Footnote anchors are denoted by [number],
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in the form a b/c, for example
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The acronym P.N.E.U. stands for “Parents’ National Educational Union”.
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
HOME EDUCATION.
PARENTS AND CHILDREN.
SCHOOL EDUCATION.
OURSELVES.
SOME STUDIES IN THE FORMATION OF
CHARACTER.
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD: OR, THE GOSPELS IN VERSE. Each Volume profusely illustrated. Vol. I: The Holy Infancy. Vol. II: His Dominion. Vol. III: Kingdom of Heaven. Vol. IV: Bread of Life. Vol. V: The Great Controversy. Vol. VI: The Training of the Disciples.
THE AMBLESIDE GEOGRAPHY READERS. Book 1.—Elementary. Maps, Plans, etc. Book 2.—Chief Divisions of the World,
with special reference to the British Empire. Book 3.—Counties of England. Book 4.—Europe. Book 5.—Asia, Africa, N. and S. America,
Australia.
An Essay Towards
A Philosophy of Education
A LIBERAL EDUCATION FOR ALL
BY
CHARLOTTE M. MASON
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO., LTD.
Broadway House: 68-74, Carter Lane, E.C. 4
1925
Printed in Great Britain by
The Bowering Press, Plymouth.
“ALL KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL MEN.”
Comenius.
“Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good,
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Not self-expression—A person, built up from within—Life,
sustained on food—Plant analogy misleading—Mental
and physical gymnastics—Mental food—The
life of the mind—Proper sustenance—Knowledge, not
sensation or information—Education, of the spirit—Cannot
be applied from without—Modern educators
belittle children—Education will profit by divorce from
sociology—Danger of an alliance with pathology—A
comprehensive theory—Fits all ages—Self-education—All
children have intellectual capacity—Should learn to
‘read’ before mechanical art of reading—Are much
occupied with things and books—A knowledge of principles,
necessary—Education chaotic for want of unifying
theory—The motive that counts.
1.—The Mind of a Child: The baby, more than a huge
oyster—Poets on infancy—Accomplishments of a child
of two—Education does not produce mind—The range
of a child’s thoughts—Reason and imagination present
in the infant—Will and wilfulness.
2.—The Mind of a School-Child: Amazing potentialities—Brain,
the organ of mind—The “unconscious mind,”
a region of symptoms—Mind, being spiritual, knows
no fatigue—Brain, duly fed, should not know fatigue—A
“play-way” does not lead to mind—Nor does environment—Mind
must come into contact with mind—What
is mind?—Material things have little effect upon
mind—Education, the evidence of things not seen—Ideas,
only fit sustenance for mind—Children must have
great ideas—Children experience what they hear and
read of—Our want of confidence in children—Children
see, in their minds—Mind, one and works altogether—Children
must see the world—Dangers of technical,
commercial, historical geography—Every man’s mind,
his means of living—All classes must be educated—The
æsthetic sense—A child’s intellect and heart already
furnished—He learns to order his life.
3.—Motives for Learning: Diluted teaching—Every
child has infinite possibilities—The Parents’ Union
School—The House of Education—Teachers must know
capabilities and requirements of children.
1.—Well-Being of Body: “Children of wrath”—“Little
angel” theory—Good and evil tendencies—Education,
handmaid of Religion—Religion becoming
more magnanimous—New-born children start fair—Children,
more of persons in their homes—Appetites—Senses—Undue
nervous tension—Overpowering personality—Parasitic
habits.
2.—Well-Being of Mind: Mind, not a chartered libertine—Has
good and evil tendencies—Intellectual evil—Intellect
enthroned in every child—A child’s vivifying
imagination—Explanations unnecessary—Children
sense the meaning of a passage—Incuria—Going over
same ground—Dangers of specialisation—Of the questionnaire—Capacity
v. aptness—Imagination, good and
evil—Reason deified by the unlearned—Fallacious reasoning—A
liberal education necessary—The beauty
sense.
3.—Intellectual Appetite: The desires—Wrong use of—Love
of knowledge sufficient stimulus.
4.—Misdirected Affections: The feelings—Love and
justice—Moral education—Children must not be fed
morally—They want food whose issue is conduct—Moral
lessons worse than useless—Every child endowed
with love—And justice—Rights and duties—Fine art
of self-adjustment—To think fairly requires knowledge—Our
thoughts are not our own—Truth, justice
in word—Opinions show integrity of thought—Sound
principles—All children intellectually hungry—Starve
on the three R’s.
5.—The Well-Being of the Soul: Education and the Soul
of a child—Ignorance of the child—Approaches towards
God—How knowledge grows—Narration—Great
thoughts of great thinkers illuminate children—Education
drowned by talk—Formative influence of
knowledge—Self-expression—Education, a going forth
of the mind—The “unconscious mind”—Mind always
conscious—But thinks in ways of which we are unconscious—Dangers
of introspection—“Complexes”—Necessity
for a Philosophy of Education.
Deputed authority, lodged in everyone—No such thing
as anarchy—A mere transference of authority—Authority
makes for Liberty—Order, the outcome of authority—Docility,
universal—The principles of authority
and docility inherent in everyone—Crux, to
find the mean—Freedom, offered as solution—“Proud
subjection and dignified obedience”—Secured by feeding
the mind—Subservience v. docility—Docility implies
equality—Physical activities do not sustain mind—Many
relationships must be established—No undue
emphasis—Sense of must in teacher and child—Freedom
comes with knowledge—The office makes the man—Children
must have responsibility of learning—The
potency of their minds—All children have quick apprehension—And
the power of attention—Humane letters
make for efficiency—Delightful to use any power—Common
interests—Powers of attention and recollection
a national asset—But want of intellectual interests
a serious handicap.
An adequate conception of children necessary—All action
comes from the ideas held—The child’s estate higher
than ours—Methods of undermining personality—
Fear—Love—“Suggestion”—Influence—Methods of
stultifying intellectual and moral growth—The desires—Of
approbation—Of emulation—Of ambition—Of
society—The natural desire of knowledge—Definite
progress, a condition of education—Doctrine of equal
opportunities for all, dangerous—But a liberal education
the possibility for all.
1.—Education is an Atmosphere: Only three means of
education—Not an artificial environment—But a natural
atmosphere—Children must face life as it is—But
must not be overburdened by the effort of decision—Dangers
of intellectual feebleness and moral softness—Bracing
atmosphere of truth and sincerity—Not a too
stimulating atmosphere—Dangers of “running wild”—Serenity
comes with the food of knowledge—Two
courses open to us.
2.—Education is a Discipline: We must all make efforts—But
a new point of view, necessary—Children must
work for themselves—Must perform the act of knowing—Attention,
the hall-mark of an educated person—Other
good habits attending upon due self-education—Spirit,
acts upon matter—Habit is to life what rails are
to transport cars—Habit is inevitable—Genesis of habit—Habits
of the ordered life—Habits of the religious life—De
Quincey on going to church—Danger of thinking
in a groove—Fads.
3.—Education is a Life: Life is not self-existing—Body
pines upon food substitutes—Mind cannot live
upon information—What is an idea?—A live thing of
the mind—Potency of an idea—Coleridge on ideas—Platonic
doctrine of ideas—Functions of education not
chiefly gymnastic—Dangers attendant upon “original
composition”—Ideas, of spiritual origin—The child,
an eclectic—Resists forcible feeding—We must take the
risk of the indirect literary form—Ideas must be presented
with much literary padding—No one capable
of making extracts—Opinions v. ideas—Given an idea,
mind performs acts of selection and inception—Must
have humane reading as well as human thought.
Herbartian Psychology—“Apperception masses”—Dangers
of correlation—“Concentration series”—Children
reduced to inanities—Mind, a spiritual organism—Cannot
live upon “sweetmeats”—Burden of
education thrown on teacher—Danger of exalting
personality of teacher—“Delightful lessons”—Across
the Bridges, by A. Paterson—Blind alleys—Unemployment—Best
boys run to seed—Continuation Classes—Education
Act of 1918—An eight hours’ University
course—Academic ideal of Education—Continuation
school, a People’s University—Dangers of utilitarian
education—The “humanities” in English—Narration
prepares for public speaking—Father of the People’s
High Schools—Munich schools—Worship of efficiency—A
well-grounded humanistic training produces capacity—Mr.
Fisher on Continuation Schools—A more
excellent way—Education from six to seventeen—A
liberal education for all.
Will, “the sole practical faculty”—“The will is the
man”—Its function, to choose, to decide—Opinions
provided for us—We take second-hand principles—One
possible achievement, character—Aim in education,
less conduct than character—Assaults upon the will—“Suggestion”—Voluntary
and involuntary action—We
must choose between suggestions—Danger of suggestion
given by another with intent—Vicarious choosing—Weakens
power of choice—Parasitic creatures may
become criminal—Gordon Riots—His will, the safeguard
of a man—Indecent to probe thoughts of the
“unconscious mind”—Right thinking, not self-expression—It
flows upon the stimulus of an idea—Will must
be fortified—Knowledge of the “city of Mansoul”
necessary—Also instruction concerning the will—Dangers
of drifting—A child must distinguish between will
and wilfulness—A strong will and “being good”—Will
must have object outside of self—Is of slow growth—Will
v. impulse—A constant will, compasses evil or good—The
“single eye”—Bushido—Will, subject to solicitation—Does
not act alone—Takes the whole man—He
must understand in order to will—Will, a free agent—Choice,
a heavy labour—Obedience, the sustainer of
personality—Obedience of choice—Persons of constant
will—Dangers of weak allowance—Two services open
to all—Self and God—Will is supreme—Will wearies
of opposition—Diversion—The “way of the will”—Freewill—We
may not think what we please—Will
supported by instructed conscience and trained reason—Education
must prepare for immediate choice—Adequate
education must be outward bound.
Reason brings forward infallible proofs—May be furtherer
of counsels, good or bad—Inventions—How did
you think of it?—Children should follow steps of reasoning—Psychology
of crime—Reasonable and right,
not synonymous—Reason works involuntarily—Reason
never begins it—Reason will affirm any theory—Logic,
the formula of reason—But not necessarily right—Beauty
and wonder of act of reasoning—But there
are limitations—We must be able to expose fallacies—Karl
Marx—Socialistic thought of to-day—Reason
requires material to work upon—Reason subject to
habit—Children must have principles—Be able to
detect fallacies—Must know what Religion is—Miracles—Quasi-religious
offers—Great things of life cannot be
proved—Reason is fallible—Children, intensely reasonable—Reasoning
power of a child does not wait upon
training—But children do not generalise—Must not be
hurried to formulate—Mathematics should not monopolise
undue time—Cannot alone produce a reasonable
soul.
Standard in Secondary Schools set by public examinations—Elementary
Schools less limited with regard to
subjects—A complete curriculum in the nature of things—Education
still at sea—Children have inherent claims—Law
of supply and demand—Human nature a composite
whole—The educational rights of man—We may
not pick and choose—Shelley offers a key—Mistakes v.
howlers—Knowledge should be consecutive, intelligent,
complete—Hours of work, not number of subjects,
bring fatigue—Short hours—No preparation.
Knowledge of God indispensable—Mothers communicate
it best—Relation to God a first-born affinity—“Kiddies”
not expected to understand—School education
begins at six—No conscious mental effort should be
required earlier—Dr. Johnson on “telling again”—Two
aspects of Religion—Attitude of Will towards God—Gradual
perception of God—Goethe on repose of soul—Children
must have passive as well as active principle—New
Testament teaching must be grounded on Old—Sceptical
children—Must not be evaded or answered
finally—A thoughtful commentator necessary—Method
of lessons, six to twelve, twelve to fifteen, fifteen to
eighteen—Aids of modern scholarship—Dogmatic
teaching comes by inference—Very little hortatory
teaching desirable—Synthetic study of life and teaching
of Christ, a necessity—“Authentic comment”
essayed in verse—Catechism—Prayer Book—Church
History.
(a) History: Montaigne on history—The League of
Nations and its parallels—Henry VIII on precedent—Dangers
of indifference to history—Rational patriotism
depends upon knowledge of history—History must
give more than impressions and opinions—P.U.S. method
multiplies time—Concentrated attention given
to the right books—Condition, a single reading—Attention
a natural function—Teacher’s interest an incentive—Teacher
who “makes allowance” for wandering,
hinders—Narration in the history lesson—Distinction
between word memory and mind memory—English
history for children of six to nine—Of nine to twelve—French
history—Ancient history—For children of
twelve to fifteen—Indian history—European history—History
for pupils of fifteen to eighteen—Literature—A
mental pageant of history—Gives weight to decisions,
consideration to action, stability to conduct—Labour
unrest—Infinite educability of all classes—Equal opportunity
should be afforded—But uneasiness apt to
follow—Knowledge brings its own satisfaction—Education
merely a means of getting on, or, of progress towards
high thinking and plain living.
(b) Literature: Literature in Form I—Classics, not
written down—In Form II—Children show originality
in “mere narration”—Just as Scott, Shakespeare,
Homer—Children all sit down to the same feast—Each
gets according to his needs and powers—Reading for
Forms III and IV—Abridged editions undesirable—Children
take pleasure in the “dry” parts—Must have
a sense of wide spaces for the imagination to wander in—Judgment
turns over the folios of the mind—Statesmanship,
formed upon wide reading—Reading for
Forms V and VI (fifteen to eighteen).
(c) Morals and Economics: Citizenship: Form I—Tales—Fables—Hears
of great citizens—Form II—The
inspiration of citizenship—Plutarch—Present day
citizenship—Problems of good and evil—Plutarch does
not label actions—Children weary of the doctored tale—The
human story always interesting—Jacob—The
good, which is all virtuous, palls—Children must see life
whole—Must be protected from grossness by literary
medium—Learn the science of proportion—Difficulty
of choosing books—Chastely taught children watch their
thoughts—Expurgated editions—Processes of nature
must not be associated with impurity—Games—Offences
bred in the mind—Mind must be continually and
wholesomely occupied—A sound body and a sound
mind—Ourselves, our Souls and Bodies—An ordered
presentation of the possibilities and powers of human
nature.
(d) Composition: Oral, from six to seven—Dangers
of teaching composition—The art of “telling”—Power
of composition innate—Oral and written from nine to
twelve—Integral part of education in every subject—From
twelve to fifteen—An inevitable consequence of
free and exact use of books—Verse—Scansion—Rhythm—Accent—Subject
must be one of keen interest—From
fifteen to eighteen, some definite teaching—Suggestions
or corrections—Education bears on the issues
and interests of everyday life.
(f) Art: Art is of the spirit—Reverent knowledge of
pictures themselves—Method—No talk of schools
of painting or style—Picture tells its own tale—Drawing—Original
illustrations—Figures—Objects—Colour—Field
studies—Architecture—Clay-modelling—Artistic
handicrafts—Musical Appreciation.
(a) Science: Huxley—“Common information”—Books
should be literary in character—French approach
to science—Principles underlying science meet for literary
treatment—Details of application too technical
for school work—Universal principles must be linked
with common incidents—Verbiage that darkens counsel—Out-of-door
work—Natural history, botany, astronomy,
physiology, hygiene, general science—A due
combination of field work with literary comments—Fatal
divorce between science and the “humanities”—Nature
Note Books—Science not a utilitarian subject.
Geography: Suffers from utilitarian spirit—Mystery
and beauty gone—Modern geography, concerned with
man’s profit—A map should unfold a panorama of
delight—Map work—Children read and picture descriptions—Knowledge
of England, a key to the world—Naval
history—Empire geography—Current geography—Countries
of Europe—Romance of natural features,
peoples, history, industries—Generalisations, not geography—Children
must see with the mind’s eye—Two
ways of teaching geography—Inferential method—But
general principles open to modification—No local colour
and personal interests—No imaginative conception—Panoramic
method—Gives colour, detail, proportion,
principles—Pictures not of much use—Except those
constructed by the imagination from written descriptions—Survey
of Asia—Africa—America—Physical
geography—Geography in connection with history—Practical
geography.
(b) Mathematics: Reasoning powers do not wait upon
our training—Beauty and truth of Mathematics—A
sense of limitation wholesome—We should hear sursum
corda in natural law—Mind invigorated by hard exercise—Mathematics
easy to examine upon—Dangers of education
directed not to awaken awe but to secure exactness—Which
does not serve in other departments of
life—Work upon special lines qualifies for work on those
only—Mathematics to be studied for their own sake—Not
as they make for general intelligence and grasp
of mind—Genius has her rights—Tendency to sacrifice
the “humanities” to Mathematics—Mathematics depend
upon the teacher—Few subjects worse taught—A
necessary part of education.
A liberal education, birthright of every child—Good
life implies cultivated intelligence—Difficulty of offering
Humanism to everyone—Problem solved at last—by
the Drighlington School (Yorks)—Teachers, not satisfied—Potency,
not property, characteristic of mind—We
try to give potency rather than knowledge—Result,
devitalisation—Mind receives knowledge in order
to grow, not to know—Office of teacher depreciated—He
has prophetic power of appeal and inspiration—Delightful
commerce of equal minds—And friction of wills
ceases—Children not products of education and environment—Carlyle
on “a person”—Children not incomplete
and undeveloped, but ignorant and weak—Potentialities
of a child as he is—David Copperfield—Knowledge,
conceived in mind—Ignorance, a chief
cause of our difficulties—Matthew Arnold—Three
divisions of knowledge—All classed under Humanism—Mind
acts upon it—Vitality results—Mind and
knowledge like ball and socket joint—Results of
P.N.E.U. method made good by thousands of children—Work
done by self-effort—Single reading tested
by narration—No revision—For children know—Use
proper names with ease—Write fully—Rarely make
howlers—Get at gist of book or subject—Children of
six to eight dictate answers at examination time—Teacher
reads with intention—Is careful to produce
author—Children listen with attention—No selection
of subjects—Book read through—Older children read
for themselves—Work done in less time—No preparation—No
working-up—Time for vocational work—Such
education, a social lever—A venture of faith—In
knowledge and in children—A new product appears—Peculiar
experience, misleading—General experience
testifies to laws—Usual educational equipment based
on false assumption—Which intervenes between child
and knowledge—Method specially suitable for large
classes—Labour of correction minimised—Choice of
books—Character of P.U.S. examination—Children reject
wrong book—Great cause of Education v. Civilisation—Grand
elementary principle of pleasure—Only
one education common to all.
Pelmanism, an indictment—Monotonous drudgery the
stumbling-block to education—A “play way”—Handicrafts—Eurhythmics—Enthusiasm
of teachers
amazing—Education, a passion—Joan and Peter types—Public
School men do the work of the world—But
schools do not teach what a boy wants to know—Mulish
resistance—Ways of mind subtle and evasive—The
error of “not what you know that matters but how you
learn it”—Every school must educate every scholar—What
is knowledge?—Intellectual requirements satisfied
by bridge and golf—Attention acts without marks,
praise or blame—But training, not education—No
faculties, only mind—Text-books make no appeal to
mind—Way of Natural Science through field work
illuminated by literature—Mind, a crucible, but no
power to distil ideas from sawdust—Dr. Arnold—“Very
various reading”—Mind, a deceiver ever—Class
will occupy itself and accomplish nothing—Outer court
of mind—Inner place where personality dwells—We
“go over it in our minds”—Attention must not be
allowed a crutch—Should be tested by the reader—Knowledge,
received with attention, fixed by narration—We
have ceased to believe in mind—Physical
brain and spiritual mind—Education must go as a
bolt to the mind—Teacher not a bridge—A key to
humanistic teaching in English—A liberal education,
measured by the number of substantives used with
fitness and simplicity—The school not merely a nursery
for the formation of character—Knowledge in
common for the “masses” and the “classes”—All
hearts rise to a familiar allusion—Speech with those
who know—Opposition, natural resource of ignorance—A
democratic education—We shall cease to present
motives of self-interest and personal advantage—The
classics in English—Old exclusive education must
broaden its base and narrow its bounds—Avoid overlapping—Academic
success and knowledge not the
same thing—Brilliant, average and dull children delight
in knowledge—It unites the household—Makes children
delightful companions—A fine sense of things worth
knowing and living for—Magnanimity, proper outcome
of education—The schoolboy’s sterile syllabus—In
spite of culture common among teachers—A method
which brings promise of relief from aphasia—Barrenness
in the written essay—Oral composition, a habit
from six to eighteen—Method cannot be worked without
a firm adherence to principle—Otherwise the books
a failure—Parents must provide necessary books—Which
must take root in the homes—Spelling comes
with the use of books—Books and text-books—The
choice of books, a question of division of labour—Terminal
examinations, records of permanent value—Bible
teaching must further the knowledge of God—The
law and the prophets still interpreters—History, the
rich pasture of the mind—Amyot on history—Plutarch—Poets—Every
age has its poetic aspect—Gathered up
by a Shakespeare—A Dante—A world possession—An
essence of history which is poetry—An essence of
science to be expressed in exquisite prose—Art—Drawing,
not a means of self-expression—Languages—Possibility
of becoming linguists—Finally, another basis for
education—Which must be in touch with life—We aim
at securing the vitality of many minds—Which shall
make England great in art and in life—Great character
comes from great thoughts—Great thoughts from great
thinkers—Thinking, not doing, the source of character.
Napoleonic Wars outcome of the wrong thinking of
ignorance—Intellectual renaissance followed—To be
superseded by the utilitarian motive—Continuation
School movement—Technical education—The Munich
Schools—“The utilitarian theory profoundly immoral”—“Service
and self-direction”—But food and work
not synonymous terms—The wide reading of great
statesmen—Duly ordered education means self-sustaining
minds and bodies—Moral bankruptcy—Co-existent
with utilitarian education—Moral madness—National
insanity—The better man does better work—German
efficiency—We depreciate ourselves—People’s High
Schools of Denmark—“A well of healing in the land”—“To
blend all classes into one”—A profoundly
Christian movement—Widely liberal as that of the
“Angelic Doctor”—Agricultural schools—Humanistic
training for business capacity—A village should offer
happy community life—Intellectual well-being makes
for stability—An empty mind seizes on any notion—A
hungry mind, responsible for labour unrest—Continuation
Schools should not exist for technical instruction—Evening
hours still free for recreation—Eight hours
a week for things of the mind—Not for opinions—Lest
leisure bore and strikes attract—But for knowledge—Not
for due exercise but for food—No
education but self-education—A great discovery
has been vouchsafed—Not a “good idea” or a
“good plan”—But a natural law in action—Grundtvig
saw impassible barrier of no literary background—But
hope of Comenius “all knowledge for all men”
is taking shape—In the case of thousands of children—Even
dull and backward ones—Under the right
conditions—Knowledge meet for the people—The
Parents’ Union School—A common curriculum for all
children of all classes—Test of a liberal education—Only
one education common to all—Nothing can act
but where it is—National work done by men brought
up on the “humanities”—Fetish of progress—The
still progress of growth—The “humanities” in English
alone, bring forth stability and efficiency—A common
ground of thought has cohesive value—Kindles
light in the eyes—Peace, signalised by a new bond of
intellectual life—Danger of ignorance in action—A
hopeful sign—Demos perceives the lack.
1. Knowledge: Failure of attempt to educate average
boy—Industrial unrest often reveals virtue but want of
knowledge—Dangerous tendency—The spirit of the
horde—Individual, less important—“Countenance,”
a manifestation of thought, dropped out of use—Never
were more devoted teachers—Substitutes for knowledge—A
mischievous fallacy—A child brought up for uses
of society—Joy in living a chief object of education—Knowledge
is the source of Pleasure—Children get
knowledge for their own sakes—Assets within power
of all—Intellectual resources—No dull hours—Knowledge
passed like light of torch from mind to mind—Kindled
at original minds—A school judged by books
used—Indirect method of teaching—Parables of Christ—Not
enough even of the right books—Children, beings
“of large discourse”—Alertness comes of handling
various subjects—Scholarship v. knowledge—Napoleon
a great reader—Nations grow great upon books—Queen
Louisa of Prussia—Kant—Fichte—The Danes—The
Japanese.
2. Letters, Knowledge and Virtue: Classics take so
much time—But University men, our educational
achievement—Letters, the content of Knowledge—Knowledge,
not a store but a state—Culture begins
with the knowledge that everything has been said and
known—We have a loss to make good—Rich and poor
used to be familiar with the Bible—A well of English
undefiled—And no longer rule as those who serve—Recklessness
due to ignorance—Scholarship, an exquisite
distinction—But not the best thing—Erudition, out
of count—The average boy—Ladies of the Italian and
French Renaissance—Tudor women—“Infinitely informed”—A
leakage somewhere—Democracy coming
in like a flood—Examination tests should safeguard
Letters—Which open life-long resources—We need a
practical philosophy—Not to be arrived at by Economics,
Eugenics—But gathered harvests of Letters.
3. Knowledge, Reason and Rebellion: Irresponsibility
characterises our generation—Lettered ignorance follows
specious arguments to logical conclusions—Reason
apt to be accompanied by Rebellion—Reason cannot
take place of Knowledge—Shakespeare on reason—The
art of living is long—Bodies of men act with momentum
which may be paralysing or propelling—Glorious thing
to perceive action of mind, reasoning power—Greek
training in use and power of words—Great thoughts
anticipate great works—People, conversant with great
thoughts—Knowledge of The Way, the Truth, the Life—A
region of sterility in intellectual life—Science the
preoccupation of our age—Principle of life goes with
flesh stripped away—History expires—Poetry, not
brought forth—Religion faints—Science, without wonder,
not spiritual—Eighteenth Century Science was
alive—Lister—Pasteur—Science, as taught, leaves us
cold—Coleridge has revealed the secret—Science waits
its literature—We are all to blame—Man does not live
by bread alone—We are losing our sense of spiritual
values—An industrial revolution—“Humbler franchises”
won by the loss of “spiritual things”—Wordsworth—Trade
Unionism a tyranny, centuries ago—Predicts
no triumph for Syndicalism now—Irresponsible
thought and speech—Question must be raised
to plane of spiritual things—Working man demands too
little—And things that do not matter—For knowledge,
the basis of a nation’s strength.
4. New and Old Conceptions of Knowledge: Knowledge,
undefined and undefinable—Knowledge v. facts—England
suffering from intellectual inanition—Mediæval
conception of knowledge—Filosofica della Religione
Cattolica—The Adoration of the Lamb—Promethean
Fable—Knowledge does not arrive casually—Is
not self-generated in man—“The teaching power of the
Spirit of God”—Unity of purpose in the education of
the race—Knowledge comes to the man who is ready—“Abt
Vogler”—All knowledge is sacred—A great
whole—Mind lives by knowledge—Which must not be
limited by choice—or time—Knowledge and “learning”—Country
needs persons of character—“New”
educational systems present a grain of knowledge in a
gallon of diluent—Rousseau’s theory—Joy in “sport”—Knowledge
plays no part in these—“Get understanding,”
our need—Fallacious arguments—Prejudice—Platitudes—Insincerity,
outcome of ignorance—Most
teachers doing excellent work—New universities full
of promise—But need for the “Science of Relations”—And
the Science of the proportion of things.
5. Education and the Fulness of Life: “I must live
my life”—What should the life be?—We are doing
something—The book of nature—Relations with
Mother Earth—Sports—Handicrafts—Art—We all
thrive in the well-being of each—The contribution of
our generation to the science of education—Person to
be brought up for his own uses—But what of mind?—Mechanical
art of reading, not reading—An unsuspected
unwritten law concerning “material” converted into
knowledge—The Logos—“The words of eternal life”—Words,
more things than events—Rhetoric a power—Motives
conveyed by words—American negroes fell
upon books—Mechanical labour performed in solitude—Labour
goes better because “my mind to me a kingdom
is”—Browning on mind—“Have mynde”—Faith
has grown feeble, Hope faints, Charity waxes
strong—But social amelioration not enough—The
pleasant places of the mind—Books, “watered down”—Christ
exposed profoundest philosophy to the multitude—Working
men value knowledge—Can deal with
it—Emotional disturbances come from mind hunger.
6. Knowledge in Literary Form: Mind demands
method—No one can live without a philosophy which
points out the end of effort—A patchwork of principles
betrays us—Human nature has not failed—But education
has failed us—A new scale of values—We want
more life—Engrossing interests—We want hope—Pleasure
comes in effort, not attainment—We want to be
governed—A new start—Other ways of looking at
things—We are uneasy—And yet almost anyone will
risk his life—Splendid magnanimity in the War—We
are not decadent—Are ready for a life of passionate
devotion—Our demands met by Words—And by the
manifestation of a Person—“The shout of a King”
among us—But understanding, prior to good works—A
consummate philosophy which meets every occasion—The
teaching of Christ—Other knowledge “dumb”
without the fundamental knowledge—Our latest educational
authority on imagination—Rousseau—Our chief
business the education of the succeeding generation—The
slough of materialism—Children must have freedom
of city of mind even in order to handle things—Imagination
does not work upon a visual presentation—Dr.
Arnold and mental pictures—“Selections” to
be avoided—Dangers of the flood-gates of knowledge—Erasmus—Rossetti—Friedrich
Perthes—Publishers
and their educational mission—Dr. Arnold on reading—A
crucial moment—John Bull on the results of forty
years’ education—England can be saved—Knowledge
exalteth a nation—Matthew Arnold’s monition.
A luminous figure of Education—But only ‘universal
opportunity’—No new thing—No universal boon like
air—Only for the few who choose—No reflection on
Public Schools but on the system of the Big Mesh—The
letters of two Public School boys pathetic but reassuring—Desire
of knowledge, inextinguishable—But
limitations of the absence of education—No cultivated
sense of humour—No sense of the supreme delightfulness
of knowledge—Coningsby—Teaching how to learn,
a farce—No avenue to knowledge but knowledge itself.
The Trustees have, at the request of the Publishers, been obliged
to reduce the original volume. Two important sections on the
practical work have been omitted,—(A)—Children’s examination
answers and, (B)—Some discussions of the method by Educational
Authorities and teachers. A pamphlet will be issued from the
P.N.E.U. Office, 26, Victoria Street, S.W., covering section B.
Sets of children’s answers (A) can be seen at the P.N.E.U. Office,
26, Victoria Street, S.W.
Foreword
Our forefathers trusted of yore to the rod and to
coercion for the evoking in children of a love of learning.
For the last fifty years we have rested our hopes on the
enthusiasm of the teachers. But that enthusiasm, when
not fictitious, often acts prejudicially by diverting the
child’s love of knowledge and new ideas into admiration
for his teacher: and when that fails, as it frequently
does, nothing is left, except extraneous and baneful
appeals to self-interest.
Miss Mason saw and in this volume has explained
that the natural and only quite wholesome way of
teaching is to let the child’s desire for knowledge operate
in the schoolboy and guide the teacher. This means
that without foregoing discipline, nor cutting ourselves
off from tradition, we must continue experiments already
being started in our elementary schools. These are
based on the chastening fact that children learn best
before we adults begin to teach them at all: and hence
that however uncongenial the task may be, we must
conform our teaching methods to those of Nature.
The attempt has often been made before. But in this
volume there is a rare combination of intuitive insight
and practical sagacity. The author refused to believe
that the collapse of the desire for knowledge between
seven and seventeen years of age is inevitable. So
must we.
EDWARD LYTTELTON, D.D.
Preface
It would seem a far cry from Undine to a ‘liberal education’
but there is a point of contact between the two;
a soul awoke within a water-sprite at the touch of love;
so, I have to tell of the awakening of a ‘general soul’
at the touch of knowledge. Eight[1] years ago the ‘soul’
of a class of children in a mining village school awoke simultaneously
at this magic touch and has remained awake.
We know that religion can awaken souls, that love makes
a new man, that the call of a vocation may do it, and in
the age of the Renaissance, men’s souls, the general soul,
awoke to knowledge: but this appeal rarely reaches the
modern soul; and, notwithstanding the pleasantness
attending lessons and marks in all our schools, I believe
the ardour for knowledge in the children of this mining
village is a phenomenon that indicates new possibilities.
Already many thousands of the children of the Empire
had experienced this intellectual conversion, but they
were the children of educated persons. To find that the
children of a mining population were equally responsive
seemed to open a new hope for the world. It may be
that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of
knowledge to awaken them to delightful living.
This is how the late Mrs. Francis Steinthal, who was
the happy instigator of the movement in Council Schools,
wrote,—“Think of the meaning of this in the lives of
the children,—disciplined lives, and no lawless strikes,
justice, an end to class warfare, developed intellects, and
no market for trashy and corrupt literature! We shall,
or rather they will, live in a redeemed world.” This was
written in a moment of enthusiasm on hearing that a
certain County Council had accepted a scheme of work
for this pioneer school; enthusiasm sees in advance the
fields white to the harvest, but indeed the event is likely
to justify high expectations. Though less than nine
years have passed since that pioneer school made the
bold attempt, already many thousands of children working
under numerous County Councils are finding that
“Studies serve for delight.”
No doubt children are well taught and happy in their
lessons as things are, and this was specially true of
the school in question; yet both teachers and children
find an immeasurable difference between the casual
interest roused by marks, pleasing oral lessons and
other school devices, and the sort of steady avidity for
knowledge that comes with the awakened soul. The
children have converted the school inspectors: “And
the English!” said one of these in astonishment as he
listened to their long, graphic, dramatic narrations of
what they had heard. During the last thirty years we
(including many fellow workers) have had thousands of
children, in our schoolrooms, home and other, working
on the lines of Dean Colet’s prayer for St. Paul’s School,—“Pray
for the children to prosper in good life and good
literature;” probably all children so taught grow up with
such principles and pursuits as make for happy and
useful citizenship.
I should like to add that we have no axe to grind.
The public good is our aim; and the methods proposed
are applicable in any school. My object in offering this
volume to the public is to urge upon all who are concerned
with education a few salient principles which are
generally either unknown or disregarded; and a few
methods which, like that bathing in Jordan, are too
simple to commend themselves to the ‘general.’ Yet
these principles and methods make education entirely
effectual.
I should like to add that no statement that I have
advanced in the following volume rests upon opinion
only. Every point has been proved in thousands of
instances, and the method may be seen at work in many
schools, large and small, Elementary and Secondary.
I have to beg the patience of the reader who is asked
to approach the one terminus by various avenues, and
I cannot do so better than in the words of old Fuller:—“Good
Reader. I suspect I may have written some
things twice; if not in the same words yet in sense, which
I desire you to pass by favourably, forasmuch as you
may well think, it was difficult and a dull thing for me in
so great a number of independent sentences to find out
the repetitions.... Besides the pains, such a search
would cost me more time than I can afford it; for my
glass of life running now low, I must not suffer one sand
to fall in waste nor suffer one minute in picking of straws....
But to conclude this, since in matters of advice,
Precept must be upon Precept, Line upon Line, I apologise
in the words of St. Paul, ‘To write the same things
to you to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is
safe.’”
I am unwilling to close what is probably the last preface
I shall be called upon to write without a very grateful
recognition of the co-operation of those friends who are
working with me in what seems to us a great cause.
The Parents’ National Educational Union has fulfilled
its mission, as declared in its first prospectus, nobly and
generously. “The Union exists for the benefit of parents
and teachers of all classes;” and, for the last eight[2] years
it has undertaken the labour and expense of an energetic
propaganda on behalf of Elementary Schools, of which
about 150[3] are now working on the programmes of the
Parents’ Union School. During the last year a pleasing
and hopeful development has taken place under the
auspices of the Hon. Mrs. Franklin. It was suggested
to the Head of a London County Council School to form
an association of the parents of the children in that school,
offering them certain advantages and requiring a small
payment to cover expenses. At the first meeting one of
the fathers present got up and said that he was greatly
disappointed. He had expected to see some three
hundred parents and there were only about sixty present!
The promoters of the meeting were, however, well pleased
to see the sixty, most of whom became members of the
Parents’ Association, and the work goes on with spirit.
We are deeply indebted to many fellow-workers, but
not even that very courteous gentleman who once wrote
a letter to the Romans could make suitable acknowledgments
to all of those to whom we owe the success of a
movement the rationale of which I attempt to make
clear in the following pages.
CHARLOTTE M. MASON.
House of Education, Ambleside. 1922.
A Short Synopsis
OF THE EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
ADVANCED IN THIS VOLUME
“No sooner doth the truth ... come into the soul’s sight, but
the soul knows her to be her first and old acquaintance.”
“The consequence of truth is great; therefore the judgment of
it must not be negligent.” (Whichcote).
1. Children are born persons.
2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities
for good and for evil.
3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience
on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but—
4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality
of children, which must not be encroached upon, whether
by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by
undue play upon any one natural desire.
5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments—the
atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the
presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: “Education
is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.”
6. When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do
not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called
a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but
that we should take into account the educational value of his
natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things,
and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It
stultifies a child to bring down his world to the ‘child’s’ level.
7. By “education is a discipline,” we mean the discipline of
habits, formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of
mind or body. Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain
structures to habitual lines of thought, i.e., to our habits.
8. In saying that “education is a life,” the need of intellectual
and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The
mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous
curriculum.
9. We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas;
but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism,
with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with
which it is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate
as the body does food-stuffs.
10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind
is a receptacle, lays the stress of Education (the preparation of
knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher.
Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving
much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom
is “what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.”
11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of
mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him,
give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that
all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not
presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception
comes our principle that,—
12. “Education is the Science of Relations”; that is, that a
child has natural relations with a vast number of things and
thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore,
handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we
know that our business is not to teach him all about anything,
but to help him to make valid as many as may be of—
“Those first-born affinities
That fit our new existence to existing things.”
13. In devising a Syllabus for a normal child, of whatever
social class, three points must be considered:—
(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient
food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental
diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity).
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language,
because his attention responds naturally to what
is conveyed in literary form.
14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced,
children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing:
or should write on some part of what they have read.
15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have
naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated
by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising,
and the like.
Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour
of mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously
greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent
on such circumstances as heredity and environment.
Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children
or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children
in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is
based on the behaviour of mind.
16. There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management
to offer to children, which we may call ‘the way
of the will’ and ‘the way of the reason.’
17. The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to
distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the
way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which
we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our
thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining
or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way,
the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of
the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease
us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘will’ again with
added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to
be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character.
It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development,
and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well
as of success.)
18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to ‘lean
(too confidently) to their own understanding’; because the
function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical
truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the
former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the
latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be
right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.
19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become
mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief
responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance
or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them
principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted
to them. These principles should save children from some of
the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us
to live at a lower level than we need.
20. We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual
and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the
Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their
continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.
Introduction
These are anxious days for all who are engaged in
education. We rejoiced in the fortitude, valour and
devotion shown by our men in the War and recognize
that these things are due to the Schools as well as to
the fact that England still breeds “very valiant creatures.”
It is good to know that “the whole army was
illustrious.” The heroism of our officers derives an
added impulse from that tincture of ‘letters’ that every
Public schoolboy gets, and those “playing fields”
where boys acquire habits of obedience and command.
But what about the abysmal ignorance shown in the
wrong thinking of many of the men who stayed at home?
Are we to blame? I suppose most of us feel that we are:
for these men are educated as we choose to understand
education, that is, they can read and write, think perversely,
and follow an argument, though they are unable
to detect a fallacy. If we ask in perplexity, why do
so many men and women seem incapable of generous
impulse, of reasoned patriotism, of seeing beyond the
circle of their own interests, is not the answer, that men
are enabled for such things by education? These are the
marks of educated persons; and when millions of men
who should be the backbone of the country seem to be
dead to public claims, we have to ask,—Why then are
not these persons educated, and what have we given
them in lieu of education?
Our errors in education, so far as we have erred, turn
upon the conception we form of ‘mind,’ and the theory
which has filtered through to most teachers implies the
out-of-date notion of the development of ‘faculties,’
a notion which itself rests on the axiom that thought is
no more than a function of the brain. Here we find
the sole justification of the scanty curricula provided
in most of our schools, for the tortuous processes of our
teaching, for the mischievous assertion that “it does
not matter what a child learns but only how he learns
it.” If we teach much and children learn little we
comfort ourselves with the idea that we are ‘developing’
this or the other ‘faculty.’ A great future lies before
the nation which shall perceive that knowledge is the
sole concern of education proper, as distinguished from
training, and that knowledge is the necessary daily food
of the mind.
Teachers are looking out for the support of a sound
theory, and such a theory must recognize with conviction
the part mind plays in education and the conditions
under which this prime agent acts. We want a philosophy
of education which, admitting that thought alone
appeals to mind, that thought begets thought, shall
relegate to their proper subsidiary places all those
sensory and muscular activities which are supposed to
afford intellectual as well as physical training. The
latter is so important in and for itself that it needs not
to be bolstered up by the notion that it includes the
whole, or the practically important part, of education.
The same remark holds good of vocational training.
Our journals ask with scorn,—“Is there no education
but what is got out of books at school? Is not the lad
who works in the fields getting education?” and the
public lacks the courage to say definitely, “No, he is
not,” because there is no clear notion current as to what
education means, and how it is to be distinguished from
vocational training. But the people themselves begin
to understand and to clamour for an education which
shall qualify their children for life rather than for earning
a living. As a matter of fact, it is the man who has read
and thought on many subjects who is, with the necessary
training, the most capable whether in handling tools,
drawing plans, or keeping books. The more of a person
we succeed in making a child, the better will he both
fulfil his own life and serve society.
Much thoughtful care has been spent in ascertaining
the causes of the German breakdown in character and
conduct; the war scourge was symptomatic and the
symptoms have been duly traced to their cause in the
thoughts the people have been taught to think during
three or four generations. We have heard much
about Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi and the rest; but
Professor Muirhead did us good service in carrying the
investigation further back. Darwin’s theories of natural
selection, the survival of the fittest, the struggle for
existence, struck root in Germany in fitting soil; and
the ideas of the superman, the super state, the right of
might—to repudiate treaties, to eliminate feebler powers,
to recognize no law but expediency—all this appears to
come as naturally out of Darwinism as a chicken comes
out of an egg. No doubt the same dicta have struck
us in the Commentaries of Frederick the Great; “they
shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who
can,” is ages older than Darwin, but possibly this is what
our English philosopher did for Germany:—There is a
tendency in human nature to elect the obligations of
natural law in preference to those of spiritual law; to
take its code of ethics from science, and, following this
tendency, the Germans found in their reading of Darwin
sanction for manifestations of brutality.
Here are a few examples of how German philosophers
amplify the Darwinian text:—“In matter dwell all
natural and spiritual potencies. Matter is the foundation
of all being.” “What we call spirit, thought, the
faculty of knowledge, consists of natural though peculiarly
combined forces.” Darwin himself protests against the
struggle for existence being the most potent agency
where the higher part of man’s nature is concerned, and
he no more thought of giving a materialistic tendency
to modern education than Locke thought of teaching
principles which should bring about the French Revolution;
but men’s thoughts are more potent than they
know, and these two Englishmen may be credited with
influencing powerfully two world-wide movements.
In Germany, “prepared by a quarter of a century of
materialistic thought,” the teaching of Darwin was
accepted as offering emancipation from various moral
restraints. Ernst Haeckel, his distinguished follower,
finds in the law of natural selection sanction for Germany’s
lawless action, and also, that pregnant doctrine of the
superman. “This principle of selection is nothing less
than democratic; on the contrary it is aristocratic in
the strictest sense of the word.” We know how Büchner,
again, simplified and popularised these new theories,—“All
the faculties which we include under the name
of psychical activities are only functions of the brain
substance. Thought stands in the same relation to the
brain as the gall to the liver.”
What use, or misuse, Germany has made of the teaching
of Darwin would not (save for the War) be of immediate
concern to us, were it not that she has given us
back our own in the form of that “mythology of faculty
psychology” which is all we possess in the way of educational
thought. English psychology proper has advanced
if not to firm ground, at any rate to the point of repudiating
the ‘faculty’ basis. “However much assailed,
the concept of a ‘mind’ is,” we are told, “to be found
in all psychological writers.”[4] But there are but mind and
matter, and when we are told again that “psychology
rests on feeling,” where are we? Is there a middle
region?
II
We fail to recognize that as the body requires wholesome
food and cannot nourish itself upon any substance
so the mind too requires meat after its kind. If the War
taught nothing else it taught us that men are spirits,
that the spirit, mind, of a man is more than his flesh,
that his spirit is the man, that for the thoughts of his
heart he gives the breath of his body. As a consequence
of this recognition of our spiritual nature, the lesson
for us at the moment is that the great thoughts, great
events, great considerations, which form the background
of our national thought, shall be the content of the
education we pass on.
The educational thought we hear most about is, as
I have said, based on sundry Darwinian axioms out of
which we get the notion that nothing matters but physical
fitness and vocational training. However important
these are, they are not the chief thing. A century ago
when Prussia was shipwrecked in the Napoleonic wars
it was discovered that not Napoleon but Ignorance
was the formidable national enemy; a few philosophers
took the matter in hand, and history, poetry, philosophy,
proved the salvation of a ruined nation, because such
studies make for the development of personality, public
spirit, initiative, the qualities of which the State was in
need, and which most advance individual happiness
and success. On the other hand, the period when
Germany made her school curriculum utilitarian marks
the beginning of her moral downfall. History repeats
itself. There are interesting rumours afloat of how
the students at Bonn, for example, went in solemn
procession to make a bonfire of French novels, certain
prints, articles of luxury and the like; things like these
had brought about the ruin of Germany and it was the
part of the youth to save her now as before. Are they
to have another Tugendbund?
We want an education which shall nourish the mind
while not neglecting either physical or vocational training;
in short, we want a working philosophy of education.
I think that we of the P.N.E.U. have arrived at
such a body of theory, tested and corrected by some
thirty years of successful practice with thousands of
children. This theory has already been set forth in
volumes[5] published at intervals during the last thirty-five
years; so I shall indicate here only a few salient
points which seem to me to differ from general theory
and practice,—
(a) The children, not the teachers, are the responsible
persons; they do the work by self-effort.
(b) The teachers give sympathy and occasionally
elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work is
done by the scholars.
(c) These read in a term one, or two, or three
thousand pages, according to their age, school and
Form, in a large number of set books. The quantity
set for each lesson allows of only a single reading; but
the reading is tested by narration, or by writing on a
test passage. When the terminal examination is at
hand so much ground has been covered that revision is
out of the question; what the children have read
they know, and write on any part of it with ease and
fluency, in vigorous English; they usually spell well.
Much is said from time to time to show that ‘mere
book-learning’ is rather contemptible, and that “Things
are in the saddle and ride mankind.” May I point out
that whatever discredit is due to the use of books does
not apply to this method, which so far as I can discover
has not hitherto been employed. Has an attempt been
made before on a wide scale to secure that scholars
should know their books, many pages in many books,
at a single reading, in such a way that months later
they can write freely and accurately on any part of
the term’s reading?
(d) There is no selection of studies, or of passages
or of episodes, on the ground of interest. The best
available book is chosen and is read through perhaps
in the course of two or three years.
(e) The children study many books on many subjects,
but exhibit no confusion of thought, and
‘howlers’ are almost unknown.
(f) They find that, in Bacon’s phrase, “Studies serve
for delight”; this delight being not in the lessons
or the personality of the teacher, but purely in their
‘lovely books,’ ‘glorious books.’
(g) The books used are, whenever possible, literary
in style.
(h) Marks, prizes, places, rewards, punishments,
praise, blame, or other inducements are not necessary
to secure attention, which is voluntary, immediate
and surprisingly perfect.
(i) The success of the scholars in what may be
called disciplinary subjects, such as Mathematics and
Grammar, depends largely on the power of the
teacher, though the pupils’ habit of attention is of use
in these too.
(j) No stray lessons are given on interesting subjects;
the knowledge the children get is consecutive.
The unusual interest children show in their work,
their power of concentration, their wide, and as far as
it goes, accurate knowledge of historical, literary and
some scientific subjects, has challenged attention and
the general conclusion is that these are the children of
educated and cultivated parents. It was vain to urge
that the home schoolroom does not usually produce
remarkable educational results; but the way is opening
to prove that the power these children show is common
to all children; at last there is hope that the offspring
of working-class parents may be led into the wide pastures
of a liberal education.
Are we not justified in concluding that singular effects
must have commensurate causes, and that we have
chanced to light on unknown tracts in the region of
educational thought. At any rate that Golden Rule
of which Comenius was in search has discovered itself,
the Rule,—“Whereby Teachers shall teach less
and Scholars shall learn more.”
Let me now outline a few of the educational principles
which account for unusual results.
III
Principles hitherto unrecognized or disregarded
I have enumerated some of the points in which our
work is exceptional in the hope of convincing the reader
that unusual work carried on successfully in hundreds
of schoolrooms—home and other—is based on principles
hitherto unrecognized. The recognition of these principles
should put our national education on an intelligent
basis and should make for general stability, joy in living,
and personal initiative.
May I add one or two more arguments in support of
my plea,—
The appeal is not to the clever child only, but to the
average and even to the ‘backward’ child.
This scheme is carried out in less time than ordinary
school work on the same subjects.
There are no revisions, no evening lessons, no cramming
or ‘getting up’ of subjects; therefore there is much
time whether for vocational work or interests or hobbies.
All intellectual work is done in the hours of morning
school, and the afternoons are given to field nature
studies, drawing, handicrafts, etc. Notwithstanding these
limitations the children produce a surprising amount of
good intellectual work.
No home-work is required.
It is not that ‘we’ (of the P.N.E.U.) are persons of
peculiar genius; it is that, like Paley’s man who found
the watch, “we have chanced on a good thing.”
“No gain
That I experience must remain unshared.”
We feel that the country and indeed the world should
have the benefit of educational discoveries which act
powerfully as a moral lever, for we are experiencing
anew the joy of the Renaissance, but without its pagan
lawlessness.
Let me trace as far as I can recall them the steps by
which I arrived at some of the conclusions upon which
we are acting. While still a young woman I saw a
great deal of a family of Anglo-Indian children who had
come ‘home’ to their grandfather’s house and were
being brought up by an aunt who was my intimate
friend. The children were astonishing to me; they
were persons of generous impulses and sound judgment,
of great intellectual aptitude, of imagination and moral
insight. These last two points were, I recollect, illustrated
one day by a little maiden of five who came home
from her walk silent and sad; some letting alone, and
some wise openings brought out at last between sobs,—“a
poor man—no home—nothing to eat—no bed to lie
upon,”—and then the child was relieved by tears. Such
incidents are common enough in families, but they were
new to me. I was reading a good deal of philosophy
and ‘Education’ at the time for I thought with the
enthusiasm of a young teacher that Education should
regenerate the world. I had an Elementary School and
a pioneer Church High School at this same time so that
I was enabled to study children in large groups; but at
school children are not so self-revealing as at home.
I began under the guidance of these Anglo-Indian children
to take the measure of a person and soon to suspect that
children are more than we, their elders, except that their
ignorance is illimitable.
One limitation I did discover in the minds of these
little people; my friend insisted that they could not
understand English Grammar; I maintained that they
could and wrote a little Grammar (still waiting to be
prepared for publication!) for the two of seven and
eight; but she was right; I was allowed to give the
lessons myself with what lucidity and freshness I could
command; in vain; the Nominative ‘Case’ baffled
them; their minds rejected the abstract conception
just as children reject the notion of writing an “Essay
on Happiness.” But I was beginning to make discoveries;
the second being, that the mind of a child
takes or rejects according to its needs.
From this point it was not difficult to go on to the
perception that, whether in taking or rejecting, the mind
was functioning for its own nourishment; that the
mind, in fact, requires sustenance as does the body, in
order that it increase and be strong; but because the
mind is not to be measured or weighed but is spiritual,
so its sustenance must be spiritual too, must, in fact, be
ideas (in the Platonic sense of images). I soon perceived
that children were well equipped to deal with ideas, and
that explanations, questionings, amplifications, are
unnecessary and wearisome. Children have a natural
appetite for knowledge which is informed with thought.
They bring imagination, judgment, and the various
so-called ‘faculties,’ to bear upon a new idea pretty
much as the gastric juices act upon a food ration. This
was illuminating but rather startling; the whole intellectual
apparatus of the teacher, his power of vivid presentation,
apt illustration, able summing up, subtle questioning,
all these were hindrances and intervened
between children and the right nutriment duly served;
this, on the other hand, they received with the sort of
avidity and simplicity with which a healthy child eats
his dinner.
The Scottish school of philosophers came to my aid
here with what may be called their doctrine of the desires,
which, I perceived, stimulate the action of mind and so
cater for spiritual (not necessarily religious) sustenance
as the appetites do for that of the body and for the continuance
of the race. This was helpful; I inferred that
one of these, the Desire of Knowledge (Curiosity) was the
chief instrument of education; that this desire might be
paralysed or made powerless like an unused limb by
encouraging other desires to intervene between a child
and the knowledge proper for him; the desire for place,—emulation;
for prizes,—avarice; for power,—ambition;
for praise,—vanity, might each be a stumbling block to
him. It seemed to me that we teachers had unconsciously
elaborated a system which should secure the discipline
of the schools and the eagerness of the scholars,—by
means of marks, prizes, and the like,—and yet eliminate
that knowledge-hunger, itself the quite sufficient incentive
to education.
Then arose the question,—Cannot people get on with
little knowledge? Is it really necessary after all?
My child-friends supplied the answer: their insatiable
curiosity shewed me that the wide world and its history
was barely enough to satisfy a child who had not been
made apathetic by spiritual malnutrition. What, then,
is knowledge?—was the next question that occurred;
a question which the intellectual labour of ages has not
settled; but perhaps this is enough to go on with;—that
only becomes knowledge to a person which he has assimilated,
which his mind has acted upon.
Children’s aptitude for knowledge and their eagerness
for it made for the conclusion that the field of a child’s
knowledge may not be artificially restricted, that he has
a right to and necessity for as much and as varied knowledge
as he is able to receive; and that the limitations
in his curriculum should depend only upon the age at
which he must leave school; in a word, a common curriculum
(up to the age of say, fourteen or fifteen) appears
to be due to all children.
We have left behind the feudal notion that intellect is
a class prerogative, that intelligence is a matter of inheritance
and environment; inheritance, no doubt, means
much but everyone has a very mixed inheritance; environment
makes for satisfaction or uneasiness, but
education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by
the eye or effected by the hand; mind appeals to mind
and thought begets thought and that is how we become
educated. For this reason we owe it to every child to
put him in communication with great minds that he may
get at great thoughts; with the minds, that is, of those
who have left us great works; and the only vital method
of education appears to be that children should read
worthy books, many worthy books.
It will be said on the one hand that many schools have
their own libraries or the scholars have the free use of
a public library and that children do read; and on the
other that the literary language of first-rate books offers
an impassable barrier to working-men’s children. In
the first place we all know that desultory reading is
delightful and incidentally profitable but is not education
whose concern is knowledge. That is, the mind of the
desultory reader only rarely makes the act of appropriation
which is necessary before the matter we read becomes
personal knowledge. We must read in order to know
or we do not know by reading.
As for the question of literary form, many circumstances
and considerations which it would take too long to
describe brought me to perceive that delight in literary
form is native to us all until we are ‘educated’ out
of it.
It is difficult to explain how I came to a solution of a
puzzling problem,—how to secure attention. Much
observation of children, various incidents from one’s
general reading, the recollection of my own childhood
and the consideration of my present habits of mind
brought me to the recognition of certain laws of the mind,
by working in accordance with which the steady attention
of children of any age and any class in society is
insured, week in, week out,—attention, not affected by
distracting circumstances. It is not a matter of ‘personal
magnetism,’ for hundreds of teachers of very
varying quality, working in home schoolrooms and in
Elementary and Secondary Schools on this method,[6] secure
it without effort; neither does it rest upon the ‘doctrine
of interest’; no doubt the scholars are interested,
sometimes delighted; but they are interested in a great
variety of matters and their attention does not flag in
the ‘dull parts.’
It is not easy to sum up in a few short sentences those
principles upon which the mind naturally acts and which
I have tried to bring to bear upon a school curriculum.
The fundamental idea is, that children are persons and
are therefore moved by the same springs of conduct as
their elders. Among these is the Desire of Knowledge,
knowledge-hunger being natural to everybody. History,
Geography, the thoughts of other people, roughly, the
humanities, are proper for us all, and are the objects of
the natural desire of knowledge. So too, are Science,
for we all live in the world; and Art, for we all require
beauty, and are eager to know how to discriminate;
social science, Ethics, for we are aware of the need to
learn about the conduct of life; and Religion, for, like
those men we heard of at the Front, we all ‘want
God.’
In the nature of things then the unspoken demand
of children is for a wide and very varied curriculum;
it is necessary that they should have some knowledge
of the wide range of interests proper to them as human
beings, and for no reasons of convenience or time limitations
may we curtail their proper curriculum.
Perceiving the range of knowledge to which children
as persons are entitled the questions are, how shall
they be induced to take that knowledge, and what can
the children of the people learn in the short time they
are at school? We have discovered a working answer
to these two conundrums. I say discovered, and not
invented, for there is only one way of learning, and the
intelligent persons who can talk well on many subjects
and the expert in one learn in the one way, that is, they
read to know. What I have found out is, that this method
is available for every child, whether in the dilatory and
desultory home schoolroom or in the large classes of
Elementary Schools.
Children no more come into the world without provision
for dealing with knowledge than without provision for
dealing with food. They bring with them not only that
intellectual appetite, the desire of knowledge, but also
an enormous, an unlimited power of attention to which
the power of retention (memory) seems to be attached,
as one digestive process succeeds another, until the final
assimilation. “Yes,” it will be said, “they are capable
of much curiosity and consequent attention but they
can only occasionally be beguiled into attending to their
lessons.” Is not that the fault of the lessons, and must
not these be regulated as carefully with regard to the
behaviour of mind as the children’s meals are with regard
to physical considerations?
Let us consider this behaviour in a few aspects. The
mind concerns itself only with thoughts, imaginations,
reasoned arguments; it declines to assimilate the facts
unless in combination with its proper pabulum; it, being
active, is wearied in the passive attitude of a listener, it
is as much bored in the case of a child by the discursive
twaddle of the talking teacher as in that of a grown-up
by conversational twaddle; it has a natural preference
for literary form; given a more or less literary presentation,
the curiosity of the mind is enormous and embraces
a vast variety of subjects.
I predicate these things of ‘the mind’ because
they seem true of all persons’ minds. Having observed
these, and some other points in the behaviour of mind,
it remained to apply the conclusions to which I had come
to a test curriculum for schools and families. Oral
teaching was to a great extent ruled out; a large number
of books on many subjects were set for reading in morning
school-hours; so much work was set that there was
only time for a single reading; all reading was tested
by a narration of the whole or a given passage, whether
orally or in writing. Children working on these lines
know months after that which they have read and are
remarkable for their power of concentration (attention);
they have little trouble with spelling or composition and
become well-informed, intelligent persons.[7]
But, it will be said, reading or hearing various books
read, chapter by chapter, and then narrating or writing
what has been read or some part of it,—all this is mere
memory work. The value of this criticism may be readily
tested; will the critic read before turning off his light a
leading article from a newspaper, say, or a chapter from
Boswell or Jane Austen, or one of Lamb’s Essays; then,
will he put himself to sleep by narrating silently what he
has read. He will not be satisfied with the result but he
will find that in the act of narrating every power of his
mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he
had not observed are brought out; that the whole is
visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way;
in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of his
personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he
has read. This is not memory work. In order to memorise,
we repeat over and over a passage or a series of points
or names with the aid of such clues as we can invent;
we do memorise a string of facts or words, and the new
possession serves its purpose for a time, but it is not
assimilated; its purpose being served, we know it no
more. This is memory work by means of which examinations
are passed with credit. I will not try to explain
(or understand!) this power to memorise; it has its
subsidiary use in education, no doubt, but it must not
be put in the place of the prime agent which is attention.
Long ago, I was in the habit of hearing this axiom
quoted by a philosophical old friend:—“The mind can
know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an
answer to a question put to the mind by itself.” I have
failed to trace the saying to its source, but a conviction
of its importance has been growing upon me during the
last forty years. It tacitly prohibits questioning from
without; (this does not, of course, affect the Socratic
use of questioning for purposes of moral conviction);
and it is necessary to intellectual certainty, to the act
of knowing. For example, to secure a conversation or
an incident, we ‘go over it in our minds’; that
is, the mind puts itself through the process of self-questioning
which I have indicated. This is what
happens in the narrating of a passage read: each new
consecutive incident or statement arrives because the
mind asks itself,—“What next?” For this reason it
is important that only one reading should be allowed;
efforts to memorise weaken the power of attention, the
proper activity of the mind; if it is desirable to ask
questions in order to emphasize certain points, these
should be asked after and not before, or during, the act
of narration.
Our more advanced psychologists come to our support
here; they, too, predicate “instead of
a coterie of
faculties, a single subjective activity, attention;” and
again, there is “one common factor in all psychical
activity, that is attention.”[8] My personal addition is
that attention is unfailing, prompt and steady when
matter is presented suitable to a child’s intellectual
requirements, if the presentation be made with the conciseness,
directness, and simplicity proper to literature.
Another point should be borne in mind; the intellect
requires a moral impulse, and we all stir our minds into
action the better if there is an implied ‘must’ in the
background; for children in class the ‘must’ acts
through the certainty that they will be required to narrate
or write from what they have read with no opportunity
of ‘looking up,’ or other devices of the idle. Children
find the act of narrating so pleasurable in itself that
urgency on the part of the teacher is seldom necessary.
Here is a complete chain of the educational philosophy
I have endeavoured to work out, which has, at least,
the merit that it is successful in practice. Some few hints
I have, as I have said, adopted and applied, but I hope
I have succeeded in methodising the whole and making
education what it should be, a system of applied philosophy;
I have, however, carefully abstained from the
use of philosophical terms.
This is, briefly, how it works:—
A child is a person with the spiritual requirements
and capabilities of a person.
Knowledge ‘nourishes’ the mind as food nourishes
the body.
A child requires knowledge as much as he requires
food.
He is furnished with the desire for Knowledge, i.e.,
Curiosity;
with the power to apprehend Knowledge, that
is, attention;
with powers of mind to deal with Knowledge
without aid from without—such as imagination,
reflection, judgment;
with innate interest in all Knowledge that he
needs as a human being;
with power to retain and communicate such
Knowledge; and to assimilate all that is
necessary to him.
He requires that in most cases Knowledge be communicated
to him in literary form;
and reproduces such Knowledge touched by his
own personality; thus his reproduction becomes
original.
The natural provision for the appropriation and
assimilation of Knowledge is adequate and no stimulus
is required; but some moral control is necessary to
secure the act of attention;
a child receives this in the certainty that he
will be required to recount what he has read.
Children have a right to the best we possess; therefore
their lesson books should be, as far as possible,
our best books.
They weary of talk, and questions bore them, so
that they should be allowed to use their books for
themselves; they will ask for such help as they wish
for.
They require a great variety of knowledge,—about
religion, the humanities, science, art;
therefore, they should have a wide curriculum, with
a definite amount of reading set for each short period
of study.
The teacher affords direction, sympathy in studies,
a vivifying word here and there, help in the making
of experiments, etc., as well as the usual teaching in
languages, experimental science and mathematics.
Pursued under these conditions, “Studies serve for
delight,” and the consciousness of daily progress is
exhilarating to both teacher and children.
The reader will say with truth,—“I knew all this
before and have always acted more or less on these
principles”; and I can only point to the unusual results
we obtain through adhering not ‘more or less,’ but strictly
to the principles and practices I have indicated. I suppose
the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend
with; every surgeon knew that his instruments and
appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of
millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the
great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from
the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied
for the rather casual ‘more or less’ methods of earlier
days.
Whether the way I have sketched out is the right and
the only way remains to be tested still more widely
than in the thousands of cases in which it has been
successful; but assuredly education is slack and uncertain
for the lack of sound principles exactly applied.
The moment has come for a decision; we have placed
our faith in ‘civilisation,’ have been proud of our progress;
and, of the pangs that the War has brought us,
perhaps none is keener than that caused by the utter
breakdown of the civilisation which we have held to be
synonymous with education. We know better now,
and are thrown back on our healthy human instincts
and the Divine sanctions. The educable part of a person
is his mind. The training of the senses and muscles is,
strictly speaking, training and not education. The mind,
like the body, requires quantity, variety and regularity
in the sustenance offered to it. Like the body, the mind
has its appetite, the desire for knowledge. Again, like
the body, the mind is able to receive and assimilate by
its powers of attention and reflection. Like the body,
again, the mind rejects insipid, dry, and unsavoury
food, that is to say, its pabulum should be presented
in a literary form. The mind is restricted to pabulum
of one kind: it is nourished upon ideas and absorbs
facts only as these are connected with the living ideas
upon which they hang. Children educated upon some
such lines as these respond in a surprising way, developing
capacity, character, countenance, initiative and a sense
of responsibility. They are, in fact, even as children,
good and thoughtful citizens.
I have in this volume attempted to show the principles
and methods upon which education of this sort is being
successfully carried out, and have added chapters
which illustrate the history of a movement the aim of
which is, in the phrase of Comenius,—“All knowledge
for all men.” As well as these I have been permitted
to use the criticisms[9] of various teachers and Directors
of education and others upon the practical working of
the scheme.
It is a matter of rejoicing that the way is open to give
to all classes a basis of common thought and common
knowledge, including a common store of literary and
historic allusions, a possession which has a curious power
of cementing bodies of men, and, in the next place, it
is an enormous gain that we are within sight of giving
to the working-classes, notwithstanding their limited
opportunities, that stability of mind and magnanimity
of character which are the proper outcome and the
unfailing test of A Liberal Education.
I shall confine myself in this volume to the amplification
and illustration of some of the points I have endeavoured
to make in this introductory statement.
Book I — CHAPTER I SELF-EDUCATION
The title of this chapter may awaken some undeserved
sympathy; gratifying visions of rhythmic movements,
independent action, self-expression in various interesting
ways, occur to the mind—for surely these things constitute
‘self-education’? Most of these modern panacea
are desirable and by no means to be neglected; limbs
trained to grace and agility, a hand, to dexterity and
precision, an eye made to see and an ear to hear, a voice
taught to interpret,—we know to-day that all these
possibilities of joy in living should be open to every
child, and we look forward even too hopefully to the
manner of citizen who shall be the outcome of our
educational zeal.
Now, although we, of the Parents’ Union, have
initiated some of these educational outworks and have
gladly and gratefully adopted others, yet is our point
of view different; we are profoundly sceptical as to the
effect of all or any of these activities upon character and
conduct. A person is not built up from without but
from within, that is, he is living, and all external educational
appliances and activities which are intended to
mould his character are decorative and not vital.
This sounds like a stale truism; but, let us consider
a few corollaries of the notion that ‘a child is a person,’
and that a person is, primarily, living. Now no external
application is capable of nourishing life or promoting
growth; baths of wine, wrappings of velvet have no
effect upon physical life except as they may hinder it;
life is sustained on that which is taken in by the organism,
not by that which is applied from without.
Perhaps the only allowable analogy with the human
mind is the animal body, especially the human body,
for it is that which we know most about; the well-worn
plant and garden analogy is misleading, especially as
regards that tiresome busybody, the gardener, who will
direct the inclination of every twig, the position of every
leaf; but, even then apart from the gardener, the child-garden
is an intolerable idea as failing to recognize the
essential property of a child, his personality, a property
all but absent in a plant. Now, let us consider for a
moment the parallel behaviour of body and mind. The
body lives by air, grows on food, demands rest, flourishes
on a diet wisely various. So, of the mind,—(by which
I mean the entire spiritual nature, all that which is not
body),—it breathes in air, calls for both activity and
rest and flourishes on a wisely varied dietary.
We go round the house and round the house, but rarely
go into the House of Mind; we offer mental gymnastics,
but these do not take the place of food, and of that we
serve the most meagre rations, no more than that bean
a day! Diet for the body is abundantly considered,
but no one pauses to say, “I wonder does the mind need
food, too, and regular meals, and what is its proper
diet?”
I have asked myself this question and have laboured
for fifty years to find the answer, and am anxious to
impart what I think I know, but the answer cannot be
given in the form of ‘Do’ this and that, but rather as
an invitation to ‘Consider’ this and that; action follows
when we have thought duly.
The life of the mind is sustained upon ideas; there
is no intellectual vitality in the mind to which ideas
are not presented several times, say, every day. But
‘surely, surely,’ as ‘Mrs. Proudie’ would say, scientific
experiments, natural beauty, nature study, rhythmic
movements, sensory exercises, are all fertile in ideas?
Quite commonly, they are so, as regards ideas of invention
and discovery; and even in ideas of art; but for
the moment it may be well to consider the ideas that
influence life, that is, character and conduct; these,
it would seem, pass directly from mind to mind, and are
neither helped nor hindered by educational outworks.
Every child gets many of these ideas by word of mouth,
by way of family traditions, proverbial philosophy,—in
fact, by what we might call a kind of oral literature.
