The Curse of Education

by Harold Edward Gorst

Ignorance, one ought to remember, is a valuable incentive to investigation. Young people should be left as much as possible to find things out for themselves. Education should resemble a person groping forward in the dark; and only so much light ought to be let in upon the process as seems desirable in each individual case. In that way, at least, the pupil would learn to think for himself; and even if little more were accomplished than this, it would be of ten thousand times greater value to the individual, and to the community at large, than the acquisition of a large stock of facts at the price of losing all power of reflection and initiative.

Let me give an illustration of what I will call the opposing methods of education.

We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that the only available book for the instruction of a class of boys was that excellent but abstruse work known as 'Bradshaw's Railway Guide.' The modern schoolmaster would draw up an exhaustive and complicated scheme. So much time would be devoted to parsing every sentence through the book. The figures would be added up, and subtracted, and divided. He would concoct neat little mathematical problems: If the 11.40 express from Paddington travelled to Swindon at fifty miles an hour and broke down half-way, at what o'clock would the 12.15 parliamentary train overtake it? and so forth. But—most valuable exercise of all—long tables of trains would be learnt off by heart, with the names of stopping places and the prices of the first-class tickets.

A genuine educationist would set to work in a much simpler fashion. He would tell the boys to look out a good train from Birmingham to Newcastle. Each boy would be free to tackle the problem in his own fashion, and the task—if successfully accomplished—would do much towards developing the thinking faculties.

In any system of real education it would be impossible for the schoolmaster to dictate the subjects to which the pupil should give his attention, and it would be equally impossible for the parent to say 'I intend my son to enter such-and-such a profession.' Nobody can settle beforehand what talents the child is to develop. That is a private matter in which no third person has any right to interfere between the child itself and Nature.

Modern education consists entirely of interference. There is, in the first place, the interference of the parent, who insists upon an artistic boy becoming a banker, puts an incipient tradesman into the army, or tries to make a scholar out of a mechanic. Then there comes the interference of the schoolmaster, who has his favourite recipe of Latin verses, quadratic equations, and what not, to stuff into every head he can get hold of for a few terms. Lastly appears the Government, which declares that nobody shall enter the army, or navy, or civil service, without devoting his best years to being crammed in such a scandalous fashion, that it is a toss-up whether he breaks down altogether under the ordeal, or simply forgets, a few months after the consummation of the process, all that has been pitchforked into his brain.

When a baby is brought into the world the parents spend the first year of its life in wondering and speculating about its future. Will it be a great author, or a Bishop, or a Lord Chancellor? If its mouth twitches when anyone slams a door, or it gurgles happily when a note is struck on the piano, they declare it has genius for music; and if it amuses itself later on by crude efforts to draw distorted figures with distorted faces and distorted arms and legs, they jump to the conclusion that they have produced an infant Correggio.

Why does all this anxiety about the child's individuality disappear the moment its intelligence begins to dawn? One must suppose, at any rate, that it does, because the parent immediately sets about getting all the originality knocked out of his offspring, and does not grudge the payment of heavy fees to secure this object.

The dreams about the Lord Chancellorship, or the gold medal at the musical academy, vanish as if by magic. There is no more talk about bishoprics or artistic fame. The parents settle down to the conventional task of having the child fitted for something it has no desire to be; and the notion that the particular faculties they observed—or thought they observed—during its early infancy should or could be developed never appears to enter their heads for a moment.

Some children develop later than others; but with proper care and encouragement it would be possible not to lead, but to follow, each child to its own bent. The child must show the way—that is the essence of real education, and it involves a complete upheaval of the principles upon which systems of instruction are at present founded.