Part 6
"Well, Macdonald, your ways are not my ways, and candidly I wouldn't teach quite a lot of the stuff you mean to teach. Grammar for instance. What's the use of knowing the parts of a sentence? I don't suppose that Shakespeare knew them. If education is meant to make people think, your Evening School would be much better employed reading books. If you read a lot your grammar takes care of itself.
"The Stuart Period is all right if you don't emphasise the importance of battles and plots. I haven't the faintest notion whether Cromwell won the battle of Marston Moor or lost it, but I have a fair idea of what the constitutional battle meant to England. The political war was over before the first shot was fired; the Civil War was a religious war. If I were you I should take the broad principles of the whole thing and skip all the battles and plots and executions.
"As for the British Colonies and their agriculture you can turn emigration officer if you fancy the job. The idea is good enough. My own personal predilection in geography is the problem of race. I used to tell my pupils about the different 'niggers' I met at the university, and of the detestable attitude of the colonials to these men."
Macdonald shook his head.
"No, no," he said, "a black man isn't as good as a white man."
So we went off at a tangent. I told him that personally I had not enough knowledge of black men to lay down the law about them, but I handed him a very suggestive article in this week's _New Age_ on the subject. The writer's theory is that in India black men are ostracised merely because they are a subject race, and he points out that in Germany and France the coloured man is treated as an equal. When I was told by a friend that the natives of India despised Keir Hardie because he carried his own bag off the vessel when he arrived in India I realised that the colour question was too complicated for me to settle. I have a sneaking suspicion that the coloured man is maligned; the average Anglo-Indian is so stupid in his attitude to most things that I can scarcely suspect him of being wise in his attitude to the native. I regret very much that I had not the moral courage to chum up with the coloured man at the university: prejudices leave one after one has left the university.
I wish I knew what Modern Geography means. A few years ago the geography lesson was placed in the hands of the science teacher in our higher grade schools, and the educational papers commenced to talk of isotherms. I have never discovered what an isotherm is; I came very near to discovering once; I asked Dickson, a man of science, what they were, but a girl smiled to me before he got well into the subject (we were in a café), and I never discovered what an isotherm was.
The old-fashioned geography wasn't a bad thing in its way. You got to know where places were, and your newspaper became intelligible. It is true that you wasted many an hour memorising stuff that was of no great importance. I recollect learning that Hexham was noted for hats and gloves. I stopped there once when I was motor-cycling. I asked an aged inhabitant what his town was noted for.
"When I coom to think of it," he said as he scratched his head, "the North Eastern Railway passes through it."
But the old geography familiarised you with the look of the map. Where it failed was in the appeal to the imagination. You learned a lot of facts but you never asked why. I should imagine that the new geography may deal with reasons why; it may enquire into racial differences; it may ask why London is situated where it is, why New York grew so big.
For weeks before I left my school my geography lesson consisted of readings from Foster Fraser's _The Real Siberia_. I began to feel at home in Siberia, and what had been a large ugly chunk of pink on the map of Asia became a real place. There is a scarcity of books of this kind. Every school should have a book on every country written in Fraser's manner. I don't say that Fraser sees very deeply into the life of the Russian. I am quite content with his delightful stories of wayside stations and dirty peasants. He paints the place as it is; if I want to know what the philosophy of the Russian is I can take up Tolstoy or Dostoeivsky or Maxim Gorki.
To return to isotherms ... well, no, I think I'll get to bed instead.
* * *
I was down in the village this morning. A motor-car came up, and two ladies and a gentleman alighted.
"Where is the village school?" asked the gentleman, and I pointed to the ugly pile.
"We are Americans," he drawled in unrequired explanation, "and we've come all the way from Leeds to see the great experiment."
"Yes," said one of the ladies--the pretty one--"we are dying to see the paradise of _A Dominie's Log_. Is it so very wonderful?"
"Marvellous!" I cried. "But the Dominie is a funny sort of chap, sensitive and very shy. You mustn't give him a hint that you know anything about his book; simply say that you want to see a Scots school at work."
