July II, igi8 
Land & Water 
1 1 
Compulsory Education : By L. P. Jacks 
STRICTLY speaking, there is not, never has been, 
and never will be, such a thing as compulsory educa- 
tion. You can compel parents to send their children 
to school, you can compel the children (within 
limits) to learn their lessons ; but so long as words 
have a meaning, you will never compel anybody to be 
■"educated." All education is a joint operation of teacher 
and learner, and unless the learner willingly contributes his 
share, nothing that the teacher can do for him, or compel 
him to- do for himself, will make him an educated human 
being. 
No matter with what powers and terrors the teacher may 
■be armed, the learner, if he is so minded, can always thwart 
"him. He can thwart him by forgetting what he has been 
taught. He can thwart him by refusing to beheve it. He 
-can thwart him by despising it. He can thwart him by 
applying it to the opposite purpose for which it was intended. 
Of course, when a youth has acquired a certain mental 
training by being compelled to learn something he despises, 
disbeheves, and is determined to forget — though he will . 
never acquire much mental training on those terms — some 
•echo of this disciphne will always hnger in his mind. But 
he may still turn it to uses which thwart the essential objects 
for which it was given him. He may use it for playing the 
part of a great rascal or a clever fool. Put it as you will, the 
'learner has the major control of the situation. He can only 
be' educated by his own connivance. Education is by con- 
sent, not by compulsion. 
The word "education" inevitably suggests to our minds 
the picture of a school. We see the pedagogue sitting at his 
desk and ruling the situation with a rod of iron. We see 
■the children on the forms, submitting to a system imposed 
upon them by wise elders, doing as they are bid, learning 
what they are given, and being caned or "kept in" if they 
kick or refuse. "Compulsion" is naturally associated with 
such a scene, and schoolfnasters, who are not the least 
tyrannical of mankind, are only too apt to accept the word 
as appropriate and pleasing. The use of the term "master" 
or "mistress" to define the school-teacher's office betrays 
this bias towards tyranny in a very significant manner. We 
have only to read the utterances on education which come 
from professional teachers to see how deeply rooted, and how 
•difficult to uproot, is the notion that education consists in 
•playing the part of ""master" — that is, in imposing a system 
lupon those who, in the last resort, must be coerced into 
receiving it. The learner — in jacket and knickerbockers — 
does not know what is good for him to learn. But the 
teacher— in cap and gojvn — knows ; and the relation between 
(the two is conceived accordingly. The teacher is "master" 
and the learner is — what shall we say ? Not exactly slave 
or servant, but one whose essential' part in the joint opera- 
,tion is even more submissive — to learn what he is set and to 
believe what he is told. Compulsory education, of course t 
This is how the matter comes to be conceived when we 
treat education, as we almost invariably do, in the form of 
a schoolmaster's problem. Fundamentally, it is nothing of 
the kind. It is a social problem, and the biggest of them all. 
It is a question of the type of culture best suited to the 
requirements of the age. We have to consider not alone 
what it is abstractly desirable that people should be taught, 
but still more what they are capable of assimilating and 
what they are willing to learn. Viewed in this large way, 
it is ipimediately apparent that compulsion is out of the 
question. You can never impose upon the public, upon the 
age, upon the "uneducated classes" if you will, a type of 
culture fhey dislike, distrust, and are unwilling to receive. 
Our stock image of a party in jacket and knickerbockers, 
on the one side, and a party in cap and gown, on the other, 
is not applicable to the world at large, or applicable only by 
putting the jacket and knickerbockers on those who fancy 
themselves entitled to the cap and gown. The uneducated 
classes are by no means willing to be educated on the under- 
standing that they do not know what is good for them, and 
that "we" do. They will never accept from "us" a type of 
culture which, they do not value and have no opportunity 
ot applying. To quote the words of a Yorkshire operative 
to the present writer, on learning that he came from 0<ford : 
" Make no mistake about one thing : we working men mean 
to have education ; btU we are not f;oin^ to take it from yon." 
