THE REALITIES OF LIFE.
"He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed."
BROWNING, "Rabbi Ben Ezra."
"Eh, Dieu! nous marchons trop en enfants--cela me fache!"
ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL.
One of the problems which beset school education, and especially
education in boarding schools, is the difficulty of combining the good
things it can give with the best preparation for after life. This
preparation has to be made under circumstances which necessarily keep
children away from many of the realities that have to be faced in the
future.
To be a small member of a large organization has an excellent effect
upon the mind. From the presence of numbers a certain dignity gathers
round many things that would in themselves be insignificant. Ideas of
corporate life with its obligations and responsibilities are gained.
Honoured traditions and ideals are handed down if the school has a
history and spirit of its own. There are impressive and solemn moments
in the life of a large school which remain in the memory as something
beautiful and great. The close of a year, with its retrospect and
anticipation, its restrained emotion from the pathos which attends all
endings and beginnings in life, fills even the younger children with
some transient realization of the meaning of it all, and lifts them
up to a dim sense of the significance of existence, while for the
elder ones such days leave engraven upon the mind thoughts which
can never be effaced. These deep impressions belong especially to
old-established schools, and are bound up with their past, with their
traditional tone, and the aims that are specially theirs. In this they
cannot be rivalled. The school-room at home is always the school-room,
it has no higher moods, no sentiment of its own.
There are diversities of gifts for school and for home education; for
impressiveness a large school has the advantage. It is also, in
general, better off in the quality of its teachers, and it can turn
their rifts to better account. A modern governess would require to be
a host in herself to supply the varied demands of a girl's education,
in the subjects to be taught, in companionship and personal influence,
in the training of character, in watching over physical development,
and even if she should possess in herself all that would be needed,
there is the risk of "incompatibility of temperament" which makes a
_tete-a-tete_ life in the school-room trying on both sides. School has
the advantage of bringing the influence of many minds to bear, so that
it is rare that a child should pass through a school course without
coming in contact with some who awaken and understand and influence
her for good. It offers too the chance of making friends, and though
"sets" and cliques, plagues of school life, may give trouble and
unsettle the weaker minds from time to time, yet if the current of the
school is healthy it will set against them, and on the other hand the
choicest and best friendships often begin and grow to maturity in the
common life of school. The sodalities and congregations in Catholic
schools are training grounds within the general system of training, in
which higher ideals are aimed at, the obligation of using influence
for good is pressed home, and the instincts of leadership turned to
account for the common good. Lastly, among the advantages of school
may be counted a general purpose and plan in the curriculum, and
better appliances for methodical teaching than are usually available
in private school-rooms, and where out-door games are in honour they
add a great zest to school life.
But, as in all human things, there are drawbacks to school education,
and because it is in the power of those who direct its organization to
counteract some of these drawbacks, it is worth while to examine them
and consider the possible remedies.
In the first place it will probably be agreed that boarding-school
life is not desirable for very young children, as their well-being
requires more elasticity in rule and occupations than is possible if
they are together in numbers. Little children, out of control and
excited, are a misery to themselves and to each other, and if they are
kept in hand enough to protect the weaker ones from the exuberant
energy of the stronger, then the strictness chafes them all, and
spontaneity is too much checked. The informal play which is possible
at home, with the opportunities for quiet and even solitude, are much
better for young children than the atmosphere of school, though a
day-school, with the hours of home life in between, is sometimes
successfully adapted to their wants. But the special cases which
justify parents in sending young children to boarding schools are
numerous, now that established home life is growing more rare, and
they have to be counted with in any large school. It can only be said
that the yoke ought to be made as light as possible--short lessons,
long sleep, very short intervals of real application of mind, as much
open air as possible, bright rooms, and a mental atmosphere that tends
to calm rather than to excite them. They should be saved from the
petting of the elder girls, in whom this apparent kindness is often a
selfish pleasure, bad on both sides.
For older children the difficulties are not quite the same, and
instead of forcing them on too fast, school life may even keep them
back. When children are assembled together in considerable numbers the
intellectual level is that of the middle class of mind and does not
favour the best, the outlook and conversation are those of the
average, the language and vocabulary are on the same level, with a
tendency to sink rather than to rise, and though emulation may urge on
the leading spirits and keep them at racing speed, this does not
quicken the interest in knowledge for its own sake, and the work is
apt to slacken when the stimulus is withdrawn. And all the time there
is comfort to the easy-going average in the consciousness of how many
there are behind them.
