“A French lesson was given to the second-year students by the

French mistress, a native of Tournai, who came to Ambleside in

1915. She had been teaching in England for some years, but had

not previously come into contact with Miss Mason’s methods.

Those methods were exactly followed during the lesson. There

was the book of recognised literary merit, the single reading,

and the immediate narration--of course in French. The book was

Alphonse Daudet’s _Lettres de Mon Moulin_, and the story read

was ‘La Chèvre de M. Seguin.’ Before the reading began, a few--a

very few--words of explanation were given--of course, in French.

Then nine pages of the story were read straight through by the

mistress, without pause or interruption of any kind, at the same

pace that one would read an English story. The students followed

by ear only: they had no books. As soon as the reading ended,

on the instant, without hesitation of any kind, narration began

in French, different members of the class taking up the story

in turn till it was finished. All were good; some astonishingly

good. To all French was a tongue in which they could think and

speak with considerable facility. Yet the time given to French

is two hours and three-quarters a week only. Such results compel

attention. It may be added that last year the writer heard a

history lecture on the reign of Louis XI given in French by

the same mistress to the then senior students, and the content

of the lecture was narrated in a similar manner, with the same

astonishing success.”

This hitherto unused power of concentrated attention in the study

of languages whether ancient or modern appears to hold promise of

making us at last a nation of linguists. We have attained very good

results in Italian and German by this same method, both in the

House of Education and the Practising School belonging to it, and

we are in a fair way to produce noticeable results in Latin. The

Classical mistress writes,--

“Latin is taught at the House of Education by means of narration

after each section has been thoroughly studied in grammar, syntax

and style. The literature studied increases in difficulty as

the pupil advances in grammar, etc. Nothing but good Latin is

ever narrated, so the pupil acquires style as well as structure.

The substance of the passage is usually reproduced with the

phraseology and style of the original and both students and

children learn what is really Latin and realise that it is a

language and not a mere grammar.”

Here we get Grammar, that is, construction, learned as we learn it

in English, at the lips of those who know, and the extraordinary

readiness in acquiring new words shewn by the scholars promises

English folk the copious vocabulary in one or another foreign

language, the lack of which is a national distress.

II

THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN

(_f_) ART

There are few subjects regarded with more respect and less

confidence in our schools than this of ‘Art.’ Of course, we say,

children should have their artistic powers cultivated, especially

those who have such powers, but _how_ is the question. The neat

solution offered by South Kensington in the sixties,--freehand

drawing, perspective, drawing from the round, has long been

rejected; but nothing definite has taken its place and we still

see models of cones, cubes and so on, disposed so that the eye may

take them in freely and that the hand may perhaps produce what the

eye has seen. But we begin now to understand that art is not to be

approached by such a macadamised road. It is of the spirit, and

in ways of the spirit must we make our attempt. We recognise that

the power of appreciating art and of producing to some extent an

interpretation of what one sees is as universal as intelligence,

imagination, nay, speech, the power of producing words. But there

must be knowledge and, in the first place, not the technical

knowledge of how to produce, but some reverent knowledge of what

has been produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line

by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but pictures

themselves. A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen

beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist,

term by term. After a short story of the artist’s life and a few

sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or

his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that

is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but _to look at

it_, taking in every detail. Then the picture is turned over and

the children tell what they have seen,--a dog driving a flock of

sheep along a road but nobody with the dog. Ah, there is a boy

lying down by the stream drinking. It is morning as you can see

by the light so the sheep are being driven to pasture, and so on;

nothing is left out, the discarded plough, the crooked birch, the

clouds beautiful in form and threatening rain, there is enough for

half an hour’s talk and memory in this little reproduction of a

great picture and the children will know it wherever they see it,

whether a signed proof, a copy in oils, or the original itself in

one of our galleries. We hear of a small boy with his parents in

the National Gallery; the boy, who had wandered off on his own

account, came running back with the news,--“Oh, Mummy, there’s

one of our Constables on that wall.” In this way children become

acquainted with a hundred, or hundreds, of great artists during

their school-life and it is an intimacy which never forsakes them.

A group of children are going up to London for a treat. “Where

would you like to go?” “Oh, Mummy, to the National Gallery to see

the Rembrandts.” Young people go to tea in a room strange to them

and are delighted to recognise two or three reproductions of De

Hooch’s pictures. In the course of school-life children get an Open

Sesame to many art galleries, and to many a cultivated home; and

life itself is illustrated for them at many points. For it is true

as Browning told us,--

“For, don’t you mark, we’re made so that we love

First when we see them painted, things we have passed

Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.”

Here is an example of how beautiful and familiar things give quite

new delight when they are pictured. A lady writes,--

“I was invited to a small village to talk about the P.U. School.

Twelve really interested women came in spite of heavy rain.... I

suggested introducing them to some of the friends their children

had made and we had a delightful picture talk with Jean B.

Corot, delightful to me because of the way one woman especially

narrated. She did it as if she had been set free for the first

time for months. It was the ‘Evening’ picture with a canal on the

right and that splendid mass of quiet trees in the centre. The

others gave bits of the picture but she gave the whole thing. It

was a green pasture to her.”

The noteworthy thing is that these women were familiar with all

such details as Corot offers in their own beautiful neighbourhood,

but Browning is right; we learn to see things when we see them

painted.

It will be noticed that the work[35] done on these pictures is

done by the children themselves. There is no talk about schools of

painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes

in later life, but the first and most important thing is to know

the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book we leave the author

to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale

through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as

elsewhere we shut out the middleman.

Forms V and VI are asked to,--“Describe, with study in sepia,

Corot’s ‘Evening.’” Beyond this of a rough study from memory of

a given picture or of any section of it, these picture studies

do not afford much material for actual drawing; they are never

copied lest an attempt to copy should lessen a child’s reverence

for great work. We are shy in speaking of what we do in actual

drawing since Herr Cizek came among us and shewed what great

things children could do with scarcely any obvious teaching and

but little suggestion. But probably such work is only to be done

under the inspiration of an artist of unusual powers and I am

writing for teachers who depend upon their children rather than

upon themselves. They illustrate favourite scenes and passages

in the books read during the term and the spirit with which the

illustrations are drawn and the fitting details introduced make

the teacher aware of how much more the children have seen in the

passage than he has himself. Their courage in grappling with

points of technique is very instructive. They tackle a crowd with

wonderful ingenuity, a crowd listening to Mark Antony’s oration,

cheering the Prince of Wales in India, in fact wherever a crowd is

wanted it is suggested pretty much as an artist would give it by

a show of heads. Like those Viennese children they use all their

paper, whether for a landscape or the details in a room. They

give you horses leaping brooks, dogs running after cats, sheep

on the road, always with a sense of motion. It is evident that

children study the figures they see with due attention and will

give you a gardener sharpening his scythe, their mother sewing,

a man rowing, or driving, or mowing. Their chairs stand on four

legs and their figures on two feet in a surprising way, and they

are always on the watch to correct their errors by what they see.

They have a delightful and courageous sense of colour, and any

child will convince you that he has it in him to be an artist.

Their field studies give them great scope. The first buttercup in

a child’s nature note book is shockingly crude, the sort of thing

to scandalise a teacher of brush-drawing, but by and by another

buttercup will appear with the delicate poise, uplift and radiance

of the growing flower.

Drawing is generally so well taught now that we need do no more

than emphasize one or two special points in our work, such as the

definite study of pictures and the illustrations of Nature Note

Books.

We do what is possible to introduce children to Architecture; and

we practise clay-modelling and the various artistic handicrafts,

but there is nothing unusual in our work in these directions.[36]

With Musical Appreciation the case is different; and we cannot do

better than quote from an address made by Mrs. Howard Glover at the

Ambleside Conference of the Parents’ Union, 1922:--

“Musical Appreciation--which is so much before the eye at the

present moment--originated in the P.N.E.U. about twenty-five

years ago. At that time I was playing to my little child much of

the best music in which I was interested, and Miss Mason happened

to hear of what I was doing. She realised that music might give

great joy and interest to the life of all, and she felt that just

as children in the P.U.S. were given the greatest literature

and art, so they should have the greatest music as well. She

asked me to write an article in the _Review_ on the result of my

observations, and to make a programme of music each term which

might be played _to_ the children. From that day to this, at the

beginning of every term a programme has appeared; thus began a

movement which was to spread far and wide.

“Musical Appreciation, of course, has nothing to do with playing

the piano. It used to be thought that ‘learning music’ must mean

this, and it was supposed that children who had no talent for

playing were unmusical and would not like concerts. But Musical

Appreciation had no more to do with playing an instrument than

acting had to do with an appreciation of Shakespeare, or painting

with enjoyment of pictures. I think that all children should take

Musical Appreciation and not only the musical ones, for it has

been proved that only three per cent. of children are what is

called ‘tone-deaf’; and if they are taken at an early age it is

astonishing how children who appear to be without ear, develop it

and are able to enjoy listening to music with understanding.”

SECTION III

THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE

(_a_) SCIENCE[37]

Huxley’s axiom that science teaching in the schools should be

of the nature of ‘common information’ is of use in defining our

limitations in regard to the teaching of science. We find another

limitation in the fact that children’s minds are not in need of the

mental gymnastics that such teaching is supposed to afford. They

are entirely alert and eager to know. Books dealing with science

as with history, say, should be of a literary character, and we

should probably be more scientific as a people if we scrapped all

the text-books which swell publishers’ lists and nearly all the

chalk expended so freely on our blackboards. The French mind has

appreciated the fact that the approach to science as to other

subjects should be more or less literary, that the principles which

underlie science are at the same time so simple, so profound and

so far-reaching that the due setting forth of these provokes what

is almost an emotional response; these principles are therefore

meet subjects for literary treatment, while the details of their

application are so technical and so minute as,--except by way of

illustration,--to be unnecessary for school work or for general

knowledge. We have not a copious scientific literature in English

but we have quite enough to go on with in our schools. We find an

American publication called _The Sciences_ (whose author would seem

to be an able man of literary power) of very great value in linking

universal principles with common incidents of every day life in

such a way that interest never palls and any child may learn on

what principles an electric bell works, what sound means, how a

steam engine works, and many other matters, explained here with

great lucidity. Capital diagrams and descriptions make experiments

easy and children arrive at their first notions of science without

the verbiage that darkens counsel. Form IIA read _Life and Her

Children_ by Arabella Buckley and get a surprising knowledge of the

earlier and lower forms of life. IIB take pleasure in Kingsley’s

_Madam How and Lady Why_. They are expected to do a great deal

of out-of-door work in which they are assisted by _The Changing

Year_, admirable month by month studies of what is to be seen

out-of-doors. They keep records and drawings in a Nature Note Book

and make special studies of their own for the particular season

with drawings and notes.

The studies of Form III for one term enable children to--“Make

a rough sketch of a section of ditch or hedge or sea-shore and

put in the names of the plants you would expect to find.” “Write

notes with drawings of the special study you have made this term.”

“What do you understand by calyx, corolla, stamen, pistil? In

what ways are flowers fertilised?” “How would you find the Pole

Star? Mention six other stars and say in what constellations they

occur.” “How would you distinguish between Early, Decorated and

Perpendicular Gothic? Give drawings.” Questions like these, it will

be seen, cover a good deal of field work, and the study of some

half dozen carefully selected books on natural history, botany,

architecture and astronomy, the principle being that children

shall observe and chronicle, but shall not depend upon their own

unassisted observation.

