My talk with Lawson last night makes me realise again how hopeless it is to plan a system of education when the economic system is all out of joint. I believe that this nation has the wealth to educate its children properly. I wonder what the Conscriptionists would say if I hinted to them that if a State can afford to take its youth away from industry to do unprofitable labour in the army and navy it can afford to educate its youth till the age of twenty is reached.
The stuff we teach in school leads nowhere; the Code subjects simply lull a child to sleep. How the devil is a lad to build a Utopia on Geography and Nature Study and Woodwork? Education should prove that the world is out of joint, and it should point a Kitchener finger at each child and say, "Your Country Needs You ... to set it Right."
XVI.
This has been a delightful day. About eleven o'clock a rap came at the door, and a young lady entered my classroom.
"Jerusalem!" I gasped. "Dorothy! Where did you drop from?"
"I'm motoring to Edinburgh," she explained, "on tour, you know, old thing!"
Dorothy is an actress in a musical comedy touring company, and she is a very old friend of mine. She is a delightful child, full of fun and mischief, yet she can be a most serious lady on occasion.
She looked at my bairns, then she clasped her hands.