[Defence of the Independent Schools]
Nearly every defence of the independent schools hitherto written has come from a writer concerned primarily with the future of the traditional Public Schools. I should therefore make it clear at the outset that I am approaching the matter from a very different point of view. I am a life-long supporter of the Labour Party and on most issues I have been to the left of centre. Claiming for ancestry nothing more aristocratic than Wessex labourers and Highland crofters, I have no sentimental or family ties to explain my interest in independent schools. Born and bred in Battersea, I was from an early age left in no doubt as to the needs and feelings of the working man. A “scholarship boy” from the elementary school to the university, I could hardly be said to be one of the privileged classes whose habit it is to contract out of the national system of education.
At eleven I passed from the elementary school – a very good one for its time – to a London grammar school. To one or two men on the staff of the school I owe much, especially to one whose friendship and wisdom is still at hand forty years later and who knows more about the inner life and needs of boys than any other man I know. Yet I came to detest that school. There were forces in it making a tremendous effort to secure its recognition as Public School. Our rugger fixtures (be it noted rugger not soccer) were ambitious, and we were reminded almost every day that ours was an Officers’ Training Corps, not a Cadet Corps such as ordinary secondary schools possessed. In the Sixth I came into open revolt and, I have been told, since, came near to expulsion.
It should be enough to excuse me from any charges of bias towards snobbery in education. But there are two facts that I must admit. I am the headmaster of an independent school founded fifteen years ago by my wife and myself to try out certain principles; and I am a member of the Society of Friends which, in relation to its size, maintain a very large number of independent schools.
This defence is provoked by the recent utterances of several Labour politicians.
It is extremely difficult at present to ensure a rational and generous consideration of the problem of independent schools because to both sides independent school means Public School. It means Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby and a hundred or more others. Emotions are aroused on both sides which are irrelevant to education. To one side the attack on the independent schools means an attack on something hallowed by time and family tradition and surrounded by sentiment. For the other side the independent schools are the focus of class privilege and snobbery, the place where the well-to-do withdraw their skirts from contamination by contact with the common man. In the heat of the argument few people remember – if they were ever aware – that there are many independent schools that do not claim membership of the Headmaster’ Association or the G.B.A., schools which have pursued a very different course, broken away from tradition and made themselves a focus of educational advance and experiment. Many of them, far from attempting to maintain a barrier between their children and the children of the state schools, have sought by every reasonable means to educate their pupils to social responsibility and identification with the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. [In the left margin of this paragraph is a handwritten note “Insertion from memo 2 p.”. There is no indication that an insertion has been made or any indication of what memo 2 p refers.]
My own school a one of the coeducational boarding schools, and is the latest in the line of development that began with Bedales in 1895. There are also a few boys schools, founded during the last fifty or sixty years, which have made a distinctive contribution to educational advance without being in any way associated with a snobbish tradition. Then there are the nine official Friends Schools, among whose old scholars there is a high proportion engaged in public service of one sort or another without any desire for privilege or monetary reward. There will be other schools entitled to associate themselves with these, but I speak only of those with which I have some contact. These I think I know well enough to be able to say that the great majority of their teachers vote Labour. The Labour Party would find it very hard indeed to name among their political opponents any active Quaker member of the Society of Friends.
The proposals made by spokesmen of the Labour Party suggest that they would not abolish the independent schools, but that they would control the entry, so that presumably the selection of pupils would be made by a public authority. It may be assumed also that the governing bodies of the schools would be publicly appointed, instead of being nominated by the religious organisations or charitable trusts to which the schools at present belong. In other words the schools would be nationalised.
It would be interesting to know precisely how the Labour Party propose to make these changes. I doubt whether it has been thought out at all. Or it may be that the problem presents itself simply as that of taking over the Public Schools – a simple matter if they are considered to be contributing nothing to educational progress and social development or to be politically a nuisance. But, as I have emphasised, they are not the only independent schools. What exactly would public ownership and control imply in the case of schools belonging to a religious organisation? I hope I may be forgiven for mentioning again the Quaker Schools. I do so simply because I speak of what I know. Just what would Mr Shinwell or Mr Michael Stewart do with Quaker Schools? Would be interfere with the Society’s right to appoint its own committees of management? Would he have each application for entry on behalf of a pupil scrutinised by the local education authority. Would this Quaker, suspected of being in the privileged class, be denied admission for his boy, and that Quaker, not open to this suspicion, be given a place? Or would Quaker schools be thrown open to the general public and Quaker children have to take their place in the queue? If this happened and the admission became much the same as that for grammar schools, how could Quaker management be justified to the public?
There is another point which seems to me to present an insuperable problem unless the Labour Party is ready to kick from under its feet the very foundation stone of democracy. The government might take over the independent schools. It would be painful but it would not be impossible. But how would it prevent the emergence of new independent schools to take the place of the old? Suppose a parent wants to teach his own child. That is possible at present provided the school attnedance (sic) officer can be assured that it is efficiently done. Suppose he joins his neighbour and one of them undertakes the teaching of both families? One can imagine the growth that might ensue. How could legislation prevent this? By enacting that not more than five children may meet for educational purposes under any roof? There is another possibility that would be open to the government, it might be enacted that every single child must register at a state school.
