Part 1

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A DOMINIE DISMISSED

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT.

In consequence of the Dominie's go-as-you-please methods of educating village children, the inevitable happens--he is dismissed, giving place to an approved disciplinarian.

The unhappy Dominie, forced to leave his bairns, seeks to enlist--but the doctor discovers that his lungs are affected, and he is ordered an open-air life.

He returns as a cattleman to the village where he has previously been a schoolmaster. Incidentally, he watches the effect of his successor's teaching, the triumph of his own methods and the discomfiture of his rival at the hands of the children, in whom the Dominie cultivated personality and the rights of bairns.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

A DOMINIE ABROAD 7s. 6d. net. A DOMINIE'S LOG 2s. 6d. net. A DOMINIE IN DOUBT 2s. 6d. net. THE BOOMING OF BUNKIE 2s. 6d. net. CARROTY BROON 2s. 6d. net.

A DOMINIE DISMISSED

BY A. S. NEILL

HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED YORK STREET ST. JAMES'S S.W.1.

_Printed in Great Britain at the Athenæum Printing Works, Redhill_

TO THE ORIGINAL OF MARGARET

A DOMINIE DISMISSED

I.

I have packed all my belongings. My trunk and two big boxes of books stand in the middle of a floor littered with papers and straw. I had my typewriter carefully packed too, but I took it from out its wrappings, and I sit amidst the ruins of my room with my wee machine before me. It is one of those little folding ones weighing about six pounds.

The London train goes at seven, and it is half-past five now. It was just ten minutes ago that I suddenly resolved to keep a diary ... only a dominie can keep a Log, and I am a dominie no longer.

I hear Janet Brown's voice outside. She is singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning" ... and she was in tears this afternoon. The limmer ought to be at home weeping her dominie's departure.

Yet ... what is Janet doing at my window? Her home is a good two miles along the road. I wonder if she has come to see me off. Yes, she has; I hear her cry to Ellen Smith: "He's packit, Ellen, and Aw hear him addressin' the labels on his typewriter." The besom!

Well, well, children have short memories. When Macdonald enters the room on Monday morning they will forget all about me.

I know Macdonald. He is a decent sort to meet in a house, but in school he is a stern one. His chief drawback is his lack of humour. I could swear that he will whack Jim Jackson for impudence before he is half an hour in the school.

I met Jim one night last week wheeling a box up from the station.

"I say, boy," I called with a pronounced Piccadilly Johnny accent, "heah, boy! Can you direct me to the--er--village post-office?"

He scratched his head and looked round him dubiously.

"Blowed if Aw ken," he said at last. "Aw'm a stranger here."

Yes, Macdonald will whack him.

I sent Jim out yesterday to measure the rainfall (there had been a fortnight's drought) and he went out to the playground. In ten minutes he returned looking puzzled. He came to my desk and lifted an Algebra book, then he went to his seat and seemed to sweat over some huge calculation. At length he came to me and announced that the rainfall was ·3578994 of an inch. I went out to the playground ... he had watered it with the watering-can.

"There are no flies on you, my lad," I said.

"No, sir," he smiled, "the flies don't come out in the rain."

Yes, Macdonald is sure to whack him.

I shall miss Jim. I shall miss them all ... but Jim most of all. What about Janet? And Gladys? And Ellen? And Jean?... Well, then, I'll miss Jim most of all the boys.

I tried to avoid being melodramatic to-day. It has been a queer day, an expectant day. They followed me with their eyes all day; if an inspector had arrived I swear that he would have put me down as a good disciplinarian. I never got so much attention from my bairns in my life.

I blew the "Fall in!" for the last time at the three o'clock interval. Janet and Ellen were late. When they arrived they carried a wee parcel each. They came forward to my desk and laid their parcels before me.

"A present from your scholars," said Janet awkwardly. I slowly took off the tissue paper and held up a bonny pipe and a crocodile tobacco-pouch. I didn't feel like speaking, so I took out my old pouch and emptied its contents into the new one; then I filled the new pipe and placed it between my teeth. A wee lassie giggled, but the others looked on in painful silence.

