The Lost Tools of Learning (Dorothy L. Sayers)
The Lost Tools of Learning
Dorothy Leigh Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957) briefly entered on a teaching career after graduating from Oxford. She published a long and popular series of detective novels, translated the "Divine Comedy," wrote a series of radio plays, and a defense of Christian belief. During World War II, she lived in Oxford, and was a member of the group that included C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield. By nature and preference, she was a scholar and an expert on the Middle Ages.
In this essay, Miss Sayers suggests that we presently teach our children everything but how to learn. She proposes that we adopt a suitably modified version of the medieval scholastic curriculum for methodological reasons.
However,
it is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I propose will ever be
carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the training colleges, nor the
examination boards, nor the boards of governors, nor the ministries of
education, would countenance them for a moment. For they amount to this: that
if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their
intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must
turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point
at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of
the Middle Ages.
Before
you dismiss me with the appropriate phrase--reactionary, romantic,
mediaevalist, laudator temporis acti (praiser of times past), or whatever tag
comes first to hand--I will ask you to consider one or two miscellaneous
questions that hang about at the back, perhaps, of all our minds, and
occasionally pop out to worry us.
When
we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went up to
university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were held fit to assume
responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs, are we altogether
comfortable about that artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and
adolescence into the years of physical maturity which is so marked in our own
day? To postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it
a number of psychological complications which, while they may interest the
psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society.
The stock argument in favor of postponing the school-leaving age and prolonging
the period of education generally is there is now so much more to learn than
there was in the Middle Ages. This is partly true, but not wholly. The modern
boy and girl are certainly taught more subjects--but does that always mean that
they actually know more?
Has
it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of
literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people
should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass
propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this
down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have
made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes
have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less
good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven
from the plausible?
Have
you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible
people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to
speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the
other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of
irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great
rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you
think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates
and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?
Have
you ever followed a discussion in the newspapers or elsewhere and noticed how
frequently writers fail to define the terms they use? Or how often, if one man
does define his terms, another will assume in his reply that he was using the
terms in precisely the opposite sense to that in which he has already defined
them? Have you ever been faintly troubled by the amount of slipshod syntax
going about? And, if so, are you troubled because it is inelegant or because it
may lead to dangerous misunderstanding?
Do
you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget
most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected), but forget also,
or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for
themselves? Are you often bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who
seem unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly, and
properly documented, and one that is, to any trained eye, very conspicuously
none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced
with a book of reference, betray a curious inability to extract from it the
passages relevant to the particular question which interests them?
Do
you often come across people for whom, all their lives, a "subject"
remains a "subject," divided by watertight bulkheads from all other
"subjects," so that they experience very great difficulty in making
an immediate mental connection between let us say, algebra and detective
fiction, sewage disposal and the price of salmon--or, more generally, between
such spheres of knowledge as philosophy and economics, or chemistry and art?
Are
you occasionally perturbed by the things written by adult men and women for
adult men and women to read? We find a well-known biologist writing in a weekly
paper to the effect that: "It is an argument against the existence of a
Creator" (I think he put it more strongly; but since I have, most
unfortunately, mislaid the reference, I will put his claim at its
lowest)--"an argument against the existence of a Creator that the same
kind of variations which are produced by natural selection can be produced at
will by stock breeders." One might feel tempted to say that it is rather
an argument for the existence of a Creator. Actually, of course, it is neither;
all it proves is that the same material causes (recombination of the
chromosomes, by crossbreeding, and so forth) are sufficient to account for all
observed variations--just as the various combinations of the same dozen tones
are materially sufficient to account for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the
noise the cat makes by walking on the keys. But the cat's performance neither
proves nor disproves the existence of Beethoven; and all that is proved by the
biologist's argument is that he was unable to distinguish between a material
and a final cause.
