A Dominie in Doubt. Alexander Sutherland Neill
wants his children to run the school themselves, but to run it according to his ideas of government.
* * * * *
I think of an incident that happened when I was teaching in a school in London. I had a drawing lesson, and the children made so much noise that the teacher in the adjoining room came in and protested that she couldn't make her voice heard. The noise in my room seemed to increase … and the lady came in again. The noise increased.
Next day I went to my class.
"You made such a noise yesterday that the teacher next door had to stop teaching. She rightly complained. Now I want to ask you what you are going to do about it."
"You should keep us in order," said Findlay, a boy of eleven.
"I refuse," I said; "it isn't my job."
This raised a lively discussion; the majority seemed to agree with
Findlay.
"Anyway," I said doggedly, "I refuse to be your policeman," and I sat down.
There was much talking, and then Joy got up.
"I think we ought to settle it by a meeting, and I propose Diana as chairman."
The idea was hailed with delight, and Diana was elected chairman and she took my desk seat and I went and sat down in her place.
Joy jumped up again.
"I propose that Mr. Neill be put out of the room."
The motion was carried.
"Righto!" I said, as I moved to the door, "I'll go up to the staff-room and have a smoke. Send for me if you want me."
I smoked a cigarette in the staff-room, and as I threw the stump into the grate Nancy came in.
"You can come down now."
I went down.
"Well," I said cheerily, "have you decided anything?"
"Yes," said the chairman, "we have decided that——"
Joy was on her feet at once.
"I propose that we don't tell Mr. Neill what we have decided. We can ask him at the end of the week if he notices any difference in our behaviour."
Others objected, and the matter was put to the vote. The voting was a draw, and Diana gave the casting vote in favour of my being told. Then she said that the meeting had agreed that if anyone made a row in class, he or she was to be sent to Coventry for a whole day.
"What will happen if I speak to the one that has been sent to
Coventry?" asked Wolodia.
"We'll send you to Coventry too," said Diana, and the meeting murmured agreement.
No one was ever sent to Coventry, but I had no further complaints against the class. One interesting feature in the affair was this: Violet, a lively girl full of fun, one day got up and, as a joke, proposed that Mr. Neill be sent to Coventry. The others, usually willing to laugh with Violet, protested.
"That's just silly, Violet," they said. "If you propose silly things like that we'll send you to Coventry."
Then someone got up and proposed that Violet be sent to Coventry for being silly, and Diana at once took the chair. I got up and moved the negative, pointing out that I made no charge against her, and she was acquitted by a majority of one. I mention this to show that children of eleven and twelve can take their responsibilities seriously.
When I told the story to Macdonald he said: "But why didn't you join in their noise?"
"For two reasons, Mac," I said. "Firstly these children were not under the suppression of government schools; secondly it wasn't my school."
III.
The servant girl at the Manse has had an illegitimate child, and Meg Caddam, the out-worker at East Mains is cutting her dead. Thus the gossip of Mrs. Macdonald. Meg Caddam is the unmarried mother of three.
I have noticed again and again that the most severe critic of the unmarried mother is the unmarried mother, and I have many a time wondered at the fact. Now I know the explanation; it is the familiar Projection of a Reproach. Meg feels guilty because of her three children, but her guilt is repressed, driven down into the unconscious.
She dare not allow her conscious mind to face the truth, for then the truth would lower her self-respect; it would be unpleasant, out of harmony with her ego-ideal. But it is easy for her to project this inner reproach on to someone else, hence her blaming of the Manse lassie. Meg Caddam is really condemning herself, but she does not know it.
I used to despise the Meg Caddams as hypocrites, but, poor souls, they are not hypocrites. Their condemnation of their fallen sisters is genuine. It is wonderful how we all manage to divide our minds into compartments. Sandy Marshall of Brigs Farm is a most religious man, yet the other day he was fined for watering his milk. It is unjust to say that his religion is hypocritical. What happens is that his religion is shut up in one compartment of his mind, and his dishonesty is shut up in another compartment … and there is no direct communication between the compartments.
The mind is like one of the older railway carriages; education's task is to convert the old carriage into a new corridor carriage with communication between the compartments. Meg Caddam's own transgression against current morality is locked up in one compartment; her condemnation of the Manse girl is in another compartment. There is an unconscious communication, but there is no conscious communication. I don't know what Meg would say if a cruel friend pointed out to her that she also was a fallen woman.
I think that the gossip of this village mostly consists of projected reproaches. Liz Ramsay, an old maid and the super-gossip of Tarbonny, came into the schoolhouse this morning.
"Do ye ken this," she said to Mrs. Macdonald, "it's my opeenion that Mrs. Broon died o' neglect. I went to the door the day afore she died to speer hoo she was, and her daughter cam to the door, and do ye ken this? That lassie was smiling … smilin' … and her auld mother upstairs at death's door. Eh, Mrs. Macdonald, she's a heartless woman that Mary Broon. She killed her mother by neglect, that's what she did."
After she had gone I said to Mrs. Macdonald: "Who nursed Liz's mother when she died last June?"
"Nobody," said Mrs. Macdonald grimly. "Liz had too much gossip to retail in the village, and I'm told that Liz was seldom in the house."
I think I am guessing fairly rightly when I say that Liz feels guilty of neglecting her own mother, and like Meg Caddam she projects the reproach on to someone else.
* * * * * *
Last Friday night I gave a lecture to the literary Society in Tarby, our nearest town. I chose the subject of forgetting, and I told the audience of Freud and his great work in connection with the unconscious. To-day's Tarby Herald in reporting the lecture prints phonetically the spelling "Froid," but the Tarby Observer goes one better when it says: "Mr. Neill is an exponent of the new science of Cycloanalysis."
Which reminds me of a painful episode that took place when I was eighteen. I was much enamoured of a young university student, and I always strove to gain her favour by being interested in the things she liked. One day she informed me that she intended to take the Psychology class at St. Andrews the following session. I had never heard the word before, and I made a bold guess that it had something to do with cycles. In consequence we talked at cross purposes for a while.
"I'd love a subject like that," I said warmly.
"Most of it will be experimental psychology," she said.
My enthusiasm increased. I thought of the many experiments I had tried with my old cushion-tyred cycle.
"Excellent!"