MARGINAL COMMENT
- By HAROLD NICOLSON
HE College of Preceptors in Bloomsbury Square provides three annual lectures in memory of Joseph Payne, a former Vice-President and the first Professor of Education in this country. The theme of this year's lectures bears the expansive title of " Horizons in the School," and the three lecturers selected are thus able to choose any special subject that they like. It is an excellent thing that our teachers should be ready and anxious to teach themselves, and that these annual lectures should pro- vide an occasion when school-masters and school-mistresses can Meet each other, pause from the daily round and common task, and consider what, after all, education is seeking to produce. Fifty years ago, before the poor had become class-conscious, there were several subjects, such as economics and imperial affairs, of which they were comparatively ignorant. In regard to these sub- jects they were prepared to accept the opinion of those who had studied them all their lives. Today, owing to the distrust created by class propaganda, we can count on no such acquiescence. An uneducated or untravelled person is unlikely today to give credence to the advice or information provided by somebody whom he assumes to belong to the capitalist class. He has been taught that the aim of the Conservative Party and its sponsors is to delude the noble worker and to tell him lies. Thus the assertions of those who are really informed on a difficult subject are met by derisive laughter ; whereas the catchwords and head- line stuff doled out by the party propagandists are taken to be incontestable truth and wisdom. This, since the days of Thersites, has been the familiar device of demagogues. It is easier to laugh than to understand, easier to fester with suspicion of others than to glow with confidence. The proletariat always prefer the easier _path, especially when they are assured that it is a praiseworthy path leading directly-to their own interests.
Ages of acquiescence are always, so we are assured, followed by ages of denial ; for several centuries mankind will accept the established order and continue to live, generation by geQeration, according to the old unquestioned pattern ; then suddenly some ferment is introduced which sets the whole community bubbling and the crust is destroyed. During these periods of negation it is customary for those who direct the revolution to teach the people to deny and to distrust even the best and truest things that they were taught in the past ; it is not only that they must deride the ancient formulas, it is also that they must suspect of the very worst motives any of those who seek even to explain them. Today we have on each side of the great divide examples of both systends. To the East, we have an area of apparent acquiescence, in which many millions ,of men and women, who cannot all be stupid, accept as truth statements and ideas that to rational beings are palpably false. To the West, we have many millions of men and women, most of whom are intelligent and sentient, who refuse to accept as truth statements and ideas that really can withstand the most searching examination. This contrast between the gullible and the incredulous is an interesting, and to my mind encouraging, thing to observe. It suggests that those who believe everything that they are told are condemned to a mental stagnation that can only end in decay ; whereas those Who refuse to believe anything, even when told by reputable authorities, are doubtless being extremely silly, but are also very much alive. Those are the sort of people whom it is worth while trying to educate. But by what means are we to inculcate the habit of responsible thinking ? I suggest, by wily tact.
Let us assume that Cleon and Thertes (not that the latter had much time to develop his theory before he was reduced to foolish tears) were Correct in thinking that, whereas it is very difficult to induce the suspicious proletariat to believe something that you tell them, it is not quite so difficult to get them—to disbelieve something that other people tell them. On this assumption, the educator should concentrate on warning his pupils against false information or ideas rather than in stuffing them with what, poor fallible creature, he may himself believe to be correct information or ideas. The hurricane of negation that now blows is some atomic gale across the world might thus• be harnessed to enlightenment, instead of whirling enlightenment into tatters even as a typhoon will destroy the gaudy umbrellas of Palm Beach. Living as we do in a country that distrusts all authority, our only hope as educatdrs is to tell the little ones to distrust every authority other than our own. The first lecture, for instance, that I attended at the College of Preceptors the other day was delivered by Mr. Geoffrey Corer, under the title, "The Limitations of National Thinking and Feeling." Being a social anthropo- logisthy profession, as well as a master of comparative philology, Mr. Corer does not really prefer one conntry to another, but regards them all as interesting specimens, some offering one set of defects and qualities and others offering another set. He told us that we were wrong to consider one nation nasty or another nice ; they were just different the one from the other ; and if we were to reach even the beginnings of international understanding, we should start by analysing those differences His (lecture sug- gested many entertaining pastimes: it also provided the salutary and welcome injunction, "Don't believe what you are told about foreigners."
Mr. Corer considers, and I agree with him, that language is a most useful test of national character. The difficulty is that one has to know a foreign language and its literature very thoroughly before one can really assess the meaning of the words they-use. - Mr. Corer pointed out that our leaders were apt to invent and employ slogans that to foreign peoples were either meaningless or possessed meanings different from those that we wished and expected to convey. Thus the, to us, evocative and precise incantation of "The Four Freedoms" is not equally comprehensible to those whose language has no word for " Freedom " that combines the Anglo-Saxon associations of pro- tection and release. The word "compromise," again, is one, as Mr. Gorer rightly pointed out, that has different implications in different languages. In English the word "compromise " arouses feelings of pleasure and esteem ; we feel that in this wicked world common sense and decency have once again triumphed, and how delicious it is to belong to the Anglo-Saxon -race. In French the word " compromis " is in no way so delightful ; it implies some- thing almost like a "deal." In Russian the word " kcunpromiss" is a term of abuse, implying weakness, or actual perfidy, on the part of those entering into-any such disgraceful transaction or deciation. Yet if a benign Senator from Ohio were presiding over an International Conference, he might well propose to Mr. Vyshinsky that they should all reach a "compromise," and be distressed when Mr. Vyshinsky blushed. It is a good rule, there- fore, never, when negotiating with foreigners, to employ any word that is the same in both languages ;. almost invariably it means something wholly different.
Mr. Corer, excellent lecturer as he is, kept on starting pheasants and then allowing them to fly Over the woods. He suggested, for instance, that what we call "conscience," meaning thereby an ethical conscience, is an extremely rare quality, and one-that only exists in societies in which parents seek to impose upon their children an established norm. In other communities, such as German communities, the sanctions of shame and pride are those more usually applied. Thus we are apt to under-estimate the immense part played in Teutonic psychology by "Ehre " or honour. How absurd, also, to lecture the Persians for not being good business-men! You might as well reproach me for being bad at lacrosse.
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