The study of natural history and botany with bird lists and plant

lists continues throughout school life, while other branches of

science are taken term by term.

The questions for Form IV for one term illustrate the various

studies of the scholars in natural history, general science,

hygiene and physiology; in fact, their studies are so various that

it is difficult to give each a separate title in the programme:--

GEOGRAPHY.

1. Write a short sketch of Central Asia, with map.

2. Compare Palestine with the Yorkshire moors. Describe the

valley of the Jordan.

3. “There is but one Nelson.” Illustrate by half-a-dozen

instances.

4. What is said in _Eöthen_ of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?

NATURAL HISTORY.

1. What do you know of (_a_), the manatee, (_b_), the whalebone

whale (sketch of skeleton), (_c_), porpoises and dolphins?

_or_, 1. Describe (_a_), quartz crystals, (_b_), felspar, (_c_),

mica, (_d_), hornblende. In what rock do these occur?

2. What do you know of insectivorous plants? Name those you know.

3. What circumstances strike you in a walk in summer?

GENERAL SCIENCE.

1. What do you understand by,--(_a_), electrical attraction,

(_b_), repulsion, (_c_), conductors, (_d_), insulators, (_e_),

methods of obtaining electricity?

2. Prove that “you never see matter itself,” and show how sight

gives us knowledge.

PHYSIOLOGY.

1. Describe the structure of the human ear.

Perhaps _Some Wonders of Matter_ by Bishop Mercer is the most

inspiring of the half-dozen volumes in current use in Form IV for

this section of their work. The questions indicate the varied

nature of the work and the answers shew that in every case the

knowledge is fairly wide and thorough. All the children in the

school are usually ready to answer each question on the work of the

term.

Forms V and VI again cover a wide field as the following questions

on a term’s work sufficiently indicate,--

GEOGRAPHY.

VI.

1. Show how the discovery of the New World affected England in

commerce and war.

2. According to what general law is life distributed on the earth?

3. Describe the Siege of Mexico by Cortes, and its surrender.

VI. & V.

4. How has the war affected (_a_), Luxembourg, (_b_), the Eastern

frontier of Belgium, (_c_), Antwerp and the Scheldt?

V.

1. Show how the Restoration affected our American possessions.

2. Show accurately how longitude is determined.

3. Sketch the history and character of Montezuma.

GEOLOGY AND GENERAL SCIENCE.

VI.

1. Discuss fully (_a_), the cause of radio-activity, (_b_),

gravitation.

2. What have you to say of the scenic aspects of the English

Trias? Name a dozen of the fossils. Sketch half-a-dozen.

V.

1. Give as full an explanation as you can of colour.

2. Describe the composition of the igneous rocks. Where do they

appear?

BIOLOGY, BOTANY, ETC.

VI.

1. What are the characters of the backboneless animals? Describe

half-a-dozen examples.

2. Describe and account for the vegetation of (_a_), woodlands,

(_b_), heath, (_c_), moorland, (_d_), meadow.

V.

1. How would you classify the industries of animals? Give

examples.

2. Describe the flora of the seashore.

VI. & V.

3. Describe, with drawings, the special study you have made this

term.

ASTRONOMY.

VI.

1. What do you understand by precession? Describe the precession

and mutation of the earth’s axis.

V.

1. Write an essay on the planet Mercury.

If we wanted an excuse for affording children a wide syllabus

introducing them at any rate to those branches of science of which

every normal person should have some knowledge, we find it in

the deprecatory words of Sir Richard Gregory in his Presidential

Address in the Education Science Section of the British

Association. He said that,--

“Education might be defined as a deliberate adjustment of a

growing human being to its environment, and the scope and

character of the subjects of instruction should be determined

by this biological principle. What was best for one race or

epoch need not be best for another. The essential mission of

school science was to prepare pupils for civilised citizenship

by revealing to them something of the beauty and the power of

the world in which they lived, as well as introducing them to

the methods by which the boundaries of natural knowledge had

been extended. School science, therefore, was not intended to

prepare for vocations, but to equip pupils for life. It should

be part of a general education, unspecialised, but in no direct

connexion with possible university courses to follow. Less than

three per cent. of the pupils from State-aided secondary schools

proceeded to universities, and yet most of the science courses in

these schools were based on syllabuses of the type of university

entrance examinations. The needs of the many were sacrificed to

the few.

“Too much importance was attached to what could be covered by

personal experiment and observation. Every science examination

qualifying for the first school certificate, which now

represented subjects normally studied up to about sixteen years

of age, was mainly a test of practical acquaintance with facts

and principles encountered in particular limited fields, but not

a single one afforded recognition of a broad and ample course

of instruction in science such as was a necessary complement to

laboratory work.

“The numbers [of examination candidates] suggested that general

scientific teaching was almost non-existent. The range of

instruction in the portions of subjects taken, moreover, was

almost confined to what could be taught in a laboratory. Reading

or teaching for interest or to learn how physical science was

daily extending the power of man received little attention

because no credit for knowledge thus gained was given in

examinations. There was very special need for the reminder that

science was not all measurement, nor all measurement science.”

It is reassuring to see methods that we have pursued for

over thirty years with admirable results recommended thus

authoritatively. The only sound method of teaching science is to

afford a due combination of field or laboratory work, with such

literary comments and amplifications as the subject affords. For

example, from _Ethics of the Dust_ children derive a certain

enthusiasm for crystals as such that their own unaided observation

would be slow to afford. As a matter of fact the teaching of

science in our schools has lost much of its educative value through

a fatal and quite unnecessary divorce between science and the

‘humanities.’

The nature note books which originated in the P.U.S. have

recommended themselves pretty widely as travelling companions and

life records wherein the ‘finds’ of every season, bird or flower,

fungus or moss, is sketched, and described _somewhat_ in the

manner of Gilbert White. The nature note book is very catholic and

finds room for the stars in their courses and for, say, the fossil

anemone found on the beach at Whitby. Certainly these note books

do a good deal to bring science within the range of common thought

and experience; we are anxious not to make science a utilitarian

subject.

GEOGRAPHY

The teaching of Geography suffers especially from the utilitarian

spirit. The whole tendency of modern Geography, as taught in

our schools, is to strip the unfortunate planet which has been

assigned to us as our abode and environment of every trace of

mystery and beauty. There is no longer anything to admire or to

wonder at in this sweet world of ours. We can no longer say with

Jasper Petulengro,--“Sun, moon and stars are sweet things, brother;

there is likewise the wind on the heath.” No, the questions

which Geography has to solve henceforth are confined to how and

under what conditions is the earth’s surface profitable to man

and desirable for his habitation. No more may children conceive

themselves climbing Mont Blanc or Mount Everest, skating on the

Fiords of Norway or swimming in a gondola at Venice. These are not

the things that matter, but only how and where and why is money

to be made under local conditions on the earth’s surface. It is

doubtful whether this kind of teaching is even lucrative because

the mind works on great ideas, and, upon these, works to great

ends. Where science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it

has perhaps no educative value.

Perhaps no knowledge is more delightful than such an intimacy

with the earth’s surface, region by region, as should enable the

map of any region to unfold a panorama of delight, disclosing not

only mountains, rivers, frontiers, the great features we know as

‘Geography,’ but associations, occupations, some parts of the past

and much of the present, of every part of this beautiful earth.

Great attention is paid to map work; that is, before reading a

lesson children have found the places mentioned in that lesson

on a map and know where they are, relatively to other places, to

given parallels, meridians. Then, bearing in mind that children

do not generalise but must learn by particulars, they read and

picture to themselves the Yorkshire Dales, the Sussex Downs, the

mysteries of a coal-mine; they see ‘pigs’ of iron flowing forth

from the furnace, the slow accretions which have made up the

chalk, the stirring life of the great towns and the occupations

of the villages. Form II (A and B) are engaged with the counties

of England, county by county, for so diverse are the counties in

aspect, history and occupations, that only so can children acquire

such a knowledge of England as will prove a key to the geography

of every part of the world, whether in the way of comparison or

contrast. For instance, while I write, the children in IIA are

studying the counties which contain the Thames basin and “Write

verses on ‘The Thames’” is part of their term’s work. _Our Sea

Power_, by H. W. Household, is of extraordinary value in linking

England with the world by means of a spirited account of the

glorious history of our navy, while the late Sir George Parkin,

than whom there is no better qualified authority, carries children

round the Empire. They are thrown on their own resources or those

of their teachers for what may be called current Geography. For

instance, “Learn what you can about _The Political Map of Europe

after the Great War_. (Evans, 4_d._).”

In Form III the Geography is still regional, that is, children are

led to form an intimate acquaintance with the countries of Europe

so that the map of any country calls up in a child’s imagination

a wonderful panorama of the diversities of the country, of the

people, their history and occupations. It is evident that this

kind of geographical image cannot be secured in any other way

than by considering Europe country by country. They begin with a

general survey of the seas and shores of the continent, of the

countries and peoples, of the diversities of tongues and their

historical origin, of the plains and mountains, of the rivers

and their basins; a survey after which they should be able to

answer such questions as,--“Name three rivers which flow into the

Baltic.” “What lands form the southern and eastern shores of the

Mediterranean?” “What countries are washed by the Baltic?” “Between

what parallels does Europe extend? What other continents lie partly

within the same parallels?” The young scholars are at home with the

map of Europe before they consider the countries separately.

The picture we present of the several countries is meant to be

before all things interesting and at the same time to provide an

intelligent and fairly exhaustive account of the given country.

Whatever further knowledge a child acquires will fit in to this

original scheme. For example, “The Rhône Valley and the Border

lands.”[38]

“The warm and fertile Rhône valley belongs in climate to the

southern region, where, although the vine is grown, large

plantations of olive and mulberry occupy much of the land. We

are apt to think of the South of France as the sunny south, the

sweet south, ‘but,’ says a writer whom we have already quoted,

‘it is austere, grim, sombre’ ... but the mulberry feeds the

silkworm and so furnishes material for the great manufacture of

France. Lyons, the second city of France, is the seat of the silk

manufacture including those of velvets and satins. It is seated

upon a tongue of land at the confluence of the rapid Rhône and

the sluggish Saône, and along the banks of both rivers are fine

quays.”

This extract indicates how geographical facts are introduced

incidentally, pretty much as a traveller comes across them. The

work for one term includes Belgium, Holland, Spain and Portugal,

and the interests connected with each of these countries are

manifold. For example,--

“On the seashore near Leyden is Katwyck where the expiring Rhine

is helped to discharge itself into the sea by means of a wide

artificial channel provided with no less than thirteen pairs of

enormous floodgates. These are shut to keep out the sea when the

tide is coming in, and open to let the streams pass out during

ebb tide. Notwithstanding these great works the once glorious

Rhine makes but an ignoble exit. The delta of this river may be

said to include the whole breadth of Holland.”[39]

It will be noticed that an attempt is made to shew the romance

of the natural features, the history, the industries, so that a

country is no more a mere matter of names on a map, or of sections

shewn by contour lines. Such generalisations are not Geography

but are slow conclusions which the mind should come to of itself

when it acquires intimacy with a region. Something of a literary

character is preserved in the Geography lessons. The new feature in

these is the study of maps which should be very thorough. For the

rest the single reading and narration as described in connection

with other work is sufficient in this subject also. Children cannot

tell what they have not seen with the mind’s eye, which we know as

imagination, and they cannot see what is not told in their books

with some vividness and some grasp of the subject. The thoroughness

of the map study is shewn by such a question to be answered from

memory as,--“What part of Belgium does the Scheldt drain? Name any

of its feeders. Name ten famous places in its basin. What port

stands at the head of its estuary?” We find great light thrown upon

the geography of the Empire in a little book of literary quality,

_Fighting for Sea Power in the Days of Sail_.

