SOCIALISM AND EDUCATION

The attitude of Socialists towards education is a peculiar one. They see in it apparently less an agency for distributing knowledge and discovering ability than an instrument for the propagation of Socialism and an institution for relieving parents of all cost and responsibility for the maintenance and the bringing up of their children. Hence most Socialists, in discussing education, consider it rather from the point of view of those who are desirous of State relief than from the point of view of those who wish for good education.

Among the “Immediate Reforms” demanded by the Social-Democratic Federation, the following embody its education programme: “Elementary education to be free, secular, industrial, and compulsory for all classes. The age of obligatory school attendance to be raised to sixteen. Unification and systematisation of intermediate and higher education, both general and technical, and all such education to be free. Free maintenance for all attending State schools. Abolition of school rates; the cost of education in all State schools to be borne by the national Exchequer." An influential Socialist writer demands: “Education should be fee-less from top to bottom of the ladder, the universities included." In accordance with the Socialist views regarding the relation of the sexes. “Socialism and Woman, the Family and the Home," most Socialists demand co-education and identical education for both sexes. “Under Socialism boys and girls will receive exactly the same training and exercise in the fundamentals of a liberal education. Success in examinations of whatever character shall bring equal reward and distinction. There will be no separation into boys’ classes and girls’ classes. The instruction being the same, they shall receive it at the same time." “Education will be the same for all and for both sexes. The sexes will be separated only in cases in which functional differences make it absolutely necessary."

Socialists see in the schools chiefly a means whereby to abolish parental responsibilities and to secure “free State maintenance” for all children. In claiming free State maintenance, Socialists grossly exaggerate with regard to the number of underfed children. “It is doubtful if half the children at present attending school are physically fit to be educated, and medical men of eminence have unhesitatingly expressed the opinion that the alarming increase of insanity, which is one of the most terrible characteristics of modern social life, is largely, if not entirely, due to the attempt to educate those who are too ill-nourished to stand the mental strain that even the most elementary school-training involves. As a remedy for this, the Social-Democratic Federation advocates a complete system of free State maintenance for all children attending school. This is an essential corollary of compulsory education. Only complete free maintenance will meet the requirements of the case." “All children, destitute or not, should be fed, and fed without charge, at the expense of the State or municipality. We propose that the regular school course should include at least one meal a day. Thus only can we make sure that all the children who need feeding will be fed." “To cram dates into the poor little skulls of innocent children when you ought to be cramming dates down their throats is not a right thing to do, especially when you remember that the most precious thing in this world is a human life, and when you realise that you are murdering systematically thousands of children every year because they cannot get proper food they cannot even get pure milk in the great cities of our land. One of our first duties in this nation is to see that every child has a right to the best and most ample provision for its physical needs. That should be the primary charge upon the nation. I am not here to-night to discuss the great question of the State maintenance of children. Personally I am absolutely in favour of it." Experience of other nations has taught that the institution of free meals for necessitous school-children is immediately and very grossly abused by unscrupulous parents easily able to feed their children. From Milan, for instance, we learn that “When in 1900 this service began, meals were given on only 133 days out of a possible 174 days of school attendance. The outlay was then set down at 98,300 francs. During the second year, however, free meals were served on 153 days and cost 149,337 francs. In 1903 the free meals cost the municipality 247,766 francs and 277,603 in 1904. The outlay will now exceed 300,000 francs, and the number of pupils who manage to establish their claim to be fed gratuitously is ever increasing." British experiments of free feeding on a smaller scale have shown that “In the large majority of cases the children who are sent to school hungry are so sent, not by honest and poor parents, but by those who have an imperfectly developed sense of parental responsibility and are willing to shuffle out of the duty of providing for their children if they think anybody else will undertake it for them. These parents are not in need of assistance they are perfectly well able to feed their own children; but if free meals can be had for the asking, they are not too proud to tell the child to ask. It relieves the mother of the trouble of preparing a meal for the child, and the money saved can be used for some more attractive form of personal expenditure." At Birmingham, for example, numerous applications were made by the teachers to the relieving officers on behalf of children under their care, but when inquiries were made into the circumstances of the parents it was found that many of them were earning over thirty shillings a week, and in one case the parent was in constant employment with an average wage of 3l 17s 6d. a week. In Bolton, where during the winter of 1904-5 a charitable society provided free meals for children in certain centres of the town, it was found that the parents of some of the children who were partaking of the free meals so provided, and even reported as being underfed, were in receipt of as much as from 2l. to 3l. a week. In Fulham (London) “More than one hundred names were sent to the Boards of Guardians of children who were adjudged to be underfed and were receiving meals from public charity. In hardly one of these cases did the relieving officer consider the complaint well founded. One family was found by him to be earning an income of 4l 4s. a week, and yet the children were sent to share in the charitable meals." “Some of the parents who sent their children to the Johanna Street school in Lambeth said that they did not give their children food before going to school as they knew that if they did not do so they would receive it at the school, as the children of other people got food there and they did not see why theirs should not too." The fact that Socialists grossly exaggerate in giving the proportion of underfed school children, and in ascribing the cause of underfeeding solely to the poverty of parents, is clear to all who have studied the problem of poverty. Mr. Cyril Jackson, the chief inspector of public elementary schools, for instance, in summarising the evidence of the women inspectors appointed to inquire into the age of admission of infants into elementary schools, says: “The question of underfed children cannot fail to be touched in the course of such an inquiry. It is interesting to find a general agreement that it is unsuitable rather than insufficient feeding that is responsible for sickly children. Want of sufficient sleep, neglect of personal cleanliness, badly ventilated homes, are contributory causes of the low physical standard reached."

