Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/childstateOOmcmirich THE SOCIALIST LIBRARY. IX. The Socialist Library — IX , Edited by J. Ramsay MacDonald M.P. The Child and The State BY MARGARET McMILLAN. If MANCHESTER : THE NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LTD. 30, Black friars Street, DEDICATION. To My Sister. 240051 FOREWORD. The book that follows is addressed to all work- ing people, but above all to those who are working for the education of the masses. It divides itself into two parts. The first is con- cerned with childhood, the second with youth and adult life. It is now many years since the struggle for a new life for the children of the people — a life to be made possible largely through the primary school — began. Long before there was any Boer war or Inter-Departmental enquiry, this struggle for a new regime that would ensure health to children was begun. Yet even now, when the echoes of the war and of the enquiry are growing faint the public halts at the thres- hold of the new reform movement. Even educational authorities halt and go back weakly on precedent. ''Learn by doing,'' said FroebeL Yet the opportunities for doing the things that would free a child while he is yet in the most receptive stage of life are not offered. Words, books, are offered — not the means of action, ix. X. It is thus we are allowing tens of thousands to grow ont without the mere notion of what it is to have a high standard in physical and moral life. Years pass. The path of deliverance is now firm and broad and bright in front of us. Thousands of voices encourage us to tread it. Other nations lead the way. Still, we hesitate. There can be no new message, and nothing of any real interest even to record^ till the people and their representatives swing boldly into the new path. The earlier part of this book repre- sents an effort to repeat the old message once more, to say it is possible a little better, or in any case with new earnestness. With regard to the second part of the book, however, the matter in hand is altogether of another kind. No one, however poor and faltering his work, can write of the higher education of the masses to-day without waking some thrill of interest and hope in everyone who thinks at all of his race or its future. This question is a new one. To-day thousands of workpeople awaken almost as if from sleep. In a single year the number of Tutorial Classes for working people has more than doubled. Every tutor knows perfectly well that the waking of any one of his working-class students to-day is an event quite other than is the XI. smooth progress of even tlie most brilliant under- graduate. To begin with, the worker's eyes are opened in an hour when Science is laying bare the effects of balked youth and despoiled childhood, and is proving that /long hours of labour without mental progress mean nothing more or less than mutilation, and that of the saddest kind. The '^prizes" of life beckon the selfish and even the unselfish. But life itself takes on a different hue to those who know at last what they and theirs have paid for our modern civilisation. And meantime every week and month sees the army of serious students growing — sees miners, dockers, rail- way men, drivers, spinners, and even the un- employed forging their way across barriers that were yesterday believed to be impassable by them. There may be, and indeed there are, two opinions as to whether they are taking the right road. Still they are finding a road — and the goal before them is clear enough. It is Higher Education for all. The world has never seen a large, highly educated Democracy — a Democracy scorning the notion of slavery. The world has never seen, and I do not pretend to say whether it will ever see it, for Higher Education does not depend merely on leisure, and access to TJniver- xu. sities and tutors, but on the will and power to go through a great deal of hard and long drudgery. One thing, however, is growing clearer every day, viz., that a great number of working people are willing to go through this immense drudgery, and more, to welcome trouble of every kind, in order to win the knowledge that is power. One can think of nothing to compare with such courage, but the stubborn and bold spirit of their own wild fore- bears who laughed at death and storm. Science is breaking many barriers now. It is showing how continuous all grow^th and development is, so that we cannot disconnect the bold warrior and the bold scholar and believe they have no kinship. On the contrary, we know that they are father and son, root and fruit. Within the next twenty years the strug^rl^ for efficiency will be carried on with anew earnestness i n every civilised land. There will be a demand (which we try to re-inforce) for better techni- cal education. But this new efficiency, while it benefits the ruling class may do very little indeed for the people. Efficient workmen have been slaves in the past, and may be worse than slaves in the future. Something more is wanted. If the working class is not to be content to be educated as a subject race, then Xlll. they must enter on a new struggle — a struggle for Higher Education. And indeed this new struggle is begun already, and must go on, un- less indeed the whole nation is turned back by being plunged into old, barbaric kinds of war- fare. To state the case for Higher Education to-day, however imperfectly, and in so doing to be of some use to the working people in facing the problems of the hour, is the aim and hope of the writer. CONTENTS. CHAPTER. PAGE I. The New Ideal 1 II. The First School Board .. 10 III. A New Era Begins 17 IV. Education — Natural and Artificial 48 V. The Worker's Child at Fourteen 7S VI. The Great Awakening ... 95 VII. Universities Old and New ... 