Ludovici - On Schooling

 

Education, as organized by the state, can have but one object: the rearing of people who are fit to be decent and worthy citizens. A man may educate himself privately in vice, in jazzing, in motoring or in crime; he is at liberty to do this at his own expense and in his own time, but if he is educated at the expense of his fellow-men the intention of these fellow-men must be to train him into a desirable member of society. Only thus can the huge outlay be made worthwhile.

Now, a desirable citizen is above all a well-conducted citizen. He may know French and fencing and be able to beat all-comers at billiards or biology, marbles or mathematics, but he is only a nuisance if he is not, in addition, well-conducted—that is to say, reliable, sensible, understanding and honest. It is more important that he should thoroughly grasp the first principles of sound conduct and thought than that he should know the whole of counterpoint or conchology.

When once he has mastered the first principles of sound conduct and thought, he is prepared to do well at anything according to his gifts, whereas the most exhaustive knowledge of counterpoint and conchology will, in the most favourable circumstances, only make him a good musician or a good classifier of shells.

In short, happiness and harmony are more easily achieved by a people holding deep and sound views concerning life and humanity than by people deeply versed in science and top-heavy with information. Happiness has been achieved again and again upon earth by people possessing not a billionth part of the knowledge that has been accumulated by modern man. A sound instinct in regard to food, a correct understanding of one’s self and one’s fellows, and a decent appreciation of the limits of individual caprice in a social community are, after all, more precious than a large accumulation of facts. And thus education, if it is to be valuable, should consist very much more in a training in manners, sound views and means of intercourse than in the acquisition of knowledge about facts. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 126–7)

Anybody would have thought that one of the first concerns of any educational body dealing with national education would have been to secure to all citizens of the same nation, irrespective of rank, at least a thorough knowledge of their native tongue. For what, indeed, could be more vital? It is the first prerequisite of all satisfactory communication, whether from or to the subject; it is the first essential weapon of the rational faculties. A particular native language may have faults and shortcomings, as compared with other native languages; it may be poorer in words, more complicated in syntax, less copiously supplied with racy idiom, etc., but surely any national scheme of education that fails to make the mastery of this native language—such as it is, perfect or imperfect—the foremost object on its programme is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. For whatever its faults may be, the masses, at least, have no other means of communication and, if they are going to be made articulate, they must be taught their native tongue.

At present, the situation of the English working-classes is, in this respect, pathetic in its helpless and infantile humility. Their talk is the babble of babes, their vocabulary the means of expression for creatures whose feelings and thoughts are no more complicated than those of primitive savages. Not only are they incapable of understanding complex states of feeling or complex thoughts when they hear them accurately and carefully expressed, but they are also utterly unable to give expression to at least three-quarters of their own thoughts and emotions. In regard to a very large number of thoughts and emotions, which to the cultivated man are commonplace matters, the masses of England are therefore literally inarticulate. The same word answers for a hundred meanings in their conversation, all of which it but inadequately expresses, while for those emotions and thoughts for which they have no words there can exist only mute and mystified suspicion.

This is bad enough. Life is sufficiently tragic for millions of creatures today, without its being either necessary or desirable to aggravate it with the additional affliction of dumbness. And yet the fact that this inarticulateness which ignorance imposes, is equivalent to dumbness, or at least to partial dumbness, is surely incontestable.

But there is a consequence of this ignorance which is even more serious than that discussed above. And that is the danger to which it exposes its sufferers of falling under false guidance, misdirection and pollution from outside. Whereas dumbness, although a sad affliction, is often merely another form of constraint; misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or the inability to criticize and to reject the expressed thoughts of others may be a source of pollution, a source of grave error and a speedy means of complete and incurable perversion.

If people are to be protected from misconceptions, false leaders, demagogues and all those smart and slippery unemployed who are ever ready to exploit ignorance and take advantage of simplicity, they must be in a position to listen critically to an address or an appeal made to them in their own language. They must be in a position to tell to what extent their proposed leader or misleader understands what he is talking about. How much false sentiment, false doctrine, inflammatory teaching is simply an abuse of language, a forcing of terms—in fact, catachresis. How much of it would be detected and exposed if the majority of the nation possessed that precision and understanding in the use of words which would come with a proper knowledge of their native tongue. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 132–4)

The boys’ curriculum at an average elementary school consists of the following subjects: English, arithmetic, geography, history, nature study or hygiene, physics, drawing, singing, physical exercise, manual work.

The reader will only need to glance at this curriculum in order to realize how varied the programme is, and how assiduously the subjects would require to be studied in the eight years of school life in order to leave in the minds of the scholars a sufficient knowledge of them to be of use in later life. Eight years, with 22 hours a week for 44 weeks a year, and such a programme! Can it be possible for the boys to acquire anything more than a mere smattering of each subject? … In fact, take it how you will, it must be acknowledged without either bitterness or malice that elementary education is nothing more than a very expensive and very elaborate farce.

It teaches the boys two things that they undoubtedly remember: the trick of deciphering letterpress, which constitutes them purchasers and readers of the lowest and most fatuous literature that sweated literary hacks can produce, and enough arithmetic for them to master the ordinary numerical problems that may arise in the daily routine of their adult lives. Of history nothing, literally nothing, is remembered, except perhaps that there was once a king who spoilt some tarts (they are not quite certain whether it was Alfred the Great or the King of Hearts) and that there was once a monarch called William the Conqueror. Of geography only the vaguest notions are retained, and these relate more often to the world as a whole than to their native land. Of hygiene, physics, not a trace is left, not even a recollection of the names of the subjects. While singing and drawing, except to the few, are a pure waste of time.

It is safe to say that this is true of the majority of the scholars and, since it is the majority of the children that constitute the great mass of the nation, it is on them we must concentrate our attention.

Since the object of all our expensive elementary school organization ought to be to impart to them some valuable knowledge that they can retain throughout their lives, some valuable knowledge, moreover, in the acquisition of which the highest faculties of their mind would be disciplined and trained, surely it would be an advantage in the first place to concentrate on a fewer number of subjects, and secondly to select only those which could be of service to them in later life (for they are the only subjects that are ever remembered), and thirdly to confine the study of the subject or subjects chosen, as far as possible, to those limits which, while they guarantee a solid foundation of learning, allow of further unassisted progress when once the school career is over.

Now, it seems to the present writer that no subject in the whole curriculum of schools answers these requirements more satisfactorily in every way than English itself. It is at once an ideal means of disciplining and training the mind, of clarifying thought and of correcting vagueness and looseness of reasoning; it is an excellent preservative of natural nobility of character, by opening up to the student the whole treasury of lofty thought and sentiment that the language contains; it is a mental weapon against befoulment by prurient and other deleterious influences; it is an instrument of criticism that can be employed at any moment, in any contingency, against the appeals of demagogues, agitators and corrupters of all kinds, and it is a means of lucid and logical communication, without which no man can be said to be safe against misunderstanding or confusion. Above all—and this is its principal value today—a knowledge of English is essential to anyone who wishes to know how to ‘read’. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 141–5)

The Lost Philosopher: The Best of Anthony M. Ludovici

Edited with Preface by John V. Day.