The Herd in Education

(Bertrand Russell)

One of the most important factors in the formation of character is the influence of the herd upon the individual during childhood and youth. Many failures of integration in personality result from the conflict between two different herds to both of which a child belongs, while others arise from conflicts between the herd and individual tastes. It should be an important consideration in education to secure that the influence of the herd is not excessive, and that its operations are beneficial rather than harmful.

Most young people are subject to the operation of two different kinds of herd, which may be called respectively the great herd and the small herd. The great herd is one composed not exclusively of young people, but of the whole society to which the child belongs. This is determined in the main by the child’s home, except where there is a very definite conflict between home and school, as happens, for example, with the children of immigrants in the United States. During the time that a boy or girl spends at school, the great herd is, however, of less importance than the small herd consisting of school-fellows.

Every collection of human beings in habitual close proximity develops a herd feeling, which is shown in a certain instinctive uniformity of behaviour, and in hostility to any individual having the same proximity but not felt as one of the group. Every new boy at school has to submit to a certain period during which he is regarded with unfriendly suspicion by those who are already incorporated in the school herd. If the boy is in no way peculiar, he is presently accepted as one of the group, and comes to act as the others act, to feel as they feel, and to think as they think. If, on the other hand, he is in any way unusual, one of two things may happen: he may become the leader of the herd, or he may remain a persecuted oddity. Some very few, by combining unusual good-nature with eccentricity, may become licensed lunatics, like ‘mad Shelley’ at Eton.

Conventional men acquire, during their school years, that quick and almost instinctive realisation of what is demanded in order to be a conventional member of the herd, which is needed for common-place respectability in later life. If a fellow-member of a club does anything which is not entirely correct, a man will remember from his boyhood the kind of treatment which was meted out to queer boys; and, while modifying his behaviour to suit the code of adult civilisation, he will still keep it, in its essential pattern, what it became in those early years. This constitutes the really effective moral code to which men are subjected. A man may do things which are immoral; he may do things which are illegal; he may be callous, or brutal, or, on a suitable occasion, rude; but he must not do any of those things for which his class will cold-shoulder him. What these things are depends, of course, upon the country and the age and the social class concerned. But in every country, in every age, and in every social class, there are such things.

Fear of the herd is very deeply rooted in almost all men and women. And this fear is first implanted at school. It becomes, therefore, a matter of great importance in moral education that the things punished by the school herd shall be, as far as possible, undesirable things which it is within the boy’s power to alter. But to secure this is extremely difficult. The natural code for a herd of boys is, as a rule, not a very exalted one. And among the things which they are most likely to punish are things which do not lie within the power of their victims. A boy who has a birth-mark on his face, or whose breath is offensive, is likely to endure agonies at school, and not one boy in a hundred will consider that he deserves any mercy. I do not think this is inevitable. I think it is possible to teach boys a more merciful attitude, but the matter is difficult, and schoolmasters who like what is called manliness are not likely to do much in this direction.

More serious, from a social, though not from an individual, point of view, is the case of those boys whose larger herd is in some way in opposition to the small herd of the school, such as Jews in a school composed mainly of Gentiles. Most Jews, even in the most liberal societies, have been subjected during boyhood to insults on account of their race, and these insults remain in their memory, colouring their whole outlook upon life and society. A boy may be taught at home to be proud of being a Jew: he may know with his intellect that Jewish civilisation is older than that of most Western nations, and that the contribution of Jews has been, in proportion to their numbers, incomparably greater than that of Gentiles. Nevertheless, when he hears other boys shout ‘Sheeney!’ or ‘Ike!’ after him in tones of derision, he finds it difficult to remember that it is a fine thing to be a Jew; and if he does remember it, he remembers it defiantly. In this way a discord is planted in his soul between the standards of home and the standards of school. This discord is a cause of great nervous tension, and also of a profound instinctive fear.

Apart from Jewish nationalism, there are two typical reactions to this situation: one that of the revolutionary, the other that of the toady. We may take Karl Marx and Disraeli as two extreme examples of these reactions. The hatred which Karl Marx felt for the existing order it is likely he would not have felt if he had been a Gentile. But having too much intelligence to hate Gentiles as such, he transferred his hatred from Gentiles as a whole to capitalists. And since capitalists were, in fact, largely hateful, he succeeded, by viewing them with the eyes of hatred, in inventing a largely true theory of their place in the social order. Disraeli, who was a Jew in race but a Christian in religion, met the situation in another way. He admired, with the profoundest sincerity, the splendours of aristocracy and the magnificence of monarchy. There, he felt in his bones, was stability. There was safety from persecution. There was immunity from pogroms. The same fear of the hostile herd which, in Karl Marx, turned to revolution, turned in Disraeli to protective imitation. With amazing skill he made himself one of the admired herd, rose to supremacy within it, became the leader of a proud aristocracy, and the favourite of his sovereign. The keynote of his life is contained in his exclamation when the House of Commons laughed down his maiden speech: ‘The time will come when you shall hear me!’ How different is the attitude of the born aristocrat in the face of laughter is illustrated by the story of the elder Pitt, who once began a speech in the House with the words: ‘Sugar, Sir—’, which caused a titter. Looking round, he repeated in louder tones: ‘Sugar, Sir—,’ and again there was a titter. A third time, with looks of wrath, and in a voice of thunder, he repeated: ‘Sugar, Sir—.’ And this time not the faintest titter was to be heard.