The necessity for organization and foresight in detail among large
numbers is also unfavourable to individual development. For children
to find everything prepared for them, to feel no friction in the
working of the machinery, so that all happens as it ought to, without
effort and personal trouble on their part, to be told what to do, and
only have to follow the bells for the ordering of their time--all this
tends to diminish their resourcefulness and their patience with the
unforeseen checks and cross-purposes and mistakes that they will have
to put up with on leaving school. As a matter of fact the more perfect
the school machinery, the smoother its working, the less does it
prepare for the rutty road afterwards, and in this there is some
consolation when school machinery jars from time to time in the
working; if it teaches patience it is not altogether regrettable, and
the little trouble which may arise in the material order is perhaps
more educating than the regularity which has been disturbed.
We are beginning to believe what has never ceased to be said, that
lessons in lesson-books are not the whole of education. The whole system
of teaching in the elementary schools has been thrown off its balance by
too many lesson-books, but it is righting itself again, and some of the
memoranda on teaching, issued by the Board of Education within the last
few years, are quite admirable in their practical suggestions for
promoting a more efficient preparation for life. The Board now insists
on the teaching of handicrafts, training of the senses in observation,
development of knowledge, taste, and skill in various departments which
are useful for life, and for girls especially on things which make the
home. The same thing is wanted in middle-class education, though parents
of the middle-class still look a little askance at household employments
for their daughters. But children of the wealthier and upper classes
take to them as a birthright, with the cordial assent of their parents
and the applause of the doctors. It is for these children, so
well-disposed for a practical education, and able to carry its influence
so far, that we may consider what can be done in school life.
We ourselves who have to do with children must first appreciate the
realities of life before we can communicate this understanding to others
or give the right spirit to those we teach. And "the realities of life"
may stand as a name for all those things which have to be learned in
order to live, and which lesson-books do not teach. The realities of
life are not material things, but they are very deeply wrought in with
material things. There are things to be done, and things to be made, and
things to be ordered and controlled, belonging to the primitive wants of
human life, and to all those fundamental cares which have to support it.
They are best learned in the actual doing from those who know how to do
them; for although manuals and treatises exist for every possible
department of skill and activity, yet the human voice and hand go much
further in making knowledge acceptable than the textbook with diagrams.
The dignity of manual labour comes home from seeing it well done, it is
shown to be worth doing and deserving of honour.
Something which cannot be shown to children, but it will come to them
later on as an inheritance, is the effect of manual work upon their
whole being. Manual work gives balance and harmony in the development of
the growing creature. A child does not attain its full power unless
every faculty is exercised in turn, and to think that hard mental work
alternated with hard physical exercise will give it full and wholesome
development is to ignore whole provinces of its possessions. Generally
speaking, children have to take the value of their mental work on the
faith of our word. They must go through a great deal in mastering the
rudiments of, say, Latin grammar (for the honey is not yet spread so
thickly over this as it is now over the elements of modern languages).
They must wonder why "grown-ups" have such an infatuation for things
that seem out of place and inappropriate in life as they consider it
worth living. Probably it is on this account that so many artificial
rewards and inducements have had to be brought in to sustain their
efforts. Physical exercise is a joy to healthy children, but it leaves
nothing behind as a result. Children are proud of what they have done
and made themselves. They lean upon the concrete, and to see as the
result of their efforts something which lasts, especially something
useful, as a witness to their power and skill, this is a reward in
itself and needs no artificial stimulus, though to measure their own
work in comparative excellence with that of others adds an element that
quickens the desire to do well. Children will go quietly back again and
again to look, without saying anything, at something they have made with
their own hands, their eyes telling all that it means to them, beyond
what they can express.
With its power of ministering to harmonious development of the faculties
manual work has a direct influence on fitness for home and social life.
It greatly develops good sense and aptitude for dealing with ordinary
difficulties as they arise. In common emergencies it is the "handy"
member of the household whose judgment and help are called upon, not the
brilliant person or one who has specialized in any branch, but the one
who can do common things and can invent resources when experience fails.
When the specialist is at fault and the artist waits for inspiration,
the handy person conies in and saves the situation, unprofessionally,
like the bone-setter, without much credit, but to the great comfort of
every one concerned.
Manual work likewise saves from eccentricity or helps to correct it.