Here
is a sentence from no less academic a source than a front- page article in the
Times Literary Supplement: "The Frenchman, Alfred Epinas, pointed out that
certain species (e.g., ants and wasps) can only face the horrors of life and
death in association." I do not know what the Frenchman actually did say;
what the Englishman says he said is patently meaningless. We cannot know
whether life holds any horror for the ant, nor in what sense the isolated wasp
which you kill upon the window-pane can be said to "face" or not to
"face" the horrors of death. The subject of the article is mass
behavior in man; and the human motives have been unobtrusively transferred from
the main proposition to the supporting instance. Thus the argument, in effect,
assumes what it set out to prove--a fact which would become immediately
apparent if it were presented in a formal syllogism. This is only a small and
haphazard example of a vice which pervades whole books--particularly books
written by men of science on metaphysical subjects.
Another
quotation from the same issue of the TLS comes in fittingly here to wind up
this random collection of disquieting thoughts--this time from a review of Sir
Richard Livingstone's "Some Tasks for Education": "More than
once the reader is reminded of the value of an intensive study of at least one
subject, so as to learn the meaning of knowledge' and what precision and
persistence is needed to attain it. Yet there is elsewhere full recognition of
the distressing fact that a man may be master in one field and show no better
judgement than his neighbor anywhere else; he remembers what he has learnt, but
forgets altogether how he learned it."
I
would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which offers an
explanation of what the writer rightly calls the "distressing fact"
that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education are not readily
transferable to subjects other than those in which we acquired them: "he
remembers what he has learnt, but forgets altogether how he learned it."
Is
not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable through all the
disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned--that although we often
succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we fail lamentably on the
whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of
learning. It is as though we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of
thumb, to play "The Harmonious Blacksmith" upon the piano, but had
never taught him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized
"The Harmonious Blacksmith," he still had not the faintest notion how
to proceed from that to tackle "The Last Rose of Summer." Why do I
say, "as though"? In certain of the arts and crafts, we sometimes do
precisely this--requiring a child to "express himself" in paint
before we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There is a school
of thought which believes this to be the right way to set about the job. But
observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman will go about to teach
himself a new medium. He, having learned by experience the best way to
economize labor and take the thing by the right end, will start off by doodling
about on an odd piece of material, in order to "give himself the feel of the
tool."
Let
us now look at the mediaeval scheme of education--the syllabus of the Schools.
It does not matter, for the moment, whether it was devised for small children
or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it. What
matters is the light it throws upon what the men of the Middle Ages supposed to
be the object and the right order of the educative process.
The
syllabus was divided into two parts: the Trivium and Quadrivium. The second
part--the Quadrivium--consisted of "subjects," and need not for the
moment concern us. The interesting thing for us is the composition of the
Trivium, which preceded the Quadrivium and was the preliminary discipline for
it. It consisted of three parts: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that
order.
Now
the first thing we notice is that two at any rate of these "subjects"
are not what we should call "subjects" at all: they are only methods
of dealing with subjects. Grammar, indeed, is a "subject" in the
sense that it does mean definitely learning a language--at that period it meant
learning Latin. But language itself is simply the medium in which thought is
expressed. The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil
the proper use of the tools of learning, before he began to apply them to
"subjects" at all. First, he learned a language; not just how to
order a meal in a foreign language, but the structure of a language, and hence
of language itself--what it was, how it was put together, and how it worked.
Secondly, he learned how to use language; how to define his terms and make
accurate statements; how to construct an argument and how to detect fallacies
in argument. Dialectic, that is to say, embraced Logic and Disputation.
Thirdly, he learned to express himself in language-- how to say what he had to
say elegantly and persuasively.
At
the end of his course, he was required to compose a thesis upon some theme set
by his masters or chosen by himself, and afterwards to defend his thesis
against the criticism of the faculty. By this time, he would have learned--or
woe betide him-- not merely to write an essay on paper, but to speak audibly
and intelligibly from a platform, and to use his wits quickly when heckled.
There would also be questions, cogent and shrewd, from those who had already
run the gauntlet of debate.
