10 - Questions and answers

Summary

‘Well,’ said the old man, shifting in his chair, ‘you must get on with your questions, guest; I have been some time answering this first one.’

Said I: ‘I want an extra word or two about your ideas of education; although I gathered from Dick that you let your children run wild and didn't teach them anything; and in short, that you have so refined your education, that now you have none.’

‘Then you gathered left-handed,’ quoth he. ‘But of course I understand your point of view about education, which is that of times past, when “the struggle for life,” as men used to phrase it (i.e. the struggle for a slave's rations on one side, and for a bouncing share of the slave-holders’ privilege on the other), pinched “education” for most people into a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not: and which had been chewed and digested over and over again by people who didn't care about it in order to serve it out to other people who didn't care about it.’

I stopped the old man's rising wrath by a laugh, and said: ‘Well, you were not taught that way, at any rate, so you may let your anger run off you a little.’