easy matter.  Readers of that wise and humorous
+tale, "The Lanchester Tradition," will remember the comical failure of
+the head master's attempt at a "Parents' Committee."  Still, all this
+being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of
+the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the
+false image of the traditional parent has been created in the
+schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is
+always "writing to complain."  Now, he who pays the piper does not
+necessarily call the tune.  That would be too absurd.  But he has a veto
+on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that the
+unmusical generally dislike a _new_ tune.
+
+The opposition to political education developed along two lines.  One of
+them makes this story a microcosm of the world history of the years
+1917-1918.  The other is something peculiar to the English public
+schools, and might have befallen at any period since Dr. Arnold
+inaugurated their modern history.
+
+When we began our experiments the "party truce," in the moral as distinct
+from the formal sense, still held good.  Outside the circles of strict
+pacifism--and with pacifism in any but a merely abusive sense we never
+had any concern--English people were agreed upon the great questions of
+the war.  Such differences of opinion as there were concerned only
+questions of method and expediency, not questions of principle.  The
+"gospel" of August, 1914, had not yet become a battle-ground disputed by
+fiercely earnest rival sects.  We were Liberals in a general sense, but
+we differed on a great many topics, and we were genuinely anxious, in the
+words of one of our pupils in the school magazine, "not so much to
+advocate any one particular remedy of any given problem as to lay before
+the class the problems themselves and the principal reforms which have
+been or are being suggested, so that thought and criticism may have full
+scope for exercise."  It would be unfair to ourselves to admit that we
+abandoned that ideal, but the events of 1917 brought a new spirit into
+the world.  On the one hand, the early days of the Russian Revolution and
+the demand for a peace "without annexations or indemnities," coupled with
+the entry of America and the war speeches of President Wilson, seemed to
+revive the flagging idealism of the Allies and lift it to a more
+universal and exalted level than ever before.  On the other hand, the
+publication of the Secret Treaties and the many incomplete revelations
+that followed thereon, laid bare the fact that quite another act of
+motives were also at work among our leaders; that territorial greed and
+diplomatic hypocrisy were enemies to be fought in our own midst as well
+as on the battlefield.  The issues of the war assumed a grander and a
+more terrible aspect.  More than ever before perhaps in the history of
+the world--and we do not overlook the period of the so-called religious
+wars--religion and politics fused.  To us, at any rate, the calm
+aloofness suggested by the quotation above became impossible.  A cry
+seemed to have gone forth, "Who is on the Lord's side?  Who?"  A great
+gulf opened up between those who only a year before had believed
+themselves to be for the time at any rate in one political camp.  On one
+side of that gulf we found ourselves, and on the other most of our
+colleagues.  It was not that we differed from them as to the necessity of
+winning the war, and of putting forward every possible military effort
+for that end.  But everything depends on the uses to which the victory is
+put, and the spirit in which it is approached, and there the differences
+were profound.
+
+And thus the _Politics Class_ became a school of liberalism.[1]  It was
+no intolerant liberalism, for intolerant liberalism is not liberalism at
+all.  From first to last we stood for the examination of all points of
+view.  We were for reading the views of those we disagreed with, not for
+abusing them unheard or burning their books unread.  In so far as some of
+our pupils carried liberalism to the point of intolerance, they lost the
+spirit of the movement they professed to support.  There were not many
+against whom this charge could be brought.  One of our most ardent
+democrats, I remember, sent me during the time of his military training a
+careful and painstaking examination of Mr. Mallock's latest big book.
+The excuse of those that fell into intolerance must be, I suppose, that
+they were young, and that they found themselves confronted by an
+astonishing spectacle of intolerance in some of their "conservative"
+masters.
+
+When this change was taking place, we sought to redress the balance by
+taking into partnership in the running of the _Politics Class_ a strongly
+Conservative master.  Such an arrangement would have been admirable had
+the genuine educational spirit been there.  It was not.  The overture was
+a failure and only added to our difficulties.  To some men it seemed
+better to root out the Liberal masters as "traitors" than to co-operate
+with them as teachers.
+
+On the eve of the final collapse, a similar experiment was tried with
+_The School Observer_.  The last number bears the names of two "editors,"
+and contains both a Liberal and a Conservative "leader" written on the
+same topic.  The innovation was made at the last minute, and the
+Conservative "leader" is not a genuine schoolboy production, but the
+model may be a useful one for future work on the same lines.
+
+But there was another influence making for the collapse.  We quoted in
+our previous book a head master who remarked at a school prize-giving
+that the only questions worth asking are those that cannot get a definite
+answer.  Political education consists almost entirely of such questions.
+Its sheet anchor is freedom of thought; its method is controversy; its
+end is not in complete mastery of a box of intellectual tricks such as
+will win full marks in an examination, but in the modesty of realised
+ignorance and the enthusiastic search for fresh lights in the darkness.
+Socrates was put to death by the Athenians because he would not desist
+from asking them questions, and it is to be feared that some of our
+pupils would have incurred the same fate had the customs of the time
+permitted it.  The taste for controversy on the fundamental subjects will
+grip a youth like the taste for drink, as many who have passed through
+undergraduate days at Oxford or Cambridge can remember.  Suppose a boy
+enters into political controversy with his form master, over the| giving
+back of an essay, or with his house master at the luncheon table....
+
+Now, there is a Divinity that doth hedge a schoolmaster, and the hedge
+must be kept in somewhat careful repair.  So long as we are concerned
+with subjects like elementary Latin and Greek or Mathematics, we are
+dealing with a body of knowledge in which, to take the examinations
+standard, all the masters get full marks.  All knowledge is contained in
+a set of small school books which the masters, for their sins, know more
+or less by heart backwards.  Even history, if it is sufficiently badly
+taught, may be grouped among such subjects, for, strange as it may seem,
+it is quite possible to teach it in such a way that no boy feels impelled
+to ask questions either insoluble in themselves or beyond the scope of
+the master's immediate memory.  There are schoolmasters who definitely
+discourage or even forbid the asking of questions by the class.  "Little
+boys should be seen and not heard"--that worst of all educational
+maxims--makes a larger contribution to the buttressing up of the present
+system than is usually supposed.  A lowering diet of irregular verbs
+keeps the boy mind "docile," to use a word of ironically perverted
+meaning, and prevents it from impinging embarrassingly upon the lightly
+guarded regions of the master's intellectual entrenchments.  In fact,
+political education set up a new intellectual standard.  It was a subject
+in which no one, boy or master, got "full marks,"--scarcely even
+President Wilson, perhaps, if you took his "work" as a whole!  All were
+learners, all were fellow workers together, and before the vast scope of
+the task, differences of proficiency between the various workers seemed
+hardly to matter.
+
+Here, then, rises a difficult question.  Ought the schoolmaster to
+possess, or appear to possess, complete knowledge of the subject he
+teaches?  The present writer has taught a good variety of subjects during
+nine years, and on the whole he has found his ignorance, not only of
+politics, but of far more finite matters, a very helpful educational
+instrument.  As an emergency teacher of Latin on the modern side, for
+instance, he found it a positive advantage that he had forgotten more of
+the language than his pupils had ever learnt.  His occasional quaint
+errors did not always pass undetected, and their detection had probably
+an educational stimulus for the form which outweighed the loss incurred
+when his mistakes passed without notice.  Nor did he feel greatly the
+loss of intellectual stature.  It was partly made good by the ingenuity
+with which he explained how he had come to make the mistake.  And if
+there was loss in intellectual prestige, there was an increased sense of
+intellectual comradeship.  But this is a trifling and not wholly serious
+digression.
+
+Some masters stand for intellectual infallibility.  These political
+discussions disturbed them.  They felt that their credentials as
+schoolmasters were being examined and found wanting.  They accused the
+boys of priggery.  It was a most false charge, for the boys were
+enthusiasts, and enthusiasm is a form of self-forgetfulness as priggery
+is a form of self-consciousness.  Still priggery was the word.  The
+charge of "priggery" was added to the charge of "pacifism."
+
+On these two lines the opposition developed and ultimately triumphed.  It
+was suggested that "the school would be empty in a couple of years," if
+political education continued.  Here, it would seem, our critics were
+trading on their false idea of the parent, and believing what they wished
+to believe.  Take the statistics of entries, which is the only tangible
+evidence on the subject, and the only conclusion you can draw is that
+political education either had no effect at all, or that it slightly
+increased the commercial well-being of the school.  It was not on such
+ground as this that political education was doomed.  As we said at the
+beginning of the chapter, the material of our experiments was the boys
+and them alone.  We had made a short cut.  We had made no effort to
+convert our colleague.  We trusted to results for their conversion.  But,
+as the preceding narrative will have shown, the greater our success, the
+greater became their irritation, when success was labelled "pacifism" and
+"priggery."  Without intending it, we had played "Pied Piper" upon some
+of the best of the house masters' foster children.  We had envisaged a
+school as a single corporate society, boys and masters working together
+with the maximum of frankness and equality for the common end, education.
+We had not allowed for the fact that a school cannot become such a
+corporate society, unless the staff has become such at the same time.
+Like three-quarters of the reformers of history, we had, in our own
+despite, become rebels.  And so all was over.  There is now no _Politics
+Class_, no _School Observer_ in the school of their foundation, though
+two other schools of fame have started papers on similar lines, with
+handsome acknowledgments to our example.  There are no political
+societies in the Houses.  Two or three of our pupils have left before
+their time, and we, the authors, are no longer schoolmasters, only
+"educationists,"--it is a change for the worse.
+
+
+
+[1] Generally speaking, the liberalism of _The Manchester Guardian_ or of
+President Wilson's speeches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PROPAGANDA
+
+"A point hardly touched on in the book is the difficulty of teaching
+politics without the disadvantages of partisanship.  It is worth
+discussion."--_Manchester Guardian_.
+
+"If 'politics'--even politics as an art culled from the classics, from
+_pro-German_[1] economists and historians, from poets such as Shelley,
+and from _German_[1] higher critics of the Bible--were taught to fifth
+form boys with crude impressionable minds, the result would be
+Bolshevism.  We agree that under careful guidance much of ultimate
+political value can be taught from history and literature.  But it must
+be done with infinite care, and opinions must be excluded from the
+teaching.  That is the difficulty."--_Contemporary Review_.
+
+"Clever boys will learn their politics for themselves."--_Saturday
+Review_.
+
+"The public schools have for years past covered their quiet
+infiltration of Conservative principles with a camouflage of strict
+neutrality.  Teachers though they are, the authors do not seem quite to
+realise what a formidable protective device this banning of the modern
+history which we call politics has been, and what obstacles have to be
+overcome before the advice given in their little book is generally
+taken."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+Two great objections have to be met if Politics is to become the
+central subject in our public school education.  The desirability of
+such a change may be urged from many points of view; and the practical
+results obtained during the course of our recent experiment seemed to
+us even more valuable than preliminary theorising had led us to expect.
+Once make a boy think about the life of his own time and the great
+principles whose fight for mastery he is witnessing; once make him
+wonder about the actual machinery by which his world is moved; once set
+him speculating about the meaning of the universe and of his own
+existence; and you have created such a spirit of eager enthusiasm and
+inquiry, that at last that development of the individual personality is
+achieved which, as every great educationist since Plato has told us,
+must be the aim of all who desire to be more than mere teachers.
+Modern History, Politics, Sociology, Economics, Ethics, even
+_Metaphysics_--we may class all these under the broad heading of
+Politics, for one and all they deal with the life and destiny of the
+individual as a member of human society and a part of the Universe.
+There is no human being who, at least while he is young, does not feel
+a keen interest in such things; the deepest waters are stirred and the
+classroom becomes the meeting-place of minds engaged in an exciting
+adventure instead of being, as is so often now the case, a prison cell
+in which all a boy's spontaneity and joy of life are crushed out beyond
+recall.
+
+Yet the two objections remain, and to one of them we address ourselves
+in this chapter.[2] When the possibility of political teaching is
+considered, the first thought that leaps to the mind is: Can the
+subject be taught without the introduction of propaganda? and is not
+Politics just the one subject in which propaganda is above everything
+undesirable?  Now it may be pointed out that the present system of
+public school education is itself a form of political propaganda none
+the less effective for being concealed.  A boy is sent to a public
+school with a set of political notions imbibed from his parents and the
+circle in which he moves, and during the whole period of his boyhood,
+no genuine effort is made to develop his powers of independent thought
+and so to enable him to revise his inherited opinions.  A certain
+stimulus no doubt is given to his mental activity by setting him
+mathematical problems to solve and passages in the classical authors to
+construe; but his thought on political and social questions remains a
+thing apart, unstirred, atrophied.  What else is this but political
+propaganda?  And when it is reinforced by a thousand subtle hints in
+and out of the classroom, hints suggesting that, of course, there can
+be no two opinions about so-and-so and his supporters, it becomes one
+of the most potent instruments of mental darkness that has ever been
+allowed to function in a rational community.
+
+But the objection to propaganda is not to be met by a "Tu quoque."  It
+is one which raises the most fundamental issues of educational theory.
+To develop, we are told, and not to mould, is the aim of education; and
+every genuine educationist will eagerly agree.  Yet you cannot develop
+in a vacuum.  You must impart some background for the young mind, give
+it some material on which to work.  How, then, can the compromise be
+effected?  How can we inculcate and yet at the same time aim above
+every thing at the development of an individuality, which may and
+indeed must, be so very different from our own?  The answer is not
+really hard to find.  What we inculcate, the background we give, must
+be considered by us as merely a stop-gap, a poor temporary support
+which the child may fling away when he can support himself.  And even
+while we are giving the support, we must at every moment be developing
+the power which will as soon as possible dispense with it.
+
+If this _caveat_ is borne in mind and honestly observed, propaganda,
+whether in political, philosophical, or religious teaching, becomes not
+only defensible but actually desirable.  Nothing can be more fatal than
+to give the impression that it does not very much matter which of
+several conflicting principles or policies a boy adopts; that there are
+after all equally strong arguments on both sides, and that the adhesion
+of the world to one philosophy of life and code of conduct rather than
+another will make no very vital difference to anybody.  Yet if the
+teacher presents his subject in a perfectly balanced and passionless
+manner such a result will inevitably follow.  The boy will notice his
+master's lack of enthusiasm, and consequently remain unenthusiastic
+himself; and not only will that intellectual eagerness remain
+undeveloped, which is as a spark to set his whole nature ablaze, but
+also he will feel none of that moral passion for principles which is
+the crying need of the world to-day.  A master in another school, which
+had adopted the idea of a Politics Class, heard of the excitement and
+controversy which ours was occasioning, and remarked adversely on our
+methods.  "We teach Politics too," he said, "but we are careful that
+the boys should never be able to discover on which side our own
+sympathies lie.  Consequently there is no excitement and no
+controversy.  Politics are thought of in just the same way as any other
+school subject."  We can well believe it.  Our whole idea, of course,
+is that they should not be so thought of; that they should be regarded
+rather as a matter of most vital interest and importance both for the
+boy himself and for the world as a whole.  We would have a boy feel an
+attachment to principles as romantic and absorbing as his affections
+for his dearest friend, not coldly cancel one principle against the
+other as if he were doing a sum in mathematics.
+
+But it is time that we explained exactly what we mean when we say that
+a master should not shrink from propaganda in political teaching.  We
+do not by any means intend that he should state only his own point of
+view, and pass over the arguments that may be urged against it.  That
+would be the merest parody of education.  Rather do we mean that he
+should adopt a threefold method.  He should put forward his own view
+with all the enthusiasm that he feels for it (we have been called
+"missionaries" by way of abuse, but find nothing but honour in the
+word); simultaneously, he should impress on his pupils the fact that it
+after all is only his view, and urge them not merely to accept but to
+examine and criticise; and finally, he should explain with complete
+honesty every point that has been, or possibly could be, raised against
+it.  We call this method "propaganda," because a fire is imparted to
+the statement of one side which cannot, from the nature of the case, be
+imparted to that of the other; but it is propaganda in which there is
+no touch of dishonesty or obscurantism.
+
+We have said that, while he is presenting his case, the master should
+be urging his pupils to examine and criticise it.  But he should do
+more than this; if he is a Liberal, he should spend much of his time in
+a direct propaganda of the great Liberal principles--freedom of thought
+and discussion; the sanctity of the individual conscience; the
+paramount importance of moral and intellectual independence.  In this
+way he will be creating a habit of mind which will _naturally_
+criticise; and so by his propaganda of general liberalism he will
+annihilate the vantage-point he would otherwise occupy in his
+propaganda of particular principles and policies.
+
+We speak of "liberal education," and surely the epithet is meaningless
+unless it be taken to imply that conversion to those general principles
+is the very bed-rock of education.  But others think otherwise, and so
+we would point out the broad distinction which must be drawn between
+propaganda of the simple liberal and propaganda of the simple
+reactionary principle--on the one hand freedom of thought, on the other
+acceptance of ideas not one's own.  Our liberal propaganda carries with
+it the instrument of its own overthrow.  If you can inspire a boy with
+a desire to put all things to the test of his own free conscience, you
+are empowering him to criticise everything you teach--even that very
+liberty of opinion, a belief in which you have been so anxious to
+create.  But with reactionary propaganda it is quite otherwise.  By it
+a static habit of mind is produced--a habit of mind which, except by
+way of a mercifully not uncommon revolt, is a pawn in the hands of its
+present teacher, and that public opinion which in time to come will
+take its teacher's place.
+
+A word may be added on the means best calculated to produce the free
+mind at which we are aiming.  Use, of course, can and should be always
+made of the fundamental arguments (all to be found in Mill) in favour
+of liberty of opinion.  But there is one case in which the employment
+of a subsidiary method may give even more valuable results.  Where a
+boy holds tenaciously to an opinion which you think to be evil, argue
+against it unceasingly; show him the errors of it; point out
+passionately the beauty of its alternative.  The stronger his
+conviction, the better; indeed, deliberately choose his deepest-seated
+prejudice--attack him in the very heart of what you regard as his
+error.  Then, when at last he sees that the opinion which he had
+thought of as the only possible one is in reality wrong, and that
+another which he had loathed is in reality right, a tremendous
+intellectual conversion will have taken place; his own case will
+constantly act as a warning to him whenever he is again tempted to
+prejudice or narrowness of outlook.
+
+
+
+[1] The italics are ours.  Why were these two words inserted, we wonder.
+
+[2] The other is dealt with in Chapter V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CONTROVERSY
+
+"While a formidable strife between masters of different creeds might be
+engendered, it is arguable that the finest political spirit might be
+fostered by approaching the problems under the conditions of fairness and
+courtesy on which the public schools pride themselves."[1]--_Manchester
+Guardian_.
+
+"Tolerance, to be more than a pale and negative virtue, needs to be based
+on an understanding of these different points of view, which means,
+again, bringing an educated mind to bear on them."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+"Boys always will be boys" they say, and the saying can be interpreted in
+many ways.  "Masters always will be masters" is a more sobering
+reflection.  The reputation of schoolmasters for sweet reasonableness has
+never stood, perhaps, particularly high.  Even supposing that, with a
+staff of angels, such a scheme of teaching as that sketched in the
+preceding chapter were desirable, will not the actual result be something
+very different?  Will not "a formidable strife between masters of
+different creeds be engendered," and will not the spectacle of that
+strife, and a possible participation in it, be the very worst possible
+training for the new generation?
+
+The difficulty is one that has got to be faced, and the present writers,
+at any rate, are not at all likely to overlook it.  As was shown in
+Chapter II., our experiments collapsed not because our colleagues
+differed from us in political opinion, but because, differing from us in
+political opinion, they also differed from us in educational theory.  Had
+the experiment collapsed simply because they differed from us in
+political opinion, it would be no use pursuing the subject of political
+education further; for a staff in which all the masters held the same
+political views would be unlikely to exist, and in any case altogether
+undesirable.  We may take it for granted that the staff will consist of
+men of diverse political opinions.  Indeed we may go further and take it
+for granted that in a school in which political education flourishes,
+those diversities, though certainly less bitter, will be more clearly
+marked than at present.  In such a school the masters, for the most part,
+will be keenly interested in politics, for the school must be a single
+society of men and boys in real intellectual co-operation.  What is good
+for the boys will be good for the masters.  Perverse metaphors comparing
+masters and boys to hounds and hares will be seen as the symptom of a
+radically false educational philosophy.
+
+If political education becomes not merely an experiment but an integral
+part of the timetable, the staff as a whole, not necessarily all the
+masters, but all those concerned with what are at present ironically
+called "the humanities," will be taking a part in it.  But how can this
+be worked?  We are here faced with a problem such as none of the ordinary
+school subjects has ever raised, at any rate in this acute form.
+Everything depends upon the educational philosophy of the staff.
+Everything depends upon the extent of their belief in freedom of opinion.
+
+The case for freedom of opinion, like the case for self-government, has
+suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted
+that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it.
+Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality.  "Britons never
+shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter.  Very
+likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed
+by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the sailors he was
+glorifying were mostly victims of the press-gang.  It is but a step from
+a press-gang to a Press Bureau.  Most Englishmen are not very anxious to
+tolerate any opinions but their own, if the subject be one that they deem
+of vital importance.  Very few have the faith of the great apostles of
+freedom, the conviction that right opinion can only triumph through fair
+and open conflict with the wrong.
+
+The cause of freedom, then, fares badly enough in the world outside, when
+we are only concerned with its application to those who have reached
+"years of discretion."  Inside the school the difficulties are admittedly
+greater, and freedom has hitherto had a poor chance.  Yet without
+freedom, though there may be instruction, there can hardly be education.
+
+In so far then as the staff fall short in this vital matter of
+toleration, they must themselves go to school and learn; and he is
+probably a poor teacher who is not himself ever learning something more.
+Here perhaps the head master might find one of his finest opportunities.
+The conscientious modern head master often finds it hard to rise above
+the mass of administrative work attached to his office.  He resembles
+Philip II. of Spain, of whom it was said that he was always trying to be
+his own private secretary.  Meanwhile his assistants go their own ways,
+each narrowing into his own little intellectual groove.  The result, at
+any rate in the more remote and less distinguished schools--that is to
+say, the vast majority--is a society far from idyllic.  Even if politics
+were to engender "a formidable strife," the discords would not be
+breaking in upon any very beautiful harmonies.  Two novels have recently
+been written by schoolmasters about their profession, and even if "Mr.
+Perrin and Mr. Traill" may be discounted as the ill-natured revenge of a
+clever man who had mistaken his profession, "The Lanchester Tradition"
+has, we believe, been generally hailed as a truthful record.  Masters at
+many schools have exclaimed, "How on earth does this Rugby man come to
+know all about _us_?"  Teaching is spiritual work or it is nothing, and
+the head master ought to be, as the greatest head masters have been, a
+true leader of his staff in spiritual things.
+
+Our profession is the most insanely individualistic in the world.
+Probably the teaching of every subject would be improved by the
+establishment of a really organised co-operation between the various
+masters teaching it, and "politics," with its strong human appeal would,
+with a leader worthy of his position, be the best place to begin.
+Masters would meet for a genuine educational purpose--and the last thing
+ever discussed at the masters' meetings we have attended has been
+educational principles--they would learn to see into each others' minds
+and methods, enlarge their intellectual sympathies and understand their
+differences.  Thus a real corporate intellectual life of the staff might
+begin.  Often at present this does not exist, and its absence is fatal to
+the school as a seriously intellectual institution.
+
+And surely the need for the tolerant staff can hardly be exaggerated.
+And here we are thinking not so much of the war and its controversies as
+of the days that will follow.  After the war a baser motive than even the
+crudest jingo patriotism will claim a monopoly over the political thought
+of public schoolboys for the defence not of "country," but of property.
+The unorthodox will be denounced not as "pacifists," but as "socialists,"
+and the enemy will be not the Kaiser, but perhaps the Prime Minister of a
+Labour Government.  But just as the only hope for the world after the war
+seems to lie in a League of Nations, so the only hope for England lies in
+the co-operation of all classes in a common search for industrial
+justice.  The public schools are "class preserves" of the rich, and their
+opportunity for good, as for harm, will be almost boundless.  "To turn
+out the young of the capitalist class with all their capitalist
+prejudices intact will be sheer dereliction of duty on the part of public
+schoolmasters."  So wrote a great teacher of the older generation.  The
+obvious way of destroying those prejudices as prejudices is by an
+enthusiastic and capable exposition of various forms of socialism.  This
+can best be done by socialist masters.  But, supposing the socialist
+teaching is false, why should those who are not Socialists fear for the
+result?  It is a necessary part of the scheme that they on their side
+should make a reasoned defence of a reformed capitalism.  If this is done
+"the young of the capitalist class" may be turned out Socialists or
+anti-Socialists, but at least they will go out into the world men of some
+economic understanding, with views based on reasoning, and by further
+reasoning or experience liable to be changed, not men with inherited
+prejudice intact.
+
+If we assume in our staff a general inclination towards freedom of
+opinion, everything becomes possible.  A hundred questions of
+organisation arise, essentially practical questions, and more easily
+solved by concrete experiment than by literary methods.  It may, however,
+be worthy while to glance at a few of these.
+
+Masters will always be human; and political education must be so
+organised as to suggest in every way that the masters of divergent views
+are co-operating in a general scheme of political education such as no
+one of them alone could impart, not competing for the political
+allegiance of the boys.  A school is not a bye-election in permanent
+session.  Thus, though a controversial element is bound to come into
+political education, we would mitigate this element by not allowing any
+one form to go to more than one master for political work.  The boy will
+pass from form to form, and thus the conservatism of a summer term will
+be tempered by the radicalism of the following winter.  But these
+political compartments will not be particularly air-tight in any case.
+The house master will be a permanent influence, and when a keen-witted
+boy has just got out of the form of a sympathetic master, it is unlikely
+that they will altogether lose touch with one another.
+
+At the top of the school, however, the controversial element should be
+more frankly accepted.  We believe in the permanent institution of a
+voluntary _Politics Class_ in which the best boys will hear again the
+best of the masters who have taught them on their way up the school.
+Between such a _Politics Class_ and a really efficient school Debating
+Society it might be hard to draw a precise line.  One would play into the
+hands of the other.
+
+The "judicial" teacher, the man who from an Olympian elevation surveys
+the political strivings of past and present alike, and analyses,
+catalogues, and defines, creating all the while an impression of luminous
+impartiality, may, of course, do much good work.  The present writer
+would be the last man to deny it when he remembers his own debt to a
+teacher of that kind.  None the less, we believe that it is the other
+kind of teaching that is really needed in the schools of the well-to-do
+to-day.[2]  The political problems of our time are of intense and
+terrible importance: on their solution this way or that depends the
+happiness or the misery of uncounted millions; and it is so largely on
+the way that the young of the privileged classes learn to look at them
+that their solution depends.  "Judicial" teaching creates the impression
+that so long as you "know the case" for or against a policy, it does not
+matter whether you believe it, and as for acting upon it, or making
+sacrifices for it, there is no question of doing anything so "extreme."
+Education _must_ create enthusiasm.
+
+It must also make for many-sidedness, and so we arrive at the function of
+the staff, the many-sided staff of enthusiasts.  Let each one believe
+himself, if he is young enough to do so, the monopolist of political
+truth.  Let each one differ from all his colleagues on every subject
+under the sun, except two, the infinite possibilities of the boys he
+teaches, and the infinite importance of freedom of opinion.
+
+
+
+[1] Is there a little irony here?
+
+[2] Whether any particular single school can afford to experiment in such
+teaching is, of course, another matter altogether.  Gallio is a less
+troublesome colleague than Paul, and Paul will waste his breath if he
+complains of the obvious fact that such things are so.  But he has a
+better ground of complaint when he sees himself silenced, while Sosthenes
+is allowed to carry on as vigorously as he pleases.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CAPTURE BY THE STATE
+
+"It is a great and perilous discovery that the State can [as in
+Germany] impress the minds of masses of men by a carefully organised
+system of political education, and we hope the authors will bear it in
+mind."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+"Germany has shown the world to what evil ends the dishonest use of
+schools and schoolmasters must lead."--_Contemporary Review_.
+
+
+We have discussed the pros and cons of propaganda--the propaganda, that
+is to say, by each master of his particular point of view--and have
+concluded that, if certain safeguards are adopted and honestly adhered
+to, such propaganda is desirable.  But there is one particular form of
+propaganda which no one, if he has any reverence at all for the
+individuality of his pupils and the freedom of the world, can regard as
+anything but an abomination.  And here we meet with the most serious
+criticism which can be, and has been, levelled against the project of
+political education.  Suppose, it has been urged, that your scheme is
+adopted by a number of the public schools; suppose that by a steady
+process of attack, this new and very powerful piece of machinery is
+captured by the State, as a means of imposing orthodoxy on the nation
+and nipping in the bud a great part of our potential vigour and
+independence; have you not then defeated most disastrously your own
+object, and desiring above everything more liberty in thought and more
+self-reliance in action, merely succeeded in setting up a system
+similar to that which created the national character of modern Germany?
+
+It is at first sight a most damaging criticism; and a criticism which
+seems to gather weight as we look about us and observe the terrible
+results which have occurred when the State has been allowed to
+manipulate opinion for its own ends.  No Englishman will need to have
+the lesson of Germany brought home to him; he knows too well how
+inculcation through the schools of the worst type of narrow patriotism,
+rendered seemingly noble by a deliberate falsification of history, has
+warped the generosity which all children, German or other, possess,
+into a pitiful acquiescence in every form of intellectual and moral
+vileness.  But in England, too, the danger signals are not wanting.  We
+have observed the people falling more and more under the sway of one
+man's ideas, carried by his Press into every town and village of the
+countryside: we have noticed that complete independence does not appear
+always to exist as between the Press and the men who are responsible
+for the gravest acts of public policy; and some of us do not much like
+what we have seen.  Are we then to help forward the forces making for
+our own Prussianisation?  We desire to see Politics taught by masters
+of every shade of political opinion, so that the boys may have all the
+materials from which to form an independent judgment; but will not the
+State see to it, as it grows more and more powerful, that only those
+men are allowed to become, or to remain, schoolmasters, who will teach
+a doctrine not abhorrent to the powers that be?  Those who know the
+public schools will not be at a loss to understand how such a
+consummation could be achieved.  Even now there is the pressure of
+parents, members of the financial or political wing of the ruling
+class--a pressure few head masters are big enough to resist.  And in
+the future--to take only one instance--may not Conscription remain, and
+the Government exercise a direct control through the medium of the
+O.T.C.?
+
+And as one writes these words; as one sees the ghastly prospect of more
+and more State control, more and more authoritarianism and docility,
+less and less of the free co-operation which is the very life-blood of
+society, one sees also that the only way in which we can prevent the
+remedy we have proposed from becoming another instrument in the hands
+of our enemies, is simply by adopting that remedy itself.  We must
+break in on the vicious circle while and how we can.  For why is there
+a danger of our instrument of education being turned into an instrument
+of obscurantism?  Only because there is a danger of our whole society
+becoming rotten to the core; only because there is a danger of the
+present cleavage between the two English nations becoming wider and
+wider, until we have, on the one hand, a class ruling in the interests
+of money and privilege, and, on the other, a slaving and possibly
+pampered proletariate.  And unless a start is made here and now with
+the political education of Europe--unless boys and girls are made to
+think politically while their generosity and idealism is still
+untainted by motives of personal profit, and their powers of vital
+thought not yet decayed by disuse--these and worse things will happen;
+love, tolerance, and the independence which is the birthright of men,
+will all be engulfed in a mad welter of personal, class, and national
+selfishness.  In such a society it really would not matter very much if
+political education were captured by the State; and the only way, as it
+seems to us, of preventing its advent is by getting up a system of
+political education.  For by political education we are creating the
+only possible safeguard against a misuse of it--we are creating a
+society which will not _desire_ to misuse it.
+
+And so we would make, if we may, an appeal to all who are considering
+what their future work shall be, and to those also who may be finding
+their present work unprofitable--we would urge them to become
+schoolmasters.  We like sometimes to think of a little Greek army of
+devoted warriors--a band of five hundred young men, who will go into
+the public schools and there gradually help to set up a system of
+political education.  The word "Greek" is not out of place.  For there
+is something about the sunlit freshness of a cricket field--something
+too, about the boys, belonging for the most part to a class which, with
+all its faults, has a great tradition of public service behind it--that
+brings before the mind a gathering of Greek humanity in the smiling
+peace of a Greek country place.  It is idle to pretend that a man of
+ability who goes into the schoolmastering profession does not have to
+make many sacrifices.  His salary is usually miserable; his chances of
+a head mastership must be at present in inverse ratio to the vigour
+with which he acts on the principles he believes in, for these posts
+are mostly reserved for the "safe," as the debates of the Head Masters'
+Conference used to show, until, a few years ago, that body very wisely
+decided to exclude reporters.  But the compensations are enormous.  He
+will live all his life close to boys whom, when he once gets to know
+them, he will find to have a freshness and high-heartedness which will
+be a constant source of hope and inspiration; he will have the joy of
+watching their minds develop, and of feeling that it is due in some
+measure to him that they are growing into makers of happiness for
+themselves and the world.  And when in his work he is met by the
+opposition of those who misinterpret or misunderstand, he will have an
+almost fierce satisfaction in the faith that the future may be all on
+his side, and that many years hence a little of him will live in men
+who have realised not his, but their, individuality, and that
+potentiality for goodness which, as well as he was able, he fostered
+and brought to the light.