It
is, of course, quite true that bits and pieces of the mediaeval tradition still
linger, or have been revived, in the ordinary school syllabus of today. Some
knowledge of grammar is still required when learning a foreign language--perhaps
I should say, "is again required," for during my own lifetime, we
passed through a phase when the teaching of declensions and conjugations was
considered rather reprehensible, and it was considered better to pick these
things up as we went along. School debating societies flourish; essays are
written; the necessity for "self- expression" is stressed, and
perhaps even over-stressed. But these activities are cultivated more or less in
detachment, as belonging to the special subjects in which they are pigeon-holed
rather than as forming one coherent scheme of mental training to which all
"subjects" stand in a subordinate relation. "Grammar"
belongs especially to the "subject" of foreign languages, and
essay-writing to the "subject" called "English"; while
Dialectic has become almost entirely divorced from the rest of the curriculum,
and is frequently practiced unsystematically and out of school hours as a
separate exercise, only very loosely related to the main business of learning.
Taken by and large, the great difference of emphasis between the two
conceptions holds good: modern education concentrates on "teaching
subjects," leaving the method of thinking, arguing, and expressing one's
conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along' mediaeval
education concentrated on first forging and learning to handle the tools of
learning, using whatever subject came handy as a piece of material on which to
doodle until the use of the tool became second nature.
"Subjects"
of some kind there must be, of course. One cannot learn the theory of grammar
without learning an actual language, or learn to argue and orate without
speaking about something in particular. The debating subjects of the Middle
Ages were drawn largely from theology, or from the ethics and history of
antiquity. Often, indeed, they became stereotyped, especially towards the end
of the period, and the far-fetched and wire-drawn absurdities of Scholastic
argument fretted Milton and provide food for merriment even to this day.
Whether they were in themselves any more hackneyed and trivial then the usual
subjects set nowadays for "essay writing" I should not like to say:
we may ourselves grow a little weary of "A Day in My Holidays" and
all the rest of it. But most of the merriment is misplaced, because the aim and
object of the debating thesis has by now been lost sight of.
A
glib speaker in the Brains Trust once entertained his audience (and reduced the
late Charles Williams to helpless rage) by asserting that in the Middle Ages it
was a matter of faith to know how many archangels could dance on the point of a
needle. I need not say, I hope, that it never was a "matter of
faith"; it was simply a debating exercise, whose set subject was the
nature of angelic substance: were angels material, and if so, did they occupy
space? The answer usually adjudged correct is, I believe, that angels are pure
intelligences; not material, but limited, so that they may have location in
space but not extension. An analogy might be drawn from human thought, which is
similarly non-material and similarly limited. Thus, if your thought is
concentrated upon one thing--say, the point of a needle--it is located there in
the sense that it is not elsewhere; but although it is "there," it
occupies no space there, and there is nothing to prevent an infinite number of
different people's thoughts being concentrated upon the same needle-point at
the same time. The proper subject of the argument is thus seen to be the
distinction between location and extension in space; the matter on which the
argument is exercised happens to be the nature of angels (although, as we have
seen, it might equally well have been something else) the practical lesson to
be drawn from the argument is not to use words like "there" in a
loose and unscientific way, without specifying whether you mean "located
there" or "occupying space there."
Scorn
in plenty has been poured out upon the mediaeval passion for hair-splitting;
but when we look at the shameless abuse made, in print and on the platform, of
controversial expressions with shifting and ambiguous connotations, we may feel
it in our hearts to wish that every reader and hearer had been so defensively
armored by his education as to be able to cry: "Distinguo."
For
we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so
necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the
printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain
that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of
words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how
to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to
words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their
intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored
tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into
the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects";
and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the
spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service
to the importance of education--lip- service and, just occasionally, a little
grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger
and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school
hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated,
because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make
a botched and piecemeal job of it.
What,
then, are we to do? We cannot go back to the Middle Ages. That is a cry to
which we have become accustomed. We cannot go back--or can we? Distinguo. I
should like every term in that proposition defined. Does "go back"
mean a retrogression in time, or the revision of an error? The first is clearly
impossible per se; the second is a thing which wise men do every day.