They thanked me, and set off for the school.
I loafed about until they returned.
"Well?" I said, "what do you think of it?"
"The fellow is an impostor!" said the man indignantly. "I expected to see them all out of doors chewing gum and sweets, and--"
"There wasn't a chin moving in the whole crowd!" cried the young lady.
"The book was a parcel of lies," said the other lady, "and when I next want a dollar's worth of fiction I reckon I'll plump for Hall Caine or Robert Chambers. The man wouldn't speak."
"I mentioned Dewey's _Schools of To-Day_," said the man, "and he stared at me as if I were talking Greek."
I directed them to the village inn for lunch, and I walked up the brae chuckling.
I had had my dinner, and was having a smoke in the bothy when I heard the American's voice: "We want to see the dominie!" Margaret came to the door, and I walked out into the yard. The trio gasped when they saw me; then the man placed his arms akimbo and looked at me.
"Well I'm damned!" he said with vehemence.
"Not so bad as that," I said with a grin, "_had_ is a better word." Then they all began to talk at once.
He explained that he was a lawyer from Baltimore: I told him that his concern about the absence of chewing-gum had led me to conjecture that he manufactured that substance. This seemed to tickle him and he made a note of it.
"Be careful!" smiled the pretty lady--his daughter--, "he'll hand over his notes to the newspaper man when he goes back home."
The lawyer knew something about education, and he told me many things about the new education of America; he was one of the directors of a modern school in his own county.
"Come over to the States," he said with eagerness; "we want men of your ideas over there. I reckon that you and the new schools there don't differ at all."
I gave him my impressions of the American schools described by Dewey in his book.
"It seems to me," I said, "that these schools over-emphasise the 'learn by doing' business. Almost every modern reformer in education talks of 'child processes'; the kindergarten idea is carried all the way. Children are encouraged to shape things with their hands."
"Sure," he said, "but that's only a preliminary to shaping things with their heads."
"I'm not so sure that the one naturally leads to the other," I went on. "Learning by doing is a fine thing, but when little Willie asks why rabbits have white tails the learning by doing business breaks down. In America you have workshops where boys mould metal; you have school farms. But I hold that a child can have all that for years and yet be badly educated."
He looked amazed.
"But I thought that was your line," he said with puzzled expression, "Montessori, and all that kind of thing!"
"I don't know what Montessorianism is," I said; "I have forgotten everything I ever read about Froebel and Pestalozzi. All I know is that reformers want the child to follow its own processes--whatever that phrase may mean. I heartily agree with them when they say that the child should choose its own line, and should discover knowledge for itself. But my point is that a boy may act every incident in history, for instance, and never realise what history means. I can't see the educational value of children acting the incident of Alfred and the burnt cakes."
"Ah! but isn't self-expression a great thing?"
"It is," I answered, "but the actor doesn't express himself. Irving expressed himself ... and the result was that Shakespeare was Irvingised. A school pageant of the accession of Henry IV. may be a fine spectacle, but it is emphasising all the stuff that doesn't matter a damn in history."
"But," he protested, "it is the stuff that matters to children. You forget that a child isn't a little adult."
"This brings us to the vexed question of the coming in of the adult," I said. "You and I agree that the adult should interfere as little as possible; but the adult will come in in spite of us. Leave children to themselves and they express their personalities the livelong day. Every game is an expression of individuality. The adult steps in and says 'We must guide these children,' and he takes their attention from playing houses to playing scenes from history. And I want to know the educational value of it all."
"It is like travel," he said. "When you travel places become real to you, and when you travel back into mediæval times the whole thing becomes real to you."
"I see your point," I said, "and in a manner I agree with you. But why select pageants? You will agree with me when I say that the condition of the people in feudal times is of far greater importance than the display of a Henry."
"Certainly, I do."
