I submit this may be a very good training for polite servants, but it is
not the way to make masters in the world. If we English believe we are
indeed a masterful people, we must be prepared to expose our children to
more and more various stimulations than we do; they must grow up free,
bold, adventurous, initiated, even if they have to take more risks in
the doing of that. An able and stimulating teacher is as rare as a fine
artist, and is a thing worth having for your son, even at the price of
shocking your wife by his lack of respect for that magnificent
compromise, the Establishment, or you by his Socialism or by his
Catholicism or Darwinism, or even by his erroneous choice of ties and
collars. Boys who are to be free, masterly men must hear free men
talking freely of religion, of philosophy, of conduct. They must have
heard men of this opinion and that, putting what they believe before
them with all the courage of conviction. They must have an idea of will
prevailing over form. It is far more important that boys should learn
from original, intellectually keen men than they should learn from
perfectly respectable men, or perfectly orthodox men, or perfectly nice
men. The vital thing to consider about your son's schoolmaster is
whether he talked lifeless twaddle yesterday by way of a lesson, and not
whether he loved unwisely or was born of poor parents, or was seen
wearing a frock-coat in combination with a bowler, or confessed he
doubted the Apostles' Creed, or called himself a Socialist, or any
disgraceful thing like that, so many years ago.
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