R. W. Hammond : Plumtree School
Sunday April 12th, 1936
I face a difficult task tonight and I can only plead that the special circumstances of this occasion and the very special nature of this congregation afford me this privilege, which I believe to be far too great and important a one to be neglected or ignored.
You will realise that such an opportunity cannot in the ordinary course of events come again to me and that the fact that in a very few days I leave this place makes it possible for me to speak with a frankness and directness which would otherwise be difficult. I trust that nothing I say may from, its outspoken nature give offence to or hurt anyone.
First, I want to speak as to the connection – as I see it – between religion and education and I would first briefly define these according to my ideas. By education I understand a process which begins on the day of a child’s birth and the most vital part of which, influencing all the rest, is given in the first few years of a child’s life by its parents, nurses and infant associates.
I believe further that this process of education never should and often never does cease while life lasts. I believe very firmly, as befits a schoolmaster, that during the years between infancy and the beginning of responsible manhood, education can best be given in a place which has come to be known as a school. In some proportion of cases, diminishing with growing years, that education can best be given during that period partly in a school and partly in the child’s home.
But I must first define a school, and to my mind the only place which has the right to bear that honoured title is one in which the process of educating a child includes the education in body, in mind and in spirit and where education takes into account the whole of the art of living and not merely what should be the purely incidental art of making a living.
The Greek word from which school is derived meant “leisure” and any system which aims merely at training workers without regard to the non-working part of their lives must be intrinsically wrong – as utterly wrong as the attempts of rulers or governments to increase the population of the countries so as to ensure the possibility of large armies. And this precaution is especially necessary today when industry has to a great extent abolished the skilled craftsman, and substituted the machine minder, whose only hope of an interesting and worthwhile life must lie in his leisure hours. And so I cannot believe that the only essential part of a school is a collection of classrooms.
And now to return to the much more difficult task of defining religion. The experience of my life and a good deal of hard thinking, have led me to change and modify my views, but I have for some years back been content to define it to myself as consisting in the long run of only one real virtue, which seems to me to run like a thread through all religions, though smothered in many by fears and ignorances and superstitions. That central thread or core I believe to be unselfishness – the willingness to sacrifice oneself for others.
I believe that the Christian religion contains a stronger core of this than others and that the teachings of Christ Himself have it to a far greater extent that the doctrines of even any Christian Church. This spirit of unselfishness is present in almost all of Christ’s teaching and on Good Friday we remember His final act of unselfishness and renunciation. I myself can see it too in the story of Easter and the Resurrection – that death is a negative state and that life alone can give this opportunity for exercising unselfishness, so that for Christ’s work to continue and live there had to be a resurrection.
Now if this is considered as the central idea – the theme song – it can be found running through all Christian teaching and through many non-Christian religions. It may be overlaid so deeply with dogma and ceremony that it lies hidden, but I believe that it must be there in any religion which is to be a living one. We have all known this unselfishness lacking in many professedly religious people and we have known it present to a high degree in some who might even be classed as heathen and in others who neither know nor would discuss whether Christ was indeed God or whether he was but a man living perfectly and teaching a perfect way of life to his fellow men and fellow sufferers.
And now as to the relation between Religion and Education. Believing as I do that schools must care for the whole child, I maintain that there must be a religious influence at work in a school and that on this, the success or failure of a schools’ life and work will depend. And so I believe a Chapel to be as necessary a building as any other for a school. Unfortunately, it is generally the case that it is only in schools attached to some certain denomination that Chapels are found. Personally, I prefer that a school should be undenominational, just as I prefer a school drawn from a variety of sources, social and geographical – a school that is a cross-section of the country as a whole and not limited in any way.
I have reasons to be personally grateful to the Church of England; my home was in one of its parsonages, and my schools and university were closely attached to that Church. I have also reasons to be grateful to the Church for the work it did in founding this school and in helping it in its early years and for its regular ministrations here and for the lives of its clergy who have lived here as chaplains, and I am thankful for the kindly relations which have generally been possible here, and which have permitted of Padres of several denominations holding their services in the school.
