The Tyranny of Shams

by Joseph McCabe

In mathematics, at least, the same criticism will hold. Geometry is, of course, no longer a mere task of memorisation; but the positive knowledge of problems is not of the least use, save in a few exceptional cases, and the training of the mind might be achieved by lessons in natural science. In natural science itself one might quarrel with much of the material given: not one in ten thousand, for instance, will even remember in later years the elements of botany. But at least we are, in giving scientific information, training the young to inquire into the nature of positive reality and initiating them to branches of knowledge in which they can easily advance in later years, since we have so fine a popular literature of science, and the advance will be a considerable gain in their whole mental outlook. It is chiefly in regard to history and geography that time and labour might be spared, and more leisure given for ensuring that the child will assimilate the knowledge imparted. Mental energy should not be wasted in mastering an immense collection of facts which, experience shows, are certain to be forgotten within a few years.

I may also recall that, when we choose to carry out the elementary reform of abolishing the plurality of tongues, a vast economy will be made in the curriculum, and really useful knowledge will be imparted more thoroughly and with finer attention to the texture of the child’s brain. The academic plea, that there is excellent training in a thorough study of Latin and Greek, may be freely granted. But there is just as excellent a training in the thorough study of such branches of science as are fitted for the school, and the positive information gained is permanently useful.

If we thus eliminate languages and simplify geography and history we give the modern teacher a more hopeful opportunity. It is surely the universal experience that we forget nine-tenths of the geographical details we learn at school, and we find little inconvenience in re-learning such as we need to master in later years. A judicious outline-scheme, with more physiography and less of useless detail, and a fuller account of one’s national geography (not because it describes the child’s country, but because it is practical information) would suffice. The remainder, or part of it, could be imparted in technical training for commerce. History should be wholly remodelled. It is ludicrous to-day to make the child grow pale and worn over the past royal families and wars of England, and dismiss the general history of the race in a page or two. A fine scheme of the history, and even the prehistory and origin, of the human race, with so much fuller information about the child’s own country as is useful for the understanding of its institutions and monuments, could be imparted in less time, with more interest, and with far greater profit. The patriotic sham deeply vitiates our scheme of instruction and makes the training of the child scandalously one-sided and exacting. Germany has recently shown us the pernicious results of this political perversion of education.

Passing to the moral education of children, we at once find it cruelly distorted and enfeebled by a religious sham of the least defensible nature. Such moralists as Kant and Emerson hardly exaggerated the human importance of moral law, however much they failed to understand its human significance. Character is the pivot on which life turns. The general diffusion of fine qualities of character would transform the earth, quite apart from economic and political reform, and lead to a speedier settlement of our industrial and international difficulties. It is therefore of supreme importance to train the will or character of the child from its earliest years. Yet there is no other branch of our education, and hardly any other branch of our life, in which we tolerate so crude and ludicrous a pretence of work.

The education authority of the Metropolis of England would, one supposes, have the advantage of the finest expert advice in the world. Enter one of the thousands of schools under its control, however, and ask how the training of character is conducted. A teacher informs you that at college he has learned only to impart “Biblical knowledge.” He will show you a scheme of lessons founded on the Old and New Testament. The younger the child, the more preposterous the lesson. In the lower standards the child must learn the story of the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, etc. It is still too young to imagine that its teacher may, at the command of our education authorities, be grossly deceiving it, or to perceive that these ancient Babylonian legends contain no particular incentive to virtue. When it passes to the higher standards it is initiated to some equally remarkable stories about the early history of mankind and the early conduct of the Deity. The teacher rarely believes these things, and it may be assumed that men like Mr. Sidney Webb, who voted for this scheme of education in the L.C.C., do not. If the child has intelligence enough to raise the question of veracity, it must be snubbed or deceived. A London teacher told me that on one occasion, when he had described some of the remarkable proceedings of the Israelites in ancient Palestine, a precocious youngster asked: “Please, sir, is it true?” Our education authorities forbid him to reply to such a question. Indeed, his headmaster was a Nonconformist (very zealous for Bible lessons), and would find a way to punish any departure from the appointed untruths.