There are two rational ways of teaching Geography. The first is

the inferential method, a good deal in vogue at the present time;

by it the pupil learns certain geographical principles which he is

expected to apply universally. This method seems to me defective

for two reasons. It is apt to be misleading as in every particular

case the general principle is open to modifications; also, local

colour and personal and historical interests are wanting and the

scholar does not form an intellectual and imaginative conception

of the region he is learning about. The second which might be

called the panoramic method unrolls the landscape of the world,

region by region, before the eyes of the scholar with in every

region its own conditions of climate, its productions, its people,

their industries and their history. This way of teaching the most

delightful of all subjects has the effect of giving to a map of a

country or region the brilliancy of colour and the wealth of detail

which a panorama might afford, together with a sense of proportion

and a knowledge of general principles. I believe that pictures are

not of very great use in this study. We all know that the pictures

which abide with us are those which the imagination constructs from

written descriptions.

The Geography for Form IV[40] includes Asia, Africa, America

and Australasia. But the same principle is followed: vivid

descriptions, geographical principles, historical associations and

industrial details, are afforded which should make, as we say, an

impression, should secure that the region traversed becomes an

imaginative possession as well as affording data for reasonable

judgments. The pupil begins with a survey of Asia followed by a

separate treatment of the great countries and divisions and of the

great physical features. Thus of Siberia we read,--

“All travellers unite in praise of the free Siberian peasant. As

soon as one crosses the Urals one is surprised by the extreme

friendliness and good nature of the inhabitants as much as by the

rich vegetation of the well-cultivated fields and the excellent

state of the roads in the southern part of the government of

Tobolsk.”

or,--

“The glossy jet black soft thick fur of the sea-otter is the most

valuable of all the Russian skins. Next ranks the skin of the

black fox. But though a thousand of its skins are worth no more

than one skin of the sea-otter, the little grey squirrel whose

skins are imported by the million really plays the most important

part in the Siberian fur trade.”

Of Further India,--

“Pigou, the middle division, is really the vast delta of the

Irrawaddy, a low-lying country which yields enormous quantities

of rice while on the higher grounds which wall in the great river

are the finest teak forests in the world.”

Africa follows Asia with the discoveries of Livingstone, Speke,

Burton, Grant, etc. We get an account of African village life and

among the chapter headings are Abyssinia, Egypt, Up the Nile, The

Soudan, The Sahara, The Barbary States, South Africa, Cape Colony,

The Islands. America follows with an account of the progress of

discovery, a geographical sketch of South America, the Andes

and the Mountain States, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, etc., the Great

Plains of South America, Central America, North America, Canada, a

historical sketch of the United States, the Eastern States, States

of the Mississippi valley, the prairies, the Western States and

territories, California. In the section on the Eastern States we

read,--

“Stretching from this chain (the Alleghanies) is the great

Appalachian coalfield which extends through Pennsylvania,

Virginia and Ohio, with a length of 720 miles containing, it is

said, coal enough to supply the world for four thousand years!

Iron occurs with the coal in great abundance. Most of this

coal is of the kind called Anthracite. It is extremely slow in

burning, emits no smoke, but has a painfully drying effect upon

the air of a room. Sir Charles Lyall speaking of Pottsville on

this coalfield says,--‘Here I was agreeably surprised to see

a flourishing manufacturing town with the tall chimneys of a

hundred furnaces burning night and day, yet quite free from

smoke. Leaving this clear atmosphere and going down into one of

the mines it was a no less pleasing novelty to find that we could

handle the coal without soiling our fingers.’”

But enough has been said to indicate the sort of intimacy that

scholars in Form IV get with all quarters of the world, their

geography, landscape, histories and industries, together with the

study of the causes which affect climate and industries. Geikie’s

_Physical Geography_ affords an admirable introduction to the

principles of physical geography.

Forms V and VI are expected to keep up with the newspapers and

know something about places and regions coming most into note in

the current term. Also, in connection with the history studied,

Seeley’s _Expansion of England, The Peoples and Problems of

India_, Geikie’s _Elementary Lessons in Physical Geography_,

Mort’s _Practical Geography_, and Kipling’s _Letters of Travel_

are included in the reading of one term. In these Forms the young

students are expected to apply their knowledge to Geography, both

practical and theoretical, and to make much use of a good Atlas

without the map questions which have guided the map work of the

lower Forms.

III

THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE

(_b_) MATHEMATICS

The question of Arithmetic and of Mathematics generally is one of

great import to us as educators. So long as the idea of ‘faculties’

obtained no doubt we were right to put all possible weight on a

subject so well adapted to train the reasoning powers, but now

we are assured that these powers do not wait upon our training.

They are there in any case; and if we keep a chief place in our

curriculum for Arithmetic we must justify ourselves upon other

grounds. We take strong ground when we appeal to the beauty and

truth of Mathematics; that, as Ruskin points out, two and two make

four and cannot conceivably make five, is an inevitable law. It

is a great thing to be brought into the presence of a law, of a

whole system of laws, that exist without our concurrence,--that

two straight lines cannot enclose a space is a fact which we can

perceive, state, and act upon but cannot in any wise alter, should

give to children the sense of limitation which is wholesome for all

of us, and inspire that _sursum corda_ which we should hear in all

natural law.

Again, integrity in our dealings depends largely upon ‘Mr.

Micawber’s’ golden rule, while ‘Harold Skimpole’s’ disregard of

these things is a moral offence against society. Once again,

though we do not live on gymnastics, the mind like the body, is

invigorated by regular spells of hard exercise.

But education should be a science of proportion, and any one

subject that assumes undue importance does so at the expense of

other subjects which a child’s mind should deal with. Arithmetic,

Mathematics, are exceedingly easy to examine upon and so long

as education is regulated by examinations so long shall we have

teaching, directed not to awaken a sense of awe in contemplating a

self-existing science, but rather to secure exactness and ingenuity

in the treatment of problems.

What is better, it will be said, than a training in exactness and

ingenuity? But in saying so we assume that this exactness and

ingenuity brought out in Arithmetic serve us in every department

of life. Were this the case we should indeed have a royal road to

learning; but it would seem that no such road is open to us. The

habits and powers brought to bear upon any one educational subject

are exercised upon that subject simply. The familiar story of how

Sir Isaac Newton teased by his cat’s cries to be let in caused a

large hole in the door to be made for the cat and a small one for

the kitten, illustrates not a mere amusing lapse in a great mind

but the fact that work upon special lines qualifies for work upon

those lines only. One hears of more or less deficient boys to whom

the study of _Bradshaw_ is a delight, of an admirable accountant

who was otherwise a little ‘deficient.’

The boy who gets ‘full marks’ in Arithmetic makes a poor show in

history because the accuracy and ingenuity brought out by his sums

apply to his sums only: and as for the value of Arithmetic in

practical life, most of us have private reasons for agreeing with

the eminent staff officer who tells us that,--

“I have never found any Mathematics except simple addition of

the slightest use in a work-a-day life except in the Staff

College examinations and as for mental gymnastics and accuracy

of statement, I dispute the contention that Mathematics supply

either any better than any other study.”

We have most of us believed that a knowledge of the theory and

practice of war depended a good deal upon Mathematics, so this

statement by a distinguished soldier is worth considering. In a

word our point is that Mathematics are to be studied for their own

sake and not as they make for general intelligence and grasp of

mind. But then how profoundly worthy are these subjects of study

for their own sake, to say nothing of other great branches of

knowledge to which they are ancillary! Lack of proportion should be

our _bête noire_ in drawing up a curriculum, remembering that the

mathematician who knows little of the history of his own country or

that of any other, is sparsely educated at the best.

At the same time Genius has her own rights. The born mathematician

must be allowed full scope even to the omission of much else that

he should know. He soon asserts himself, sees into the intricacies

of a problem with half an eye, and should have scope. He would

prefer not to have much teaching. But why should the tortoise keep

pace with the hare and why should a boy’s success in life depend

upon drudgery in Mathematics? That is the tendency at the present

moment--to close the Universities and consequently the Professions

to boys and girls who, because they have little natural aptitude

for mathematics, must acquire a mechanical knowledge by such heavy

all-engrossing labour as must needs shut out such knowledge of the

‘humanities’ say, as is implied in the phrase ‘a liberal education.’

The claims of the London Matriculation examination, for example,

are acknowledged by many teachers to be incompatible with the wide

knowledge proper to an educated person.

Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the text-book

and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly because teachers have

seldom time to give the inspiring ideas, what Coleridge calls, the

‘Captain’ ideas, which should quicken imagination.

How living would Geometry become in the light of the discoveries of

Euclid as he made them!

To sum up, Mathematics are a necessary part of every man’s

education; they must be taught by those who know; but they may not

engross the time and attention of the scholar in such wise as to

shut out any of the score of ‘subjects,’ a knowledge of which is

his natural right.

It is unnecessary to exhibit mathematical work done in the P.U.S.

as it is on the same lines and reaches the same standard as in

other schools. No doubt his habit of entire attention favours the

P.U.S. scholar.

III

THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE

(_c_) PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT, HANDICRAFTS

It is unnecessary, too, to say anything about games, dancing,

physical exercises, needlework and other handicrafts as the methods

employed in these are not exceptional.[41]

Book II

Theory Applied

CHAPTER I

A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

I need not waste time in attempting to convince the reader of what

we all know, that a liberal education is, like justice, religion,

liberty, fresh air, the natural birthright of every child. Neither

need we discuss the scope of such an education. We are aware that

good life implies cultivated intelligence, that, according to the

Platonic axiom, ‘Knowledge is virtue,’ even though there be many

exceptions to the rule. Educated teachers are not slow to perceive

the part the Humanities play in a worthy scheme of education, but

they are faced by enormous difficulties which are admirably summed

up in a recent work,--[42]

“The tragedy of modern education has been the prolonged failure

of Humanism to secure conditions under which its purpose might be

realised for the people at large.”

It is because we (of the Parents’ Union School) have succeeded in

offering Humanism under such conditions that we believe the great

problem of education is at last solved. We are able to offer the

Humanities (in the mother tongue) to large classes of children from

illiterate homes in such a way that the teaching is received with

delight and freely assimilated. One swallow does not make a summer,

we all know, but the experience of one school shows that it is

possible to carry out a pretty full literary programme joyously and

without effort while including all the usual school activities.

Wireless telegraphy was, so to speak, in the air before the first

Marconi message was sent, but that first wireless message made

it possible for any passenger on board a Channel steamer to send

such a message. Just so, the experiment in the Drighlington School

(Yorkshire) placed the conditions for a humanistic education at the

service of any teacher. I am much impressed by the amount of work

of this kind which is already being done in our schools. I heard

the other day of a man whose whole life had been elevated by a

single inspiring (poetic) sentence which he heard as a schoolboy;

we have been told that the ‘man in the street’ cannot resist a row

of books; we are told, too, that the War has made us a nation of

readers, both at home and in the trenches, readers largely of the

best books in poetry and history; is there no credit due to the

schools for these things? But teachers are not satisfied; their

reach is greater than their grasp and they are more aware of the

sordid lives about them, of the “dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance”

which prevails, than of any success they have yet attained.

