ANOTHER VOICE
Now we can bring back the cane for Anglo-Saxon schoolboys
AUBERON WAUGH
At the beginning of last month I conducted an earnest enquiry into the faults of our education system, prompted by HM Inspectors' Report: Educational Provision in the Outer London Borough of Brent (`Haunted by Shirley Williams and her truckload of dead albatrosses', Another voice, May 2 1987) — which ended on the anguished cry: 'But the real problem, almost unique to Britain accord- ing to the testimony of those who have taught abroad, is that British children no longer wish to learn.'
I do not know why it was that on that occasion I used the word `British' rather than `English' or, even more appropriate- ly, , 'Anglo-Saxon'. There is no evidence that the Celts of Ireland, Wales and Scotland have lost their wish to learn, let alone that the Asians, Franks, Slays, Jews and even West Indians who make up most of the rest of the Brits have succumbed to this 'dogged, stubborn, intractable resist- ance to culture' which, as a correspondent reminds me, has long been recognised as a characteristic of the English.
He sends me a passage from the English translation of Hippolyte Taine's, Notes sur I ' Angleterre (1872): As for the very little children, still in their 'nurseries' they are living flowers, rosebuds in bloom: especially in the country their chubby, cherubic cheeks and the firm plump- ness of their bodies proclaim the rich sap which will in due course make strong, stout fellows of them. From about their seventh year, they are dominated not by intelligence but by physical and moral energy. They often have a sulky, unamiable look which makes one think of young bull-dogs. For example, young H — and little M —, the sons of great families, seem to be, and are, no better than simple little oafs, stubbornly resistant to culture, fit only for hunting and the fisticuffs they indulge in at school.
An observer of the species told me, 'An English boy is ferocious, untameable, the blood of the Norse "rovers" flows in his veins; hence the use of flogging; in our schools, it would be impossible to do without the rod . . . The animal instincts are too strong in these boys, they are too bursting with health; books are repugnant to them, they will not and cannot learn. They like to eat, box, play cricket, ride horses.'
Taine then pays tribute to other qualities in these English boys: 'They are brave, enduring, bold, hardened to blows and all kinds of risks,' and quotes the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays: 'It is a strange thing to see how much almost all English boys are in love with danger.'
These latter qualities may well explain how it was that Dunkirk prompted the whole of England (apart from the Left- dominated trade unions) to such orgies of team spirit and selfless communality. But if it is true that dark-haired Celts are by nature bards and poets, fair-skinned Anglo-Saxons are by nature cowherds, how did the Anglo-Saxons produce their Shakespeares and Churchills? • My correspondent's answer is that the Anglo-Saxon mind generally flowers very late — often after the age of formal schooling — and then only in response to severe discipline:
The English need rote learning, the cane, Latin and Greek, and the stick rather than the carrot. They certainly do not need to be left alone to 'discover by finding out'. They need to be driven until habits of patience, application and concentration have become ingrained.
He explains that 'the clay may be stiff, but it is of very high quality, and if worked up enough will achieve results which the rest of the world may watch but cannot excel'.
The problem, as he sees it, is that our present state educators are so uneducated themselves and so steeped in egalitarian and anti-racial doctrine that it has never occurred to them that the brutal discipline which would be unnecessary in a Japanese, French or Irish school may be essential to the final flowering of the English mind. My correspondent ends on a gloomy note: In my belief the effort required to turn one English ox into a civilised and educated leader of society, or even into a good solicitor of integrity, is such that if the available means are spread thin, no English children will be educated and we shall have a yob culture and a .yob country. This is a peculiarly English problem. I am sure that 'democratic' education can work perfectly well in Scotland or Wales.
All my adult life, I have been extremely sceptical of the benefit of corporal punish- ment in schools, except as a way of keeping schoolteachers happy in lieu of paying them higher wages. One reason for my attitude may be, as I sometimes boast, that I once held the school record at Downside, having been beaten on 14 occasions in a single term, and I am almost sure it did me no good. I also studied Latin and Greek, with the results that all can see. But I never thought the beatings had seriously done me much harm until now, when in middle age I suddenly find myself calling for a return of the cane in schools. Yes, this unknown correspondent has converted me.
The trouble with implementing his perception, as it seems to me, is that beating in schools will have to be reintro- duced on a strictly racial basis. There is no need to beat the Celts, Asians, West Indians, Jews, etc. I do not know how the anti-racial lobby would take to this discri- mination against Anglo-Saxons, but I dare say it will not mind too much. Celts, Asians, etc can be given a 'democratic' education, being left with the traditional lumps of plasticine to 'discover by finding out' how to turn them into worms; while Anglo-Saxon boys will be rounded up and taught Latin and Greek to the accompani- ment of frequent and savage beatings.
It will not be very popular, of course. Working-class parents may traditionally be noisy in their support for hanging, but if a schoolteacher lays a hand on their kiddies, Dad goes and punches the teacher on the nose. We will probably need to introduce flogging for parents, too. Even middle- class parents are nowadays so wet and confused that they tend to take their children's side in any dispute with teachers. One might well find a rush of chaps with names like Featherstone wanting to change to Finkelstein. Old English names like Walston would suddenly revert to Wald- stein, and I suspect the Yorkshire Hatters- leys would lose no time in emerging as the Hatterjis we always suspected they were. Perhaps the best thing would be to reserve strict and particular education for fair- skinned boys, leaving everyone else to get on with their democratic doodles and plasticine discovery classes. Even this might be a little bit unfair on the odd Swede or albino Celt, but after Heysel Stadium and the Old Vic's ghastly new Henry IV 1 and 2 and Henry V, we must all agree that the English desperately need caning.
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