CLASS-FEELING IN EDUCATION

CLASS-FEELING IN EDUCATION

(Bertrand Russell)

Ever since the dawn of civilisation, class inequality has existed. Among savage tribes at the present day, it takes very simple forms. There are chiefs, and the chiefs are able to have several wives. Savages, unlike civilised men, have found a way of making wives a source of wealth, so that the more wives a man has the wealthier he becomes. But this primitive form of social inequality soon gave way to others more complex. In the main, social inequality has been bound up with inheritance, and therefore, in all patriarchal societies, with descent in the male line. Originally, the greater wealth of certain persons was due to military prowess. The successful fighter acquired wealth, and transmitted it to his sons. Wealth acquired by the sword usually consisted of land, and to this day land-owning is the mark of the aristocrat, the aristocrat being in theory the descendant of some feudal baron, who acquired his lands by killing the previous occupant and holding his acquisition against all comers. This is considered the most honourable source of wealth. There are others slightly less honourable, exemplified by those who, while completely idle themselves, have acquired their wealth by inheritance from an ndustrious ancestor; and yet others, still less respectable, whose wealth is due to their own industry. In the modern world, the plutocrat who, though rich, still works, is gradually ousting the aristocrat, whose income was in theory derived solely from ownership of land and natural monopolies. There have been two main legal sources of property: one, the aristocratic source, namely, ownership of land; the other, the bourgeois source, namely, the right to the produce of one’s own labour. The right to the produce of one’s own labour has always existed only on paper, because things are made out of other things, and the man who supplies the raw material exacts a right to the finished product in return for wages, or, where slavery exists, in return for the bare necessaries of life. We have thus three orders of men – the land-owner, the capitalist, and the proletarian. The capitalist in origin is merely a man whose savings have enabled him to buy the raw materials and the tools required in manufacturing, and who has thereby acquired the right to the finished product in return for wages. The three categories of land-owner, capitalist, and proletarian are clear enough in theory; but in practice the distinctions are blurred. A land-owner may employ business methods in developing a seaside resort which happens to be upon his property. A capitalist whose money is derived from manufacture may invest the whole or part of his fortune in land, and take to living upon rent. A proletarian, in so far as he has money in the savings bank, or a house which he is buying on the instalment plan, becomes to that extent a capitalist or a landowner as the case may be. The eminent barrister who charges a thousand guineas for a brief should, in strict economics, be classified as a proletarian. But he would be indignant if this were done, and has the mentality of a plutocrat.

From a practical point of view, the important class distinctions outside the  depend upon the patriarchal family and the practice of inheritance. Owing to the patriarchal family, the children of the rich get a different education, though not always a better one, than is given to the children of the poor. Owing to inheritance, the children of the rich may look forward, if they so desire, to idleness without starvation. If there were no such thing as inheritance, the inequalities of wealth which would survive would be obliterated in each generation. And if there were no such thing as the patriarchal family, the children of the rich would not be educated differently from the children of the poor. Socialists are apt to speak of the capitalist system in a somewhat vague way, without an adequate analysis of the different factors which contribute to it. The business activities of the capitalist are by no means the whole of the capitalist system. The fact that his children are in a privileged position owing to his wealth is an essential part of it. I do not mean this as a criticism of Marxism, since Marx realised the connection between economics and the family. But I do say it in criticism of a good many English-speaking Socialists, who imagine that the economic structure of society has no very vital connection with marriage and the family. As a matter of fact, the connection is reciprocal. The bourgeois who is concerned in amassing private property applies the conception of private property to his wife and children, and has in consequence a certain way of feeling in regard to them. Conversely, sexual jealousy and paternal affection are emotions leading men to desire private property in women and children. And from their desire for this form of private property they are led to desire other forms also. In a primitive community, a man may desire wealth in order to have many wives. In a civilised community, one of the reasons for desiring wealth is to be able to give a better social status to one’s wife and children than belongs to the wives and children of wage-earners. The connection of private property in material things with private property in women and children is thus reciprocal. It cannot be expected that one will break down without the other also breaking down. Private property in women and children introduces rivalry in regard to them, and thus brings the motive of class distinction into education. How all these matters would be affected by a thoroughgoing communism I do not propose to consider at this stage.

