every means in our power, the use of leisure, is one of the most
important things a school has to do. We might, therefore, turn at once
to the consideration of the various means for such teaching that
experience has shown to be practicable in the school. But before doing
so, there is yet another reason, the most far-reaching of all, to be
urged for regarding this as a side of education fully as necessary,
at the present time above all, as those sides that none would
question. Great as is the direct and immediate value of the interests
and occupations thus to be encouraged, their indirect influence is
more valuable still, if they teach not only handiness and
adaptiveness, but also call forth initiative and individuality, and so
help to develop the complete and many-sided human personality which is
the crown and purpose of education as of life. We do not now think of
education as merely book-learning, nor even as concerned only with
mind and body, or only as fitting preparation for skilled work and
cultured leisure; but rather as the development of the whole human
being, with all his possibilities, interests, and motives, as well as
powers, his feelings and imagination no less than reason and will. In
a word, education is training for life, with all that this connotes,
and, as we learn to live only by living, must be thought of not merely
as preparation for life, but as a life itself. Plainly, if we give it
a meaning as wide as this, a great part of education lies outside the
school, in the influences of the home surroundings and, after school,
of occupation and the whole social environment. But during the school
years--and they are the most impressionable of all--it is the school
life that is for most the chief formative influence; and now more
necessarily so than ever. When, a few generations back, life was
still, in the main, life in the country, and most things were still
made at home or in the village, the most important part of education
lay, except for a few, outside the school. Now it is the other way.
Town life, the replacing of home-made by factory-made goods, the
disappearance of the best part of home life before the demands of
industry on the one side and the growth of luxury on the other--these
things are signs of a tendency that has swept away most of the
practical home-education, and thrown it all upon the school. And the
schools have even yet hardly realised the full meaning of this change.
Instead of having to provide only a part of education--the specially
intellectual and, in the public schools at least, the physical
side--we have now to think of the whole nature of the growing boy or
girl, and, by the environment and the occupations we provide, to
appeal to interests and motives, and give occasion for the right use
of powers, that may otherwise be undeveloped or misused. A school
cannot now consist merely of class-rooms and playing fields. This is
recognised by the addition of laboratories and workshops, gymnasium,
swimming-bath, lecture-hall, museum, art-school, music-rooms--all now
essentials of a day school as much as of a boarding school. But many
of these things are still only partially made use of, and are apt to
be regarded rather as ornamental excrescences, to be used by the few
who have a special bent that way, at an extra charge, than as an
integral part of education for all. All the interests and means of
training that they represent, and others as well, need to be brought
more into the daily routine; to some extent in place of the too
exclusively literary, or at least bookish, training, that has hitherto
been the staple of education, but more, perhaps, since it is not
possible to include in the regular curriculum _all_ that is of value,
as optional subjects and free-time occupations, though organised as
part of the school course. For it is not only the few who already know
their bent who need opportunity to be made for following it, but
rather those who will not discover their powers without practice, or
their interests without suggestion or encouragement. In this respect
the war has brought opportunities of no little value to the school,
not only in the absorbing interest in the war itself and the desire
for knowledge and readiness for effort that it awakens, but also in
the demands it has made for practical work of many kinds that boys and
girls can do, and the lessons of service that it has taught. Work on
the land and in the shops, for those whose school time is already too
short, is a curtailment, only to be made as a last resort, of the kind
of learning they will have no other opportunity to acquire; but it
gives to the public schoolboy the feeling of reality that most of his
school work lacks. Such opportunities of doing what is seen to be
productive and necessary work, are, like the making of things for
those at the front, and for the wounded, both in themselves and in the
motives that inspire them, a valuable part of education that should
not be forgotten when the present need for them is over.