Therefore they fret under the time limitations which seem to make

it impossible to do anything worth while in such vast subjects as

History and Literature, for example.

I wonder does this uneasiness point to a fact which we are slow

to realise,--that the requirements of the mind are very much like

those of the body? Both require as conditions of health,--activity,

variety, rest and, above all, food. There has been some tendency

among us to offer gymnastics, whether intellectual or physical,

by way of a square meal of knowledge, which is as if one were

to invite a boy to Swedish Drill by way of his dinner; and that

wretched misnomer ‘education’ is partly to blame. Now, potency,

not property, is the characteristic of mind. A child is able to

deal with much knowledge, but he possesses none worth speaking

of; yet we set to work to give him that potency which he already

possesses rather than the knowledge which he lacks; we train

his reason, cultivate his judgment, exercise this and the other

faculty, which we have no more to do with than with the digestive

processes of a healthy child; we know that the more we meddle with

these the worse for the child; but what if the devitalisation

we notice in so many of our young people, keen about games but

dead to things of the mind, is due to the processes carried on

in our schools, to our plausible and pleasant ways of picturing,

eliciting, demonstrating, illustrating, summarising, doing all

those things for children which they are born with the potency to

do for themselves? No doubt we do give intellectual food, but too

little of it; let us have courage and we shall be surprised, as we

are now and then, at the amount of intellectual strong meat almost

any child will take at a meal and digest at his leisure.

Perhaps the first thing for us to do is to get a just perception

of what I may call the relativity of knowledge and the mind. The

mind receives knowledge, not in order that it may know, but in

order that it may grow, in breadth and depth, in sound judgment and

magnanimity; but in order to grow, it _must know_.

The fact is that we are handicapped, not so much by the three or

four difficulties I have already indicated, as by certain errors of

judgment, forms of depreciation, which none of us escape because

they are universal. We as teachers depreciate ourselves and our

office; we do not realise that in the nature of things the teacher

has a prophetic power of appeal and inspiration, that his part

is not the weariful task of spoon-feeding with pap-meat, but the

delightful commerce of equal minds where his is the part of guide,

philosopher and friend. The friction of wills which makes school

work harassing ceases to a surprising degree when we deal with the

children, mind to mind, through the medium of knowledge.

Next, we depreciate children, even though most teachers lay down

their lives for their charges with amazing devotion. We have been

so long taught to regard children as products of education and

environment, that we fail to realise that from the first they are

persons; and, as Carlyle has well said,--

“The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine, to him that has

a sense for the godlike.”

We must either reverence or despise children; and while we regard

them as incomplete and undeveloped beings who will one day arrive

at the completeness of man, rather than as weak and ignorant

persons, whose ignorance we must inform and whose weakness we must

support, but whose potentialities are as great as our own, we

cannot do otherwise than despise children, however kindly and even

tenderly we commit the offence.

As soon as he gets words with which to communicate with us, a

child lets us know that he thinks with surprising clearness and

directness, that he sees with a closeness of observation that

we have long lost, that he enjoys and that he sorrows with an

intensity we have ceased to experience, that he loves with an

abandon and a confidence which, alas, we do not share, that he

imagines with a fecundity no artist among us can approach that he

acquires intellectual knowledge and mechanical skill at a rate so

amazing, that, could the infant’s rate of progress be kept up to

manhood, he would surely appropriate the whole field of knowledge

in a single lifetime! (It is worth while in this connection to

re-read the early chapters of _David Copperfield_.)

I am considering a child as he is, and am not tracing him, either

with Wordsworth, to the heights above, or, with the evolutionist,

to the depths below; because a person is a mystery, that is,

we cannot explain him or account for him, but must accept him

as he is. This wonder of personality does not cease, does not

disappear, when a child goes to school; he is still ‘all there’

in quite another sense from that of the vulgar catch-word. But we

begin to lose the way to his mind from the day that he enters the

schoolroom; the reason for this is, we have embraced the belief

that ‘knowledge is sensation,’ that a child knows what he sees and

handles rather than what he conceives in his mind and figures in

his thoughts. I labour this point because our faith in a child’s

spiritual, _i.e._, intellectual educability is one of our chief

assets. Having brought ourselves face to face with the wonder of

mind in children, we begin to see that knowledge is the aliment

of the mind as food is that of the body. In the days before the

War, a lifetime ago it seems, our insular contempt for knowledge

was a by-word; except for a schoolmaster or other thinker here and

there, nobody took knowledge seriously; we announced boldly that

it did not matter what a child learned but only how he learned

it. As for mere ‘book-learning,’ for that we had a fine contempt!

But we have changed all that. We are beginning to suspect that

ignorance is our national stumbling-block, a chief cause of those

difficulties at home which hinder our efforts abroad. For ignorance

there is only one cure, and that is, knowledge; his school is the

seat of knowledge for a child, and whatever else his teachers do

for him, first of all they must sustain him with knowledge, not in

homœopathic doses, but in regular, generous servings. If we ask,

what is knowledge?--there is no neat and ready answer at hand.

Matthew Arnold, we know, classifies all knowledge under three

heads,--the knowledge of God, divinity, the knowledge of man,

known as the ‘humanities’ and the knowledge of the physical world,

science, and that is enough to go on with. But I should like to

question this division and to class all three parts of knowledge

under the head of Humanism, which should include all knowledge

that makes a direct appeal to the mind through the channel of

literary form; now, the substance of Divinity is contained in

one of the three great literatures of the world, and Science, in

France if not usually in England, is embodied in a beautiful and

poetic literature of great clarity, precision and grace. Is it

not then allowable to include all knowledge of which literature

is a proper medium under the head of ‘Humanism’? One thing at any

rate we know with certainty, that no teaching, no information

becomes knowledge to any of us until the individual mind has acted

upon it, translated it, transformed, absorbed it, to reappear,

like our bodily food, in forms of vitality. Therefore, teaching,

talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until

self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only

possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of

a child’s nature.

I have endeavoured to call your attention to a certain undervaluing

of children and undervaluing of knowledge which seem to me to mar

our twentieth century ideal of education, fine as that is. If we

realise that the mind and knowledge are like two members of a ball

and socket joint, two limbs of a pair of scissors, fitted to each

other, necessary to each other and acting only in concert, we shall

understand that our function as teachers is to supply children with

the rations of knowledge which they require; and that the rest,

character and conduct, efficiency and ability, and, that finest

quality of the citizen, magnanimity, take care of themselves. “But

how?” cries the teacher, whose life is spent in the labour of

Sisyphus. I think we have chanced on a way that, at any rate, works

to admiration, the principles and practice of which I am anxious to

bring before you.

Let me first repeat[43] a few of the results that have been made

good by thousands of children, and within the last few years by

many Council Schools throughout the country:--

The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they

do the work by self-effort.

The teachers give the uplift of their sympathy in the work and

where necessary elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work

is done by the scholars.

These read in a term from one thousand to between two and three

thousand pages, according to age and class, in a large number of

set books; the quantity set for each lesson allows of only a single

reading.

The reading is tested by narration, or by writing on a test passage.

No revision is attempted when the terminal examination is at hand;

because too much ground has been covered to allow of any ‘looking

up.’

What the children have read they know, and write on any part of it

with ease and fluency, in vigorous English. They usually spell well.

During the examinations, which last a week, the children cover say

from twenty to sixty sheets of Cambridge paper, according to age

and class; but if ten times as many questions were set on the work

studied most likely they would cover ten times as much paper.

It rarely happens that all the children in a class are not able

to answer all the questions set in such subjects as history,

literature, citizenship, geography, science. But here differences

manifest themselves; some children do better in history, some in

science, some in arithmetic, others in literature; some, again,

write copious answers and a few write sparsely; but practically all

know the answers to the set questions.

In the course of an examination they deal freely with a great

number of substantives, including many proper names; I once had the

names used by a child of ten in an examination paper counted; there

were well over a hundred, of which these are the ‘A’s’--

Africa, Alsace-Lorraine, Abdomen, Antigonons, Antennæ, Aphis,

Antwerp, Alder, America, Amsterdam, Austria-Hungary, Ann Boleyn,

Antarctic, Atlantic;

and these are the ‘M’s,’--

Megalopolis, Maximilian, Milan, Martin Luther, Mary of the

Netherlands, Messina, Macedonia, Magna Charta, Magnet, Malta,

Metz, Mediterranean, Mary Queen of Scots, Treaty of Madrid;

and upon all these subjects the children wrote as freely and fully

as if they were writing to an absent sister about a new family of

kittens!

The children write with perfect understanding as far as they go

and there is rarely a ‘howler’ in hundreds of sets of papers.

They have an enviable power of getting at the gist of a book or

subject. Sometimes they are asked to write verses about a personage

or an event; the result is not remarkable by way of poetry, but

sums up a good deal of thoughtful reading in a delightful way; for

example,--the reading of _King Lear_ is gathered in twelve lines on

‘Cordelia,’--

CORDELIA

Nobliest lady, doomed to slaughter,

An unlov’d, unpitied daughter,

Though Cordelia thou may’st be,

“Love’s” the fittest name for thee;

If love doth not, maid, bestow

Scorn for scorn, and “no” for “no,”

If love loves through scorn and spite,

If love clings to truth and right,

If love’s pure, maid, as thou art,

If love has a faithful heart,

Thou art then the same as love;

Come from God’s own realms above!

M. K. C. 10-10/12 Form II.

A life of Livingstone (read in connection with the Geography of

Africa) is thus epitomised,--

LIVINGSTONE

“The whole of Africa is desert bare,

Except around the coast.” So people said,

And thought of that great continent no more.

“The smoke of thousand villages I’ve seen!”

So cried a man. He knew no more. His words

Sank down into one heart there to remain.

The man who heard rose up and gave his all:

Into the dark unknown he went alone.

What terrors did he face? The native’s hate,

The fever, tetse-fly and loneliness.

But to the people there he brought great Light.

Who was this man, the son of some great lord?

Not so. He was a simple Scottish lad

Who learnt to follow duty’s path. His name

Was Livingstone, he will not be forgot.

E. P. (15.) Form IV.

And here is a rendering of Plutarch’s _Life of Pericles_ by a girl

of fourteen in Form IV,--

Oh! land, whose beauty and unrivalled fame;

Lies dead, obscure in Time’s great dusty vault.

Not so in memory, for truly here,

Each and alike look up and do revear

Those heroes of the hidden past. Plato,

Who’s understanding reached the wide world’s end;

Aristides, that just and noble man.

And last, not least, the great wise Pericles

Who’s socialistic views and clever ways

For governing the rich and poor alike

Were to be envied. In his eyes must Greece

Live for ever as the home of beauty.

So to the Gods great marble shrines he made,

Temples and theatres did he erect;

So that the beauty of his beloved Greece

Might live for ever. And now when seeing

What is left of all those wondrous sights

We think not of the works _themselves_

But rather of the man who had them built.

