WEEDS (Reworked)
One of the activities that I enjoy is gardening. I cannot give the continuous attention to my garden that a good gardener should and it is often in a shocking condition, but I derive a genuine satisfaction from the task of clearing it up. It is a relief from dealing with children to play about with plants and flowers. They cannot answer back. If I neglect them or treat them harshly they just quietly die, and if I am worried by their departure I can always put others in their place.
Nevertheless, while I am gardening it often occurs to me that there are striking similarities between a garden and a school. Many of the things that one has to do in order to make a plant grow well are very like what one has to do for children. We sometimes say that a child is flowering, meaning that there was something under the surface of his personality at an earlier stage that we had faith in and that is now bursting forth in well-being and pleasing development. I know that people sometimes compare children to flowers in a sentimental way; I shall not I hope be guilty of that and I hope I shall not forget that there are profound differences between persons and plants.
A gardener plans what flowers he will grow and he tries to make sure of the right conditions for their growth. He has to provide the right soil, and perhaps manure. He has to control weeds and occasionally to prune. Where are the similarities between these and what teachers have to do in a school? Do I plan my pupils and arrange them as I would the plants in a garden? In some ways I do. The boys and girls in front of me were selected because I liked the look of them, found them interesting. It is true that I cannot select a child as I do a delphinium or a lupin; I cannot look him up in a catalogue to discover what he will be like when he is full-grown, nor am I concerned as to whether he is a pure-bred or a hybrid. But I like variety in a school, to be made up wholly of boys and just as in a garden and I do not like a school to be made up wholly of boys or of girls, or of intellectuals, or craftsmen, or sportsmen, or of one social class.
Whatever plants I choose for my garden I have to beware of overcrowding. A boarding school often has the important advantage over a day school that it is in the country and there is space and air. (Yet even under these conditions children sometimes suffer from the overcrowding that is due to their not leaving each other alone enough, when they pester each other and destroy each other’s privacy.) In this school we have a wide expanse of country on our doorstep, workshops and hobby rooms to go to in spare time, places where boys and girls can do messy jobs without involving anyone’s precious carpet or table-top. Yet .......
Then just as I provide manure for plants; we teachers provide food for our pupils. There was a time not so very long ago when it was thought that manure itself was good for human beings. Some of my pupils will remember, from our investigation in the history of medicine, that when Charles ll was dying from the effects of a blood clot the physicians tried, among scores of other incredible treatments, applying a mixture of Burgundy pitch and pigeon dung to his feet. The obvious counterpart to manure is the food provided to eat, but nevertheless , as a gardener, I can’t help thinking of what corresponds to the counterpart. compost, that we so carefully and laboriously make out of vegetable waste and grass cuttings. The rotted remains of last year’s plants become the food for the plants we grow this year. There is a close parallel between this and the spiritual and mental food that we provide in a school. The material of our classes and discussions is the compost, so to speak, from the thought of many previous generations. We can none of us live as though we were the first human beings on the earth: we can none of us start learning from scratch. When we make any sort of contact with our environment of people and thought we cannot help making use of a tremendous inheritance of attitudes, habits and ideas. The compost we use is much of it thousands of years old. But it is definitely compost and not the original material. We cannot listen to Plato – or even to Jesus – as though nothing had happened between their time and ours. That is why we need a sense of history and why people who have an interest in history simply do not understand where they are. Here of course, is a difference from plants, who can thrive while accepting, without question what is in the soil, knowing nothing of its origin. We cannot.
Different conditions are often needed for different plants. I must not treat all plants alike. Some - like the Rhododendrons like an acid soil and can’t bear lime. Other plants need lime. I’ve been trying to grow a certain plant in the crevice of a rock, but it will not thrive because it needs moisture. My zinnias, however thrive best in a dry summer. Fortunately children have some needs that are the same for all. Except for vegetarians and the one of two people who are sick when they eat nuts or swell up when they taste a strawberry, we can provide the same physical food for all. It would be very difficult otherwise; we should not be able to keep our cooks long. In other matters there are differences. I have to speak to some people differently from the way in which I speak to others. Some people take criticism well, go away and think it over and make immediate use of it. With others I have to be more gentle, otherwise they may be made miserable and unable to make use of the criticism. Some people have already achieved a good deal of courage. Others are more sensitive and imaginative; their courage needs to be built up more slowly so that they do not lose their sensitiveness – for it is often a valuable quality.
