I do not want to repeat what I said about fear in a former chapter; I am concerned with it now only in the intellectual sphere, as an obstacle to truthful thinking. In this sphere, it is much easier to overcome in youth than in later life, because a change of opinion is less likely to bring grave misfortune to a boy or girl than to an adult, whose life is built upon certain postulates. For this reason, I should encourage a habit of intelligent controversy among the older boys and girls, and I should place no obstacles in their way even if they questioned what I regarded as important truths. I should make it my object to teach thinking, not orthodoxy, or even heterodoxy. And I should absolutely never sacrifice intellect to the fancied interest of morals. It is generally held that the teaching of virtue demands the inculcation of falsehood. In politics, we conceal the vices of eminent statesmen of our own party. In theology, we conceal the sins of Popes if we are Catholics, and the sins of Luther and Calvin if we are Protestants. In matters of sex, we pretend before young people that virtue is much commoner than it is. In all countries, even adults are not allowed to know certain kinds of facts which the police consider undesirable, and the censor, in England, does not allow plays to be true to life, since he holds that the public can only be cajoled into virtue by deceit. This whole attitude implies a certain feebleness. Let us know the truth, whatever it is; then we can act rationally. The holders of power wish to conceal the truth from their slaves, in order that they may be misled as to their own interests; this is intelligible. What is less intelligible is that democracies should voluntarily make laws designed to prevent themselves from knowing the truth. This is collective Quixotism: they are resolved not to be told that the helmet is less good than they wish to believe. Such an attitude of abject funk is unworthy of free men and women. In my school, no obstacle to knowledge shall exist of any sort or kind. I shall seek virtue by the right training of passions and instincts, not by lying and deceit. In the virtue that I desire, the pursuit of knowledge, without fear and without limitation, is an essential element, in the absence of which the rest has little value.
What I am saying is no more than this: that I should cultivate the scientific spirit. Many eminent men of science do not have this spirit outside their special province; I should seek to make it all-pervasive. The scientific spirit demands in the first place a wish to find out the truth; the more ardent this wish, the better. It involves, in addition, certain intellectual qualities. There must be preliminary uncertainty, and subsequent decision according to the evidence. We must not imagine in advance that we already know what the evidence will prove. Nor must we be content with a lazy scepticism, which regards objective truth as unattainable and all evidence as inconclusive. We should admit that even our best-founded beliefs probably stand in need of some correction; but truth, so far as it is humanly attainable, is a matter of degree. Our beliefs in physics are certainly less false now than they were before the time of Galileo. Our beliefs as to child psychology are certainly nearer to the truth than Dr. Arnold’s were. In each case, the advance has come through substituting observation for preconceptions and passions. It is for the sake of this step that preliminary uncertainty is so important. It is necessary, therefore, to teach this, and also to teach the skill required for marshalling evidence. In a world where rival propagandists are perpetually blazing falsehoods at us, to induce us to poison ourselves with pills or each other with poison gases, this critical habit of mind is enormously important. Ready credulity in the face of repeated assertions is one of the curses of the modern world, and schools should do what they can to guard against it.
Throughout the later school years, even more than earlier, there should be a sense of intellectual adventure. Pupils should be given the opportunity of finding out exciting things for themselves after their set tasks were done, and therefore the set tasks should not be too heavy. There must be praise whenever it is deserved, and although mistakes must be pointed out, it should be done without censure. Pupils should never be made to feel ashamed of their stupidity. The great stimulus in education is to feel that achievement is possible. Knowledge which is felt to be boring is of little use, but knowledge which is assimilated eagerly becomes a permanent possession. Let the relation of knowledge to real life be very visible to your pupils, and let them understand how by knowledge the world could be transformed. Let the teacher appear always the ally of the pupil, not his natural enemy. Given a good training in the early years, these precepts will suffice to make the acquisition of knowledge delightful to the great majority of boys and girls.
CHAPTER XVII
DAY SCHOOLS AND BOARDING SCHOOLS
Whether a boy or girl should be sent to a boarding school or a day school is, to my mind, a question which must be decided in each case according to circumstances and temperament. Each system has its own advantages; in some cases the advantages of one system are greater, in others those of the other. I propose, in this chapter, to set forth the kind of arguments which would weigh with me in deciding about my own children, and which, I imagine, would be likely to weigh with other conscientious parents.