J. F.

One wonders is ‘socialistic’ used for democratic; any way, the

notion is original. There is little to be said for the technique of

the verses but I think the reader will agree that each set shows

thoughtful appreciation of some part of the term’s reading. The

verses are uncorrected.

Much use is made according to this method of the years from 6 to

8, during which children must learn to read and write; they get at

the same time, however, a good deal of consecutive knowledge of

history and geography, tale and fable, some of which at the end of

the term they dictate in answer to questions and their answers form

well-expressed little essays on the subjects they deal with.

The time appropriated in the time-table at this stage to the

teaching of some half-dozen more or less literary subjects such as

Scripture, and the subjects I have indicated, is largely spent by

the teachers in reading, say, two or three paragraphs at a time

from some one of the set books, which children, here and there

in the class, narrate. The teacher reads with the intention that

the children shall know, and therefore, with distinctness, force,

and careful enunciation; it is a mere matter of sympathy, though

of course it is the author and not himself, whom the teacher is

careful to produce. This practice, of the teacher reading aloud

and the class narrating, is necessarily continued through all the

classes of an elementary school, because some of the books used

are rather costly and only one copy is furnished. I wonder does

this habit of listening with close attention to what is read aloud

tend to equalise the children of the ‘uneducated’ with those of the

educated classes? Certainly, the work of the two is surprisingly

equal. By the way, there is no selection of subjects, passages or

episodes on the ground of interest. The best available book is

chosen and read through in the course, it may be, of two or three

years.

Let me add that the appeal of these principles and this method

is not to the clever child only but to the average and even to

the ‘backward’ child; indeed we have had several marked successes

with backward children. Just as we all partake of that banquet

which is ‘Shakespeare’ according to our needs and desires, so do

the children behave at the ample board set before them; there

is enough to satisfy the keenest intelligence while the dullest

child is sustained through his own willing effort. This scheme

of fairly wide and successful intellectual work is carried out

in the same or less time than is occupied in the usual efforts

in the same directions; there are no revisions, no evening

preparations (because far more work is done by the children in

ordinary school-time than under ordinary school methods, when the

child is too often a listener only): no note-taking, because none

are necessary, the children having the matter in their books and

knowing where to find it; and as there is no cramming or working up

of subjects there is much time to spare for vocational and other

work of the kind.

Such an education as I am urging should act as a social lever also;

everyone is much occupied with problems concerning amelioration of

life for our ‘poorer classes’ but do we sufficiently consider that,

given a better education, the problems of decent living will for

the most part be solved by the people themselves?

Like all great ventures of life this that I propose is a venture

of faith, faith in the saving power of knowledge and in the

assimilative power of children. Its efficacy depends upon the fact

that it is in the nature of things, that is, in the nature of

knowledge and in the nature of children. Bring the two together in

ways that are sanctioned by the laws of mind and, to use a figure,

a chemical combination takes place and a new product appears, a

person of character and intelligence, an admirable citizen whose

own life is too full and rich for him to be an uneasy member of

society.

Education is part and parcel of religion and every enthusiastic

teacher knows that he is obeying the precept,--‘feed my

lambs’--feed with all those things which are good and wholesome for

the spirit of a man; and, before all and including all, with the

knowledge of God.

I have ventured to speak of the laws of mind, or spirit, but indeed

we can only make guesses here and there and follow with diffidence

such light as we get from the teachings of the wise and from

general experience; general experience, because peculiar experience

is apt to be misleading; therefore, when I learned that long tried

principles and methods were capable of application to the whole of

a class of forty children in the school of a mining village, I felt

assured that we were following laws whose observance results in

education of a satisfying kind.

The mind requires sustenance as does the body, that it may increase

and be strong; so much everybody knows. A long time ago it was

perceived that the pabulum given in schools was of the wrong

sort; Grammar rules, lists of names and dates and places,--the

whole stock in trade of the earlier schoolmaster--was found to

be matter which the minds of children reject: and, because we

were wise enough to see that the mind functions for its own

nourishment whether in rejecting or receiving, we changed our

tactics, following, so we thought, the lead of the children. We

did well, and therefore are prepared, if necessary, to do better.

What, then, if our whole educational equipment, our illustrations,

elucidations, questionings, our illimitable patience in getting a

point into the children, were all based on the false assumption of

the immature, which we take to connote the imperfect, incomplete

minds of children? “I think I could understand, Mummy, if you did

not explain quite so much,”--is this the inarticulate cry of the

school child to-day? He really is capable of much more than he

gets credit for, but we go the wrong way about getting his capable

mind into action.

We err when we allow our admirable teaching to intervene between

children and the knowledge their minds demand. The desire for

knowledge (curiosity) is the chief agent in education: but this

desire may be made powerless like an unused limb by encouraging

other desires to intervene, such as the desire for place

(emulation), for prizes (avarice), for power (ambition), for praise

(vanity). But I am told that marks, places and prizes (except for

attendance) do not figure largely in Elementary Schools, therefore

the love of knowledge for its own sake is likely to have a freer

course in these schools than in others.

That children are born persons,--is the first article of the

educational _credo_ which I am concerned to advance; this implies

that they come to us with power of attention, avidity for

knowledge, clearness of thought, nice discrimination in books even

before they can read, and the power of dealing with many subjects.

Practical teachers will say, guarantee to us the attention of our

scholars and we will guarantee their progress in what Colet calls

‘good literature,’ I have already explained[44] how I came to a

solution of this puzzling problem,--how to secure attention.

Let me add again that the principles and methods I have indicated

are especially suitable for large classes; what is called the

‘sympathy of numbers’ stimulates the class, and the work goes with

added impetus: each child is eager to take part in narration or

to do written work well. By the way, only short test answers are

required in writing, so that the labour of correction is minimised.

To two further points I must invite attention; the choice of books

and the character of the terminal examinations. I do not know

better how to describe the sort of books that children’s minds will

consent to deal with than by saying that they must be literary

in character. A child of seven or eight will narrate a difficult

passage from _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, say, with extraordinary

zest and insight; but I doubt if he or his elders would retain

anything from that excellent work, Dr. Smiles’s _Self-Help_! The

completeness with which hundreds of children reject the wrong book

is a curious and instructive experience, not less so than the

avidity and joy with which they drain the right book to the dregs;

children’s requirements in the matter seem to be quantity, quality

and variety: but the question of books is one of much delicacy and

difficulty. After the experience of over a quarter of a century[45]

in selecting the lesson books proper to children of all ages, we

still make mistakes, and the next examination paper discovers the

error! Children cannot answer questions set on the wrong book; and

the difficulty of selection is increased by the fact that what they

like in books is no more a guide than what they like in food.

The moment has come to try the great cause of _Education v.

Civilisation_, with the result, let us hope, that the latter will

retire to her proper sphere of service in the amelioration of

life and will not intrude on the higher functions of inspiration

and direction which belong to Education. Both Civilisation and

Education are the handmaids of Religion, but, each in its place,

and the one may not thrust herself into the office of the other.

It is a gain, any way, that we are within sight of giving to all

members of the working classes notwithstanding their limited

opportunities that stability of mind and magnanimity of character

which are the proper outcome and the unfailing test of a LIBERAL

EDUCATION; also it is to the good that “the grand elementary

principle of pleasure” should be discovered in unexpected places,

in what is too often the drudgery of the schoolroom.

Milton’s ideal of a “complete and generous education” meets our

occasions;--“that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully

and magnanimously all the offices both private and public of peace

and war”; and perhaps it remains for our generation to prove that

this ideal is open to and necessary for persons of all sorts and

conditions. It has been well said that,--

“Just as there is only one kind of truth common to us all, so

there is only one education common to us all. In the case of the

education of the people the only question is: How is this common

education to be developed under the circumstances of simple

conditions of life and large masses of people? That this should

be accomplished is the decisive mark of all real education.”

The writer (Eucken) offers no solution of this problem: and it

remains with the reader to determine each with himself whether that

solution which I here propose is or is not worth a trial.

CHAPTER II

A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Mighty is the power of persistent advertisement. The author of _The

Pagan_ may or may not be bringing an indictment against Pelmanism,

but without any doubt ‘Pelmanism’ is bringing an indictment against

secondary education. Half a million souls, Judges and Generals,

Admirals and Barristers, are protesting that they have not been

educated. No doubt the spirit that informs advertisements is often

a lying spirit but claims so well attested as these may have

something in them, and we who are engaged in secondary education

are uneasy. Again, we have the Board of Education desiring that

returns should be made promptly of all schools not already in

communication with the State, which, by the way, is taking paternal

action in several directions to secure a liberal education for

_all_ His Majesty’s lieges. “Pay the schoolmaster well and you

will get education” is the panacea of the moment, and so we get

in one neighbourhood a village schoolmaster with a salary of £350

and a house, and a singularly able curate, an Oxford man, with a

wife and family and no house who flourishes on £150 a year! Work,

however, is more than wages, and this exclusive stress on high

salaries is a tacit undervaluing of teachers. Most of us know of

fine educational work being done with little inducement in the way

of either pay or praise. The real drawback to a teacher’s work

and the stumbling-block in the way of a liberal education is the

monotonous drudgery of teaching continually what no one wants to

learn. Before the War, the President of the British Association

complained that education was uninteresting alike to pupils,

teachers and parents. That is why we are always learning and never

knowing, and why teachers exert themselves to invent a ‘Play Way,’

why handicrafts, ‘Eurhythmics’ and the like are offered, not as

adjuncts to, but as substitutes for, education, why our Public

Schools are exhorted to change their ways and our lesser private

schools are threatened with extinction.

And with all this the intelligence and devotion, the enthusiasm

and self-sacrificing zeal of teachers generally is amazing. They

realise that education is, not merely an interest, but a passion;

and this is true not only of the heads and the staffs of great

schools but of those hundreds of little private schools scattered

over the country.

We have all heard of “the two Miss Prettymans, who kept a girls’

school at Silverbridge. Two more benignant ladies than the Miss

Prettymans never presided over such an establishment.” As for

Miss Annabella Prettyman, the elder, “it was considered ... that

she did all the thinking, that she knew more than any other

woman in Barsetshire, and that all the Prettyman schemes for

education emanated from her mind. It was said, too, by those who

knew them best, that her sister’s good-nature was as nothing to

hers, that she was the most charitable, the most loving, the most

conscientious of schoolmistresses.” To be sure Miss Ann, the

younger sister, knew more about Roman History and Roman Law than

about current history and English Law, but what would you have?

Here was a type of school with which Trollope was familiar

generations ago, and perhaps it would not be hard to find such

another school in every ‘Silverbridge’ of to-day. To-day, however,

we are uneasy, and in our unrest produce “Joan and Peter” types

of education; that is, small schools indulge in freaks and great

schools with much reason to believe in themselves are aware of

a hitch somewhere, for they fail to turn out many boys or girls

who have intellectual interests, or have that flexibility of mind

which Matthew Arnold tells us their Academy gives to our neighbours

across the Channel. There is that bugbear of ‘Pelmanism’ urging a

charge of inadequacy against our methods; there is always some new

book by a man who brings railing accusations against his particular

school; and here is a tempered protest from Colonel Repington which

is telling:--

“When I look back upon Eton schooling I regard it with mixed

feelings, for I loved my five years at Eton, gloried in its

beauties and traditions, and was in upper division when I left.

