Questions and Answers "Well," said the old man, shifting in his chair, "you must get on with your questions, Guest; I have been some time answering this first one."Said I: "I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education;although I gathered from **** that you let your children run wild and didn't teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your education, that now you have none.""Then you gathered left-handed," quoth he." But of course I understand your point of view about education, which is that of times past, when `the struggle for life,' as men used to phrase it (_i.e.,_the struggle for a slave's rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave-holders' privilege on the other), pinched `education' for most people into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information;something to be swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve it out to other people who didn't care about it."I stopped the old man's rising wrath by a laugh, and said: "Well, _you_ were not taught that way, at any rate, so you may let your anger run off you a little.""True, true," said he smiling. "I thank you for correcting my ill temper: I always fancy myself as living in any period of which we may be speaking. But, however, to put it in a cooler way: you expected to see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts, to be subjected to a certain conventional courese of `learning'. My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the fact of _growth_, bodily and mental? No one could come out of such a mill uninjured; and those only would avoid being crushed by it who would have the spirit of rebellion strong in them.
Fortunately most children have had that at all times, or I do not know that we should ever have reached our present position. Now you see what it all comes to. In the old times all this was the result of _poverty_. In the nineteenth century, society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which it was founded that real education was impossible for anybody. The whole theory of their so called education was that it was necessary to shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty forbade anything else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and the information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow.""Yes," said I, "but suppose the child, youth, man, never wants the information, never grows in the direction you might hope him to do:
suppose, for instance, he objects to learning arithmetic or mathematics; you can't force him when he _is_ grown; can't you force him while he is growing, and oughtn't you to do so?""Well," said he, "were you forced to learn arithmetic and mathematics?""A little," said I.
"And how old are you now?"
"Say fifty-six," said I.
"And how much arithmetic and mathematics do you know now?" quoth the old man, smiling rather mockingly.
Said I: "None whatever, I am sorry to say."Hammond laughed quietly, but made no other comment on my admission, and I dropped the subject of education, perceiving him to be hopeless on that side.
I thought a little, and said: "You were speaking just now of households: that sounded to me a little like the customs of past times; I should have thought you would have lived more in public.""Phalangsteries, eh?" said he. "Well, we live as we like, and we like to live as a rule with certain house-mates that we have got used to.