Education, Education, Education à la D. H. Lawrence

Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone!

 

I. 

 

Former schoolteacher D. H. Lawrence always retained an interest in education and held typically strong views on the subject, some of which I would like to discuss here as set out in a long essay entitled 'Education of the People'. Composed of twelve sections, this work goes way beyond anything we might encounter in the Times Educational Supplement.* 

 

In places, the language used resembles Lawrence's later study Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), though readers will be relieved to know that I'll not be making reference here to plexuses, planes, and ganglia, nor discussing his neurophysiological account of consciousness. As far as possible, I want to remain in the classroom and focus on Lawrence's thoughts on a new national curriculum ...

II. 

 

Lawrence opens his essay with three questions: "What is education all about? What is it doing? Does anybody know?" [87]

Whether he answers his own questions is debatable, though he clearly thinks he knows what education is all about - or, rather, what education should be all about - and has a good idea of what it should do; namely, develop the individual and not simply produce model citizens. For Lawrence, the ultimate aim of education has to be to "recognise the true nature in each child, and to give each its natural chance [...] helped wisely, reverently, towards his own fulfilment" [99].  

That sounds pretty idealistic to me - which is ironic, as Lawrence vehemently attacks all forms of idealism in this essay - and, obviously, I'm uncomfortable with the language used here; particularly when Lawrence maps this line of thinking on to a conventional model of class, so that the latter too becomes a question of nature rather than politics.

In the blink of an eye, Lawrence moves from know thyself to know thy place and fulfilment is privileged over freedom and equality. He might believe in universal education, but he certainly doesn't believe in universal suffrage and thinks that liberal democracy pisses on the spark of divinity that exists in every man, woman and child and which gives them their ontological uniqueness. 

 

III.

 

The first thing Lawrence calls for is the defeat of fear; particularly the fear of failure and of not being able to earn a living. We should educate our children to be fearless, he says; to have courage and a little insouciance. After all, what's the worst that can happen? You might be unemployed and penniless - you might even starve to death - but why worry about it? "It isn't such an awful thing, if you don't care about keeping up appearances" [91] or preserving yourself like a fat green cabbage. 

The second thing that Lawrence advocates is leaving children alone as much as possible; teach 'em the three Rs and then let them find their own aims and concerns. If they choose not to study, then that's their business: "Is not radical unlearnedness just as true a form of self-expression, and just as desirable a state, for many natures (even the bulk), as learnedness?" [95]

And in order to ensure this unlearnedness, Lawrence advocates the educational system be restructured from top to bottom along the following sensible lines:
 

Send all children to state schools aged seven for four hours a day; three hours given over to reading, writing, and arithmetic; one hour devoted to PE or domestic science. The schools will teach children of both sexes and all classes, so they might gain a radical understanding of one another both in their common humanity and essential differences.  

At the age of twelve, divide the children into two groups; the first shall be sent to secondary schools, "where an extended curriculum includes Latin or French, and some true science" [97]; the second group, who will not be sent to the secondary schools, will have their intellectual education reduced to two hours, "whilst three hours will be devoted to [...] martial exercises and the rudiments of domestic labour" [97]. This second group of children will form a "vigorous, passionate proletariat of indomitable individuals" [106] and artisans.

When the secondary students are about to turn fifteen, further divide them in two; those who "according to their own nature and capacity" [97] have learnt all they can from books, shall be given apprenticeships for "some sort of semi-profession" [97] and will form a reliable middle-class. The remaining students, who display a natural inclination for scholarship, shall be admitted into colleges at sixteen; they, says Lawrence, belong to the highest class and will become our doctors, lawyers, priests, professors, and artists of the future. 

"Such", concludes Lawrence, "is a brief sketch of a sensible system of education for a civilised people" [99]. 

 

 

IV.

 

It is, I think, a deeply disappointing model which basically reinforces the class system as it presently exists and continues to entrench the division between manual and intellectual labour, wherein the latter is socially privileged.

