Theoria - DISA

English. To fail in mathematics or Latin is to leave boys and
girls deficient in these subjects, but to fail in English is to
leave them fundamentally uneducated. And the truth is that,
despite the efforts and improvements of a generation, we are
still short of full success in this primary task.
The Scottish Council is talking of secondary education. They
are also talking of a country where, apart from a few thousand
people in the Western Highlands, there is only one mother
tongue, English. We, members of universities in South Africa,
are concerned with the mother tongue not only at the school
level, but also at the university level; and, what is more, we
are concerned with two mother tongues. If Scottish educationists
have to confess that " they are still short of full success ",
what about us ? We might, I think, make our confession of
failure just a little bit stronger.
However, I had better dismount from my hobby-horse, for
fear that it might gallop off with me well into the afternoon. My
concern is with a liberal education, the liberal education that we
are not achieving in South Africa.
A little while ago I referred to " those of us who believe in
the liberal way of life ". I will assume that everybody within
these four walls does. Perhaps that is a large assumption, but
let it pass. What is certain- is that plenty of South Africans
outside these four walls don't believe in the liberal way of life,
or in the liberal education that should prepare for it. Many of
these are sincerely convinced that the liberal way of life is a bad
way of life, and that the sooner all remnants of it are swept from
South Africa the better for the community we live in. And don't
imagine that all these sincere disbelievers in our creed belong to
the Right in politics. A great many, so far as I can discover,
belong to the extreme Left; for, one of the odd things about
extremes, as perhaps you have already discovered, is that they
meet. Both groups—I won't give them names, but you know
whom I have in mind—deny the right of the individual to be an
individual. That is the essence of the liberal creed-—a belief in
the individual, queer creature though he often is. Both groups
are temperamentally and therefore also theoretically opposed to
the diversity of opinions and the multiplication of eccentrics
which the liberal way of life encourages. Eccentrics are often a
nuisance. Often, too, however, they are the salt of the earth.
Both non-liberal groups demand uniformity, conformity to the
standard pattern.
We, as liberals, are bound by our own creed to allow nonliberals
the right to think as they please, however sharply we may
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