Every aspect of the learning and teaching experience in a school is -or ought to be – about growth and development. Newman observed that even the mere fact of being in a vibrant and intense atmosphere of intellectual work can itself be an agent for the intellectual, social and cultural development of the young. (He claims not to speak of the religious and the moral in the same terms, but this is only because he is writing about Protestants for a Catholic audience. It is clear that these kinds of development cannot be separated from the rest.)

When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day. … from Idea of a University, Discourse 6.

As one who lives in such a community, and remembers experiencing something similar as a boy, I am certainly in sympathy with Newman’s view. Many of the best lessons I learnt were learnt through friendship, through discussion, even through osmosis, in an environment of men and boys with, on the whole, lively minds and open hearts; and I suppose it must be the same for the boys whom I presume to teach today.

Thinking back to my own days as a schoolboy, however, there is a clear distinction in my mind between those long-lasting lessons that I learnt from teachers as teachers, and those I learnt from teachers as men. Perhaps it is partly because I was never a brilliant scientist that my best and fondest memories of my science masters involve camping trips or discussions about the existence of God; they have little to do with photosynthesis, the periodic table or electrons, although these were certainly interesting and useful things to know, and even if the disciplines of mind acquired in studying them are doubtless a useful break to the romantic and impractical urges of the artist.

On the other hand, the encounter of minds, and even hearts, so idealised by Newman (whose own heraldic motto was cor ad cor loquitur) certainly happened in English, History and Religion lessons at school; and that – it seems to me – is how I have been drawn to relive that same experience myself from the other side of the teacher’s desk. I can remember the buzz I myself felt when discovering the possibilities of language, or appreciating why I found an argument convincing or why some descriptive passages in novels produced a clear picture in the mind and others did not. English, then, was a subject that certainly marked me more than any other; and I am sure that this was a common experience for many English grammar school boys.

Anthropologists teach us that tribal myths and legends had an initiatic function, helping the young to integrate into society and understand their role in it. Modern children have the same needs as their classical and tribal ancestors, and will respond in the same way to the childhood heroes that we set before them in our era. They will imitate them. Good art – especially if it is being served to unformed minds – should imitate the best of life, so that our living is in turn enriched by it. So, we should be careful, and not simply accept the latest product of Hollywood as the new Jason, Hercules or, ultimately (for a believer), Jesus Christ for our children. There is a direct link between the impoverishment of the myths and literature we offer our children and the all-pervasive societal and moral decline evident especially in the level of aspirations and behaviour we are now seeing in our inner cities. (Jenny lives with Eric and Martin, Susanne Bosche, 1981 (championed by the Positive Imaging policies of the Inner London Education Authority back in the 1980s) would be a particularly crass example of how misguided intellectuals would seek to influence schoolchildren through fabricating brand new initiatic myths. )

It is the task, then, of the good English teacher, to instil a love for (and, in these interesting and dangerous times, a critical taste for) good literature, by proposing plenty of it to the young mind. This way, we may inform the thoughts that will be thought. We engage in the noble mission of furnishing the mind of the next generation, ensuring that these youngsters are not strangers to the human condition, but full participants in it (a Christian sentiment, of course: “I came that they might have life; and life in all its fullness.” John 10:10) To achieve nobility of soul, then, we must ensure a nobility of influences: the speeches of great men or, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, “the best that has ever been thought or known.” In Culture and Anarchy.

Part of the reason why in so many English literature departments in universities around the world, left-wing professors will devote themselves to almost any task other than actually teaching English literature, is that they know that the classics have a transformative, healing and formative effect, and one that promotes and celebrates a profound – and anti-revolutionary – continuity of all the ages of man’s story. That is what makes them classics. And that is what makes them unpopular with those who are uncomfortable with man’s past and heritage: those, in fact, who would make us all strangers to the human condition, in order to make us ripe for brainwashing into Marxism, Nazism, hedonism or whichever other particular ephemeral ideology they happen to espouse.

If we English teachers can give our pupils enough experience of good and wholesome literature and ideas, and a love for language and its possibilities, we will be rooting them firmly in their culture, and also helping them to think for themselves. The positive effects of such a contribution to their education will be felt across the whole curriculum (inter alia, it will improve their Thinking Skills, to borrow the ridiculous modern edu-jargon) and will teach them spiritual, intellectual, moral, social and cultural lessons that will last a lifetime. Then they will never be time’s fools, taken in too easily by the zeitgeist. They will stand like Shakespeare’s fixed mark (in his wonderful sonnet 116), braving all the tempests that the unlovely and uncultured moderns can throw at them.