"Cannot"-- does this mean that our behavior is determined
irreversibly, or merely that such an action would be very difficult in view of
the opposition it would provoke? Obviously the twentieth century is not and cannot
be the fourteenth; but if "the Middle Ages" is, in this context,
simply a picturesque phrase denoting a particular educational theory, there
seems to be no a priori reason why we should not "go back" to
it--with modifications--as we have already "gone back" with
modifications, to, let us say, the idea of playing Shakespeare's plays as he
wrote them, and not in the "modernized" versions of Cibber and
Garrick, which once seemed to be the latest thing in theatrical progress.
Let
us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression is
possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities, and furnish
ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom we may
experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines chosen by
ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff
our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims
and methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large enough to
allow our classes to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will
postulate a Board of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we
turn out. Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern
Trivium "with modifications" and we will see where we get to.
But
first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate them on novel
lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to unlearn; besides, one
cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is by its nature not
learning, but a preparation for learning. We will, therefore, "catch 'em
young," requiring of our pupils only that they shall be able to read,
write, and cipher.
My
views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor enlightened.
Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know best and the only child I
can pretend to know from inside) I recognize three states of development.
These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert,
and the Poetic--the latter coinciding, approximately, with the onset of
puberty. The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy
and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the
whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and
appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one
rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible
polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert age, which
follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is
characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to "catch people
out" (especially one's elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its
nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form. The
Poetic age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is
self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being
misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good
luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a
reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate
eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others. Now it
seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts itself with a singular
appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to
the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.
Let
us begin, then, with Grammar. This, in practice, means the grammar of some
language in particular; and it must be an inflected language. The grammatical
structure of an uninflected language is far too analytical to be tackled by anyone
without previous practice in Dialectic. Moreover, the inflected languages
interpret the uninflected, whereas the uninflected are of little use in
interpreting the inflected. I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best
grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is
traditional and mediaeval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of
Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at
least fifty percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the
Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences
and to the literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with
all its historical documents.
Those
whose pedantic preference for a living language persuades them to deprive their
pupils of all these advantages might substitute Russian, whose grammar is still
more primitive. Russian is, of course, helpful with the other Slav dialects.
There is something also to be said for Classical Greek. But my own choice is
Latin. Having thus pleased the Classicists among you, I will proceed to horrify
them by adding that I do not think it either wise or necessary to cramp the
ordinary pupil upon the Procrustean bed of the Augustan Age, with its highly
elaborate and artificial verse forms and oratory. Post-classical and mediaeval
Latin, which was a living language right down to the end of the Renaissance, is
easier and in some ways livelier; a study of it helps to dispel the widespread
notion that learning and literature came to a full stop when Christ was born
and only woke up again at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Latin
should be begun as early as possible--at a time when inflected speech seems no
more astonishing than any other phenomenon in an astonishing world; and when
the chanting of "Amo, amas, amat" is as ritually agreeable to the
feelings as the chanting of "eeny, meeny, miney, moe."
During
this age we must, of course, exercise the mind on other things besides Latin
grammar. Observation and memory are the faculties most lively at this period;
and if we are to learn a contemporary foreign language we should begin now,
before the facial and mental muscles become rebellious to strange intonations.
Spoken French or German can be practiced alongside the grammatical discipline
of the Latin.
In
English, meanwhile, verse and prose can be learned by heart, and the pupil's
memory should be stored with stories of every kind--classical myth, European
legend, and so forth. I do not think that the classical stories and
masterpieces of ancient literature should be made the vile bodies on which to
practice the techniques of Grammar--that was a fault of mediaeval education
which we need not perpetuate. The stories can be enjoyed and remembered in
English, and related to their origin at a subsequent stage. Recitation aloud
should be practiced, individually or in chorus; for we must not forget that we
are laying the groundwork for Disputation and Rhetoric.
The
grammar of History should consist, I think, of dates, events, anecdotes, and
personalities. A set of dates to which one can peg all later historical
knowledge is of enormous help later on in establishing the perspective of
history. It does not greatly matter which dates: those of the Kings of England
will do very nicely, provided that they are accompanied by pictures of
costumes, architecture, and other everyday things, so that the mere mention of
a date calls up a very strong visual presentment of the whole period.
