Chapter 12:
National education

The good effects of private education will always be very limited; the parent who really puts his own hand to the plough will always be somewhat disappointed until education becomes a grand national concern. A man can’t retire into a desert with his child; and if he did, he couldn’t bring himself back to childhood and become the proper friend and playmate of an infant or youth. When children are confined to the society of men and women, they soon acquire a kind of premature manhood that stops the growth of every vigorous power of mind or body. In order to develop their faculties they should be stimulated to think for themselves; and this can be done only by mixing a number of children together and making them jointly pursue the same objects.

[MW continues with this theme. •If children are to be openly inquiring they need time with their peers rather than with parents who stand—however wisely—in authority over them. •There are affections amongst children that are unlike the affection a child may have for his parents, and a child needs practice in the former, because ‘in youth the seeds of every affection should be sown’. •A frank openness of speech and feeling is possible between child and child but not between child and parent; and this matters because it ‘first opens the heart to friendship and confidence’ and leads on to ‘more expansive benevolence’. •A little further down she levels a further charge against home-schooling: it leads to the children’s acquiring ‘too high an opinion of their own importance’, to their ‘being allowed to tyrannize over servants’, and to their becoming ‘vain and effeminate’ because they are treated like men when they are still boys’.

[Considerations like these, MW says, have affected her former preference for private education; and yet she still has that preference, because:] I still think that schools as they are now regulated are hot-beds of vice and folly, and that the only knowledge of human nature that could be learned from them is merely cunning selfishness.

[She now holds forth strenuously against the schools: at them ‘boys become gluttons and slovens’, and rush into the libertinism that ‘hardens the heart as it weakens the understanding’. Children at boarding-schools spend at least ‘half of the time’ longing for vacations, and when these come ‘they are spent in total dissipation and beastly indulgence’. A little further on she refers to ‘the system of tyranny and abject slavery that is established among the boys’.]

The only way to avoid two extremes that are equally harmful to morality would be to contrive some way of combining a public and private education. Thus to make men citizens, two natural steps might be taken that seem to lead directly to the desired point: cultivating the domestic affections that first open the heart to the various modifications of humanity, while also allowing the children to spend great part of their time on terms of equality with other children. [MW follows this up with a lyrical reminiscence of ‘a country day school’, whose pupils had the desirable daily mixture of childhood friends and family influence. She contrasts this fiercely with the evils of ‘close confinement in an academy near London’, ending with ‘. . . to say nothing of the slavery to forms that makes religion worse than a farce’. This launches her on an attack first on religious services in schools and then cutting with a wider swathe through religious practices more generally.]

·A DIATRIBE AGAINST RELIGIOUS PRACTICE IN ENGLAND·

What good can be expected from the youth who receives the sacrament of the Lord’s supper so as to avoid paying a fine? Half the employment of the youths is to elude the necessity of attending public worship; and well they may, for such a constant repetition of the same thing must be a very irksome restraint on their natural vivacity. These ceremonies

•have the most fatal effect on their morals,

•are a ritual performed by the lips when the heart and mind are far away, and

•are no longer stored up by our ·Protestant· church as a bank to draw on for the fees of the poor souls in purgatory;

so why shouldn’t they be abolished?

[This next paragraph is addressed to the situation of any school or college which was founded by someone who provided a financial endowment and laid down rules for how the institution was to be run. There were and still are many of these.]

But in this country there is a fear of any innovation. This hidden fear is really the apprehensive timidity of idle slugs who guard the snug place that they view as an hereditary estate—eating, drinking and enjoying themselves instead of fulfilling the duties (except a few empty forms) for which the ‘estate’ was endowed. How do they guard it? By sliming it over! These are the people who most strenuously insist on conforming to the will of the founder, crying out against every reform as if it were a violation of justice. [MW is especially indignant, she explains, about institutions that are now Protestant but were founded by Roman Catholics and still hold onto ‘the relics of popery’ that remain from their foundation. She continues:] These Romish customs have the most baneful effect on the morals of our clergy; for the idle vermin who two or three times a day sloppily perform a service that they think is useless, but call their ‘duty’, soon lose their sense of duty. Having been forced at college to attend or evade public worship, they acquire an habitual contempt for the very service the performance of which will enable them to live in idleness. . . .

Nothing can be more irreverent than the cathedral service as it is now performed in this country, and England doesn’t contain a set of weaker men than those who are the slaves of this childish routine. A disgusting skeleton of the former state is still exhibited; but all the solemnity—which engaged the imagination even if it didn’t purify the heart—is stripped off. The performance of ·Roman Catholic· high mass on the ·European· continent must impress anyone who has a spark of imagination with that solemn melancholy, that sublime tenderness, which is so near a kin to devotion. I don’t say that these devotional feelings do more moral good than any other emotion of taste; but I do say that the ·French Roman Catholic· theatrical pomp that gratifies our senses is preferable to the ·English Protestant· cold parade that insults the understanding without reaching the heart.