Where education is concerned it is, of course, the social position of the fathers that determines that of the children. Thus in any society in which class distinctions exist, children are respected not solely on account of their own merits, but also on account of the wealth of their fathers. The children of the rich acquire a belief that they are superior to the children of the poor, and an attempt is made to cause the children of the poor to think themselves inferior to the children of the rich. It is necessary to make this effort with the children of the poor, since otherwise they might come to resent the injustice of which they are the victims. Consequently, wherever class distinctions exist, education necessarily has two correlative defects: that of producing arrogance in the rich, and that of aiming at irrational humility in the poor. The objections to the arrogance of the rich are obvious, and have been pointed out by the moralist from the time of the Hebrew prophets downwards, though only a small percentage of the moralists have noticed that the evil could not be undone by mere preaching, but only by a different economic system. The evils of attempting to produce irrational humility in the poor are somewhat different. If it is produced, initiative and self-respect are harmfully diminished. If it is not produced, there is resentment tending to destructiveness. Whether it is produced or whether it is not, the attempt to produce it involves the teaching of falsehood: ethical falsehood, since it is a representation that the inequality of the rich and the poor is not an injustice; economic falsehood, since it is suggested that the present economic system is the best possible; historical falsehood, since the previous conflicts of rich and poor are narrated from the standpoint of the rich. When the teachers are little better than proletarians themselves, they need slavish souls if they are to believe what they have to teach, and lack of courage if they are to teach it without believing it.

In pre-industrial societies, where wealth is mainly aristocratic, the defence of inequality takes the form of reverence for birth, which often overrides the reverence for actual wealth, and conceals the economic origin of the sentiment. A penniless exiled chieftain may be more respected than a successful money-lender. Nevertheless, fundamentally it is wealth that is respected, because as a rule in such societies it is aristocratic descent which is the source of wealth. Where aristocracy is strong, belief in it is, of course, bolstered up by all kinds of nonsense, such as that aristocrats have better manners, more education, or finer feelings than other people. In a plutocratic society, such as that of the United States, there is a different form of humbug. The successful plutocrat is supposed to have achieved his position by hard work, frugality, and scrupulous honesty. He is supposed to use his position as a public trust, with an eye always to the general good. In the sixties and seventies of the last century, when the great fortunes of plutocrats were a novelty, traditional culture, such as that of the Adams family, exposed with gusto the tricks and chicanery and sheer illegality by which many of the leading men had amassed their wealth.1 Throughout the eighties and nineties, books were written against the methods of the Standard Oil Company. Nowadays, this is all changed. The great plutocrats are regarded as great public benefactors. Every university has, or hopes to have, endowments from them. Every young man of academic tastes hopes to receive a research fellowship from the bounty of some philanthropic billionaire. The universities and the press are filled with the praise of the very rich, and the man in the street is taught to believe that virtue is proportional to income. Class distinctions are thus just as important in a country like the United States as they are in an aristocratic country, and a good deal more important than they are in countries such as Norway and Denmark, where there is diffused comfort with hardly any great fortunes.

