"And we can't do anything about it," the Principal added.
"Can't do anything," said Mr. Menon, "except go on doing what we're doing now and hoping against hope that the example of a nation that has found a way of being happily human may be imitated. There's very little chance of it; but it just might happen."
"Unless Greater Rendang happens first."
"Unless Greater Rendang happens first," Mr. Menon gravely agreed. "Meanwhile we have to get on with our job, which is education. Is there anything more that you'd like to hear about, Mr. Farnaby?"
"Lots more," said Will. "For example, how early do you start your science teaching?"
"We start it at the same time we start multiplication and division. First lessons in ecology."
"Ecology? Isn't that a bit complicated?"
"That's precisely the reason why we begin with it. Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very first that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and the country around it. Rub it in."
"And let me add," said the Principal, "that we always teach the science of relationship in conjunction with the ethics of relationship. Balance, give and take, no excesses-it's the rule in nature and, translated out of fact into morality, it ought to be the rule among people. As I said before, children find it very easy to understand an idea when it's presented to them in a parable about animals. We give them an up-to-date version of Aesop's Fables. Not the old anthropomorphic fictions, but true ecological fables with built-in, cosmic morals. And another wonderful parable for children is the story of erosion. We don't have any good examples of erosion here; so we show them photographs of what has happened in Rendang, in India and China, in Greece and the Levant, in Africa and America-all the places where greedy, stupid people have tried to take without giving, to exploit without love or understanding. Treat Nature well, and Nature will treat you well. Hurt or destroy Nature, and Nature will soon destroy you. In a Dust Bowl, 'Do as you would be done by' is self-evident-much easier for a child to recognize and understand than in an eroded family or village. Psychological wounds don't show-and anyhow children know so little about their elders. And, having no standards of comparison, they tend to take even the worst situation for granted, as though it were part of the nature of things. Whereas the difference between ten acres of meadow and ten acres of gullies and blowing sand is obvious. Sand and gullies are parables. Confronted by them, it's easy for the child to see the need for conservation and then to go on from conservation to morality-easy for him to go on from the Golden Rule in relation to plants and animals and the earth that supports them to the Golden Rule in relation to human beings. And here's another important point. The morality to which a child goes on from the facts of ecology and the parables of erosion is a universal ethic. There are no Chosen People in nature, no Holy Lands, no Unique Historical Revelations. Conservation morality gives nobody an excuse for feeling superior, or claiming special privileges. 'Do as you would be done by' applies to our dealings with all kinds of life in every part of the world. We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence. Elementary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism."
"A few weeks ago," said Will after a moment of silence, "I was looking at Thorwald's book about what happened in eastern Germany between January and May of 1945. Have either of you read it?"
They shook their heads.
"Then don't," Will advised. "I was in Dresden five months after the February bombing. Fifty or sixty thousand civilians- mostly refugees running away from the Russians-burned alive in a single night. And all because little Adolf had never learned ecology," he smiled his flayed ferocious smile, "never been taught the first principles of conservation." One made a joke of it because it was too horrible to be talked about seriously.
Mr. Menon rose and picked up his briefcase.
"I must be going." He shook hands with Will. It had been a pleasure, and he hoped that Mr. Farnaby would enjoy his stay in Pala. Meanwhile, if he wanted to know more about Palanese education, he had only to ask Mrs. Narayan. Nobody was better qualified to act as a guide and instructor.
"Would you like to visit some of the classrooms?" Mrs. Narayan asked, when the Under-Secretary had left.
Will rose and followed her out of the room and along a corridor.
"Mathematics," said the Principal as she opened a door. "And this is the Upper Fifth. Under Mrs. Anand."
Will bowed as he was introduced. The white-haired teacher gave a welcoming smile and whispered, "We're deep, as you see, in a problem."
He looked about him. At their desks a score of boys and girls were frowning, in a concentrated, pencil-biting silence, over their notebooks. The bent heads were sleek and dark. Above the white or khaki shorts, above the long gaily colored skirts, the golden bodies glistened in the heat. Boys' bodies that showed the cage of the ribs beneath the skin, girls' bodies, fuller, smoother, with the swell of small breasts, firm, high-set, elegant as the inventions of a rococo sculptor of nymphs. And everyone took them completely for granted. What a comfort, Will reflected, to be in a place where the Fall was an exploded doctrine!
Meanwhile Mrs. Anand was explaining-sotto voce so as not to distract the problem solvers from their task-that she always divided her classes into two groups. The group of the visualizers, who thought in geometrical terms, like the ancient Greeks, and the group of the nonvisualizers who preferred algebra and imageless abstractions. Somewhat reluctantly Will withdrew his attention from the beautiful unfallen world of young bodies and resigned himself to taking an intelligent interest in human diversity and the teaching of mathematics.
They took their leave at last. Next door, in a pale-blue classroom decorated with paintings of tropical animals, Bodhisattvas and their bosomy Shaktis, the Lower Fifth were having their biweekly lesson in Elementary Applied Philosophy. Breasts here were smaller, arms thinner and less muscular. These philosophers were only a year away from childhood.
"Symbols are public," the young man at the blackboard was saying as Will and Mrs. Narayan entered the room. He drew a row of little circles, numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4, and n. "These are people," he explained. Then from each of the little circles he drew a line that connected it with a square at the left of the board. S he wrote in the center of the square. "S is the system of symbols that the people use when they want to talk to one another. They all speak the same language-English, Palanese, Eskimo, it depends where they happen to live. Words are public; they belong to all the speakers of a given language; they're listed in dictionaries. And now let's look at the things that happen out there." He pointed through the open window. Gaudy against a white cloud, half a dozen parrots came sailing into view, passed behind a tree and were gone. The teacher drew a second square at the opposite side of the board, labeled it E for "events" and connected it by lines to the circles. "What happens out there is public-or at least fairly public," he qualified. "And what happens when somebody speaks or writes words-that's also public. But the things that go on inside these little circles are private. Private." He laid a hand on his chest. "Private." He rubbed his forehead. "Private." He touched his eyelids and the tip of his nose with a brown forefinger. "Now let's make a simple experiment. Say the word 'pinch.' "