Some Socialists, though only a few, have been honest enough to express similar views. A Fabian tract, for instance, says: “We have said that universal free feeding appears to be the only way in which the evil of improper (as distinct from insufficient) feeding can be removed. At present many children whose parents get fairly good wages cannot feed their children properly, either because they do not know what is the best food to give, or because they have not the time or the skill to prepare it. Manifestly the case of these will not be met by any system which feeds only the patently starved and destitute child. But it will be met both directly and indirectly by a universal system; directly, because the children, whatever they get at home, will at least get proper food at school; indirectly, because it will serve to educate the next generation of mothers in the knowledge of what is the best and most economical way of providing for their families. This is not the place to go into the very large question of what is the ideal diet for a child. All that need be insisted on here is that the provision should be bought and prepared under expert advice, and that consideration of cheapness should never be allowed to count as against the needs of nourishment. Every child should receive at least one solid meal in the middle of the day, and perhaps a glass of hot milk on arrival in the morning."

The “hungry children” argument is a valuable one for purposes of agitation, and it is used by the Socialists to the fullest extent. The workers are told: “The children are too ill provided for to be educated. This is not because the worker is idle or thriftless, but actually because he is too industrious and produces so much that his labour as a producer is at a discount. It is objected that to provide free State maintenance for all the children would be to destroy parental responsibility. But it is too late in the day to urge this objection, seeing that the State has taken upon itself the education of the children and is prepared to undertake, and does undertake, their maintenance and bringing-up when the parents are so careless of their responsibilities as to neglect them entirely." “The old-fashioned prejudice fostered by the capitalists and their hangers-on that it is degrading to accept anything from the State is fast dying out" That workmen who are daily told by their leaders that it is unreasonable to expect that they should bring up their children frequently desert their family is natural. Every year many thousands of wives and children are deserted. At every police station the names of such men may be seen posted up, and those desertions are undoubtedly largely due to Socialistic teaching.

The real object of the Socialists in demanding free maintenance for the children is not humanity. In making that demand they do not even think of the welfare of the children, as the following extracts will prove, which clearly reveal the real object of their demands. “Free maintenance for children should be accepted by trade unionists as tending to raise the standard of comfort. All should demand it with the object of personally benefiting themselves." “In nine cases out of ten it is the hungry child who breaks the back of the strike. Let them feel assured that their children’s dinner is secure, and they will continue the struggle to a victorious end." “Free maintenance for children would be a tax on that surplus wealth which the capitalists and the aristocracy share between them. To the worker free maintenance for his children would be equivalent to an additional income. His standard of living would rise. No doubt the capitalist would reduce his wages as much as possible, but the worker would then be able to fight him on more equal terms. His children being well cared for, he would be able to hold out against the capitalist for an indefinite period." “We counsel the workers to accept the offer as a small payment on account of a huge debt, but to accept it with no more gratitude than is shown by the class which is maintained in luxury, parents and children alike, by the collective industry of the workers. By dint of organisation they may be able very soon to exact payment of a more substantial sum State maintenance, to wit."

The doctrines above given have unfortunately been accepted by many organised workers. A resolution of the Trades Union Congress at Leeds, in September 1904, asserted:

“That having regard to the facts (a) that twelve millions of the population are living in actual poverty, or close to the poverty line; (b) that physical deterioration of the people is the inevitable result of this; (c) that it is impossible to teach starving and underfed children, this Congress urges the Government to introduce, without further delay, legislation instructing education authorities to provide at least one free meal a day for children attending State-supported schools.”

A resolution passed at the Scottish Miners’ Conference on December 30, 1904, stated:

“That this Conference is in favour of State maintenance of children, but that in the meantime we identify ourselves with the movement in favour of free meals for school children.”

Resolutions passed by the National Labour Conference on the State maintenance of children, at the Guildhall, City of London, Friday, January 20, 1905, declared:

“That this Conference of delegates from British Labour Organisations, Socialist and other bodies, declares in favour of State maintenance of children as a necessary corollary of universal compulsory education and as a means of partially arresting that physical deterioration of the industrial population of this country which is now generally recognised as a grave national danger. As a step towards such State maintenance this Conference, supporting the decision of the last Trades Union Congress upon this question, calls upon the Government to introduce without further delay such legislative measures as will enable the local authorities to provide meals for children attending the common schools, to be paid for out of the National Exchequer; and in support of this demand calls attention to the evidence given by Dr. Eichholz, the official witness of the Board of Education on the Committee on Physical Deterioration, in which he stated that the question of food is at the base of all the evils of child degeneracy, and that if steps were taken to ensure the proper adequate feeding of the children the evil will rapidly cease.”

A Socialist has worked out in a widely read book the cost of free education and State maintenance, which will require a yearly expenditure of 458,750,000l., a sum four times as large as the entire national Budget. This outlay does not deter him. Combining the State schools with State workshops, he promises that they will yield a profit of exactly 105,850,000l. a year. This scheme should recommend itself to Chancellors of the Exchequer in search of a few millions.

Another imaginative Socialist would make the abolition of all existing languages part of his educational scheme: “Socialism will steadfastly aim at the adoption of a universal language, be it English or volapük. All the modern languages and for the matter of that, the ancient also are but jungles of verbiage which retard, rather than facilitate, human thought and progress. They have grown up anyhow; but what we now want is a made language, constructed on scientific principles, and so easy of comprehension that any intelligent person can acquire it in a few months."

Across the educational, as most other, proposals of British Socialists should be written in large letters, Utopia!