Kipling Knew What We Seem to Have Forgotten

Rudyard Kipling has gone far out of fashion. Born in Bombay, in British India, in 1865, he was an unapologetic imperialist; he even coined the phrase “take up the white man’s burden” to mark the symbolic passage of global power from Britain to the US. Yet his 1919 poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” should be compulsory reading today because it goes to the heart of our contemporary troubles — and suggests a way out.

Kipling wrote “The Gods” in 1919, after a war that had killed as many as 22 million people (including his only son, John) and amid a pandemic that eventually claimed at least another 50 million. The poem contrasts the “gods of the marketplace” — faddish ideas that periodically grip the public — with the “gods of the copybook headings” — pieces of popular wisdom that were printed on the top line of every page in school exercise books. Children were expected to copy them out, learning basic moral lessons while they improved their handwriting.