If, then, by the fullest use of leisure occupations, we are, like
Canning, to call in a new world to redress the balance of the old,
what, in actual practice, is possible in the school? For an answer to
this question one has only to see what is done in the schools of the
Society of Friends, in which the use of leisure in these ways has
always been a strongly marked feature long before it was taken up by
others, with a tradition, indeed, in the older schools, of sixty or a
hundred years of accumulated experience behind it. Instead of singling
out, for description of the use it makes of leisure, any one school in
which it might be supposed that there were special conditions present,
it will be best to enumerate the various activities that have long
been practised in several different schools. Of those selected for the
purpose not all are connected with the Society of Friends; some are
for boys and some for girls only, and some co-educational; but alike
in being boarding schools, and in keeping their boys and girls from an
early age until, at the end of their school life, they go on to the
university or to their business or professional training. A few of the
pursuits to be mentioned are obviously more appropriate for boys,
others for girls; but the differences between those that are followed
in schools for boys and those for girls are surprisingly small, and to
give separate lists would only involve much needless repetition.
For the sake of clearness, it may be well to group the various
activities according as they are mainly outdoor or indoor occupations.
In the outdoor group, games and sports need not be included, as being,
in most cases, as much a part of the ordinary school course as the
class-work. They only become free-time pursuits, in the sense here
intended, in so far as practice for them is optional, and a large
amount of free time spent upon it. Thus, for example, while swimming
is, or should be, compulsory for all, and a regular time found for it
in the school time-table, it is entirely a voluntary matter to go in,
as in many schools a large number do, for the tests of the Royal
Humane Society. Apart from games, the outdoor pursuit that occupies
the largest place is probably, in most of these schools, some branch
of natural history (which may perhaps be held to include geology as
well as the study of plant and animal life)--not so much by the making
of collections, though this usually serves as a beginning, as by the
keeping of diaries, notes of observations illustrated by drawings and
photographs, and experimental work, in connection, perhaps, with work
done in science classes. Similarly in the study of archaeology, visits
to places of interest--there are always many old churches within
reach, if not other buildings of equal interest--give matter for
written notes as well as for drawings and photographs; and in at least
one case, the fact that the neighbourhood is rich in Roman remains has
given opportunity, under the guidance of a keen classical
archaeologist, for the laying bare of more than one Roman villa, and
for making interesting additions to the school museum. Besides their
use in the service of other pursuits, sketching and photography also
have many votaries for their own sake, though the former is usually
more dependent on encouragement from above. Then there is gardening.
The tenure of a plot of ground is a joy to many children; and in the
opinion of the writer, some experience, and some experimental work,
in the growing of the most necessary food plants, as well as flowers,
should form part of the education of all at a certain stage, whether
in school time or in free time. For some, where the conditions are
favourable, this can be extended to the care of fruit-trees, bees,
poultry, and to some kinds of farm-work. The needs of war-time have
brought something of this into many schools, to the real gain of
education, now and later, if it can be retained, at least as a
possibility of choice. So also with the care of the playing fields:
the more that the work needed for a game is thrown upon the players
themselves, the more does it contribute to education. And so too with
constructive work of any kind that, with some help of suggestion or
direction, is within the compass even of comparatively unskilled
labour. A lengthy list could be given of things accomplished in this
way, with an educational value all the greater for their practical
purpose, from Ruskin's famous road down to the last field levelled and
pavilion built or shed put up, by voluntary effort and in time found
by the workers without encroaching on regular school work. And lastly,
an outdoor occupation for free time which, in the earlier days of
school life, we shall do well to encourage--both for its own value and
the manifold interests that it encourages and lessons that it teaches,
and also for its bearing on questions of national service that will
remain to be answered after the war--is the wide range of activities
comprised in scouting, undoubtedly one of the chief educational
advances of our time. Whatever differences of views there may be on
the wider questions of military service for national defence, and of
making military training a specific part of education, few can deny
that, with a view to national service of _some_ kind, the use made by
Sir Robert Baden-Powell of instincts natural to all at a particular
stage of growth, by an organisation which can be kept entirely free
from the failings of militarism, is a development of the utmost
educational, as well as national, value. If a school already develops,
by other means, all the activities trained by scouting, and utilises
in other ways the instincts and motives to which it makes appeal,
there may be little or nothing to be gained by its adoption. But of
how many schools can this be said? For the rest it undoubtedly offers
a way of doing, at the stage of growth for which it is best fitted,
much of what, if there is any truth in what has been urged above, is,
from the point of view of individual development, of greater
importance now than ever before. If, in addition to this, it will go
far to solve the problem of national service, and to remove the need
for conscription in the continental form, there is every reason to
give it a prominent place in the activities encouraged, if not
insisted upon, at school.
