Part 3

I want to substitute kindness for the word chivalry. I want to tell my bairns that the only sin in the world is cruelty. I do not preach morality for I hardly know what morality is. I have no morals, I am an a-moralist, or should it be a non-moralist? I judge not, and I mean to school my bairns into judging not. Yet I am not being quite consistent. I do judge cruelty and uncharitableness; but I judge not those who do not act up to the accustomed code of morals. A code is always a temptation to a healthy person; it is like a window by a railway siding: it cries out: "Chuck a chunk of coal through me." Codes never make people moral; they merely make them hypocritical. I include the Scotch code.

* * *

Until lately I thought that drill was unnecessary for rural bairns. It was the chief inspector of the district who converted me. He pointed out that country children are clumsy and slack. "A countryman can heave a sack of potatoes on his back," he said, "but he has no agility, no grace of movement."

I agree with him now. I find that drill makes my bairns more graceful. But I am far from being pleased with any system that I know. I don't really care tuppence whether they are physically alert or not, but I want them to be graceful, if only from an artistic point of view. The system I really want to know is Eurhythmics. I recently read an illustrated article by (or on?) Jacques Dalcroze, the inventor of the method, and the founder of the Eurhythmics School near Dresden. The system is drill combined with music. The pupils walk and dance, and I expect, sit to music. The photographs were beautiful studies in grace; the school appears to be full of Pavlovas. I think I shall try to found a Eurhythmics system on the photographs. I cannot surely invent anything more graceless than "'Shun!"

Grace is almost totally absent from rural dances. The ploughman takes off his jacket, and sweats his roaring way through "The Flowers o' Edinburgh"; but the waltz has no attraction for him. Waltzing is a necessity in a rural scheme of education ... and, incidentally, in a Mayfair scheme of education, now that the "Bunny Hug" and the "Turkey Trot" and the "Tango" have come to these isles.

* * *

Robert Campbell left the school to-day. He had reached the age limit. He begins work tomorrow morning as a ploughman. And yesterday I wrote about introducing Eurhythmics! Robert's leaving brings me to earth with a flop. I am forced to look a grim fact in the face. Truly it is like a death; I stand by a new made grave, and I have no hope of a resurrection. Robert is dead.

Pessimism has hold of me to-night. I have tried to point the way to what I think best in life, tried to give Robert an ideal. Tomorrow he will be gathered to his fathers. He will take up the attitude of his neighbours: he will go to church, he will vote Radical or Tory, he will elect a farmer to the School Board, he will marry and live in a hovel. His master said to me recently: "Bairns are gettin' ower muckle eddication noo-a-days. What eddication does a laddie need to herd kye?"

Yes, I am as pessimistic as any Schopenhauer to-night, I cannot see the sun.

* * *

My pessimism has remained with me all day. I feel that I am merely pouring water into a sieve. I almost feel that to meddle with education is to begin at the wrong end. I may have an ideal, but I cannot carry it out because I am up against all the forces of society. Robert Campbell is damned, not because education is so very wrong, but because education is trying to adapt itself to commerce and economics and convention. I think I am right in holding that our Individualist, as opposed to a Socialist, system is to blame. "Every man for himself" is the most cursed saying that was ever said. If we are to allow an idle rich to waste millions yearly, if we are to allow profiteers to amass thousands at the expense of the slaving majority, what chance has poor Robert Campbell? I complete the saying--"and the Deil tak the henmost." Robert is the henmost.

O! the people are poor things. Democracy is the last futility. Yet I should not blame the people; they never get a chance. Our rulers are on the side of the profiteers, and the latter take very good care that Robert Campbell shall leave school when he is fourteen. It isn't that they want more cheap labour; they are afraid that if he is educated until he is nineteen he will be wise enough to say: "Why should I, a man made in the image of God, be forced to slave for gains that you will steal?"

