How C.S. Lewis Predicted the Downfall of Education
The dark side of state schooling and the idea of equality
C.S. Lewis believed that the modern world’s obsession with equality went too far; that it would eventually destroy ambition — and even the concept of greatness itself.
He envisioned a future world where the abilities of great boys and girls are crushed by administrators afraid to hurt the feelings of lesser pupils; where taste for classical music and great literature are suppressed in an effort to fit in; where future scientists, physicians, and philosophers are considered “stalks that [need] their tops knocked off.”
Disturbingly, it’s a world we’re not too far from now, but how did Lewis know way back in the 1940’s?
Lewis observed in his own time that education could make or break society. If left in the wrong hands — namely the state — the dystopia he imagined would become a reality. Public education would level everybody to a state of mediocrity. But he also hinted at how education could be saved…
Here’s what Lewis predicted, and what we can do about it.
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The Siren Song of Perfect Equality
In Lewis’ 1942 work, The Screwtape Letters, a demon named Screwtape plots against humanity. He schemes to pull unsuspecting men and women away from God, and in the process destroy society.
One of Screwtape’s main tactics is using social trends — the spirit of the times — to accomplish his goals. In the final chapter, for example, the demon describes to his fellow fiends how the modern trend of democratic government and the desire for universal equality can actually be used against mankind…
The idolization of perfect equality can be used to prevent the best and brightest from rising to the top, reducing all into a condition of ignorance. How so? Through the social pressure of conformity. Since people naturally desire to fit in, and the dominant social trend centers around democracy and universal equality, exceptional individuals can be coerced into forsaking the very things that would foster greatness for the sake of conformity:
“….those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from fear of being undemocratic….that people who would really wish to be — and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be — honest, chaste, or temperate refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend against the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.”
The Coddling of the Mind
It’s precisely this coercive social influence that is most destructive when made a core part of the educational system. The idea that anyone could be smarter — or conversely, less intelligent — than others is the ultimate sin against the doctrine of equality. Thus an educational system designed around equality will coddle low performers and even purposefully conceal the differences that naturally arise between students:
“…dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised.”
How this all plays out reads eerily similar to modern education. Lewis says that university exams will be made so easy that nearly all students will get good grades. Consequently, the quality of universities will be so diminished that nearly every citizen can go to them whether they care about education or not.
Primary schools will become more akin to nurseries, where the “teachers” are far too busy dealing with troublesome students to waste any time on real teaching. Students who are too dull or lazy to learn languages, mathematics, or science, can be set to doing things that children used to do for fun — “Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling.”
All the while the low performers will be kept blissfully unaware that they are inferior because revealing so would cause, as Lewis says, “trauma.” Yes, Lewis directly uses that word “trauma” that has become so ubiquitous in the modern lexicon. “Avoiding trauma” has now become a catch-all term to avoid ever pushing students to their full capabilities or punishing students who are disruptive.
Lewis says the fear of hurting an inferior child’s feelings results in him/her being pushed through school, which only results in a declining education for everybody. He writes:
“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.”
This all leaves an intriguing question: how does the decline in education actually happen?