But, when we compare the mind with the body, we perceive
that three ‘square’ meals a day are generally
necessary to health, and that a casual diet of ideas is poor
and meagre. Our schools turn out a good many clever
young persons, wanting in nothing but initiative, the
power of reflection and the sort of moral imagination
which enables you to ‘put yourself in his place.’ These
qualities flourish upon a proper diet; and this is not
afforded by the ordinary school book, or, in sufficient
quantity by the ordinary lesson. I should like to emphasize
quantity, which is as important for the mind as
for the body; both require their ‘square meals.’
It is no easy matter to give its proper sustenance to
the mind; hard things are said of children, that they
have ‘no brains,’ ‘a low order of intellect,’ and so on;
but many of us are able to vouch for the fine intelligence
shewn by children who are fed with the proper mind-stuff;
but teachers do not usually take the trouble to find out
what this is. We come dangerously near to what Plato
condemns as “that lie of the soul,” that corruption of
the highest truth, of which Protagoras is guilty in the
saying that, “Knowledge is sensation.” What else
are we saying when we run after educational methods
which are purely sensory? Knowledge is not sensation,
nor is it to be derived through sensation; we feed upon
the thoughts of other minds; and thought applied to
thought generates thought and we become more thoughtful.
No one need invite us to reason, compare, imagine;
the mind, like the body, digests its proper food, and it
must have the labour of digestion or it ceases to function.
But the children ask for bread and we give them a
stone; we give information about objects and events
which mind does not attempt to digest but casts out
bodily (upon an examination paper?). But let information
hang upon a principle, be inspired by an idea, and
it is taken with avidity and used in making whatsoever
in the spiritual nature stands for tissue in the physical.
“Education,” said Lord Haldane, some time ago,
“is a matter of the spirit,”—no wiser word has been said
on the subject, and yet we persist in applying education
from without as a bodily activity or emollient. We begin
to see light. No one knoweth the things of a man but
the spirit of a man which is in him; therefore, there is
no education but self-education, and as soon as a young
child begins his education he does so as a student. Our
business is to give him mind-stuff, and both quality
and quantity are essential. Naturally, each of us
possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but
we know where to procure it; for the best thought the
world possesses is stored in books; we must open books
to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant
provision and orderly serving.
I am jealous for the children; every modern educational
movement tends to belittle them intellectually;
and none more so than a late ingenious attempt to feed
normal children with the pap-meat which may (?) be
good for the mentally sick: but, “To all wildly popular
things comes suddenly and inexorably death, without
hope of resurrection.” If Mr. Bernard Shaw is right,
I need not discuss a certain popular form of ‘New Education.’
It has been ably said that education should
profit by the divorce which is now in progress from
psychology on the one hand and sociology on the other;
but what if education should use her recovered liberty
to make a monstrous alliance with pathology?
Various considerations urge upon me a rather distasteful
task. It is time I showed my hand and gave
some account of work, the principles and practices of
which should, I think, be of general use. Like those
lepers who feasted at the gates of a famished city, I begin
to take shame to myself! I have attempted to unfold
(in various volumes[10]) a system of educational theory
which seems to me able to meet any rational demand,
even that severest criterion set up by Plato; it is able
to “run the gauntlet of objections, and is ready to
disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute
truth.” Some of it is new, much of it is old. Like the
quality of mercy, it is not strained; certainly it is twice
blessed, it blesses him that gives and him that takes,
and a sort of radiancy of look distinguishes both scholar
and teacher engaged in this manner of education; but
there are no startling results to challenge attention.
Professor Bompas Smith remarked in an inaugural
address at the University of Manchester that,—“If we
can guide our practice by the light of a comprehensive
theory we shall widen our experience by attempting
tasks which would not otherwise have occurred to us.”
It is possible to offer the light of such a comprehensive
theory, and the result is precisely what the Professor
indicates,—a large number of teachers attempt tasks
which would not otherwise have occurred to them. One
discovers a thing because it is there, and no sane person
takes credit to himself for such discovery. On the
contrary, he recognizes with King Arthur,—“These
jewels, whereupon I chanced Divinely, are for public
use.” For many years we have had access to a sort
of Aladdin’s cave which I long to throw open ‘for
public use.’
Let me try to indicate some of the advantages of the
theory I am urging:—It fits all ages, even the seven
ages of man! It satisfies brilliant children and discovers
intelligence in the dull. It secures attention, interest,
concentration, without effort on the part of teacher or
taught.
Children, I think, all children, so taught express themselves
in forcible and fluent English and use a copious
vocabulary. An unusual degree of nervous stability is
attained; also, intellectual occupation seems to make
for chastity in thought and life. Parents become
interested in the schoolroom work, and find their children
‘delightful companions.’ Children shew delight in books
(other than story books) and manifest a genuine love
of knowledge. Teachers are relieved from much of the
labour of corrections. Children taught according to this
method do exceptionally well at any school. It is unnecessary
to stimulate these young scholars by marks,
prizes, etc.
After all, it is not a quack medicine I am writing
about, though the reader might think so, and there is
no 1s. 1½d. a bottle in question!
Over thirty years ago I published a volume about the
home education of children and people wrote asking how
those counsels of perfection could be carried out with
the aid of the private governess as she then existed; it
occurred to me that a series of curricula might be devised
embodying sound principles and securing that children
should be in a position of less dependence on their teacher
than they then were; in other words, that their education
should be largely self-education. A sort of correspondence
school was set up, the motto of which,—“I am,
I can, I ought, I will,” has had much effect in throwing
children upon the possibilities, capabilities, duties and
determining power belonging to them as persons.
“Children are born persons,” is the first article of the
educational credo in question. The response made by
children (ranging in age from six to eighteen) astonished
me; though they only shewed the power of attention,
the avidity for knowledge, the clearness of thought, the
nice discrimination in books, and the ability to deal
with many subjects, for which I had given them credit
in advance. I need not repeat what I have urged elsewhere
on the subject of ‘Knowledge’ and will only
add that anyone may apply a test; let him read to a
child of any age from six to ten an account of an incident,
graphically and tersely told, and the child will relate
what he has heard point by point, though not word for
word, and will add delightful original touches; what is
more, he will relate the passage months later because
he has visualised the scene and appropriated that bit of
knowledge. A rhetorical passage, written in ‘journalese,’
makes no impression on him; if a passage be read more
than once, he may become letter-perfect, but the spirit,
the individuality has gone out of the exercise. An older
boy or girl will read one of Bacon’s Essays, say, or a
passage from De Quincey, and will write or tell it forcibly
and with some style, either at the moment or months
later. We know how Fox recited a whole pamphlet of
Burke’s at a College supper though he had probably
read it no more than once. Here on the very surface
is the key to that attention, interest, literary style, wide
vocabulary, love of books and readiness in speaking,
which we all feel should belong to an education that is
only begun at school and continued throughout life;
these are the things that we all desire, and how to obtain
them is some part of the open secret I am labouring to
disclose ‘for public use.’
I am anxious to bring a quite successful educational
experiment before the public at a moment when we are
told on authority that “Education must be ... an
appeal to the spirit if it is to be made interesting.” Here
is Education which is as interesting and fascinating as
a fine art to parents, children and teachers.
During the last thirty years thousands of children
educated on these lines have grown up in love with
Knowledge and manifesting a ‘right judgment in all
things’ so far as a pretty wide curriculum gives them
data.
I would have children taught to read before they learn
the mechanical arts of reading and writing; and they
learn delightfully; they give perfect attention to paragraph
or page read to them and are able to relate the
matter point by point, in their own words; but they
demand classical English and cannot learn to read in
this sense upon anything less. They begin their ‘schooling’
in ‘letters’ at six, and begin at the same time to
learn mechanical reading and writing. A child does
not lose by spending a couple of years in acquiring these
because he is meanwhile ‘reading’ the Bible, history,
geography, tales, with close attention and a remarkable
power of reproduction, or rather, of translation into his
own language; he is acquiring a copious vocabulary
and the habit of consecutive speech. In a word, he is
an educated child from the first, and his power of dealing
with books, with several books in the course of a morning’s
‘school,’ increases with his age.
But children are not all alike; there is as much
difference between them as between men or women;
two or three months ago, a small boy, not quite six, came
to school (by post); and his record was that he could
read anything in five languages, and was now teaching
himself the Greek characters, could find his way about
the Continental Bradshaw, and was a chubby, vigorous
little person. All this the boy brings with him when
he comes to school; he is exceptional, of course, just
as a man with such accomplishments is exceptional;
but I believe that all children bring with them much
capacity which is not recognized by their teachers,
chiefly intellectual capacity, (always in advance of motor
power), which we are apt to drown in deluges of explanation,
or dissipate in futile labours in which there is no
advance.
People are naturally divided into those who read and
think and those who do not read or think; and the business
of schools is to see that all their scholars shall
belong to the former class; it is worth while to remember
that thinking is inseparable from reading which is concerned
with the content of a passage and not merely
with the printed matter.
The children I am speaking of are much occupied with
things as well as with books, because ‘Education is the
Science of Relations,’ is the principle which regulates
their curriculum; that is, a child goes to school with
many aptitudes which he should put into effect. So, he
learns a good deal of science, because children have no
difficulty in understanding principles, though technical
details baffle them. He practises various handicrafts
that he may know the feel of wood, clay, leather, and
the joy of handling tools, that is, that he may establish
a due relation with materials. But, always, it is the
book, the knowledge, the clay, the bird or blossom, he
thinks of, not his own place or his own progress.
I am afraid that some knowledge of the theory we
advance is necessary to the open-minded teacher who
would give our practices a trial, because every detail
of schoolroom work is the outcome of certain principles.
For instance it would be quite easy without much
thought to experiment with our use of books; but in
education, as in religion, it is the motive that counts,
and the boy who reads his lesson for a ‘good mark’
becomes word-perfect, but does not know. But these
principles are obvious and simple enough, and, when
we consider that at present education is chaotic for want
of a unifying theory, and that there happens to be no
other comprehensive theory in the field which is in line
with modern thought and fits every occasion, might it
not be well to try one which is immediately practicable
and always pleasant and has proved itself by producing
many capable, serviceable, dutiful men and women of
sound judgment and willing mind?
In urging a method of self-education for children in
lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should
like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing
and greatly overburdened class; the difference
is just that between driving a horse that is light and a
horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the
ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily.
The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the
city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher
and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of
forcible intellectual feeding.
CHAPTER II CHILDREN ARE BORN PERSONS — 1.— The Mind of a Child — 2.— The Mind of a School-Child — 3.— Motives for Learning
“No sooner doth the truth ... come into the soul’s
sight, but the soul knows her to be her first and old acquaintance.”
“The consequence of truth is great, therefore the judgment of
it must not be negligent.”
It should not surprise the reader that a chapter, designed
to set forth a startling truth, should open with the
weighty words of an old Divine (Whichcote). But
truths get flat and wonders stale upon us. We do not
care much about the starry firmament, the budding
trees, the cunning architecture of the birds; and to all
except young parents and young brothers and sisters
a baby is no longer a marvel. The completeness of the
new baby brother is what children admire most, his toes
and his fingers, his ears and all the small perfections of
him. His guardians have some understanding of the
baby; they know that his chief business is to grow and
they feed him with food convenient for him. If they are
wise they give free play to all the wrigglings and stretchings
which give power to his feeble muscles. His parents
know what he will come to, and feel that here is a new
chance for the world. In the meantime, he needs food,
sleep and shelter and a great deal of love. So much
we all know. But is the baby more than a ‘huge
oyster’? That is the problem before us and hitherto
educators have been inclined to answer it in the negative.
Their notion is that by means of a pull here, a push
there, a compression elsewhere a person is at last turned
out according to the pattern the educator has in his mind.
The other view is that the beautiful infant frame
is but the setting of a jewel of such astonishing worth
that, put the whole world in one scale and this jewel
in the other, and the scale which holds the world flies
up outbalanced. A poet looks back on the glimmering
haze of his own infancy and this is the sort of thing
he sees,—
“I was entertained like an angel with the works of God in
their splendour and glory.... Is it not strange that an
infant should be heir of the whole world and see those mysteries
which the books of the learned never unfold?... The corn
was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor
was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.
The dust and stones of the street were as precious gold....
The green trees transported and ravished me. Their
sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap....
Boys and girls tumbling in the streets were moving jewels. I
knew not that they were born or should die.... The streets
were mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and
silver were mine as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and
ruddy faces. The skies were mine and so were the sun and moon
and stars, and all the world was mine and I the only spectator
and enjoyer of it.”
It takes a poet like Traherne to retain and produce
such vivid memories, though perhaps we can all recall
the sense that we were spectators at the show of life,
and we can recollect a sunny time before we were able
to speak or tell what we knew. Punch amused us at one
time with a baby’s views of his nurse and his surroundings
and especially of the unwarranted pulls and pushes
to which he was subject; but probably an infant is
no critic. His business is to perceive and receive and
these he does day in and day out.
We have an idea that poets say more than they know,
express more than they see, and that their version of
life must be taken cum grano, but perhaps the fact is
that no labour of the mind enables them to catch and
put into words the full realities of which they are cognisant,
and therefore we may take Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Vaughan and the rest as witnesses who only hint at
the glory which might be revealed. We are not poets
and are disposed to discount the sayings of the poets,
but the most prosaic of us comes across evidence of
mind in children, and of mind astonishingly alert. Let
us consider, in the first two years of life they manage
to get through more intellectual effort than any following
two years can show. Supposing that much-discussed
Martian were at last able to make his way to our planet,
think of how much he must learn before he could accommodate
himself to our conditions! Our notions of hard
and soft, wet and dry, hot and cold, stable and unstable,
far and near, would be as foreign to him as they are to
an infant who holds out his pinafore for the moon. We
do not know what the Martian means of locomotion
are but we can realise that to run and jump and climb
stairs, even to sit and stand at will must require fully
as much reasoned endeavour as it takes in after years
to accomplish skating, dancing, ski-ing, fencing, whatever
athletic exercises people spend years in perfecting;
and all these the infant accomplishes in his first two
years. He learns the properties of matter, knows
colours and has first notions of size, solid, liquid; has
learned in his third year to articulate with surprising
clearness. What is more, he has learned a language,
two languages, if he has had the opportunity, and the
writer has known of three languages being mastered by
a child of three, and one of them was Arabic; mastered,
that is, so far that a child can say all that he needs to
say in any one of the three—the sort of mastery most of
us wish for when we are travelling in foreign countries.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu tells us that in her time
the little children of Constantinople prattled in five
tongues with a good knowledge of each. If we have not
proved that a child is born a person with a mind as
complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body,
we can at least show that he always has all the mind
he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is
the instrument of his education and that his education
does not produce his mind.
Who shall measure the range of a child’s thoughts?
His continual questions about God, his speculations
about ‘Jesus,’ are they no more than idle curiosity,
or are they symptoms of a God-hunger with which we
are all born, and is a child able to comprehend as much
of the infinite and the unseen as are his self-complacent
elders? Is he ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in our
ways and does the fairy tale afford a joyful escape to
regions where all things are possible? We are told
that children have no imagination, that they must needs
see and touch, taste and handle, in order to know. While
a child’s age is still counted by months, he devotes
himself to learning the properties of things by touching,
pulling, tearing, throwing, tasting, but as months pass
into years a coup d’œil suffices for all but new things of
complicated structure. Life is a continual progress to
a child. He does not go over old things in old ways;
his joy is to go on. The immensity of his powers brings
its own terrors. Let me again quote Traherne,—
“Another time in a lowering and sad evening being alone in
the field when all things were dead and quiet a certain wanton
horror fell upon me beyond imagination. The unprofitableness
and silence of the place dissatisfied me: its wildness terrified me.
From the utmost ends of the earth fear surrounded me....
I was a weak and little child and had forgotten there was a man
alive on the earth. Yet also something of hope and expectation
comforted me from every border.”
Traherne never loses the lessons that come to him and
he goes on,—
“This taught me that I was concerned in all the world ...
that the beauties of the earth were made to entertain me ...
that the presence of cities, temples and kingdoms, ought to sustain
me and that to be alone in the world was to be desolate and
miserable.”
Reason is present in the infant as truly as imagination.
As soon as he can speak he lets us know that he has
pondered the ‘cause why’ of things and perplexes
us with a thousand questions. His ‘why?’ is ceaseless.
Nor are his reasonings always disinterested. How
soon the little urchin learns to manage his nurse or
mother, to calculate her moods and play upon her feelings!
It is in him to be a little tyrant; “he has a will
of his own,” says his nurse, but she is mistaken in supposing
that his stormy manifestations of greed, wilfulness,
temper, are signs of will. It is when the little boy is
able to stop all these and restrain himself with quivering
lip that his will comes into play; for he has a conscience
too. Before he begins to toddle he knows the difference
between right and wrong; even a baby in arms will
blush at the ‘naughty baby!’ of his nurse; and that
strong will of his acts in proportion as he learns the
difficult art of obedience; for no one can make a child
obey unless he wills to do so, and we all know how small
a rebel may make confusion in house or schoolroom.
But we must leave the quite young child, fascinating
as he is, and take him up again when he is ready for
lessons. I have made some attempt elsewhere[11] to show
what his parents and teachers owe to him in those years
in which he is engaged in self-education, taking his
lessons from everything he sees and hears, and strengthening
his powers by everything he does. Here, in a volume
which is chiefly concerned with education in the sense
of schooling, I am anxious to bring before teachers
the fact that a child comes into their hands with a mind
of amazing potentialities: he has a brain too, no doubt,
the organ and instrument of that same mind, as a piano
is not music but the instrument of music. Probably
we need not concern ourselves about the brain which is
subject to the same conditions as the rest of the material
body, is fed with the body’s food, rests, as the body
rests, requires fresh air and wholesome exercise to keep
it in health, but depends upon the mind for its proper
activities.
The world has concerned itself of late so much with
psychology, whose province is what has been called
‘the unconscious mind,’ a region under the sway of
nerves and blood (which it is best perhaps to let alone)
that in our educational efforts we tend to ignore the
mind and address ourselves to this region of symptoms.
Now mind, being spiritual, knows no fatigue; brain,
too, duly nourished with the food proper for the body,
allowed due conditions of fresh air and rest, should not
know fatigue; given these two conditions, we have a
glorious field of educational possibilities; but it rests
with us to evolve a theory and practice which afford
due recognition to mind. An authoritative saying which
we are apt to associate with the religious life only is
equally applicable to education. That which is born
of the flesh, is flesh, we are told; but we have forgotten
this great principle in our efforts at schooling children.
We give them a ‘play way’ and play is altogether necessary
and desirable but is not the avenue which leads
to mind. We give them a fitting environment, which
is again altogether desirable and, again, is not the way
to mind. We teach them beautiful motion and we
do well, for the body too must have its education;
but we are not safe if we take these by-paths as approaches
to mind. It is still true that that which is born of the
spirit, is spirit. The way to mind is a quite direct way.
Mind must come into contact with mind through the
medium of ideas. “What is mind?” says the old
conundrum, and the answer still is “No matter.” It
is necessary for us who teach to realize that things
material have little effect upon mind, because there are
still among us schools in which the work is altogether
material and technical, whether the teaching is given
by means of bars of wood or more scientific apparatus.
The mistress of an Elementary School writes,—“The
father of one of my girls said to me yesterday, ‘You
have given me some work to do. E. has let me have
no rest until I promised to set up my microscope and
get pond water to look for monads and other wonders.’”
Here we have the right order. That which was born
of the spirit, the idea, came first and demanded to confirm
and illustrate. “How can these things be?” we
ask, and the answer is not evident.
Education, like faith, is the evidence of things not
seen. We must begin with the notion that the business
of the body is to grow; and it grows upon food, which
food is composed of living cells, each a perfect life in
itself. In like manner, though all analogies are misleading
and inadequate, the only fit sustenance for
the mind is ideas, and an idea too, like the single cell
of cellular tissue, appears to go through the stages and
functions of a life. We receive it with appetite and
some stir of interest. It appears to feed in a curious way.
We hear of a new patent cure for the mind or the body,
of the new thought of some poet, the new notion of a
school of painters; we take in, accept, the idea and for
days after every book we read, every person we talk with
brings food to the newly entertained notion. ‘Not
proven,’ will be the verdict of the casual reader; but
if he watch the behaviour of his own mind towards any
of the ideas ‘in the air,’ he will find that some such
process as I have described takes place; and this process
must be considered carefully in the education of children.
We may not take things casually as we have done.
Our business is to give children the great ideas of life,
of religion, history, science; but it is the ideas we must
give, clothed upon with facts as they occur, and must
leave the child to deal with these as he chooses.
This is how he deals with Geography, for example:—
“When I heard of any new kingdom beyond the seas the light
and glory of it entered into me. It rose up within me and I was
enlarged by the whole. I entered into it, I saw its commodities,
springs, meadows, inhabitants and became possessor of that new
room as if it had been prepared for me so much was I magnified
and delighted in it. When the Bible was read my spirit was
present in other ages. I saw the light and splendour of them,
the land of Canaan, the Israelites entering into it, the ancient
glory of the Amorites, their peace and riches, their cities, houses,
vines and fig-trees.... I saw and felt all in such a lively
manner as if there had been no other way to those places but in
spirit only.... Without changing place in myself I could
behold and enjoy all those. Anything when it was proposed
though it was a thousand years ago being always present before
me.”
I venture again to quote Traherne because I know of
no writer who retains so clear a memory of his infancy;
but Goethe gives as full and convincing an account of
his experience of the Bible,[12] I say ‘experience’ advisedly,
for the word denotes the process by which children
get to know. They experience all the things they hear
and read of; these enter into them and are their life;
and thus it is that ideas feed the mind in the most literal
sense of the word ‘feed.’
Do our Geography lessons take the children there?
Do they experience, live in, our story of the call of
Abraham?—or of the healing of the blind man on the
way to Jericho? If they do not, it is not for lack of
earnestness and intention on the part of the teacher;
his error is rather want of confidence in children. He
has not formed a just measure of a child’s mind and
bores his scholars with much talk about matters which
they are able to understand for themselves much better
than he does. How many teachers know that children
require no pictures excepting the pictures of great artists,
which have quite another function than that of illustration?
They see for themselves in their own minds
a far more glorious, and indeed more accurate, presentation
than we can afford in our miserable daubs. They
read between the lines and put in all the author has
left out. A child of nine, who had been reading Lang’s
Tales of Troy and Greece, drew Ulysses on the Isle of
Calypso cutting down trees to make a raft; a child
of ten, revelling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, drew
that Indian Princess bringing her lovely boy to Titania.
We others are content to know that Ulysses built a
raft, that the boy was the child of an Indian Princess.
This is how any child’s mind works, and our concern
is not to starve these fertile intelligences. They must
have food in great abundance and variety. They know
what to do with it well enough and we need not disturb
ourselves to provide for the separate exercise of
each so-called ‘faculty’; for the mind is one and works
all together; reason, imagination, reflection, judgment,
what you please, are like ‘all hands’ summoned
by the ‘heave-ho!’ of the boatswain. All swarm on
deck for the lading of cargo, that rich and odorous cargo
of ideas which the fair vessel of a child’s mind is waiting
to receive. Do we wish every child in a class to say,—or,
if he does not say, to feel,—“I was enlarged wonderfully”
by a Geography lesson? Let him see the
place with the eyes of those who have seen or conceived
it; your barographs, thermographs, contour lines, relief
models, sections, profiles and the like, will not do it. A
map of the world must be a panorama to a child of
pictures so entrancing that he would rather ponder
them than go out to play; and nothing is more easy
than to give him this joie de vivre. Let him see the
world as we ourselves choose to see it when we travel;
its cities and peoples, its mountains and rivers, and he
will go away from his lesson with the piece of the world
he has read about, be it county or country, sea or shore,
as that of “a new room prepared for him, so much will
he be magnified and delighted in it.” All the world is
in truth the child’s possession, prepared for him, and
if we keep him out of his rights by our technical, commercial,
even historical, geography, any sort of geography,
in fact, made to illustrate our theories, we are guilty
of fraudulent practices. What he wants is the world
and every bit, piece by piece, each bit a key to the rest.
He reads of the Bore of the Severn and is on speaking
terms with a ‘Bore’ wherever it occurs. He need not
see a mountain to know a mountain. He sees all that
is described to him with a vividness of which we know
nothing just as if there had been “no other way to
those places but in spirit only.” Who can take the
measure of a child? The Genie of the Arabian tale is
nothing to him. He, too, may be let out of his bottle
and fill the world. But woe to us if we keep him corked
up.
Enough, that the children have minds, and every
man’s mind is his means of living; but it is a great
deal more. Working men will have leisure in the future
and how this leisure is to be employed is a question
much discussed. Now, no one can employ leisure fitly
whose mind is not brought into active play every day;
the small affairs of a man’s own life supply no intellectual
food and but small and monotonous intellectual
exercise. Science, history, philosophy, literature, must
no longer be the luxuries of the ‘educated’ classes; all
classes must be educated and sit down to these things
of the mind as they do to their daily bread. History
must afford its pageants, science its wonders, literature
its intimacies, philosophy its speculations, religion its
assurances to every man, and his education must have
prepared him for wanderings in these realms of gold.
How do we prepare a child, again, to use the æsthetic
sense with which he appears to come provided? His
education should furnish him with whole galleries of
mental pictures, pictures by great artists old and new;—Israels’
Pancake Woman, his Children by the Sea;
Millet’s Feeding the Birds, First Steps, Angelus;
Rembrandt’s Night Watch, The Supper at Emmaus;
Velasquez’s Surrender of Breda,—in fact, every child
should leave school with at least a couple of hundred
pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the
halls of his imagination, to say nothing of great buildings,
sculpture, beauty of form and colour in things he sees.
Perhaps we might secure at least a hundred lovely landscapes
too,—sunsets, cloudscapes, star-light nights. At
any rate he should go forth well furnished because
imagination has the property of magical expansion, the
more it holds the more it will hold.
It is not only a child’s intellect but his heart that
comes to us thoroughly furnished. Can any of us love
like a little child? Father and mother, sisters and
brothers, neighbours and friends, “our” cat and “our”
dog, the wretchedest old stump of a broken toy, all come
in for his lavish tenderness. How generous and grateful
he is, how kind and simple, how pitiful and how full
of benevolence in the strict sense of goodwill, how loyal
and humble, how fair and just! His conscience is on
the alert. Is a tale true? Is a person good?—these
are the important questions. His conscience chides him
when he is naughty, and by degrees as he is trained,
his will comes to his aid and he learns to order his life.
He is taught to say his prayers, and we elders hardly
realize how real his prayers are to a child.
Now place a teacher before a class of persons the
beauty and immensity of each one of whom I have tried
to indicate and he will say, “What have I to offer them?”
His dull routine lessons crumble into the dust they are
when he faces children as they are. He cannot go on
offering them his stale commonplaces; he feels that he
may not bore them; that he may not prick the minds
he has dulled by unworthy motives of greed or emulation;
he would not invite a parcel of children to a Timon
feast of smoke and lukewarm water. He knows that
children’s minds hunger at regular intervals as do their
bodies; that they hunger for knowledge, not for information,
and that his own poor stock of knowledge is not
enough, his own desultory talk has not substance
enough; that his irrelevant remarks interrupt a child’s
train of thought; that, in a word, he is not sufficient for
these things.
On the other hand, the children, the children of the
slums especially, have no vocabulary to speak of, no
background of thought derived from a cultured environment.
They are like goodly pitchers, capable of holding
much but with necks so narrow that only the thinnest
stream can trickle in. So we have thought hitherto,
and our teaching has been diluted to dishwater and the
pitchers have gone empty away.
But we have changed all that. Just as in the War
the magnanimous, patriotic citizen was manifested in
every man so in our schools every child has been discovered
to be a person of infinite possibilities. I say
every child, for so-called ‘backward’ children are no
exception. I shall venture to bring before the reader
some experiences of the Parents’ Union School as being
ground with which I am familiar. Examination papers
representing tens of thousands of children working in
Elementary Schools, Secondary Schools and home
schoolrooms have just passed under my eye. How the
children have revelled in knowledge! and how good
and interesting all their answers are! How well they
spell on the whole and how well they write! We do not
need the testimony of their teachers that the work of the
term has been joyous; the verve with which the children
tell what they know proves the fact. Every one of these
children knows that there are hundreds of pleasant places
for the mind to roam in. They are good and happy
because some little care has been taken to know what
they are and what they require; a care very amply rewarded
by results which alter the whole outlook on
education. In our Training College, the students are
not taught how to stimulate attention, how to keep order,
how to give marks, how to punish or even how to reward,
how to manage a large class or a small school with
children in different classes. All these things come by
nature in a school where the teachers know something
of the capacities and requirements of children. To hear
children of the slums ‘telling’ King Lear or Woodstock,
by the hour if you will let them, or describing with
minutest details Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb or
Botticelli’s Spring, is a surprise, a revelation. We take
off our shoes from off our feet; we ‘did not know it
was in them,’ whether we be their parents, their teachers
or mere lookers-on. And with some feeling of awe upon
us we shall be the better prepared to consider how and
upon what children should be educated. I will only
add that I make no claims for them which cannot be
justified by hundreds, thousands, of instances within
our experience.
CHAPTER III THE GOOD AND EVIL NATURE OF A CHILD — 1.— Well-being of Body — 2.— Well-Being of Mind — 3.— Intellectual Appetite — 4.— Misdirected Affections — 5.— The Well-Being of the Soul
Children are not born bad but with possibilities for good and
for evil.
A well-known educationalist has brought heavy charges
against us all on the score that we bring up children
as ‘children of wrath.’ He probably exaggerates the
effect of any such teaching, and the ‘little angel’ theory
is fully as mischievous. The fact seems to be that
children are like ourselves, not because they have become
so, but because they are born so; that is, with tendencies,
dispositions, towards good and towards evil,
and also with a curious intuitive knowledge as to which
is good and which is evil. Here we have the work of
education indicated. There are good and evil tendencies
in body and mind, heart and soul; and the hope
set before us is that we can foster the good so as to
attenuate the evil; that is, on condition that we put
Education in her true place as the handmaid of Religion.
The community, the nation, the race, are now taking
their due place in our religious thought. We are no
longer solely occupied in what an Irish woman called
‘saving yer dirty sowl.’ Our religion is becoming more
magnanimous and more responsible and it is time that
a like change should take place in our educational thought.
We find ourselves in open places breathing fresher air
when we consider, not the education of an individual
child or of a social class or even of a given country, but
of the race, of the human nature common to every class
and country, every individual child. The prospect is
exhilarating and the recognition of the potentialities in
any child should bring about such an educational renaissance
as may send our weary old world rejoicing on its
way.
Physicians and physiologists tell us that new-born
children start fair. A child is not born with tuberculosis,
for example, if with a tendency which it is our
business to counteract. In the same way all possibilities
for good are contained in his moral and intellectual outfit,
hindered it may be by a corresponding tendency to
evil for every such potentiality. We begin to see our
way. It is our business to know of what parts and
passions a child is made up, to discern the dangers that
present themselves, and still more the possibilities of
free-going in delightful paths. However disappointing,
even forbidding, the failings of a child, we may be quite
sure that in every case the opposite tendency is there
and we must bring the wit to give it play.
Parents have this sort of mother-wit more commonly
than we outsiders, teachers and the like. Of course, we
know of the mothers and fathers who can’t do anything
with Tom and hope the schoolmaster will lick him into
shape. But how often on the other hand are we surprised
to see how much more of persons Bob and Polly are
in their own homes than at school! Perhaps this is
because parents know their children better than do
others and for that reason believe in them more; for
our faith in the divine and the human keeps pace with
our knowledge. For this reason it behoves us teachers
to get a bird’s eye view of the human nature which is
present in every child. Everybody knows that hunger,
thirst, rest, chastity are those natural endowments of
the body by means of which it grows and functions; but
in every child there are tendencies to greediness, restlessness,
sloth, impurity, any one of which by allowance
may ruin the child and the man that he will be.
Again, our old friends, the five senses, require direction
and practice. Smell, especially, might be made a source
of delicate pleasure by the habit of discriminating the
good smells of field and garden, flower and fruit, for
their own sakes, not as ministering to taste, which,
unduly pampered, becomes a man’s master. But there
is little that is new to be learned about the body and
those various body-servants with which it is equipped.
Education already does her part in training the muscles,
cultivating the senses, ordering the nerves, of all children,
rich and poor; for in these days we perceive that the
development which is due to one child is due to all. If
we make a mistake in regard to physical education it is
perhaps in the matter of ordering the nerves of a child.
We do not consider enough that the nourishment, rest,
fresh air and natural exercise, proper for the body as a
whole, meet the requirements of the nervous system
and that the undue nervous tension which a small child
suffers in carrying a cup of tea, an older boy or girl in
cramming for an examination, may be the cause later
of a distressing nervous breakdown. We are becoming
a nervous, overstrained nation and though golf and
cricket may do something for us, a watchful education,
alert to arrest every symptom of nervous over-pressure,
would do much to secure for every child a fine physique
and a high degree of staying power.
A snare which attends the really brilliant teacher
is the exhausting effect upon children of an overpowering
personality. They are such ardent and responsive
little souls that the teacher who gives them nods and
becks and wreathéd smiles may play the Pied Piper
with them. But he or she should beware. The undue
play of the personality of the teacher is likely to suppress
and subdue that of his scholars; and, not only so,
children are so eager to live up to the demands made
upon them that they may be brought to a state of continual
nervous over-pressure under the influence of a
‘charming personality.’ This sort of subjection, the
Schwärmerei of the Germans, was powerfully set forth
in a recent novel in which an unprincipled and fascinating
mistress ‘ran’ her personality with disastrous results.
But the danger does not lie in extreme cases. The girl
who kisses the chamber door of her class mistress will
forget this lady by and by; but the parasitic habit
has been formed and she must always have some person
or some cause on which to hang her body and soul.
I speak of ‘she’ and ‘her’ perhaps unfairly, because
ever since the Greek youth hung about their masters in
the walks of the Academy there have been teachers
who have undermined the stability of the boys to whom
they devoted themselves. Were his countrymen entirely
wrong about Socrates? A tendency to this
manner of betrayal is the infirmity of noble minds, of
those who have the most to give; and for this reason,
again, it is important that we should have before us a
bird’s eye view, let us call it, of human nature.
There is a common notion that it is our inalienable
right not only to say what we please but to think as we
please, that is, we believe that while body is subject to
physical laws, while the affections, love and justice, are
subject to moral laws, the mind is a chartered libertine.
Probably this notion has much to do with our neglect
of intellect. We do not perceive that the mind, too,
has its tendencies both good and evil and that every
inclination towards good is hindered and may be thwarted
by a corresponding inclination towards evil; I am not
speaking of moral evil but of those intellectual evils
which we are slow to define and are careless in dealing
with. Does the teacher of a large class always perceive
that intellect is enthroned before him in every child,
however dull and inattentive may be his outer show?
Every child in such a class is open to the wonders that
science reveals, is interested in the wheeling worlds
of the winter firmament. “Child after child,” said
a schoolmistress, “writes to say how much they have
enjoyed reading about the stars.” “As we are walking
sometimes and the stars are shining,” says a girl of
eleven in an Elementary School, “I tell mother about
the stars and planets and comets. She said she should
think astronomy very interesting.”
But we teach astronomy, no, we teach ‘light and
heat’ by means of dessicated text-books, diagrams and
experiments, which last are no more to children than the
tricks of white magic. The infinitely little is as attractive
to them as the infinitely great and the behaviour of an
atom, an ion, is a fairy tale they delight in, that is, if
no semblance to a fairy tale be suggested. The pageant
of history with its interplay of characters is as delightful
as any tale because every child uses his own film to
show the scenes and exhibit the persons. We fuss a good
deal about the dress, implements and other small details
of each historic period but we forget that, give the
child a few fit and exact words on the subject and he
has the picture in his mind’s eye, nay, a series, miles
long of really glorious films; for a child’s amazing,
vivifying imagination is part and parcel of his intellect.
The way children make their own the examples
offered to them is amazing. No child would forget
the characterisation of Charles IX as ‘feeble and violent,’
nor fail to take to himself a lesson in self-control.
We may not point the moral; that is the work proper
for children themselves and they do it without fail.
The comparative difficulty of the subject does not affect
them. A teacher writes (of children of eleven),—“They
cannot have enough of Publicola and there are always
groans when the lesson comes to an end.”
I have said much of history and science, but mathematics,
a mountainous land which pays the climber,
makes its appeal to mind, and good teachers know that
they may not drown their teaching in verbiage. As
for literature—to introduce children to literature is
to instal them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to
bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before
them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn
to know literature by being familiar with it from the
very first. A child’s intercourse must always be with
good books, the best that we can find. Of course, we
have always known that this is the right thing for children
in cultivated homes, but what about those in whose
dwellings books are little known? One of the wise
teachers in Gloucestershire[13] notes that a recognition of
two things is necessary in dealing with this problem.
First, that,—
“To explain the meaning of words destroys interest in the
story and annoys the child. Second, that in many instances it is
unnecessary. Although a child’s dictionary knowledge of words
is lacking it does not follow that the meaning of a sentence or
paragraph is unknown to him ... neither is the correct employment
of the words beyond him in writing or narrating. Two
examples of this power to sense the meaning were observed last
term. There is a particular boy in Form IIB who has not
hitherto been looked upon as possessing high intelligence. Classified
by age he ought to be two Forms higher. Last term in taking
the story of Romulus and Remus, I found that in power of
narrating and degree of understanding (that is, of ‘sensing’ a
paragraph and either translating it into his vocabulary or in
using the words read to him) he stood above the others and also
above the majority in the next higher Form.”
“What has surprised us most,” said the Headmaster of A.,
“is the ready way in which boys absorb information and become
interested in literature, literature which we have hitherto considered
outside the scope of primary school teaching. A year
ago I could not have believed that boys would have read Lytton’s
Harold, Kingsley’s Hereward, and Scott’s Talisman with real
pleasure and zest or would study with understanding and delight
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, King John and Richard II; but experience
has shown us we have underrated the abilities and
tastes of the lads we should have known better.”
That is the capital charge against most schools. The
teachers underrate the tastes and abilities of their pupils.
In things intellectual, children, even backward children,
have extraordinary ‘possibilities for good’—possibilities
so great that if we had the wit to give them their
head they would carry us along like a stream in spate.
But what about intellectual tendencies, or ‘possibilities
for evil’? One such tendency dominates many
schools notwithstanding prodigious efforts on the part
of the teachers to rouse slumbering minds. Indeed,
the more the teacher works, the greater the incuria of
the children, so the class is prodded with marks, the
boys take places, the bogie of an oncoming examination
is held before them. Some spasmodic effort is the result
but no vital response and, though boys and girls love
school, like their teachers and even their lessons, they care
not at all for knowledge, for which the school should
create enthusiasm. I can touch here on no more than
two potent means of creating incuria in a class. One
is the talky-talky of the teacher. We all know how
we are bored by the person in private life who explains
and expounds. What reason have we to suppose that
children are not equally bored? They try to tell us
that they are by wandering eyes, inanimate features,
fidgetting hands and feet, by every means at their disposal;
and the kindly souls among us think that they
want to play or to be out of doors. But they have no use
for play except at proper intervals. What they want is
knowledge conveyed in literary form and the talk of
the facile teacher leaves them cold.
Another soothing potion is little suspected of producing
mental lethargy. We pride ourselves upon
going over and over the same ground ‘until the children
know it’; the monotony is deadly. A child writes,—“Before
we had these (books) we had to read the same
old lot again and again.” Is it not true? In the
home schoolroom books used by the grandmother are
fit for the grandchildren, books used in boys’ schools
may be picked up at second-hand stalls with the
obliterated names of half-a-dozen successive owners.
And what of the compilations, neither books nor text-books,
which do duty in Elementary Schools? No
wonder Mr. Fisher said, in opening a public library, that
he had been “surprised and pained when visiting Elementary
Schools to find that there was nothing in them
which could be called a book, nothing that would charm
and enlighten and expand the imagination.” And yet,
as he went on to say, the country is “full of artistic
and literary ability and always has been so.” If this
ability is to be brought into play we must recognise
that children are not ruminants intellectually any more
than physically. They cannot go over the same ground
repeatedly without deadening, even paralysing results,
for progress, continual progress is the law of intellectual
life.
In matters of the mind again Habit is a good servant
but a bad master. Specialisation, the fetish of the end
of the last century, is to be deprecated because it is at
our peril that we remain too long in any one field of
thought. We may not, for example, allow the affairs
and interests of daily life to deprive the mind of its
proper range of interests and occupations. It is even
possible for a person to go into any one of the great
fields of thought and to work therein with delight until
he become incapable of finding his way into any other
such field. We know how Darwin lost himself in science
until he could not read poetry, find pleasure in pictures,
think upon things divine; he was unable to turn his
mind out of the course in which it had run for most of
his life. In the great (and ungoverned) age of the Renaissance,
the time when great things were done, great
pictures painted, great buildings raised, great discoveries
made, the same man was a painter, an architect, a goldsmith
and a master of much knowledge besides; and all
that he did he did well, all that he knew was part of
his daily thought and enjoyment. Let us hear Vasari
on Leonardo,—
“Possessed of a divine and marvellous intellect and being an
excellent geometrician, he not only worked at sculpture ...
but also prepared many architectural plans and buildings ...
he made designs for mills and other engines to go by water; and,
as painting was to be his profession, he studied drawing from life.”
Leonardo knew nothing about Art for Art’s sake, that
shibboleth of yesterday, nor did our own Christopher
Wren, also a great mathematician and master of much
and various knowledge, to whom architecture was rather
a by-the-way interest, and yet he built St. Paul’s. What
an irreparable loss we had when that plan of his for a
beautiful and spacious London was flung aside because
it would cost too much to carry it out! Just so of our
parsimony do we fling aside the minds of the children
of our country, also capable of being wrought into
pleasaunces of delight, structures of utility and beauty,
at a pitifully trifling cost. It is well we should recognise
that the business of education is with us all our lives,
that we must always go on increasing our knowledge.
Of the means we employ to hinder the growth of
mind perhaps none is more subtle than the questionnaire.
It is as though one required a child to produce for inspection
at its various stages of assimilation the food he
consumed for his dinner; we see at once how the digestive
processes would be hindered, how, in a word, the child
would cease to be fed. But the mind also requires its
food and leave to carry on those quiet processes of digestion
and assimilation which it must accomplish for itself.
The child with capacity, which implies depth,
is stupified by a long rigmarole on the lines of,—“If John’s father
is Tom’s son, what relation is Tom to John?” The
shallow child guesses the riddle and scores; and it is
by the use of tests of this kind that we turn out young
people sharp as needles but with no power of reflection,
no intelligent interests, nothing but the aptness of the
city gamin.
Imagination may become like that cave Ezekiel tells
of wherein were all manner of unseemly and evil things;
it may be a temple wherein self is glorified; it may be
a chamber of horrors and dangers; but it may also be
a House Beautiful. It is enough for us to remember
that imagination is stored with those images supplied
day by day whether by the cinema, the penny dreadful,
by Homer or Shakespeare, by the great picture or the
flaming ‘shocker.’ We have heard of the imaginative
man who conceived a passion for the Sphinx!
In these days when Reason is deified by the unlearned
and plays the part of the Lord of Misrule it is necessary
that every child should be trained to recognize fallacious
reasoning and above all to know that a man’s reason is
his servant and not his master; that there is no notion
a man chooses to receive which his reason will not justify,
whether it be mistrust of his neighbour, jealousy of his
wife, doubts about his religion, or contempt for his
country.
Realising this, we ‘see reason’ in the fact that
thousands of men go on strike because two of their
body have been denied permission to attend a certain
meeting. We see reason in this but the men themselves
confound reason with right and consider that such a
strike is a righteous protest. The only safeguard against
fallacies which undermine the strength of the nation
morally and economically is a liberal education which
affords a wide field for reflection and comparison and
abundant data upon which to found sound judgments.
As for that æsthetic ‘appetency’ (to use Coleridge’s
word) upon which so many of the gentle pleasures of life
depend, it is open to many disasters: it dies of inanition
when beauty is not duly presented to it, beauty in words,
in pictures and music, in tree and flower and sky. The
function of the sense of beauty is to open a paradise of
pleasure for us; but what if we grow up admiring the
wrong things, or, what is morally worse, arrogant in the
belief that it is only we and our kind who are able to
appreciate and distinguish beauty? It is no small part
of education to have seen much beauty, to recognize it
when we see it, and to keep ourselves humble in its
presence.
As the body is provided with its appetites, by undue
indulgence of any one of which a man may make shipwreck,
but which duly ordered should result in a robust
and vigorous frame; so, too, the spiritual part of us is
provided with certain caterers whose business it is to
secure that kind of nourishment which promotes spiritual
or intellectual growth in one or another direction. Perhaps
in no part of our educational service do we make
more serious blunders than in our use of those desires
which act as do the appetites for the body’s service.
Every child wants to be approved, even baby in his new
red shoes; to be first in what is going on; to get what
is going; to be admired; to lead and manage the rest;
to have the companionship of children and grown people;
and last, but not least, every child wants to know.
There they are, those desires, ready to act on occasion
and our business is to make due use of this natural provision
for the work of education. We do make use of
the desires, not wisely, but too well. We run our schools
upon emulation, the desire of every child to be first; and
not the ablest, but the most pushing, comes to the front.
We quicken emulation by the common desire to get and
to have, that is, by the impulse of avarice. So we offer
prizes, exhibitions, scholarships, every incentive that
can be proposed. We cause him to work for our approbation,
we play upon his vanity, and the boy does more
than he can. What is the harm, we say, when all those
springs of action are in the child already? The athlete
is beginning to discover that he suffers elsewhere from
the undue development of any set of muscles; and the
boy whose ambition, or emulation, has been unduly
stimulated becomes a flaccid person. But there is a
worse evil. We all want knowledge just as much as we
want bread. We know it is possible to cure the latter
appetite by giving more stimulating food; and the
worst of using other spurs to learning is that a natural
love of knowledge which should carry us through eager
school-days, and give a spice of adventure to the duller
days of mature life, is effectually choked; and boys
and girls ‘Cram to pass but not to know; they do pass
but they don’t know.’ The divine curiosity which should
have been an equipment for life hardly survives early
schooldays.
Now it has been demonstrated very fully indeed that
the delightfulness of knowledge is sufficient to carry a
pupil joyfully and eagerly through his school life and
that prizes and places, praise, blame and punishment,
are unnecessary in so far as they are used to secure ardent
interest and eager work. The love of knowledge is
sufficient. Each of those other stimuli should no doubt
have its natural action, but one or two springs of action
seem to be played upon excessively in our schools.
Conduct gives opportunity for ‘virtue emulously rapid
in the race’ and especially that part of conduct known
as ‘play’ in which most of the natural desires come
into action; but even in play we must beware of the
excess of zeal which risks the elimination of the primary
feelings of love and justice. In the schoolroom, without
doubt, the titillation of knowledge itself affords sufficient
stimulus to close attention and steady labour; and the
desire of acquisition has due play in a boy who is constantly
increasing his acquirements.
We are aware of more than mind and body in our
dealings with children. We appeal to their ‘feelings’;
whether ‘mind’ or ‘feelings’ be more than names we
choose to give to manifestations of that spiritual entity
which is each one of us. Probably we have not even
taken the trouble to analyse and name the feelings and to
discover that they all fall under the names of love and
justice, that it is the glory of the human being to be
endowed with such a wealth of these two as is sufficient
for every occasion of life. More, the occasions come
and he is ready to meet them with the ease and triumph
of the solvent debtor.
But this rich endowment of the moral nature is also
a matter with which the educator should concern himself.
Alas, he does so. He points the moral with a
thousand tedious platitudes, directs, instructs, illustrates
and bores exceedingly the nimble and subtle
minds of his scholars. This, of the feelings and their
manifestations, is certainly the field for the spare and
guarded praise and blame of parent and teacher; but
this praise or blame is apt to be either scrapped by
children, or, taken as the sole motive for conduct, they
go forth unused to do a thing ‘for it is right’ but only
because somebody’s approbation is to be won.
This education of the feelings, moral education, is too
delicate and personal a matter for a teacher to undertake
trusting to his own resources. Children are not
to be fed morally like young pigeons with predigested
food. They must pick and eat for themselves and they
do so from the conduct of others which they hear of or
perceive. But they want a great quantity of the sort of
food whose issue is conduct, and that is why poetry,
history, romance, geography, travel, biography, science
and sums must all be pressed into service. No one can
tell what particular morsel a child will select for his sustenance.
One small boy of eight may come down late
because—“I was meditating upon Plato and couldn’t
fasten my buttons,” and another may find his meat in
‘Peter Pan’! But all children must read widely, and
know what they have read, for the nourishment of their
complex nature.
As for moral lessons, they are worse than useless;
children want a great deal of fine and various moral
feeding, from which they draw the ‘lessons’ they require.
It is a wonderful thing that every child, even the rudest,
is endowed with Love and is able for all its manifestations,—kindness,
benevolence, generosity, gratitude, pity,
sympathy, loyalty, humility, gladness; we older persons
are amazed at the lavish display of any one of these
to which the most ignorant child may treat us. But
these aptitudes are so much coin of the realm with which
a child is provided that he may be able to pay his way
through life; and, alas, we are aware of certain vulgar
commonplace tendencies in ourselves which make us
walk delicately and trust, not to our own teaching, but to
the best that we have in art and literature and above
all to that storehouse of example and precept, the Bible,
to enable us to touch these delicate spirits to fine issues.
St. Francis, Collingwood, Father Damien, one of the V.C.’s
among us, will do more for children than years of talk.
Then there is that other wonderful provision for right
living without which no neglected or savage man-soul
exists. Everyone has Justice in his heart; a cry for
‘fair play’ reaches the most lawless mob, and we all
know how children torment us with their ‘It’s not fair.’
It is much to know that as regards justice as well as love
there exists in everyone an adequate provision for the
conduct of life: general unrest, which has its rise in
wrong thinking and wrong judging far more than in
faulty conditions, is the misguided outcome of that sense
of justice with which, thank God, we are all endued.
Here, on the face of it, we get one office of education.
This, of justice, is another spiritual provision which we
fail to employ duly in our schools; and so wonderful
is this principle that we cannot kill, paralyse, or even
benumb it, but, choked in its natural course, it spreads
havoc and devastation where it should have made the soil
fertile for the fruits of good living.
Few of the offices of education are more important
than that of preparing men to distinguish between their
rights and their duties. We each have our rights and
other persons have their duties towards us as we towards
them; but it is not easy to learn that we have precisely
the same rights as other people and no more; that other
people owe to us just such duties as we owe to them.
This fine art of self-adjustment is possible to everyone
because of the ineradicable principle which abides in us.
But our eyes must be taught to see, and hence the need
for all the processes of education, futile in proportion as
they do not serve this end. To think fairly requires,
we know, knowledge as well as consideration.
Young people should leave school knowing that their
thoughts are not their own;[14] that what we think of
other people is a matter of justice or injustice; that a
certain manner of words is due from them to all manner
of persons with whom they have to deal; and that not to
speak those words is to be unjust to their neighbours.
They should know that truth, that is, justice in word,
is their due and that of all other persons; there are few
better equipments for a citizen than a mind capable of
discerning the truth, and this just mind can be preserved
only by those who take heed what they think.
“Yet truth,” says Bacon, “which only doth judge itself,
teacheth that the enquiry of truth, which is the love-making,
or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which
is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the
enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.”
If justice in word is to be duly learned by all scholars
still more is integrity, justice in action; integrity in
work, which disallows ca’canny methods, whether those
of the artisan who does as little as he can in the time,
or of the schoolboy who receives payment in kind—in
his support, the cost of his education and the trust imposed
in him by parents and teachers. Therefore he may
not scamp, dawdle over, postpone, crib, or otherwise
shirk his work. He learns that “my duty towards my
neighbour” is “to keep my hands from picking and
stealing,” and, whether a man be a workman, a servant,
or a prosperous citizen, he must know that justice requires
from him the integrity in material which we call honesty;
not the common honesty which hates to be found out,
but that refined and delicate sense of values which
George Eliot exhibits for us in ‘Caleb Garth.’
There is another form in which the magnanimous
citizen of the future must be taught the sense of justice.
Our opinions show our integrity of thought. Every
person has many opinions whether his own honestly
thought out, or notions picked up from his pet newspaper
or his companions. The person who thinks out
his opinions modestly and carefully is doing his duty
as truly as if he saved a life because there is no more
or less about duty.
If a schoolboy is to be guided into the justice of thought
from which sound opinions emanate, how much more
does he need guidance in arriving at that justice in motive
which we call sound principles. For what, after all, are
principles but those motives of first importance which
govern us, move us in thought and action? We appear
to pick up these in a casual way and are seldom able to
render an account of them and yet our lives are ordered
by our principles, good or bad. Here, again, we have a
reason for wide and wisely ordered reading; for there
are always catch-words floating in the air, as,—‘What’s
the good?’ ‘It’s all rot,’ and the like, which the vacant
mind catches up for use as the basis of thought and
conduct, as, in fact, paltry principles for the guidance
of a life.
Here we have one more reason why there is nothing
in all those spiritual stores in the world’s treasury too
good for the education of all children. Every lovely
tale, illuminating poem, instructive history, every
unfolding of travel and revelation of science exists for
children. “La terre appartient à l’enfant, toujours à
l’enfant,” was well said by Maxim Gorky, and we should
do well to remember the fact.
The service that some of us (of the P.N.E.U.) believe
we have done in the cause of education is to discover that
all children, even backward children, are aware of their
needs and pathetically eager for the food they require;
that no preparation whatever is necessary for this sort of
diet; that a limited vocabulary, sordid surroundings,
the absence of a literary background to thought are not
hindrances; indeed they may turn out to be incentives
to learning, just as the more hungry the child, the readier
he is for his dinner. This statement is no mere pious
opinion; it has been amply proved in thousands of
instances. Children of a poor school in the slums are
eager to tell the whole story of Waverley, falling continually
into the beautiful language and style of the
author. They talk about the Rosetta Stone and about
treasures in their local museum; they discuss Coriolanus
and conclude that ‘his mother must have spoiled him.’
They know by heart every detail of a picture by La Hooch,
Rembrandt, Botticelli, and not only is no evolution of
history or drama, no subtle sweetness, no inspiration of a
poet, beyond them, but they decline to know that which
does not reach them in literary form.
What they receive under this condition they absorb
immediately and show that they know by that test of
knowledge which applies to us all, that is, they can tell
it with power, clearness, vivacity and charm. These
are the children to whom we have been doling out the
‘three R’s’ for generations! Small wonder that juvenile
crime increases; the intellectually starved boy must
needs find food for his imagination, scope for his intellectual
power; and crime, like the cinema, offers it must
be admitted, brave adventures.
If we leave the outer courts of mind and body, the
holy places of the affections and the will (we shall consider
this last later) and enter that holy of holies where man
performs his priestly functions, we may well ask with
diffidence and humility what may education do for the
Soul of a child? “What is there that outwits the understanding
of a man or that is out of the range of his
thoughts, the reach of his aspirations? He is, it is true,
baffled on all hands by his ignorance, the illimitable
ignorance of even the wisest, but ignorance is not incapacity
and the wings of a man’s soul beat with impatience
against the bars of his ignorance. He would
out, out into the universe of infinite thought and
infinite possibilities. How is the soul of a man to be
satisfied? Crowned kings have thrown up dominion
because they want that which is greater than kingdoms;
profound scholars fret under limitations which keep them
playing upon the margin of the unsounded ocean of
knowledge; no great love can satisfy itself with loving;
there is no satisfaction save one for the soul of a man,
because the things about him are finite, measurable, incomplete
and his reach is beyond his grasp. He has an
urgent, incessant, irrepressible need of the infinite.”[15]
“I want, am made for, and must have a God;”—not
a mere serviceable religion,—because we have in us an
infinite capacity for love, loyalty and service which we
cannot expend upon any other.
But what sort of approaches do we prepare for children
towards the God whom they need, the Saviour in Whom
is all help, the King Who affords all delight, commands all
adoration and loyalty? Any words or thoughts of
ours are poor and insufficient, but we have a treasury
of divine words which they read and know with satisfying
pleasure and tell with singular beauty and fitness.
“The Bible is the most interesting book I know,” said
a young person of ten who had read a good many books
and knew her Bible. By degrees children get that knowledge
of God which is the object of the final daily prayer
in our beautiful liturgy—the prayer of St. Chrysostom—“Grant
us in this world knowledge of Thy truth,” and
all other knowledge which they obtain gathers round
and illuminates this.
Here is an example of how such knowledge grows.
I heard a class of girls aged about thirteen read an
essay on George Herbert. Three or four of his poems
were included, and none of the girls had read either
essay or poems before. They ‘narrated’ what they
had read and in the course of their narration gave a
full paraphrase of The Elixir, The Pulley, and one or
two other poems. No point made by the poet was
omitted and his exact words were used pretty freely.
The teacher made comments upon one or two unusual
words and that was all; to explain or enforce (otherwise
than by a reverently sympathetic manner, the
glance and words that showed that she too, cared),
would have been impertinent. It is an interesting
thing that hundreds of children of this age in Secondary
and Elementary Schools and in families scattered over
the world read and narrated the same essay and no
doubt paraphrased the verses with equal ease. I felt
humbled before the children knowing myself incapable
of such immediate and rapid apprehension of several
pages of new matter including poems whose intention
is by no means obvious. In such ways the great thoughts
of great thinkers illuminate children and they grow in
knowledge, chiefly the knowledge of God.
And yet this, the chief part of education, is drowned
in torrents of talk, in tedious repetition, in objurgation
and recrimination, in every sort of way in which the
mind may be bored and the affections deadened.
I have endeavoured to sketch some of the possibilities
for good and the corresponding possibilities for evil
present in all children; they are waiting for direction
and control, certainly, but still more for the formative
influence of knowledge. I have avoided philosophical
terms, using only names in common use,—body and soul,
body and mind, body, soul and spirit,—because these
represent ideas that we cannot elude and that convey
certain definite notions; and these ideas must needs
form the basis of our educational thought.
We must know something about the material we are
to work upon if the education we offer is not to be scrappy
and superficial. We must have some measure of a child’s
requirements, not based upon his uses to society, nor
upon the standard of the world he lives in, but upon his
own capacity and needs. We would not willingly educate
him towards what is called ‘self-expression’; he has
little to express except what he has received as knowledge,
whether by way of record or impression; what he
can do is to assimilate and give this forth in a form
which is original because it is modified, re-created, by
the action of his own mind; and this originality is produced
by the common bread and milk which is food for
everyone, acting upon the mind which is peculiar to each
individual child.
Education implies a continuous going forth of the mind;
but whatever induces introspection or any form of self-consciousness
holds up as it were the intellectual powers
and brings progress to a standstill. The reader may have
noticed with some disappointment that I have not
invited him to the study of psychology as it is understood
to-day. No doubt there exists a certain dim region described
as the unconscious mind, a sort of half-way house
between mind and matter, a place where the intellect
is subdued to the action of nerves and blood. Mind is
of its nature infinitely and always conscious and to speak
of the unconscious mind is a contradiction in terms; but
what is meant is that the mind thinks in ways of which
we are unconscious; and that our business is to make
ourselves aware by much introspection, much self-occupation,
of the nature and tendencies of this ‘unconscious’
region. The results of this study, so far as they
have been arrived at, are not encouraging. The best
that is in us would appear to find its origin in ‘complexes,’
sensual, erotic, greedy. Granting that such possibilities
are in us safety, lies in so nourishing the mind that
seed of baseness may bear fruit of beauty. Researches
in this region are deeply interesting no doubt, to the
psychologist, and may eventually bear fruit if only as
contributing a quota to the classification of knowledge;
but no authority on the subject is willing to offer at
present his researches as a contribution to educational
lore. It may be that the mind as well as the body has
its regions where noli me tangere is a counsel of expedience;
and, by the time we have dealt with those functions of
the mind which we know, we may find ourselves in a
position to formulate that which we certainly do not
possess, a Science, should it not be a Philosophy, of
Education?
CHAPTER IV AUTHORITY AND DOCILITY
The principles of Authority on the one hand and Docility on the
other are natural, necessary and fundamental
The War has made surprises stale but in those remote
pre-war days we were enormously startled by the discovery
of wireless telegraphy. That communications
should pass through almost infinite space without sign
or sound or obvious channel and arrive instantly at
their destination took away our breath. We had the
grace to value the discovery for something more than
its utility; we were awed in the presence of a law which
had always been there but was only now perceived. In
something the same way we have been electrified by the
discovery in the fields of France of heroism in the breast
of every common soldier. Now, just such discoveries
wait us in the field of education and any miner in this
field may strike a vein of ore which shall enrich the world.
The citizens of an ancient city on the shores of Gennesaret
made one of those startling discoveries and knew how to
give it a name; they found out that Christ ‘spake with
authority’ and not as their scribes.
It is not ours to speak with authority; the ‘verily,
verily I say unto you’ is a divine word not for us. Nevertheless
deputed authority is among us and in us. ‘He
is an authority’ on such and such a subject, is a correct
expression because by much study he has made it his own
and has a right to speak. This deputed authority appears
to be lodged in everyone, ready for occasion. Mr. Benjamin
Kidd has told us how the London policeman is the
very embodiment of authority, implicitly obeyed in a
way surprising to strangers. Every king and commander,
every mother, elder sister, school prefect, every foreman
of works and captain of games, finds that within himself
which secures faithful obedience, not for the sake of his
merits but because authority is proper to his office.
Without this principle, society would cease to cohere.
Practically there is no such thing as anarchy; what is
so-called is a mere transference of authority, even if in
the last resort the anarchist find authority in himself
alone. There is an idea abroad that authority makes
for tyranny, and that obedience, voluntary or involuntary,
is of the nature of slavishness; but authority is, on
the contrary, the condition without which liberty does
not exist and, except it be abused, is entirely congenial
to those on whom it is exercised: we are so made that
we like to be ordered even if the ordering be only that of
circumstances. Servants take pride in the orders they
receive; that our badge of honour is an ‘Order’ is a
significant use of words. It is still true that ‘Order is
heaven’s first law’ and order is the outcome of authority.
That principle in us which brings us into subjection to
authority is docility, teachableness, and that also is universal.
If a man in the pride of his heart decline other
authority, he will submit himself slavishly to his ‘star’
or his ‘destiny.’ It would seem that the exercise of
docility is as natural and necessary as that of reason or
imagination; and the two principles of authority and
docility act in every life precisely as do those two elemental
principles which enable the earth to maintain its orbit,
the one drawing it towards the sun, the other as constantly
driving it into space; between the two, the
earth maintains a more or less middle course and the
days go on.
The same two principles work in every child, the one
producing ordered life, the other making for rebellion,
and the crux in bringing up children is to find the mean
which shall keep a child true to his elliptical orbit. The
solution offered to-day is freedom in our schools; children
may be governed but they must not be aware that they
are governed, and, ‘Go as you please,’ must be the apparent
rule of their lives, while, ‘Do as you’re bid,’ is the moving
force. The result of an ordered freedom is obtained, that
ordered freedom which rules the lives of 999 in 1000
of the citizens of the world; but the drawback to an
indirect method of securing this result is that when,
‘Do as you please,’ is substituted for, ‘Do as you’re bid,’
there is dissimulation in the air and children fail to
learn that habit of ‘proud subjection and dignified
obedience’ which distinguishes great men and noble
citizens. No doubt it is pleasing that children should
behave naturally, should get up and wander about,
should sit still or frolic as they have a mind to, but
they too, must ‘learn obedience’; and it is no small
element in their happiness and ours that obedience is
both delightful and reposeful.
It is the part of the teacher to secure willing obedience,
not so much to himself as to the laws of the school and
the claims of the matter in hand. If a boy have a passage
to read, he obeys the call of that immediate duty, reads
the passage with attention and is happy in doing so.
We all know with what a sense of added importance we
say,—“I must be at Mrs. Jones’s by eleven.” “It is
necessary that I should see Brown.” The life that does
not obey such conditions has got out of its orbit and is
not of use to society. It is necessary that we should all
follow an ordered course, and children, even infant
children, must begin in the way in which they will have
to go on. Happily they come to us with the two inherent
forces, centripetal and centrifugal, which secure to them
freedom, i.e., self-authority, on the one hand, and ‘proud
subjection’ on the other.
But parents and those who stand in loco parentis have
a delicate task. There must be subjection, but it must
be proud, worn as a distinction, an order of merit. Probably
the way to secure this is to avoid standing between
children and those laws of life and conduct by which we
are all ultimately ruled. The higher the authority, the
greater distinction in obedience, and children are quick
to discriminate between the mere will and pleasure of
the arbitrary teacher or parent and the chastened authority
of him who is himself under rule. That subservience
should take the place of docility is the last calamity
for nation, family or school. Docility implies equality;
there is no great gulf fixed between teacher and taught;
both are pursuing the same ends, engaged on the same
theme, enriched by mutual interests; and probably the
quite delightful pursuit of knowledge affords the only
intrinsic liberty for both teacher and taught. “He is
the freeman whom the truth makes free,” and this freedom
the steady pursuit and delightful acquirement of
knowledge afford to us day by day. “The mind is its
own place,” we are told, “and in itself can make a heaven
of hell, a hell of heaven”; and that heaven of the
mind, is it not continual expansion in ordered freedom?
And that restless, burning, inflammatory hell, does it
not come of continual chafing against natural and
righteous order?
As for the superficial freedom of sitting or standing,
going or coming, that is a matter which settles itself,
as do all the relations between teacher and taught, once
children are allowed a due share in their own education,
not a benefit for us to confer but rather a provision for
them to take. Our chief concern for the mind or for the
body is to supply a well-ordered table with abundant,
appetising, nourishing and very varied food, which
children deal with in their own way and for themselves.
This food must be served au naturel, without the predigestion
which deprives it of stimulating and nourishing
properties and no sort of forcible feeding or spoon feeding
may be practised. Hungry minds sit down to such a
diet with the charming greediness of little children;
they absorb it, assimilate it and grow thereby in a manner
astonishing to those accustomed to the dull profitless
ruminating so often practised in schools. When the
teacher avoids hortatory methods, his scholars change
position when they have a mind to; but their mind is
commonly to sit still during a lesson time because they
are so intent on their work that they have no desire for
small divagations; while, on the other hand, the teacher
makes it his business to see that the body gets its share,
and an abundant share, of gymnastics whether by way
of games or drill. But this is a subject well understood
in modern schools and it is only necessary to say that
though mental activity promotes bodily functions in a
surprising way—has not an American physiologist discovered
that people may live to 160 or 1000 years (!) if
they continue to use their minds?—athleticism, on the
other hand, if unduly pursued, by no means promotes
mental activity.
In days when the concern of educators seems to be
to provide an easy option for that mental activity, the
sole condition of education, it must be urged that manual
dexterity, gardening, folk-dancing, and the like, while
they fulfil their proper function in training nerve and
muscle to ready responsiveness, do not sustain mind.
Nor, again, can we educate children upon the drama,
even the Shakespearean drama, nor upon poetry, even
the most musical and emotional. These things children
must have; but they come into the world with many
relations waiting to be established; relations with places
far and near, with the wide universe, with the past of
history, with the social economics of the present, with
the earth they live on and all its delightful progeny of
beast and bird, plant and tree; with the sweet human
affinities they entered into at birth; with their own
country and other countries, and, above all, with that
most sublime of human relationships—their relation to
God. With such a programme before his pupils only the
uninstructed teacher will put undue emphasis upon and
give undue time to arithmetic and handicrafts, singing
or acting, or any of the hundred specifics which are passed
off as education in its entirety.
The sense of must should be present with children;
our mistake is to act in such a way that they, only,
seem to be law-compelled while their elders do as they
please. The parent or teacher who is pestered for
‘leave’ to do this or that, contrary to the discipline of
the house or school, has only himself to thank; he has
posed as a person in authority, not under authority, and
therefore free to allow the breach of rules whose only
raison d’être is that they minister to the well-being of
the children. Two conditions are necessary to secure
all proper docility and obedience and, given these two,
there is seldom a conflict of wills between teacher and
pupils. The conditions are,—the teacher, or other
head, may not be arbitrary but must act so evidently
as one under authority[16] that the children, quick to discern,
see that he too must do the things he ought; and therefore
that regulations are not made for his convenience.
(I am assuming that everyone entrusted with the bringing
up of children recognises the supreme Authority to
Whom we are subject; without this recognition I do
not see how it is possible to establish the nice relation
which should exist between teacher and taught.) The
other condition is that children should have a fine sense
of the freedom which comes of knowledge which they
are allowed to appropriate as they choose, freely given
with little intervention from the teacher. They do
choose and are happy in their work, so there is little
opportunity for coercion or for deadening, hortatory
talk.