Geography
will similarly be presented in its factual aspect, with maps, natural features,
and visual presentment of customs, costumes, flora, fauna, and so on; and I
believe myself that the discredited and old-fashioned memorizing of a few
capitol cities, rivers, mountain ranges, etc., does no harm. Stamp collecting
may be encouraged.
Science,
in the Poll-Parrot period, arranges itself naturally and easily around
collections--the identifying and naming of specimens and, in general, the kind
of thing that used to be called "natural philosophy." To know the
name and properties of things is, at this age, a satisfaction in itself; to
recognize a devil's coach-horse at sight, and assure one's foolish elders,
that, in spite of its appearance, it does not sting; to be able to pick out
Cassiopeia and the Pleiades, and perhaps even to know who Cassiopeia and the
Pleiades were; to be aware that a whale is not a fish, and a bat not a bird--all
these things give a pleasant sensation of superiority; while to know a ring
snake from an adder or a poisonous from an edible toadstool is a kind of
knowledge that also has practical value.
The
grammar of Mathematics begins, of course, with the multiplication table, which,
if not learnt now, will never be learnt with pleasure; and with the recognition
of geometrical shapes and the grouping of numbers. These exercises lead
naturally to the doing of simple sums in arithmetic. More complicated
mathematical processes may, and perhaps should, be postponed, for the reasons
which will presently appear.
So
far (except, of course, for the Latin), our curriculum contains nothing that
departs very far from common practice. The difference will be felt rather in
the attitude of the teachers, who must look upon all these activities less as
"subjects" in themselves than as a gathering-together of material for
use in the next part of the Trivium. What that material is, is only of
secondary importance; but it is as well that anything and everything which can
be usefully committed to memory should be memorized at this period, whether it
is immediately intelligible or not. The modern tendency is to try and force
rational explanations on a child's mind at too early an age. Intelligent
questions, spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive an immediate and
rational answer; but it is a great mistake to suppose that a child cannot
readily enjoy and remember things that are beyond his power to
analyze--particularly if those things have a strong imaginative appeal (as, for
example, "Kubla Kahn"), an attractive jingle (like some of the
memory-rhymes for Latin genders), or an abundance of rich, resounding
polysyllables (like the Quicunque vult).
This
reminds me of the grammar of Theology. I shall add it to the curriculum,
because theology is the mistress-science without which the whole educational
structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis. Those who disagree about
this will remain content to leave their pupil's education still full of loose
ends. This will matter rather less than it might, since by the time that the
tools of learning have been forged the student will be able to tackle theology
for himself, and will probably insist upon doing so and making sense of it.
Still, it is as well to have this matter also handy and ready for the reason to
work upon. At the grammatical age, therefore, we should become acquainted with
the story of God and Man in outline--i.e., the Old and New testaments presented
as parts of a single narrative of Creation, Rebellion, and Redemption--and also
with the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. At this early
stage, it does not matter nearly so much that these things should be fully
understood as that they should be known and remembered.
It
is difficult to say at what age, precisely, we should pass from the first to
the second part of the Trivium. Generally speaking, the answer is: so soon as
the pupil shows himself disposed to pertness and interminable argument. For as,
in the first part, the master faculties are Observation and Memory, so, in the
second, the master faculty is the Discursive Reason. In the first, the exercise
to which the rest of the material was, as it were, keyed, was the Latin
grammar; in the second, the key- exercise will be Formal Logic. It is here that
our curriculum shows its first sharp divergence from modern standards. The
disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen is entirely unjustified; and its
neglect is the root cause of nearly all those disquieting symptoms which we
have noted in the modern intellectual constitution. Logic has been discredited,
partly because we have come to suppose that we are conditioned almost entirely
by the intuitive and the unconscious. There is no time to argue whether this is
true; I will simply observe that to neglect the proper training of the reason
is the best possible way to make it true. Another cause for the disfavor into
which Logic has fallen is the belief that it is entirely based upon universal
assumptions that are either unprovable or tautological. This is not true. Not
all universal propositions are of this kind. But even if they were, it would
make no difference, since every syllogism whose major premise is in the form
"All A is B" can be recast in hypothetical form. Logic is the art of
arguing correctly: "If A, then B." The method is not invalidated by
the hypothetical nature of A. Indeed, the practical utility of Formal Logic
today lies not so much in the establishment of positive conclusions as in the prompt
detection and exposure of invalid inference.
