Part 1

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A DOMINIE'S LOG

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT.

"A Dominie's Log" was directly due to the Scottish code of Education, by which it is forbidden to enter general reflections or opinions in the official log-book.

Requiring a safety-valve, a young Dominie decides to keep a private log-book. In it he jots down the troubles and comedies of the day's work. Sometimes he startles even his own bairns by his unconventionality.

There is a lot in Education that he does not understand. The one thing, however, that he does comprehend is the Child Mind, and he possesses the saving quality of humour.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

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

A DOMINIE'S LOG

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._

AS A BOY I ATTENDED A VILLAGE SCHOOL WHERE THE BAIRNS CHATTERED AND WERE HAPPY. I TRACE MY LOVE OF FREEDOM TO MY FREE LIFE THERE, AND I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY FORMER DOMINIE, MY FATHER.

PREFACE.

The first four installments of this Log were published in the _Educational News_, under the acting editorship of Mr. Alexander Sivewright, who was very anxious to publish the Log in full, but apparently public opinion on the subject of the indiscriminate kissing of girls forced him to hold up the remainder.

Then teachers began to write me letters. Some of them were very complimentary; others weren't. These letters worried me, for I couldn't quite determine whether I was a lunatic or a genius. Then an unknown lady sent me a tract.

The title of the tract was: "The Sin That Found Him Out." The hero was a boy called Willie. He never told a lie, and when other boys smote him he turned the other cheek and prayed for them. "Life to him was one long prayer," said the tract. Then troubles came. He grew up and his father took to drink. His elder brother had a disagreement with the local police about his whereabouts on the night of a certain robbery, and was decidedly unconvincing. Willie stepped in and took all the blame.

The next chapter takes Willie as a private to the fields of Flanders, and the penultimate chapter sees him a major-general. The last chapter contains the moral, but what the moral is I cannot well make out. In fact I don't know whether the title refers to Willie or his transgressing brother, but I feel that somewhere in that pamphlet there is a lesson for me.

Before the tract arrived I thought of publishing the Log as a brilliant treatise on education. Its arrival altered all my values. I then knew that I was the educational equivalent of the "awful example" who sits on the platform at temperance meetings, and with great humility I besought Mr. Herbert Jenkins to publish my Log as a terrible warning to my fellow sinners.

A. S. N.

1915.

A DOMINIE'S LOG

I.

"No reflections or opinions of a general character are to be entered in the log-book."--Thus the Scotch Code.

I have resolved to keep a private log of my own. In the regulation volume I shall write down all the futile never-to-be-seen piffle about Mary Brown's being laid up with the measles, and about my anxiety lest it should spread. (Incidentally, my anxiety is real; I do not want the school to be closed; I want a summer holiday undocked of any days.) In my private log I shall write down my thoughts on education. I think they will be mostly original; there has been no real authority on education, and I do not know of any book from which I can crib.

To-night after my bairns had gone away, I sat down on a desk and thought. What does it all mean? What am I trying to do? These boys are going out to the fields to plough; these girls are going to farms as servants. If I live long enough the new generation will be bringing notes of the plese-excuss-james-as-I-was-washing type ... and the parents who will write them went out at that door five minutes ago. I can teach them to read, and they will read serials in the drivelling weeklies; I can teach them to write, and they will write pathetic notes to me by and bye; I can teach them to count, and they will never count more than the miserable sum they receive as a weekly wage. The "Three R's" spell futility.

But what of the rest? Can I teach them drawing? I cannot. I can help a boy with a natural talent to improve his work, but of what avail is it? In their future homes they will hang up the same old prints--vile things given away with a pound of tea. I can teach them to sing, but what will they sing?... the _Tipperary_ of their day.

My work is hopeless, for education should aim at bringing up a new generation that will be better than the old. The present system is to produce the same kind of man as we see to-day. And how hopeless he is. When first I saw Houndsditch, I said aloud: "We have had education for generations ... and yet we have this." Yes, my work is hopeless. What is the use of the Three R's, of Woodwork, of Drawing, of Geography, if Houndsditch is to remain? What is the use of anything?