+
+We have both been schoolmasters; at the moment we are neither of us
+anything so useful; and we feel that we can say quite dogmatically that
+there is no happiness equal to that of the profession that was ours.
+And both of us fell into it accidently, as so many others have done.
+Yet the appeal for schoolmasters should surely not be based entirely or
+even mainly on the idyllic picture of the happy schoolmaster.  John
+Stuart Mill reduced hedonism to its fundamental paradox when he
+declared that the way to find happiness was to turn your back on it.
+If there is one lesson which political education rightly conducted
+cannot fail to impress upon its best boys, it is the crying need of the
+schools for their services.  From Plato and Aristotle down to the
+latest treatises on Reconstruction, be it the "Principles of
+Reconstruction," as laid down by Mr. Bertrand Russell, or the "Elements
+of Reconstruction," as reprinted from _The Times_ with an introduction
+by Lord Milner, all alike come round to education as the keystone of
+the arch of politics.  The final appeal is always to the schoolmaster,
+and it is perhaps less hopeful to appeal to the actual schoolmaster of
+to-day than to the possible schoolmaster of to-morrow.  As are our
+schools, so will be our Parliaments and our Civil Service, and some at
+any rate who have mapped out for themselves a career of political
+usefulness and honour in Westminster, Whitehall, or abroad, might
+bethink themselves first of Banquo.
+
+  "Lesser than Macbeth and greater:
+  Not so happy yet much happier;
+  Thou shalt get kings though thou be none."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MAKING OF "POLITICIANS"
+
+"The way the authors wish to realise their ideal would, I fear, merely
+increase the output of politicians and political journalists, of whom
+an adequate supply already exists."--Mr. E. B. Osborn, in _The Morning
+Post_.
+
+
+Sharp-wittedness playing on ignorance to the end of personal
+advancement--so dominant a feature has this become of our political
+life, that any protest against the misuse of a noble word, when men
+speak contemptuously of politics, is no doubt quite untimely.
+Untimely, because it is too early, not because it is too late.  We
+retain the word ourselves, and call the kind of education we advocate
+political education; appropriately it seems to us, for we believe that
+its wide adoption would remove the root cause which has made such a
+stigma possible, and free the very name of politics from the
+indignities it now justly suffers.
+
+Nothing, indeed, could be wider of the mark than the notion that a
+system of political education would increase the number of
+self-seeking, power-hunting "politicians."  Such men are the product,
+not of political education, but of the lack of it.  What is the present
+situation?  To the ordinary boy, politics, when it first obtrudes
+itself on his attention, appears under one or other of two aspects.  If
+he is clever, or is imagined to be so by ambitious parents, or again,
+if, though stupid, he happens to belong to a political family, the air
+begins to be thick with talk of his "going into" politics.  He is to
+"go into" politics in the same way as men "go into" the Stock Exchange
+or the law; by virtue either of birth or brains he is to enter one of
+those little strongholds of his class, and earn his living there by
+playing the appropriate game.
+
+This is the guise under which politics appears to one type of boy.  The
+other type, hears in some quarter or other a babble about income-tax
+and little navies and big loans; and either dismisses the whole thing
+as "absolute rot," which can have no possible meaning for him, or
+imbibes the ideas and prejudices of the people whose talk he is
+listening to, without in the least understanding their implications.
+
+From these two types is developed the great bulk of the population,
+considered under its political aspect.  On the one side, politicians,
+whether clever or stupid; on the other, the electorate, ignorant and
+apathetic, or prejudiced and inflammable, as the case may be.  There
+are, of course, other classes too.  There is the man who has made money
+in business, and late in the day conceives the idea of entering
+Parliament--which he sometimes succeeds in doing even when he has been
+unable to avoid making an election speech or two.  There is the
+idealist who takes up political work with the sole object of doing
+useful service.  There is the well-informed and open-minded student of
+public affairs.  There is the intellectualist.  But the great majority
+are as we have described them.
+
+The introduction of a far-reaching system of political education would
+have three results, each of which would reinforce the others in putting
+an end to the present state of affairs.  Make every one a politician,
+and "politicians" will become rare.  Politics will cease to be an
+essentially specialised profession; men will no longer "go into" it as
+into a thing apart.  Some will administer, guide, and direct; others
+will know and criticise.  But every one will be politically active; and
+instead of the stronghold of politics in a desert of ignorance, there
+will be that interplay of political functions, distributed among the
+whole body of the people, which is the real meaning of democracy.
+
+And not only will politics cease to be a preserve, kept ready for
+spoliation by the clever, the pushing, the rich, and the well-born, but
+also the very desire in these men so to misuse their citizenship will
+cease altogether to come to birth.  For political education, properly
+so called, awakens political idealism; it teaches principles, arouses
+aspirations after public service.  The "politician" is a man who finds
+in political intrigue the fruitful source of his own advancement; one
+who catches at every breeze to further his personal ends.  But if
+politics had formed the basis of his education; if, while his idealism
+was still untainted, he had been led to consider fundamental
+principles, and to examine public affairs in the light of them: then
+the potential goodness of his political nature would have been so fully
+realised, that no vain or mean thing would disfigure his maturity.
+"Ah, but 'potential goodness' and 'while his idealism was still
+untainted'; there's the rub," we hear the cynic saying.  Such criticism
+moves us not at all.  We had to do during the course of our experiment
+with a great number of boys of many different types; one can recall
+hardly a case in which, when vital thought had really been awakened,
+often after much sweat and agony, virtue was not found to be the
+fundamental characteristic of the boy's intellectual nature.  But the
+teacher must not, of course, rest satisfied until he is certain that
+the goal in very truth has been reached; until he is sure that his
+pupil has thrown off the weight of carelessness, thoughtlessness, and
+prejudice, and that his mind is really awake and is in actual contact
+with ideas.
+
+Finally, just as the leader and administrator will not desire to misuse
+his powers, so the education of the rest of the nation will deprive him
+of his opportunity.  For it is only among a people politically
+uneducated that corruption and intrigue on a grand scale can exist.
+The unscrupulous creation and manipulation of public opinion; the
+concealment of low and mean designs under an appearance of nobility and
+disinterestedness; the putting forward of one argument in support of a
+policy, while a thousand are kept back which weaken or invalidate it;
+the appeal to prejudice and blind passion; the cunning use of
+suggestion; worst of all that pitiable game which consists of turning
+the people's noblest instincts--instincts of fellowship, solidarity,
+romance--to the basest ends; marks of degradation such as these would
+vanish gradually but surely as knowledge and power of criticism spread
+to every section of the community.  Such evil motives as still existed
+would be seen through and exposed; events would be regarded, not as
+isolated occurrences, but as a part of history, to be viewed in their
+relation to the whole and to be judged in accordance with a definite
+philosophy of life.  So that if, here and there, a "politician"
+survived or made his reappearance in the clearer atmosphere, he would
+find his playthings gone; waiting instead for him would be men,
+citizens, politicians--ready to sweep him aside and gaily choose a
+better man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND FREAK SCHOOLS
+
+The Radical--and by the Radical we mean any one who sees that life for
+the majority at the present time is not as fine and happy as it should
+be, and who is determined to leave no stone unturned to make it
+so--commonly looks askance at the public schools.  He thinks of them,
+rightly, as the stronghold of those in possession, the class which, as
+a whole, not only opposes such fundamental reforms as would result in a
+fairer distribution of wealth, but also itself has failed to do what
+might conceivably justify its favoured position, to keep alive, by
+virtue of special opportunities such as would disappear in a society
+based on equality, the finest ideas of which the race is capable.
+Individual and national power, privilege, commercialism--it is on these
+things that it has set its eyes in its leadership of the nation.  And
+so our fellow-radicals have more than once said to us, "If you are
+really keen on education, why don't you start a school of your own?"
+
+Now it is, no doubt, difficult for any one who has fallen under the
+sway of a public school, and who has been so caught up by its
+fascination as to feel for it a love more compelling than anything in
+his life, to be certain that personal predilections do not dictate a
+reply unjustified by intellectual considerations.  Yet for all that we
+give our answer without hesitation.  For the multiplication of what may
+be conveniently, if somewhat unkindly, classed together as "freak"
+schools, breaks no fresh ground at all.  Boys who have been brought up
+in an "intellectualist" atmosphere, and those alone, are sent there;
+and even if there were no schools to which they could be sent, home
+influence would turn them out intellectualists still.  The ranks of the
+intellectualists, in fact, are recruited from three main sources.
+First, there are the sons of intellectualists, sent either to a freak
+school or to no school at all; secondly, sons of intellectualists of a
+slightly different type, sent to a public school yet nevertheless
+retaining in the new environment their own peculiar stamp; and,
+thirdly, the clever sons of "ordinary" parents, sent to a public school
+and becoming intellectualists by revolt against the philistinism of it
+and of their homes.  The community thus composed leads a life as
+distinct and separate from that of the rest of the nation as was ever
+lived by the "Intelligentzia" in Russia's darkest hour.  It has hardly
+a point of contact with the average Englishman; it does not understand
+his revues and musical comedies, his novels and cinemas, his hunting
+and race meetings; it speaks a different language, thinks altogether
+different thoughts.  And being itself not in the least understood, it
+has acquired a certain hardness of mind, a certain contempt for
+ordinary people and ordinary things, which has widened the gulf, and
+led to mutual suspicion and sometimes even hatred.  Inevitably its
+mental health has been affected by such a situation.  Feeling itself
+different, it has consciously made itself as different as possible;
+intellectual extravagances indulged in from mere bravado, these and
+similar stigmata of balance lost and sanity impaired have made their
+appearance in varying degrees at one time or another.  Under a
+different set of circumstances--those of the war, for instance, so far
+as concerns a section of the group of which we are speaking--there has
+been a pitiful relapse into mere boredom, cynicism, and inactivity;
+remote from the passions of the crowd, and unable to give service to a
+cause in which they disbelieve, some of our cleverest men have provided
+an English parallel with the vodka-drinking, bridge-playing, and
+unutterably tired community of highly-developed intellects which
+Tchekoff describes so brilliantly.
+
+Now, in saying all this we would not have it thought that we are
+bringing a sweeping accusation against one section of the nation.  For
+the fault lies, not mainly with them, but with the lack of culture,
+idealism, and genuine education which characterises England (and most
+other countries) to-day.  In a country in which regard for things of
+the mind and spirit was the rule and not the exception, these men would
+form the backbone of the nation; they would develop along healthy
+lines, be marked by love and sympathy instead of contempt, use their
+great powers to the full in the public service.  What they are to be
+blamed for is their failure to see their real duty; their failure to
+understand that it is among the philistines, and not in their own
+exclusive set, that their most important work lies.  Some of them, of
+course, do understand this, and spend their lives in an unselfish
+attempt to spread light in the darkness.  But even so they commonly
+speak a language which is not understood; and inevitably they fail to
+achieve any widespread result.
+
+It is not, then, in the multiplication of schools designed to cater for
+intellectualists that we see the best hope for the progress of the
+nation.  We see it rather in the creation of an army of missionaries
+from among the ordinary men themselves; missionaries of thought about
+the great problems of life and society, fashioned out of those who are
+of the people and understand and sympathise with their emotions.  When
+once the average, revue-loving, thoughtless, "sporting" public school
+boy has been taught to think vigorously about politics and sociology;
+when once he has been so fired with enthusiasm for these things that he
+will teach and talk to others of his kind: then, at last, slowly and
+painfully no doubt, but none the less inevitably, will war, poverty,
+and materialism vanish altogether from a world not meant for them.
+That is why we have ventured to urge all those who both are idealists
+and love the public schools--but those alone--to break in on them and
+help to awaken the great sleeping instrument of salvation.
+
+And they will find good material awaiting them.  The English public
+school boy shares with all the youth of all the nations an immense
+store of latent idealism, which can be brought to a splendid fruition
+if atrophy and decay are not allowed to overtake it.  But he possesses
+other things also, over and above this common heritage.  The
+intellectualist has often got beyond the big ideas, if such a paradox
+may be allowed; they have been for so long the platitudes of his caste,
+and he has grown so hopeless of their general acceptance, that he has
+turned to a search after subtle refinements and intellectual novelties,
+in the course of which much generous breadth of vision has been lost.
+Again, many working-class reformers--can it be wondered?--not only
+bring to their task a bitterness against the world which has so misused
+them and their fellows, but also have inevitably been cut off from
+those gentle manners of life which have been gradually evolved by the
+more fortunate to express, however imperfectly, the feeling for grace
+and beauty which it should be our aim, not to crush, but to extend to
+all.  But with the public school boy all is different.  Once he has
+begun to think in any real sense of the word, his intellectual life
+develops as joyfully and naturally as does the physical life of the
+beasts of the field.  Freshly and spontaneously, and with no trace of
+self-consciousness or affectation, he leaps to greet ideas and
+principles, between which and his own true nature there is a glorious
+bond of kinship.  We have seen boy after boy, as he realises, for
+instance, the meaning of Liberty, and gets his first glimpse of the
+wide country which such a realisation opens up, experiencing an emotion
+of happiness which we can only compare to the catch of breath with
+which men see great scenes of beauty, or hear of lovely deeds of
+generosity and heroism.  Given their chance, public school boys (not
+one or two, but great masses of average humanity) will rediscover for
+themselves the simple things which Christ and Plato taught; and once
+that is achieved a general advance all along the line toward the goal
+of a worthy human society may begin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MORALITY
+
+"Generally speaking, the intellectualist phase [of a boy's career] is
+remarkably brief.  Just occasionally its morals are such as to cause
+the swift expulsion of its leaders.  More often they leave in the
+natural course of things, or grow weary of their pose--which has,
+indeed, not made them popular--and return after the holidays frankly
+and unaffectedly Philistine.  This transient fashion is not new.  What
+is new is the deliberate encouragement given to it by a certain type of
+assistant master.  We do not imply that the wise master will
+suppress...  That kind of intellectual measles will work itself out...
+But to leave the phase alone is one thing; deliberately to foster and
+give it official backing is quite another."--_The Church Times_.
+
+
+When the morality of the public schools is being discussed, attention
+is usually concentrated almost exclusively on that particular branch of
+morality which is concerned with sex.  Nor is this unnatural; for sex
+plays so important a part in the life of a growing boy, and the
+development of his character is so closely bound up with the
+development of his physical nature, that the determining part may be
+very easily confused with the whole.  Yet there are many boys who are
+sexually virtuous, but filled with the worst type of hardness and
+intolerance; many, too, who are sexually vicious, yet full of love and
+sympathy.  To imagine that the problem of public school morality is
+solved as soon as we have discovered the best method of making public
+school boys continent, is to look at the matter from an altogether too
+narrow angle; for the sins of the spirit, we have been told, are more
+unpardonable than the sins of the flesh.
+
+Nevertheless, when we have said this, as say it we must, the fact
+remains that the sex question is one of overwhelming importance.  For
+if once self-indulgence is allowed to become firmly rooted in a boy's
+character, in the majority of cases it will be ineradicable; and he
+will either be the victim throughout a great part of his life of
+temptations which he loathes, and which will be a constant source of
+unhappiness to him, or he will end by acquiescing in a manner of life
+which is degrading, it may be to himself alone, it may be both to
+himself and others.  It will be urged, of course, as it has been urged
+against every school novel which has attempted to give a true picture
+of the "manners" of a school house, that we are grotesquely
+exaggerating the whole business; that there may be a problem in the
+case of this boy or that, but that in general there is no problem at
+all.  This simply will not do.  There is a problem, and a very grave
+one; and we had better anticipate the possibility of being
+misunderstood by stating very directly what it is.  We believe that the
+number of cases in which boys have undesirable relationships with one
+another is not very large, but we believe also that there is a very
+great deal of that purely personal self-indulgence, that purely
+self-regarding licentiousness, which is the cause of so much
+unhappiness in boyhood.
+
+But the reader will already be asking, "What is all this to do with
+political education?"  The connection is a close one.  For the
+prevalence of this particular form of immorality may be ascribed to two
+main causes.  At some time during early adolescence the majority of
+boys automatically become acquainted with the sensation of sex, and, as
+part of a natural process, try to reproduce the pleasurable experience.
+But why do so many of these repeat and repeat the process, until the
+thing becomes a habit for which they can find no escape?  Partly
+because the verbal warning which is given to them by parents and
+masters is made in a wrong form, and partly because there is not that
+constant joy and romance in their daily lives in comparison with which
+temptation, when it comes, will appear sordid and unworthy.  In the
+second place, there is an atmosphere in the houses of tolerance towards
+these practices, accompanied by constant discussion, sometimes open,
+sometimes secret, which encourages and not rarely actually suggests
+them.  This is certainly true of many houses in many schools.  The
+house prefects, it is true, usually try to suppress as much of the
+unhealthiness as they can; but since, on the one hand, they are often
+known to have been "as bad as any one" in their day, and on the other
+they use the method of pretending that these are things which no decent
+boy could possibly be guilty of, they meet at best with a very partial
+success, derived only from the fear which they inspire.
+
+The common method of dealing with the evil is a system of "talks" by
+masters and heads of houses.  The "talks" follow a fairly stereotyped
+plan; they are either religious in nature, and contain references to
+"the temple of the body," or medical, and convey warnings of the
+physical consequences which will follow if excess is persisted in.
+Sometimes the two types of address are dovetailed into a single whole.
+Neither are wholly satisfactory.  The medical variety sometimes
+terrifies a sensitive boy, who will imagine that his whole life is
+ruined and all his chance of future happiness wrecked.  He will become
+somewhat morose, and not unfrequently will finally turn, in his
+despair, to the very thing against which he has been warned.  On the
+other hand, and with another type of boy, it often fails equally
+disastrously, because, judged by the medical standards to which it
+appeals, it is proved by experience to be unsound.  In his anxiety to
+create a strong impression the schoolmaster will sometimes make
+statements that are simply untrue.  He will tell the boy that these
+practices will ruin his cricket or his football.  No doubt it sometimes
+will; but it is more than likely that the boy knows several highly
+successful athletes who are, as the boy knows, though the master may
+not, complete adepts in schoolboy vice.  Then there is the old threat,
+possibly obsolete to-day, though one hesitates to say that anything is
+obsolete in the conservative world with which we deal--the old threat
+that half the inmates of the asylums of England have been brought there
+by this practice.  That, again, is simply untrue, and if the boy
+happens to know it, the effect of such an untruth upon him may be very
+bad.  Equally unsuccessful, in the majority of cases, is the religious
+talk.  The unspeculative, dogmatic type of school religion does not
+make an appeal to the ordinary boy sufficiently strong to override what
+he has found to be the most fascinating thing in his experience.  It is
+too much a conventional decency imposed upon him from without, too
+little a force within him which he has been helped to develop, such as
+is alone powerful enough to contend with a desire itself arising
+spontaneously from within.  And when the sermon is accompanied by
+exhortations to pray against temptation, it is sometimes not only
+useless, but (again in the case of the ordinary boy) positively
+harmful.  For to get into the habit of praying against temptation means
+to get into the habit of thinking about it, to become self-conscious,
+and to succumb.  Not but that there are some quite young boys who feel
+Christ's nearness to them as Friend and Helper so vividly that they can
+gain real strength from praying to Him.  But we are talking of the
+average boy; and the average boy is not of this type.
+
+Conversations between master and boy on the subject are, of course,
+quite necessary and often very helpful.  Very often a boy is mystified,
+or it may be terrified, by what seems to him some peculiarity in his
+nature, and it may do him all the good in the world to unburden his
+soul to some one older and more experienced than himself.  It is best,
+too, that the House master should be the man to whom such a boy
+naturally turns; though if the boy should prefer to turn elsewhere, the
+fact should be to the House master food for thought rather than for
+anger.  Indeed, while in one way there is far too much talk on this
+subject, in another there is far too little.  Too much may easily be
+made of conventional "talks" on conventional occasions.  What is rather
+wanted is a relationship between boy and master, created by frank
+intercourse on other topics, such as will naturally bring the boy to
+the master for help in these difficulties, with the sure knowledge that
+the latter will not "lecture" him, but will speak as one who has been
+through similar difficulties in his own boyhood, and is anxious only to
+help and to explain.
+
+Under the present system, when the verbal appeal fails, recourse is
+often had to corporal punishment.  We have no room here for a
+discussion of the ethics of punishment; but a method more foolish could
+scarcely be devised, if the aim is to enable the boy to overcome
+temptation.  And of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment is the
+worst.  The physical side of the boy's nature is asserting itself in
+all its strength; and you attempt to combat it by making a physical
+appeal which must from the nature of the case be far less powerful and
+compelling.  Moreover, any one with even a slight knowledge of sexual
+psychology (and it is curious how few schoolmasters take the trouble to
+acquire such knowledge) is aware that given a certain temperament on
+the part whether of the giver or the receiver, perils lurk in this form
+of punishment of the very type which it is designed to meet.
+
+But the only sound way of combating the over-development of one side of
+a boy's nature is to develop the other.  Make a boy's whole life one of
+joy and interest; let him live with a constant sense of the beauty of
+grass and sky, of the exultation of vital work, of the happiness of
+love and friendship.  As the days go by, let him feel his latent powers
+developing, and glory in the thought that they have been given him for
+his own joy and that of humanity.  Then when temptation comes to him,
+and he remembers how its indulgence has left him slack and bored, it
+will seem to him like a candle-flame in the sun of his happiness, a
+wretched little mean and unworthy thing breaking in on and threatening
+to ruin the peace and harmony of his life.  And so he will not give it
+a second thought, and soon all danger will be over.  This may seem
+preposterously difficult.  It is: but it is also the only way.  The
+master cannot do it for the boy, but he can perhaps give the boys some
+help towards doing it for themselves.
+
+What we want is that every house should become a small community of
+boys carrying on together absorbingly interesting and romantic
+activities--a kind of club in which they may forgather and undertake in
+common the intellectual and spiritual adventure which thus become a
+part of their individual daily lives.
+
+In this way there will be none of that boredom, that feeling of "having
+nothing on earth to do or think about," the presence of which is the
+chief cause impelling a boy to turn to the one thing which at least can
+provide him at any moment with a temporary excitement.  Rather will his
+whole nature develop harmoniously, and sex, about which we have become
+too self-conscious, take its proper place as the (normally) unconscious
+inspirer of many of our most vital activities and happiest emotions.
+And once morbidity has been put away, and with it the constant
+preoccupation of boys and masters with this one topic, and all that
+suspicion and suggestiveness which we know so well, then the graver
+problem which has to do with the relationship of boy to boy will be
+found to have been solved at the same time.  No one who knows a public
+school is likely to deny that sexual emotion is nearly always an
+element in the intensest schoolboy friendships; but that makes them
+neither the less lovely nor the less desirable.  Indeed, the value of
+such friendships at their finest cannot be overestimated.  For when a
+boy "falls in love," he learns for the first time something of the real
+splendour of living: he comes into his birthright of beauty and
+ecstacy, and understands how the greatest happiness is to be found in
+doing everything for the service of another.  There is something very
+loathsome about the spying, and secretiveness, the jokes and unclean
+hintings which, in the majority of schools, make such a friendship
+appear a thing to be ashamed rather than proud of, and often in the end
+actually render it shameful.  Given a clean atmosphere, an absence of
+suspicion on the part of masters and of morbidity on that of boys, and
+we believe that very rarely would physical acts result from schoolboy
+love.
+
+But the reader will be asking, for the second time, "What is all this
+to do with political education?"  And again we answer--everything.  For
+we believe that the joy in life, and the intellectual interest of which
+we have spoken can be awakened from where they lie dormant in a boy's
+nature by political education.  The subject is the boy's own destiny as
+a member of human society and a part of the universe (for it will be
+remembered that we include ethics and philosophy with history and
+politics under the one broad heading); and there is hardly a boy who
+does not find, at best in all these subjects, at worst in one of them,
+the inspiration to vital work and the sense of living well, which goes
+with it.  The boys start reading, widely; a thousand topics occupy
+their attention; poetry, plays, novels--all these are reached from the
+one starting point.  Then clubs and groups of various kinds are started
+in their houses; and the sex problem has become as much as it ever can
+become, a thing of the past.
+
+Nor, we may add, are we merely theorising, and talking of hypothetical
+goods which might conceivably follow from the adoption of our plan.
+All that we have written of is within our own experience.  Time after
+time while we were making our experiments did we come across cases of
+boys whose moral health had been saved by their new-found interest.
+One had turned to physical excitement as the only possible relief from
+the tedium of Latin grammar; after a year under the altered
+circumstances he turned to it no longer.  The parents of another (a boy
+of about sixteen) had attempted to base his morality solely on
+Christian dogma, which meant nothing to him; and the result was
+disastrous.  But a course of lectures on Plato's philosophy gave him
+what religion had previously failed to give him--a belief in an ideal
+and the distinction between right and wrong, and a determination to do
+always what seemed to him the absolute best.[1]  But by far the most
+remarkable results were achieved in the house of which we have already
+spoken in Chapter I.  During his first fortnight of office, the new
+head boy followed the old method; he examined all suspicious cases,
+discovered some that he had not suspected, and dealt out the
+traditional treatment.  Then he followed the old method no longer; nor
+did he ever return to it from that day till the day when he finally
+left the school before his time.  Instead, he set about interesting the
+boys in politics.  We have already described the course of his
+experiments; how enthusiasm, kindled over newspapers, spread to plays,
+to poetry, to pictures, and to music.  And the result?  The house was
+transformed: it became such a place as every mother hopes the house
+where her own son is may be.  And yet during the whole time of which we
+are speaking only one boy was beaten, and he for an act quite unrelated
+to the seventh or indeed to any other of the Ten Commandments.
+
+
+NOTE.--A fortnight after the writing of the present book was projected,
+one of the writers was dispatched on military duty to India, and the
+above chapter was sent home from "Somewhere" in "Somewhere"--I believe
+Taranto.  Close co-operation in authorship became impossible, and upon
+his collaborator in England devolved the responsibility of sole
+editorship.  I leave the above chapter almost as it was written, for
+there is about it, as it seems to me, an indomitable optimism which was
+a characteristic of the writer's work and a cause of its success.
+
+Still, in so far as it suggests that a complete solution has been found
+for a problem I believe to be insoluble, I must in honesty add a few
+words on my own account.
+
+Our direct experience, or the more remarkable part of it, amounts to
+this: that a certain head of a house achieved during the course of a
+year, using the methods described, an uplifting of the whole tone of
+his house that can only be described as marvellous.  Other heads
+elsewhere have no doubt achieved similar results by other means, though
+we have never come across an example equally remarkable.  The goal can
+be reached, presumably, by the road of saintliness.  It might be
+reached, though it is doubtful, by the road of Puritanism and
+"efficiency," the appeal to abstinence and "living hard."  It cannot be
+reached, that is certain, by merely disciplinary methods and the appeal
+to fear, for the commonest form of schoolboy vice is such that, even
+allowing for the casualness of boys, it will not be detected once in a
+hundred cases.
+
+Something, however, must be discounted from this result, by reason of
+the fact that the experiments were new.  These boys had an enthusiasm
+bred of the fact that they rightly felt themselves to be pioneers.
+They felt themselves to be making history, certainly for the first,
+possibly for the last, time in their lives, and whether you admire them
+or whether you laugh at them, making history they were, so far as their
+own world was concerned.  It seems doubtful whether the spiritual force
+engendered would have lasted at full strength when the thing had become
+normal, and it was no longer possible to start the hare of some new
+"stunt" (as they called it, I am sorry to say) once every two or three
+weeks.  The experiment was cut short in its prime, and how it would
+have developed when the first generation of enthusiasts had passed
+away, one cannot say.
+
+As for the other houses, something had been begun in two or three, but
+nothing of much value had been achieved.  The minorities hesitated
+between a desire to imitate and a desire to be quite original, and the
+majorities looked a trifle askance upon the whole affair.  And the
+masters came in here and put every sort of difficulty in the way, for
+by this time the collapse was visibly approaching.
+
+None the less, the lines on which this strange and temporary
+achievement was based are the only lines along which the moral problem
+can be grappled with.  A perfectly "pure" public school is as
+impossible as a perfectly satisfactory Marriage Law.  A few
+incorrigibly bad boys there will always be--incorrigible, that is, when
+they have reached public school age.  Hopelessly inanimate and feeble
+boys there will be also, doomed to become the victims of the bad.  But
+the present moral average might be immensely raised, and the plain way
+to raise it is to provide other adventures for the soul.  A boy once
+said to me, speaking of the matter in hand, "You see, it's the only
+thing I've ever found to do here really 'on my own.'"  It was, in fact,
+his one adventure.  No amount of class-room tasks, however well
+devised, no amount of organised games, however healthy, no amount of
+school religion, however sincere, could fill that gap.  We must put the
+boys on the lines to organise their own adventures, and the only
+adventures that can compete with this absorbing adventure of misapplied
+sexuality, must be adventures that really lead up to the highest and
+best things of life.  It was only when he found an empire to save that
+Clive ceased to be a young ruffian.  Nothing lower than "politics" will
+suffice.
+
+
+
+[1] Not that we believe that Plato is a greater teacher than Christ.
+Our opinion is the opposite; but we are also of Shelley's opinion when
+he said, "I would rather go to hell with Plato than to heaven with
+Paley."  Much that is called Christian is not of Christ.  Also there
+are no doubt minds so constituted that they will get more good in
+certain circumstances from the lesser teacher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RELIGION
+
+"It may be a slight shock to some people to hear that 'Divinity' should
+grapple with Capitalism and Imperialism."--_Manchester Guardian_.
+
+"Politics, in the large sense, is one of the main gateways to the
+understanding of fellowship, and of that which lies beyond fellowship,
+and leads boys to express something further-reaching than the thought of
+the dear city of Cecrops."--Mr. Kenneth Richmond in _The New Age_.
+
+
+This chapter will be as short as its subject-matter is important.
+Indeed, the problem of religion as it presents itself in a public school
+is so interesting and so difficult that one might well apologise for
+relegating it to a late chapter in a brief book upon an apparently quite
+alien subject.  But we have set out to recount our experience of
+political education; and in our experience we found that politics and
+religion lay not so very far apart.  Without any very direct suggestion
+from us, several of our pupils to whom the Kingdom of Heaven had been
+hitherto a somewhat uninteresting abstraction found that they could not
+think out to their satisfaction the problems of the city of Cecrops until
+they had formulated their ideas upon the city of God.  The history of
+_The School Observer_ illustrates this well enough.  That journal showed
+a distinct tendency to become a religious organ.  At the time of its
+suppression the embarrassed editor was confronted with three long
+articles--the longest, it must be confessed, his own--all of them bearing
+upon the nature of the Deity, and, lest we should be misunderstood, all
+of them broadly Christian in character.
+
+Now, a certain type of clerical head master has often tried to impress
+upon his boys--he would try it on his staff also did he not know that it
+would be waste of time and energy--that the two hours devoted to
+"divinity" are the two most important school hours of the week.  And he
+is quite right: they are the most important, or, rather, but for
+opportunities missed, they would be.  For a liberal education without a
+foundation in religion is not merely defective, it is impossible.  If the
+religious foundation offered by the teacher proves no foundation, proves
+a mere meaningless excrescence upon the time-table, then a religion will
+be sought and found elsewhere, even though it be, as is most likely, a
+religion such as is generally classed as no-religion, mere worship, as
+Ruskin called it, of Britannia Agoraia, Britannia of the Market Place,
+the Goddess of Getting-on.  That, it is to be feared, is very much what
+we have at present, for the religion of the divinity lesson is usually
+nothing at all, and the religion of the school chapel has hardly got
+beyond the tribal stage, and does not suffice for the modern man in his
+maturity, nor for most types of thoughtful schoolboy.  There are some old
+boys, perhaps many, who have a strong sentimental regard for "the old
+chapel"; but it is as a venerable symbol of the corporate life of their
+boyhood that they regard it, not as a place of divine worship.  The
+religion they carry away from the school chapel has very little
+connection with the message of the gospel they heard there: it is a
+religion not of Jesus Christ, but of Alma Mater.  Their attitude to it is
+not strictly religious at all, but romantic.
