@11112011 For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour
was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at
the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we
have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the
incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the
masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when
men were sent to fight armoured tanks with rifles, are not scandalised when
young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda
with a smattering of “subjects”; and when whole classes and whole nations
become hypnotised by the arts of the spellbinder, we have the impudence
to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education—
lip-service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the
school leaving-age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers
slave conscientiously in and out of school-hours, till responsibility becomes a burden and a nightmare; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely
frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence
can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.