Chapter XVI: The Open Door to Intelligence

It has been the chief aim in these pages, not to elaborate a scheme of education on new principles, but to point out the utter folly of persisting with a system that has worked a vast amount of evil, and cannot be proved to have achieved any real good.

Our great men have not been the product of a school curriculum, or of an academic training. In no single instance, as far as can be ascertained, has nobility of character, or the possession of genius, or soundness of judgment, or even beauty of diction in literature, been attributable to the grind in grammatical rules, the fact-cramming, and the mental gymnastics which go to make up what is called 'a liberal education.'

In science, where the highest intellectual qualities are brought into play, most of the great discoverers have owed their entire scientific knowledge to self-taught methods of investigation. And it is the same thing in every field of research where the thinking faculties must reach the supreme limit of development--namely, that nothing is traceable to academic learning, and that everything is owing to the mental initiative which is produced solely by self-inculcated habits of reflection.

To give education systems the credit, or even a share in the credit, of all the splendid achievements in politics, science, art, and literature is sheer intellectual laziness. It is the curse of the age that few people will trouble to question the existing order of things, and that nobody--except those who make the manufacture of opinions their profession--can be found to express an independent opinion on any subject under the sun.

That is one reason why newspapers exist in their present form. The leading article is primarily the invention of the stupid, conventional, well-educated man whose profound knowledge of dates and irregular verbs has, unfortunately, had the effect of preventing him from forming his own judgment on public affairs. The Press, which must have been originally established, like the famous _Peking Gazette_, for the dissemination of news, has long ago discovered that people prefer to obtain their opinions ready-made.

The wise argument we hear being urged in a railway-carriage or at a dinner-table is merely an intellectual reach-me-down purchased at a book-stall for the modest price of one penny. If there were only one newspaper, and consequently only one leading article on a particular topic, political discussion would die a natural death.

The political opinion to which the majestic alderman or the classically-trained savant gives such profound utterance is the opinion, not of himself, but of some poor devil who knows nothing of the blessings of a university education, but who writes in a garret, or in a dingy office off Fleet Street, to earn his bread and cheese.

Its value or political insight need not be disparaged on that account. I would trust it a thousand times rather than I would trust the opinion--if such a thing should have any existence--of the average educated man whose brains have been jellified at school or college. The point is not the value of the humble scribe's opinion, however, but the fact that a man, of what would be called inferior educational attainments, has to be engaged to do mental work that cannot be performed by the brains of people who have enjoyed all the advantages that a first-rate education is supposed to confer.

The vote of the working-man is scarcely more unintelligently applied at election times than the vote of the educated man. On the contrary, the former may be said to think independently, or at least to use an independent instinct, whilst the latter is contented to believe in the iniquity of one party or the virtue of another, according to the opinion of the man in the garret. The working man wants beer, and he knows it. The China question, the war in South Africa, the housing of the working classes, the great education controversy--everything is beer to him. It is the Government who cheapen beer, or who regulate the percentage of arsenic to be used in brewing, that command his support--not Ministers who promise to maintain British supremacy in the Far East, or who put forward an attractive programme of domestic legislation.

The natural consequence of this wholesale production of dummy members of society is that the strings of government are really pulled by the intelligent few. Whatever the external constitution of Great Britain may be, the real power does not lie with Parliament or with the Executive, but is invariably wielded by one or more men of commanding ability.

Nominally, the administration is in the hands of the social aristocracy, that is to say, of a few peer families and their innumerable relations. Whichever of the two great parties in the State may happen to be in power, the Government is invariably exploited by members of the peer class, who practically divide the spoils of office amongst themselves and their immediate entourage.

Although, however, the English nobility manage to usurp all the offices of State, and to secure all the plums for themselves, it is not they who really govern the country. No doubt the landed aristocracy are politically the most fit to govern. They have no commercial or industrial interests that may bring corrupt and undesirable influences into public life. But they are unfitted for the position they ought to occupy by a system of education that manufactures mediocrity, and stifles the very qualities of imaginativeness and initiative which are indispensable to sound statesmanship.

What is the inevitable result?

The self-made man, with all his splendid intellectual faculties developed, with his independence of judgment, and his acquired habit of thinking for himself instead of leaning on precedent and borrowed wisdom, rides the dummy Government class with whip and spur. He lays on the lash here and digs in the rowels there, goading on his steed in any direction that chances to suit his purpose. He naturally places personal ambition in front of national expediency, because his political career is necessarily a constant fight against odds. Either he must rise superior to the peer combination, as Disraeli succeeded in doing after a struggle unparalleled in the annals of political history, or he will be crushed by it.

But the necessities of his position render the self-made man a particularly undesirable element in the administration of public affairs. During the course of his successful upward struggle he has, in nine cases out of ten, entangled himself in commercial or industrial interests from which it is difficult or impossible for him to dissociate himself. By this means, and through the necessarily adventurous character of his political career, he can scarcely avoid becoming, however undeserved the imputation may be, an object of suspicion. And when once distrust of this kind has been allowed to permeate through our public life, the degeneration of parliamentary government must follow.