+
+It is easy to write with a certain irony on this subject, but that is the
+last thing we want to do, for the problem of the public schools is here,
+as elsewhere, a profoundly difficult one, and many good men have devoted
+the best of their life's energies to it, and have achieved here and there
+a fine measure of success.  But their success has been personal and
+exceptional.  The rule is what we have just described.  Indeed, the
+problem of the schools is but a single aspect of the problem of the
+Church and the world at large.  Two years ago the National Mission came,
+proclaiming that the Church had been a failure, and so much has recently
+been written on these lines by the leaders of the Churches themselves
+that it is unnecessary for us to enlarge upon the well-worn theme.
+Nominally the schools are "Church" schools.  "Chapels" are as compulsory
+as football, and all boys, with a very few marked and conscious
+exceptions, are confirmed and expected to become communicants.  But in
+actual fact, many of them come from homes where connection with the
+Church is purely nominal, even if it exists at all.  Thus a dangerous
+element of formalism and make-believe is introduced from the start.  The
+masters again;--fifty years ago they were parsons almost without
+exception--stern, godly, whiskered individuals--singularly unlike, as it
+would seem, to our colleagues or ourselves.  The masters of to-day are
+nearly all laymen, and laymen with as wide a variety of religious
+opinions as the members of the Stock Exchange; but--and this is where
+they differ from the members of the Stock Exchange--they will all be,
+during term time, formal members of the Church of England.  Once again,
+formalism and make-believe.  Yet what would you have?  The schools are
+the schools of the nation, not of a sect; and to-day the Church of
+England is, within the nation, but a sect.  And even supposing the
+schools were, or could be, genuinely Church of England schools, another
+problem would remain, for within the Church itself there is a wide
+variety of opinions, and beliefs without which Christianity is impossible
+to one will be mere blasphemy to another.  It has been said with some
+truth that our religious ideas have undergone as great a revolution in
+the last hundred years as our knowledge of machinery, and that the
+sermons of 1820 are as obsolete as its stage coaches.  For the author of
+this notion--and he is a clergyman--this may be true; but whereas none of
+his congregation travel in stage coaches, it is very likely that the
+theology of some of them is nearer to that of the sermons of 1820 than to
+his own.
+
+Now, it is obvious that our experience of political education does not
+provide a way out of all these difficulties; but it seems to us to throw
+a certain glimmering of light upon them.  Several of our boys who, in
+spite of schoolroom "divinity" and the school chapel, had more or less
+outgrown the religious faith of their childhood, and found nothing
+satisfactory to take its place, were led back towards religion by their
+interest in politics.  In fine, they had discovered the intellectual need
+for a religion, and liberalism pointed the way to Christianity.  As in
+the Middle Ages, philosophy had been the "ancilla Fidei."  The suggestion
+is that the fault of our religious teaching in school and chapel has been
+that it is not sufficiently philosophical.  By a philosophical religion
+it need hardly be said that we do not mean the obtrusion of a remote and
+contentious theology, but a religion based upon a real understanding of
+political principles and crying social needs.
+
+"It may be a slight shock to some people to hear that 'divinity' should
+grapple with capitalism and imperialism," says the _Manchester Guardian_
+reviewer.  It may: none the less we believe that it is with such problems
+that Christianity has to grapple if there is ever to be a Christian
+society upon earth.  The last thing we wish to suggest is the off-hand
+conclusion that capitalism and imperialism are in all their
+manifestations anti-Christian.  The world is not so simple a place.  But
+we cannot go on applying one set of principles to our private lives and
+another set of principles to our politics and industry.  Man is not so
+illogical a creature as that.  There is bound to be, finally, either a
+levelling up or a levelling down towards a single uniform standard.  No
+proverb is more dangerous than "Charity begins at home."  When it begins
+in the place most congenial to its exercise, it is apt to end there.
+Lord Melbourne is said to have complained, after hearing a sermon,
+"Things are coming to a pretty pass, when religion claims to interfere
+with a man's private life."  We smile at Lord Melbourne's honest
+indignation.  Our turn come to be indignant when the sermon applies the
+Christian "paradoxes" to industry, commerce, and international relations.
+
+And it is along these lines that religious teaching can be made
+absorbingly interesting.  It all comes round to the old question, "Are we
+going to apply Christianity to the problems of modern society or are we
+not?"  The case against doing so can be found every day in the press, so
+here, at any rate, is an issue worth facing, with a presumably infallible
+authority to support each side.  The direction of most religious teaching
+hitherto has been too purely personal; the exhortation is too obvious and
+the appeal falls flat.  Politics without religion lacks foundation; but
+religion without politics lacks quite half its content.  Christianity is
+the leaven, but so also is politics the lump.
+
+Along these lines, we believe, one might get in the middle and lower
+parts of the school results analogous to those we have described in the
+cases of some sixth form boys.  The present writer used to teach Divinity
+to a middle form on the Modern Side, and whenever a Gospel happened to be
+scheduled, he found ample material to his hand.  It is surprising how
+little, for all the sermons they have heard, most boys of sixteen have
+faced the ideas expressed in the most hackneyed texts.  "It is easier for
+a camel to go through the eye of a needle...."  "Love your enemies."
+"Take no thought for the morrow."  A most mischievous half-truth has got
+about that these sayings are not to be taken literally.  Boys have told
+me that a "rich man" means one who has grown rich by robbery.  Well, what
+is robbery?  "La propriété, c'est le vol"?  "Love your enemies" means, I
+have been told, "Have no enemies: lead a peaceable life; but if..."
+There was a case apparently not provided for.  "Take no thought for the
+morrow."  On this I once got the delightfully honest comment, "Christ
+must have said this to cheer the disciples when they were depressed.
+Taken literally it would be absurd."  With such candour on the pupils'
+side, surely the teacher's task is not hopeless.  Here at last we have
+the atmosphere of honest controversy, and without controversy there is no
+freedom of thought; without freedom of thought no conviction; without
+conviction, no education and no religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CURRICULUM
+
+It is always difficult to define the limits of a topic.  This book is
+concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very
+broad sense we here attach to the term.  Our contention is that that
+subject is of paramount importance, and that it should provide the
+basis and foundation of liberal education.  With that idea in view, we
+have given some account of our own experience; we have also considered
+what seemed the most reasonable and weighty objections; we have also
+shown how politics reacted, in our experience, upon morality and
+religion.  And then it might seem well to make an end.  But an
+education is, or should be, a single whole, and the entire omission of
+certain aspects lends itself to misunderstanding.  Our previous book
+suggested to one reader, at least, that we regarded subjects other than
+those we treated of, as possessing no educational value other than a
+purely utilitarian one.  That was not at all the impression we wished
+to create, and it is with a view to correcting it that we attempt a
+brief general survey of the non-political subjects and their place in a
+curriculum which took politics as its centre.  But we offer these
+remarks with much diffidence.  If this book and its predecessor have
+any value, it is due to the fact that they are based on direct and
+vivid teaching experience; and here for the most part the guidance of
+experience deserts us.
+
+One very natural criticism of our thesis is that politics, though it
+may stimulate interest, cannot provide intellectual discipline.  The
+criticism is natural because, so long as the English subjects are
+regarded as a subsidiary matter, they are and will be treated by
+masters and boys in an easy going manner.  Other and sterner subjects
+are reckoned on to supply the disciplinary factor which the English
+subjects lack.  There is, in fact, a very prevalent idea that interest
+and discipline vary inversely to one another; that discipline is to be
+found in doing what is uninteresting; and that interest is to be found
+in doing what is "slack."  This is very bad psychology.  For we aim at
+training willing servants, fit to become masters, not slaves fit for
+nothing but slavery.  The only valuable discipline is self-discipline,
+and self-discipline will only be reached when the boy has realised for
+himself that the work is intrinsically worth doing, and when he has
+realised that he will have become interested.  Again, what is
+interesting must be absorbing, and such work can never be "slack."  The
+mistake seems to arise from a confusion of ideas in connection with the
+word "easy."  It is no more "easy" to write an adequate essay on the
+subject of National Guilds than it is to learn the principal parts of a
+large number of irregular verbs: possibly it is much more difficult.
+But under certain conditions which we have seen produced, a boy will
+find it "easy" to gird himself up to the former task; indeed, he will
+get so absorbed that he will find it difficult to leave off.  Few
+questions are less "easy" than those connected with a paper-money
+currency, but one half-holiday afternoon we found a vigorous discussion
+on this subject in progress between a group of cricketers whom rain had
+driven to the pavilion.  Ordinary history teaching, if only time is
+allowed and certificate examinations do hot threaten, affords scope for
+a great variety of exercises demanding careful thought and accurate
+knowledge.
+
+So much in answer to the suggestion that only through the non-political
+subjects can real hard work be secured.
+
+The non-political subjects fall into three groups--languages,
+mathematics, and the natural sciences.
+
+Probably no one regards the teaching of foreign languages in the public
+schools as at all satisfactory at present, and the chief reason is that
+far too much is attempted, with far too little consideration of what
+will be achieved.  Most boys are either simultaneously learning, or
+have at one time simultaneously tried to learn, three foreign
+languages, Latin, Greek, and French, or Latin, French, and German.  The
+burden is too heavy for them to bear.  Only the minority have any real
+gift for foreign languages, and for the rest the aim should be one
+foreign language only.  Little will be accomplished in any subject
+unless there is a real ambition to learn, and there can be no such
+ambition unless a definite goal is in sight.  The goal here is real
+knowledge in a foreign language, for half or quarter-knowledge of a
+foreign language is a most unsatisfying accomplishment.  The obvious
+language is French.  Even so, many will not learn to write it
+correctly, and as for speaking it, that is an accomplishment so much
+more conveniently acquired elsewhere that we offer no opinion as to how
+far it is worth attempting at school.[1]  But fluent reading of French
+is a thing within the reach of practically any boy, and even the stupid
+boy, if he concentrates upon this, to the exclusion of other and more
+difficult linguistic tasks, will make such unmistakable progress that
+his ambitions may well be roused.  And the accomplishment is one that
+can quickly be made useful.  For instance, probably the best general
+history of Europe is still Guizot's book, and its French is about the
+easiest ever written.  But we would go further.  We remember once a boy
+being birched for circulating a copy of _La Vie Parisienne_.  Does not
+this suggest that every house should take a French daily newspaper, and
+also an illustrated weekly, other than that above mentioned?
+
+But while advocating the single language for the ordinary boy, we are
+pulled up short by the claims of Latin; and here we feel a difficulty.
+A good deal of what is said in favour of Latin we regard as pure
+superstition.  It is not true that boys can only learn to write their
+own language correctly by means of Latin prose.  Nor is it true that
+Latin prose supplies the ideal mental discipline.  That is only true
+for the minority of boys who reach the stage at which real Latin prose
+is written.  Most flounder about all their time in the stage of
+artificial Latin prose, wherein is nothing more than the meticulous
+application of a set of laboriously acquired grammatical rules--a
+tolerable training in conscientious application, such as any subject
+can supply, but nothing more.  Yet it may well be true--on this point
+we feel uncertain--that an elementary knowledge of Latin supplies such
+a foundation for the understanding both of English and French, that it
+is worth making some sacrifices to retain it.  If that be so, we would
+start every boy on Latin as his first foreign language.  Those who
+showed little ability would abandon it at about the time they began
+French.
+
+In the case of boys with some real linguistic ability, we are happy to
+find ourselves thoroughly conservative.  We believe firmly in the grand
+old fortifying classical curriculum, provided it is understood that the
+languages themselves are but means to an end, to the understanding of
+the classical civilisation.  In fine, the goal of classics should be
+to-day, as it was for the Renaissance scholars, ultimately political.
+The classical student who, at the time when his schooling ends, is
+still doing no more than "settling Hoti's business" and "properly
+basing Oun," is in the position of Browning's "Grammarian," with this
+vital difference that he probably does not intend to employ his future
+life in building any superstructure upon the foundations thus
+laboriously laid.
+
+In mathematics there is probably a deeper cleavage than in any other
+subject between the real thing, as mathematicians understand it, and
+the elementary knowledge within the reach of all.  "The real thing" is
+perhaps the most remote and specialised of all branches of learning.
+For a few it is the best, indeed, the only natural, line of
+development; but these are few and easily recognised, and even they
+should not be allowed to specialise too narrowly--that is a point which
+no one who is not a mathematician will dispute.  At the other end of
+the scale comes the third of the three R's; and about that again there
+is no controversy, except as to the best methods of teaching it.[2]
+Yet the schools do not recognise sufficiently clearly this line of
+cleavage, and many boys who are presumed to have reached the end of the
+elementary stage remain for some time battering in vain at the doors of
+the inner temple.  These should go back once over the elements again to
+see if they know them, and then give it up for good.  This will mean a
+cheerful exodus from the upper-middle mathematical divisions.  We
+confess to sympathy with the conservative-radical head master who said,
+"I shall not advocate the abolition of compulsory Greek in University
+examinations until I can get people to agree to the abolition of
+compulsory Algebra."
+
+There is perhaps a middle term between elementary and "real"
+mathematics; that is the mathematics that is the handmaid of physics,
+and leads us on to the natural sciences.
+
+To-day the claims of natural science are very insistent, and they come
+from more than one quarter.  From one quarter comes the claim that
+science alone of the subjects in the time-table "means business," and
+makes money, and that in these strenuous times other subjects that lead
+to mere elegant accomplishments must crowd into a narrow space to make
+room for the one subject that makes for sheer efficiency.  The point is
+often put with a certain crudity; but we may as well ignore that, and
+recognise that the just claims of commercial training will have to be
+met by the schools more fully than heretofore.  Only let us recognise
+commercial training for what it is, and not pretend that it can ever
+offer a substitute for the liberal education which must continue
+alongside of it.  But the teacher of science will more often take quite
+other ground, and will claim that his subject, over and above its
+commercial usefulness, provides most of the ingredients of a Liberal
+education in itself.  He will point to the training it offers in habits
+of conscientious accuracy, its exemplification of the laws of cause and
+effect, its undeviating respect for truth, and the inspiration of its
+endless progress, built up on the heroic researches of the great
+pioneers.
+
+This claim demands careful and sympathetic scrutiny.  To begin with
+criticism, we are quite unconvinced that science alone can train the
+mind to logical methods, or imbue it with a respect for truth in
+matters outside the scientific sphere.  "Science," as the term is
+commonly understood, deals with material things, and, as such, it gives
+but little support to the mind when confronted with the problems of
+humanity, whether personal or political.  It is only too common for the
+science specialist to respect cause and effect in a test-tube and
+despise it in a newspaper.  In science no passions are evoked in favour
+of one solution or another.  The search for truth may well be
+disinterested, since it is, humanly speaking, uninterested.  A liberal
+education must train the mind to master prejudice and self-interest,
+and this training cannot be given in a material where prejudice and
+self-interest will not come into play.
+
+As regards ordinary laboratory work, and lectures on laboratory detail,
+of which science teaching at present, as many science masters agree,
+far too exclusively consists, our view is similar to our view on
+mathematics.  It is often instructive, both for boy and master, to get
+the boys to draw up an ideal time-table.  The results, as a rule, are
+disappointingly conventional, it is true.  Few boys have ever
+criticised their education, except in a purely destructive and cynical
+spirit, and when confronted with the constructive task, produce
+something not very far removed from the time-table they follow out
+every week.  But as regards science, it will often be found that the
+form falls into two clearly marked divisions.  One part cut it down to
+a minimum, and would, if they had the courage of their convictions, cut
+it out altogether; the other part give it half, or more than half, the
+time-table.  This probably marks the fact that for many boys a very
+small amount of laboratory experience, just enough to give them a
+notion of method, is all that they will benefit by.  For the rest the
+training has real value and interest; but these are a minority.
+
+But there is another aspect of science, receiving as yet far too little
+attention at school, which seems to us an essential part of a liberal
+education.  Indeed, when our own sixth form time-table was remodelled,
+we put in a claim for a weekly lecture on General Principles of
+Science, alongside with modern history and political science and
+economics.  The general principles of natural law, evolution  and
+heredity, the nature and cure of disease, the atomic theory of matter,
+general principles of astronomy--these things seem to us second only in
+importance to the great principles of politics themselves.  Here is an
+extraordinary record of patient achievement, some contact with which is
+in itself an inspiration not merely intellectual, but moral.  For it
+seems to us hardly fanciful to suggest that such knowledge should
+react--so subtle are the reactions of the boy-mind, as we have already
+tried to show--most favourably on the political spirit.  Dr. Gregory,
+in his enthusiastic work in praise of his subject, "Discovery: or the
+Spirit and Service of Science," writes: "In the discussion of political
+questions, prejudice and party determine the view taken, and facts are
+selected and exploited not so much with the object of arriving at the
+truth as to confound the other side....  A politician may place party
+above truth, and a diplomatist will conceal it on behalf of his
+country, but it is the duty of the man of science to attain truth at
+all costs.  In direct opposition to the narrowness of thought which
+views all subjects through the distorting mirage of party prejudice,
+stands the absolute freedom of mind of the man of science who stands
+with open arms to welcome truth...."  And Dr. Gregory's moral would
+seem to be: Eschew politics and devote yourself to science.  As if the
+world could exist without politics!  As if the happy alternative to bad
+politicians were no politicians!  The right moral surely is that which
+we have been drawing, with possibly wearisome repetition, throughout
+this book; that all that is best in the scientific mind, all that is
+best in the literary and artistic mind, all that is best in the
+religious mind, must be brought to bear upon the problems of our
+corporate life.
+
+
+
+[1] We offer no opinion, also, on the "oral method" of teaching both
+modern and classical tongues, as we have no experience at all to guide
+us.
+
+[2] Surely, too, the third of the three R's should include a knowledge
+of book-keeping, balance sheets, etc.  Here we join hands heartily with
+the "utilitarian" school of educational reformers.  We also wish that
+every one learnt shorthand almost as soon as he had learnt longhand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE YOUNG GENERATION AND THE OLD
+
+"There, it is to be feared, they will find the parents most in their
+way.  The normal father may endure his son being taught poetry, but he
+will object to the instilling of opinion other than his
+own."--_Outlook_.
+
+"Fancy some imp of fifteen or sixteen assailing the author of his
+being, a court-worn barrister or 'rattled' stockbroker, at his evening
+meal: 'Father, I think Lord Bryce's bill for the reform of the House of
+Lords radically unsound,' or suddenly asking his mother, who, good,
+easy woman, is revolving in her mind the merits of a coat and skirt she
+has seen that afternoon at Debenham's: 'Mother, what is your opinion of
+the Trading with the Enemy Bill?'"--_Saturday Review_.
+
+"Youth is asking questions as never before--asking awkward, burning
+questions, which put its seniors in a flutter.  The seniors, under
+question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never
+till now dreamt of the need of any.  If they are wise, they will put
+away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer
+these things out, and perchance clear their own minds in the
+process."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+By way of epilogue--an appeal to the parents.
+
+What is it that the parents want from the schools?  The question is
+all-important; for by the spiritual law of demand and supply, what they
+want they will get.  It has been said that every nation has the
+government it deserves.  So it is with the press, and so it is with the
+schools: we get what we want, and what we want is what we deserve.
+What do we want?
+
+There are some parents who take the public schools quite seriously as
+places of professional training, places where their sons will be taught
+to earn their livings, and they are encouraged in this notion by the
+fact that several professional bodies insist on successful candidature
+in some pass examination in school subjects as a first step towards
+entrance into the profession, and thereby rivet these examinations upon
+the schools.  The result is not altogether bad.  The examinations make
+for a deplorable ossification of the curriculum; but they also set a
+certain low standard, and drive a certain type of boy and master to
+work, and, though the type of work is not very exalted, it is better
+than nothing at all.  On the individual boy the effect will be various.
+"Look here," says the house master, "there's London Matric. at the end
+of next term.  Hadn't you better give up all this foolery with politics
+and do a little real work?"  The advice was taken, and perhaps we are
+not sufficiently impartial to offer a valuable opinion on the result.
+However, the boy was no fool, and the first part of the advice need
+never have been given.  Except in the case of boys, far too numerous,
+who are taking examinations that ought never to have been imposed on
+them, "modern aiders" and the like who are mugging up "prepared books"
+of Virgil and Euripides, work for a pass examination ought not to mean
+the cessation of all other intellectual activity.
+
+There is another much more old-fashioned type of parent who stands for
+everything that is traditional, who is seriously disturbed if his boy
+wanders far afield from the old classical curriculum, who regards all
+new subjects as foolish fads.  It is this parent, helped by an
+old-fashioned type of house master, who retains in a mild torture of
+boredom the boys who linger wasting their time in the lower reaches of
+the classical side.
+
+But anything is better than nothing, and the attitude of many more
+parents is purely cynical.  They just leave it to the schoolmaster.
+"Cynical" might seem a hard word with which to repay this compliment of
+trust; but it is not, for there is really no compliment and no trust.
+The parent does not really believe in the school-master's judgment.  He
+believes in him so little that he thinks it simply does not matter what
+happens in the class-room, provided the boy seems to enjoy himself--how
+many parents really _know_ whether their boys do enjoy themselves at
+school?--and provided the house master is not actively complaining.
+
+Now, there is only one hope, and that is that the parents should come
+to look at this matter of their son's education politically.
+School-time is a training, and we are all familiar enough with the idea
+of training now.  Before the war, as since, schools had their O.T.C.'s.
+But these O.T.C.'s were wretched perfunctory affairs, boring everybody,
+because we hardly any of us seriously envisaged them as a training,
+only as an incubus.  Now, we all see them as training for a part that
+has got to be played, and the whole spirit is different.  But the
+country will soon be calling upon our public school boys to play
+another and perhaps even more difficult part, and where is the training
+for that?  When the war is won we shall plunge into another maelstrom;
+and it will all be politics, politics, politics.  The leaders of labour
+have roughly charted their course; they mean to make a new world for
+the masses whether we like it or not, and they mean in the main right.
+But what part are the public school men going to play?  It is an
+extremely difficult position, and the difficulties crop up not only in
+the details, of which only mature experience can give a knowledge, but
+in the elementary principles regulating our outlook, our attitude.  And
+that is where the public schools could come in with irresistible effect
+if only they would brace themselves to the task.  "Your king and
+country need you," said the old recruiting poster of 1914.  "Good God!
+have they never wanted me till now?" was the natural rejoinder.  In any
+case they will not cease to want the public school boy when the war is
+over.
+
+In this task the parents must co-operate.  The normal father, we are
+told, will object if his son brings home opinions other than his own.
+But, in sober truth, if the son brings home the same opinions as the
+fathers have always held, we are in a poor way.  It was the fathers and
+the grandfathers who brought the world to its present pass.  It is the
+sons who, starting with new principles from new beginnings, have got to
+set it on a better road.  The _Saturday Review_ and _The Westminster
+Gazette_ offer us, in the quotations at the head of this chapter two
+little vignettes of parentage.  Which would you have?
+
+The holidays occupy rather more than a quarter, and rather less than a
+third of the year.  If you asked what the boys do in the holidays, you
+would ask a question that puzzles many boys themselves to answer.  The
+waste of school holidays is even more striking than the waste of school
+terms.  For education should not be, indeed, cannot be, limited to term
+time.  The proportion of boys who require "rest" in the holidays, even
+for the first week or two, is small.  A slack time, prolonged beyond a
+week or so, bores most boys consumedly and ought to bore them all.  We
+are not thinking here of the favoured few who get their fill of fishing
+and field sports.  Such things have their limitations, perhaps, but
+they offer at least a time of activity, resourcefulness, and keen
+enjoyment.  Most boys, however, live in quiet homes in towns, far from
+the opportunity for such things, and how these pass the time is a
+mystery even to themselves, as many have confessed to us.  In plain
+words, they _kill_ the time, and thereby acquire a most dangerous
+accomplishment.  Some few, it is true, make themselves endlessly useful
+to their parents, and nothing could be better.  But only a few homes
+provide scope for an "odd-jobs man" of this type.  For the bulk,
+holidays are simply times of unemployment.
+
+Now, when a schoolmaster ventures to offer advice about the holidays,
+he might seem to be stepping presumptuously outside his own province;
+but that plea for reticence is one we cannot admit.  Term and holidays
+alike are an education, and they interact upon one another so closely
+that the schoolmaster not only may, but must, form his judgment upon
+both.  It is not for us to compile a detailed "Parent's Assistant."
+Heaven forbid!  Every home has its own problems and its own
+opportunities, but surely there is no home in which the parents have
+not a range of activities, professional, commercial, political, or
+literary.  So often, as it seems, from various motives, good and bad,
+the boy remains more or less excluded from these long after he has
+become capable of a certain partnership in his parents' interests.  The
+drawback of life at a public school is that it is highly artificial.
+Call it as you please a barrack or a monastery, a boarding-school is
+something cut off from the main streams of ordinary life.  In the
+holidays the boy renews contact with ordinary life, and that periodic
+renewal is an essential part of his education.  But surely his holidays
+should bring him into contact with some more of life than its
+superficial frivolities.
+
+The kind of holidays we have in mind would make some call on the time
+and energy of the parents; and perhaps it will be said that the time
+and energy simply cannot be spared.  Well, there was a time, fifteen
+years or so before, when these same parents gave ungrudgingly any
+amount of time and energy to the task of watching over the development
+of the little child now rapidly approaching manhood.  But the boy of
+seventeen, though much more difficult to understand, is every bit as
+fascinating as the child of two, and the parents' time and energy
+devoted to the boy will be as certainly well spent.
+
+And it will, we believe, bring a new happiness to many parents
+themselves.  As school-masters, our widest experience of parents--not
+that we pretend it is very wide--is our experience of boys' talk about
+their homes.  Boys speak of their parents with deep affection and
+respect, as a rule; but so very often they leave an impression that
+they do not really know them.  It is the commonest thing in the world
+for fathers and sons, without any positive estrangement, to get
+entirely out of touch with one another during the latter part of a
+boy's school-time.  The boy develops rapidly, and the greater part of
+his development is quite concealed from the father.  He returns home to
+find his father "just the same," and apparently quite unable to divine
+the new developments which the son is too proud to reveal uninvited.
+Or maybe he does attempt to reveal them, and, bungling his task, finds
+himself misunderstood, and lays the blame on the father.  So often, as
+it seems, the father might have helped matters by playing a rather more
+active part, and going half, or even three-quarters, of the way to meet
+his son's confidences.  But there is a natural shyness of fathers
+towards their sons at this stage, and shyness on one side begets
+shyness and misunderstanding on the other.  More than once a boy has
+said to one of us, "What am I to do to get into touch with my father?
+Last holidays we found we'd nothing sensible to talk to each other
+about at all."  It is difficult to advise, but the most obvious thing
+to say is, presumably, to remind the boy that his father is but a human
+being like himself; that possibly the boy is himself rather
+unnecessarily enigmatic, and that instead of expecting the father to
+make all the moves, the son might himself hold out a hand and help the
+father to understand the changes that had taken place within him.  That
+is how the matter stands on the boy's side, and it may help some
+fathers to know it.
+
+One of our boys, we remember, wanted to discover something at first
+hand of the real interests of employees in his father's firm.  Whatever
+he discovered, it made an excellent holiday interest for him.  Among
+other things, he attended some W.E.A. lectures, because he found that
+the more intelligent men were interested by them.  This was a boy of
+rather unusual initiative; but we believe there are many boys who would
+find a genuine interest in such matters, if the fathers gave them the
+lead.  Thus the wretched tradition that the holidays are for
+unemployment would be gradually broken down, and games would take their
+proper place--in holidays and term alike.  Perhaps, too, the father on
+looking back might find that there had been some "education" in it for
+himself also.
+
+The principle from which we started was that the public schools were
+full of glorious possibilities, to-day largely unrealised.  Is not the
+same true of many homes?
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+"It is quite evident that the boys have been encouraged to read
+periodicals such as _The Nation_ and _The English Review_, and their
+articles read like elaborate parodies.  There is no particular harm in
+allowing a clever boy to do monkey tricks of this type, but there is a
+good deal of harm in printing it instead of gently deriding the
+self-sufficiency of these youthful oracles."--_Church Times_.
+
+"The most obvious fact about these articles is that the boys are
+writing what they mean, and what they want to say, and that they are
+able to do so because they feel sure of the community that forms their
+audience."--Mr. Kenneth Richmond in _The New Age_.
+
+
+
+
+[Of the three articles that follow, the first was printed in the first
+issue of _The School Observer_; the second was written for the
+suppressed sixth issue; the last was written on the day after the final
+collapse of the whole experiment, and was, of course, never intended
+for the paper at all.]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE
+
+If workmen strike, if employers oppress, if prostitution flourishes, if
+paper demagogues are allowed to rule, if poverty exists, if men fight,
+whatever evil it is, the remedy lies at the root--education.  All
+reforms are mere palliatives until the fundamental reform of education
+is perfected.  There are no connecting links of argument.  It is a
+natural corollary, justified by any particular example that may be
+traced.
+
+It is another question whether education or lack of it is more
+calculated to hasten the ultimate ideal of well-ordered anarchy, which,
+consciously or unconsciously, we all entertain; but for the meanwhile
+the affirmative assumption must be adopted.  The sole remaining
+question, then, is, By what means is education to rectify the immediate
+evils?
+
+While it is fairly generally established that the purpose of education
+is efficient citizenship, it is clear that, owing to the diminished
+proportion of the individual to the community, the purpose is being
+gradually lost sight of.  To borrow from scientific phraseology, the
+tendency of the unit to remaining an "idiot" (in the Greek sense of the
+word!) varies directly as the magnitude of the mass.  And this is a
+truism that public schools do not help to abolish.  Although "school
+patriotism" is invariably quoted as a denial of this, there prevails in
+modern schools a definite inclination towards unsentimental cynicism in
+the matter.  This does not necessarily denote an unhealthy spirit, but
+an increase of intellect that, whether with justification or not,
+vaguely asks for something wider or more substantial.
+
+Perhaps our grandfathers are right when they tell us that the modern
+youth becomes a man sooner than his predecessors.  Perhaps our
+grandfathers are right when they tell us it is a pity.
+
+However that may be, the two facts remain, that there is a rather
+benighted tendency in the direction of intellectual activity, which the
+public school spirit makes no effort to assist, and that the public
+schools are inclined to produce gentlemen rather than citizens.  Of
+course the former make better advertisements.  Yet they ought not to.
+They would not in Germany.  One day they will not here.  The instance
+shows that the Chestertonian "England of Romance" is really the one
+that exists.  The word "gentleman" is purely a romantic one, and a
+gentleman a purely romantic though enviable figure.  A state in the
+future will not be able to thrive on gentlemen: it will need citizens.
+
+It has cost me dear to write down this, for in my illogical mind (and
+no one, by the way, save a politician, could have a logical one!) I
+would choose without hesitation the gentleman.  But that is probably
+because, if I could, I would sell my quills for brushes.
+
+The conclusion from all this, then, is that I was not holding Germany
+up as a paragon just now, but leading up to an obvious improvement--a
+gentleman-citizen.  Whoever thinks he fulfils the conditions implicated
+in the _rôle_ may know that not only is he an uncommon and a great man,
+but also the embodiment of a high, practicable ideal; in the attainment
+of which lies the solution of the whole educational question--how, of
+the two component parts, to maintain the moral position of the first
+and create one for the second.
+
+Except for the few, favoured with a productive imagination, the public
+school can as yet do nothing in this direction.  It would be useless,
+for instance, to crowd a dull, technical science of politics on an
+already over-amended curriculum.  One day it may not be useless.  But
+until a new species of governess can be bred, it is.  Of the species in
+question, I know of one example.  There may be more, but not many,
+though of course they are, I am aware, rapidly multiplying.  The only
+possible children's governess is the governess who attempts to teach
+nothing except how to learn.  The ideal education is undoubtedly an _ŕ
+la carte_ one, but as this is impossible both physically and because a
+public school master has not the time to find out how to teach any
+particular boy, the difficulty is solved if the boy has found out how
+to learn from any particular master.
+
+A man's life depends altogether on the first morsel of education he
+receives, so that a governess's responsibility is colossal.  And, of
+course, a competent governess is a far holier thing than any parson's
+wife.  Not only must she teach not so much what he will have to learn
+(which would scarcely encourage him in view of its magnitude) as how he
+will have to learn (which could only make him eager to put the theory
+to the test of practice--all the more so when he finds it succeeds),
+but also she must attempt to discover and develop, even at this very
+early stage, the seeds of mental independence and originality, which
+alone can make him a competent citizen.  Think how much easier
+legislation would be in a state composed of such as these!  It is the
+only condition that really justifies democracy.  There could be no
+question of denying a people of this quality a voice in their own
+government.  Representation could no longer be a game for gamblers and
+contortionists.
