THE REPLACEMENT OF COMPETITION BY GROUP WORK
§ 1
When Sanderson first came to Oundle his ideas seem to have differed
from the normal scholastic opinion of his time mainly in his conviction
of the interestingness and attractiveness of real scientific work
for many types of boys that the established classical and stylistic
mathematical teaching failed to grip. He developed these new aspects
of school work, and his earliest success lay in the fact that he got
a higher percentage of boys interested and active in school work than
was usual elsewhere, and that the report of this and the report of his
wholesome and stimulating personality spread into the world of anxious
parents. But it early became evident to him that the new subjects
necessitated methods of handling in vivid contrast to the methods
stereotyped for the classical and mathematical courses.
There have been three chief phases in the history of educational
method in the last five centuries, the phase of compulsion, the phase
of competition, and the phase of natural interest. They overlap and
mingle. Medieval teaching being largely in the hands of celibates, who
had acquired no natural understanding of children and young people, and
who found them extremely irritating, irksome, or exciting, was stupid
and brutal in the extreme. Young people were driven along a straight
and narrow road to a sort of prison of dusty knowledge by teachers
almost as distressed as themselves. The medieval school went on to the
chant of rote-learning with an accompaniment of blows, insults, and
degradations of the dunce-cap type. The Jesuit schools, to which the
British public schools owe so much, sought a human motive in vanity and
competition; they turned to rewards, distinctions, and competitions.
Sir Francis Bacon recommended them justly as the model schools of his
time. The class-list with its pitiless relegation of two-thirds of the
class to self-conscious mediocrity and dufferdom was the symbol of
this second, slightly more enlightened phase. The school of the rod
gave place to the school of the class-list. An aristocracy of leading
boys made the pace and the rest of the school found its compensation
in games or misbehaviour. So long as the sole subjects of instruction
remained two dead languages and formal mathematics, subjects
essentially unappetising to sanely constituted boys, there was little
prospect of getting school method beyond this point.
By the end of the eighteenth century schoolmasters were beginning
to realise what most mothers know by instinct, that there is in all
young people a curiosity, a drive to know, an impulse to learn, that
is available for educational ends, and has still to be properly
exploited for educational ends. It is not within our present scope
to discuss Pestalozzi, Froebel, and the other great pioneers in this
third phase of education. Nearly all children can be keenly interested
in some subject, and there are some subjects that appeal to nearly
all children. Directly you cease to insist upon a particular type of
achievement in a particular line of attainment, directly your school
gets out of the narrow lane and moves across open pasture, it goes
forward of its own accord. The class-list and the rod, so necessary
in the dusty fury of the lane, cease to be necessary. In the effective
realisation of this Sanderson was a leader.
For a time he let the classical and literary work of the school run
on upon the old competition-compulsion, class-list lines. For some
years he does not seem to have realised the possibility of changes in
these fields. But from the first in his mechanical teaching and very
soon in mathematics the work ceased to have the form of a line of boys
all racing to acquire an identical parcel of knowledge, and took on
the form more and more of clusters of boys surrounding an attractive
problem. There grew up out of the school Science a periodic display,
the Science Conversazione, in which groups of youngsters displayed
experiments and collections they had co-operated to produce. Later on
a Junior Conversazione developed. These conversaziones show the Oundle
spirit in its most typical expression. Sanderson derived much from
the zeal and interest these groups of boys displayed. He realised how
much finer and how much more fruitful was the mutual stimulation of a
common end than the vulgar effort for a class place. The clever boy
under a class-list system loves the shirker and the dullard who make
the running easy, but a group of boys working for a common end display
little patience with shirking. The stimulus is much more intimate, and
it grows. Jones minor is told to play up, exactly as he is told to play
up in the playing field.
In the summer term the conversazione in its fully developed form took
up a large part of the energy of the school. Says the official life:
'All the senior boys in the school were eligible for this work,
the only qualification necessary being a willingness to work and
to sacrifice some, at least, of one's free time. There was never
any dearth of willing workers, the total number often exceeding two
hundred. The chief divisions of the conversazione were: Physics and
Mechanics; Chemistry; Biology; and Workshops. A boy who volunteered
to help was left free to choose which branch he would adopt. Having
chosen, he gave his name to the master in charge; if he had any
particular experiment in view, he mentioned it, and if suitable, it was
allotted to him. If he had no suggestion, an experiment was suggested,
and he was told where information could be obtained. As a general rule
two or three boys worked together at any one experiment.