The very first point we have to grasp is that if we are to 
have any success with education we must al)andon the 
attempt at compulsion, and must dismiss the word, with all 
its bag and baggage, from the vocabulary of the subject. 
By compulsion, 1 mean the policy or the action of an intellec- 
tual ehte, a learned aristocracy, who think themselves pos- 
sessed of the right or tire power to impose their type of culture 
on the world at large, on the community in general. I mean 
the notion that the community is divided into two classes 
— an educated class in cap and gown, and an uneducated 
class in jacket and knickerbockers — and that the former 
are the "masters" of a school, in which the latter are the 
pupils, ready to learn what they are taught and to believe as 
they are bidden. Not until these notions have been utterly 
discarded and — I must add — not until the airs of superiority 
which usually go with them have been finally abandoned, 
shall we be in a position to take the first step towards the 
solution of our problem. , 
Class Misunderstanditig 
If the educated classes would give themselves the trouble 
to. get into a little closer touch with the uneducated their 
eyes would be quickly opened to the truth of this matter. 
They would discover that the so-called "indifference of the 
masses" to education has been wholly misconceived and 
misnamed. The masses are not indifferent to education ; 
but they are profoundly distrustful of the particular sort bf 
education that is being offered them, and for good reasons of 
their own. Moreover, they bitterly resent being treated as 
the jacket-and-knickerbocker party. They even deny that 
they are uneducated — or, rather, and the correction is im- 
portant, they deny that "we" are educated. They regard 
us as a very inefficient lot. They think that they under- 
stand their business better than we understand ours, and 
since the test of education is the understanding of one's 
own business, they are convinced that we are less educated 
than themselves. They see no good to be gained by swal- 
lowing our culture. At the present time, especially, they 
point to the appalling mess the "educated classes" have 
made of things ; they see how fatal the mess would have 
been if the "uneducated classes" had not come to the rescue ; 
and they are more than ever disposed to look upon the 
culture we offer them with distrust. Indeed, they have all 
they can do to restrain themselves from bidding us "get out." 
On the whole, I believe they have sounder notions of 
education than we have. "Education," they say, "must 
take the form of teaching us to make the best of the life we 
have to live. But the education you are offering us has 
little or nothing to do with that Hfe. It is at best an orna- 
ment. It has done you little good — witness the mess you 
have made of things. It would do us no good at all. It is 
not suited to the life we have to live. It would hinder us 
far more than it would help. It is a foreign product, an 
exotic thing, a bit of a flower garden set down in the middle 
of a cornfield." Such are their thoughts ; but let no one 
suppose they indicate "a gross materialism." There is far 
more ideaUsm at the back of' them than appears at first 
sight. To be a moral idealist it is not necessary that you 
should go up and down the world, perhaps in company with 
the devil, spouting eloquence about the moral ideal. These 
people are convinced that their life, hard as it is, could be 
transformed into a fine and noble life if only they were edu- 
cated for that object. Their complaint is that we are trying 
to educate them for another sort of life which they know 
they cannot sustain, and are not, in fact, desirous of hving. 
And there is no compulsion which can make them think 
otherwise. He who acts as though thare were is living in 
a fool's paradise. 
If anybody doubts these things let him consider the 
Germans. The Germans are the greatest exponents of com- 
pulsory education the world has ever seen. In their own 
eyes they are the educated class of the universe, and their 
policy accordingly is to impose their culture on the rest of 
mankind. Germany, observe, is to be not merely the master 
but the schoolmaster of all nations. She alone knows what is 
good for them. She alone is to wear the cap and gown and 
to wield the rod. The others are in jacket and knicker- 
bockers. '^ "One single highly-cultivated German warrior," 
says Haeckel, "represents a higher intellectual and moral 
Hfe than hundreds of the raw children of nature, whom 
England, France, Russia, and Italy .oppose to him." And, 
as though this were not enough, only the other day von 
KGlilmann spoke of compelling the goodwill of Germany's 
foes, so that wc are not only to be forced to accept her culture, 
but forced to accept it with delight and gratitude. This is 
compulsory education carried to its logical conclusion. Who 
