[1] The italics are ours. Why were these two words inserted, we wonder.
[2] The other is dealt with in Chapter V.
CHAPTER IV
CONTROVERSY
"While a formidable strife between masters of different creeds might be engendered, it is arguable that the finest political spirit might be fostered by approaching the problems under the conditions of fairness and courtesy on which the public schools pride themselves."[1]—Manchester Guardian.
"Tolerance, to be more than a pale and negative virtue, needs to be based on an understanding of these different points of view, which means, again, bringing an educated mind to bear on them."—Westminster Gazette.
"Boys always will be boys" they say, and the saying can be interpreted in many ways. "Masters always will be masters" is a more sobering reflection. The reputation of schoolmasters for sweet reasonableness has never stood, perhaps, particularly high. Even supposing that, with a staff of angels, such a scheme of teaching as that sketched in the preceding chapter were desirable, will not the actual result be something very different? Will not "a formidable strife between masters of different creeds be engendered," and will not the spectacle of that strife, and a possible participation in it, be the very worst possible training for the new generation?
The difficulty is one that has got to be faced, and the present writers, at any rate, are not at all likely to overlook it. As was shown in Chapter II., our experiments collapsed not because our colleagues differed from us in political opinion, but because, differing from us in political opinion, they also differed from us in educational theory. Had the experiment collapsed simply because they differed from us in political opinion, it would be no use pursuing the subject of political education further; for a staff in which all the masters held the same political views would be unlikely to exist, and in any case altogether undesirable. We may take it for granted that the staff will consist of men of diverse political opinions. Indeed we may go further and take it for granted that in a school in which political education flourishes, those diversities, though certainly less bitter, will be more clearly marked than at present. In such a school the masters, for the most part, will be keenly interested in politics, for the school must be a single society of men and boys in real intellectual co-operation. What is good for the boys will be good for the masters. Perverse metaphors comparing masters and boys to hounds and hares will be seen as the symptom of a radically false educational philosophy.
If political education becomes not merely an experiment but an integral part of the timetable, the staff as a whole, not necessarily all the masters, but all those concerned with what are at present ironically called "the humanities," will be taking a part in it. But how can this be worked? We are here faced with a problem such as none of the ordinary school subjects has ever raised, at any rate in this acute form. Everything depends upon the educational philosophy of the staff. Everything depends upon the extent of their belief in freedom of opinion.
The case for freedom of opinion, like the case for self-government, has suffered from the fact that we take the theory so completely for granted that we do not notice how far we are removed from the practice of it. Freedom is supposed to be an Englishman's speciality. "Britons never shall be slaves," we say, and suppose that settles the matter. Very likely Thomson, when he wrote his feeble verses (they have been redeemed by an excellent tune), never paused to reflect that the sailors he was glorifying were mostly victims of the press-gang. It is but a step from a press-gang to a Press Bureau. Most Englishmen are not very anxious to tolerate any opinions but their own, if the subject be one that they deem of vital importance. Very few have the faith of the great apostles of freedom, the conviction that right opinion can only triumph through fair and open conflict with the wrong.