LESSONS AND PLAY.
"What think we of thy soul?
* * * *
"Born of full stature, lineal to control;
And yet a pigmy's yoke must undergo.
Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind,
With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind;
Must be obsequious to the body's powers,
Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways,
Must do obeisance to the days,
And wait the little pleasure of the hours;
Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be
Captive in statuted minority!"
"Sister Songs," by FRANCIS THOMPSON.
Lessons and play used to be as clearly marked off one from the other as
land and water on the older maps. Now we see some contour maps in which
the land below so many feet and the sea within so many fathoms' depth
are represented by the same marking, or left blank. In the same way the
tendency in education at present is almost to obliterate the line of
demarcation, at least for younger children, so that lessons become a
particular form of play, "with a purpose," and play becomes a sublimated
form of lessons, as the druggists used to say, "an elegant preparation"
of something bitter. If the Board of Education were to name a commission
composed of children, and require it to look into the system, it is
doubtful whether they would give a completely satisfactory report. They
would probably judge it to be too uniform in tone, poor in colour and
contrast, deficient in sparkle. They like the exhilaration of bright
colour, and the crispness of contrast. Of course they would judge it
from the standpoint of play, not of lessons. But play which is not quite
play, coming after something which has been not quite lessons, loses the
tingling delight of contrast. The funereal tolling of a bell for real
lessons made a dark background against which the rapture of release for
real play shone out with a brilliancy which more than made up for it. At
home, the system of ten minutes' lessons at short intervals seems to
answer well for young children; it exerts just enough pressure to give
rebound in the intervals of play. Of course this is not possible at
school.
But the illusion that lessons are play cannot be indefinitely kept up,
or if the illusion remains it is fraught with trouble. Duty and
endurance, the power to go through drudgery, the strength of mind to
persist in taking trouble, even where no interest is felt, the
satisfaction of holding on to the end in doing something arduous, these
things must be learned at some time during the years of education. If
they are not learned then, in all probability they will never be
acquired at all; examples to prove the contrary are rare. The question
is how--and when. If pressed too soon with obligations of lessons,
especially with prolonged attention, little anxious faces and round
shoulders protest. If too long delayed the discovery comes as a shock,
and the less energetic fall out at once and declare that they "can't
learn"--"never could."
Perhaps in one way the elementary schools with their large classes have
a certain advantage in this, because the pressure is more self-adjusting
than in higher class education, where the smaller numbers give to each
child a greater share in the general work, for better or for worse. In
home education this share becomes even greater when sometimes one child
alone enjoys or endures the undivided attention of the governess. In
that case the pressure does not relax. But out of large classes of
infants in elementary schools it is easy to see on many vacant restful
faces that after a short exertion in "qualifying to their teacher" they
are taking their well-earned rest. They do not allow themselves to be
strung up to the highest pitch of attention all through the lesson, but
take and leave as they will or as they can, and so they are carried
through a fairly long period of lessons without distress. As they grow
older and more independent in their work the same cause operates in a
different way. They can go on by themselves and to a certain extent they
must do so, as o n account of the numbers teachers can give less time
and less individual help to each, and the habit of self-reliance is
gradually acquired, with a certain amount of drudgery, leading to
results proportionate to the teacher's personal power of stimulating
work. The old race of Scottish schoolmaster in the rural schools
produced--perhaps still produces--good types of such self-reliant
scholars, urged on by his personal enthusiasm for knowledge. Having no
assistant, his own personality was the soul of the school, both boys and
girls responding in a spirit which was worthy of it. But the boys had
the best of it; "lassies" were not deemed worthy to touch the classics,
and the classics were everything to him. In America it is reported that
the best specimens of university students often come from remote schools
in which no external advantages have been available; but the tough
unyielding habit of study has been developed in grappling with
difficulties without much support from a teacher.
With those who are more gently brought up the problem is how to obtain
this habit of independent work, that is practically--how to get the will
to act. There is drudgery to be gone through, however it may be
disguised, and as a permanent acquisition the power of going through it
is one of the most lasting educational results that can be looked for.
Drudgery is labour with toil and fatigue. It is the long penitential
exercise of the whole human race, not limited to one class or
occupation, but accompanying every work of man from the lowest
mechanical factory hand or domestic "drudge" up to the Sovereign
Pontiff, who has to spend so many hours in merely receiving,
encouraging, blessing, and dismissing the unending processions of his
people as they pass before him, imparting to them graces of which he can
never see the fruit, and then returning to longer hours of listening to
complaints and hearing of troubles which often admit of no remedy: truly
a life of labour with toil and fatigue, in comparison with which most
lives are easy, though each has to bear in its measure the same stamp.
