The conventional examinations which we usually find held at the end of a scholastic year, to which our fathers attached so much importance, have had no result at all; or, if any result, a bad one. These functions and their accompanying solemnities seem to have been instituted for the sole purpose of satisfying the vanity of parents and the selfish interests of many teachers, and in order to put the children to torture before the examination and make them ill afterwards. Each father wants his child to be presented in public as one of the prodigies of the college, and regards him with pride as a learned man in miniature. He does not notice that for a fortnight or so the child suffers exquisite torture. As things are judged by external appearances, it is not thought that there is any real torture, as there is not the least scratch visible on the skin.…
The parent’s lack of acquaintance with the natural disposition of the child, and the iniquity of putting it in false conditions so that its intellectual powers, especially in the sphere of memory, are artificially stimulated, prevent the parent from seeing that this measure of personal gratification may, as has happened in many cases, lead to illness and to the moral, if not the physical, death of the child.
On the other hand, the majority of teachers, being mere stereotypers of ready-made phrases and mechanical inoculators, rather than moral fathers of their pupils, are concerned in these examinations [[58]]with their own personality and their economic interests. Their object is to let the parents and the others who are present at the public display see that, under their guidance, the child has learned a good deal, that its knowledge is greater in quantity and quality than could have been expected of its tender years and in view of the short time that it has been under the charge of this very skilful teacher.
In addition to this wretched vanity, which is satisfied at the cost of the moral and physical life of the child, the teachers are anxious to elicit compliments from the parents and the rest of the audience, who know nothing of the real state of things, as a kind of advertisement of the prestige of their particular school.
Briefly, we are inexorably opposed to holding public examinations. In our school everything must be done for the advantage of the pupil. Everything that does not conduce to this end must be recognised as opposed to the natural spirit of positive education. Examinations do no good, and they do much harm to the child. Besides the illness of which we have already spoken, the nervous system of the child suffers, and a kind of temporary paralysis is inflicted on its conscience by the immoral features of the examination; the vanity provoked in those who are placed highest, envy and humiliation, grave obstacles to sound growth, in those who have failed, and in all of them the germs of most of the sentiments which go to the making of egoism.
In a later number of the Bulletin I found it necessary to return to the subject:—
We frequently receive letters from Workers’ [[59]]Educational Societies and Republican Fraternities asking that the teachers shall chastise the children in our schools. We ourselves have been disgusted, during our brief excursions, to find material proofs of the fact which is at the base of this request; we have seen children on their knees, or in other attitudes of punishment.
These irrational and atavistic practices must disappear. Modern pædagogy entirely discredits them. The teachers who offer their services to the Modern School, or ask our recommendation to teach in similar schools, must refrain from any moral or material punishment, under penalty of being disqualified permanently. Scolding, impatience, and anger ought to disappear with the ancient title of “master.” In free schools all should be peace, gladness, and fraternity. We trust that this will suffice to put an end to these practices, which are most improper in people whose sole ideal is the training of a generation fitted to establish a really fraternal, harmonious, and just state of society.
[[60]]
Chapter XI.
THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND THE LIBRARY
In setting out to establish a rational school for the purpose of preparing children for their entry into the free solidarity of humanity, the first problem that confronted us was the selection of books. The whole educational luggage of the ancient system was an incoherent mixture of science and faith, reason and unreason, good and evil, human experience and revelation, truth and error; in a word, totally unsuited to meet the new needs that arose with the formation of a new school.
If the school has been from remote antiquity equipped not for teaching in the broad sense of communicating to the rising generation the gist of the knowledge of previous generations, but for teaching on the basis of authority and the convenience of the ruling classes, for the purpose of making children humble and submissive, it is clear that none of the books hitherto used would suit us. But the severe logic of this position did not at once convince me. I refused to believe that the French democracy, which worked so zealously for the separation of Church and State, incurred the anger of the [[61]]clericals, and adopted obligatory secular instruction, would resign itself to a semi-education or a sophisticated education. I had, however, to yield to the evidence, against my prejudice. I first read a large number of works in the French code of secular instruction, and found that God was replaced by the State, Christian virtue by civic duty, religion by patriotism, submission to the king, the aristocracy, and the clergy by subservience to the official, the proprietor, and the employer. Then I consulted an eminent Freethinker who held high office in the Ministry of Public Instruction, and, when I had told him my desire to see the books they used, which I understood to be purged of traditional errors, and explained my design and ideal to him, he told me frankly that they had nothing of the sort; all their books were, more or less cleverly and insidiously, tainted with untruth, which is the indispensable cement of social inequality. When I further asked if, seeing that they had replaced the decaying idol of deity by the idol of oligarchic despotism, they had not at least some book dealing with the origin of religion, he said that there was none; but he knew one which would suit me—Malvert’s Science and Religion. In point of fact, this was already translated into Spanish, and was used as a reading-book in the Modern School, with the title Origin of Christianity.
In Spanish literature I found several works written by a distinguished author, of some eminence in science, who had produced them rather in the interest of the publishers than with a view to the education of [[62]]children. Some of these were at first used in the Modern School, but, though one could not accuse them of error, they lacked the inspiration of an ideal and were poor in method. I communicated with this author with a view to interesting him in my plans and inducing him to write books for me, but his publishers held him to a certain contract and he could not oblige me.