"Well?" I said, "what do you think of it?"
"The fellow is an impostor!" said the man indignantly. "I expected to
see them all out of doors chewing gum and sweets, and--"
"There wasn't a chin moving in the whole crowd!" cried the young lady.
"The book was a parcel of lies," said the other lady, "and when I next
want a dollar's worth of fiction I reckon I'll plump for Hall Caine or
Robert Chambers. The man wouldn't speak."
"I mentioned Dewey's _Schools of To-Day_," said the man, "and he stared
at me as if I were talking Greek."
I directed them to the village inn for lunch, and I walked up the brae
chuckling.
I had had my dinner, and was having a smoke in the bothy when I heard
the American's voice: "We want to see the dominie!" Margaret came to the
door, and I walked out into the yard. The trio gasped when they saw me;
then the man placed his arms akimbo and looked at me.
"Well I'm damned!" he said with vehemence.
"Not so bad as that," I said with a grin, "_had_ is a better word." Then
they all began to talk at once.
He explained that he was a lawyer from Baltimore: I told him that his
concern about the absence of chewing-gum had led me to conjecture that
he manufactured that substance. This seemed to tickle him and he made a
note of it.
"Be careful!" smiled the pretty lady--his daughter--, "he'll hand over
his notes to the newspaper man when he goes back home."
The lawyer knew something about education, and he told me many things
about the new education of America; he was one of the directors of a
modern school in his own county.
"Come over to the States," he said with eagerness; "we want men of your
ideas over there. I reckon that you and the new schools there don't
differ at all."
I gave him my impressions of the American schools described by Dewey in
his book.
"It seems to me," I said, "that these schools over-emphasise the 'learn
by doing' business. Almost every modern reformer in education talks of
'child processes'; the kindergarten idea is carried all the way.
Children are encouraged to shape things with their hands."
"Sure," he said, "but that's only a preliminary to shaping things with
their heads."
"I'm not so sure that the one naturally leads to the other," I went on.
"Learning by doing is a fine thing, but when little Willie asks why
rabbits have white tails the learning by doing business breaks down. In
America you have workshops where boys mould metal; you have school
farms. But I hold that a child can have all that for years and yet be
badly educated."
He looked amazed.
"But I thought that was your line," he said with puzzled expression,
"Montessori, and all that kind of thing!"
"I don't know what Montessorianism is," I said; "I have forgotten
everything I ever read about Froebel and Pestalozzi. All I know is that
reformers want the child to follow its own processes--whatever that
phrase may mean. I heartily agree with them when they say that the child
should choose its own line, and should discover knowledge for itself.
But my point is that a boy may act every incident in history, for
instance, and never realise what history means. I can't see the
educational value of children acting the incident of Alfred and the
burnt cakes."
"Ah! but isn't self-expression a great thing?"
"It is," I answered, "but the actor doesn't express himself. Irving
expressed himself ... and the result was that Shakespeare was
Irvingised. A school pageant of the accession of Henry IV. may be a fine
spectacle, but it is emphasising all the stuff that doesn't matter a
damn in history."
"But," he protested, "it is the stuff that matters to children. You
forget that a child isn't a little adult."
"This brings us to the vexed question of the coming in of the adult," I
said. "You and I agree that the adult should interfere as little as
possible; but the adult will come in in spite of us. Leave children to
themselves and they express their personalities the livelong day. Every
game is an expression of individuality. The adult steps in and says 'We
must guide these children,' and he takes their attention from playing
houses to playing scenes from history. And I want to know the
educational value of it all."
"It is like travel," he said. "When you travel places become real to
you, and when you travel back into mediæval times the whole thing
becomes real to you."
"I see your point," I said, "and in a manner I agree with you. But why
select pageants? You will agree with me when I say that the condition of
the people in feudal times is of far greater importance than the display
of a Henry."
"Certainly, I do."
"And the things of real importance in history are incapable of being
dramatised. You can make a modern school act the Signing of Magna
Charta, but the children won't understand the meaning of Magna Charta
any the better. You can't dramatise the Enclosure of the Public Lands in
Tudor Times; you can't dramatise the John Ball insurrection; all the
acting in the world won't help you to understand the Puritan
Revolution."
"You are thinking of children as little adults," he said.
"But they _are_ little adults! Every game is an imitation of adult
processes; the ring games down at the school there nearly all deal with
love and matrimony; the girls make houses and take in lodgers. And if
you persuade them to act the part of King Alfred you are encouraging
them to be little adults. They are children when they cry and run and
jump; whenever they reason they reason as adults. They are very often in
the company of adults ... and that's one of the reasons why you cannot
trust what are called child processes. Child processes naturally induce
a child to make a row ... and daddy won't put up with a row. The child
cannot escape being a little adult. It's all very well for a Rousseau to
deal abstractly with child psychology. I am not Rousseau, and I tackle
the lesser problem of adult psychology. The problem before me is--or
rather was--painfully concrete. I set out to counteract the adult
influence of the home. I saw Peter MacMannish shy divots at the Radical
candidate because Peter's father was a Tory; I saw Lizzie Peters put out
her tongue at the local Christabel Pankhurst because Lizzie's mother had
said forcibly that woman's place is the home."
"I see," said the American thoughtfully, "you used your adult
personality on the ground that it was the lesser of two evils? But don't
you think that that was a mistake? Was the freedom of behaviour and
criticism you allowed them not the best antidote to home prejudices?"
"If the children had not been going to homes at night I should have
trusted to freedom alone. As it was the poor bairns were between two
fires. I gave them freedom ... and their parents cursed me. One woman
sent a verbal message to me to the effect that I was an idiot; one
bright little lassie came to me one day with the words of the woman next
door, 'It's just waste o' time attendin' that schule.' Do you imagine
that all the child processes in the world could save a child from an
environment like that?"
When the American departed he held out his hand.
"I came to see a reformer of child education," he said with a smile,
"and I discover that you aren't a reformer of child education at all;
your job in life is to run a school for parents."