VI - THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF A SCHOOL

Among the major defects that have been attributed a ruling educational methods is that they are uninspired by any yearning for God. It is often said with grave reproach that education in India the same as in some other countries has been rendered godless and that a godless education is even worse than no education. Let us have no knowledge rather than have no God. Supporters of the introduction of religious education in schools make this aspect real or supposed of the prevailing educational system their chief argument.

It is, however, possible to imagine a school where religion is apparently given all care but where there is little of God. We are apt to forget that mere orthodoxy is not often enough to give us God and that it has occasionally been discovered to be little better than the taking of God's name in vain. Formal religious instruction cannot always be depended on to make school-life spiritual.

Let it at once be conceded that if its life is not concerned for the spirit a school is worse than useless is indeed a harm. Life the dragons of old knowledge that is not in some way spiritual can and has done a great deal of damage to human welfare. Wrong applications of science or of the power derived from knowledge have become a familiar feature of the civilization of air fire and iron. In the case of individuals also knowledge not rarely goes hand in hand with hypocrisy and cunning and we sometimes nerely wish that Adam and had not sinned out Eden. The unfashioned untutored uncultivated human material is often more pleasant to deal with than that which has been carefully treated with education and armed with the instruments of knowledge. It is imperative that if the advance of knowledge is to be freed from the frustrations that spring from selfishness or from the personal sense of things education must be so organized as to influence the spirit as well as the body.

The value of a school must be gadged on the strength of its spiritual life. It is the atmosphere that is more important than instruction. It is the ideals that elusively hover about a school infinitely more than the teachers who work in its classrooms that give the school its tone, that dreamy flavour that rises from the beautiful things ever anxious for alliance with human happiness. A school devoid of such ideals such atmosphere ever if it passes the highest percentage of pupils in the public examinations, even if its old boys carry all before them, is not from the point of view of collective human good an institution to be quite proud of. It may be an ingenious combination of educational tricks an effective drill house for the head a hugely enlarged edition of a most efficient crammer, but it is not quite the right school for the community of children who live around and who when al is considered are not meant merely for success in the world. In fact, mankind had benefited more from noble failures than from vaunted achievements. It is highly necessary that a school worth its salt must teach the glory of suffering as well as the felicity of success, the supreme joy of aspiring, trying failing as well as the solid comfort of coming seeing and conquering.

The school must have a soul to be anything better than a machine to be a pervasive intangible spirit ennobling pupil and teacher stimulating work sustaining energy and keeping alive the flame of beauty and truth amidst the alien impulses blowing from the outer world. It must have traditions that touch the soul of whomsoever comes into contact with it. The school must be greater than its Headmaster, teachers and books its playgrounds and apparatuses.

To construct such traditions is like building Rome, not a day's work. If there is the right spirit in the school these traditions come in course of time and give an airy quality that silently influences the mind to the school house. When they have come te school ceases to be an educational institution becoming a temple of knowledge where God reigus without having been enthroned thereby human beings. No impressive enthronement of Him by itself can give the school God's reign. No religious instruction by itself can make the life of any school spiritual.

Boys and girls are naturally fond of work so long as it more creative than mechanical and so long as they are not forced to do it. Idleness dies of itself. Employment is an instinctive craving of the mind and it is the duty of the school to guide this craving through beautiful channels instead of damping it with the frozen breath of uniform discipline of monotonous methods. If the school descend to drudgery either on the part of its teachers or on the part of its pupils it ceases to be an education institution becoming a harsh penitentiary of the freedoms and joys of the mind.

In order that it may develop a spiritual life, the school must always keep before it a vivid sense of art. Art is work utterly unspoiled. In the class-room in the playground in the library anywhere and everywhere within the school there must be the murmuring joy of dong things beautifully and well. It is such work that increases the zest for doing such work that nourishes the body with a kind of celestial food. Teaching becomes devilling when the teacher finds no beauty in it derives no joy from it and such teaching falls heavy on the pupils the worst calamity against which the juvenile mind can not be too carefully protected. It is such teaching that is called drudgery which is art utterly gone wrong. Where such teaching prevails spiritual life has little chance to live learning has little chance to reveal the learner to himself. The school becomes an insensate machine and a heavy habit of slumb settles on the young pupils. Here is the birthplace of many mentalities.

No formal instruction in religion can possibly correct such serious educational pathology.

Clean in thought clean in body co-operative in effort creative and beautiful in whatever is done any school can rise to the highest pitch of spiritual worth. These things however do not come to themselves. The duty devolves on the staff to try with unremitting zeal, jointly and individually to invite them to bring them. For this the staff must be a band of artists wedded to beauty, wandering for true joy living by the wages that teaching gives but living distinctly above them. For this the staff must be a band of artists wedded to beauty wandering for true joy living by the wages that teaching gives but living distinctly above them. Whatever educational reformers might ask the teachers to do teaching will not become spiritual unless the teachers themselves feel the imperative need to cherish some living ideals and be prepared to suffer for them and to take heart of grace from them. The teacher is the hinge of the school and unless he be some spirit although the needs of the flesh enjoin on him to be mostly matter the school will not go far towards spiritual existence. Every teacher ought at least to remember that life consists of spirit no less than matter and that it is often from the spirit that the great benedictions of human life arise.