"The problem might have been serious if the idle rich of whom you speak
had been a very large proportion of the population, but, of course,
though very much in evidence, they were in numbers insignificant compared
with the mass of useful workers. So far as they were educated
persons--and quite generally they had some smattering of knowledge--there
was an ample demand for their services as teachers. Of course, they were
not trained teachers, or capable of good pedagogical work; but directly
after the Revolution, when the children and youth of the former poor were
turned back by millions from the field and factories to the schools, and
when the adults also of the working classes passionately demanded some
degree of education to correspond with the improved conditions of life
they had entered on, there was unlimited call for the services as
instructors of everybody who was able to teach anything, even one of the
primary branches, spelling, writing, geography, or arithmetic in the
rudiments. The women of the former wealthy class, being mostly well
educated, found in this task of teaching the children of the masses, the
new heirs of the world, an employment in which I fancy they must have
tasted more real happiness in the feeling of being useful to their kind
than all their former frivolous existences could have given them. Few,
indeed, were there of any class who did not prove to have some physical
or mental quality by which they might with pleasure to themselves be
serviceable to their kind."
WHAT WAS DONE WITH THE VICIOUS AND CRIMINAL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account