A Dominie's Log

by Alexander Sutherland Neill

I once saw a book by, I think, Arnold Forster; a book that was meant to teach children the meaning of citizenship. If I remember aright it dealt with parliament and law, and local government.

Who was Arnold Forster? Why cannot our bairns have the best? Why tell them all the stale lies about democracy, the freedom of the individual, the justice of our laws? Are Forster's ideas of citizenship as great as the ideas of Plato, of More, of Morris, of Wells? I intend to make an abridgement of Plato's Republic, More's Utopia, William Morris's News from Nowhere, Bacon's A New Atlantis, H. G. Wells' A Modern Utopia, and New Worlds for Old.

Arnold Forster was with the majority. Nearly every day I quote to my bairns Ibsen's words from An Enemy of the People.... "The Majority never has right on its side. Never I say." Every lesson book shouts aloud the words: "The majority is always right."

Do I teach my bairns Socialism? I do not think so. Socialism means the owning of a State by the people of that State, and this State is not fit to own anything. For at present the State means the majority in Parliament, and that is composed of mediocre men. A State that takes up Home Rule while the slums of the East End exist is a State run by office boys for office boys ... to adapt Salisbury's description of a London daily. We could not have Socialism to-day; the nation is not ripe for it.

The Germans used to drink to "The Day"; every teacher in Britain should drink daily to "The Day" when there shall be no poor, when factory lasses will not rise at five and work till six. I know that I shall never see the day, but I shall tell my bairns that it is coming. I know that most of the seed will fall on stony ground, but a sower can but sow.

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I have been image-breaking to-day, and I feel happy. It began with patent medicines, but how I got to them I cannot recollect. I remember commencing a lesson on George Washington. The word hatchet led naturally to Women's Suffrage; then ducks came up.... Heaven only knows how, and the word quack brought me to Beans for Bibulous Britons. I told how most of these medicines cost half a farthing to make, and I explained that the manufacturer was spending a good part of the shilling profit in advertising. Then I told of the utter waste of material and energy in advertising, and went on to thunder against the hideous yellow tyre signs on the roadside.

At dinner-time I read in my paper that some knight had received his knighthood because of his interest in the Territorial Movement. "Much more likely that he gave a few thousands to the party funds," I said to my wondering bairns. Then I cursed the cash values that attach to almost everything.

I am determined to tear all the rags of hypocrisy from the facts of life; I shall lead my bairns to doubt everything. Yet I want them to believe in Peter Pan, or is it that I want them to believe in the beauty of beautiful stories? I want them to love the alluring lady Romance, but I think I want them to love her in the knowledge that she is only a Dream Child. Romance means more to the realist than to the romancist.