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."
[pg 16]
"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.[pg 17] 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[pg 18] 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[pg 19] 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[pg 20] 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[pg 21] 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[pg 22] 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."
[pg 23]
"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."
"yes, sir," he said, and he glanced down to the second gate. i think that he wouldn't have been very much surprised if he had seen[pg 24] a tiger there. jim has the power of make-believe developed strongly. a few weeks ago he found a dead sparrow in the playground. he came to me and asked for a coffin. i gave him a match-box and he lined the class up in twos and led them with bared heads towards the grave he had dug. the four foremost boys carried the coffin shoulder high.
jim laid ropes over the grave and the coffin was lowered reverently. a boy was just about to fill in the grave when jim cried: "hold on!" then he took a handful of earth and sprinkled it over the coffin saying: "dust to dust, and ashes to ashes."
i blew the last post over the grave afterwards. jim was as serious as could be; for the moment he seemed to think that he was burying his brother.
when he had got his milk he came to the byre door and watched me work for a little.
"please, sir," he asked, "do you like that better than teaching?"
i told him that i didn't.
"i wish mester macdonald wud be a cattleman," he said fervently.
"some folk might say that he is," i remarked.
"he gave me my licks the first mornin' he cam," he continued. "we got an essay 'how i spent my holidays,' and i said that i was in france and helped the crown prince to loot places. we quarrelled about how much we should get each and i shot him. the mester gave me three scuds for tellin' lies."
[pg 25]
"he would," i said grimly.
"but you used to tell me to tell lies!" he cried.
"i did, jim. and you see the result.... i muck out a byre."
when jim went away i came to a sudden resolution: i would fight for jim. i'll do all in my power to help the lad to preserve his own personality.... frank thomson is his uncle and i'll try to get jim to see me often. professional etiquette! professional etiquette be damned! i'm not in the profession now anyhow, and all the professional etiquette in the world is as nothing to the saving of a soul.
* * *
i find that i enjoy my food now. formerly i looked on a meal as an appetiser for a smoke; now i look on a meal as an event. i feel healthier than i ever did in my life before. the land dulls one, however. the old cry "back to the land" means "back to elemental mental stagnation." i spent this forenoon cutting turnips, and i know that i thought of nothing all the time. i have a theory that great thoughts are the product of disease. possibly this is only another way of saying that genius is allied to madness. shelley was a physical weakling; ibsen and nietzsche went mad. yes, geniuses are diseased folk, but the converse does not hold.
macdonald came up to see me to-night; he wanted to ask a few things about the school. we lay on a bank and lit our pipes.
[pg 26]
"i can't find your 'record of work,'" he said.
"i never kept one."
"but ... the code demands one!"
"i know ... but i didn't keep one. my record of work is my pupils in after life."
"yes," he said drily, "i know all about that, but you are supposed to keep a record that will show an inspector what you are doing to produce this after life record."
"macdonald," i said impatiently, "if you mean to tell me that any man can tell what i am doing to prepare children for after life by squinting at a crowd of entries of the took-the-history-of-the-great-rebellion-this-week order ... well, i don't understand your attitude to life in general."
"that's all very well," he protested, "but we aren't there to make the rules; we're paid servants who have to administer the laws of wiser men."
"how do you know that they are wiser?" i asked.
"they're wiser than i am anyway," he said with a smile.
"i'm not so sure of it, macdonald; they are more unscrupulous than you are. they know what they want, definitely and finally; they want efficient wage-slaves."
"that's merely a socialistic cry."
"it may be, but it's true. who rule us? a definite governing class of trained aristocrats."
[pg 27]
"h'm! i shouldn't call lloyd george and that labour man hodge trained aristocrats."
"they aren't born aristocrats i admit, but they are aristocratised democrats. they've adapted themselves to the aristocratic tradition. they are on the side of aristocracy; you won't find them alienating the good opinion of the moneyed classes. we are governed from above; do you admit that?"
"in the main ... yes," he said grudgingly.
"very good! well, then, our rulers believe in two kinds of education. they send their sons to the public schools where boys are trained to be governors, but they send the rest of the sons of the community to state schools where they are trained to be disciplined and content with their lot."
"that's nonsense."
"possibly, but i suppose you know that the members of the house of lords and the cabinet don't send their sons to l.c.c. schools."
"you are simply preaching class war," he said.
"i am. there is a class war—there has been for generations—but it is a one-sided war."
"it is," said macdonald grimly.
"the upper class took the offensive long ago, and it keeps it yet. look at the squire down in the village. he won't ride in the same railway compartment with you or me; he won't sit beside us in the theatre ... why, he won't lie beside us in the kirkyard: he's got that railed-off corner for his family. i don't blame[pg 28] him; he has been educated up in his belief, just as you and i have been educated up in the belief that we are his inferiors. when i was down in the school i lectured the whole class one day because i saw a boy doff his cap to the squire and nod to his mother three seconds afterwards.
"don't you see that this village is a little british empire? here there are only two classes—the big house and the village ... the ruling class and the ruled. the school trains the ruled to be ruled, and the kirk takes up the training on the seventh day. the minister talks a lot of prosy platitudes about faith and love and charity, but he never thinks of saying a thing that the squire might take umbrage at."
i broke off and refilled my pipe.
"how are you getting on?" i asked.
"well enough. the bairns are nice."
"a little bit noisy," he added, "but, of course, i was prepared for that. i heard about your experiment months ago. by the way, what sort of a teacher is miss watson?"
"excellent," i replied.
"how often did you examine her classes?"
"i never examined her classes, not formally, but her bairns spoke to me, and i judged her work from their conversation."
"i examined their work yesterday; her spelling is weak and her geography atrocious."
"shouldn't wonder," i said carelessly. "i never bothered about those things; i judged[pg 29] her work by what her bairns were, not by what they knew. they're a bright lot when you ask them to think out things."
"no wonder they fired you out," he laughed; "you're impossible as a dominie, you know."
i smiled.
"how do you like jim jackson?" i asked suddenly.
"cheeky devil!"
"he's clever," i said.
"you may call it cleverness, but i have another name for it. he is a fellow that requires to be sat on."
"and you'll sit on him?"
"i certainly shall ... heavily too."
i tried to show macdonald that he was making a criminal blunder, but he got impatient. "i can't stand cheek," he kept saying, and i had to give up all hope of convincing him that i was right. macdonald is essentially a stupid man. i don't say that merely because he disagrees with me; i say it because he refuses to think out his own attitude. he cries that jim is cheeky, but he won't go into the other question as to whether humour is impudence. had he argued that humour is a drawback in life i should have pitied his taste, but i should have admired his ability to make out a good case.