Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)

1. Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) Education, joy and fear

2. Introduction • What do we experience the most profoundly: hope or fear, fear or hope? • Bertrand Russell observes: • In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact. (1918/2006: 139) • Here, then, is the central problem Russell identified within society: the elevation of fear over joy and hope. • But Russell (1918/2006: 139) insists: ‘It is not so that life should be lived’. There is a solution: fear need not replace joy and hope as the primary experience in the lives of so many.

3. The problem Fear and conformity in education and society

4. What is the nature of the problem? • Conformity: the fearful or passive acceptance of what is. Russell claims: ‘Animal habit is sufficient by itself to make a man like the old ways … None of the higher mental processes are required for conservatism’ (Russell, 1932: 20). • When a whole school falls into such passivity, there is stagnancy, for ‘Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence’ (Russell, 1932: 21). • Education ends, for Russell, when the critical imagination is closed down, when individuals no longer think for themselves and with others.

5. What are the causes of the problem? • Russell identifies two sources of conformity and fear in education: • the ‘herd’ within schools; • and the bureaucrats who seek to control schooling.

6. The ‘herd’ within schools • Russell: the young are constantly torn between the hope that they might reveal their uniqueness, and the fear that others will reject them. Fear leads young people to merely conform to the behaviour and ideals of the ‘herd’. • Hence Russell’s observes: • Fear of the herd is very deeply rooted in almost all men and women. And this fear is first implanted at school … A boy who has a birth-mark on his face, or whose breath is offensive, is likely to endure agonies at school, and not one boy in a hundred will consider that he deserves any mercy. (Russell, 1932: 90)

8. The bureaucratic threat • The rise of the bureaucratic, who seeks to discover and impose order, to make life predictable, has seen ‘men of wide individual culture’ replaced by, what Russell calls, ‘men of executive ability, or by mere politicians who must be rewarded for their service’ (Russell, 1932: 14).

9. What are the consequences of the problem? • For Russell, the primary consequence of fear in education and society is the closing down of humanity and its possibilities. • Russell insists that ‘compulsion in education … destroys originality and intellectual interest’ (Russell, 1932: 32). • Russell contends: • [C]hildren who are forced to learn acquire a loathing for knowledge. When they think, they do not think spontaneously in the way in which they run or jump or shout: they think with a view to pleasing some adult, and therefore with an attempt at correctness rather than natural curiosity. (Russell, 1932: 33)

10. The Minister for Exams When I was a child I sat an exam.The test was so simple There was no way I could fail. Q1. Describe the taste of the moon. It tastes like Creation I wrote,it has the flavour of starlight. Q2. What colour is Love? Love is the colour of the water a man lost in the desert finds, I wrote. There were other questions.They were as simple. I described the grief of Adam when he was expelled from Eden.I wrote down the exact weight of an elephant's dream. Yet today, many years later,For my living I sweep the streets or clean out the toilets of the fat hotels. Why? Because I constantly failed my exams.Why? Well, let me set a test. Q1. How large is a child's imagination?Q2. How shallow is the soul of the Minister for Exams? -Brian Pattern

11. From fear to joy Russell’s solution to a needlessly cruel world

12. What is Russell’s solution? • Russell described the world he saw in 1932 thus: • Our world is a mad world. Ever since 1914 it has ceased to be constructive, because man will not follow their intelligence in creating international co-operation, but insist in retaining the division of mankind intro hostile groups. (Russell, 1932: 246) • He went on to say: ‘The cure for our problem is to make men sane, and to make men sane they must be educated sanely’ (Russell, 1932: 247). • A sane education allows the young to affirm themselves and prepares them to make a unique contribution to the world.

13. What needs to change? • So, how might education what persons ‘sane’? Russell tells us that three changes need to occur: • 1. We need to move from conformity and compulsion to greater freedom, imagination, judgement and friendliness in education • 2. We need to move from the bureaucratic teacher to the friendly teacher • 3. We need to move from deadening certainty to fruitful doubt

14. Beyond conformity and compulsion • Young person should be given freedom to discover and express who they are, but total freedom leads to the young to form a ‘herd’. • Russell writes: ‘The thing to be aimed at is to have little pressure of the herd as possible …’ (Russell, 1932: 96). And: ‘Too much herd pressure interferes with individuality ...’ (Russell, 1932: 97). • However, he concedes the need for young people to be guided. Hence, Russell wants a compromise between total freedom and compulsion. • The capability for consistent self-direction is one of the most valuable that a human being can possess … and is never developed either by a very rigid discipline or complete freedom. (Russell, 1932: 39-40)

15. Nevertheless, Russell wants the young to experience ‘certain forms of freedom which most adults find unendurable’ (Russell, 1932: 62). For the young: • there should be ‘no enforced respect for grown-ups, who should allow themselves to be called fools whenever children wish to call them so’ (Russell, 1932: 62); • they ‘should not be forbidden to swear’ (Russell, 1932: 62-3); • and they ‘should be entirely free from the sex taboo, and not checked when their conversation seems to inhabited adults to be indecent’ (Russell, 1932: 63).

