A Dominie in Doubt Part 19

"There are scores of good books," I replied, "but no teacher can afford to buy them."

"I know," he said crossly; "I've had a row with the Income Tax people. I asked for a rebate of ten pounds for necessary school books, and they wouldn't allow it, although I'm told that if a London merchant buys a London Directory he gets a rebate for the amount."

"I agree that it is unjust," I said, "but the new Income Tax proposals allow twenty pounds a year for teachers' books."

"Just tell us what you would advise a teacher to spend his twenty quid on," said Macdonald.

"It depends on his tastes," I said. "If his subject is History he will buy history books; if his subject is behaviour, he'll buy psychology books."

"Give us an idea of your own library," said Duncan.

I sat down and wrote out a list from memory.

It ran as follows:--

BOOKS ON EDUCATION:-- _The Play Way_, by Caldwell Cook.

_The Path to Freedom in the School_, by Norman MacMunn.

_What Is and What Might Be_, by Edmond Holmes.

Montessori's three volumes.

_An Adventure in Education_, by J. H. Simpson.

BOOKS ON PSYCHO-a.n.a.lYSIS AND PSYCHOLOGY: Freud's _Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Three Contributions to the s.e.xual Theory_.

Jung's _Psychology of the Unconscious, Studies in Word a.s.sociation, a.n.a.lytical Psychology_.

Frink's _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_.

Maurice Nicoll's _Dream Psychology_.

Morton Prince's _The Unconscious_.

Pfister's _The Psycho-a.n.a.lytic Method_.

Ernest Jones' _Psycho-a.n.a.lysis_.

Ferenczi's _Contributions to Psycho-a.n.a.lysis_.

Wilfred Lay's _The Child's Unconscious Mind_.

Moll's _The s.e.xual Life of the Child_.

Adler's _The Neurotic Const.i.tution_.

Bernard Hart's _The Psychology of Insanity_.

CROWD PSYCHOLOGY:-- _The Crowd in Peace and War_, Martin Conway.

_Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_, Trotter.

_The Crowd_, Gustave le Bon.

GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY:-- _Psychology and Everyday Life_, Swift.

_Textbook of Psychology_, James.

_The Boy and His Gang_, Puffer.

_Mental Conflicts and Misconduct_, Healy.

_The Individual Delinquent_, Healy.

_Rational s.e.x Ethics_, Robie.

_Social Psychology_, McDougall.

_The Play of Man_, Groos.

"That's too much for me," said Duncan. "I couldn't afford a quarter of these books. What books would you recommend if you had to choose half a dozen for a hard-up dominie?"

I thought for a little, and then I replied: "Bernard Hart's _The Psychology of Insanity_, two bob; Frink's _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_, a first-rate book on a.n.a.lysis, a guinea; _The Crowd in Peace and War_, by Sir Martin Conway, eight and six; Healy's _Mental Conflicts and Misconduct_, ten and six; and Wilfred Lay's _The Child's Unconscious Mind_, ten and six."

"But," cried Duncan, "I don't want to set up an asylum! What's the good of books on insanity and morbid fears to a teacher?"

I explained that the t.i.tles of Hart's and Frink's books were misleading, although the difference between the mind of the lunatic and the mind of the average man is merely one of degree. Bernard Hart shows that the lunatic has the same faults as we have, only more so. Frink's book is badly named; it is an excellent work on mind mechanisms. Any teacher who reads these six books with understanding will never again use a strap on a pupil. If I were Education Minister, I should present every school in Britain with a copy of each of the six.

Macdonald asked if I had any books on hypnotism and suggestion.

"No," I said, "but I have read them through a library. I don't believe in either because they do not touch root causes. We are all suffering from bottled up infantile emotion, and a.n.a.lysis goes to the root of the matter; it makes what is unconscious conscious, and enables the patient to re-educate himself, to use the old repressed emotion up in his daily life. a.n.a.lysis means release. Suggestion does not touch the root repressed emotion, and I fancy that after suggestion the symptom merely changes. A man has a phobia of cats. By suggestion I can dispel his fear of cats, but the fear is transferred to something else, and he then has an exaggerated fear of catching tuberculosis. Unless the ancient cause becomes conscious it is not released.

"We see suggestion working in our schools daily. By suggestion parents and teachers force the child to inhibit his gross s.e.xual wishes, and in a short time the child accepts the ideals of his masters. At first he inhibits a desire because father thinks it naughty; later he inhibits it because he himself thinks it naughty. But the gross s.e.xual wish lives on in the unconscious . . . hence the neurosis, hence the respectable old men who are imprisoned for showing gross pictures to children, hence the frequent indecent a.s.saults on children. All these unfortunate people are suffering from the results of early suggestion--the suggestion that s.e.x is sin. That primitive s.e.x impulses can be sublimated I admit, but the teacher's job is not to preach that s.e.x activities are evil; his job is to help the child to use up his primitive s.e.x energy in creative work."