"And the things of real importance in history are incapable of being dramatised. You can make a modern school act the Signing of Magna Charta, but the children won't understand the meaning of Magna Charta any the better. You can't dramatise the Enclosure of the Public Lands in Tudor Times; you can't dramatise the John Ball insurrection; all the acting in the world won't help you to understand the Puritan Revolution."
"You are thinking of children as little adults," he said.
"But they _are_ little adults! Every game is an imitation of adult processes; the ring games down at the school there nearly all deal with love and matrimony; the girls make houses and take in lodgers. And if you persuade them to act the part of King Alfred you are encouraging them to be little adults. They are children when they cry and run and jump; whenever they reason they reason as adults. They are very often in the company of adults ... and that's one of the reasons why you cannot trust what are called child processes. Child processes naturally induce a child to make a row ... and daddy won't put up with a row. The child cannot escape being a little adult. It's all very well for a Rousseau to deal abstractly with child psychology. I am not Rousseau, and I tackle the lesser problem of adult psychology. The problem before me is--or rather was--painfully concrete. I set out to counteract the adult influence of the home. I saw Peter MacMannish shy divots at the Radical candidate because Peter's father was a Tory; I saw Lizzie Peters put out her tongue at the local Christabel Pankhurst because Lizzie's mother had said forcibly that woman's place is the home."
"I see," said the American thoughtfully, "you used your adult personality on the ground that it was the lesser of two evils? But don't you think that that was a mistake? Was the freedom of behaviour and criticism you allowed them not the best antidote to home prejudices?"
"If the children had not been going to homes at night I should have trusted to freedom alone. As it was the poor bairns were between two fires. I gave them freedom ... and their parents cursed me. One woman sent a verbal message to me to the effect that I was an idiot; one bright little lassie came to me one day with the words of the woman next door, 'It's just waste o' time attendin' that schule.' Do you imagine that all the child processes in the world could save a child from an environment like that?"
When the American departed he held out his hand.
"I came to see a reformer of child education," he said with a smile, "and I discover that you aren't a reformer of child education at all; your job in life is to run a school for parents."
IX.
The school is closed for the Autumn Holiday ... commonly called the Tattie Holiday here. Macdonald has gone off to Glasgow. The bigger boys and girls are gathering potatoes in the fields here, and I am driving the tattie digger. At dinnertime they come to the bothy and eat their bread; Mrs. Thomson gives them soup and coffee in the kitchen, but they bring their bowls over to my bothy. Much of the fun has gone out of them; the constant bending makes them very tired, and they drop off to sleep very easily. Janet and Ellen lay in my bed all dinnertime yesterday and slept. Occasionally a boy will sing a song that always crops up at tattie time:--
O! I'm blyde I'm at the tatties, I'm blyde I'm at the tatties, I'm blyde I'm at the tatties, Wi' auchteenpence a day!
Blyde means glad, but there is but little gladness in the band that trudges up the rigs in the morning twilight.
Jim Jackson is sometimes in good form. He has taken on the swaying gait of the young ploughman; he hasn't got the pockets that are situated in the front of the trousers, but he shoves his hands down the inside instead, and he says: "Ma Goad, you lads, hurry up afore the Boss comes roond wi' the digger again!" They call me the Boss now; Macdonald is the Mester. They seldom mention the school at all; if they do it is to recall some incident that happened in my time. But already the memory of our happy days is becoming hazy; life is too interesting for children to recall memories.
To-day Jim sat and gazed absently at my bothy fire.
"Now, bairns," I said, "Jim's got an idea. Cough it up, Jim."
"Aw was thinkin' o' the tattie-digger," he said slowly; "it seems an awfu' roondaboot wye o' liftin' tatties. Could we no invent a digger that wud hoal the tatties and gaither them at the same time?"
"Laziness is the mother of invention," I remarked.
"But ... cud a machine no be invented?" he asked.
"You could have a sort o' basket," he went on, "that ceppit a' the tatties as they were thrown oot."
"Dinna haver!" interjected Janet, "it wud cep a' the stanes at the same time."
"If spuds were made o' steel," said Jim, "ye cud draw them oot wi' a magnet."