+
+As things are, however, the progress of the public schools (and I have
+been dealing exclusively with public-school classes) cannot make much
+headway until they have clay to mould instead of granite to chisel.  It
+is not their fault if there is no way to teach the majority, and if the
+few are thrown back on their own inadequate resources.  The remedy lies
+in some measure to ensure the right primary education.  Seventy-five
+per cent. of the public school boys have not had brilliant, discerning
+governesses--or even mothers.  There are not enough of either to go
+round.  So that the seventy-five per cent., possibly more, don't know
+how to learn, and the mere twenty-five per cent. do.  It is hard to
+tackle effectively so intangible a problem as the correct primary
+method of teaching, and the statesman, through whose instrumentality
+this percentage is reversed, may give up politics for gold not had
+brilliant, discerning governesses with a clear conscience.  The first
+step, therefore, is to reform the education of women.  "Take care of
+the women, the men will take care of themselves."
+
+Nevertheless, be the solution what it may, the importance of the
+subject cannot be over-estimated.  One more illustration.  The better
+educated a man is, the more capable he is of soaring above the spirit
+of national citizenship....
+
+And the next stage is the spirit of world citizenship ... which, in the
+course of many, many years, together, possibly, with the development of
+Esperanto, means the brotherhood of men....
+
+Then perpetual peace....
+
+Then advancement to a primitive condition....
+
+Then the much-dreamed-of well-ordered anarchy....
+
+To continue till a second Milton is called upon to write as misty
+history a second "Paradise Lost." ...
+
+B.W.L.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"And He saw that it was good...."
+
+
+Throughout the Universe which He had created He set a Great Road, and
+on it was Man, at first invisible, but soon an infinite multitude.  And
+then unto Man, as to nothing else in His Universe, He gave the power to
+move, and to walk on the Road, which He made to pass through all the
+Great and Beautiful Worlds, coming at last to where He is, where all is
+happy because all is good, and where nothing ends because there is the
+End.  And as He looked and beheld Man scattered out upon the great Road
+as it wound about through the Universe, He thought to try His people,
+and show by a certain proof whether they were possessed of the goodness
+through which alone they could comprehend all things, and become able
+to enter the realm of perfect goodness.  And so He sent the semblance
+of a great Fire into the Universe, which should seem utterly to destroy
+all things which He had made, and to cut off the hope and possibility
+of a future perception and life eternal.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+As the fire rolls on, devouring all that it meets, humanity on the Road
+sees its advance, and realises that in the course of a few hours the
+Universe will be reduced to a smouldering cinder, that its hopes for a
+future life, where the Road ends, is cut short and never to be
+realised, and that apparently its former belief, albeit a vague and
+ill-defined one, in a God who is all-merciful and kind, was altogether
+an illusion, and merely a cause for false confidence and
+self-righteousness.  And how will it stand the test?  Would the good or
+the bad element in human nature assert itself in the face of absolute
+annihilation?  It is obvious that with such a position several of the
+possible and no doubt ordinary motives for goodness, such as the idea
+of doing good in order to reap benefits or escape punishment in a
+future existence, and of doing good for the sake of having it
+recognised among others, are excluded from the proposition.  Even the
+idea of doing good because it is in accordance with a "will of God" is
+excluded, since the idea of destruction coming from the direction of
+the End is unheard of to man, and is in direct contradiction to his
+ideas of God.  We are brought, therefore, down to the very foundation;
+and the question we have to answer becomes--Is one of the elements of
+human nature a feeling of necessity to pursue goodness for its own
+sake, quite apart from any motives?
+
+In the first place, when a supreme danger such as that already
+described is rapidly approaching humanity, if such a thing could be,
+what would be the immediate result?  We know that with the ordinary
+dangers, such as shipwreck and air-raid, the tendency among people
+gathered together in large numbers is to panic, to herd together and
+become temporarily deprived of normal reasoning powers.  Would this be
+the result of the sight of approaching universal destruction?  Surely
+not.  Panic is the result, I believe, not of approaching danger simply,
+but necessarily of a danger which threatens to affect some of a number
+of people more than others, and which there is a possibility of
+avoiding.  It is entirely the element of uncertainty or suspense which
+causes panic among numbers of people.  Now this is an important point
+in the argument.  It seems very easy to defeat it on the grounds that
+animals almost invariably herd together and panic in the face of
+danger, and that such action cannot be due to the element of
+uncertainty and suspense, since this necessitates the employment of
+calculative and reasoning faculties which animals presumably do not
+possess.  The justification is to be found in a closer examination of
+the part played by the uncertainty in producing the panic which is
+common to men and animals.  In the face of danger, as in everything
+else, man's first instinct is to reason and calculate, and his
+calculation results in finding the danger either avoidable and
+uncertain, which is almost always the case, or unavoidable and
+inevitable.  If the danger is found avoidable, fear is the immediate
+result.  Fear as we know it has come into being with reason, but at the
+same time, as will be seen later, it is only reason which can triumph
+over and destroy fear.  This fear then brings about the destruction of
+reason, and the animal standard is reached, from which time the man
+behaves in the same way as the animals, to whom the danger is merely
+something out of the ordinary.  He then comes under the domination of
+the instinct to panic.  It will thus be seen that all the mental
+processes which came before the reversion to the animal standard in
+men, are unknown to animals, and are the outcome of the purely human
+faculty of reason.  However, if reason can by any means retain its
+foothold and its entirety, there will neither be fear nor the
+consequent breakdown of reason and the domination of panic.  Now this
+is the position in the other case, the case in which reason finds the
+danger unavoidable.  In the case of a danger which is unavoidable there
+will be no panic.  It is this fact which accounts for the bravery of
+numbers of people going to their death on board a sinking ship; but
+such a position has never--or very seldom, indeed--avoided a relapse,
+to a certain extent, to panic, inasmuch as there is a possibility of
+avoiding the danger, and a possibility that some may survive, while
+others are doomed to perish.
+
+In the face of universal destruction, therefore, there will be no fear
+and no panic.  The fact that he is facing annihilation together with
+the rest of humanity would have an extraordinary influence on each
+individual, which, of course, would be just the same if he alone was
+aware of the danger.  I remember very well an evening at school when I
+was told and convinced by several boys older than myself that (I even
+remember the date) on June 18th the earth was going to be destroyed.
+It had been proved, I was told, beyond the shadow of a doubt that on
+that particular date some natural phenomenon would take place which
+would inevitably entail the destruction of everything living on the
+earth.  This forms an interesting parallel to the present case; for at
+the time I was only about eight years old, and I had very scanty ideas
+about God and future life.  To me the earth was the Universe.  And,
+furthermore, for about an hour most of us thoroughly believed that the
+destruction of the earth, or the End of the World as we called it, was
+at hand.  Of course, it might be said that there is no real parallel,
+since we were only children; but I believe that argument to be
+absolutely fallacious.  In the matter of fundamental tendencies and
+characteristics of human nature one cannot assume such divisions.
+Since the present state of good and evil in human nature has taken
+thousands of years to become evolved, it seems unlikely that there can
+be caused in the individual at present any fundamental change.  I
+therefore contend that as soon as personality and independence of
+character becomes evident in the individual, both the good and the evil
+in his nature will be present in the same way and in the same relation,
+although not necessarily in the same proportions or degrees, as they
+will be throughout the greater part of his life.  This personality
+becomes evident without any doubt at a very early age, certainly by the
+age of eight; and in so far as the development of good and evil is
+dependent upon the development of character, it seems likely that these
+elements will be more clearly marked in the child of eight than in the
+second infancy of the man of eighty.
+
+To return to the personal incident.  I recall very vividly now the
+half-hour which followed my conviction of Universal destruction, and,
+of course, I realise my actual feelings and their probable causes more
+clearly now than I did at the time.  The real force of my conviction
+only lasted for about an hour, but in that time, and aided no doubt by
+a rather strained imagination, I was, I feel convinced, in the same
+position as any one of the individuals on that great Road as they see
+the Fire approaching and devouring the entire Universe.
+
+As the affair was being explained to me I remember I was terrified, but
+very soon, and as soon as I realised the situation, which it must be
+remembered the people on the Road would do almost instantaneously, this
+feeling entirely left me.  And the next feeling, a very forcible one,
+was rather extraordinary, being as it was an overpowering feeling of
+solitude.  It was evening, and twenty or thirty of us were all in a
+large classroom together, and for many minutes I felt more lonely than
+I ever had before; I felt cut off from all those around me, and I see
+that, as Peer Gynt would have said, "I had become myself."  As has
+already been said, I was not frightened, and what I did in those
+minutes was to work.  It was "prep-time," and it is an interesting
+fact, as bearing out what has already been said both about the
+establishment of individuality with consequent opportunities of
+concentration, and also about the maintenance of reason, that I was
+able to "do" in those minutes, and do better than usual, the work that
+generally demanded more than the allotted hour.
+
+Very soon, however, the feeling of solitude passed away and its place
+was taken by a feeling of exactly the opposite nature, a feeling of
+Unity, of extraordinary fellowship, followed by a wonderful sensation
+of happiness.  All this sounds rather grotesque, and the continued use
+of these rather meaningless epithets is very ineffectual in expressing
+what they are meant to convey.  But it must be remembered that the
+position is altogether an extraordinary one; and the feelings and
+sensations resulting from such a position were extraordinary at the
+time and still are extraordinary.  The position seems quite unique; it
+is difficult to imagine where and how else that same mental condition
+could be produced: older people would not have credited the story even
+for the short time that we did, and younger children would not have had
+the independence of thought and imagination to picture and contemplate
+the situation.  At the time it was my good fortune to experience things
+which I have never experienced before or since, and which I believe few
+ever have experienced.
+
+However, you ask for a return to the question of whether goodness is an
+immanent reality in human nature; you ask perhaps, in view of the
+incident described, "If it had been in your power to do something at
+that time which was supremely pleasurable but at the same time contrary
+to your moral ideas, would you have done it?"  The answer, which is
+mainly contained in or drawn from what has gone before is--No; and the
+direct reason is, because, in the conditions produced by the position
+described, nothing but what is good remains in the human nature.  The
+bed-rock has been reached, and it is good; the causes of evil and of
+its continuance are removed.
+
+Ever since man has led a corporate life it seems probable that one
+outstanding evil has prevailed, in greater or less degrees according to
+the rate and amount of progress made by any community.  And this evil
+is the lack and suppression of individuality.  It seems impossible to
+account for it, except by simply saying that it is, and has always been
+a characteristic tendency of human nature; however, this is the most
+encouraging answer possible, because it assumes that this evil can
+eventually be eradicated.  No one can surely deny that there is a lack
+of individuality at present; its chief manifestations, of course, are
+to be found in hatred, and in the spirit of competition and rivalry; it
+produces a clash between individual opinions and actions which is so
+apparent that it cannot be denied, and need not be enlarged upon.  But,
+apart from these more obvious manifestations, this failing has been
+responsible for the production and continuance of _all_ that is evil in
+man.  Human nature is the foundation of our life, of that foundation
+every individual is entitled to partake; and, furthermore, that
+foundation is good.  Every individual possesses a portion of this
+foundation as his right; and what is the result, under these
+circumstances, of lack of individuality?  Surely the result is that
+some parts of those individual sections, parts which are in some cases
+similar to and in other cases different from parts of other individual
+sections, are used as the foundation, while the remainder is left
+unused.  For, for the most part, men either employ those parts of their
+portion of the foundation of goodness which are common to as many other
+individual sections as possible, or, like Alceste, the parts which are
+definitely opposed to most others.  In any case where the foundation is
+undeveloped and unused there grows, like a poisonous growth, sin, which
+is made of and feeds upon the material of the good foundation, which
+has been put to the wrong use.  Sin and evil are not separate, in the
+strict sense, from good.  It seems inconceivable that good and evil
+should have had different origins, and should have existed as rival
+elements in human nature without the one having by this time triumphed
+over the other.
+
+In matters which affect every member of a body similarly, the combined
+influence of all those members should be brought to bear; but where
+every individual can "be himself" and interpret and use his portion of
+the foundation of goodness in the complete way for which he was made
+and intended, without affecting others, he should be allowed to
+influence them or be influenced by them, without interference on the
+part of any other individual.  Since this has not been the case, we
+have had the continuance of sin, and until it is the case, there always
+will be sin.
+
+Now, in the position described, complete individuality is established
+and evil ceases to exist and becomes a thing of the past.  With the
+near prospect of universal destruction, there is immediately a
+cessation of progress; and then, as in the incident described, there
+comes complete individuality--every individual becomes himself.  With a
+common destruction inevitable and with the establishment of
+individuality, co-operation in its true sense prevails, and with it the
+surpassing and disappearance of evil; and then that wonderful happiness
+... of all this I am convinced.  I remember well the effect for an hour
+or so among a few of us that evening.  The contrast between the
+atmosphere in the little room in which the most impressed of us
+gathered during that time, which was free, I know, from everything but
+good, and that of a day or two later when we made fun of the whole
+affair, is so marked that my opinion on the matter is very definite.
+
+Goodness alone there was at the beginning, and goodness alone there
+will be at the end.  No man is the cause of his own downfall, but he
+alone as an individual can be the maintainer of his foothold.
+Individuality in all that concerns the individual, alone can make and
+keep life clean and sweet.  If this individuality could, by such means
+as education, be established, there would be constituted a _uniting_
+force through humanity which could lead it, in the course of time, in
+the way it should go.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+And as He raised the semblance of the Fire from the Universe, He looked
+upon Man and saw that he was good.
+
+J. A. A. J.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DREAM
+
+How much of our life seems and is a dream!  How often we feel ourselves
+carried off our feet and borne along on a tide of circumstances, tossed
+backwards and forwards on a sea of conflicting events, now hurried
+along by a current of opinion, now blinded with the spray of false
+accusation, then motionless for a moment, trying to collect our
+shattered thoughts before the next onslaught: but all the time out of
+touch, consciously, with what is going on, utterly powerless, trying to
+gather up the threads and recover consciousness.  Any action that we
+take, any word that we utter, is done without thought, without
+knowledge, and without any result.  And yet neither the cause nor the
+effect are, strictly speaking, physical.  The position is a mental
+attitude, in this case mental helplessness, and this is dependent
+solely upon the relation of the mind to exterior circumstances.  When
+we are fully conscious, we are ourselves each the centre of a little
+world, which includes all that concerns us, and the appearance of this
+depends entirely upon its particular meaning for us.  We do not,
+cannot, under these circumstances, see anything exactly as it is: its
+appearance is influenced by its importance for us or by the degree of
+approval, or disapproval which we ourselves attach to it.  When our
+life becomes a dream, our sphere is broken into and usurped by the
+changing of values, shapes, and appearance of things within it.  The
+old familiar forms are transfigured and tampered with, our mistaken or
+incomplete idea of persons is revealed, and a host of new and
+inexplicable forms appear; with the result that we are literally
+bewildered, and instead of regarding things with reference to their
+influence upon us, we see things as they are in themselves--when we can
+see at all--and feel what they actually do to us.
+
+There can be no one who is not aware of this experience, in a greater
+or a less degree.  I speak of it as dreaming because that is the
+analogy which best represents the circumstances, all of which have been
+explained except one.  In the same way as we are not conscious that
+what we have been dreaming is a dream until we awake, so in these
+periods of our actual life in which we are deprived of will and are
+borne along by exterior circumstances and forces, we are not aware of
+our helplessness, of our utter weakness, of the significance of what we
+have seen and heard, until we have regained consciousness and woken
+again to our freedom.
+
+In this sense I have recently had a dream, and only since have I
+realised that what I dreamt was fact; and then I was able to place it
+all within my sphere--its ideas, its causes, and its effects have
+become or are becoming the familiar forms and shapes, in the midst of
+which I am, like a spider at the centre of its web, placed with my
+hands on every thread.  And this is that dream.
+
+Full of life and happiness I set out with another, one who was a friend
+and had lived with me for a time, sharing the same hopes, methods, and
+ideals.  Laughing as we went, with the smiling world around us and the
+glad faces of those we knew, we made our way to the house of one who,
+older than ourselves, had inspired and befriended in us those hopes and
+ideals.  And there we learnt from him that the authorities of the
+community, the institution to which we belonged, had taken offence at
+our methods and by suppressing them had destroyed our aims and all that
+was most dear to us.  As we sat there in silence, my mind cast back
+over the time--it was little more than a year--since our outlook had
+been entirely changed.  I saw the school a throbbing piece of mechanism
+with its bells, its clocks, and its governors, set down in a place of
+great beauty.  Blind to anything of beauty, it worked with a rhythm and
+a precision which became a twentieth-century development (although it
+had been set up in 1557, and was still running on very nearly its
+original lines--which was the reason, so they say, of why it "worked"
+so "well").  I saw it at work and was myself made part of its raw
+material.  Into its hungry mouth there went childhood at its best, full
+of energy, with every kind of ability, talent and promise, enterprise
+and ambition; through its teeth, its moulds, and its classrooms they
+passed, until they issued from the end a single and singular type of
+humanity, moulded, stamped, docketed and numbered--to take their place,
+or rather, and this is the saddest note of all, their very numerous and
+different places in the world.
+
+While this was passing through my mind we got up and went out for a
+walk.
+
+And then there came the War, and the men and institutions of Europe
+were put to a supreme test.  And the immediate result was that men
+began to think, began to look about them, and realising the palpable
+evil of war, began to wonder whether they had not been mistaken in
+their values and systems.  Men soon came to realise that they did not
+fulfil their entire duty if they followed as nearly as possible in the
+footsteps of their great-grandfathers, but that as the world moved it
+behoved them to move; that each man is made with the possibility of
+every attitude and achievement as seeds within him; that circumstances
+alone had caused him to live on some of these and not on others; that
+intolerance was therefore a crime of the most unpardonable character;
+that it was wrong and unprofitable to let one's self be borne along on
+the surface of the world's tide--and that it was every man's duty to
+use the world as he finds it for the development and fulfilment of all
+that is best within him, and not to depend upon one thing and reject
+another, favour one opinion, and oppose or even disregard another.  And
+those in the school who first realised this, determined not to submit
+to the guiding and moulding of this mechanical institution, but to look
+at the world around and outside them--its beauty, its methods, its
+effects, its possibility, its wonder and its joy, and to develop for
+themselves, under the guidance and suggestion of those whom they
+trusted, their own powers, with their own principles to guide them and
+their own aims to reach.
+
+And in the carrying out of this plan and in the suggesting of it to
+others and in witnessing the results in others and in the institution
+to which they belonged, they, and later I and all those who followed
+them, found great happiness--a happiness which I felt could come from
+nowhere else, and certainly a happiness such as I had never before
+experienced.  A greater facility in all intellectual activity, and in
+avoiding and fighting everything which one felt to be wrong, a greater
+confidence, and determination through self-dependence in all things,
+are some of the natural immediate fruits of a self-conceived basis of
+thought and action which refused to accept blindly everything that was
+handed down or dealt out.
+
+The permanent results in the shape of statistics and concrete evidence
+are proof and witness to the rightness of the undertaking.  But now it
+is all of the past--the reasons are irrelevant; suffice it that they
+are iniquitous, and more than iniquitous, since they have murdered what
+is right.
+
+And now we had come, after passing through a great field of green corn
+rustling in the light wind, to a fence, on which we sat.  My
+retrospective thoughts had now caught up to the present--but I was
+still dreaming.  All that I thought was unconscious, out of my control
+and wonderful.  Our attempt had been very beautiful, had been a work of
+art, and in many ways had come to a beautiful and artistic end.  Like a
+great and wonderful bubble, wrought in many and enchanting colours, it
+rose up complete at that moment from its birthplace and deathbed--and I
+was happy again.
+
+Then from the place down below us--that place in which we had striven
+and apparently failed--I seemed to hear the voice of those who opposed
+and hated us in our ways--those who were making the school into a
+machine again--and were rejoicing in it, as they pumped in the oil:
+
+"The Germans are verrmin--it is your work in life to _krrussch_ them!"
+
+And at that very moment there came by three German prisoners--passed
+us, jumped over the fence and were gone; but the likeness! it was more
+than striking; never, never shall I forget it--and I was convinced.
+
+The school, its very self, its soul, had struggled to its feet, and as
+a little child was taking its first conscious steps--the most
+beautiful, perhaps, that it was ever destined to take--when they, those
+mechanicians, with their mailed fists smote it in the face, crushed it
+heartlessly to the ground, with Louvain and Belgium not only before
+their eyes but on their very lips.
+
+"Oh, this world is a rotten place," he said, at my side.
+
+"I wonder," I murmured in reply, and I still do....
+
+J. A. A. J.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25797-8.txt or 25797-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/7/9/25797
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/25797-8.zip b/25797-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb63ed2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25797-8.zip
diff --git a/25797.txt b/25797.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..542f383
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25797.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3439 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The School and the World, by Victor Gollancz
+and David Somervell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The School and the World
+
+
+Author: Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2008  [eBook #25797]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD
+
+by
+
+VICTOR GOLLANCZ and DAVID SOMERVELL
+
+Authors of "Political Education in a Public School"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
+1919
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+THE SCHOOL
+
+WHICH BOTH WE
+
+AND THOSE WHO DIFFERED FROM US
+
+SOUGHT TO SERVE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In December, 1917, the present writers wrote a little book entitled
+"Political Education in a Public School," in which they put forward
+their views as to what the aims and methods of a modern liberal
+education should be.  They also described certain experiments which
+they had been permitted to make in one of our old English Public
+Schools, experiments which both illustrated the authors' principles and
+tested their value.  In July, 1918, that book was published.
+
+But in the intervening seven months several things had happened.  On
+the one hand, "Political Education" had produced further striking
+evidence of its power over boys' intellects and characters, evidence
+altogether more striking than anything that had occurred up to the time
+of writing the book.  On the other hand, the movement in the full tide
+of its success ran upon rocks and has been, for the time being at any
+rate, utterly and completely destroyed.  The authors have left the
+school in which their experiments were made.
+
+When the book was published, its reviewers in the press raised one by
+one a series of problems which we had already encountered in a
+practical shape in the course of our work, problems hardly touched on,
+however, in our book, which was devoted to exposition rather than
+argument.  Such problems were: How far is political propaganda
+inseparable from political education, and in what respects is such
+propaganda desirable or undesirable?  How can political differences
+among the masters themselves be made to play a helpful rather than an
+injurious part?  Does the introduction of politics into the curriculum
+open a way, as the very able reviewer in _The Westminster Gazette_
+suggested, for Prussianism in its most insidious form, the conscription
+of educated opinion?  Are the old Public Schools the best medium for
+political education, or should the new wine be poured into new bottles?
+and lastly--for educational "subjects" are or should be but aspects of
+a single whole--what of political education in relation to morality,
+and to religion?
+
+The present volume, therefore, essays a twofold task.  The first two
+chapters briefly recapitulate and continue the history of our work down
+to its abrupt end.  The latter chapters deal with such questions as
+those mentioned above.  One feature of the earlier volume survives in
+its successor.  The Appendix to that volume contained a selection of
+articles written by boys for our political paper, _The School
+Observer_.  As an Appendix to this volume we print a few more articles
+by boys whose work did not then appear.  We are under no delusions as
+to there being anything very extraordinary about these articles and
+those printed in the previous volume.  Abler work has been done by
+abler boys in various schools at various times.  They are interesting
+as the combined effort of a group rather than as the work of
+individuals.  We reproduce them as the only concrete evidence available
+of the character of one aspect of our experiment.
+
+In the former volume we suppressed the name of the school out of
+deference to the wishes of the Head Master, and though our own judgment
+was against the concealment as a wholly superfluous piece of
+mystification, we continue to respect his wishes.
+
+One word of apology is needed for the use to which we have put the
+utterances of our reviewers.  The reviews revealed the interesting and
+important fact that thoughtful people really felt strongly, one way or
+the other, on the subject of political education.  They constitute a
+symposium of conflicting judgments upon an educational problem of which
+they one and all recognize the importance, and as such their main
+features are worth preserving.
+
+Having said this much about the reviews it is necessary to add a word
+more.  The quotations we have chosen are, quite naturally, very largely
+critical, and as such give no idea of the very warm welcome the general
+policy of the book received.  Not one in five among the reviewers was
+hostile.  One of them, however, the _Church Times_ reviewer, was
+virulently hostile, and appeared to us not merely to dislike our
+educational policy, which he had every right to do, but to blaspheme
+against the very idea of a liberal education.  As we have quoted from
+no other "Church" paper, we should like to remark here that a number of
+other such papers, representing various schools of religious thought,
+gave the book a generous welcome.
+
+Our experiments perished in the dark days of last spring.  Within only
+a month or two came the turn of the tide.  It is bitter to reflect
+that, could they but have survived until victory and peace brought a
+return of political sanity, they might have weathered the storm and
+conciliated some of their bitterest enemies, and reached safety.
+Possibly, though gone, they have left their mark.
+
+Meanwhile pneumonia has carried off, in the prime of early manhood,
+their staunchest friend among our colleagues.  He was not one who took
+any but a very small part in the actual conduct of the experiments.  He
+once lectured to _The Politics Class_ on "Liberalism."  But he had a
+genius for sympathy, and always, when difficulties arose, it was to him
+that we turned, because he had the gift of making us feel that it was
+still worth while to persevere.  Had we been wiser, he could perhaps
+have served us still further by bringing us into touch with some of
+those who differed from us, and helping to a mutual understanding.  For
+everyone was his friend.  The dedication of this book had already been
+chosen before he died, and we are unwilling to alter it, but perhaps we
+may also venture to offer it as an unworthy tribute to the memory of
+Alan Gorringe.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAP.
+
+       PREFACE
+    I. THE RISE
+   II. THE COLLAPSE
+  III. PROPAGANDA
+   IV. CONTROVERSY
+    V. CAPTURE BY THE STATE
+   VI. THE MAKING OF "POLITICIANS"
+  VII. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND FREAK SCHOOLS
+ VIII. MORALITY
+   IX. RELIGION
+    X. CURRICULUM
+   XI. THE YOUNG GENERATION AND THE OLD
+       APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+"That such an experiment should have been permitted in one of the great
+public (English) schools is a sign of the greatest promise for the
+future."--_Aberdeen Free Press_.
+
+"Of all the objectionable and inept proposals for reforming the
+education of our public schools we must award the palm to the scheme of
+teaching boys politics."--_Saturday Review_.
+
+"We do not believe the authors have delivered all their
+message."--_Scottish Educational Journal_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RISE
+
+The school in which political education was tried for a space of
+something under two years is in no way a very remarkable school.  It
+has its sixteenth-century founder, "of pious memory," and its "second
+founder," of memory almost more pious, in early Victorian days.  That
+second founder made the school famous as a centre of stalwart
+evangelicalism.  More recently its fame has been won chiefly in the
+production of first-class cricketers.  Until the early years of the
+present century the school had also, we are told, a kind of inverted
+fame as one of the "stupidest" of the public schools, as a dumping
+ground for young hopefuls who could not pass entrance examinations
+elsewhere.  From that reputation, however, it had struggled fairly
+successfully to free itself.
+
+The present writers started with the common assumption that the
+"Classical" scheme of a liberal education had long broken down in
+practice, and survived only as feudalism survived in eighteenth-century
+France, because sufficient energy had not yet generated to create a new
+scheme to replace it.  In part it had already disappeared and given
+place to the patchwork innovations of the earnest but painfully
+cautious and conservative reformers who have ruled the schools since
+the days of Dr. Arnold.[1]  The classical system had become the
+classical compromise, a clipped and truncated classics, fighting a
+losing battle for air space amidst a crowd of inadequately provided
+"new subjects"--history, literature, science, modern languages.  In
+some ways the last state was worse than the first.  For the first state
+had at least been based upon a great tradition and an ordered
+philosophy of life, but in the last state there was no tradition, no
+ordered philosophy; only a jumble and a scramble, and a passing of
+examinations.  Such a system or lack of system must fall a prey sooner
+or later to some educational movement based on a coherent and
+defensible doctrine.
+
+Now, as it chances, such a movement is already in the field; we may
+call it the "Cult of Efficiency."  It proclaims a great many truths
+about the necessity of increasing productivity, about the connection
+between education and the world of business, and generally speaking
+points to the achievements of Germany for our envious imitation; it
+proclaims the commercial utility of Spanish and Russian, and ranges in
+its advocacy from advanced chemistry to shorthand and book-keeping.
+Much that writers on these lines have to urge against the present
+system is perfectly sound and reasonable.  Many of their claims will
+have to be recognised in the educational system of the future.  But the
+admission of their claim as a whole, of the claim of "efficiency" to be
+the true and rightful heir of the old classical education, would be, to
+speak without exaggeration, the greatest disaster that could possibly
+befall this country.
+
+What was wanted then was a conception of education at once "liberal"
+and "modern," and such the writers found in "politics," using that word
+in its widest Platonic sense.  The classical education set out to study
+the ancient world, and in the case of most of its pupils achieved
+little more than the dry elements of two dead languages.  The study of
+the modern world has so far usually meant no more than the study of how
+to make a little money out of it; the trail of commercialism has been
+drawn over our Modern Sides.  Why should not the modern world be
+studied in the same noble and disinterested spirit as that in which the
+best of the old teachers studied the world of Greece and Rome?  It is
+surely worthy of such study.  Only perhaps by such study in our schools
+can its wounds be healed.  The central subject of a liberal education
+should be "To-day," the great difficulties amongst which we are all
+groping, the great problems awaiting solution, the great movements,
+capitalism and socialism, imperialism and internationalism, freedom and
+authority, that are battling for mastery or negotiating for a workable
+compromise.  The value of the classics lies wholly in the contribution
+that classical art, philosophy, and history can make to the enrichment
+of our minds for the study of our own problems.  The value of modern
+history lies in the inspiration of its great men, and the warning of
+its tragic experiences.  The value of "Divinity" is only found when we
+face the fundamental question, Are we to apply Christianity in our
+political and economic relations to-day, or are we not?  But over and
+above this reorientation of subjects already scheduled in the orthodox
+time-table, there is the new subject within which all these (except
+Divinity, which is fundamental) must be regarded as merely
+contributory, and that subject is "politics," the treatment, elementary
+yet thorough, vigorous yet many sided, of the great questions of the
+day, with all the diverse lines of thought along which each can be
+approached.  Here the fundamental "text-book" is the newspaper.
+Growing up in such a world as this of 1918, how can it be anything but
+sheer monasticism to divert the main part of a boy's intellectual
+energies away from this subject to anything else?  Our educational
+"America is here or nowhere."
+
+With this principle in view, and after various tentative experiments,
+we obtained permission to found the _Politics Class_ described in our
+previous book.  Suffice it to say here that the class was a voluntary
+body of some thirty or forty senior boys, that met once a week on a
+half-holiday evening to hear informal lectures from one or other of us,
+and occasionally from one or other of our colleagues, on questions of
+the day.  Sometimes the topic was purely general--"Competition and
+Co-operation," "The Spirit of the Reformer," or the like.  Sometimes a
+historical topic was traced rapidly from its beginnings down to a
+crisis of last week's newspaper, the discourse ending on the brink of
+the future with a note of interrogation; such were brief courses of
+lectures on "The Irish Question," and "The Russian Revolution."  A
+third type were those that confined themselves to an analysis of a
+strictly contemporary situation, such as the lectures on the various
+"peace terms" speeches that led up to the Versailles declaration of
+February, 1918.  No attempt was made to create any artificial
+popularity for the class.  The scene was the ordinary bleak class-room
+with all its sad suggestiveness.  Ordinary notes were taken in ordinary
+note-books.  No one, in fact, can have come from any motive but a
+genuine desire to know what was deemed worth knowing.
+
+Parallel with the foundation of the _Politics Class_ had come a
+remodelling of the sixth form time-table.  Indeed, not modern politics
+but Greek philosophy had been the first subject to stir that almost
+religious passion for a real understanding of things, without which
+knowledge is in the old man mere pedantry and in the young man mere
+grist for the examination mill.  In the present educational chaos,
+school sixth forms are quite bewilderingly fissiparous.  Every one is a
+"specialist" of some sort or other; specialism means "private work,"
+and if private work enables the gifted few to escape into
+self-education from the hampering attentions of the form master, it
+gives the rest a terrible training in the habits of time-wasting and
+evasion.  Yet so long as sixth form orthodoxy is classical scholarship
+work, the majority will rightly be found among the heretics, and that
+is the "specialists."  The remodelled sixth form time-table made at
+least a move towards the recognition of the principle that, over and
+above specialisms, there were certain subjects that were the common
+concern of all educated men.  A heterogeneous body drawn from all
+corners of the school time-table met together for Modern History, for
+Outlines of World History, and for General Principles of Science, and
+(with some regrettable abstentions) for Political Science and
+Economics.  Some day it will appear ridiculous that these last subjects
+should not have been deemed a necessity for all the "specialists" alike.