* * *

I smile as I re-read the words I wrote yesterday, for to-day I feel that hope has not left me. But I am not any more hopeful about the three R's and the others. I am hopeful because I have found a solution. I shall henceforth try to make my bairns realise. Yes, realise is the word. Realise what? To tell the truth, I have some difficulty in saying. I think I want to make them realise what life means. Yes, I want to give them, or rather help them to find an attitude. Most of the stuff I teach them will be forgotten in a year or two, but an attitude remains with one throughout life. I want these boys and girls to acquire the habit of looking honestly at life.

Ah! I wonder if I look honestly at life myself! Am I not a very one-sided man? Am I not a Socialist, a doubter, a heretic? Am I not biassed when I judge men like the Cecils and the Harmsworths? I admit it. I am a partisan, and yet I try to look at life honestly. I try ... and that is the main point. I do not think that I have any of the current superstitions about morality and religion and art. I try to forget names; I try to get at essentials, at truth. The fathers of my bairns are, I think, interested in names. I wonder how many of them have sat down saying: "I must examine myself, so that I may find out what manner of man I am." I hold that self-knowledge must come before all things. When one has stripped off all the conventions, and superstitions, and hypocrisies, then one is educated.

* * *

These bairns of mine will never know how to find truth; they will merely read the newspapers when they grow up. They will wave their hats to the King, but kingship will be but a word to them; they will shout when a lawyer from the south wins the local seat, but they will not understand the meaning of economics; they will dust their old silk hats and march to the sacrament, but they will not realise what religion means.

I find that I am becoming pessimistic again, and I did feel hopeful when I began to write. I _should_ feel hopeful, for I am resolved to find another meaning in education. What was it?... Ah, yes, I am to help them to find an attitude.

* * *

I have been thinking about discipline overnight. I have seen a headmaster who insisted on what he called perfect discipline. His bairns sat still all day. A movement foreshadowed the strap. Every child jumped up at the word of command. He had a very quiet life.

I must confess that I am an atrociously bad disciplinarian. To-day Violet Brown began to sing _Tipperary_ to herself when I was marking the registers. I looked up and said: "Why the happiness this morning, Violet?" and she blushed and grinned. I am a poor disciplinarian.

I find that normally I am very, very slack; I don't mind if they talk or not. Indeed, if the hum of conversation stops, I feel that something has happened and I invariably look towards the door to see whether an Inspector has arrived.

I find that I am almost a good disciplinarian when my liver is bad; I demand silence then ... but I fear I do not get it, and I generally laugh. The only discipline I ask for usually is the discipline that interest draws. If a boy whets his pencil while I am describing the events that led to the Great Rebellion, I sidetrack him on the topic of rabbits ... and I generally make him sit up. I know that I am teaching badly if the class is loafing, and I am honest enough in my saner moments not to blame the bairns.

I do not like strict discipline, for I do believe that a child should have as much freedom as possible. I want a bairn to be human, and I try to be human myself. I walk to school each morning with my briar between my lips, and if the fill is not smoked, I stand and watch the boys play. I would kiss my wife in my classroom, but ... I do not have a wife. A wee lassie stopped me on the way to school this morning, and she pushed a very sticky sweetie into my hand. I took my pipe from my mouth and ate the sweetie--and I asked for another; she was highly delighted.

Discipline, to me, means a pose on the part of the teacher. It makes him very remote; it lends him dignity. Dignity is a thing I abominate. I suppose the bishop is dignified because he wants to show that there is a real difference between his salaried self and the underpaid curate. Why should I be dignified before my bairns? Will they scorn me if I slide with them? (There was a dandy slide on the road to-day. I gave them half-an-hour's extra play this morning, and I slid all the time. My assistants are adepts at the game.)

