PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION
Every child should be washed. Every child should be educated. The only
question is how to get there. The "why's" of life interest chiefly the
academic mind. The "how's" interest every one. It is a pleasure
sometimes to be out in dirty weather on a lee shore; it permits you to
devote all your energies to accomplishing something. When secretary
for our hospital rowing club on the Thames, a fine cup was given for
competition by Sir Frederick Treves on terms symbolic of his attitude
to life. The race was to be in ordinary punts with a coxswain "in
order that every ounce of energy should be devoted to the progress of
the boat."
That is the whole trouble with the Newfoundland Labrador. All moneys
granted for education are handed to the churches for sectarian
schools. It is almost writing ourselves down as still living in the
Middle Ages, when the Clergy had a monopoly of polite learning. In
more densely populated countries this division of grants need not be
so disastrous. Here it means that one often finds a Roman Catholic, a
Church of England, a Methodist, and a Salvation Army school, all in
one little village--and no school whatever in the adjoining place.
The denominational spirit, fostered by these sectarian schools and
societies, is so emphasized that Catholic and Protestant have little
in common. Some preferred to let their children or themselves suffer
pain and inefficiency, rather than come for relief to a hospital where
the doctors were Protestant. This has in some measure passed away, but
it was painfully real at first--so much so that once a rickety,
crippled child, easily cured, though he actually came to the harbour,
was forbidden to land and returned home to be a cripple for life.
The salaries available offer no attraction to enter the teaching
profession in this island; and there is no compulsory education law to
assist those who with lofty motives remain loyal to the profession
when "better chances" come along. Gauged rightly, there is no such
thing as a better chance for fulfilling life's purposes than an
education; and modern conditions concede the right of a decent living
wage to all who render service to the world in whatever line.
In the little village where are our headquarters there was already a
Church of England and a Methodist school when we came there, and a
Salvation Army one has since been added. Threats of still another
"institution of learning" menaced us at one time--almost like a new
Egyptian plague, with more permanency of results thrown in.
If the motor power of the school boat is dissipated in sectarian
religious education, not to say focussed on it, the arrival of the
cargo must be seriously handicapped. The statistical returns may show
a majority of our fishermen as "able to read and write"; but as a
matter of fact the illiteracy and ignorance of North Newfoundland and
Labrador is the greatest handicap in the lives of the people.
My first scholar came from North Labrador, long before we aspired to a
school of our own. He was a lad of Scotch extraction and name, and
came aboard the hospital ship one night, as she lay at anchor among
some northern islands, with the request that we would take him up with
us to some place where he could get an hour's schooling a day. He
offered to work all the rest of the time in return for his food and
clothing. To-day he holds a Pratt certificate, is head of our machine
shop, has a sheet-metal working factory of his own which fills a most
valuable purpose on the shore, is general consultant for the coast in
matters of engineering, as well as being the Government surveyor for
his district. He is also chief musician for the church, having fitted
himself for both those latter posts in his "spare time." The
inspiration which his life has been is in itself an education to many
of us--a reflex result which is the really highest value of all life.
As each transferred individual has come back North for service, desire
has at once manifested itself for similar privileges in young people
who had not previously shown even interest enough to attend our winter
night schools. This is the best evidence that inroads are being made
into that natural apathy which is content with mediocrity or even
inferiority. This is everywhere the world's most subtle enemy. Even if
selfishness or envy has been the motive, the fact remains that they
have often kindled that discontent with the past which Charles
Kingsley preached as necessary to all progress. Nowhere could the
pathology of the matter be more easily traced than in these concrete
examples carrying the infection which could come from no other quarter
into our isolation. It has been in very humble life an example of the
return of the "Yankee to the Court of King Arthur."
There was a time when Lord Haldane proposed that every English child,
who in the Board schools had proved his ability to profit by it,
should be given a college or university education at the expense of
the State--as a remunerative outlay for the nation. This proposal was
turned down as being too costly, though the expenditure for a single
day's running of this war would have gone a long way to provide such
a fund. We now know that it can be done and must be done as a sign
manual of real freedom, which is not the leaving of parents or
forbears, incompetent for any reason, free to damn their country with
a stream of stunted intellects.