Eccentricity may appear harmless and even interesting, but in practice
it is found to be a drawback, enfeebling some sides of a character,
throwing the judgment at least on some points out of focus. In children
it ought to be recognized as a defect to be counteracted. When people
have an overmastering genius which of itself marks out for them a
special way of excellence, some degree of eccentricity is easily
pardoned, and almost allowable. But eccentricity unaccompanied by genius
is mere uncorrected selfishness, or want of mental balance. It is
selfishness if it could be corrected and is not, because it makes
exactions from others without return. It will not adapt itself to them
but insists on being taken as it is, whether acceptable or not. At best,
eccentricity is a morbid tendency liable to run into extremes when its
habits are undisturbed. An excuse sometimes made for eccentricity is
that it is a security against any further mental aberration, perhaps on
the same principle that inoculation producing a mild form of diseases is
sometimes a safeguard against their attacks. But if the mind and habits
of life can be brought under control, so as to take part in ordinary
affairs without attracting attention or having exemptions and allowance
made for them, a result of a far higher order will have been attained.
To recognize eccentricity as selfishness is a first step to its cure,
and to make oneself serviceable to others is the simplest corrective.
Whatever else they may be, "eccentrics" are not generally serviceable.
Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in
constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow
very rapidly and are hard to overcome. One of the commonest of these is
talking to themselves. Sitting still, making efforts to apply their
minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by
nerve fatigue. In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant
state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities
and other mental troubles. If their attention is diverted from
themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which
belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its
accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the
little eccentric pose will be forgotten; this is better than being
noticed and laughed at and formally corrected.
Manual employments, especially if varied, and household occupations
afford a great variety, give to children a sense of power in knowing
what to do in a number of circumstances; they take pleasure in this, for
it is a thing which they admire in others. Domestic occupations also
form in them a habit of decision, from the necessity of getting through
things which will not wait. For domestic duties do not allow of waiting
for a moment of inspiration or delaying until a mood of depression or
indifference has passed. They have a quiet, imperious way of commanding,
and an automatic system of punishing when they are neglected, which are
more convincing that exhortations. Perhaps in this particular point lies
their saving influence against nerves and moodiness and the
demoralization of "giving way." Those who have no obligations, whose
work will wait for their convenience, and who can if they please let
everything go for a time, are more easily broken down by trouble than
those whose household duties still have to be done, in the midst of
sorrow and trial. There is something in homely material duties which
heals and calms the mind and gives it power to come back to itself. And
in sudden calamities those who know how to make use of their hands do
not helplessly wring them, or make trouble worse by clinging to others
for support.
Again, circumstances sometimes arise in school life which make light
household duties an untold boon for particular children. Accidental
causes, troubles of eyesight, or too rapid growth, etc., may make
regular study for a time impossible to them. These children become
_exempt_ persons, and even if they are able to take some part in the
class work the time of preparation is heavy on their hands. Exempt
persons easily develop undesirable qualities, and their apparent
privileges are liable to unsettle others. As a matter of fact those who
are able to keep the common life have the best of it, but they are apt
to look upon the exemption of others as enviable, as they long for gipsy
life when a caravan passes by. With the resource of household employment
to give occupation it becomes apparent that exemption does not mean
holiday, but the substitution of one duty or lesson for another, and
this is a principle which holds good in after life--that except in case
of real illness no one is justified in having nothing to do.
Lastly, the work of the body is good for the soul, it drives out
silliness as effectually as the rod, since that which was of old
considered as the instrument for exterminating the "folly bound up in
the heart of a child," has been laid aside in the education of girls. It
is a great weapon against the seven devils of whom one is Sloth and
another Pride, and it prepares a sane mind in a sound body for the
discipline of after life.
Experience bears its own testimony to the failure of an education which
is out of touch with the material requirements of life. It leaves an
incomplete power of expression, and some dead points in the mind from
which no response can be awakened. To taste of many experiences seems to
be necessary for complete development. When on the material side all is
provided without forethought, and people are exempt from all care and
obligation, a whole side of development is wanting, and on that side the
mind remains childish, inexperienced, and unreal. The best mental
development is accomplished under the stress of many demands. One claim
balances the other; a touch of hardness and privation gives strength of
mind and makes self-denial a reality; a little anxiety teaches foresight
and draws out resourcefulness, and the tendency to fret about trifles is
corrected by the contact of the realities of life.
To come to practice--What can be done for girls during their years at
school?
In the first place the teaching of the fundamental handicraft of women,
needlework, deserves a place of honour. In many schools it has almost
perished by neglect, or the thorns of the examination programme have
grown up and choked it. This misfortune has been fairly common where the
English "University Locals" and the Irish "Intermediate" held sway.
