Good Sunday Morning!
1. Question – If the devil had his say,
‘What would he say about education in a
democracy?’
2. Thought – [The devil Screwtape in a speech at
the “Annual Dinner of the Tempters’ Training
College for Young Devils”:] 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 it is not pretty to notice how
“democracy” (in the incantatory {a use of
spells or verbal charms} sense) is now doing for us the
work that was once done by the most ancient
Dictatorships, and by the same methods?
…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.” … Children
who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be
artificially kept back, because the others would get a
trauma…by being left behind. 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 coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A
MAT.
In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual
abolition of education when
I’m as good as you has finally 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 to busy reassuring the
dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time of
real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil
to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance
among men. The little vermin will do it for us. (The
Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis)