Lewis's treatment of School

[TimmyofOz]

I just got done listening to LWW on CD for Thankgiving. And once again I saw Lewis make a swipe at schools. Apparently Edmund started going bad because of a new school he was going to. And one of the new sovereigns main accomplishment was that they "liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school". We know how Lewis also made a bad school a highlight in SC. And at the end of PC a school is made to be a sad place that Aslan liberates many from. Is Lewis upset with just bad schools or all learning institutes. Maybe he would have liked Home schooling if they had it then.

 

[Parthian King]

Read Surprised by Joy, and you will understand his perspective better. He was sent off to boarding school (which in SBJ he names "Belsen" in his chapter "Concentration Camp") in Hertfordshire about a month after his mother's death. (I think his comment about Edmund's schooling may be a bit autobiographical here, and given his other writings I'm sure he would see himself more as Edmund--the redeemed traitor--than as Peter.) Although it doesn't compare in sheer misery, his chapter "Bloodery" describes his unpleasant experience when he was a bit older at another boarding school. Lewis' was a classic education of the British elite and cannot be compared with (what I presume by your comments to be) an understanding of public education in North America. It might also be useful to note that Lewis was a brilliant academe and spent the rest of his life in universities teachings others who had, for the most part, been to the same type of prep schools he had.

Professor Kirke's comments illuminate best: He wants to children to learn in school and be taught properly, not not to go at all.