 

The only difference is that Lawrence seeks to remove the accident of money from his social system so that the classes will "derive through heredity, as the great oriental castes" [107]. Such a system, he says, is organic and vital; there's nothing automatic or mechanical about it. Oh, and it's also fundamentally religious in character, established upon the living religious faculty; i.e., the "inward worship of the creative life-mystery" [108]. 

 

Ultimately, Lawrence adopts the sow's ear/silk purse argument, insisting that we are all determined by our true nature and that it's dangerously mistaken to try and force all children to think or express themselves creatively: "Every teacher knows that it is worse than useless trying to educate at least fifty per-cent of his scholars" [96], writes Lawrence. 

 

Indeed, it might even be preferable to exclude them from elementary schools altogether and the "imbecile pretence of culture" [112] that only renders them neurasthenic. Better to keep them ignorant but robust - or as swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, and as hard as steel, as someone else also keenly interested in the education of the young would later put it.**  
  

 

V.

It will be surprising to some readers to learn that Lawrence was as opposed to self-expression in children as the development of smirking self-consciousness. Surprising too, to discover he also hates the cultivation of imagination:

"Down with imagination in school, down with self-expression. Let us have a little severe hard work, good, clean, well-written exercises, well-pronounced words, well-set-down sums: and [...] for the rest, leave the children alone. Pitch them out into the street or the playgrounds and take no notice of them. Drive them savagely away from their posturings.

       There must be an end to the self-conscious attitudinising of our children. The self-consciousness and all the damned high-flownness must be taken out of them, and their little personalities must be nipped in the bud. Children shall be regarded as young creatures, not as young affected persons."  [126-27]

 

Now, that's something I can agree with at last ...   

    

Notes

* Funnily enough, Lawrence submitted an earlier, much shorter version of 'Education of the People' to the Times Educational Supplement. Perhaps unsurprisingly the work was rejected.

 

** In a speech of 14 September, 1935, Hitler famously set out his vision of German youth; not only was it to be slender and supple, but Flink wie die Windhunde, Zaeh wie Leder, Hart wie Kruppstahl. This is not to suggest that Lawrence was a Nazi - or that Hitler was a Lawrentian.  

 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Page references given in the text refer to this edition. 

 

Readers interested in a related post to this one on returning to school in the age of coronavirus, should click here. 

 

 

Back to School in the Age of Coronavirus

The schools in England are finally reopening this week, having been closed since March (not because children were dropping like flies or the elderly residents of care homes, but because of the collective hysteria triggered by Covid-19).

So it seems a good time to once more pose the three questions asked by former teacher D. H. Lawrence in an essay written 100 years ago: "What is education all about? What is it doing? Does anybody know?" [87]. 

I suspect that, as a matter of fact, nobody today has the faintest clue as to what goal education should serve - unless it's to produce a politically correct, genderfluid, socially distanced generation all wearing face masks.    

Who's responsible for this: the teachers ... the parents ... the politicians? Or perhaps it's what some people like to call the system, referring to a faceless bureaucratic machine. But as Lawrence notes, saying that is really saying nothing:

"The system, after all, is only the outcome of the human psyche, the human desires. We shout and blame the machine. But who on earth makes the machine, if we don't? And any alterations in the system are only modifications in the machine. The system is in us, it is not something external to us. The machine is in us, or it would never come out of us. Well then, there's nothing to blame but ourselves, and there's nothing to change except inside ourselves." [90] 

We're all responsible, as adults, for creating a climate of fear and a culture of resentment into which we raise our children, rather than opposing values, of courage and insouciance, for example, upon which they might better base their lives. For if you can't prevent young people being frightened for (and of) their own existence, "you'll educate them in vain" [91].  

Which is really a crying shame:

"It is a shame to treat children as we treat them in school, to a lot of [...] lies, and to a lot of fear and humiliation." [92].

And the answer? Obviously, it is to overcome our fear. Unfortunately, I suspect that's going to take even longer than the search for a vaccine. Until then:

"Teach the three Rs and leave the children to look out for their own aims. That's the very best thing we can do at the moment, since we are all cowards." [93]

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 85-166. All page references given in the text refer to this edition. 

 

For a related post on D. H. Lawrence and education, click here.