'Some of the experiments chosen required weeks of preparation; there
was apparatus to be made and fitted up, information to be sought and
absorbed, so that on the final day an intelligent account could be
given to any visitor watching the experiment. This work was all done
out of school hours. Four or five days before Speech Day, ordinary
school lessons ceased for those taking part in the conversazione; the
laboratories, class-rooms, and workshops were portioned out so that
each boy knew exactly where he was to work, and how much space he
had. The setting up of the experiments began. To any one visiting the
school on these particular days it must have seemed in a state of utter
confusion, boys wandering about in all directions apparently under no
supervision, and often to all appearances with no purpose. A party
might be met with a jam-jar and fishing-net near the river; others
might be found miles away on bicycles, going to a place where some
particular flower might be found. Three or four boys would appear to
be smashing up an engine and scattering its parts in all directions,
while others could be seen wheeling a barrow-load of bricks or trying
to mix a hod of mortar. Gradually a certain amount of order appeared,
some experiments were tried and found to work satisfactorily, others
failed, and investigation into the cause of failure had to be carried
out. As the final day approached excitement increased, frantic
telegrams were sent to know, for example, if the liquid air had been
despatched, frequent visits to the railway-station were made in the
hopes of finding some parcel had arrived; sometimes it was even
necessary to motor to Peterborough to pick up material which otherwise
would arrive too late. A programme giving a short description of the
experiment or exhibit had to pass through the printer's hands. At last
everything would be ready; occasionally, but very seldom, an experiment
had to be abandoned or another substituted at the last moment.'
The year 1905 marked a phase in the co-operative system of work on the
mechanical side with the machining and erection of a six-horse-power
reversing engine, designed for a marine engine of 3500 horse-power.
Castings and drawings were supplied by the North Eastern Marine
Engineering Works. The engine was a triumphant success, and thereafter
a number of engines has been built by groups of boys. Concurrently
with this steady replacement of the instructional-exercise system
by the group-activity system, the mathematical work became less and
less a series of exercises in style and more and more an attack upon
problems needing solution in the workshops and laboratories, with the
solution as the real incentive to the work. These dips into practical
application gave a great stimulus to the formal mathematical teaching,
for the boys realised as they could never have done otherwise the value
of such work as a 'tool-sharpening' exercise of ultimately real value.
§ 2
Quite early in his Oundle days Sanderson displayed his disposition
towards collective as against solitary activity in his dealings with
the school music. When he came to the school the 'musical' boys
were segregated from the non-musical in a choir; the rest listened
in conscious exclusion and inferiority. But from the outset he set
himself to make the whole school sing and attend to music. The few
boys with bad ears were carried along with the general flood; the
discord they made was lost in the mass effect. Towards the end a very
great proportion of the boys were keen listeners to and acute critics
of music. They would crowd into the Great Hall on Sunday evenings to
listen to the organ recital with which that day usually concluded.
§ 3
Presently Sanderson began to apply the lessons he had learnt from
grouping boys for scientific work to literature and history. Most of
us can still recall the extraordinary dreariness of school literature
teaching; the lesson that was a third-rate lecture, the note-taking,
the rehearsal of silly opinions about books unread and authors unknown,
the horrible annotated editions, the still more horrible text-books of
literature. Sanderson set himself to sweep all this away. A play, he
held, was primarily to be played, and the way to know and understand
it was to play it. The boys must be cast for parts and learn about the
other characters in relation to the one they had taken. Questions
of language and syntax, questions of interpretation, could be dealt
with best in relation to the production. But most classes had far
too many boys to be treated as a single theatrical company, so small
groups of boys were cast for each part. There would be three or four
Othellos, three or four Desdemonas or Iagos. They would act their
parts simultaneously or successively. The thing might or might not
ripen into a chosen cast giving a costume performance in public. The
important thing is that the boys were brought into the most active
contact possible with the reality of the work they studied. The groups
discussed stage 'business' and gesture and the precise stress to lay on
this or that phrase. The master stood like a producer in the auditorium
of the Great Hall. Let any one compare the vitality of that sort of
thing with the ordinary lesson from an annotated text-book.