America has already honoured herself forever by being a pioneer in
this movement for the higher education of the people. Religion surely
need not fear mental enlightenment. The dangers of life lie in
ignorance, and after all is not true religion a thing of the intellect
as well as of the heart? Can that really be inculcated in "two periods
of forty minutes each week devoted to sectarian teaching," which was
one of the concessions demanded of us in our fight for a free public
or common school at St. Anthony? My own mental picture of myself at
the age of seven sitting on a bench for forty minutes twice every week
learning to be "religious" made me sympathize with Scrooge when the
Ghost of the Past was paying him a visit.
One thing was certain. The young lives entrusted to us were having as
good medical care for their bodies as we could provide; and if we
could compass it, we were going to have that paralleled for their
minds. The parents of the village children could do as they liked with
those committed to them--and they did it. There is nothing so
thoroughly reactionary that I know of as religious prejudice well
ground in. As regards the treatment of physical ailments the
prejudices of what Dr. Holmes called "Homoeopathy and Kindred
Delusions" always are strong in proportion as they are impregnated
with some religious bias.
Our efforts to combine the local schools having failed, we had to
provide a building of our own. This we felt must be planned for the
future. For some day the halcyon days of peace on earth shall be
permitted in our community, and the true loyalty of efficient service
to our brothers will, it is to be hoped, become actually the paramount
object of our Christian religion. Perhaps this terrible war will have
convinced the world that the loftiest aspirations of mankind are no
more to save yourself hereafter than here. Is it not as true as ever
that if we are not ourselves possessors of Christ's spirit, ourselves
we cannot save?
The only schoolhouse available, anyhow, was not nearly so good a
building as that which we have since provided for the accommodation of
our pigs! Fat pork is considered an absolute essential "down North";
and it was cheaper and safer, according to Upton Sinclair, to raise
pigs than buy the salted or tinned article. So we had instituted what
we deemed a missionary enterprise in that line. (_Pace_ our vegetarian
friends.)
As soon as a sum of three thousand dollars had been raised, architect
friends at the Pratt Institute sent down to us competitive designs,
and one of our Labrador boys, who had studied there, erected the
building. Having at the beginning no funds whatever for current
expenses, we had to look for volunteer teachers. One denomination
helped with part of its harbour grant, but the Government would not
make any special donation toward the union school project. Even the
caput grant, to which we had hoped that we were entitled for our own
orphanage children, had by law to go to the denomination to which
their parents had belonged. This was not always easy to decide
correctly. On the occasion of taking the last census in Labrador, a
well-dressed stranger suddenly visited one of our settlements on the
east coast. It so happened that a very poor man with a large and
growing family of eight children under ten years, who resided there,
was not so loyal to his church as we are taught we ought to be. When
the stranger entered his tilt a vision of material favours to be
obtained was the dominant idea in the fisherman's mind. He was
therefore on tenterhooks all the while that the questioning was going
on lest some blunder of his might alienate the sympathy on which he
was banking for "getting his share." At length it came to the
momentous point of "What denomination do you belong to?"--a very vital
matter when it comes to sympathy and sharing up. In some hesitation he
gazed at the row of his eight unwashed and but half-clad offspring,
whose treacly faces gaped open-mouthed at the visitor. Then with
sudden inspiration he decided to play for safety, and replied, "Half
of them is Church of England, and half is Methodist!"
Being an unrecognized school, and so far off, some years went by
before the innovation of bringing up scholars from our northern
district entered our heads. We realized at length, however, that we
should close one channel of criticism to the enemy if we proved that
we could justify our school by their standard of annual examinations.
Our teachers, being mostly volunteers, had to come from outside the
Colony. Having no funds to purchase books and other supplies, we made
use of books also sent us from outside. The real value of the local
examination becomes questionable as a standard of success when far
more highly educated teachers, and at least as cleverly laid-out study
books, prevented the children in our school from passing them.
Moreover, further to waken their faculties, we had included in our
facilities a large upper hall of the school building and a library of
some thousands of books collected from all quarters. The former
afforded the stimulus which entertainments given by the children
could carry, and also space for physical drill; the latter, that
greatest incentive of all, access to books which lure people to wish
to read them. In summer the parents and older children are busy with
the fisheries day and night, and the little children run more or less
wild, so this form of occupation was doubly desirable.
