Macdonald came up to-night. I hadn't seen him for weeks.
"I am making out a scheme of work for the Evening School," he said.
"What line did you take?"
"My scheme was simple," I replied, "and luckily I had an inspector who
appreciated what I was trying to do. I made the history lessons lessons
in elementary political economy. Arithmetic and Algebra were the usual
thing."
"What about Reading and Grammar?" he asked.
"We read David Copperfield, and I meant to read a play of Shakespeare
and Ibsen's _An Enemy of the People_, but I never found time for them.
The class became a sort of debating society. I gave out subjects. We
discussed Votes for Women, Should Women Smoke? Is Money the Reward of
Ability? I told them about the theory of evolution; I began to trace the
history of mankind, or rather tried to make out a likely history, but at
the end of the session we hadn't arrived at the dawn of written
history."
"Did you find any pupil improving?"
"Macdonald, you are a demon for tangible results. The only tangible
result of my heresies I can think of is the fact that Margaret Thomson
smokes my cigarettes now."
"Have a look at this scheme," he said, and he handed me a lengthy
manuscript. The arithmetic was a detailed list of utilitarian sums ...
how to measure ricks of hay and fields, how to calculate the price of
papering walls and so on. My own attitude to utilitarian sums is this:
if you know the principles of pure mathematics all these things come
easily to you, hence teach pure mathematics and let the utilitarian part
take care of itself.
His English part dealt minutely with grammar; he was to give much
parsing and analysis; compound sentences were to be broken up into their
component parts.
In History he was to do the Stuart Period, and Geography was to cover
the whole world "special attention being paid to the agricultural
produce of the British Colonies."
"It is a 'correct' scheme," I said.
"Give me your candid opinion of it."
"Well, Macdonald, your ways are not my ways, and candidly I wouldn't
teach quite a lot of the stuff you mean to teach. Grammar for instance.
What's the use of knowing the parts of a sentence? I don't suppose that
Shakespeare knew them. If education is meant to make people think, your
Evening School would be much better employed reading books. If you read
a lot your grammar takes care of itself.
"The Stuart Period is all right if you don't emphasise the importance of
battles and plots. I haven't the faintest notion whether Cromwell won
the battle of Marston Moor or lost it, but I have a fair idea of what
the constitutional battle meant to England. The political war was over
before the first shot was fired; the Civil War was a religious war. If I
were you I should take the broad principles of the whole thing and skip
all the battles and plots and executions.
"As for the British Colonies and their agriculture you can turn
emigration officer if you fancy the job. The idea is good enough. My own
personal predilection in geography is the problem of race. I used to
tell my pupils about the different 'niggers' I met at the university,
and of the detestable attitude of the colonials to these men."
Macdonald shook his head.
"No, no," he said, "a black man isn't as good as a white man."
So we went off at a tangent. I told him that personally I had not enough
knowledge of black men to lay down the law about them, but I handed him
a very suggestive article in this week's _New Age_ on the subject. The
writer's theory is that in India black men are ostracised merely because
they are a subject race, and he points out that in Germany and France
the coloured man is treated as an equal. When I was told by a friend
that the natives of India despised Keir Hardie because he carried his
own bag off the vessel when he arrived in India I realised that the
colour question was too complicated for me to settle. I have a sneaking
suspicion that the coloured man is maligned; the average Anglo-Indian is
so stupid in his attitude to most things that I can scarcely suspect him
of being wise in his attitude to the native. I regret very much that I
had not the moral courage to chum up with the coloured man at the
university: prejudices leave one after one has left the university.
I wish I knew what Modern Geography means. A few years ago the geography
lesson was placed in the hands of the science teacher in our higher
grade schools, and the educational papers commenced to talk of
isotherms. I have never discovered what an isotherm is; I came very near
to discovering once; I asked Dickson, a man of science, what they were,
but a girl smiled to me before he got well into the subject (we were in
a café), and I never discovered what an isotherm was.
The old-fashioned geography wasn't a bad thing in its way. You got to
know where places were, and your newspaper became intelligible. It is
true that you wasted many an hour memorising stuff that was of no great
importance. I recollect learning that Hexham was noted for hats and
gloves. I stopped there once when I was motor-cycling. I asked an aged
inhabitant what his town was noted for.
"When I coom to think of it," he said as he scratched his head, "the
North Eastern Railway passes through it."
But the old geography familiarised you with the look of the map. Where
it failed was in the appeal to the imagination. You learned a lot of
facts but you never asked why. I should imagine that the new geography
may deal with reasons why; it may enquire into racial differences; it
may ask why London is situated where it is, why New York grew so big.
For weeks before I left my school my geography lesson consisted of
readings from Foster Fraser's _The Real Siberia_. I began to feel at
home in Siberia, and what had been a large ugly chunk of pink on the map
of Asia became a real place. There is a scarcity of books of this kind.
Every school should have a book on every country written in Fraser's
manner. I don't say that Fraser sees very deeply into the life of the
Russian. I am quite content with his delightful stories of wayside
stations and dirty peasants. He paints the place as it is; if I want to
know what the philosophy of the Russian is I can take up Tolstoy or
Dostoeivsky or Maxim Gorki.
To return to isotherms ... well, no, I think I'll get to bed instead.
* * *
I was down in the village this morning. A motor-car came up, and two
ladies and a gentleman alighted.
"Where is the village school?" asked the gentleman, and I pointed to the
ugly pile.
"We are Americans," he drawled in unrequired explanation, "and we've
come all the way from Leeds to see the great experiment."
"Yes," said one of the ladies--the pretty one--"we are dying to see the
paradise of _A Dominie's Log_. Is it so very wonderful?"
"Marvellous!" I cried. "But the Dominie is a funny sort of chap,
sensitive and very shy. You mustn't give him a hint that you know
anything about his book; simply say that you want to see a Scots school
at work."
They thanked me, and set off for the school.