Many kinds of eminence, both good and bad, have been caused by the boy’s desire to wipe out some shame which he had suffered in the face of the herd. Of this sort of thing bastards afford an illustration. Edmund, in Lear, sets forth the way in which his being illegitimate has made him hostile to conventional people. I dare say William the Conqueror would not have been stirred to such notable deeds if he had not wished to wipe out the stain of his birth.

So far we have been considering the effect of quite ordinary herds upon individuals who were abnormal either in character or in circumstance. But not infrequently there have been boyish herds of a more extreme sort, more vicious and more cruel than the herds to which most of us were accustomed in youth.

Kropotkin, in his youth, was a member of the corps of pages, the aristocratic school in which boys specially favoured by the Czar were educated. His descriptions of the things that occurred in this school are interesting. He says, for example:

‘. . . The first form did what they liked; and not farther back than the preceding winter one of their favourite games had been to assemble the “greenhorns” at night in a room, in their nightshirts, and to make them run round, like horses in a circus, while the pages de chambre, armed with thick india-rubber whips, standing some in the centre and the others on the outside, pitilessly whipped the boys. As a rule the “circus” ended in an Oriental fashion, in an abominable way. The moral conceptions which prevailed at that time, and the foul talk which went on in the school concerning what occurred at night after a circus, were such that the least said about them the better.’

The influence of the school herd upon the character of remarkable men can hardly be over-estimated. Take, for example, Napoleon. Napoleon, in his youth, was at the aristocratic military college at Brienne, where almost all the other boys were rich and of the higher nobility. He was there as a result of a political concession which France had made to Corsica, in virtue of which a certain small number of Corsican youths were educated at Brienne free of charge. He was one of a large family, and his mother was poor. After he became Emperor, it was conveniently discovered that he was descended from an ancient Ghibelline family, but this was not known at the time. His clothes were plain and threadbare, while the other youths were in gorgeous raiment. He was a despised nobody, whom they viewed with haughty disdain. When the Revolution broke out, he sympathized with it, and one may suspect that an element in his sympathy was the thought of the humiliation which was being brought upon the comrades of his years at Brienne. But when he rose to be Emperor, a more exquisite and Arabian-Nights type of revenge became possible. The very men who had despised him could now be made to sue for the privilege of bowing down before him. Can it be doubted that the snobbery that marred his later years of power had its source in the humiliations which he had suffered as a boy? His mother, who had not suffered the same humiliations, viewed his career with cynical detachment, and, against his wishes, insisted upon saving a large part of her salary in preparation for the day when his glories should be at an end.

There have been a few great men, mostly monarchs, who never suffered the pressure of the herd at all. The most notable of these is Alexander the Great, who was not at any time one among a crowd of equals. Perhaps both his greatness and his faults were due in part to this fact. He was not held back from magnificent conceptions by any such modesty as is instilled into the new boy at school. Conceiving of himself as a conqueror, it seemed natural to conquer the whole world. Conceiving of himself as greater than all his contemporaries, it seemed natural to think of himself as a god. In his dealings with his friends, even those who were nearest to him, he showed no sign of recognizing their rights. His murder of Parmenio and Cleitus, taken in isolation, suggest the cruel tyrant, but they are psychologically explicable as due to the impatience of a man who had at no time been subjected to the herd.