Disraeli spent the greater part of his political life in manoeuvring for the premiership. When his object had been successfully attained, all his great qualities were turned to the advantage of the State. But up to that point he was compelled, in order to survive in his colossal struggle against the aristocratic element in politics, to play for his own hand.

That must always be the case with the self-made man. His first objective must be his own self-preservation, and if he wishes to gain power he is bound to exploit the political situation, regardless of the best interests of the country, because every man's hand is against him until the summit of his ambition has been reached.

Schools and colleges in which the mind is crammed instead of being developed cannot produce statesmen. They can manufacture in unlimited quantities the type of well-intentioned, honourable mediocrity with which our public service is stocked. But as long as this process is continued, the real power in the administration of the affairs of the Empire will remain virtually in the hands of a few able individuals of the wrong calibre. There will be a dummy Prime Minister, and a dummy Cabinet; but the wires will be worked by the self-made man who must place himself first and his country second, with consequences usually disastrous to the national welfare.

There is no intended disparagement of the self-made man. He is, and always has been, the best intellectual product of the age. The greatest statesmen, philosophers, scientists, writers, and other men of genius have been self-made or self-cultured. But it does not follow because great statesmen have been self-made men, that it is for the good of the country that its rulers should be drawn from that class. As has already been pointed out, the self-made man usually creates far more mischief in the course of his upward political struggle, than is compensated for afterwards when he has secured his position and can turn his talents to the account of his country, instead of for the purpose of securing his own personal advancement.

There is, it must be remembered, a national emergency for which we have to prepare. Our extended Imperial obligations, and the sharp commercial competition which has caused some of the great Powers to sacrifice individuality wholesale in order to mobilize an army of traders, make it imperative that measures should be taken to preserve the Anglo-Saxon race.

The thing to avoid at this moment is imitation of tactics that will send every nation adopting them backward in evolution. To secure a temporary commercial triumph at the enormous sacrifice of the natural development of the individual, would be a fatal and short-sighted policy that could only end in national ruin. We have not yet reached the worst depths of the education fallacy, but we are complacently drifting in that direction.

State interference in educational matters may be an excellent thing when the whole energies of the central authorities happen to be exerted in mitigation of the evils of the national system. But it must be borne in mind that political parties and the heads of departments are constantly changing in this country. The reformer of to-day may to-morrow be superseded by a retrogressive-minded mediocrity; and there would be no guarantee that the beneficial influence of the one would not be annihilated afterwards by the pernicious intermeddling of the other.

Instead of casting about for means of securing a State monopoly of the ruinous type of education supplied by our schools and colleges, it would be more conducive to the salvation of the country if the whole energies of the nation were directed towards revolutionizing the system of instruction itself.

If schoolmasters can accomplish nothing better than the manufacture of set types of humanity, the progress of mankind would be promoted more rapidly without their assistance.

What is, after all, the main object of education?

It is to assist everybody to develop his faculties and talents, so that he may be fitted for the position in life which Nature intended him to occupy.

Nobody can assert for an instant that the conventional methods of instructing youth either achieve, or even appear to aim at achieving, this end. The school does not pretend to discover or to encourage individual talents. It offers to pound so much Latin grammar, mathematics, history, geography, etc., into each pupil, and to turn him out at the end of the process with exactly the same mental equipment as that acquired by the rest of his school-fellows.

The principal aim of this book has been to draw attention to the incongruities and evils brought about by this sham and worthless system of education. That the world contains many illustrious examples of culture and genius is no proof that the slightest benefit has been derived by anybody from parsing Ovid or cramming facts and dates. 'The best part of every man's education,' said Sir Walter Scott, 'is that which he gives to himself'; and it might be added, with literal truth, that it is the only part which is of the slightest service in developing the mind with which he has been naturally endowed.

All that I have presumed to advocate is that the door should be left open to intelligence.

The education systems of the present day are particularly felicitous in keeping it firmly closed. It is only by dodging the schoolmaster and the coach that youthful talent stands a chance of being brought to maturity. The greatest achievements are not the work of senior wranglers and Balliol scholars: they have been accomplished by class-room dunces, like Clive and Wellington; by school idlers, such as Napoleon, Disraeli, Swift, and Newton; or by self-taught men like Stephenson, John Hunter, Livingstone, and Herschel.

It cannot be doubted that the institution of a rational method of developing the mind of the individual would sweep away all these anomalies. There are thousands of men in responsible positions who would willingly exchange their entire stock of classical or mathematical knowledge for a modicum of common sense and judgment. If everybody were encouraged to think for himself, the Empire would have no lack of good servants to carry on the traditions of the past; and the dummy unit of administration would give place to a self-reliant man, capable of moving with the times, and of serving the public interest according to its wants, instead of clinging merely to routine and precedent.

Nearly all the misery suffered by humanity has been produced by artificial means. Providence did not intend this world to be a place of purgatory for the majority of mankind. We are what we have made ourselves, and not what evolution intended us to be. It is in our power to mitigate much of the evil we have ignorantly manufactured for our own discomfiture, if we only attack it at the roots. And the greatest curse humanity has laid upon itself is that arbitrary interference with the natural development of the mind which is misnamed 'education.'

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

End of Project Gutenberg's The Curse of Education, by Harold E. Gorst