What We Do Not Teach, and Why

To my mind, a glance at the subjects now taught in schools ought to
convince any reasonable person that the object of the lessons is to keep
children out of mischief, and not to qualify them for their part in life
as responsible citizens of a free State. It is not possible to maintain
freedom in any State, no matter how perfect its original constitution,
unless its publicly active citizens know a good deal of constitutional
history, law, and political science, with its basis of economics. If
as much pains had been taken a century ago to make us all understand
Ricardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world
would have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the
greatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive
knowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either
place-hunters, anarchists, or sheep shepherded by wolves.

But it will be observed that these are highly controversial subjects.
Now no controversial subject can be taught dogmatically. He who knows
only the official side of a controversy knows less than nothing of its
nature. The abler a schoolmaster is, the more dangerous he is to his
pupils unless they have the fullest opportunity of hearing another
equally able person do his utmost to shake his authority and convict him
of error.

At present such teaching is very unpopular. It does not exist in
schools; but every adult who derives his knowledge of public affairs
from the newspapers can take in, at the cost of an extra halfpenny, two
papers of opposite politics. Yet the ordinary man so dislikes having his
mind unsettled, as he calls it, that he angrily refuses to allow a paper
which dissents from his views to be brought into his house. Even at his