The Herd in Education
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.
A thoughtful essay and concluding para is truly a gem.
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