Let
us now quickly review our material and see how it is to be related to
Dialectic. On the Language side, we shall now have our vocabulary and
morphology at our fingertips; henceforward we can concentrate on syntax and
analysis (i.e., the logical construction of speech) and the history of language
(i.e., how we came to arrange our speech as we do in order to convey our
thoughts).
Our
Reading will proceed from narrative and lyric to essays, argument and
criticism, and the pupil will learn to try his own hand at writing this kind of
thing. Many lessons--on whatever subject--will take the form of debates; and
the place of individual or choral recitation will be taken by dramatic
performances, with special attention to plays in which an argument is stated in
dramatic form.
Mathematics--algebra,
geometry, and the more advanced kinds of arithmetic--will now enter into the
syllabus and take its place as what it really is: not a separate
"subject" but a sub- department of Logic. It is neither more nor less
than the rule of the syllogism in its particular application to number and
measurement, and should be taught as such, instead of being, for some, a dark
mystery, and, for others, a special revelation, neither illuminating nor
illuminated by any other part of knowledge.
History,
aided by a simple system of ethics derived from the grammar of theology, will
provide much suitable material for discussion: Was the behavior of this
statesman justified? What was the effect of such an enactment? What are the
arguments for and against this or that form of government? We shall thus get an
introduction to constitutional history--a subject meaningless to the young
child, but of absorbing interest to those who are prepared to argue and debate.
Theology itself will furnish material for argument about conduct and morals;
and should have its scope extended by a simplified course of dogmatic theology
(i.e., the rational structure of Christian thought), clarifying the relations
between the dogma and the ethics, and lending itself to that application of
ethical principles in particular instances which is properly called casuistry.
Geography and the Sciences will likewise provide material for Dialectic.
But
above all, we must not neglect the material which is so abundant in the pupils'
own daily life.
There
is a delightful passage in Leslie Paul's "The Living Hedge" which
tells how a number of small boys enjoyed themselves for days arguing about an
extraordinary shower of rain which had fallen in their town--a shower so
localized that it left one half of the main street wet and the other dry. Could
one, they argued, properly say that it had rained that day on or over the town
or only in the town? How many drops of water were required to constitute rain?
And so on. Argument about this led on to a host of similar problems about rest
and motion, sleep and waking, est and non est, and the infinitesimal division
of time. The whole passage is an admirable example of the spontaneous
development of the ratiocinative faculty and the natural and proper thirst of
the awakening reason for the definition of terms and exactness of statement.
All events are food for such an appetite.
An
umpire's decision; the degree to which one may transgress the spirit of a regulation
without being trapped by the letter: on such questions as these, children are
born casuists, and their natural propensity only needs to be developed and
trained--and especially, brought into an intelligible relationship with the
events in the grown-up world. The newspapers are full of good material for such
exercises: legal decisions, on the one hand, in cases where the cause at issue
is not too abstruse; on the other, fallacious reasoning and muddleheaded
arguments, with which the correspondence columns of certain papers one could
name are abundantly stocked.
Wherever
the matter for Dialectic is found, it is, of course, highly important that
attention should be focused upon the beauty and economy of a fine demonstration
or a well-turned argument, lest veneration should wholly die. Criticism must
not be merely destructive; though at the same time both teacher and pupils must
be ready to detect fallacy, slipshod reasoning, ambiguity, irrelevance, and
redundancy, and to pounce upon them like rats. This is the moment when
precis-writing may be usefully undertaken; together with such exercises as the
writing of an essay, and the reduction of it, when written, by 25 or 50
percent.