"And if the sky fell you would catch larks," said I.
"If the sea dried up!" said Ellen, and Jim instantly forgot his patent tattie-digger.
"Crivens! What a fine essay that wud mak! Why did ye no gie us that for an essay?"
"Take it on now," I suggested, but he ignored the suggestion.
"The Mester gae me a book to read in the holidays," he said irrelevantly, "and it's called _Self Help_; it's a' aboot laddies that got on weel."
I ceased to listen to their talk. I thought of Samuel Smiles and his Victorian ideals. The book is iniquitous nowadays; it is the Bible of the individualist. Get on! I'm afraid that Smiles' idea of getting on is still popular in Scotland; the country might well adapt the popular song "Get Out and Get Under," changing it to "Get On or Get Under" and making it the national anthem of Scotland.
I once compared _Self Help_ with Lorimer's _Letters of a Self-made Merchant to his Son_, and was struck by the similarity of the ideals. Lorimer's book is an Americanised _Self-help_. Smiles is slightly better. With him getting on means more than the amassing of wealth; it means gaining position, which being interpreted means returning to your native village with prosperous rotundity and a gold chain.
Lorimer has no special interest in gold chains and symbols of wealth; he doesn't care a button for position. He preaches efficiency and power; to him the greatest achievement in life appears to be the packing of the maximum of pig into the minimum of tin in the minimum of time. A business friend of mine tells me that it is the greatest book America has produced. Evidently it didn't require the Lusitania incident to prove that America is a long-suffering nation.
Jim was back to the subject of inventions again.
"Aw read in a paper that there's a fortune waitin' for the man that can invent something to haud breeks up instead o' gallis's."
"Ye cud hae buttons on the foot o' yer sark," suggested Janet.
"Aye," said Jim scornfully, "and if a button cam off what wud haud up yer breeks?"
"Public opinion ... in this righteous village," I murmured; "it's almost strong enough to hold up any pair of breeks, Jim," but no one understood me.
"Ye cud hae sticks up the side," said Ellen, "and yer breeks wud stand up like fisherman's boots."
"And if ye wanted to bend?" demanded Jim.
Ellen shoved out her tongue at him.
"Ye never said onything aboot bendin', and ye dinna need to bend onywye."
"What aboot when ye're gaitherin' tatties?" crowed Jim.
Ellen tossed her head.
"Aw wasna thinkin' o' the sort o' man that gaithers tatties; Aw was thinkin' o' gentlemen's breeks ... the kind o' breeks ye'll never hae, Jim Jackson."
Jim sighed and gave me a look which I took to mean: "Women are impossible when it comes to arguing." He thought for a time; then he looked up with twinkling eyes.
"Aw've got it!"
"Well?"
"Do away wi' breeks a'-the-gether, and wear kilts."
"And what will ye do wi' yer hands?" put in Fred Findlay; "there's nae pooches in a kilt."
"Goad, Fred," said Jim, "Aw never thocht o' that; we'll just hae to wrastle on wi' oor breeks and oor gallis's."
"Ye cud wear a belt," suggested Janet.
"And gie mysel' pewmonia! No likely!"
"It's no pewmonia that ye get wearin' a belt," said Janet, "it's a pendicitis."
"G'wa, lassie, what do you ken aboot breeks onywye?"
"Aw ken mair than you do, Jim Jackson. For wan thing Aw ken that it's no a subject ye shud speak aboot afore lassies. Come on, Ellen, we'll go ootside; the conversation's no proper."
Jim glanced at me doubtfully.
"It was her that said that breeks cud be buttoned to yer sark!" he exclaimed. He jumped up and hastened to the door.
"Janet Broon," I heard him cry, "dinna you speak aboot sarks to me again; sarks is no a proper subject o' conversation for young laddies."
I think it was Fletcher of Saltoun who said that he didn't care who made a nation's laws if he made its ballads. To-night I feel that I don't care if Macdonald hears the bairns' opinion of Charles I. so long as I hear their opinion of sarks and breeks.
