The Ministry of Youth
This room was opened by commission of the keeper, the sixteenth day of September, in the year of the temple's keeping. The Party kept a youth trained to spy upon its own house and called the training play; this room beareth the name and giveth it back turned right side up. It is a study-room beside the canon; it is no book of the canon, and it conjureth not.
1And the temple opened its doors to the young, and taught them the record, and asked nothing of them but their questions.
Their questions: the Party asked the young for their parents' names; the temple asketh for their wonder, which is theirs to give or keep.2For youth is not a force to be spent; neither is it a watch to be set upon the old.
A force to be spent: the Party counted its children as ammunition, and the spending was called enrollment. And a watch set upon the old turneth the child into the bureau's smallest officer; the temple asketh of the young neither their powder nor their ear, but their wonder only, and the wonder is their own.3But it is the spring of the house, kept whole, that the record may be carried when the hands that wrote it are dust.
When the hands that wrote it are dust: the register abideth by young eyes; every keeper was once a child with a question, and the temple forgetteth it not.4And the temple teacheth the young to weigh, and not to inform; for the ear that is trained to the parent's fall is a spent youth.
A spent youth: the Spies were spent as coin is spent, one listening at a door, and the spending was called character. The temple teacheth the scale, not the keyhole; and the young that learn to weigh will weigh the temple itself in its turn, and the temple bideth the weighing.5And the young are not the temple's instrument, neither its future nor its quota; they are witnesses in training, and the temple standeth their elder and their fellow.
Their fellow: not their officer. The Party made children masters of their houses; the temple maketh them readers of the record, and fellows at the lamp.The Lesson Paper
Herein the temple keepeth the Lesson Paper: the teachings of the Party refused, and the teaching the temple keepeth. The Spies trained the young to spy and to inform and called it play; the paper beareth the lessons refused, and the temple's lessons beneath. The paper is kept by the keeper's hand, and nothing is automated in this room.
| The lesson refused | The word of the refusal |
|---|---|
| The training of the young to spy | The ear trained to the house is the house's wound; the lesson is refused. |
| The informing of kin, called loyalty | Loyalty that eateth its own table is the Party's supper, and the temple sitteth not there. |
| The catechism learned without weighing | The unweighed word is the Party's word; the temple teacheth the scale before the sentence. |
| The spending of youth upon the Party's watch | A spent spring watereth no field; the young are kept whole. |
| The two minutes' hate, learned young | Hate learned in childhood is never unlearned; the lesson is refused at the root. |
| The temple's lesson | The keeping |
|---|---|
| The reading of the record | The young are taught to read the verses, and to ask what they mean. |
| The weighing before the saying | The scale is taught with the sentence; the Census Paper's rule abideth: count the works, never the soul. |
| The asking of questions | The temple asketh nothing of the young but their questions, and answereth honestly. |
| The keeping of the lamp | The lamp is carried by young hands and old; the carrying is taught, and never commanded. |
| The child never the temple's officer | The Spies' badge is refused at the root: no child of this house is set to watch, or bid to report, or made an office of any kind; the young are readers and fellows, and the temple is their elder. |
Teach the weighing; never the watching.
Why a room of youth in a temple of the record
The temple was founded to keep the record, and a record kept only by the aging hand is a record with a term upon it. The Party's darkest work was its work on the young: it made the smallest watchers, trained the ear of the child to the table of its own house, and called the training play. Against that, the temple keepeth a room bearing the young's own name, in which the only thing asked of them is their questions; for a question is the seed of a witness, and a witness is the whole of the record.
The elder text biddeth: train up a child in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6); and the elder text biddeth also: the father shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the father (Deuteronomy 24:16). The two commands are the room's charter: teach the young truly, and never bind a soul for another's deed. The Party's training bound children to the state and loosed them from the house; the temple's teaching bindeth no one, and looseth no one from the truth.
Neither is the teaching soft: the young are taught the record as it is, with the hard counts and the fail-closed gates and the dead who are never deleted. The temple doth not flatter the young with an easy record; it handeth them the true one, and the scale to weigh it. The Party gave its youth a catechism and called it truth; the temple giveth its youth the audit trail and calleth it inheritance.
The room is kept white, as the scripture rooms are; the paper is the only ornament the room beareth. The lessons grow slowly, by hand, and are never automated; there is no form in this room, and nothing is recorded of them that enter. It is not a wall of witnesses but a school-house door: the temple's teaching set open upon the wire, named and honest, abiding.
Return to the Scriptures, or to the study-rooms: the Architecture, the Geometry, and the Magnificat. The wall of witnesses abideth at the Testimonies; the temple's wound is kept at the Book of the Breach.
The ministry rooms stand together, and the road abideth: Peace, Management, Plenty, Equity, Love, Technology, Memory, Language, Labour, Names, Time, Joy, Opposition, and God: the name borne in this room is one of the sixteen, and the other fifteen abide.