Let us now turn to the group of indoor pursuits, which, if they have
not quite so direct a bearing upon health, are in another way even
more important; for a large part of leisure, even at school and still
more, in all probability, afterwards, falls at times and under
conditions that make some indoor occupation necessary, and the waste
or misuse of these times is likely to be greater. In this group
certain things need be no more than mentioned, as either applying, at
any given time, only to a few picked individuals, or else likely, in
the majority of schools, to be made a regular part of the school
routine; such as, of the one kind, the editing of the school magazine,
or membership of the school fire-brigade with the frequent practices
that this involves; or, of the other kind, special gymnastics
(including such things as boxing and fencing), or lectures and
concerts and other entertainments given to the school, as
distinguished from those given by members of it, the preparation for
which gives occupation beforehand to much of their leisure. Of the
free-time pursuits more properly so called, in which many can share,
the commonest are probably the various school societies. Most schools
have one or more debating societies, with meetings at regular
intervals throughout the winter terms, for the discussion of questions
of general or special interest; the difficulty being more often to
find a subject than speakers. Many also have Essay or Literary
societies, for reading papers and discussing the books and writers
treated of, which involve a considerable amount of previous reading.
Besides these most schools now have similar societies, in addition to
those for carrying out the field-work already mentioned, for holding
lectures and discussions on various branches of science. Some also
have a musical society for gaining fuller acquaintance with the works
of the chief composers; and a dramatic society for reading and acting
plays as occasion allows. Allied with these interests is voluntary
laboratory work in some branch of science, both by individuals and
groups, which may not unfairly be dignified with the name of research,
even if it is only the re-discovery of what has been worked out by
others. In some schools special provision is made for encouraging
optional work of this kind in astronomy; in others it may be wireless
telegraphy, or the use of vegetable dyes, and so forth. In some of
this work even the younger can take part; and of the many reasons for
its encouragement not the least is the wide field it opens to
individual initiative.
Besides all these more specially intellectual interests, and of still
wider appeal, various kinds of handicrafts afford abundant occupation,
some for the longer and some also for the shorter periods of leisure.
Wood-work, carving, work in metal or leather, pottery, basket-plaiting,
bookbinding, needlework and embroidery, knitting, netting hammocks and
so forth--the only limit to the number of such crafts is the limit to
the knowledge and energy of those who can start and direct them, and
to the space available, as some can only be carried on in rooms reserved
for such work. So, too, with various kinds of art-work--drawing,
modelling, lettering, making posters for entertainments; or music, both
individual and concerted, orchestra practice, part-singing, glee-clubs
and so on; or morrice and other folk-dances, now happily being widely
revived. And lastly there are indoor games, some of which, like chess
(cards are probably best confined to the sanatorium), have a high
training value, and others afford a useful occasional outlet to high
spirits; and entertainments got up by some society, or perhaps by a
single form, for the rest of the "house" or school, such as a concert
or play or even an occasional fancy-dress dance, the preparation for
which will happily occupy free time for as long beforehand as is
allowed, and does much to encourage ingenuity, especially if strict
conditions are imposed that all that is required must be made for the
purpose and not bought.
But by this time many questions will have arisen in the mind of the
reader, especially if much of what has been enumerated lies outside
his school experience; questions that demand an immediate answer. Even
if all this free-time work and play may have a certain value, how can
time be found for it without encroaching on the regular work and games
which, after all, must be the main concern of the school? And even
supposing that time could be found for both, will not all this
voluntary activity and pleasure-work absorb the interests and energies
that ought to be given to the more serious, if less attractive,
studies? And again, how can all this wide range of activity be
controlled? Who is going to teach, or look after, all these things?
How are they to be kept going? Are they, or any of them, to be
compulsory, or is a boy or girl to be allowed to do anything or
nothing, or to flit, butterfly-fashion, from one to another, learning
nothing except to fritter away energy in endless mental dissipation?
