CHARACTER AND SCHOOL
By HAMILTON FYFE
CATCHWORDS have more effect on public opinion than argu- ment—or even facts. A fact is quickly forgotten ; a catch- word sticks in the mind. Here is an illustration. In all the discussions on the future of Public Schools those who hope to keep them as they are (with a slight infiltration of " poor boys ") repeat insistently the assertion that they are invaluable because they " train character." So frequently is this claimed that it passes muster even with many who wish to bring these schools within the framework of a national system. Mr. Muff admitted it in his significant account of visits he and other Labour M.P.s paid to Public Schools. It was no doubt put to him as a merit which could not be questioned. He seems to have accepted it in that light.
I want to question it. I want to suggest that this catchword is deceptive. What those who use it mean is that the character formed by Public School life is finer and more honourable than that formed in other ways. This I do not believe to be true. If it is not true, it ought to be exposed. Then, as the exposure gradually forces itself upon the public mind, it will dissipate the chief—indeed, the only—reason alleged for the desirability of keeping these schools in their present coaditions.
Take any group of men prominent in public life, in industry, business, the sciences, medicine or law. Can a line be drawn between those who were at Public Schools and those who were not? Can it be said that the former are superior to the rest in character? I do not imagine anybody would reply " Yes " to that. To contrast in print living individuals in the two categories would be invidious. But we can all make the contrast for ourselves, and I am certain no great difference will appear. In some directions the men who had to "make their own way" will be seen to have the advantage. They had to contend with hard circumstances which brought out. their grit and perseverance, while the others found soft places prepared for them when they came into the world, and were not obliged, as boys at any rate, to fend for themselves or go to work at an early age. The " self-made " gain in experience of life and acquaintance with human nature under aspects hidden from "those who are born to possessions and privilege.
None who knew him or followed his career in the newspapers would ever have hinted that the late Sir Kingsley Wood's character might have been more estimable if he had been at a Public School, any more than the Public School system could be blamed for Sir Oswald Mosley's vagaries or the treason of the " Man in the Tower," the British officer who now broadcasts for the Nazis and blackens the name of his nation.. At the Foreign Office, Arthur Henderson's character was considered more worthy of respect - than Lord Curzon's. Henderson lacked his predecessor's wide personal know- ledge of other lands and their rulers, but that knowledge was not acquired at school.
Run over the names of men who during the last half-century have deserved well of their country. I limit the period to fifty years, since it is present-day training we are told to consider so praiseworthy for character-formation. You will not find these men overwhelmingly, nor even principally, Public School. Most of them got an education which is slighted as being inferior in the shaping of men. Opinions differ as to the effect school has on that process. For my own part, I hold this effect to be vastly exaggerated ; I look on home influences as having far more to do with forming habits and principles. But that is not the point I am discussing. What I want to do is to disabuse the public mind of the idea that there is some magic in the Public School method and tradition which tends to make boys nobler, more upright, more resolute than any, other system can.
To begin with, it is nonsensical to speak as if the Public Schools all followed the same recipe for character-building. Eton is utterly unlike Oundle. Winchester and Rugby have little in common. Harrow and Stowe are run on entirely different lines. If, therefore, distinct personalities could be discerned in Public School men,
those men would vary widely according to the school they were at. Such variations do, in fact, attract notice. I have appealed to the recent past. I rest my case willingly' on the present as well. Look at today's Cabinet, add the Ministers outside it who hold important offices, sort them into two groups. Nobody, I ant confident, would assert either that the Public School group display more devotion to duty, more steady purpose, more fairness of judgement, more energy, patience or goodwill ; or that the members of it are united by any common traits of character implanted in them as boys.
What the Public Schools did during a great many years was to form the character of a Ruling Class. When I went to one at the age of twelve, I had already been imbued at my Prep. School with the conviction that I belonged to a class far above all who were lumped together as " cads." Nothing whatever was done at; school to check this ridiculous pride of birth. A great deal was done to inflame and increase it. Not done deliberately ; there was no need, since our superiority was so completely taken for granted. I was fortunately shaken out of this silliness when I became a newspaper reporter and learned to know the world as it really was. Nearly all my schoolfellows remained ignorant ; they continued to suppose they had some sort of right to a privileged position. It was theirs to keep their hands clean and give orders ; the lower classes must obey and do the dirty work. They went into the Army or the Indian Civil Service ; they climbed to exalted rank in Govern- ment offices. Some managed their estates ; some sat in Parliament as peers or M.P.s. Their Ruling Class mentality, fostered by their Public Schools, served them well ; better than talent or cleverness would have done. They stepped into the best jobs as if they were entitled to them. Often they did them very well. Often, however, they did not ; though as a rule they escaped the just consequences of slackness or stupidity. Why? Because they belonged to the Ruling Class. Thinking back to those I have come across in later years, I cannot agree that their characters are such as to distinguish them in any noticeable degree from men who were not at Public Schools.
Socially there may be a difference. What these schools do beyond question is to confer a certain type of good manners. Not, of course, on all who go to them. They have been shamed by several of the worst-mannered men I have known (an Ambassador was among them). But in general a Public School boy is inclined to be courteous, obliging, well-spoken, at his ease in any company. This used not to be so. Edward FitzGerald admired Frederick Tennyson for being " haughty," which Mr. Dorrit tried to be when he became a gentleman. Haughtiness was then the gentleman's hall-mark. Happily that has changed. The Public School boy now becomes quickly more a citizen of the world than ever he was: less exclusive, shy, abnormally self-conscious, repressed. A surface change, welcome in itself, but altogether distinct from the special service the Public Schools are declared by their defenders to offer—character-training in a particularly valuable way, which is practised nowhere else.
I maintain that the characters of men trained on these lines are as diverse as those of the general population—not any better in the aggregate, certainly not any worse. We get no suggestion in Torn Brown's Schooldays that Arnold's Rugby produced a uniform type of boy. In that story there are many types—East and Flashman and Little Arthur and Martin the ornithOlogist and Tom himself, all unlike one another, not in the least conforming to a common mould. Only in the later part of last century did the legend of a Public School character begin to circulate. Recently it has been strengthened a little by another catchword coined in derision. Not in contempt ; the Old School Tie jokes are seldom even hostile.
They convey the impression that there is some sort of clanship among the wearers of school colours which is rather amusing. This clanship has now worn thin. There is not nearly as much of it as there used to be. That is accounted for by the increased citizenship-of-the-world sense to which I referred just now. Once there was felt some obligation to be clannish because of traditions,
prestige, even carefully-preserved slang, and the " character " sup- posed to result from all these. Now that character can no longer be appealed to.' It exists only in the imaginations of people who arc slaves to catchwords and refuse to recozaise that Time 20ea on.
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