+
+The real test of an educational system is not what the masters do for
+the boys, but what the boys do for themselves, and in this matter only
+one large undertaking fell within the scope of our previous book,
+namely the paper, _The School Observer_, therein described and largely
+quoted.  The idea of this paper, a political journal on the lines of a
+high-class weekly, published twice a term, with "Notes on Current
+Events," political "leaders," literary and philosophic "middles," a
+poem or so, and correspondence all complete--this laughably magnificant
+idea came entirely from a little group of boys, and one at any rate of
+the present writers was at first frankly sceptical.  Well,--enthusiasm
+has a way of beating scepticism, at any rate when youth is thrown into
+the scale.  We were quickly harnessed to our task as members of the
+editorial committee.  Our literary contributions were confined to a
+part of the "Notes on Current Events," the portion of the paper that
+naturally attracted least outside notice, and was rarely singled out
+for praise.  It is true that a discerning schoolmaster from another
+school remarked that these notes displayed "restrained strength even
+more remarkable in boys than the qualities of the other parts of the
+paper."  I am ashamed to say we smiled and held our peace.
+
+Five of the six issues of the paper appeared, and we had already
+contracted with our advertisers for a second volume when the crash
+came.  In general, of course, the paper was much less important than
+the _Politics Class_.  The class was a necessity to political
+education; the paper was a luxury.  But it is a man's luxuries that
+give the clue to his character, and it was the very fact that the paper
+was always of the nature of a _jeu d'esprit_, a glorious game, a kind
+of Fleet Street doll's-house affair, that gave a sense of gay adventure
+to the pursuit of politics.  When the paper had been suppressed, a boy
+who had never contributed to it said to me, "What a shame!" and he
+added very pensively, "It was all so extraordinarily romantic!"
+
+But so far the movement had only touched the sixth form, and in a minor
+degree such lower forms as the writers happened to meet in the course
+of their professional duties.  That was plainly not enough.  If boys
+are learning from their masters something that they really value, their
+natures are so essentially communicative and sociable that they will be
+eager to pass it on to their friends.  This may seem a paradox, but it
+is true enough.  If of two boys in constant contact, A is learning
+algebra and B is not, and if A refrains from talking algebra to B, one
+of two causes must be the explanation of A's reticence.  Either he does
+not care about B or else he does not care about algebra, and since by
+hypothesis he cares about B, we can only assume that he does not care
+about algebra.  A simple experiment will verify our conclusion.  Drop
+an indiscretion about a colleague during the algebra lesson, and B, C,
+D and all the rest of them to a long way beyond Z will know all about
+it before sunset.  A, B, C, and D are interested in masters' opinions
+of each other.
+
+Now we would not claim for a moment that all educational subjects
+should be required to pass this test of "interest," and rejected if
+they do not.[2]  That would be grotesque.  But it seems to us that the
+central subject of a liberal education, that subject to which all
+others cohere and in relation to which all others are justified, ought
+to make some such appeal to enthusiasm.  Unless education produces
+enthusiasm for something, there is no education, and that is why it has
+so often been maintained that the real education of Public Schools is
+in the playing fields, because there alone, for most boys, enthusiasm
+is generated, if it is generated at all.  (For most, one may remark in
+passing, it is not generated even there.  The notion that the average
+boy is an enthusiast for cricket is as wide of the mark as would be the
+idea that he was an enthusiast for Greek, Natural Science, or the
+Church of England.)
+
+Judged by this test of infectious enthusiasm, political education was
+to produce in the early months of 1918, evidence of its educational
+worth such as we never dreamt of, and here again the pioneer was not
+ourselves but a boy, and that boy not one of the group that had started
+the paper.  This boy, who had recently become head of his House,
+conceived the idea that politics could become the medium of the same
+spirit of joyous and unforced co-operation as is traditionally (and
+sometimes actually) associated with athletics.  His idea of a school
+house was of a vigorous and jolly community, living together on terms
+of friendly equality such as reduced fagging and the oligarchial
+"prefect system" to a minimum, and uniting in a real effort to keep
+abreast with the great world outside by means of a co-operative study
+of politics and the Press.  The idea will seem mere foolishness and an
+impossibility to many of those who did not see it actually at work.  At
+the best it will seem the kind of thing we may have read of in books
+about "freak schools," where so much loss has obviously to be set
+against whatever is gained.  In this case, not only the idea, but all
+the practical details came from the boy himself and the little band of
+enthusiasts that gathered round him.  Indeed, one feels a sense of
+impropriety in describing what was essentially not our work, but his.
+However, it was the fine flower of political education, and as such may
+fitly close this chapter.  "Houses," after all, and not "forms," are
+the natural social units that compose a public school, and a scheme of
+education that becomes in the best sense popular may, indeed must, take
+its rise in the classroom, but will find its freest development in the
+life of house reading-room and house study.
+
+The chief among many "stunts," as they were called, was a political
+society.  The twenty-five members of this society, rather over half the
+house, undertook to read between them nearly all the more important
+newspapers, including one or two French papers.  On Sunday the society
+sat in conclave, the three or four leading events of the week were
+taken each in turn, and the individual or group responsible for each
+newspaper put forward the view of the event in question taken by his
+own particular organ.  These views were compared and debated, and
+ultimately a brief synopsis was drawn up, consisting of the event
+itself, with the chief typical utterances of the press on the subject
+set out underneath, for purposes of comparison and contrast.  These
+were typed and posted on a board as "news of the week."  Neither of us
+ever attended a meeting of this society, and it is obvious, from the
+fact that more than half the house joined in, that we are not concerned
+here with the activities of a little set of intellectualists.  In the
+fullest sense in which the word is applicable in a public school, these
+political activities were "democratic," and the effect on the "English"
+work of some of the boys in middle forms was most remarkable.  The
+present writer recalls, for instance, a Middle Fifth essay of some
+three thousand words on the complex, and in some ways repellent,
+subject of "National Guilds."  On how many successive nights the rule
+against "sitting up" was broken over the composition of this work the
+recipient of the essay forebore to inquire.
+
+From this beginning other developments rapidly opened.  A modest but
+useful idea was a question paper, on which any one who liked could set
+down questions that occurred to him in the course of his reading.  The
+House Library naturally felt the impact of the movement, and a
+political section was started in which books about the Greeks and
+Mill's "Liberty" stood side by side with the latest essay on
+"Reconstruction."  But it would be giving an altogether unworthy notion
+of the movement if it were suggested that politics alone, in the
+narrower sense, marked the limit of these activities.  The best modern
+plays and poetry began to appear on shelves whence rubbishy novels of a
+past generation were removed to make room for them.  Nor were older
+books neglected.  The general drift of interest was inevitably towards
+the moderns; but the great poets of the past were also finding their
+way in before the end came.
+
+Then, of course, there was a gramophone, with its "popular" and
+"classical" repertoires; and before the end came, the "classical" had
+so far surpassed the "popular" in popularity that House piano recitals
+had begun as well.
+
+Another development was on lines that would have gladdened the heart of
+Ruskin and Morris, though I do not know that either of these was
+consciously recognised as an influence.  A movement arose for
+beautifying the studies, which began with pseudo-Japanese lamp-shades,
+and moved upward through pretty curtains and tablecloths to framed
+"Medici" pictures.  Before the end there was hardly a study that had
+not its big framed Medici, and often a selection of Medici postcards as
+well.
+
+All these things involved, of course, some considerable expenditure;
+but the cost was met with an eagerness astonishing to the boys
+themselves when they reflected that, a few months before, So-and-so
+"had never cared about anything but the tuck shop."
+
+Other houses began to catch the spirit of the thing--a trifle
+reluctantly and tentatively, it must be admitted, for there is a good
+deal of improper pride about a school house, and imitations have not
+quite the glamour of originals.  Also the whole movement was by this
+time falling under a cloud, and it is now time to give some account of
+the collapse.
+
+
+
+[1] A brilliant "depreciation" of Arnold and his school has recently
+appeared in Mr. Lytton Strachey's "Eminent Victorians."
+
+[2] Something more is said on this subject in Chapter X.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COLLAPSE
+
+"Teachers though they are, Mr. Gollancz and Mr. Somervell do not seem
+quite to realise ... what obstacles have to be overcome before the advice
+given in their little book is generally taken."--_The Westminster
+Gazette_.
+
+
+Our account of the collapse of our experiment has to be written, as the
+reader will easily understand, with a good deal of reserve.  "The rise"
+was the work of ourselves and our pupils.  "The collapse" was the work of
+others.  It is not a question of "Dora"; it is not a question of the
+common law of libel; there are certain older laws of courtesy and
+forbearance which we would fain observe, for he who has not learnt to
+observe these has hardly made a beginning with political education.  So
+let it be said to begin with that no one was to blame.  Things followed
+their predestined course, and every actor in the drama played the part
+that was natural and proper to him.  It was natural that the movement
+should be destroyed by masters as that its success should be made by
+boys.  If any one is to blame it is ourselves.  It was we who chose to
+pour new wine into old bottles--the preference for old bottles is
+explained in Chapter VI.--and when the custodians of the bottles awoke to
+the fact and hastily poured the wine out again, fearing  disaster, they
+certainly thought they were acting for the best.  Needless to say, we
+have often discussed the question whether, had the movement run on other
+lines, had we been content with rather less to begin with, had we
+considered principle rather less and prudence rather more, had we added
+the _role_ of diplomatist to the _role_ of missionary, had we hardened
+our hearts against some of the best boys in order to soften the hearts of
+some of the more tractable masters--had we done all these things, could
+we have postponed or even permanently escaped the collapse?  On the
+whole, we come to the conclusion that, much as we regret many plain
+mistakes of detail, in the main it is best that the bold course was
+taken, We rode boldly, and, in the last months, we had to ride for a
+fall.  An experiment has been made by frontal attack, and with the
+slenderest of resources.  Now that all that is over, the time has come to
+begin the slow and circuitous approach toward political education as a
+normal institution.
+
+The material of our experiment was boys and boys alone.  Now, at first
+sight, a school might seem to consist of boys, but in point of fact boys
+are only one element in a complex organisation embracing boys, masters,
+head master, bursar, governors, and parents.  The boys are only there to
+be educated, and education is a matter about which very few people have
+any strongly cherished ideas.  For very many, public school education is
+a species of "doing time," whereby a child of fourteen is taken and
+simply kept out of mischief (or, at any rate, kept away from home, where
+he would be a nuisance), until at eighteen he is become a man.  But the
+other constituent parts of the school have serious commercial interests
+at stake.  For the masters the school is the means of livelihood, and the
+livelihood afforded them is in many cases so niggardly that they very
+rightly consider that the smallest financial mishap to the school might
+plunge them below the line of bare subsistence.  From a slightly
+different angle, the eyes of the higher officials and the governors are
+fixed upon the same point.  A head master once remarked to me of one of
+his governors, "Old X.'s only idea is that the school should pay five per
+cent."
+
+And the parents.  It is an article of faith with the present writers that
+parents are wiser, more tolerant and more open to ideas on educational
+matters, than schoolmasters generally suppose.  But parents live at a
+distance, and only make themselves felt at moments of crisis, and then
+the crisis is one which they probably only very imperfectly understand.
+That is all the fault of the schools, for the schools have never made a
+serious attempt to take the parents into partnership in the matter of
+their sons' education.  And here we are back against the root of all
+evil, for the reason why this has not been done is that the schools have
+not yet seriously faced the fact that a liberal education for the average
+boy is an unsolved problem, for the solution of which they need all the
+help they can possibly get.  Of course this taking of the parent into
+partnership would be no easy matter.  Readers of that wise and humorous
+tale, "The Lanchester Tradition," will remember the comical failure of
+the head master's attempt at a "Parents' Committee."  Still, all this
+being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of
+the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the
+false image of the traditional parent has been created in the
+schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is
+always "writing to complain."  Now, he who pays the piper does not
+necessarily call the tune.  That would be too absurd.  But he has a veto
+on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that the
+unmusical generally dislike a _new_ tune.
+
+The opposition to political education developed along two lines.  One of
+them makes this story a microcosm of the world history of the years
+1917-1918.  The other is something peculiar to the English public
+schools, and might have befallen at any period since Dr. Arnold
+inaugurated their modern history.
+
+When we began our experiments the "party truce," in the moral as distinct
+from the formal sense, still held good.  Outside the circles of strict
+pacifism--and with pacifism in any but a merely abusive sense we never
+had any concern--English people were agreed upon the great questions of
+the war.  Such differences of opinion as there were concerned only
+questions of method and expediency, not questions of principle.  The
+"gospel" of August, 1914, had not yet become a battle-ground disputed by
+fiercely earnest rival sects.  We were Liberals in a general sense, but
+we differed on a great many topics, and we were genuinely anxious, in the
+words of one of our pupils in the school magazine, "not so much to
+advocate any one particular remedy of any given problem as to lay before
+the class the problems themselves and the principal reforms which have
+been or are being suggested, so that thought and criticism may have full
+scope for exercise."  It would be unfair to ourselves to admit that we
+abandoned that ideal, but the events of 1917 brought a new spirit into
+the world.  On the one hand, the early days of the Russian Revolution and
+the demand for a peace "without annexations or indemnities," coupled with
+the entry of America and the war speeches of President Wilson, seemed to
+revive the flagging idealism of the Allies and lift it to a more
+universal and exalted level than ever before.  On the other hand, the
+publication of the Secret Treaties and the many incomplete revelations
+that followed thereon, laid bare the fact that quite another act of
+motives were also at work among our leaders; that territorial greed and
+diplomatic hypocrisy were enemies to be fought in our own midst as well
+as on the battlefield.  The issues of the war assumed a grander and a
+more terrible aspect.  More than ever before perhaps in the history of
+the world--and we do not overlook the period of the so-called religious
+wars--religion and politics fused.  To us, at any rate, the calm
+aloofness suggested by the quotation above became impossible.  A cry
+seemed to have gone forth, "Who is on the Lord's side?  Who?"  A great
+gulf opened up between those who only a year before had believed
+themselves to be for the time at any rate in one political camp.  On one
+side of that gulf we found ourselves, and on the other most of our
+colleagues.  It was not that we differed from them as to the necessity of
+winning the war, and of putting forward every possible military effort
+for that end.  But everything depends on the uses to which the victory is
+put, and the spirit in which it is approached, and there the differences
+were profound.
+
+And thus the _Politics Class_ became a school of liberalism.[1]  It was
+no intolerant liberalism, for intolerant liberalism is not liberalism at
+all.  From first to last we stood for the examination of all points of
+view.  We were for reading the views of those we disagreed with, not for
+abusing them unheard or burning their books unread.  In so far as some of
+our pupils carried liberalism to the point of intolerance, they lost the
+spirit of the movement they professed to support.  There were not many
+against whom this charge could be brought.  One of our most ardent
+democrats, I remember, sent me during the time of his military training a
+careful and painstaking examination of Mr. Mallock's latest big book.
+The excuse of those that fell into intolerance must be, I suppose, that
+they were young, and that they found themselves confronted by an
+astonishing spectacle of intolerance in some of their "conservative"
+masters.
+
+When this change was taking place, we sought to redress the balance by
+taking into partnership in the running of the _Politics Class_ a strongly
+Conservative master.  Such an arrangement would have been admirable had
+the genuine educational spirit been there.  It was not.  The overture was
+a failure and only added to our difficulties.  To some men it seemed
+better to root out the Liberal masters as "traitors" than to co-operate
+with them as teachers.
+
+On the eve of the final collapse, a similar experiment was tried with
+_The School Observer_.  The last number bears the names of two "editors,"
+and contains both a Liberal and a Conservative "leader" written on the
+same topic.  The innovation was made at the last minute, and the
+Conservative "leader" is not a genuine schoolboy production, but the
+model may be a useful one for future work on the same lines.
+
+But there was another influence making for the collapse.  We quoted in
+our previous book a head master who remarked at a school prize-giving
+that the only questions worth asking are those that cannot get a definite
+answer.  Political education consists almost entirely of such questions.
+Its sheet anchor is freedom of thought; its method is controversy; its
+end is not in complete mastery of a box of intellectual tricks such as
+will win full marks in an examination, but in the modesty of realised
+ignorance and the enthusiastic search for fresh lights in the darkness.
+Socrates was put to death by the Athenians because he would not desist
+from asking them questions, and it is to be feared that some of our
+pupils would have incurred the same fate had the customs of the time
+permitted it.  The taste for controversy on the fundamental subjects will
+grip a youth like the taste for drink, as many who have passed through
+undergraduate days at Oxford or Cambridge can remember.  Suppose a boy
+enters into political controversy with his form master, over the| giving
+back of an essay, or with his house master at the luncheon table....
+
+Now, there is a Divinity that doth hedge a schoolmaster, and the hedge
+must be kept in somewhat careful repair.  So long as we are concerned
+with subjects like elementary Latin and Greek or Mathematics, we are
+dealing with a body of knowledge in which, to take the examinations
+standard, all the masters get full marks.  All knowledge is contained in
+a set of small school books which the masters, for their sins, know more
+or less by heart backwards.  Even history, if it is sufficiently badly
+taught, may be grouped among such subjects, for, strange as it may seem,
+it is quite possible to teach it in such a way that no boy feels impelled
+to ask questions either insoluble in themselves or beyond the scope of
+the master's immediate memory.  There are schoolmasters who definitely
+discourage or even forbid the asking of questions by the class.  "Little
+boys should be seen and not heard"--that worst of all educational
+maxims--makes a larger contribution to the buttressing up of the present
+system than is usually supposed.  A lowering diet of irregular verbs
+keeps the boy mind "docile," to use a word of ironically perverted
+meaning, and prevents it from impinging embarrassingly upon the lightly
+guarded regions of the master's intellectual entrenchments.  In fact,
+political education set up a new intellectual standard.  It was a subject
+in which no one, boy or master, got "full marks,"--scarcely even
+President Wilson, perhaps, if you took his "work" as a whole!  All were
+learners, all were fellow workers together, and before the vast scope of
+the task, differences of proficiency between the various workers seemed
+hardly to matter.
+
+Here, then, rises a difficult question.  Ought the schoolmaster to
+possess, or appear to possess, complete knowledge of the subject he
+teaches?  The present writer has taught a good variety of subjects during
+nine years, and on the whole he has found his ignorance, not only of
+politics, but of far more finite matters, a very helpful educational
+instrument.  As an emergency teacher of Latin on the modern side, for
+instance, he found it a positive advantage that he had forgotten more of
+the language than his pupils had ever learnt.  His occasional quaint
+errors did not always pass undetected, and their detection had probably
+an educational stimulus for the form which outweighed the loss incurred
+when his mistakes passed without notice.  Nor did he feel greatly the
+loss of intellectual stature.  It was partly made good by the ingenuity
+with which he explained how he had come to make the mistake.  And if
+there was loss in intellectual prestige, there was an increased sense of
+intellectual comradeship.  But this is a trifling and not wholly serious
+digression.
+
+Some masters stand for intellectual infallibility.  These political
+discussions disturbed them.  They felt that their credentials as
+schoolmasters were being examined and found wanting.  They accused the
+boys of priggery.  It was a most false charge, for the boys were
+enthusiasts, and enthusiasm is a form of self-forgetfulness as priggery
+is a form of self-consciousness.  Still priggery was the word.  The
+charge of "priggery" was added to the charge of "pacifism."
+
+On these two lines the opposition developed and ultimately triumphed.  It
+was suggested that "the school would be empty in a couple of years," if
+political education continued.  Here, it would seem, our critics were
+trading on their false idea of the parent, and believing what they wished
+to believe.  Take the statistics of entries, which is the only tangible
+evidence on the subject, and the only conclusion you can draw is that
+political education either had no effect at all, or that it slightly
+increased the commercial well-being of the school.  It was not on such
+ground as this that political education was doomed.  As we said at the
+beginning of the chapter, the material of our experiments was the boys
+and them alone.  We had made a short cut.  We had made no effort to
+convert our colleague.  We trusted to results for their conversion.  But,
+as the preceding narrative will have shown, the greater our success, the
+greater became their irritation, when success was labelled "pacifism" and
+"priggery."  Without intending it, we had played "Pied Piper" upon some
+of the best of the house masters' foster children.  We had envisaged a
+school as a single corporate society, boys and masters working together
+with the maximum of frankness and equality for the common end, education.
+We had not allowed for the fact that a school cannot become such a
+corporate society, unless the staff has become such at the same time.
+Like three-quarters of the reformers of history, we had, in our own
+despite, become rebels.  And so all was over.  There is now no _Politics
+Class_, no _School Observer_ in the school of their foundation, though
+two other schools of fame have started papers on similar lines, with
+handsome acknowledgments to our example.  There are no political
+societies in the Houses.  Two or three of our pupils have left before
+their time, and we, the authors, are no longer schoolmasters, only
+"educationists,"--it is a change for the worse.
+
+
+
+[1] Generally speaking, the liberalism of _The Manchester Guardian_ or of
+President Wilson's speeches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PROPAGANDA
+
+"A point hardly touched on in the book is the difficulty of teaching
+politics without the disadvantages of partisanship.  It is worth
+discussion."--_Manchester Guardian_.
+
+"If 'politics'--even politics as an art culled from the classics, from
+_pro-German_[1] economists and historians, from poets such as Shelley,
+and from _German_[1] higher critics of the Bible--were taught to fifth
+form boys with crude impressionable minds, the result would be
+Bolshevism.  We agree that under careful guidance much of ultimate
+political value can be taught from history and literature.  But it must
+be done with infinite care, and opinions must be excluded from the
+teaching.  That is the difficulty."--_Contemporary Review_.
+
+"Clever boys will learn their politics for themselves."--_Saturday
+Review_.
+
+"The public schools have for years past covered their quiet
+infiltration of Conservative principles with a camouflage of strict
+neutrality.  Teachers though they are, the authors do not seem quite to
+realise what a formidable protective device this banning of the modern
+history which we call politics has been, and what obstacles have to be
+overcome before the advice given in their little book is generally
+taken."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+Two great objections have to be met if Politics is to become the
+central subject in our public school education.  The desirability of
+such a change may be urged from many points of view; and the practical
+results obtained during the course of our recent experiment seemed to
+us even more valuable than preliminary theorising had led us to expect.
+Once make a boy think about the life of his own time and the great
+principles whose fight for mastery he is witnessing; once make him
+wonder about the actual machinery by which his world is moved; once set
+him speculating about the meaning of the universe and of his own
+existence; and you have created such a spirit of eager enthusiasm and
+inquiry, that at last that development of the individual personality is
+achieved which, as every great educationist since Plato has told us,
+must be the aim of all who desire to be more than mere teachers.
+Modern History, Politics, Sociology, Economics, Ethics, even
+_Metaphysics_--we may class all these under the broad heading of
+Politics, for one and all they deal with the life and destiny of the
+individual as a member of human society and a part of the Universe.
+There is no human being who, at least while he is young, does not feel
+a keen interest in such things; the deepest waters are stirred and the
+classroom becomes the meeting-place of minds engaged in an exciting
+adventure instead of being, as is so often now the case, a prison cell
+in which all a boy's spontaneity and joy of life are crushed out beyond
+recall.
+
+Yet the two objections remain, and to one of them we address ourselves
+in this chapter.[2] When the possibility of political teaching is
+considered, the first thought that leaps to the mind is: Can the
+subject be taught without the introduction of propaganda? and is not
+Politics just the one subject in which propaganda is above everything
+undesirable?  Now it may be pointed out that the present system of
+public school education is itself a form of political propaganda none
+the less effective for being concealed.  A boy is sent to a public
+school with a set of political notions imbibed from his parents and the
+circle in which he moves, and during the whole period of his boyhood,
+no genuine effort is made to develop his powers of independent thought
+and so to enable him to revise his inherited opinions.  A certain
+stimulus no doubt is given to his mental activity by setting him
+mathematical problems to solve and passages in the classical authors to
+construe; but his thought on political and social questions remains a
+thing apart, unstirred, atrophied.  What else is this but political
+propaganda?  And when it is reinforced by a thousand subtle hints in
+and out of the classroom, hints suggesting that, of course, there can
+be no two opinions about so-and-so and his supporters, it becomes one
+of the most potent instruments of mental darkness that has ever been
+allowed to function in a rational community.
+
+But the objection to propaganda is not to be met by a "Tu quoque."  It
+is one which raises the most fundamental issues of educational theory.
+To develop, we are told, and not to mould, is the aim of education; and
+every genuine educationist will eagerly agree.  Yet you cannot develop
+in a vacuum.  You must impart some background for the young mind, give
+it some material on which to work.  How, then, can the compromise be
+effected?  How can we inculcate and yet at the same time aim above
+every thing at the development of an individuality, which may and
+indeed must, be so very different from our own?  The answer is not
+really hard to find.  What we inculcate, the background we give, must
+be considered by us as merely a stop-gap, a poor temporary support
+which the child may fling away when he can support himself.  And even
+while we are giving the support, we must at every moment be developing
+the power which will as soon as possible dispense with it.
+
+If this _caveat_ is borne in mind and honestly observed, propaganda,
+whether in political, philosophical, or religious teaching, becomes not
+only defensible but actually desirable.  Nothing can be more fatal than
+to give the impression that it does not very much matter which of
+several conflicting principles or policies a boy adopts; that there are
+after all equally strong arguments on both sides, and that the adhesion
+of the world to one philosophy of life and code of conduct rather than
+another will make no very vital difference to anybody.  Yet if the
+teacher presents his subject in a perfectly balanced and passionless
+manner such a result will inevitably follow.  The boy will notice his
+master's lack of enthusiasm, and consequently remain unenthusiastic
+himself; and not only will that intellectual eagerness remain
+undeveloped, which is as a spark to set his whole nature ablaze, but
+also he will feel none of that moral passion for principles which is
+the crying need of the world to-day.  A master in another school, which
+had adopted the idea of a Politics Class, heard of the excitement and
+controversy which ours was occasioning, and remarked adversely on our
+methods.  "We teach Politics too," he said, "but we are careful that
+the boys should never be able to discover on which side our own
+sympathies lie.  Consequently there is no excitement and no
+controversy.  Politics are thought of in just the same way as any other
+school subject."  We can well believe it.  Our whole idea, of course,
+is that they should not be so thought of; that they should be regarded
+rather as a matter of most vital interest and importance both for the
+boy himself and for the world as a whole.  We would have a boy feel an
+attachment to principles as romantic and absorbing as his affections
+for his dearest friend, not coldly cancel one principle against the
+other as if he were doing a sum in mathematics.
+
+But it is time that we explained exactly what we mean when we say that
+a master should not shrink from propaganda in political teaching.  We
+do not by any means intend that he should state only his own point of
+view, and pass over the arguments that may be urged against it.  That
+would be the merest parody of education.  Rather do we mean that he
+should adopt a threefold method.  He should put forward his own view
+with all the enthusiasm that he feels for it (we have been called
+"missionaries" by way of abuse, but find nothing but honour in the
+word); simultaneously, he should impress on his pupils the fact that it
+after all is only his view, and urge them not merely to accept but to
+examine and criticise; and finally, he should explain with complete
+honesty every point that has been, or possibly could be, raised against
+it.  We call this method "propaganda," because a fire is imparted to
+the statement of one side which cannot, from the nature of the case, be
+imparted to that of the other; but it is propaganda in which there is
+no touch of dishonesty or obscurantism.
+
+We have said that, while he is presenting his case, the master should
+be urging his pupils to examine and criticise it.  But he should do
+more than this; if he is a Liberal, he should spend much of his time in
+a direct propaganda of the great Liberal principles--freedom of thought
+and discussion; the sanctity of the individual conscience; the
+paramount importance of moral and intellectual independence.  In this
+way he will be creating a habit of mind which will _naturally_
+criticise; and so by his propaganda of general liberalism he will
+annihilate the vantage-point he would otherwise occupy in his
+propaganda of particular principles and policies.
+
+We speak of "liberal education," and surely the epithet is meaningless
+unless it be taken to imply that conversion to those general principles
+is the very bed-rock of education.  But others think otherwise, and so
+we would point out the broad distinction which must be drawn between
+propaganda of the simple liberal and propaganda of the simple
+reactionary principle--on the one hand freedom of thought, on the other
+acceptance of ideas not one's own.  Our liberal propaganda carries with
+it the instrument of its own overthrow.  If you can inspire a boy with
+a desire to put all things to the test of his own free conscience, you
+are empowering him to criticise everything you teach--even that very
+liberty of opinion, a belief in which you have been so anxious to
+create.  But with reactionary propaganda it is quite otherwise.  By it
+a static habit of mind is produced--a habit of mind which, except by
+way of a mercifully not uncommon revolt, is a pawn in the hands of its
+present teacher, and that public opinion which in time to come will
+take its teacher's place.
+
+A word may be added on the means best calculated to produce the free
+mind at which we are aiming.  Use, of course, can and should be always
+made of the fundamental arguments (all to be found in Mill) in favour
+of liberty of opinion.  But there is one case in which the employment
+of a subsidiary method may give even more valuable results.  Where a
+boy holds tenaciously to an opinion which you think to be evil, argue
+against it unceasingly; show him the errors of it; point out
+passionately the beauty of its alternative.  The stronger his
+conviction, the better; indeed, deliberately choose his deepest-seated
+prejudice--attack him in the very heart of what you regard as his
+error.  Then, when at last he sees that the opinion which he had
+thought of as the only possible one is in reality wrong, and that
+another which he had loathed is in reality right, a tremendous
+intellectual conversion will have taken place; his own case will
+constantly act as a warning to him whenever he is again tempted to
+prejudice or narrowness of outlook.
+
+
+
+[1] The italics are ours.  Why were these two words inserted, we wonder.
+
+[2] The other is dealt with in Chapter V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CONTROVERSY
+
+"While a formidable strife between masters of different creeds might be
+engendered, it is arguable that the finest political spirit might be
+fostered by approaching the problems under the conditions of fairness and
+courtesy on which the public schools pride themselves."[1]--_Manchester
+Guardian_.
+
+"Tolerance, to be more than a pale and negative virtue, needs to be based
+on an understanding of these different points of view, which means,
+again, bringing an educated mind to bear on them."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+"Boys always will be boys" they say, and the saying can be interpreted in
+many ways.  "Masters always will be masters" is a more sobering
+reflection.  The reputation of schoolmasters for sweet reasonableness has
+never stood, perhaps, particularly high.  Even supposing that, with a
+staff of angels, such a scheme of teaching as that sketched in the
+preceding chapter were desirable, will not the actual result be something
+very different?  Will not "a formidable strife between masters of
+different creeds be engendered," and will not the spectacle of that
+strife, and a possible participation in it, be the very worst possible
+training for the new generation?
+
+The difficulty is one that has got to be faced, and the present writers,
+at any rate, are not at all likely to overlook it.  As was shown in
+Chapter II., our experiments collapsed not because our colleagues
+differed from us in political opinion, but because, differing from us in
+political opinion, they also differed from us in educational theory.  Had
+the experiment collapsed simply because they differed from us in
+political opinion, it would be no use pursuing the subject of political
+education further; for a staff in which all the masters held the same
+political views would be unlikely to exist, and in any case altogether
+undesirable.  We may take it for granted that the staff will consist of
+men of diverse political opinions.  Indeed we may go further and take it
+for granted that in a school in which political education flourishes,
+those diversities, though certainly less bitter, will be more clearly
+marked than at present.  In such a school the masters, for the most part,
+will be keenly interested in politics, for the school must be a single
+society of men and boys in real intellectual co-operation.  What is good
+for the boys will be good for the masters.  Perverse metaphors comparing
+masters and boys to hounds and hares will be seen as the symptom of a
+radically false educational philosophy.
+
+If political education becomes not merely an experiment but an integral
+part of the timetable, the staff as a whole, not necessarily all the
+masters, but all those concerned with what are at present ironically
+called "the humanities," will be taking a part in it.  But how can this
+be worked?  We are here faced with a problem such as none of the ordinary
+school subjects has ever raised, at any rate in this acute form.
+Everything depends upon the educational philosophy of the staff.
+Everything depends upon the extent of their belief in freedom of opinion.
+
+The case for freedom of opinion, like the case for self-government, has
+suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted
+that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it.
+Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality.  "Britons never
+shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter.  Very
+likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed
+by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the sailors he was
+glorifying were mostly victims of the press-gang.  It is but a step from
+a press-gang to a Press Bureau.  Most Englishmen are not very anxious to
+tolerate any opinions but their own, if the subject be one that they deem
+of vital importance.  Very few have the faith of the great apostles of
+freedom, the conviction that right opinion can only triumph through fair
+and open conflict with the wrong.
+
+The cause of freedom, then, fares badly enough in the world outside, when
+we are only concerned with its application to those who have reached
+"years of discretion."  Inside the school the difficulties are admittedly
+greater, and freedom has hitherto had a poor chance.  Yet without
+freedom, though there may be instruction, there can hardly be education.
+
+In so far then as the staff fall short in this vital matter of
+toleration, they must themselves go to school and learn; and he is
+probably a poor teacher who is not himself ever learning something more.
+Here perhaps the head master might find one of his finest opportunities.
+The conscientious modern head master often finds it hard to rise above
+the mass of administrative work attached to his office.  He resembles
+Philip II. of Spain, of whom it was said that he was always trying to be
+his own private secretary.  Meanwhile his assistants go their own ways,
+each narrowing into his own little intellectual groove.  The result, at
+any rate in the more remote and less distinguished schools--that is to
+say, the vast majority--is a society far from idyllic.  Even if politics
+were to engender "a formidable strife," the discords would not be
+breaking in upon any very beautiful harmonies.  Two novels have recently
+been written by schoolmasters about their profession, and even if "Mr.
+Perrin and Mr. Traill" may be discounted as the ill-natured revenge of a
+clever man who had mistaken his profession, "The Lanchester Tradition"
+has, we believe, been generally hailed as a truthful record.  Masters at
+many schools have exclaimed, "How on earth does this Rugby man come to
+know all about _us_?"  Teaching is spiritual work or it is nothing, and
+the head master ought to be, as the greatest head masters have been, a
+true leader of his staff in spiritual things.
+
+Our profession is the most insanely individualistic in the world.
+Probably the teaching of every subject would be improved by the
+establishment of a really organised co-operation between the various
+masters teaching it, and "politics," with its strong human appeal would,
+with a leader worthy of his position, be the best place to begin.
+Masters would meet for a genuine educational purpose--and the last thing
+ever discussed at the masters' meetings we have attended has been
+educational principles--they would learn to see into each others' minds
+and methods, enlarge their intellectual sympathies and understand their
+differences.  Thus a real corporate intellectual life of the staff might
+begin.  Often at present this does not exist, and its absence is fatal to
+the school as a seriously intellectual institution.
+
+And surely the need for the tolerant staff can hardly be exaggerated.
+And here we are thinking not so much of the war and its controversies as
+of the days that will follow.  After the war a baser motive than even the
+crudest jingo patriotism will claim a monopoly over the political thought
+of public schoolboys for the defence not of "country," but of property.
+The unorthodox will be denounced not as "pacifists," but as "socialists,"
+and the enemy will be not the Kaiser, but perhaps the Prime Minister of a
+Labour Government.  But just as the only hope for the world after the war
+seems to lie in a League of Nations, so the only hope for England lies in
+the co-operation of all classes in a common search for industrial
+justice.  The public schools are "class preserves" of the rich, and their
+opportunity for good, as for harm, will be almost boundless.  "To turn
+out the young of the capitalist class with all their capitalist
+prejudices intact will be sheer dereliction of duty on the part of public
+schoolmasters."  So wrote a great teacher of the older generation.  The
+obvious way of destroying those prejudices as prejudices is by an
+enthusiastic and capable exposition of various forms of socialism.  This
+can best be done by socialist masters.  But, supposing the socialist
+teaching is false, why should those who are not Socialists fear for the
+result?  It is a necessary part of the scheme that they on their side
+should make a reasoned defence of a reformed capitalism.  If this is done
+"the young of the capitalist class" may be turned out Socialists or
+anti-Socialists, but at least they will go out into the world men of some
+economic understanding, with views based on reasoning, and by further
+reasoning or experience liable to be changed, not men with inherited
+prejudice intact.
+
+If we assume in our staff a general inclination towards freedom of
+opinion, everything becomes possible.  A hundred questions of
+organisation arise, essentially practical questions, and more easily
+solved by concrete experiment than by literary methods.  It may, however,
+be worthy while to glance at a few of these.
+
+Masters will always be human; and political education must be so
+organised as to suggest in every way that the masters of divergent views
+are co-operating in a general scheme of political education such as no
+one of them alone could impart, not competing for the political
+allegiance of the boys.  A school is not a bye-election in permanent
+session.  Thus, though a controversial element is bound to come into
+political education, we would mitigate this element by not allowing any
+one form to go to more than one master for political work.  The boy will
+pass from form to form, and thus the conservatism of a summer term will
+be tempered by the radicalism of the following winter.  But these
+political compartments will not be particularly air-tight in any case.
+The house master will be a permanent influence, and when a keen-witted
+boy has just got out of the form of a sympathetic master, it is unlikely
+that they will altogether lose touch with one another.
+
+At the top of the school, however, the controversial element should be
+more frankly accepted.  We believe in the permanent institution of a
+voluntary _Politics Class_ in which the best boys will hear again the
+best of the masters who have taught them on their way up the school.
+Between such a _Politics Class_ and a really efficient school Debating
+Society it might be hard to draw a precise line.  One would play into the
+hands of the other.
+
+The "judicial" teacher, the man who from an Olympian elevation surveys
+the political strivings of past and present alike, and analyses,
+catalogues, and defines, creating all the while an impression of luminous
+impartiality, may, of course, do much good work.  The present writer
+would be the last man to deny it when he remembers his own debt to a
+teacher of that kind.  None the less, we believe that it is the other
+kind of teaching that is really needed in the schools of the well-to-do
+to-day.[2]  The political problems of our time are of intense and
+terrible importance: on their solution this way or that depends the
+happiness or the misery of uncounted millions; and it is so largely on
+the way that the young of the privileged classes learn to look at them
+that their solution depends.  "Judicial" teaching creates the impression
+that so long as you "know the case" for or against a policy, it does not
+matter whether you believe it, and as for acting upon it, or making
+sacrifices for it, there is no question of doing anything so "extreme."
+Education _must_ create enthusiasm.
+
+It must also make for many-sidedness, and so we arrive at the function of
+the staff, the many-sided staff of enthusiasts.  Let each one believe
+himself, if he is young enough to do so, the monopolist of political
+truth.  Let each one differ from all his colleagues on every subject
+under the sun, except two, the infinite possibilities of the boys he
+teaches, and the infinite importance of freedom of opinion.
+
+
+
+[1] Is there a little irony here?
+
+[2] Whether any particular single school can afford to experiment in such
+teaching is, of course, another matter altogether.  Gallio is a less
+troublesome colleague than Paul, and Paul will waste his breath if he
+complains of the obvious fact that such things are so.  But he has a
+better ground of complaint when he sees himself silenced, while Sosthenes
+is allowed to carry on as vigorously as he pleases.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CAPTURE BY THE STATE
+
+"It is a great and perilous discovery that the State can [as in
+Germany] impress the minds of masses of men by a carefully organised
+system of political education, and we hope the authors will bear it in
+mind."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+"Germany has shown the world to what evil ends the dishonest use of
+schools and schoolmasters must lead."--_Contemporary Review_.
+
+
+We have discussed the pros and cons of propaganda--the propaganda, that
+is to say, by each master of his particular point of view--and have
+concluded that, if certain safeguards are adopted and honestly adhered
+to, such propaganda is desirable.  But there is one particular form of
+propaganda which no one, if he has any reverence at all for the
+individuality of his pupils and the freedom of the world, can regard as
+anything but an abomination.  And here we meet with the most serious
+criticism which can be, and has been, levelled against the project of
+political education.  Suppose, it has been urged, that your scheme is
+adopted by a number of the public schools; suppose that by a steady
+process of attack, this new and very powerful piece of machinery is
+captured by the State, as a means of imposing orthodoxy on the nation
+and nipping in the bud a great part of our potential vigour and
+independence; have you not then defeated most disastrously your own
+object, and desiring above everything more liberty in thought and more
+self-reliance in action, merely succeeded in setting up a system
+similar to that which created the national character of modern Germany?
+
+It is at first sight a most damaging criticism; and a criticism which
+seems to gather weight as we look about us and observe the terrible
+results which have occurred when the State has been allowed to
+manipulate opinion for its own ends.  No Englishman will need to have
+the lesson of Germany brought home to him; he knows too well how
+inculcation through the schools of the worst type of narrow patriotism,
+rendered seemingly noble by a deliberate falsification of history, has
+warped the generosity which all children, German or other, possess,
+into a pitiful acquiescence in every form of intellectual and moral
+vileness.  But in England, too, the danger signals are not wanting.  We
+have observed the people falling more and more under the sway of one
+man's ideas, carried by his Press into every town and village of the
+countryside: we have noticed that complete independence does not appear
+always to exist as between the Press and the men who are responsible
+for the gravest acts of public policy; and some of us do not much like
+what we have seen.  Are we then to help forward the forces making for
+our own Prussianisation?  We desire to see Politics taught by masters
+of every shade of political opinion, so that the boys may have all the
+materials from which to form an independent judgment; but will not the
+State see to it, as it grows more and more powerful, that only those
+men are allowed to become, or to remain, schoolmasters, who will teach
+a doctrine not abhorrent to the powers that be?  Those who know the
+public schools will not be at a loss to understand how such a
+consummation could be achieved.  Even now there is the pressure of
+parents, members of the financial or political wing of the ruling
+class--a pressure few head masters are big enough to resist.  And in
+the future--to take only one instance--may not Conscription remain, and
+the Government exercise a direct control through the medium of the
+O.T.C.?
+
+And as one writes these words; as one sees the ghastly prospect of more
+and more State control, more and more authoritarianism and docility,
+less and less of the free co-operation which is the very life-blood of
+society, one sees also that the only way in which we can prevent the
+remedy we have proposed from becoming another instrument in the hands
+of our enemies, is simply by adopting that remedy itself.  We must
+break in on the vicious circle while and how we can.  For why is there
+a danger of our instrument of education being turned into an instrument
+of obscurantism?  Only because there is a danger of our whole society
+becoming rotten to the core; only because there is a danger of the
+present cleavage between the two English nations becoming wider and
+wider, until we have, on the one hand, a class ruling in the interests
+of money and privilege, and, on the other, a slaving and possibly
+pampered proletariate.  And unless a start is made here and now with
+the political education of Europe--unless boys and girls are made to
+think politically while their generosity and idealism is still
+untainted by motives of personal profit, and their powers of vital
+thought not yet decayed by disuse--these and worse things will happen;
+love, tolerance, and the independence which is the birthright of men,
+will all be engulfed in a mad welter of personal, class, and national
+selfishness.  In such a society it really would not matter very much if
+political education were captured by the State; and the only way, as it
+seems to us, of preventing its advent is by getting up a system of
+political education.  For by political education we are creating the
+only possible safeguard against a misuse of it--we are creating a
+society which will not _desire_ to misuse it.
+
+And so we would make, if we may, an appeal to all who are considering
+what their future work shall be, and to those also who may be finding
+their present work unprofitable--we would urge them to become
+schoolmasters.  We like sometimes to think of a little Greek army of
+devoted warriors--a band of five hundred young men, who will go into
+the public schools and there gradually help to set up a system of
+political education.  The word "Greek" is not out of place.  For there
+is something about the sunlit freshness of a cricket field--something
+too, about the boys, belonging for the most part to a class which, with
+all its faults, has a great tradition of public service behind it--that
+brings before the mind a gathering of Greek humanity in the smiling
+peace of a Greek country place.  It is idle to pretend that a man of
+ability who goes into the schoolmastering profession does not have to
+make many sacrifices.  His salary is usually miserable; his chances of
+a head mastership must be at present in inverse ratio to the vigour
+with which he acts on the principles he believes in, for these posts
+are mostly reserved for the "safe," as the debates of the Head Masters'
+Conference used to show, until, a few years ago, that body very wisely
+decided to exclude reporters.  But the compensations are enormous.  He
+will live all his life close to boys whom, when he once gets to know
+them, he will find to have a freshness and high-heartedness which will
+be a constant source of hope and inspiration; he will have the joy of
+watching their minds develop, and of feeling that it is due in some
+measure to him that they are growing into makers of happiness for
+themselves and the world.  And when in his work he is met by the
+opposition of those who misinterpret or misunderstand, he will have an
+almost fierce satisfaction in the faith that the future may be all on
+his side, and that many years hence a little of him will live in men
+who have realised not his, but their, individuality, and that
+potentiality for goodness which, as well as he was able, he fostered
+and brought to the light.
+
+We have both been schoolmasters; at the moment we are neither of us
+anything so useful; and we feel that we can say quite dogmatically that
+there is no happiness equal to that of the profession that was ours.
+And both of us fell into it accidently, as so many others have done.
+Yet the appeal for schoolmasters should surely not be based entirely or
+even mainly on the idyllic picture of the happy schoolmaster.  John
+Stuart Mill reduced hedonism to its fundamental paradox when he
+declared that the way to find happiness was to turn your back on it.
+If there is one lesson which political education rightly conducted
+cannot fail to impress upon its best boys, it is the crying need of the
+schools for their services.  From Plato and Aristotle down to the
+latest treatises on Reconstruction, be it the "Principles of
+Reconstruction," as laid down by Mr. Bertrand Russell, or the "Elements
+of Reconstruction," as reprinted from _The Times_ with an introduction
+by Lord Milner, all alike come round to education as the keystone of
+the arch of politics.  The final appeal is always to the schoolmaster,
+and it is perhaps less hopeful to appeal to the actual schoolmaster of
+to-day than to the possible schoolmaster of to-morrow.  As are our
+schools, so will be our Parliaments and our Civil Service, and some at
+any rate who have mapped out for themselves a career of political
+usefulness and honour in Westminster, Whitehall, or abroad, might
+bethink themselves first of Banquo.
+
+  "Lesser than Macbeth and greater:
+  Not so happy yet much happier;
+  Thou shalt get kings though thou be none."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MAKING OF "POLITICIANS"
+
+"The way the authors wish to realise their ideal would, I fear, merely
+increase the output of politicians and political journalists, of whom
+an adequate supply already exists."--Mr. E. B. Osborn, in _The Morning
+Post_.
+
+
+Sharp-wittedness playing on ignorance to the end of personal
+advancement--so dominant a feature has this become of our political
+life, that any protest against the misuse of a noble word, when men
+speak contemptuously of politics, is no doubt quite untimely.
+Untimely, because it is too early, not because it is too late.  We
+retain the word ourselves, and call the kind of education we advocate
+political education; appropriately it seems to us, for we believe that
+its wide adoption would remove the root cause which has made such a
+stigma possible, and free the very name of politics from the
+indignities it now justly suffers.
+
+Nothing, indeed, could be wider of the mark than the notion that a
+system of political education would increase the number of
+self-seeking, power-hunting "politicians."  Such men are the product,
+not of political education, but of the lack of it.  What is the present
+situation?  To the ordinary boy, politics, when it first obtrudes
+itself on his attention, appears under one or other of two aspects.  If
+he is clever, or is imagined to be so by ambitious parents, or again,
+if, though stupid, he happens to belong to a political family, the air
+begins to be thick with talk of his "going into" politics.  He is to
+"go into" politics in the same way as men "go into" the Stock Exchange
+or the law; by virtue either of birth or brains he is to enter one of
+those little strongholds of his class, and earn his living there by
+playing the appropriate game.
+
+This is the guise under which politics appears to one type of boy.  The
+other type, hears in some quarter or other a babble about income-tax
+and little navies and big loans; and either dismisses the whole thing
+as "absolute rot," which can have no possible meaning for him, or
+imbibes the ideas and prejudices of the people whose talk he is
+listening to, without in the least understanding their implications.
+
+From these two types is developed the great bulk of the population,
+considered under its political aspect.  On the one side, politicians,
+whether clever or stupid; on the other, the electorate, ignorant and
+apathetic, or prejudiced and inflammable, as the case may be.  There
+are, of course, other classes too.  There is the man who has made money
+in business, and late in the day conceives the idea of entering
+Parliament--which he sometimes succeeds in doing even when he has been
+unable to avoid making an election speech or two.  There is the
+idealist who takes up political work with the sole object of doing
+useful service.  There is the well-informed and open-minded student of
+public affairs.  There is the intellectualist.  But the great majority
+are as we have described them.
+
+The introduction of a far-reaching system of political education would
+have three results, each of which would reinforce the others in putting
+an end to the present state of affairs.  Make every one a politician,
+and "politicians" will become rare.  Politics will cease to be an
+essentially specialised profession; men will no longer "go into" it as
+into a thing apart.  Some will administer, guide, and direct; others
+will know and criticise.  But every one will be politically active; and
+instead of the stronghold of politics in a desert of ignorance, there
+will be that interplay of political functions, distributed among the
+whole body of the people, which is the real meaning of democracy.
+
+And not only will politics cease to be a preserve, kept ready for
+spoliation by the clever, the pushing, the rich, and the well-born, but
+also the very desire in these men so to misuse their citizenship will
+cease altogether to come to birth.  For political education, properly
+so called, awakens political idealism; it teaches principles, arouses
+aspirations after public service.  The "politician" is a man who finds
+in political intrigue the fruitful source of his own advancement; one
+who catches at every breeze to further his personal ends.  But if
+politics had formed the basis of his education; if, while his idealism
+was still untainted, he had been led to consider fundamental
+principles, and to examine public affairs in the light of them: then
+the potential goodness of his political nature would have been so fully
+realised, that no vain or mean thing would disfigure his maturity.
+"Ah, but 'potential goodness' and 'while his idealism was still
+untainted'; there's the rub," we hear the cynic saying.  Such criticism
+moves us not at all.  We had to do during the course of our experiment
+with a great number of boys of many different types; one can recall
+hardly a case in which, when vital thought had really been awakened,
+often after much sweat and agony, virtue was not found to be the
+fundamental characteristic of the boy's intellectual nature.  But the
+teacher must not, of course, rest satisfied until he is certain that
+the goal in very truth has been reached; until he is sure that his
+pupil has thrown off the weight of carelessness, thoughtlessness, and
+prejudice, and that his mind is really awake and is in actual contact
+with ideas.
+
+Finally, just as the leader and administrator will not desire to misuse
+his powers, so the education of the rest of the nation will deprive him
+of his opportunity.  For it is only among a people politically
+uneducated that corruption and intrigue on a grand scale can exist.
+The unscrupulous creation and manipulation of public opinion; the
+concealment of low and mean designs under an appearance of nobility and
+disinterestedness; the putting forward of one argument in support of a
+policy, while a thousand are kept back which weaken or invalidate it;
+the appeal to prejudice and blind passion; the cunning use of
+suggestion; worst of all that pitiable game which consists of turning
+the people's noblest instincts--instincts of fellowship, solidarity,
+romance--to the basest ends; marks of degradation such as these would
+vanish gradually but surely as knowledge and power of criticism spread
+to every section of the community.  Such evil motives as still existed
+would be seen through and exposed; events would be regarded, not as
+isolated occurrences, but as a part of history, to be viewed in their
+relation to the whole and to be judged in accordance with a definite
+philosophy of life.  So that if, here and there, a "politician"
+survived or made his reappearance in the clearer atmosphere, he would
+find his playthings gone; waiting instead for him would be men,
+citizens, politicians--ready to sweep him aside and gaily choose a
+better man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND FREAK SCHOOLS
+
+The Radical--and by the Radical we mean any one who sees that life for
+the majority at the present time is not as fine and happy as it should
+be, and who is determined to leave no stone unturned to make it
+so--commonly looks askance at the public schools.  He thinks of them,
+rightly, as the stronghold of those in possession, the class which, as
+a whole, not only opposes such fundamental reforms as would result in a
+fairer distribution of wealth, but also itself has failed to do what
+might conceivably justify its favoured position, to keep alive, by
+virtue of special opportunities such as would disappear in a society
+based on equality, the finest ideas of which the race is capable.
+Individual and national power, privilege, commercialism--it is on these
+things that it has set its eyes in its leadership of the nation.  And
+so our fellow-radicals have more than once said to us, "If you are
+really keen on education, why don't you start a school of your own?"
+
+Now it is, no doubt, difficult for any one who has fallen under the
+sway of a public school, and who has been so caught up by its
+fascination as to feel for it a love more compelling than anything in
+his life, to be certain that personal predilections do not dictate a
+reply unjustified by intellectual considerations.  Yet for all that we
+give our answer without hesitation.  For the multiplication of what may
+be conveniently, if somewhat unkindly, classed together as "freak"
+schools, breaks no fresh ground at all.  Boys who have been brought up
+in an "intellectualist" atmosphere, and those alone, are sent there;
+and even if there were no schools to which they could be sent, home
+influence would turn them out intellectualists still.  The ranks of the
+intellectualists, in fact, are recruited from three main sources.
+First, there are the sons of intellectualists, sent either to a freak
+school or to no school at all; secondly, sons of intellectualists of a
+slightly different type, sent to a public school yet nevertheless
+retaining in the new environment their own peculiar stamp; and,
+thirdly, the clever sons of "ordinary" parents, sent to a public school
+and becoming intellectualists by revolt against the philistinism of it
+and of their homes.  The community thus composed leads a life as
+distinct and separate from that of the rest of the nation as was ever
+lived by the "Intelligentzia" in Russia's darkest hour.  It has hardly
+a point of contact with the average Englishman; it does not understand
+his revues and musical comedies, his novels and cinemas, his hunting
+and race meetings; it speaks a different language, thinks altogether
+different thoughts.  And being itself not in the least understood, it
+has acquired a certain hardness of mind, a certain contempt for
+ordinary people and ordinary things, which has widened the gulf, and
+led to mutual suspicion and sometimes even hatred.  Inevitably its
+mental health has been affected by such a situation.  Feeling itself
+different, it has consciously made itself as different as possible;
+intellectual extravagances indulged in from mere bravado, these and
+similar stigmata of balance lost and sanity impaired have made their
+appearance in varying degrees at one time or another.  Under a
+different set of circumstances--those of the war, for instance, so far
+as concerns a section of the group of which we are speaking--there has
+been a pitiful relapse into mere boredom, cynicism, and inactivity;
+remote from the passions of the crowd, and unable to give service to a
+cause in which they disbelieve, some of our cleverest men have provided
+an English parallel with the vodka-drinking, bridge-playing, and
+unutterably tired community of highly-developed intellects which
+Tchekoff describes so brilliantly.
+
+Now, in saying all this we would not have it thought that we are
+bringing a sweeping accusation against one section of the nation.  For
+the fault lies, not mainly with them, but with the lack of culture,
+idealism, and genuine education which characterises England (and most
+other countries) to-day.  In a country in which regard for things of
+the mind and spirit was the rule and not the exception, these men would
+form the backbone of the nation; they would develop along healthy
+lines, be marked by love and sympathy instead of contempt, use their
+great powers to the full in the public service.  What they are to be
+blamed for is their failure to see their real duty; their failure to
+understand that it is among the philistines, and not in their own
+exclusive set, that their most important work lies.  Some of them, of
+course, do understand this, and spend their lives in an unselfish
+attempt to spread light in the darkness.  But even so they commonly
+speak a language which is not understood; and inevitably they fail to
+achieve any widespread result.
+
+It is not, then, in the multiplication of schools designed to cater for
+intellectualists that we see the best hope for the progress of the
+nation.  We see it rather in the creation of an army of missionaries
+from among the ordinary men themselves; missionaries of thought about
+the great problems of life and society, fashioned out of those who are
+of the people and understand and sympathise with their emotions.  When
+once the average, revue-loving, thoughtless, "sporting" public school
+boy has been taught to think vigorously about politics and sociology;
+when once he has been so fired with enthusiasm for these things that he
+will teach and talk to others of his kind: then, at last, slowly and
+painfully no doubt, but none the less inevitably, will war, poverty,
+and materialism vanish altogether from a world not meant for them.
+That is why we have ventured to urge all those who both are idealists
+and love the public schools--but those alone--to break in on them and
+help to awaken the great sleeping instrument of salvation.
+
+And they will find good material awaiting them.  The English public
+school boy shares with all the youth of all the nations an immense
+store of latent idealism, which can be brought to a splendid fruition
+if atrophy and decay are not allowed to overtake it.  But he possesses
+other things also, over and above this common heritage.  The
+intellectualist has often got beyond the big ideas, if such a paradox
+may be allowed; they have been for so long the platitudes of his caste,
+and he has grown so hopeless of their general acceptance, that he has
+turned to a search after subtle refinements and intellectual novelties,
+in the course of which much generous breadth of vision has been lost.
+Again, many working-class reformers--can it be wondered?--not only
+bring to their task a bitterness against the world which has so misused
+them and their fellows, but also have inevitably been cut off from
+those gentle manners of life which have been gradually evolved by the
+more fortunate to express, however imperfectly, the feeling for grace
+and beauty which it should be our aim, not to crush, but to extend to
+all.  But with the public school boy all is different.  Once he has
+begun to think in any real sense of the word, his intellectual life
+develops as joyfully and naturally as does the physical life of the
+beasts of the field.  Freshly and spontaneously, and with no trace of
+self-consciousness or affectation, he leaps to greet ideas and
+principles, between which and his own true nature there is a glorious
+bond of kinship.  We have seen boy after boy, as he realises, for
+instance, the meaning of Liberty, and gets his first glimpse of the
+wide country which such a realisation opens up, experiencing an emotion
+of happiness which we can only compare to the catch of breath with
+which men see great scenes of beauty, or hear of lovely deeds of
+generosity and heroism.  Given their chance, public school boys (not
+one or two, but great masses of average humanity) will rediscover for
+themselves the simple things which Christ and Plato taught; and once
+that is achieved a general advance all along the line toward the goal
+of a worthy human society may begin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MORALITY
+
+"Generally speaking, the intellectualist phase [of a boy's career] is
+remarkably brief.  Just occasionally its morals are such as to cause
+the swift expulsion of its leaders.  More often they leave in the
+natural course of things, or grow weary of their pose--which has,
+indeed, not made them popular--and return after the holidays frankly
+and unaffectedly Philistine.  This transient fashion is not new.  What
+is new is the deliberate encouragement given to it by a certain type of
+assistant master.  We do not imply that the wise master will
+suppress...  That kind of intellectual measles will work itself out...
+But to leave the phase alone is one thing; deliberately to foster and
+give it official backing is quite another."--_The Church Times_.
+
+
+When the morality of the public schools is being discussed, attention
+is usually concentrated almost exclusively on that particular branch of
+morality which is concerned with sex.  Nor is this unnatural; for sex
+plays so important a part in the life of a growing boy, and the
+development of his character is so closely bound up with the
+development of his physical nature, that the determining part may be
+very easily confused with the whole.  Yet there are many boys who are
+sexually virtuous, but filled with the worst type of hardness and
+intolerance; many, too, who are sexually vicious, yet full of love and
+sympathy.  To imagine that the problem of public school morality is
+solved as soon as we have discovered the best method of making public
+school boys continent, is to look at the matter from an altogether too
+narrow angle; for the sins of the spirit, we have been told, are more
+unpardonable than the sins of the flesh.
+
+Nevertheless, when we have said this, as say it we must, the fact
+remains that the sex question is one of overwhelming importance.  For
+if once self-indulgence is allowed to become firmly rooted in a boy's
+character, in the majority of cases it will be ineradicable; and he
+will either be the victim throughout a great part of his life of
+temptations which he loathes, and which will be a constant source of
+unhappiness to him, or he will end by acquiescing in a manner of life
+which is degrading, it may be to himself alone, it may be both to
+himself and others.  It will be urged, of course, as it has been urged
+against every school novel which has attempted to give a true picture
+of the "manners" of a school house, that we are grotesquely
+exaggerating the whole business; that there may be a problem in the
+case of this boy or that, but that in general there is no problem at
+all.  This simply will not do.  There is a problem, and a very grave
+one; and we had better anticipate the possibility of being
+misunderstood by stating very directly what it is.  We believe that the
+number of cases in which boys have undesirable relationships with one
+another is not very large, but we believe also that there is a very
+great deal of that purely personal self-indulgence, that purely
+self-regarding licentiousness, which is the cause of so much
+unhappiness in boyhood.
+
+But the reader will already be asking, "What is all this to do with
+political education?"  The connection is a close one.  For the
+prevalence of this particular form of immorality may be ascribed to two
+main causes.  At some time during early adolescence the majority of
+boys automatically become acquainted with the sensation of sex, and, as
+part of a natural process, try to reproduce the pleasurable experience.
+But why do so many of these repeat and repeat the process, until the
+thing becomes a habit for which they can find no escape?  Partly
+because the verbal warning which is given to them by parents and
+masters is made in a wrong form, and partly because there is not that
+constant joy and romance in their daily lives in comparison with which
+temptation, when it comes, will appear sordid and unworthy.  In the
+second place, there is an atmosphere in the houses of tolerance towards
+these practices, accompanied by constant discussion, sometimes open,
+sometimes secret, which encourages and not rarely actually suggests
+them.  This is certainly true of many houses in many schools.  The
+house prefects, it is true, usually try to suppress as much of the
+unhealthiness as they can; but since, on the one hand, they are often
+known to have been "as bad as any one" in their day, and on the other
+they use the method of pretending that these are things which no decent
+boy could possibly be guilty of, they meet at best with a very partial
+success, derived only from the fear which they inspire.
+
+The common method of dealing with the evil is a system of "talks" by
+masters and heads of houses.  The "talks" follow a fairly stereotyped
+plan; they are either religious in nature, and contain references to
+"the temple of the body," or medical, and convey warnings of the
+physical consequences which will follow if excess is persisted in.
+Sometimes the two types of address are dovetailed into a single whole.
+Neither are wholly satisfactory.  The medical variety sometimes
+terrifies a sensitive boy, who will imagine that his whole life is
+ruined and all his chance of future happiness wrecked.  He will become
+somewhat morose, and not unfrequently will finally turn, in his
+despair, to the very thing against which he has been warned.  On the
+other hand, and with another type of boy, it often fails equally
+disastrously, because, judged by the medical standards to which it
+appeals, it is proved by experience to be unsound.  In his anxiety to
+create a strong impression the schoolmaster will sometimes make
+statements that are simply untrue.  He will tell the boy that these
+practices will ruin his cricket or his football.  No doubt it sometimes
+will; but it is more than likely that the boy knows several highly
+successful athletes who are, as the boy knows, though the master may
+not, complete adepts in schoolboy vice.  Then there is the old threat,
+possibly obsolete to-day, though one hesitates to say that anything is
+obsolete in the conservative world with which we deal--the old threat
+that half the inmates of the asylums of England have been brought there
+by this practice.  That, again, is simply untrue, and if the boy
+happens to know it, the effect of such an untruth upon him may be very
+bad.  Equally unsuccessful, in the majority of cases, is the religious
+talk.  The unspeculative, dogmatic type of school religion does not
+make an appeal to the ordinary boy sufficiently strong to override what
+he has found to be the most fascinating thing in his experience.  It is
+too much a conventional decency imposed upon him from without, too
+little a force within him which he has been helped to develop, such as
+is alone powerful enough to contend with a desire itself arising
+spontaneously from within.  And when the sermon is accompanied by
+exhortations to pray against temptation, it is sometimes not only
+useless, but (again in the case of the ordinary boy) positively
+harmful.  For to get into the habit of praying against temptation means
+to get into the habit of thinking about it, to become self-conscious,
+and to succumb.  Not but that there are some quite young boys who feel
+Christ's nearness to them as Friend and Helper so vividly that they can
+gain real strength from praying to Him.  But we are talking of the
+average boy; and the average boy is not of this type.
+
+Conversations between master and boy on the subject are, of course,
+quite necessary and often very helpful.  Very often a boy is mystified,
+or it may be terrified, by what seems to him some peculiarity in his
+nature, and it may do him all the good in the world to unburden his
+soul to some one older and more experienced than himself.  It is best,
+too, that the House master should be the man to whom such a boy
+naturally turns; though if the boy should prefer to turn elsewhere, the
+fact should be to the House master food for thought rather than for
+anger.  Indeed, while in one way there is far too much talk on this
+subject, in another there is far too little.  Too much may easily be
+made of conventional "talks" on conventional occasions.  What is rather
+wanted is a relationship between boy and master, created by frank
+intercourse on other topics, such as will naturally bring the boy to
+the master for help in these difficulties, with the sure knowledge that
+the latter will not "lecture" him, but will speak as one who has been
+through similar difficulties in his own boyhood, and is anxious only to
+help and to explain.
