The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. We have done this by inculcating The Historical Point of View. Only the learned read old books and we have now so dealt with the learned that they are of all men the least likely to acquire wisdom by doing so. You are much more likely to make man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as an anodyne when he is dull and weary. It is the same with other desires of the flesh. generous and imaginative and even spiritual. 'being in love,' much more easily drawn into perversions, much less. And it is also to be noted that the Trough sexuality is subtly different in quality from that of the Peak - much less likely to lead to. The attack has a much better chance of success when the man's whole inner world is drab and cold and empty. be very easily used for work or play or thought or innocuous merriment. This may surprise you, because, of course, there is more physical energy, and therefore more potential appetite, at the Peak periods but you must remember that the powers of resistance are then also at their highest. “I have always found that the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age-group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coaeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON THE MAT.” Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma-Beelzebub, what a useful word!-by being left behind. An even more drastic scheme is not impossible. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have-I believe the English already use the phrase-‘parity of esteem’. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Let them, for example, make mud-pies and call it modelling. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. These differences between the pupils-for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences-must be disguised. “The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils.

Screwtape letters