Yet, the only way is to labour on, to strive to convey some idea of my ideal to my bairns. If every teacher in Scotland had the same ideal as I have I think that the fight would not be a long one. But how do I know that my ideal is the right one? I cannot say; I just _know_. Which, I admit, is a woman's reason.

* * *

I was re-reading _An Enemy of the People_ last night, and the thought suddenly came to me: "Would my bairns understand it?" This morning I cut out Bible instruction and read them the first act. I then questioned them, and found to my delight that they had grasped the theme. It was peculiarly satisfying to me to find that they recognized Dr. Stockmann as a better man than his grovelling brother Peter. If my bairns could realise the full significance of Ibsen's play, "The Day" would not be so far off as I am in the habit of thinking it is.

I must re-read Shaw's _Widowers' Houses_; I fancy that children might find much thought in it. It is one of his "Unpleasant Plays," but I see no reason for keeping the unlovely things from bairns. I do not believe in frightening them with tales of murder and ghosts. Every human being has something of the gruesome in his composition; the murder cases are the most popular readings in our press. I want to direct this innate desire for gruesome things to the realising of the most gruesome things in the world--the grinding of soul and body in order to gain profits, the misery of poverty and cold, the weariness of toil. If our press really wants to make its readers shudder, why does it not publish long accounts of infant mortality in the slums, of gin fed bairns, of back-doors used as fuel, of phthisical girls straining their eyes over seams? I know why the press ignores these things, the public does not want to think of them. If the public wanted such stories every capitalist owner of a newspaper would supply them, grudgingly, but with a stern resolve to get dividends. To-day the papers are mostly run for the rich and their parasites. The only way in which 'Enery Smith can get his photograph into the papers is by jumping on Mrs. 'Enery Smith until she expires. I wonder that no criminologist has tried to prove that publicity is the greatest incentive to crime.

When I read the daily papers to my bairns I try to tell them what is left out. "Humour at Bow Street," a heading will run. Ye Gods! Humour! I have as much humour as most men, but if anyone can find humour in the stupid remarks of a law-giver he must be a W. W. Jacobs, a Mark Twain, a George A. Birmingham, and a Stephen Leacock rolled into one ... with the Devil thrown in. Humour at Bow Street. I have been there. I have seen the poor Magdalenes and the pitiable Lazaruses shuffle in with terror in their eyes. I have seen the inflexible mighty law condemn them to the cells, I have heard their piteous cries for mercy. And the newspapers talk of the humour of the courts.

I once read that law's primary object is to protect the rich from the poor. The appalling truth of that saying dawned on me in Bow Street. Humour! Yes, there is humour in Bow Street. The grimmest, ugliest joke in the world is this.... Covent Garden Opera House stands across the street from the court.

* * *

To-day I told Senior II. to write up the following story, I advised them to add graces to it if they could.

"A farmer went to Edinburgh for the day. He was walking down the High Street with open mouth when the fire engine came swinging round the corner. The farmer gave chase down the North Bridge and Leith Street, and owing to the heavy traffic the engine's rate was so slow that he could easily keep up with it. But it turned down London Road, and in the long silent street soon outdistanced him. He ran until he saw that it was hopeless. Then he stopped and held up a clenched fist.

"Ye can keep yer dawmed tattie-chips," he cried, "Aw'll get them some other place."

Mary Peters began thus:--

"Mr. Peter Mitchell went to Edinburgh for the day...."

Mr. Peter Mitchell is Chairman of the School Board.

* * *

Why did I substitute "auld" for "dawmed" tattie-chips when I told the bairns the story. Art demands the "dawmed." I think I substituted the "auld" because I like a quiet life. I have no time to persuade indignant parents that "damn" is not a sin. But it was weakness on my part; I compromised, and compromise is always a lie.

VI.

This morning I had a note from a farmer in the neighbourhood.

"DEAR SIR,--I send my son Andrew to get education at the school not Radical politics.

I am, Yours respectfully, Andrew Smith."

I called Andrew out.

"Andrew," I said, with a smile, "when you go home to-night tell your father that I hate Radicalism possibly more than he does."