Pius X has borne the yoke of labour from his youth. His predecessor took
it up with an enthusiasm that burned within him, and accepted training
in a service where the drudgery is as severe though generally kept out
of sight. The acceptance of it is the great matter, whatever may be the
form it takes.
Spurs and bait, punishment and reward, have been used from time
immemorial to set the will in motion, and the results have been
variable--no one has appeared to be thoroughly satisfied with either, or
even with a combination of the two. Some authorities have stood on an
eminence, and said that neither punishment nor reward should be used,
that knowledge should be loved for its own sake. But if it was not
loved, after many invitations, the problem remained. As usual the real
solution seems to be attainable only by one who really loves both
knowledge and children, or one who loves knowledge and can love
children, as Vittorino da Feltre loved them both, and also Blessed
Thomas More. These two affections mingled together produce great
educators--great in the proportion in which the two are possessed--as
either one or the other declines the educational power diminishes, till
it dwindles down to offer trained substitutes and presentable
mediocrities for living teachers. The fundamental principle reasserts
itself, that "love feels no labour, or if it does it loves the labour."
Here is one of our Catholic secrets of strength. We have received so
much, we have so much to give, we know so well what we want to obtain.
We have the Church, the great teacher of the world, as our prototype,
and by some instinct a certain unconscious imitation of her finds its
way into the mind and heart of Catholic teachers, so that, though often
out of poorer material, we can produce teachers who excel in personal
hold over children, and influence for good by their great affection and
the value which they set on souls. Their power of obtaining work is
proportioned to their own love of knowledge, and here--let it be owned--we
more often fail. Various theories are offered in explanation of this;
people take one or other according to their personal point of view. Some
say we feel so sure of the other world that our hold on this is slack.
Some that in these countries we have not yet made up for the check of
three centuries when education was made almost impossible for us. And
others say it is not true at all. Perhaps they know best.
Next to the personal power of the teacher to influence children in
learning lessons comes an essential condition to make it possible, and
that is a simple life with quiet regular hours and unexciting pleasures.
Amid a round of amusements lessons must go to the wall, no child can
stand the demands of both at a time. All that can be asked of them is
that they should live through the excitement without too much weariness
or serious damage. The place to consider this is in London at the
children's hour for riding in the park, contrasting the prime condition
of the ponies with the "illustrious pallor" of so many of their riders.
They have courage enough left to sit up straight in their saddles, but
it would take a heart of stone to think of lesson books. This extreme of
artificial life is of course the portion of the few. Those few, however,
are very important people, influential in the future for good or evil,
but a protest from a distance would not reach their schoolrooms, any
more than legislation for the protection of children; they may be
protected from work, but not from amusement. The conditions of simple
living which are favourable for children have been so often enumerated
that it is unnecessary to go over them again; they may even be procured
in tabular form or graphical representation for those to whom these
figures and curves carry conviction.
But a point that is of more practical interest to children and teachers,
struggling together in the business of education, and one that is often
overlooked, is that children do not know how to learn lessons when the
books are before them, and that there is a great waste of good power,
and a great deal of unnecessary weariness from this cause. If the cause
of imperfectly learned lessons is examined it will usually be found
there, and also the cause of so much dislike to the work of preparation.
Children do not know by instinct how to set about learning a lesson from
a book, nor do they spontaneously recognize that there are different
ways of learning, adapted to different lessons. It is a help to them to
know that there is one way for the multiplication table and another for
history and another for poetry, as the end of the lesson is different.
They can understand this if it is put before them that one is learnt
most quickly by mere repetition, until it becomes a sing-song in the
memory that cannot go wrong, and that afterwards in practice it will
allow itself to be taken to pieces; they will see that they can grasp a
chapter of history more intelligently if they prepare for themselves
questions upon it which might be asked of another, than in trying by
mechanical devices of memory to associate facts with something to hold
them by; that poetry is different from both, having a body and a soul,
each of which has to be taken account of in learning it, one of them
being the song and the other the singer. Obviously there is not one only
way for each of these or for other matters which have to be learnt, but
one of the greatest difficulties is removed when it is understood that
there is something intelligible to be done in the learning of lessons
beyond reading them over and over with the hope that they will go in.
The hearing of lessons is a subject that deserves a great deal of
consideration. It is an old formal name for what has been often an
antiquated mechanical exercise. A great deal more trouble is expended
now on the manner of questioning and "hearing" the lessons; but even yet
it may be done too formally, as a mere function, or in a way that kills
the interest, or in a manner that alarms--with a mysterious face as if
setting traps, or with questions that are easy and obvious to ask, but
for children almost impossible to answer. Children do not usually give
direct answers to simple questions. Experience seems to have taught them
that appearances are deceptive in this matter, and they look about for
the spring by which the trap works before they will touch the bait. It
is a pity to set traps, because it destroys confidence, and children's
confidence in such matters as lessons is hard to win.