The generous help of summer volunteers, especially a trained
kindergartner, Miss Olive Lesley, gave us a regular summer school. All
the expensive outfit needed was also donated. Eye and hand were
enlisted in the service of brain evolution; while a piano, which it is
true had seen better days, pressed the ear and the imagination into
the service as well.
One of the great gaps in child development in Labrador had been the
almost entire lack of games. The very first year of our coming the
absence of dolls had so impressed itself upon us that the second
season we had brought out a trunkful. Even then we found later that
the dolls were perched high up on the walls as ornaments, just out of
reach of the children. In one little house I found a lad playing with
some marbles. For lack of better these were three-quarter-inch bullets
which "Dad had given him," while the alley was a full-inch round ball,
which belonged to what my host was pleased to call "the little
darlint"--a hoary blunderbuss over six feet in length. The skipper
informed me that he had plenty of "fresh" for the winter, largely as a
result of the successful efforts of the "darlint"; though it appeared
to have exploded with the same fatal effect this year as the season
previous. "I hear that you made a good shot, the other day, Uncle
Joe," I remarked. "Nothing to speak on," he answered. "I only got
forty-three, though I think there was a few more if I could have found
them on the ice."
The pathos of the lack of toys and games appealed especially to the
Anglo-Saxon, who believes that if he has any advantage over
competitors, it is not merely in racial attributes, but in the
reaction of those attributes which develop in him the ineradicable
love of athletics and sport. The fact that he dubs the classmate whom
he admires most "a good sport," shows that he thinks so, anyway.
So organized play was carefully introduced on the coast. It caught
like wildfire among the children, and it was delightful to see groups
of them naively memorizing by the roadside school lessons in the form
of "Ring-of-Roses," "Looby-Loo," "All on the Train for Boston." To our
dismay in the minds of the local people the very success of this
effort gave further evidence of our incompetence.
Our people have well-defined, though often singular, ideas as to what
Almighty God does and does not allow; and among the pursuits which are
irrevocably condemned by local oracles is dancing. The laxity of
"foreigners" on this article of the Creed is proverbial. At the time
there were two ministers in the place, and realizing that the people
considered that our kindergarten was introducing the thin edge of the
wedge, and that our whole effort might meet with disaster unless the
rumours were checked, I went in search of them without delay. Three
o'clock found us knocking at the kindergarten door. The teacher and
source of the reputed scandal seemed in no way disconcerted by the
visitation. The first game was irreproachable--every child was sitting
on the floor. But next the children, were choosing partners, and
though the boys had chosen boys, and the girls girls, the suspicions
of the vigilance committee were aroused. No danger, however, to the
three R's transpired, and we were next successfully piloted clear of
condemnation through a game entitled "Piggie-wig and Piggie-wee." Our
circulation was just beginning to operate once more in its normal
fashion when we were told that the whole company would now "join hands
and move around in a circle" to music. The entire jury sensed that the
crucial moment had come. We saw boys and girls alternating, hand held
in hand--and all to the undeniably secular libretto of "Looby-Loo." It
was, moreover, noted with inward pain that many of the little feet
actually left the ground. We adjourned to an adjacent fish stage to
discuss the matter. I need not dilate on the vicissitudes of the
session. It was clear that all but "Looby-Loo" could obviously be
excluded from the group of "questionables"--but the last game was of a
different calibre and must be put to vote. My readers will be relieved
to learn that the resultant ballot was unanimously in favour of
non-interference, and that from the pulpit the following Sunday the
clergy gave to the kindergarten the official sanction of the Church.
Other outsiders now began telling the people that we could not pass
the Colony's examinations because we wasted our efforts on teaching
"foolishness"; and the denomination which had hitherto lent us aid
withdrew it, and tried again to run a midget sectarian school right
alongside. The first occasion, however, on which this institution came
seriously to my attention was when the minister and another young man
came to call during the early weeks of our winter school session. The
stranger was their special teacher. He was undoubtedly a smart lad; he
had passed the preliminary examination. But he was only sixteen, and
in temperament a very young sixteen at that. He was engaged at a more
generous salary than usual, and was perfectly prepared to
revolutionize our records. But, alas, not only was their little
building practically unfit for habitation, but after a week's waiting
not one single scholar had come to his school. The contrast between
the two opportunities was too great--except for frothing criticism.
Gladly, to help our neighbours out of a difficulty, we divided a big
classroom into two parts, added a third teacher to our school, and
were thus able to make an intermediate grade.