But the principle of authority, as well as that of
docility, is inherent in children and it is only as the
tact and judgment of the teacher make opportunity
for its free play that they are prepared for the duties
of life as citizens and members of a family. The movement
in favour of prefects, as in Public Schools, is a
recognition of this fact and it is well that children should
become familiar with the idea of representative authority,
that is, that they are governed by chosen members of
their own body, a form of self-government. To give
effect to the idea, the prefect should be elected and
children shew extraordinary insight in choosing the
right officers. But that is not enough because only a
few are set in authority; certain small offices should be
held in rotation by every member of a class. The office
makes the man as much as the man makes the office
and it is surprising how well rather incompetent children
will perform duties laid on them.
All school work should be conducted in such a manner
that children are aware of the responsibility of learning;
it is their business to know that which has been taught.
To this end the subject matter should not be repeated.
We ourselves do not attend to the matters in our daily
paper which we know we shall meet with again in a
weekly review, nor to that if there is a monthly review
in prospect; these repeated aids result in our being
persons of wandering attention and feeble memory.
To allow repetition of a lesson is to shift the responsibility
for it from the shoulders of the pupil to those of the
teacher who says, in effect,—“I’ll see that you know
it,” so his pupils make no effort of attention. Thus the
same stale stuff is repeated again and again and the
children get bored and restive, ready for pranks by way
of a change.
Teachers are apt to slight their high office and hinder
the processes of education because they cherish two
or three fallacies. They regard children as inferior,
themselves as superior, beings;—why else their office?
But if they recognized that the potency of children’s minds
is as great or greater than that of their own, they would
not conceive that spoon-feeding was their mission, or
that they must masticate a morsel of knowledge to make
it proper for the feeble digestion of the scholar.
We depreciate children in another way. We are convinced
that they cannot understand a literary vocabulary
so we explain and paraphrase to our own heart’s content
but not to theirs. Educated mothers know that their
children can read anything and do not offer explanations
unless they are asked for them; and we have taken
it for granted that this quickness of apprehension comes
only to the children of educated parents.
Another misapprehension which makes for disorder
is our way of regarding attention. We believe that it
is to be cultivated, nursed, coddled, wooed by persuasion,
by dramatic presentation, by pictures and illustrative
objects: in fact, the teacher, the success of whose work
depends upon his ‘personality,’ is an actor of no mean
power whose performance would adorn any stage.
Attention, we know, is not a ‘faculty’ nor a definable
power of mind but is the ability to turn on every such
power, to concentrate, as we say. We throw away
labour in attempting to produce or to train this necessary
function. There it is in every child in full measure, a
very Niagara of force, ready to be turned on in obedience
to the child’s own authority and capable of infinite
resistance to authority imposed from without. Our
part is to regard attention, too, as an appetite and to
feed it with the best we have in books and in all knowledge.
But children do it ‘on their own’; we may not play
Sir Oracle any more; our knowledge is too circumscribed,
our diction too poor, vague, desultory, to cope with
the ability of young creatures who thirst for knowledge.
We must put into their hands the sources which we
must needs use for ourselves, the best books of the
best writers.
I will mention only one more disability which hinders
us in our work as teachers; I mean that depreciation
of knowledge which is just now characteristic of Englishmen.
A well-known educationalist lately nailed up
the thesis that what children want in the way of knowledge
is just two things,—How to do the work by which
they must earn their living and how to behave as citizens.
This writer does not see that work is done and duties
performed in the ratio of the person who works: the
more the man is as a person, the more valuable will
be his work and the more dependable his conduct: yet
we omit from popular education that tincture of humane
letters which makes for efficiency! One hears, for
instance, of an adolescent school with some nine thousand
pupils who come in batches of a few hundreds, each batch
to learn one or other of a score or so of admirable crafts
and accomplishments; but not one hour is spent in a
three or four years’ course in this people’s university
on any sort of humane knowledge, in any reading or
thinking which should make the pupils better men and
women and better citizens.
To return to our method of employing attention; it
is not a casual matter, a convenient, almost miraculous
way of covering the ground, of getting children to know
certainly and lastingly a surprising amount; all this
is to the good, but it is something more, a root principle
vital to education. In this way of learning the child
comes to his own; he makes use of the authority which
is in him in its highest function as a self-commanding,
self-compelling, power. It is delightful to use any power
that is in us if only that of keeping up in cup and ball
a hundred times as (to the delight of small nephews and
nieces), Jane Austen did. But to make yourself attend,
make yourself know, this indeed is to come into a kingdom,
all the more satisfying to children because they
are so made that they revel in knowledge.
Here is some notice of a day or two spent in London
by a child of eleven which reaches me as I write:—
“Mother took her to Westminster Abbey one afternoon and
while I was seeing her to bed she told me all the things she had
noticed there which they had been hearing about in ‘architecture’
this term. She loves ‘architecture.’ She also expressed
her anxiety to make acquaintance with the British Museum and
see the things there that they had been ‘having’ in their term’s
work. So the next morning we went there and studied the
Parthenon Room in great detail. She was a most interesting
companion and taught me ever so much! We also went to St.
Paul’s and Madame Tussaud’s where she was delighted to see
so many people out of ‘history.’ The modern people did not
interest her so much except Jack Cornwell and Nurse Cavell.”
It will be noticed that the child is educating herself;
her friends merely take her to see the things she
knows about and she tells what she has read, a quite
different matter from the act of pouring information
down the throats of the unhappy children who are
taken to visit our national treasure houses.
A short time ago when the King and Queen paid a
private visit to the British Museum, in the next hall,
also, no doubt, examining the Parthenon Room, were
a group of children from a London County Council School,
as full of information and interest as the child above
mentioned because they had been doing the same work.
It was not a small thing for those children to know that
their interests and delights were common to them and
their Sovereigns. Of such strands are formed the cord
which binds society; and one of the main purposes of a
‘liberal education for all’ is to form links between high
and low, rich and poor, the classes and the masses, in the
strong sympathy of common knowledge. The Public
Schools have arrived at this through the medium of the
classics; an occasional ‘tag’ from Horace moves and
unites the House of Commons, not only through the
urbane thought of the poet but because it is a key to a
hundred associations. If this has been effected through
the medium of a dead language, what may we not hope
for in the way of common thought, universal springs of
action, conveyed through our own rich and inspiring
literature?
Consider what this power of perfect attention and
absolute recollection should be to every employer and
chief, what an asset to the nation! I heard this week
of a Colonel who said that his best subaltern was an old
“P.U.S.” (Parents’ Union School) boy; and this sort
of evidence reaches us continually. There are few who
do not know the mischievous and baffling effects of
inattention and forgetfulness on the part of subordinates;
and we visualize a world of surprising achievement when
children shall have been trained to quick apprehension
and retention of instructions.
We may not pose before children, nor pride ourselves
on dutiful getting up of knowledge in order to deliver
it as emanating from ourselves. There are those who
have a right to lecture, those who have devoted a life-time
to some one subject about which they have perhaps
written their book. Lectures from such persons are,
no doubt, as full of insight, imagination and power as
are their written works; but we cannot have a score
of such lecturers in every school, each to elucidate his
own subject, nor, if we could, would it be good for the
children. The personality of the teacher would influence
them to distraction from the delight in knowledge which
is itself a sufficient and compelling force to secure perfect
attention, and seemly discipline.
I am not figuring an ‘Erewhon,’ some Utopia of our
dreams; we of the P.N.E.U. seem to have let loose a
force capable of sending forth young people firm with
the resolve—
“I will not cease from mental strife
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”
Practically all schools are doing wonders. The schoolmaster
is abroad in the land and we are educating ‘our
masters’ with immense zeal and self-devotion. What we
have reason to deplore is that after some eight or twelve
years’ brilliant teaching in school, the cinema show and the
football field, polo or golf, satisfy the needs of our former
pupils to whatever class they belong. We are filled with
compassion when we detect the lifeless hand or leg, the
artificial nose or jaw, that many a man has brought home
as a consequence of the War. But many of our young
men and women go about more seriously maimed than
these. They are devoid of intellectual interests, history
and poetry are without charm for them, the scientific
work of the day is only slightly interesting, their ‘job’
and the social amenities they can secure are all that their
life has for them.
The maimed existence in which a man goes on from
day to day without either nourishing or using his intellect,
is causing anxiety to those interested in education, who
know that after religion it is our chief concern, is, indeed,
the necessary handmaid of religion.
CHAPTER V THE SACREDNESS OF PERSONALITY
These principles (i.e., authority and docility) are limited by the
respect due to the personality of children which may not be encroached
upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion
or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.
People are too apt to use children as counters in a game,
to be moved hither and thither according to the whim
of the moment. Our crying need to-day is less for a
better method of education than for an adequate conception
of children,—children, merely as human beings,
whether brilliant or dull, precocious or backward. Exceptional
qualities take care of themselves and so does
the ‘wanting’ intelligence, and both of these share with
the rest in all that is claimed for them in the previous
chapters. Our business is to find out how great a mystery
a person is quâ person. All action comes out of the ideas
we hold and if we ponder duly upon personality we shall
come to perceive that we cannot commit a greater
offence than to maim or crush, or subvert any part of
a person.
We have many ingenious, not to say affectionate, ways
of doing this, all of them more or less based upon that
egoism which persuades us that in proportion to a child’s
dependence is our superiority, that all we do for him
is of our grace and favour, and that we have a right,
whether as parents or teachers, to do what we will with
our own. Have we considered that in the Divine estimate
the child’s estate is higher than ours; that it is
ours to “become as little children,” rather than theirs
to become as grown men and women; that the rules
we receive for the bringing up of children are for the most
part negative? We may not despise them, or hinder
them, (“suffer little children”), or offend them by our
brutish clumsiness of action and want of serious thought;
while the one positive precept afforded to us is “feed”
(which should be rendered ‘pasture’) “my lambs,” place
them in the midst of abundant food. A teacher in a Yorkshire
Council School renders this precept as,—“I had
left them in the pasture and came back and found them
feeding,” that is, she had left a big class reading a given
lesson and found them on her return still reading with
eagerness and satisfaction. Maxima reverentia debetur
pueris has a wider meaning than it generally receives.
We take it as meaning that we should not do or say
anything unseemly before the young, but does it not
also include a profound and reverent study of the properties
and possibilities present in a child?
Nor need we be alarmed at so wide a programme.
The vice which hinders us in the bringing up of children
is that so heavily censured in the Gospel. We are not
simple; we act our parts and play in an unlawful way
upon motives. Perhaps after all the least reprehensible
pedagogic motive is that which is most condemned and
the terrorism of ‘Mr. Creakle’ may produce a grey
record in comparison with the blackness of more subtle
methods of undermining personality. We can only
touch upon a few of these, but a part may stand for the
whole. For the action of fear as a governing motive
we cannot do better than read again our David Copperfield
(a great educational treatise) and study ‘Mr.
Creakle’ in detail for terrorism in the schoolroom and
‘Mr. Murdstone’ for the same vice in the home. But,—is
it through the influence of Dickens?—fear is no longer
the acknowledged basis of school discipline; we have
methods more subtle than the mere terrors of the law.
Love is one of these. The person of winning personality
attracts his pupils (or hers) who will do anything for his
sake and are fond and eager in all their ways, docile to
that point where personality is submerged, and they
live on the smiles, perish on the averted looks, of the
adored teacher. Parents look on with a smile and think
that all is well; but Bob or Mary is losing that growing
time which should make a self-dependent, self-ordered
person, and is day by day becoming a parasite who can
go only as he is carried, the easy prey of fanatic or demagogue.
This sort of encroachment upon the love of
children offers as a motive, ‘do this for my sake’; wrong
is to be avoided lest it grieve the teacher, good is to be
done to pleasure him; for this end a boy learns his lessons,
behaves properly, shows good will, produces a whole
catalogue of schoolboy virtues and yet his character
is being undermined.
‘Suggestion’ goes to work more subtly. The teacher
has mastered the gamut of motives which play upon
human nature and every suggestion is aimed at one or
other of these. He may not use the nursery suggestions
of lollipops or bogies but he does in reality employ these
if expressed in more spiritual values, suggestions subtly
applied to
the idiosyncrasies of a given child. ‘Suggestion’
is too subtle to be illustrated with advantage:
Dr. Stephen Paget holds that it should be used only as
a surgeon uses an anæsthetic; but it is an instrument
easy to handle, and unconsidered suggestion plays on a
child’s mind as the winds on a weathercock. “Unstable
as water, thou shalt not excel” is the unfortunate child’s
doom; for how is it possible for stability of mind and
character to evolve under a continual play of changing
suggestions? But this it will be said is true of the
unconsidered suggestion. What of a carefully laid train,
all leading in the same direction, to produce perseverance,
frankness, courage, any other excellent virtue? The
child is even worse off in such a case. That particular
virtue becomes detestable; no other virtue is inviting;
and he is acquiring no strength to stand alone but waits
in all his doings for promptings from without. Perhaps
the gravest danger attending this practice is that every
suggestion received lays the person open to the next
and the next. A due respect for the personality of
children and a dread of making them incompetent to
conduct their own lives will make us chary of employing
a means so dangerous, no matter how good the immediate
end.
Akin to suggestion is influence, which acts not so
much by well-directed word or inciting action as by a
sort of atmosphere proceeding from the teacher and
enveloping the taught. Late in the last century goody-goody
books were written about the beauty of influence,
the duty of influence, the study of the means of influence,
and children were brought up with the notion that to
influence other persons consciously was a moral duty.
No doubt such influence is inevitable; we must needs
affect one another, not so much by what we do or say
as by that which we are, and so far influence is natural
and wholesome. We imbibe it from persons real and
imaginary and we are kept strong and upright by currents
and counter-currents of unstudied influence. Supineness
before a single, steady, persistent influence is a different
matter, and the schoolgirl who idolises her mistress,
the boy who worships his master, is deprived of the
chance of free and independent living. His personality
fails to develop and he goes into the world as a parasitic
plant, clinging ever to the support of some stronger
character.
So far we have considered incidental ways of trespassing
upon those rights of personality proper to children,
but we have more pervasive, if less injurious, ways of
stultifying intellectual and moral growth. Our school
ethic rests upon, our school discipline is supported by,
undue play upon certain natural desires. It is worth
while to reflect that the mind also has its appetites,
better known as desires. It is as necessary that Mind
should be fed, should grow and should produce, as that
these things should happen to Body, and just as Body
would not take the trouble to feed itself if it never became
hungry, so Mind also would not take in that which it
needs if it were not that certain Desires require to be
satisfied. Therefore schoolmasters do not amiss in
basing their practice upon the Desires whose very function
appears to be to bring nourishment to Mind. Where
we teachers err is in stimulating the wrong Desires to
accomplish our end. There is the desire of approbation
which even an infant shows, he is not happy unless
mother or nurse approve of him. Later this same
desire helps him to conquer a sum, climb a hill, bring
home a good report from school, and all this is grist
to the mill, knowledge to the mind; because the persons
whose approbation is worth having care that he should
learn and know, conquer idleness, and get habits of steady
work, so that his mind may be as duly nourished every
day as is his body. Alas for the vanity that attends
this desire of approbation, that makes the boy more
solicitous for the grin of the stable-boy than for the
approval of his master! Nay, this desire for approval
may get such possession of him that he thinks of nothing
else; he must have approval whether from the worthless
or the virtuous. It is supposed that outbreaks of violence,
robbery, assassinations, occur at times for the mere
sake of infamy, just as deeds of heroism are done for the
sake of fame. Both infamy and fame mean being thought
about and talked about by a large number of people;
and we know how this natural desire is worked by the
daily press; how we get, now a film actress, now a burglar,
a spy, a hero, or a scientist set before us to be our admiration
and our praise.
Emulation, the desire of excelling, works wonders
in the hands of the schoolmaster; and, indeed, this
natural desire is an amazing spur to effort, both intellectual
and moral. When in pursuit of virtue two or a
score are ‘emulously rapid in the race,’ a school acquires
a ‘good tone’ and parents are justified in thinking it
the right place for their boy. In the intellectual field,
however, there is danger; and nothing worse could
have happened to our schools than the system of marks,
prizes, place-taking, by which many of them are practically
governed. A boy is so taken up with the desire
to forge ahead that there is no time to think of anything
else. What he learns is not interesting to him; he
works to get his remove.
But emulation does not stand alone as Vicegerent in
our schools; another natural desire whose unvarnished
name is avarice labours for good government and so-called
progress cheek by jowl with emulation. “He
must get a scholarship,”—is the duty of a small boy
even before he goes to school, and indeed for good and
sufficient reasons. Sometimes the sons of rich parents
carry off these prizes but as a rule they fall to those
for whom they are intended, the sons of educated parents
in rather straitened circumstances, sons of the clergy,
for example. The scholarship system is no more than a
means of distributing the vast wealth left by benefactors
in the past for this particular purpose. Every Grammar
School has its own scholarships; the Universities have
open scholarships and bursaries often of considerable
value; and a free, or partially free, education is open
to the majority of the youth of the upper middle class
on one condition, that of brains. It is small wonder
that every Grammar and Public School bases its curriculum
upon these conditions, knows exactly what
standard of merit will secure the ‘Hastings,’ knows
the boys who have a chance, and orders their very
strenuous work towards the end in view. It is hard to
say what better could be done and yet this deliberate
cult of cupidity is disastrous; for there is no doubt that
here and there we come upon impoverishment of personality
due to enfeebled intellectual life; the boy did
not learn to delight in knowledge in his schooldays and
the man is shallow in mind and whimsical in judgment.
It is hopeless to make war from without on a system
which affords very effectual help in the education of boys
who are likely later to become of service to the country;
but Britain must make the most of her sons and many
of these men are capable of being more than they are.
It is from within the schools that help must come and
the way is fairly obvious. Most schools give from eleven
in the lowest to eight hours in the highest Forms to
‘English’ that is, from twenty to sixteen consecutive
readings a week might be afforded in a wide selection
of books,—literature, history, economics, etc.,—books
read with the concentrated attention which makes a
single reading suffice. The act of narrating what has
been read might well be useful to boys who should be
prepared for public speaking. By a slight alteration
of this kind, in procedure rather than in curriculum or
time-table, it is probable that our schools would turn
out many more well-read, well-informed men and convincing
speakers than they do at present. Such a
method, even if applied to ‘English’ only, would tend
to correct any tendency in schools to become mere
cramming places for examinations, would infect boys
with a love of knowledge and should divert the natural
desire for acquisition into a new channel, for few things
are more delightful than the acquisition of knowledge.
We need not delay over that desire of power, ambition,
which plays its part in every life; but the educator must
see that it plays no more than its part. Power is good
in proportion as it gives opportunities for serving; but
it is mischievous in boy or man when the pleasure of
ruling, managing, becomes a definite spring of action.
Like each of the other natural desires, that for power
may ruin a life that it is allowed to master; ambition is
the cause of half the disasters under which mankind
suffers. The ambitious boy or man would as soon lead
his fellows in riot and disorder as in noble effort in a
good cause; and who can say how far the labour unrest
under which we suffer is inspired and inflamed by ambitious
men who want to rule if only for the immediate
intoxication of rousing and leading men? It is a fine
thing to say of a multitude of men,—“I can wind them
round my little finger”; and the much-burdened Head
of a school must needs beware! If the able, ambitious
fellow be allowed to manage the rest, he cheats them
out of their fair share of managing their own lives; no
boy should be allowed to wax feeble to make another
great; the harm to the ambitious boy himself must be
considered too, lest he become an ignoble, manœuvring
person. It is within a teacher’s scope to offer wholesome
ambitions to a boy, to make him keen to master
knowledge rather than manage men; and here he has
a wide field without encroaching on another’s preserve.
Another desire which may well be made to play into
the schoolmaster’s hands is that of society, a desire
which has much to do with the making of the naughty
boys, idle youths and silly women of our acquaintance.
It is sheer delight to mix with our fellows, but much
depends on whom we take for our fellows and why;
and here young people may be helped by finger-posts.
If they are so taught that knowledge delights them,
they will choose companions who share that pleasure.
In this way princes are trained; they must know something
of botany to talk with botanists, of history to
meet with historians; they cannot afford to be in the
company of scientists, adventurers, poets, painters,
philanthropists or economists, and themselves be able to
do no more than ‘change the weather and pass the time
of day’; they must know modern languages to be at
home with men of other countries, and ancient tongues
to be familiar with classical allusions. Such considerations
rule the education of princes, and every boy has a
princely right to be brought up so that he may hold his
own in good society, that is, the society of those who
‘know.’
We hear complaints of the cast-iron system of British
society; but how much of it is due to the ignorance
which makes it only possible to men and women to talk
to those of their own clique, soldiers with soldiers, schoolmasters
and schoolboys with their kind? The boy who
wants to be able to talk to people who ‘know’ has no
unworthy motive for working.
We have considered the several desires whose function
is to stimulate the mind and save us from that vis inertiæ
which is our besetting danger. Each such desire has its
place but the results are disastrous if any one should
dominate. It so happens that the last desire we have
to consider, the desire of knowledge, is commonly deprived
of its proper function in our schools by the predominance
of other springs of action, especially of emulation, the
desire of place, and avarice, the desire of wealth, tangible
profit. This divine curiosity is recognised in ordinary
life chiefly as a desire to know trivial things. What did
it cost? What did she say? Who was with him?
Where are they going? How many postage stamps
in a line would go round the world? And curiosity is
satisfied by incoherent, scrappy information which
serves no purpose, assuredly not the purpose of knowledge
whose function is to nourish the mind as food
nourishes the body. But so besotted is our educational
thought that we believe children regard knowledge rather
as repulsive medicine than as inviting food. Hence our
dependence on marks and prizes, athletics, alluring
presentation, any jam we can devise to disguise the
powder. The man who wilfully goes on crutches has
feeble incompetent legs; he who chooses to go blindfold
has eyes that cannot bear the sun; he who lives
on pap-meat has weak digestive powers, and he whose
mind is sustained by the crutches of emulation and
avarice loses that one stimulating power which is sufficient
for his intellectual needs. This atrophy of the
desire of knowledge is the penalty our scholars pay
because we have chosen to make them work for inferior
ends. Our young men and maidens do not read unless
with the stimulus of a forthcoming examination. They
are good-natured and pleasant but have no wide range
of thought, lofty purpose, little of the magnanimity
which is proper for a citizen. Great thoughts and great
actions are strange to them, though the possibility
is still there and they may yet shew in peace such action
as we have seen and wondered at during the War. But
we cannot always educate by means of a great war; the
penalties are too heavy for human nature to endure for
long. Therefore the stimuli to greatness, magnanimity,
which the war afforded we must produce in the ordinary
course of education.
But knowledge is delectable. We have all the ‘
satiable curiosity’ of Mr. Kipling’s Elephant even when we
content ourselves with the broken meats flung by the
daily press. Knowledge is to us as our mother’s milk,
we grow thereby and in the act of sucking are admirably
content.
The work of education is greatly simplified when we
realize that children, apparently all children, want to
know all human knowledge; they have an appetite
for what is put before them, and, knowing this, our
teaching becomes buoyant with the courage of our convictions.
We know how Richelieu shut up colleges
throughout France, both Jesuit and secular, “in order
to prevent the mania of the poor for educating their
children which distracts them from the pursuits of
trade and war.” This mania exists with us, not only
in the parents but in the children, the mania of hungry
souls clamouring for meat, and we choke them off, not
by shutting up schools and colleges, but by offering
matter which no living soul can digest. The complaints
made by teachers and children of the monotony of the
work in our schools is full of pathos and all credit to
those teachers who cheer the weary path by entertaining
devices. But mind does not live and grow upon entertainment;
it requires its solid meals.
The Gloucestershire teachers, under Mr. Household’s
direction, have entered so fully into the principles
implied in the method, that I am tempted to illustrate
largely from their experience.[17] But they by no means
stand alone. Hundreds of other teachers have the same
experiences and describe them as opportunity offers.
The finding of this power which is described as ‘sensing
a passage,’ is as the striking of a vein of gold in that
fabulously rich country, human nature. Our ‘find’
is that children have a natural aptitude for literary
expression which they enjoy in hearing or reading and
employ in telling or writing. We might have guessed
this long ago. All those speeches and sayings of untamed
warriors and savage potentates which the historians
have preserved for us, critics have declined as showing
too much cultivated rhetoric to have been possible for
any but highly educated persons. But the time is coming
when we shall perceive that only minds like those of
children are capable of producing thoughts so fresh
and so finely expressed. This natural aptitude for
literature, or, shall we say, rhetoric, which overcomes
the disabilities of a poor vocabulary without effort,
should direct the manner of instruction we give, ruling
out the talky-talky of the oral lesson and the lecture;
ruling out, equally, compilations and text-books; and
placing books in the hands of children and only those
which are more or less literary in character that is,
which have the terseness and vividness proper to literary
work. The natural desire for knowledge does the rest
and the children feed and grow.
It must be borne in mind that in proportion as other
desires are stimulated that of knowledge is suppressed.
The teacher who proposes marks and places as worthy
aims will get work certainly but he will get no healthy
love of knowledge for its own sake and no provision
against the ennui of later days. The monotony I have
spoken of attends all work prompted by the stimuli of
marks and places; such work becomes mechanical, and
there is hardly enough of it prepared to last through
the course of a boy’s school life. The master of a Preparatory
School remarks,—“It must be a well-known
fact (I am not speaking of the exceptional but of the
average boy) that new boys are placed too low. We
find—it is a common experience—that if we send up a
boy whether he be a good mathematician, a good classic,
a good English scholar or a good linguist, a couple of years
will pass by before he is doing at the Public School the
work he was doing when he left us.” The Public Schoolmaster
makes the same sort of complaint; he says, that
“At twenty the boy is climbing the same pear-tree that
he climbed at twelve,” that is to say, work which is done
in view of examinations must be of the rather narrow
mechanical kind upon which it is possible to set questions
and mark answers with absolute fairness. Now,
definite progress, continual advance from day to day
with no treading of old ground, is a condition of education.
There is an uneasy dread in some minds lest a liberal
education for all, the possibility which is now before
us, should cause a social bouleversement, such an upheaval
as obtained in the French Revolution. But this fear
arises from an erroneous conception. The doctrine of
equal opportunities for all is no doubt dangerous. It is
the intellectual rendering of the ‘survival of the fittest’
and we have had a terrible object lesson as to how that
doctrine works. The uneasy, ambitious spirit comes
to the front, gets all the chances, dominates his fellows,
and thinks no upheaval too great a price for the advancement
of himself and his notions. Men of this type come
to the top through the avenue of examinations. Ambition
and possibly greed are seconded by dogged perseverance.
As was said of Louis XIV, such men elevate
their practice into a theory and arrogate to their habits
the character of principles of government. And these
pseudo-principles inflame the populace because they
promise place and power to every man in the state, with
no sense of the proportion he bears to the rest. Probably
the ‘labour unrest’ of to-day is not without connexion
with the habit of working in our schools for prizes and
places. The boy who works to be first and to get something
out of it does not always become the quiet, well-ordered
citizen who helps to cement society and carries
on the work of the State.
Knowledge pursued for its own sake is sedative in so
far as it is satisfying; and the splendid consciousness
that every boy in your Form has your own delight in
knowing, your own pleasure in expressing that which
he knows, shares your intimacy with this and the other
sage and hero, makes for good fellowship and magnanimity
and should deliver the citizen from a restless desire
to come to the front. It is possible that a conscientious
and intelligent teacher may be a little overwhelmed
when he considers all that goes to a man, all that goes
to each of the boys under his care. It is true that,—
“There lives
No faculty within us which the Soul
Can spare: and humblest earthly weal demands
For dignity not placed beyond her reach
Zealous co-operation of all means
Given or required to raise us from the mire
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits
By gross utilities enslaved; we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past
If for the future aught of good must come.”
Wordsworth is no doubt right. There is no faculty
within the soul which can be spared in the great work
of education; but then every faculty, or rather power,
works to the one end if we make the pursuit of knowledge
for its own sake the object of our educational efforts.
We find children ready and eager for this labour and
their accomplishment is surprising.
CHAPTER VI THREE INSTRUMENTS OF EDUCATION — I.— Education is an Atmosphere — 2.— Education is a Discipline — 3.— Education is a Life
Seeing that we are limited by the respect due to the personality of
children we can allow ourselves but three educational instruments—the
atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit and the
presentation of living ideas. Our motto is,—‘Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, a life.’ When we say that education
is an atmosphere we do not mean that a child should be isolated
in what may be called a ‘child environment’ specially adapted
and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational
value of his natural home atmosphere both as regards persons and
things and should let him live freely among his proper conditions.
It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the ‘child’s’ level.
Having cut out the direct use of fear or love, suggestion
or influence, undue play upon any one natural desire,
emulation, for example, we are no longer free to use all
means in the education of children. There are but three
left for our use and to each of these we must give careful
study or we shall not realise how great a scope is left to
us. To consider the first of these educational instruments;
for a decade or two we have pinned our faith on
environment as a great part of education; as, say, nine-tenths
rather than a third part of the whole. The theory
has been,—put a child in the right environment and so
subtle is its influence, so permanent its effects that he is
to all intents and purposes educated thereby. Schools
may add Latin and sums and whatever else their curriculum
contains, but the actual education is, as it were,
performed upon a child by means of colour schemes,
harmonious sounds, beautiful forms, gracious persons.
He grows up æsthetically educated into sweet reasonableness
and harmony with his surroundings.
“Peter’s nursery was a perfect dream in which to hatch the
soul of a little boy. Its walls were done in warm, cream-coloured
paint and upon them Peter’s father had put the most lovely
patterns of trotting and jumping horses and dancing cats and
dogs and leaping lambs, a carnival of beasts ... there was a
big brass fire-guard in Peter’s nursery ... and all the tables
had smoothly rounded corners against the days when Peter
would run about. The floor was of cork carpet on which Peter
would put his toys and there was a crimson hearthrug on which
Peter was destined to crawl ... there were scales in Peter’s
nursery to weigh Peter every week and tables to show how
much he ought to weigh and when one should begin to feel
anxious. There was nothing casual about the early years of
Peter.”
So, Mr. Wells, in that inconclusive educational treatise
of his, Joan and Peter. It is an accurate picture of the
preparation for ‘high-souled’ little persons all over the
world. Parents make tremendous sacrifices to that
goddess who presides over Education. We hear of a pair
investing more than their capital in a statue to adorn the
staircase in order that ‘Tommy’ should make his soul
by the contemplation of beauty. This sort of thing has
been going on since the ‘eighties at any rate and, as usual,
Germany erected a high altar for the cult which she passed
on to the rest of us. Perhaps it is safe to say that the
young Intelligenzia of Europe have been reared after this
manner. And is the result that Neo-Georgian youth
Punch presents to us with his air of weariness, condescension
and self-complacency? Let us hear Professor Sir
Jagadis Chandra Bose, the Indian scientist, on one of his
conclusions concerning the nervous impulse in plants,—
“A plant carefully protected under glass from outside shocks
looks sleek and flourishing but its higher nervous function is
then found to be atrophied. But when a succession of blows”
(electric shocks) “is rained on this effete and bloated specimen,
the shocks themselves create nervous channels and arouse anew
the deteriorated nature. Is it not the shocks of adversity and
not cotton wool protection that evolve true manhood?”
We had thought that the terrible succession of blows
inflicted by the War had changed all that; but, no; the
errors of education still hold sway and we still have
amongst us the better-than-my-neighbour folk, whose
function, let us hope, is to administer the benefits of
adversity to most of us. What if parents and teachers in
their zeal misread the schedule of their duties, magnified
their office unduly and encroached upon the personality of
children? It is not an environment that these want, a
set of artificial relations carefully constructed, but an
atmosphere which nobody has been at pains to constitute.
It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely
as the atmosphere of the earth is about us. It is thrown
off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred by events,
sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the regulated
action of common sense. We all know the natural
conditions under which a child should live; how he
shares household ways with his mother, romps with his
father, is teased by his brothers and petted by his sisters;
is taught by his tumbles; learns self-denial by the baby’s
needs, the delightfulness of furniture by playing at
battle and siege with sofa and table; learns veneration
for the old by the visits of his great-grandmother; how
to live with his equals by the chums he gathers round him;
learns intimacy with animals from his dog and cat;
delight in the fields where the buttercups grow and
greater delight in the blackberry hedges. And, what
tempered ‘fusion of classes’ is so effective as a child’s
intimacy with his betters, and also with cook and housemaid,
blacksmith and joiner, with everybody who comes
in his way? Children have a genius for this sort of
general intimacy, a valuable part of their education;
care and guidance are needed, of course, lest admiring
friends should make fools of them, but no compounded
‘environment’ could make up for this fresh air, this
wholesome wind blowing now from one point, now from
another.
We certainly may use atmosphere as an instrument
of education, but there are prohibitions, for ourselves
rather than for children. Perhaps the chief of these
is, that no artificial element be introduced, no sprinkling
with rose-water, softening with cushions. Children must
face life as it is; if their parents are anxious and perturbed
children feel it in the air. “Mummie, Mummie, you
aren’t going to cry this time, are you?” and a child’s
hug tries to take away the trouble. By these things
children live and we may not keep them in glass cases;
if we do, they develop in succulence and softness and will
not become plants of renown. But due relations must be
maintained; the parents are in authority, the children
in obedience; and again, the strong may not lay their
burdens on the weak; nor must we expect from children
that effort of decision, the most fatiguing in our lives,
of which the young should generally be relieved.
School, perhaps, offers fewer opportunities for vitiating
the atmosphere than does home life. But teaching may
be so watered down and sweetened, teachers may be so
suave and condescending, as to bring about a condition
of intellectual feebleness and moral softness which
it is not easy for a child to overcome. The bracing atmosphere
of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every
school; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge
by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a
current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor,
who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health
on the faces of teachers and children alike.
But a school may be working hard, not for love of
knowledge, but for love of marks, our old enemy; and
then young faces are not serene and joyous but eager,
restless, apt to look anxious and worried. The children
do not sleep well and are cross; are sullen or in tears
if anything goes wrong, and are, generally, difficult to
manage. When this is the case there is too much oxygen
in the air; they are breathing a too stimulating atmosphere,
and the nervous strain to which they are subjected
must needs be followed by reaction. Then teachers think
that lessons have been too hard, that children should be
relieved of this and that study; the doctors probably
advise that so-and-so should ‘run wild’ for a year.
Poor little soul, at the very moment when he is most
in need of knowledge for his sustenance he is left to prey
upon himself! No wonder the nervous symptoms become
worse, and the boy or girl suffers under the stigma of
‘nervous strain.’ The fault has been in the atmosphere
and not in the work; the teacher, perhaps, is
over anxious that her children should do well and her
nervous excitation is catching. “I am afraid X—— cannot
do his examination; he loves his work but he bursts
into tears when he is asked an examination question.
Perhaps it is that I have insisted too much that he
must never be satisfied with anything but his best.”
Poor little chap (of seven) pricked into over exertion by
the spur of moral stimulus! We foresee happy days for
children when all teachers know that no other exciting
motive whatever is necessary to produce good work in
each individual of however big a class than that love of
knowledge which is natural to every child. The serenity
and sweetness of schools conducted on this principle
is surprising to the outsider who has not reflected upon
the contentment of a baby with his bottle!
There are two courses open to us in this matter. One,
to create by all manner of modified conditions a hot-house
atmosphere, fragrant but emasculating, in which children
grow apace but are feeble and dependent; the other to
leave them open to all the “airts that blow,” but with
care lest they be unduly battered; lest, for example, a
miasma come their way in the shape of a vicious companion.
By this formula we mean the discipline of habits formed definitely
and thoughtfully whether habits of mind or of body. Physiologists
tell us of the adaptation of brain structure to habitual lines of thought,
i.e., to our habits.
Education is not after all to either teacher or child
the fine careless rapture we appear to have figured it.
We who teach and they who learn are alike constrained;
there is always effort to be made in certain directions;
yet we face our tasks from a new point of view. We
need not labour to get children to learn their lessons;
that, if we would believe it, is a matter which nature
takes care of. Let the lessons be of the right sort and
children will learn them with delight. The call for
strenuousness comes with the necessity of forming habits;
but here again we are relieved. The intellectual habits
of the good life form themselves in the following out of
the due curriculum in the right way. As we have already
urged, there is but one right way, that is, children must
do the work for themselves. They must read the given
pages and tell what they have read, they must perform,
that is, what we may call the act of knowing. We are all
aware, alas, what a monstrous quantity of printed matter
has gone into the dustbin of our memories, because we
have failed to perform that quite natural and spontaneous
‘act of knowing,’ as easy to a child as breathing and,
if we would believe it, comparatively easy to ourselves.
The reward is two-fold: no intellectual habit is so
valuable as that of attention; it is a mere habit but it
is also the hall-mark of an educated person. Use is second
nature, we are told; it is not too much to say that
‘habit is ten natures,’ and we can all imagine how our
work would be eased if our subordinates listened to
instructions with the full attention which implies recollection.
Attention is not the only habit that follows
due self-education. The habits of fitting and ready
expression, of obedience, of good-will, and of an impersonal
outlook are spontaneous bye-products of education
in this sort. So, too, are the habits of right thinking
and right judging; while physical habits of neatness
and order attend upon the self-respect which follows an
education which respects the personality of children.
Physiologists tell us that thoughts which have become
habitual make somehow a mark upon the brain substance,
but we are bold in calling it a mark for there is no discernible
effect to be quoted. Whether or no the mind
be served by the brain in this matter, we are empirically
certain that a chief function of education is the establishment
of such ways of thinking in children as shall
issue in good and useful living, clear thinking, æsthetic
enjoyment, and, above all, in the religious life. How
it is possible that spirit should act upon matter is a mystery
to us, but that such act takes place we perceive
every time we note a scowling brow, or, on the other
hand,—
“A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks;
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of gospel books.”
We all know how the physical effort of smiling affects
ourselves in our sour moods,—
“Nor soul helps flesh more now, than flesh helps soul.”
Both are at our service in laying down the rails, so to
speak, upon which the good life must needs run.
In the past we have, no doubt, gone through an age of
infant slavery, an age of good habits enforced by vigorous
penalties, conscientiously by the over scrupulous
eighteenth century parent, and infamously by the schoolmasters,
the ‘Creakles’ and the ‘Squeers’ who laboured
only for their own ease and profit. Now, the pendulum
swings the other way. We have lost sight of the fact
that habit is to life what rails are to transport cars. It
follows that lines of habit must be laid down towards
given ends and after careful survey, or the joltings and
delays of life become insupportable. More, habit is
inevitable. If we fail to ease life by laying down habits
of right thinking and right acting, habits of wrong thinking
and wrong acting fix themselves of their own accord.
We avoid decision and indecision brings its own delays,
“and days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.” Almost
every child is brought up by his parents in certain habits
of decency and order without which he would be a social
outcast. Think from another point of view how the
labour of life would be increased if every act of the bath,
toilet, table, every lifting of the fork and use of spoon
were a matter of consideration and required an effort
of decision! No; habit is like fire, a bad master but an
indispensable servant; and probably one reason for the
nervous scrupulosity, hesitation, indecision of our day,
is that life was not duly eased for us in the first place
by those whose business it was to lay down lines of habit
upon which our behaviour might run easily.
It is unnecessary to enumerate those habits which we
should aim at forming, for everyone knows more about
these than anyone practises. We admire the easy
carriage of the soldier but shrink from the discipline
which is able to produce it. We admire the lady who can
sit upright through a long dinner, who in her old age
prefers a straight chair because she has arrived at due
muscular balance and has done so by a course of discipline.
There is no other way of forming any good habit,
though the discipline is usually that of the internal
government which the person exercises upon himself; but
a certain strenuousness in the formation of good habits
is necessary because every such habit is the result of conflict.
The bad habit of the easy life is always pleasant
and persuasive and to be resisted with pain and effort,
but with hope and certainty of success, because in our
very structure is the preparation for forming such habits
of muscle and mind as we deliberately propose to ourselves.
We entertain the idea which gives birth to the
act and the act repeated again and again becomes the
habit; ‘Sow an act,’ we are told, ‘reap a habit.’ ‘Sow
a habit, reap a character.’ But we must go a step
further back, we must sow the idea or notion which makes
the act worth while. The lazy boy who hears of the
Great Duke’s narrow camp bed, preferred by him because
when he wanted to turn over it was time to get up,
receives the idea of prompt rising. But his nurse or his
mother knows how often and how ingeniously the tale
must be brought to his mind before the habit of prompt
rising is formed; she knows too how the idea of self-conquest
must be made at home in the boy’s mind until
it become a chivalric impulse which he cannot resist.
It is possible to sow a great idea lightly and casually and
perhaps this sort of sowing should be rare and casual
because if a child detect a definite purpose in his mentor
he is apt to stiffen himself against it. When parent or
teacher supposes that a good habit is a matter of obedience
to his authority, he relaxes a little. A boy is late
who has been making evident efforts to be punctual; the
teacher good-naturedly foregoes rebuke or penalty, and
the boy says to himself,—“It doesn’t matter,” and
begins to form the unpunctual habit. The mistake the
teacher makes is to suppose that to be punctual is troublesome
to the boy, so he will let him off; whereas the office
of the habits of an ordered life is to make such life easy
and spontaneous; the effort is confined to the first half
dozen or score of occasions for doing the thing.
Consider how laborious life would be were its wheels
not greased by habits of cleanliness, neatness, order,
courtesy; had we to make the effort of decision about
every detail of dressing and eating, coming and going,
life would not be worth living. Every cottage mother
knows that she must train her child in habits of decency,
and a whole code of habits of propriety get themselves
formed just because a breach in any such habit causes
a shock to others which few children have courage to face.
Physical fitness, morals and manners, are very largely
the outcome of habit; and not only so, but the habits
of the religious life also become fixed and delightful and
give us due support in the effort to live a godly, righteous
and sober life. We need not be deterred by the fear that
religious habits in a child are mechanical, uninformed by
the ideas which should give them value. Let us hear
what the young De Quincey felt about going to church:—
“On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to
church: it was a church on the ancient model of England having
aisles, galleries, organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the
proportions were majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt
through the long litany, as often as we came to that passage so
beautiful amongst many that are so where God is supplicated
on behalf of ‘all sick persons and young children’ and ‘that
He would show His pity upon all prisoners and captives,’ I wept
in secret, and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows
saw, on days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting
as ever prophet can have beheld ... there were the Apostles
that had trampled upon earth and the glories upon earth, there
were the martyrs who had borne witness to the truth through
flames ... and all the time I saw through the wide central field
of the window where the glass was uncoloured white fleecy
clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky.”
And then the little boy had visions of sick children
upon whom God would have pity.—
“These visions were self-sustained, the hint from the Litany,
the fragment from the clouds, those and the storied windows
were sufficient.... God speaks to children also in dreams
and by the oracles that lurk in darkness; but in solitude, above
all things when made vocal to the meditative heart by the truths
and services of a national church, God holds with children
‘communion undisturbed.’”
With such a testimony before us, supported by gleams
of recollection on our own part, we may take courage
to believe that what we rightly call Divine Service is particularly
appropriate to children; and will become more
so as the habit of reading beautifully written books
quickens their sense of style and their unconscious appreciation
of the surpassingly beautiful diction of our
liturgy.
We have seen the value of habit in mind and morals,
religion and physical development. It is as we have seen
disastrous when child or man learns to think in a groove,
and shivers like an unaccustomed bather on the steps of
a new notion. This danger is perhaps averted by giving
children as their daily diet the wise thoughts of great
minds, and of many great minds; so that they may
gradually and unconsciously get the courage of their
opinions. If we fail in this duty, so soon as the young
people get their ‘liberty’ they will run after the first
fad that presents itself; try it for a while and then take
up another to be discarded in its turn, and remain uncertain
and ill-guided for the rest of their days.
We have left until the last that instrument of education
implied in the phrase ‘Education is a life’; ‘implied’
because life is no more self-existing than it is
self-supporting; it requires sustenance, regular, ordered
and fitting. This is fully recognised as regards bodily
life and, possibly, the great discovery of the twentieth
century will be that mind too requires its ordered rations
and perishes when these fail. We know that food is to
the body what fuel is to the steam-engine, the sole source
of energy; once we realise that the mind too works only
as it is fed education will appear to us in a new light. The
body pines and develops humours upon tabloids and
other food substitutes; and a glance at a ‘gate’ crowd
watching a football match makes us wonder what sort
of mind-food those men and boys are sustained on, whether
they are not suffering from depletion, inanition, notwithstanding
big and burly bodies. For the mind is
capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives,
grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information
is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there
are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than
of the other.
What is an idea? we ask, and find ourselves plunged
beyond our depth. A live thing of the mind, seems to
be the conclusion of our greatest thinkers from Plato to
Bacon, from Bacon to Coleridge. We all know how an
idea ‘strikes,’ ‘seizes,’ ‘catches hold of,’ ‘impresses’ us
and at last, if it be big enough, ‘possesses’ us; in a word,
behaves like an entity.
If we enquire into any person’s habits of life, mental
preoccupation, devotion to a cause or pursuit, he will
usually tell us that such and such an idea struck him.
This potency of an idea is matter of common recognition.
No phrase is more common and more promising than,
‘I have an idea’; we rise to such an opening as trout
to a well-chosen fly. There is but one sphere in which
the word idea never occurs, in which the conception of
an idea is curiously absent, and that sphere is education!
Look at any publisher’s list of school books and you
shall find that the books recommended are carefully
dessicated, drained of the least suspicion of an idea,
reduced to the driest statements of fact. Here perhaps
the Public Schools have a little pull over the rest of us;
the diet they afford may be meagre, meagre almost to
starvation point for the average boy, but it is not destitute
of ideas; for, however sparsely, boys are nourished
on the best thoughts of the best minds.
Coleridge has done more than other thinkers to bring
the conception of an idea within the sphere of the scientific
thought of to-day; not as that thought is expressed
in psychology, a term which he himself launched upon
the world with an apology for it as insolens verbum (“we
beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum but it is
one of which our language stands in great need.” Method,
S. T. Coleridge) but as shewing the reaction of mind to
an idea. This is how in his Method Coleridge illustrates
the rise and progress of such an idea:—
“We can recall no incident of human history that impresses
the imagination more deeply than the moment when Columbus
on an unknown ocean first perceived that baffling fact, the change
of the magnetic needle. How many instances occur in history
when the ideas of nature (presented to chosen minds by a Higher
Power than Nature herself) suddenly unfold as it were in prophetic
succession systematic views destined to produce the most important
revolutions in the state of man! The clear spirit of
Columbus was doubtless eminently methodical. He saw distinctly
that great leading idea which authorised the poor pilot
to become a ‘promiser of kingdoms.’”
Here we get such a genesis of an idea as fits in curiously
with what we know of the history of great inventions
and discoveries “presented to chosen minds by a higher
Power than Nature herself.” It corresponds too, not
only with the ideas that rule our own lives, but with the
origin of practical ideas which is unfolded to us by the
prophet Isaiah:—
“Doth the ploughman plough continually to ... open and
break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the
face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches and scatter
the cummin and put the wheat in rows ... for his God doth
instruct him aright and doth teach him.... Bread corn is
ground for he will not ever be threshing it.... This also
cometh from the Lord of Hosts which is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in working.”[18]
Let us hear Coleridge further on the subject of those
ideas which may invest us as an atmosphere rather than
strike as a weapon:—
“The idea may exist in a clear and definite form as that of a
circle in that of the mind of a geometrician or it may be a mere
instinct, a vague appetency towards something ... like the
impulse which fills a young poet’s eyes with tears.”
These indefinite ideas which express themselves in an
‘appetency’ towards something and which should draw
a child towards things honest, lovely and of good report,
are not to be offered of set purpose or at set times: they
are held in that thought-atmosphere which surrounds
him, breathed as his breath of life.
It is distressing to think that our poor words and ways
should be thus inspired by children; but to recognise
the fact will make us careful not to admit sordid or
unworthy thoughts and motives into our dealings with
them.
Coleridge treats in more detail those definite ideas
which are not inhaled as air but are conveyed as meat
to the mind:—
“From the first or initiative idea, as from a seed, successive
ideas germinate.” “Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring
machinery of the external world, are like light and air
and moisture to the seed of the mind which would else rot and
perish.” “The paths in which we may pursue a methodical
course are manifold and at the head of each stands its peculiar
and guiding idea. Those ideas are as regularly subordinate in
dignity as the paths to which they point are various and eccentric
in direction. The world has suffered much in modern times
from a subversive and necessary natural order of science ...
from summoning reason and faith to the bar of that limited
physical experience to which by the true laws of method they
owe no obedience. Progress follows the path of the idea from
which it sets out requiring however a constant wakefulness of
mind to keep it within the due limits of its course. Hence the
orbits of thought, so to speak, must differ from among themselves
as the initiative ideas differ.” (Method, S. T. C.).
Is it not a fact that the new light which biology is
throwing upon the laws of mind is bringing us back to
the Platonic doctrine that “An idea is a distinguishable
power, self-affirmed and seen in unity with the Eternal
Essence”?
I have ventured to repeat from an earlier volume[19]
this slight exposition of Coleridge’s teaching, because
his doctrine corresponds with common experience and
should reverse our ordinary educational practice. The
whole subject is profound, but as practical as it is profound.
We must disabuse our minds of the theory that
the functions of education are in the main gymnastic,
a continual drawing out without a corresponding act
of putting in. The modern emphasis upon ‘self-expression’
has given new currency to this idea; we who
know how little there is in us that we have not received,
that the most we can do is to give an original twist,
a new application, to an idea that has been passed
on to us; who recognise, humbly enough, that we are
but torch-bearers, passing on our light to the next as
we have received it from the last, even we invite children
to ‘express themselves’ about a tank, a Norman castle,
the Man in the Moon, not recognising that the quaint
things children say on unfamiliar subjects are no more
than a patchwork of notions picked up here and there.
One is not sure that so-called original composition is
wholesome for children, because their consciences are
alert and they are quite aware of their borrowings; it
may be better that they should read on a theme before
they write upon it, using then as much latitude as they
like.
In the early days of a child’s life it makes little apparent
difference whether we educate with a notion of filling
a receptacle, inscribing a tablet, moulding plastic matter,
or nourishing a life, but as a child grows we shall perceive
that only those ideas which have fed his life are taken
into his being; all the rest is cast away or is, like sawdust
in the system, an impediment and an injury.
Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas.
Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so
that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one
another, whether by word of mouth, written page,
Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain
a child’s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with
food. Probably he will reject nine-tenths of the ideas
we offer, as he makes use of only a small proportion of
his bodily food, rejecting the rest. He is an eclectic;
he may choose this or that; our business is to supply him
with due abundance and variety and his to take what
he needs. Urgency on our part annoys him. He resists
forcible feeding and loathes predigested food. What
suits him best is pabulum presented in the indirect literary
form which Our Lord adopts in those wonderful parables
whose quality is that they cannot be forgotten though,
while every detail of the story is remembered, its application
may pass and leave no trace. We, too, must take
this risk. We may offer children as their sustenance
the Lysander of Plutarch, an object lesson, we think,
shewing what a statesman or a citizen should avoid:
but, who knows, the child may take to Lysander and
think his ‘cute’ ways estimable! Again, we take the
risk, as did our Lord in that puzzling parable of the Unjust
Steward. One other caution; it seems to be necessary
to present ideas with a great deal of padding, as they
reach us in a novel or poem or history book written with
literary power. A child cannot in mind or body live
upon tabloids however scientifically prepared; out of a
whole big book he may not get more than half a dozen
of those ideas upon which his spirit thrives; and they
come in unexpected places and unrecognised forms, so
that no grown person is capable of making such extracts
from Scott or Dickens or Milton, as will certainly give
him nourishment. It is a case of,—“In the morning
sow thy seed and in the evening withhold not thine hand
for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this
or that.”
One of our presumptuous sins in this connection is that
we venture to offer opinions to children (and to older
persons) instead of ideas. We believe that an opinion
expresses thought and therefore embodies an idea. Even
if it did so once the very act of crystallization into
opinion destroys any vitality it may have had; pace
Ruskin, a crystal is not a living body and does not feed
men. We think to feed children on the dogmas of a
church, the theorems of Euclid, mere abstracts of history,
and we wonder that their education does not seem to
take hold of them. Let us hear M. Fouillée[20] on this
subject, for to him the idea is all in all both in philosophy
and education. But there is a function of education
upon which M. Fouillée hardly touches, that of the formation
of habits, physical, intellectual, moral.
“‘Scientific truths,’ said Descartes, ‘are battles won.’ Describe
to the young the principal and most heroic of these battles;
you will thus interest them in the results of science and you will
develop in them a scientific spirit by means of the enthusiasm
for the conquest of truth.... How interesting Arithmetic and
Geometry might be if we gave a short history of their principal
theorems, if the child were meant to be present at the labours
of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a Euclid, or in modern times, of a
Descartes, a Pascal, or a Leibnitz. Great theories instead of
being lifeless and anonymous abstractions would become living
human truths each with its own history like a statue by Michael
Angelo or like a painting by Raphael.”
Here we have an application of Coleridge’s ‘captain-idea’
of every train of thought; that is, not a naked
generalisation, (neither children nor grown persons find
aliment in these), but an idea clothed upon with fact,
history and story, so that the mind may perform the acts
of selection and inception from a mass of illustrative
details. Thus Dickens makes ‘David Copperfield’ tell
us that,—“I was a very observant child,” and that “all
children are very observant,” not as a dry abstraction,
but as an inference from a number of charming natural
incidents.
All roads lead to Rome, and all I have said is meant
to enforce the fact that much and varied humane reading,
as well as human thought expressed in the forms
of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children
now and then, but their very bread of life, which they
must have in abundant portions and at regular periods.
This and more is implied in the phrase, “The mind
feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a
generous curriculum.”
CHAPTER VII HOW WE MAKE USE OF MIND
“We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas but
is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a ‘spiritual organism’
with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet with
which it is prepared to deal and what it is able to digest and assimilate
as the body does food-stuffs.
“Such a doctrine as the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle,
lays the stress of education, the preparation of food in enticing
morsels, duly ordered, upon the teacher. Children taught on this
principle are in danger of receiving much teaching but little knowledge;
the teacher’s axiom being ‘what a child learns matters
less than how he learns it.’”
I cannot resist presenting the Herbartian Psychology
in the dry light of Scottish humour.[21]
“We have failed to explain ideas by the mind, how about
explaining the mind by ideas? You are not to suppose that
this is exactly how Herbart puts it, Herbart is a philosopher, a
German philosopher. It is true that he starts with the mind or,
as he prefers to call it, a soul: but do not fear that the sport of
the hunt is to be spoiled for that ... the ‘given’ soul is no
more a real soul than it is a real crater of a volcano. It has
absolutely no content: it is not even an idea trap. Ideas can
slip in and out of it as they please, or, rather, as other ideas
please but the soul has no power either to call, make, keep, or
recall, an idea. The ideas arrange all these matters among
themselves. The mind can make no objection.”
“‘The soul has no capacity nor faculty whatever either to
receive or produce anything: it is therefore no tabula rasa in the
sense that impressions, foreign to its nature, may be made on
it. Also it is no substance in Leibnitz’s sense, which includes
original self-activity. It has originally neither ideas, nor feelings,
nor desires. Further, within it lie no forms of intuition and
thought, no laws of willing and acting, nor any sort of predisposition
however remote towards these. The simple nature of the
soul is totally unknown and for ever remains so. It is as little
a subject for speculative as for empirical psychology.’ (Lehrbuch
zur Psychologie, by Herbart: Part III: pp. 152, 153.) Thus, a
vigorous vis inertiæ is the only power of the mind. Still it is
subject to the action of certain forces. Nothing but ideas
(Vorstellung) can attack the soul so that the ideas really make
up the mind.”
We are familiar with the struggle of ideas on the
threshold, with the good luck of those that get in and
especially of those that get in first and mount to high
places; with the behaviour of ideas, very much like
that of persons who fall into groups in an anarchical
state. This behaviour is described as the formation of
‘apperception masses’ and the mass that is sufficiently
strong has it all its own way and dominates the mind.
Our business is not to examine the psychology of Herbart,
a very serious and suggestive contribution to our
knowledge of educational principles, but rather to consider
how it works out practically in education. But
before we examine how Herbartian psychology bears
this test of experiment, let us consider what Professor
William James has to say of psychology in general.
“When we talk of psychology as a natural science,” he tells us,
“we must not assume that that means a sort of psychology that
stands at last on solid ground. It means just the reverse. It
means a psychology particularly fragile and into which the
waters of metaphysical criticism leak at every joint, a psychology
all of whose elementary assumptions and data must be reconsidered
in wider connections and translated into other terms.
It is, in short, a phrase of diffidence and not of arrogance; and
it is indeed strange to hear people talk triumphantly of the
‘New Psychology’ and write Histories of Psychology when into
the real elements and forces which the word covers not the first
glimpse of clear insight exists. A string of raw facts, a little
gossip and wrangle about opinions, a little classification and
generalisation on the mere descriptive level ... but not a
single law ... not a single proposition from which any
consequence can casually be deduced.”
But Professor James went on and wrote his extraordinarily
interesting book on psychology, and we must do the
same though our basis is no more than the common
experience of mankind so far as one mind can express
the experience common to us all.
Herbart’s psychology is extraordinarily gratifying and
attractive to teachers who are, like other people, eager
to magnify their office; and here is a scheme which shows
how every child is a new creation as he comes forth
from the hands of his teacher. The teacher learns how
to do it; he has but to draw together a mass of those
ideas which themselves will combine in the mind into
which they effect an entrance, and, behold, the thing
is done: the teacher has done it; he has selected the
ideas, shewn the correlation of each with the other and
the work is complete! The ideas establish themselves,
the most potent rule and gather force, and if these be
good, the man is made.
Here, for example, is a single week’s ‘Correlation of
Subjects’ worked out by a highly qualified teacher.
“Arithmetic (Decimal Fractions), Mathematics (Simple
Equations, Parallelograms), Science (Latent Heat), Housecraft
(Nerves, Thought, Habits), Geography (Scotland,
General Industries); or, again, for another week,—under
the same headings,—Metric problems, Symbols (four rules),
Triangles (sum angles), Machinery, Circulation, Sculpture
of the British Isles.” The ideas, no doubt, have an
agility and ability which we do not possess and know how
to jump at each other and form the desired ‘apperception
masses.’
A successful and able modern educationalist gives us
a valuable introduction to Herbartian Principles, and,
by way of example, “A Robinson Crusoe Concentration
Scheme,” a series of lessons given to children in Standard
I in an Elementary School. First we have nine lessons
in literature and language, the subjects being such as
‘Robinson climbs a hill and finds he is on an island.’
Then, ten object lessons of which the first is,—The Sea,
the second, A Ship from Foreign Parts, the sixth, A Life-Boat,
the seventh, Shell-Fish, the tenth, A Cave. How
these ‘objects’ are to be produced one does not see. The
third series are drawing lessons, probably as many, a
boat, a ship, an oar, an anchor and so on. Then follows
a series on manual training, still built upon ‘Robinson’;
the first, a model of the sea-shore; then, models of
Robinson’s island, of Robinson’s house and Robinson’s
pottery. The next course consists of reading, an indefinite
number of lessons,—‘passages from The Child’s
Robinson Crusoe and from a general Reader on the matters
discussed in object lessons.’ Then follows a series of
writing lessons, “simple composition on the subject
of the lessons ... the children framed the sentences
which the teacher wrote on the blackboard and the class
copied afterwards.” Here is one composition,—“Robinson
spent his first night in a tree. In the morning he was
hungry but he saw nothing round him but grass and
trees without fruit. On the sea-shore he found some
shell-fish which he ate.” Compare this with the voluminous
output of children of six or seven working
on the P.U.S. scheme upon any subject that they know;
with, indeed, the pages they will dictate after a single
reading of a chapter of Robinson Crusoe, not a ‘child’s
edition.’
Arithmetic follows with, no doubt, as many lessons,
“many mental examples and simple problems dealt
with Robinson”; the eighth and last course was in
singing and recitation,—‘I am monarch of all I survey,’
etc. “The lessons lasted about forty-five minutes each.... Under
ordinary conditions the story of ‘Robinson
Crusoe’ would be the leading feature in the work of a
whole year ... in comparing the English classes with
the German classes I have seen studying ‘Robinson
Crusoe’ I was convinced that the eagerness and interest
was as keen among the children here as in the German
schools.... One easily sees what a wealth of material
there is in the further development of the story.” One
does indeed! The whole thing must be highly amusing
to the teacher, as ingenious amplifications self-produced
always are: that the children too were entertained, one
does not doubt. The teacher was probably at her best
in getting by sheer force much out of little: she was,
in fact, acting a part and the children were entertained
as at a show, cinema or other; but of one thing we may
be sure, an utter distaste, a loathing, on the part of the
children ever after, not only for ‘Robinson Crusoe’ but
for every one of the subjects lugged in to illustrate his
adventures. We read elsewhere of an apple affording
a text for a hundred lessons, including the making of a
ladder, (in paper), to gather the apples; but, alas, the
eating of the worn-out apple is not suggested! The
author whom we quote for ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and whom
we refrain from naming because, as a Greek Chorus might
say, ‘we cannot praise,’ follows the ‘Robinson’ series
with another interminable series on the Armada.
The conscientious, ingenious and laborious teachers
who produce these ‘concentration series’ are little aware
that each such lesson is an act of lèse majesté. The
children who are capable of and eager for a wide range
of knowledge and literary expression are reduced to
inanities; a life-long ennui is set up; every approach to
knowledge suggests avenues for boredom, and the
children’s minds sicken and perish long before their
school-days come to an end. I have pursued this subject
at some length because we, too, believe in ideas as the
proper and only diet upon which children’s minds grow.
We are more in the dark about Mind than about Mars!
We can but judge by effects, and these appear to point
to the conclusion that mind is a ‘spiritual organism.’
(I need not apologise for speaking of that which has no
substance as an ‘organism,’—no greater a contradiction
in terms than Herbart’s ‘apperception masses.’) By an
analogy with Body we conclude that Mind requires regular
and sufficient sustenance; and that this sustenance is
afforded by ideas we may gather from the insatiable
eagerness with which these are appropriated, and the
evident growth and development manifested under such
pabulum. That children like feeble and tedious oral
lessons, feeble and tedious story books, does not at all
prove that these are wholesome food; they like lollipops
but cannot live upon them; yet there is a serious attempt
in certain schools to supply the intellectual, moral, and
religious needs of children by appropriate ‘sweetmeats.’
As I have said elsewhere, the ideas required for the
sustenance of children are to be found mainly in books
of literary quality; given these the mind does for itself
the sorting, arranging, selecting, rejecting, classifying,
which Herbart leaves to the struggle of the promiscuous
ideas which manage to cross the threshold. Nor is this
merely a nominal distinction; Herbart was a philosopher
and therefore his thought embraced the universal. Probably
few schools of the day are consciously following
the theories of this philosopher; but in most schools, in
England and elsewhere, so far as any intelligent rationale
is followed it is that of Herbart. There are many reasons
for this fact. A scheme which throws the whole burden
of education on the teacher, which exalts the personality
of the teacher as the chief agent in education, which
affords ingenious, interesting, and more or less creative
work to a vast number of highly intelligent and devoted
persons, whose passionate hope is to leave the world a
little better than they found it by means of those children
whom they have raised to a higher level, must needs
make a wide and successful appeal. It appeals equally
to Education Committees and school managers. Consider
the saving involved in the notion that teachers are compendiums
of all knowledge, that they have but, as it were,
to turn on the tap and the necessary knowledge flows
forth. All responsibility is shifted, and the relief is very
great. Not only so but lessons are delightful to watch
and to hear; the success of jig-saw puzzles illustrates
a tendency in human nature to delight in the ingenious
putting together of unlikely things, as, for example, a
lifebuoy and Robinson Crusoe. There is a series of small
triumphs to be observed any day of the week, and these
same triumphs are brought about by dramatic display,—so
ingenious, pleasing, fascinating, are the ways in which
the teacher chooses to arrive at her point. I say ‘her’
point because women excel in this kind of teaching, but
men do not come far short. What of the children
themselves? They, too, are amused and entertained,
they enjoy the puzzle-element and greatly enjoy the
teacher who lays herself out to attract them. There is
no flaw in the practical working of the method while it
is being carried out. Later, it gives rise to dismay and
anxiety among thoughtful people.
Much water has run under the bridge since several
years ago Mr. A. Paterson startled us out of self-complacency
with his Across the Bridges. We as a nation
were well pleased at the time with the result of our
efforts; nothing could be more intelligent, alert, brighter,
than the seventh standard boy about to leave school
and take up his life work. Conditions were unpropitious.
We know the old story of inviting blind alleys, present
success and then unemployment, with resulting depreciation
in character. What is to be done? The question
of after conditions is now being taken up seriously.
We have Continuation Classes which even if a boy be out
of work will help him to the Chinese art of ‘saving his
face.’ But Mr. Paterson condemns the schools for the
rapidity with which their best boys run to seed. He
does not quote the case of the boy who gets work, earns
fair wages, conducts himself respectably, goes to a ‘Polytechnic,’
the sort of boy with whom Mr. Pett Ridge makes
us familiar, who is so much less than he might be, so
crude in his notions, so unmoral in his principles, so poor
in interests, so meagre if not coarse in his choice of pleasures
and after all such a good fellow at bottom. He
might have been taught in school to utilise his powers,
to come into the enjoyment of the fine mind that is in
him; but in schools,—
“There is too much learning and too little work. The teacher
ready to use the powers that his training and experience have
given him works too hard while the boy’s share in the struggle
is too light. It is possible to make education too easy for children
and to rob learning of the mental discipline which often wearies
but in the end produces concentration and the capacity to work
alone.... He is rarely left to himself with the book in his
hands, forced to concentrate all his mind on the dull words
before him with no one at hand to explain or make the memory
work easier by little tricks of repetition and association....
The boy who reaches the seventh standard with every promise
and enters the service of a railway company is first required to
sit down by himself and master the symbols of the telegraphic
code. This he finds extremely irksome for the only work he
has ever done alone before is the learning of racy poetry which
is the very mildest form of mental discipline.” “‘Silent reading’
is occasionally allowed in odd half-hours ... it might well
be a regular subject for reading aloud is but a poor gift compared
with the practice of reading in private.”[22]
What does his curriculum do for the boy? Let us
again hear Mr. Paterson:—[23]
“What is the educational ideal set before the average boy
whose school-days are to end at fourteen? What type is it
that the authorities seek to produce? A glance at the syllabus
will reassure the ordinary cynic who still labours under the
quaint delusion that French and Algebra and violin-playing
are taught in every London Elementary School at the expense
of the ratepayer.... The syllabus was designed to leave a
boy at fourteen with a thoroughly sound and practical knowledge
of reading, writing and arithmetic and with such grounding in
English, geography and history, as may enable him to read a
newspaper or give a vote with some idea of what he is doing....
But these are all subsidiary to teaching the three ‘R’s’ which
between them occupy more than half the twenty-four hours of
teaching in the week.... It is certain that the present object
in view is dispiriting to master and boy alike for a knowledge of
reading, writing and arithmetic is no education and no training
but merely the elementary condition of further knowledge.
In many schools the boy is labouring on with these mere rudiments
for two or more years after all reasonable requirements have been
satisfied. The intelligent visitor looking at the note-books of an
average class will be amazed at the high standard of the neatness
and accuracy but he will find the excellence of a very visible
order. The handwriting is admirable, sixteen boys out of thirty
can write compositions without a flaw in grammar or spelling.
Yet it will occur to him that the powers of voluntary thought
and reason, of spontaneous enquiry and imagination, have not
been stirred. This very perfection of form makes him suspicious
as to the fundamental principles of our State curriculum. In
Public Schools boys are not trained to be lawyers, or parsons,
or doctors, but to be men. If they have learned to work systematically
and think independently they are then fit to be
trained for such life and profession as taste or necessity may
dictate. But at our Elementary Schools we seem to aim at
producing a nation of clerks for it is only to a clerk that this
perfection of writing and spelling is a necessary training.”
The very faults of his qualities nullify the work of the
teacher. His failing is that he does too much. Once
more we quote our authority:—
“With the average boy there is a marked waste of mental
capital between the ages of ten and thirteen and the aggregate
of this loss to the country is heavy indeed. Ten years at school
conquer many of the drawbacks of home and discover a quick,
receptive mind in the normal child.... Many opportunities
have been lost in these years of school but after fourteen there is
a more disastrous relapse. The brain is not taxed again and
shrivels into a mere centre of limited formulæ acting automatically
in response to appetite or sensation. The boy’s general education
fails utterly. Asia is but a name that it is difficult to spell though
at school he spoke of its rivers and ports.... It is probable
that the vocabulary of a working man at forty is actually smaller
than it was at fourteen so shrunk is the power of the mind to
feed upon the growing experience of life.... Of the majority
of boys it is true to say that only half their ability is ever used
in the work they find to do on leaving school, the other half curls
up and sleeps for ever.”