Much of a gardener’s energy is spent in dealing with weeds. Weeds are plants too – but shall I say that some children are desirable plants and others weeds? That would be too hard, and I should not want any of my pupils to be set wondering whether he or she is a garden flower or a weed! Yet it is true that all of us behave at times like weeds and tendencies grow up in us that are very much like weeds.
Let us look at some of the weeds I meet in my garden. I’m always meeting thistles and nettles in odd corners and getting pricked or stung by them. As you know there are people who are like thistles and have to be cautiously approached; we do in fact call them prickly characters. There are others who use remarks that sting and the poison gets under our skin. It is wise to ask yourself now and then whether there is anything of the thistle or the nettle about you. Another weed I meet is goose-grass or “cleavers”; they stick all over you. Because of their clinging tendencies they are sometimes called “sweethearts”. All of us go through a period of being cleavers. When we are very young we cleave to our mothers and hate being anywhere else. Later we learn to stand on our own feet but perhaps running back to mother when things are difficult. Mothers have to train children not to be cleavers. Some mothers want their children to remain cleavers, clinging to them with sticky affection is a profound mistake. The wise mother likes to see her child standing firmly on his own feet and eventually treating her as a friend, not clinging to her in childish dependence. In school this tendency to cling can spoil the quality of friendships. Friendships should never be possessive. We can give most and receive most from our friends when we are willing that they shall be free. When people are jealous and clinging in their friendships they are being cleavers – weeds in the community.
Another weed that drives me almost to despair is the ground elder. Everyone who has worked in a gardening squad has made its acquaintance. Its thick white roots grow along under the surface hidden from our sight until its leaves begin to appear all over the place. We dig down and find a great tangled mat. We tear it up, but even an inch of root left in the soil will start all over again on its subversive work. No wonder that some gardeners remove all their plants from the infested bed, treat it heavily with weed-killer and leave it unused for a year.
Some weeds grow in human beings like ground elder. Things seem alright on the surface, but deep down strong tendencies are growing that later burst forth into destructive actions. That is what happens in some murderers; they are not habitual criminals, but something suddenly comes to the surface that has been growing some time. One does not usually have to cope with murderers in a school, but one is sometimes suddenly faced with trouble that could have been avoided if only one had known of tendencies growing quietly and steadily under the surface. Everyone ought to feel some responsibility for checking this growth; the staff alone cannot, it needs everyone’s co-operation.
There is yet another weed that I have trouble with – chickweed. It grows densely, all over the surface again forming a thick mat, but this time one that can be seen. It is something like the triviality that can grow on the surface of community life, the chatter, the gossip, the pettiness; and just as chickweed clutters up the soil, tending to choke the good plants and shut out the light from the seedlings, so the triviality of school life may obstruct the proper growth of everyone but the strongest. I realise that while I have been talking about weeds I have at times compared a weed to a certain type of person and at other times to a tendency only. Before I leave this topic of weeds, may I say that I should never in fact regard a boy or girl as wholly a weed. It is true that a tendency can grow so strong in a person as to obscure the rest of his personality, but we can never do anything to help him if we allow ourselves to forget that the rest of his personality does exist.
