THE TRAINING OF DEMOCRATS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr. C. E. M. Joad's interesting article suggests to my mind two things : a criticism, and an omission. My criticism (and I am a trained and graduate teacher of wide and life- long experience) is that it seems to me quite possible usefully to teach boys and girls of 13-14 much of nearly all the subjects he gives as " essential for education in citizenship."
As to bias, trust the teachers. The difficulty would be rather the wider reading involved. Why not use such a book as H. G. Wood's : Truth and Error of Communism, H. Macmillan's Reconstruction, with John Strachey's Coming Struggle for Power (or Emile Burns' The Only Way Out) as a Socialist balancer, or Mrs. Barbara Wootton's book, Plan or No Plan ; also the elements of logic might well be included. The teacher would be as a judge, but even a judge gives guidance to the jury, and very emphatically, at times. Certainly the study of institutions, like the League, should be included, or a Police Force, with the proposed I.P.F. criticized carefully. Why is " nationalism " so rampant today, and why are States so selfish and unjust, and immoral to one another ? Partly, because of the narrow teaching in the schools, and omitting to teach the facts, and laws, of human society.
Mr. Joad's omission is this : he says, " It is no use demand- ing government by the people, if the people have no desire to participate in government," and then straightway ignores one principal cause of the lack of this desire, of this wide- spread apathy. In the recent elections in London, only one in three voted : in Harrow, only one in nine. There is wide-spread feeling that our voting system is unjust and wrong. The voters (and there are millions) are simply dii- illusioned when they find their vote again and again thrown away. For, in our mad system, nobody's vote is worth a jot, 'unless it is cast for a winner. My Own vote—and 1 he never missed once in a lifetime, and am, I suppose, a fair average of the intelligent voter—has every single time been thrown away. Never once in my life have I been encouraged by helping to return a good and wise representative.
In every election, millions of the electors must have known, like me, that their votes were just wasted. Why should I go on, when my countrymen (including Mr. Joad) treat me, and my considered judgement—and millions with me, and their considered judgements—with such unmerited contempt ?
Today voting is largely sham, and unfair sham ! And men know it. Hence, the growing contempt for democracy ! Yet what is finer than democracy, once it is freed of its defects ? Shall we just drift " on and on," and let the world become " a lunatic asylum run by lunatics " ? Or shall we wake up
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