It should be clear that nothing could prevent the establishment of new independent schools unless the Labour Party is were prepared to restrict the freedom of men and women to an intolerable extent – to an extent seen hitherto only in totalitarian countries. It would have to make the children the property of the state and deny the right of parents to meet what they consider to be the need of their children. I can imagine the theorists saying “Ah, but there will be many alternatives possible; the parent will be invited to choose”. But most real advances, in education as in other things, have come because a desriable (sic) alternative did not exist, and some one set out to create it. Is this to be made possible? The desirable alternative might be something wanted by a very small minority, too small to convince the Ministry of Education or the County Director that it would be worth the expenditure of public money. Yet it might be extremely significant. The quality of education has nothing to do with numbers.
Private Enterprise in Education
Many of us have been led at some time or other to condemn private enterprise in industry. The implication has been that it is private grabbing; undoubtedly it often is, but whether it is always so need not be answered here. The enterprise I am now concerned with has nothing in common with this sort of activity, for I make no attempt to justify schools conducted for private profit. This would be a completely different issue and it should not be allowed to confuse the present issue. The schools that I am concerned about were all of them the result of enterprise that arose from a sense of responsibility or obligation or commitment in a social or spiritual sense. They all operate under charitable companies or trusts and their headmasters, like their assistants, are salaried men, whose incomes are not affected by how much the housekeeper spends on food.
My principal thesis is that, whatever happens in a social organisation and planning to meet the needs of the public, we must never have taken from us the opportunity and the freedom to meet the needs of other human beings – immediately and spontaneously. If an unemployed man comes to my door hungry, or even if my neighbour comes back from his holidays, and finds no food in his house, nothing must prevent me from giving him a loaf. I must not have to ask anybody’s permission. There has been a good deal of criticism of the Welfare State on the grounds that by providing so many services through our national organisation we deprive people of the challenge to be responsible for their own lives. Much of this criticism is unjustified, but I see another danger. We may deprive people of the challenge to be generous; it may seem no longer necessary. If the state does everything for my neighbour, why should I stir myself to think about him? I am not about to propound an argument that the poor should be kept poor to provide an opportunity for the rich to be charitable. Even if everyone were raised well above the subsistence level there would still be an enormous volume of human need, for man does not live by bread alone.
Education is deeply concerned with the not-by-bread-alone aspect of human life. Instruction in techniques of scholarship or bread-winning is only part of education. No one looking out on the conduct of mankind could say that we really understand how to meet his spiritual needs - and by spiritual I do not mean something specifically religious; I mean everything to do with his hopes, his fears, his values, his impulses, his treatment of his wife, his children and his neighbour. However great may be our achievements in providing for material needs, food, medical services, pensions, the whole organisation of social security, we must all the time look beneath the surface to see what is happening to men and women in their personality and conduct. Whatever happens, individuals and groups within the state must not cease to feel and accpet (sic) direct responsibility. The danger that we shall discourage and lose this is real, and it can be averted only if people are educated towards responsibility and encouraged in every way to exercise it. Many in independent schools are a spontaneous expression of responsibility and interest in deeper needs; and at a time when widespread responsibility is so much needed it would be disastrous to check or discourage this expression.
There is little sign that the Labour Party critics of the independent schools have thought along any such lines as these. They seem to have no criterion by which to judge the quality of a school and the effect of its education; they make judgments to categories in the light of doctrinaire principles, and they seem not to know what education is about; otherwise how can Mr. Michael Stewart liken the buying of a commission in the army to the spending of money on the fees of an independent school? The one is the purchase of power by a person who has neither the right to it nor the training for it. The other is the purchase of an alternative sort of education and a cooperation with certain teachers to make it possible. A man who buys a commission deprives a ranker of a commission, but a boy who goes to an independent school deprives a boy at a grammar school of nothing. Perhaps Mr. Stewart is thinking of those people who send their boys to Public Schools to that they will have the advantage of knowing the right people when it comes to getting a job. There is something in this, though less than there used to be; but even so it does not constitute a criticism of independent education. It is a criticism of Public Schools and the ulterior purposes for which they have been exploited; the political function In all institutions there are conflicting forces at work. The original impulses which brought some of the Public Schools into being they to some extent inevitably serve in a capitalist society. But all institutions embrace contradictions, and the cause of education will not be served if critics are so moved by hostility towards Public Schools that they cannot make an objective assessment of the value of independent ventures in education, as contrasted with educational ventures that are decreed by a local or ministerial authority. Let the critics look in detail at what is being done in the various independent schools and find out whether they have any quality by reason of the fact that they are independent. I think they will find that there is as much variation in quality and social effect among the independent schools as there is over the whole field of education. Some may be found to justify condemnation entirely; they may be pernicious in their effect. But this does not relieve the critics of the necessity to be discriminating in their criticism of others; on the contrary it makes it imperative.
I have made it clear that whatever may be the structure of society now or in the future, I want to see in people the keenest awareness of human needs and the immediate constructive response that should be made to those needs. Lobbying is not an immediate constructive response; it has to be done and there are certain people who do it well. There are other people who are best fitted to plunge in and do the job, who are irritated and finally frustrated by the inevitable conflicts with administrative power. If every new idea, every original impulse has got to wait until it can express itself through the national organisation, we are going to lose more than we can afford – perhaps lose everything in the long run.
Education cannot be organised. Instruction can, but not education. Organisation can only provide the conditions and the opportunity, but there is no guarantee that the result will be what is expected; it may indeed be the reverse.
Archive reference PP/KCB 6/6/2 document 14