Here we have a depressing prospect of grievous waste
in the future. We all applaud the Education Act of
1918, are convinced that every boy and girl will receive
education until the end of his sixteenth, possibly
eighteenth, year. A wave of generous feeling passed
over the nation and employers were willing to support
the law; and if the eight hours conceded be spent in
making the young people more reliable, intelligent and
responsible persons no doubt the employers will be
rewarded for their generosity.
But there are rocks ahead. The only way to take
advantage of this provision is to make this an eight
hours’ University course. Now as Mr. Paterson happily
remarks the Universities do not undertake to prepare
barristers, parsons, stockbrokers, bankers, or even
soldiers and sailors, with a specialised knowledge proper
for each profession. Their implicit contention is, given
a well-educated man with cultivated imagination, trained
judgment, wide interests, and he is prepared to master
the intricacies of any profession; while he knows at the
same time how to make use of himself, of the powers
with which nature and education have endowed him for
his own happiness; the delightful employment of his
leisure; for the increased happiness of his neighbours
and the well-being of the community; that is, such a
man is able, not only to earn his living, but to live.
The Universities fulfil this claim; the various professions
abound with men who, in newspaper phrase, are
‘ornaments to their professions,’ and who gave up leisure
and means to serve their fellow-citizens as magistrates,
churchwardens, members of committees, special constables
when needed, until lately, members of Parliament,
holding service as an honour, and as proud as was
‘Godfrey Bertram,’ that unhappy laird in Guy Mannering,
to write ‘J.P.’ after their names. The enormous amount
of voluntary service rendered in such ways throughout
the Empire as well as that of insufficiently, or duly, paid
service justifies the Universities in their reading of their
peculiar function. But not only so, generous disinterested
work can never be paid for, and our great statesmen,
churchmen, soldiers and civil servants, as well as
the members of County, Municipal, and Urban District
Councils, have done their devoir over and above the
bond.
To secure this same splendidly devoted voluntary
service from all classes is the task set before us as a
nation, a task the more easy because we have all seen it
fulfilled in the War when every man was a potential hero.
Now is it not the fact that the Army proved itself an unequalled
University for our men, offering them increased
knowledge, broad views, lofty aims, duty and discipline,
along with the finest physical culture? So much so, that
instead of going on from where the War left off, we have
to be on the watch against retrograde movements, physical,
moral, intellectual. The downward grade is always
at hand and we know how easy it is. We cannot afford
another great war for the education of our people but
we must in some way supply the ‘University’ element
and Mr. Fisher’s great Act points out such a way. The
young people are for four years (a proper academic
period) to be under influences that make for ‘sweetness
and light.’ But we must keep to the academic ideal:
all preparation for specialised industries should be taboo.
Special teaching towards engineering, cotton-spinning,
and the rest, is quite unnecessary for every manufacturer
knows that given a ‘likely’ lad he will soon be turned into
a good workman in the works themselves. The splendid
record of women workers in the war supports our contention.
The efforts of Technical Schools and the like
are not greatly prized by the heads of firms so far as the
technical knowledge they afford goes. Boys from them
are employed rather on the off chance that they may turn
out intelligent and apt than for what they know beforehand
of the business. Here is one more reason for
treating the Continuation School as the People’s University
and absolutely eschewing all money-making arts
and crafts. Denmark and Scandinavia have tried this
generous policy of educating young people, not according
to the requirements of their trade but according to their
natural capacity to know and their natural desire for
knowledge, that desire to know history, poetry, science,
art, which is natural to every man; and the success of
the experiment now a century old is an object lesson for
the rest of the world.
Germany has pursued a different ideal. Her efforts,
too, have been great, unified by the idea of utility; and,
if we will only remember the lesson, the war has shown
us how futile is an education which affords no moral or
intellectual uplift, no motive higher than the learner’s
peculiar advantage and that of the State. Germany
became morally bankrupt (for a season only, let us hope)
not solely because of the war but as the result of an education
which ignored the things of the spirit or gave these
a nominal place and a poor rendering in a utilitarian
syllabus. We are encouraged to face the fact boldly
that it is a People’s University we should aim at, a University
with its thousands of Colleges up and down the
land, each of them the Continuation School (the name is
not inviting) for some one neighbourhood.
But, it will be argued, the subject matter of a University
education is conveyed for the most part through
the channel of dead languages, Latin and Greek. Our
contention is that, however ennobling the literature in
these tongues, we cannot honestly allow our English
literature to take a second place to any other, and that
therefore whatever Sophocles, Thucydides, Virgil, have
it in them to do towards a higher education, may be
effected more readily by Milton, Gibbon, Shakespeare,
Bacon, and a multitude of great thinkers who are therefore
great writers. Learning conveyed in our common
speech is easier come by than that secreted in a dead
language and this fact will help us to deal with the inadequacy
of the period allowed. Given absolute attention,
and we can do much with four hundred hours a year
(1,600 hours in our four years’ course) but only if we go
to work with a certainty that the young students crave
knowledge of what we call the ‘humanities,’ that they
read with absolute attention and that, having read,
they know. They will welcome the preparation for
public speaking, an effort for which everyone must
qualify in these days, which the act of narration offers.
The alternative is some such concentration scheme as
that indicated in Robinson Crusoe,—a year’s work on
soap, its manufacture, ingredients, the Soap Trade,
Soap Transport, the Uses of Soap, how to make out a
Soap invoice, the Sorts of Soap, and so on ad infinitum.
Each process in the iron, cotton, nail, pin, engine, button,—each
process in our thousand and one manufactures—will
offer its own ingenious Concentration Scheme.
The advocates of utilitarian education will be delighted,
the young students will be kept busy and will to some
extent use their wits all the time. With what result?
Some two centuries ago when a movement for adolescent
education agitated Europe, devastated by the Napoleonic
wars, we English took our part. The current
early divided into two streams, the material and the
spiritual, the useful and the educative, and England,
already great in manufactures, was carried along by the
first of these streams, followed by Germany, France,
Switzerland; while the Scandinavian group of countries
learned at the lips of that ‘Father of the People’s High
Schools’ that “spirit is might, spirit reveals itself in
spirit, spirit works only in freedom.” We see the
apotheosis of utilitarian education in the Munich schools
on the one hand and in the morale of the German army
on the other. But we are slow to learn because we
have set up a little tin god of efficiency in that niche
within our private pantheon which should be occupied
by personality. We trouble ourselves about the uses
of the young person to society. As for his own use,
what he should be in and for himself, why, what matter?
Because, say we, if we fit him to earn his living we
fit him also to be of service to the world and what
better can we do for him personally? We forget that
it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God
shall man live,—whether it be spoken in the way of some
truth of religion, poem, picture, scientific discovery, or
literary expression; by these things men live and in all
such is the life of the spirit. The spiritual life requires
the food of ideas for its daily bread. We shall find, in
the words of a well-known Swedish professor, that, “just
as enrichment of the soil gives the best conditions for the
seed sown in it so a well-grounded humanistic training
provides the surest basis for a business capacity, and not
the least so in the case of the coming farmer.” But we
need not go so far afield, we have a prophet of our own,
and I will close this part of my subject by quoting certain
of Mr. Fisher’s words of wisdom:—
“Now let me say something about the content of education,
about the things which should be actually taught in the schools,
and I am only going to talk in the very broadest possible way.
In my afternoon’s reading I came upon another very apposite
remark in the letters of John Stuart Mill. Let me read it to
you:—
‘What the poor, as well as the rich, require is not to be
taught other people’s opinions, but to be induced and
enabled to think for themselves. It is not physical science
that will do this, even if they could learn it much more
thoroughly than they are able to do.’
“The young people of this country are not to be regenerated
by economic doctrine or economic history or physical science;
they can only be elevated by ideas which act upon the imagination
and act upon the character and influence the soul, and it is
the function of all good teachers to bring those ideas before them.
“I have sometimes heard it said that you should not teach
patriotism in the school. I dissent from that doctrine. I
think that patriotism should be taught in the schools. I will
tell you what I mean by patriotism. By patriotism I do not
mean Jingoism, but what I mean by patriotism is an intelligent
appreciation of all things noble in the romances, in the literature
and in the history of one’s own country. Young people should
be taught to admire what is great while they are at school. And
remember that for the poor of this country the school is a far
more important factor than it is for the rich people of this
country....
“I say that I want patriotism in the larger sense of the term
taught in the schools. Of course there is a great deal to criticise
in any country, and I should be the last person to suggest that the
critical faculty should not be exercised and trained at school.
But before we teach children to criticise the institutions of
their country, before we teach them to be critical of what is bad,
let us teach them to recognize and admire what is good. After
all life is very short; we all of us have only one life to live, and
during that life let us get into ourselves as much love, as much
admiration, as much elevating pleasure as we can, and if we
view education merely as discipline in critical bitterness, then
we shall lose all the sweets of life and we shall make ourselves
unnecessarily miserable. There is quite enough sorrow and
hardship in this world as it is without introducing it prematurely
to young people.” ...
N.B.—Probably some educational authorities may decide to
give one hour or two weekly to physical training and handicrafts,
in which case the time-table must allow for so much the less
reading. But I should like to urge that, with the long evening
leisure of which there is promise, Club life will become an important
feature in every village and district. Classes will certainly
be arranged for military and other drills, gymnastics, dancing,
singing, swimming, carpentry, cooking, nursing, dress-making,
weaving, pottery, acting,—in fact, whatever the quickened
intelligence of the community demands. No compulsion would
be necessary to enforce attendance at classes, for which the
machinery is already in existence in most places, and which,
associated with Club life, would have certain social attractions
in the way of public displays, prize givings and so on. The intellectual
life of the Continuation School should give zest to these
evening occupations as well as to the Saturday Field Club which
no neighbourhood should be without.
I have put the case for Continuation Schools as strongly
as may be, but there is a more excellent way. In these
days of high wages it may well happen that parents will
be willing to let their children remain at school until
the end of their seventeenth year, in which case they
will be able to go on with the ‘secondary education’
which they have begun at the age of six and we shall
see a new thing in the world. Every man and woman
will have received a liberal education; life will no longer
discount the ideas and aims of the schoolroom, and, if
according to the Platonic saying, “Knowledge is virtue,”
knowledge informed by religion, we shall see even in our
own day how righteousness exalteth a nation.
CHAPTER VIII I.—THE WAY OF THE WILL
We may offer to children two guides to moral and intellectual
self-management which we may call ‘the Way of the Will’ and
‘the Way of the Reason.’
The Way of the Will: Children should be taught (a) to distinguish
between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the way to will
effectively is to turn our thoughts away from that which we desire
but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to
think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting.
(d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work
with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as
diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort
that we may ‘will’ again with added power. The use of suggestion
as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify
and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a
condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline
of failure as well as of success.)
The great things of life, life itself, are not easy of definition.
The Will, we are told, is ‘the sole practical faculty
of man.’ But who is to define the Will? We are told
again that ‘the Will is the man’; and yet most men
go through life without a single definite act of willing.
Habit, convention, the customs of the world have done
so much for us that we get up, dress, breakfast, follow
our morning’s occupations, our later relaxations, without
an act of choice. For this much at any rate we know
about the will. Its function is to choose, to decide, and
there seems to be no doubt that the greater becomes
the effort of decision the weaker grows the general will.
Opinions are provided for us, we take our principles at
second or third hand, our habits are suitable and convenient,
and what more is necessary for a decent and
orderly life? But the one achievement possible and
necessary for every man is character; and character is
as finely wrought metal beaten into shape and beauty
by the repeated and accustomed action of will. We who
teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim
in education is less conduct than character; conduct
may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes,
but it is of value to the world only as it has its source
in character.
Every assault upon the flesh and spirit of man is an
attack however insidious upon his personality, his will;
but a new Armageddon is upon us in so far as that the
attack is no longer indirect but is aimed consciously and
directly at the will, which is the man; and we shall
escape becoming a nation of imbeciles only because there
will always be persons of good will amongst us who will
resist the general trend. The office of parents and
teachers is to turn out such persons of good will;
that they should deliberately weaken the moral fibre
of their children by suggestion is a very grave offence
and a thoughtful examination of the subject should act
as a sufficient deterrent. For, let us consider. What
we do with the will we describe as voluntary. What we
do without the conscious action of will is involuntary.
The will has only one mode of action, its function is to
‘choose,’ and with every choice we make we grow in
force of character.
From the cradle to the grave suggestions crowd upon
us, and such suggestions become part of our education
because we must choose between them. But a suggestion
given by intent and supported by an outside personality
has an added strength which few are able to
resist, just because the choice has been made by another
and not by ourselves, and our tendency is to accept this
vicarious choice and follow the path of least resistance.
No doubt much of this vicarious choosing is done for
our good, whether for our health of body or amenableness
of mind; but those who propose suggestion as a means
of education do not consider that with every such attempt
upon a child they weaken that which should make a
man of him, his own power of choice. The parasitic
creatures who live upon the habits, principles and opinions
of others may easily become criminal. They only wait
the occasion of some popular outburst to be carried into
such a fury of crime as the Gordon Riots presented:
a mad fury of which we have had terrible examples in
our own day, though we have failed to ascribe them
to their proper cause, the undermining of the will of the
people, who have not been instructed in that ordering
of the will which is their chief function as men and
women. His will is the safeguard of a man against
the unlawful intrusion of other persons. We are taught
that there are offences against the bodies of others which
may not be committed, but who teaches us that we may
not intrude upon the minds and overrule the wills of
others; that it is indecent to let another probe the
thoughts of the ‘unconscious mind’ whether of child
or man? Now the thought that we choose is commonly
the thought that we ought to think and the part of the
teacher is to afford to each child a full reservoir of the
right thought of the world to draw from. For right
thinking is by no means a matter of self-expression.
Right thought flows upon the stimulus of an idea, and
ideas are stored as we have seen in books and pictures and
the lives of men and nations; these instruct the conscience
and stimulate the will, and man or child ‘chooses.’
An accomplished statesman[24] exhibited to us lately how
the disintegration of a great empire was brought about
by the weakness of its rulers who allowed their will-power
to be tampered with, their judgment suggested, their
actions directed, by those who gained access to them.
There is no occasion for panic, but it is time that we
realised that to fortify the will is one of the great purposes
of education, and probably some study of the map of the
City of Mansoul would afford us guidance: at least, a
bird’s eye view of the riches of the City should be spread
before children. They should themselves know of the
wonderful capacities to enter upon the world as a great
inheritance which exist in every human being. All its
beauty and all its thought are open to everyone. Everyone
may take service for the world’s use, everyone may
climb those delectable mountains from whence he gets
the vision of the City of God. He must know something
of his body with its senses and its appetites: of his
intellect, imagination and æsthetic sense: of his moral
nature, ordered by love and justice. Realising how much
is possible to Mansoul and the perils that assail it, he
should know that the duty of self-direction belongs to
him; and that powers for this direction are lodged in
him, as are intellect and imagination, hunger and thirst.
These governing powers are the conscience and the will.
The whole ordering of education with its history, poetry,
arithmetic, pictures, is based on the assumption that
conscience is incapable of ordering life without regular
and progressive instruction. We need instruction also
concerning the will. Persons commonly suppose that
the action of the will is automatic, but no power of
Mansoul acts by itself and of itself, and some little study
of the ‘way of the will’—which has the ordering of
every other power—may help us to understand the functions
of this Premier in the kingdom of Mansoul.
Early in his teens we should at least put clearly before
a child the possibility of a drifting, easy life led by
appetite or desire in which will plays no part; and the
other possibility of using the power and responsibility
proper to him as a person and willing as he goes. He
must be safeguarded from some fallacies. No doubt
he has heard at home that Baby has a strong will because
he cries for a knife and insists on pulling down the table-cloth.
In his history lessons and his readings of tale
and poem, he comes across persons each of whom carries
his point by strong wilfulness. He laughs at that rash
boy Phaëton, measures Esau with a considering eye,
finds him more attractive than Jacob who yet wins
higher approval; perceives that Esau is wilful but that
Jacob has a strong will, and through this and many other
examples, recognises that a strong will is not synonymous
with ‘being good,’ nor with a determination to have
your own way. He learns to distribute the characters
he comes across in his reading on either side of a line,
those who are wilful and those who are governed by will;
and this line by no means separates between the bad
and the good.
It does divide, however, between the impulsive, self-pleasing,
self-seeking, and the persons who have an aim
beyond and outside of themselves, even though it be an
aim appalling as that of Milton’s Satan. It follows
for him that he must not only will, but will with a view
to an object outside himself. He will learn to recognise
in Louis XI a mean man and a great king, because
France and not himself was the object of his crooked
policy. The will, too, is of slow growth, nourished upon
the ideas proposed to it, and so all things work together
for good to the child who is duly educated. It is well
that children should know that while the turbulent
person is not ruled by will at all but by impulse, the
movement of his passions or desires, yet it is possible to
have a constant will with unworthy or evil ends, or, even
to have a steady will towards a good end and to compass
that end by unworthy means. The simple rectified will,
what our Lord calls ‘the single eye,’ would appear to be
the one thing needful for straight living and serviceableness.
But always the first condition of will, good
or ill, is an object outside of self. The boy or girl who
sees this will understand that self-culture is not to be
accepted as an ideal, will not wonder why Bushido is
mighty in Japan, will enter into the problem which
Browning raises in The Statue and the Bust. By degrees
the scholar will perceive that just as to reign is the distinctive
function of a king, so to will is the function of
a man. A king is not a king unless he reigns and
a man is less than a man unless he wills. Another thing
to be observed is that even the constant will has its times
of rise and fall, and one of the secrets of living is how
to tide over the times of fall in will power.
The boy must learn too that the will is subject to
solicitations all round, from the lust of the flesh and
the lust of the eye and the pride of life; that will does
not act alone; it takes the whole man to will and a man
wills wisely, justly and strongly, in proportion as all
his powers are in training and under instruction. We
must understand in order to will. “How is that ye will
not understand?” said our Lord to the Jews; and
that is the way with most of us, we will not understand.
We look out for great occasions which do not come and
do not see that the sphere for the action of our wills is
in ourselves. Our concern with life is to be fit, and
according to our fitness come our occasions and the
uses we shall be put to.
Unlike every other power in the kingdom of Mansoul,
the will is able to do what it likes, is a free agent, and
the one thing the will has to do is to prefer. “Choose
ye this day,” is the command that comes to each of us
in every affair and on every day of our lives, and the
business of the will is to choose. But, choice, the effort
of decision, is a heavy labour, whether it be between
two lovers or two gowns. So, many people minimise
this labour by following the fashion in their clothes,
rooms, reading, amusements, the pictures they admire
and the friends they select. We are zealous in choosing
for others but shirk the responsibility of decisions for
ourselves.
What is to be said about obedience, to the heads of
the house first, to the State, to the Church, and always
to the laws of God? Obedience is the test, the sustainer
of personality, but it must be the obedience of choice;
because choice is laborious, little children must be
trained in the obedience of habit; but every gallant
boy and girl has learned to choose to obey all who are
set in authority.
Such obedience is of the essence of chivalry and
chivalry is that temper of mind opposed to self-seeking.
The chivalrous person is a person of constant will for,
as we have seen, will cannot be exercised steadily for
ends of personal gain.
It is well to know what it is we choose between. Things
are only signs which represent ideas and several times
a day we shall find two ideas presented to our minds
and must make our choice upon right and reasonable
grounds. We shall thus be on our guard against the
weak allowance which we cause to do duty for choice
and against such dishonest fallacies as, that it is our
business to get the best that is to be had at the lowest
price; and it is not only in matters of dress and ornament,
household use and decoration, that we run after
the cheapest and newest. We chase opinions and ideas
with the same restlessness and uncertainty; any fad, any
notion in the newspapers, we pick up with eagerness.
Once again, the will is the man. The business of the
will is to choose. There are many ways to get out of
the task of choosing but it is always,—“Choose you this
day whom ye will serve.” There are two services open
to us all, the service of God, (including that of man)
and the service of self. If our aim is just to get on, ‘to
do ourselves well,’ to get all possible ease, luxury and
pleasure out of our lives, we are serving self and for the
service of self no act of will is required. Our appetites
and desires are always at hand to spur us into the necessary
exertions. But if we serve God and our neighbour,
we have to be always on the watch to choose between
the ideas that present themselves. What the spring
is to the year, school days are to our life. You meet a
man whose business in the world appears to be to eat
and drink, play golf and motor; he may have another
and deeper life that we know nothing about, but, so far
as we can see, he has enlisted in the service of self. You
meet another, a man of position, doing important work,
and his ideas are those he received from the great men
who taught him at school and College. The Greek Plays
are his hobby. He is open to great thoughts and ready
for service, because that which we get in our youth we
keep through our lives.
Though the will affects all our actions and all our
thoughts, its direct action is confined to a very little
place, to that postern at either side of which stand conscience
and reason, and at which ideas must needs present
themselves. Shall we take an idea in or reject it?
Conscience and reason have their say, but will is supreme
and the behaviour of will is determined by all the principles
we have gathered, all the opinions we have formed.
We accept the notion, ponder it. At first we vaguely
intend to act upon it; then we form a definite purpose,
then a resolution and then comes an act or general
temper of mind. We are told of Rudyard Kipling that
his great ambition and desire at one time was to keep
a tobacconist’s shop. Why? Because in this way he
could get into human touch with the men who came to
buy their weekly allowance of tobacco. Happily for
the world he did not become a tobacconist but the idea
which moved him in the first place has acted throughout
his life. Always he has men, young men, about him
and who knows how many he has moved to become
‘Captains Courageous’ by his talk as well as by his
books!
But suppose an unworthy idea present itself at the
postern, supported by public opinion, by reason, for
which even conscience finds pleas? The will soon wearies
of opposition, and what is to be done? Fight it out?
That is what the mediæval Church did with those ideas
which it rightly regarded as temptations; the lash, the
hair shirt, the stone couch, the emaciated frame told
of these not too successful Armageddons.
When the overstrained will asks for repose, it may
not relax to yielding point but may and must seek
recreation, diversion,—Latin thought has afforded us
beautiful and appropriate names for that which we
require. A change of physical or mental occupation
is very good, but if no other change is convenient, let
us think of something else, no matter how trifling. A
new tie, or our next new hat, a story book we are reading,
a friend we hope to see, anything does so long as we do
not suggest to ourselves the thoughts we ought to think
on the subject in question. The will does not want the
support of arguments but the recreation of rest, change,
diversion. In a surprisingly short time it is able to
return to the charge and to choose this day the path of
duty, however dull or tiresome, difficult or dangerous.
This ‘way of the will’ is a secret of power, the secret of
self-government, with which people should be furnished,
not only for ease in practical right doing, or for advance
in the religious life, but also for their intellectual well-being.
Our claim to free will is a righteous claim;
will can only be free, whether its object be right or
wrong; it is a matter of choice and there is no choice
but free choice. But we are apt to translate free will
into free thought. We allow ourselves to sanction intellectual
anarchism and forget that it rests with the will
to order the thoughts of the mind fully as much as the
feelings of the heart or the lusts of the flesh. Our
thoughts are not our own and we are not free to think
as we choose. The injunction,—“Choose ye this day,”
applies to the thoughts which we allow ourselves to receive.
Will is the one free agent of Mansoul, will alone
may accept or reject; and will is therefore responsible
for every intellectual problem which has proved too much
for a man’s sanity or for his moral probity. We may not
think what we please on shallow matters or profound.
The instructed conscience and trained reason support
the will in those things, little and great, by which men
live.
The ordering of the will is not an affair of sudden
resolve; it is the outcome of a slow and ordered education
in which precept and example flow in from the
lives and thoughts of other men, men of antiquity and
men of the hour, as unconsciously and spontaneously
as the air we breathe. But the moment of choice is
immediate and the act of the will voluntary; and
the object of education is to prepare us for this
immediate choice and voluntary action which every day
presents.
While affording some secrets of ‘the way of the will’
to young people, we should perhaps beware of presenting
the ideas of ‘self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control.’
All adequate education must be outward
bound, and the mind which is concentrated upon self-emolument,
even though it be the emolument of all the
virtues, misses the higher and the simpler secrets of life.
Duty and service are the sufficient motives for the arduous
training of the will that a child goes through with
little consciousness. The gradual fortifying of the will
which many a schoolboy undergoes is hardly perceptible
to himself however tremendous the results may be
for his city or his nation. Will, free will, must have an
object outside of self; and the poet has said the last
word so far as we yet know,——
“Our wills are ours we know not how;
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.”
CHAPTER IX 2.—THE WAY OF THE REASON
We should teach children, also, not to lean (too confidently) unto
their own understanding because the function of reason is to give
logical demonstration of (a) mathematical truth and (b) of initial
ideas accepted by the will. In the former case reason is, perhaps,
an infallible guide but in the latter is not always a safe one, for
whether the initial idea be right or wrong reason will confirm it
by
irrefragable proofs.
Therefore children should be taught as they become mature enough
to understand such teaching that the chief responsibility which
rests upon them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas
presented to them. To help them in this choice we should afford
them principles of conduct and a wide range of fitting knowledge.
Every child, every man, who comes to a sudden halt
watching the action of his own reason, is another Columbus,
the discoverer of a new world. Commonly we let
reason do its work without attention on our part, but
there come moments when we stand in startled admiration
and watch the unfolding before us point by point
of a score of arguments in favour of this carpet as against
that, this route in preference to the other, our chosen
chum as against Bob Brown; because every pro suggested
by our reason is opposed to some con in the background.
How else should it happen that there is no single point
upon which two persons may reason,—food, dress,
games, education, politics, religion,—but the two may
take opposite sides, and each will bring forward infallible
proofs which must convince the other were it not that
he too is already convinced by stronger proofs to
strengthen his own argument. Every character in
history or fiction supports this thesis; and probably
we cannot give a better training in right reasoning than
by letting children work out the arguments in favour
of this or that conclusion.
Thus, Macbeth, a great general, returns after a brilliant
victory, head and heart are inflated, what can he not
achieve? Could he not govern a country as well as
rule an army? Reason unfolds the steps by which he
might do great things; great things, ay, but are they
lawful, these possible exploits? And then in the nick
of time he comes across the ‘weird Sisters,’ as we are
all apt to take refuge in fatalism when conscience no
longer supports us. He shall be Thane of Cawdor, and,
behold, confirmation arrives on the spot. He shall also
be king. Well, if this is decreed, what can he do? He
is no longer a free agent. And a score of valid arguments
unfold themselves showing how Scotland, the
world, his wife, himself, would be enhanced, would
flourish and be blessed if he had the opportunity to do
what was in him. Opportunity? The thing was
decreed! It rested with him to find the means, the tools.
He was not without imagination, had a poetic mind and
shrank before the horrors he vaguely foresaw. But
reason came to his aid and step by step the whole bloody
tragedy was wrought out before his prescient mind.
When we first meet with Macbeth he is rich in honours,
troops of friends, the generous confidence of his king.
The change is sudden and complete, and, we may
believe, reason justified him at every point. But reason
did not begin it. The will played upon by ambition
had already admitted the notion of towering greatness
or ever the ‘weird Sisters’ gave shape to his desire.
Had it not been for this countenance afforded by the
will, the forecasts of fate would have influenced his
conduct
no more than they did that of Banquo.
But it must not be supposed that reason is malign,
the furtherer of ill counsels only. Nurse Cavell, Jack
Cornwell, Lord Roberts, General Gordon, Madame
Curie, leave hints enough to enable us to follow the
trains of thought which issued in glorious deeds. We
know how Florence Nightingale received, welcomed,
reasoned out the notion of pity which obsessed her,
and how through many difficulties her great project for
the saving of the sick and suffering of her country’s army
worked itself out; how she was able to convey to those
in power the same convincing arguments which moved
herself. That was a happy thought of the mediæval
Church which represented the leading idea of each of the
seven Liberal Arts by a chosen exponent able to convince
others by the arguments which his own reason brought
forward. So Priscian taught the world Grammar;
Pythagoras, Arithmetic; and the name of Euclid still
stands for the science which appealed to his reason. But
it is not only great intellectual advances and discoveries
or world-shaping events for good or evil, that exhibit
the persuasive power of reason. There is no object in
use, great or small, upon which some man’s reason has
not worked exhaustively. A sofa, a chest of drawers,
a ship, a box of toy soldiers, have all been thought out
step by step, and the inventor has not only considered
the pros but has so far overcome the cons that his invention
is there, ready for use; and only here and there
does anyone take the trouble to consider how the useful,
or, perhaps, beautiful article came into existence. It is
worth while to ask a child, How did you think of it?
when he comes to tell you of a new game he has invented,
a new country of the imagination he has named, peopled
and governed. He will probably tell you what first
‘put it into his head’ and then how the reasons one
after another came to him. After,—How did you think
of it?—the next question that will occur to a child is,—How
did he think of it?—and he will distinguish
between the first notion that has ‘put it into his head’
and the reasoned steps which have gone to the completion
of an object, the discovery of a planet, the making
of a law. Sometimes a child should be taken into the
psychology of crime, and he will see that reason brings
infallible proofs of the rightness of the criminal act.
From Cain to the latest great offender every criminal act
has been justified by reasoned arguments which come of
their own accord to the criminal. We know the arguments
before which Eve fell when the Serpent played the
part of the ‘weird Sisters.’ It is pleasant to the eye;
it is good for food; it shall make you wise in the knowledge
of good and evil—good and convincing arguments,
specious enough to overbear the counter-pleadings of
Obedience. Children should know that such things are
before them also; that whenever they want to do wrong
capital reasons for doing the wrong thing will occur to
them. But, happily, when they want to do right no
less cogent reasons for right doing will appear.
After abundant practice in reasoning and tracing out
the reasons of others, whether in fact or fiction, children
may readily be brought to the conclusions that reasonable
and right are not synonymous terms; that reason
is their servant, not their ruler,—one of those servants
which help Mansoul in the governance of his kingdom.
But no more than appetite, ambition, or the love of ease,
is reason to be trusted with the government of a man, much
less that of a state; because well-reasoned arguments
are brought into play for a wrong course as for a right.
He will see that reason works involuntarily; that all
the beautiful steps follow one another in his mind without
any activity or intention on his own part; but he need
never suppose that he was hurried along into evil by
thoughts which he could not help, because reason never
begins it. It is only when he chooses to think about some
course or plan, as Eve standing before the apples, that
reason comes into play; so, if he chooses to think about a
purpose that is good, many excellent reasons will hurry
up to support him; but, alas, if he choose to entertain
a wrong notion, he, as it were, rings the bell for reason,
which enforces his wrong intention with a score of arguments
proving that wrong is right.
A due recognition of the function of reason should be
an enormous help to us all in days when the air is full
of fallacies, and when our personal modesty, that becoming
respect for other people which is proper to well-ordered
natures whether young or old, makes us willing
to accept conclusions duly supported by public opinion
or by those whose opinions we value. Nevertheless, it
is something to recognise that probably no wrong thing
has ever been done or said, no crime committed, but
has been justified to the perpetrator by arguments coming
to him involuntarily and produced with cumulative force
by his own reason. Is Shakespeare ever wrong? And,
if so, may we think that a Richard III who gloats over
his own villainy as villainy, who is in fact no hypocrite,
in the sense of acting, to himself—is hardly true to
human nature? Great is Shakespeare! So perhaps
Richard was the exception to the rule which makes a man
go out and hang himself when at last he sees his incomparable
villainy, and does not Richard say in the end,—“I
myself find in myself no pity for myself”? For ourselves
and our children it is enough to know that reason
will put a good face on any matter we propose; and, that
we can prove ourselves to be in the right is no justification
for there is absolutely no theory we may receive,
no action we may contemplate, which our reason will
not affirm. Of course we know by many infallible
proofs that Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and an ingenious
person has worked out a chain of arguments proving
that Dr. Johnson wrote the Bible! Why not? For a
nation of logical thinkers, the French made an extraordinary
faux-pas when they elected the Goddess of Reason
to divine honours. But, indeed, perhaps they did it
because they are a logical nation; for logic gives us the
very formula of reason, and that which is logically proved
is not necessarily right. We need no longer wonder
that two men equally upright, equally virtuous, selected
out of any company, will hold opposite views on almost
any question; and each will support his views by logical
argument. So we are at the mercy of the doctrinaire in
religion, the demagogue in politics, and, dare we say,
of the dreamer in science; and we think to save our
souls by being in the front rank of opinion in one or the
other. But not if we have grown up cognisant of the
beauty and wonder of the act of reasoning, and also,
of the limitations which attend it.
We must be able to answer the arguments in the air,
not so much by counter reasons as by exposing the
fallacies in such arguments and proving on our own part
the opposite position. For example, “that very lovable,
very exasperating but essentially real, though often
wrong-headed enthusiast,” Karl Marx, dominates the
socialistic thought of to-day. Point by point, for good
or for evil, the Marxian Manifesto of 1848 is coming into
force. “For the most advanced countries,” we are told,
“the following measures might come into very general
application.”
(1) “Expropriation of landed property and application
of rent to State Expenditure.” We have not space
to examine the Marxian proposition in detail but let us
consider a single fallacy. It is assumed that the rent of
landed property is for the sole use, enrichment and
enjoyment of the owner. Now the schedule of the
Duke of Bedford, for example, published recently, shows
that the income derived from park property is inadequate
to its upkeep and to the taxes imposed upon the owner.
Again, landowners are not only large employers of
labour, generally under favourable conditions, but they
keep up a very important benefaction; most of the
extensive landowners make of their places public parks
kept in beautiful order at their private expense.
(2) “Heavy progressive taxation.” The fallacy lies
in the fact that the proletariat in whose interest the
Manifesto was issued must necessarily on account of their
numbers be large taxpayers. Therefore it is upon them
that heavy progressive taxation will press—as we have
all seen in Russia—to the point of their extinction.
(3) “Abolition of inheritance.” A measure designed
to reduce all persons to the same level. As we know,
the abolition of class is the main object of socialism.
But the underlying fallacy is the assumption that class
is stable and is not in a state of continual flux, the continual
upward and downward movement as of watery
particles in the ocean. The man at the bottom to-day
may be at the top to-morrow, as we see, not only in Soviet
Russia, but in most civilised countries. Attempts to
control this natural movement are as vain as King
Canute’s command to the ocean.
(4) “Confiscation of the property of all emigrants
and rebels.” Assumed authority must be supported by
tyranny, that worst tyranny which requires all men to
think to order, as they must in a Soviet State, or be
penalised to make them powerless. The fallacy lies in
a misconception of human nature. There is nothing
that men will not sacrifice for an idea, for such an idea
as that of freedom of thought and of movement.
(5), (6), (7), deal with centralisation, credit, of transport,
of factories, of instruments of production in the
hands of the State,—the State, that is, Everyman,—the
Proletariat, in fact,—in whose hands all wealth and means
of obtaining wealth shall be lodged.
Here we have a logically thought-out preparation for
the government of the people, by the people, for the
people; but the underlying fallacy is that it makes for
revolution which effects no change but a mere change
of rulers, better or worse as may be. In the Soviet
Republic, according to the law of perpetual social flux,
new rulers would come to the top, arbitrary and tyrannical,
because not hemmed in by precedent and custom;
and children will be at no loss to show how the last
state of a nation so governed is worse than the first.
(8) “Compulsory obligation of labour upon all.” The
initial idea of a Soviet State is that it shall afford due
liberty and equal conditions for all. But even in the
contemplation of such a State it was necessary to postulate
for everybody conscription and the discipline of an
army.
(9) “Joint prosecution for Agriculture and Manufacture.”
The aim being the gradual removal of the distinction
of town and country. Here is a point in the
Manifesto which we should all like to see in practice
but—is it possible?
(10) “Public and gratuitous education for all children.”
This happily we have seen carried out with the proviso,
‘for whom it may be necessary or desirable.’ The difficulty
lies in the conception of education formed by a
Soviet community; and the plea for free education is
a specious blind, the intention being such an education
as shall train the coming generation in rabid revolutionary
principles.
To continue our examination of the Tenth Maxim;
the next clause (b) requires “abolition of children’s
labour in factories in its present form.” So far so good.
Happily we have lived to see this abolition; there may
be a sinister reading of the clause but on the surface
it carries the assent of all good citizens.
(c) “Union of education with material production.”
Here from motives of economy we are going the way of
the Communists in our Continuation Schools; but a
fallacy underlies the maxim which may well frustrate
our efforts towards the better education of the people.
The assumption is that the boy who learns, say, certain
manufacturing processes, pari passu with his intellectual
education does better in the future than he who gives
the full period to education. There is no consensus of
the opinion of employers to prove that this is the case.
On the contrary, given a likely boy, and a manufacturer
will be satisfied that he will soon learn his business in
the ‘works.’ But the function of education is not to
give technical skill but to develop a person; the more
of a person, the better the work of whatever kind; and
as I have said before, the idea of the Continuation School
is, or should be, a University course in the ‘humanities’;
not in what have been called the ‘best humanities,’ i.e.,
the Classics, though whether these are in any sense
‘best’ is a moot question, but in the singularly rich
‘humanities’ which the English tongue affords.
These Ten Marxian Maxims give us ample ground for
discussion not for lectures or for oral lessons, but for
following for a few minutes any opening suggested by
‘current events,’ a feature in the children’s programme
of work. But they must follow arguments and detect
fallacies for themselves. Reason like the other powers
of the mind, requires material to work upon whether
embalmed in history and literature, or afloat with the
news of a strike or uprising. It is madness to let children
face a debatable world with only, say, a mathematical
preparation. If our business were to train their power of
reasoning, such a training would no doubt be of service;
but the power is there already, and only wants material
to work upon.
This caution must be borne in mind. Reason, like all
other properties of a person, is subject to habit and
works upon the material it is accustomed to handle.
Plato formed a just judgment on this matter, too,[25] and
perceived that mathematics afford no clue to the labyrinth
of affairs whether public or private.
We have seen that their reading and the affairs of the
day should afford scope and opportunity for the delight
in ratiocination proper to children. The fallacies they
themselves perpetrate when exposed make them the
readier to detect fallacies elsewhere.
What are we to do? Are we to waste time in discussing
with children every idle and blasphemous proposition
that comes their way? Surely not. But we may
help them to principles which should enable them to
discern these two characters for themselves. A proposition
is idle when it rests on nothing and leads to nothing.
Again, blasphemy is a sin, the sin of being impudent
towards Almighty God, Whom we all know, without
any telling, and know Him to be fearful, wonderful,
loving, just and good, as certainly as we know that the
sun shines or the wind blows. Children should be brought
up, too, to perceive that a miracle is not less a miracle
because it occurs so constantly and regularly that we
call it a law; that sap rises in a tree, that a boy is born
with his uncle’s eyes, that an answer that we can perceive
comes to our serious prayers; these things are
not the less miracles because they happen frequently or
invariably, and because we have ceased to wonder about
them. No doubt so did the people of Jerusalem when
our Lord performed many miracles in their streets.
When children perceive that,—“My Father worketh
hitherto and I work”—is the law which orders nations
and individuals: that “My spirit shall not always
strive with man,” is an awful warning to every people
and every person; that to hinder the mis-doing, encourage
the well-doing of men and nations is incessant
labour, the work of the Father and the Son:—to a
child who perceives these things miracles will not be
matters of supreme moment because all life will be for
him matter for wonder and adoration.
Again, if we wish children to keep clear of all the
religious clamours in the air, we must help them to
understand what religion is.—[26]
“Will religion guarantee me my private and personal happiness?
To this on the whole I think we must answer, No; and
if we approach it with a view to such happiness, then most
certainly and absolutely No.”
Here is a final and emphatic answer to the quasi religious
offers which are being clamourously pressed upon
hesitating souls. Ease of body is offered to these, relief
of mind, reparation of loss, even of the final loss when
those they love pass away. We may call upon mediums,
converse through table-rappings, be healed by faith,—faith,
that is, in the power of a Healer who manipulates
us. Sin is not for us, nor sorrow for sin. We may live
in continual odious self-complacency, remote from the
anxious struggling souls about us, because, forsooth,
there is no sin, sorrow, anxiety or pain, if we will that
these things shall not be. That is to say, religion will
“guarantee me my private and personal happiness,” will
make me immune from every distress and misery of life;
and this happy immunity is all a matter within the
power of my own will; the person that matters in my
religion is myself only. The office of religion for me in
such a case is to remove all uneasiness, bodily and
spiritual, and to float me into a Nirvana of undisturbed
self-complacency. But we must answer with Professor
Bosanquet, “absolutely NO.” True religion will not do
this for me because the final form of the religion that will
do these things is idolatry, self-worship, with no intention
beyond self.
To go on with our quotation,—
“Well, but if not that then what? We esteem the thing
as good and great, but if it simply does nothing for us, how is
it to be anything to us? But the answer was the answer to the
question and it might be that to a question sounding but slightly
different, a very different answer would be returned. We
might ask, for instance,—‘does it make my life more worth
living?’ And the answer to this might be,—‘It is the only
thing that makes life worth living at all.’”
In a word, “I want, am made for and must have a God.”
No doubt through the sweetness of their faith and
love children have immediate access to God, and what
more would we have? ‘Gentle Jesus’ is about their
path and about their bed; angels minister to them;
they enjoy all the immunities of the Kingdom. But we
may not forget that reason is as active in them as the
affections. Towards the end of the last century people
had a straight and easy way of giving a reasonable foundation
to a child’s belief. All the articles of the Christian
Faith were supported by a sort of little catechism of
‘Scripture Proofs’; and this method was not without
its uses. But, to-day, we have to prove the Scriptures
if we rely upon Scripture proofs and we must change
our point of attack. Children must know that we cannot
prove any of the great things of life, not even that we
ourselves live; but we must rely upon that which we
know without demonstration. We know, too, and this
other certainty must be pressed home to them, that
reason, so far from being infallible, is most exceedingly
fallible, persuadable, open to influence on this side and
that; but is all the same a faithful servant, able to
prove whatsoever notion is received by the will. Once we
are convinced of the fallibility of our own reason we are
able to detect the fallacies in the reasoning of our opponents
and are not liable to be carried away by every
wind of doctrine. Every mother knows how intensely
reasonable a child is and how difficult it is to answer
his quite logical and foolishly wrong conclusions. So we
need not be deterred from dealing with serious matters
with these young neophytes, but only as the occasion
occurs; we may not run the risk of boring them with the
great questions of life while it is our business to send
them forth assured.
We find that, while children are tiresome in arguing
about trifling things, often for the mere pleasure of
employing their reasoning power, a great many of them
are averse to those studies which should, we suppose,
give free play to a power that is in them, even if they
do not strengthen and develop this power. Yet few
children take pleasure in Grammar, especially in English
Grammar, which depends so little on inflexion. Arithmetic,
again, Mathematics, appeal only to a small percentage
of a class or school, and, for the rest, however
intelligent, its problems are baffling to the end, though
they may take delight in reasoning out problems of life
in literature or history. Perhaps we should accept
this tacit vote of the majority and cease to put undue
pressure upon studies which would be invaluable did the
reasoning power of a child wait upon our training, but
are on a different footing when we perceive that children
come endowed to the full as much with reason as with
love; that our business is to provide abundant material
upon which this supreme power should work; and that
whatever development occurs comes with practice in
congenial fields of thought. At the same time we may not
let children neglect either of these delightful studies.
The time will come when they will delight in words, the
beauty and propriety of words; when they will see that
words are consecrated as the vehicle of truth and are not
to be carelessly tampered with in statement or mutilated
in form; and we must prepare them for these later
studies. Perhaps we should postpone parsing, for
instance, until a child is accustomed to weigh sentences
for their sense, should let them dally with figures of speech
before we attempt minute analysis of sentences, and
should reduce our grammatical nomenclature to a minimum.
The fact is that children do not generalise, they
gather particulars with amazing industry, but hold their
impressions fluid, as it were; and we may not hurry
them to formulate. If the use of words be a law
unto itself, how much more so the language of figures
and lines! We remember how instructive and impressive
Ruskin is on the thesis that ‘two and two make
four’ and cannot by any possibility that the universe
affords be made to make five or three. From this
point of view, of immutable law, children should approach
Mathematics; they should see how impressive is Euclid’s
‘Which is absurd,’ just as absurd as would be the statements
of a man who said that his apples always fell
upwards, and for the same reason. The behaviour of
figures and lines is like the fall of an apple, fixed by
immutable laws, and it is a great thing to begin to see
these laws even in their lowliest application. The child
whose approaches to Arithmetic are so many discoveries
of the laws which regulate number will not divide fifteen
pence among five people and give them each sixpence
or ninepence; ‘which is absurd’ will convict him, and
in time he will perceive that ‘answers’ are not purely
arbitrary but are to be come at by a little boy’s reason.
Mathematics are delightful to the mind of man which
revels in the perception of law, which may even go forth
guessing at a new law until it discover that law; but
not every boy can be a champion prize-fighter, nor can
every boy ‘stand up’ to Mathematics. Therefore
perhaps the business of teachers is to open as many doors
as possible in the belief that Mathematics is one out of
many studies which make for education, a study by no
means accessible to everyone. Therefore it should not
monopolise undue time, nor should persons be hindered
from useful careers by the fact that they show no great
proficiency in studies which are in favour with examiners,
no doubt, because solutions are final, and work can be
adjudged without the tiresome hesitancy and fear of
being unjust which beset the examiners’ path in other
studies.
We would send forth children informed by “the
reason firm, the temperate will, endurance, foresight,
strength and skill,” but we must add resolution to our
good intentions and may not expect to produce a reasonable
soul of fine polish from the steady friction, say, of
mathematical studies only.
CHAPTER X THE CURRICULUM [27] — Section I THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD — Section II THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN ( a ) HISTORY — II THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN ( b ) LITERATURE — II THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN ( c ) MORALS AND ECONOMICS: CITIZENSHIP — II THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN ( d ) COMPOSITION — II THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN ( e ) LANGUAGES — II THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN ( f ) ART — Section III THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE ( a ) SCIENCE [37] — III THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE ( b ) MATHEMATICS — III THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE ( c ) PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT, HANDICRAFTS
We, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit
him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and
generous curriculum, taking care only that all knowledge offered to
him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing
ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that:—
“Education is the Science of Relations”; that is, a child
has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts:
so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts,
science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our
business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to
make valid as many as may be of—
“Those first-born affinities
That fit our new existence to existing things.”
In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social
class, three points must be considered:—
(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient
food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental
diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity).
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language,
because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed
in literary form.
As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children
should “tell back” after a single reading or hearing: or should
write on some part of what they have read.
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally
great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading
of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like.
Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of mind,
we find that the educability of children is enormously greater than
has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such
circumstances as heredity and environment.
Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children
or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in
elementary schools respond freely to this method, which is based on
the behaviour of mind.
Few things are more remiss in our schools than the
curriculum which is supposed to be entirely at the option
of the Head: but is it? Most Secondary schools work
towards examinations which more or less afford the
privilege of entry to the Universities. The standard
to be reached is set by these and the Heads of schools
hold themselves powerless.
Though Elementary schools no longer work with a view
to examination results yet as their best pupils try for
scholarships admitting them to secondary schools, they
do come indirectly under the same limitations. There
is, however, much less liberty in Secondary than in
Primary schools with regard to the subjects taught and
the time devoted to each. The result is startling. A
boy of eight in an Elementary school may shew more
intelligence and wider knowledge than a boy of fourteen
in a Preparatory school, that is, if he have been taught
on the principles I have in view, while the other boy
has been instructed with a view to a given standard of
scholarship. The Preparatory school boy does, however,
reach that standard in Latin, if not in Greek also,
and in Mathematics.
If we succeed in establishing a similar standard which
every boy and girl of a given age should reach in a
liberal range of subjects, a fair chance will be afforded
to the average boy and girl while brilliant or especially
industrious young people will go ahead.
We labour under the mistake of supposing that there
is no natural law or inherent principle according to
which a child’s course of studies should be regulated;
so we teach him those things which, according to Locke,
it is becoming for a ‘gentleman’ to know on the one hand,
and, on the other, the arts of reading, writing and summing,
that he may not grow up an illiterate citizen. In
both cases the education we offer is too utilitarian,—an
indirect training for the professions or for a craftsman’s
calling with efforts in the latter case to make a boy’s
education bear directly on his future work.
But what if in the very nature of things we find a
complete curriculum suggested? “The human race
has lost its title deeds,” said Voltaire, and mankind has
been going about ever since seeking to recover them;
education is still at sea and Voltaire’s epigram holds
good. We have not found our title deeds and so we
yield to the children no inherent claims. Our highest
aim is to educate young people for their uses to society,
while every faddist is free to teach what he pleases
because we have no title deeds to confront him with.
Education, no doubt, falls under the economic law of
supply and demand; but the demand should come from
the children rather than from teachers and parents; how
are their demands to become articulate? We must
give consideration to this question because the answer
depends on a survey of the composite whole we sum
up as ‘human nature,’ a whole whose possibilities are
infinite and various, not only in a budding genius, the
child of a distinguished family, but in every child of the
streets.
A small English boy of nine living in Japan, remarked,—“Isn’t
it fun, Mother, learning all these things?
Everything seems to fit into something else.” The boy
had not found out the whole secret; everything fitted
into something within himself.
The days have gone by when the education befitting
either a gentleman or an artisan was our aim. Now we
must deal with a child of man, who has a natural desire
to know the history of his race and of his nation, what
men thought in the past and are thinking now; the best
thoughts of the best minds taking form as literature,
and at its highest as poetry, or, as poetry rendered in the
plastic forms of art: as a child of God, whose supreme
desire and glory it is to know about and to know his
almighty Father: as a person of many parts and passions
who must know how to use, care for, and discipline himself,
body, mind and soul: as a person of many relationships,—to
family, city, church, state, neighbouring
states, the world at large: as the inhabitant of a world
full of beauty and interest, the features of which he must
recognise and know how to name, and a world too, and a
universe, whose every function of every part is ordered
by laws which he must begin to know.
It is a wide programme founded on the educational
rights of man; wide, but we may not say it is impossible
nor may we pick and choose and educate him in this
direction but not in that. We may not even make choice
between science and the ‘humanities.’ Our part it seems
to me is to give a child a vital hold upon as many as
possible of those wide relationships proper to him.
Shelley offers us the key to education when he speaks
of “understanding that grows bright gazing on many
truths.”
Because the relationships a child is born to are very
various, the knowledge we offer him must be various too.
A lady teaching in Cape Colony writes,—“The papers
incorporated in the pamphlet A Liberal Education:
Practice (by A. C. Drury) testify to—to me—an almost
incredible standard of proficiency. The mistakes are
just the kind of mistakes that children should make
and no more of them than just enough to keep them from
being priggish. There are none of those howlers of fact
or expression that make one view one’s efforts with a
feeling of utter despondency.”
The knowledge of children so taught is consecutive,
intelligent and complete as far as it goes, in however
many directions. For it is a mistake to suppose that the
greater the number of ‘subjects’ the greater the scholar’s
labour; the contrary is the case as the variety in itself
affords refreshment, and the child who has written thirty
or forty sheets during an examination week comes out
unfagged. Not the number of subjects but the hours
of work bring fatigue to the scholar; and bearing this in
mind we have short hours and no evening preparation.
Of the three sorts of knowledge proper to a child,—the
knowledge of God, of man, and of the universe,—the
knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable,
and most happy-making. Mothers are on the
whole more successful in communicating this knowledge
than are teachers who know the children less well and
have a narrower, poorer standard of measurement for
their minds. Parents do not talk down to children, but
we might gather from educational publications that the
art of education as regards young children is to bring
conceptions down to their ‘little’ minds. If we give
up this foolish prejudice in favour of the grown-up we
shall be astonished at the range and depth of children’s
minds; and shall perceive that their relation to God is
one of those ‘first-born affinities’ which it is our part
to help them to make good. A mother knows how to
speak of God as she would of an absent father with all
the evidences of his care and love about her and his
children. She knows how to make a child’s heart beat
high in joy and thankfulness as she thrills him with the
thought, ‘my Father made them all,’ while his eye
delights in flowery meadow, great tree, flowing river.
“His are the mountains and the valleys his and the
resplendent rivers, whose eyes they fill with tears of
holy joy,” and this is not beyond children. We recollect
how ‘Arthur Pendennis’ walked in the evening light
with his mother and recited great passages from Milton
and the eyes of the two were filled ‘with tears of holy
joy,’ when the boy was eight. The teacher of a class
has not the same tender opportunities but if he take
pains to get a just measure of children’s minds it is surprising
how much may be done.
The supercilious point of view adopted by some teachers
is the cause of the small achievements of their scholars.
The ‘kiddies’ in a big girls’ school are not expected
to understand and know and they live down to the
expectations formed of them. We (of the P.N.E.U.)
begin the definite ‘school’ education of children when
they are six; they are no doubt capable of beginning
a year or two earlier but the fact is that nature and
circumstances have provided such a wide field of education
for young children that it seems better to abstain
from requiring direct intellectual efforts until they have
arrived at that age.
As for all the teaching in the nature of ‘told to the
children,’ most children get their share of that whether
in the infant school or at home, but this is practically
outside the sphere of that part of education which
demands a conscious mental effort, from the scholar, the
mental effort of telling again that which has been read
or heard. That is how we all learn, we tell again, to
ourselves if need be, the matter we wish to retain, the
sermon, the lecture, the conversation. The method is
as old as the mind of man, the distressful fact is that it
has been made so little use of in general education. Let
us hear Dr. Johnson on the subject:—
“‘Little people should be encouraged always to tell whatever
they hear particularly striking to some brother, sister, or servant,
immediately, before the impression is erased by the intervention
of newer occurrences.’ He perfectly remembered the first time
he heard of heaven and hell because when his mother had made
out such a description of both places as she thought likely to
seize the attention of her infant auditor who was then in bed
with her, she got up and dressing him before the usual time, sent
him directly to call the favourite workman in the house to whom
she knew he would communicate the conversation while it was
yet impressed upon his mind. The event was what she wished
and it was to that method chiefly that he owed the uncommon
felicity of remembering distant occurrences and long past conversations.”
(Mrs. Piozzi).
Now our objective in this most important part of education
is to give the children the knowledge of God. We
need not go into the question of intuitive knowledge, but
the expressed knowledge attainable by us has its source in
the Bible, and perhaps we cannot do a greater indignity
to children than to substitute our own or some other
benevolent person’s rendering for the fine English,
poetic diction and lucid statement of the Bible.
Literature at its best is always direct and simple and a
normal child of six listens with delight to the tales both of
Old and New Testament read to him passage by passage,
and by him narrated in turn, with delightful touches of
native eloquence. Religion has two aspects, the attitude
of the will towards God which we understand by
Christianity, and that perception of God which comes
from a gradual slow-growing comprehension of the divine
dealings with men. In the first of these senses, Goethe
was never religious, but the second forms the green reposeful
background to a restless and uneasy life and it
is worth while to consider how he arrived at so infinitely
desirable a possession. He gives us the whole history
fully in Aus Meinem Leben, a treatise on education very
well worth our study. There he says,—
“Man may turn where he will, he may undertake what he
will but he will yet return to that road which Dante has laid
down for him. So it happened to me in the present case: my
efforts with the language” (Hebrew, when he was ten) “with
the contents of the Holy Scriptures, resulted in a most lively
presentation to my imagination of that beautiful much-sung
land and of the countries which bordered it as well as of the
people and events which have glorified that spot of earth for
thousands of years.... Perhaps someone may ask why I set
forth here in such detail this universally known history so often
repeated and expounded. This answer may serve, that in no
other way could I show how with the distractions of my life
and my irregular education I concentrated my mind and my
emotion on one point because I can in no other way account for
the peace which enveloped me however disturbed and unusual
the circumstances of my life. If an ever active imagination of
which the story of my life may bear witness led me here and
there, if the medley of fable, history, mythology, threatened
to drive me to distraction, I betook myself again to those
morning lands, I buried myself in the five books of Moses and
there amongst the wide-spreading, shepherd people I found the
greatest solitude and the greatest comfort.”
It is well to know how Goethe obtained this repose
of soul, this fresh background for his thoughts, and in
all the errors of a wilful life this innermost repose appears
never to have left him. His eyes, we are told, were
tranquil as those of a god, and here is revealed the
secret of that large tranquility. Here, too, Goethe
unfolds for us a principle of education which those who
desire their children to possess the passive as well as the
active principle of religion would do well to consider;
for it is probably true that the teaching of the New
Testament, not duly grounded upon or accompanied
by that of the Old, fails to result in such thought of God,
wide, all-embracing, all-permeating, as David, for example,
gives constant expression to in the Psalms. Let
us have faith and courage to give children such a full and
gradual picture of Old Testament history that they unconsciously
perceive for themselves a panoramic view of
the history of mankind typified by that of the Jewish
nation as it is unfolded in the Bible. Are our children
little sceptics, as was the young Goethe, who take a
laughing joy in puzzling their teachers with a hundred
difficulties? Like that wise old Dr. Albrecht, let us be
in no haste to explain. Let us not try to put down or
evade their questions, or to give them final answers, but
introduce them as did he to some thoughtful commentator
who weighs difficult questions with modesty and scrupulous
care. If we act in this way, difficulties will assume
their due measure of importance, that is to say, they will
be lost sight of in the gradual unfolding of the great
scheme whereby the world was educated. I know of no
commentator for children, say, from six to twelve, better
than Canon Paterson Smyth (The Bible for the Young).
He is one of the few writers able to take the measure of
children’s minds, to help them over real difficulties, give
impulse to their thoughts and direction to their conduct.
Between the ages of six and twelve children cover the
whole of the Old Testament story, the Prophets, major
and minor, being introduced as they come into connection
with the Kings. The teacher opens the lesson by reading
the passage from The Bible for the Young, in which the
subject is pictorially treated; for example,—
“It is the battle field of the valley of Elah. The camp of Israel
is on one slope, the big tents of the Philistines on the other. The
Israelites are rather small men, lithe and clever, the Philistines
are big men, big, stupid, thick-headed giants, the same as
when Samson used to fool them and laugh at them long ago.
There is great excitement on both sides,” etc.
There will be probably some talk and discussion after
this reading. Then the teacher will read the Bible
passage in question which the children will narrate, the
commentary serving merely as a background for their
thoughts. The narration is usually exceedingly interesting;
the children do not miss a point and often add picturesque
touches of their own. Before the close of the
lesson, the teacher brings out such new thoughts of God
or new points of behaviour as the reading has afforded,
emphasising the moral or religious lesson to be learnt
rather by a reverent and sympathetic manner than by
any attempt at personal application.
Forms III and IV (twelve to fifteen) read for themselves
the whole of the Old Testament as produced by the Rev.
H. Costley-White in his Old Testament History. Wise
and necessary omissions in this work make it more
possible to deal with Old Testament History, in the words
of the Authorised Version, than if the Bible were used as
a single volume. Then, “each period is illustrated by
reference to contemporary literature (e.g., Prophets and
Psalms and monuments).” Again, “Brief historical
explanations and general commentary are inserted in
their proper places.” For example, after Genesis iii, we
read, as an introduction to the story of Cain and Abel,—
“The original object of this story was to explain the development
of sin amongst mankind and the origin of homicide which
in this first instance was actual murder. There are difficulties
in the story which do not admit of satisfactory explanation. It
may be asked,—‘Why did God not accept Cain’s offering?’
‘How was His displeasure shewn?’ ‘What was the sign
appointed for Cain?’ ‘Whom did he marry?’ The best way
to answer such questions is to admit that we do not know, but
we may add that these early stories are only a selection which
do not necessarily form a consistent and complete whole, and
that in this very case there are signs that the original story
has been cut down and edited.
“Among the lessons taught are the following,—(1) God judges
man’s motives rather than his acts. The service of the heart
is worth more than any ceremonial. (2) It is not the sin of
murder that is condemned so much as the sin of jealousy and
malice: cf. the Sermon on the Mount, Matt, xxi, 6. (3) The
great doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man, that each man is his
brother’s keeper and has his share of responsibility for the conditions
of the lives of others. (4) Sin always brings its own punishment.
(5) God remonstrates with man before the climax of sin
is reached.”
The footnotes which form the only commentary upon
the text are commendably short and to the point.
Having received a considerable knowledge of the Old
Testament in detail from the words of the Bible itself
and having been trained to accept difficulties freely
without giving place to the notion that such difficulties
invalidate the Bible as the oracle of God and our sole
original source of knowledge concerning the nature of
Almighty God and the manner of His government of
the world, children are prepared for a further study
of divinity, still following the Bible text.
When pupils are of an age to be in Forms V and VI
(from 15 to 18) we find that Dummelow’s One Volume
Bible Commentary is of great service. It is designed to
provide in convenient form,—
“A brief explanation of the meaning of the Scriptures. Introductions
have been supplied to the various books and Notes
which will help to explain the principal difficulties, textual, moral
or doctrinal, which may arise in connection with them. A series
of articles has also been prefixed dealing with the larger questions
suggested by the Bible as a whole. It is hoped that the
Commentary may lead to a perusal of many of the books of Holy
Scripture which are often left unread in spite of their rare literary
charm and abundant usefulness for the furtherance of the
spiritual life.... In recent years much light has been thrown
upon questions of authorship and interpretation and the contributors
to this volume have endeavoured to incorporate in
it the most assured results of modern scholarship whilst avoiding
opinions of an extreme or precarious kind. Sometimes these
results differ from traditional views but in such cases it is not
only hoped but believed that the student will find the spiritual
value and authority of the Bible have been enhanced rather
than diminished by the change.”
The Editor has in these words set forth so justly the
aims of the Commentary that I need only say we find it
of very great practical value. The pupils read the general
articles and the introductions to the separate Books;
they read too the Prophets and the poetical books with
the notes supplied. Thus they leave school with a fairly
enlightened knowledge of the books of the Old Testament
and of the aids modern scholarship has brought towards
their interpretation; we hope also with increased
reverence for and delight in the ways of God with men.
The New Testament comes under another category.
The same commentaries are used and the same methods
followed, that is, the reverent reading of the text, with
the following narration which is often curiously word
perfect after a single reading; this is the more surprising
because we all know how difficult it is to repeat
a passage which we have heard a thousand times; the
single attentive reading does away with this difficulty
and we are able to assure ourselves that children’s minds
are stored with perfect word pictures of every tender
and beautiful scene described in the Gospels; and are able
to reproduce the austere if equally tender teaching which
enforces the object lessons of the miracles. By degrees
the Person of Our Lord as revealed in His words and His
works becomes real and dear to them, not through emotional
appeals but through the impression left by accurate
and detailed knowledge concerning the Saviour of the
World, Who went about doing good. Dogmatic teaching
finds its way to them by inference through a quiet realisation
of the Bible records; and loyalty to a Divine Master
is likely to become the guiding principle of their lives.
I should like to urge the importance of what may be
called a poetic presentation of the life and teaching of Our
Lord. The young reader should experience in this study
a curious and delightful sense of harmonious development,
of the rounding out of each incident, of the progressive
unfolding which characterises Our Lord’s teaching; and,
let me say here, the custom of narration lends itself surprisingly
to this sort of poetic insight. Every related
incident stands out in a sort of bas-relief; every teaching
so rendered unfolds its meaning; every argument convinces;
and the personages reveal themselves to us more
intimately than almost any persons we know in real life.
Probably very little hortatory teaching is desirable. The
danger of boring young listeners by such teaching is great,
and there is also the further danger of provoking counter-opinions,
even counter-convictions, in the innocent-looking
audience. On the whole we shall perhaps do well
to allow the Scripture reading itself to point the moral.
“We are at present in a phase of religious thought,
Christian and pseudo-Christian, when a synthetic study
of the life and teaching of Christ may well be of use. We
have analysed until the mind turns in weariness from the
broken fragments; we have criticised until there remains
no new standpoint for the critic; but if we could only get
a whole conception of Christ’s life among men and of the
philosophic method of His teaching, His own words should
be fulfilled and the Son of Man lifted up, would draw all
men unto Himself. It seems to me that verse offers a
comparatively new medium in which to present the great
theme. It is more impersonal, more condensed, is
capable of more reverent handling than is prose; and
what Wordsworth calls the ‘authentic comment’ may be
essayed in verse with more becoming diffidence. Again,
the supreme moment of a very great number of lives,
that in which a person is brought face to face with Christ,
comes before us with great vividness in the Gospel narratives,
and it is possible to treat what we may call dramatic
situations with more force, and at the same time with more
reticence, in verse than in prose.
“We have a single fragment of the great epic which
the future may bring forth,—
‘Those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our advantage to the bitter cross.’
“If Shakespeare had given us the whole how rich should
we be! Every line of verse dealing directly with Our
Lord from the standpoint of His personality is greatly
treasured. We love the lines in which Trench tells us,—
‘Of Jesus sitting by Samarian well
Or teaching some poor fishers on the shore.’
and Keble’s,—
‘Meanwhile He paces through the adoring crowd
Calm as the march of some majestic cloud.’
or his,—
‘In His meek power He climbs the mountain’s brow.’
Every line of such verse is precious but the lines are few,
no doubt because the subject is supremely august.
Meantime we are waiting for the great epic: because
the need seems to be urgent the writer has ventured to
offer a temporary stop-gap in the six volumes of The
Saviour of the World.” (From the Preface to the first
volume).
A girl of thirteen and a half (Form IV) in her Easter
examination tackled the question: “The people sat
in darkness”.... “I am the Light of the World.”
Shew as far as you can the meaning of these statements.
She was not asked to write in verse, and was she not
taught by a beautiful instinct to recognise that the
phrases she had to deal with were essential poetry and
that she could best express herself in verse?
“The people sat in darkness—all was dim,
No light had yet come unto them from Him,
No hope as yet of Heaven after life,
A peaceful haven far from war and strife.
Some warriors to Valhalla’s halls might go
And fight all day, and die. At evening, lo!
They’d wake again, and drink in the great hall.
Some men would sleep for ever at their fall;
Or with their fickle Gods for ever be:
So all was dark and dim. Poor heathens, see!
The Light ahead, the clouds that roll away,
The golden, glorious, dawning of the Day;
And in the birds, the flowers, the sunshine, see
The might of Him who calls, ‘Come unto Me.’”
A girl of seventeen (Form V) answered the question:
Write an essay or a poem on the Bread of Life, by the
following lines,—
“‘How came He here,’ ev’n so the people cried,
Who found Him in the Temple: He had wrought
A miracle, and fed the multitude,
On five small loaves and fish: so now they’d have
Him king; should not they then have ev’ry good,
Food that they toiled not for and
clothes and care,
And all the comfort that they could require?—
So thinking sought the king....
Our Saviour cried:
‘Labour ye not for meat that perisheth,
But rather for the everlasting bread,
Which I will give’—Where is this bread, they cry,
They know not ’tis a heavenly bread He gives
But seek for earthly food—‘I am the Bread of Life
And all who come to Me I feed with Bread.
Receive ye then the Bread. Your fathers eat
Of manna in the wilderness—and died—
But whoso eats this Bread shall have his part
In everlasting life: I am the Bread,
That cometh down from Heaven; unless ye eat
Of me ye die, but otherwise ye live.’
So Jesus taught, in Galilee, long since.
“The people murmured when they heard His Word,
How can it be? How can He be our Bread?
They hardened then their hearts against His Word,
They would not hear, and could not understand,
And so they turnéd back to easier ways,
And many of them walked with Him no more.
May He grant now that we may hear the Word
And harden not our hearts against the Truth
That Jesus came to teach: so that in vain
He may not cry to hearts that will not hear,
‘I am the Bread of Life, for all that come,
I have this gift, an everlasting life,
And room within my Heavenly Father’s House.’”
The higher forms in the P.U.S. read The Saviour of
the World volume by volume together with the text
arranged in chronological order. The lower forms read
in turns each of the Synoptic Gospels; Form IV adds
the Gospel of St. John and The Acts, assisted by the
capital Commentaries on the several Gospels by Bishop
Walsham How, published by the S.P.C.K. The study
of the Epistles and the Book of Revelation is confined
for the most part to Forms V and VI. The Catechism,
Prayer-book, and Church History are treated with suitable
text-books much in the same manner and give opportunities
for such summing-up of Christian teaching as is
included in the so-called dogmas of the Church. We
find that Sundays together with the time given to
preparation for Confirmation afford sufficient opportunities
for this teaching.[28]
I have already spoken of history as a vital part of
education and have cited the counsel of Montaigne that
the teacher ‘shall by the help of histories inform himself
of the worthiest minds that were in the best ages.’
To us in particular who are living in one of the great
epochs of history it is necessary to know something of
what has gone before in order to think justly of what is
occurring to-day. The League of Nations, for example,
has reminded us not only of the Congress of Vienna but
of the several Treaties of Perpetual Peace which have
marked the history of Europe. It is still true that,—
“Things done without example, in their issue
Are to be feared. Have you a precedent
Of this commission?”
(Henry VIII.)
We applaud the bluff King’s wisdom and look uneasily
for precedents for the war and the peace and the depressing
anxieties that have come in their train. We are
conscious of a lack of sound judgment in ourselves to
decide upon the questions that have come before us and
are aware that nothing would give us more confidence
than a pretty wide acquaintance with history. The
more educated among our ‘Dominion’ cousins complain
that their young people have no background of history
and as a consequence ‘we are the people’ is their master
thought; they would face even the loss of Westminster
Abbey without a qualm. What is it to them where great
events have happened, great persons lived and moved?