These remarks can’t be misplaced in a discussion of national education, especially given that the supporters of these puerile establishments pretend to be the champions of religion. Religion, pure source of comfort in this vale of tears! how has your clear stream been muddied by the dabblers who have presumptuously tried to confine in one narrow channel the living waters that always flow toward God—the sublime ocean of existence! What would life be without the peace that can’t be had except through the love of God, built on humanity?. . . .

·END OF THE DIATRIBE·

[There are several more paragraphs expressing scorn and disgust for boarding schools and what they do to the morals of their pupils. Then:]

I have heard several masters of schools maintain that their role was connected not with boys’ morals but only with their learning Latin and Greek; and that they had done their duty by sending some good scholars to college.

A few good scholars, I grant, may have been formed in this way; but to bring forward these clever boys, the health and morals of a number of others have been sacrificed. . . . It is not for the benefit of society that a few brilliant men should be brought forward at the expense of the multitude. It is true that great men seem to start up. . . .at proper intervals, to restore order and blow away the clouds that thicken over the face of truth; but if more reason and virtue prevailed in society, these strong winds wouldn’t be necessary. [MW now returns to the main theme of this chapter, taking it to the declaration that ‘children ought to be educated at home’. She adds some warnings about the danger of this, and then:]

This train of reasoning brings me back to a subject that I want to discuss at length, the need for proper day-schools.

But these should be national establishments; schoolmasters in private schools depend on the whims of parents, and as long as that is so they can’t be expected to exert themselves any more than is necessary to please ignorant people. A schoolmaster has to give the parents some sample of the boy’s abilities, which during the vacation is shown to every visitor to his home; and this does more harm than would at first be supposed. For these purposes the master winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion that injures the wheels and stops the progress of gradual improvement, or alternatively the master does much of the work himself, thus going along with falsehoods. . . .

[MW goes on with her indictment of most private schools; e.g. they have too many children in each class, because that is the only way the school can stay solvent. This eventually brings her to the first mention of girls in this chapter:]

With what disgust have I heard sensible women. . . .speak of the wearisome confinement they endured at school. . . . Obliged to walk with steady deportment stupidly backwards and forwards, holding up their heads, turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of moving vigorously and naturally in the ways that are so conducive to health. . . .

[She adds a little about the harm that separate schooling does to the characters of girls and (a different harm) the characters of boys, and draws from these facts a conclusion] that I have had in view throughout—namely that to improve both sexes they ought to be educated together, not only in private families but also in public schools. . . . If boys and girls were permitted to pursue the same studies together, they might early learn the graceful decencies that produce modesty. . . . Lessons of politeness and decorum (that rulebook that treads on the heels of falsehood!) would be made useless by habitual propriety of behaviour. . . .

[In case you are wondering about the frequency of ellipses in this chapter, it should be explained that they replace material that •essentially repeats things already said earlier in the work, or •provides details that we can supply for ourselves, given our knowledge of MW, or •is like this: ‘Until more understanding preponderate in society, there will always be a want of heart and taste, and the harlot’s rouge will supply the place of that celestial suffusion that only virtuous affections can give to the face.’ Enough already!]

[Much more about the harm done to girls by their upbringing—notably harm to their grasp of what real virtue is and their ability to respond appropriately to the fine arts; MW thinks that these two are connected. As an example of the latter, she reports being made almost breathless by the beauty of music she was listening to, and ‘a lady asked me where I bought my gown’. She then moves back into her theme of women being deprived of power and therefore developing cunning; plus remarks about the harms that have been done by women partly manipulating the men who had power.]

When I call women ‘slaves’, I mean this in a political and civil sense; for indirectly they obtain too much power, and their efforts to get this illicit power debase them.

So let an enlightened nation run an experiment to discover how far reason would bring women back to nature and their duty; let them share the advantages of education and government with man, and see whether they become •better as they grow •wiser and become •free. They can’t be injured by the experiment, because it’s not in the power of man to make them more insignificant than they are at present.

To make this practicable, day schools for particular ages should be established by government, in which boys and girls might be educated together. The school for the younger children, from five to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely free and open to all classes.¹ A sufficient number of masters should be chosen by a select committee in each parish, to whom complaints of negligence etc. could be made if signed by six of the children’s parents. . . .

I am advocating the creation of elementary day-schools where boys and girls, rich and poor, would meet together. To prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline. The school-room ought to be surrounded by a large piece of ground in which the children could have exercise, because at this age they shouldn’t be confined to any sedentary task for more than an hour at a time. But these relaxations could all be made a part of elementary education, for many things improve and occupy the senses when introduced as a kind of show—things that children would turn a deaf ear to if their principles were dryly laid down. For instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy ·could all be taught in practical ways, out-of-doors·. Reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy could fill up the rest of the day; but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic play in the open air. The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics could be taught by conversations in the Socratic form.