It
will, doubtless, be objected that to encourage young persons at the Pert age to
browbeat, correct, and argue with their elders will render them perfectly
intolerable. My answer is that children of that age are intolerable anyhow; and
that their natural argumentativeness may just as well be canalized to good
purpose as allowed to run away into the sands. It may, indeed, be rather less
obtrusive at home if it is disciplined in school; and anyhow, elders who have
abandoned the wholesome principle that children should be seen and not heard
have no one to blame but themselves.
Once
again, the contents of the syllabus at this stage may be anything you like. The
"subjects" supply material; but they are all to be regarded as mere
grist for the mental mill to work upon. The pupils should be encouraged to go
and forage for their own information, and so guided towards the proper use of
libraries and books for reference, and shown how to tell which sources are
authoritative and which are not.
Towards
the close of this stage, the pupils will probably be beginning to discover for
themselves that their knowledge and experience are insufficient, and that their
trained intelligences need a great deal more material to chew upon. The
imagination-- usually dormant during the Pert age--will reawaken, and prompt
them to suspect the limitations of logic and reason. This means that they are
passing into the Poetic age and are ready to embark on the study of Rhetoric.
The doors of the storehouse of knowledge should now be thrown open for them to
browse about as they will. The things once learned by rote will be seen in new
contexts; the things once coldly analyzed can now be brought together to form a
new synthesis; here and there a sudden insight will bring about that most
exciting of all discoveries: the realization that truism is true.
It
is difficult to map out any general syllabus for the study of Rhetoric: a
certain freedom is demanded. In literature, appreciation should be again
allowed to take the lead over destructive criticism; and self-expression in
writing can go forward, with its tools now sharpened to cut clean and observe
proportion. Any child who already shows a disposition to specialize should be
given his head: for, when the use of the tools has been well and truly learned,
it is available for any study whatever. It would be well, I think, that each
pupil should learn to do one, or two, subjects really well, while taking a few
classes in subsidiary subjects so as to keep his mind open to the
inter-relations of all knowledge. Indeed, at this stage, our difficulty will be
to keep "subjects" apart; for Dialectic will have shown all branches
of learning to be inter-related, so Rhetoric will tend to show that all
knowledge is one. To show this, and show why it is so, is pre-eminently the
task of the mistress science. But whether theology is studied or not, we should
at least insist that children who seem inclined to specialize on the
mathematical and scientific side should be obliged to attend some lessons in
the humanities and vice versa. At this stage, also, the Latin grammar, having
done its work, may be dropped for those who prefer to carry on their language
studies on the modern side; while those who are likely never to have any great
use or aptitude for mathematics might also be allowed to rest, more or less,
upon their oars. Generally speaking, whatsoever is mere apparatus may now be
allowed to fall into the background, while the trained mind is gradually
prepared for specialization in the "subjects" which, when the Trivium
is completed, it should be perfectly well equipped to tackle on its own. The
final synthesis of the Trivium--the presentation and public defense of the
thesis--should be restored in some form; perhaps as a kind of "leaving
examination" during the last term at school.
The
scope of Rhetoric depends also on whether the pupil is to be turned out into
the world at the age of 16 or whether he is to proceed to the university.
Since, really, Rhetoric should be taken at about 14, the first category of
pupil should study Grammar from about 9 to 11, and Dialectic from 12 to 14; his
last two school years would then be devoted to Rhetoric, which, in this case,
would be of a fairly specialized and vocational kind, suiting him to enter
immediately upon some practical career. A pupil of the second category would
finish his Dialectical course in his preparatory school, and take Rhetoric
during his first two years at his public school. At 16, he would be ready to
start upon those "subjects" which are proposed for his later study at
the university: and this part of his education will correspond to the mediaeval
Quadrivium. What this amounts to is that the ordinary pupil, whose formal
education ends at 16, will take the Trivium only; whereas scholars will take
both the Trivium and the Quadrivium.
Is
the Trivium, then, a sufficient education for life? Properly taught, I believe
that it should be. At the end of the Dialectic, the children will probably seem
to be far behind their coevals brought up on old-fashioned "modern"
methods, so far as detailed knowledge of specific subjects is concerned. But after
the age of 14 they should be able to overhaul the others hand over fist.
