public school

(I realize this is long, but it was too good to skip.)

I’m reading bits and pieces of one of my very favorite books to the kids–The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis–and, just like all the other times I re-browse, I was awe-struck today by his poignant, prophetic insight, especially in light of our recent elections. I particularly wanted to quote the part about education, but had to preface it with quite a bit before. I hope you will take the time to digest it!

Lewis was an exceptional thinker of his day…one of the few who could actually see what others refused to see.

It’s not the easiest read for sure, but even if you have to read it twice–it’s worth it. Wow, I say! Stay with it…he ends up addressing the state of our education system so poignantly it is unbelievable.

Preface: For those who don’t know anything about The Screwtape Letters, it’s brilliantly written from the perspective of one of Satan’s demons–Screwtape, instructing his nephew on the destruction of a human soul. In this quote, he is speaking at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College. Understanding this makes all the difference 😉

You may want to print it off and read it as a family. Great conversations are made of this stuff!

“Let me recall to your minds what the human situation was in the latter half of the nineteenth century–the period at which I ceased to be a practising Tempter and was rewarded with an administrative post. The great movement towards liberty and equality among men had by then borne solid fruit and grown mature. Slavery had been abolished. The American War of Independence had been won. The French Revolution had succeeded. Religious toleration was almost everywhere on the increase. In that movement there had originally been many elements which were in our favor. Much Atheism, much Anti-Clericalism, much envy and thirst for revenge…But by the latter part of the century the situation was much simpler, and also much more ominous. In the English sector a horrible ting had happened. The Enemy, with His usual sleight of hand, had largely appropriated this progressive or liberalising movement and and perverted it to His own ends. Very little of is old anti-Christianity remained….

Believe me, gentledevils, the threat of something like a really healthy state of society seemed then perfectly serious. Thanks to Our Father Below the threat was averted. Our counterattack was on two levels. On the deepest level our dealers contrived to call into full life an element which had been implicit in the movement from its earliest days. Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, you remember, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do….

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose….It will never occur to them that Democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them….

You are to use the word purely as an incantation…it is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal….

As a result you can use the word Democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading of all human feelings. You can get him to practice, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.

The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist-measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says “I’m as good as you” believe it. He would not say it if he did….The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others…

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence–moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods?

One Dictator led an envoy into a field of corn, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain: allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals.

Thus Tyrants could practice, in sense, ‘democracy’. But now ‘democracy can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own. No one need now go through the field with a can. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

In that promising land the spirit of “I’m as good as you” has already become something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system….

The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be ‘undemocratic’. These differences between the pupils–for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences–must be disguised.

This can be done on various levels. At universities, exams must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance exams must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not….

Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back because the others would get a trauma–Beelzebub, what a useful word!–by being left behind. (Kelly: “Does anyone recognize this phrase?”) The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age-group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coaeval’s attempts to spell out A cat sat on the mat.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when “I’m as good as you” has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers–or should I say, nurses?–will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us….

As an English politician remarked not long ago, “A democracy does not want great men”.

How accurately does that define our nation?!