The father came down to-night to apologise. "Aw thocht ye was ane o' they wheezin' Radicals," he explained. Then he added, "And what micht yer politics be?"

"I am a Utopian," I said modestly.

He scratched his head for a moment, then he gave it up and asked my opinion of the weather. We discussed turnips for half-an-hour, at the end of which time I am sure he was wondering how an M.A. could be such an ignoramus. We parted on friendly terms.

* * *

I do not think that I have any definite views on the teaching of religion to bairns; indeed, I have the vaguest notion of what religion means. I am just enough of a Nietzschean to protest against teaching children to be meek and lowly. I once shocked a dear old lady by saying that the part of the Bible that appealed to me most was that in which the Pharisee said: "I thank God that I am not as other men." I was young then, I have not the courage to say it now.

I do, however, hold strongly that teaching religion is not my job. The parish minister and the U.F. minister get good stipends for tending their flocks, and I do not see any reason in the world why I should have to look after the lambs. For one thing I am not capable. All I aim at is teaching bairns how to live ... possibly that is the true religion; my early training prevents my getting rid of the idea that religion is intended to teach people how to die.

To-day I was talking about the probable formation of the earth, how it was a ball of flaming gas like the sun, how it cooled gradually, how life came. A girl looked up and said: "Please, sir, what about the Bible?" I explained that in my opinion the creation story was a story told to children, to a people who were children in understanding. I pointed out a strange feature, discovered to me by the parish minister, that the first chapter of Genesis follows the order of scientific evolution ... the earth is without form, life rises from the sea, then come the birds, then the mammals.

But I am forced to give religious instruction. I confine my efforts to the four gospels; the bairns read them aloud. I seldom make any comment on the passages.

In geography lessons I often take occasion to emphasise the fact that Muhammudans and Buddhists are not necessarily stupid folk who know no better. I cannot lead bairns to a religion, but I can prevent their being stupidly narrow.

No, I fear I have no definite opinions on religion.

I set out to enter the church, but I think that I could not have stayed in it. I fancy that one fine Sunday morning I would have stood up in the pulpit and said: "Friends, I am no follower of Christ. I like fine linen and tobacco, books and comfort. I should be in the slums, but I am not Christlike enough to go there. Goodbye."

I wonder! Why then do I not stand up and say to the School Board: "I do not believe in this system of education at all. I am a hypocrite when I teach subjects that I abominate. Give me my month's screw. Goodbye." I sigh ... yet I like to fancy that I could not have stayed in the kirk. One thing I am sure of: a big stipend would not have tempted me to stay. I have no wish for money; at least, I wouldn't go out of my way to get it. I wouldn't edit a popular newspaper for ten thousand a year. Of that I am sure. Quite sure. Quite.

Yet I once applied for a job on a Tory daily. I was hungry then. What if I were hungry now? The flesh is weak ... but, I could always go out on tramp. I more than half long for the temptation. Then I should discover whether I am an idealist or a talker. Possibly I am a little of both.

I began to write about religion, and I find myself talking about myself. Can it be that my god is my ego?

* * *

I began these log-notes in order to discover my philosophy of education, and I find that I am discovering myself. This discovery of self must come first. Personality goes far in teaching. May it go too far? Is it possible that I am a danger to these bairns? May I not be influencing them too much? I do not think so. Anything I may say will surely be negatived at home; my word, unfortunately, is not so weighty as father's.

In what is called Spelling Reform we cannot have a revolution; all we can hope for is a reform within Spelling, a reform that will abolish existing anomalies. So in education we cannot have a revolution. All we can hope for is a reform wrought within education by the teacher. If every teacher were a sort of Wellsian-Shavian-Nietzschean-Webbian fellow, the children would be directly under two potent influences--the parents and teachers.