+
+Under the present system, when the verbal appeal fails, recourse is
+often had to corporal punishment.  We have no room here for a
+discussion of the ethics of punishment; but a method more foolish could
+scarcely be devised, if the aim is to enable the boy to overcome
+temptation.  And of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment is the
+worst.  The physical side of the boy's nature is asserting itself in
+all its strength; and you attempt to combat it by making a physical
+appeal which must from the nature of the case be far less powerful and
+compelling.  Moreover, any one with even a slight knowledge of sexual
+psychology (and it is curious how few schoolmasters take the trouble to
+acquire such knowledge) is aware that given a certain temperament on
+the part whether of the giver or the receiver, perils lurk in this form
+of punishment of the very type which it is designed to meet.
+
+But the only sound way of combating the over-development of one side of
+a boy's nature is to develop the other.  Make a boy's whole life one of
+joy and interest; let him live with a constant sense of the beauty of
+grass and sky, of the exultation of vital work, of the happiness of
+love and friendship.  As the days go by, let him feel his latent powers
+developing, and glory in the thought that they have been given him for
+his own joy and that of humanity.  Then when temptation comes to him,
+and he remembers how its indulgence has left him slack and bored, it
+will seem to him like a candle-flame in the sun of his happiness, a
+wretched little mean and unworthy thing breaking in on and threatening
+to ruin the peace and harmony of his life.  And so he will not give it
+a second thought, and soon all danger will be over.  This may seem
+preposterously difficult.  It is: but it is also the only way.  The
+master cannot do it for the boy, but he can perhaps give the boys some
+help towards doing it for themselves.
+
+What we want is that every house should become a small community of
+boys carrying on together absorbingly interesting and romantic
+activities--a kind of club in which they may forgather and undertake in
+common the intellectual and spiritual adventure which thus become a
+part of their individual daily lives.
+
+In this way there will be none of that boredom, that feeling of "having
+nothing on earth to do or think about," the presence of which is the
+chief cause impelling a boy to turn to the one thing which at least can
+provide him at any moment with a temporary excitement.  Rather will his
+whole nature develop harmoniously, and sex, about which we have become
+too self-conscious, take its proper place as the (normally) unconscious
+inspirer of many of our most vital activities and happiest emotions.
+And once morbidity has been put away, and with it the constant
+preoccupation of boys and masters with this one topic, and all that
+suspicion and suggestiveness which we know so well, then the graver
+problem which has to do with the relationship of boy to boy will be
+found to have been solved at the same time.  No one who knows a public
+school is likely to deny that sexual emotion is nearly always an
+element in the intensest schoolboy friendships; but that makes them
+neither the less lovely nor the less desirable.  Indeed, the value of
+such friendships at their finest cannot be overestimated.  For when a
+boy "falls in love," he learns for the first time something of the real
+splendour of living: he comes into his birthright of beauty and
+ecstacy, and understands how the greatest happiness is to be found in
+doing everything for the service of another.  There is something very
+loathsome about the spying, and secretiveness, the jokes and unclean
+hintings which, in the majority of schools, make such a friendship
+appear a thing to be ashamed rather than proud of, and often in the end
+actually render it shameful.  Given a clean atmosphere, an absence of
+suspicion on the part of masters and of morbidity on that of boys, and
+we believe that very rarely would physical acts result from schoolboy
+love.
+
+But the reader will be asking, for the second time, "What is all this
+to do with political education?"  And again we answer--everything.  For
+we believe that the joy in life, and the intellectual interest of which
+we have spoken can be awakened from where they lie dormant in a boy's
+nature by political education.  The subject is the boy's own destiny as
+a member of human society and a part of the universe (for it will be
+remembered that we include ethics and philosophy with history and
+politics under the one broad heading); and there is hardly a boy who
+does not find, at best in all these subjects, at worst in one of them,
+the inspiration to vital work and the sense of living well, which goes
+with it.  The boys start reading, widely; a thousand topics occupy
+their attention; poetry, plays, novels--all these are reached from the
+one starting point.  Then clubs and groups of various kinds are started
+in their houses; and the sex problem has become as much as it ever can
+become, a thing of the past.
+
+Nor, we may add, are we merely theorising, and talking of hypothetical
+goods which might conceivably follow from the adoption of our plan.
+All that we have written of is within our own experience.  Time after
+time while we were making our experiments did we come across cases of
+boys whose moral health had been saved by their new-found interest.
+One had turned to physical excitement as the only possible relief from
+the tedium of Latin grammar; after a year under the altered
+circumstances he turned to it no longer.  The parents of another (a boy
+of about sixteen) had attempted to base his morality solely on
+Christian dogma, which meant nothing to him; and the result was
+disastrous.  But a course of lectures on Plato's philosophy gave him
+what religion had previously failed to give him--a belief in an ideal
+and the distinction between right and wrong, and a determination to do
+always what seemed to him the absolute best.[1]  But by far the most
+remarkable results were achieved in the house of which we have already
+spoken in Chapter I.  During his first fortnight of office, the new
+head boy followed the old method; he examined all suspicious cases,
+discovered some that he had not suspected, and dealt out the
+traditional treatment.  Then he followed the old method no longer; nor
+did he ever return to it from that day till the day when he finally
+left the school before his time.  Instead, he set about interesting the
+boys in politics.  We have already described the course of his
+experiments; how enthusiasm, kindled over newspapers, spread to plays,
+to poetry, to pictures, and to music.  And the result?  The house was
+transformed: it became such a place as every mother hopes the house
+where her own son is may be.  And yet during the whole time of which we
+are speaking only one boy was beaten, and he for an act quite unrelated
+to the seventh or indeed to any other of the Ten Commandments.
+
+
+NOTE.--A fortnight after the writing of the present book was projected,
+one of the writers was dispatched on military duty to India, and the
+above chapter was sent home from "Somewhere" in "Somewhere"--I believe
+Taranto.  Close co-operation in authorship became impossible, and upon
+his collaborator in England devolved the responsibility of sole
+editorship.  I leave the above chapter almost as it was written, for
+there is about it, as it seems to me, an indomitable optimism which was
+a characteristic of the writer's work and a cause of its success.
+
+Still, in so far as it suggests that a complete solution has been found
+for a problem I believe to be insoluble, I must in honesty add a few
+words on my own account.
+
+Our direct experience, or the more remarkable part of it, amounts to
+this: that a certain head of a house achieved during the course of a
+year, using the methods described, an uplifting of the whole tone of
+his house that can only be described as marvellous.  Other heads
+elsewhere have no doubt achieved similar results by other means, though
+we have never come across an example equally remarkable.  The goal can
+be reached, presumably, by the road of saintliness.  It might be
+reached, though it is doubtful, by the road of Puritanism and
+"efficiency," the appeal to abstinence and "living hard."  It cannot be
+reached, that is certain, by merely disciplinary methods and the appeal
+to fear, for the commonest form of schoolboy vice is such that, even
+allowing for the casualness of boys, it will not be detected once in a
+hundred cases.
+
+Something, however, must be discounted from this result, by reason of
+the fact that the experiments were new.  These boys had an enthusiasm
+bred of the fact that they rightly felt themselves to be pioneers.
+They felt themselves to be making history, certainly for the first,
+possibly for the last, time in their lives, and whether you admire them
+or whether you laugh at them, making history they were, so far as their
+own world was concerned.  It seems doubtful whether the spiritual force
+engendered would have lasted at full strength when the thing had become
+normal, and it was no longer possible to start the hare of some new
+"stunt" (as they called it, I am sorry to say) once every two or three
+weeks.  The experiment was cut short in its prime, and how it would
+have developed when the first generation of enthusiasts had passed
+away, one cannot say.
+
+As for the other houses, something had been begun in two or three, but
+nothing of much value had been achieved.  The minorities hesitated
+between a desire to imitate and a desire to be quite original, and the
+majorities looked a trifle askance upon the whole affair.  And the
+masters came in here and put every sort of difficulty in the way, for
+by this time the collapse was visibly approaching.
+
+None the less, the lines on which this strange and temporary
+achievement was based are the only lines along which the moral problem
+can be grappled with.  A perfectly "pure" public school is as
+impossible as a perfectly satisfactory Marriage Law.  A few
+incorrigibly bad boys there will always be--incorrigible, that is, when
+they have reached public school age.  Hopelessly inanimate and feeble
+boys there will be also, doomed to become the victims of the bad.  But
+the present moral average might be immensely raised, and the plain way
+to raise it is to provide other adventures for the soul.  A boy once
+said to me, speaking of the matter in hand, "You see, it's the only
+thing I've ever found to do here really 'on my own.'"  It was, in fact,
+his one adventure.  No amount of class-room tasks, however well
+devised, no amount of organised games, however healthy, no amount of
+school religion, however sincere, could fill that gap.  We must put the
+boys on the lines to organise their own adventures, and the only
+adventures that can compete with this absorbing adventure of misapplied
+sexuality, must be adventures that really lead up to the highest and
+best things of life.  It was only when he found an empire to save that
+Clive ceased to be a young ruffian.  Nothing lower than "politics" will
+suffice.
+
+
+
+[1] Not that we believe that Plato is a greater teacher than Christ.
+Our opinion is the opposite; but we are also of Shelley's opinion when
+he said, "I would rather go to hell with Plato than to heaven with
+Paley."  Much that is called Christian is not of Christ.  Also there
+are no doubt minds so constituted that they will get more good in
+certain circumstances from the lesser teacher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+RELIGION
+
+"It may be a slight shock to some people to hear that 'Divinity' should
+grapple with Capitalism and Imperialism."--_Manchester Guardian_.
+
+"Politics, in the large sense, is one of the main gateways to the
+understanding of fellowship, and of that which lies beyond fellowship,
+and leads boys to express something further-reaching than the thought of
+the dear city of Cecrops."--Mr. Kenneth Richmond in _The New Age_.
+
+
+This chapter will be as short as its subject-matter is important.
+Indeed, the problem of religion as it presents itself in a public school
+is so interesting and so difficult that one might well apologise for
+relegating it to a late chapter in a brief book upon an apparently quite
+alien subject.  But we have set out to recount our experience of
+political education; and in our experience we found that politics and
+religion lay not so very far apart.  Without any very direct suggestion
+from us, several of our pupils to whom the Kingdom of Heaven had been
+hitherto a somewhat uninteresting abstraction found that they could not
+think out to their satisfaction the problems of the city of Cecrops until
+they had formulated their ideas upon the city of God.  The history of
+_The School Observer_ illustrates this well enough.  That journal showed
+a distinct tendency to become a religious organ.  At the time of its
+suppression the embarrassed editor was confronted with three long
+articles--the longest, it must be confessed, his own--all of them bearing
+upon the nature of the Deity, and, lest we should be misunderstood, all
+of them broadly Christian in character.
+
+Now, a certain type of clerical head master has often tried to impress
+upon his boys--he would try it on his staff also did he not know that it
+would be waste of time and energy--that the two hours devoted to
+"divinity" are the two most important school hours of the week.  And he
+is quite right: they are the most important, or, rather, but for
+opportunities missed, they would be.  For a liberal education without a
+foundation in religion is not merely defective, it is impossible.  If the
+religious foundation offered by the teacher proves no foundation, proves
+a mere meaningless excrescence upon the time-table, then a religion will
+be sought and found elsewhere, even though it be, as is most likely, a
+religion such as is generally classed as no-religion, mere worship, as
+Ruskin called it, of Britannia Agoraia, Britannia of the Market Place,
+the Goddess of Getting-on.  That, it is to be feared, is very much what
+we have at present, for the religion of the divinity lesson is usually
+nothing at all, and the religion of the school chapel has hardly got
+beyond the tribal stage, and does not suffice for the modern man in his
+maturity, nor for most types of thoughtful schoolboy.  There are some old
+boys, perhaps many, who have a strong sentimental regard for "the old
+chapel"; but it is as a venerable symbol of the corporate life of their
+boyhood that they regard it, not as a place of divine worship.  The
+religion they carry away from the school chapel has very little
+connection with the message of the gospel they heard there: it is a
+religion not of Jesus Christ, but of Alma Mater.  Their attitude to it is
+not strictly religious at all, but romantic.
+
+It is easy to write with a certain irony on this subject, but that is the
+last thing we want to do, for the problem of the public schools is here,
+as elsewhere, a profoundly difficult one, and many good men have devoted
+the best of their life's energies to it, and have achieved here and there
+a fine measure of success.  But their success has been personal and
+exceptional.  The rule is what we have just described.  Indeed, the
+problem of the schools is but a single aspect of the problem of the
+Church and the world at large.  Two years ago the National Mission came,
+proclaiming that the Church had been a failure, and so much has recently
+been written on these lines by the leaders of the Churches themselves
+that it is unnecessary for us to enlarge upon the well-worn theme.
+Nominally the schools are "Church" schools.  "Chapels" are as compulsory
+as football, and all boys, with a very few marked and conscious
+exceptions, are confirmed and expected to become communicants.  But in
+actual fact, many of them come from homes where connection with the
+Church is purely nominal, even if it exists at all.  Thus a dangerous
+element of formalism and make-believe is introduced from the start.  The
+masters again;--fifty years ago they were parsons almost without
+exception--stern, godly, whiskered individuals--singularly unlike, as it
+would seem, to our colleagues or ourselves.  The masters of to-day are
+nearly all laymen, and laymen with as wide a variety of religious
+opinions as the members of the Stock Exchange; but--and this is where
+they differ from the members of the Stock Exchange--they will all be,
+during term time, formal members of the Church of England.  Once again,
+formalism and make-believe.  Yet what would you have?  The schools are
+the schools of the nation, not of a sect; and to-day the Church of
+England is, within the nation, but a sect.  And even supposing the
+schools were, or could be, genuinely Church of England schools, another
+problem would remain, for within the Church itself there is a wide
+variety of opinions, and beliefs without which Christianity is impossible
+to one will be mere blasphemy to another.  It has been said with some
+truth that our religious ideas have undergone as great a revolution in
+the last hundred years as our knowledge of machinery, and that the
+sermons of 1820 are as obsolete as its stage coaches.  For the author of
+this notion--and he is a clergyman--this may be true; but whereas none of
+his congregation travel in stage coaches, it is very likely that the
+theology of some of them is nearer to that of the sermons of 1820 than to
+his own.
+
+Now, it is obvious that our experience of political education does not
+provide a way out of all these difficulties; but it seems to us to throw
+a certain glimmering of light upon them.  Several of our boys who, in
+spite of schoolroom "divinity" and the school chapel, had more or less
+outgrown the religious faith of their childhood, and found nothing
+satisfactory to take its place, were led back towards religion by their
+interest in politics.  In fine, they had discovered the intellectual need
+for a religion, and liberalism pointed the way to Christianity.  As in
+the Middle Ages, philosophy had been the "ancilla Fidei."  The suggestion
+is that the fault of our religious teaching in school and chapel has been
+that it is not sufficiently philosophical.  By a philosophical religion
+it need hardly be said that we do not mean the obtrusion of a remote and
+contentious theology, but a religion based upon a real understanding of
+political principles and crying social needs.
+
+"It may be a slight shock to some people to hear that 'divinity' should
+grapple with capitalism and imperialism," says the _Manchester Guardian_
+reviewer.  It may: none the less we believe that it is with such problems
+that Christianity has to grapple if there is ever to be a Christian
+society upon earth.  The last thing we wish to suggest is the off-hand
+conclusion that capitalism and imperialism are in all their
+manifestations anti-Christian.  The world is not so simple a place.  But
+we cannot go on applying one set of principles to our private lives and
+another set of principles to our politics and industry.  Man is not so
+illogical a creature as that.  There is bound to be, finally, either a
+levelling up or a levelling down towards a single uniform standard.  No
+proverb is more dangerous than "Charity begins at home."  When it begins
+in the place most congenial to its exercise, it is apt to end there.
+Lord Melbourne is said to have complained, after hearing a sermon,
+"Things are coming to a pretty pass, when religion claims to interfere
+with a man's private life."  We smile at Lord Melbourne's honest
+indignation.  Our turn come to be indignant when the sermon applies the
+Christian "paradoxes" to industry, commerce, and international relations.
+
+And it is along these lines that religious teaching can be made
+absorbingly interesting.  It all comes round to the old question, "Are we
+going to apply Christianity to the problems of modern society or are we
+not?"  The case against doing so can be found every day in the press, so
+here, at any rate, is an issue worth facing, with a presumably infallible
+authority to support each side.  The direction of most religious teaching
+hitherto has been too purely personal; the exhortation is too obvious and
+the appeal falls flat.  Politics without religion lacks foundation; but
+religion without politics lacks quite half its content.  Christianity is
+the leaven, but so also is politics the lump.
+
+Along these lines, we believe, one might get in the middle and lower
+parts of the school results analogous to those we have described in the
+cases of some sixth form boys.  The present writer used to teach Divinity
+to a middle form on the Modern Side, and whenever a Gospel happened to be
+scheduled, he found ample material to his hand.  It is surprising how
+little, for all the sermons they have heard, most boys of sixteen have
+faced the ideas expressed in the most hackneyed texts.  "It is easier for
+a camel to go through the eye of a needle...."  "Love your enemies."
+"Take no thought for the morrow."  A most mischievous half-truth has got
+about that these sayings are not to be taken literally.  Boys have told
+me that a "rich man" means one who has grown rich by robbery.  Well, what
+is robbery?  "La propriete, c'est le vol"?  "Love your enemies" means, I
+have been told, "Have no enemies: lead a peaceable life; but if..."
+There was a case apparently not provided for.  "Take no thought for the
+morrow."  On this I once got the delightfully honest comment, "Christ
+must have said this to cheer the disciples when they were depressed.
+Taken literally it would be absurd."  With such candour on the pupils'
+side, surely the teacher's task is not hopeless.  Here at last we have
+the atmosphere of honest controversy, and without controversy there is no
+freedom of thought; without freedom of thought no conviction; without
+conviction, no education and no religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CURRICULUM
+
+It is always difficult to define the limits of a topic.  This book is
+concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very
+broad sense we here attach to the term.  Our contention is that that
+subject is of paramount importance, and that it should provide the
+basis and foundation of liberal education.  With that idea in view, we
+have given some account of our own experience; we have also considered
+what seemed the most reasonable and weighty objections; we have also
+shown how politics reacted, in our experience, upon morality and
+religion.  And then it might seem well to make an end.  But an
+education is, or should be, a single whole, and the entire omission of
+certain aspects lends itself to misunderstanding.  Our previous book
+suggested to one reader, at least, that we regarded subjects other than
+those we treated of, as possessing no educational value other than a
+purely utilitarian one.  That was not at all the impression we wished
+to create, and it is with a view to correcting it that we attempt a
+brief general survey of the non-political subjects and their place in a
+curriculum which took politics as its centre.  But we offer these
+remarks with much diffidence.  If this book and its predecessor have
+any value, it is due to the fact that they are based on direct and
+vivid teaching experience; and here for the most part the guidance of
+experience deserts us.
+
+One very natural criticism of our thesis is that politics, though it
+may stimulate interest, cannot provide intellectual discipline.  The
+criticism is natural because, so long as the English subjects are
+regarded as a subsidiary matter, they are and will be treated by
+masters and boys in an easy going manner.  Other and sterner subjects
+are reckoned on to supply the disciplinary factor which the English
+subjects lack.  There is, in fact, a very prevalent idea that interest
+and discipline vary inversely to one another; that discipline is to be
+found in doing what is uninteresting; and that interest is to be found
+in doing what is "slack."  This is very bad psychology.  For we aim at
+training willing servants, fit to become masters, not slaves fit for
+nothing but slavery.  The only valuable discipline is self-discipline,
+and self-discipline will only be reached when the boy has realised for
+himself that the work is intrinsically worth doing, and when he has
+realised that he will have become interested.  Again, what is
+interesting must be absorbing, and such work can never be "slack."  The
+mistake seems to arise from a confusion of ideas in connection with the
+word "easy."  It is no more "easy" to write an adequate essay on the
+subject of National Guilds than it is to learn the principal parts of a
+large number of irregular verbs: possibly it is much more difficult.
+But under certain conditions which we have seen produced, a boy will
+find it "easy" to gird himself up to the former task; indeed, he will
+get so absorbed that he will find it difficult to leave off.  Few
+questions are less "easy" than those connected with a paper-money
+currency, but one half-holiday afternoon we found a vigorous discussion
+on this subject in progress between a group of cricketers whom rain had
+driven to the pavilion.  Ordinary history teaching, if only time is
+allowed and certificate examinations do hot threaten, affords scope for
+a great variety of exercises demanding careful thought and accurate
+knowledge.
+
+So much in answer to the suggestion that only through the non-political
+subjects can real hard work be secured.
+
+The non-political subjects fall into three groups--languages,
+mathematics, and the natural sciences.
+
+Probably no one regards the teaching of foreign languages in the public
+schools as at all satisfactory at present, and the chief reason is that
+far too much is attempted, with far too little consideration of what
+will be achieved.  Most boys are either simultaneously learning, or
+have at one time simultaneously tried to learn, three foreign
+languages, Latin, Greek, and French, or Latin, French, and German.  The
+burden is too heavy for them to bear.  Only the minority have any real
+gift for foreign languages, and for the rest the aim should be one
+foreign language only.  Little will be accomplished in any subject
+unless there is a real ambition to learn, and there can be no such
+ambition unless a definite goal is in sight.  The goal here is real
+knowledge in a foreign language, for half or quarter-knowledge of a
+foreign language is a most unsatisfying accomplishment.  The obvious
+language is French.  Even so, many will not learn to write it
+correctly, and as for speaking it, that is an accomplishment so much
+more conveniently acquired elsewhere that we offer no opinion as to how
+far it is worth attempting at school.[1]  But fluent reading of French
+is a thing within the reach of practically any boy, and even the stupid
+boy, if he concentrates upon this, to the exclusion of other and more
+difficult linguistic tasks, will make such unmistakable progress that
+his ambitions may well be roused.  And the accomplishment is one that
+can quickly be made useful.  For instance, probably the best general
+history of Europe is still Guizot's book, and its French is about the
+easiest ever written.  But we would go further.  We remember once a boy
+being birched for circulating a copy of _La Vie Parisienne_.  Does not
+this suggest that every house should take a French daily newspaper, and
+also an illustrated weekly, other than that above mentioned?
+
+But while advocating the single language for the ordinary boy, we are
+pulled up short by the claims of Latin; and here we feel a difficulty.
+A good deal of what is said in favour of Latin we regard as pure
+superstition.  It is not true that boys can only learn to write their
+own language correctly by means of Latin prose.  Nor is it true that
+Latin prose supplies the ideal mental discipline.  That is only true
+for the minority of boys who reach the stage at which real Latin prose
+is written.  Most flounder about all their time in the stage of
+artificial Latin prose, wherein is nothing more than the meticulous
+application of a set of laboriously acquired grammatical rules--a
+tolerable training in conscientious application, such as any subject
+can supply, but nothing more.  Yet it may well be true--on this point
+we feel uncertain--that an elementary knowledge of Latin supplies such
+a foundation for the understanding both of English and French, that it
+is worth making some sacrifices to retain it.  If that be so, we would
+start every boy on Latin as his first foreign language.  Those who
+showed little ability would abandon it at about the time they began
+French.
+
+In the case of boys with some real linguistic ability, we are happy to
+find ourselves thoroughly conservative.  We believe firmly in the grand
+old fortifying classical curriculum, provided it is understood that the
+languages themselves are but means to an end, to the understanding of
+the classical civilisation.  In fine, the goal of classics should be
+to-day, as it was for the Renaissance scholars, ultimately political.
+The classical student who, at the time when his schooling ends, is
+still doing no more than "settling Hoti's business" and "properly
+basing Oun," is in the position of Browning's "Grammarian," with this
+vital difference that he probably does not intend to employ his future
+life in building any superstructure upon the foundations thus
+laboriously laid.
+
+In mathematics there is probably a deeper cleavage than in any other
+subject between the real thing, as mathematicians understand it, and
+the elementary knowledge within the reach of all.  "The real thing" is
+perhaps the most remote and specialised of all branches of learning.
+For a few it is the best, indeed, the only natural, line of
+development; but these are few and easily recognised, and even they
+should not be allowed to specialise too narrowly--that is a point which
+no one who is not a mathematician will dispute.  At the other end of
+the scale comes the third of the three R's; and about that again there
+is no controversy, except as to the best methods of teaching it.[2]
+Yet the schools do not recognise sufficiently clearly this line of
+cleavage, and many boys who are presumed to have reached the end of the
+elementary stage remain for some time battering in vain at the doors of
+the inner temple.  These should go back once over the elements again to
+see if they know them, and then give it up for good.  This will mean a
+cheerful exodus from the upper-middle mathematical divisions.  We
+confess to sympathy with the conservative-radical head master who said,
+"I shall not advocate the abolition of compulsory Greek in University
+examinations until I can get people to agree to the abolition of
+compulsory Algebra."
+
+There is perhaps a middle term between elementary and "real"
+mathematics; that is the mathematics that is the handmaid of physics,
+and leads us on to the natural sciences.
+
+To-day the claims of natural science are very insistent, and they come
+from more than one quarter.  From one quarter comes the claim that
+science alone of the subjects in the time-table "means business," and
+makes money, and that in these strenuous times other subjects that lead
+to mere elegant accomplishments must crowd into a narrow space to make
+room for the one subject that makes for sheer efficiency.  The point is
+often put with a certain crudity; but we may as well ignore that, and
+recognise that the just claims of commercial training will have to be
+met by the schools more fully than heretofore.  Only let us recognise
+commercial training for what it is, and not pretend that it can ever
+offer a substitute for the liberal education which must continue
+alongside of it.  But the teacher of science will more often take quite
+other ground, and will claim that his subject, over and above its
+commercial usefulness, provides most of the ingredients of a Liberal
+education in itself.  He will point to the training it offers in habits
+of conscientious accuracy, its exemplification of the laws of cause and
+effect, its undeviating respect for truth, and the inspiration of its
+endless progress, built up on the heroic researches of the great
+pioneers.
+
+This claim demands careful and sympathetic scrutiny.  To begin with
+criticism, we are quite unconvinced that science alone can train the
+mind to logical methods, or imbue it with a respect for truth in
+matters outside the scientific sphere.  "Science," as the term is
+commonly understood, deals with material things, and, as such, it gives
+but little support to the mind when confronted with the problems of
+humanity, whether personal or political.  It is only too common for the
+science specialist to respect cause and effect in a test-tube and
+despise it in a newspaper.  In science no passions are evoked in favour
+of one solution or another.  The search for truth may well be
+disinterested, since it is, humanly speaking, uninterested.  A liberal
+education must train the mind to master prejudice and self-interest,
+and this training cannot be given in a material where prejudice and
+self-interest will not come into play.
+
+As regards ordinary laboratory work, and lectures on laboratory detail,
+of which science teaching at present, as many science masters agree,
+far too exclusively consists, our view is similar to our view on
+mathematics.  It is often instructive, both for boy and master, to get
+the boys to draw up an ideal time-table.  The results, as a rule, are
+disappointingly conventional, it is true.  Few boys have ever
+criticised their education, except in a purely destructive and cynical
+spirit, and when confronted with the constructive task, produce
+something not very far removed from the time-table they follow out
+every week.  But as regards science, it will often be found that the
+form falls into two clearly marked divisions.  One part cut it down to
+a minimum, and would, if they had the courage of their convictions, cut
+it out altogether; the other part give it half, or more than half, the
+time-table.  This probably marks the fact that for many boys a very
+small amount of laboratory experience, just enough to give them a
+notion of method, is all that they will benefit by.  For the rest the
+training has real value and interest; but these are a minority.
+
+But there is another aspect of science, receiving as yet far too little
+attention at school, which seems to us an essential part of a liberal
+education.  Indeed, when our own sixth form time-table was remodelled,
+we put in a claim for a weekly lecture on General Principles of
+Science, alongside with modern history and political science and
+economics.  The general principles of natural law, evolution  and
+heredity, the nature and cure of disease, the atomic theory of matter,
+general principles of astronomy--these things seem to us second only in
+importance to the great principles of politics themselves.  Here is an
+extraordinary record of patient achievement, some contact with which is
+in itself an inspiration not merely intellectual, but moral.  For it
+seems to us hardly fanciful to suggest that such knowledge should
+react--so subtle are the reactions of the boy-mind, as we have already
+tried to show--most favourably on the political spirit.  Dr. Gregory,
+in his enthusiastic work in praise of his subject, "Discovery: or the
+Spirit and Service of Science," writes: "In the discussion of political
+questions, prejudice and party determine the view taken, and facts are
+selected and exploited not so much with the object of arriving at the
+truth as to confound the other side....  A politician may place party
+above truth, and a diplomatist will conceal it on behalf of his
+country, but it is the duty of the man of science to attain truth at
+all costs.  In direct opposition to the narrowness of thought which
+views all subjects through the distorting mirage of party prejudice,
+stands the absolute freedom of mind of the man of science who stands
+with open arms to welcome truth...."  And Dr. Gregory's moral would
+seem to be: Eschew politics and devote yourself to science.  As if the
+world could exist without politics!  As if the happy alternative to bad
+politicians were no politicians!  The right moral surely is that which
+we have been drawing, with possibly wearisome repetition, throughout
+this book; that all that is best in the scientific mind, all that is
+best in the literary and artistic mind, all that is best in the
+religious mind, must be brought to bear upon the problems of our
+corporate life.
+
+
+
+[1] We offer no opinion, also, on the "oral method" of teaching both
+modern and classical tongues, as we have no experience at all to guide
+us.
+
+[2] Surely, too, the third of the three R's should include a knowledge
+of book-keeping, balance sheets, etc.  Here we join hands heartily with
+the "utilitarian" school of educational reformers.  We also wish that
+every one learnt shorthand almost as soon as he had learnt longhand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE YOUNG GENERATION AND THE OLD
+
+"There, it is to be feared, they will find the parents most in their
+way.  The normal father may endure his son being taught poetry, but he
+will object to the instilling of opinion other than his
+own."--_Outlook_.
+
+"Fancy some imp of fifteen or sixteen assailing the author of his
+being, a court-worn barrister or 'rattled' stockbroker, at his evening
+meal: 'Father, I think Lord Bryce's bill for the reform of the House of
+Lords radically unsound,' or suddenly asking his mother, who, good,
+easy woman, is revolving in her mind the merits of a coat and skirt she
+has seen that afternoon at Debenham's: 'Mother, what is your opinion of
+the Trading with the Enemy Bill?'"--_Saturday Review_.
+
+"Youth is asking questions as never before--asking awkward, burning
+questions, which put its seniors in a flutter.  The seniors, under
+question, discover that they have no body of doctrine, and have never
+till now dreamt of the need of any.  If they are wise, they will put
+away the taboo on politics and sit down with their juniors to hammer
+these things out, and perchance clear their own minds in the
+process."--_Westminster Gazette_.
+
+
+By way of epilogue--an appeal to the parents.
+
+What is it that the parents want from the schools?  The question is
+all-important; for by the spiritual law of demand and supply, what they
+want they will get.  It has been said that every nation has the
+government it deserves.  So it is with the press, and so it is with the
+schools: we get what we want, and what we want is what we deserve.
+What do we want?
+
+There are some parents who take the public schools quite seriously as
+places of professional training, places where their sons will be taught
+to earn their livings, and they are encouraged in this notion by the
+fact that several professional bodies insist on successful candidature
+in some pass examination in school subjects as a first step towards
+entrance into the profession, and thereby rivet these examinations upon
+the schools.  The result is not altogether bad.  The examinations make
+for a deplorable ossification of the curriculum; but they also set a
+certain low standard, and drive a certain type of boy and master to
+work, and, though the type of work is not very exalted, it is better
+than nothing at all.  On the individual boy the effect will be various.
+"Look here," says the house master, "there's London Matric. at the end
+of next term.  Hadn't you better give up all this foolery with politics
+and do a little real work?"  The advice was taken, and perhaps we are
+not sufficiently impartial to offer a valuable opinion on the result.
+However, the boy was no fool, and the first part of the advice need
+never have been given.  Except in the case of boys, far too numerous,
+who are taking examinations that ought never to have been imposed on
+them, "modern aiders" and the like who are mugging up "prepared books"
+of Virgil and Euripides, work for a pass examination ought not to mean
+the cessation of all other intellectual activity.
+
+There is another much more old-fashioned type of parent who stands for
+everything that is traditional, who is seriously disturbed if his boy
+wanders far afield from the old classical curriculum, who regards all
+new subjects as foolish fads.  It is this parent, helped by an
+old-fashioned type of house master, who retains in a mild torture of
+boredom the boys who linger wasting their time in the lower reaches of
+the classical side.
+
+But anything is better than nothing, and the attitude of many more
+parents is purely cynical.  They just leave it to the schoolmaster.
+"Cynical" might seem a hard word with which to repay this compliment of
+trust; but it is not, for there is really no compliment and no trust.
+The parent does not really believe in the school-master's judgment.  He
+believes in him so little that he thinks it simply does not matter what
+happens in the class-room, provided the boy seems to enjoy himself--how
+many parents really _know_ whether their boys do enjoy themselves at
+school?--and provided the house master is not actively complaining.
+
+Now, there is only one hope, and that is that the parents should come
+to look at this matter of their son's education politically.
+School-time is a training, and we are all familiar enough with the idea
+of training now.  Before the war, as since, schools had their O.T.C.'s.
+But these O.T.C.'s were wretched perfunctory affairs, boring everybody,
+because we hardly any of us seriously envisaged them as a training,
+only as an incubus.  Now, we all see them as training for a part that
+has got to be played, and the whole spirit is different.  But the
+country will soon be calling upon our public school boys to play
+another and perhaps even more difficult part, and where is the training
+for that?  When the war is won we shall plunge into another maelstrom;
+and it will all be politics, politics, politics.  The leaders of labour
+have roughly charted their course; they mean to make a new world for
+the masses whether we like it or not, and they mean in the main right.
+But what part are the public school men going to play?  It is an
+extremely difficult position, and the difficulties crop up not only in
+the details, of which only mature experience can give a knowledge, but
+in the elementary principles regulating our outlook, our attitude.  And
+that is where the public schools could come in with irresistible effect
+if only they would brace themselves to the task.  "Your king and
+country need you," said the old recruiting poster of 1914.  "Good God!
+have they never wanted me till now?" was the natural rejoinder.  In any
+case they will not cease to want the public school boy when the war is
+over.
+
+In this task the parents must co-operate.  The normal father, we are
+told, will object if his son brings home opinions other than his own.
+But, in sober truth, if the son brings home the same opinions as the
+fathers have always held, we are in a poor way.  It was the fathers and
+the grandfathers who brought the world to its present pass.  It is the
+sons who, starting with new principles from new beginnings, have got to
+set it on a better road.  The _Saturday Review_ and _The Westminster
+Gazette_ offer us, in the quotations at the head of this chapter two
+little vignettes of parentage.  Which would you have?
+
+The holidays occupy rather more than a quarter, and rather less than a
+third of the year.  If you asked what the boys do in the holidays, you
+would ask a question that puzzles many boys themselves to answer.  The
+waste of school holidays is even more striking than the waste of school
+terms.  For education should not be, indeed, cannot be, limited to term
+time.  The proportion of boys who require "rest" in the holidays, even
+for the first week or two, is small.  A slack time, prolonged beyond a
+week or so, bores most boys consumedly and ought to bore them all.  We
+are not thinking here of the favoured few who get their fill of fishing
+and field sports.  Such things have their limitations, perhaps, but
+they offer at least a time of activity, resourcefulness, and keen
+enjoyment.  Most boys, however, live in quiet homes in towns, far from
+the opportunity for such things, and how these pass the time is a
+mystery even to themselves, as many have confessed to us.  In plain
+words, they _kill_ the time, and thereby acquire a most dangerous
+accomplishment.  Some few, it is true, make themselves endlessly useful
+to their parents, and nothing could be better.  But only a few homes
+provide scope for an "odd-jobs man" of this type.  For the bulk,
+holidays are simply times of unemployment.
+
+Now, when a schoolmaster ventures to offer advice about the holidays,
+he might seem to be stepping presumptuously outside his own province;
+but that plea for reticence is one we cannot admit.  Term and holidays
+alike are an education, and they interact upon one another so closely
+that the schoolmaster not only may, but must, form his judgment upon
+both.  It is not for us to compile a detailed "Parent's Assistant."
+Heaven forbid!  Every home has its own problems and its own
+opportunities, but surely there is no home in which the parents have
+not a range of activities, professional, commercial, political, or
+literary.  So often, as it seems, from various motives, good and bad,
+the boy remains more or less excluded from these long after he has
+become capable of a certain partnership in his parents' interests.  The
+drawback of life at a public school is that it is highly artificial.
+Call it as you please a barrack or a monastery, a boarding-school is
+something cut off from the main streams of ordinary life.  In the
+holidays the boy renews contact with ordinary life, and that periodic
+renewal is an essential part of his education.  But surely his holidays
+should bring him into contact with some more of life than its
+superficial frivolities.
+
+The kind of holidays we have in mind would make some call on the time
+and energy of the parents; and perhaps it will be said that the time
+and energy simply cannot be spared.  Well, there was a time, fifteen
+years or so before, when these same parents gave ungrudgingly any
+amount of time and energy to the task of watching over the development
+of the little child now rapidly approaching manhood.  But the boy of
+seventeen, though much more difficult to understand, is every bit as
+fascinating as the child of two, and the parents' time and energy
+devoted to the boy will be as certainly well spent.
+
+And it will, we believe, bring a new happiness to many parents
+themselves.  As school-masters, our widest experience of parents--not
+that we pretend it is very wide--is our experience of boys' talk about
+their homes.  Boys speak of their parents with deep affection and
+respect, as a rule; but so very often they leave an impression that
+they do not really know them.  It is the commonest thing in the world
+for fathers and sons, without any positive estrangement, to get
+entirely out of touch with one another during the latter part of a
+boy's school-time.  The boy develops rapidly, and the greater part of
+his development is quite concealed from the father.  He returns home to
+find his father "just the same," and apparently quite unable to divine
+the new developments which the son is too proud to reveal uninvited.
+Or maybe he does attempt to reveal them, and, bungling his task, finds
+himself misunderstood, and lays the blame on the father.  So often, as
+it seems, the father might have helped matters by playing a rather more
+active part, and going half, or even three-quarters, of the way to meet
+his son's confidences.  But there is a natural shyness of fathers
+towards their sons at this stage, and shyness on one side begets
+shyness and misunderstanding on the other.  More than once a boy has
+said to one of us, "What am I to do to get into touch with my father?
+Last holidays we found we'd nothing sensible to talk to each other
+about at all."  It is difficult to advise, but the most obvious thing
+to say is, presumably, to remind the boy that his father is but a human
+being like himself; that possibly the boy is himself rather
+unnecessarily enigmatic, and that instead of expecting the father to
+make all the moves, the son might himself hold out a hand and help the
+father to understand the changes that had taken place within him.  That
+is how the matter stands on the boy's side, and it may help some
+fathers to know it.
+
+One of our boys, we remember, wanted to discover something at first
+hand of the real interests of employees in his father's firm.  Whatever
+he discovered, it made an excellent holiday interest for him.  Among
+other things, he attended some W.E.A. lectures, because he found that
+the more intelligent men were interested by them.  This was a boy of
+rather unusual initiative; but we believe there are many boys who would
+find a genuine interest in such matters, if the fathers gave them the
+lead.  Thus the wretched tradition that the holidays are for
+unemployment would be gradually broken down, and games would take their
+proper place--in holidays and term alike.  Perhaps, too, the father on
+looking back might find that there had been some "education" in it for
+himself also.
+
+The principle from which we started was that the public schools were
+full of glorious possibilities, to-day largely unrealised.  Is not the
+same true of many homes?
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+"It is quite evident that the boys have been encouraged to read
+periodicals such as _The Nation_ and _The English Review_, and their
+articles read like elaborate parodies.  There is no particular harm in
+allowing a clever boy to do monkey tricks of this type, but there is a
+good deal of harm in printing it instead of gently deriding the
+self-sufficiency of these youthful oracles."--_Church Times_.
+
+"The most obvious fact about these articles is that the boys are
+writing what they mean, and what they want to say, and that they are
+able to do so because they feel sure of the community that forms their
+audience."--Mr. Kenneth Richmond in _The New Age_.
+
+
+
+
+[Of the three articles that follow, the first was printed in the first
+issue of _The School Observer_; the second was written for the
+suppressed sixth issue; the last was written on the day after the final
+collapse of the whole experiment, and was, of course, never intended
+for the paper at all.]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE
+
+If workmen strike, if employers oppress, if prostitution flourishes, if
+paper demagogues are allowed to rule, if poverty exists, if men fight,
+whatever evil it is, the remedy lies at the root--education.  All
+reforms are mere palliatives until the fundamental reform of education
+is perfected.  There are no connecting links of argument.  It is a
+natural corollary, justified by any particular example that may be
+traced.
+
+It is another question whether education or lack of it is more
+calculated to hasten the ultimate ideal of well-ordered anarchy, which,
+consciously or unconsciously, we all entertain; but for the meanwhile
+the affirmative assumption must be adopted.  The sole remaining
+question, then, is, By what means is education to rectify the immediate
+evils?
+
+While it is fairly generally established that the purpose of education
+is efficient citizenship, it is clear that, owing to the diminished
+proportion of the individual to the community, the purpose is being
+gradually lost sight of.  To borrow from scientific phraseology, the
+tendency of the unit to remaining an "idiot" (in the Greek sense of the
+word!) varies directly as the magnitude of the mass.  And this is a
+truism that public schools do not help to abolish.  Although "school
+patriotism" is invariably quoted as a denial of this, there prevails in
+modern schools a definite inclination towards unsentimental cynicism in
+the matter.  This does not necessarily denote an unhealthy spirit, but
+an increase of intellect that, whether with justification or not,
+vaguely asks for something wider or more substantial.
+
+Perhaps our grandfathers are right when they tell us that the modern
+youth becomes a man sooner than his predecessors.  Perhaps our
+grandfathers are right when they tell us it is a pity.
+
+However that may be, the two facts remain, that there is a rather
+benighted tendency in the direction of intellectual activity, which the
+public school spirit makes no effort to assist, and that the public
+schools are inclined to produce gentlemen rather than citizens.  Of
+course the former make better advertisements.  Yet they ought not to.
+They would not in Germany.  One day they will not here.  The instance
+shows that the Chestertonian "England of Romance" is really the one
+that exists.  The word "gentleman" is purely a romantic one, and a
+gentleman a purely romantic though enviable figure.  A state in the
+future will not be able to thrive on gentlemen: it will need citizens.
+
+It has cost me dear to write down this, for in my illogical mind (and
+no one, by the way, save a politician, could have a logical one!) I
+would choose without hesitation the gentleman.  But that is probably
+because, if I could, I would sell my quills for brushes.
+
+The conclusion from all this, then, is that I was not holding Germany
+up as a paragon just now, but leading up to an obvious improvement--a
+gentleman-citizen.  Whoever thinks he fulfils the conditions implicated
+in the _role_ may know that not only is he an uncommon and a great man,
+but also the embodiment of a high, practicable ideal; in the attainment
+of which lies the solution of the whole educational question--how, of
+the two component parts, to maintain the moral position of the first
+and create one for the second.
+
+Except for the few, favoured with a productive imagination, the public
+school can as yet do nothing in this direction.  It would be useless,
+for instance, to crowd a dull, technical science of politics on an
+already over-amended curriculum.  One day it may not be useless.  But
+until a new species of governess can be bred, it is.  Of the species in
+question, I know of one example.  There may be more, but not many,
+though of course they are, I am aware, rapidly multiplying.  The only
+possible children's governess is the governess who attempts to teach
+nothing except how to learn.  The ideal education is undoubtedly an _a
+la carte_ one, but as this is impossible both physically and because a
+public school master has not the time to find out how to teach any
+particular boy, the difficulty is solved if the boy has found out how
+to learn from any particular master.
+
+A man's life depends altogether on the first morsel of education he
+receives, so that a governess's responsibility is colossal.  And, of
+course, a competent governess is a far holier thing than any parson's
+wife.  Not only must she teach not so much what he will have to learn
+(which would scarcely encourage him in view of its magnitude) as how he
+will have to learn (which could only make him eager to put the theory
+to the test of practice--all the more so when he finds it succeeds),
+but also she must attempt to discover and develop, even at this very
+early stage, the seeds of mental independence and originality, which
+alone can make him a competent citizen.  Think how much easier
+legislation would be in a state composed of such as these!  It is the
+only condition that really justifies democracy.  There could be no
+question of denying a people of this quality a voice in their own
+government.  Representation could no longer be a game for gamblers and
+contortionists.
+
+As things are, however, the progress of the public schools (and I have
+been dealing exclusively with public-school classes) cannot make much
+headway until they have clay to mould instead of granite to chisel.  It
+is not their fault if there is no way to teach the majority, and if the
+few are thrown back on their own inadequate resources.  The remedy lies
+in some measure to ensure the right primary education.  Seventy-five
+per cent. of the public school boys have not had brilliant, discerning
+governesses--or even mothers.  There are not enough of either to go
+round.  So that the seventy-five per cent., possibly more, don't know
+how to learn, and the mere twenty-five per cent. do.  It is hard to
+tackle effectively so intangible a problem as the correct primary
+method of teaching, and the statesman, through whose instrumentality
+this percentage is reversed, may give up politics for gold not had
+brilliant, discerning governesses with a clear conscience.  The first
+step, therefore, is to reform the education of women.  "Take care of
+the women, the men will take care of themselves."
+
+Nevertheless, be the solution what it may, the importance of the
+subject cannot be over-estimated.  One more illustration.  The better
+educated a man is, the more capable he is of soaring above the spirit
+of national citizenship....
+
+And the next stage is the spirit of world citizenship ... which, in the
+course of many, many years, together, possibly, with the development of
+Esperanto, means the brotherhood of men....
+
+Then perpetual peace....
+
+Then advancement to a primitive condition....
+
+Then the much-dreamed-of well-ordered anarchy....
+
+To continue till a second Milton is called upon to write as misty
+history a second "Paradise Lost." ...
+
+B.W.L.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"And He saw that it was good...."
+
+
+Throughout the Universe which He had created He set a Great Road, and
+on it was Man, at first invisible, but soon an infinite multitude.  And
+then unto Man, as to nothing else in His Universe, He gave the power to
+move, and to walk on the Road, which He made to pass through all the
+Great and Beautiful Worlds, coming at last to where He is, where all is
+happy because all is good, and where nothing ends because there is the
+End.  And as He looked and beheld Man scattered out upon the great Road
+as it wound about through the Universe, He thought to try His people,
+and show by a certain proof whether they were possessed of the goodness
+through which alone they could comprehend all things, and become able
+to enter the realm of perfect goodness.  And so He sent the semblance
+of a great Fire into the Universe, which should seem utterly to destroy
+all things which He had made, and to cut off the hope and possibility
+of a future perception and life eternal.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+As the fire rolls on, devouring all that it meets, humanity on the Road
+sees its advance, and realises that in the course of a few hours the
+Universe will be reduced to a smouldering cinder, that its hopes for a
+future life, where the Road ends, is cut short and never to be
+realised, and that apparently its former belief, albeit a vague and
+ill-defined one, in a God who is all-merciful and kind, was altogether
+an illusion, and merely a cause for false confidence and
+self-righteousness.  And how will it stand the test?  Would the good or
+the bad element in human nature assert itself in the face of absolute
+annihilation?  It is obvious that with such a position several of the
+possible and no doubt ordinary motives for goodness, such as the idea
+of doing good in order to reap benefits or escape punishment in a
+future existence, and of doing good for the sake of having it
+recognised among others, are excluded from the proposition.  Even the
+idea of doing good because it is in accordance with a "will of God" is
+excluded, since the idea of destruction coming from the direction of
+the End is unheard of to man, and is in direct contradiction to his
+ideas of God.  We are brought, therefore, down to the very foundation;
+and the question we have to answer becomes--Is one of the elements of
+human nature a feeling of necessity to pursue goodness for its own
+sake, quite apart from any motives?
+
+In the first place, when a supreme danger such as that already
+described is rapidly approaching humanity, if such a thing could be,
+what would be the immediate result?  We know that with the ordinary
+dangers, such as shipwreck and air-raid, the tendency among people
+gathered together in large numbers is to panic, to herd together and
+become temporarily deprived of normal reasoning powers.  Would this be
+the result of the sight of approaching universal destruction?  Surely
+not.  Panic is the result, I believe, not of approaching danger simply,
+but necessarily of a danger which threatens to affect some of a number
+of people more than others, and which there is a possibility of
+avoiding.  It is entirely the element of uncertainty or suspense which
+causes panic among numbers of people.  Now this is an important point
+in the argument.  It seems very easy to defeat it on the grounds that
+animals almost invariably herd together and panic in the face of
+danger, and that such action cannot be due to the element of
+uncertainty and suspense, since this necessitates the employment of
+calculative and reasoning faculties which animals presumably do not
+possess.  The justification is to be found in a closer examination of
+the part played by the uncertainty in producing the panic which is
+common to men and animals.  In the face of danger, as in everything
+else, man's first instinct is to reason and calculate, and his
+calculation results in finding the danger either avoidable and
+uncertain, which is almost always the case, or unavoidable and
+inevitable.  If the danger is found avoidable, fear is the immediate
+result.  Fear as we know it has come into being with reason, but at the
+same time, as will be seen later, it is only reason which can triumph
+over and destroy fear.  This fear then brings about the destruction of
+reason, and the animal standard is reached, from which time the man
+behaves in the same way as the animals, to whom the danger is merely
+something out of the ordinary.  He then comes under the domination of
+the instinct to panic.  It will thus be seen that all the mental
+processes which came before the reversion to the animal standard in
+men, are unknown to animals, and are the outcome of the purely human
+faculty of reason.  However, if reason can by any means retain its
+foothold and its entirety, there will neither be fear nor the
+consequent breakdown of reason and the domination of panic.  Now this
+is the position in the other case, the case in which reason finds the
+danger unavoidable.  In the case of a danger which is unavoidable there
+will be no panic.  It is this fact which accounts for the bravery of
+numbers of people going to their death on board a sinking ship; but
+such a position has never--or very seldom, indeed--avoided a relapse,
+to a certain extent, to panic, inasmuch as there is a possibility of
+avoiding the danger, and a possibility that some may survive, while
+others are doomed to perish.
+
+In the face of universal destruction, therefore, there will be no fear
+and no panic.  The fact that he is facing annihilation together with
+the rest of humanity would have an extraordinary influence on each
+individual, which, of course, would be just the same if he alone was
+aware of the danger.  I remember very well an evening at school when I
+was told and convinced by several boys older than myself that (I even
+remember the date) on June 18th the earth was going to be destroyed.
+It had been proved, I was told, beyond the shadow of a doubt that on
+that particular date some natural phenomenon would take place which
+would inevitably entail the destruction of everything living on the
+earth.  This forms an interesting parallel to the present case; for at
+the time I was only about eight years old, and I had very scanty ideas
+about God and future life.  To me the earth was the Universe.  And,
+furthermore, for about an hour most of us thoroughly believed that the
+destruction of the earth, or the End of the World as we called it, was
+at hand.  Of course, it might be said that there is no real parallel,
+since we were only children; but I believe that argument to be
+absolutely fallacious.  In the matter of fundamental tendencies and
+characteristics of human nature one cannot assume such divisions.
+Since the present state of good and evil in human nature has taken
+thousands of years to become evolved, it seems unlikely that there can
+be caused in the individual at present any fundamental change.  I
+therefore contend that as soon as personality and independence of
+character becomes evident in the individual, both the good and the evil
+in his nature will be present in the same way and in the same relation,
+although not necessarily in the same proportions or degrees, as they
+will be throughout the greater part of his life.  This personality
+becomes evident without any doubt at a very early age, certainly by the
+age of eight; and in so far as the development of good and evil is
+dependent upon the development of character, it seems likely that these
+elements will be more clearly marked in the child of eight than in the
+second infancy of the man of eighty.
+
+To return to the personal incident.  I recall very vividly now the
+half-hour which followed my conviction of Universal destruction, and,
+of course, I realise my actual feelings and their probable causes more
+clearly now than I did at the time.  The real force of my conviction
+only lasted for about an hour, but in that time, and aided no doubt by
+a rather strained imagination, I was, I feel convinced, in the same
+position as any one of the individuals on that great Road as they see
+the Fire approaching and devouring the entire Universe.
+
+As the affair was being explained to me I remember I was terrified, but
+very soon, and as soon as I realised the situation, which it must be
+remembered the people on the Road would do almost instantaneously, this
+feeling entirely left me.  And the next feeling, a very forcible one,
+was rather extraordinary, being as it was an overpowering feeling of
+solitude.  It was evening, and twenty or thirty of us were all in a
+large classroom together, and for many minutes I felt more lonely than
+I ever had before; I felt cut off from all those around me, and I see
+that, as Peer Gynt would have said, "I had become myself."  As has
+already been said, I was not frightened, and what I did in those
+minutes was to work.  It was "prep-time," and it is an interesting
+fact, as bearing out what has already been said both about the
+establishment of individuality with consequent opportunities of
+concentration, and also about the maintenance of reason, that I was
+able to "do" in those minutes, and do better than usual, the work that
+generally demanded more than the allotted hour.
+
+Very soon, however, the feeling of solitude passed away and its place
+was taken by a feeling of exactly the opposite nature, a feeling of
+Unity, of extraordinary fellowship, followed by a wonderful sensation
+of happiness.  All this sounds rather grotesque, and the continued use
+of these rather meaningless epithets is very ineffectual in expressing
+what they are meant to convey.  But it must be remembered that the
+position is altogether an extraordinary one; and the feelings and
+sensations resulting from such a position were extraordinary at the
+time and still are extraordinary.  The position seems quite unique; it
+is difficult to imagine where and how else that same mental condition
+could be produced: older people would not have credited the story even
+for the short time that we did, and younger children would not have had
+the independence of thought and imagination to picture and contemplate
+the situation.  At the time it was my good fortune to experience things
+which I have never experienced before or since, and which I believe few
+ever have experienced.
+
+However, you ask for a return to the question of whether goodness is an
+immanent reality in human nature; you ask perhaps, in view of the
+incident described, "If it had been in your power to do something at
+that time which was supremely pleasurable but at the same time contrary
+to your moral ideas, would you have done it?"  The answer, which is
+mainly contained in or drawn from what has gone before is--No; and the
+direct reason is, because, in the conditions produced by the position
+described, nothing but what is good remains in the human nature.  The
+bed-rock has been reached, and it is good; the causes of evil and of
+its continuance are removed.
+
+Ever since man has led a corporate life it seems probable that one
+outstanding evil has prevailed, in greater or less degrees according to
+the rate and amount of progress made by any community.  And this evil
+is the lack and suppression of individuality.  It seems impossible to
+account for it, except by simply saying that it is, and has always been
+a characteristic tendency of human nature; however, this is the most
+encouraging answer possible, because it assumes that this evil can
+eventually be eradicated.  No one can surely deny that there is a lack
+of individuality at present; its chief manifestations, of course, are
+to be found in hatred, and in the spirit of competition and rivalry; it
+produces a clash between individual opinions and actions which is so
+apparent that it cannot be denied, and need not be enlarged upon.  But,
+apart from these more obvious manifestations, this failing has been
+responsible for the production and continuance of _all_ that is evil in
+man.  Human nature is the foundation of our life, of that foundation
+every individual is entitled to partake; and, furthermore, that
+foundation is good.  Every individual possesses a portion of this
+foundation as his right; and what is the result, under these
+circumstances, of lack of individuality?  Surely the result is that
+some parts of those individual sections, parts which are in some cases
+similar to and in other cases different from parts of other individual
+sections, are used as the foundation, while the remainder is left
+unused.  For, for the most part, men either employ those parts of their
+portion of the foundation of goodness which are common to as many other
+individual sections as possible, or, like Alceste, the parts which are
+definitely opposed to most others.  In any case where the foundation is
+undeveloped and unused there grows, like a poisonous growth, sin, which
+is made of and feeds upon the material of the good foundation, which
+has been put to the wrong use.  Sin and evil are not separate, in the
+strict sense, from good.  It seems inconceivable that good and evil
+should have had different origins, and should have existed as rival
+elements in human nature without the one having by this time triumphed
+over the other.
+
+In matters which affect every member of a body similarly, the combined
+influence of all those members should be brought to bear; but where
+every individual can "be himself" and interpret and use his portion of
+the foundation of goodness in the complete way for which he was made
+and intended, without affecting others, he should be allowed to
+influence them or be influenced by them, without interference on the
+part of any other individual.  Since this has not been the case, we
+have had the continuance of sin, and until it is the case, there always
+will be sin.
+
+Now, in the position described, complete individuality is established
+and evil ceases to exist and becomes a thing of the past.  With the
+near prospect of universal destruction, there is immediately a
+cessation of progress; and then, as in the incident described, there
+comes complete individuality--every individual becomes himself.  With a
+common destruction inevitable and with the establishment of
+individuality, co-operation in its true sense prevails, and with it the
+surpassing and disappearance of evil; and then that wonderful happiness
+... of all this I am convinced.  I remember well the effect for an hour
+or so among a few of us that evening.  The contrast between the
+atmosphere in the little room in which the most impressed of us
+gathered during that time, which was free, I know, from everything but
+good, and that of a day or two later when we made fun of the whole
+affair, is so marked that my opinion on the matter is very definite.
+
+Goodness alone there was at the beginning, and goodness alone there
+will be at the end.  No man is the cause of his own downfall, but he
+alone as an individual can be the maintainer of his foothold.
+Individuality in all that concerns the individual, alone can make and
+keep life clean and sweet.  If this individuality could, by such means
+as education, be established, there would be constituted a _uniting_
+force through humanity which could lead it, in the course of time, in
+the way it should go.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+And as He raised the semblance of the Fire from the Universe, He looked
+upon Man and saw that he was good.
+
+J. A. A. J.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DREAM
+
+How much of our life seems and is a dream!  How often we feel ourselves
+carried off our feet and borne along on a tide of circumstances, tossed
+backwards and forwards on a sea of conflicting events, now hurried
+along by a current of opinion, now blinded with the spray of false
+accusation, then motionless for a moment, trying to collect our
+shattered thoughts before the next onslaught: but all the time out of
+touch, consciously, with what is going on, utterly powerless, trying to
+gather up the threads and recover consciousness.  Any action that we
+take, any word that we utter, is done without thought, without
+knowledge, and without any result.  And yet neither the cause nor the
+effect are, strictly speaking, physical.  The position is a mental
+attitude, in this case mental helplessness, and this is dependent
+solely upon the relation of the mind to exterior circumstances.  When
+we are fully conscious, we are ourselves each the centre of a little
+world, which includes all that concerns us, and the appearance of this
+depends entirely upon its particular meaning for us.  We do not,
+cannot, under these circumstances, see anything exactly as it is: its
+appearance is influenced by its importance for us or by the degree of
+approval, or disapproval which we ourselves attach to it.  When our
+life becomes a dream, our sphere is broken into and usurped by the
+changing of values, shapes, and appearance of things within it.  The
+old familiar forms are transfigured and tampered with, our mistaken or
+incomplete idea of persons is revealed, and a host of new and
+inexplicable forms appear; with the result that we are literally
+bewildered, and instead of regarding things with reference to their
+influence upon us, we see things as they are in themselves--when we can
+see at all--and feel what they actually do to us.
+
+There can be no one who is not aware of this experience, in a greater
+or a less degree.  I speak of it as dreaming because that is the
+analogy which best represents the circumstances, all of which have been
+explained except one.  In the same way as we are not conscious that
+what we have been dreaming is a dream until we awake, so in these
+periods of our actual life in which we are deprived of will and are
+borne along by exterior circumstances and forces, we are not aware of
+our helplessness, of our utter weakness, of the significance of what we
+have seen and heard, until we have regained consciousness and woken
+again to our freedom.
+
+In this sense I have recently had a dream, and only since have I
+realised that what I dreamt was fact; and then I was able to place it
+all within my sphere--its ideas, its causes, and its effects have
+become or are becoming the familiar forms and shapes, in the midst of
+which I am, like a spider at the centre of its web, placed with my
+hands on every thread.  And this is that dream.
+
+Full of life and happiness I set out with another, one who was a friend
+and had lived with me for a time, sharing the same hopes, methods, and
+ideals.  Laughing as we went, with the smiling world around us and the
+glad faces of those we knew, we made our way to the house of one who,
+older than ourselves, had inspired and befriended in us those hopes and
+ideals.  And there we learnt from him that the authorities of the
+community, the institution to which we belonged, had taken offence at
+our methods and by suppressing them had destroyed our aims and all that
+was most dear to us.  As we sat there in silence, my mind cast back
+over the time--it was little more than a year--since our outlook had
+been entirely changed.  I saw the school a throbbing piece of mechanism
+with its bells, its clocks, and its governors, set down in a place of
+great beauty.  Blind to anything of beauty, it worked with a rhythm and
+a precision which became a twentieth-century development (although it
+had been set up in 1557, and was still running on very nearly its
+original lines--which was the reason, so they say, of why it "worked"
+so "well").  I saw it at work and was myself made part of its raw
+material.  Into its hungry mouth there went childhood at its best, full
+of energy, with every kind of ability, talent and promise, enterprise
+and ambition; through its teeth, its moulds, and its classrooms they
+passed, until they issued from the end a single and singular type of
+humanity, moulded, stamped, docketed and numbered--to take their place,
+or rather, and this is the saddest note of all, their very numerous and
+different places in the world.
+
+While this was passing through my mind we got up and went out for a
+walk.
+
+And then there came the War, and the men and institutions of Europe
+were put to a supreme test.  And the immediate result was that men
+began to think, began to look about them, and realising the palpable
+evil of war, began to wonder whether they had not been mistaken in
+their values and systems.  Men soon came to realise that they did not
+fulfil their entire duty if they followed as nearly as possible in the
+footsteps of their great-grandfathers, but that as the world moved it
+behoved them to move; that each man is made with the possibility of
+every attitude and achievement as seeds within him; that circumstances
+alone had caused him to live on some of these and not on others; that
+intolerance was therefore a crime of the most unpardonable character;
+that it was wrong and unprofitable to let one's self be borne along on
+the surface of the world's tide--and that it was every man's duty to
+use the world as he finds it for the development and fulfilment of all
+that is best within him, and not to depend upon one thing and reject
+another, favour one opinion, and oppose or even disregard another.  And
+those in the school who first realised this, determined not to submit
+to the guiding and moulding of this mechanical institution, but to look
+at the world around and outside them--its beauty, its methods, its
+effects, its possibility, its wonder and its joy, and to develop for
+themselves, under the guidance and suggestion of those whom they
+trusted, their own powers, with their own principles to guide them and
+their own aims to reach.
+
+And in the carrying out of this plan and in the suggesting of it to
+others and in witnessing the results in others and in the institution
+to which they belonged, they, and later I and all those who followed
+them, found great happiness--a happiness which I felt could come from
+nowhere else, and certainly a happiness such as I had never before
+experienced.  A greater facility in all intellectual activity, and in
+avoiding and fighting everything which one felt to be wrong, a greater
+confidence, and determination through self-dependence in all things,
+are some of the natural immediate fruits of a self-conceived basis of
+thought and action which refused to accept blindly everything that was
+handed down or dealt out.
+
+The permanent results in the shape of statistics and concrete evidence
+are proof and witness to the rightness of the undertaking.  But now it
+is all of the past--the reasons are irrelevant; suffice it that they
+are iniquitous, and more than iniquitous, since they have murdered what
+is right.
+
+And now we had come, after passing through a great field of green corn
+rustling in the light wind, to a fence, on which we sat.  My
+retrospective thoughts had now caught up to the present--but I was
+still dreaming.  All that I thought was unconscious, out of my control
+and wonderful.  Our attempt had been very beautiful, had been a work of
+art, and in many ways had come to a beautiful and artistic end.  Like a
+great and wonderful bubble, wrought in many and enchanting colours, it
+rose up complete at that moment from its birthplace and deathbed--and I
+was happy again.
+
+Then from the place down below us--that place in which we had striven
+and apparently failed--I seemed to hear the voice of those who opposed
+and hated us in our ways--those who were making the school into a
+machine again--and were rejoicing in it, as they pumped in the oil:
+
+"The Germans are verrmin--it is your work in life to _krrussch_ them!"
+
+And at that very moment there came by three German prisoners--passed
+us, jumped over the fence and were gone; but the likeness! it was more
+than striking; never, never shall I forget it--and I was convinced.
+
+The school, its very self, its soul, had struggled to its feet, and as
+a little child was taking its first conscious steps--the most
+beautiful, perhaps, that it was ever destined to take--when they, those
+mechanicians, with their mailed fists smote it in the face, crushed it
+heartlessly to the ground, with Louvain and Belgium not only before
+their eyes but on their very lips.
+
+"Oh, this world is a rotten place," he said, at my side.
+
+"I wonder," I murmured in reply, and I still do....
+
+J. A. A. J.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCHOOL AND THE WORLD***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25797.txt or 25797.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/7/9/25797
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/25797.zip b/25797.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ccb436
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25797.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d29446
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #25797 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25797)