The question of aids to study by stimulants is a difficult one. On the
one hand it seems to some educators a fundamental law that reward should
follow right-doing and effort, and so no doubt it is; but the reward
within one's own mind and soul is one thing and the calf-bound book is
another--scarcely even a symbol of the first, because they are not
always obtained by the same students. This is a fruitful subject for
discourse or reflection at distributions of prizes. Those who are behind
the scenes know that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the
strong, and the children know it themselves, and prize-winners often
become the object of the "word in season," pointing out how rarely they
will be found to distinguish themselves in after life; while the steady
advance of the plodding and slow mind is dwelt upon, and those who have
failed through idleness drink up the encouragement which was not
intended for them, and feel that they are the hope of the future because
they have won no prizes. It is difficult on those occasions to make the
conflicting conclusions clear to everybody.
Yet the system of prize distributions is time honoured and traditional,
and every country is not yet so disinterested in study as to be able to
do without it; under its sway a great deal of honest effort is put out,
and the taste of success which is the great stimulant of youth is first
experienced.
There is also the system of certificates, which has the advantage of
being open to many instead of to one. It is likewise a less material
testimonial, approaching more nearly to the merited word of approval
which is in itself the highest human reward, and the one nearest to the
heart of things, because it is the one which belongs to home. For if the
home authorities interest themselves in lessons at all, their grown-up
standard and the paramount weight of their opinion gives to one word of
their praise a dignity and worth which goes beyond all prizes. Beyond
this there is no natural satisfaction to equal the inner consciousness
of having done one's best, a very intimate prize distribution in which
we ourselves make the discourse, and deliver the certificate to
ourselves. This is the culminating point at which educators aim; they
are all agreed that prizes in the end are meant to lead up to it, but
the way is long between them. And both one and the other are good in so
far as they lead us on to the highest judgment that is day by day passed
on our work. When prizes, and even the honour of well-deserved praise,
fail to attract, the thought of God the witness of our efforts, and of
the value in His sight of striving which is never destined to meet with
success, is a support that keeps up endurance, and seals with an evident
mark of privilege the lives of many who have made those dutiful efforts
not for themselves but in the sight of God.
The subject of play has to be considered from two points of view, that
of the children and ours. Theirs is concerned chiefly with the present
and ours with the future, far although we do not want every play-hour to
be haunted with a spectral presence that speaks of improvement and
advancement, yet we cannot lose sight of the fact that every hour of
play is telling on the future, deepening the mark of the character,
strengthening the habits, and guiding the lines of after life into this
or that channel.
Looking at it from this point of view of the future, there seems to be
something radically wrong at present with the play provided for children
of nursery age. In a very few years we shall surely look back and wonder
how we could have endured, for the children, the perverse reign of the
Golliwog dynasty and the despotism of Teddy-bears. More than that, it is
pitiful to hear of nurseries for Catholic children sometimes without
shrine or altar or picture of the Mother of God, and with one of these
monsters on every chair. Something even deeper than the artistic sense
must revolt before long against this barbarous rule. The Teddy-bear, if
he has anything to impart, suggests his own methods of life and defence,
and the Golliwog, far worse--limp, hideous, without one characteristic
grace, or spark of humour--suggests the last extremity of what is
embodied in the expression "letting oneself go." And these things are
loved! Pity the beautiful soul of the child, made for beautiful things.
_II y a toujours en nous quelque chose qui veut ramper_, said Pere de
Ravignan, and to this the Golliwog makes strong appeal. It is only too
easy to _let go_, and the Golliwog playfellow says that it is quite
right to do so--he does it himself. It takes a great deal to make him
able to sit up at all--only in the most comfortable chair can it be
accomplished--if the least obstacle is encountered he can only give way.
And yet this pitiable being makes no appeal to the spirit of
helpfulness. Do what you can for him it is impossible to raise him up,
the only thing is to go down with him to his own level and stay there.
The Golliwog is at heart a pessimist.
In contrast with this the presence of an altar or nursery shrine, though
not a plaything, gives a different tone to play--a tone of joy and
heavenliness that go down into the soul and take root there to grow into
something lasting and beautiful. There are flowers to be brought, and
lights, and small processions, and evening recollection with quietness
of devotion, with security in the sense of heavenly protection, with the
realization of the "great cloud of witnesses" who are around to make
play safe and holy, and there is through it all the gracious call to
things higher, to be strong, to be unselfish, to be self-controlled, to
be worthy of these protectors and friends in heaven.
