One more exception might be necessary: compulsory freedom. I am sure
that a child should not be imprisoned in a school. I am not so sure that
it should not sometimes be driven out into the open--imprisoned in the
woods and on the mountains, as it were. For there are frowsty children,
just as there are frowsty adults, who dont want freedom. This morbid
result of over-domestication would, let us hope, soon disappear with its
cause.
Mobilization
Those who see no prospect held out to them by this except a country in
which all the children shall be roaming savages, should consider, first,
whether their condition would be any worse than that of the little caged
savages of today, and second, whether either children or adults are
so apt to run wild that it is necessary to tether them fast to one
neighborhood to prevent a general dissolution of society. My own
observation leads me to believe that we are not half mobilized enough.
True, I cannot deny that we are more mobile than we were. You will still
find in the home counties old men who have never been to London, and who
tell you that they once went to Winchester or St Albans much as if they
had been to the South Pole; but they are not so common as the clerk who
has been to Paris or to Lovely Lucerne, and who "goes away somewhere"
when he has a holiday. His grandfather never had a holiday, and, if he
had, would no more have dreamed of crossing the Channel than of taking
a box at the Opera. But with all allowance for the Polytechnic excursion
and the tourist agency, our inertia is still appalling. I confess to
having once spent nine years in London without putting my nose
outside it; and though this was better, perhaps, than the restless
globe-trotting vagabondage of the idle rich, wandering from hotel to
hotel and never really living anywhere, yet I should no more have done
it if I had been properly mobilized in my childhood than I should have
worn the same suit of clothes all that time (which, by the way, I very
nearly did, my professional income not having as yet begun to sprout).
There are masses of people who could afford at least a trip to Margate,
and a good many who could afford a trip round the world, who are more
immovable than Aldgate pump. To others, who would move if they knew how,
travelling is surrounded with imaginary difficulties and terrors. In
short, the difficulty is not to fix people, but to root them up. We keep
repeating the silly proverb that a rolling stone gathers no moss, as if
moss were a desirable parasite. What we mean is that a vagabond does not
prosper. Even this is not true, if prosperity means enjoyment as well as
responsibility and money. The real misery of vagabondage is the misery
of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, the misery of being derelict
of God and Man, the misery of the idle, poor or rich. And this is one
of the miseries of unoccupied childhood. The unoccupied adult, thus
afflicted, tries many distractions which are, to say the least, unsuited
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