But religion must not begin and end with the Chapel and with services – it may even exist independently of these – but it must enter into every side of school life. It must be a force finding expression in trouble and in rejoicing; it must see the good in everyone and help that good to come out and show itself; it must add interest and enthusiasm to work and to play; it must smooth out differences and difficulties and make any real enmity impossible. This religions will be shown far more in deeds than in words, and in the life taken as a whole of any who have it rather than by isolated acts.
It is not uncommon to find education systems which regard schools as machines made to turn out certain standardised and exact products. I think this is wrong and that a school can be better compared to a forest or orchard – a collection of living, growing organisms sharing the same sun and air and soil in only slightly differing proportions, but bearing a great variety of different products to be put to different uses.
In such a school, masters can but guide and help their pupils to develop. This will need supervision and discipline both having to be exercised with much skill and care and tact which no machine-minding spirit will ever produce: and at the back of all their work there must be this religious influence running through the whole life and growth of each individual and of the school as a whole.
And in such a school it should be possible to teach much to all which they can cherish through life. The love of truth and the love of the search for truth in so far as it can be found. The love of beauty in nature, in literature and in music – in all that is clean and sweet. The love of freedom – freedom with responsibility – in a world which in parts is steadily losing that freedom, or at least forgetting that it should be denied to none, and in others is almost accustomed to look on it as a crime.
It seems wrong in a British community to have to speak of being taught the love of freedom which our people have for centuries breathed in with the air of the lands which were theirs. But times change and tyranny can take many forms and even with us today there is real need to teach the love of freedom, and for many to learn that it is useless to teach that as a British virtue to subject races and then to deny it to them.
The love of skill in some worthwhile work of use or beauty. The love of fresh air, of birds and beasts and all God’s creatures. The love of find buildings and the noble things man has made to win his mastery over nature. The love of knowledge and the shame of wilful ignorance. The love of service for others – first for the individual, then for the small communities or family or school or town or nation, and finally, for all mankind, without which all lesser loves and royalties are empty and valueless. The love of manly strength and of fine clean bodies.
I believe that the English Public School in the last half of the 19th century endeavoured to set the formation of character through such loves as these in the forefront of its ideas on the education of boys. I believe that in the last third of a century these ideas have spread to schools of many other types and I believe that our only hopes for the future lie in this direction. The world today presents the astounding paradox of man having complete control over nature and yet being willing to see the vast majority of mankind suffering from misery and want, from wars and famines and restrictions. This can only be due to fear, born of ignorance – ignorance leading to bad forms of government and giving opportunity for the exploitation of weaker nations and weaker social classes by the stronger. The great achievements of science and discovery and industry are being turned to ignoble ends or to those which are purely selfish.
And so I would make my last words here a plea for education with a religious background, education conceived in no niggardly spirit nor one starved and stunted so that other interests may be protected, an education which will develop each and every individual whatever his conditions of birth or his colour so as to enable him to use his powers to the utmost of his ability and to the benefit of his fellow man. You have to carry on a school to know how few children get a real chance to do this nowadays.
The miserable economies made by the financial authorities controlling most State systems of education, the astonishing number of parents, even of the better-off class, who are unwilling to deny themselves enough to enable their own children to get a full education and those others who, while able and willing to give their own children of the best, are up in arms to prevent and thwart the State in its efforts to do so for less fortunate boys and girls.
We have been fortunate in this school in having many parents who were determined – at no matter what cost to themselves – to have their sons well equipped for life, but their spirit must become more general and in its own interests each State must be brought to see the falseness of the economy which denies to any one of its citizens of the future full opportunity to develop to the full their powers of mind and body.
No schoolmaster can every be satisfied with his work in the way that a man turning out bricks or rails or machines can be, by felling that he has made the best possible article out of the materials provided. A schoolmaster in laying down his work can only be conscious of his own weaknesses and his own defects and can only feel that considering these limitations he has with God’s help done his best for his pupils; he can but hope that those pupils will grow up to be greater and better men than he is.
It is in this spirit that I commend to you this school. I believe that it contains the germs of greatness and that under Providence it can with the united work of staff and boys, old boys and parents, be made of great use and value to this country and to the world, of far greater use in the future than in the past.