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.