But all the same I was conscious that Eton was not teaching me

the things that I wanted to know, and was trying to teach me

things that revolted me, particularly mathematics and classics. I

wanted to learn history, geography, modern languages, literature,

science, and political economy, and I had a very poor chance at

Eton of obtaining anything but a smattering of any one of them. I

do not agree that we learnt nothing or were lazy. We worked very

hard, but at what, to my mind, were useless things, and, with my

feet planted firmly in the ground, I resisted in a mulish way all

attempts to teach me dead languages and higher mathematics. I

believe that I was right. Classics have left nothing with me but

some ideas that I could have learnt better from a crib.”

Probably the writer is mistaken as to what he owes to Eton. Without

those five years he might not have become the authority on the

theory and practice of war he is admitted to be. Who knows how much

‘Cæsar’ may have influenced him as a small boy! No doubt Public

Schools have many defects but they also have the knack of turning

out men who do the work of the world. We know about the ‘playing

fields,’ but perhaps when all is said it is the tincture of the

classics that every public schoolboy gets which makes him ‘to

differ.’ Nevertheless such protests as ‘Eton was not teaching me

the things I wanted to know’ deserve consideration.

It is easy to condemn the schools, but the fact is, a human being

is born with a desire to know much about an enormous number of

subjects. How is the school time table to get them all in or an

adequate treatment of any one of them? Then, boys (and girls too)

offer a resisting medium of extraordinary density. Every boy

‘resists in a mulish way’ attempts to teach him, not only dead

languages and higher mathematics, but literature and science and

every subject the master labours at; with the average boy a gallon

of teaching produces scarce a gill of learning, and what is the

master to do? It is something to know, however, that behind all

this ‘mulishness’ there is avidity for knowledge, not so much for

the right sort (every sort is the right sort), but put in the right

way, and we cannot say that every way is the right way.

I put before the reader what we (of the P.N.E.U.) have done towards

the solution of this educational problem with sincere diffidence,

but also with courage, because I know that no persons are more open

to conviction on reasonable grounds than are many distinguished

Headmasters and Mistresses; may they, if convinced, have the

courage of their convictions!

So little is known about the behaviour of mind that it is open to

anyone to make discoveries in this _terra incognita_. I speak, not

of psychology, of which we hear a great deal and know very little,

but of mind itself, whose ways are subtle and evasive; nevertheless

that education only is valid which has mind for its objective. The

initial difficulty is the enormous field of knowledge to which a

child ought to be introduced in right of his human nature and of

those “first born affinities” which he lives to make good. First

and chiefest is the knowledge of God, to be got at most directly

through the Bible; then comes the knowledge of man, to be got

through history, literature, art, civics, ethics, biography, the

drama, and languages; and lastly, so much knowledge of the universe

as shall explain to some extent the phenomena we are familiar with

and give a naming acquaintance at any rate with birds and flowers,

stars and stones; nor can this knowledge of the universe be carried

far in any direction without the ordering of mathematics. The

programme is immense and school life is limited. What we may call

the ‘Academic’ solution of the problem is,--teach a boy to know one

thing thoroughly, say, Greek or Chemistry or Mathematics, and you

give him the key to all knowledge. Therefore, we are told, it is

not what you know that matters, but how you learn it; and a grammar

grind, a mathematics grind or a laboratory ‘stunt,’ with a few

odd matters thrown in, is supposed to answer all the purposes of

education. The plan answers fairly well with the dozen best boys or

girls in any school, because these are so keen and intelligent that

they forage for themselves in various directions; but it does not

answer with the average pupil, and he is coming in for his share of

public attention. Shortly we shall have a new rule,--every school

must educate _every_ scholar in the three sorts of knowledge proper

to him as a human being. What is knowledge? some one will say, and

there is no pat, neatly-framed answer to be given; only this we can

assert,--Knowledge is that which we know; and the learner knows

only by a definite act of knowing which he performs for himself.

But appalling _incuria_ blocks the way. Boys and girls do not want

to know; therefore they do not know; and their future intellectual

requirements will be satisfied by bridge at night and golf by day.

It has come to us of the Parents’ Union School to discover great

avidity for knowledge in children of all ages and of every class,

together with an equally remarkable power of attention, retention,

and intellectual reaction upon the pabulum consumed. The power

which comes into play in the first place is, of course, attention,

and every child of any age, even the so-called ‘backward’ child

seems to have unlimited power of attention which acts without mark,

prize, place, praise or blame. This fact clearly recognised opens

great possibilities to the teacher; though his first impulse be

to deny statements which seem to him sweeping and absurd. But the

education of the future will probably offer us intellectual assets

in human nature as surprising as the ethical values exhibited by

the War.

We have not attained but I think we are on the way to attainment.

After over a quarter of a century of experiment on a wide scale and

consequent research, we have discovered what children are able to

know and desire to know; what their minds will act upon in the ways

of judgment and imagination; what they are incapable of knowing;

and under what conditions knowledge must be offered to them. We do

not want a ‘play-way,’ nor need we substitute arts and crafts or

eurhythmics or even ‘rugger’ and the swimming bath, as things that

boys take to, whereas learning goes against the grain. Physical

and mechanical training are necessary for the up-bringing of the

young, but let us regard them for the moment as training rather

than education,--which ought to concern itself with things of the

mind. Education as we know it is admirably designed to ‘develop

the faculties’; but if “All that’s an exploded idee,” if there

be no faculties to develop, but only mind,--alert, self-active,

discriminating, logical, capable alike of great flights and of

minute processes--we must necessarily alter our educational

tactics. Mind is benefitted by occasional gymnastics just as is

‘Brother Body,’ but cannot subsist on these any more than ‘Body’

can live on Swedish drill.

As I have said, knowledge, that is, roughly, ideas clothed upon

with facts, is the proper pabulum for mind. This food a child

requires in large quantities and in great variety. The wide

syllabus I have in view is intended in every point to meet some

particular demand of the mind, and the curious thing is that in a

syllabus embracing a score of subjects the young learner is quite

unconfused, makes no howlers, and never mixes, say, a fact of

English with a fact of French history.

Again, we have made a rather strange discovery,--that the mind

refuses to know anything except what reaches it in more or less

literary form. It is not surprising that this should be true of

children and persons accustomed to a literary atmosphere but

that it should be so of ignorant children of the slums points to

a curious fact in the behaviour of mind. Persons can ‘get up’

the driest of pulverised text-books and enough mathematics for

some public examination; but these attainments do not appear to

touch the region of mind. When we get a young Pascal who enters

voluntarily and eagerly into the study of mathematics he finds

himself in a region of high thinking and self-existent law of the

very nature of poetry; minds of this calibre assert themselves; but

this is a gift and does not come of plodding. For the general run

of scholars probably the “Association of Head Mistresses” are right

and a less exacting standard should be set for public examinations.

Of Natural Science, too, we have to learn that the way into the

secrets of nature is not through the barbed wire entanglements of

science as she is taught but through field work or other immediate

channel, illustrated and illuminated by books of literary value.

The French Academy was founded to advance _Science_ and Art, a

fact which may account for the charming lucidity and the exquisite

prose of many French books on scientific subjects. The mind is a

crucible which brings enormous power to act on what is put into it

but has no power to distil from sand and sawdust the pure essence

of ideas. So much for the manner of food which that organism (if I

may be allowed the figure) called the mind requires for its daily

subsistence. How various this sustenance must be I have already

indicated and we remember how urgently Dr. Arnold insisted on ‘very

various reading’ in the three parts of knowledge, knowledge of God,

of man, and of the universe.

But the mind was a deceiver ever. Every teacher knows how a class

will occupy itself diligently by the hour and accomplish nothing,

even though the boys think they have been reading. We all know how

ill we could stand an examination on the daily papers over which

we pore. Details fail us, we can say,--“Did you see such and such

an article?” but are not able to outline its contents. We try to

remedy this vagueness in children by making them take down, and get

up, notes of a given lesson: but we accomplish little. The mind

appears to have an outer court into which matter can be taken and

again expelled without ever having entered the inner place where

personality dwells. Here we have the secret of learning by rote,

a purely mechanical exercise of which no satisfactory account has

been given, but which leaves the patient, or pupil, unaffected.

Most teachers know the dreariness of piles of exercises into

which no stray note of personality has escaped. Now there is a

natural provision against this mere skimming of the ground by the

educational plough. Give children the sort of knowledge that they

are fitted to assimilate, served in a literary medium, and they

will pay great attention. What next? A clever _questionnaire?_

Questions, as Dr. Johnson told us, are an intrusion and a bore;

but here we have a word of ancient wisdom for our guidance; “The

mind can know nothing except what it can express in the form of

an answer to a question put by the mind to itself.” Observe, not

a question put by an outsider, but, put by the mind to itself. We

all know the trick of it. If we want to tell the substance of a

conversation, a sermon, a lecture, we ‘go over it in our minds’

first and the mind puts its question to itself, the same question

over and over again, no more than,--What next?--and lo, we have it,

the whole thing complete! We remember how one of Burke’s pamphlets,

by no means light affairs, was told almost verbatim at a College

supper. We admire such a feat and think it quite out of our reach

but it is the sort of thing that any boy or girl of fifteen could

do if allowed to read the pamphlet only once; a second reading

would be fatal because no one can give full attention to that

which he has heard before and expects to hear again. Attention

will go halt all its days if we accustom it to the crutch. We as

teachers offend deeply in this matter. We think that we shall be

heard for our much speaking and we repeat and enforce, explain

and illustrate, not altogether because we love the sound of our

own voices, but because we depreciate knowledge, we depreciate

children, and we do not understand that the mind and knowledge

are as the two members of a ball and socket joint, each of them

irrelevant without the other. ‘Education’ will have turned over a

new leaf once we realise that knowledge is to the mind as food is

to the body, without which the one faints and flags and eventually

perishes as surely as does the other.

The way to bring this panacæa into use is exceedingly simple. Let

the child (up to any age while he is an infant in the eye of the

law) tell what he has read in whole or in part on the instant, and

again, in an examination paper months later. ‘Mere verbal memory,’

some reader will say, and there is no answer to be given but that

which one must give to oneself. Let the objector read an essay of

Lamb’s, say, or of Matthew Arnold’s, _Lycidas_ or the ‘raven’

scene in _Barnaby Rudge_ and then put himself to sleep or wile

away an anxious or a dull hour by telling to himself what he has

read. The result will be disappointing; he will have forgotten this

and that turn of thought, link in the chain of argument, but he

will know the whole thing in a surprising way; the incidents, the

figures, the delicate play of thought in the author will be brought

out in his mind like the figures in the low relief which the

sculptor produces from his block. He finds he has taken in ‘mind

stuff’ which will come into use in a thousand ways perhaps as long

as he lives.

Here we get the mind forces which must act continuously in

education,--attention, assimilation, narration, retention,

reproduction. But what of reason, judgment, imagination,

discrimination, all the corps of ‘faculties’ in whose behoof the

teacher has hitherto laboured? These take care of themselves and

play as naturally and involuntarily upon the knowledge we receive

with attention and fix by narration as do the digestive organs

upon duly masticated food-stuff for the body. We must feed the

mind as the body fitly and freely; and the less we meddle with the

digestive processes in the one as in the other the more healthy the

life we shall sustain. It is an infinitely great thing, that mind

of man, present in completeness and power in even the dullest of

our pupils; even of him it may be said,--

“Darkness may bound his Eyes, not his Imagination. In his Bed he

may lie, like Pompey and his Sons, in all quarters of the Earth,

may speculate the Universe, and enjoy the whole World in the

Hermitage of Himself.”