There literally was not time for it, and the loss became so general that
it was taken as a matter of course, scarcely regretted; to the children
themselves, so easily carried off by _vogue_, it became almost a matter
for self-complacency, "not to be able to hold a needle" was accepted as
an indication of something superior in attainments. And it must be owned
that there were certain antiquated methods of teaching the art which
made it quite excusable to "hate needlework." One "went through so much
to learn so little"; and the results depending so often upon help from
others to bring them to any conclusion, there was no sense of personal
achievement in a work accomplished. Others planned, cut out and prepared
the work, and the child came in as an unwilling and imperfect sewing
machine merely to put in the stitches. The sense of mastery over
material was not developed, yet that is the only way in which a child's
attainment of skill can be linked on to the future. What cannot be done
without help always at hand drops out of life, and likewise that which
calls for no application of mind.
To reach independence in the practical arts of life is an aim that will
awaken interests and keep up efforts, and teachers have only a right to
be satisfied when their pupils can do without them. This is not the
finishing point of a course of teaching, it is a whole system, beginning
in the first steps and continuing progressively to the end. It entails
upon teachers much labour, much thought, and the sacrifice of showy
results. The first look of finish depends more upon the help of the
teacher than upon the efforts of children. Their results must be waited
for, and they will in the early years have a humbler, more rough-hewn
look than those in which expert help has been given. But the educational
advantages are not to be compared.
A four years' course, two hours per week, gives a thorough grounding
in plain needlework, and girls are then capable of beginning
dressmaking, in they can reach a very reasonable proficiency when they
leave school. Whether they turn this to practical account in their own
homes, or make use of it in Clothing Societies and Needlework Guilds for
the poor, the knowledge is of real value. If fortune deals hardly with
them, and they are thrown on their own resources later in life, it is
evident that to make their own clothes is a form of independence for
which they will be very thankful. Another branch of needlework that
ought to form part of every Catholic girl's education is that of work
for the Church in which there is room for every capacity, from the
hemming of the humblest _lavabo_ towel to priceless works of art
embroidered by queens for the popes and bishops of their time.
"First aid," and a few practical principles of nursing, can sometimes be
profitably taught in school, if time is made for a few lessons, perhaps
during one term. The difficulty of finding time even adds to the
educational value, since the conditions of life outside do not admit of
uniform intervals between two bells. Enough can be taught to make girls
able to take their share helpfully in cases of illness in their homes,
and it is a branch of usefulness in which a few sensible notions go a
long way.
General self-help is difficult to define or describe, but it can be
taught at school more than would appear at first sight, if only those
engaged in the education of children will bear in mind that the triumph
of their devotedness is to enable children to do without them. This is
much more laborious than to do things efficiently and admirably for
them, but it is real education. They can be taught as mothers would
teach them at home, to mend and keep their things in order, to prepare
for journeys, pack their own boxes, be responsible for their labels and
keys, write orders to shops, to make their own beds, dust their private
rooms, and many other things which will readily occur to those who have
seen the pitiful sight of girls unable to do them.
Finally, simple and elementary cooking comes well within the scope of
the education of elder girls at school. But it must be taught seriously
to make it worth while, and as in the teaching of needlework, the
foundations must be plain. To begin by fancy-work in one case and
bonbons in the other turns the whole instruction into a farce. In this
subject especially, the satisfaction of producing good work, well done,
without help, is a result which justifies all the trouble that may be
spent upon it. When girls have, by themselves, brought to a happy
conclusion the preparation of a complete meal, their very faces bear
witness to the educational value of the success. They are not elated nor
excited, but wear the look of quiet contentment which seems to come from
contact with primitive things. This look alone on a girl's face gives a
beauty of its own, something becoming, and fitting, and full of promise.
No expression is equal to it in the truest charm, for quiet contentment
is the atmosphere which in the future, whatever may be her lot, ought to
be diffused by her presence, an atmosphere of security and rest.
Perhaps at first sight it seems an exaggeration to link so closely
together the highest natural graces of a woman with those lowliest
occupations, but let the effects be compared by those who have examined
other systems of instruction. If they have considered the outcome of an
exclusively intellectual education for girls, especially one loaded with
subjects in sections to be "got up" for purposes of examination, and
compared it with one into which the practical has largely entered, they
can hardly fail to agree that the latter is the best preparation for
life, not only physically and morally but mentally. During the stress of
examinations lined foreheads, tired eyes, shallow breathing, angular
movements tell their own story of strain, and when it is over a want of
resourcefulness in finding occupation shows that a whole side has
remained undeveloped. The possibility of turning to some household
employments would give rest without idleness; it would save from two
excesses in a time of reaction, from the exceeding weariness of having
nothing to do, the real misery of an idle life, and on the other hand
from craving for excitement and constant change through fear of this
unoccupied vacancy.