After the age of nine, girls and boys who are intended for domestic employment or mechanical trades should be transferred to other schools and be given instruction that is to some degree adapted to the destination of each individual pupil; the two sexes should still be together in the morning, but in the afternoon the girls should attend a school where simple sewing, dressmaking, millinery, etc. would be their employment.

Young people of superior abilities, or fortune, might now be taught—in another school—the dead and living languages, the elements of science, and more on history and politics, on a more extensive scale that wouldn’t exclude literature. ‘Girls and boys still together?’ I hear some readers ask. Yes! And I wouldn’t fear any consequence except that there might be some early girl-boy attachment that didn’t perfectly agree with the views of the parents though it had an excellent effect on the moral character of the young people. I’m afraid that we are a long way from having a world that is so enlightened that parents, anxious only to make their children virtuous, will let them choose companions for life themselves.

Besides, this would be a sure way to promote early marriages, and from early marriages the most salutary physical and moral effects naturally flow. [Then a long page of praise for the advantages, very much in the spirit of things said in earlier chapters. A notable episode in this is MW’s treatment of the ‘coming out’ of debutantes in the fashionable world. [That was where and when girls of 17+ from wealthy families were for the first time taken to adult balls and parties and so on.] MW writes: ‘What can be more indelicate than a girl’s coming out in the fashionable world? That is the process of bringing to market a marriageable miss whose person [see Glossary] is taken from one public place to another.’ [She comes close to describing a debutante ball as a slave auction where the merchandise is ogled by potential buyers. ‘Indelicate’ indeed!]]

What I am offering here is only an outline of the plan I have in mind, not the fully detailed plan. But I must include one detail that I highly approve of in the regulations presented in M. Talleyrand’s pamphlet, mentioned earlier. It is the proposal to make the children and youths independent of the masters respecting punishments. They should be tried by their peers, which would be an admirable method of fixing sound principles of justice in the mind, and might have an excellent effect on a child’s temperament, which is very early soured or irritated by tyranny until it becomes peevishly cunning or ferociously overbearing. . . .

I know it will be said that woman would be ‘unsexed’ by acquiring strength of body and mind, and that beauty—soft bewitching beauty!—would no longer adorn the daughters of men. I think, on the contrary, that we would then see •dignified beauty and •true grace, arising from many powerful physical and moral causes. It wouldn’t be •relaxed beauty or •the graces of helplessness; but rather the beauty and grace that appears to make us respect the human body as a majestic structure that is fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the relics of antiquity.

[MW moves now into a discussion of ancient Greek sculpture, why and how we admire it and why and how it was made. She takes this opportunity to re-work her themes of virtue, intelligence, and so on. The last sentence of this passage is a pivot note on which she modulates into a new topic:] Judgment can be acquired only by reflection, affection only by the discharge of duties, and humanity only by the exercise of compassion to every living creature.

Humanity to animals should be particularly taught as a part of national education, for it is not at present one of our national virtues. Gentleness towards their domestic animals, among the lower class, is more often found in savage states than in civilized ones. For civilization •prevents the dealings with animals that create affection in the crude hut or mud cabin, and •leads uncultivated minds—who are only depraved by the refinements of a society where they are trodden down by the rich—to domineer over their animals to revenge the insults they have to bear from their ·social· superiors.

This habitual cruelty is first caught—·like catching a disease·—at school, where the boys have great sport tormenting the miserable animals that they come across. As they grow up they easily shift from barbarity towards animals to domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants. Justice won’t be a powerful spring of action unless it extends to the whole creation, nor will benevolence. Indeed, I believe it can be accepted as an axiom that those who can •see pain without being moved will soon learn to •inflict it.

[MW attacks not only people who treat animals cruelly but also ones who let sentimental affection for domestic pets supplant the feelings they should have for human beings, e.g. their children. She includes in this a portrait of her former employer, Lady Kingsborough [see note here], lisping coy nothings to her lap-dogs and neglecting her children. She adds:]

I don’t like to make a distinction without a difference, and I have to say that I have been as much disgusted by •the fine lady who took her lap-dog to her bosom instead of her child as by •the ferocity of a man who beat his horse and declared that the horse knew when he did wrong just as a Christian would.

[Then more about the troubles that would not occur if boys and girls were educated, in the right way, together. Followed by a three-page sweep through the theme of the moral harm done to women by the way they are treated by men.]

NOTES

¹ Treating this part of the subject, I have borrowed some hints from a very sensible pamphlet on Public Education, written by M. Talleyrand. [see here]