We are paying in our education of to-day for the wave of

materialism that spread over the country a hundred years ago.

People do not take the trouble to be definitely materialistic now,

but our educational thought has received a trend which carries us

whither we would not. Any apostle of a new method is welcome to

us. We have ceased to believe in mind, and though we would not

say in so many words that “the brain secretes thought as the liver

secretes bile,” yet the physical brain rather than the spiritual

mind is our objective in education; therefore, “things are in the

saddle and ride mankind,” and we have come to believe that children

are inaccessible to ideas or any knowledge.

The message for our age is, Believe in mind, and let education go

straight as a bolt to the mind of the pupil. The use of books is a

necessary corollary, because no one is arrogant enough to believe

he can teach every subject in a full curriculum with the original

thought and exact knowledge shown by the man who has written a

book on perhaps his life-study. But the teacher is not moved by

arrogance but by a desire to be serviceable. He believes that

children cannot understand well-written books and that he must make

of himself a bridge between the pupil and the real teacher, the man

who has written the book.

Now we have proved that children, even children of the slums,

are able to understand any book suitable for their age: that is,

children of eight or nine will grasp a chapter in _Pilgrim’s

Progress_ at a single reading; children of fourteen, one of Lamb’s

Essays or a chapter in _Eöthen_, boys and girls of seventeen

will ‘tell’ _Lycidas_. Given a book of literary quality suitable

to their age and children will know how to deal with it without

elucidation. Of course they will not be able to answer questions

because questions are an impertinence which we all resent, but they

will tell you the whole thing with little touches of individual

personality in the narrative. Perhaps this is the key to the

enormous difficulty of humanistic teaching in English. We are no

longer overpowered by the mass of the ‘humanities’ confronted with

the slow process of getting a child to take in anything at all of

the author he is reading. The slow process is an invention of our

own. Let the boy read and he knows, that is, if he must tell again

what he has read.

This, of telling again, sounds very simple but it is really a

magical creative process by means of which the narrator sees what

he has conceived, so definite and so impressive is the act of

narrating that which has been read only once. I dwell on the single

reading because, let me repeat, it is impossible to fix attention

on that which we have heard before and know we shall hear again.

Treat children in this reasonable way, mind to mind; not so much

the mind of the teacher to that of the child,--that would be to

exercise undue influence--but the minds of a score of thinkers

who meet the children, mind to mind, in their several books, the

teacher performing the graceful office of presenting the one

enthusiastic mind to the other. In this way children cover an

incredible amount of ground in the time at their disposal.

Perhaps there is no better way of measuring a person of liberal

education than by the number of substantives he is able to use

with familiarity and discrimination. We remember how Scott tried

a score of openings with the man on the coach and got no further

until he hit upon ‘bent leather’; then the talk went merrily for

the man was a saddler. We have all had such experiences and know to

our shame that we ourselves have victimised interlocutors who have

not been able to find our particular ‘bent leather.’ Now, this is

a matter for teachers to consider. There are a thousand subjects

on which we should have definite knowledge and be able to speak

with intelligence; and, indeed, do we not set ‘general knowledge’

papers, with the result that boys and girls are ‘out’ for scrappy

information and provide material for comic paragraphs? There is no

remedy for this state of things but a great deal of _consecutive_

reading from very various books, all of some literary value; and

this we find can be accomplished readily in school hours because

one reading is sufficient; nor should there be any revision for

the distant examination. Here is an uncorrected list of 200 names,

used with ease and fitness in an examination on one term’s work by

a child of eleven in Form II.

Abinadab, Athenian, Anne Boleyn, Act of Uniformity, Act of

Supremacy, America, Austria, Alcibiades, Athens, Auckland,

Australia, Alexandria, Alhambra.

Bible, Bishop of Rochester, Baron, Bean-shoots, Bluff, Bowen

Falls, Bishoprics, Blind Bay, Burano.

Currants, Cupid, Catholic, Court of High Commission, Cranmer,

Charles V, Colonies, Convent, Claude, Calais, Cook Strait,

Canterbury Plain, Christchurch, Cathedral, Canals, Caliph of

Egypt, Court of the Myrtles, Columbus, Cordova.

David, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Guise, Dunedin, Doge’s

Palace.

England, Emperor, Empire, Egmont (Count), English Settlement.

Flour, Fruits, French, Francis I, Francis of Guise, Ferdinand,

Foveau Strait, Fuchsias, Fiords, Ferns.

Greek, Germany, Gondolas, “Gates of the Damsels,” Gondoliers,

Granada, Gate of Justice, Gypsies.

Henry VIII, History, Hooper, Henry II, Hungary, Haeckel.

Israel, Italian (language), Italy, Infusoria.

Jesse, Jonathan, Joseph, John, Jerusalem, James, Jane Seymour.

King of Denmark, King of Scotland, Kiwi.

“Love-in-idleness,” Lord Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, Lord Robert

Dudley, Lime, Lyttleton, N.Z., Lake Tango.

Mary (The Virgin), More (Sir Thomas), Music, Martyr’s Memorial,

Milan, Metz, Monastery, Mary, Queen of Scots, Mediterranean,

Microscope, Messina, Middle Island, Mount Egmont, Mount Cook,

Milford Sound, Museum, Moa, Maoris, Mussulman, Moorish King.

Naomi, Netherlands, Nice, New Zealand, North Island, Napier,

Nelson.

Oberon, Oxford, Orion.

Pharisees, Plants, Parliament, Puck, Pope, Protestant, Poetry,

Philosophy, “_Paix des Dames_,” Philip II, Paris, Planets, “Pink

Terraces,” Piazetta, Philip of Burgundy.

Queen Catherine, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Queen Isabella,

Queen Juana.

Ruth, Robin Goodfellow, Ridley, Reformation, Radiolaria,

Rotomaliana (Lake), Rea.

Saul, Samuel, Simeon, Simon Peter, Sunshine, Sugar-cane, Spices,

Sultan, Spain, St. Quentin, Socrates, Stars, Sycamore, Seed-ball,

Stewart Island, Seaports, Southern Alps, Scotch Settlement, St.

Mark, St. Theodore, St. Maria Formosa (Church), Sierra Navada.

Temple, Titania, Testament, Treaty, Turks, Toul, Thread Slime,

Tree Ferns, Timber Trees, Trieste, Toledo.

Verdure, Venus (Planet), Volcano, Volcanic Action, Venice.

Wheat, Wiltshire, William Cecil, Walsingham, Winged Seed,

Wellington, Waikato.

Zaccharias, Zebedee.

The fitness and simplicity with which these substantives are

employed is evidenced in the complete sets of papers that

follow.[46]

Supposing we have succeeded in shifting a conscientious and

intelligent teacher from one mental position to another, suppose

that he give up the notion of developing ‘faculties’ because he

perceives that mind is complete and sufficient and wants nothing

but its proper pabulum; that, again, he yield his place as the

medium of all knowledge because his boys are qualified to deal with

knowledge at first hand from the right books; suppose he scrap all

the text-books and compendiums he has in use, perceiving that only

that curious outsider, the verbal memory, and not the mind, will

consent to deal with these dry-as-dust compilations; suppose he

concede that much knowledge of various sorts and therefore a wide

curriculum is necessary for the production of an intelligent and

magnanimous citizen; supposing he has proved that any boy can face

such a curriculum because all boys have immense power of attention

and are able to know their work after a single reading,--surely

he has still one or two strongholds that have not been attacked!

What he aims at, he will tell you, is, not to open avenues of

approach to the subjects about which intelligent citizens should

know something, but to give pretty thorough knowledge in two or

three directions and to turn out straight Englishmen; that is,

he looks upon school as a nursery for the formation of character

rather than for the acquisition of knowledge. As for the one or two

subjects, practically, classics and mathematics, I have nothing

to say; those subjects are of real value and also under existing

regulations pretty high attainments in them are necessary as a

preliminary to professional advancement. It is possible that when

a boy has the habit of covering the ground rapidly he may get more

into the given ‘period’ and leave a margin for the wider range

of subjects proper to a liberal education. Experiments in this

direction are being tried in one of our great Grammar Schools,

and how important such experiments are to us as a democracy, I

need not be at pains to show. There is every promise that the

‘masses’ will learn to read in their schools in such wise as to

produce in a terminal examination as considerable a list of names

as those on the preceding page. If the masses know ‘Sancho Panza,’

Elsinore, ‘Excalibur,’ ‘Rosinante,’ ‘Mrs. Jellaby,’ redstart,

‘Bevis,’ bogbean,--the classes must know these things too with

easy intimacy. If the one class is familiar with the pictures of

the Van Eycks, with ‘Comus,’ ‘Duessa,’ ‘Baron of Bradwardine,’ the

other class must know them too, and be able to use the knowledge

with such effect as does the ‘Honourable Member’ when he quotes a

familiar tag from Horace. He touches a spring to which all hearts

rise, because allusions to what we know are like the light on ‘old

familiar faces.’ What we want is a common basis of thought, such

a ground work as we get from having read the same books, grown

familiar with the same pictures, the same musical compositions, the

same interests; when we have such a fundamental basis, we shall be

able to speak to each other whether in public speaking or common

talk; we shall “all hear ... in our own tongue the wonderful works

of God” because we have learned a common speech through those who

in their books have lived to educate the race. And how persuasively

shall we speak to those who know, and therefore do not present the

dead front of opposition--the natural resource of ignorance!

A democratic education must have new features. We must all be able

to ‘take the front’ of men and women by speaking of that which

they have known and felt and already found joy in. So shall we

cease to present motives of self interest and personal advantage as

incentives to public action; we shall touch springs of poetry, of

heroism, to which all natures have the habit of rising; and thus

shall we build “Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.”

Towards this, we must have read the same books, only in English

rather than in Latin or Greek, because the people will probably

never have time to attain proficiency in these; neither, as a

matter of fact, has the average boy at our great schools. If we

must still have an exclusive education to which only the few best

in a school can attain,--and it seems to me that we must, that this

is, in fact, the one thing we have achieved, an education that has

accomplished great results in character and conduct;--but if we

would keep this possession, we must at the same time broaden its

base and narrow its bounds. We must give wide reading in the lower

forms, reading that everybody has read, and we must so compress

our classical and mathematical work in the higher Forms that much

history and ‘English’ may be included. I speak without authority

but is it not true that there is overlapping in the passage from

Preparatory to Public School, from one Form to a higher, from the

Sixth to the University? Probably it will be found possible to give

the old training which has produced such notable results, but to

make it an inclusive not an exclusive education, to take in the

books which everyone should know, the pictures everyone should be

familiar with, the history, the travel, in which we should all be

at home, some understanding of the phenomena which come before us

all. Once we give up the notion that education is a development

of the ‘faculties’ to be accomplished by the teacher, and realize

that it is on the contrary an appropriation of wide knowledge

which the pupil must get for himself, there is some fear that the

old exclusive education must go by the board; but this would be a

national calamity. We must keep that to which we have attained and

add to it the wide reading of a liberal education. The careers of

‘Joan’ and ‘Peter,’ as depicted by Mr. Wells are instructive. Peter

is not entered for a recognised Public School for his guardian

had many things against such schools, but games are his chief

concern. Later we find the two at College, and of Joan it is said,

“No religion has convinced her of a purpose in her life, neither

Highmorton nor Cambridge has suggested any mundane devotion to

her nor pointed her ambitions to a career. The only career these

feminine schools and Colleges recognized was a career of academic

success and teaching.” The implicit charge against the schools is

that they try each in its own way to find a substitute for the

saving grace of knowledge. Academic success and knowledge are not

the same thing and many excellent schools fail to give their pupils

delight in the latter for its own sake or to bring them in touch

with the sort of knowledge that influences character and conduct.

