Even the reformers of education appear to have deceived themselves. Many of them—Arnold and Thring conspicuous amongst their number—have tried to abolish this abuse or to remedy that defect; but not one has gone to the root of the evil, and has boldly stated that the whole system of education is based upon totally erroneous principles—designed, not to encourage progress and generate ideas, but to stifle development, and to place an insurmountable obstacle in the path of the evolution of humanity.
The world has acquiesced in the deceit, and so the great fallacy has grown up unchecked, and, like a rolling stone, gathered moss from generation to generation, until its hideous proportions seem to have embraced the universe, and to have shut out every particle of light from the vision of unhappy, convention-haunted mankind.
CHAPTER XV
REAL EDUCATION
There is no such thing in existence as a system of genuine education. A large number of institutions exist, as we have seen, for the purpose of manufacturing and cramming, after an approved plan, the youth of the upper and middle classes, and there is a well-organized system of sham education spread throughout the country under the title of 'public elementary schools.' That is the sum of modern educational effort.
The word 'education,' when used in the sense that is commonly applied to it, could not be satisfactorily and adequately defined in less than a post octavo pamphlet. It signifies an enormous number of things, from pot-hooks to trigonometry. It means history, geography, physics, chemistry, natural history, mineralogy, Latin, Greek, French, arithmetic, algebra, Euclid, and goodness knows how many more things, jammed in at so much a pound. It means taking a child, shaking everything out of its head, and then stuffing every nook and corner with facts it will never be able to remember, and with dates for which it cannot have any use. It means risking the mental shipwreck of the clever child, and making the stupid more dense. And it means popping the individual into a mould, and dishing him up as a dummy.
What it does not mean, is developing the faculties of each individual.
There is, in fact, a wide difference between what education is and what it should be. If every school and college throughout the country were closed to-morrow, it would probably effect some negative good within an appreciable measure of time, and it would certainly abolish much positive harm that is being unceasingly produced by the present methods of instruction. If no effort be made to develop the faculties of each individual, then it is better to leave them alone to develop on their own account. But nothing can be more pernicious than to take the youth of the nation wholesale, and to destroy most of the good that is latent in them, in order to manufacture them into something which Nature never intended them to be.
This is not education, but fabrication. It is destruction, not development. Real education would consist in assisting every individual to develop the faculties with which Nature had endowed him, and to train to their highest capacity any special talents that might reveal themselves during the process. Above all things, real education would encourage the utilization of the brain for purposes of thought and reflection, instead of trying to make it a warehouse for storing van-loads of useless knowledge.
It is absurd to assume that this simple educational aim is beyond the reach of humanity. That its introduction into the practical affairs of life would cause a stupendous revolution cannot be denied. But it does not follow, on that account, that it should be conveniently consigned, like many another pressing reform, to the pigeon-hole of the impossible.