One other point is worth consideration. The "servant question" is one
which looms larger and larger as a household difficulty. There are
stories of great and even royal households being left in critical
moments at the mercy of servants' tempers, of head cooks "on strike" or
negligent personal attendants. And from these down to the humblest
employers of a general servant the complaint is the same--servants so
independent, so exacting, good servants not to be had, so difficult to
get things properly done, etc. These complaints give very strong warning
that helpless dependence on servants is too great a risk to be accepted,
and that every one in ordinary stations of life should be at least able
to be independent of personal service. The expansion of colonial life
points in the same direction. The "simple life" is talked of at home,
but it is really lived in the colonies. Those who brace themselves to
its hardness find a vigour and resourcefulness within them which they
had never suspected, and the pride of personal achievement in making a
home brings out possibilities which in softer circumstances might have
remained for ever dormant, with their treasure of happiness and hardy
virtues. It is possible, no doubt, in that severe and plain life to lose
many things which are not replaced by its self-reliance and hardihood.
It is possible to drop into merely material preoccupation in the
struggle for existence. But it is also possible not to do so, and the
difference lies in having an ideal.
To Catholics even work in the wilderness and life in the backwoods are
not dissociated from the most spiritual ideals. The pioneers of the
Church, St. Benedict's monks, have gone before in the very same labour
of civilization when Europe was to a great extent still in backwoods.
And, when they sanctified their days in prayer and hard labour, poetry
did not forsake them, and learning even took refuge with them in their
solitude to wait for better times. It was religion which attracted both.
Without their daily service of prayer, the _Opus Dei_, and the assiduous
copying of books, and the desire to build worthy churches for the
worship of God, arts and learning would not have followed the monks into
the wilderness, but their life would have dropped to the dead level of
the squatter's existence. In the same way family life, if toilsome,
either at home or in a new country, may be inspired by the example of
the Holy Family in Nazareth; and in lonely and hard conditions, as well
as in the stress of our crowded ways of living, the influence of that
ideal reaches down to the foundations and transfigures the very humblest
service of the household.
These primitive services which are at the foundation of all home life
are in themselves the same in all places and times. There is in them
something almost sacred; they are sane, wholesome, stable, amid the
weary perpetual change of artificial additions which add much to the
cares but little to the joys of life. There is a long distance between
the labours of Benedictine monks and the domestic work possible for
school girls, but the principles fundamental to both are the
same--happiness in willing work, honour to manual labour, service of God
in humble offices. The work of lay-sisters in some religious houses,
where they understand the happiness of their lot, links the two extremes
together across the centuries. The jubilant onset of their company in
some laborious work is like an anthem rising to God, bearing witness to
the happiness of labour where it is part of His service. They are the
envy of the choir religious, and in the precincts of such religious
houses children unconsciously learn the dignity of manual labour, and
feel themselves honoured by having any share in it. Such labour can be
had for love, but not for money.
One word must be added before leaving the subject of the realities of
life. Worn time to time a rather emphatic school lifts up its voice in
the name of plain speaking and asks for something beyond reality--for
realism, for anticipated instruction on the duties and especially on the
dangers of grown-up life. It will be sufficient to suggest three points
for consideration in this matter: (1) That these demands are not made by
fathers and mothers, but appear to come from those whose interest in
children is indirect and not immediately or personally responsible. This
may be supposed from the fact that they find fault with what is omitted,
but do not give their personal experience of how the want may be
supplied. (2) Those priests who have made a special study of children do
not seem to favour the view, or to urge that any change should be made
in the direction of plain speaking. (3) The answer given by a great
educational authority, Miss Dorothea Beale, the late Principal of
Cheltenham College, may appeal to those who are struck by the theory if
they do not advocate it in practice. When this difficulty was laid
before her she was not in favour of departing from the usual course, or
insisting on the knowledge of grown-up life before its time, and she
pointed out that in case of accidents or surgical operations it was not
the doctors nor the nurses actively engaged who turned faint and sick,
but those who had nothing to do, and in the same way she thought that
such instruction, cut off from the duties and needs of the present, was
not likely to be of any real benefit, but rather to be harmful.
Considering how wide was her experience of educational work this opinion
carries great weight.