In the Middle Ages there were everywhere little groups of persons
clustering round some beloved teacher, and thus it was that men learned
not only the humanities but all gracious and useful crafts. There were
no State art schools, no State technical schools: as I have said, men
became artists in the studio of some master-artist, men learned crafts
in the workshop of some master-craftsman. It was always the individual
inspiring, guiding, fostering other individuals; never the State
usurping the place of father or fosterer, dispensing education like a
universal provider of readymades, aiming at turning out all men and
women according to regulation patterns.
In Ireland the older and truer conception was never lost sight of. It
persisted into Christian times when a Kieran or an Enda or a Colmcille
gathered his little group of foster-children (the old word was still
used) around him; they were collectively his family, his household, his
_clann_--many sweet and endearing words were used to mark the intimacy
of that relationship. It seems to me that there has been nothing nobler
in the history of education than this development of the old Irish plan
of fosterage under a Christian rule, when to the pagan ideals of
strength and truth there were added the Christian ideals of love and
humility. And this, remember, was not the education system of an
aristocracy, but the education system of a people. It was more
democratic than any education system in the world to-day. Our very
divisions into primary, secondary, and university crystallize a
snobbishness partly intellectual and partly social. At Clonard Kieran,
the son of a carpenter, sat in the same class as Colmcille, the son of a
king. To Clonard or to Aran or to Clonmacnois went every man, rich or
poor, prince or peasant, who wanted to sit at Finnian’s or at Enda’s or
at Kieran’s feet and to learn of his wisdom.
Always it was the personality of the teacher that drew them there. And
so it was all through Irish history. A great poet or a great scholar had
his foster-children who lived at his house or fared with him through the
country. Even long after Kinsale the Munster poets had their little
groups of pupils; and the hedge schoolmasters of the nineteenth century
were the last repositories of a high tradition.
I dwell on the importance of the personal element in education. I would
have every child not merely a unit in a school attendance, but in some
intimate personal way the pupil of a teacher, or, to use more expressive
words, the disciple of a master. And here I nowise contradict another
position of mine, that the main object in education is to help the child
to be his own true and best self. What the teacher should bring to his
pupil is not a set of readymade opinions, or a stock of cut-and-dry
information, but an inspiration and an example; and his main
qualification should be, not such an overmastering will as shall impose
itself at all hazards upon all weaker wills that come under its
influence, but rather so infectious an enthusiasm as shall kindle new
enthusiasm. The Montessori system, so admirable in many ways, would seem
at first sight to attach insufficient importance to the function of the
teacher in the schoolroom. But this is not really so. True, it would
make the spontaneous efforts of the children the main motive power, as
against the dominating will of the teacher which is the main motive
power in the ordinary schoolroom. But the teacher must be there always
to inspire, to foster. If you would realise how true this is, how
important the personality of the teacher, even in a Montessori school,
try to imagine a Montessori school conducted by the average teacher of
your acquaintance, or try to imagine a Montessori school conducted by
yourself!