Though I think I share with C.S Lewis the spirit of what he says about education and equality, I attributed to him some ideas which he didn’t have. Indeed, I got one detail (regarding compulsory subjects – see below) the wrong way round. So, with apologies all round, I summarise his ideas, as presented in his 1944 article ‘Democratic Education’.
His first paragraph is key, so I will quote it in full:
‘Democratic education, says Aristotle, ought to mean, not the education which democrats like, but the education which will preserve democracy. Until we have realized that the two things do not necessarily go together we cannot think clearly about education.’
He goes on to say that ‘an education which gave the able and diligent boys (sic) no advantage over the stupid and idle ones, would be in one sense democratic. It would be egalitarian and democrats like equality.’ Lewis notes that a movement towards ‘total egalitarianism’ in education (where everyone wins prizes) has begun to appear, apparent in the ‘growing demand that subjects which some boys do very much better than others should not be compulsory’ (he cites Latin and Maths). Arguing for the enemy, he says that since both these subjects give “an unfair advantage” to boys of a certain type, to abolish that advantage is in one sense democratic.
Lewis attacks this argument by saying that to be consistent all compulsory subjects must be abolished, and the curriculum must be made so wide that every boy will get a chance at something. Next he launches into his stuff on superiority. Again, I’ll quote him in full:
'Even the boy who can’t or won’t learn his alphabet can be praised and petted for something – handicrafts or gymnastics, moral leadership or deportment, citizenship or the care of guinea-pigs, “hobbies” or musical appreciation – anything he likes. Then no boy, and no boy’s parents, need feel inferior.
An education on those lines will be pleasing to democratic feelings. It will have repaired the inequalities of nature. But it is quite another question whether it will breed a democratic nation which can survive, or even one whose survival is desirable.’
Having commented that a nation thus educated is only likely to escape invasion and destruction if its enemies have adopted the same education system, Lewis moves on to the more interesting of desirability. His understanding of equality seems to me to be unparalleled.
‘The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest, of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority. At the present moment it would be very unrealistic to overlook the importance of the latter. There is in all men a tendency (only corrigible by good training from without and persistent moral effort from within) to resent the existence of what is stronger, subtler or better than themselves…’
In the next paragraph he returns to his theme:
‘The kind of “democratic” education which is already looming ahead is bad because it endeavours to propitiate evil passions, to appease envy. There are two reasons for not attempting this. In the first place, you will not succeed. Envy is insatiable. The more you concede to it the more it will demand. No attitude of humility which you cam possibly adopt will propitiate a man with an inferiority complex. In the second place, you are trying to introduce equality where equality is fatal.’
Lewis then goes on to explain this by pointing out that outside mathematics equality is a purely social conception, applying to man as a political and economic animal. It has, though, ‘no place in the world of the mind’. He lists many things which are not democratic: beauty, virtue (‘achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men’), truth (‘demanding special industry and special talents’). He concludes: ‘Political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death.’
Thus, with regard to education, ‘a truly democratic education – one which will preserve democracy – must be ruthlessly aristocratic, shamelessly “high-brow”. In drawing up its curriculum it should always have chiefly in view the interests of the boy who wants to know and can know’.
Regarding the ‘dull’ boy (my ‘thickie’), Lewis argues that it is the “aristocratic” system that really gives these children what they want. (It should be noted that Lewis draws on his teaching experience to note that 'with very few exceptions…the stupid boy is the boy who does not want to know.) They will ‘gravitate very comfortably to the bottom of the form’, sitting at the back of the room ‘occasionally ragging and occasionally getting punished, and all the time imbibing that playfully intransigent attitude to authority which is our chief protection against England’s becoming a servile state’.
The ‘dull’ boy gets a decent job (‘much better paid than the intellectual ones’), and enjoys the ‘priceless benefit’ of knowing he’s not clever. He will have a certain half-amused respect for the smart ones. ‘He will be a pillar of democracy’, allowing ‘just the right amount of rope to those clever ones’.
Patronise the boy by making woodwork an official subject and you will ‘fool the poor boy into the belief that what he is doing is just as clever “in its own way” as real work’. Why patronise and disadvantage him? Because 'when he gets out into the real world he is bound to discover the truth, and start to resent those inferiorities which, but for the modernising educator, ‘would not have irked him at all’.
He concludes: ‘Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it if full of little men who think they are big themselves.’