A Dominie's Log

by Alexander Sutherland Neill

I begin to think that country children should learn ballads. There is a beauty about the old ballads that even children can catch; it is the beauty of a sweet simplicity. When I think of the orchestration of Swinburne, I think of the music of the ballads as of a flute playing. And I know that orchestration would be lost on country folk.

I hate the poems that crowd the average school-book ... Little Jim, We are Seven, Lucy Gray, The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Boy stood on the Burning Deck, and all the rest of them. I want to select the best of the Cavalier lyrists' works, the songs from the old collections like Davison's Poetical Rhapsody and England's Helicon, the lyrics from the Elizabethan dramatists. I want to look through moderns like William Watson, Robert Bridges, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, Henley, Dowson, Abercrombie, William Wilfred Gibson ... there must be many charming pieces that bairns would enjoy.

I read out the old Tale of Gamelyn the other day, and the queer rhythm and language seemed to interest the class.

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I think that the teaching of history in schools is all wrong. I look through a school-history, and I find that emphasis is laid on incident. Of what earthly use is the information given about Henry VIII.'s matrimonial vagaries? Does it matter a rap to anyone whether Henry I.—or was it Henry II.?—ever smiled again or not? By all means let us tell the younger children tales of wicked dukes, but older children ought to be led to think out the meaning of history. The usual school-history is a piece of snobbery; it can't keep away from the topic of kings and queens. They don't matter; history should tell the story of the people and their gradual progress from serfdom to ... sweating.

I believe that a boy of eleven can grasp cause and effect. With a little effort he can understand the non-sentimental side of the Mary Stewart-Elizabeth story, the result to Scotland of the Franco-Scottish alliance. He can understand why Philip of Spain, a Roman Catholic, preferred that the Protestant Elizabeth should be Queen of England rather than the Catholic Mary Stewart.

The histories never make bairns think. I have not seen one that mentioned that Magna Charta was signed because all classes in the country happened to be united for the moment. I have not seen one that points out that the main feature in Scots history is the lack of a strong central government.

Hume Brown's school History of Scotland is undoubtedly a very good book, but I want to see a history that will leave out all the detail that Brown gives. All that stuff about the Ruthven Raid and the Black Dinner of the Douglases might be left out of the books that the upper classes read. My history would tell the story of how the different parts were united to form the present Scotland, without mentioning more than half-a-dozen names of men and dates. Then it would go on to tell of the struggles to form a central government. Possibly Hume Brown does this. I don't know; I am met with so much detail about Perth Articles and murders that I lose the thread of the story.

Again, the school-histories almost always give a wrong impression of men and events. Every Scots schoolboy thinks that Edward I. of England was a sort of thief and bully rolled into one, and that the carpet-bagger, Robert Bruce, was a saint from heaven. Edward's greatness as a lawgiver is ignored; at least we ought to give him credit for his statesmanship in making an attempt to unite England, Scotland, and Wales. And Cromwell's Drogheda and Wexford affair is generally mentioned with due emphasis, while Charles I.'s proverbial reputation as "a bad king but a good father" is seldom omitted.

I expect that the school-histories of the future will talk of the "scrap of paper" aspect of the present war, and they will anathematise the Kaiser. But the real historians will be searching for deeper causes; they will be analysing the national characteristics, the economical needs, the diplomatic methods, of the nations.