"What is Truth?" millions of Pilates have asked. It is because we have no standard of Truth that our education is a failure. Each of us gets hold of a corner of the page of Truth, but the trouble is that so many grasp the same corner. It is a corner dirty with thumb-marks ... "Humour in Bow Street," "Knighthood for Tooting Philanthropist," "Dastardly Act by Leeds Strikers," "Special Service of Praise in the Parish Kirk" ... marks do not obliterate the page. My corner is free from thumbmarks, and anyone can read the clear type of "Christlessness in Bow Street," "Jobbery in the Sale of Honours," "Murder of Starving Strikers," "Thanksgiving Service for the Blessing of Whitechapel" ... but few will read this corner's story; the majority likes the filthy corner with the beautiful news.

I have discovered my mission. I am the apostle of the clean corner with the dirty news written on it.

* * *

I began to read the second act of _An Enemy of the People_ this morning, but I had to give it up; the bairns had lost interest. I closed the book. "Suppose," I said, "suppose that this village suddenly became famous as a health-resort. People would build houses and hotels, your fathers would grow richer; and suppose that the doctor discovered that the water supply was poisonous, that the pipes lay through a swamp where fever germs were. What would the men who had built hotels and houses say about the doctor? What would they do about the water supply?"

The unanimous opinion was that the water-pipes would be relaid; the people would not want visitors to come and take fever.

This opinion leads me to conclude that bairns are idealists; childhood takes the Christian view. Barrie says that genius is the power of being a boy again at will; I agree, but Barrie and I are possibly thinking of different aspects. Ibsen was a genius because he became as a little child. Dr. Stockmann (Ibsen) is a simple child; he cannot realise that self-interest can make his own brother a criminal to society.

I told my bairns what the men in the play did.

"But," said one in amazement, "they would not do that in real life?"

"They are doing it every day," I said. "This school is old, badly ventilated, overcrowded. It is a danger to your health and mine. Yet, if I asked for a new school, the whole village would rise up against me. 'More money on the rates!' they would cry, and they would treat me very much as the people in the play treated Dr. Stockmann."

* * *

I find it difficult to discuss the causes of the war with the bairns. I refuse to accept the usual tags about going to the assistance of a weak neighbour whom we agreed to protect. We all want to think that we are fighting for Belgium but are we?

I look to Mexico and I find it has been bathed in blood because the American Oil Kings and the British Oil Kings were at war. President Diaz was pro-English, Madero was pro-American, Huerta was pro-English ... and the United States supported the notorious Villa. Villa's rival, Carranzo, was pro-English. It is an accepted belief that the American Oil Kings financed the first risings in order to drive the British oil interests out of the country. Hence, widows and orphans in Mexico are the victims of a dollar massacre.

Can we trace the present war to the financiers? It is said that the Triple Entente is the result of Russia's receiving loans from France and Britain.

I cannot find a solution. I am inclined to attach little value to what is called national feeling. The workers are the masses, and I cannot imagine a German navvy's having any hatred of a British navvy. A world of workers would not fight, but at present the workers are so badly organised that they fight at the bidding of kings and diplomatists and financiers. War comes from the classes above, and by means of their press the upper classes convert the proletariat to their way of thinking.

A more important subject is that of the ending of wars. The idealistic vapourings of the I.L.P. with its silly talk of internationalism will do nothing to stop war. Norman Angell's cry that war doesn't pay will not stop war. But a true democracy in each country will stop it. I think of Russia with all its darkness and cruelty, and I am appalled; a true democracy there will be centuries in coming. For Germany I do not fear; out of her militarism will surely arise a great democratic nation. And out of our own great trial a true democracy is arising. Capitalism has failed; the State now sees that it must control the railways and engineering shops in a crisis. The men who struck work on the Clyde are of the same class as the men who are dying in Flanders. Why should one lot be heroes and the other lot be cursed as traitors? The answer is simple. The soldiers are fighting for the nation; the engineers are working primarily for the profiteers, and only secondarily for the nation. Profiteering has not stood the test, and the workers are beginning to realise the significance of its failure.

VII.

