It will begin when a man of science, an engineer, or a surgeon, ceases
to consider lawful that division of labour, or rather that taking away
other men's labour, which now exists, and when he no longer considers
that he has the right to take,--I do not say hundreds of thousands,--but
even a moderate sum of one thousand or five hundred rubles as
compensation for his services; but when such a man comes to live among
labouring-people in the same condition and in the same way as they, and
applies his information in mechanics, technics or hygiene, to cure them.
But at present, scientific men, who are fed at the expense of the
workman, have quite forgotten the conditions of the life of these men:
they ignore (as they say) these conditions, and are quite seriously
offended that their imaginary knowledge does not find application among
the people.
The departments of the healing art as well as of the mechanical have not
yet been touched: the questions how best to divide the period of labour,
how and upon what it is best to feed, how best to dress, how to
counteract dampness and cold, how best to wash, to suckle, and swaddle
children, and so on, and all these applied to the conditions in which
the workers now exist,--all these questions have not yet been faced.
The same applies to the activity of scientific teachers,--the
pedagogues. Science has arranged this business, too, in such a way, that
teaching according to science is possible only for those who are rich;
and the teachers, like the engineers and surgeons, are involuntarily
drawn towards money, and among us in Russia especially towards the
government.
And this cannot be otherwise, because a school properly arranged (and
the general rule is that the more scientifically a school is arranged
the more expensive it is), with convertible benches, globes, maps,
libraries, and manuals for teachers and pupils, is just such a school to
maintain which it is necessary to double the taxes of the people. So
science wants to have it. The children are necessary for work, and the
more so with the poorer people. The advocates of science say, "Pedagogy
is even now of use for the people; but let it develop, then it will be
still better." But if it will develop till instead of 20 schools in a
district there will be 100--all of them scientific,--and the parents
forced to keep up these schools? Then they will be still poorer, and
will want the labour of their children still more urgently.
What is to be done then?
To this they will reply, "The government will establish schools, and
will make education obligatory as it is in the rest of Europe." But the
money will still have to be raised from the people, and labour will be
still harder for them, and they will have less time to spare from their
labour, and there will then be no obligatory education at all.
There is, again, only one escape,--for a teacher to live in the
conditions of a workman, and to teach for that compensation which will
be freely offered him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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