The harm done by class distinctions is not confined to the children. It extends to the teachers and the curriculum. More social prestige attaches to care of the mind than to care of the body, and therefore the teacher who gives intellectual instruction is usually indifferent to questions of health, and ignorant of the signs by which the first approaches of any physical ailment can be detected. The distinction between mind and body is artificial and unreal; but unfortunately it has had an effect upon the social hierarchy, with the result that care of the body and care of the mind are much more separated in education than they ought to be. This, of course, is nothing like as bad as it was in former days, when a deaf child might be punished for inattention for years on end without any of the teachers discovering that he was deaf. But although such extreme instances as this are not likely to occur nowadays, the evil still exists in less flagrant forms. The teacher, for example, knows nothing about the child’s digestive condition, and may be indignant at stupidity and bad temper for which the cause is to be found in constipation. If it were suggested to teachers that they should pay any attention to the bowel action of their pupils, their snobbery would be outraged. I do not wish the reader to misunderstand me at this point. I am not denying that in all modern schools there is physical care of children, and that a great deal is done to keep them in health, as compared with what used to be done in former times. What I am complaining of is that physical and mental care are so completely separated, and that the person who possesses the knowledge required for the one has, as a rule, no inkling of the knowledge required for the other. In an adult there is a considerable gulf between mind and body, but this gulf has no metaphysical necessity. It is a produce of education. In a baby there is no gulf, in an infant there is very little, and in a child not much. I do not suppose that a child of ten could give a very good philosophical account of the difference between mind and body. But every child would understand at once if you said: ‘Your mind is what is looked after by Miss A., and your body is what is looked after by Miss B.’ It is the distinction between Miss A. and Miss B. that underlies the subsequent metaphysical distinction between mind and matter. If the functions of Miss A. and Miss B. were combined in a Miss C., all children would grow up to be neutral monists, believing that mind and matter are only different aspects of the same phenomenon. In this way, metaphysics is connected with the class system. Mental activity is that which does not involve the use of arms or legs. Physical activity is that which does. Mental activity is superior to physical, because those who practice it exclusively need servants to do their physical labours for them. It follows that the soul is nobler than the body, that matter is the evil principle, and so on.

As regards the curriculum also, respect for wealth has had an effect, though this effect is less obvious than formerly. The Greeks, like all communities that employ slave labour, held the view that all manual work is vulgar. This led them to place a great emphasis upon such things as culture and philosophy and rhetoric, which could be studied without the use of the hands. They tended to think that all manipulation of matter was unworthy of a gentleman, and this probably had something to do with their partial lack of success in experimental science. Plutarch, relating the ingenious inventions of Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse, defends him from the charge of vulgarity on the ground that he was doing it for the benefit of his cousin the King. The Romans inherited the Greek view of culture, and down to our own day this view has been dominant in all countries of Western Europe. Culture is something which can be acquired by reading books, or by conversation. Whatever involves more than this is not culture in the Greek meaning of the term. And the Greek education and the social order meaning of the term is still that adopted, at any rate in England, by most schoolmasters, many university teachers, and all old gentlemen with literary tastes. This applies not only to Greek and Roman antiquity, but also to modern history. It is considered more cultured to know about Horace Walpole than about Henry Cavendish, about Bolingbroke than about Robert Boyle, though in each case the latter was the more important man. All this is ultimately connected with the idea that a gentleman is one who does not use his hands unless it be in the noble art of war. A gentleman may use a sword, but should not use a typewriter.

In matters of this sort, the United States is much ahead of Europe, owing to the fact that, in America, aristocracy was abolished with emphasis at a time when it still existed in every

European country. But a new form of class distinction in education is growing up, which is the distinction between business management and the technical processes of manufacture. The man engaged in business management is the aristocrat of the future, and the phrase ‘a great executive’ has much the same connotations in modern America that the phrase ‘a great nobleman’ had in the novels of Disraeli. The substitution of the great executive for the great nobleman as the type to be admired is having a considerable effect upon ideals of culture. A great nobleman, in the dithyrambic day-dreams of Disraeli, was, no doubt, a man possessed of power, but it was power which had come to him without his having had to seek it, and which he exercised somewhat lazily. He was possessed also of great wealth, but this, again, had come to him without exertion, and he affected to think little of it. The things upon which he prided himself were his exquisite manners, his knowledge of good wine, his familiarity with the great world of all civilised countries, his judgement in regard to Renaissance pictures, and his capacity for epigram. It may be said generally that the accomplishments of aristocrats were frivolous, but innocent. The accomplishments of the great executives of our own time are very different. They class-feeling in education are men whose position has been achieved by their powerful will, and their capacity for judging other men. Power is their ruling passion, organising is the activity in which they excel.