I cleared my throat to speak, but the words refused to come ... so I lit the pipe.

"That's better," I said with forced cheerfulness, and I puffed away for a little.

"Well, bairns," I began, "I am----" Then Barbara Watson began to weep. I frowned at Barbara; then I blew my nose. Confound Barbara!

"Bairns," I began again, "I am going away now." Janet's eyes began to look dim, and I had to frown at her very hard; then I had to turn my frown on Jean ... and Janet, the besom, took advantage of my divided attention. I blew my nose again; then I coughed just to show that I really did have a cold.

"I don't suppose any of you understand why I am going away, but I'll try to tell you. I have been dismissed by your fathers and mothers. I haven't been a good teacher, they say; I have allowed you too much freedom. I have taken you out sketching and fishing and playing; I have let you read what you liked, let you do what you liked. I haven't taught you enough. How many of you know the capital of Bolivia? You see, not one of you knows."

"Please, sir, what is it?" asked Jim Jackson.

"I don't know myself, Jim."

My pipe had gone out and I lit it again.

"Bairns, I don't want to leave you all; you are mine, you know, and the school is ours. You and I made the gardens and rockeries; we dug the pond and we caught the trout and minnows and planted the water-plants. We built the pigeon-loft and the rabbit-hutch. We fed our pets together. We----"

I don't know what happened after that. I took out my handkerchief, but not to blow my nose.

"The bugle," I managed to say, and someone shoved it into my hand. Then I played "There's No Parade To-day," but I don't think I played it very well.

Only a few went outside; most of them sat and looked at me.

"I must get Jim to save the situation," I said to myself, and I shouted his name.

"P-please, sir," lisped Maggie Clark, "Jim's standin' oot in the porch."

"Tell him to come in," I commanded.

Maggie went out; then she returned slowly.

"P-please, sir, he's standin' greetin' and he winna come."

"Damnation!" I cried, and I bustled them from the room.

A quarter-past six! It's time Jim came for these boxes.

* * *

I am back in my old rooms in a small street off Hammersmith Broadway. My landlady, Mrs. Lewis, is a lady of delightful garrulity, and her comments on things to-day have served to cheer me up. She is intensely interested in the fact that I have come from Scotland, and anxious to give me all the news of events that have happened during my sojourn in the wilds.

"Did you 'ear much abaht the war in Scotland?" she said.

I looked my surprise.

"War! What war?"

Then she explained that Britain and France and Russia and the Allies were fighting against Germany.

"Now that I come to think of it," I said reflectively, "I _did_ see a lot of khaki about to-day."

"Down't you get the pypers in Scotland?" she asked.

"Thousands of them, Mrs. Lewis; why, every Scot plays the pipes."

"I mean the pypers, not the pypers," she explained.

"Oh, I see! We do get a few; English travellers leave them in the trains, you know."

She thought for a little.

"It must be nice livin' in a plyce w'ere everyone knows everyone else. My sister Sally's married to a pynter in Dundee, Peter Macnab; do you know 'im?"

I explained that Peter and I were almost bosom friends. Then she asked me whether I knew what his wage was. I explained that I did not know. She then told me how much he gave Sally to keep house with, and I began to regret my temerity in claiming a close acquaintance with the erring Peter. Mrs. Lewis at once began to recount the family history of the Macnabs, and I blushed for the company I kept.

I decided to disown Peter.

"Perhaps he'll behave better now that he has gone to Glasgow," I remarked.

"But he ain't gone to Glasgow!" she exclaimed.

I looked thoughtful.

"Ah!" I cried, "I've been thinking of the other Peter Macnab, the painter in Lochee."

"Sally's 'usband lives in a plyce called Magdalen Green."

"Ah! I understand now, Mrs. Lewis. I've met that one too; you're quite right about his character."

If I ever write a book of aphorisms I shall certainly include this one: Never claim an acquaintance with a lady's relations by marriage.

