Making Good Citizens
By HUGH LYON*
MY philosophy tutor used to say that whenever his attention was drawn to some remarkable social or political doctrine he would always go to his bookcase to see which of the Greeks had expressed it best. Certainly in any discussion of citizen- ship we can scarcely make a start later than fifth-century Athens. The speech of Pericles may be highly coloured by Thucydides' own patriotism and rhetorical enthusiasm, but the history of those golden years shows us clearly enough a people passionately devoted to a city they loved, intelligently trained to serve it (any one of the five thousand citizens might find himself chosen by lot to preside for a day over the supreme council), and ready without any suggestion of compulsion to give life itself in her defence. Was there, we ask, something at work here of which we have lost the secret, some glory in that dawn which later centuries have muffled in clouds no one can now penetrate ? Or is it just a matter of being a little more intelligent in adapting our methods to modern conditions ?
Probably neither answer is the right one. At any rate the fervent Hellenist should be reminded that besides her five thousand citizens Athens contained many times as many " alien " residents without civic rights, as well as a vast mass of slaves whose work set their masters free to practise the higher virtues. Athens, in fact, was not a democracy but an aristocracy ; and Rome, seeking to follow in her footsteps, became first a bureaucracy and then a tyranny. Roman citizenship became a marketable prize, granting privileges and status, unbalanced by civic duties, the mark of a ruling clique in an Empire rather than the relationship between an individual and his community. It looks, in fact, as if history is more likely to mislead than Inspire us, unless we are particularly careful to realise how easy it is to use the same word to describe many different things.
What then do we mean today by good citizenship ? Is it the complete subordination of a man to his country's interests 1 If so, then we should turn for our pattern not to Greece or Rome but to the totalitarian States of Europe. Something wrong there. Pericles, we feel, would have been wholeheartedly on our side against these modern Persians, in spite of our casual and makeshift attitude. In our trite (but rather moving) phrase, a man has a right to call his soul his own. What he gives, by way of service or sentiment, to his country must be a free gift, or it is worth nothing, nothing either to himself or ultimately to his country, which will by his very sub- servience go all the more swiftly to disaster. There must be no tampering with fundamental liberties, however stubbornly they seem to oppose our progress towards the ideal state. Yet it is increasingly clear that the more careful we are to allow men to render to God the things which are God's the more reluctant they seem to be to give their due to Caesar. Englishmen today are scarcely remarkable for their readiness to undertake civic duties, their understanding of Headmaster of Rugby 1931-1948.
political issues, their freedom from prejudice, their respect for public property and institutions, and their subordination of personal and selfish aims (whether of individual or class) to the common good. All these things we must learn or we shall neither survive nor deserve to survive. How then can we set about it ?
Clearly one of the first approaches must be through education, both in and out of school. That the teaching profession arc alive both to the need and to their responsibility is evidenced by the lessons in " current affairs " or " civics" which have found then way into even the most over-loaded time-table, by special courses in local govern- ment or international affairs, by visits of distinguished speakers to schools and of schools to every kind of official undertaking, from the local sewage works to the Houses of Parliament, and by conferences, discussion groups and all other forms of collective education. More significant still, perhaps, is the growing tendency to fuse history and geography into a single subject, " social studies." This last develop- ment has its dangers, and in some schools which have pursued it uncritically, both here and in the Commonwealth (where it is far more general), it has become a woolly and superficial "soft option," most distressing to an old-fashioned pedagogue. But at its best it is a fine educational instrument, admirably suited (for instance) to the last year in the Modern School.
All this is good. But it is only a beginning, and may even appear, from a more comprehensive point of view, to be irrelevant. The Association for Education in Citizenship, which has done pioneer work in this field, has always insisted that the only real ways of teaching citizenship are, first, to treat all the main branches of study as being part of a single process, the development of a personality which will make its own best contribution to the common good ; and, secondly, to provide opportunity in the life of the school for the practice of civic virtues. What children are specifically taught they readily forget ; what remains with them is the mental and moral atmosphere in which they arc educated. Hard labour at a specialist subject is not incompatible with a realisation of the place of that and other subjects in the life of a civilised man and the contribution he can make to the community. Still more, the training provided by being part of a well-conducted, tolerant and efficient society is the best possible preparation for good citizenship. It is this that has made the Public Schools, with all their faults, so valuable an element in English education. The prefect system, the grading of authority, the delegation of responsibility to senior boys in all departments of school life, the multiplication of school societies, the cultivation of public spirit—all these are open to abuse ; but they are a valuable education in the qualities which make a man a worthy and useful member of a free society. There is hardly a grammar school today which has not only adopted but carried further these principles, and the new secondary schools are hastening to follow that example ; so there may be better days ahead.
But one cannot consider education in citizenship for long without realising that the school is only part of what should be a much more extended process, starting in the home and going on into adult life. Nor is it, again, the teaching of parents and in the adult school, but the quality of the life lived in the home and the factory and the office, which is going to determine the kind of citizens we are going to have in the searching days ahead. We come to realise, in fact, that what seemed at first to be simply a mental problem is fundamentally a spiritual one. This is not to decry all the endeavours which are being made to improve technique and spread knowledge ; far from it. But all will be in vain if we are not at the same time facing the problem at a deeper level ; somehow or other we must strive to discover the Christian secret of living together in love. That is the " more excel- lent way" which was set forth as the only guide to citizenship of a kingdom more lasting than Greece or Rome, more widespread than the British Empire or all the Soviets.
These reflections on a well-worn theme are largely prompted by the latest Ministry of Education pamphlet, Citizens Growing Up*, which ought to be read by every adult in the country. There are no doubt those who will grumble that the Ministry has caught infection from those schoolmasters who are more ready to teach
* H.M. Stationery Office. Is. outside the classroom than in it. But the great majority will recognise and welcome the breadth and the sanity with which the author tackles his subject, and the stress he lays on those spiritual founda- tions without which all building is in vain. Would that all official pamphlets were of this quality.
Have we, perhaps, gone astray in the past through an attempt to divide our lives into two compartments, as though our " private " Jives were of no concern to our fellow citizens ? If so, the attempt was misguided and doomed to failure. The claim of the totalitarians to control the whole lives of their subjects is a vicious one.; but, it should have taught us that there is nothing in our lives which is not affecting others, and through them the community, for good or ill. If we are to have a race of better citizens in this country we must do more than educate them in the principles and practice of good government ; we must teach them high personal standards in work and leisure, sound principles of conduct abroad and by their fire- side, and the charity which, starting at home, will sweeten and inspire their relations with all their fellow-men.
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