Only a brief answer can be attempted to these questions. It might
indeed be given in the answer to the old puzzle, _solvitur ambulando_;
for, given a clear aim and common sense, most difficulties in
education disappear as one goes on. It is, in fact, a question of
educational values; that settled, matters of detail soon settle
themselves. From what has been said above, it will be plain that the
writer is one of those who think these voluntary free-time activities
of such value that they are willing, in order to make room for them,
to jettison some of the traditions that have gathered about school
work and games. Let the morning hours be reserved for the severer
kinds of class work, but let the afternoons be mainly given to active
pursuits of other kinds as well as games; and on one of them at least
let expeditions in pursuit of the outdoor interests above outlined be
an alternative to the games chosen by the keen players, or compulsory
for those without an equivalent hobby. Then, too, in the evenings let
preparation be varied with handicrafts (the result will be an
intellectual gain rather than loss), and time be reserved for the
meetings of societies or for entertainments. It may be well to say
here that while every one of the things above mentioned is an actual
fact in some school, in none, probably, are all attempted at once,
nor, of course, do any of their members take up many of these pursuits
at the same time; but it is surprising how much can be done by
treating a part of some afternoons and evenings in the week as leisure
time for these pursuits. When this is done, there is usually a
particular member of the Staff whose task it is, either permanently or
in rotation, to see what is being done, to give suggestions and
encouragement to beginners, and to see, if necessary, that freedom
does not mean disorder. Naturally, in the case of handicrafts, others
also take part as actual teachers or at least as fellow-workers; but
though it is generally helpful for members of the Staff to join in all
such work and in discussions, the aim of it all is likely to be more
fully attained if as much as possible of the organisation and
direction is left to members of the school. So, too, with the question
of compulsion. Not all have so strong a bent as to know what they want
to do, and sometimes interests come only by actual experience. It is
well, therefore, to have an understanding that, at certain times, all
must follow some one of the possible occupations; but the more it can
be left to the individual choice, and the wider the range of choice,
the better for the purpose we have in view. Not all country rambles
need have a definite object, nor all time be actively filled that
might be left for reading. But without a definite object few will make
a habit of walking, or learn to know and love the country; and not
all, especially where there is a multiplicity of other interests, will
form the habit of reading unless regular times are set apart for it,
times when books must be read and not merely magazines. How far
freedom of change from one occupation to another is desirable is
largely an individual question. The younger need to try many things
before they can settle down to one, in order to discover their real
interests and to exercise their faculties. But it is well to have a
strict limit to the number of things that may be taken up at once, and
a fixed length of time to be given to each before it may be replaced
by another. With the older, this, as a rule, settles itself, on the
one hand by growing interest in one or two directions, and on the
other by the increasing demands of the school work and approaching
examinations. It is the younger, therefore, who need most
encouragement. In schools where, as said above, there is a long
tradition of such free-time work, there is the less need for anything
beyond suggestions and general supervision. Yet even in these it is
found helpful to have, at the beginning of the year, talks upon the
subject by some member of the Staff, or an old boy perhaps who has
devoted himself to some particular branch, in order to explain what
can be done and the standard to be maintained. In several of them
prizes are offered every year, either by the school or by the Old
Scholars' Association or by individual old scholars, for good work in
many of the categories mentioned above; these in some schools being
the only prizes given. In some cases they are money prizes, as in
certain kinds of work the tools or materials used are costly; in
others the prizes are not given to individuals, but in the form of a
"trophy" to the form or "house" that shows up the best record for the
term or year; in others, again, the need of prizes is not felt, but
interest and keenness to maintain a good standard are kept up by the
public show, held each year, of work done in leisure time. And, it may
be added, a great stimulus in itself is the wider freedom that can be
earned by those who follow certain branches of study, in the way, for
instance, of expeditions, on foot or by bicycle, to places where they
can be pursued.