But discipline is necessary; there are men known as Inspectors. And Johnny must be flogged if he does not attend to the lesson. He must know the rivers of Russia. After all, why should he? I don't know them, and I don't miss the knowledge. I couldn't tell you the capital of New Zealand ... is it Wellington? or Auckland? I don't know; all I know is that I could find out if I wanted to.

I do not blame Inspectors. Some of them are men with what I would call a vision. I had the Chief Inspector of the district in the other day, and I enjoyed his visit. He has a fine taste in poetry, and a sense of humour.

The Scotch Education Department is iniquitous because it is a department; a department cannot have a sense of humour. And it is humour that makes a man decent and kind and human.

If the Scotch Education Department were to die suddenly I should suddenly become a worse disciplinarian than I am now. If Willie did not like Woodwork, I should say to him: "All right, Willie. Go and do what you do like, but take my advice and do some work; you will enjoy your football all the better for it."

I believe in discipline, but it is self-discipline that I believe in. I think I can say that I never learned anything by being forced to learn it, but I may be wrong. I was forced to learn the Shorter Catechism, and to-day I hate the sight of it. I read the other day in Barrie's _Sentimental Tommy_ that its meaning comes to one long afterwards and at a time when one is most in need of it. I confess that the time has not come for me; it will never come, for I don't remember two lines of the Catechism.

It is a fallacy that the nastiest medicines are the most efficacious; Epsom Salts are not more beneficial than Syrup of Figs.

A thought!... If I believe in self-discipline, why not persuade Willie that Woodwork is good for him as a self-discipline? Because it isn't my job. If Willie dislikes chisels he will always dislike them. What I might do is this: tell him to persevere with his chisels so that he might cut himself badly. Then he might discover that his true vocation is bandaging, and straightway go in for medicine.

Would Willie run away and play at horses if I told him to do what he liked best? I do not think so. He likes school, and I think he likes me. I think he would try to please me if he could.

* * *

When I speak kindly to a bairn I sometimes ask myself what I mean (for I try to find out my motives). Do I want the child to think kindly of me? Do I try to be popular? Am I after the delightful joy of being loved? Am I merely being humanly brotherly and kind?

I have tried to analyse my motives, and I really think that there is little of each motive. I want to be loved; I want the bairn to think kindly of me. But in the main I think that my chief desire is to make the bairn happy. No man, no woman, has the right to make the skies cloudy for a bairn; it is the sin against the Holy Ghost.

I once had an experience in teaching. A boy was dour and unlovable and rebellious and disobedient. I tried all ways--I regret to say I tried the tawse. I was inexperienced at the time yet I hit upon the right way. One day I found he had a decided talent for drawing. I brought down some of my pen-and-ink sketches and showed him them. I gave him pictures to copy, and his interest in art grew. I won him over by interesting myself in him. He discovered that I was only human after all.

Only human!... when our scholars discover that we are only human, then they like us, and then they listen to us.

I see the fingers of my tawse hanging out of my desk. They seem to be two accusing fingers. My ideals are all right, but.... I whacked Tom Wilkie to-night. At three o'clock he bled Dave Tosh's nose, and because Dave was the smaller, I whacked Tom. Yet I did not feel angry; I regret to say that I whacked Tom because I could see that Dave expected me to do it, and I hate to disappoint a bairn. If Dave had been his size, I know that I should have ignored their battle.

* * *

I have not used the strap all this week, and if my liver keeps well, I hope to abolish it altogether.

To-day I have been thinking about punishment. What is the idea of punishment? A few months ago a poor devil of an engine-driver ran his express into a goods, and half-a-dozen people were killed. He got nine months. Why? Is his punishment meant to act as a deterrent? Will another driver say to himself: "By Jove, I'll better not wreck my train or I'll get nine months." Nine months is not punishment, but the lifelong thought: "I did it," is hell.