The above illustrations are designed to suggest that the school herd is one of the most important factors in determining character, especially when it conflicts with some individual or social characteristic in a boy of exceptional talents. The man who wishes to found a good school must think more about the character of the herd which he is creating than about any other single element. If he himself is kindly and tolerant, but permits the school herd to be cruel and intolerant, the boys under his care will experience a painful environment in spite of his excellences. I think that in some modern schools the doctrine of noninterference is carried to a point where this sort of thing may easily occur. If the children are never interfered with by the adults, the bigger children are likely to establish a tyranny over the smaller ones, so that the liberty which is supposed to be the watchword of the school will exist only for an aristocracy of the physically strong. It is, however, extremely difficult to prevent the tyranny of older children by means of direct disciplinary measures. If the grown-ups exercise force in their dealings with the older children, the older children will, in turn, exercise force in their dealings with the smaller ones. The thing to be aimed at is to have as little pressure of the herd as possible, and as little dominance of physical strength as is compatible with juvenile human nature. While it is well for boys and girls to learn the lesson of social dealings with their contemporaries, it is not well for them to be subjected to too intense a herd pressure. Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction. If it is very intense, it produces adults who are timid and conventional, except in a few rare instances. This is regrettable, however excellent may be the moral standards by which the herd is actuated. In Tom Brown’s Schooldays there is a boy who is kicked for saying his prayers. This book had a great effect, and among my contemporaries I knew one who had been kicked at school for not saying his prayers. I regret to say that he remained through life a prominent atheist. Thus even this highly virtuous form of herd tyranny, when carried too far, becomes undesirable. Too much herd pressure interferes with individuality, and with the development of all such interests as are not common among average healthy boys, e.g. science and art, literature and history, and everything else that makes civilisation. It cannot be denied, however, that emulation within the herd has its good points. It encourages physical prowess, and it discourages all kinds of sneaking underhand meanness. Within limits, therefore, it has its uses.

These uses are much greater where the purposes of the herd are, on the whole, good, than where they are, for example, such as in Kropotkin’s account of the ‘corps of pages’. One of the advantages of special schools for boys and girls of unusual ability is that, in such schools, the herd is likely to be far more enlightened than in ordinary schools, and far less hostile to civilized pursuits. But even where completely ordinary boys and girls are concerned, it is possible, by means of grown-up example, to produce a certain degree of toleration and kindliness, and a considerable degree of interest in collective enterprises such as plays, for example, in which the herd instinct works co-operatively and not oppressively.

For certain exceptionally strong characters, there is an educational value in standing out against the herd for some reason profoundly felt to be important. Such action strengthens the will, and teaches a man self-reliance. Provided he is not made to suffer too much, this may be all for the good; but if the herd makes him unhappy beyond a point, he will either yield and lose what was most excellent in his character, or become filled with a destructive rage, which may, as in Napoleon’s case, do untold harm to the world.

With regard to the larger herd that lies outside the school, parents whose opinions are in any way unconventional are faced with a perplexity which many of them find it very difficult to resolve. If they send their children to a school where unusual opinions are encouraged, or where unusual freedoms are permitted, they fear that, on entering the larger world, the boy or girl will not be readily adaptable to things as they are. Those who have been allowed to think and speak freely about sex will be oppressed by the usual reticences and pruderies. Those who have not been taught patriotism will have a difficulty in finding a niche in our nationalistic world. Those who have not been taught respect for constituted authority will find themselves in trouble through the freedom of their criticisms. And, in a word, those who have been used to freedom will feel the chains of slavery more irksome than those who have been slaves from birth. Such, at least, is the argument which I have frequently heard advanced by liberal-minded parents in favour of an illiberal education for their children.

There are, I think, two answers to this argument, one comparatively superficial, the other fundamental. The first of these answers consists in pointing out that external conformity of behaviour is a thing which young people learn easily, and that, in fact, it is universally taught in all conventional systems of education, where the behaviour of children before parents and teachers is totally different from their behaviour with each other. It is, I believe, quite as easy to learn this conformity in adolescence as to learn it at an earlier age. To some degree it is a mere matter of good manners. It would be rude to talk to a Mussulman against Mahomet, or to a judge against the criminal law. It may be our public duty to express opinions on either of these subjects publicly, but it can hardly be our duty to express them privately in quarters where they can only cause pain and anger. I do not believe that a free education need make a boy or girl incapable of kindly manners, nor of that degree of external decorum which conventional life demands. Nor do I believe that the pain of conformity after a free education is nearly so great as the pain caused by the complexes which are implanted in the course of a conventional education. So much for the first answer.

The second answer goes deeper. Our world contains grave evils, which can be remedied if men wish to remedy them. Those who are aware of these evils and fight against them are likely, it is true, to have less everyday happiness than those who acquiesce in the status quo. But in place of everyday happiness they will have something which I, for my part, value more highly, both for myself and for my children. They will have the sense of doing what lies in their power to make the world less painful. They will have a more just standard of values than is possible for the easy-going conformist. They will have the knowledge that they are among those who prevent the human race from sinking into stagnation or despair. This is something better than slothful contentment, and if a free education promotes this, parents ought not to shrink from the incidental pains which it may involve for their children.