The slow, imperceptible, sinking-in of high ideals is the gain that

a good school should yield its pupils.

We have, if not a higher, yet another standard which it may be

interesting to consider. We offer children knowledge for its own

sake and our pupils discover that ‘studies serve for delight.’ We

do not give our best attention to brilliant children, it is not

necessary; these work well on their own account and so do the

average and even the dull pupils. Historical characters become

real to them and a fairly wide historical field comes under their

purview; they do not grow up in crass ignorance of the history

of foreign countries; they understand, for example, the India of

to-day the better because they have some slight intimacy with Akbar

as a contemporary of Elizabeth. They take to themselves a lesson

from the youthful presumption of ‘Phaëton’; ‘Midas’ and ‘Circe,’

Xerxes and Pericles enrich the background of their thoughts. The

several Forms get through a great deal of reading because we

have discovered that a single reading suffices to secure a clear

knowledge (as far as it goes) of a subject, given the right book.

Therefore, many books are necessary, and each is read consecutively

so that the knowledge acquired is not scrappy and insecure. I know

that teachers enjoy the work set term by term fully as much as

do the children and that a schoolroom life in which there is no

monotony, no dulness, little or no idleness or inattention, does

away with the necessity to make games the paramount interest of the

school--to make them indeed a stem necessity rather than a joyous

relaxation.

The introduction of the methods I advocate has a curious effect

on a whole family. The old nurse and the gardener are told of the

adventures of ‘Waverley.’ “A. B. has named a moss her father picked

on the tip-top of Ben Lawers. It is very rare and only grows on

Ben Lawers and one other mountain. She is so pleased,” and so, no

doubt, is her father! The whole household thinks of and figures to

itself great things, for nothing is so catching as knowledge and

that fine temper of mind that knowledge brings with it. Children so

taught are delightful companions because they have large interests

and worthy thoughts; they have much to talk about and such casual

talk benefits society. The fine sense, like an atmosphere, of

things worth knowing and worth living for, this it is which

produces magnanimous citizens, and we feel that Milton was right in

claiming magnanimity as the proper outcome of education.

When we compare the large number of books, of historical and

literary personages, the range of natural phenomena, with which

children brought up on these lines are acquainted, with the sterile

syllabus, not very well mastered, which is the schoolboy’s normal

fare, we find matter for reflection. Yet I suppose that in few

things is the general moral and intellectual progress evidenced

more than in the culture common among the teachers of secondary

schools. Every Head knows how to draw up the best possible syllabus

and to secure good work, if upon narrow lines, but we (of the

P.N.E.U.) work at an advantage when, as I have said, we recognise

one or two natural laws.

I have no doubt that some of my readers are interested in the work

we are doing in Elementary schools,--a work the more astonishing

because children who have little vocabulary to begin with, no trace

of literary background, show themselves able to hear or read a

work of literary value and after a single reading to narrate pages

with spirit and accuracy, not hedging at the longest names nor

muddling complicated statements. This was a revelation to us, and

it signifies that a literary education is open to all, not after

tedious and laborious preparation, but immediately. The people wait

only for the right books to be put into their hands and the right

method to be employed.

Let me repeat that we live in times critical for everybody, but

eminently critical for teachers, because it rests with them whether

personal or general good shall be aimed at, whether education

shall be merely a means of getting on, or a means of general

progress towards high thinking and plain living, and therefore an

instrument of the greatest national good.

Let me beg that Heads of schools, so far in sympathy with me that

they perceive we are at the parting of the ways, will consider a

method which brings promise of relief.

We are in a condition, for example, to answer the questions to be

considered by the Departmental Committee on English:--

“Can history and literature be brought into closer relations

with the school curriculum than is the case at present? How much

grammar is necessary? Could not oral composition and drama and

debate, do something to cure our national _aphasia_? How can the

preparatory schools improve their English teaching? How can the

school essay be redeemed from barrenness? How can examinations be

made a test of English without destroying the love of literature?”

These questions might have been framed with a view to bring out

the attainments of the Parents’ Union School. History, European

as well as English, runs in harness with literature. Some Syntax

is necessary and a good deal of what may be called historical

Grammar, but, not in order to teach the art of correct writing and

speaking; this is a native art, and the beautiful consecutive and

eloquent speech of young scholars in narrating what they have read

is a thing to be listened to not without envy. As to _aphasia_, to

quote a Director of Education on this subject,--“Conversational

readiness becomes a characteristic. A quarter of a century of these

methods with all the children of England and the strong silent

Englishman should be a rare bird!” A schoolmaster remarks that his

big boys are now eager to speak at some length--a thing new in his

experience. Consider what an asset this should be to a country

whose safety will depend more and more upon the power in the middle

classes of clear and conclusive speech. Oral composition is the

habit of the school from the age of six to eighteen. “Children of

ten who read Shakespeare” is the heading of an article in a local

newspaper which sent a reporter to investigate the P.N.E.U. method

at work in a school as the result of an article in the _Nineteenth

Century and After_ written by the Headmaster. As for preparatory

schools, we can do no more than offer them a method the results of

which in teaching English are rather surprising. The final question

as to how examinations may be made a source of intellectual

profit is I think sufficiently answered in the P.U.S. children’s

examination papers.

We do not invite Heads of schools to take up work lightly, which

implies a sound knowledge of certain principles and as faithful a

practice. The easy tolerance which holds smilingly that everything

is as good as everything else, that one educational doctrine

is as good as another, that, in fact, a mixture of all such

doctrines gives pretty safe results,--this sort of complacent

attitude produces lukewarm effort and disappointing progress. I

feel strongly that to attempt to work this method without a firm

adherence to the few principles laid down would be not only idle

but disastrous. “Oh, we could do anything with books like those,”

said a master; he tried the books and failed conspicuously because

he ignored the principles. We teachers are really modest and

diffident and are not prepared to say that we are more capable of

handling a subject than is a carefully chosen author who writes

especially upon that subject. “Yes, but,” says a young and able

teacher, “we know better how to reach the minds of children than

does the most eloquent author speaking through the dull pages of a

book.” This is a contention of which we have finally disposed. We

have shown that the mass of knowledge, evoking vivid imagination

and sound judgment, acquired in a term from the proper books, is

many times as great, many times more thoroughly visualised by the

scholars, than had they waited upon the words of the most able and

effective teacher. This is why we insist upon the use of books.

It is not that teachers are not eminently capable but because

information does not become knowledge unless a child perform the

‘act of knowing’ without the intervention of another personality.

Heads of schools are a generous folk and perhaps they have some

reason to think parents are niggardly, but the provision of the

necessary books by the parents is a _sine quâ non_. It is our part

to see to it that books take root in the homes of our scholars

and we must make parents understand that it is impossible to give

a liberal education to children who have not a due provision of

very various books. Moreover, it is impossible to teach children

to spell when they do not read for themselves; we hear complaints

of the difficulties of spelling, of the necessity to do violence

to the language which is dear to us all in order to make ‘spelling

made easy’; but in thousands of cases that come before us we

find that children who use their books for themselves spell well

because they visualise the words they read. Those who merely

listen to their teacher have no guide (in English at any rate)

to the spelling of the words they hear. We are, perhaps, opposed

to oral lessons or lectures except by way of occasional review

or introduction. For actual education children must do their own

work out of their own books under the sympathetic guidance of

an intelligent teacher. We find, I may add, that once parents

recognise how necessary a considerable supply of books is, they

make no difficulty about getting those set in our programmes. Mr.

Fisher says,--“there are books and text-books,” and the day is at

hand when we shall all see that the latter are of no educational

value. We rarely use text-books in the Parents’ Union School but

confine ourselves as far as possible to works with the imaginative

grasp, the touch of originality, which distinguish a book from a

text-book. Perhaps we should apologise for ourselves as purveyors

not precisely of books but of lists of books. Every headmaster or

mistress is able to draw up such lists, but think of the labour

of keeping some 170 books in circulation with a number of changes

every term! Here is our excuse for offering our services to

much-occupied teachers. There has been talk from time to time about

interfering with the liberty of teachers to choose their own books,

but one might as well contend for everyman’s liberty to make his

own boots! It is one of those questions of the division of labour

which belong to our civilisation; and if the question of liberty be

raised at all, why should we not go further and let the children

choose their books? But we know very well that the liberty we

worship is an elusive goddess and that we do not find it convenient

to do all those things we are at liberty to do.

The terminal examinations are of great importance. They are not

merely and chiefly tests of knowledge but records which are

likely to be permanent. There are things which every child must

know, every child, for the days have gone by when ‘the education

befitting a gentleman’ was our aim.

The knowledge of God is the principal knowledge, and no teaching

of the Bible which does not further that knowledge is of religious

value. Therefore the children read, or if they are too young to

read for themselves the teacher reads to them, a passage of varying

length covering an incident or some definite teaching. If there

are remarks to be made about local geography or local custom, the

teacher makes them before the passage has been read, emphasizing

briefly but reverently any spiritual or moral truth; the children

narrate what has been read after the reading; they do this with

curious accuracy and yet with some originality, conveying the

spiritual teaching which the teacher has indicated. Now this is

no parrot-exercise, but is the result of such an assimilation of

the passage that it has become a part of the young scholar. It is

only by trying the method oneself on such an incident, for example,

as the visit of Nicodemus or the talk with the woman of Samaria,

that we realise the wonderful clearness with which each incident

is brought out, the fullness of meaning with which every phrase

is invested by such personal effort. This method of teaching is

especially valuable in dealing with the Gospel history, but none

of us who read during the War the daily lessons appointed by the

Church could fail to be struck by the fact that the law and the

prophets still interpret the ways of God, and we shall not do well

if we tacitly treat the Old Testament as out-of-date as a guide to

life.

Next in order to religious knowledge, history is the pivot upon

which our curriculum turns. History is the rich pasture of the

mind--which increases upon the knowledge of men and events and,

more than all, upon the sense of nationhood, the proper corrective

of the intolerable individualism of modern education. Let Amyot

tell us,--

“How greatly is the reading of histories to be esteemed, which

is able to furnish us with more examples in one day, than the

whole course of the longest life of any man is able to do.

Insomuch that they which exercise themselves in reading as they

ought to do, although they be but young, become such in respect

of understanding of the affairs of this world, as if they were

old and grayheaded and of long experience. Yea, though they

never have removed out of their houses, yet are they advertised,

informed and satisfied of all things in the world.”

Hence, the great value of the Old Testament,--history and poetry,

the law and the prophets; and perhaps no one was more sensible of

this educative value of the Scriptures than Goethe, though he was

little sensible of their more spiritual worth. We endeavour to

bring records contemporary with the Bible before children, using

the contents of certain Rooms of the British Museum as a basis.

Episodes of Greek and Roman history come in, partly for their

historical, partly for their distinctly ethical value. Plutarch is,

of course, our great authority.