They are men capable of doing the greatest good or the greatest harm, men who must be respected for their abilities and their importance, and loved or hated according to the nature of their work, but never viewed with indifference or condescension. In an industrial world men of this type must come to the fore. In the USSR men of this type are utilised by the State in ways which give scope for their abilities, without permitting the ruthless individualism of which they are allowed to be guilty in the capitalist world. But whether under capitalism or under communism, it is men of this type who must ultimately dominate an industrial civilisation, and the difference between their mentality and that of aristocrats of former times must have an important influence in making industrial culture different from that of feudal and commercial ages.

The conception of ‘the education of a gentleman’ has had a bad effect upon universities. Young people who are not exceptionally intellectual find it difficult in the years between eighteen and twenty-two to take very seriously the acquisition of academic knowledge, which is going to be of no direct use to them in later life. They tend, therefore, to be idle at the university, or if they work, to do so from mere thoughtless conscientiousness. For those whose profession is going to be research, the universities are admirable, but for most of the rest they are too much out of touch with subsequent life. It is possible to spend the university years in the acquisition of knowledge which has some professional utility, but conservative academic types view this with horror. I think they are mistaken. I think many clever young men become vapid and cynical through the consciousness that their work has no real importance while they are at the university. This does not happen to those who are studying medicine or engineering or agriculture or any subject of which education and the social order the utility is obvious. A gentleman is intended to be ornamental rather than useful, but in order to be adequately ornamental he has to be supplied with an unearned income. For those who will have to earn their living, it is hardly wise to attempt a form of education whose main purpose was to make idleness elegant. Pure learning as an ideal has its place in the life of the community, but only for those few who are going to devote their energies to research. For those who are going to be engaged in some other profession, it would be better to spend the last years of education in acquiring such knowledge as would enable them to pursue their profession with intelligence and breadth of outlook. There is no such thing nowadays as an all-round education, but there is a tendency, especially in England, to over-emphasise those elements in education which enable a man to talk with seeming intelligence. Moreover, knowledge acquired at the university, if it is quite unrelated to subsequent professional work, is likely to be soon forgotten. If professional men of forty were examined in the subjects that they had studied at the university, I am afraid it would be found that in most cases very little knowledge remained. Whereas, if they had studied something which enabled them to see their profession in relation to the life of the community, and to understand its social aspects, it is likely that their subsequent experiences would have supplied illustrations to what they had learned, and would therefore have caused the knowledge to remain in their minds.

I have dealt hitherto with incidental disadvantages derived from class-distinctions, but I have only touched upon the greatest disadvantage, which is ethical. Wherever unjust inequalities exist, a man who profits by them tends to protect himself from a sense of guilt by theories suggesting that he is in some way better than those who are less fortunate. These theories involve a limitation of sympathy, and opposition to justice, and a tendency to defend the status quo. They thus make the more fortunate members of the community into opponents of all progress; fear invades class-feeling in education their souls, and they shrink timidly from all doctrines that they suspect of having a subversive tendency, and of being therefore a threat to their own comfort. On the other hand, the less fortunate members of the community must either suffer such intellectual atrophy that they do not perceive the injustice of which they are the victims, and such moral loss of self-respect that they are willing to bow down before men intrinsically no better than themselves, or they must be filled with anger and resentment, protesting indignantly, feeling a continual sense of grievance, and gradually coming to view the world through the jaundiced eyes of the victim of persecution mania. All tolerated injustice has thus two bad sides: one as regards the fortunate, and the other as regards the unfortunate. It is for these reasons rather than from any abstract excellence in justice for its own sake that unjust social systems are evil. In a community based upon injustice, the ethical side of education can never be what it should be. Emotions of resentment which, considered in themselves, are bad, may be a very necessary motive force in eliminating injustice, whether between classes, nations, or sexes. But they do not cease to be intrinsically undesirable by being politically necessary. And it should be a touch-stone of the good society that, in it, the usual emotions will be those that are kindly, friendly, and constructive, rather than those that are angry and destructive. This consideration, if followed out, will lead us very far. But as our theme is education, I will leave it to the reader to carry the argument to its conclusion.