Now I will turn to another operation that a gardener has to carry out in order to make sure of good results. He has to prune. Roses and fruit trees are most in need of pruning, but in many other plants there has to be some control over the various shoots that they throw out. If the central shoot of a plant is allowed to grow straight on it may flower early in the year but fail to provide enough flowers later on. Not everyone realises that this can happen with children. Intelligent children can become precocious and be trained to do remarkably well in a competitive examination. Teachers push a child for a university scholarship and he perhaps gains much credit for the school. But often in the early twenties, even during his university course, everything seems to go out of such a person and he is heard of no more. All his energy having gone into securing success and a competitive show there is none left to produce the everyday supply of flowers that the world needs. There are indeed some boys and girls strong enough to survive this treatment but far too many suffer injury. Teachers must concern themselves not only with what their pupils will be able to do at eighteen or nineteen but also with what they will be able to do at forty or fifty; they must plan for stamina, long-lasting vigour.
What we prefer to do in this school is to develop plenty of side shoots that will not only produce flowers, but contribute to the health of the whole plant. We hope for the development of many interests of value in themselves and to nourish the central interest. We hope that people will say of our pupils when they meet them as adults: Here is someone who not only knows his job, but knows about life and the world in a wider way and can turn his hand to other jobs in an emergency, one who is unafraid of the unexpected.
Side shoots may, however, have to be pruned if the plant is to grow in an orderly way and look balanced. Sometimes children’s activities become too scattered, too wasteful of energy; and then we have to be pruners, to step in and try to limit those activities to that fewer shoots will grow more strongly. But a gardener does not just snip off pieces of shoot ruthlessly. He prunes to a bud. He says “Now there is a good bud; if I cut it back to there it will do well”. A wise teacher does a similar thing. He sees that a child is in need of plenty of physical activity and is spending his energy wildly and perhaps destructively, so he tries to find a more definite physical activity – a game or long-distance cycling, or climbing – that will give him an outlet and also a sense of genuine achievement. Sometimes a boy or girl reads voraciously and indiscriminately and needs more definite direction in his choice of books.
I could perhaps go on yet longer, finding parallels between the work of the gardener and that of a teacher but a point would soon come when this would lose any usefulness that it may have had so far. Moreover there are profound differences. Plants are not responsive as are human beings. It is true that plants are said to respond to wise treatment, but what we mean is that in their own way they thrive by it. The plants remain quite indifferent to the gardener. If their need were met entirely by mechanical means they would thrive just as well, their “response” would be exactly the same. People – boys and girls – can do so much more. They can ultimately respond in a much more equal way, with understanding and conscious affection, and that is why the regard of the teacher is ultimately so much greater that that of the gardener. If the teacher does not get this response; if his pupils do not ultimately become his friends, it is no one’s fault but his own.
Let me finish up, however, on a point of similarity that takes all our activities on to another plane. Both the gardener and the teacher have to understand what they are doing and to accumulate as much wisdom and scientific knowledge as they can about plants or children. But when they have achieved good results, should they stand back and say “It is good, and it is all my own work”? No. Good gardeners, like good craftsmen, retain a sense of wonder; they may be delighted and proud when they see what has been achieved, but they know that it is not just their work but something that has grown out of their understanding and feeling for living things – something that is at unexplainable and only to be accepted with wonder and gratitude. I am sufficient of a scientist to know how much science can contribute to horticulture, but when I accept with complacence the beauty of a tulip or rose, or when I can taste a James Grieve straight off the tree without a sense of wonder, may I be denied those things for ever!
The teacher is dealing with living – and much more responsive – creatures. He too must avoid putting himself on the back for what his pupils do. Indeed, human beings are far more variable and unaccountable creatures than plants. They have minds, personalities and intentions of their own, impulses good or bad that may be quite unsuspected until they come into operation at some stage in development. We can never carry out our work as teachers with anything like the same degree of certainty as a gardener. We can sometimes with fair confidence that we are largely responsible for a pupil getting through an examination or learning the right technique in metal-work, but where the general development of his personality is concerned we never know clearly what is due to our efforts, what is due to heredity or some hitherto hidden quality growing up in him, what is due to his friendships or to the grace of God. We teachers have to learn to take pleasure in good results without claiming them as our own.
Archive Reference PP/KCB 3/7/3 document 25