I am trying to think why I punished Lizzie Smith for talking last Friday. Bad habit, I expect. Yet it acted as a deterrent; it showed that I was in earnest about what I was saying--I was reading the war news from the _Scotsman_.

I am sorry that I punished her; it was weakness on my part, weakness and irritation. If she had no interest in the war, why should she pretend that she had? But no, I cannot have this. I must inculcate the idea of a community; the bairn must be told that others have rights. I often want to rise up and contradict the minister in kirk, but I don't; the people have rights; they do not come out to listen to me. If I offend against the community, the community will punish me with ostracism or bitterness. We have all a right to live our own lives, but in living them we must live in harmony with the community. Lizzie must be told that all the others like the war news, and that in talking she is annoying them. Yes, I must remember to emphasise continually the idea of a corporate life.

* * *

I see that it is only the weak man who requires a strap. Lord Kitchener could rule my school without a strap, but I am not Kitchener. Moreover, I am glad I'm not. I do not want to be what is called a strong man. John Gourlay, in _The House with the Green Shutters_ was strong enough to rule every school in Scotland with Sir John Struthers superadded; yet I do not want to be Gourlay. His son would have been a better teacher, for he was more human. Possibly Kitchener is very human; I do not know.

II.

I heard a blackie this morning as I went to school, and when I came near to the playground I heard the girls singing. And I realised that Lenten was come with love to Town.

The game was a jingaring, and Violet Brown was in the centre.

The wind and the wind and the wind blows high, The rain comes pattering from the sky. Violet Brown says she'll die For the lad with the rolling eye. She is handsome, she is pretty, She is the girl of the golden city; She is counted one, two, three, Oh! I wonder who he'll be. Willie Craig says he loves her....

My own early experiences told me that Willie wasn't far off. Yes, there he was at the same old game. When Vi entered the ring Willie began to hammer Geordie Steel with his bonnet. But I could see Violet watch him with a corner of her eye, and I am quite sure that she was aware that the exertion of hammering Geordie did not account for Willie's burning cheeks.

Then Katie Farmer entered the ring ... and Tom Dixon at once became the hammerer of Geordie.

Poor wee Geordie! I know that he loves Katie himself, and I know that between blows he is listening for the fatal "Tom Dixon says he loves her."

I re-arranged seats this morning, and Willie is now sitting behind his Vi, but Tom Dixon is not behind Katie. Poor despised Geordie is there, but I shall shift him to-morrow if he does not make the most of his chances.

* * *

This morning Geordie passed a note over to Katie, then he sat all in a tremble. I saw Katie read it ... and I saw her blush. I blew my nose violently, for I knew what was written on that sacred sheet; at least I thought I knew.... "Dear Katie, will you be my lass? I will have you if you will have me--Geordie."

At minutes I listened for the name when Katie went into the ring. It was "Tom Dixon" again. I blew my whistle and stopped the game.

At dinner-time I looked out at the window, and rejoiced to see poor Geordie hammering Tom Dixon. I opened the window and listened. Katie was in the ring again, and I almost shouted "Hurrah!" when I heard the words, "Geordie Steel says he loves her." But I placed Tom Dixon behind Katie in the afternoon; I felt that I had treated poor Tom with injustice.

To-night I tried to tackle Form 9b, but I could not concentrate. But it wasn't Violet and Katie that I was thinking of; I was thinking of the Violets and Katies I wrote "noties" to many years ago. I fear I am a bit of a sentimentalist, yet ... why the devil shouldn't I be?

* * *

I have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my Qualifying Class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village kirk. "And you must explain away any rise or fall," I said.

Margaret Steel had a huge drop one Sunday, and her explanation was "Special Collection for Missions." Next Sunday the congregation was abnormally large; Margaret wrote "Change of Minister."

Few bairns have a sense of humour; their's is a sense of fun. Make a noise like a duck and they will scream, but tell them your best joke and they will be bored to tears.