The great majority of the whole reconstruction and work of the school
was made possible by the generous and loving interest of a lady in
Chicago. Added to the other anxieties of meeting our annual budget, we
did not feel able to bear the additional burden for which this venture
called. One cannot work at one's best at any time with an anxious
mind. The lady, however, was generous enough to give sufficient
endowment to secure two teachers among other things, though she
absolutely refused to let even her name be known in connection with
the school. Our consolation is that we know that she has vision enough
to realize the value of her gift and to accept that as a more than
sufficient return.
Seeing that some of our older scholars were able to find really useful
and remunerative employment in teaching, and as only for those who
held certificates of having passed the local examinations were
augmentation grants available, we decided to make special efforts to
have our scholars pass by the local standards. We, therefore, thanks
to the endowment, engaged teachers trained in the country, and
instituted the curriculum of the Colony. These teachers told us that
our school was better than almost any outside St. John's. Four
scholars have passed this year; and now we have as head mistress a
delightful lady who holds the best percentage record for passing
children through the requirements of the local examinations of any in
the country.
So much more deeply, however, do idle words sink into some natures
than even deeds, that one family preferred to keep their children at
home to risk sending them to our undenominational school; and there is
no law to compel better wisdom with us here in the North.
On the other hand, we had already obtained a scale of our own for
grading success. For a number of our most promising boys and girls we
had raised the money for them to get outside the country what they
could never get in it, namely, the technical training which is so much
needed on a coast where we have to do everything for ourselves, and
the breadth of view which contact with a more progressive civilization
alone can give them. The faculty of Pratt Institute gave us a
scholarship, and later two of them; and with no little fear as to
their ability to keep up, we sent two young men there. The newness of
our school forced us to select at the beginning boys who had only
received teaching after their working hours. Both boys and girls have
always had to earn something to help them on their way through. But
they have stood the test of efficiency so well that we look forward
with confidence to the future. A girl who took the Domestic Economy
course at the Nasson Institute told me only to-day, "It gave me a new
life altogether, Doctor"; and she is making a splendid return in
service to her own people here.
The real test of education is its communal effect; and no education is
complete which leaves the individual ignorant of the things that
concern his larger relationship to his country, any more than he is
anything beyond a learned animal if he knows nothing of his
opportunities and responsibilities as a son of God. But though
example is a more impelling factor than precept, undoubtedly the most
permanent contributions conferred on the coast by the many college
students, who come as volunteers every summer to help us in the
various branches of our work, is just this gift of their own
personalities. Strangely enough, quite a number of these helpers who
have to spend considerable money coming and returning, just to give us
what they can for the sole return of what that means to their own
lives, have not been the sons of the wealthy, but those working their
way through the colleges. These men are just splendid to hold up as
inspirational to our own.
The access to books, as well as to sermons, may not be neglected. Our
faculties, like our jaws, atrophy if we do not use them to bite with.
The Carnegie libraries have emphasized a fact that is to education and
the colleges what social work is to medicine and the hospitals. We
were running south some years ago on our long northern trip before a
fine leading wind, when suddenly we noticed a small boat with an
improvised flag hoisted, standing right out across our bows. Thinking
that it was at least some serious surgical case, we at once ordered
"Down sail and heave her to," annoying though it was to have the
trouble and delay. When at last she was alongside, a solitary,
white-haired old man climbed with much difficulty over our rail.
"Good-day. What's the trouble? We are in a hurry." The old man most
courteously doffed his cap, and stood holding it in his hand. "I
wanted to ask you, Doctor," he said slowly, "if you had any books
which you could lend me. We can't get anything to read here." An angry
reply almost escaped my lips for delaying a steamer for such a
purpose. But a strange feeling of humiliation replaced it almost
immediately. Which is really charity--skilfully to remove his injured
leg, if he had one, or to afford him the pleasure and profit of a good
book? Both services were just as far from his reach without our help.
"Haven't you got any books?"
"Yes, Doctor, I've got two, but I've read them through and through
long ago."
"What kind are they?"
"One is the 'Works of Josephus,'" he answered, "and the other is
'Plutarch's Lives.'"
I thought that I had discovered the first man who could honestly and
truthfully say that he would prefer for his own library the "best
hundred books," selected by Mr. Ruskin and Dr. Eliot, without even so
much as a sigh for the "ten best sellers."