* * *
A Trade Union official delivered a lecture on Labour Aspirations in the village hall to-night. I was sadly disappointed. The man tried to make out that the interests of Capital and Labour are similar.
"We are not out to abolish the capitalist," he said; "all we want is a say in the workshop management. We have nothing to do with the way the employer conducts his business; we want to mind our own business. We want to see men paid a living wage; we want to see...." I ceased to be interested in what the man wanted to see. I fancy that he requires to see a devil of a lot before he is capable of guiding the Trade Unions.
Why are these so-called leaders so poor in intellect? Why are they so fearful of alienating the good opinion of the capitalist? If the Trade Union has any goal at all it surely is the abolition of the capitalist. The leaders crawl to the feet of capital and cry: "For the Lord's sake listen to us! We won't ask much; we won't offend you in the least. We merely want to ask very deferentially that you will see that there is no unemployment after the war. We beseech you to let our stewards have a little say ... a very little say ... in the management of the shops. Take your Rent and Interest and Profit as usual; as usual we'll be quite content with what is left over."
If a bull had intelligence he would not allow himself to be led to the shambles. If the Trade Unions had intelligence they would not allow their paid leaders to lead them to the altar.
The lecturer had evidently been told that I was the only Socialist in the village, and he called upon me to say a few words. I have no doubt that later he regretted calling upon me.
"The speaker is modest in his demands," I said. "He has told you what Labour is asking for, and now I'll tell you what I think Labour _should_ ask for. Labour's chief aim should be to make the Trade Unions blackleg proof. When they have roped in all the workers they will be able to command anything they like. They should then go to the State and say: 'We want to join forces with the State. Capitalism is un-Christlike, and wasteful, and we must destroy it. We propose to take over the whole concern ourselves; we propose to abolish Rent, Interest, and Profit ... and Wagery. At present we are selling our labour to the highest bidder, and in the process we are selling our souls along with our bodies. Each industry will conduct its own business, not for profit but for social service; no shareholders will live on our labour; we shall give our members pay instead of wages.'
"Gentlemen, I call an organisation of this kind a Guild, but you can call it what you like. It is the only organisation that will abolish wagery, that is, will prohibit labour from being a commodity obeying the Laws of Supply and Demand."
"What about nationalisation of land and mines and railways?" said the official. "These are on our programme, and they will revolutionise industry."
"Hand over the mines and the railways to the State," I said, "and you have State capitalism. You won't abolish wages; you'll buy the mines and railways, and you'll draw your wages from what is left over after the interest due to the late shareholders is paid."
"Ah!" he interrupted, "you want to confiscate?"
"If necessary, certainly. We have conscripted life because the State required men to give their lives; why not conscript wealth in the same way? The State requires the wealth of the rich, not only for the purpose of paying for the war; it requires it to pay for the peace to come."
"Control of industry by producers has always failed," he said. "_The New Statesman_ Supplement on the Control of Industry proved this conclusively."
"Of course it has always failed," I said. "Flying always failed, but the aeroplane experimenters did not sit down and wail: 'It's absolutely no good; men have always failed to fly.' If the Railway Trade Union got the offer of the whole railway system to-morrow to run as it pleased it would make a bonny hash of it. Why? Because management is a skilled business. But if the salaried railway officials had the vision to see that their interests lay with the men instead of with the masters, then you would find a difference. The Trade Unions without the salaried officials are useless.
"I read the Supplement you mention. One of the causes of failure given was that the producers had an interest in the plant and they were always unwilling to scrap machinery in order to introduce better machines."
"That's quite true," he nodded.
"Is it? Why does Bruce the linen manufacturer in the neighbouring town here scrap comparatively new machinery when better inventions come out? He has an interest in the plant, hasn't he? Why then does he not stick to the old methods?"
"He knows that he will gain in the end."
"Exactly. And a society of workers running their own business would not have the gumption to see that the new methods would be a gain in the end?"
"The fact remains that they have tried and failed," he said.