I wandered along Fleet Street to-day, the most fascinating street in London ... and the most disappointing. To understand Fleet Street you must walk along the Strand at midday. The Londoner is the most childish creature on earth. If a workman opens a drain cap the traffic is held up by the crowds who push forward to glimpse the pipes below. If a black man walks along the Strand half a hundred people will follow him on the off chance that he may be Jack Johnson. London is the most provincial place in Britain. I have eaten cookies in Princes Street in Edinburgh, and I have eaten buns in Piccadilly. The London audience was the greater. Audience! the word derives from the Latin _audio_: I hear. That won't do to describe my eating; spectators is the word.

I wandered about all day, and the interests of the streets kept my thoughts away from that little station in the north. Now it is evening, and my thoughts are free to wander.

A few of them would see Macdonald arrive to-day, and I think that in wondering at him they will have forgotten me. Children live for the hour; their griefs are as ephemeral as their joys, and the ephemeralism of their emotion is as wonderful as its intensity. A boy will bury his brother in the afternoon, and scream at Charlie Chaplin in the evening. He will forget Charlie again, though, when he lies alone in the big double bed at night.

Jim and Janet and Jean and the rest have loved me well, but I have no illusions about their love. Children are painfully docile. In two weeks they will accept Macdonald's iron rule without question, just as they accepted my absence of rule without question. Yet I wonder ...! Perhaps the love of freedom that I gave them will make them critical now. I know that they gradually developed a keen sense of justice. It was just a fortnight ago that Peter Shaw was reported to me as a slayer of young birds. I formed a jury with Jim Jackson as foreman, and they called for witnesses.

"Gentlemen of the jury, your verdict?" I said.

Jim stood up.

"Accused is acquitted ... only one witness!"

I used to see them weigh my actions critically, and I had to be very particular not to show any sign of favouritism--a difficult task, for a dominie is bound to like some bairns better than others. Will they apply this method to Macdonald? I rather think he will beat it out of them. He is the type of dominie that stands for Authority with the capital A. His whole bearing shouts: "I am the Law. What I say is right and not to be questioned."

My poor bairns!

II.

I went to Richmond to-day, hired a skiff, and rowed up to Teddington. I tied the painter to a tuft of grass on the bank and lazed in the sunshine. For a time I watched the boats go by, and I smiled at the windmill rowing of a boatload of young Italians. Then a gilded youth went by feathering beautifully ... and I smiled again, for the Italians seemed to be getting ever so much more fun out of their rowing than this artist got.

By and by the passers-by wearied me, and I thought of my village up north. The kirk would be in. Macdonald would probably be there, and the bairns would be glancing at him sidelong, while I, the failure, lay in a boat among strangers. I began to indulge in the luxury of self-pity; feeling oneself a martyr is not altogether an unpleasant sensation.

I turned my face to the bank and thought of what had taken place. The villagers accused me of wasting their children's time, but when I asked them what they would have me make their children do they were unable to answer clearly.

"Goad!" said Peter Steel the roadman, "a laddie needs to ken hoo to read and write and add up a bit sum."

"Just so," I said. "When you go home to-night just try to help your Jim with his algebra, will you? I'll give you five pounds if you can beat him at arithmetic."

"Aw'm no sayin' that he doesna ken his work," he protested, "but Aw want to ken what's the use o' a' this waste o' time pluckin' flowers and drawin' hooses. You just let the bairns play themsells."

"That's what childhood is for," I explained, "for playing and playing again. In most schools the children work until they tire, and then they play. My system is the reverse; they play until they are tired of play and then they work ... ask for work."

I know that the villagers will never understand what I was trying to do. My neighbour, Lawson of Rinsley School, had a glimmering of my ideal.

"I see your point," he said, "but the fault of the system is this: you are not preparing these children to meet the difficulties of life. In your school they choose their pet subjects, but in a factory or an office they've got to do work that they may hate. I say that your kids will fail."

"You aren't teaching them character," he added.

