One of the delegates, Mr. Cowan, showed that he was looking at education in a broad light. "Education," he said, "if it is to be real, is bound up with the questions of housing, public health, medical treatment, and the like; ... hence education should be in the hands of some body that would view the matter as a whole ... viz., the County Council."
He might have added that education is primarily bound up with profiteering. Our city schools are necessarily adjuncts to our factories and our slums; the dominie is clearly the servant of the capitalist ... and the poor devil doesn't know it. It's absolutely useless to talk of larger areas and larger salaries and larger children; the fundamental fact is that capital calls the tune, and larger areas will do as much for education as tinkering with the saddle spring of a motor-bike will do for a seized engine bearing.
Larger salaries will attract better men and women to the profession, says the Institute representative, and I ask wearily: "What difference will that make? You'll merely get honours graduates to do the profiteer's dirty work more effectively. You can't reform the schools from within. The prisons are built, and you will merely tempt your highly specialised teacher into a soul-destroying hell. The slums and the sweating will go on as usual next door; your city children will be starved and ragged and diseased as of yore."
I think it a pity that this deputation ever went to the Scots Secretary at all. Why should the teaching profession go begging favours from the State? The wise business men who rule us will smile grimly and say:—"The blighters gave themselves away when they asked for larger salaries." They won't appreciate the fact that the deputies were honest men with a real desire for a better education.
I should like to suggest to the Institute that it might have written a nice letter to Mr. Tennant. Why, bless me, I'll have a shot at composing one myself! Here goes!
"Dear Mr. Tennant,
"We aren't asking any favours this time; we are simply writing you a friendly letter telling you what we are going to do.
"Firstly, we are now beginning to make a determined attempt to take over the control of Scots Education ... and we'll succeed even if we have to go on strike for our rights. Our Educational Institute will become the Scots Guild of Teachers ... a sort of polite Trade Union, you know, just like the Medicine Union and the Law Union—only more so. Is that quite clear?
"Well, our Guild, when it is strong enough, will come up to town one fine morning to see the Cabinet. Our words will be something like these: 'We are the Teachers' Guild of Scotland, old dears, and we've come to tell you that we're going to run the show now.'
"Of course the Cabinet will get a shock at first. Then they will laugh and say: 'We wish you luck! By the way how do you propose to get the money?' And when we answer that we expect to get it from the State they will roar with mirth. We shall wait politely till the laugh is over, and then we shall calmly tell them our proposal ... rather, our demand. We shall demand money from the State to carry on the whole thing. Education isn't a profiteering affair, and we must draw every penny from the people ... just as the State does now.
"Then a member (Lloyd George in all probability) will remark: 'Yes, yes, gentlemen, but don't you see that all your demand amounts to is a change of management? You want to abolish the Education Department and substitute your President for my friend Sir John Struthers.'
"We shall shout 'No!' very very viciously at this ... you've heard them shout 'No' when they sing 'For he's a jolly good fellow?' Well, then, we'll shout it just like that, and then we'll explain thus:—
"We aren't going in for a change of management: we are going to build a new house. We are done with grants and Form 9 B's and inspectors and Supplementary Classes for ever. We are going to spend.... Oh! such a lot of money. You'll be surprised when you know what we are going to do. You know Dundee? Mr. Churchill there made it famous.... well, Dundee, is one of the dirtiest slums in creation. At present it has lots of big grey schools. We are going to knock 'em down. After that we are going to build bonny wee schools out in the country; schools that won't hold more than a hundred pupils. There will be lovely gardens and ponds and rabbit-houses; there will be food and—.' At this stage the Cabinet will telephone for the lunacy experts.
"Do we make ourselves clear, Mr. Tennant? As you know well the State will be terribly unwilling to give us more money. If we make our schools decent places the poor profiteers will be in the soup, won't they? Our present schools do no harm; the discipline of the classroom prepares a bright lad for the discipline of the wagery shop, and, of course, a girl accustomed to the atmosphere of a city school won't object to the ventilation obtaining in the factory. When we insist on taking the kiddies to bonny wee schools the profiteer will realise with dismay that his factory and his slum-hovels will have to adapt themselves to the new attitude of the kids.
"Mind you, we quite admit that we're going to have a hell of a fight. We even go the length of saying that we may be beaten at first; for we have no economic power, and the men with the economic power will crush us if they can. Our only weapon will be the strike, but even the strike will, in a manner, be playing into the profiteers' hands; 'Geewhiz!' they'll cry, 'the teachers are on strike ... now for cheap child labour!' Our only hope is that the citizens will realise the importance of a dominies' rebellion.
"Now, we don't want you to take this letter as a personal insult, or even as a vote of censure. You may be of opinion that Scots education is quite safe in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland, and you may imagine that we've got profiteering on the brain. We have. But we can't agree with you that education is safe in the hands of the Secretary for Scotland. Why, you might get another post to-morrow, and your colleague Runciman might step into your job. And it was only the other day that he was defending war-profits on the ground that they were forming a fund to compete with neutral trade after the war. The worst of you political fellows is that you've all got profiteering on the brain, just like us ... only, it's a natural healthy growth in your case, while in our case it is a malignant tumour. We've got profiteering thrust upon us, so to speak; you fellows were born with it.
"Well, well, isn't this rotten weather, what?
"Best wishes to Mrs. Tennant.
"Yours sincerely,
"The Educational Institute of Scotland."
* * *
Jim came to the bothy last night, and his face was troubled.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Aw—Aw didna gie ye a marriage present," he stammered, "Aw didna hae ony money."