We're all radicals until we have kids. Then we start listening to the
likes of C.S. Lewis.
"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement
towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human
excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to
notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work
that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods?
The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must
not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would
be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept
back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright
pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his
school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante
sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may
reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as
you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not
learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who
are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say
nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the
back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and
toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men."
