THE NEW PERSCUTION

G. K. CHESTERTON

Popular education is positive persecution. Compared with it, the Spanish Inquisition

was merely negative persecution. To some this may seem to have a faint savour, of disapproval or regret for modern education. But it need not be so; for it is not a condemnation but a description. There is a very strong case for persecution, both positive and negative; people are not necessarily doing wrong when they are persecuting; but they are doing wrong in not knowing what they are doing. And the above statement is a clear but colorless summary of an important distinction. All the fires and faggots, all the racks and redhot pincers, of the old religious persecutions were used to make sure that men should not learn this or that form of heresy. All the books and blackboards, all the maps and diagrams of the State Schools, backed by State inspectors and State police, are used to make sure that men shall learn this or that fact of history, or what not. The old coercion was more cruel but more concentrated' working in holes and corners against an unpopular minority, narrowing its circles to pounce upon particular exceptions. The new coercion is more mild and humane but much more ubiquitous and universal; keeping the power of police—on which it depends—much more in the background, but successfully imposing its information, not on a minority that has rebelled, but on a majority that has never thought of rebelling. Compulsory education is compulsory propaganda, where the other is only compulsory expurgation. In the old case the Inquisitor censors the press; in the new case he owns the press.

Now why did the modern world, which talked so much of liberty, take up so lightly the very drastic social discipline of driving everybody to school? I think we should agree about the general atmosphere or assumption under which it was done. It was done with the idea that education was something apart from politics and religion and all controversial topics. Education was simply instruction, and instruction in very simple and self-evident things. The State schools were to give elementary education. And elementary education was very elementary. Moreover it is true that there are truths indisputable except by a very fantastical scepticism; such as the truths of mathematics or the manifestations of the senses. There may be two sides to a question, but there are three sides to a triangle. In short it really is true, in connection with things like simple arithmetic or the ABC, that education, though it is compulsion, need not be persecution. But education strays easily into controversy the moment it steps out of the single rut of very simple things. Even in the very elementary education subjects were included, which can not be uncontroversial, such as a very elementary history. In elementary education, therefore, there must be partisan and questionable elements. But as a matter of fact, the problem has become much more acute than this; and that for a special reason which appears to have escaped observation.

What nobody seems to have noticed is this:

On top of all this ambition to extend education to cover all classes, there has come another ambition of extending it so as to cover all subjects. We began by saying that the schoolmaster must teach everybody; we have begun to say that he must teach everybody everything. And if he is to go on adding more and more subjects, he must go on adding more and more controversial subjects. He only managed to be impartial by being impersonal, as about the three sides of a triangle; if he is to influence the whole personality of the pupil, he must become very personal and perhaps very partial because there are always two sides of a question. And this partiality is, at any given moment, backed up by the whole power of modern police. So long as we limited education we limited compulsion, and perhaps limited it to commonplaces to which men may reasonably be compelled. But when we enlarge education we enlarge compulsion; as we multiply schools we multiply prisons; as we open new fields of psychology or aesthetics we bring province after province of the human mind under the control of a new Censor and a modern Inquisition.

The truth is that State instruction set out with the idea of teaching what the English called, with humorous inaccuracy, the three R's, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, assuming that they were three truisms like Right, Reason, and Reality. But the new curriculum is as controversial as the three R's advanced by that electioneering demagogue, who appealed to America with the triad of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. He is now commonly spoken of as a very unfortunate political adventurer; but in truth what were then condemned as paradoxes must be implied in many standard summaries as truisms. Any official generalization, which assumes the last amendment to the American Constitution, does pronounce a partisan opinion about rum. Any conventional history, which calls the Reformation a reform, does pronounce a partisan opinion about Rome. And the very fact that modern government can fine or imprison anybody who chooses to withdraw his child from the schools where these things are taught, is a significant and sufficient summary of how it deals with rebellion.

Since the severity of the punishment can have nothing logically to do with the claim of the authority, we may repeat that this is to bring the human mind under the control of the Censor and the Inquisitor. But the point is that it is positive and not negative, permanent and not exceptional. The ink of the Censor does not black things out, but writes them in. The brand of the Inquisitor does not burn things out, but burns them in. And enlarging the scope of the schools means that more and more things are to be branded indelibly with the mark of the State.

This legal and logical fact must not be confused for a moment with the random skepticism that denies the dependence of childhood and the need for a natural authority. It is obvious that somebody must teach children something; but in most civilizations it is normal for the general view of life to descend from father to son. In our civilization alone the son can be taken, forcibly and by law, from the father, and taught an increasingly large and complex number of things with which the father may or may not agree. It might be defended under a desperate necessity of teaching people particular things, which they could not possibly learn otherwise, and which it was essential that they should learn somehow. But obviously it is a most unfortunate field for the ambition of schoolmasters to teach new topics, or the expansion of schools to include new branches of science. For the whole thing rests on force; and the force is a great deal more fixed and certain than the authority. But it is at least clear that under these circumstances to extend the definition of education is to extend the application of coercion. To say that the sense of beauty should be a part of education is to say that the sense of beauty should be under state control. To say that games and amusements are an essential part of education is to say that they must be part and parcel of a penal law. If philosophy is imparted in the school, philosophy is imposed by the State. If a sense of humor is to be trained in the training school, it will be governed by the government. The emancipation of the teacher means the enslavement of the taught.

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Education may be merely spiritual kidnapping. As a mode of propaganda it is perhaps less moral, and certainly less manly, than any of the old religious wars. It is more dignified to enforce our ideas by fighting battles than by stealing babies; and modern compulsory education is only stealing babies on a large scale. It might be covered by the title of the amusing American novel which was called Other People's Children: and the experiment already shows some signs of being a failure, as it was in the novel.

I cannot feel that the whole business exactly shines with a sense of honour. We seem to have taken a multitude of helpless infants away from their natural protectors, on the plea that it was mortally necessary for them to learn the ABC. Having thus got them under lock and key, we have sat down to think about things in general, and our minds have undergone an expansion and exaltation on the subject of the ABC. The educationists have taken pupils on the plea of teaching them reading and writing and subjected them to all the tests of psychology; which is quite as unreasonable and absurd as if a priest had been permitted to teach them the Gospel, and then subjected them to the tortures of the Inquisition. On the whole, I confess I have more respect for the old thing called conversion than the new thing called education. Education is the conversion of somebody who cannot hit you back.

It is imposing your precious progressive notions on a child who may accept them as novelties, and not on a grown-up person who will know that they are nonsense. But the purpose of this article is not to suggest any such personal point of view. It is merely to point out a legal and logical fact, very large and obvious but incredibly ignored. It is the fact that the combination of the two enthusiasms, one for everybody being sent to school, and the other for everything being taught in school, must .between them mean a huge and unheard-of power being surrendered to the State school and therefore to the State.

I use the terms incredible and unheard-of and yet, strangely enough, it is not so. We have all heard of the conclusion of this matter; and we can all believe it, since we have seen it. There has already been a powerful and highly organized society which pursued to its end the very path along which we are thus advancing, and did very thoroughly what we are doing more and more. It gathered all the new sciences under the name of education, and gathered education under the name of government. It made every art or sport an educational department, and every educational department a government department. It carried to perfection the principle which proposes, not only to teach everybody, but to teach everybody everything. And those who seek it may find it, at the foot of that high precipice of pride where lie the broken bones of Prussia.