Speaking of intemperance in relation to crime, he states that: 'Brain-workers provide the most hopeless cases of dipsomania. Increased brain-power—more brain-work; more brain-exhaustion—more nervous desire for a stimulant, more rapid succumbing to the alcoholic habit—these are the stages that can be noted everywhere among those who have had more "schooling" than their fathers. Australia consumes more alcohol per head than any nation. In Australia primary education is more universal than in England, and yet there criminals have increased out of all proportion to the population. Of much crime, of many forms of crime, it is irrefragably true that crime is condensed alcohol, and it is certainly not true that the absolutely or comparatively illiterate alone comprise those who swell these categories.'
I have taken pains to ascertain the opinions of several of the chaplains attached to the great convict prisons, and they are practically unanimous in condemning the present system of education.
'It is liable,' writes one of these experienced clergymen, 'to foster conceit, discontent, a disinclination to submit to discipline and authority, and a dangerous phase of ambition, which are fruitful sources of that kind of crime which is in these days most prevalent.... This superficial education causes, I think, self-deceit as well as self-conceit, and makes young people imagine that because, in addition to what they have learnt, they can present a good outward appearance, they are qualified to fill any kind of appointment with success.
'I think, also,' he goes on to say, 'that it leads them in their desire to rise in the social scale to attempt by dishonest means to live at a higher rate than is justifiable, to gamble and speculate, in order to keep up a false position. I have come across those who have fallen where this has confessedly been the case, and who have lamented that such wrong ideas had been put into their heads. Young people now look upon many honourable and useful employments as beneath them, and there is a general rush for those which seem to offer a better social position.'
The conventional belief in the efficacy of cramming boys with moral platitudes and all kinds of commonplace facts and theoretical knowledge is so ingrained that there is a natural reluctance to ascribe any evil effects to the process of education. I am contented, however, to let the facts speak for themselves. It cannot well be disputed that unsuitable education, or sham education, or whatever one may like to call it, is the direct cause of widespread dissatisfaction amongst the very classes from which the majority of criminals are recruited. Whilst vast numbers of people are constantly being unfitted for the commonest occupations of life, there must result an overcrowding of the callings which are considered suitable to the dignity of those who have eaten the unripe fruit of the elementary tree of knowledge.
It is self-evident that the unsuitably educated have much greater incentive to wrong-doing than the merely illiterate, and it is also a corroborative fact that by far the greater proportion of criminals have been taught at least to read and write. Given two boys, one of whom had acquired a smattering of facts at school and had learnt the Catechism very perfectly by rote, whilst the other had merely been encouraged to apply a little common sense to manual labour, who would have any hesitation in pointing out the former as the more likely to fall into evil ways?
Therein lies the supreme foolishness of modern methods of instruction. All the moral aphorisms in the world will not help a boy to be honest if he is at the same time unfitted for his station in life. People do not need moral instruction; they acquire all their morality in the school of life. It is impossible to teach boys and girls theoretically to be virtuous. All that can be done is to turn them into first-class hypocrites, ready to quote texts and to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, whilst they are busy breaking the Ten Commandments every day of the week.
A surprising amount of virtue would come into the world of its own accord if a little more pains were taken to preserve for each individual the environment to which he is adapted by nature. This life has become such a mockery that people talk of heaven as a state in which every person will be free to do the things he likes best—as if that blissful condition were utterly unattainable here.
Whilst such anomalies exist as those which curse the existence of the majority upon this earth, criminals will continue to be produced. And if we concede that these anomalies are directly or indirectly brought about by false and irrational methods of educating the youth of the country, we must also allow that education helps to manufacture criminals and to encourage crime.