The lessons from the New Testament are, it is true, devoid of this atmosphere of Oriental animalism, ferocity, and superstition which clings to the Old Testament lesson, but here again the teacher is forced to violate the elementary principles of education. He must gravely tell the story of the miraculous birth, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Christ. He probably knows that some of the most learned divines in England and other countries regard these stories as false, but he must deliberately and solemnly tell the young that Christ was God and that these things are written in the “Word of God.” He must repeat parables which we know to have been borrowed (and often spoiled in the borrowing) from the Jewish rabbis, yet teach that this was the unique feature of Christ’s preaching. He must use all his ingenuity to wring a moral lesson out of the parables of the workers in the vineyard, the royal banquet, and so on. He must keep up this elaborate deception of the child until it leaves his care; and he knows that, in nine cases out of ten in London or any large city, the child is already hearing on all sides sneers at these ancient myths, and laughing at the system which inculcates them in the name of all that is most sacred.

The aim of our London authorities, and education authorities generally in England, is not to train character, but to teach the contents of the Bible. Why a civic authority should include the teaching of the Bible no man knows; and whether a civic authority can be indifferent to the truth or untruth of the lessons it imposes few seem to ask. Mr. Sidney Webb, endorsing these lessons, said that the Bible was “great literature”; and scores of our parochial legislators, who were not generally known to admire great literature (but were known to have numbers of Nonconformist constituents), fervently repeated the phrase. Does the child appreciate or hear a single word about the literary qualities of the Bible? Does a literary lesson need to be a deliberate lesson in untruth? Can we find no great literature which has not the taint of untruth?

Dr. Clifford says that these lessons tend to make “good citizens.” It is not at first sight apparent why we should go to the literature of an ancient, mendacious, polygamous, and bloodthirsty tribe for lessons in citizenship in a modern civilisation. Let us suppose, however, that the ingenious teacher has wrung a moral of truthfulness, fraternity, respect for women, self-reliance, and universal justice out of these peculiar records of ancient Judæa. Follow the child, in imagination, into the later years of citizenship. He hardly leaves the school before he learns that the whole Biblical scheme is very generally ridiculed, and is rejected even by large numbers of learned theologians. Before many years, at least, he is fairly sure to learn this. The prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount he, of course, never had the slightest intention of observing. The teacher, even while he reads the quixotic counsels, knows, and possibly notes with approval, that the boy’s code is: “If any smite thee on the one cheek, smite him forthwith on both.” But the boy now learns that from the Creation to the Resurrection the whole story is seriously disputed and is rejected by the majority of well-educated people. He looks back on his “Bible lessons” and his teacher with derision, and he discards the whole authority of his code of conduct. Surely an admirable foundation for virtue and citizenship!

Into the larger question of the relation of religious education and crime I cannot enter here. I have shown elsewhere that France, Victoria, and New Zealand, the countries with longest experience of secular education, have the best record among civilised nations in the reduction of crime. The carelessness of clerical writers as to the truth of their statements on this subject is appalling. There is not a tittle of reason in criminal statistics, or any other exact indications of national health, for retaining religious lessons in our schools. They are there merely because the clergy find it conducive to their prestige to have their sacred book enthroned with honour in the national scheme of education. As in the case of divorce, they ask us to maintain immorality in the name of religion. German schools are saturated with religious teaching, yet we have seen the issue of it all.

For one hundred years our English school-system has been hampered and perverted by this clerical insistence on religious lessons. Parents, they sometimes say, desire it; but when the Trades Union Congress, the only large body of parents which ever pronounced on the subject, repeatedly voted for secular education, by overwhelming majorities, the clergy, through the minority of their followers, could only secure the exclusion of the subject from the agenda. Neither do the majority of teachers desire it; while educationists, as a whole, resent this grievous complication of their work. Nothing but the complete secularisation of all schools receiving funds from the nation or municipality will enable us to advance. The clergy must do their own work on their own premises. The moral pretext is a thin disguise of an effort to use the nation’s resources and authority for the purpose of attaching children to the churches.