And, alas, this indifference to history is not confined to
the Dominions; young people at home are equally indifferent,
nor have their elders such stores of interest
and information as should quicken children with the
knowledge that always and everywhere there have been
great parts to play and almost always great men to play
those parts: that any day it may come to anyone to do
some service of historical moment to the country. It
is not too much to say that a rational well-considered
patriotism depends on a pretty copious reading of
history, and with this rational patriotism we desire our
young people shall be informed rather than with the
jingoism of the emotional patriot.
If there is but little knowledge of history amongst us,
no doubt our schools are in fault. Teachers will plead
that there is no time save for a sketchy knowledge of
English history given in a course of lectures of which
the pupils take notes and work up reports. Most of us
know how unsatisfying is such a course however entertaining.
Not even Thackeray could introduce the
stuff of knowledge into his lectures on The Four Georges.
Our knowledge of history should give us something more
than impressions and opinions, but, alas, the lack of time
is a real difficulty.
Now the method I am advocating has this advantage;
it multiplies time. Each school period is quadrupled in
time value and we find that we get through a surprising
amount of history in a thorough way, in about the same
time that in most schools affords no more than a skeleton
of English History only. We know that young people
are enormously interested in the subject and give concentrated
attention if we give them the right books. We
are aware that our own discursive talk is usually a waste
of time and a strain on the scholars’ attention, so we
(of the P.N.E.U.) confine ourselves to affording two
things,—knowledge, and a keen sympathy in the interest
roused by that knowledge. It is our part to see that
every child knows and can tell, whether by way of oral
narrative or written essay. In this way an unusual
amount of ground is covered with such certainty that no
revision is required for the examination at the end of the
term. A single reading is a condition insisted upon
because a naturally desultory habit of mind leads us all
to put off the effort of attention as long as a second or
third chance of coping with our subject is to be hoped
for. It is, however, a mistake to speak of the ‘effort
of attention.’ Complete and entire attention is a natural
function which requires no effort and causes no fatigue;
the anxious labour of mind of which we are at times
aware comes when attention wanders and has again to
be brought to the point; but the concentration at which
most teachers aim is an innate provision for education
and is not the result of training or effort. Our concern
is to afford matter of a sufficiently literary character,
together with the certainty that no second or third
opportunity for knowing a given lesson will be allowed.
The personality of the teacher is no doubt of much
value but perhaps this value is intellectual rather than
emotional. The perception of the teacher is keenly
interested, that his mind and their minds are working
in harmony is a wonderful incentive to young scholars;
but the sympathetic teacher who believes that to attend
is a strain, who makes allowance for the hundred wandering
fancies that beset a child—whom he has at last
to pull up with effort, tiring to teacher and pupil—hinders
in his good-natured efforts to help.
The child of six in IB has, not stories from English History,
but a definite quantity of consecutive reading, say,
forty pages in a term, from a well-written, well-considered,
large volume which is also well-illustrated. Children cannot
of course themselves read a book which is by no means
written down to the ‘child’s level’ so the teacher reads
and the children ‘tell’ paragraph by paragraph, passage
by passage. The teacher does not talk much and is
careful never to interrupt a child who is called upon to
‘tell.’ The first efforts may be stumbling but presently
the children get into their ‘stride’ and ‘tell’ a passage
at length with surprising fluency. The teacher probably
allows other children to correct any faults in the telling
when it is over. The teacher’s own really difficult part
is to keep up sympathetic interest by look and occasional
word, by remarks upon a passage that has been narrated,
by occasionally shewing pictures, and so on. But she
will bear in mind that the child of six has begun the
serious business of his education, that it does not matter
much whether he understands this word or that, but that
it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly
with books. Whatever a child or grown-up person can
tell, that we may be sure he knows, and what he cannot
tell, he does not know. Possibly this practice of ‘telling’
was more used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
than it is now. We remember how three gentlemen
meet in Henry VIII and one who has just come out of
the Abbey from witnessing the coronation of Anne
Boleyn is asked to tell the others about it, which he does
with the vividness and accuracy we obtain from children.
In this case no doubt the ‘telling’ was a stage device,
but would it have been adopted if such narration were
not commonly practised? Even in our own day a good
raconteur is a welcome guest; and a generation or two
ago the art was studied as a part of gentlemanly equipment.
The objection occurs that such a social accomplishment
is unnecessary for children and is a mere
exercise of memory. Now a passage to be memorised
requires much conning, much repetition, and meanwhile
the learners are ‘thinking’ about other matters, that is,
the mind is not at work in the act of memorising. To
read a passage with full attention and to tell it afterwards
has a curiously different effect. M. Bergson makes the
happy distinction between word memory and mind
memory, which, once the force of it is realised, should
bring about sweeping changes in our methods of
education.
Trusting to mind memory we visualise the scene, are
convinced by the arguments, take pleasure in the turn
of the sentences and frame our own upon them; in
fact that particular passage or chapter has been received
into us and become a part of us just as literally as was
yesterday’s dinner; nay, more so, for yesterday’s dinner is
of little account to-morrow; but several months, perhaps
years hence, we shall be able to narrate the passage we
had, so to say, consumed and grown upon with all the
vividness, detail and accuracy of the first telling. All
those powers of the mind which we call faculties have
been brought into play in dealing with the intellectual
matter thus afforded; so we may not ask questions to
help the child to reason, paint fancy pictures to help
him to imagine, draw out moral lessons to quicken his
conscience. These things take place as involuntarily as
processes of digestion.
Children of seven are promoted to Form IA in which
they remain for a couple of years. They read from the
same capital book, Mrs. Marshall’s Our Island Story,
and about the same number of pages in a term; but
while the readings in IB are confined to the first third
of the book embodying the simpler and more direct
histories, those in IA go on to the end of the volume and
children learn at any rate to love English history.
“I’d a lot sooner have history than my dinner,” said a
sturdy boy of seven by no means inclined to neglect
his dinner.
In IA the history is amplified and illustrated by short
biographies of persons connected with the period studied,
Lord Clive, Nelson, etc.; and Mrs. Frewen Lord’s delightful
Tales from Westminster Abbey and from St. Paul’s
help the children immensely in individualising their
heroes. It is good to hear them ‘tell’ of Franklin,
Nelson, Howard, Shaftesbury, and their delight in visiting
the monuments is very great. One would not think that
Donne would greatly interest children but the excitement
of a small party in noticing the marks of the Great Fire
still to be seen on his monument was illuminating to
lookers-on.
Possibly there is no sounder method of inculcating
a sane and serviceable patriotism than this of making
children familiar with the monuments of the great even
if they have not the opportunity to see them. Form
II (ages 9 to 12) have a more considerable historical programme
which they cover with ease and enjoyment.
They use a more difficult book than in IA, an interesting
and well-written history of England of which they read
some fifty pages or so in a term. IIA read in addition
and by way of illustration the chapters dealing with the
social life of the period in a volume, treating of social life
in England. We introduce children as early as possible
to the contemporary history of other countries as the study
of English history alone is apt to lead to a certain
insular and arrogant habit of mind.
Naturally we begin with French history and both
divisions read from the First History of France, very well
written, the chapters contemporary with the English
history they are reading. The readiness with which
children write or tell of Richelieu, Colbert, Bayard,
justifies us in this early introduction of foreign history;
and the lucidity and clearness with which the story is
told in the book they use results on the part of the
children in such a knowledge of the history of France
as throws light on that of their own country and certainly
gives them the sense that history was progressing everywhere
much as it was at home during the period they
are reading about.
The study of ancient history which cannot be contemporaneous
we approach through a chronologically-arranged
book about the British Museum (written for the
scholars of the P.U.S. by the late Mrs. W. Epps who had
the delightful gift of realising the progress of the ages
as represented in our great national storehouse). I have
already instanced a child’s visit to the Parthenon Room
and her eager identification of what she saw with what she
had read, and that will serve to indicate the sort of key to
ancient history afforded by this valuable book. Miss
G. M. Bernau has added to the value of these studies by
producing a ‘Book of Centuries’ in which children
draw such illustrations as they come across of objects
of domestic use, of art, etc., connected with the century
they are reading about. This slight study of the British
Museum we find very valuable; whether the children
have or have not the opportunity of visiting the Museum
itself, they have the hope of doing so, and, besides, their
minds are awakened to the treasures of local museums.
In Form III children continue the same history of
England as in II, the same French history and the same
British Museum Book, going on with their ‘Book of
Centuries.’ To this they add about twenty to thirty pages
a term from a little book on Indian History, a subject
which interests them greatly.
Slight studies of the history of other parts of the
British Empire are included under ‘Geography.’
In Form IV the children are promoted to Gardiner’s
Student’s History of England, clear and able, but somewhat
stiffer than that they have hitherto been engaged
upon, together with Mr. and Mrs. Quennell’s History
of Everyday Things in England (which is used in
Form III also). Form IV is introduced to outlines of
European history. The British Museum for Children
and ‘Book of Centuries’ are continued.
It is as teachers know a matter of extreme difficulty
to find the exactly right book for children’s reading in
each subject and for some years we have been regretting
the fact that Lord’s very delightful Modern Europe[29] has
been out of print.
The history studies of Forms V and VI (ages 15 to 18)
are more advanced and more copious and depend for
illustration upon readings in the literature of the period.
Green’s Shorter History of the English People is the text-book
in English history, amplified, for example, by
Macaulay’s Essays on Frederick the Great and the Austrian
Succession, on Pitt and Clive. For the same period we
use an American history of Western Europe and a very
admirable history of France, well-translated from the
original of M. Duruy. Possibly Madame de Staël’s
L’Allemagne or some other historical work of equal
calibre may occur in their reading of French. It is not
possible to continue the study of Greek and Roman
history in detail but an admirably written survey
informed with enthusiasm is afforded by Professor de
Burgh’s The Legacy of the Ancient World. The pupils make
history charts for every hundred years on the plan either
adapted or invented by the late Miss Beale of Cheltenham,
a square ruled into a hundred spaces ten in each direction
with the symbol in each square showing an event which
lends itself to illustration during that particular ten
years. Thus crossed battle axes represent a war.
The geographical aspects of history fall under
‘Geography’ as a subject. This course of historical
reading is valued exceedingly by young people as affording
a knowledge of the past that bears upon and illuminates
the present. The writer recollects meeting a brilliant
group of Oxford undergraduates, keen and full of interest,
but lamentably ignorant, who said, “We want to know
something about history. What do you advise us to
read? We know nothing.” Perhaps no youth should
go to College without some such rudimentary course of
English, European, and, especially, French history, as
is afforded by the programmes.[30] Such a general survey
should precede any special course and should be required
before the more academic studies designed to prepare
students for ‘research work.’
It will be observed that the work throughout the
Forms is always chronologically progressive. The young
student rarely goes over old ground; but should it happen
that the whole school has arrived at the end of 1920, say,
and there is nothing for it but to begin again, the books
studied throw new light and bring the young students
into line with modern research.
But any sketch of the history teaching in Forms V
and VI in a given period depends upon a notice of the
‘literature’ set; for plays, novels, essays, ‘lives,’ poems,
are all pressed into service and where it is possible, the
architecture, painting, etc., which the period produced.
Thus questions such as the following on a term’s work
both test and record the reading of the term,—“Describe
the condition of (a) the clergy, (b) the army, (c) the navy,
(d) the general public in and about 1685.” “Trace the
rise of Prussia before Frederick the Great.” “What
theories of government were held by Louis XIV? Give
some account of his great ministers.” “Describe the
rise of Russia and its condition at the opening of the
eighteenth century.” “Suppose Evelyn (Form VI) or
Pepys (Form V) in counsel at the League of Nations,
write his diary for three days.” “Sketch the character
and manners of Addison. How does he appear in
Esmond?”
It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in
the background of one’s thoughts. We may not be
able to recall this or that circumstance, but, ‘the imagination
is warmed’; we know that there is a great deal
to be said on both sides of every question and are saved
from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The
present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all
that has gone before.
Perhaps the gravest defect in school curricula is that
they fail to give a comprehensive, intelligent and interesting
introduction to history. To leave off or even to
begin with the history of our own country is fatal. We
cannot live sanely unless we know that other peoples are
as we are with a difference, that their history is as ours,
with a difference, that they too have been represented
by their poets and their artists, that they too have their
literature and their national life. We have been asleep
and our awaking is rather terrible. The people whom
we have not taught, rise upon us in their ignorance and
‘the rabble,’—
“As the world were now but to begin
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
They cry,—‘Choose we!’”
(Hamlet.)
Heaven help their choice for choosing is indeed with them,
and little do they know of those two ratifiers and props
of every present word and action, Antiquity and Custom!
It is never too late to mend but we may not delay to offer
such a liberal and generous diet of History to every child
in the country as shall give weight to his decisions, consideration
to his actions and stability to his conduct;
that stability, the lack of which has plunged us into many
a stormy sea of unrest.
It is to be noted that ‘stability’ is the mark of the
educated classes. When we reflect upon the disturbance
of the national life by labour unrest and, again, upon the
fact that political and social power is passing into the
hands of the majority, that is of the labouring classes,
we cannot but feel that there is a divine fitness, a providential
adaptation in the circumstance that the infinite
educability of persons of all classes should be disclosed
to us as a nation at a time when an emotional and ignorant
labouring class is a peculiar danger. I am not sure that
the education implied in the old symbol of the ladder
does make for national tranquility. It is right that equal
opportunity of being first should be afforded to all but
that is no new thing. Our history is punctuated by men
who have risen, and the Roman Church has largely
founded herself as has the Chinese Empire upon this
doctrine of equal opportunity. But let us remember
that the men who climb are apt to be uneasy members
of society; the desire for knowledge for its own sake,
on the other hand, finds satisfaction in knowledge itself.
The young men see visions; the hardships of daily life
are ameliorated, and while an alert and informed mind
leads to decency and propriety of living it does not lead
to the restless desire to subvert society for the sake of
the chances offered by a general upheaval. Wordsworth
is right:—
“If rightly trained and bred Humanity is humble.”
We live in times critical for everybody but eminently
critical for teachers because it rests with them to decide
whether personal or general good should be aimed at,
whether education shall be merely a means of getting on
or a means of general progress towards high thinking
and plain living and therefore an instrument of the
greatest national good.[31]
Except in Form I the study of Literature goes pari
passu with that of History. Fairy tales, (Andersen or
Grimm, for example), delight Form IB, and the little
people re-tell these tales copiously, vividly, and with the
astonishing exactness we may expect when we remember
how seriously annoyed they are with the story-teller
who alters a phrase or a circumstance. Æsop’s Fables,
too, are used with great success, and are rendered, after
being once heard, with brevity and point, and children
readily appropriate the moral. Mrs. Gatty’s Parables
from Nature, again, serve another purpose. They feed a
child’s sense of wonder and are very good to tell. There
is no attempt to reduce the work of this form, or any other,
to a supposed ‘child level.’ Form IA (7 to 9) hears and
tells chapter by chapter The Pilgrim’s Progress and the
children’s narrations are delightful. No beautiful
thought or bold figure escapes them. Andrew Lang’s
Tales of Troy and Greece, a big volume, is a pièce de resistance
going on from term to term.
The great tales of the heroic age find their way to
children’s hearts. They conceive vividly and tell eagerly,
and the difficult classical names instead of being a stumbling-block
are a delight, because, as a Master of a Council
school says,—
“Children have an instinctive power by which they are able
to sense the meaning of a whole passage and even some difficult
words.”
That the sonorous beauty of these classical names
appeals to them is illustrated by a further quotation
from the same Master,—
“A boy of about seven in my school the other day asked his
mother why she had not given him one of those pretty names
they heard in the stories at school. He thought Ulysses a
prettier name than his own, Kenneth, and that the mother of
his playmate might have called him Achilles instead of Alan.”
There is profound need to cultivate delight in beautiful
names in days when we are threatened with the fear
that London itself should lose that rich halo of historic
associations which glorifies its every street and alley, that
it may be made like New York, and should name a street
X500,—like a workhouse child without designation;
an age when we express the glory and beauty of the next
highest peak of the Himalayas
by naming it K2! In
such an age, this, of their inherent aptitude for beautiful
names, is a lode of much promise in children’s minds.
The Kaffir who announced that his name was ‘Telephone’
had an ear for sound. Kingsley’s Water Babies, Alice in
Wonderland, Kipling’s Just So Stories, scores of exquisite
classics written for children, but not written down to
them, are suitable at this stage.
Form IIB has a considerable programme of reading,
that is, not the mere mechanical exercise of reading but
the reading of certain books. Therefore it is necessary
that two years should be spent in Form IA and that in
the second of these two years the children should read
a good deal of the set work for themselves. In IIB they
read their own geography, history, poetry, but perhaps
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, say, Scott’s Rob Roy,
Gulliver’s Travels, should be read to them and narrated
by them until they are well in their tenth year. Their
power to understand, visualise, and ‘tell’ a play of
Shakespeare from nine years old and onwards is very
surprising. They put in nothing which is not there,
but they miss nothing and display a passage or a scene
in a sort of curious relief. One or two books of the
calibre of The Heroes of Asgard are also included in the
programme for the term.
The transition to Form IIA is marked by more
individual reading as well as by a few additional
books. The children read their ‘Shakespeare play’
in character. Certain Council School boys, we are
told, insist on dramatising Scott as they read it. Bulfinch’s
Age of Fable admits them to the rich imaginings
of peoples who did not yet know. Goldsmith’s poems
and Stevenson’s Kidnapped, etc., may form part of a
term’s work, and in each and all children shew the same
surprising power of knowing, evinced by the one sure test,—they
are able to ‘tell’ each work they have read not
only with accuracy but with spirit and originality. How
is it possible, it may be asked, to show originality in ‘mere
narration’? Let us ask Scott, Shakespeare, Homer,
who told what they knew, that is narrated, but with
continual scintillations from their own genius playing
upon the written word. Just so in their small degree
do the children narrate; they see it all so vividly that
when you read or hear their versions the theme is illuminated
for you too.
Children remain in Form II until they are twelve, and
here I would remark on the evenness with which the
power of children in dealing with books is developed.
We spread an abundant and delicate feast in the programmes
and each small guest assimilates what he can.
The child of genius and imagination gets greatly more
than his duller comrade but all sit down to the same
feast and each one gets according to his needs and powers.
The surprises afforded by the dull and even the ‘backward’
children are encouraging and illuminating. We
think we know that man is an educable being, but when
we afford to children all that they want we discover how
straitened were our views, how poor and narrow the
education we offered. Even in so-called deficient children
we perceive,—
“What a piece of work is man.... In apprehension, how
like a god!”
In Forms III and IV we introduce a History of
English Literature carefully chosen to afford sympathetic
interest and delight while avoiding stereotyped
opinions and stale information. The portion read each
term (say fifty pages) corresponds with the period covered
in history studies and the book is a great favourite with
children. They have of course a great flair for Shakespeare,
whether King Lear, Twelfth Night, Henry V, or
some other play, and The Waverleys usually afford a contemporary
tale. There has been discussion in Elementary
Schools as to whether an abridged edition would not give
a better chance of getting through the novel set for a term,
but strong arguments were brought forward at a conference
of teachers in Gloucester in favour of a complete
edition. Children take pleasure in the ‘dry’ parts,
descriptions and the like, rendering these quite beautifully
in their narrations. Form IV may have quite a
wide course of reading. For instance if the historical
period for a term include the Commonwealth, they may
read L’Allegro, and Il Penseroso, Lycidas, and contemporary
poets as represented in a good anthology, or, for
a later period, Pope’s Rape of the Lock, or Gray’s poems,
while Form III read poems of Goldsmith and Burns.
The object of children’s literary studies is not to give
them precise information as to who wrote what in the
reign of whom?—but to give them a sense of the spaciousness
of the days, not only of great Elizabeth, but of all
those times of which poets, historians and the makers
of tales, have left us living pictures. In such ways the
children secure, not the sort of information which is of
little cultural value, but wide spaces wherein imagination
may take those holiday excursions deprived of which
life is dreary; judgment, too, will turn over these folios
of the mind and arrive at fairly just decisions about a
given strike, the question of Poland, Indian Unrest.
Every man is called upon to be a statesman seeing that
every man and woman, too, has a share in the government
of the country; but statesmanship requires imaginative
conceptions, formed upon pretty wide reading and some
familiarity with historical precedents.
The reading for Forms V and VI (ages 15 to 18) is more
comprehensive and more difficult. Like that in the
earlier Forms, it follows the lines of the history they
are reading, touching current literature in the occasional
use of modern books; but young people who have been
brought up on this sort of work may, we find, be trusted
to keep themselves au fait with the best that is being
produced in their own days. Given the proper period,
Form V would cover in a term Pope’s Essay on Man,
Carlyle’s Essay on Burns, Frankfort Moore’s Jessamy
Bride, Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (edited),
Thackeray’s The Virginians, the contemporary poets
from an anthology. Form VI would read Boswell, The
Battle of the Books, Macaulay’s Essays on Goldsmith,
Johnson, Pitt; the contemporary poets from The Oxford
Book of Verse, and both Forms read She Stoops to Conquer.
This course of reading, it will be seen, is suggestive and
will lead to much reading round and about it in later
days. As for the amount covered in each Form, it is
probably about the amount most of us cover in the period
of time included in a school term, but while we grown-up
persons read and forget because we do not take the pains
to know as we read, these young students have the powers
of perfect recollection and just application because they
have read with attention and concentration and have in
every case reproduced what they have read in narration,
or, the gist of some portion of it, in writing.
The children’s answers[32] in their examination papers,
show that literature has become a living power in the
minds of these young people.
Like Literature this subject, too, is ancillary to History.
In Form I, children begin to gather conclusions as to the
general life of the community from tales, fables and the
story of one or another great citizen. In Form II, Citizenship
becomes a definite subject rather from the point of
view of what may be called the inspiration of citizenship
than from that of the knowledge proper to a citizen,
though the latter is by no means neglected. We find
Plutarch’s Lives exceedingly inspiring. These are read
aloud by the teacher (with suitable omissions) and narrated
with great spirit by the children. They learn to
answer such questions as,—“In what ways did Pericles
make Athens beautiful? How did he persuade the
people to help him?” And we may hope that the idea
is engendered of preserving and increasing the beauty
of their own neighbourhood without the staleness which
comes of much exhortation. Again, they will answer,—“How
did Pericles manage the people in time of war
lest they should force him to act against his own judgment?”
And from such knowledge as this we may
suppose that the children begin to get a sympathetic
view of the problems of statesmanship. Then, to come
to our own time, they are enabled to answer,—“What
do you know of (a) County Councils, (b) District Councils,
(c) Parish Councils?”—knowledge which should make
children perceive that they too are being prepared to
become worthy citizens, each with his several duties.
Our old friend Mrs. Beesley’s Stories from the History of
Rome helps us here in Form IIB instead of Plutarch,
illumined by Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome. In
giving children the knowledge of men and affairs which
we class under ‘Citizenship’ we have to face the problem
of good and evil. Many earnest-minded teachers will
sympathise with one of their number who said,—
“Why give children the tale of Circe, in which there is such
an offensive display of greediness, why not bring them up exclusively
on heroic tales which offer them something to live
up to? Time is short. Why not use it all in giving examples
of good life and instruction in good manners?”
Again,—
“Why should they read any part of Childe Harold, and so
become familiar with a poet whose works do not make for
edification?”
Now Plutarch is like the Bible in this, that he does
not label the actions of his people as good or bad
but leaves the conscience and judgment of his readers
to make that classification. What to avoid and how
to avoid it, is knowledge as important to the citizen
whether of the City of God or of his own immediate
city, as to know what is good and how to perform the
same. Children recognise with incipient weariness the
doctored tale as soon as it is begun to be told, but the
human story with its evil and its good never flags in
interest. Jacob does not pall upon us though he was
the elect of God. We recognise the justice of his own
verdict on himself, “few and evil have been the days
of my life.” We recognise the finer integrity of the
foreign kings and rulers that he is brought in contact
with, just as in the New Testament the Roman Centurion
is in every case a finer person than the religious Jew.
Perhaps we are so made that the heroic which is all
heroic, the good which is all virtuous, palls upon us,
whereas we preach little sermons to ourselves on the text
of the failings and weaknesses of those great ones with
whom we become acquainted in our reading. Children
like ourselves must see life whole if they are to profit.
At the same time they must be protected from grossness
and rudeness by means of the literary medium through
which they are taught. A daily newspaper is not on a
level with Plutarch’s Lives, nor with Andrew Lang’s
Tales of Troy and Greece, though possibly the same class
of incidents may appear in both. The boy, or girl, aged
from ten to twelve, who is intimate with a dozen or so
of Plutarch’s Lives, so intimate that they influence his
thought and conduct, has learned to put his country
first and to see individuals only as they serve or dis-serve
the State. Thus he gets his first lesson in the science of
proportion. Children familiar with the great idea of a
State in the sense, not of a government but of the people,
learn readily enough about the laws, customs and government
of their country; learn, too, with great interest
something about themselves, mind and body, heart and
soul, because they feel it is well to know what they have
it in them to give to their country.
We labour under a difficulty in choosing books which
has exercised all great thinkers from Plato to Erasmus,
from Erasmus to the anxious Heads of schools to-day.
I mean the coarseness and grossness which crop up in
scores of books desirable otherwise for their sound learning
and judgment. Milton assures us with strong asseveration
that to the pure all things are pure; but we are
uneasy. When pupils in the higher forms read the
Areopagitica they are safeguarded in some measure
because they perceive that to see impurity is to be impure.
The younger children are helped by the knowledge we offer
them in Ourselves, and chastely taught children learn
to watch over their thoughts ‘because of the angels.’ So
far as we can get them we use expurgated editions; in
other cases the book is read aloud by the teacher with
necessary omissions. We are careful not to associate the
processes of nature whether in the plant or animal world
with possible thoughts of impurity in the mind of a child.
One point I should like to touch upon in this connection.
The excessive countenance sometimes afforded to games
by the Heads of schools is not altogether for the sake of
distinction in the games. “I keep under my body,”
says St. Paul, and games which exhaust the physical
powers have as their unspoken raison d’être the desire to
keep boys and girls decent. No doubt they do so to some
extent though painful occurrences come to light in
even the best schools. Now a fact not generally recognised
is that offences of the kind which most distress
parents and teachers are bred in the mind and in an empty
mind at that. That is why parents, who endeavour to
save their sons from the corruption of the Public School
by having them taught at home, are apt to miss their
mark. The abundant leisure afforded by home teaching
offers that empty chamber swept and garnished which
invites sins that can be committed in thought and in
solitude. Our schools err, too, in not giving anything
like enough work of the kind that from its absorbing
interest compels reflection and tends to secure a mind
continually and wholesomely occupied. Supply a boy
with abundant mental pabulum, not in the way of
desultory reading, (that is a sort of idleness which leads
to mischief), but in the way of matter to be definitely
known, give him much and sound food for his imagination,
speculation, aspiration, and you have a wholesome-minded
youth to whom work is a joy and games not a
strain but a healthy relaxation and pleasure. I make
no apology for what may appear like a divergence from
the subject of citizenship, because all boys and girls should
know that they owe a sound mind and a sound body as their
personal contribution alike to their city and their State.
Ourselves, our Souls and Bodies (by the Writer) is much
used in the P.U.S., as I know of no other attempt to
present such a ground plan of human nature as should
enable the young student to know where he is in his
efforts to ‘be good’ as the children say. The point of
view taken in this volume is, that all beautiful and noble
possibilities are present in every one; but that each
person is subject to assaults and hindrances in various
ways of which he should be aware in order that he may
watch and pray. Hortatory teaching is apt to bore both
young people and their elders; but an ordered presentation
of the possibilities and powers that lie in human
nature, and of the risks that attend these, can hardly
fail to have an enlightening and stimulating effect.
But the objects we have in view in teaching ‘Everyday
Morals’ and ‘Citizenship’ cannot be better illustrated
than by a few papers[33] written by children of
various ages, dealing with self management, and exemplifying
the virtues that help and serve city and
country. “Oh dear,” said a little girl coming out of a
swimming bath, “I’m just like Julius Cæsar, I don’t care
to do a thing at all if I’m not best at it.” So, in unlikely
ways, and from unlikely sources, do children gather that
little code of principles which shall guide their lives.
Composition in Form I (A and B) is almost entirely oral
and is so much associated with Bible history, English
history, geography, natural history, that it hardly calls
for a special place on the programme, where however
it does appear as ‘Tales.’ In few things do certain
teachers labour in vain more than in the careful and
methodical way in which they teach composition to
young children. The drill that these undergo in forming
sentences is unnecessary and stultifying, as much so
perhaps as such drill would be in the acts of mastication
and deglutination. Teachers err out of their exceeding
goodwill and generous zeal. They feel that they cannot
do too much for children and attempt to do for them
those things which they are richly endowed to do for
themselves. Among these is the art of composition,
that art of ‘telling’ which culminates in a Scott or a
Homer and begins with the toddling persons of two and
three who talk a great deal to each other and are surely
engaged in ‘telling’ though no grown-up, not even a
mother, can understand. But children of six can tell to
amazing purpose. The grown-up who writes the tale
to their ‘telling’ will cover many pages before getting
to the end of “Hans and Gretel” or “The Little Match
Girl” or a Bible story. The facts are sure to be accurate
and the expression surprisingly vigorous, striking and
unhesitating. Probably few grown-ups could ‘tell’
one of Æsop’s Fables with the terse directness which
children reproduce. Neither are the children’s narrations
incoherent; they go on with their book, week by
week, whatever comes at a given time,—whether it be
Mrs. Gatty’s Parables from Nature, Andersen or Grimm
or The Pilgrim’s Progress, from the point where they left
off,—and there never is a time when their knowledge is
scrappy. They answer such questions as,—“Tell about
the meeting of Ulysses and Telemachus,” or, “about
Jason and Hera.” “Tell how Christian and Hopeful
met with Giant Despair,” or, “about the Shining Ones.”
Children are in Form IA from 7 to 9 and their reading
is wider and their composition more copious. They will
‘tell’ in their examinations about the Feeding of the
Four Thousand, about the Building of the Tabernacle,
How Doubting Castle was demolished, about the burning
of Old St. Paul’s, How we know that the world is round
and a great deal besides; for all their work lends itself
to oral composition and the power of such composition is
innate in children and is not the result of instruction.
Two or three points are important. Children in IB require
a quantity of matter to be read to them, graduated, not
according to their powers which are always present, but
they require a little time to employ their power of fixed
attention and that other power which they possess of
fluent narration. So probably young children should be
allowed to narrate paragraph by paragraph, while
children of seven or eight will ‘tell’ chapter by chapter.
Corrections must not be made during the act of narration,
nor must any interruption be allowed.
Children must not be teased or instructed about the
use of stops or capital letters. These things too come
by nature to the child who reads, and the teacher’s
instructions are apt to issue in the use of a pepper box
for commas. We do not say that children should never
read well-intentioned second-rate books, but certainly
they should not read these in school hours by way of
lessons. From their earliest days they should get the
habit of reading literature which they should take hold
of for themselves, much or little, in their own way. As
the object of every writer is to explain himself in his own
book, the child and the author must be trusted together,
without the intervention of the middle-man. What his
author does not tell him he must go without knowing
for the present. No explanation will really help him,
and explanations of words and phrases spoil the text
and should not be attempted unless children ask, What
does so and so mean? when other children in the class
will probably tell.
Form II (A and B), (ages 9 to 12). Children in this
Form have a wider range of reading, a more fertile field
of thought, and more delightful subjects for composition.
They write their little essays themselves, and as for
the accuracy of their knowledge and justice of their
expression, why, ‘still the wonder grows.’ They will
describe their favourite scene from The Tempest or
Woodstock. They write or ‘tell’ stories from work set
in Plutarch or Shakespeare or tell of the events of the
day. They narrate from English, French and General
History, from the Old and the New Testament, from Stories
from the History of Rome, from Bulfinch’s Age of Fable,
from, for example, Goldsmith’s or Wordsworth’s poems,
from The Heroes of Asgard: in fact, Composition is not
an adjunct but an integral part of their education in every
subject. The exercise affords very great pleasure to
children, perhaps we all like to tell what we know, and
in proportion as their composition is entirely artless, it
is in the same degree artistic and any child is apt to
produce a style to be envied for its vigour and grace.
But let me again say there must be no attempt to teach
composition. Our failure as teachers is that we place
too little dependence on the intellectual power of our
scholars, and as they are modest little souls what the
teacher kindly volunteers to do for them, they feel that
they cannot do for themselves. But give them a fair
field and no favour and they will describe their favourite
scene from the play they have read, and much besides.
Forms III and IV. In these Forms as in I and II what
is called ‘composition’ is an inevitable consequence of a
free yet exact use of books and requires no special
attention until the pupil is old enough to take of his own
accord a critical interest in the use of words. The
measured cadences of verse are as pleasing to children
as to their elders. Many children write verse as readily
as prose, and the conciseness and power of bringing
their subject matter to a point which this form of composition
requires affords valuable mental training. One
thing must be borne in mind. Exercises in scansion are
as necessary in English as in Latin verse. Rhythm
and accent on the other hand take care of themselves in
proportion as a child is accustomed to read poetry. In
III and IV as in the earlier Forms, the matter of their
reading during the term, topics of the day, and the
passing of the Seasons, afford innumerable subjects for
short essays or short sets of verses of a more abstract
nature in IV than in III: the point to be considered is
that the subject be one on which, to quote again Jane
Austen’s expression, the imagination of the children
has been ‘warmed,’ They should be asked to write
upon subjects which have interested them keenly. Then
when the terminal examination comes they will respond
to such a question as,—“Write twelve lines (which must
scan) on ‘Sir Henry Lee,’ or ‘Cordelia,’ or Pericles,
or Livingstone,” or, to take a question from the early
day’s of the War, “Discuss Lord Derby’s Scheme. How
is it working?”; or, (IV) an essay on “The new army
in the making, shewing what some of the difficulties
have been and what has been achieved.”
Forms V and VI. In these Forms some definite teaching
in the art of composition is advisable, but not too much,
lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style
which may encumber them for life. Perhaps the method
of a University tutor is the best that can be adopted;
that is, a point or two might be taken up in a given composition
and suggestions or corrections made with little
talk. Having been brought up so far upon stylists the
pupils are almost certain to have formed a good style;
because they have been thrown into the society of
many great minds, they will not make a servile copy
of any one but will shape an individual style out of the
wealth of material they possess; and because they have
matter in abundance and of the best they will not write
mere verbiage. Here is an example of a programme
set for a term’s work in these two Forms,—“A good
précis; letters to The Times on topics of the day;
subjects taken from the term’s work in history and
literature; or notes on a picture study; dialogues between
characters occurring in your literature and history
studies; ballads on current events; (VI) essays on events
and questions of the day; a patriotic play in verse or
prose.” Here are questions set for another term,—“Write
a pæan, rhymed or in blank verse, on the Prince
of Wales’s tour in the Dominions.” “An essay, dated
1930, on the imagined work of the League of Nations.”
Form V, “Write a woeful ballad touching the condition
of Ireland, or, a poem on the King’s garden party to the
V.C.’s.” “An essay on the present condition of England,
or, on President Wilson.”
The response of the young students to such a scheme
of study is very delightful. What they write has literary
and sometimes poetic value, and the fact that they can
write well is the least of the gains acquired. They can
read, appreciating every turn of their author’s thought;
and they can bring cultivated minds to bear on the
problems of the hour and the guiding of the State; that
is to say, their education bears at every point on the
issues and interests of every day life, and they shew good
progress in the art of becoming the magnanimous citizens
of the future. Here are a few examples[34] of the compositions
of the several Forms.
(F. B. IIA. Council School.)
ARMISTICE DAY
Soldiers dying, soldiers dead,
Bullets whizzing overhead.
Tommies standing cheerily by.
Waiting for their time to die;
Soon the lull of firing comes,
And naught is heard but the roll of drums.
And now the last shell crashes down,
A soldier reels in pain
Too late the glad news comes to him.
He never moves again,
He is the Unknown Warrior,
A man without a name.
Two years have passed and home he comes,
To the hearts that loved him well,
Who is the Unknown Warrior,?
No lips the tale can tell,
His tomb is in the Abbey,
Where the souls of Heroes dwell.
A nations sorrow and a nations tears,
Have gone with the nameless man,
Who knows, who can tell, the Warriors name,
We think that no man can,
So let our sorrow turn to joy
On the grave of the Unknown man.
(A. B. 13¾. III.)
Write some lines, in blank verse, that must scan on one of the
following: (a), Scylla and Charybdis; (b), The White Lady of
Avenel; (c), The Prince of Wales in India.
THE WHITE LADY OF AVENEL
The sun had set and night was drawing on,
The hills stood black against the twilight sky.
A faint young crescent moon shone dimly forth
Casting a pale and ghostly radiance
Upon the group of pine trees on the hill,
And silvering the rivers eddying swirl.
Now all was silent, not a sound disturbed
The summer night, and not a breath of wind
Stirred in the pines. All nature slept in peace.
But what was that, standing up in the shade?
A woman, straight, and slim, all clad in white,
Upon her long soft hair a misty crown,
And ever and anon she deeply sighed,
Leaning against the rugged mountain rock,
Like to a moon beam, or a wisp of smoke.
And on her shimmering, moonlit, robe she wore
A golden girdle, in whose links was woven
The fortunes of the house of Avenel.
A cloud past o’er the moon, and the slim ghost
Faded and disapeared into the air.
A breeze sprang up among the pine trees tall;
And then the river murmuring on its way
Whispered a sad lament unto the night.
(K. L. 13½. III.)
Write in Ballad Metre some lines on “Armistice Day” or
“Echo.”
ARMISTICE DAY, or THE UNKNOWN WARRIOR
Within the ancient Abbey’s sacred pyle,
Which proudly guards the noblest of our dead.
Where kings and statesmen lie in every aisle,
And honoured poets, soldiers, priests are laid;
Behold a stranger comes. From whence is he?
Is he of noble birth; of rank or fame?
Was he as great as any whom we see
Around, who worked to make themselves a name?
Surely he is a prince, nay, e’en a king?
For see the waiting thousands gathered here;
And hear the streets of ancient London ring
To the slow tramp of men who guard his bier!
And, surely, ’tis the King himself who comes
As chiefest mourner on this solemn day,
And these who walk behind him are his sons—
All here to mourn this man. Who is he? Say!
How long the ranks of men who follow him
To his last resting-place—the House of God.
Our bishops, soldiers,
statesmen all are here,
Gathered to lay him in his native sod.
You ask “Is he a prince?” I answer “No!
Though none could be interred with greater state!
This man went forth to guard us from a foe,
Which threatened this our land—He did his work!”
He raised the flag of Liberty on high
And challenging the powers of Wrong and Might
He gave up all he had without a sigh
And died for the good cause of God and Right.
Nor is a sense of humour wanting,—
(M. O. 13. III.)
Write in Ballad Metre some lines on “Echo.”
ECHO
Jupiter once went away from his wife
To flirt with some nymphs in a wood
But Juno, suspecting that he was with them
Came after as fast as she could.
Now Echo, a nymph, knew that Juno was there
That the nymphs they would soon be found out,
And so she kept Juno away from the wood
For if they had gone she did doubt.
But Juno knew all; and her anger was great
And Echo this dreadful thing heard
“Since you are so fond of talking, from now
You only shall have the last word!”
Now Echo went far from the dwellings of men
And spent her sad life all alone
And often she’d weep and think of the past
And over her fate make her moan.
Echo loved a Greek youth, but he could not love her.
And she watched him all day from her bower
Till she pined away, all but her voice, which lives still,
And the youth was turned into a flower.
(R. C. 15. III. Elementary, Convent School.)
Write some verses on (a) ‘Dandie Dinmont,’ or, (b) ‘Atalanta,’
or, (c) Allenby.
Atlanta was a huntress,
Who dearly loved the chase.
She out-ran the deer in fleetness,
And possessed a lovely face.
Many eager suiters sought her,
But they sought her all in vain,
For she vowed she’d never marry
And her suiters all were slain.
She had heeded well the warning,
From a witch well skilled in lore,
Who had told her if she married,
Happiness was hers no more.
Then a youth whom Venus favoured,
Came one day to run the race,
And by throwing golden apples,
He out-ran her in the chase.
In their hour of joy and triumph
Venus they forget to thank,
And the goddess sore offended,
Lowered them to the wild beast’s rank.
(J. T. III.)
Phaëton was a wilful youth who always got his way.
He asked to drive his father’s charge upon a certain day.
But Phœbus knowing well what danger lurkéth in the sky,
Implored of him to wish again and not that task to try.
But Phaëton determined was to best this dangerous way,
And leaped into the chariot to spite his father’s sway.
The horses started forward at a dashing headlong pace,
Phaëton tried to hold them back and modify the race.
With dreadful swiftness on he flew, losing his proper road,
The earth and sky began to smoke in an alarming mode.
At length when all had burst in flames, Jupiter cried aloud,
Phaëton who had lost his head was killed beneath a cloud.
(H. E. M. 15 8/12 IV.)
Write thirty lines of blank verse on (a), “A Spring Morning”
(following “A Winter Morning Walk”), or, (b), Pegasus, or, (c), Allenby.
A SPRING MORNING.
’Tis Spring; and now the birds with merry song
Sing with full-throated voice to the blue sky
On which small clouds float, soft as a dove’s wing.
Against the blue the pale-green leaflet gleams.
The darker green of elder, further down,
Sets off the brilliance of the hawthorn-hedge.
Close to the ground, the purple violet peeps
From out its nest of overhanging leaves.
On yonder bank the daffodils toss their heads
Under the shady lichen trees so tall.
Close by a chesnut, bursting into leaf,
Drops down it’s sticky calyx on the ground;
An early bumble-bee dives headlong in
To a half-opened flower of early pear.
O’erhead, in the tall beech trees, busy rooks,
With great caw-caws and many angry squawks
Build their great clumsy nests with bits of twig
And little sticks just laid upon a bough.
And by the long, straight, path tall fir trees wave
Their graceful heads in the soft whisp’ring breeze
And pressed against one ruddy trunk, an owl
In vain tries to avoid the light of day,
But blinks his wise old eyes, and shakes himself,
And nestles close amid the sheltering leaves.
Now on the rhubarb-bed we see, glad sight,
Large red buttons, which promise fruit quite soon
And further down the lettuce shoots up pale
Next to a row of parsley, getting old.
But see the peas, their curly tendrils green
Clinging to their stout pea-sticks for support.
(B. B. 15. IV.)
A SPRING MORNING
Soft on the brown woods
A pale light gleams,
And slowly spreading seems
To change the brown wood to a land of dreams,
Where beneath the trees
The great god Pan,
Doth pipe, half goat, half man,
To satyrs dancing in the dawning wan.
And then comes Phœbus,
The visions fade
And down the dewy glade
The rabbits scuttle o’er the rings they made.
In the fields near-by
The cattle rise
And where the river lies
A white mist rises to the welcoming skies.
Where the downs arise
And blue sky crowns
Their heads, fast o’er the mounds
The mist is driv’n to where the ocean sounds.
White wings against blue sky,
Gulls from the cliffs rise,
Watching, with eyes
That see from shore to where the sky line lies,
Where blue sea fades in bluer skies
Soft, doth the tide creep
O’er the golden sands
With sea-weed strands
Which, mayhap, knew the dawn of other lands.
(R. B. IV.)
Write thirty lines of blank verse on “Pegasus.”
The sky was blue and flecked with tiny clouds
Like sheep they ran before the driving wind
The sun was setting like a big red rose
The clouds that flew by him like rose-buds were
And as I gaz’d I saw a little cloud
White as the flower that rises in the spring
Come nearer, nearer, nearer as I looked
And as it came it took a diff’rent shape
It seemed to turn into a fairy steed.
White as the foam that rides the roaring waves
Still it flew on until it reached the earth
And galloping full lightly came to me
And then I saw it was a wondrous thing
It leapt about the grass and gently neighed
I heard its voice sound like a crystal flute
“Oh come” he said “with me ascend the sky
Above the trees, above the hills we’ll soar
Until we reach the home of all the gods
There will we stay and feast awhile with them
And dance with Juno and her maidens fair
And hear dear Orpheus and the pipes of Pan
And wander, wander, wander up above”
“Oh fairy steed, oh angel steed” I said
“Horse fit for Jupiter himself to ride
What is thy name I pray thee tell me this”
Then came the magic voice of him again
“If thou wilt know my name then come with me.”
Yet tell me first I hesitating said
He told me and when I had heard the name
I leapt upon his back and flew with him.
(A. B. 16. V.)
Some verses, in the metre of Pope’s “Essay on Man,” on the
meeting of the League of Nations.
From each proud kingdom and each petty state
The statesmen meet together to debate
Upon the happy time when wars shall cease
And joy shall reign, and universal peace.
No more shall day with radience cruelly bright
Glare down upon the carnage of the fight.
No more shall night’s dark cloak be rent aside
By flashing shells and searchlight’s stealthy glide
No more shall weary watchers wait at home
With straining
eyes for those that cannot come
The nations shall forget their strife and greed
The strong shall help the weak in time of need
May they succeed in every peaceful plan
If war can cease as long as man is man.
(E. H. 16 11/12. V.)
Gather up in blank verse the impressions you have received from
your reading of Tennyson’s poems.
Take up a volume of the poet’s works,
Read on, lay it aside, and take thy pen,
Endeavour in a few, poor, worthless lines
To give expression of thy sentiments....
Surely this man loved all the joys of life,
Saw beauty in the smallest and the least,
Put plainer things that hitherto were dim,
And lit a candle in the darkest room.
His thoughts, now sad, now gay, may surely be
The solace sweet for many a weary hour,
His words, drunk deeply, seem to live and burn
Clear, radiant, gleaming from the printed page.
Nature to him was dear and so has made
Her wiles for other men a treasure vast.
Old Books, his master mind could comprehend
Are shown to us as pictures to a child.
Read on—and when the volume’s put away,
Muse on the learnings thou hast found therein;
The time thus spent thou never will repent,
For love of good things all should seek and find.
(E. P. H. 16 11/12 V.)
A LULLABY SONG
The little waves are sighing on the shore,
And the little breezes sobbing in the trees;
But the little stars are shining,
In the sky’s blue velvet lining,
And Lady Sleep is tapping at the door.
The little gulls are flying home to shore,
And the little lights are flashing from the ships,
But close your eyes, my sweet,
And be ready then to greet
Dear Lady Sleep who’s tapping at the door.
The wind is rising all around the shore,
And the fishing boats speed home before the gale;
But hark not to the rain
That is lashing on the pane,
For Lady Sleep has entered by the door.
The storm has sunk the ships and swept the shore,
But there’s weeping in the town and on the quay,
But, sweet, you’re dreaming fast
Even though the dawn be past,
And Lady Sleep has gone, and closed the door.
(M. H. 17⅓. VI.)
Write a letter in the manner of Gray on any Modern Topic.
Mr. Gray to Mr. —— At Torquay.
My dear ——
“Savez vous que je vous hais, que je vous deteste—voici
des termes un peu forts,” still, I think that they are justified,
imagine leaving a friend for two months in this place without
once taking up the pen upon his behalf. If this neglect be due
only to your low spirits, I will for once pardon you but only upon
condition that you should come down here to visit me and at
the same time strengthen your constitution. I can promise you
but little diversion, but I think that the scenery will repay the
journey—not to speak of myself. You will also be able to study
many “venerable vegetables” which are not usually to be found
in England. But, I waste your time and my paper with these
“bêtises” and I know well upon what subject your mind is at
present dwelling—which of us indeed is not thinking of Ireland.
I would give much to hear your views upon the subject. For my
part it seems to me that there can be but one true view, and it
surprises me mightily to hear so much discussion upon the subject.
Are we not truly a peculiar nation who pass bills of Home
Rule etc., with much discussion and debate, when neither of the
two parties concerned will accept the conditions that we offer
them? The one considering they give too little freedom, and
the other too much. Accursed be the man who invented a bill
which was and will be the cause of so much trouble “in sæcula
sæculorum.” Surely we need not have any doubt as to what line
of action we should adopt, surely it has not been the habit of
England to let her subjects revolt without an attempt to quell
them, surely the government will not stand by and see its servants
murdered, and the one loyal province oppressed. But alas many
things are possible with such a government. Here it is said by
people who have been driven from that country by incendiaries
that the Government will let things take their course till everything
is in such a condition that the Premier will rise in the
house and say “You see how things stand—it is no use trying
to control Ireland, let us leave it to the Seinn Feiners, and live
happily ever afterwards, free from such unprofitable cares.”
Such is the talk, but I believe it not. We have as a nation
always muddled things but we have muddled through triumphant
in the end. It is so obvious that our interests and those of Ireland
co-incide, that even to contemplate separation is to me incredible.
Thus I remain your harassed friend, etc.
(N. S. 15 10/12. VI.)
Gather up in blank verse the impressions you have received from
your reading of Tennyson’s poems.
ON READING TENNYSON’S POEMS.
Oh! Prophet of an era yet to come,
When men shall sing where men were wont to speak
In words which even Englishmen knew not.
And when I read thy songs, at once I felt
The breath of Nature that was lurking there.
And then I knew that all thy life thou dwelt
Amid the changing scenes of Nature’s play,
And knew the very language of the birds,
And drank the essence of the honeysuckle.
And when thou wast but young, I knew thy thoughts,
Thy Doubts and struggles, for thou gave them me;
And yet, had I been thee, my thoughts would still
Have rested deep within my heart; but still
T’would be relief to pour out all my woes
In the sweet flow of sympathetic verse.
Thy epithets produce a vivid scene
Of knights in armour or of maiden fair,
And yet, methinks, the fairness of her face
Doth sometimes cover many a fault below.
But to thy genius and thy work for ever
Be owed a debt of thankfulness that we
No longer tread the paths of level Pope
Or read those words that are not English-born.
(K. B. 16. V.)
THE CLOUDS
Among the spirits of the nearer air
There are three children of the sun and sea—
The Genii of the clouds; it is their care
To give the ocean’s bounty to the earth:
Oft they retain it in a time of dearth,
But they give all, however much it be.
The youngest of the three is very fair;
She is a maiden beautiful and sweet,
Of ever varying mood, changeful as air.
Now, plunged in merriment, she takes delight
In all she sees, now tears obscure her sight;
A breeze-swept lake shows not a change more fleet.
The fleecy clouds of April own her sway—
They, golden, lie against the golden sun,
Or sport across the blue when she is gay;
But when, anon, her girlish passions rise,
She marshalls them across the sunny skies
To flood the earth, then stops ere half begun.
Her elder brother is of different mien,
The clouds he governs are of different mould;
When the earth pants for moisture he is seen
To spread his clouds across the filmy blue.
When his rain falls, it steady is and true;
Persistent, gentle, ceaseless, yet not cold.
From the grey bowl with which he caps the earth,
It sweetly falls with earth-renewing force.
Not April’s rapid change from grief to mirth
Excites its fall, but calm, determined thought
Of middle age, of deeds from judgment wrought;
He recks not blame, but still pursues his course.
Aged, yet of awesome beauty is the third,
Of flashing eye and sullen, scornful brow—
With an imperious hand she guides her herd
Of wild, tempestuous mood; quick roused to ire
Is she, slow to forgive, of vengeance dire;
Before her awful glance the tree-tops bow.
And when enraged, she stretches forth a hand—
A long, thin hand—to North, South, East and West,
And draws from thence clouds num’rous as the sand;
They crowd on the horizon, and blot out
The sun’s fair light; then, like a giant’s shout,
The thunder booms at her dread spear’s behest.
(A. P. V.)
Sketch a scene between a “Mr. Woodhouse” of to-day and a
neighbour of his.
Scene:—Mr. Woodhouse’s private study.
Persons present:—Owner of study, and Miss Syms, a very
modern young lady.
Mr. Woodhouse.—“Oh, good afternoon Miss Syms, I am
charmed to see you. Dear, dear, how dark it is. One might
almost think it were evening, if the clock opposite did not directly
oppose the fact.”
Miss S.—“Oh, I don’t know, it’s not so bad out. I’m awfully
sorry to blow in like this, but I came to enquire after Miss Woodhouse’s
cold. Is she better?”
Mr. W.—“How very thoughtful of you! No, I am afraid
dear Emma is very indisposed. It is so trying having an invalid
in the house, it makes me quite miserable when I think of my
poor daughter having to stay all alone, in bed. But really,
that is almost the best place in this dreadful weather. Do you
really mean to say that you have been taking a walk.”
Miss S.—“Yes, why on earth shouldn’t I? It’s about the
only way to get really warm.”
Mr. W.—“If the liberty might be allowed me, (dryly) I should
say, that it was the one way in which to get a feverish cold,
besides making oneself thoroughly miserable; and the ground
is so damp under foot!”
Miss S.—“Oh, it hasn’t been raining much lately. I only
got caught in a little shower, (visible start from Mr. W.). (coyly,)
Excuse me, but is that a box of cigarettes up there on the mantlepiece?”
Mr. W.—“Cigarettes? Oh, no! I couldn’t think of keeping
them near the house. I never smoke. It irritates my throat,
which is naturally weak.”
Miss S.—“But don’t your visiters ever take the liberty of
enjoying something of the sort? Besides, what about Miss
Woodhouse?”
Mr. W.—(horrified,) “Dear Emma smoke a cigarette!! Why,
I never heard of such a thing. What would she say if I told her.
Dear Emma smoke, no, no, certainly not.”
Miss S.—(Laughing,) “Oh, I am sure I’m very sorry. I didn’t
mean to offend.
How do you think the old Johnnies in Ireland are behaving
themselves?”
Mr. W.—(coldly,) “I beg your pardon.”
Miss S.—(sweetly,) “I said, how do you think matters are
looking, in Ireland.”
Mr. W.—“I am sorry, I think I could not have heard aright
before.—Matters in Ireland, yes, oh I think the Irish rebels are
positively awful. To think of breaking into houses, and turning
the poor inhabitants out into the cold streets, (where they
probably nearly die of cold), it is too dreadful!”
Miss S.—“Oh, I s’pose they are rather brutes sometimes.
But in a way I almost sympathise with them. I wouldn’t like
to have to knuckle under to the English (catching sight of Mr.
W.’s expression of horror and pained surprise,) I really think
I’d better get a move on. Please don’t look at me like that!
I really don’t mean half I say. Cheerio!!”
Mr. W.—“Good afternoon Miss Syms, it was so kind of you
to come. (aside) Oh, how unfeeling of dear Emma to have a
cold, if it means visiters like this every hour. (aloud,) Good
afternoon, can you find your way out. I really shall catch cold
if I move out of this room!!”
(E. G. 17. V.)
Write some lines on “Spring” in the metre of “Allegro.”
SPRING
Begone! for a short space
Ye whistling winds, and fogs, and snowy clouds,
And frosts that with fair lace
Each window-pane in dainty pattern shrouds,
Offsprings of Winter, ye!
Begone! find out some icy arctic land.
Upon that cheerless strand
’Mongst piercing ice, and chilling glaciers dwell
Such regions suit ye well,
Go, cold Winter, well are we rid of thee!
Come Spring, thou fairest season come!
With the bee’s enchanting hum,
And the dainty blossoms swinging
On the tree, while birds are singing,
See how they clothe the branches gray
In dress of freshest pink, all day,
Then when the dewy evening falls
They close their flowers till Morning calls.
Sweet Morn! Spring leads thee by the hand
And bids thee shine o’er all the land;
Thou send’st forth beams of purest gold,
To bid the daffodils unfold,
While Spring bends down with her fresh lips
To kiss the daisie’s petal tips.
And as she walks o’er the green sward
A cheerful mavis, perfect bard
Breaks into song; his thrilling notes
Are echoed from a hundred throats
Of eager birds, who love to sing
To their sweet mistress, fairest Spring.
Then as she sits on mossy throne
A scarlet lady-bird, alone,
Bids her good welcome; and above
Is heard the cooing of the dove.
Two butterflies in russet clad
Fly round her head with flutt’rings glad;
While at her side a giddy fly
Buzzes his joy that she is nigh,
Oh! Spring my heart’s desire shall be
That thou wilt ever dwell with me!
English is rather a logical study dealing with sentences
and the positions that words occupy in them than with
words and what they are in their own right. Therefore
it is better that a child should begin with a sentence and
not with the parts of speech, that is, he should learn a
little of what is called analysis before he learns to parse.
It requires some effort of abstraction for a child to perceive
that when we speak, we speak about something
and say something about it; and he has learned nearly
all the grammar that is necessary when he knows that
when we speak we use sentences and that a sentence
makes sense; that we can put words together so as to
make utter nonsense, as,—“Tom immediately candlestick
uproarious nevertheless”—a string of words making
perfect nonsense and therefore not a sentence. If we
use words in such a way as to make sense we get a sentence;
“John goes to school” is a sentence. Every
sentence has two parts, (1), the thing we speak of, and (2),
what we say about it. We speak of John, we say about
him that he goes to school. At this stage the children
require many exercises in finding out the first and second
parts of simple sentences. When they are quite familiar
with the fact that the first part of a sentence is what we
speak about, they may get a name for it, subject, which
will be made simpler to them if they know the word
subject means that which we talk about. For instance,
we may say, the subject of conversation was parsley,
which is another way of saying the thing we were speaking
about was parsley. To sum up such a lesson, the class
should learn,—Words put together so as to make sense
form a sentence. A sentence has two parts, that which
we speak of and what we say about it. That which we
speak of is the subject.
Children will probably be slow to receive this first
lesson in abstract knowledge, and we must remember
that knowledge in this sort is difficult and uncongenial.
Their minds deal with the concrete and they have the
singular faculty of being able to make concrete images
out of the merest gossamer of a fairy tale. A seven year
old child sings,—
“I cannot see fairies,
I dream them.
There is no fairy that can hide from me;
I keep on dreaming till I find him.
There you are, Primrose! I see you, Blackwing!”
But a child cannot dream parts of speech, and any
grown-up twaddle attempting to personify such abstractions
offends a small person who with all his love of play
and nonsense has a serious mind. Most children can be
got to take in the notion of a sentence as, words making
sense, especially if they are allowed a few excursions
into non-sense, the gibberish of strings of words which
do not make sense. Again, by dint of many interesting
exercises in which they never lose sight of the subject,
they get hold of that idea also.
One more initial idea is necessary if children are not
to wander blindfold through the mazes of grammar ‘as
she is’ not ‘spoke,’ but writ in books. They must be
familiar with verbs and perhaps the simplest way to
approach this idea is to cause them to make sentences
with two words, the thing they speak of and what they
say about it,—Mary sings, Auntie knits, Henry runs.
In each of these examples, the child will see the thing we
speak of and what we say about it.
But these are matters familiar to all teachers and we
have nothing new in the teaching of grammar to suggest;
but we probably gain in the fact that our scholars pay
full attention to grammar, as to all other lessons. We
look forward hopefully to the result of efforts so to unify
grammar that it will no longer perplex the student, as
English, Latin, French grammar, each with its own
nomenclature.
Children in Form IIB have easy French Lessons with
pictures which they describe, but in IIA while still engaged
on the Primary French Course children begin to use the
method which is as full of promise in the teaching of
languages as in English, that is, they are expected to
narrate the sentence or paragraph which has been read to
them. Young children find little difficulty in using
French vocables, but at this stage the teacher should
with the children’s help translate the little passage which
is to be narrated, then re-read it in French and require
the children to narrate it. This they do after a time
surprisingly well, and the act of narrating gives them
some command of French phrases as far as they go, much
more so than if they learnt the little passage off by heart.
They learn French songs in both divisions and act
French Fables (by Violet Partington) in Form IIA. This
method of closely attentive reading of the text followed
by narration is continued in each of the Forms. Thus
Form II is required to “Describe in French, picture 20.”
“Narrate the story Esope et le Voyageur.” Part of
the term’s work in Form III is to “Read and narrate
Nouveaux Contes Français, by Marc Ceppi.” Form IV is
required amongst other things to “Read and narrate
Molière’s Les Femmes Savantes.” Forms V and VI are
required to “Write a résumé of Le Misanthrope or
L’Avare,” “Translate into French, Modern Verse, page
50, ‘Leisure.’”
We have not space to follow in detail the work of the
P.U.S. in French, which of course includes the usual
attention to French Grammar but it may interest the
reader to see the sort of thing that students of the House
of Education are able to accomplish in the way of narration.
The French mistress gives, let us suppose, a lecture
in history or literature lasting, say, for half an hour. At
the end the students will narrate the substance of the
lecture with few omissions and few errors. Here is an
example of the sort of thing Mr. Household heard, on the
occasion of a short visit to the House of Education,
Ambleside,—
“A French lesson was given to the second-year students by the
French mistress, a native of Tournai, who came to Ambleside
in 1915. She had been teaching in England for some years, but
had not previously come into contact with Miss Mason’s methods.
Those methods were exactly followed during the lesson. There
was the book of recognised literary merit, the single reading, and
the immediate narration—of course in French. The book was
Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres de Mon Moulin, and the story read was
‘La Chèvre de M. Seguin.’ Before the reading began, a few—a
very few—words of explanation were given—of course, in
French. Then nine pages of the story were read straight through
by the mistress, without pause or interruption of any kind, at
the same pace that one would read an English story. The
students followed by ear only: they had no books. As soon as
the reading ended, on the instant, without hesitation of any kind,
narration began in French, different members of the class taking
up the story in turn till it was finished. All were good; some
astonishingly good. To all French was a tongue in which they
could think and speak with considerable facility. Yet the time
given to French is two hours and three-quarters a week only.
Such results compel attention. It may be added that last year
the writer heard a history lecture on the reign of Louis XI given
in French by the same mistress to the then senior students, and
the content of the lecture was narrated in a similar manner, with
the same astonishing success.”
This hitherto unused power of concentrated attention
in the study of languages whether ancient or modern
appears to hold promise of making us at last a nation of
linguists. We have attained very good results in Italian
and German by this same method, both in the House
of Education and the Practising School belonging to it,
and we are in a fair way to produce noticeable results
in Latin. The Classical mistress writes,—
“Latin is taught at the House of Education by means of narration
after each section has been thoroughly studied in grammar,
syntax and style. The literature studied increases in difficulty
as the pupil advances in grammar, etc. Nothing but good Latin
is ever narrated, so the pupil acquires style as well as structure.
The substance of the passage is usually reproduced with the
phraseology and style of the original and both students and
children learn what is really Latin and realise that it is a language
and not a mere grammar.”
Here we get Grammar, that is, construction, learned as
we learn it in English, at the lips of those who know,
and the extraordinary readiness in acquiring new words
shewn by the scholars promises English folk the copious
vocabulary in one or another foreign language, the lack
of which is a national distress.
There are few subjects regarded with more respect and
less confidence in our schools than this of ‘Art.’ Of
course, we say, children should have their artistic powers
cultivated, especially those who have such powers, but
how is the question. The neat solution offered by South
Kensington in the sixties,—freehand drawing, perspective,
drawing from the round, has long been rejected;
but nothing definite has taken its place and we still see
models of cones, cubes and so on, disposed so that the eye
may take them in freely and that the hand may perhaps
produce what the eye has seen. But we begin now to
understand that art is not to be approached by such a
macadamised road. It is of the spirit, and in ways of
the spirit must we make our attempt. We recognise that
the power of appreciating art and of producing to some
extent an interpretation of what one sees is as universal
as intelligence, imagination, nay, speech, the power of
producing words. But there must be knowledge and,
in the first place, not the technical knowledge of how to
produce, but some reverent knowledge of what has been
produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line
by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but
pictures themselves. A friendly picture-dealer supplies
us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the
work of some single artist, term by term. After a short
story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words
about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures,
the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is,
children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it,
taking in every detail. Then the picture is turned over
and the children tell what they have seen,—a dog driving
a flock of sheep along a road but nobody with the dog.
Ah, there is a boy lying down by the stream drinking.
It is morning as you can see by the light so the sheep
are being driven to pasture, and so on; nothing is left
out, the discarded plough, the crooked birch, the clouds
beautiful in form and threatening rain, there is enough
for half an hour’s talk and memory in this little reproduction
of a great picture and the children will know it
wherever they see it, whether a signed proof, a copy in
oils, or the original itself in one of our galleries. We
hear of a small boy with his parents in the National
Gallery; the boy, who had wandered off on his own
account, came running back with the news,—“Oh,
Mummy, there’s one of our Constables on that wall.” In
this way children become acquainted with a hundred,
or hundreds, of great artists during their school-life and
it is an intimacy which never forsakes them. A group of
children are going up to London for a treat. “Where
would you like to go?” “Oh, Mummy, to the National
Gallery to see the Rembrandts.” Young people go to
tea in a room strange to them and are delighted to
recognise two or three reproductions of De Hooch’s
pictures. In the course of school-life children get an
Open Sesame to many art galleries, and to many a
cultivated home; and life itself is illustrated for them at
many points. For it is true as Browning told us,—
“For, don’t you mark, we’re made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.”
Here is an example of how beautiful and familiar things
give quite new delight when they are pictured. A lady
writes,—
“I was invited to a small village to talk about the P.U. School.
Twelve really interested women came in spite of heavy rain....
I suggested introducing them to some of the friends their children
had made and we had a delightful picture talk with Jean B.
Corot, delightful to me because of the way one woman especially
narrated. She did it as if she had been set free for the first time
for months. It was the ‘Evening’ picture with a canal on the
right and that splendid mass of quiet trees in the centre. The
others gave bits of the picture but she gave the whole thing. It
was a green pasture to her.”
The noteworthy thing is that these women were familiar
with all such details as Corot offers in their own beautiful
neighbourhood, but Browning is right; we learn to see
things when we see them painted.
It will be noticed that the work[35] done on these pictures
is done by the children themselves. There is no talk
about schools of painting, little about style; consideration
of these matters comes in later life, but the first and
most important thing is to know the pictures themselves.
As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own
tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the
medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as elsewhere
we shut out the middleman.
Forms V and VI are asked to,—“Describe, with study
in sepia, Corot’s ‘Evening.’” Beyond this of a rough
study from memory of a given picture or of any section
of it, these picture studies do not afford much material
for actual drawing; they are never copied lest an attempt
to copy should lessen a child’s reverence for great work.
We are shy in speaking of what we do in actual drawing
since Herr Cizek came among us and shewed what great
things children could do with scarcely any obvious teaching
and but little suggestion. But probably such work
is only to be done under the inspiration of an artist of
unusual powers and I am writing for teachers who depend
upon their children rather than upon themselves. They
illustrate favourite scenes and passages in the books read
during the term and the spirit with which the illustrations
are drawn and the fitting details introduced make the
teacher aware of how much more the children have seen
in the passage than he has himself. Their courage in
grappling with points of technique is very instructive.
They tackle a crowd with wonderful ingenuity, a crowd
listening to Mark Antony’s oration, cheering the Prince
of Wales in India, in fact wherever a crowd is wanted it
is suggested pretty much as an artist would give it by a
show of heads. Like those Viennese children they use all
their paper, whether for a landscape or the details in a
room. They give you horses leaping brooks, dogs running
after cats, sheep on the road, always with a sense of
motion. It is evident that children study the figures
they see with due attention and will give you a gardener
sharpening his scythe, their mother sewing, a man
rowing, or driving, or mowing. Their chairs stand on
four legs and their figures on two feet in a surprising way,
and they are always on the watch to correct their errors
by what they see. They have a delightful and courageous
sense of colour, and any child will convince you that he
has it in him to be an artist. Their field studies give
them great scope. The first buttercup in a child’s nature
note book is shockingly crude, the sort of thing to scandalise
a teacher of brush-drawing, but by and by another
buttercup will appear with the delicate poise, uplift and
radiance of the growing flower.
Drawing is generally so well taught now that we need
do no more than emphasize one or two special points in
our work, such as the definite study of pictures and the
illustrations of Nature Note Books.
We do what is possible to introduce children to Architecture;
and we practise clay-modelling and the various
artistic handicrafts, but there is nothing unusual in our
work in these directions.[36]
With Musical Appreciation the case is different; and
we cannot do better than quote from an address made
by Mrs. Howard Glover at the Ambleside Conference
of the Parents’ Union, 1922:—
“Musical Appreciation—which is so much before the eye at
the present moment—originated in the P.N.E.U. about twenty-five
years ago. At that time I was playing to my little child
much of the best music in which I was interested, and Miss Mason
happened to hear of what I was doing. She realised that music
might give great joy and interest to the life of all, and she felt
that just as children in the P.U.S. were given the greatest literature
and art, so they should have the greatest music as well.
She asked me to write an article in the Review on the result of
my observations, and to make a programme of music each term
which might be played to the children. From that day to this,
at the beginning of every term a programme has appeared; thus
began a movement which was to spread far and wide.
