  "It is a great and perilous discovery that the State can [as in Germany] impress the minds of masses of men by a carefully organised system of political education, and we hope the authors will bear it in mind."—Westminster Gazette. "Germany has shown the world to what evil ends the dishonest use of schools and schoolmasters must lead."—Contemporary Review. We have discussed the pros and cons of propaganda—the propaganda, that is to say, by each master of his particular point of view—and have concluded that, if certain safeguards are adopted and honestly adhered to, such propaganda is desirable. But there is one particular form of propaganda which no one, if he has any reverence at all for the individuality of his pupils and the freedom of the world, can regard as anything but an abomination. And here we meet with the most serious criticism which can be, and has been, levelled against the project of political education. Suppose, it has been urged, that your scheme is adopted by a number of the public schools; suppose that by a steady process of attack, this new and very powerful piece of machinery is captured by the State, as a means of imposing orthodoxy on the nation and nipping in the bud a great part of our potential vigour and independence; have you not then defeated most disastrously your own object, and desiring above everything more liberty in thought and more self-reliance in action, merely succeeded in setting up a system similar to that which created the national character of modern Germany? It is at first sight a most damaging criticism; and a criticism which seems to gather weight as we look about us and observe the terrible results which have occurred when the State has been allowed to manipulate opinion for its own ends. No Englishman will need to have the lesson of Germany brought home to him; he knows too well how inculcation through the schools of the worst type of narrow patriotism, rendered seemingly noble by a deliberate falsification of history, has warped the generosity which all children, German or other, possess, into a pitiful acquiescence in every form of intellectual and moral vileness. But in England, too, the danger signals are not wanting. We have observed the people falling more and more under the sway of one man's ideas, carried by his Press into every town and village of the countryside: we have noticed that complete independence does not appear always to exist as between the Press and the men who are responsible for the gravest acts of public policy; and some of us do not much like what we have seen. Are we then to help forward the forces making for our own Prussianisation? We desire to see Politics taught by masters of every shade of political opinion, so that the boys may have all the materials from which to form an independent judgment; but will not the State see to it, as it grows more and more powerful, that only those men are allowed to become, or to remain, schoolmasters, who will teach a doctrine not abhorrent to the powers that be? Those who know the public schools will not be at a loss to understand how such a consummation could be achieved. Even now there is the pressure of parents, members of the financial or political wing of the ruling class—a pressure few head masters are big enough to resist. And in the future—to take only one instance—may not Conscription remain, and the Government exercise a direct control through the medium of the O.T.C.? And as one writes these words; as one sees the ghastly prospect of more and more State control, more and more authoritarianism and docility, less and less of the free co-operation which is the very life-blood of society, one sees also that the only way in which we can prevent the remedy we have proposed from becoming another instrument in the hands of our enemies, is simply by adopting that remedy itself. We must break in on the vicious circle while and how we can. For why is there a danger of our instrument of education being turned into an instrument of obscurantism? Only because there is a danger of our whole society becoming rotten to the core; only because there is a danger of the present cleavage between the two English nations becoming wider and wider, until we have, on the one hand, a class ruling in the interests of money and privilege, and, on the other, a slaving and possibly pampered proletariate. And unless a start is made here and now with the political education of Europe—unless boys and girls are made to think politically while their generosity and idealism is still untainted by motives of personal profit, and their powers of vital thought not yet decayed by disuse—these and worse things will happen; love, tolerance, and the independence which is the birthright of men, will all be engulfed in a mad welter of personal, class, and national selfishness. In such a society it really would not matter very much if political education were captured by the State; and the only way, as it seems to us, of preventing its advent is by getting up a system of political education. For by political education we are creating the only possible safeguard against a misuse of it—we are creating a society which will not desire to misuse it. And so we would make, if we may, an appeal to all who are considering what their future work shall be, and to those also who may be finding their present work unprofitable—we would urge them to become schoolmasters. We like sometimes to think of a little Greek army of devoted warriors—a band of five hundred young men, who will go into the public schools and there gradually help to set up a system of political education. The word "Greek" is not out of place. For there is something about the sunlit freshness of a cricket field—something too, about the boys, belonging for the most part to a class which, with all its faults, has a great tradition of public service behind it—that brings before the mind a gathering of Greek humanity in the smiling peace of a Greek country place. It is idle to pretend that a man of ability who goes into the schoolmastering profession does not have to make many sacrifices. His salary is usually miserable; his chances of a head mastership must be at present in inverse ratio to the vigour with which he acts on the principles he believes in, for these posts are mostly reserved for the "safe," as the debates of the Head Masters' Conference used to show, until, a few years ago, that body very wisely decided to exclude reporters. But the compensations are enormous. He will live all his life close to boys whom, when he once gets to know them, he will find to have a freshness and high-heartedness which will be a constant source of hope and inspiration; he will have the joy of watching their minds develop, and of feeling that it is due in some measure to him that they are growing into makers of happiness for themselves and the world. And when in his work he is met by the opposition of those who misinterpret or misunderstand, he will have an almost fierce satisfaction in the faith that the future may be all on his side, and that many years hence a little of him will live in men who have realised not his, but their, individuality, and that potentiality for goodness which, as well as he was able, he fostered and brought to the light. We have both been schoolmasters; at the moment we are neither of us anything so useful; and we feel that we can say quite dogmatically that there is no happiness equal to that of the profession that was ours. And both of us fell into it accidently, as so many others have done. Yet the appeal for schoolmasters should surely not be based entirely or even mainly on the idyllic picture of the happy schoolmaster. John Stuart Mill reduced hedonism to its fundamental paradox when he declared that the way to find happiness was to turn your back on it. If there is one lesson which political education rightly conducted cannot fail to impress upon its best boys, it is the crying need of the schools for their services. From Plato and Aristotle down to the latest treatises on Reconstruction, be it the "Principles of Reconstruction," as laid down by Mr. Bertrand Russell, or the "Elements of Reconstruction," as reprinted from The Times with an introduction by Lord Milner, all alike come round to education as the keystone of the arch of politics. The final appeal is always to the schoolmaster, and it is perhaps less hopeful to appeal to the actual schoolmaster of to-day than to the possible schoolmaster of to-morrow. As are our schools, so will be our Parliaments and our Civil Service, and some at any rate who have mapped out for themselves a career of political usefulness and honour in Westminster, Whitehall, or abroad, might bethink themselves first of Banquo. "Lesser than Macbeth and greater: |
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