Indeed, I am not at all sure that a pupil thoroughly proficient in the Trivium
would not be fit to proceed immediately to the university at the age of 16,
thus proving himself the equal of his mediaeval counterpart, whose precocity
astonished us at the beginning of this discussion. This, to be sure, would make
hay of the English public-school system, and disconcert the universities very
much. It would, for example, make quite a different thing of the Oxford and
Cambridge boat race.
But
I am not here to consider the feelings of academic bodies: I am concerned only
with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable
mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools
of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows
how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the
time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the
tools at his command. To learn six subjects without remembering how they were
learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and
remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open
door.
It
is clear that the successful teaching of this neo-mediaeval curriculum will
depend even more than usual upon the working together of the whole teaching
staff towards a common purpose. Since no subject is considered as an evil
in itself, any kind of rivalry in the staff-room will be sadly out of
place. The fact that a pupil is unfortunately obliged, for some reason,
to miss the history period on Fridays, or the Shakespeare class on Tuesdays, or
even to omit a whole subject in favour of some other subject, must not be
allowed to cause any heart-burnings--the essential is that he should acquire
the method of learning in whatever medium suits him best. If human nature
suffers under this blow to one's professional pride in one's own subject, there
is comfort in the thought that the end-of-term examination results will not be
affected; for the papers will be so arranged as to be an examination in method,
by whatever means.
I
will add that it is highly important that every teacher should, for his or her
own sake, be qualified and required to teach in all three parts of the Trivium;
otherwise Masters of Dialectic, especially, might find their minds hardening
into a permanent adolescence. For this reason, teachers in preparatory
schools should also take Rhetoric class in the public schools to which they are
attached; or, if they are not so attached, then by arrangement in other schools
in the same neighborhood. Alternatively, a few preliminary classes in
rhetoric might be taken in preparatory school from the age of thirteen
onwards.
Before
concluding these necessarily very sketchy suggestions, I ought to say why I
think it necessary, in these days, to go back to a discipline which we had
discarded. The truth is that for the last three hundred years or so we have
been living upon our educational capital. The post-Renaissance world,
bewildered and excited by the profusion of new "subjects" offered to
it, broke away from the old discipline (which had, indeed, become sadly dull
and stereotyped in its practical application) and imagined that henceforward it
could, as it were, disport itself happily in its new and extended Quadrivium
without passing through the Trivium. But the Scholastic tradition, though
broken and maimed, still lingered in the public schools and universities:
Milton, however much he protested against it, was formed by it--the debate of
the Fallen Angels and the disputation of Abdiel with Satan have the tool-marks
of the Schools upon them, and might, incidentally, profitably figure as set
passages for our Dialectical studies. Right down to the nineteenth century, our
public affairs were mostly managed, and our books and journals were for the
most part written, by people brought up in homes, and trained in places, where
that tradition was still alive in the memory and almost in the blood. Just so,
many people today who are atheist or agnostic in religion, are governed in
their conduct by a code of Christian ethics which is so rooted that it never
occurs to them to question it.
But
one cannot live on capital forever. However firmly a tradition is rooted, if it
is never watered, though it dies hard, yet in the end it dies. And today a
great number--perhaps the majority--of the men and women who handle our
affairs, write our books and our newspapers, carry out our research, present
our plays and our films, speak from our platforms and pulpits--yes, and who
educate our young people--have never, even in a lingering traditional memory,
undergone the Scholastic discipline. Less and less do the children who come to
be educated bring any of that tradition with them. We have lost the tools of
learning--the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, the chisel and the
plane-- that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a
set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task and no more, and in
using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work
as a whole or "looks to the end of the work."
What use is it to pile task on task
and prolong the days of labor, if at the close the chief object is left
unattained? It is not the fault of the teachers--they work only too hard
already. The combined folly of a civilization that has forgotten its own roots
is forcing them to shore up the tottering weight of an educational structure that
is built upon sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils
themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to
teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do
this is effort spent in vain.
Oxford, 1947
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