There is another side also to the question of nursery play, and that is
what may be called the play-values of the things provided. Mechanical
toys are wonderful, but beyond an artificial interest which comes mostly
from the elders, there is very little lasting delight in them for
children. They belong to the system of over-indulgence and
over-stimulation which measures the value of things by their price.
Their worst fault is that they do all there is to be done, while the
child looks on and has nothing to do. The train or motor rushes round
and round, the doll struts about and bleats "papa," "mama," the
Teddy-bear growls and dances, and the owner has but to wind them up,
which is very poor amusement. Probably they are better after they have
been over-wound and the mechanical part has given way, and they have
come to the hard use that belongs to their proper position as
playthings. If a distinction may be drawn between toys and playthings,
toys are of very little play-value, they stand for fancy play, to be
fiddled with; while playthings stand as symbols of real life, the harder
and more primitive side of life taking the highest rank, and all that
they do is really done by the child. This is the real play-value. Even
things that are not playthings at all, sticks and stones and shells,
have this possibility in them. Things which have been found have a
history of their own, which gives them precedence over what comes from a
shop; but the highest value of all belongs to the things which children
have made entirely themselves--bows and arrows, catapults, clay marbles,
though imperfectly round, home-made boats and kites. The play-value
grows in direct proportion to the amount of personal share which
children have in the making and in the use of their playthings. And in
this we ought cordially to agree with them.
After the nursery age, in the school or school-room, play divides into
two lines--organized games, of which we hear a great deal in school at
present, and home play. They are not at all the same thing. Both have
something in their favour. So much has been written of late about the
value of organized games, how they bring out unselfishness, prompt and
unquestioning obedience, playing for one's side and not for oneself,
etc., that it seems as if all has been said better than it could be said
again, except perhaps to point out that there is little relaxation in
the battle of life for children who do their best at books indoors and
at games out of doors--so that in self-defence a good many choose an
"elective course" between the two lines of advantages that school
offers, and do not attempt to serve two masters; they will do well at
books or games, but not at both. If the interest in games is keen, they
require a great deal of will-energy, as well as physical activity, a
great deal of self-control and subordination of personal interest to the
good of the whole. In return for these requirements they give a great
deal, this or that, more or less, according to the character of the
game; they give physical control of movement, quickness of eye and hand,
promptitude in decision, observance of right moments, command of temper,
and many other things. In fact, for some games the only adverse
criticism to offer is that they are more of a discipline than real play,
and that certainly for younger children who have no other form of
recreation than play, something more restful to the mind and less
definite in purpose is desirable.
For these during playtime some semblance of solitude is exceedingly
desirable at school where the great want is to be sometimes alone. It is
good for them not to be always under the pressure of competition--going
along a made road to a definite end--but to have their little moments of
even comparative solitude, little times of silence and complete freedom,
if they cannot be by themselves. Hoops and skipping-ropes without races
or counted competitions will give this, with the possibility of a moment
or two to do nothing but live and breathe and rejoice in air and
sunshine. Without these moments of rest the conditions of life at
present and the constitutions for which the new word "nervy" has had to
be invented, will give us tempers and temperaments incapable of repose
and solitude. A child alone in a swing, kicking itself backwards and
forwards, is at rest; alone in its little garden it has complete rest of
mind with the joy of seeing its own plants grow; alone in a field
picking wild flowers it is as near to the heart of primitive existence
as it is possible to be. Although these joys of solitude are only
attainable in their perfection by children at home, yet if their value
is understood, those who have charge of them at school can do something
to give them breathing spaces free from the pressure of corporate life,
and will probably find them much calmer and more manageable than if they
have nothing but organized play.
There are plenty of indoor occupations too for little girls which may
give the same taste of solitude and silence, approaching to those
simpler forms of home play which have no definite aim, no beginning and
ending, no rules. The fighting instinct is very near the surface in
ambitious and energetic children, and in the play-grounds it asserts
itself all the more in reaction after indoor discipline, then excitement
grows, and the weaker suffer, and the stronger are exasperated by
friction. If unselfish, they feel the effort to control themselves; if
selfish, they exhaust themselves and others in the battle to impose
their own will. In these moods solitude and silence, with a hoop or
skipping-rope, are a saving system, and restore calmness of mind. All
that is wanted is freedom, fresh air, and spontaneous movement. This is
more evident in the case of younger children, but if it can be obtained
for elder girls it is just as great a relief. They have usually acquired
more self-control, and the need does not assert itself so loudly, but it
is perhaps all the greater; and in whatever way it can best be
ministered to, it will repay attention and the provision that may be
made for it.