“Musical Appreciation, of course, has nothing to do with
playing the piano. It used to be thought that ‘learning music’
must mean this, and it was supposed that children who had no
talent for playing were unmusical and would not like concerts.
But Musical Appreciation had no more to do with playing an
instrument than acting had to do with an appreciation of Shakespeare,
or painting with enjoyment of pictures. I think that all
children should take Musical Appreciation and not only the
musical ones, for it has been proved that only three per cent. of
children are what is called ‘tone-deaf’; and if they are
taken at an early age it is astonishing how children who appear
to be without ear, develop it and are able to enjoy listening to
music with understanding.”
Huxley’s axiom that science teaching in the schools
should be of the nature of ‘common information’ is of
use in defining our limitations in regard to the teaching
of science. We find another limitation in the fact that
children’s minds are not in need of the mental gymnastics
that such teaching is supposed to afford. They are
entirely alert and eager to know. Books dealing with
science as with history, say, should be of a literary
character, and we should probably be more scientific
as a people if we scrapped all the text-books which swell
publishers’ lists and nearly all the chalk expended so
freely on our blackboards. The French mind has appreciated
the fact that the approach to science as to other
subjects should be more or less literary, that the principles
which underlie science are at the same time so
simple, so profound and so far-reaching that the due
setting forth of these provokes what is almost an
emotional response; these principles are therefore meet
subjects for literary treatment, while the details of their
application are so technical and so minute as,—except by
way of illustration,—to be unnecessary for school work
or for general knowledge. We have not a copious
scientific literature in English but we have quite enough
to go on with in our schools. We find an American
publication called The Sciences (whose author would seem
to be an able man of literary power) of very great value
in linking universal principles with common incidents
of every day life in such a way that interest never palls
and any child may learn on what principles an electric
bell works, what sound means, how a steam engine works,
and many other matters, explained here with great
lucidity. Capital diagrams and descriptions make experiments
easy and children arrive at their first notions of
science without the verbiage that darkens counsel. Form
IIA read Life and Her Children by Arabella Buckley and
get a surprising knowledge of the earlier and lower forms
of life. IIB take pleasure in Kingsley’s Madam How
and Lady Why. They are expected to do a great deal
of out-of-door work in which they are assisted by The
Changing Year, admirable month by month studies of
what is to be seen out-of-doors. They keep records
and drawings in a Nature Note Book and make special
studies of their own for the particular season with
drawings and notes.
The studies of Form III for one term enable
children to—“Make a rough sketch of a section of ditch
or hedge or sea-shore and put in the names of the plants
you would expect to find.” “Write notes with drawings
of the special study you have made this term.” “What
do you understand by calyx, corolla, stamen, pistil?
In what ways are flowers fertilised?” “How would
you find the Pole Star? Mention six other stars and say
in what constellations they occur.” “How would you
distinguish between Early, Decorated and Perpendicular
Gothic? Give drawings.” Questions like these, it will
be seen, cover a good deal of field work, and the study
of some half dozen carefully selected books on natural
history, botany, architecture and astronomy, the principle
being that children shall observe and chronicle, but shall
not depend upon their own unassisted observation.
The study of natural history and botany with bird
lists and plant lists continues throughout school life,
while other branches of science are taken term by term.
The questions for Form IV for one term illustrate
the various studies of the scholars in natural history,
general science, hygiene and physiology; in fact, their
studies are so various that it is difficult to give each a
separate title in the programme:—
Geography.
1. Write a short sketch of Central Asia, with map.
2. Compare Palestine with the Yorkshire moors. Describe
the valley of the Jordan.
3. “There is but one Nelson.” Illustrate by half-a-dozen
instances.
4. What is said in Eöthen of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre?
Natural History.
1. What do you know of (a), the manatee, (b), the whalebone
whale (sketch of skeleton), (c), porpoises and
dolphins?
or,
1. Describe (a), quartz crystals, (b), felspar, (c), mica, (d),
hornblende. In what rock do these occur?
2. What do you know of insectivorous plants? Name
those you know.
3. What circumstances strike you in a walk in summer?
General Science.
1. What do you understand by,—(a), electrical attraction,
(b), repulsion, (c), conductors, (d), insulators, (e),
methods of obtaining electricity?
2. Prove that “you never see matter itself,” and show how
sight gives us knowledge.
Physiology.
1. Describe the structure of the human ear.
Perhaps Some Wonders of Matter by Bishop Mercer
is the most inspiring of the half-dozen volumes in current
use in Form IV for this section of their work. The questions
indicate the varied nature of the work and the
answers shew that in every case the knowledge is fairly
wide and thorough. All the children in the school are
usually ready to answer each question on the work of
the term.
Forms V and VI again cover a wide field as the following
questions on a term’s work sufficiently indicate,—
Geography.
VI.
1. Show how the discovery of the New World affected
England in commerce and war.
2. According to what general law is life distributed on the
earth?
3. Describe the Siege of Mexico by Cortes, and its
surrender.
VI. & V.
4. How has the war affected (a), Luxembourg, (b),
the Eastern frontier of Belgium, (c), Antwerp and
the Scheldt?
V.
1. Show how the Restoration affected our American
possessions.
2. Show accurately how longitude is determined.
3. Sketch the history and character of Montezuma.
Geology and General Science.
VI.
1. Discuss fully (a), the cause of radio-activity, (b),
gravitation.
2. What have you to say of the scenic aspects of the
English Trias? Name a dozen of the fossils.
Sketch half-a-dozen.
V.
1. Give as full an explanation as you can of colour.
2. Describe the composition of the igneous rocks. Where
do they appear?
Biology, Botany, etc.
VI.
1. What are the characters of the backboneless animals?
Describe half-a-dozen examples.
2. Describe and account for the vegetation of (a), woodlands,
(b), heath, (c), moorland, (d), meadow.
V.
1. How would you classify the industries of animals?
Give examples.
2. Describe the flora of the seashore.
VI. & V.
3. Describe, with drawings, the special study you
have made this term.
Astronomy.
VI.
1. What do you understand by precession? Describe the
precession and mutation of the earth’s axis.
V.
1. Write an essay on the planet Mercury.
If we wanted an excuse for affording children a wide
syllabus introducing them at any rate to those branches
of science of which every normal person should have some
knowledge, we find it in the deprecatory words of Sir
Richard Gregory in his Presidential Address in the
Education Science Section of the British Association.
He said that,—
“Education might be defined as a deliberate adjustment of a
growing human being to its environment, and the scope and
character of the subjects of instruction should be determined by
this biological principle. What was best for one race or epoch
need not be best for another. The essential mission of school
science was to prepare pupils for civilised citizenship by revealing
to them something of the beauty and the power of the world in
which they lived, as well as introducing them to the methods
by which the boundaries of natural knowledge had been extended.
School science, therefore, was not intended to prepare for vocations,
but to equip pupils for life. It should be part of a general
education, unspecialised, but in no direct connexion with possible
university courses to follow. Less than three per cent. of the
pupils from State-aided secondary schools proceeded to universities,
and yet most of the science courses in these schools were
based on syllabuses of the type of university entrance examinations.
The needs of the many were sacrificed to the few.
“Too much importance was attached to what could be covered
by personal experiment and observation. Every science examination
qualifying for the first school certificate, which now
represented subjects normally studied up to about sixteen years
of age, was mainly a test of practical acquaintance with facts and
principles encountered in particular limited fields, but not a single
one afforded recognition of a broad and ample course of instruction
in science such as was a necessary complement to laboratory
work.
“The numbers [of examination candidates] suggested that
general scientific teaching was almost non-existent. The range
of instruction in the portions of subjects taken, moreover, was
almost confined to what could be taught in a laboratory. Reading
or teaching for interest or to learn how physical science was
daily extending the power of man received little attention because
no credit for knowledge thus gained was given in examinations.
There was very special need for the reminder that science was
not all measurement, nor all measurement science.”
It is reassuring to see methods that we have pursued
for over thirty years with admirable results recommended
thus authoritatively. The only sound method of teaching
science is to afford a due combination of field or laboratory
work, with such literary comments and amplifications as
the subject affords. For example, from Ethics of the
Dust children derive a certain enthusiasm for crystals as
such that their own unaided observation would be slow
to afford. As a matter of fact the teaching of science
in our schools has lost much of its educative value through
a fatal and quite unnecessary divorce between science
and the ‘humanities.’
The nature note books which originated in the P.U.S.
have recommended themselves pretty widely as travelling
companions and life records wherein the ‘finds’ of every
season, bird or flower, fungus or moss, is sketched, and
described somewhat in the manner of Gilbert White.
The nature note book is very catholic and finds room
for the stars in their courses and for, say, the fossil
anemone found on the beach at Whitby. Certainly these
note books do a good deal to bring science within the
range of common thought and experience; we are
anxious not to make science a utilitarian subject.
GEOGRAPHY
The teaching of Geography suffers especially from the
utilitarian spirit. The whole tendency of modern Geography,
as taught in our schools, is to strip the unfortunate
planet which has been assigned to us as our abode and
environment of every trace of mystery and beauty.
There is no longer anything to admire or to wonder at
in this sweet world of ours. We can no longer say with
Jasper Petulengro,—“Sun, moon and stars are sweet
things, brother; there is likewise the wind on the heath.”
No, the questions which Geography has to solve henceforth
are confined to how and under what conditions is
the earth’s surface profitable to man and desirable for his
habitation. No more may children conceive themselves
climbing Mont Blanc or Mount Everest, skating on the
Fiords of Norway or swimming in a gondola at Venice.
These are not the things that matter, but only how and
where and why is money to be made under local conditions
on the earth’s surface. It is doubtful whether this kind
of teaching is even lucrative because the mind works on
great ideas, and, upon these, works to great ends. Where
science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it
has perhaps no educative value.
Perhaps no knowledge is more delightful than such an
intimacy with the earth’s surface, region by region, as
should enable the map of any region to unfold a panorama
of delight, disclosing not only mountains, rivers, frontiers,
the great features we know as ‘Geography,’ but associations,
occupations, some parts of the past and much of
the present, of every part of this beautiful earth. Great
attention is paid to map work; that is, before reading
a lesson children have found the places mentioned in that
lesson on a map and know where they are, relatively to
other places, to given parallels, meridians. Then,
bearing in mind that children do not generalise but must
learn by particulars, they read and picture to themselves
the Yorkshire Dales, the Sussex Downs, the mysteries of
a coal-mine; they see ‘pigs’ of iron flowing forth from
the furnace, the slow accretions which have made up the
chalk, the stirring life of the great towns and the occupations
of the villages. Form II (A and B) are engaged
with the counties of England, county by county, for so
diverse are the counties in aspect, history and occupations,
that only so can children acquire such a knowledge
of England as will prove a key to the geography of every
part of the world, whether in the way of comparison or
contrast. For instance, while I write, the children in
IIA are studying the counties which contain the Thames
basin and “Write verses on ‘The Thames’” is part of
their term’s work. Our Sea Power, by H. W. Household,
is of extraordinary value in linking England with the
world by means of a spirited account of the glorious
history of our navy, while the late Sir George Parkin,
than whom there is no better qualified authority, carries
children round the Empire. They are thrown on their
own resources or those of their teachers for what may be
called current Geography. For instance, “Learn what
you can about The Political Map of Europe after the Great
War. (Evans, 4d.).”
In Form III the Geography is still regional, that is,
children are led to form an intimate acquaintance with
the countries of Europe so that the map of any country
calls up in a child’s imagination a wonderful panorama
of the diversities of the country, of the people, their
history and occupations. It is evident that this kind of
geographical image cannot be secured in any other way
than by considering Europe country by country. They
begin with a general survey of the seas and shores of the
continent, of the countries and peoples, of the diversities
of tongues and their historical origin, of the plains and
mountains, of the rivers and their basins; a survey after
which they should be able to answer such questions as,—“Name
three rivers which flow into the Baltic.” “What
lands form the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean?”
“What countries are washed by the
Baltic?” “Between what parallels does Europe
extend? What other continents lie partly within the
same parallels?” The young scholars are at home
with the map of Europe before they consider the countries
separately.
The picture we present of the several countries is meant
to be before all things interesting and at the same time
to provide an intelligent and fairly exhaustive account
of the given country. Whatever further knowledge a
child acquires will fit in to this original scheme. For
example, “The Rhône Valley and the Border lands.”[38]
“The warm and fertile Rhône valley belongs in climate to the
southern region, where, although the vine is grown, large plantations
of olive and mulberry occupy much of the land. We are
apt to think of the South of France as the sunny south, the
sweet south, ‘but,’ says a writer whom we have already quoted,
‘it is austere, grim, sombre’ ... but the mulberry feeds the
silkworm and so furnishes material for the great manufacture
of France. Lyons, the second city of France, is the seat of the
silk manufacture including those of velvets and satins. It is
seated upon a tongue of land at the confluence of the rapid Rhône
and the sluggish Saône, and along the banks of both rivers are
fine quays.”
This extract indicates how geographical facts are introduced
incidentally, pretty much as a traveller comes
across them. The work for one term includes Belgium,
Holland, Spain and Portugal, and the interests connected
with each of these countries are manifold. For
example,—
“On the seashore near Leyden is Katwyck where the expiring
Rhine is helped to discharge itself into the sea by means of a wide
artificial channel provided with no less than thirteen pairs of
enormous floodgates. These are shut to keep out the sea when
the tide is coming in, and open to let the streams pass out during
ebb tide. Notwithstanding these great works the once glorious
Rhine makes but an ignoble exit. The delta of this river may
be said to include the whole breadth of Holland.”[39]
It will be noticed that an attempt is made to shew the
romance of the natural features, the history, the industries,
so that a country is no more a mere matter of names
on a map, or of sections shewn by contour lines. Such
generalisations are not Geography but are slow conclusions
which the mind should come to of itself when it
acquires intimacy with a region. Something of a literary
character is preserved in the Geography lessons. The
new feature in these is the study of maps which should
be very thorough. For the rest the single reading and
narration as described in connection with other work
is sufficient in this subject also. Children cannot tell
what they have not seen with the mind’s eye, which we
know as imagination, and they cannot see what is not told
in their books with some vividness and some grasp of the
subject. The thoroughness of the map study is shewn
by such a question to be answered from memory as,—“What
part of Belgium does the Scheldt drain? Name
any of its feeders. Name ten famous places in its basin.
What port stands at the head of its estuary?” We find
great light thrown upon the geography of the Empire in
a little book of literary quality, Fighting for Sea Power
in the Days of Sail.
There are two rational ways of teaching Geography.
The first is the inferential method, a good deal in vogue
at the present time; by it the pupil learns certain geographical
principles which he is expected to apply universally.
This method seems to me defective for two
reasons. It is apt to be misleading as in every particular
case the general principle is open to modifications; also,
local colour and personal and historical interests are
wanting and the scholar does not form an intellectual
and imaginative conception of the region he is learning
about. The second which might be called the panoramic
method unrolls the landscape of the world, region by
region, before the eyes of the scholar with in every region
its own conditions of climate, its productions, its people,
their industries and their history. This way of teaching
the most delightful of all subjects has the effect of giving
to a map of a country or region the brilliancy of colour
and the wealth of detail which a panorama might afford,
together with a sense of proportion and a knowledge of
general principles. I believe that pictures are not of very
great use in this study. We all know that the pictures
which abide with us are those which the imagination
constructs from written descriptions.
The Geography for Form IV[40] includes Asia, Africa,
America and Australasia. But the same principle is
followed: vivid descriptions, geographical principles,
historical associations and industrial details, are afforded
which should make, as we say, an impression, should
secure that the region traversed becomes an imaginative
possession as well as affording data for reasonable judgments.
The pupil begins with a survey of Asia followed
by a separate treatment of the great countries and divisions
and of the great physical features. Thus of Siberia
we read,—
“All travellers unite in praise of the free Siberian peasant.
As soon as one crosses the Urals one is surprised by the extreme
friendliness and good nature of the inhabitants as much as by
the rich vegetation of the well-cultivated fields and the excellent
state of the roads in the southern part of the government of
Tobolsk.”
or,—
“The glossy jet black soft thick fur of the sea-otter is the
most valuable of all the Russian skins. Next ranks the skin of
the black fox. But though a thousand of its skins are worth
no more than one skin of the sea-otter, the little grey squirrel
whose skins are imported by the million really plays the most
important part in the Siberian fur trade.”
Of Further India,—
“Pigou, the middle division, is really the vast delta of the
Irrawaddy, a low-lying country which yields enormous quantities
of rice while on the higher grounds which wall in the great river
are the finest teak forests in the world.”
Africa follows Asia with the discoveries of Livingstone,
Speke, Burton, Grant, etc. We get an account of African
village life and among the chapter headings are Abyssinia,
Egypt, Up the Nile, The Soudan, The Sahara, The
Barbary States, South Africa, Cape Colony, The Islands.
America follows with an account of the progress of discovery,
a geographical sketch of South America, the
Andes and the Mountain States, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, etc.,
the Great Plains of South America, Central America,
North America, Canada, a historical sketch of the United
States, the Eastern States, States of the Mississippi
valley, the prairies, the Western States and territories,
California. In the section on the Eastern States we
read,—
“Stretching from this chain (the Alleghanies) is the great
Appalachian coalfield which extends through Pennsylvania,
Virginia and Ohio, with a length of 720 miles containing, it is said,
coal enough to supply the world for four thousand years! Iron
occurs with the coal in great abundance. Most of this coal is
of the kind called Anthracite. It is extremely slow in burning,
emits no smoke, but has a painfully drying effect upon the air of
a room. Sir Charles Lyall speaking of Pottsville on this coalfield
says,—‘Here I was agreeably surprised to see a flourishing
manufacturing town with the tall chimneys of a hundred furnaces
burning night and day, yet quite free from smoke. Leaving
this clear atmosphere and going down into one of the mines it
was a no less pleasing novelty to find that we could handle the
coal without soiling our fingers.’”
But enough has been said to indicate the sort of
intimacy that scholars in Form IV get with all quarters
of the world, their geography, landscape, histories and
industries, together with the study of the causes which
affect climate and industries. Geikie’s Physical Geography
affords an admirable introduction to the principles
of physical geography.
Forms V and VI are expected to keep up with the newspapers
and know something about places and regions
coming most into note in the current term. Also, in
connection with the history studied, Seeley’s Expansion
of England, The Peoples and Problems of India, Geikie’s
Elementary Lessons in Physical Geography, Mort’s
Practical Geography, and Kipling’s Letters of Travel are
included in the reading of one term. In these
Forms the young students are expected to apply their
knowledge to Geography, both practical and theoretical,
and to make much use of a good Atlas without the map
questions which have guided the map work of the lower
Forms.
The question of Arithmetic and of Mathematics generally
is one of great import to us as educators. So long as the
idea of ‘faculties’ obtained no doubt we were right to
put all possible weight on a subject so well adapted to
train the reasoning powers, but now we are assured that
these powers do not wait upon our training. They are
there in any case; and if we keep a chief place in our
curriculum for Arithmetic we must justify ourselves
upon other grounds. We take strong ground when we
appeal to the beauty and truth of Mathematics; that,
as Ruskin points out, two and two make four and cannot
conceivably make five, is an inevitable law. It is a
great thing to be brought into the presence of a law, of
a whole system of laws, that exist without our concurrence,—that
two straight lines cannot enclose a space
is a fact which we can perceive, state, and act upon but
cannot in any wise alter, should give to children the
sense of limitation which is wholesome for all of us, and
inspire that sursum corda which we should hear in all
natural law.
Again, integrity in our dealings depends largely upon
‘Mr. Micawber’s’ golden rule, while ‘Harold Skimpole’s’
disregard of these things is a moral offence against
society. Once again, though we do not live on gymnastics,
the mind like the body, is invigorated by regular
spells of hard exercise.
But education should be a science of proportion, and
any one subject that assumes undue importance does so
at the expense of other subjects which a child’s mind
should deal with. Arithmetic, Mathematics, are exceedingly
easy to examine upon and so long as education is
regulated by examinations so long shall we have teaching,
directed not to awaken a sense of awe in contemplating
a self-existing science, but rather to secure exactness and
ingenuity in the treatment of problems.
What is better, it will be said, than a training in
exactness and ingenuity? But in saying so we assume
that this exactness and ingenuity brought out in Arithmetic
serve us in every department of life. Were this
the case we should indeed have a royal road to learning;
but it would seem that no such road is open to us. The
habits and powers brought to bear upon any one educational
subject are exercised upon that subject simply. The
familiar story of how Sir Isaac Newton teased by his
cat’s cries to be let in caused a large hole in the door to
be made for the cat and a small one for the kitten, illustrates
not a mere amusing lapse in a great mind but
the fact that work upon special lines qualifies for work
upon those lines only. One hears of more or less deficient
boys to whom the study of Bradshaw is a delight, of an
admirable accountant who was otherwise a little
‘deficient.’
The boy who gets ‘full marks’ in Arithmetic makes a
poor show in history because the accuracy and ingenuity
brought out by his sums apply to his sums only: and as
for the value of Arithmetic in practical life, most of us
have private reasons for agreeing with the eminent staff
officer who tells us that,—
“I have never found any Mathematics except simple addition
of the slightest use in a work-a-day life except in the Staff College
examinations and as for mental gymnastics and accuracy of
statement, I dispute the contention that Mathematics supply
either any better than any other study.”
We have most of us believed that a knowledge of the
theory and practice of war depended a good deal upon
Mathematics, so this statement by a distinguished soldier
is worth considering. In a word our point is that Mathematics
are to be studied for their own sake and not as
they make for general intelligence and grasp of mind.
But then how profoundly worthy are these subjects of
study for their own sake, to say nothing of other great
branches of knowledge to which they are ancillary!
Lack of proportion should be our bête noire in drawing
up a curriculum, remembering that the mathematician
who knows little of the history of his own country or
that of any other, is sparsely educated at the best.
At the same time Genius has her own rights. The born
mathematician must be allowed full scope even to the
omission of much else that he should know. He soon
asserts himself, sees into the intricacies of a problem
with half an eye, and should have scope. He would
prefer not to have much teaching. But why should
the tortoise keep pace with the hare and why should a
boy’s success in life depend upon drudgery in Mathematics?
That is the tendency at the present moment—to
close the Universities and consequently the Professions
to boys and girls who, because they have little
natural aptitude for mathematics, must acquire a
mechanical knowledge by such heavy all-engrossing
labour as must needs shut out such knowledge of the
‘humanities’ say, as is implied in the phrase ‘a liberal
education.’
The claims of the London Matriculation examination,
for example, are acknowledged by many teachers to be
incompatible with the wide knowledge proper to an
educated person.
Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon
the text-book and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly
because teachers have seldom time to give the inspiring
ideas, what Coleridge calls, the ‘Captain’ ideas, which
should quicken imagination.
How living would Geometry become in the light of the
discoveries of Euclid as he made them!
To sum up, Mathematics are a necessary part of
every man’s education; they must be taught by those
who know; but they may not engross the time and
attention of the scholar in such wise as to shut out any
of the score of ‘subjects,’ a knowledge of which is his
natural right.
It is unnecessary to exhibit mathematical work done
in the P.U.S. as it is on the same lines and reaches the
same standard as in other schools. No doubt his habit
of entire attention favours the P.U.S. scholar.
It is unnecessary, too, to say anything about games,
dancing, physical exercises, needlework and other
handicrafts as the methods employed in these are not
exceptional.[41]
Book II Theory Applied — CHAPTER I A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
I need not waste time in attempting to convince the
reader of what we all know, that a liberal education is,
like justice, religion, liberty, fresh air, the natural birthright
of every child. Neither need we discuss the scope
of such an education. We are aware that good life
implies cultivated intelligence, that, according to the
Platonic axiom, ‘Knowledge is virtue,’ even though
there be many exceptions to the rule. Educated teachers
are not slow to perceive the part the Humanities play
in a worthy scheme of education, but they are faced by
enormous difficulties which are admirably summed up
in a recent work,—[42]
“The tragedy of modern education has been the prolonged
failure of Humanism to secure conditions under which its
purpose might be realised for the people at large.”
It is because we (of the Parents’ Union School) have
succeeded in offering Humanism under such conditions
that we believe the great problem of education is at last
solved. We are able to offer the Humanities (in the
mother tongue) to large classes of children from illiterate
homes in such a way that the teaching is received with
delight and freely assimilated. One swallow does not
make a summer, we all know, but the experience of
one school shows that it is possible to carry out a pretty
full literary programme joyously and without effort
while including all the usual school activities. Wireless
telegraphy was, so to speak, in the air before the first
Marconi message was sent, but that first wireless message
made it possible for any passenger on board a Channel
steamer to send such a message. Just so, the experiment
in the Drighlington School (Yorkshire) placed the conditions
for a humanistic education at the service of any
teacher. I am much impressed by the amount of work of
this kind which is already being done in our schools.
I heard the other day of a man whose whole life had
been elevated by a single inspiring (poetic) sentence
which he heard as a schoolboy; we have been told
that the ‘man in the street’ cannot resist a row of
books; we are told, too, that the War has made us a
nation of readers, both at home and in the trenches,
readers largely of the best books in poetry and history;
is there no credit due to the schools for these things?
But teachers are not satisfied; their reach is greater
than their grasp and they are more aware of the sordid
lives about them, of the “dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance”
which prevails, than of any success they have
yet attained. Therefore they fret under the time
limitations which seem to make it impossible to do
anything worth while in such vast subjects as History
and Literature, for example.
I wonder does this uneasiness point to a fact which we
are slow to realise,—that the requirements of the mind
are very much like those of the body? Both require as
conditions of health,—activity, variety, rest and, above
all, food. There has been some tendency among us to
offer gymnastics, whether intellectual or physical, by way
of a square meal of knowledge, which is as if one were to
invite a boy to Swedish Drill by way of his dinner; and
that wretched misnomer ‘education’ is partly to blame.
Now, potency, not property, is the characteristic of mind.
A child is able to deal with much knowledge, but he
possesses none worth speaking of; yet we set to work
to give him that potency which he already possesses
rather than the knowledge which he lacks; we train his
reason, cultivate his judgment, exercise this and the other
faculty, which we have no more to do with than with
the digestive processes of a healthy child; we know that
the more we meddle with these the worse for the child;
but what if the devitalisation we notice in so many of our
young people, keen about games but dead to things of
the mind, is due to the processes carried on in our schools,
to our plausible and pleasant ways of picturing, eliciting,
demonstrating, illustrating, summarising, doing all those
things for children which they are born with the potency
to do for themselves? No doubt we do give intellectual
food, but too little of it; let us have courage and we shall
be surprised, as we are now and then, at the amount of
intellectual strong meat almost any child will take at a
meal and digest at his leisure.
Perhaps the first thing for us to do is to get a just
perception of what I may call the relativity of knowledge
and the mind. The mind receives knowledge, not in order
that it may know, but in order that it may grow, in
breadth and depth, in sound judgment and magnanimity;
but in order to grow, it must know.
The fact is that we are handicapped, not so much by
the three or four difficulties I have already indicated, as
by certain errors of judgment, forms of depreciation,
which none of us escape because they are universal. We
as teachers depreciate ourselves and our office; we do
not realise that in the nature of things the teacher has a
prophetic power of appeal and inspiration, that his part
is not the weariful task of spoon-feeding with pap-meat,
but the delightful commerce of equal minds where his
is the part of guide, philosopher and friend. The friction
of wills which makes school work harassing ceases
to a surprising degree when we deal with the children,
mind to mind, through the medium of knowledge.
Next, we depreciate children, even though most
teachers lay down their lives for their charges with
amazing devotion. We have been so long taught to
regard children as products of education and environment,
that we fail to realise that from the first they are
persons; and, as Carlyle has well said,—
“The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine, to him that
has a sense for the godlike.”
We must either reverence or despise children; and while
we regard them as incomplete and undeveloped beings
who will one day arrive at the completeness of man, rather
than as weak and ignorant persons, whose ignorance we
must inform and whose weakness we must support, but
whose potentialities are as great as our own, we cannot
do otherwise than despise children, however kindly and
even tenderly we commit the offence.
As soon as he gets words with which to communicate
with us, a child lets us know that he thinks with surprising
clearness and directness, that he sees with a
closeness of observation that we have long lost, that he
enjoys and that he sorrows with an intensity we have
ceased to experience, that he loves with an abandon
and a confidence which, alas, we do not share, that he
imagines with a fecundity no artist among us can approach
that he acquires intellectual knowledge and mechanical
skill at a rate so amazing, that, could the infant’s rate
of progress be kept up to manhood, he would surely
appropriate the whole field of knowledge in a single
lifetime! (It is worth while in this connection to re-read
the early chapters of David Copperfield.)
I am considering a child as he is, and am not tracing
him, either with Wordsworth, to the heights above, or,
with the evolutionist, to the depths below; because a
person is a mystery, that is, we cannot explain him or
account for him, but must accept him as he is. This
wonder of personality does not cease, does not disappear,
when a child goes to school; he is still ‘all there’
in quite another sense from that of the vulgar catch-word.
But we begin to lose the way to his mind from
the day that he enters the schoolroom; the reason for
this is, we have embraced the belief that ‘knowledge is
sensation,’ that a child knows what he sees and handles
rather than what he conceives in his mind and figures
in his thoughts. I labour this point because our faith
in a child’s spiritual, i.e., intellectual educability is one
of our chief assets. Having brought ourselves face to
face with the wonder of mind in children, we begin to
see that knowledge is the aliment of the mind as food
is that of the body. In the days before the War, a lifetime
ago it seems, our insular contempt for knowledge
was a by-word; except for a schoolmaster or other
thinker here and there, nobody took knowledge seriously;
we announced boldly that it did not matter what a child
learned but only how he learned it. As for mere ‘book-learning,’
for that we had a fine contempt! But we have
changed all that. We are beginning to suspect that
ignorance is our national stumbling-block, a chief cause
of those difficulties at home which hinder our efforts
abroad. For ignorance there is only one cure, and that
is, knowledge; his school is the seat of knowledge for a
child, and whatever else his teachers do for him, first
of all they must sustain him with knowledge, not in
homœopathic doses, but in regular, generous servings.
If we ask, what is knowledge?—there is no neat and
ready answer at hand. Matthew Arnold, we know,
classifies all knowledge under three heads,—the knowledge
of God, divinity, the knowledge of man, known as the
‘humanities’ and the knowledge of the physical world,
science, and that is enough to go on with. But I should
like to question this division and to class all three parts
of knowledge under the head of Humanism, which should
include all knowledge that makes a direct appeal to the
mind through the channel of literary form; now, the
substance of Divinity is contained in one of the three
great literatures of the world, and Science, in France if
not usually in England, is embodied in a beautiful and
poetic literature of great clarity, precision and grace.
Is it not then allowable to include all knowledge of which
literature is a proper medium under the head of ‘Humanism’?
One thing at any rate we know with certainty,
that no teaching, no information becomes knowledge to
any of us until the individual mind has acted upon it,
translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear, like
our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching,
talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing
until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is
the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid
on the surface of a child’s nature.
I have endeavoured to call your attention to a certain
undervaluing of children and undervaluing of knowledge
which seem to me to mar our twentieth century ideal
of education, fine as that is. If we realise that the mind
and knowledge are like two members of a ball and socket
joint, two limbs of a pair of scissors, fitted to each other,
necessary to each other and acting only in concert, we
shall understand that our function as teachers is to supply
children with the rations of knowledge which they
require; and that the rest, character and conduct, efficiency
and ability, and, that finest quality of the citizen,
magnanimity, take care of themselves. “But how?”
cries the teacher, whose life is spent in the labour of
Sisyphus. I think we have chanced on a way that, at
any rate, works to admiration, the principles and practice
of which I am anxious to bring before you.
Let me first repeat[43] a few of the results that have
been made good by thousands of children, and within
the last few years by many Council Schools throughout
the country:—
The children, not the teachers, are the responsible
persons; they do the work by self-effort.
The teachers give the uplift of their sympathy in the
work and where necessary elucidate, sum up or enlarge,
but the actual work is done by the scholars.
These read in a term from one thousand to between
two and three thousand pages, according to age and
class, in a large number of set books; the quantity
set for each lesson allows of only a single reading.
The reading is tested by narration, or by writing on a
test passage.
No revision is attempted when the terminal examination
is at hand; because too much ground has been
covered to allow of any ‘looking up.’
What the children have read they know, and write on
any part of it with ease and fluency, in vigorous English.
They usually spell well.
During the examinations, which last a week, the
children cover say from twenty to sixty sheets of Cambridge
paper, according to age and class; but if ten
times as many questions were set on the work studied
most likely they would cover ten times as much paper.
It rarely happens that all the children in a class are not
able to answer all the questions set in such subjects as
history, literature, citizenship, geography, science. But
here differences manifest themselves; some children do
better in history, some in science, some in arithmetic,
others in literature; some, again, write copious answers
and a few write sparsely; but practically all know the
answers to the set questions.
In the course of an examination they deal freely with a
great number of substantives, including many proper
names; I once had the names used by a child of ten in
an examination paper counted; there were well over a
hundred, of which these are the ‘A’s’—
Megalopolis, Maximilian, Milan, Martin Luther, Mary of the
Netherlands, Messina, Macedonia, Magna Charta, Magnet,
Malta, Metz, Mediterranean, Mary Queen of Scots, Treaty of
Madrid;
and upon all these subjects the children wrote as freely
and fully as if they were writing to an absent sister
about a new family of kittens!
The children write with perfect understanding as far
as they go and there is rarely a ‘howler’ in hundreds of
sets of papers. They have an enviable power of getting
at the gist of a book or subject. Sometimes they are
asked to write verses about a personage or an event;
the result is not remarkable by way of poetry, but sums
up a good deal of thoughtful reading in a delightful
way; for example,—the reading of King Lear is gathered
in twelve lines on ‘Cordelia,’—
CORDELIA
Nobliest lady, doomed to slaughter,
An unlov’d, unpitied daughter,
Though Cordelia thou may’st be,
“Love’s” the fittest name for thee;
If love doth not, maid, bestow
Scorn for scorn, and “no” for “no,”
If love loves through scorn and spite,
If love clings to truth and right,
If love’s pure, maid, as thou art,
If love has a faithful heart,
Thou art then the same as love;
Come from God’s own realms above!
M. K. C. 10 10/12 Form II.
A life of Livingstone (read in connection with the
Geography of Africa) is thus epitomised,—
LIVINGSTONE
“The whole of Africa is desert bare,
Except around the coast.” So people said,
And thought of that great continent no more.
“The smoke of thousand villages I’ve seen!”
So cried a man. He knew no more. His words
Sank down into one heart there to remain.
The man who heard rose up and gave his all:
Into the dark unknown he went alone.
What terrors did he face? The native’s hate,
The fever, tetse-fly and loneliness.
But to the people there he brought great Light.
Who was this man, the son of some great lord?
Not so. He was a simple Scottish lad
Who learnt to follow duty’s path. His name
Was Livingstone, he will not be forgot.
E. P. (15.) Form IV.
And here is a rendering of Plutarch’s Life of Pericles
by a girl of fourteen in Form IV,—
Oh! land, whose beauty and unrivalled fame;
Lies dead, obscure in Time’s great dusty vault.
Not so in memory, for truly here,
Each and alike look up and do revear
Those heroes of the hidden past. Plato,
Who’s understanding reached the wide world’s end;
Aristides, that just and noble man.
And last, not least, the great wise Pericles
Who’s socialistic views and clever ways
For governing the rich and poor alike
Were to be envied. In his eyes must Greece
Live for ever as the home of beauty.
So to the Gods great marble shrines he made,
Temples and theatres did he erect;
So that the beauty of his beloved Greece
Might live for ever. And now when seeing
What is left of all those wondrous sights
We think not of the works themselves
But rather of the man who had them built.
J. F.
One wonders is ‘socialistic’ used for democratic;
any way, the notion is original. There is little to be said
for the technique of the verses but I think the reader
will agree that each set shows thoughtful appreciation
of some part of the term’s reading. The verses are
uncorrected.
Much use is made according to this method of the years
from 6 to 8, during which children must learn to read
and write; they get at the same time, however, a good
deal of consecutive knowledge of history and geography,
tale and fable, some of which at the end of the term they
dictate in answer to questions and their answers form
well-expressed little essays on the subjects they deal with.
The time appropriated in the time-table at this stage
to the teaching of some half-dozen more or less literary
subjects such as Scripture, and the subjects I have
indicated, is largely spent by the teachers in reading,
say, two or three paragraphs at a time from some one of
the set books, which children, here and there in the class,
narrate. The teacher reads with the intention that the
children shall know, and therefore, with distinctness,
force, and careful enunciation; it is a mere matter of
sympathy, though of course it is the author and not
himself, whom the teacher is careful to produce. This
practice, of the teacher reading aloud and the class narrating,
is necessarily continued through all the classes of an
elementary school, because some of the books used are
rather costly and only one copy is furnished. I wonder
does this habit of listening with close attention to what
is read aloud tend to equalise the children of the ‘uneducated’
with those of the educated classes? Certainly,
the work of the two is surprisingly equal. By
the way, there is no selection of subjects, passages or
episodes on the ground of interest. The best available
book is chosen and read through in the course, it may be,
of two or three years.
Let me add that the appeal of these principles and
this method is not to the clever child only but to the
average and even to the ‘backward’ child; indeed we
have had several marked successes with backward
children. Just as we all partake of that banquet which
is ‘Shakespeare’ according to our needs and desires,
so do the children behave at the ample board set before
them; there is enough to satisfy the keenest intelligence
while the dullest child is sustained through his own willing
effort. This scheme of fairly wide and successful intellectual
work is carried out in the same or less time than is
occupied in the usual efforts in the same directions; there
are no revisions, no evening preparations (because far more
work is done by the children in ordinary school-time
than under ordinary school methods, when the child is
too often a listener only): no note-taking, because none
are necessary, the children having the matter in their
books and knowing where to find it; and as there is no
cramming or working up of subjects there is much time
to spare for vocational and other work of the kind.
Such an education as I am urging should act as a
social lever also; everyone is much occupied with problems
concerning amelioration of life for our ‘poorer
classes’ but do we sufficiently consider that, given
a better education, the problems of decent living will for
the most part be solved by the people themselves?
Like all great ventures of life this that I propose
is a venture of faith, faith in the saving power of knowledge
and in the assimilative power of children. Its
efficacy depends upon the fact that it is in the nature
of things, that is, in the nature of knowledge and in the
nature of children. Bring the two together in ways
that are sanctioned by the laws of mind and, to use a
figure, a chemical combination takes place and a new
product appears, a person of character and intelligence,
an admirable citizen whose own life is too full and
rich for him to be an uneasy member of society.
Education is part and parcel of religion and every
enthusiastic teacher knows that he is obeying the precept,—‘feed
my lambs’—feed with all those things which are
good and wholesome for the spirit of a man; and, before
all and including all, with the knowledge of God.
I have ventured to speak of the laws of mind, or spirit,
but indeed we can only make guesses here and there
and follow with diffidence such light as we get from the
teachings of the wise and from general experience;
general experience, because peculiar experience is apt to
be misleading; therefore, when I learned that long tried
principles and methods were capable of application to the
whole of a class of forty children in the school of a
mining village, I felt assured that we were following laws
whose observance results in education of a satisfying
kind.
The mind requires sustenance as does the body, that
it may increase and be strong; so much everybody knows.
A long time ago it was perceived that the pabulum given
in schools was of the wrong sort; Grammar rules, lists
of names and dates and places,—the whole stock in trade
of the earlier schoolmaster—was found to be matter which
the minds of children reject: and, because we were wise
enough to see that the mind functions for its own nourishment
whether in rejecting or receiving, we changed our
tactics, following, so we thought, the lead of the children.
We did well, and therefore are prepared, if necessary,
to do better. What, then, if our whole educational
equipment, our illustrations, elucidations, questionings,
our illimitable patience in getting a point into the children,
were all based on the false assumption of the immature,
which we take to connote the imperfect, incomplete minds
of children? “I think I could understand, Mummy,
if you did not explain quite so much,”—is this the
inarticulate cry of the school child to-day? He really
is capable of much more than he gets credit for, but we
go the wrong way about getting his capable mind into
action.
We err when we allow our admirable teaching to
intervene between children and the knowledge their
minds demand. The desire for knowledge (curiosity)
is the chief agent in education: but this desire may be
made powerless like an unused limb by encouraging
other desires to intervene, such as the desire for place
(emulation), for prizes (avarice), for power (ambition),
for praise (vanity). But I am told that marks, places
and prizes (except for attendance) do not figure largely
in Elementary Schools, therefore the love of knowledge
for its own sake is likely to have a freer course in these
schools than in others.
That children are born persons,—is the first article of
the educational credo which I am concerned to advance;
this implies that they come to us with power of attention,
avidity for knowledge, clearness of thought, nice
discrimination in books even before they can read, and
the power of dealing with many subjects.
Practical teachers will say, guarantee to us the attention
of our scholars and we will guarantee their progress
in what Colet calls ‘good literature,’ I have already
explained[44] how I came to a solution of this puzzling
problem,—how to secure attention.
Let me add again that the principles and methods
I have indicated are especially suitable for large
classes; what is called the ‘sympathy of numbers’
stimulates the class, and the work goes with added
impetus: each child is eager to take part in narration
or to do written work well. By the way, only short
test answers are required in writing, so that the labour
of correction is minimised.
To two further points I must invite attention; the
choice of books and the character of the terminal examinations.
I do not know better how to describe the sort of
books that children’s minds will consent to deal with
than by saying that they must be literary in character.
A child of seven or eight will narrate a difficult passage
from The Pilgrim’s Progress, say, with extraordinary
zest and insight; but I doubt if he or his elders would
retain anything from that excellent work, Dr. Smiles’s
Self-Help! The completeness with which hundreds of
children reject the wrong book is a curious and instructive
experience, not less so than the avidity and joy with
which they drain the right book to the dregs; children’s
requirements in the matter seem to be quantity, quality
and variety: but the question of books is one of much
delicacy and difficulty. After the experience of over a
quarter of a century[45] in selecting the lesson books proper
to children of all ages, we still make mistakes, and the
next examination paper discovers the error! Children
cannot answer questions set on the wrong book; and the
difficulty of selection is increased by the fact that what
they like in books is no more a guide than what they like
in food.
The moment has come to try the great cause of
Education v. Civilisation, with the result, let us hope,
that the latter will retire to her proper sphere of service
in the amelioration of life and will not intrude on the
higher functions of inspiration and direction which belong
to Education. Both Civilisation and Education are the
handmaids of Religion, but, each in its place, and the
one may not thrust herself into the office of the other.
It is a gain, any way, that we are within sight of giving
to all members of the working classes notwithstanding
their limited opportunities that stability of mind and
magnanimity of character which are the proper outcome
and the unfailing test of a Liberal Education; also
it is to the good that “the grand elementary principle
of pleasure” should be discovered in unexpected places,
in what is too often the drudgery of the schoolroom.
Milton’s ideal of a “complete and generous education”
meets our occasions;—“that which fits a man to perform
justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices
both private and public of peace and war”; and perhaps
it remains for our generation to prove that this ideal is
open to and necessary for persons of all sorts and conditions.
It has been well said that,—
“Just as there is only one kind of truth common to us all, so
there is only one education common to us all. In the case of the
education of the people the only question is: How is this common
education to be developed under the circumstances of simple
conditions of life and large masses of people? That this should
be accomplished is the decisive mark of all real education.”
The writer (Eucken) offers no solution of this problem:
and it remains with the reader to determine each with
himself whether that solution which I here propose is
or is not worth a trial.
CHAPTER II A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Mighty is the power of persistent advertisement. The
author of The Pagan may or may not be bringing
an indictment against Pelmanism, but without any
doubt ‘Pelmanism’ is bringing an indictment against
secondary education. Half a million souls, Judges and
Generals, Admirals and Barristers, are protesting that
they have not been educated. No doubt the spirit that
informs advertisements is often a lying spirit but claims
so well attested as these may have something in them,
and we who are engaged in secondary education are
uneasy. Again, we have the Board of Education desiring
that returns should be made promptly of all schools not
already in communication with the State, which, by the
way, is taking paternal action in several directions to
secure a liberal education for all His Majesty’s lieges.
“Pay the schoolmaster well and you will get education”
is the panacea of the moment, and so we get in one
neighbourhood a village schoolmaster with a salary of
£350 and a house, and a singularly able curate, an Oxford
man, with a wife and family and no house who flourishes
on £150 a year! Work, however, is more than wages,
and this exclusive stress on high salaries is a tacit undervaluing
of teachers. Most of us know of fine educational
work being done with little inducement in the way of
either pay or praise. The real drawback to a teacher’s
work and the stumbling-block in the way of a liberal
education is the monotonous drudgery of teaching continually
what no one wants to learn. Before the War,
the President of the British Association complained
that education was uninteresting alike to pupils, teachers
and parents. That is why we are always learning and
never knowing, and why teachers exert themselves to
invent a ‘Play Way,’ why handicrafts, ‘Eurhythmics’
and the like are offered, not as adjuncts to, but as substitutes
for, education, why our Public Schools are
exhorted to change their ways and our lesser private
schools are threatened with extinction.
And with all this the intelligence and devotion, the
enthusiasm and self-sacrificing zeal of teachers generally
is amazing. They realise that education is, not merely
an interest, but a passion; and this is true not only of
the heads and the staffs of great schools but of those
hundreds of little private schools scattered over the
country.
We have all heard of “the two Miss Prettymans, who
kept a girls’ school at Silverbridge. Two more benignant
ladies than the Miss Prettymans never presided over
such an establishment.” As for Miss Annabella Prettyman,
the elder, “it was considered ... that she did
all the thinking, that she knew more than any other
woman in Barsetshire, and that all the Prettyman schemes
for education emanated from her mind. It was said,
too, by those who knew them best, that her sister’s good-nature
was as nothing to hers, that she was the most
charitable, the most loving, the most conscientious of
schoolmistresses.” To be sure Miss Ann, the younger
sister, knew more about Roman History and Roman Law
than about current history and English Law, but what
would you have?
Here was a type of school with which Trollope was
familiar generations ago, and perhaps it would not be hard
to find such another school in every ‘Silverbridge’ of
to-day. To-day, however, we are uneasy, and in our
unrest produce “Joan and Peter” types of education;
that is, small schools indulge in freaks and great schools
with much reason to believe in themselves are aware of
a hitch somewhere, for they fail to turn out many boys
or girls who have intellectual interests, or have that
flexibility of mind which Matthew Arnold tells us their
Academy gives to our neighbours across the Channel.
There is that bugbear of ‘Pelmanism’ urging a charge
of inadequacy against our methods; there is always
some new book by a man who brings railing accusations
against his particular school; and here is a tempered
protest from Colonel Repington which is telling:—
“When I look back upon Eton schooling I regard it with mixed
feelings, for I loved my five years at Eton, gloried in its beauties
and traditions, and was in upper division when I left. But all
the same I was conscious that Eton was not teaching me the
things that I wanted to know, and was trying to teach me things
that revolted me, particularly mathematics and classics. I
wanted to learn history, geography, modern languages, literature,
science, and political economy, and I had a very poor chance
at Eton of obtaining anything but a smattering of any one of
them. I do not agree that we learnt nothing or were lazy. We
worked very hard, but at what, to my mind, were useless things,
and, with my feet planted firmly in the ground, I resisted in a
mulish way all attempts to teach me dead languages and higher
mathematics. I believe that I was right. Classics have left
nothing with me but some ideas that I could have learnt better
from a crib.”
Probably the writer is mistaken as to what he owes to
Eton. Without those five years he might not have
become the authority on the theory and practice of war
he is admitted to be. Who knows how much ‘Cæsar’
may have influenced him as a small boy! No doubt
Public Schools have many defects but they also have
the knack of turning out men who do the work of the
world. We know about the ‘playing fields,’ but perhaps
when all is said it is the tincture of the classics
that every public schoolboy gets which makes him ‘to
differ.’ Nevertheless such protests as ‘Eton was not
teaching me the things I wanted to know’ deserve
consideration.
It is easy to condemn the schools, but the fact is, a
human being is born with a desire to know much about
an enormous number of subjects. How is the school
time table to get them all in or an adequate treatment
of any one of them? Then, boys (and girls too) offer
a resisting medium of extraordinary density. Every boy
‘resists in a mulish way’ attempts to teach him, not
only dead languages and higher mathematics, but literature
and science and every subject the master labours
at; with the average boy a gallon of teaching produces
scarce a gill of learning, and what is the master to do?
It is something to know, however, that behind all this
‘mulishness’ there is avidity for knowledge, not so much
for the right sort (every sort is the right sort), but put
in the right way, and we cannot say that every way is
the right way.
I put before the reader what we (of the P.N.E.U.)
have done towards the solution of this educational
problem with sincere diffidence, but also with courage,
because I know that no persons are more open to
conviction on reasonable grounds than are many distinguished
Headmasters and Mistresses; may they, if
convinced, have the courage of their convictions!
So little is known about the behaviour of mind that
it is open to anyone to make discoveries in this terra
incognita. I speak, not of psychology, of which we hear
a great deal and know very little, but of mind itself,
whose ways are subtle and evasive; nevertheless that
education only is valid which has mind for its objective.
The initial difficulty is the enormous field of knowledge
to which a child ought to be introduced in right of his
human nature and of those “first born affinities” which
he lives to make good. First and chiefest is the knowledge
of God, to be got at most directly through the Bible;
then comes the knowledge of man, to be got through
history, literature, art, civics, ethics, biography, the
drama, and languages; and lastly, so much knowledge
of the universe as shall explain to some extent the phenomena
we are familiar with and give a naming acquaintance
at any rate with birds and flowers, stars and stones; nor
can this knowledge of the universe be carried far in any
direction without the ordering of mathematics. The
programme is immense and school life is limited. What
we may call the ‘Academic’ solution of the problem
is,—teach a boy to know one thing thoroughly, say,
Greek or Chemistry or Mathematics, and you give him
the key to all knowledge. Therefore, we are told, it is
not what you know that matters, but how you learn it;
and a grammar grind, a mathematics grind or a laboratory
‘stunt,’ with a few odd matters thrown in, is supposed
to answer all the purposes of education. The plan
answers fairly well with the dozen best boys or girls in
any school, because these are so keen and intelligent
that they forage for themselves in various directions;
but it does not answer with the average pupil, and he is
coming in for his share of public attention. Shortly we
shall have a new rule,—every school must educate every
scholar in the three sorts of knowledge proper to him
as a human being. What is knowledge? some one will
say, and there is no pat, neatly-framed answer to be
given; only this we can assert,—Knowledge is that which
we know; and the learner knows only by a definite act
of knowing which he performs for himself. But appalling
incuria blocks the way. Boys and girls do not want to
know; therefore they do not know; and their future
intellectual requirements will be satisfied by bridge at
night and golf by day.
It has come to us of the Parents’ Union School to discover
great avidity for knowledge in children of all ages
and of every class, together with an equally remarkable
power of attention, retention, and intellectual reaction
upon the pabulum consumed. The power which comes
into play in the first place is, of course, attention, and
every child of any age, even the so-called ‘backward’
child seems to have unlimited power of attention which
acts without mark, prize, place, praise or blame. This
fact clearly recognised opens great possibilities to the
teacher; though his first impulse be to deny statements
which seem to him sweeping and absurd. But the
education of the future will probably offer us intellectual
assets in human nature as surprising as the ethical values
exhibited by the War.
We have not attained but I think we are on the way to
attainment. After over a quarter of a century of experiment
on a wide scale and consequent research, we have
discovered what children are able to know and desire to
know; what their minds will act upon in the ways of
judgment and imagination; what they are incapable of
knowing; and under what conditions knowledge must
be offered to them. We do not want a ‘play-way,’ nor
need we substitute arts and crafts or eurhythmics or even
‘rugger’ and the swimming bath, as things that boys
take to, whereas learning goes against the grain. Physical
and mechanical training are necessary for the up-bringing
of the young, but let us regard them for the moment
as training rather than education,—which ought to
concern itself with things of the mind. Education as we
know it is admirably designed to ‘develop the faculties’;
but if “All that’s an exploded idee,” if there be no
faculties to develop, but only mind,—alert, self-active,
discriminating, logical, capable alike of great flights and
of minute processes—we must necessarily alter our educational
tactics. Mind is benefitted by occasional gymnastics
just as is ‘Brother Body,’ but cannot subsist on
these any more than ‘Body’ can live on Swedish drill.
As I have said, knowledge, that is, roughly, ideas
clothed upon with facts, is the proper pabulum for mind.
This food a child requires in large quantities and in great
variety. The wide syllabus I have in view is intended
in every point to meet some particular demand of the
mind, and the curious thing is that in a syllabus embracing
a score of subjects the young learner is quite unconfused,
makes no howlers, and never mixes, say, a fact of English
with a fact of French history.
Again, we have made a rather strange discovery,—that
the mind refuses to know anything except what reaches
it in more or less literary form. It is not surprising that
this should be true of children and persons accustomed
to a literary atmosphere but that it should be so of
ignorant children of the slums points to a curious fact
in the behaviour of mind. Persons can ‘get up’ the
driest of pulverised text-books and enough mathematics
for some public examination; but these attainments do
not appear to touch the region of mind. When we get a
young Pascal who enters voluntarily and eagerly into the
study of mathematics he finds himself in a region of high
thinking and self-existent law of the very nature of
poetry; minds of this calibre assert themselves; but this
is a gift and does not come of plodding. For the general
run of scholars probably the “Association of Head
Mistresses” are right and a less exacting standard should
be set for public examinations.
Of Natural Science, too, we have to learn that the way
into the secrets of nature is not through the barbed wire
entanglements of science as she is taught but through
field work or other immediate channel, illustrated and
illuminated by books of literary value.
The French Academy was founded to advance Science
and Art, a fact which may account for the charming
lucidity and the exquisite prose of many French books
on scientific subjects. The mind is a crucible which brings
enormous power to act on what is put into it but has no
power to distil from sand and sawdust the pure essence
of ideas. So much for the manner of food which that
organism (if I may be allowed the figure) called the mind
requires for its daily subsistence. How various this
sustenance must be I have already indicated and we
remember how urgently Dr. Arnold insisted on ‘very
various reading’ in the three parts of knowledge, knowledge
of God, of man, and of the universe.
But the mind was a deceiver ever. Every teacher
knows how a class will occupy itself diligently by the
hour and accomplish nothing, even though the boys
think they have been reading. We all know how ill we
could stand an examination on the daily papers over
which we pore. Details fail us, we can say,—“Did you
see such and such an article?” but are not able to outline
its contents. We try to remedy this vagueness in children
by making them take down, and get up, notes of a given
lesson: but we accomplish little. The mind appears
to have an outer court into which matter can be taken
and again expelled without ever having entered the inner
place where personality dwells. Here we have the secret
of learning by rote, a purely mechanical exercise of
which no satisfactory account has been given, but which
leaves the patient, or pupil, unaffected. Most teachers
know the dreariness of piles of exercises into which no
stray note of personality has escaped. Now there is a
natural provision against this mere skimming of the
ground by the educational plough. Give children the
sort of knowledge that they are fitted to assimilate, served
in a literary medium, and they will pay great attention.
What next? A clever questionnaire? Questions, as
Dr. Johnson told us, are an intrusion and a bore; but
here we have a word of ancient wisdom for our guidance;
“The mind can know nothing except what it can express
in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind
to itself.” Observe, not a question put by an outsider,
but, put by the mind to itself. We all know the trick of
it. If we want to tell the substance of a conversation,
a sermon, a lecture, we ‘go over it in our minds’ first
and the mind puts its question to itself, the same question
over and over again, no more than,—What next?—and
lo, we have it, the whole thing complete! We remember
how one of Burke’s pamphlets, by no means light affairs,
was told almost verbatim at a College supper. We admire
such a feat and think it quite out of our reach but it is
the sort of thing that any boy or girl of fifteen could do
if allowed to read the pamphlet only once; a second
reading would be fatal because no one can give full attention
to that which he has heard before and expects to
hear again. Attention will go halt all its days if we
accustom it to the crutch. We as teachers offend deeply
in this matter. We think that we shall be heard for our
much speaking and we repeat and enforce, explain and
illustrate, not altogether because we love the sound of
our own voices, but because we depreciate knowledge,
we depreciate children, and we do not understand that
the mind and knowledge are as the two members of a
ball and socket joint, each of them irrelevant without the
other. ‘Education’ will have turned over a new leaf
once we realise that knowledge is to the mind as food is
to the body, without which the one faints and flags and
eventually perishes as surely as does the other.
The way to bring this panacæa into use is exceedingly
simple. Let the child (up to any age while he is an infant
in the eye of the law) tell what he has read in whole or in
part on the instant, and again, in an examination paper
months later. ‘Mere verbal memory,’ some reader will
say, and there is no answer to be given but that which
one must give to oneself. Let the objector read an essay
of Lamb’s, say, or of Matthew Arnold’s, Lycidas or the
‘raven’ scene in Barnaby Rudge and then put himself
to sleep or wile away an anxious or a dull hour by telling
to himself what he has read. The result will be disappointing;
he will have forgotten this and that turn
of thought, link in the chain of argument, but he will
know the whole thing in a surprising way; the incidents,
the figures, the delicate play of thought in the author
will be brought out in his mind like the figures in the
low relief which the sculptor produces from his block.
He finds he has taken in ‘mind stuff’ which will come
into use in a thousand ways perhaps as long as he lives.
Here we get the mind forces which must act continuously
in education,—attention, assimilation, narration,
retention, reproduction. But what of reason, judgment,
imagination, discrimination, all the corps of ‘faculties’
in whose behoof the teacher has hitherto laboured?
These take care of themselves and play as naturally and
involuntarily upon the knowledge we receive with attention
and fix by narration as do the digestive organs upon
duly masticated food-stuff for the body. We must feed
the mind as the body fitly and freely; and the less we
meddle with the digestive processes in the one as in the
other the more healthy the life we shall sustain. It is
an infinitely great thing, that mind of man, present in
completeness and power in even the dullest of our pupils;
even of him it may be said,—
“Darkness may bound his Eyes, not his Imagination. In
his Bed he may lie, like Pompey and his Sons, in all quarters
of the Earth, may speculate the Universe, and enjoy the whole
World in the Hermitage of Himself.”
We are paying in our education of to-day for the wave
of materialism that spread over the country a hundred
years ago. People do not take the trouble to be definitely
materialistic now, but our educational thought has
received a trend which carries us whither we would not.
Any apostle of a new method is welcome to us. We have
ceased to believe in mind, and though we would not say
in so many words that “the brain secretes thought as the
liver secretes bile,” yet the physical brain rather than the
spiritual mind is our objective in education; therefore,
“things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” and we have
come to believe that children are inaccessible to ideas or
any knowledge.
The message for our age is, Believe in mind, and let
education go straight as a bolt to the mind of the pupil.
The use of books is a necessary corollary, because no one
is arrogant enough to believe he can teach every subject
in a full curriculum with the original thought and exact
knowledge shown by the man who has written a book
on perhaps his life-study. But the teacher is not moved
by arrogance but by a desire to be serviceable. He
believes that children cannot understand well-written
books and that he must make of himself a bridge between
the pupil and the real teacher, the man who has written
the book.
Now we have proved that children, even children of
the slums, are able to understand any book suitable for
their age: that is, children of eight or nine will grasp
a chapter in Pilgrim’s Progress at a single reading;
children of fourteen, one of Lamb’s Essays or a chapter
in Eöthen, boys and girls of seventeen will ‘tell’ Lycidas.
Given a book of literary quality suitable to their age
and children will know how to deal with it without elucidation.
Of course they will not be able to answer questions
because questions are an impertinence which we all resent,
but they will tell you the whole thing with little touches
of individual personality in the narrative. Perhaps this
is the key to the enormous difficulty of humanistic teaching
in English. We are no longer overpowered by the mass
of the ‘humanities’ confronted with the slow process of
getting a child to take in anything at all of the author
he is reading. The slow process is an invention of our
own. Let the boy read and he knows, that is, if he must
tell again what he has read.
This, of telling again, sounds very simple but it is really
a magical creative process by means of which the narrator
sees what he has conceived, so definite and so impressive
is the act of narrating that which has been read only
once. I dwell on the single reading because, let me
repeat, it is impossible to fix attention on that which
we have heard before and know we shall hear again.
Treat children in this reasonable way, mind to mind;
not so much the mind of the teacher to that of the child,—that
would be to exercise undue influence—but the minds
of a score of thinkers who meet the children, mind to
mind, in their several books, the teacher performing the
graceful office of presenting the one enthusiastic mind to
the other. In this way children cover an incredible
amount of ground in the time at their disposal.
Perhaps there is no better way of measuring a person
of liberal education than by the number of substantives
he is able to use with familiarity and discrimination.
We remember how Scott tried a score of openings with
the man on the coach and got no further until he hit
upon ‘bent leather’; then the talk went merrily for the
man was a saddler. We have all had such experiences
and know to our shame that we ourselves have victimised
interlocutors who have not been able to find our particular
‘bent leather.’ Now, this is a matter for teachers to
consider. There are a thousand subjects on which we
should have definite knowledge and be able to speak
with intelligence; and, indeed, do we not set ‘general
knowledge’ papers, with the result that boys and girls
are ‘out’ for scrappy information and provide material
for comic paragraphs? There is no remedy for this state
of things but a great deal of consecutive reading from very
various books, all of some literary value; and this we find
can be accomplished readily in school hours because one
reading is sufficient; nor should there be any revision
for the distant examination. Here is an uncorrected
list of 200 names, used with ease and fitness in an examination
on one term’s work by a child of eleven in Form II.
Abinadab, Athenian, Anne Boleyn, Act of Uniformity, Act
of Supremacy, America, Austria, Alcibiades, Athens, Auckland,
Australia, Alexandria, Alhambra.
Bible, Bishop of Rochester, Baron, Bean-shoots, Bluff, Bowen
Falls, Bishoprics, Blind Bay, Burano.
Currants, Cupid, Catholic, Court of High Commission, Cranmer,
Charles V, Colonies, Convent, Claude, Calais, Cook Strait, Canterbury
Plain, Christchurch, Cathedral, Canals, Caliph of Egypt,
Court of the Myrtles, Columbus, Cordova.
David, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Guise, Dunedin, Doge’s
Palace.
England, Emperor, Empire, Egmont (Count), English Settlement.
Flour, Fruits, French, Francis I, Francis of Guise, Ferdinand,
Foveau Strait, Fuchsias, Fiords, Ferns.
Greek, Germany, Gondolas, “Gates of the Damsels,” Gondoliers,
Granada, Gate of Justice, Gypsies.
Henry VIII, History, Hooper, Henry II, Hungary, Haeckel.
Israel, Italian (language), Italy, Infusoria.
Jesse, Jonathan, Joseph, John, Jerusalem, James, Jane
Seymour.
King of Denmark, King of Scotland, Kiwi.
“Love-in-idleness,” Lord Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, Lord
Robert Dudley, Lime, Lyttleton, N.Z., Lake Tango.
Mary (The Virgin), More (Sir Thomas), Music, Martyr’s
Memorial, Milan, Metz, Monastery, Mary, Queen of Scots, Mediterranean,
Microscope, Messina, Middle Island, Mount Egmont,
Mount Cook, Milford Sound, Museum, Moa, Maoris, Mussulman,
Moorish King.
Naomi, Netherlands, Nice, New Zealand, North Island, Napier,
Nelson.
Oberon, Oxford, Orion.
Pharisees, Plants, Parliament, Puck, Pope, Protestant, Poetry,
Philosophy, “Paix des Dames,” Philip II, Paris, Planets, “Pink
Terraces,” Piazetta, Philip of Burgundy.
Ruth, Robin Goodfellow, Ridley, Reformation, Radiolaria,
Rotomaliana (Lake), Rea.
Saul, Samuel, Simeon, Simon Peter, Sunshine, Sugar-cane,
Spices, Sultan, Spain, St. Quentin, Socrates, Stars, Sycamore,
Seed-ball, Stewart Island, Seaports, Southern Alps, Scotch
Settlement, St. Mark, St. Theodore, St. Maria Formosa (Church),
Sierra Navada.
Wheat, Wiltshire, William Cecil, Walsingham, Winged Seed,
Wellington, Waikato.
Zaccharias, Zebedee.
The fitness and simplicity with which these substantives
are employed is evidenced in the complete sets of
papers that follow.[46]
Supposing we have succeeded in shifting a conscientious
and intelligent teacher from one mental position to
another, suppose that he give up the notion of developing
‘faculties’ because he perceives that mind is complete
and sufficient and wants nothing but its proper pabulum;
that, again, he yield his place as the medium of all knowledge
because his boys are qualified to deal with knowledge
at first hand from the right books; suppose he scrap all
the text-books and compendiums he has in use, perceiving
that only that curious outsider, the verbal memory, and
not the mind, will consent to deal with these dry-as-dust
compilations; suppose he concede that much knowledge
of various sorts and therefore a wide curriculum is necessary
for the production of an intelligent and magnanimous
citizen; supposing he has proved that any boy can face
such a curriculum because all boys have immense power
of attention and are able to know their work after a single
reading,—surely he has still one or two strongholds that
have not been attacked! What he aims at, he will tell
you, is, not to open avenues of approach to the subjects
about which intelligent citizens should know something,
but to give pretty thorough knowledge in two or three
directions and to turn out straight Englishmen; that is,
he looks upon school as a nursery for the formation of
character rather than for the acquisition of knowledge.
As for the one or two subjects, practically, classics and
mathematics, I have nothing to say; those subjects are
of real value and also under existing regulations pretty
high attainments in them are necessary as a preliminary
to professional advancement. It is possible that when
a boy has the habit of covering the ground rapidly
he may get more into the given ‘period’ and leave
a margin for the wider range of subjects proper
to a liberal education. Experiments in this direction
are being tried in one of our great Grammar Schools,
and how important such experiments are to us as a democracy,
I need not be at pains to show. There is every
promise that the ‘masses’ will learn to read in their
schools in such wise as to produce in a terminal examination
as considerable a list of names as those on the preceding
page. If the masses know ‘Sancho Panza,’
Elsinore, ‘Excalibur,’ ‘Rosinante,’ ‘Mrs. Jellaby,’
redstart, ‘Bevis,’ bogbean,—the classes must know
these things too with easy intimacy. If the one class
is familiar with the pictures of the Van Eycks, with
‘Comus,’ ‘Duessa,’ ‘Baron of Bradwardine,’ the other
class must know them too, and be able to use the knowledge
with such effect as does the ‘Honourable Member’
when he quotes a familiar tag from Horace. He touches
a spring to which all hearts rise, because allusions to what
we know are like the light on ‘old familiar faces.’ What
we want is a common basis of thought, such a ground work
as we get from having read the same books, grown familiar
with the same pictures, the same musical compositions,
the same interests; when we have such a fundamental
basis, we shall be able to speak to each other whether in
public speaking or common talk; we shall “all hear
... in our own tongue the wonderful works of God”
because we have learned a common speech through those
who in their books have lived to educate the race. And
how persuasively shall we speak to those who know, and
therefore do not present the dead front of opposition—the
natural resource of ignorance!
A democratic education must have new features.
We must all be able to ‘take the front’ of men and
women by speaking of that which they have known and
felt and already found joy in. So shall we cease to present
motives of self interest and personal advantage as incentives
to public action; we shall touch springs of poetry,
of heroism, to which all natures have the habit of rising;
and thus shall we build “Jerusalem in England’s green
and pleasant land.” Towards this, we must have read the
same books, only in English rather than in Latin or Greek,
because the people will probably never have time to attain
proficiency in these; neither, as a matter of fact, has the
average boy at our great schools. If we must still have
an exclusive education to which only the few best in a
school can attain,—and it seems to me that we must,
that this is, in fact, the one thing we have achieved, an
education that has accomplished great results in character
and conduct;—but if we would keep this possession,
we must at the same time broaden its base and narrow
its bounds. We must give wide reading in the lower
forms, reading that everybody has read, and we must
so compress our classical and mathematical work in the
higher Forms that much history and ‘English’ may be
included. I speak without authority but is it not true
that there is overlapping in the passage from Preparatory
to Public School, from one Form to a higher, from the
Sixth to the University? Probably it will be found
possible to give the old training which has produced such
notable results, but to make it an inclusive not an exclusive
education, to take in the books which everyone
should know, the pictures everyone should be familiar
with, the history, the travel, in which we should all be at
home, some understanding of the phenomena which come
before us all. Once we give up the notion that education
is a development of the ‘faculties’ to be accomplished by
the teacher, and realize that it is on the contrary an appropriation
of wide knowledge which the pupil must get for
himself, there is some fear that the old exclusive education
must go by the board; but this would be a national calamity.