What is education's chief aim? The reply generally given is that education's aim is to help a child to live its life fully. Yet it seems to me that that reply does not go far enough; I think that the aim should be to help a child to live its cosmic life fully, to live for others.

Every human is egocentric, selfish. No human ever rises above selfishness, only there are degrees of selfishness. I buy a motor-cycle because I am selfish; and you found a hospital for orphans because you are selfish. It is my pleasure to have a Sunbeam; it is yours to help the poor. Your selfishness has become altruism; that is, in pleasing yourself you have managed to please others. The aim in education is not to abolish selfishness; it is to educe the selfishness that is altruistic. Hence it may be said that education's chief aim is to teach one how to love. No, that won't do; no one can teach another how to love; the teacher's job is to evoke love. This he can do only by loving.

If I hate my pupils I evoke hate from them; if I love them I evoke love from them in return.

Is it possible to love your neighbour as yourself? It is when you know yourself. You hate in others what you hate in yourself, and you love in others what is lovable in yourself. So that in loving your neighbour you are loving yourself.

If, then, the teacher's first aim is to evoke the love of his pupils, he must know himself, and knowing must love himself. Every day pupils are suffering because of the teacher's hatred of himself.

Dominie Brown rises in the morning surly and unhappy. He complains about the bacon and eggs at breakfast . . . no, the red herring; dominies cannot afford bacon and eggs . . . and Mrs. Brown makes unpleasant remarks. Brown crosses the road to school with thunder on his face, and the children s.h.i.+ver in terror all morning.

If Brown could sit down calmly to think out his bad mood, he would realise that he was punis.h.i.+ng the children because he was worsted in his word battle with his wife. And _he would be quite wrong_. The truth would be that he was punis.h.i.+ng the children because he was at war with himself. His early morning ugly mood betrayed a mental conflict. Hating himself, he hated his wife; his hate evoked her hate . . . and thus the circle was completed.

We might trace all the futilities, all the stupidities of mankind, all the wars and crimes and injustices to man's ignorance of self. To know all is to forgive all. Christ condemned no one because he was at peace with himself. Yet, I suddenly remember that He whipped the money-changers out of the Temple. This incident is comforting, for it shows that the most lovable man who ever lived betrayed one human frailty on one occasion at least. But now I am preaching again.

I went to see Charlie Chaplin in "Shoulder Arms" last night. Charlie is an artist of high quality; for once I think as the crowd thinks. But I leave the crowd when it comes to appreciating the "moving human dramas"

in five parts.

The cinema must be reckoned with in any educational scheme. One may learn more about crowd psychology from attendance at cinemas than from reading books on crowd psychology. The cinema is popular because it encourages day-dreaming or phantasy. There are two kinds of thinking, reality thinking and phantasy or day-dreaming. Phantasying is the easier of the two; I can sit for hours building castles in Spain, and I never grow tired; but if I have to sit down and think out the Theory of Quadratics I soon become weary. In reality thinking the intellect is active, but in day-dreaming emotion is in control. Day-dreaming gets nowhere; the asylums are full of day-dreamers who spend their hours constructing beautiful phantasies. In childhood phantasy is supreme.

Bobby turns the nursery into a jungle; the sofa is a tiger, the chairs are lions, the rocking-horse is an elephant. It is all real to him. And in later years Bobby often returns to his childish phantasying. We all do. What young lover has not phantasied a burning mansion where his lady love is imprisoned? Have we not all clambered up the water pipes and rescued her from the flames?

The world of the theatre is a phantasy world. With the rising of the curtain we forget our outside life; we live the part of the hero or the heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street.

Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema is due to this human desire for make-believe. Cinema-going is a regression to the infantile; we return to the childish phase where the wish was all powerful. In the cinema the villain is always worsted; the wronged heroine always falls into the hero's arms at the end. Life for most of us means trials and sorrows and conflicts, and we long to return to the nursery phase where life was what we wished it to be. The cinema and the public-house are the most convenient doors by which we can regress.

The "moving drama" is the other side of the industrial picture. Life for the ma.s.ses means dirt and disease, ugly factories, sordid homes, mean streets. The moving drama takes the ma.s.ses away from grim reality; they see beautifully gowned women in drawing-rooms; they see the King reviewing his regiments; they see wild and free cowboys chasing Red Indians. For two hours they live . . . and then they go out again into their world of mere existence. And it is all wrong, tragically wrong.

The cinema craze means that life is too ugly to face; it means that the ma.s.ses are fleeing from reality and to flee from reality is fatal.

Day-dreams are laudable only when they come true. If the ma.s.ses day-dreamed of an economic Utopia and forthwith set about building a New Jerusalem, their phantasies would become realities; but the moving human drama never leads to building; it is raw whisky swallowed to bring oblivion. The moving human drama will live and flourish so long as mankind tolerates the slavery of industrialism. It is a powerful weapon for capitalism; like the church and the public-house, it keeps the wage-slaves quiet.

To-night the conversation in Dauvit's shop turned to the subject of honours.

"They tell me," said Jake Tosh, "that you can buy a knighthood, or a peerage for that matter."