To-day I have scrapped somebody's Rural Arithmetic. It is full of sums of the How-much-will-it-take-to-paper a-room? type. This cursed utilitarianism in education riles me. Who wants to know what it will take to paper a room? Personally I should call in the painter, and take my meals on the parlour piano for a day or two. Anyway, why this suspicion of the poor painter? Is he worse than other tradesmen? If we must have a utilitarian arithmetic then I want to see a book that will tell me if the watchmaker is a liar when he tells me that the mainspring of my watch is broken. I want to see sums like this:--How long will a plumber take to lay a ten foot pipe if father can do it at the rate of a yard in three minutes? (Ans., three days).

To me Arithmetic is an art not a science. I do not know a single rule; I must always go back to first principles. I love catch questions, questions that will make a bairn think all the time. Inspectors' Tests give but little scope for the Art of Arithmetic; they are usually poor peddling things that smell strongly of materialism. In other words, they appeal to the mechanical part of a bairn's brain instead of to the imagination. I want to see a test that will include a sum like this:--23.4 × .065 × 54.678 × 0. The cram will start in to multiply out; the imaginative bairn will glance along and see the nought, and will at once spot that the answer is zero.

* * *

I have just discovered an excellent song-book--Curwen's _Approved Songs_. It includes all the lovely songs of Cavalier and Puritan times, tunes like _Polly Oliver_ and _Golden Slumbers_. At present my bairns are singing a Christmas Carol by Bridge, _Sweeter than Songs of Summer_. They sing treble, alto, and tenor, while I supply the bass. The time is long past Christmas, but details like that don't worry me. This carol is the sweetest piece of harmonising I have heard for a long time.

* * *

I have been re-reading Shaw's remarks on Sex in Education. I cannot see that he has anything very illuminating to say on the subject; for that matter no one has. Most of us realise that something is wrong with our views on sex. The present attitude of education is to ignore sex, and the result is that sex remains a conspiracy of silence. The ideal some of us have is to raise sex to its proper position as a wondrous beautiful thing. To-day we try to convey to bairns that birth is a disgrace to humanity.

The problem before me comes to this: How can I bring my bairns to take a rational elemental view of sex instead of a conventional hypocritical one? How can I convey to them the realisation that our virtue is mostly cowardice, that our sex morality is founded on mere respectability? (It is the easiest thing in the world to be virtuous in Padanarum; it is not so easy to be a saint in Oxford Street. Not because Oxford Street has more temptation, but because nobody knows you there.)

In reality I can do nothing. If I mentioned sex in school I should be dismissed at once. But if a philanthropist would come along and offer me a private school to run as I pleased, then I should introduce sex into my scheme of education. Bairns would be encouraged to believe in the stork theory of birth until they reached the age of nine. At that age they would get the naked truth.

A friend of mine, one of the cleverest men I know, and his wife, a wise woman, resolved to tell their children anything they asked. The eldest, a girl of four, asked one day where she came from. They told her, and she showed no surprise. But I would begin at nine chiefly because the stork story is so delightful that it would be cruel to deprive a bairn of it altogether. Yet, after all, the stork story is all the more charming when you know the bald truth.

Well, at the age of nine my bairns would be taken in hand by a doctor. They would learn that modesty is mainly an accidental result of the invention of clothes. They would gradually come to look upon sex as a normal fact of life; in short, they would recognise it as a healthy thing.

Shaw is right in saying that children must get the truth from a teacher, because parents find a natural shyness in mentioning sex to their children. But I think that the next generation of parents will have a better perspective; shyness will almost disappear. The bairns must be told; of that there is no doubt. The present evasion and deceit lead to the dirtiness which constitutes the sex education of boys and girls.

The great drawback to a frank education on sex matters is the disgusting fact that most grown-up people persist in associating sex with sin. The phrase "born in sin" is still applied to an illegitimate child. When I think of the damnable cruelty of virtuous married women to a girl who has had a child I want to change the phrase into "born into sin."

* * *