We must keep that to which we have attained and add
to it the wide reading of a liberal education. The careers
of ‘Joan’ and ‘Peter,’ as depicted by Mr. Wells are
instructive. Peter is not entered for a recognised Public
School for his guardian had many things against such
schools, but games are his chief concern. Later we find
the two at College, and of Joan it is said, “No religion has
convinced her of a purpose in her life, neither Highmorton
nor Cambridge has suggested any mundane devotion to
her nor pointed her ambitions to a career. The only
career these feminine schools and Colleges recognized was
a career of academic success and teaching.” The implicit
charge against the schools is that they try each in its own
way to find a substitute for the saving grace of knowledge.
Academic success and knowledge are not the
same thing and many excellent schools fail to give their
pupils delight in the latter for its own sake or to bring
them in touch with the sort of knowledge that influences
character and conduct. The slow, imperceptible, sinking-in
of high ideals is the gain that a good school should yield
its pupils.
We have, if not a higher, yet another standard which
it may be interesting to consider. We offer children
knowledge for its own sake and our pupils discover that
‘studies serve for delight.’ We do not give our best attention
to brilliant children, it is not necessary; these work
well on their own account and so do the average and even
the dull pupils. Historical characters become real to
them and a fairly wide historical field comes under their
purview; they do not grow up in crass ignorance of the
history of foreign countries; they understand, for
example, the India of to-day the better because they have
some slight intimacy with Akbar as a contemporary of
Elizabeth. They take to themselves a lesson from the
youthful presumption of ‘Phaëton’; ‘Midas’ and
‘Circe,’ Xerxes and Pericles enrich the background of
their thoughts. The several Forms get through a great
deal of reading because we have discovered that a single
reading suffices to secure a clear knowledge (as far as it
goes) of a subject, given the right book. Therefore, many
books are necessary, and each is read consecutively so
that the knowledge acquired is not scrappy and insecure.
I know that teachers enjoy the work set term by term
fully as much as do the children and that a schoolroom
life in which there is no monotony, no dulness, little or
no idleness or inattention, does away with the necessity
to make games the paramount interest of the school—to
make them indeed a stem necessity rather than a
joyous relaxation.
The introduction of the methods I advocate has a
curious effect on a whole family. The old nurse and the
gardener are told of the adventures of ‘Waverley.’
“A. B. has named a moss her father picked on the tip-top
of Ben Lawers. It is very rare and only grows on Ben
Lawers and one other mountain. She is so pleased,”
and so, no doubt, is her father! The whole household
thinks of and figures to itself great things, for nothing
is so catching as knowledge and that fine temper of mind
that knowledge brings with it. Children so taught are
delightful companions because they have large interests
and worthy thoughts; they have much to talk about
and such casual talk benefits society. The fine sense,
like an atmosphere, of things worth knowing and worth
living for, this it is which produces magnanimous
citizens, and we feel that Milton was right in
claiming magnanimity as the proper outcome of education.
When we compare the large number of books, of historical
and literary personages, the range of natural
phenomena, with which children brought up on these
lines are acquainted, with the sterile syllabus, not very
well mastered, which is the schoolboy’s normal fare, we
find matter for reflection. Yet I suppose that in few
things is the general moral and intellectual progress
evidenced more than in the culture common among the
teachers of secondary schools. Every Head knows how
to draw up the best possible syllabus and to secure good
work, if upon narrow lines, but we (of the P.N.E.U.)
work at an advantage when, as I have said, we recognise
one or two natural laws.
I have no doubt that some of my readers are interested
in the work we are doing in Elementary schools,—a work
the more astonishing because children who have little
vocabulary to begin with, no trace of literary background,
show themselves able to hear or read a work of literary
value and after a single reading to narrate pages with
spirit and accuracy, not hedging at the longest names
nor muddling complicated statements. This was a
revelation to us, and it signifies that a literary education
is open to all, not after tedious and laborious preparation,
but immediately. The people wait only for the
right books to be put into their hands and the right
method to be employed.
Let me repeat that we live in times critical for everybody,
but eminently critical for teachers, because it rests
with them whether personal or general good shall be
aimed at, whether education shall be merely a means
of getting on, or a means of general progress towards
high thinking and plain living, and therefore an instrument
of the greatest national good.
Let me beg that Heads of schools, so far in sympathy
with me that they perceive we are at the parting of the
ways, will consider a method which brings promise of
relief.
We are in a condition, for example, to answer the
questions to be considered by the Departmental Committee
on English:—
“Can history and literature be brought into closer relations with
the school curriculum than is the case at present? How much
grammar is necessary? Could not oral composition and drama
and debate, do something to cure our national aphasia? How
can the preparatory schools improve their English teaching?
How can the school essay be redeemed from barrenness? How
can examinations be made a test of English without destroying
the love of literature?”
These questions might have been framed with a view to
bring out the attainments of the Parents’ Union School.
History, European as well as English, runs in harness with
literature. Some Syntax is necessary and a good deal
of what may be called historical Grammar, but, not
in order to teach the art of correct writing and speaking;
this is a native art, and the beautiful consecutive
and eloquent speech of young scholars in narrating what
they have read is a thing to be listened to not without
envy. As to aphasia, to quote a Director of Education
on this subject,—“Conversational readiness becomes
a characteristic. A quarter of a century of these methods
with all the children of England and the strong silent
Englishman should be a rare bird!” A schoolmaster
remarks that his big boys are now eager to speak at
some length—a thing new in his experience. Consider
what an asset this should be to a country whose safety
will depend more and more upon the power in the middle
classes of clear and conclusive speech. Oral composition
is the habit of the school from the age of six to
eighteen. “Children of ten who read Shakespeare” is
the heading of an article in a local newspaper which
sent a reporter to investigate the P.N.E.U. method at
work in a school as the result of an article in the Nineteenth
Century and After written by the Headmaster. As
for preparatory schools, we can do no more than offer
them a method the results of which in teaching English
are rather surprising. The final question as to how
examinations may be made a source of intellectual
profit is I think sufficiently answered in the P.U.S.
children’s examination papers.
We do not invite Heads of schools to take up work
lightly, which implies a sound knowledge of certain
principles and as faithful a practice. The easy tolerance
which holds smilingly that everything is as good as
everything else, that one educational doctrine is as good
as another, that, in fact, a mixture of all such doctrines
gives pretty safe results,—this sort of complacent attitude
produces lukewarm effort and disappointing progress.
I feel strongly that to attempt to work this method
without a firm adherence to the few principles laid down
would be not only idle but disastrous. “Oh, we could
do anything with books like those,” said a master; he
tried the books and failed conspicuously because he
ignored the principles. We teachers are really modest
and diffident and are not prepared to say that we are
more capable of handling a subject than is a carefully
chosen author who writes especially upon that subject.
“Yes, but,” says a young and able teacher, “we know
better how to reach the minds of children than does the
most eloquent author speaking through the dull pages
of a book.” This is a contention of which we have
finally disposed. We have shown that the mass of knowledge,
evoking vivid imagination and sound judgment,
acquired in a term from the proper books, is many times
as great, many times more thoroughly visualised by the
scholars, than had they waited upon the words of the
most able and effective teacher. This is why we insist
upon the use of books. It is not that teachers are not
eminently capable but because information does not
become knowledge unless a child perform the ‘act of
knowing’ without the intervention of another personality.
Heads of schools are a generous folk and perhaps they
have some reason to think parents are niggardly, but the
provision of the necessary books by the parents is a
sine quâ non. It is our part to see to it that books take
root in the homes of our scholars and we must make
parents understand that it is impossible to give a liberal
education to children who have not a due provision of
very various books. Moreover, it is impossible to teach
children to spell when they do not read for themselves;
we hear complaints of the difficulties of spelling, of the
necessity to do violence to the language which is dear
to us all in order to make ‘spelling made easy’; but in
thousands of cases that come before us we find that
children who use their books for themselves spell well
because they visualise the words they read. Those who
merely listen to their teacher have no guide (in English
at any rate) to the spelling of the words they hear. We
are, perhaps, opposed to oral lessons or lectures except
by way of occasional review or introduction. For actual
education children must do their own work out of their
own books under the sympathetic guidance of an intelligent
teacher. We find, I may add, that once parents
recognise how necessary a considerable supply of books
is, they make no difficulty about getting those set in our
programmes. Mr. Fisher says,—“there are books and
text-books,” and the day is at hand when we shall all
see that the latter are of no educational value. We
rarely use text-books in the Parents’ Union School but
confine ourselves as far as possible to works with the
imaginative grasp, the touch of originality, which distinguish
a book from a text-book. Perhaps we should
apologise for ourselves as purveyors not precisely of books
but of lists of books. Every headmaster or mistress is
able to draw up such lists, but think of the labour of
keeping some 170 books in circulation with a number of
changes every term! Here is our excuse for offering
our services to much-occupied teachers. There has been
talk from time to time about interfering with the liberty
of teachers to choose their own books, but one might as
well contend for everyman’s liberty to make his own
boots! It is one of those questions of the division of
labour which belong to our civilisation; and if the
question of liberty be raised at all, why should we not go
further and let the children choose their books? But
we know very well that the liberty we worship is an
elusive goddess and that we do not find it convenient
to do all those things we are at liberty to do.
The terminal examinations are of great importance.
They are not merely and chiefly tests of knowledge but
records which are likely to be permanent. There are
things which every child must know, every child, for the
days have gone by when ‘the education befitting a
gentleman’ was our aim.
The knowledge of God is the principal knowledge, and
no teaching of the Bible which does not further that
knowledge is of religious value. Therefore the children
read, or if they are too young to read for themselves
the teacher reads to them, a passage of varying length
covering an incident or some definite teaching. If there
are remarks to be made about local geography or local
custom, the teacher makes them before the passage has
been read, emphasizing briefly but reverently any
spiritual or moral truth; the children narrate what has
been read after the reading; they do this with curious
accuracy and yet with some originality, conveying the
spiritual teaching which the teacher has indicated. Now
this is no parrot-exercise, but is the result of such an
assimilation of the passage that it has become a part of
the young scholar. It is only by trying the method
oneself on such an incident, for example, as the visit of
Nicodemus or the talk with the woman of Samaria,
that we realise the wonderful clearness with which each
incident is brought out, the fullness of meaning with which
every phrase is invested by such personal effort. This
method of teaching is especially valuable in dealing with
the Gospel history, but none of us who read during the
War the daily lessons appointed by the Church could
fail to be struck by the fact that the law and the prophets
still interpret the ways of God, and we shall not do well
if we tacitly treat the Old Testament as out-of-date as
a guide to life.
Next in order to religious knowledge, history is the
pivot upon which our curriculum turns. History is the
rich pasture of the mind—which increases upon the
knowledge of men and events and, more than all, upon
the sense of nationhood, the proper corrective of the
intolerable individualism of modern education. Let
Amyot tell us,—
“How greatly is the reading of histories to be esteemed, which
is able to furnish us with more examples in one day, than the whole
course of the longest life of any man is able to do. Insomuch
that they which exercise themselves in reading as they ought
to do, although they be but young, become such in respect of
understanding of the affairs of this world, as if they were old
and grayheaded and of long experience. Yea, though they never
have removed out of their houses, yet are they advertised,
informed and satisfied of all things in the world.”
Hence, the great value of the Old Testament,—history
and poetry, the law and the prophets; and perhaps no
one was more sensible of this educative value of the
Scriptures than Goethe, though he was little sensible
of their more spiritual worth. We endeavour to bring
records contemporary with the Bible before children,
using the contents of certain Rooms of the British Museum
as a basis. Episodes of Greek and Roman history come
in, partly for their historical, partly for their distinctly
ethical value. Plutarch is, of course, our great authority.
“(Plutarch) hath written the profitable story of all authors.
For all other were fain to take their matter, as the fortune of
the countries whereof they wrote fell out: But this man being
excellent in wit, learning, and experience, hath chosen the
special acts of the best persons, of the famousest nations of the
world.” (North).
English History is always with us, but only in the earliest
years is it studied alone. It is not, as we know, possible
always to get the ideal book, so we use the best we can
find and supplement with historical essays of literary
value. Literature is hardly a distinct subject, so closely
is it associated with history, whether general or English;
and whether it be contemporary or merely illustrative;
and it is astonishing how much sound learning children
acquire when the thought of an age is made to synchronise
with its political and social developments. A point
which I should like to bring before the reader is the
peculiar part which poetry plays in making us aware of
this thought of the ages, including our own. Every age,
every epoch, has its poetic aspect, its quintessence, as it
were, and happy the people who have a Shakespeare, a
Dante, a Milton, a Burns, to gather up and preserve its
meaning as a world possession.
Let me repeat that what is called ‘composition’ is an
inevitable consequence of this free yet exact use of books
and requires no special attention until the pupil is old
enough to take naturally a critical interest in the use of
words. Civics takes place as a separate subject, but it is
so closely bound up with literature and history on the one
hand and with ethics, or, what we call everyday morals,
on the other, that the division of subjects is only nominal.
We have considered in a previous chapter[47] what we do
for children as inhabitants of a world ordered by natural
law. Here we have a contention with some teachers of
science who maintain that a child can only learn what he
discovers for himself de novo. The theory is plausible, but
the practice is disappointingly narrow and inexpansive.
The teacher has got his knowledge through books; why
then are they taboo for the children? Probably the reason
is that text-books of science are dessicated to the last
degree, so the teacher hopes to make up for their dryness
by familiar talk about the Hydra, for example, as a
creature capable of close friendships, about the sea-anemone
as a ‘Granny’ of enormous longevity; that
is, the interest of the subject is made to depend upon side
issues. The French scientists know better; they perceive
that as there is an essence of history which is poetry
so there is an essence of science to be expressed in exquisite
prose. We have a few books of this character in English
and we use them in the P.U.S. in conjunction with field
work and drawing—a great promoter of enthusiasm
for nature.
I have already shown[47] what we do, for example,
in the way of affording children familiar acquaintance
with great music and great pictures. An eminent
art-dealer in London paid us a pretty compliment
when he said,—“Lord help the children!” were
our work to come to an end; and he had reason for he
had just sold to P.U.S. children thousands of little
exquisite reproductions of certain pictures
by Velasquez which were the study of the term; no wonder that a man
who loves art and believes in it should feel that something
worth while was being done. In drawing, the
scholars work very freely in colour from natural figures
and objects and draw scenes visualised in the term’s reading.
We do not teach drawing as a means of self-expression;
the scholars express, not themselves, but
what they can see and what they conceive.
I have already gone into the teaching of languages;
the habit of fixed attention and ready narration which
the P.U.S. pupils acquire should be of value in this
branch of work, and I believe a new era is opening for us
and we English will at last become linguists. At the
House of Education the students narrate in French,[48]—more
readily and copiously than they do in English,—the
courses of lectures in French history and literature
which form part of their work. In German and Italian
they are able to read a scene in a play and ‘tell’ the
scene in character, or a short passage from a narrative.
We rather emphasise Italian, the language is so beautiful
and the literature so rich, and I should like to suggest
that schools should do the same. Latin and Greek we
learn in the usual ways, but we apply the method of
narration to the former.
I must commend any further study of the rationale
of our syllabus to the reader’s own kind consideration;
he will perceive that we have a principle of correlation
in things essential, but no fatiguing practice of it in
detail. But to one more statement, a very daring one,
I beg for favourable attention. The common theory
and practice of education are on trial. It is idle to
‘develop the faculties’ if there be no faculties, but only
mind, which, like Wordsworth’s cloud, moves altogether
when it moves at all. Therefore, those subjects whose
raison d’être is to develop this and the other faculty are
practically out of court and we must seek another basis
for education. Subjects of instruction which would be
valuable if reason, judgment, imagination, had to be
‘developed’ become as meretricious, as much ‘accomplishments,’
as those early Victorian accomplishments
over which we make merry. Education must be in touch
with life. We must learn what we desire to know. Nobody
talks to his friend about ‘stinks,’ about the niceties
of Greek accents, nor, unless the two be mathematicians,
about surds. But, when Jupiter is regnant, how good
to tell and to learn! What a welcome companion is he
who can distinguish between songs that differ in the
vespers of the birds! How grateful the company of the
reader of history who brings forward parallels to episodes
in the great War! We are apt to work for one thing in
the hope that we shall get another and a very different
thing; we don’t. If we work for public examinations,
the questions in which must be of a narrow academic
cast, we get a narrow, accurate, somewhat sterile type
of mind. We reap as we have sown.
The future of England depends largely upon Secondary
schools; let the Heads of these lay out a liberal field of
study and astonishingly fair things will grow in that
garden of mind in which we are invited to sow the seeds
of all knowledge. My bold proposal is that the Heads
of Secondary Schools from the least to the greatest
should adopt a scheme of work following the lines I have
indicated, faute de mieux, that of the Parents’ Union
School, and that they should do this for the nation’s sake.
Mr. Masefield remarks,—
“There can be no great art without great fable. Great art
can only exist where great men brood intensely on something
upon which all men brood a little. Without a popular body
of fable there can be no unselfish art in any country. Shakespeare’s
art was selfish till he turned to the great tales in the
four most popular books of his time, Holinshed, North’s Plutarch,
Cinthio and De Belleforest. Since the newspaper became
powerful, topic has supplanted fable and subject comes to the
artist untrimmed and unlit by the vitality of many minds.”
It is this vitality of many minds that we aim at securing
and entreat educational workers and thinkers to join in
forming a common body of thought which shall make
England great in art no doubt, and also great in life.
This is the way to make great men and not by petty
efforts to form character in this direction or in that. Let
us take it to ourselves that great character comes out of
great thoughts, and that great thought must be initiated
by great thinkers; then we shall have a definite aim in
education. Thinking and not doing is the source of
character.
(Here followed a set of examination answers in each form.
Space forbids their inclusion but specimen sets can be seen at the
P.N.E.U. Office.)
CHAPTER III THE SCOPE OF CONTINUATION SCHOOLS
A hundred years ago, about the close of the Napoleonic
wars, there was such another stirring among the dry
bones as we are aware of to-day. All the world knew
then, as now, that war was the outcome of the wrong
thinking of ignorance, and that education was the
nostrum for minds diseased.
Prussia led the way; not the children but the young
people were the immediate concern of Statesmen, and,
guided by the philosophy of Fichte, and organised under
the statesmanship of Stein, that noble league of youth,
the Tugendbund, came into being. Prussia was miserably
impoverished, but her concern was not with the
arts which should make her rich; her young people
looked to philosophic principles for precept and to
history for example, and, it was well with the land.
Not only in Prussia but throughout western Europe
there was a more or less active intellectual renaissance,
but, whether because the times were not ripe or the
peoples were not worthy, the high ideals of the early
days of the century were superseded by the utilitarian
motive.
When the ‘Continuation School’ movement revived,
envy of the commercial and manufacturing successes of
England actuated the new effort; and already in 1829
a Bavarian statesman had announced that if you would
have the fruit you must sow the seed, that is, manufacturing
success is to be had only at the cost of technical
education.
We all know the result in the great Munich schools
where first-rate organisation and admirable teaching have
produced an appreciable effect upon German industries.
But the best German minds have long been aware that
“an education which has powerful economic interests
behind it is apt to become too narrowly utilitarian in
motive and to lose that ideal element which gives all
education its chief power over character.” As Mr.
Lecky has said concerning morals, “the Utilitarian
theory is profoundly immoral.”
The occasion brought forth the man; we know how
in 1900 Dr. Kirschensteiner chanced to see the announcement
of a prize offered for an essay on the best way of
training youth. He wrote the essay, was crowned by the
Academy of his country, and that essay in pamphlet
form has influenced opinion and directed action throughout
the west: Professors Dewey and Stanley Hall in the
United States, Dr. Armstrong and Sir Philip Magnus at
home, are among its leading exponents.
And what was the note of this new gospel of education?
Practically that same note which had proceeded from
England, France, Switzerland, a century earlier: a
utilitarian education should be universal and compulsory;
child and adolescent should be “saturated with
the spirit of service, provided with the instruments of
effective self-direction.” Behold, Utopia at hand! every
young person fitted, body and soul, for the uses of
society; as for his own uses, what he should be in and
for himself—why, what matter?
It is not that the eminent educationalists I have
referred to would willingly sacrifice the individual youth
to society; on the contrary they would raise him, give
him place and power, give him opportunity; place his
feet on the rungs of that ladder we used to hear about;
but we have all been misled by mistaken views as to the
function of education. We have believed that knowledge
may be derived from sensation, that what we
have seen with our eyes and our hands have handled
affords us the nutriment our souls demand. No doubt
a boy uses his mind to some purpose when he makes,
for example, an ingenious model; and, seeing mind at
work, we run away with the notion that food and work
are synonymous terms; for the body they may be so
in a certain sense, for work brings pay and pay buys
food, but no such indirect transaction is possible to
mind; a mind perpetually at heavy work is a sort
of intellectual navvy, whose food must be proportioned
to his labour. Our great statesmen, Gladstone,
Lord Salisbury and others, knew this, and their
wide and deep reading in other matters than politics
should not occasion surprise.
The War has forced new ideas upon us; we begin,
for instance, to realise the avidity of the adult mind for
instruction; it was startling to read of 1,500 soldier candidates
for twenty vacant places in a certain class. We
begin to see that mind, the mind of all sorts and conditions
of men, requires its rations, wholesome and regularly
served. As things are we shall have to see to it that
everybody gets fed; but our hope is that henceforth we
shall bring up our young people with self-sustaining
minds, as well as self-sustaining bodies, by a due ordering
of the process of education. We hope so to awaken
and direct mind hunger that every man’s mind will look
after itself.
What is the proper food of mind, has already been
discussed but we may assume that education should
make our boys and girls rich towards God (we
remember the fool of the parable who failed because
he was not “rich towards God”), rich towards
society and rich towards themselves. I will not press
my point by urging the moral bankruptcy which has
been exposed to us during recent years as co-existent
with, if not caused by, utilitarian education; for the
catastrophe has been accelerated by the sort of moral
madness of which we too have had our seasons in the
past,—witness our Barnaby Rudge and Peveril of the
Peak episodes; we have indeed been carried off our
feet by a fallacious notion once and again, but our
national insanity has on each occasion been short-lived
because our education hitherto has not taught us to
believe a lie.
We are not worse than others, and if we think well of
ourselves as a nation, why, national pride and personal
modesty do not go ill together; in peace-time we have
bitter things to say of our British working-man, but all
the same he compares favourably with the somewhat
sardonic Latin, the sullen Teuton, whom we all know.
And the better man does the better work. We have
heard much of German efficiency, and perhaps the
German excels in little matters like doors that shut,
blinds that draw, springs that act, things of domestic
utility important in a country with a more extreme
climate than ours; but these are little matters and
perhaps our failing is, not to do our best except on big
occasions; give us a big job or a big war and we show
our mettle.
But probably in all our considerable industries we
excel. German women will purr over the material of our
dresses with “Ach, englisches Tuch!” Well dressed
men are English tailored in English cloths. We buy, or
bought, things “made in Germany” because they were
cheap, but the most costly and most desired goods in
German shops are advertised as “englisch.”
This is a point to be borne in mind in considering the
education of adolescents. We are given to depreciating
ourselves and each other, but in fact we have no lee-way
to make up; as both a manufacturing and commercial
nation we are well in the van and are without inducement
to sell the people’s birthright for a mess of pottage.
Before I come to the point I desire to make, let us
consider whether the problem of Continuation Schools
has been attacked anywhere more successfully than in
those countries of Middle Europe. Some of them,
Germany especially, have done all that is to be done in
response to the cry for efficiency with its resultant big
returns and high wages; but from the beginning of the
Continuation School movement in, say, 1806, the four
north-western countries have worked towards different
ends. In Denmark they have, not Continuation Schools,
but People’s High Schools, a pleasanter name for possibly
a pleasanter thing.
Denmark, like Germany, was, as we know, devastated
by the Napoleonic wars, but had been vitalised by the
liberation of its serfs in 1788, and this prepared the
ground for Grundtvig, that poet, historian and enthusiast,
who became the “Father of the People’s High Schools.”
“Where there is most life, there is the victory,” said
he, and the immediate way to an access of life he saw
in “A Danish High School accessible to young people
all over the land,” a school which should inspire “admiration
for what is great, love for what is beautiful, faithfulness
and affection, peace and unity, innocent cheerfulness,
pleasure and mirth.” Observe, there is no word
of ‘efficiency’ in this poet’s dream, but he did assure
Charles VIII that with such a school, “a well of healing
in the land,” he might afford to smile at the newspapers,
whether they chose to praise or blame. The King gave
heed, begged for a further development of his plans than
was afforded in the original pamphlet, and by 1845 the
schools he had dreamed of began to be.
We cannot follow the development of these Danish
People’s Schools, but in 1903-4 their pupils numbered
over three thousand men and rather more women, and
wise men cherished the hope that “the new Danish
school for youth is to have the good fortune to blend
all classes of the people into one.”
All of these High Schools bear the mark of the genius
of their “Father”—whose pupils have known how to
sum up his teaching in three sayings,—“Spirit is might;
Spirit reveals itself in spirit; Spirit works only in freedom.”
We are able to trace the source of these sayings,
and indeed this movement seems to have been from
the first profoundly Christian—Christian in no narrow
sense, but sharing the wide liberality of that Allegoria
filosofica della Religione Cattolica conceived by the ‘Angelic
Doctor’ and pictured by Simone Memmi on the walls of
the Spanish chapel in Santa Maria Novella (Florence): the
several teachers commemorated were themselves illustrious
pagans but not therefore the less under Divine teaching.
Here, it seems to me, is an educational credo worth
reviving in these utilitarian days, and some such creed
seems to have been Grundtvig’s, though probably
independently conceived. His great hope is that “above
all, some acquaintance with popular literature, especially
with the poetry and history of one’s own country, will
create a brand new world of readers all over the
land.”
I cannot go into the question of the Agricultural
Schools of which it is said that “the Danish Agricultural
School is the child of the Danish Folkshöjskole, and
must, like this, have Christian faith and national life for
its basis.” In the careless days before the War we could
all testify to the excellence of Danish butter, but did we
consider the “resolution and capacity” with which
Danish peasants passed over from the making of poor
butter in their various small holdings to the “manufacture
in co-operative dairies of butter of an almost
uniform fineness”? This, too, says an eminent Swedish
Professor, is due to the High Schools, for, said he, “Just
as the enrichment of the soil gives the best conditions
for the seeds sown in it, so a well-grounded humanistic
training provides the surest basis for business capacity,
and not the least so in the case of the coming farmers.”[49]
These are weighty words deserving our consideration at
a moment when we, too, are on the eve of a new departure.
The three neighbouring countries watched the experiments
in Denmark with keen interest, and almost simultaneously
People’s High Schools sprang up in all four.
These northern High Schools, necessarily winter
schools, were not open at the time of my visit, but two or
three things casually observed might, I think, be traced
to their influence. For instance, Copenhagen itself, as
compared with Munich, strikes one as a city with a soul.
At the Hague, again, I saw an artisan in his working
clothes shewing pictures in one of the galleries to his
boy of seven who looked earnestly and listened eagerly.
The young people in the great Delft porcelain works
shewed traces of culture and gentleness in countenance
and manner. But nothing struck me more than what
I saw in the general shop of an out of the way village in
Sweden; the villagers were peasants and the one shop
sold cabbages and herrings, cheese and calico; but
across the small-paned window was a shelf closely packed
with volumes in paper covers which had not had time
to get dusty; of course I could not read all the titles,
but among them were translations from French, German
and English. I noticed slim volumes of Scott, Dickens,
Thackeray, Ruskin, Carlyle and the last thing out.
One felt assured that the village was in ‘kingdom come,’
that of a long winter’s evening, in any home, one read
aloud whilst the rest worked, that there was much to
talk about when friends met and lovers walked. (How
sad, by the way, to read that ‘Tommy,’ whom we all
love and revere, is quick to form friendships but that
these do not progress for the friends have nothing to talk
about.) Think of little plays got up, of public readings
given by the villagers themselves; might such things
be with us, the lure of the town would cease to draw our
village men and maids, for the village that can offer a
happy community life, sustained by the people themselves,
is able to hold its people.
Our upper and middle classes, professional and other,
are singularly stable folk, and they are so, not because
of their material but of their intellectual well-being; in
this sense only they are most of them the ‘Haves’ as
compared with the ‘Have-nots.’ The reason is not far
to seek. Are there not agitators abroad whose business
it is to sow seeds of discontent in the gaping minds of the
multitude? The full mind passes on, but that which is
empty seizes on any new notion with avidity, and is hardly
to be blamed for doing so; a hungry mind takes what
it can get, and the baker is apt to be lenient about
prosecuting the starving man who steals a loaf. I do
not hesitate to say that the constantly recurring misery
of our age, ‘Labour Unrest,’ is to be laid at the door,
not of the working man, but of the nation which has not
troubled itself to consider the natural hunger of mind
and the manner of meat such hunger demands.
I have tried to establish that the Kultur offered by the
Munich type of Continuation School has had no good
effect upon morals or manners and no conspicuously good
effect upon manufactures.
That England is under no necessity to follow Germany’s
lead in this matter for Germany allows our superiority
by paying a high price for our goods.
That Denmark and the neighbouring states, on
the contrary, excel in those things in which we fall
short.
That the People’s High Schools of Denmark are
worthier of our imitation than the Continuation Schools
of Germany.
That they are so because character and conduct,
intelligence and initiative, are the outcome of a humanistic
education in which the knowledge of God is put first.
But we cannot take educational prescriptions designed
for another patient; the Grundtvig Schools are for
students ranging from eighteen to twenty-five, not for the
more difficult ages from fourteen to eighteen. Again,
these People’s High Schools are residential. In countries
so largely agricultural it is possible for a great part of the
young adult population to spend the five winter months
year by year at one of these People’s High Schools.
Their case and ours do not go on all fours. Our problem
is the young adolescent in a country largely manufacturing.
Now, we have received our cloth, and not in ungenerous
measure. How shall we cut our coat, that is, how shall
we spend those seven or eight hours a week in which
“Education” is to do her part for the young citizen?
If we take the easiest way, we shall let the boy do what
he is doing for the rest of the week,—work for his employer,
whether directly, by way of increased output,
or indirectly, by way of increased skill. This would be
a betrayal. No employer wishes to take with one hand
what he gives with the other; besides, what employer
doubts the ability of his staff to train his young employees?
Again, the technique of any employment
takes but little time to understand. It is the practice
that is of value, and such practice is—work. Continuation
Schools should not exist for technical instruction;
they are established definitely for the sort of education
of which such instruction forms no part; and will not
the evening hours be free as they are at present for
technical classes, gymnastic clubs, and various forms
of recreative exercise?
This particular gift of time must be dedicated to things
of the mind if we believe that mind too requires its
rations and that to use the mind is by no means the
same thing as to feed it.
With the best will in the world to give boys and girls
something on which to chew the cud, real mind-stuff for
digestion and assimilation, we find that the flood-gates
are opened; an ocean of things good to know overwhelms
us and we have—eight hours a week! We seize
on that blessed word compromise and see two possibilities:
we are in a hurry to make good citizens. Now,
good citizens must have sound opinions about law, duty,
work, wages, what not; so we pour opinions into the
young people from the lips of lecturer or teacher, his
opinions, which they are intended to take as theirs. In
the next place there is so much to be learned that a
selection must needs be made; the teacher makes this
selection and the young people are “poured into like
a bucket,” which, says Carlyle, “is not exhilarating to
any soul.” Some ground is covered; teachers and
Education Authorities are satisfied; and if, when the time
comes, the young people leave school discontented and
uneasy, if their work bore them and their leisure bore
them, if their pleasures are mean and meagre, and if
they become men and women rather eager than otherwise
for the excitement of a strike, that is because the
Continuation, as the Elementary, School will have failed
to find them.
This is the real educational difficulty in schools for
all classes, for pupils of all ages,—the enormous field of
knowledge which it is necessary to cover in order to
live with intelligence and moral insight. Know one thing
well and you have the power to apprehend many things
is the academic solution, which has not worked altogether
badly, but it cannot be stretched to fit our present occasion,—the
“Enlightenment of the Masses.” What we
may call the ‘academic’ doctrine assumes that mind
like body is capable of development in various directions
by means of due exercise. Profounder educational
thought, however, reveals mind to us as of enormous
capacity, self-active, present in everyone and making
but one demand—its proper pabulum. Feed mind
duly and its activities take care of themselves. As the
well-fed workman is fit for all his labours, so the duly
nourished mind knows, thinks, feels, judges with general
righteousness. The good man and magnanimous citizen
is he who has been fed with food convenient for him.
Such a view of education naturally includes religion,
not only “for his God doth instruct him and doth teach
him,” but because we may take knowledge roughly as
of three sorts,—knowledge of God, to be got first-hand
through the sacred writings, knowledge of man, to be
arrived at through history, poetry, tale; through the
customs of cities and nations, civics; through the laws of
self-government, morals. One other great branch of
knowledge remains. Every youth should know something
of the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, the
stars in their courses, the innumerable phenomena that
come under general observation; he should have some
knowledge of physics, though chemistry perhaps should
be reserved for those who have a vocation that way.
Here are we on the verge of that new life for our
country which we all purpose, faced with infinite possibilities
on either hand,—the vast range of knowledge
and the vast educability of mind. Another certainty
presents itself, that we have not time for short cuts:
the training of muscle and sense, however necessary, does
not nourish mind; and, on the other hand, the verbiage
of a lecturer is not assimilated. There is no education
but self-education and only as the young student works
with his own mind is anything effected.
But we are not without hope. An astounding field
has been opened to us; thousands of children in
Council Schools are doing incredible things with freedom
and joy. They have taken in hand their own education
and are greedy of knowledge for its own sake, knowledge
in the three great fields that I have indicated.
The fact is that a great discovery has been vouchsafed
to us, greater, I think, as concerns education, than any
since the invention of the first alphabet. Let us again
refer to Coleridge[50] on the origin of great discoveries.
Coleridge gives no qualification to the minds which
receive these great ideas, they are not described as great
minds, but, he says, they are “previously prepared to
receive them,” that is, the great ideas. If the reader
will forgive me for saying so I think my mind has been
so prepared—by extraordinary incapacity in one direction,
the direction, roughly, of academic attainments,
and by some degree of capacity in other directions, and
it has been gradually borne in upon me that this incapacity
and this capacity are pretty general, and
perhaps afford a key to the problem of education. A
further preparation came to me in unusual opportunities
for testing and understanding the minds of children and
young people. I am anxious to bring this idea of a discovery
before the reader because our methods are so simple
and obvious that people are inclined to take them up
at random and say that extensive reading is a “good
idea which we have all tried more or less” and that free
narration “is a good plan in which there is nothing new.”
It is true that we all read and that narration is as natural
as breathing, its value depending solely upon what is
narrated. What we have perhaps failed to discover
hitherto is the immense hunger for knowledge (curiosity)
existing in everyone and the immeasurable power of attention
with which everyone is endowed; that everyone
likes knowledge best in a literary form: that the knowledge
should be exceedingly various concerning many
things on which the mind of man reflects; but that knowledge
is acquired only by what we may call “the act of
knowing,” which is both encouraged and tested by narration,
and which further requires the later test and record
afforded by examinations. This is nothing new, you will
say, and possibly no natural law in action appears extraordinarily
new; we take flying already as a matter of
course; but though there is nothing surprising in the
action of natural laws, the results are exceedingly surprising,
and to that test we willingly submit these methods.
“All is not for all” was the sad conclusion of that
Danish patriot and prophet. No doubt Grundtvig
thought of the impassable barriers presented by a poor
and mean vocabulary and a field of thought without
literary background. So “all is not for all” he said,
even as a prophet of our own proclaims that a worthy
education is only for the élite. Books are not for the
people, was Grundtvig’s conclusion; wherefore those
young Danes were lectured to by men of enthusiasm
who had their country’s literature and history at their
fingers’ ends and could convey the temper of their own
minds. A great deal was effected, but minds nourished
at the lips of a teacher have not the stability of those
which seek their own meat.
But what if all were for all, if the great hope of Comenius—“All
knowledge for all men”—were in process of taking
shape? This is what we have established in many
thousands of cases, even in those of dull and backward
children, that any person can understand any book
of the right calibre (a question to be determined mainly
by the age of the young reader); that the book must
be in literary form; that children and young persons
require no elucidation of what they read; that their
attention does not flag while so engaged; that they
master a few pages at a single reading so thoroughly
that they can ‘tell it back’ at the time or months later
whether it be the Pilgrim’s Progress or one of Bacon’s
Essays or Shakespeare’s plays; that they throw individuality
into this telling back so that no two tell quite
the same tale; that they learn incidentally to write and
speak with vigour and style and usually to spell well.
Now this art of telling back is Education and is very
enriching. We all practise it, we go over in our minds
the points of a conversation, a lecture, a sermon, an
article, and we are so made that only those ideas and
arguments which we go over are we able to retain. Desultory
reading or hearing is entertaining and refreshing,
but is only educative here and there as our attention is
strongly arrested. Further, we not only retain but
realise, understand, what we thus go over. Each incident
stands out, every phrase acquires new force, each link in
the argument is riveted, in fact we have performed The
Act of Knowing, and that which we have read, or
heard, becomes a part of ourselves, it is assimilated after
the due rejection of waste matter. Like those famous
men of old we have found out “knowledge meet for the
people” and to our surprise it is the best knowledge
conveyed in the best form that they demand. Is it
possible that hitherto we have all been like those other
teachers of the past who were chidden because they had
taken away the key of knowledge, not entering in themselves
and hindering those who would enter in?
To-day we are in this position. We realise that there
is an act of knowing to be performed; that no one can
know without this act, that it must be self-performed,
that it is as agreeable and natural to the average child
or man as singing is to the song thrush, that “to know”
is indeed a natural function. Yet we hear of the incuria
which prevails in most schools, while there before us
are the young consumed with the desire to know, can we
but find out what they want to know and how they
require to be taught.
Humanistic education, whether in English or Latin,
affects conduct powerfully; knowledge of this sort is
very welcome to children and young persons; a good
deal of ground may be covered because a single reading
of a passage suffices; this sort of humanistic work has
been tried with good effect; and if our Continuation
Schools are to be of value they must afford an education
on some such lines.
The Parents’ Union School, originally organised[51] for
the benefit of children educated at home, is worked by
means of programmes followed by examination papers
sent out term by term. When the same work, if not the
whole of it, was taken up by Council Schools,[52] the advantage
of such an organisation was apparent, especially in
that it afforded a common curriculum for children of all
classes. By using this curriculum we were enabled to
see that the slum child in a poor school compares quite
favourably with the child of clever or opulent parents
who had given heed to his education.
Now one of our national difficulties is the fact that
we have no common basis of thought or ground for
reflection. No doubt, by pretty copious reading, links
of common interests might be established, and the
schoolroom might do at least as much for the general
life as does the cricket-pitch. The scheme works practically
without a hitch in Council Schools; this is the
sort of work that the highest class in these Schools, (in
Standard VII), are doing with great success and very
great delight. They read English, French and General
History (three or four volumes), two or three books dealing
with citizenship and morals from various points of view;
Literature, contemporary with the history read (several
works); natural history, physical geography and science
(three or four books); Scripture (chiefly the Bible).
Every term brings a new programme of work, the continuation
usually of books already in reading. Children
in Secondary Schools and in families remain for one
year in Form IV and that work seems adapted to
the status of Continuation Schools for the first year
or two. After that the more advanced programme
(Forms V and VI) might be used in the same way. This
work would appeal to young people as being unlike the
ordinary school grind, and as giving them opportunity
for consecutive speaking and essay writing.
There is probably no better test of a liberal education
than the number of names a person is able to use accurately
and familiarly as occasion requires. We all recollect
a character of Miss Austen’s who had no opinion to offer
as to whether the Bermudas should be described as the
West Indies or not, because she had never called them
anything in her life!
Now, here is an alphabetical (uncorrected) list taken
from the examination papers of a girl of thirteen,
containing 213 proper names, all of them used accurately,
easily and with interest.
Burns (Robert), Bastille, Bombay, Bengal, Burke, Black Hole
of Calcutta, British Museum, Benevolence, Basalt, Butterfly,
Beetles, Blood-vessels, Berber, Blue Nile Baghdad, Burne
Jones.
England, East India Company, Economical Reform, Europe,
Emperor of Austria, Empress of Russia, Emu, Eastern Turkestan,
Egypt.
France, Frederick the Great, Frederick William of Prussia,
Flightless birds, First Cataract, Foraminifera.
Gadarenes, Gizeh, Great Commoner, George III, General
Warrants, Governor General, Grace and Free-will, Greek language,
Generosity, Gulls, Granite, Grubs, Gastric juice, Globules.
Sea of Galilee, ‘Sophia Primrose,’ Surajah Dowlah, Seven
Years’ War, Silesia, Saxony, Secretary, Storks, Sandpipers,
Seedlings.
“The Task,” Treaty of Dresden, Tullus, Trade Unions, Trustees,
Treasurer, Tropical countries.
Ulysses, Ungulata.
Volcanic eruptions, Vermes, Vertebrate, Villi, Ventricles,
Vernæ Cavæ, Vicar of Wakefield, Volscians, Vice President.
Wallace, Walpole, War of Independence, Wilkes, Whitfield,
Wesley, War of the Austrian Succession, Water birds, Wady
Halfa.
Yang-tse-kiang.
Zonga, Zambesi, Zorndorff.
This is ‘Secondary’ work, but supposing the young
people of a Continuation School, who could not read all
the books on the programmes, got some degree of intimacy,
some association, with, say, one hundred such
names in a term, we might believe that they were receiving
a liberal education. This is the sort of work we
hope to see done in Continuation Schools by pupils from
fourteen to sixteen. The young people of the future
between sixteen and eighteen should be prepared to work
in Forms V and VI.
It is not the best children that answer the examination
questions; the general rule is that everybody takes
every question. I have touched only on the more humanistic
subjects as whatever is done in Mathematics,
for instance, the Head of the Continuation School will
no doubt arrange; and indeed so much has been done
in the Elementary School already that probably the keeping
of fictitious account books would be a sufficient exercise
for young people who show some mathematical talent.
No cost whatever is attached to the adoption and continued
working of this method[53] except the cost of books
and of these, young wage-earners would no doubt buy
their own, so that by degrees each would form his little
library of books that he has read, understands and knows
his way about. I should like to quote a few sentences
from Professor Eucken on the education of the people:—
“By education of the people it must not for a moment be
supposed that we mean a special kind of education. We do not
refer to a condensed preparation of our spiritual and intellectual
possessions, suitable for the needs and interests of the great
masses; we are not thinking of a diluted concoction of the real
draught of education which we are so kind and condescending
as to dispense to the majority. No!... There is only one
education common to us all.” “We can all unite in the construction
of a spiritual world over against that of petty human routine.
Thus there is, in truth, a possibility of a truly human education,
and therefore of a true education of the people.”
The Jena Professor sees clearly enough the task
before us all; but he sees, or sets forth, no possible way
of accomplishing it, nor is there any other way than
that which we have set forth that can afford this sort
of liberal education; the electric telegraph was not
discovered twice over.
After all our protests we are in our way utilitarian
for no other study is so remunerative as that of the
‘humanities.’ Let me draw the reader’s attention to one
point. Instability, unrest, among our wage-earners is
the serious danger threatening our social life. Now it
is said that nothing can act but where it is and the class
which acts steadily where it is, at some outpost of empire,
on a home estate, in Parliament, where you will, is the
class educated at Public Schools, that is, men brought
up on the ‘humanities.’ Strong language will be used
about the deadness and decadence of these men although
they do much of our national work. Their defects are
obvious and manifold, but still, as I say, the public work
that is done is, for the most part, done by men whom no
one could describe as progressive. Is there not some
confusion of ideas about this fetish of progress? Do we
not confound progress with movement, action, assuming
that where these are there is necessarily advance?
Whereas much of our activity is like the waves of the
sea, going always and arriving never. What we desire
is the still progress of growth that comes of root striking
downwards and fruit urging upwards. And this progress
in character and conduct is not attained through conditions
of environment or influence but only through the
growth of ideas, received with conscious intellectual
effort.
It will be possible to have only a little of this strong
meat in Continuation Schools, but a little goes a long
way, how far, our Public School men illustrate; for a
careful analysis will bring us to the conclusion that not
Latin and Greek, Games, Athletics, or environment,
but the ‘humanities’ in English alone will bring forth
the stability and efficiency which we desire to see in all
classes of society.
I have said that we have after all a generous allowance
of cloth from which to cut our garment, seven or eight
hours a week. In that time we may get in, page for page,
book for book, as full a complement of the ‘humanities,’
poetry, history, essay, tragedy, comedy, philosophy,
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, as our public
men have imbibed at their schools. To be sure these do
it in the classic tongues while for those there is only plain
English; but however duly we magnify Greek literature
we cannot honestly say that that of England is second
to any the world has yet seen. We can give to the
people the thought of the best minds and we can secure
on their part the conscious intellectual effort, the act of
knowing, which bears fruit in capability, character and
conduct. We cannot offer to the people the grace of
scholarship in the allotted time, but no doubt earnest
souls will find a way to get this surpassing excellence
also; if there be profit in ‘grinding at Grammar’ that
they must forego, too, but the inspiration and delight of
entering into an intellectual world full of associations,
this they should have, a well of healing and fountain of
delight.
Now a common ground of thought is inestimable in
what may be called its cohesive value; and what we
desire to afford to the nation at large is such another
background of thought, sketched in like that of the
Public School man from the books men and women have
read at school, books which made them intimate with
Pitt and Fox, ‘Dick Swiveller,’ ‘Mrs. Quickly,’ with
daffodils and clouds and nightingales as the poets have
seen them, with a thousand promiscuous and seemingly
purposeless scenes and sayings which somehow combine
to serve the purpose of a background throwing the
thoughts and incidents of to-day into clear relief. For
this reason we, like the Public Schools, all read the same
books, with such an intensive single reading that for the
rest of the lives of these young people phrases or allusions
they come across will kindle in their eyes that ‘light
which never was on sea or land.’ We may hope that
Public Schools will presently add this modicum of English
to their classical studies; then the candidate for election
will have something to appeal to other than the desire
to better himself, which is supposed to dominate every
man. By the way, is the paucity of literary or historical
allusions, not in Latin, to be heard in the House
due to the fact that the audience cannot be counted
upon to rise to a reference not included in the well-known
school books? If so, we shall change all that; once
the masses read, the classes must read, too, and the
Peace will be signalised by a new bond of intellectual
life in common.
“There is no more dreadful sight,” says Goethe,
“than ignorance in action,” and is not this the sight
that is at the present time dismaying us all? Demos
is king to-day, and who may dispute his right? But
let us all give him the chance to become that philosopher-king
who according to an ancient dream was to be the
fit ruler, or rulers, of the people. The hopeful sign is
that Demos himself perceives his lack, and clamours for
the humanistic education in which he sees his salvation.
CHAPTER IV THE BASIS OF NATIONAL STRENGTH [54] A LIBERAL EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT — I KNOWLEDGE — II LETTERS, KNOWLEDGE AND VIRTUE — III KNOWLEDGE, REASON, AND REBELLION — IV NEW AND OLD CONCEPTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE — V EDUCATION AND THE FULLNESS OF LIFE — VI KNOWLEDGE IN LITERARY FORM
We have from time to time given some attention to the
failure of our attempts to educate “The Average Boy,”
and it may be useful to look into one or two fundamental
principles upon which this question and others seem
to me to depend. For if our conceptions of education
are heterogeneous and incoherent, naturally, we shall
have a tangle of examination schemes evolved to test
our ill-conceived work.
Educationally, we are in a bad way. We were told
some time ago, in Across the Bridges, of the rapid deterioration
of the bright intelligent responsive schoolboy who
has passed through the sixth and seventh standards.
Why? we ask. Industrial unrest often reveals virtue,
even heroism of a sort, in the working man, but a lamentable
want of knowledge—lack of education; he appears
to have little insight, imagination, or power of reflection.
The tendency in his class is that “dangerous tendency
which we must all do our best to resist” indicated by Mr.
Burns at a public meeting some few years ago; “the
spirit of the horde,” he said, “is being developed; and
whether it is in exhibitions, sports, or legislation, the individual
is becoming less and less important and the mob
more and more so.” And again, “the tendency of the
present day in all modern movements is for great crowds
to be brought together to see other people play; and that
is extending not only to play, but to other fields of life.”
Could the industrial movement of to-day be better diagnosed?
Again we ask, Why? As for those young men
from Public Schools who fail in the Dominions, enough
has been said about them; but those other Public School
men who succeed in a measure at outposts of the Empire
because of the virtue that is in them, do they not fail
sometimes in an equal measure for lack of the insight,
imagination, intelligence, which come of knowledge?
As for the people who stay at home, “educated” men
and women, I write as an old woman who remembers how
in the sixties and seventies “countenance” was much
talked of; “an intelligent countenance,” “a fine countenance,”
“a noble countenance,” were matters of daily
comment. The word has dropped out of use; is it because
the thing signified has dropped out of existence?
Countenance is a manifestation of thought, feeling,
intelligence; and it is none of these, but stolid indifference
combined with physical well-being, that we read in many
faces to-day.
If we have these grounds for discontent, education is
no doubt the culprit at the bar, though there never was,
I suppose, a more heroic and devoted body of teachers
at work. They get for themselves the greater blessing of
those who give; but the children suffer, poor little souls;
“poured into like a bucket,” they receive without stint,
and little comes of it. There is no lack of zeal on the part
of the teaching profession, but there is a tendency amongst
us to depreciate knowledge and to depreciate our scholars.
Now, knowledge is the material of education, as flour is
the material of bread; there are substitutes for knowledge,
no doubt, as there are for flour. Before the era
of free meals I heard of a little girl in East London whose
mother gave her a penny, to buy dinner for herself and
her little sister, when the two set out for school. The
child confided to her teacher that a ha’porth of aniseed
drops “stays your stomach” more than a halfpenny
bun. Now, our schools are worked more or less upon
aniseed drops—marks, prizes, scholarships, blue ribbons,
all of which “stay the stomach” of the boy who does
not get the knowledge that he needs. That is the point.
He needs knowledge as much as he needs bread and milk;
his appetite for knowledge is as healthy as his appetite
for his dinner; and an abundant regular supply at short
intervals of various knowledge is a constitutional necessity
for the growing youth as well as for the curious child;
and yet we stay his hunger pangs upon “aniseed drops.”
We do worse. We say, “What is the good of knowledge?
Give a boy professional instruction, whether he
is to be a barrister or a bricklayer, and strike out from his
curriculum Greek or geography, or whatever is not of
utilitarian value. Teach him to play the game and
handle the ropes of his calling, and you have done the
best for him.” Now, here is a most mischievous fallacy,
an assertion that a child is to be brought up for the uses
of society only and not for his own uses. Here we get
the answer to the repeated question that suggested itself
in a survey of our educational condition. We launch
children upon too arid and confined a life. Now personal
delight, joy in living, is a chief object of education;
Socrates conceived that knowledge is for pleasure, in the
sense, not that knowledge is one source, but is the source
of pleasure.
It is for their own sakes that children should get knowledge.
The power to take a generous view of men and
their motives, to see where the greatness of a given
character lies, to have one’s judgment of present events
illustrated and corrected by historic and literary parallels,
to have, indeed, the power of comprehensive judgment—these
are admirable assets within the power of every
one according to the measure of his mind; and these
are not the only gains which knowledge affords. The
person who can live upon his own intellectual resources
and never know a dull hour (though anxious and sad
hours will come) is indeed enviable in these days of intellectual
inanition, when we depend upon spectacular
entertainments pour passer le temps.
If knowledge means so much to us, “What is knowledge?”
the reader asks. We can give only a negative
answer. Knowledge is not instruction, information,
scholarship, a well-stored memory. It is passed, like the
light of a torch, from mind to mind, and the flame can be
kindled at original minds only. Thought, we know,
breeds thought; it is as vital thought touches our minds
that our ideas are vitalized, and out of our ideas comes
our conduct of life. The case for reform hardly needs
demonstration, but now we begin to see the way of reform.
The direct and immediate impact of great minds upon
his own mind is necessary to the education of a child.
Most of us can get into touch with original minds chiefly
through books; and if we want to know how far a school
provides intellectual sustenance for its scholars, we may
ask to see the list of books in reading during the current
term. If the list be short, the scholar will not get enough
mind-stuff; if the books are not various, his will not be
an all-round development; if they are not original, but
compiled at second hand, he will find no material in them
for his intellectual growth. Again, if they are too easy
and too direct, if they tell him straight away what he is
to think, he will read, but he will not appropriate. Just
as a man has to eat a good dinner in order that his physical
energies may be stimulated to select and secrete that
small portion which is vital to him, so must the intellectual
energies be stimulated to extract what the individual
needs by a generous supply, and also by a way of presentation
that is not obvious. We have the highest authority
for the indirect method of teaching proper to literature,
and especially to poetry. The parables of Christ remain
dark sayings; but what is there more precious in the
world’s store of knowledge?
How injurious then is our habit of depreciating children;
we water their books down and drain them of literary
flavour, because we wrongly suppose that children cannot
understand what we understand ourselves; what is
worse, we explain and we question. A few pedagogic
maxims should help us, such as, “Do not explain”
“Do not question,” “Let one reading of a passage
suffice,” “Require the pupil to relate the passage he has
read.” The child must read to know; his teacher’s
business is to see that he knows. All the acts of generalization,
analysis, comparison, judgment, and so on, the
mind performs for itself in the act of knowing. If we
doubt this, we have only to try the effect of putting
ourselves to sleep by relating silently and carefully, say,
a chapter of Jane Austen or a chapter of the Bible, read
once before going to bed. The degree of insight, the
visualization, that comes with this sort of mental exercise
is surprising.
As I have said, a child in his seventh year will relate The
Pilgrim’s Progress, chapter by chapter, though he cannot
read it, and some half-dozen other books of the best we
can find for him. In his eighth or ninth year he works
happily with a dozen books at a time, books of history,
adventures, travels, poems. From his tenth to his twelfth
year he reads considerable books of English and French
history, seriously written, Shakespeare’s historical plays,
North’s Plutarch’s Lives, and a dozen other worthy
books. As he goes up the school, his reading becomes
wider and more difficult, but every one knows the reading
proper at the ages of fifteen, seventeen, eighteen. The
right books are given, but not enough of them. The
reading dietary is too meagre for the making of a full man.
A score of first-rate books should appear in the school
curriculum term by term. The point that I insist upon,
however, is that from his sixth year the child should be
an “educated child” for his age, should love his lesson
books, and enjoy a terminal examination on the books
he has read. Children brought up largely on books
compare favourably with those educated on a few books
and many lectures; they have generous enthusiasms,
keen sympathies, a wide outlook and sound judgment,
because they are treated from the first as beings of
“large discourse looking before and after.” They are
persons of leisure too, with time for hobbies, because
their work is easily done in the hours of morning school.
It is not necessary to speak of modern languages and
mathematics, field work in natural history, handiwork,
etc. Schools are pretty much agreed about the treatment
of these subjects. As for Latin and Greek, the teaching
of these and the possibility of getting in any work beyond
these is a crucial question; but I think it is open to
Public Schoolmasters to discover that, given boys who
have read and thought, and who have maintained the
habit of almost perfect attention that a child begins
with, the necessary amount of work in the Classics may be
done in a much shorter time, and that the mind of the
pupil is the more alert because it is engaged in handling
various subjects.
Perhaps, too, some enlightened Headmaster may come
to distinguish between scholarship and knowledge—a
distinction which practical men, like Napoleon, for
example, have known how to draw. Probably there
never was a life on which the ‘humanities’ exercised a
more powerful influence; rarely has there been such an
example of the power of the informed mind to conquer
the world. Napoleon is the final answer to the contention
that a knowledge of books has no practical value,
for there was, perhaps, no incident in his career that was
not suggested, inspired, illustrated by some historical
precedent, some literary apophthegm. He was, as we
know, no scholar, but he read diligently, even in the
midst of absorbing affairs, Homer, the Bible, the Koran,
poetry, history, Plutarch.
Nations grow great upon books as truly as do individuals.
We know how that heroic young Queen, Louisa
of Prussia, perceived that the downfall of her country
was not due to Napoleon alone, but also to national ignorance,
and that if Prussia were to rise it must be through
the study of history. So she set herself to work at the
history of modern Europe during that sojourn at Memel,
when she knew poverty as a peasant woman knows it.
The disciples of Kant founded a league of virtue to arouse
Prussian students to the duty of patriotism; Fichte
knew how to issue a trumpet call; the nation became a
nation of students, and the son of Queen Louisa established
the German Empire! Alas, that an age should have
come when the ‘humanities’ were proscribed on German
soil—and humanity followed them into exile! A
noble view of education was as righteousness exalting a
nation; but, alas, we all know what universal havoc
and disaster have proceeded from the debased and
materialised theory of education promulgated at Munich.
The Danes, again, as we all know, owe their rise out
of illiteracy to the Napoleonic impulse. After we had
seized their battleships, by way of clipping the claws of
Bonaparte, they set to work to make themselves the first
farmers in Europe; this they have done in and through
their schools and their continuation schools, where they
get, not technical instruction, but a pretty wide course
in history and literature. As for the Japanese revolution
of some fifty years ago, history has little to show
of a finer quality; and this, again, was the work of a
literary people.
If we would not be left behind by the East and the
West we must, as other nations have done, “add to our
virtue, knowledge”; and we are still competent, as some
of these are not, to mount from the bottom rung of the
Apostolic educational ladder. It rests with us to add
to our faith, virtue, and to our virtue, knowledge. It
is an unheard of thing that the youth of a great nation
should grow up without those ideals, slow enough in
maturing, which are to be gathered for the most part
from wide and wisely directed reading.
The following fragments of a valuable letter illustrate
the contention of the foregoing chapter:—
“There is one thing, however, one note of regret, and that
is that one paragraph, that on classical education, was not
more expanded. I am satisfied that your central view covers
the whole truth; and I am going to give you a small individual
experience illustrating this fact—viz., that an early education
in the great books of our own language, read, with enjoyment,
by children and appropriately given to them from year to year,
is the true groundwork of later expansion. Here is the story:—My
three daughters were suckled on Walter Scott and Shakespeare.
Later, about the ages of from ten to twelve, off their
own, they took up Plutarch’s Lives, Bunyan, Defoe, and in the
same period they refused to learn arithmetic and geography,
the former on the ground of its monotony, and the latter, because,
although they loved it, they held that the existing system
of teaching geography was ‘rotten,’ and that geography ought
to be learnt by going to the places. I knew better than to
remonstrate. I meekly suggested that perhaps they would substitute
something else in their curriculum, and they said at once,
in an obviously prepared sentence, ‘That’s just it, we want to
learn Latin and harmony.’ Now here comes your point (in that
lamentably abbreviated paragraph):—
‘Given boys (or girls) who have read and thought, and who
have maintained the habit of almost perfect attention that a child
begins with, the necessary amount of work in the classics may
be done in a much shorter time, and the mind of the pupil is
the more alert because it is engaged in handling various subjects.’
Six months later these girls knew more Latin than I learnt
in six years under distinguished scholars with very eminent
names. They could sling passages from Horace appropriately;
they knew the first two Eclogues and half the Æneid by heart;
they regarded Cicero’s Letters to Atticus as a ‘penny post’
affair, and were quite unduly familiar with the private life of
Seneca. But all this did not interfere with their painting or
their horsemanship, and better authorities on cricket and the
Turf I don’t happen to know. That is the illustrative episode.
The point, in my mind, is that an early education from great
books with the large ideas and the large virtues is the only
true foundation of knowledge—the knowledge worth having.”
This interesting letter brings us straight to a question
which I thought had been pretty fully threshed out;
and I tackle it with diffidence, only because an outsider
may see aspects overlooked by experts. The gist of the
charges brought against Public Schools is,—Classics take
up so much time that there is no opportunity for Litteræ
Humaniores in any other form. It is easy to say,—Gain
time by giving up Greek; but, in the first place, Public
Schools, with our old Universities in sequence, are our
educational achievement. Other efforts are experimental,
but this one thing we know—that men are
turned out from this course who are practically unmatched
for quality, culture, and power; even the average B.A.
shows up better than his compeers, and a degree in Arts
signifies more than one in any other faculty.
We return thus to my original contention—that letters,
primarily, are the content of knowledge; that if Wellington
ever said how Waterloo was won, it was not on
the playing-fields only, but in the class-rooms of
Eton; that Cæsar, Thucydides, Prometheus Bound,
have won more battles than we know on fields civil and
military. A little strong meat goes a long way, and
even the average Public School boy turns out a capable
man. But, alas, if capable, he is also ignorant; he does
not know the history and literature of his own country
or any other. He has not realised that knowledge is,
not a store, but rather a state that a person remains
within or drops out of. His degree taken, he shuts his
books, reads the newspapers a little, perhaps a magazine
or two, but otherwise occupies himself with the interests
of sports, games, shows, or his employment. What is to
be done, we wonder vaguely, to secure to this average
boy some tincture of knowledge and some taste for
knowledge? The expedient of dropping Greek to make
room for other things recurs; but on reflection we say,
“No”; for culture begins with the knowledge that everything
has been known and everything has been perfectly
said these two thousand years ago and more. This
knowledge, slowly drummed into a youth, should keep
him from swelled head, from joining in the “We are
the people” cry of the blatant patriot; and there is no
better way of knowing a people than to know something
of their own words in their own speech.
It is well, by the way, that we should remember that
we have as a nation an enormous loss to make good;
time was, and not so long ago, when rich and poor were
intimately familiar with one of the three great classical
literatures. Men’s thoughts were coloured, their speech
moulded, their conduct more or less governed, by the
pastoral idylls called “Genesis,” the impassioned poetry
of Isaiah, the divine philosophy of John, the rhetoric of
Paul—all, writings, like the rest of the Bible, in what
Matthew Arnold calls “the grand manner.” Here is
the well of English undefiled from which men have drawn
the best that our literature holds, as well as their philosophy
of life, their philosophy of history, and that
principal knowledge we are practising to do without—the
knowledge of God. And we wonder that the governing
classes should forget how to rule as those who serve;
and that the working man, brought up on “Readers”
in lieu of a great literature, should act with the obstinate
recklessness proper to ignorance.
But to return to the main issue. How shall we instruct
the ignorance and yet retain the classical culture of the
average Public School boy? I should like to suggest,
again, with diffidence, that he, like his more brilliant
compeer, is driven through a mill the outpour of which
should be scholarship. Now, scholarship is an exquisite
distinction which it would be ill for us as a nation to miss;
but if all the men in an assemblage were decorated, who
would care to wear an order? Some things are precious
for their rarity, and to put a school in the running for this
goal is as absurd as the ambition of the little boy who
meant to be a Knight of the Garter when he grew up.
The thing is not to be done; some men are born to be
scholars, as the shape of their heads testifies. The rest
of us take pleasure in their decoration, but are not
envious, for scholarship is not the best thing, and does
not necessarily imply that vital touch of mind upon mind
out of which is got knowledge. As for erudition, we may
leave that out of count, it is hardly even an aim at the
present time. The geniuses, as one to some thousands,
say, of our best, do not trouble themselves much about
the regimen we offer—classics or modern languages, or
what not; an idle tale, a puppet show, the meanest
flower that blows, is enough for them. Anyway, they
take care of themselves, and we come back to the average
boy.
He must learn his Greek and Latin, but there is an easier
way; the girls mentioned in the letter I cite had hit
upon it. That favourite girl pupil of Vittorino’s who
spoke and wrote Greek with “remarkable purity” at
twelve, having, so to speak, done with Latin at an earlier
age—she, we may be sure, had not been through the
grammar school grind. Nor had any of the learned ladies
of the Italian and the French Renaissance, the list of
whose accomplishments leaves us breathless. While
still children, we know how early they married, their
knowledge of the classics was copious (and not too
wholesome), they knew two or three modern languages,
could treat the wounded, nurse the sick, prepare simples,
govern great households, ride to chase, yes, and kill too!
and do exquisite embroidery. Our own women of the
Tudor times appear likewise to have been “infinitely
informed” and to have carried their learning gaily;
Maria Theresa, by no means a learned lady, could make
speeches and converse with her Magyar nobles in Latin,
and they could respond, neither knowing the native
speech of the other. If these things were true of girls
and women, how much more was expected of boys and
men!
Are we persons of less intelligence, or how did they
do it all? Every preparatory school knows how. Perhaps
few boys enter Public Schools who could not pass
“Responsions,” that is, who are not, as far as Greek
goes, ready for Oxford. I once heard a Headmaster
say:—
“A boy does as much Latin now by the age of twelve as he
will ever need for examination purposes, and he spends the
next eight years in doing over again and again the same work!
A clever boy of twelve could easily pass Responsions.”
A headmaster in Newfoundland mentions in his school
report for 1905 a boy who “began Greek in October and
passed the Oxford Responsions in January.”
There is a leakage somewhere, and there is overlapping,
and both are due to the examinations upon which scholarships
are awarded. Something must be done, because
Public Schools, with all their splendid records, are not
effective in the sense that they turn out the average boy
a good all-round man. For better or for worse, who
knows? the Democracy is coming in like a flood, and
our old foundations will be tossed about in the welter
unless we make haste to strengthen our weak places.
Might not a commission—consisting of two or three headmasters,
as many preparatory school masters, University
“Dons,” and public men (once public school boys and
now the fathers of such boys) look into the question and
devise examination tests which shall safeguard Letters,
ancient and modern, without putting too high a premium
upon scholarship?
Once the hands of schoolmasters were united, they
would no doubt devise means by which our friend, the
average boy, would get such a knowledge of the classics
as should open life-long resources to him. Like the
‘Baron of Bradwardine’ he would go about with a pocket
Livy (as he would say, “Titus Livius,”) to be read, not
laboured at a few lines at a time: The Seven against
Thebes, Iphigenia in Aulis, the few tragedies left to us by
the great dramatists would form part of the familiar background
of his thoughts. He would know somewhat of
the best that has been written in Greek and Latin, whether
through printed translations or through the text itself
rendered in the sort of running translation which some
masters know how to give. Pari passu, he would do his
share of gerund-grind, and construe the two or three
books of his present limited acquaintance. But his
limitations would be recognised, and he would not be
required to turn out Greek and Latin verse.
Meantime his master will require him to know pretty
intimately a hundred worthy books in addition to the
great novels—to be read in class periods, in vacation,
and in leisure time—his knowledge of each to be tested
by a single bit of oral description or written work in verse
or prose. “Ground he at Grammar,” sums up every
successful school boy’s record as it did that of the dead
“Grammarian”; but the ten or twelve years of school
life should yield more than this.
I say nothing now about the teaching of science, for
which most schools provide, except that for our generation,
science seems to me to be the way of intellectual
advance. All the same, the necessity incumbent upon us
at the moment is to inculcate a knowledge of Letters.
Men and their motives, the historical sequence of events,
principles for the conduct of life, in fact, practical philosophy,
is what the emergencies of the times require us to
possess, and to be able to communicate. These things
are not to be arrived at by any short cut of economics,
eugenics, and the like, but are the gathered harvests of
many seasons’ sowing of poetry, literature, history. The
nation is in sore need of wise men, and these must be made
out of educated boys.
We have been very busy about education these sixty
years or more—diligently digging, pruning, watering;
but there is something amiss with our tree of knowledge;
its fruits, both good and evil, are of a mean, crabbed sort,
with so little to choose between them that superior persons
find it hard to determine which is which. To examine
the individual apples would be a long process, but let
me take one at a venture: is it not true that a conviction
of irresponsibility characterises our generation?
If this be true, seeing that we all think as we have
been brought up to think, our education is at fault.
Faulty education is to blame if private property be recklessly
injured in broad day, if working men do vital
injury to their country thinking to serve their caste, if
there be people who love to have it so, as long as their
own interests are immune. The melancholy fact is that
the people who do damage to private property, to public
interests, and to that more delicate asset of a nation,
public opinion, are all by way of being educated in their
several degrees. All of them can write and speak clearly,
think logically if not sincerely, and exhibit a certain
practical ability. It is true that the War has changed
much and has brought us a temporary salvation, but
education must secure to us our gains or the last state
of the nation may be worse than the first.
No doubt we are better and not worse than our forefathers;
and, where we err, it is through ignorance.
“Through ignorance ye did it,” was said of the worst
crime that men have done; and that appalling offence
was wrought for no worse reason than because it is the
habit of more or less lettered ignorance to follow specious
arguments to logical conclusions. The sapient East
knows all about it. Lady Lugard tells us how “the
Copts have a saying that ‘in the beginning when God
created things He added to everything its second.’
‘I go to Syria,’ said Reason; ‘I go with you,’ said
Rebellion.” We need not follow the other pairs that
went forth, but still Reason is apt to be accompanied by
Rebellion when it sets out in search of a logical issue.
For it is a fatal error to think that reason can take the
place of knowledge, that reason is infallible, that reasonable
conclusions are of necessity right conclusions.
