George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 55 George & The 1870 Education Act PART TWO

As Jacques Brel so rightly wrote, in this rough translation of his song Sons Of: 

Sons of the thief, sons of the saint

Who is the child with no complaint?

Sons of the great or sons unknown

All were children like your own

The same sweet smiles, the same sad tears

The cries at night, the nightmare fears

Sons of the great or sons unknown

All were children like your own...

click and click

You would think advances in a society's educational attainment would be taken as a good thing. Think again! As George so ably demonstrates, those who feel entitled to rule the masses fear the masses much more than the masses fear their masters (or mistresses!). Sameness in a society - where lines of difference are not demarcated by artificial boundaries like money or assumed or inherited 'aristocratic' superiority - threatens the status quo. In the early nineteenth century, money was becoming increasingly the big social class divider and the rise of technological innovation allowed the rise of the middle classes; if you make things, you need to have a steady supply of customers to buy them so you can make some more... But, those whose hold on notions of superiority realised their stability was built on very shaky ground - after all, what goes up, must come down - eventually.

The Westbury Horse by Eric Ravilious 1939

It might be said that the late Victorian artisan class had skills and few aspirations; the middle class had aspirations but few skills: this is the world George was born into. Chasing the means to make money was probably one of the most challenging aspects of Victorian life for anyone not ground down by and therefore, habituated, to poverty - that is, anyone who felt entitled to more than a crust of bread and a hovel to live in. What good was George to the world - being just another unskilled labourer who didn't want to work hard for a living? What, exactly, was he able to do that would fund the lifestyle he esteemed? That George chose writing as a mode of money generation seems entirely fitting to a man who didn't want a proper job - his skills set was virtually worthless. His need for control over every aspect of his world meant working as part of a team was simply not an option open to him - which is why he would never have survived in the academic world of a school or university. However, it is very hard to see George as anything more than an opportunist writer - using what few skills he had to earn a living, much as a window cleaner utilises a bucket and a strong right arm haha. Of course, he fought this notion his whole life, preferring to think he was an Artist and therefore, one of the 'chosen' ones. But, the labour intensive product he at times turns out (Workers in the Dawn must have been as arduous to write as it is to read haha) does not give us 'l'art pour l'art'. True genius doesn't come along very often, and cannot be manufactured. 

Rythme by Sonia Delaunay 1938

The 1870 Education Act, brought in to raise the literacy and numeracy of the average artisan and to create a more versatile workforce able to adapt to technological challenges, was a revolution in the possibility of change, but was more a process than an event. It takes time to up-skill a workforce and even longer to build it into a social group with the degree of discernment that leads to love for all things culture. However, this Act did not usher in a new world where everyone wanted to read novels - let alone write them. The bar was set very low for standards of educational attainment. Take a look at the levels proposed in the first revision of the Act click in 1872 and you see the highest level (standard VI) aspired to this abstraction:

Reading	To read with fluency and expression.
Writing	A short theme or letter, or an easy paraphrase.
Arithmetic	Proportion and fractions (vulgar and decimal).

Nowadays, this might be a Level 1 standard for adults, or the work of Year 4 in primary school.

From The Hundred Mile Walk by Richard Long 1971-72

Then, as now, anyone wanting more was obliged to set off on their own solitary journey into knowledge, or was able to join in adult learning - evening classes, very similar to those offered by Walter Egremont in Thyrza, but also such as those delivered in conjunction with the local Mechanics Institute at Owens College click back in George's day. None of this education was free (it still isn't in the UK as it is paid for by taxation). Charities stepped in and delivered education, then as now, with many schools being run by the church or other religious groups. There was also the continuing work of the Ragged Schools click such as the embryonic one started by the truly heroic John Pounds in Portsmouth in the 1830s. He was there teaching young paupers to read and write when George Meredith was a little 'un playing further up along the High Street.

Dynamism of a Soccer Player
by Umberto Boccioni 1913

George and his cronies thought this sort of aspiration for learning would lead to a diminishing of quality culture - but he and they failed to understand everyone has their own, personal version of culture, just as viable and rich as anyone else's; it is the flux of cultural life and its accessibility to all that keeps the various levels relevant and creative. For example, to like opera in the UK is an elitist conceit, rarely manifested by the working class; for everyone in Italy, a love of opera is a patriotic duty! George only had one blueprint for what was acceptable as culture - the kind of thing of which he approved. The fundamental tenet of elitism is that you don't want your passions shared with anyone you consider inferior, or shared with too many, because, if it's all the rage, can it really be any good? Certainly, making culture appear more elitist and to a degree, mystifyingly arcane, seems like a good way of ensuring the working classes won't want to access it. As an example, take the current visual Arts scene - how much of it is aimed at 'the masses' when most Art is bought for private enjoyment and not put on public display? And much of the really good stuff is locked away in bank vaults, far away from the perishing Medusa-like gaze of Demos!

The Rt Hon Ernest Bevin by Jacob Epstein 1943

So, here we have the lasting fundamental flaw to the 1870 Act, one that George feared would be the thin end of the wedge: it would breed discontent. Look at what it had done for the servant problem! Poor George lusted after a decent housekeeper as much as he lusted after... whatever it was he lusted after. By training up your workforce to be able to raise in them an expectation of work, you have to deliver the sorts of  jobs they want to do - does anyone really want to keep house for someone like Mr Gissing? Whilst being paid a pittance? Someone with reading and 'riting and 'rithmatic is not likely to want to be a street sweeper, either. Likewise, someone with dyscalculia or dyslexia isn't likely to do well as a clerk. A similar thing occurs now, with so many leaving university with expectations of work commensurate to their abilities and preferences only to find the sort of job available is in the service sector. Not that there is anything wrong with the service sector, but it isn't what you rack up a massive student loan debt for, is it? George pondered this with regard to women's education for those women likely to aspire to more than skivvy to an old curmudgeon. He feared women would not want to waste their lives on marriage or breeding - especially to and with old curmudgeons - and he was not wrong. If you raise your levels of attainment, we women will grow more disgruntled and eventually (a hundred years after the Act) come to believe we are entitled to more than the role of professional doormat/courtesan/breeding unit/housekeeper/general whipping post, and then who will be blacking the boots, frying the eggs and bacon and servicing the men's peculiar sexual needs?

Epiphany by Richard Hamilton 1964

And, so, the 1870 Act inadvertently supported the drive to elitism by introducing a range of measures and checks on the quality of your educated artisan end product, by endlessly testing levels of attainment. No one was allowed to evolve from one class to another without the Cerberus of the exam system hunting them down and finishing them off just as they emerged from childhood. And, if you haven't attained the arbitrary required level, you are out on your arse in life. In the UK, a public school education will always be in and of itself, a passport to a world of privilege and preference even when the dimmest dunce has graduated from it; but a failed state school kid stands no chance at all in the open market of unskilled work - all the university graduates have grabbed the service industry jobs! The sinister side of this is that those at the bottom of the attainment heap are disenfranchised on every level - marked out as losers and failures and little more than collateral damage cannon fodder in life - for the whole of their life. Progress?

Woman In The Bath by Edgar Degas 1886

One of the more dangerous long-term aspects of the standardisation of education was that it was for the first time possible to judge children as successes or failures based on an arbitrary set of principles devised by 'experts' that took no account of what they were capable of as individuals. This was a retrograde step, and we have never fully recovered from this great wrong. Suddenly, we were on our way to IQ tests and anyone who didn't come up to standard might be deemed surplus to requirements. (From the work of Howard Gardiner click we can see there is much more to intelligence than book smarts.) It is a very short step to eugenics - but more of that another time.