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direct teaching, till it is impossible to eradicate from his mind the idea
that "self," the lower, personal, animal self, is the end-all, and be-all,
of life. Here you get the great source of all the after-misery, crime, and
heartless selfishness, which you admit as much as I do. Selfishness, as said
over and over again, is the curse of humanity, and the prolific parent of
all the evils and crimes in this life; and it is your schools which are the
hotbeds of such selfishness.
Q. That is all very fine as generalities, but I should like a few facts, and
to learn also how this can be remedied.
A. Very well, I will try and satisfy you. There are three great divisions of
scholastic establishments, board, middle-class and public schools, running
up the scale from the most grossly commercial to the idealistic classical,
with many permutations and combinations. The practical commercial begets the
modern side, and the ancient and orthodox classical reflects its heavy
respectability even as far as the School Board pupil teacher's
establishments. Here we plainly see the scientific and material commercial
supplanting the effete orthodox and classical. Neither is the reason very
far to seek. The objects of this branch of education are, then, pounds,
shillings, and pence, the summum bonum of the nineteenth century. Thus, the
energies generated by the brain molecules of its adherents are all
concentrated on one point, and are, therefore, to some extent, an organized
army of educated and speculative intellects of the minority of men, trained
against the hosts of the ignorant, simple-minded masses doomed to be
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vampirized, lived, and sat upon by their intellectually stronger brethren.
Such training is not only untheosophical, it is simply unchristian. Result:
The direct outcome of this branch of education is an overflooding of the
market with money-making machines, with heartless selfish men-animals-who
have been most carefully trained to prey on their fellows and take advantage
of the ignorance of their weaker brethren!
Q. Well, but you cannot assert that of our great public schools, at any
rate?
A. Not exactly, it is true. But though the form is different, the animating
spirit is the same: untheosophical and unchristian, whether Eton and Harrow
turn out scientists or divines and theologians.
Q. Surely you don't mean to call Eton and Harrow "commercial"?
A. No. Of course the Classical system is above all things respectable, and
in the present day is productive of some good. It does still remain the
favorite at our great public schools, where not only an intellectual, but
also a social education is obtainable. It is, therefore, of prime importance
that the dull boys of aristocratic and wealthy parents should go to such
schools to meet the rest of the young life of the "blood" and money classes.
But unfortunately there is a huge competition even for entrance; for the
moneyed classes are increasing, and poor but clever boys seek to enter the
public schools by the rich scholarships, both at the schools themselves and
from them to the Universities.
Q. According to this view, the wealthier "dullards" have to work even harder
than their poorer fellows?
A. It is so. But, strange to say, the faithful of the cult of the "Survival
of the fittest" do not practice their creed; for their whole exertion is to
make the naturally unfit supplant the fit. Thus, by bribes of large sums of
money, they allure the best teachers from their natural pupils to
mechanicalize their naturally unfit progeny into professions which they
uselessly overcrowd.
Q. And you attribute all this to what?
A. All this is owing to the perniciousness of a system which turns out goods
to order, irrespective of the natural proclivities and talents of the youth.
The poor little candidate for this progressive paradise of learning, comes
almost straight from the nursery to the treadmill of a preparatory school
for sons of gentlemen. Here he is immediately seized upon by the workmen of
the materio-intellectual factory, and crammed with Latin, French, and Greek
Accidence, Dates, and Tables, so that if he have any natural genius it is
rapidly squeezed out of him by the rollers of what Carlyle has so well
called "dead vocables."
Q. But surely he is taught something besides "dead vocables," and much of
that which may lead him direct to Theosophy, if not entirely into the
Theosophical Society?
A. Not much. For of history, he will attain only sufficient knowledge of his
own particular nation to fit him with a steel armor of prejudice against all
other peoples, and be steeped in the foul cesspools of chronicled national
hate and bloodthirstiness; and surely, you would not call that-Theosophy?
Q. What are your further objections?
A. Added to this is a smattering of selected, so-called, Biblical facts,
from the study of which all intellect is eliminated. It is simply a memory
lesson, the "Why" of the teacher being a "Why" of circumstances and not of
reason.
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Q. Yes; but I have heard you congratulate yourself at the ever-increasing
number of the Agnostics and Atheists in our day, so that it appears that
even people trained in the system you abuse so heartily do learn to think
and reason for themselves.
A. Yes; but it is rather owing to a healthy reaction from that system than
due to it. We prefer immeasurably more in our Society Agnostics, and even
rank Atheists, to bigots of whatever religion. An Agnostic's mind is ever
opened to the truth; whereas the latter blinds the bigot like the sun does
an owl. The best-i.e., the most truth-loving, philanthropic, and honest-of
our Fellows were, and are, Agnostics and Atheists (disbelievers in a
personal God). But there are no free-thinking boys and girls, and generally
early training will leave its mark behind in the shape of a cramped and
distorted mind. A proper and sane system of education should produce the
most vigorous and liberal mind, strictly trained in logical and accurate
thought, and not in blind faith. How can you ever expect good results, while
you pervert the reasoning faculty of your children by bidding them believe
in the miracles of the Bible on Sunday, while for the six other days of the
week you teach them that such things are scientifically impossible?
Q. What would you have, then?
A. If we had money, we would found schools which would turn out something
else than reading and writing candidates for starvation. Children should
above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual
charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves. We
would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute
minimum, and devote the time to the development and training of the inner
senses, faculties, and latent capacities. We would endeavor to deal with
each child as a unit, and to educate it so as to produce the most harmonious
and equal unfoldment of its powers, in order that its special aptitudes
should find their full natural development. We should aim at creating free
men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]