16. Russell wants: • to surpass ‘the evils of over-education’ (Russell, 1932: 174); • to see ‘a dramatic elimination of instruction that serves no useful purpose’ (Russell, 1932: 175); • and for an end to come to ‘the tyranny of examinations and competition’ (Russell, 1932: 177). • In particular, Russell wants lessons to be voluntary, and he argues that when they are: • There is no longer friction between teacher and pupil, and in a fairly large proportion of cases the pupils consider the knowledge imparted by the teacher worth having. (Russell, 1932: 33)

17. In calling for an end to examinations, Russell once again points to a view of learning that is its own reward and not merely a tool with which to pass tests. • For the sake of examinations, young people have to learn by heart all kinds of things, such as dates, which it is far more sensible to look up in books of reference. The proper sort of instruction teaches the use of books, not useless feats of memory designed to make books unnecessary. (Russell, 1932: 176

18. For Russell, to live a life worthy of a human being is to actively engage those essentially human capabilities of judgement and imagination. He writes: • [K]nowledge and comprehensiveness appear to me glorious attributes … The man who holds concentrated and sparkling within his own mind … the depths of space, the evolution of the sun and planets, the geological ages of the earth, and the brief history of humanity, appears to me to be doing what is distinctively human and what adds most to the diversified spectacle of nature. (Russell, 1932: 10-11) • Education, for Russell, should be where the young learn to step forth, to become part of the world, and realise their human ‘capacity to strike out a wholly new line’ (Russell, 1932: 14). Education should be a joyful affirmation of human potential and possibility.

19. Beyond the bureaucratic teacher • Of the bureaucratic teacher and the good teacher, Russell writes: • The man who deals affectionately with a small group of children knows them as individuals, and feels things about them which it would be difficult to put into words; often it is what is particular to a child that such a man likes best. But the man who views children from a distance, through a mist of official reports, is impatient of this sort of thing. He wishes all children were exactly alike, since it would make his work easy … (Russell, 1932: 242) • And: ‘It is … very important, in combating the danger of uniformity, to encourage teachers who love teaching rather than those who love governing’ (Russell, 1932: 240)

20. Beyond false certainty to spirited doubt • We require, according to Russell, a doubt that poises us to the possible and that ‘Absence of finality [which] is the essence of the scientific spirit’ (Russell, 1932: 23). • ‘No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact’ (Russell, 1935/2004: 147).

21. To summarise Russell’s position: • Friendliness between the young and not the dominance of the herd • Friendliness between the young and their teachers and not unbending authority and terror • Friendliness between the young and knowledge and not the imposition of knowledge onto the young

22. The good, open-minded teacher is honest with the young; he knows: Lying to the young is wrong. Proving to them that lies are true is wrong. Telling them that God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world is wrong. They know what you mean. They are people too. Tell them the difficulties can’t be counted, and let them see not only what will be but see with clarity these present times. Say obstacles exist they must encounter, sorrow comes, hardship happens. The hell with it. Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy. • (Yevtushenko, 2008: 52)

23. Conclusion • So, to conclude - words of hope from Russell: • Our age is so painful that many of the best men have been seized with despair. But there is no rational ground for despair: the means of happiness for the human race exist, and it is only necessary that the human race should choose to use them. (Russell, 1932: 248)

24. Questions from Russell • Was there a ‘herd’ within your school? • If yes, what were its consequences? • In your experience, what is the difference between ‘teachers who love teaching’ and teachers ‘who love governing’ (Russell, 1932: 240) • What were the consequences of the bureaucratic mindset on your experiences of schooling?

25. "I do not believe that a free education need make a boy or girl incapable of kindly manners, nor of that degree of external decorum which conventional life demands. Nor do I believe that the pain of conformity after a free education is nearly so great as the pain caused by the complexes which are implanted in the course of a conventional education.”