Lawson's criticism has made me think hard. I grant that I am not an efficient producer of wage-slaves. The first attribute of a slave is submission; he must never question. Macdonald is the true wage-slave producer. He sets up authority to destroy criticism, and the children naturally accept their later slavery without question. Macdonald is the ideal teacher for the reactionists and the profiteers.

Will my bairns shirk the difficulties of life? There is Dan MacInch. He shirked algebra; he told me frankly that he didn't like it. I said nothing, and I allowed him to read while the others were working algebraical problems. In less than a week he came to me. "Please, sir, give me some algebra for home," he said, and in three weeks he was as good as any of them. I hold that freedom does not encourage the shirking of difficulties. I found that my bairns loved them. Some of them delighted in making them. Jim Jackson would invent the most formidable sums and spend hours trying to solve them.

Of course there were aversions. Jim hated singing and grammar. Why should I force him to take an interest in them? No one forces me to take an interest in card-playing ... my pet aversion, or in horse-racing.

Freedom allows a child to develop its own personality. If Jim Jackson, after being with me for two years, goes into an office and shirks all unpleasant duties, I hold that Jim is naturally devoid of grit. I allowed him to develop his own personality and if he fails in life his personality is manifestly weak. If Macdonald can turn out a better worker than I can ... and I deny that there is any evidence that he can ... I contend that he has done so at the expense of a boy's individuality. He has forced something from without on the boy. That's not education. The word derives from the Latin "to lead forth." Macdonald would have made Jim Jackson a warped youth; he would have Macdonaldised him. I took the other way. I said to myself: "This chap has something bright in him. What is it?" I offered him freedom and he showed me what he was--a good-natured clever laddie with a delightful sense of the comic. I think that his line is humour; more than once have I told him that he has the makings of a great comedian in him. I said this to Lawson and he scoffed.

"Good Lord!" he cried, "what a mission to have in life!"

"Better an excellent Little Tich," I replied, "than an average coal-heaver. To amuse humanity is a great mission, Lawson."

There was wee Doris Slater, the daughter of people who lived in a caravan. That child moved like a goddess. I think that if Pavlova saw Doris she would beg her mother to allow the child to become a dancer. Macdonald would try to make Doris a typist, I fancy, and pride himself on the fact that he had improved her social position. I would have Doris a dancer, for she looks like being fit to become a very great artist. Music moves her to unconscious ecstatic grace in movement.

I want education to guide a child into finding out what best it can do. At present our schools provide for the average child ... and heaven only knows how many geniuses have been destroyed by stupid coercion. I want education to set out deliberately to catch genius in the bud. And what discovers genius cannot be bad for the children who have no genius.

I want education to produce the best that is in a child. That is the only way to improve the world. The naked truth is that we grown-ups have failed to make the world better than the gigantic slum it is, and when we pretend to know how a child should be brought up we are being merely fatuous. We must hand on what we have learned to the children, but we must do it without comment. We must not say: "This is right," because we don't know what is right: we must not say: "This is wrong," because we don't know what is wrong. The most we should do is to tell a child our experience. When I caught my boys smoking I did not say: "This is wrong"; I merely said: "Doctors say that cigarettes are bad for a boy's health. They are the specialists in health; you and I don't know anything about it."

When I tell a boy that a light should not be taken near to petrol I am handing on bitter experience of my own, but when I say that he must know the chief dates of history by Monday morning I am doing an absolutely defenceless thing, for no one can prove by experience that a knowledge of dates is a good thing. Macdonald would say: "Quite so, but could you prove that it is a bad thing?" I would reply that I could prove it is a senseless thing; moreover education should not aim at giving children things that do not do them harm. I don't suppose that it would do me any harm to learn up the proper names in the Bible beginning with Adam. The point is would it do me any good?

I once had a discussion with Macdonald on Socialism. He accused me of attempting to force humanity to be of a pattern.

"Socialism kills individualism," he said.

I smile to think that the Conservative Macdonald is trying to mould children to a pattern, while I, a Socialist, insist on each child's being allowed to develop its own separate individuality.