Reason is a man’s servant, not his master; and behaves
like a good and faithful servant—a sort of ‘Caleb Balderstone,’
ready to lie royally in his master’s behoof—and
bring logical demonstration of any premiss which the
will chooses to entertain. But the will is the man, the
will chooses; and the man must know, if the will is to
make just and discriminating decisions. This is what
Shakespeare, as great a philosopher as a poet, set himself
to teach us, line upon line, precept upon precept. His
‘Leontes,’ ‘Othello,’ ‘Lear,’ ‘Prospero,’ ‘Brutus,’ preach
on the one text—that a man’s reason brings certain
infallible proofs of any notions he has wilfully chosen
to take up. There is no escape for us, no short cut;
art is long, especially the art of living.
In the days when the working man represented only
the unit of his family he picked up enough knowledge to
go on with at church and chapel, by scrutinizing his
neighbour’s doings, in the village parliament, held at
pump or “public,” from the weekly news-sheet. But
we have changed all that: bodies of working men have
learned by means of union to act with a momentum
which may be paralysing or propelling according to
whether the men have or have not knowledge. Without
knowledge, Reason carries a man into the wilderness and
Rebellion joins company. The man is not to be blamed:
it is a glorious thing to perceive your mind, your reasoning
power, acting of its own accord as it were and producing
argument after argument in support of any initial notion;
how is a man to be persuaded, when he wakes up to
this tremendous power he has of involuntary reasoning,
that his conclusions are not necessarily right, but rather
that he who reasons without knowledge is like a child
playing with edged tools? Following his reason, he
acquires this and the other sort of freedom; but is it
not written:—
“Nor yet
(Grave this upon thy heart!) if spiritual things
Be lost through apathy, or scorn, or fear,
Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support,
However hardly won or justly dear.”
If, then, the manners and the destinies of men are shaped
by knowledge, it may be well to inquire further into the
nature of that evasive entity. Matthew Arnold helps
us by offering a threefold classification which appeals to
common sense—knowledge of God, knowledge of men,
and knowledge of the natural world; or, as we should
say, Divinity, the Humanities, and Science. But I think
we may go further and say that Letters, if not (as I said
before) the main content of knowledge, constitute anyway
the container—the wrought salver, the exquisite
vase, even the alabaster box to hold the ointment.
If a man cannot think without words, if he who thinks
with words will certainly express his thoughts, what of
the monosyllabic habit that is falling upon men of all
classes? The chatter of many women and some men
does not count, for thought is the last thing it is meant
to express. The Greeks believed that a training in the
use and power of words was the chief part of education,
recognising that if the thought fathers the word, so does
the word in turn father the thought. They concerned
themselves with no language, ancient or modern, save
their own, but of that they acquired a consummate appreciation.
With the words came the great thoughts, expressed
in whatever way the emergencies of the State
called for—in wise laws, victorious battles, glorious
temples, sculpture, drama. For great thoughts anticipate
great works; and these come only to a people conversant
with the great thoughts that have been written
and said. In what strength did the youngest and
greatest of our Premiers bring about the “revival of
England”? He was fortified by illimitable reading,
by a present sense of a thousand impossibilities that had
been brought to pass—of a thousand things so wisely
said that wise action was a necessary outcome. To say
that we as a nation are suffering from our contemptuous
depreciation of knowledge is to say that we scorn Letters,
the proper vehicle of all knowledge.
Let us glance at the three departments of knowledge
to see in regard to which of the three we are most in error.
Some of us are content with such knowledge of Divinity
as is to be picked up from the weekly sermon heard in
church, but even with the qualification of a degree in
Arts I wonder do our divines lift us as much as they might
into that serener region where words fitly spoken beget
thoughts of peace and holy purpose? That worship is
the main end of our Church services is a sublime ideal,
but, “The Way, without which there is no going, the
Truth, without which there is no knowing, the Life,
without which there is no living,” must needs be set
before us in “words that burn,” and we wait for preachers
like those of a bygone day, “Whose pulpit thunders
shook a nation’s soul.”
It is possible that the Church may err in keeping us
underfed upon that knowledge which is life, but she
does not send us away empty. We get some little share,
too, of literature, poetry, history: a phrase, a line, lights
up a day for us; to read of Charles Fox’s having said,
“Poetry’s everything,” of that black conqueror of the
Soudan who said, “Without learning life would have
neither pleasure nor savour”—these things do us good,
we cannot tell why.
But there is a region of apparent sterility in our
intellectual life. Science says of literature, “I’ll none
of it,” and science is the preoccupation of our age.
Whatever we study must be divested to the bone, and
the principle of life goes with the flesh we strip away:
history expires in the process, poetry cannot come to
birth, religion faints; we sit down to the dry bones of
science and say, Here is knowledge, all the knowledge
there is to know. “I think that is very wonderful,” a
little girl wrote in an examination paper after trying to
explain why a leaf is green. That little girl had found
the principle—admiration, wonder—which makes science
vital, and without wonder her highest value is, not
spiritual, but utilitarian. A man might as well collect
matchboxes, like those charming people in one of Anatole
France’s novels, as search for diatoma, unless the wonder
of the world be ever fresh before his eyes. In the eighteenth
century science was alive, quick with emotion, and therefore
it found expression in literature. Still, a Lister, a
Pasteur, moves us, and we feel that in one department
of science, anyway, men stirred by the passion of humanity
(“letters” at the fountain head?) are doing
monumental work.
But for the most part science as she is taught leaves
us cold; the utility of scientific discoveries does not
appeal to the best that is in us, though it makes a pretty
urgent and general appeal to our lower avidities. But
the fault is not in science—that mode of revelation which
is granted to our generation, may we reverently say?—but
in our presentation of it by means of facts and figures
and demonstrations that mean no more to the general
audience than the point demonstrated, never showing
the wonder and magnificent reach of the law unfolded.
The Hebrew poet who taught us that “Breadcorn is
bruised ... because his God doth instruct him and
doth teach him,” glorified life. Coleridge has revealed
the innermost secret, whether of science or literature:
speaking on the genesis of an idea, he says, “When the
idea of Nature (presented to chosen minds by a Higher
Power than Nature herself),” etc. The man who would
write for us about the true inwardness of wireless telegraphy,
say, how truly it was a discovery, a revealing of
that which was there and had been there all along, might
make our hearts burn within us. No doubt there are
many scientific men who are also men of letters, and some
scientific books as inspiring as great poems—but science
is waiting for its literature; and, though we cannot live
in shameful ignorance and must get what we can out of
the sources open to us, science as it is too commonly
taught tends to leave us crude in thought and hard and
narrow in judgment.
We are told that in times of great upheaval it profits
not to cast blame on this or that section of the community;
that we are all to blame even for the offences
of individuals; and we partly believe it because our fathers
have told us; thus did the prophets humble themselves
before God, and bemoaned each his exceeding great sin
in the sin of his people. We, too, are meek under chastisements,
but we are vague and, to that extent, insincere.
Perhaps our duty is to give serious thought to the problems
of our national life; then we may come to realise
that man does not live by bread alone; we may perceive
that “bread” (or cake!) is our sole and final offer to all
persons of all classes; that we are losing our sense of any
values excepting money values; that our young men no
longer see visions, and are attracted to a career in proportion
as “there’s money in it.” Nothing can come out of
nothing, and, if we bring up the children of the nation on
sordid hopes and low ambitions, need we be surprised
that every man plays for his own hand?
We recognise now and then, when the shoe pinches,
that the nation is in the threes of a revolution, but do we
take trouble to find out the cause of “industrial unrest”
and the correct attitude of the public towards that
unrest? The revolution which is in progress may, it
seems to me, develop on either of two lines: the men
may get those “humbler franchises” they covet, but at
the loss of “spiritual things”—such as the character
for fair play, straight dealing, and loyalty to contract,
which we like to think of as distinctively English. But
what about the warning that these “humbler franchises”
will be likewise lost? Trade unionism is no new thing;
centuries ago and for centuries, as we know, England
and Europe were under the dominion of those states
within the State—the Trades Guilds. At this distance of
time we can afford to admire these for the spiritual things
to which they held fast; their religious organisation, the
thorough training they afforded to their apprentices, and
the obligation every member of a guild was under to use
just weights and measures and to turn out first rate work
of whatever kind. But, notwithstanding these moral
safeguards, the tyranny of the guilds became insupportable,
and they disappeared into the limbo of things no
longer serviceable. Could any dream of Socialism, again,
offer more perfect conditions than did the Russian village
communes? But these too established a tyranny which
was felt to be more oppressive than serfdom itself: the
Mir disappeared, lost in that Gehenna which engulfed
the guilds.
Wordsworth’s prophetic lines should instruct us.
“However hardly won or justly dear” those humbler
franchises for which men are standing out in their tens
of thousands with unanimity, courage, devotion to a cause
justified by their Reason, they will not be able to support
those same franchises if spiritual things, the real things
of life, be lost in gaining them. Therefore we may predict
that the present movement may well issue in worse things
but will not issue in the triumph of either trade unionism
or syndicalism.
Here is our opportunity. We blame the workmen for
their irresponsible action, for what seems to us the
reckless way in which the poorest are impoverished and
multitudes of workers are compelled to unwilling idleness.
But those of us who are neither miners nor owners
may not allow ourselves irresponsible thought or speech,
and we may contribute our quota towards appeasement.
It is within everybody’s province to influence public
opinion, if it be only the opinion of two or three; we may
raise the whole question to a higher plane, the plane of
those spiritual things—duty, responsibility, brotherly
love (towards all men)—which make the final appeal.
We could not, and we need not try to, obstruct the revolution
of which we are vaguely conscious, but we may
help to make it a turn of the wheel which shall bring us
out of the darkness of a Simplon Tunnel into the light and
glory of a Lombard plain. We may, respecting the claims
of working men, perceive that they demand too little,
and that the things they demand are not those which
matter. Even the shock of a revolution is not too high
a price for an experience which should convince us that
knowledge is the basis of a nation’s strength.
I have so far advanced that “knowledge” is undefined
and probably indefinable; that it is a state out of which
persons may pass and into which they may return, but
never a store upon which they may draw; that knowledge-hunger
is as universal as bread-hunger; that our
best provision for conveying knowledge is marvellously
successful with the best men, but rather futile with the
second best; that persons whose education has not enriched
them with knowledge store up information (statistics
and other facts), upon which they use their reasoning
powers; that the attempt to reason without knowledge
is disastrous; and that, during the present distress,
England is, for various economical reasons, in a condition
of intellectual inanition consequent upon a failure in her
food supply, in this case the supply of food proper for the
mind. I have glanced at Knowledge under the three
headings suggested by one who speaks with authority,
and have contended that, even if the knowledge be
divisible, the vehicle by which it is carried is one and
indivisible, and that it is generally impossible for the mind
to receive knowledge except through the channel of letters.
But the mediæval mind had, as we know, a more satisfactory
conception of knowledge than we have arrived at.
Knowledge is for us a thing of shreds and patches,
knowledge of this and of that, with yawning gaps between.
The scholastic mediæval mind, probably working on
the scattered hints which the Scriptures offer, worked out
a sublime Filosofica della Religione Cattolica, pictured, for
example, in the great fresco painted by Simone Memmi
and Taddeo Gaddi (which Ruskin has taught us to know),
and implied in “The Adoration of the Lamb” painted
by the two Van Eycks. In the first picture we get a
Pentecostal Descent, first, upon the cardinal virtues and
the Christian graces, then, upon prophets and apostles,
and below these upon the seven Liberal Arts represented
each by its captain figure, Cicero, Aristotle, Zoroaster,
etc., none of them Christian, not one of them a Hebrew.
Here we get the magnificent idea that all knowledge
(undebased) comes from above and is conveyed to minds
which are, as Coleridge says, previously prepared to
receive it; and, further, that it comes to a mind so prepared,
without question as to whether it be the mind of
pagan or Christian; a truly liberal catholic idea, it seems
to me, corresponding marvellously with the facts of life.
As sublime and even more explicit is the Promethean
fable which informed the Greek mind. With the sense
of a sudden plunge we come down to our own random and
ineffectual notions, and are tempted to cry with Wordsworth,—
“Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,”
and know that a God had brought gifts of knowledge to
men at awful cost, than to sit serene in the vague belief
that knowledge arrives in incoherent particles, no one
knows how and no one knows whence; or that it is self-generated
in a man here and there who gets out of himself
new insight into the motions of mind and heart, a
new perception of the laws of life, the hint of a new
amelioration in the condition of men.
Because the notion that we entertain of knowledge as
being heterogeneous lies at the root of our heterogeneous
theories of education, it may be as well to quote a passage
from Ruskin’s description of that picture in the chapel
of the Church of Santa Maria Novella to which I have
referred:—
“ ... On this side and the opposite side of the Chapel are
represented by Simon Memmi’s hand, the teaching power of
the Spirit of God and the saving power of the Christ of God
in the world according to the understanding of Florence in
his time.
“We will take the side of intellect first. Beneath the
pouring forth of the Holy Spirit in the point of the arch beneath
are the three Evangelical Virtues. Without these, says Florence,
you can have no science. Without Love, Faith and Hope—no
intelligence. Under these are the four Cardinal Virtues
... Temperance, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude. Under
these are the great Prophets and Apostles.... Under the
line of Prophets, as powers summoned by their voices are the
mythic figures of the seven theological or spiritual and the seven
geological or natural sciences; and under the feet of each of
them the figure of its Captain-teacher to the world.” (Mornings
in Florence.)
That is, the Florentines of the Middle Ages believed in
“the teaching power of the Spirit of God,” believed not
only that the seven Liberal Arts were fully under the
direct outpouring of the Holy Ghost, but that every
fruitful idea, every original conception, be it in geometry,
or grammar, or music, was directly derived from a Divine
source.
Whether we receive it or not, and the Scriptures abundantly
support such a theory regarding the occurrence
of knowledge, we cannot fail to perceive that here we have
a harmonious and ennobling scheme of education and
philosophy. It is a pity that the exigencies of his immediate
work prevented Ruskin from inquiring further into
the origin, the final source, of knowledge, but we may
continue the inquiry for ourselves. In “the teaching
power of the Spirit of God” we have a pregnant and
inspiring phrase. Supposing that we accept this mediæval
philosophy tentatively for present relief, what would
be our gains?
First, the enormous relief afforded by a sense of unity
of purpose, of progressive evolution, in the education of
the race. It induces great ease of mind to think that
knowledge is dealt out to us according to our preparedness
and according to our needs; that God whispers in
the ear of the man who is ready in order that he may be
the vehicle to carry the new knowledge to the rest of us.
“God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear,”
‘Abt Vogler’ is made to say; and another poet causes
his Explorer to cry:—
“God chose me for His whisper, and I’ve found it, and it’s yours!”
Next, that knowledge, in this light, is no longer sacred
and secular, great and trivial, practical and theoretical.
All knowledge, dealt out to us in such portions as we are
ready for, is sacred; knowledge is, perhaps, a beautiful
whole, a great unity, embracing God and man and the
universe, but having many parts which are not comparable
with one another in the sense of less or more, because
all are necessary and each has its functions. Next, we
perceive that knowledge and the mind of man are to each
other as are air and the lungs. The mind lives by means
of knowledge; stagnates, faints, perishes, deprived of
this necessary atmosphere.
That, it is not for a man to choose, “I will learn this
or that, the rest is not my concern”; still less is it for
parent or schoolmaster to limit a child to less than he
can get at of the whole field of knowledge; for, in the
domain of mind at least as much as in that of morals or
religion, man is under a Divine Master; he has to know
as he has to eat.
That, there is not one period of life, our school days, in
which we sit down to regular meals of intellectual diet,
but that we must eat every day in order to live every day.
That, knowledge and what is known as “learning”
are not to be confounded; learning may still be an available
store when it is not knowledge; but by knowledge
one grows, becomes more of a person, and that is all
that there is to show for it. We sometimes wonder at
the simplicity and modesty of persons whose knowledge
is matter of repute; but they are not hiding their light;
they are not aware of any unusual possessions; they
have nothing to show but themselves, but we feel the
force of their personalities. Now, forceful personalities,
persons of weight and integrity, of decision and sound
judgment, are what the country is most in need of; and,
if we propose to bring such persons up for the public service,
the gradual inception of knowledge is one condition
amongst others.
There are various delightfully “new” educational
systems in favour, in all of which a grain of knowledge
is presented in a gallon of warm diluent. We have the
theory that it does not matter what a child learns, but
only how he learns it; which is as sound as, It does not
matter what a child eats, but only how he eats it, therefore
feed him on sawdust! Then, we have Rousseau’s
primitive man theory, that a child must get all his knowledge
through his own senses and by his own wits, as if
there were no knowledge waiting to be passed on by the
small torch-bearer; and there is the theory which obtained
in Catholic England, exemplified in more than one
of the Waverley Novels, in the sports purveyed for her
tenantry by ‘Lady Margaret Bellenden,’ for example.
Those men and maidens had been trained as children
to be “supple, active, healthy, with senses alert, ready
for dance and song, with an eye and ear ready for the
beautiful, intelligent, happy, capable.” (I quote from
a valuable letter in The Times). What with our
morris-dances, pageants, living pictures, miracle plays,
and so on, we are reviving the Stuart educational ideals,
and no doubt we do well to aim at increasing the general
joy. But our age requires more of us; in the sort of
self-activity and self-expression implied in these and in
half a dozen other educational theories, knowledge plays
no part, and the city gamin exhibits in perfection every
quality of gaiety, alert intelligence, delight in shows,
which we set ourselves to cultivate.
“With all thy getting, get understanding,” is the
message for our needs, and understanding is, in one sense,
the conscious act of the mind in apprehending knowledge,
which is in fact relative, and does not exist for any person
until that person’s mind acts upon the intellectual matter
presented to it. “Why will ye not understand?” is
the repeated and poignant question of the Gospels.
That is what ails us as a nation, we do not understand;
not ignorant persons only, but educated men and women,
employ fallacious arguments, offer prejudices for principles,
and platitudes for ideas. If it be argued that these
failures are due less to ignorance than to insincerity,
I should reply that insincerity is an outcome of ignorance;
the darkened intelligence cannot see clearly. “The day
is unto them that know,” but knowledge is by no means
the facile acquirement of those who, according to Ruskin,
“cram to pass and not to know.”
I would not be understood as passing strictures upon
the vast and excellent educational work nearly all
teachers are doing; it is impossible to go into an Elementary
School without being impressed by the competence
of the teachers and the intelligence of the children;
I have already paid a worthless tribute to Public Schools,
and should like here to add a word of affectionate and
hearty appreciation of the High School girl as I know her,
thoughtful and well educated—a person quite undeserving
of the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism too freely
aimed at her. As for our new Universities, they remove
the stigma under which many of us have suffered in
presence of the numerous centres of intellectual life which
add dignity and grace to continental cities. The new
Universities are full of promise for the land.
We have, no doubt, arrived at a good starting place,
but we may not consider that the journey is accomplished.
I need not repeat the charges to which we have laid ourselves
open because of our ignorance, but I shall endeavour
to take a closer survey of the field of education as regarded
from the standpoint of knowledge and the innate affinities
existing in the mind with that knowledge which is proper
for it. For the present the need is that “abstract knowledge”
should present itself to practical persons as the
crying demand of the nation; the “mandate,” let us say,
pronounced by certain general failures to understand
the science of relations, and that other neglected form
of knowledge, “the science of the proportion of things.”
“I must live my life!” said the notorious bandit who
before the War terrorized Paris; and we have heard the
sort of cant often, even before The Doll’s House gave to
“self-expression” the dignity of a cult; nevertheless,
the brigand Bonnot has done an ill turn to society, for
a misguiding theory neatly put is more dangerous than
an ill-example.
We are tired of the man who claims to live his life at
the general expense, of the girl who will live hers to her
family’s annoyance or distress; but there really is a
great opportunity open to the nation which will set itself
to consider what the life of a man should be and will give
each individual a chance to live his life.
We are doing something; we are trying to open the
book of nature to children by the proper key—knowledge,
acquaintance by look and name, if not more, with bird
and flower and tree; we see, too, that the magic of poetry
makes knowledge vital, and children and grown-ups
quote a verse which shall add blackness to the ashbud,
tender wonder to that “flower in the crannied wall,” a
thrill to the song of the lark. As for the numerous field
clubs of the northern towns, the members of which,
weavers, miners, artisans, reveal themselves as accomplished
botanists, birdmen, geologists, their Saturday
rambles mean not only “life,” but splendid joy. It is
to be hoped that the opportunities afforded in the schools
will prepare women to take more part in these excursions;
at present the work done is too thorough for their endurance
and for their slight attainments.
In another direction we are doing well; we are so made
that every dynamic relation, be it leap-frog or high-flying,
which we establish with Mother Earth, is a cause of joy;
we begin to see this and are encouraging swimming, dancing,
hockey, and so on, all instruments of present joy and
permanent health. Again, we know that the human
hand is a wonderful and exquisite instrument to be used
in a hundred movements exacting delicacy, direction and
force; every such movement is a cause of joy as it leads
to the pleasure of execution and the triumph of success.
We begin to understand this and make some efforts to
train the young in the deft handling of tools and the
practice of handicrafts. Some day, perhaps, we shall see
apprenticeship to trades revived, and good and beautiful
work enforced. In so far, we are laying ourselves out
to secure that each shall “live his life”; and that, not
at his neighbour’s expense; because, so wonderful is the
economy of the world that when a man really lives his
life he benefits his neighbour as well as himself; we all
thrive in the well-being of each. We are perceiving, too,
that a human being is endowed with an ear attuned to
harmony and melody, with a voice from which music
may issue, hands whose delicate action may draw forth
sounds in enthralling sequence. With the ancient Greeks,
we begin to realise that music is a necessary part of education.
So, too, of pictorial art; at last we understand
that every one can draw, and that, because to draw is
delightful, every one should be taught how; that every
one delights in pictures, and that education is concerned
to teach him what pictures to delight in.
A person may sing and dance, enjoy music and natural
beauty, sketch what he sees, have satisfaction in his own
good craftsmanship, labour with his hands at honest
work, perceiving that work is better than wages; may
live his life in various directions, the more the merrier.
A certain pleasant play of the intellect attends the doing
of all these things; his mind is agreeably exercised; he
thinks upon what he is doing, often with excitement,
sometimes with enthusiasm. He says, “I must live my
life,” and he lives it in as many of these ways as are open
to him; no other life is impoverished to supply his fullness,
but, on the contrary, the sum of general joy in well-being
is increased both through sympathy and by imitation.
This is the sort of ideal that is obtaining in our schools
and in the public mind, so that the next generation bid
fair to be provided with many ways of living their lives,
ways which do not encroach upon the lives of others.
Here is the contribution of our generation to the science
of education, and it is not an unworthy one; we perceive
that a person is to be brought up in the first place for his
own uses, and after that for the uses of society; but, as a
matter of fact, the person who “lives his life” most
completely is also of most service to others because he
contains within him provision for many serviceable activities
which are employed in living his life; and, besides,
there is a negative advantage to the community in the fact
that the man is able to live on his own resources.
But a man is not made up only of eyes to see, a heart
to enjoy, limbs delightful in the using, hands satisfied
with perfect execution: life in all these kinds is open
more or less to all but the idly depraved. But what of
man’s eager, hungry, restless, insatiable mind? True,
we teach him the mechanical art of reading while he is
at school, but we do not teach him to read; he has
little power of attention, a poor vocabulary, little habit
of conceiving any life but his own; to add to the gate-money
at a football match is his notion of adventure and
diversion.
We are, in fact, only taking count of the purlieus of
that vast domain which pertains to every man in right
of his human nature. We neglect mind. We need not
consider brain; a duly nourished and duly exercised
mind takes care of its physical organ provided that organ
also receives its proper material nourishment. But our
fault, our exceeding great fault, is that we keep our own
minds and the minds of our children shamefully underfed.
The mind is a spiritual octopus, reaching out limbs in
every direction to draw in enormous rations of that which
under the action of the mind itself becomes knowledge.
Nothing can stale its infinite variety; the heavens and the
earth, the past, the present, and future, things great and
things minute, nations and men, the universe, all are
within the scope of the human intelligence. But there
would appear to be, as we have seen, an unsuspected
unwritten law concerning the nature of the “material”
which is converted into knowledge during the act of
apprehension. The idea of the Logos did not come by
chance to the later Greeks; “The Word” is not a
meaningless title applied to the second Person of the
Trinity; it is not without significance that every utterance
which fell from Him is marked by exquisite literary
fitness; (a child’s comment on a hymn that was
read to her was, “that is not poetry; Jesus would have
said it much better”); in rendering an account of His
august commission Christ said:—“I have given unto
them the words which Thou gavest me”; and one disciple
voiced the rest when he said, “Thou hast the words of
eternal life.” The Greeks knew better than we that
words are more than things, more than events; with all
primitive peoples rhetoric appears to have been a power;
the grand old sayings which we have scorned as inventions
are coming to their own again, because, what modern is
capable of such inventions? Men move the world, but
the motives which move men are conveyed by words.
Now, a person is limited by the number of things he is
able to call by their names, qualify by appropriate
epithets; this is no mere pedantic ruling, it belongs to
that unfathomable mystery we call human nature; and
the modern notion of education, with its shibboleth of
“things not words,” is intrinsically demoralizing. The
human intelligence demands letters, literature, with a
more than bread-hunger. It is almost within living
memory how the newly emancipated American negroes
fell upon books as the famished Israelites fell upon food
in the deserted camp of Sennacherib.
Only as he has been and is nourished upon books is
a man able to “live his life.” A great deal of mechanical
labour is necessarily performed in solitude; the miner,
the farm-labourer, cannot think all the time of the block
he is hewing, the furrow he is ploughing; how good that
he should be figuring to himself the trial scene in the
Heart of Midlothian, the “high-jinks” in Guy Mannering,
that his imagination should be playing with ‘Ann Page’
or ‘Mrs. Quickly,’ or that his labour goes the better
“because his secret soul a holy strain repeats.” People,
working people, do these things. Many a one can say
out of a rich experience, “My mind to me a kingdom
is”; many a one cries with Browning’s ‘Paracelsus,’
“God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind, Mind
should be precious. Spare my mind alone!” We know
how “Have mynde” appears on the tiles paving the
choir of St. Cross; but “mynde” like body, must have
its meat.
Faith has grown feeble in these days, hope faints in our
heavy ways, but charity waxes strong; we would make
all men millionaires if we could, or, at any rate, take
from the millionaires to give to the multitude. No doubt
some beneficent and venturous Robin Hood of a minister
will arise (has arisen?) to take steps in that direction;
but when all has been done in the way of social amelioration
we shall not have enabled men to “live their lives”
unless we have given them a literary education of such
sort that they choose to continue in the pleasant places
of the mind. “That is all very well in theory,” some one
objects, “but look at the Masses, are they able to receive
Letters? When they talk it is in journalese, and anything
in the nature of a book must be watered down
and padded to suit their comprehension.” But is it not
true that working men talk in “journalese” because it
is only the newspapers that do them the grace to meet
them frankly on their own level? Neither school education
nor life has put books in their way, and their adoption
of the only literary speech that offers but proves a
natural aptitude for Letters. One cannot always avoid
appeal to the authority one knows to be final, and I will
not apologise for citing the fact at which no doubt we
have all wondered that Christ should expose the profoundest
philosophy to the multitude, the “Many,”
whom even Socrates contemns.
May I quote, with apologies to the writer, a letter signed
“A Working Man,” written in answer to one of mine
which was honoured by being reprinted in The Times
Weekly Edition? (It is good, by the way, that such a
journal should be in the hands of working men). My
correspondent “thanks Heaven that there are still a few
persons left in this country who regard education as
somewhat different from a means of keeping a shop.”
We may all thank Heaven that there are working men
who value knowledge for its own sake and hate to have
it presented to them as a means of getting on.
The fact is, Letters make a universal appeal because
they respond to certain innate affinities: young Tennysons,
De Quinceys, and the like, are, as we all know,
inordinate readers, but these are capable of foraging on
their own account; it is for the average, the dull, and the
backward boy I would lay urgent claim to a literary
education; the minds of such as these respond to this
and to no other appeal, and they turn out perfectly intelligent
persons, open to knowledge by many avenues.
For working men whose intelligence is in excess of their
education, Letters are the accessible vehicle of knowledge;
having learned the elements of reading, writing, and
summing, it is unnecessary to trouble them with any other
“beggarly elements”; their natural intelligence and
mature minds make them capable of dealing with difficulties
as they occur; and for further elucidation every
working men’s club should have an encyclopædia. Some
men naturally take to learning, and will struggle manfully
with their Latin grammar, and Cicero, their Euclid and
trigonometry. Happy they! But the general conclusion
remains, that for men and women of all ages,
all classes, and all complexions of mind, Letters are an
imperative and daily requirement to satisfy that universal
mind-hunger, the neglect of which gives rise to emotional
disturbances, and, as a consequence, to evils that dismay
us.
I have so far urged that knowledge is necessary to men,
and that, in the initial stages, it must be conveyed through
a literary medium, whether it be knowledge of physics
or of Letters, because there would seem to be some inherent
quality in mind which prepares it to respond to
this form of appeal and no other. I say in the initial
stages, because possibly, when the mind becomes conversant
with knowledge of a given type, it unconsciously
translates the driest formulæ into living speech; perhaps
it is for some such reason that mathematics seem to fall
outside this rule of literary presentation; mathematics,
like music, is a speech in itself, a speech
irrefragably logical, of exquisite clarity, meeting the requirements of
mind.
To consider Letters as the staple of education is no new
thing; nor is the suggestion new that to turn a young
person into a library is to educate him. But here we are
brought to a stand; the mind demands method, orderly
presentation, as inevitably as it demands knowledge;
and it may be that our educational misadventures are due
to the fact that we have allowed ourselves to take up
any haphazard ordering that is recommended with
sufficient pertinacity.
But no one can live without a philosophy which points
out the order, means and end of effort, intellectual or
other; to fail in discovering this is to fall into melancholia,
or more active madness: so we go about picking
up a maxim here, a motto there, an idea elsewhere, and
make a patchwork of the whole which we call our principles;
beggarly fragments enough we piece together to
cover our nakedness and a hundred phrases which one
may hear any day betray lives founded upon an ignoble
philosophy. No doubt people are better than their words,
better than their own thoughts; we speak of ourselves
as “finite beings,” but is there any limit to the generosity
and nobility of almost any person? The hastily spoken
“It is the rule at sea,” that distressed us a while
ago, what a vista does it disclose of chivalric tenderness,
entire self-sacrifice! Human nature has not failed;
what has failed us is philosophy, and that applied philosophy
which is called education. Philosophy, all the
philosophies, old and new, land us on the horns of a
dilemma; either we do well by ourselves and seek our
own perfection of nature or condition, or we do well by
others to our own loss or deterioration. If there is a
mean, philosophy does not declare it.
There are things of which we have desperate need:
we want a new scale of values: I suppose we all felt
when, in those days before the War, we read how several
millionaires went down in the “Titanic” disaster, not
only that their millions did not matter, but that they
did not matter to them; that possibly they felt themselves
well quit of an incessant fatigue. We want more
life: there is not life enough for our living; we have no
great engrossing interests; we hasten from one engagement
to another and glance furtively at the clock to see
how time, life, is getting on; we triumph if a week seems
to have passed quickly; who knows but that the approach
of an inevitable end might find us glad to get it all over?
We want hope: we busy ourselves excitedly about some
object of desire, but the pleasure we get is in effort, not in
attainment; and we read, before the War, of the number
of suicides among Continental schoolboys, for instance,
with secret understanding; what is there to live for?
We want to be governed: servants like to receive their
“orders”; soldiers and schoolboys enjoy discipline;
there is satisfaction in stringent Court etiquette; the
fact of being “under orders” adds dignity to character.
When we revolt it is only that we may transfer our
allegiance. We want a new start: we are sick of ourselves
and of knowing in advance how we shall behave
and how we shall feel on all occasions; the change we
half-unconsciously desire is to other aims, other ways of
looking at things. We feel that we are more than there
is room for; other conditions might give us room; we
don’t know; any way, we are uneasy. These are two
or three of the secret matters that oppress us, and we are
in need of a philosophy which shall deal with such things
of the spirit. We believe we should be able to rise to its
demands, however exigeant, for the failure is not in us
or in human nature so much as in our limited knowledge
of conditions.
The cry of decadence is dispiriting, but is it well-founded?
The beautiful little gowns that have come
down as heirlooms would not fit the “divinely tall”
daughters of many a house where they are treasured.
We have become frank, truthful, kind; our conscientiousness
and our charity are morbid; we cannot rest in our
beds for a disproportionate anxiety for the well-being
of everybody; we even exceed the generous hazard,
that, peradventure for a good man one might be found
to die; almost any man will risk his life for the perishing
without question of good or bad; and we expect no less
from firemen, doctors, life-boatmen, parsons, the general
public. And what a comment on the splendid magnanimity
of men does the War afford!
An annoying inquiry concerning risks at sea almost
resulted in a ruling that no one should let himself be saved
so long as others were in danger; it is preposterous, but
is what human nature expects of itself. No, we are not
decadent on the whole, and our uneasiness is perhaps
caused by growing pains. We may be poor things, but
we are ready to break forth into singing should the chance
open to us of a full life of passionate devotion. Now, all
our exigeant demands are met by words written in a Book,
and by the manifestations of a Person; and we are waiting
for a Christianity such as the world has not yet
known. Hitherto, Christ has existed for our uses; but
what if a time were coming when we, also, should taste
the “orientall fragrancie” of, “My Master!” So it
shall be when the shout of a King is among us, and are
there not premonitions? But these things come not by
prayer and fasting, by good works and self-denial, alone;
there is something prior to all these upon which our
Master insists with distressful urgency, “Why will ye
not know? Why will ye not understand?”
My excuse for touching upon our most intimate concerns
is that this matter, too, belongs to the domain of
Letters; if we propose to seek knowledge we must proceed
in an orderly way, recognising that the principal knowledge
is of most importance; the present writer writes
and the reader reads, because we are all moved by the
spirit of our time; these things are our secret preoccupation,
for we have come out of a long alienation as
persons “wearied with trifles,” and are ready and anxious
for a new age. We know the way, and we know where
to find our rule of the road; but we must bring a new
zeal and a new method to our studies; we may no longer
dip here and there or read a perfunctory chapter with a
view to find some word of counsel or comfort for our use.
We are engaged in the study of, in noting the development
of, that consummate philosophy which meets every
occasion of our lives, all demands of the intellect, every
uneasiness of the soul.
The arrogance which pronounces judgment upon the
written “Word” upon so slight an acquaintance as would
hardly enable us to cover a sheet or two of paper with
sayings of the Master, which confines the Divine teaching
to the great Sermon, of which we are able to rehearse
some half-dozen sentences, is as absurd as it is blameworthy.
Let us give at least as profound attention to
the teaching of Christ as the disciples of Plato, say, gave
to his words of wisdom. Let us observe, note-book in
hand, the orderly and progressive sequence, the penetrating
quality, the irresistible appeal, the unique content
of the Divine teaching; (for this purpose it might be well
to use some one of the approximately chronological
arrangements of the Gospel History in the words of the
text). Let us read, not for our profiting, though that
will come, but for love of that knowledge which is better
than thousands of gold and silver. By and by we perceive
that this knowledge is the chief thing in life; the meaning
of Christ’s saying, “Behold, I make all things new,”
dawns upon us; we get new ideas as to the relative worth
of things; new vigour, new joy, new hope are ours.
If we believe that knowledge is the principal thing,
that knowledge is tri-partite, and that the fundamental
knowledge is the knowledge of God, we shall bring up our
children as students of Divinity and shall pursue our own
life-long studies in the same school. Then we shall find
that the weekly sermons for which we are prepared are
as bread to the hungry; and we shall perhaps understand
how enormous is the demand we make upon the clergy
for living, original thought. It is only as we are initiated
that science and “Nature” come to our aid in this chief
pursuit; then, they “their great Original proclaim”;
but while we are ignorant of the principal knowledge
they remain dumb. Literature and history have always
great matters to speak of or suggest, because they deal
with states or phases of moral government and moral
anarchy, and tacitly indicate to us the sole key to all this
unintelligible world; and literature not only reveals
to us the deepest things of the human spirit, but it is profitable
also “for example of life and instruction in
manners.”
We are at the parting of the ways; our latest educational
authority, one who knows and loves little children,
would away with all tales and histories that appeal to the
imagination; let children learn by means of things, is
her mandate; and the charm and tenderness with which
it is delivered may well blind us to its desolating character.
We recognise Rousseau, of course, and his Emile, that
self-sufficient person who should know nothing of the
past, should see no visions, allow no authority. But
human nature in children is stronger than the eighteenth
century philosopher and the theories which he continues
to inform. Whoever has told a fairy tale to a child has
been made aware of that natural appetency for letters
to which it is our business to minister. Are we not able
to believe that words are more than meat, and, so believing,
shall we not rise up and insist that children shall
have a liberal diet of the spirit? Rousseau, in spite of
false analogies, fallacious arguments, was able to summon
fashionable mothers and men of the world throughout
Europe to the great task of education, because his eloquence
convinced them that this was their assigned work
and a work capable of achievement; and we who perhaps
see with clearer eyes should do well to cherish this legacy—the
conviction that the education of the succeeding
generation is the chief business of every age.
Nevertheless, though we are ourselves emerging from
the slough of materialism, we are willing to plunge
children into its heavy ways through the agency of a
“practical” and “useful” education; but children
have their rights, and among these is the freedom of the
city of mind. Let them use things, know things, learn
through things, by all means; but the more they know
Letters the better they will be able, with due instruction,
to handle things. I do not hesitate to say that the whole
of a child’s instruction should be conveyed through the
best literary medium available. His history books should
be written with the lucidity, concentration, personal
conviction, directness, and admirable simplicity which
characterizes a work of literary calibre. So should his
geography books; the so-called scientific method of teaching
geography now in vogue is calculated to place a child
in a somewhat priggish relation to Mother Earth; it is
impossible, too, that the human intelligence should
assimilate the sentences one meets with in many books for
children, but the memory retains them and the child is
put in the false attitude of one who offers pseudo-knowledge.
Most of the geography books, for example, require
to be translated into terms of literature before they can
be apprehended. Great confidence is placed in diagrammatic
and pictorial representation, and it is true
that children enjoy diagrams and understand them as
they enjoy and understand puzzles; but there is apt to
be in their minds a great gulf between the diagram and
the fact it illustrates. We trust much to pictures, lantern
slides, cinematograph displays; but without labour there
is no profit, and probably the pictures which remain
with us are those which we have first conceived through
the medium of words; pictures may help us to correct
our notions, but the imagination does not work upon a
visual presentation; we lay the phrases of a description
on our palette and make our own pictures; (works of
art belong to another category). We recollect how Dr.
Arnold was uneasy until he got details enough to form a
mental picture of a place new to him. So it is with
children and all persons of original mind: a map to put
the place in position, and then, all about it, is what we
want.
Readings in literature, whether of prose or poetry,
should generally illustrate the historical period studied;
but selections should be avoided; children should read
the whole book or the whole poem to which they are
introduced. Here we are confronted by a serious difficulty.
Plato, we know, determined that the poets in his
“Republic” should be well looked after lest they should
write matter to corrupt the morals of youth; aware of
what happened in Europe when the flood-gates of knowledge
were opened, Erasmus was anxiously solicitous
on this score, and it is a little surprising to find that here,
Rossetti was on the side of the angels. Will the publishers,
who, since Friedrich Perthes discovered their
educational mission, have done so much for the world,
help us in this matter also? They must excise with a
most sparing hand, always under the guidance of a
jealous scholar; but what an ease of conscience it would
be to teachers if they could throw open the world of books
to their scholars without fear of the mental and moral
smudge left by a single prurient passage! Many, too,
who have taken out their freedom in the republic of letters
would be well content to keep complete library editions
in costly bindings in their proper place, while handy
volumes in daily use might be left about without
uneasiness.
The Old Testament itself after such a (very guarded)
process would be more available for the reading of
children; and few persons would feel that Shakespeare’s
plays suffered from the removal of obscenities here and
there. In this regard we cherish a too superstitious
piety. In another matter, let that great “remedial
thinker,” Dr. Arnold, advise us:—“Adjust your proposed
amount of reading to your time and inclination;
but whether that amount be large or small let it be
varied in its kind and widely varied. If I have a confident
opinion on any one point connected with the improvement
of the human mind it is on this.” Here we
get support for a varied and liberal curriculum; and,
as a matter of fact, we find that the pupil who studies a
number of subjects knows them as well as he who studies
a few knows those few.
Children should read books, not about books and about
authors; this sort of reading may be left for the spare
hours of the dilettante. Their reading should be carefully
ordered, for the most part in historical sequence; they
should read to know, whether it be Robinson Crusoe or
Huxley’s Physiography; their knowledge should be
tested, not by questions, but by the oral (and occasionally
the written) reproduction of a passage after one reading;
all further processes that we concern ourselves about
in teaching, the mind performs for itself; and, lastly,
this sort of reading should be the chief business in the
class room.
We are at a crucial moment in the history of English
education. John Bull is ruminating. He says, “I have
laboured at the higher education of women; let them
back to the cooking-pot and distaff and learn the
science (!) of domestic economy. I have tried for these
forty years to educate the children of the people. What
is the result? Strikes and swelled head! Let them
have ’prentice schools and learn what will be their
business in life!” John Bull is wrong. In so far as we
have failed it is that we have offered the pedantry, the
mere verbiage, of knowledge in lieu of knowledge itself;
and it is time for all who do not hold knowledge in contempt
to be up and doing; there is time yet to save
England and to make of her a greater nation, more
worthy of her opportunities. But the country of our love
will not stand still; if we let the people sink into the mire
of a material education our doom is sealed; eyes now
living will see us take even a third-rate place among the
nations, for it is knowledge that exalteth a nation, because
out of duly-ordered knowledge proceedeth righteousness
and prosperity ensueth.
“Think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well,” says our
once familiar mentor, Matthew Arnold, and his monition
exactly meets our needs.
SUPPLEMENTARY TOO WIDE A MESH
“The wide world dreaming on things to come” is
concentrating on a luminous figure of education which it
beholds, dimly, emerging from a cloudy horizon. This
gracious presence is to change the world, to give to all
men wider possibilities, other thoughts, aims: but,
alas, this Education which is to be open to all promises
no more on a nearer view than to make Opportunity
universal—that is, in spiritual things, he may take who
has the power and he may keep who can.
The net is cast wide no doubt and brings in a mighty
haul but the meshes are so wide that it will only retain
big fishes. Now this is the history of education since
the world was and is no new thing. The mediæval
schools of castle or abbey, the Renaissance schools, the
very schools of China, have all been conducted upon
this plan. Education is for him who wants it and can
take it but is no universal boon like the air we breathe
or the sunshine we revel in.
We are a little sorry for the effect of this limitation
upon the ‘working classes’: only a small percentage of
the children of these are ‘big’ enough to be retained in
the examination net which, to do it justice, explores all
waters. A few of the pass men may do big things and fill
big posts, but for the rest, a large percentage is, in practice,
illiterate except for the spelling out of a local ‘rag’
for football and parish news.
But is the mischief confined to what we call the
‘working classes’? Is it not a fact that in most schools
the full force of instruction is turned on upon a few
boys who are likely to distinguish themselves? While
for the rest of the school teaching is duly given no doubt
but the boys find they may take it or leave it as the
humour takes them.
We were all fascinated a while ago by the story of a
pair of charming ‘Twins’; these went through the
usual preparatory school education and then passed on
to a great Public School where they remained until they
were nineteen; that is, they had ten or twelve good
years among most excellent opportunities. As they
were attractive boys we may take it that their masters
were not at any rate unwilling to teach them. Their
record should have been quite a good one, and, though
it is the fashion to sneer a little at Public Schools, we
know that these have turned out and do turn out the
best and most intellectual men the country has occasion
for. Therefore what happened in the case of these
‘Twins’ does not cast any reflection upon Public Schools
but solely upon the system of the Big Mesh. Here are
some of the things we read in that delightful biography:—
“While in hospital after a smash at polo R—— wrote to
F——:—‘I enjoyed it immensely. What lucky people we are
taking an interest in so many things!’”
Surely here was material for a schoolmaster to work
upon! Again, we read:—
“They never ceased to wonder at the magnificence of the world
and they carried a divine innocence into soldiering and travel
and sport and business and, not least,—into the shadows of the
Great War.”
And this ‘wonder’ of theirs was the note that marked
them at school. Again, what material for their instructors!
“But,” we read, “at X—— they showed little interest in
books and, later, were wont to lament to each other that ‘They
had left school wholly uneducated.’” (The italics are ours.)
Their kindly biographer and dear friend goes on to say:—
“But they learnt other things,—the gift of leadership, for
instance, and the power of getting alongside all varieties of
human nature.”
But was not this nature rather than nurture, school
nurture at any rate, for these gifts seem to have been
a family inheritance? Born in 1880, they left school
in 1899, when there follows a delightful record for the
one brother of successful and adventurous sport while—
“R—— was soon absorbed in the city ... and beginning
to lament his want of education.” “F——, while in Egypt
was greatly impressed by Lord Cromer and writes to R——,
‘he is quite the biggest man we have!... to hear him talk
is worth hearing.’”
The two brothers correspond constantly and R—— takes
the part of mentor to his brother. He advises him
to learn The Times leaders by heart to improve his
style,—“because they are very good English.” Again,—
“I will send you out next mail a very good book, Science and
Education, by Professor Huxley which I have marked in several
places, the sort of book you can read over again.” R—— “had
discovered that he was very badly educated and was determined
to remedy this defect:—‘It don’t matter ... I do believe
not having learned at X—— so long as one does so now.’”
See the fine loyalty of the young man; his failures were
not to be put down to his school!
If the schools take credit for any one thing it is that
they show their pupils ‘how to learn’; but do they?
We are told that R—— set to work at a queer assortment
of books and writes to F——:—
“Anyone can improve his memory: the best way is by
learning by heart—no matter what—and then when you think
you know it, say it or write it.... After two or three days
you are sure to forget it again and then instead of looking at the
book ‘strain your mind’ and try to remember it. Above all
things always keep your mind employed. One great man (I
forget which) used to see a number on a door, say 69, and tried
to remember all that had happened in the years ending in 69.
Or, see a horse and remember how many you have seen that
day.... Asquith always learns things by heart, he never
wastes a minute; as soon as he has nothing to do he picks up
some book. He reads till 1-30 every night. When driving to
the Temple next morning he thinks over what he has read.
Result: he has a marvellous memory and knows everything.”
Think of the Herculean labours the poor fellow set
for both himself and his brother! They ran an intellectual
race across a ploughed field after heavy rain and
the marvel is that they made way at all. Yet these two
brothers had sufficient intellectual zeal to have made
them great men as Ambassadors, Governors of Dominions,
Statesmen, what not; whereas so far as things of the
mind go, they spent their days in a hopeless struggle, alert
for any indication which might help them to make up
lee-way, and all because, according to their own confession,
they ‘had learned nothing at school.’ Here are
further indications of R——’s labours in the field of
knowledge:—
“I am reading Rosebery’s Napoleon and will send it to you.
What a wonder he was! Never spent a moment of his life without
learning something.... I enclose an essay from Bacon’s
book. Learn it by heart if you can. I have and think it a
clinker.... I have also finished Life of Macaulay. I have
always wondered how our great politicians and literary chaps
live.... I also send you a Shakespeare. I learnt Antony’s
harangue to the Romans after Cæsar’s death; I am also trying
to learn a little about electricity and railroad organization, so
have my time filled up. Pickwick Papers I also send to you.
I have always avoided this sort of books but Dickens’ works
are miles funnier than the rotten novels one sees.... I have
learnt one thing by my reading and my conversation with
Professors,—you and I go at a subject all wrong.” (Italics ours.)
These letters are pathetic documents and, that they
are reassuring also, let us be thankful. They do go to
prove that the desire of knowledge is inextinguishable
whatever schools do or leave undone; but have these
nothing to answer for when a pursuit which should yield
ever recurring refreshment becomes dogged labour over
heavy roads with little pleasure in progress?
Here, again, is another evidence of the limitations
attending an utter absence of education. A cultivated
sense of humour is a great factor in a joyous life, but
these young men are without it. Perhaps the youth
addicted to sports usually fails to appreciate delicate
nonsense; sports are too strenuous to admit of a subtler,
more airy kind of play and we read:—
“R—— heard Mr. Balfour and Lord Reay praising Alice in
Wonderland. Deeply impressed he bought the book as soon as
he returned to London and read it earnestly. To his horror he
saw no sense in it. Then it struck him that it might be meant
as nonsense and he had another try, when he concluded that
it was rather funny but he remained disappointed.”
We need not follow the career of these interesting
men further. Both fell early before they were forty.
Their fine qualities and their personal fascination remained
with them to the end, as did also, alas, their
invincible ignorance. They laboured indefatigably, but,
as R—— remarked,—“You and I go at a subject all
wrong!”
The schools must tell us why men who attained
mediocre successes and the personal favour due to
charming manners and sweet natures were yet somewhat
depressed and disappointed on account of the ignorance
which they made blind and futile efforts to correct;
but they never got so far as to learn that knowledge is
delightful because one likes it; and that no effort at self-education
can do anything until one has found out this
supreme delightfulness of knowledge.
It must be noted that this failure of a great school to
fulfil its purpose occurred twenty years ago, and that no
educational body has made more well-considered and
enlightened advances than have the Headmasters of the
great Public Schools. Probably that delightful group
of Eton boys in Coningsby has always been and is
to-day typical; there is a certain knightly character in
the fine bearing and intelligent countenances of the Head
Boys one comes across there which speaks well for their
intellectual activity. The question is whether more
might not be done with the average boy.
The function of the schools is no doubt to feed their
scholars on knowledge until they have created in them a
healthy appetite which they will go on satisfying for
themselves day by day throughout life. We must give
up the farce of teaching young people how to learn,
which is just as felicitous a labour and just as necessary
as to teach a child the motions of eating without offering
him food; and studies which are pursued with a view
to improve the mind must in future take a back seat.
The multitudinous things that every person wants to
know must be made accessible in the schoolroom, not by
diagrams, digests, and abstract principles; but boys and
girls, like ‘Kit’s little brother,’ must learn ‘what oysters
is’ by supping on oysters. There is absolutely no avenue
to knowledge but knowledge itself, and the schools must
begin, not by qualifying the mind to deal with knowledge,
but by affording all the best books containing all
the sorts of knowledge which these ‘Twins,’ like everyone
else, wanted to know. We have to face two difficulties.
We do not believe in children as intellectual
persons nor in knowledge as requisite and necessary for
intellectual life. It is a pity that education is conducted
in camera save for the examination lists which shew
how the best pupils in a school have acquitted themselves,
the half-dozen or dozen best in a big school. Finely
conscientious as teachers are they can hardly fail to give
undue importance to their group of candidates for
examination and a school of four or five hundred stands
or falls by a dozen head boys.
[See note under Table of Contents for (a) the large number of
children’s answers, and (b) Book IV of which only Chapter 1
appears in this volume].
attention, 259; a habit, 100; a natural function, 171; how secured, 13-15, 17, 28, 45,
76, 255; must not have crutches, 258; power of, present in children, xxxi, 7,
14, 18, 76, 154,
171, 255, 263, 290; the hall-mark of an educated person, 99; the prime agent in education, 16, 76, 247; weakened by efforts to memorise, 17; unfailing, 17, 171, 291
brain, adaptation of, to habits, xxx, 101; thought not a function of, 2, 4, 260; subject to same conditions as body, 38; should not know fatigue, 38; mind takes care of, 330
children, waiting for call of knowledge, xxv; are born persons, xxix, 13, 18, 29,
36, 80, 238; have good and evil tendencies, xxix, 47-49, 52,
61, 66, 85, 86,
88, 89; must live under natural conditions, xxix, 96-99; have appetite for knowledge, xxx, 10, 11-13,
14, 18, 29, 44,
53, 58, 62, 77,
89, 91, 124; can deal with knowledge, xxx, 10, 14,
18, 40, 72, 109,
117, 154, 237, 263; require much and various knowledge, xxx, 11,
12, 14, 19, 25,
72, 109, 111, 116,
125, 154, 157, 253,
256, 263, 288-290; and in literary form, xxxi, 13, 17,
18, 29, 30, 51,
92, 109, 154, 160,
172, 218, 248, 256,
260, 291; have power of attention, xxxi, 7, 14,
18, 29, 75, 154,
171, 255, 263, 291; enormous educability of, xxxi; must have principles of conduct, xxxi, 62; must have responsibility of learning, 6, 74,
99; have powers common to all, 8; backward, 9, 62, 183,
245, 255, 291; are ignorant, 10; have imagination, 10, 18, 36,
41, 50; and judgment, 10, 18; hindered by apparatus of teacher, 11, 54; made apathetic by spiritual malnutrition, 11, 54; must have great thoughts, 12, 40; must read many books, xxx, 7, 12,
15, 30, 59, 76,
267, 271, 303; must read to know, 13, 99; are bored by talk, 15, 19, 41,
44, 52, 58; intellectual capacity of, belittled, 26, 31,
75, 81, 158, 192,
238, 246; are not all alike, 30, 241; first notions of, 35; and language, 35; early thoughts of, 36, 238; experience what they hear and read, 40; hearts of, thoroughly furnished, 43, 60; of the slums, 44, 63, 256,
260, 293; all, persons of infinite possibilities, 44, 156; start fair, 47; muscles and nerves of, 48; have power to sense meaning, 51, 181; not intellectual ruminants, 53; dangers of feeding, morally, 59; must think fairly, 61; capacity and needs of, 66, 157; and the sense of ‘must,’ 73; offences against, 81; must be relieved of decisions, 97; need bracing, not too stimulating, atmosphere, 98; should not ‘run wild,’ 98; must form good habits, 100; grow upon ideas, 109; should know something of their own capacities, 131, 187,
189; must follow arguments and detect fallacies, 147; must know what religion is, 149; educational rights of, 157, 339; howlers of v. mistakes, 158, 256; have affinity for God, 158; able for school education at five, but no conscious mental effort desirable until six, 159; examination answers of, 167, 168, 185,
191, 193, 194, 195-209,
244; enjoy classical names, 181; must see life whole, 187; must learn science of proportion, 187; chastely taught, watch their thoughts, 188; do not generalise, 224; devitalised, 237; not products of education or environment, 238; not incomplete beings, but ignorant, 238; powers of, 9, 238, 255; shown in verses, 242-243; offer a resisting medium, 253; need physical and mechanical training, 255; beings ‘of large discourse,’ 305; should be persons of leisure, 305
Christ, parables of, 304; gave profoundest philosophy to the multitude, 332; does not exist for our uses only, 336; teaching of, must receive profound attention, 337
composition, 190-209; oral, 190, 269; art of, should not be taught, 190, 192, 269; not an adjunct of education, 192; in verse, 193, 242; definite teaching of, in Forms V and VI, 193, 194; power of, innate in children, 191; written, 192; comes of free and exact use of books, 193; children’s, 195-209
conscience, present in infant, 37; governing power of man, 131
Continuation Schools, edited by Sir Michael Sadler, 285
Continuation Schools, a Liberal Education in, 119, 124, 127,
147; the scope of, 279-299; movement and technical education, 279; not for technical instruction, but for things of the mind, 287
curriculum, a full, xxx, 14, 19, 30,
154, 263; a common, 12, 293; principles bearing upon the, 13, 31, 156-158; in P.U.S., 15, 28, 154-234; in Grammar and Public Schools, 85; and the formation of habits, 99; in Elementary Schools, 155; standard set by examinations, 233; a complete, suggested by the nature of things, 156
desires, which stimulate mind, 11, 88; cater for spiritual sustenance, 11; atrophy of, 89; v. other desires, 247; must be used wisely, 56; right and wrong, 84
education; a liberal, xxv, 8, 21,
78, 92, 127, 235,
250, 261, 264, 266,
271, 294, 296; gives stability of mind, 248; makes for sound judgment, 56; three instruments of, xxix, 94; and atmosphere, xxix, 94-99; and discipline of habit, xxix, xxx,
99-104; is a life, xxix, 104-111; is the Science of Relations, xxx, 31, 154; little dependent on heredity and environment, xxxi; errors in, 2, 5, 24,
26, 38, 41, 44,
53, 58, 59, 75-77,
82-89, 91, 94-96, 98,
105, 110, 114-122, 129,
155, 178, 190, 237,
246, 254, 304; a philosophy of, 2, 18, 67; and training, 3, 5, 6,
20, 39, 48, 147,
287; must nourish mind, 6, 72, 105,
111, 253, 255, 260; discoveries in, 9, 62, 68,
104, 255, 256, 290; and the Desires, 11, 58, 84-90; Knowledge the concern of, 2, 93, 266; is of the spirit, 12, 26, 30,
38, 39, 125; attention, the prime agent of, 16, 76,
247; lacks exact application of principles, 19; “new,” 27; distinguished from psychology, sociology, pathology, 27; in want of a unifying theory, 32; does not produce mind, 36; and use of leisure, 42, 79, 121; the work of, 46, 60, 248,
281, 287; the handmaid of Religion, 46, 79, 248; business of, always with us, 54; of the feelings, 59; of the soul, 63; drowned by talk, 65; and capacity of child, 66; a going forth of the mind, 66, 137; popular, 76; a free, 85, 146; definite progress a condition of, 91; not mainly gymnastic in function, 108, 236; in Denmark and Scandinavia, 123, 125,
283-287, 291, 306; in Germany, 123, 125, 279,
280, 306; utilitarian, 125, 156, 180,
224, 279-283, 302; co-existent with moral bankruptcy, 281; in France, 125; in Switzerland, 125; Secondary, 127, 250-278; less liberty than in Primary, 155; character, the aim of, 129, 287; must fortify will, 131; title deeds of, 156; beginning of definite, 159; a science of proportion, 231-233; a social lever, 245; solves problems of decent living, 245; a venture of faith, 245; part and parcel of Religion, 246; v. Civilisation, 248; a common, 249, 264, 296; a democratic, 265; not for the best children only, 254; hindered by materialism, 259; an exclusive, our great achievement, 265; overlapping in, 265; a literary, open to all, 268; humanistic, affects conduct, 293; an early, from great books, the true foundation of knowledge, 308; of the race, 324; new systems of, 325; result of forty years’, 342; should be universal boon like air, 343; as exemplified by two Public School boys, 343-348
Elementary Schools, 326; P.N.E.U. propaganda on behalf of, xxvii; P.U.S. methods in, xxxi, 13, 14,
39, 44, 50, 268; books in, 53; concentration schemes in, 115; A Liberal Education in, 235-249; gain by no marks, no places, 247
environment, xxix, 94-99; educability of children little dependent on,
xxxi, 155; not way to mind, 38; v. atmosphere, 96; children not products of, 238
Germany, moral breakdown of, 3, 123; influence of Darwin on, 3, 4; utilitarianism in, 6, 123, 125,
280, 286, 306; cult of æstheticism in, 95; philosophers of, 3, 4; school curriculum in, 6; efficiency in, 282, 283
history, 14, 30, 42, 50,
59, 62, 73, 77,
151, 157, 169-180, 254,
267; a vital part of education, 169, 273; church, 169; English, 170-175, 176, 177; French, 175, 176, 177; ancient, 175, 176, 177,
274; Indian, 176, 267; European, 176, 177; British Empire, 176; and literature, 176, 177, 180,
184, 269, 274; and citizenship, 185, 274; geographical aspects of, 177; as a background for thought, 178; time given to, 170; necessary for a sane life, 178; gives weight to decision, consideration to action, stability to conduct, 179; charts, by Miss Beale, 177
human nature, prefers natural to spiritual law, 3; a composite whole, 156; possibilities of, infinite and various, 156; an ordered presentation of the powers of, 189; has not failed, 335
knowledge, call of, xxv; appetite for, xxx, 10, 11,
14, 18, 20, 29,
44, 53, 57, 77,
89, 90, 92, 117,
124, 253, 255, 290,
302; must be vital, xxx, 39, 44,
105, 154; quantity and variety of, xxx, 11, 14,
19, 116, 123, 154,
157, 253, 256, 257,
263, 288, 289, 290; must be literary in form, xxx, 13, 15,
18, 29, 30, 51,
91, 109, 111, 154,
160, 172, 218, 248,
256, 260, 290; assimilation of, xxx, 12, 14,
16, 18, 155, 240,
292; the sole concern of education, 2, 12, 93; the necessary food of mind, 2, 18, 75,
88, 239, 256, 258; consecutive, 7, 158, 172,
244, 261, 267; accurate, 8; what is? 12, 239, 254, 303; a basis of common, for all classes, 20, 78,
264, 293, 298, 299; not sensation, 26; of good and evil, 46; love of, sufficient stimulus for work, 58, 79,
98; of God, 64, 65, 158-169,
239, 246, 254, 272,
287, 289, 310, 315,
338; formative influence of, 65; brings freedom, 71, 73; depreciation of, 76, 301, 316; is delectable, 89; creates bracing atmosphere, 97; v. teaching, 118; is virtue, 127, 235; of man, 169-218, 239, 254,
289, 315; of the Universe, 218-234, 239, 254,
289, 316; relativity of, and mind, 237, 240, 324; stops friction, 238; substitutes for, 302; ‘The source of pleasure,’ 302; Matthew Arnold on, 239; received with attention, and fixed by narration, 259; not same as academic success, 266; unifying effect of, 267; ‘Meet for the people,’ 292; a distinction between, and scholarship, 305; ‘Letters,’ the content of, 308; not a store but a state, 309; of the Life, the Truth, the Way, 317; the basis of a nation’s strength, 321; v. information, 303, 321; mediæval conception of, 321; all, is sacred, 324; a great unity, 324; and ‘learning,’ 325; exalteth a nation, 342
‘Letters,’ knowledge and virtue, 307; the vehicle of knowledge, 308; a knowledge of, necessary, 313; make a universal appeal, 333; the staple of education, 334
Liberal Education, A: Practice, by A. C. Drury, 157
mathematics, the teaching of, 7, 59, 148,
151, 152, 153, 155,
230-233, 254, 256, 264,
296; appeal to mind, 51; beauty and truth of, 230, 334; undue importance of, 231; not a royal road to learning, 231; to be studied for their own sake, 232; success should not depend on, 232; depend upon the teacher, 233; badly taught, 233
matter, not the foundation of all being, 4; and mind, 5
Mind, habits of, xxix, 53, 100; feeds on ideas, xxix, 2, 10,
15, 18, 20, 25,
39, 40, 105, 111,
117, 256, 257; not a receptacle, xxx, 112; a spiritual organism, xxx, 24, 38,
117; has appetite, xxx, 10, 20,
39, 57, 89, 281; must be fed, xxx, 5, 10,
18, 20, 24, 25,
41, 71, 105, 111,
117, 154, 236, 239,
246, 259, 263, 281,
288; can deal with knowledge, xxx, 10, 18,
41, 72, 117; not made up of faculties, 2, 17; in education, 2, 6, 253; thought alone appeals to, 2, 12, 15; is one, 5, 41; is spiritual, 5, 38; action of, stimulated by desires, 11, 13,
88; nature of, 20; house of, 24; must have labour of digestion, 26, 237; the instrument of education, 36; spiritual, v. physical brain, 38, 100,
260, 330; amazing potentialities of, 38; ‘the unconscious,’ 38, 66, 130; tendency to ignore, 38; the means of living, 42; good and evil tendencies of, 46, 49, 52; not a chartered libertine, 49; use of term, 66; always conscious, 66; heaven of, 71; not sustained by physical or emotional activity, 72, 289; must not be intruded upon, 130; deals with intellectual matter without aids, 172; potency not property characteristic of, 237; laws of, 245, 246, 290; behaviour of, 253; duly fed, its activities take care of themselves, 289; vast educability of, 289; receives knowledge to grow, 237; must know, 237; wonder of, 239; and knowledge, 240, 324; functions for its own nourishment,
246; of children not immature, 246; stability of, 248; benefits by occasional gymnastics, 255; a crucible, cannot distil from sawdust, 257; a deceiver ever, 257; outer court of, 257; how, works, 257; -stuff, 259; forces which act in education, 259; we must believe in, 260; moves altogether when it moves at all, 276; demands method, 334
Person, a child is a, xxix, 13, 18,
29, 36, 44, 238; chief responsibility of a, to accept ideas, xxxi; marks of an educated, 1, 100; the more of a, the better citizen, 3, 76,
147; the measure of a, 10, 80; a, built up from within, 23; a, is a mystery, 238; a, measured by the wide and familiar use of substantives, 261; a, brought up first for his own uses, then for society, 329; a, who ‘lives his life,’ 329; nobility of a, 334
Reason, 259; the way of the, xxxi; present in the infant, 37; must not be deified, 55; justifies any notion, 55, 143; confounded with right, 56; does not begin it, 140; brings infallible proofs of any idea, 139, 315; works involuntarily, 142; is subject to habit, 147; is fallible, 150, 314; and rebellion, 314; cannot take the place of knowledge, 314
Science, xxx, 14, 31, 40,
42, 51, 59, 154,
157, 239, 256; teaching of, 218-230, 275; approached by field-work, with literary comments, 223, 256; fatal divorce between, and the ‘humanities,’ 223, 318; must rouse wonder, 224, 317; the mode of revelation granted to our generation, 318; waiting for its literature, 318; of relations, 327; of the proportion of things, 327
Spirit, Divine, xxxi; is the man, 5; education is of the, 12, 26, 30; born of spirit, 39; use of term, 65; acts upon matter, 100; is might, reveals itself in spirit, works only in freedom, 125,
284
teacher, part of, in education, 6, 19, 118,
130, 237, 240, 241,
246, 260, 261, 304; personality of, 7, 48, 78,
82, 129, 172; intellectual apparatus of, 11; not a mere instrument, 32; must understand human nature of child,
47; underrates tastes and abilities of children, 52, 238; must read aloud with intention, 244; comes between children and knowledge, 247; finds education a passion, 251
thought, not simply a function of brain, 2, 4, 260; great, necessary for children, 5, 12, 130; alone appeals to mind, 12; begets thought, 12, 303; action follows on due, 24; our, not our own, 60, 137; right, not self-expression, follows upon an idea, 130; socialistic, fallacies in, 144-147; sins committed in, 188; common basis of, 264, 298
Will, the way of the, xxxi, 128, 131; function of, to choose, 128, 129, 133; action of, is character, 129; the safeguard of a man, 130; and danger of suggestion, 130; education must fortify, 131; the governing power of man, 131; fallacies concerning, 132; nourished upon ideas, 132; must have objects outside self, 133; the function of man, 133; implies understanding, 133; a free agent, 133; is supreme, 135; needs diversion, 136; free, not free thought, 136, 137; ordering of, 137; is the man, 314
[7] The small Practising School attached to the House of Education
(ages of scholars from six to eighteen) affords opportunities
for testing the programmes of work sent out term by term,
and the examinations set at the end of each term. The work in
each Form is easily done in the hours of morning-school.
[8] I again quote from the article on Psychology in the
Encyclopædia Britannica.
[9] See Some Discussions of the Method. (P.N.E.U. Office, 1/-).
[26] What Religion Is, by Bernard Bosanquet, D.C.L.
[27] All particulars may be had from The Director, Parents’
Union School, Ambleside. The illustrations in the way of
children’s answers for the various sections of this chapter have
been omitted for want of space, except in the case of a few
answers under Composition.
[28] Examples of the work of scholars of various ages illustrating
what has been said may be seen at the P.N.E.U. Office.
[54] The Author owes to the Editor of The Times permission to
reprint the chapters under this heading written in 1912; as also
the happy titles of the several chapters and the general title.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg xxii: an entry for ‘Index 349’ has been added at the end of the
Table of Contents. Pg 3: ‘about Nietszche’ replaced by ‘about Nietzsche’. Pg 17: ‘a congerie of’ replaced by ‘a coterie of’. Pg 72: ‘Not, again, can we’ replaced by ‘Nor, again, can we’. Pg 82: ‘the idiosyncracies’ replaced by ‘the idiosyncrasies’. Pg 89: ‘satiable curtiosity’ replaced by ‘satiable curiosity’. Pg 139: ‘irrefragible proofs’ replaced by ‘irrefragable proofs’. Pg 140: ‘no more then they’ replaced by ‘no more than they’. Pg 168: ‘clothes and ca e’ replaced by ‘clothes and care’. Pg 181: ‘by naming it D2’ replaced by ‘by naming it K2’. Pg 197: ‘statemen all’ replaced by ‘statesmen all’. Pg 200: ‘And ne tles close’ replaced by ‘And nestles close’. Pg 202: ‘eyes for thoes’ replaced by ‘eyes for those’. Pg 232: ‘perfer not to have’ replaced by ‘prefer not to have’. Pg 275: ‘by Velasqeuz which’ replaced by ‘by Velasquez which’. Pg 334: ‘irrefragibly logical’ replaced ‘irrefragably logical’. Pg 357: ‘Nietszche, 3’ replaced by ‘Nietzsche, 3’.