But with all this there is, of course, the danger that so much energy
may be absorbed in these pursuits that little is left for the ordinary
school work. In some few cases, where there is a strong natural bent
and the free-time pursuit is a serious object of study, this may be a
thing not to be discouraged, as it will provide the truest means of
education. But in most cases care is needed to see that the due
proportion is kept, and especially that mere amusement is not allowed
to occupy the whole of leisure, still less to distract thought and
effort from serious work. By making entertainments, which might, if
too frequent or too elaborate, have this effect, dependent on the
school work being well done, this danger can be minimised. For the
rest, if free-time work is found to take the first place in a boy's
thoughts, may not this be a sign that the ordinary curriculum and
methods of teaching are capable of improvement, and that more use of
these natural interests may with advantage be made in class time as
well? Not that work of any kind can be all pleasure or always
outwardly interesting; there is plenty of hard spade-work needed in
any study seriously followed, in class or out. But if in education
keenness is the first essential and personality the final aim,
interest and freedom must have a larger place than is usually allowed
them in the class-room if the real education is not to centre in the
self-chosen and self-directed pursuits of leisure.
One word more. It must not be supposed that all that has been
described is only possible, or only needed, in the boarding school or
only for a specially leisured class. If, as has here been urged,
these activities and interests form an integral part of education in
its fullest meaning, they are just as necessary in the day school and
cannot be left to chance and the home to see to. And of all the needed
reforms in elementary education, amongst the most needed is the
greater utilisation of the active interests and instincts of children,
in a training that would have a wider outlook and a closer bearing,
through practical experience, both on the work of life and the use of
leisure.
X
PREPARATION FOR PRACTICAL LIFE
By SIR J. D. McCLURE
Head Master of Mill Hill School
I
It is, perhaps, the chief glory of the Ideal Commonwealth that each
and every member thereof is found in his right place. His profession
is also his vocation; in it is his pride; through it he attains to the
_joie de vivre_; by it he makes his contribution to the happiness of
his fellows and to the welfare and progress of the State. The
contemplation of the Ideal, however, would seem to be nature's anodyne
for experience of the Actual. In practical life, all attempts, however
earnest and continuous, to realise this ideal are frustrated by one or
more of many difficulties; and though the Millennium follows hard upon
Armageddon, we cannot assume that in the period vaguely known as
"after the war" these difficulties will be fewer in number or less in
magnitude. Some of the more obvious may be briefly considered.
In theory, every child is "good for something"; in practice, all
efforts to discover for what some children are good prove unavailing.
The napkin may be shaken never so vigorously, but the talent remains
hidden. In every school there are many honest fellows who seem to have
no decided bent in any direction, and who would probably do equally
well, or equally badly, in any one of half-a-dozen different
employments. Some of these boys are steady, reliable, not unduly
averse from labour, willing--even anxious--to be guided and to carry
out instructions, yet are quite unable to manifest a preference for
any one kind of work.
Others, again, show real enthusiasm for a business or profession, but
do not possess those qualities which are essential to success therein;
yet they are allowed to follow their supposed bent, and spend the
priceless years of adolescence in the achievement of costly failure.
Many a promising mechanic has been spoiled by the ill-considered
attempts to make a passable engineer; and the annals of every
profession abound in parallel instances of misdirected zeal. In saying
this, however, one would not wish to undervalue enthusiasm, nor to
deny that it sometimes reveals or develops latent and unsuspected
talents.
The life-work of many is determined largely, if not entirely, by what
may be termed family considerations. There is room for a boy in the
business of his father or some other relative. The fitness of the boy
for the particular employment is not, as a rule, seriously considered;
it is held, perhaps, to be sufficiently proved by the fact that he is
his father's son. He is more likely to be called upon to recognise the
special dispensations of a beneficent Providence on his behalf. It is
natural that a man should wish the fruits of his labour to benefit his
family in the first instance, at any rate; and the desire to set his
children well on the road of life's journey seems entirely laudable.
It is easy to hold what others have won, to build on foundations which
others have laid, and to do this with all their experience and
goodwill to aid him. Hence when the father retires he has the solid
satisfaction of knowing that
Resigned unto the Heavenly Will,
His son keeps on the business still.
It cannot be denied that this policy is often successful; but it is
equally undeniable that it is directly responsible for the presence of
many incompetent men in positions which none but the most competent
should occupy. There are many long-established firms hastening to
decay because even they are not strong enough to withstand the
disastrous consequences of successive infusions of new (and young)
blood.