He was soon bounding away over the seas in his little craft, the happy
possessor of one of our moving libraries, containing some fifty books,
ranging from Henty's stories to discarded tomes from theological
libraries.
Each year the hospital ship moves these library boxes one more stage
along the coast. As there are some seventy-five of them, they thus
last the natural life of books, since we have only rarely enjoyed the
help of a trained librarian enabling us to make the most use of these
always welcome assets for our work. Later, some librarian friends from
Brooklyn, chief among whom was Miss Marion Cutter, came down to help
us; but our inability to have continuity when the ladies cannot afford
to give their valuable services, has seriously handicapped the
efficiency of this branch of the work. This, however, only spells
opportunity, and when this war releases the new appreciation of
service, we feel confident that somehow we shall be able to fill the
gap, and some one will be found to come and help us again to meet this
great need.
The cooperation of teachers and librarians more than doubles the
capacity of each alone, and we believe sincerely that they do that of
doctors, as they unquestionably do that of the clergy. All the world's
workers have infinitely more to gain by cooperation than they often
suspect. And indeed we who are apostles of cooperation, as essential
for economy in distribution and efficiency in production, realize that
groups of workers pulling together always increase by geometrical
progression the result obtained.
None of our methods, however, tackled the smallest settlements, hidden
away here and there in these fjords, especially those unreached by the
mail steamers and devoid of means of transportation. Mahomet just
could not come to the mountain, so it had to go to him. A lady and a
Doctor of Philosophy, Miss Ethel Gordon Muir, whose life had been
spent in teaching, and who would have been excused for discontinuing
that function during her long vacations, came down at her own cost and
charges to carry the light to one of these lonely settlements. She has
with loyal devotion continued to carry on and enlarge that work ever
since, till finally she has built up a work that the clergyman of the
main section of coast affected, and also the Superintendent of
Education, have declared is the most effective branch of our Mission.
Her band of teachers are volunteers. They come down to these little
hamlets for the duration of their summer vacations. They live with the
fishermen in their cottages and gather their pupils daily wherever
seems best. Lack of proper accommodation and pioneer conditions
throughout in no way deter them. We expected that their criticism
would be, "It is not worth while." That has never been the case.
Before the war they came again and again, as a testimony to their
belief in the value of the effort. Some have given promising children
a chance for a complete education in the States. Indeed, one such lad,
taken down some years ago by one of the students, entered Amherst
College last year; while several were fighting with the American boys
"Over There."
The only real joy of possession is the power which it confers for a
larger life of service. Has it been the reader's good fortune ever to
save a human life? A cousin of mine, an officer in the submarine
service of the Royal Engineers, told me a year or two before the war
that he was never quite happy because he had spent all his life
acquiring special capacities which he never in the least expected to
be able to put to practical use. This war has given to him, at least,
what possessions could never have offered.
It almost requires the fabulous Jack to overcome the hoary giants of
prejudice and custom, or the irrepressible energy of the Gorgon. It
has been helpful to remember away "down North" the stand which
Archbishop Ireland took for public schools. When the Episcopal
clergyman for Labrador, whom we had been influential in bringing out
from England, decided to start an undenominational boarding-school on
his section of the coast, we began to hope that we might yet live to
see our sporadic effort become a policy. Laymen in St. John's, led by
the Rev. Dr. Edgar Jones, a most progressive clergyman, sympathized in
dollars, and we were able to back the effort. A splendid volunteer
head teacher will arrive in the spring to begin work. The effort still
needs much help; but I am persuaded that a chain of undenominational
schools can be started that will react on the whole country. Already a
scheme for a similar uplift for the west coast is being promulgated.
In a letter written to my wife some years ago I find that my
convictions on the subject of education were no less firm than they
are to-day. One came to the conclusion that "ignorance is the worst
cause of suffering on our coast, and our 'religion' is fostering it.
True, it has denominational schools, but these are to bolster up
special ecclesiastical bodies, and are not half so good as Government
schools would be. The 'goods delivered' in the schools are not
educational in the best sense, and are all too often inefficiently
offered. Instead of making the children ambitious to go on learning
through life, they make them tired. There is no effort to stimulate
the play side; and in our north end of the Colony's territory there
are no trades taught, no new ideas, no manual training--it is all
so-called 'arts' and Creeds."