George Bernard Shaw

My father-in-law, a classics professor, and I share a little joke that all educators are socialists, which isn't true, it's a little joke, but a study of socialism has given me a great deal of insight into the hopes and dreams of the nice people who believe in whole language and other constructivist teaching practices. They really mean well. They really mean for us all to enjoy heaven on earth.

My husband has a set of Encyclopedia Britannica volumes published in 1946. It dares call itself "A New Survey of Universal Knowledge." In Volume 20, Sarsparilla to Sorcery, I have looked up Socialism and Socrates and Sophistry, for instance. After Socialism, but before Socrates and Sophistry, there is an entry entitled "Socialism: Principles and Outlook."

Now, the Socialism article itself appears complete at first reading. It gives the origins and history of Socialism; Owenism, Marxism, national movements and the Russian Revolution are each treated in turn. The entry is written by a gentleman named G. D. H. Cole.

But "Socialism: Principles and Outlook" is written by George Bernard Shaw. In the spirit of inquiry, independent research, and consulting original sources, I thought you guys might like the following observation Shaw makes with regards to schooling:

Democracy, or votes for everybody, does not produce constructive solutions of social problems; nor does compulsory schooling help much. Unbounded hopes were based on each successive extension of the electoral franchise, culminating in the enfranchisement of women. These hopes have been disappointed, because the voters, male and female, being politically untrained and uneducated,have (a) no grasp of constructive measures, (b) loathe taxation as such, (c) dislike being governed at all, and (d) dread and resent any extension of official interference as an encroachment on their personal liberty. Compulsory schooling, far from enlightening them, inculcates the sacredness of private property, and stigmatizes a distributive state as criminal and disastrous, thereby continually renewing the old prejudices against Socialism,and making impossible a national education dogmatically inculcating as first principles the iniquity of private property, the paramount social importance of equality of income, and the criminality of idleness.

He continues,

Capitalism has never produced the necessary enlightenment among the masses nor admitted to a controlling share in public affairs the order of intellect and character outside which Socialism, or indeed politics, as distinguished from mere party electioneering, is incomprehensible. Not until the two main tenets of Socialism -- abolition of private property (which must not be confused with personal property), and equality of income -- have taken hold of the people as religious dogmas, as to which no controversy is regarded as sane, will a stable Socialist state be possible....

The private individual, with the odds overwhelmingly against him as a social climber, dreams even in the deepest poverty of some bequest or freak of fortune by which he may become a capitalist, and dreads that the little he has may be snatched from him by that terrible and unintelligible thing, State policy. Thus the private person's vote is the vote of Ananias and Sapphira; and democracy becomes a more effective bar to Socialism than the pliant and bewildered conservatism of the plutocracy.

Hmm. I'd better go find out who Ananias and Sapphira are.

I think Scarsdale is a "pliant and bewildered conservatism of the plutocracy."

So, I'm siding with Vlorbik today. Rather than schools being used as tools for training capitalists or socialists, let's agree to abolish the schools.