I try hard to cultivate their sense of humour and their imagination. In their composition I give them many autobiographies ... a tile hat, a penny, an old boot, a nose, a tooth. To-day I asked them to describe in the first person a snail's journey to the end of the road. Margaret Steel talked of her hundred mile crawl, and she noted the tall forests on each side of the road. "The grass would be trees to a snail," she explained.

Poor Margaret! When she is fourteen she will go out to the fields, and in three years she will be an ignorant country bumpkin. Our education system is futile because it does not go far enough. The State should see to it that each child has the best of chances. Margaret should be sent to a Secondary School and to a University free of charge. Her food and clothes and books and train fares should be free by right. The lassie has brains ... and that is argument enough.

Our rulers do realize to a slight extent the responsibility of the community to the child. It sends a doctor round to look at Margaret's teeth; it may feed her at school if she is starving; it compels her to go to school till she is fourteen. At the age of fourteen she is free to go to the devil--the factory or the herding.

But suppose she did go to a Secondary School. What then? Possibly she would become a Junior Student or a University Student. She would learn much, but would she think? I found that thinking was not encouraged at the university.

* * *

To-day I asked Senior I. to write up "A hen in the Kirk," and one or two attempts showed imagination.

Is it possible that I am overdoing the imagination business? Shall I produce men and women with more imagination than intellect? No, I do not think there is danger. The nation suffers from lack of imagination; few of us can imagine a better state of society, a fuller life.

Who are the men with great imagination?... Shelley, Blake, Browning, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Tolstoy. These men were not content with life as it was; they had ideals, and ideals are creatures of the imagination.

I once saw a book by, I think, Arnold Forster; a book that was meant to teach children the meaning of citizenship. If I remember aright it dealt with parliament and law, and local government.

Who was Arnold Forster? Why cannot our bairns have the best? Why tell them all the stale lies about democracy, the freedom of the individual, the justice of our laws? Are Forster's ideas of citizenship as great as the ideas of Plato, of More, of Morris, of Wells? I intend to make an abridgement of Plato's _Republic_, More's _Utopia_, William Morris's _News from Nowhere_, Bacon's _A New Atlantis_, H. G. Wells' _A Modern Utopia_, and _New Worlds for Old_.

Arnold Forster was with the majority. Nearly every day I quote to my bairns Ibsen's words from _An Enemy of the People_.... "The Majority _never_ has right on its side. _Never_ I say." Every lesson book shouts aloud the words: "The majority is always right."

Do I teach my bairns Socialism? I do not think so. Socialism means the owning of a State by the people of that State, and this State is not fit to own anything. For at present the State means the majority in Parliament, and that is composed of mediocre men. A State that takes up Home Rule while the slums of the East End exist is a State run by office boys for office boys ... to adapt Salisbury's description of a London daily. We could not have Socialism to-day; the nation is not ripe for it.

The Germans used to drink to "The Day"; every teacher in Britain should drink daily to "The Day" when there shall be no poor, when factory lasses will not rise at five and work till six. I know that I shall never see the day, but I shall tell my bairns that it is coming. I know that most of the seed will fall on stony ground, but a sower can but sow.

* * *

I have been image-breaking to-day, and I feel happy. It began with patent medicines, but how I got to them I cannot recollect. I remember commencing a lesson on George Washington. The word hatchet led naturally to Women's Suffrage; then ducks came up.... Heaven only knows how, and the word quack brought me to Beans for Bibulous Britons. I told how most of these medicines cost half a farthing to make, and I explained that the manufacturer was spending a good part of the shilling profit in advertising. Then I told of the utter waste of material and energy in advertising, and went on to thunder against the hideous yellow tyre signs on the roadside.

At dinner-time I read in my paper that some knight had received his knighthood because of his interest in the Territorial Movement. "Much more likely that he gave a few thousands to the party funds," I said to my wondering bairns. Then I cursed the cash values that attach to almost everything.