One word may be merely suggested for consideration concerning games in
girls' schools, and that is the comparative value of them as to physical
development. The influence of the game in vogue in each country will
always be felt, but it is worth attention that some games, as hockey,
conduce to all the attitudes and movements which are least to be
desired, and that others, as basket-ball, on the contrary tend--if
played with strict regard to rules--to attitudes which are in themselves
beautiful and tending to grace of movement. This word belongs to our
side of the question, not that of the children. It belongs to our side
also to see that hoops are large, and driven with a stick, not a hook,
for the sake of straight backs, which are so easily bent crooked in
driving a small hoop with a hook.
In connexion with movement comes the question of dancing. Dancing comes,
officially, under the heading of lessons, most earnest lessons if the
professor has profound convictions of its significance. But dancing
belongs afterwards to the playtime of life. We have outlived the grim
puritanical prejudice which condemned it as wrong, and it is generally
agreed that there is almost a natural need for dancing as the expression
of something very deep in human nature, which seems to be demonstrated
by its appearance in one form or another, amongst all races of mankind.
There is something in co-ordinated rhythmical movement, in the grace of
steps, in the buoyancy of beautiful dancing which seems to make it a
very perfect exercise for children and young people. But there are
dances and dances, steps and steps, and about the really beautiful there
is always a touch of the severe, and a hint of the ideal. Without these,
dancing drops at once to the level of the commonplace and below it. In
general, dances which embody some characteristics of a national life
have more beauty than cosmopolitan dances, but they are only seen in
their perfection when performed by dancers of the race to whom their
spirit belongs, or by the class for whom they are intended: which is
meant as a suggestion that little girls should not dance the hornpipe.
In conclusion, the question of play, and playtime and recreation is
absorbing more and more attention in grown-up life. We have heard it
said over and over again of late years that we tire a nation at play,
and that "the athletic craze" has gone beyond all bounds. Many facts are
brought forward in support of this criticism from schools, from
newspapers, from general surveys of our national life at present. And
those who study more closely the Catholic body say that we too are
sharing in this extreme, and that the Catholic body though small in
number is more responsible and more deserving of reproof if it falls
from its ideals, for it has ideals. It is only Catholic girls who
concern us here, but our girls among other girls, and Catholic women
among other women have the privilege as well as the duty of upholding
what is highest. We belong by right to the graver side of the human
race, for those who know must be in an emergency graver, less reckless
on the one hand, less panic-stricken on the other, than those who do not
know. We can never be entirely "at play." And if some of us should be
for a time carried away by the current, and momentarily completely "at
play," it must be in a wave of reaction from the long grinding of
endurance under the penal times. Cardinal Newman's reminiscences of the
life and ways of "the Roman Catholics" in his youth showy the temper of
mind against which our present excess of play is a reaction.
"A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully
about, as memorials of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'--not a sect,
not even an interest, as men conceived of it--not a body, however small,
representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of
individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the
great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed
which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church. Here a set of
poor Irishmen, coining and going at harvest time, or a colony of them
lodged in a miserable quarter of the vast metropolis. There, perhaps, an
elderly person, seen walking in the streets, grave and solitary, and
strange, though noble in bearing, and said to be of good family, and 'a
Roman Catholic.' An old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in
with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and the report attaching
to it that 'Roman Catholics' lived there; but who they were, or what
they did, or what was meant by calling them Roman Catholics, no one
could tell, though it had an unpleasant sound, and told of form and
superstition. And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro, looking with a
boy's curious eyes through the great city, we might come to-day upon
some Moravian chapel, or Quaker's meeting-house, and to-morrow on a
chapel of the 'Roman Catholics': but nothing was to be gathered from it,
except that there were lights burning there, and some boys in white,
swinging censers: and what it all meant could only be learned from
books, from Protestant histories and sermons; but they did not report
well of the 'Roman Catholics,' but, on the contrary, deposed that they
had once had power and had abused it. ... Such were the Catholics in
England, found in corners, and alleys, and cellars, and the housetops,
or in the recesses of the country; cut off from the populous world
around them, and dimly seen, as if through a mist or in twilight, as
ghosts flitting to and fro, by the high Protestants, the lords of the
earth." ("The Second Spring.")
This it is from which we are keeping holiday; but for us it can be only
a half holiday, the sifting process is always at work, the opposition of
the world to the Church only sleeps for a moment, and there are many who
tell us that the signs of the times point to new forms of older
conflicts likely to recur, and that we may have to go, as they went on
the day of Waterloo, straight from the dance to the battlefield.