There are first of all considerations of health. Whatever may be true of actual schools, it is clear that schools are capable of being made more scientifically careful in this respect than most homes, because they can employ doctors and dentists and matrons with the latest knowledge, whereas busy parents are likely to be comparatively uninformed medically. Moreover, schools can be put in healthy neighbourhoods. In the case of people who live in big towns, this argument alone is very powerful in favour of boarding schools. It is obviously better for young people to spend most of their life in the country, so that if their parents have to live in towns it may be desirable to send the children away for their schooling. This argument may perhaps cease, before long, to have much validity: the health of London, for example, is steadily improving, and might be brought up to the standard of the country by the artificial use of ultra-violet light. Nevertheless, even if illness could be brought as low as in the country, a considerable nervous strain would remain. Constant noise is bad for both children and adults; the sights of the country, the smell of damp earth, the wind and the stars, ought to be stored in the memory of every man and woman. I think, therefore, that life in the country for the greater part of the year will remain important for the young whatever improvements may be effected in urban health.
Another argument, though a much smaller one, in favour of boarding schools is that they save the time otherwise spent in going and coming. Most people do not have a really good day school at their doors, and the distance to be traversed may be considerable. This argument is strongest in the country, as the other was strongest for town dwellers.
When it is desired to try any innovation in educational methods, it is almost inevitable that it should first be tried in a boarding school, because it is unlikely that the parents who believe in it will all live within one small area. This does not apply to infants, because they are not yet wholly in the grip of the education authorities; consequently Madame Montessori and Miss McMillan were able to try their experiment upon the very poor. Within the recognized school years, on the contrary, only the rich are allowed to try experiments with their children’s education. Most of them, naturally, prefer what is old and conventional; the few who desire anything else are geographically widely distributed, and do not anywhere suffice to support a day school. Such experiments as Bedales are only possible for boarding schools.
The arguments on the other side are, however, very considerable. In a school, many aspects of life do not appear: it is an artificial world, whose problems are not those of the world at large. A boy who is only at home during the holidays, when everybody makes a fuss over him, is likely to acquire far less knowledge of life than a boy who is at home every morning and evening. This is, at present, less true of girls, because more is demanded of them in many homes; but in proportion as their education is assimilated to that of boys, their home life also will become similar, and their present greater knowledge of domestic affairs will disappear. After fifteen or sixteen, it is good for boys and girls to have a certain share in parental occupations and anxieties—not too much, it is true, since that would interfere with education, but still some, lest they should fail to realize that the old people have their own life, their own interests, and their own importance. In the school, only young people count, and it is for them that everything is done. In holidays, the atmosphere of home is apt to be dominated by the young people. Consequently they tend to become arrogant and hard, ignorant of the problems of adult life, and quite aloof from their parents.
This state of affairs is apt to have a bad effect upon the affections of young people. Their affection for their parents becomes atrophied, and they never have to learn to adjust themselves to people whose tastes and pursuits are different from their own. I think this tends towards a certain selfish completeness, a feeling of one’s own personality as something exclusive. The family is the most natural corrective of this tendency, since it is a unit composed of people of different ages and sexes, with different functions to perform; it is organic, in a way which a collection of homogeneous individuals is not. Parents love their children largely because they give so much trouble; if parents give no trouble to their children, their children will not take them seriously. But the trouble they give must be legitimate: it must be only such as is necessary if they are to do their work and have any life of their own. Respect for the rights of others is one of the things young people ought to learn, and it is more easily learnt in the family than elsewhere. It is good for boys and girls to know that their father can be harassed by worries and their mother worn out by a multiplicity of details. And it is good that filial affection should remain alive during adolescence. A world without family affection tends to become harsh and mechanical, composed of individuals who try to domineer, but become cringing if they fail. I fear that these bad effects are to a certain extent produced by sending children to boarding schools, and I regard them as sufficiently serious to offset great advantages.