The Curse of Education

by Harold Edward Gorst

That must always be the case with the self-made man. His first objective must be his own self-preservation, and if he wishes to gain power he is bound to exploit the political situation, regardless of the best interests of the country, because every man's hand is against him until the summit of his ambition has been reached.

Schools and colleges in which the mind is crammed instead of being developed cannot produce statesmen. They can manufacture in unlimited quantities the type of well-intentioned, honourable mediocrity with which our public service is stocked. But as long as this process is continued, the real power in the administration of the affairs of the Empire will remain virtually in the hands of a few able individuals of the wrong calibre. There will be a dummy Prime Minister, and a dummy Cabinet; but the wires will be worked by the self-made man who must place himself first and his country second, with consequences usually disastrous to the national welfare.

There is no intended disparagement of the self-made man. He is, and always has been, the best intellectual product of the age. The greatest statesmen, philosophers, scientists, writers, and other men of genius have been self-made or self-cultured. But it does not follow because great statesmen have been self-made men, that it is for the good of the country that its rulers should be drawn from that class. As has already been pointed out, the self-made man usually creates far more mischief in the course of his upward political struggle, than is compensated for afterwards when he has secured his position and can turn his talents to the account of his country, instead of for the purpose of securing his own personal advancement.

There is, it must be remembered, a national emergency for which we have to prepare. Our extended Imperial obligations, and the sharp commercial competition which has caused some of the great Powers to sacrifice individuality wholesale in order to mobilize an army of traders, make it imperative that measures should be taken to preserve the Anglo-Saxon race.

The thing to avoid at this moment is imitation of tactics that will send every nation adopting them backward in evolution. To secure a temporary commercial triumph at the enormous sacrifice of the natural development of the individual, would be a fatal and short-sighted policy that could only end in national ruin. We have not yet reached the worst depths of the education fallacy, but we are complacently drifting in that direction.

State interference in educational matters may be an excellent thing when the whole energies of the central authorities happen to be exerted in mitigation of the evils of the national system. But it must be borne in mind that political parties and the heads of departments are constantly changing in this country. The reformer of to-day may to-morrow be superseded by a retrogressive-minded mediocrity; and there would be no guarantee that the beneficial influence of the one would not be annihilated afterwards by the pernicious intermeddling of the other.

Instead of casting about for means of securing a State monopoly of the ruinous type of education supplied by our schools and colleges, it would be more conducive to the salvation of the country if the whole energies of the nation were directed towards revolutionizing the system of instruction itself.

If schoolmasters can accomplish nothing better than the manufacture of set types of humanity, the progress of mankind would be promoted more rapidly without their assistance.

What is, after all, the main object of education?

It is to assist everybody to develop his faculties and talents, so that he may be fitted for the position in life which Nature intended him to occupy.