Smith—Wealth of Nations—Book V Part 3: The Expenses of Public Works and Public Institutions

THE EDUCATION OF THE LABOURING POOR·

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of most of those who live by labour comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, often only one or two. Now, the understandings of most men are formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations—with effects that are always nearly the same—has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in devising ways to remove difficulties that never occur. So he naturally loses the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as a human creature can possibly become. The torpor of his mind makes him incapable of enjoying or taking part in any rational conversation, conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment,or, therefore, forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life.

Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless particular trouble has been taken to make him otherwise he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and makes him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any employment except the one to which he has been bred. Thus, his dexterity at his own particular trade seems to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor—i.e. the great body of the people—must necessarily fall unless government works to prevent it.

It is otherwise in societies of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in the rude state of husbandry before the improvement of manufactures and the extension of foreign commerce. In such societies, each man’s varied occupations oblige him to exert his capacity and to invent ways of solving problems that continually occur. Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not allowed to fall into the drowsy stupidity that seems to benumb the understanding of most of the lower ranks of people in a civilised society. In those ‘barbarous’ societies every man is a warrior; everyman is also in some measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable judgment concerning the interests of his society and the conduct of those who govern it; so almost every man can see well enough how far their chiefs are good judges in peace or good leaders in war. No man in such a society can acquire the improved and refined understanding that afew men sometimes have in a more civilised state. . . . Everyman has a considerable degree of knowledge, ingenuity, and invention but hardly any man has a great degree of these qualities. Still, the degree that is commonly possessed is generally sufficient for conducting the whole simple business of the society. In a civilised state, on the other hand, though there is little variety in the occupations of most individuals there is an almost infinite variety in those of the whole society. These varied occupations present an almost infinite variety of topics of contemplation for those few who, having no particular occupation of their own, have leisure and inclination to examine the occupations of other people. Such contemplation exercises their minds in endless comparisons and combinations, and makes their understandings extraordinarily acute and comprehensive. But unless those few happen to be placed in some very particular situations, their great abilities—though honourable to themselves—may contribute little to the good government or happiness of their society. Despite the great abilities of those few, all the nobler parts of the human character may be to a large extent obliterated and extinguished in the great body of the people.

In a civilised and commercial society the education of the common people may require more public attention than the education of people of some rank and fortune. I base this on three facts about people of some rank and fortune.

(i)They are generally about 19 years of age before they enter on the particular business, profession, or trade by which they propose to distinguish themselves in the world. By then they have had plenty of time to acquire, or at least to fit themselves to acquire, every accomplishment that can recommend them to the public esteem or make them worthy of it; and their parents or guardians are generally anxious enough for this to happen to be willing enough to lay out the expense necessary for it. If they are not always properly educated, it is seldom from lack of expense laid out on their education but from the improper application of that expense. It is seldom from the lack of masters but from the negligence and incapacity of the masters who can be had and the impossibility (in the present state of things) of finding any better.

(ii)The employments in which they spend most of their lives are not simple and uniform as those of the common people are. They are almost all extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than the hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such employments can seldom grow slack through lack of exercise.

(iii)Their employments are seldom such as harass them from morning to night. They generally have a good deal of spare time during which they can perfect themselves in every branch of useful or ornamental knowledge that attracts them.

It is otherwise with the common people.

(i)Their parents can barely afford to maintain them, even in infancy. As soon as they are able to work they must follow some trade by which they can earn their subsistence.

(ii)That trade is generally so simple and uniform that it gives little exercise to the understanding.

(iii)Their labour is so constant and so severe that it leaves them little time and less inclination to think about anything else.

But. . . the most essential parts of education—to read, write, and account—can be acquired so early in life that even those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense the public can facilitate, encourage and even impose on almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.

The public can facilitate this acquisition by establishing in every parish or district a little school where children can be taught for a reward so moderate that even a common labourer can afford it. The master may be partly paid by the public (but not wholly or even principally paid by it, because then he would soon learn to neglect his business). [This is done in Scotland, Smith reports, and to a lesser extent in England.] If in those little schools the books used in teaching children to read were a little more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a smattering of Latin that the children of the common people are sometimes taught there, uselessly, they were instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary education [Smith’s phrase] of this rank of people would perhaps be as complete as it can be. There is hardly any common trade that does not provide some opportunities for applying the principles of geometry and mechanics, and that would not therefore gradually exercise and improve the common people in those principles, which are the necessary introduction to the most abstract as well as to the most useful sciences.

The public can encourage the acquisition of those most essential parts of education by giving small premiums and little badges of distinction to the children of the common people who excel in them.

The public can impose on almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education by obliging every man to undergo an examination in them before he can obtain the freedom in any corporation or be allowed to set up any trade in a village or town corporate.

[Smith writes about how ancient Greece and Rome dealt with education, especially military education. This leads into a discussion—largely repeating the one begun on page 202—of militias versus standing armies. Embedded in this is a striking declaration about a state’s interest in its citizens’ being brave; and this whole matter of the education of the young ends with a declaration about a state’s interest in its citizens’ not being stupid.]

. . . .A coward, a man incapable of defending or revenging himself, evidently lacks one of the most essential parts of the character of a man. He is as much mutilated and deformed in his mind as a legless man is in his body. He is evidently the more wretched and miserable of the two because happiness and misery must necessarily depend more on whether the mind is healthful or unhealthful, mutilated or whole, than on whether the body is. Even if the martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the society, the government would still need to give serious attention to preventing the mental mutilation, deformity, and wretchedness that cowardice involves from spreading through the great body of the people; just as it would need to give serious attention to preventing leprosy or any other loathsome and offensive disease from spreading among them, even if it were neither mortal nor dangerous.. . . .

The same thing may be said of the gross ignorance and stupidity that seem so often to benumb the understandings of all the lower ranks of people in a civilised society. A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the character of human nature. Even if the state derived no advantage from the instruction of the lower ranks of people, it should still attend to their not being altogether uninstructed. In fact, though, the state gets considerable advantage from their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of fanaticism and superstition, which often cause the most dreadful disorders among ignorant nations. Also, an instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more respectable and more likely to have the respect of their lawful superiors, which makes them more disposed to respect those superiors. . . .

In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much on the people’s favourable judgment of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it.