The Rainbow

"You can't do anything," said Miss Schofield. "He's

against you on one side and he sets the children against you on

the other. The children are simply awful. You've got to

make them do everything. Everything, everything has got

to come out of you. Whatever they learn, you've got to force it

into them--and that's how it is."

Ursula felt her heart fail inside her. Why must she grasp all

this, why must she force learning on fifty-five reluctant

children, having all the time an ugly, rude jealousy behind her,

ready to throw her to the mercy of the herd of children, who

would like to rend her as a weaker representative of authority.

A great dread of her task possessed her. She saw Mr. Brunt, Miss

Harby, Miss Schofield, all the school-teachers, drudging

unwillingly at the graceless task of compelling many children

into one disciplined, mechanical set, reducing the whole set to

an automatic state of obedience and attention, and then of

commanding their acceptance of various pieces of knowledge. The

first great task was to reduce sixty children to one state of

mind, or being. This state must be produced automatically,

through the will of the teacher, and the will of the whole

school authority, imposed upon the will of the children. The

point was that the headmaster and the teachers should have one

will in authority, which should bring the will of the children

into accord. But the headmaster was narrow and exclusive. The

will of the teachers could not agree with his, their separate

wills refused to be so subordinated. So there was a state of

anarchy, leaving the final judgment to the children themselves,

which authority should exist.

So there existed a set of separate wills, each straining

itself to the utmost to exert its own authority. Children will

never naturally acquiesce to sitting in a class and submitting

to knowledge. They must be compelled by a stronger, wiser will.

Against which will they must always strive to revolt. So that

the first great effort of every teacher of a large class must be

to bring the will of the children into accordance with his own

will. And this he can only do by an abnegation of his personal

self, and an application of a system of laws, for the purpose of

achieving a certain calculable result, the imparting of certain

knowledge. Whereas Ursula thought she was going to become the

first wise teacher by making the whole business personal, and

using no compulsion. She believed entirely in her own

personality.

So that she was in a very deep mess. In the first place she

was offering to a class a relationship which only one or two of

the children were sensitive enough to appreciate, so that the

mass were left outsiders, therefore against her. Secondly, she

was placing herself in passive antagonism to the one fixed

authority of Mr. Harby, so that the scholars could more safely

harry her. She did not know, but her instinct gradually warned

her. She was tortured by the voice of Mr. Brunt. On it went,

jarring, harsh, full of hate, but so monotonous, it nearly drove

her mad: always the same set, harsh monotony. The man was become

a mechanism working on and on and on. But the personal man was

in subdued friction all the time. It was horrible--all

hate! Must she be like this? She could feel the ghastly

necessity. She must become the same--put away the personal

self, become an instrument, an abstraction, working upon a

certain material, the class, to achieve a set purpose of making

them know so much each day. And she could not submit. Yet

gradually she felt the invincible iron closing upon her. The sun

was being blocked out. Often when she went out at playtime and

saw a luminous blue sky with changing clouds, it seemed just a

fantasy, like a piece of painted scenery. Her heart was so black

and tangled in the teaching, her personal self was shut in

prison, abolished, she was subjugate to a bad, destructive will.

How then could the sky be shining? There was no sky, there was

no luminous atmosphere of out-of-doors. Only the inside of the

school was real--hard, concrete, real and vicious.