The group system was extended with increasing effectiveness into
more and more of the literary and historical work. Here the School
Library took the place of the laboratory and was indeed as necessary
to the effective development of the group method. The official life
of Sanderson gives a typical scheme of operations pursued in the
case of a form studying the period 1783-1905. The subject was first
divided up into parts, such as the state of affairs preceding the
French Revolution; the French Revolution in relation to England; the
industrial system and economic problems generally; and so on. The form
divided up into groups and each group selected a part or a section of
a part for its study. The objective of each group was the preparation
of a report, illustrated by maps, schedules, and so forth, upon the
section it had studied. After a preliminary survey of the whole field
under the direction of a master, each boy followed up the particular
matter assigned to him by individual reading for a term, supplemented
when necessary by consultation with the master. Then came the
preparation of maps and other material, the assembling of illuminating
quotations from the books studied, the drafting of the group's report,
the discussion of the report. In some cases where the group was in
disagreement there would be a minority report.
In this way there was scarcely a boy in the form who did not feel
himself contributing and necessary to the general result, and who was
not called upon not merely by his master but by his colleagues, for
some special exertion. It might be thought that the departmentalising
of the subject among groups would mean that the knowledge would
accumulate in pockets, but this was not the case. Boys of separate
groups talked with one another of their work and found a lively
interest in their different points of view. It is rare that boys who
have received the same lesson can find much in it to talk about,
unless it is a comparison of who has retained most, but a boy who has
been preparing maps of the Napoleonic military campaigns may find the
liveliest interest in another who has been following the history of
the same period from the point of view of sea power. There was indeed
a very considerable amount of interchange, and when it came to facing
external examiners and testing the general knowledge attained, the
Oundle boys were found to compare favourably with boys who had been
drummed in troops through complete histories of the chosen period.
This group system of work had arisen naturally out of the conditions of
the new laboratory teaching, and it had been developed for the sake of
its educational effectiveness; but as it grew it became more and more
evident to Sanderson that its effects went far beyond mere intellectual
attainment. It marked a profound change in the spirit of the school.
It was not only that the spirit of co-operation had come in. That had
already been present on the cricket and football fields. But the boys
were working to make something or to state something and not to gain
something. It was the spirit of creation that now pervaded the school.
And he perceived, too, that the boys he would now be sending out
into the world must needs carry that creative spirit with them
and play a very different part from the ambitious star boys who
went on from a training under the older methods. They would play
an as yet incalculable part in redeeming the world from the wild
orgy of competition that was now afflicting it. In one of his very
characteristic sermons he gave his ripened conception of this side of
his work. He had been speaking, perhaps with a certain idealisation,
of the old craftsmen's guilds--with a glance or so at the Grocers'
Company. The school, he declared, was to be no longer an arena but a
guild. For what was a guild?
'A community of co-workers and no competition, that was its idea. It
is all based on the system of apprenticeships and co-workers. The
apprentices helped the masters in every way they could; even the
masters were grouped together for mutual assistance and were called
assistants. The Company was a mystery or guild of craftsmen and
dealers, and their aim was to produce good craftsmen and good dealers.
'To-day, in these days of renascence, we return to the aim and methods
of the guilds. Boys are to be apprentices and master-workers and
co-workers. In a community this needs must be. We are called to a
definite work, all who are privileged to attend here, staff and boys
alike--the work of infusing life into the boys committed to our care.
Nor can any one stand out of this and seek work elsewhere. Nemesis
sets in for all who try to live for themselves alone. They may try to
work--but their work is sterile. The community calls for the energies
and activities of all. We are beginning to learn something of what
this means. It does not mean an abandonment of the best methods of
the past. But it does mean that we have to concern ourselves with the
pressing needs and problems of to-day, and join in the work. I do not
dwell on this now. My mind goes off to the possible effect of these
ideas on the general life of the school.
'The working of these ideas is well seen already in the outdoor life
of the school. We see it when houses are getting their teams together
to join a competition for a shield, say. We see the mutual help, the
voluntary practice, the consultations of the captain with others. We
see it in the work in the Cadet Corps. We see it in the preparation
for a play--this time, the _Midsummer Night's Dream_. We see it in the
new work in the library, and we see it as clearly as in anything in
the preparation for a conversazione. No more valuable training can be
given than this last--well worth all the many kinds of sacrifice it
entails. From it, at any rate, the spirit of competition is, I think,
altogether removed. Boys, we believe, set forth to do their work as
well as they possibly can--but not to beat one another.... I dwell upon
these things because we hope that all boys will become workers at last,
with interest and zeal, in some part of the field of creation and
inquiry, which is the true life of the world. It is from such workers,
investigators, searchers, the soul of the nation is drawn. We will
first of all transform the life of the school, then the boys, grown
into men--and girls from their schools grown into women--whom their
schools have enlisted into this service, will transform the life of the
nation and of the whole world.'