The Socialist would appear to be the keenest individualist in the world, for it is from the heretical section of society that the demand for freedom in education is coming.

* * *

To-day I visited Watterson, an old college friend of mine. He is now in Harley Street, and is fast becoming famous as a specialist in nervous disorders.

"Your nerves are all to pot," he said; "what have you been doing with yourself?"

I told him my recent history.

"But, Good Lord!" he cried, "how did you manage to find any worry in a village?"

I tried to explain. Living in a village narrows one; the outside world is gradually forgotten, and the opinions of ignoramuses gradually come to matter. I found myself beginning to worry over the adverse criticisms of villagers who could not read nor write.

"You've got neurasthenia," said Watterson; "what you want to do is to settle down on a farm for six months; live in the open air and do nothing strenuous. Don't try to think, and for God's sake don't worry. Read _John Bull_ and _The Pink 'Un_, and chuck all the weekly intellectual reviews. And ... most important of all, fall in love with a rosy-cheeked daughter of the soil."

I have written to Frank Thomson, the farmer of Eagleshowe, asking if he still wants a cattleman. His last man was conscripted, and if the job is still vacant Frank will give it to me.

To-night I sit chuckling. The idea of a dismissed dominie's returning to a village to feed cattle is rich. The village will extract much amusement out of it. I imagine Peter Mitchell looking over the dyke and crying: "Weel, dominie, and how is the experiment in eddication gettin' on?"

* * *

I sit at a bright peat fire in Frank Thomson's bothy. I arrived at three o'clock and no bairn was about the station. I was glad, for I did not want to meet anyone. There was a queer feeling of shame in returning; I feared to meet anyone's glance. To return a few days after an affecting farewell is the last word in anticlimax; it is so horribly undramatic a thing to do. I wish that Lazarus had kept a diary after his resurrection; I fancy that quite a few people resented his return.

I cannot write more to-night; I am tired out. The most tiring thing in the world is to rise in one place and go to bed in another.

* * *

I was going out to fetch the cows this afternoon when I espied three girls in white pinafores at the top of the field. They waved their hands and ran down to meet me.

"We'll help you to take in the cows," cried Janet. They accepted my return without even the slightest curiosity, and I was glad.

"Righto!" I said, "but wait a bit. I want to sketch the farm first."

I sat down on the bank and the three settled themselves round me.

"Please, sir," said Ellen, "Mr. Macdonald's a nice man."

I did not want to discuss Macdonald with my bairns, and I sketched in silence. I think they forgot all about my presence after that; in the old days they used to talk to each other as if I weren't there. Once they discussed likely sweethearts in the village for me, and I am sure they forgot that I was there.

"He's nice to the lassies, Ellen," said Jean, "but not to the boys."

"What did he strap Jim Jackson for?" asked Ellen.

"Aw dinna ken," said Janet, "but he was needin' the strap. Jim Jackson's a cheeky wee thing."

"Eh!" said Jean, "haven't we to sit awful quiet, Jan?"

"Weel," said Janet nodding her head sagely, "and so ye shud sit quiet in the schule. Ye'll no be learning yer lessons if ye speak."

I went on sketching.

Janet is already being Macdonaldised. She accepts his authority without question. Ellen and Jean are critical as yet, but in a week both will have adapted themselves to the machine.

They wandered off to pluck flowers. I finished my sketch and hailed them. Then they came to me and took my arms and we took the cows home.

In the evening I was mucking out the byre when Jim Jackson came for his milk.

"Good morrow, sir," I called from the byre door, "you didn't happen to see Mr. Thomson's elephant as you came up the road?"

He looked interested.

"Elephant?" he asked brightly.

"Yes. The white one; strayed away this afternoon from the chicken coop. Have you seen it?"

"No," he said, "not the white one, but the grey one and the tiger are sitting at the dyke-side down at the second gate. I gave the tiger a turnip when I passed it."

"Good!" I cried, "always be kind to animals."