125 VIII. Acceptance — A Summary ... ITS THE CHILD AND THE STATE. I. The New Ideal. On the question of education Socialists have not as yet declared themselves. There is a lack of unanimity, and even of clearness, in the references to this subject which one finds scattered through the works of Continental Socialists. But in Britain — the land of free- dom and laissez faire — the more prominent Socialist writers flatly oppose each other. Some — of whom Mr. Richardson is a type — are eager to withdraw children from their home surroundings and to place them in schools, where they will be trained, dressed, bathed, and equipped for life under competent teachers and attendants; while others, such as Mr. Blatchford, are opposed to schools and formal teaching altogether, cv^d declare that home is the only training ground, and that the only head teacher should be the mother. All this is a little confusing to the rank and file Social- ist, and what is worse, it leaves him under a vague impression that this is one of the many subjects on which he need not, for the pre- sent, at least, make up his mind. In the end, he usually declares in favour of **a straight 2 run from the elementary school to the univer- aity," as being a very inclusive kind of pro- gramme anyhow. Meantime, the Governments of Europe are not so vague. Take for example our great sister-nation Germany. Germany takes nothing for granted in matters that concern her citizens of to-morrow. Her ruling classes say: **We want good peasants," and they pro- ceed to make peasants in school, or rather since after all peasants cannot be made in any school they adapt the teaching to the life and work of the country children, and turn them out at last fitted for this work and life, and proud to be peasants. They say again, **We want officers and leaders of men." So the officers are trained from childhood. All this is done so frankly, so carefully, and so thoroughly, that there is little passing from one kind of school to another. The child who enters the common folk-school will, in all probability, never go to a Realschule , and cer- tainly he need not dream of entering the ''Gym- nasium." In England, the division of classes is not nearly so sharp, and there is a certain com- ing and going between the frontiers. But even in England there is not nearly so much laissez faire as we are apt to believe. The great schools are formed to be the nurseries, not of learned men or scholars, but of leaders and rulers, and the governing classes have sanc- tioned a type of education for the well-to-do and upper-class child which it certainly would not admit or approve in the common Council School. It is never a policy of mere neglect that determines the orders of education that prevail in any State or Nation. England her- self muddles through with a good deal more method than appears on the surface. The English workman, however, is less conscious of any method at all than is his German cousin. He knows, of course, that in England there is a * 'ladder," and that a few County School children climb the higher rungs, but he does not know very well what they are striving for, much less does he feel that he should deny himself for years, in order that his son should become a living mystery. Above all, the rural labourer takes little account of the ladder. He is in a sense the best educated person of all — for he is *' baked into the hardest of moulds." '* Some score or two of years ago," to quote Carlyle's famous words, **he was a red-coloured,, pulpy infant — and is fixed and hardened now,„ as are the artizans, clergy, gentry, who can be nothing else forthwith." Not one of them can compare with the peasant for firm- ness of setting. That is why every reformer — and particularly Karl Marx — is really afraid of him. (There are, of course, rural toilers who are not peasants — who do not bear the mark of the industrial oven — who are even scholars, and fine scholars With these 4 we are not concerned here). They see that the thing done is final. And what kind of form is this into which people are baked hard ? **In the progress of the division of labour/' says Adam Smith, *Hhe employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the under- standings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employ- ments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occa- sion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in finding out expedients for re- moving dijBBculties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become.' ' This was written one hundred and fifty years ago, when the sub-division of labour was not nearly so fine and complete as it is to- day — when a shoemaker was still a shoemaker (not a mere cutter, varnisher, clicker, etc.) making a shoe complete. The pit women of the earlier part of the nineteenth century could not do any household work. They could not prepare food. They did not go to school, and they knew nothing. N^ one could say they had wasted time in book- 5 learning, but it certainly does not appear that they were better housekeepers than are their grandchildren. They were miserable house- wives, wretched mothers. **0f the 140,000 persons employed in lace making in 1861 (many of these persons were children), one in eight was consumptive. Of the strawplaiters of Bedford, numbering over 40,000 persons, a Commissioner writes in 1861, **their morality is at the lowest ebb. ... A great number of women have illegitimate children, and that at such an immature age that even those most conversant with criminal statistics are astounded." The parents worked their little ones almost to death, and the children on growing up deserted their parents at once, caring nothing at all for them. For the women of Lancashire and Cheshire in 1861, we are assured that the great strike was really a blessing in disguise. Their babies, who had been dosed with Godfrey's Cordial, began to be fed with milk. Yet these men and women were very profitable servants. They made enormous profits for their masters. And why were their children sent to school in 1870? Not because reading helped them in the mill. It did not help them at all. In some trades masters used to like to have weak-minded per- sons, because they could not betray trade secrets. As for book-learning, who wants that to-day in the toiler in mill or mine? If the first Education Act was passed in 1870 that was 6 because a voice was beginning to ask in many hearts: ''Why are human beings not allowed to become human? They are not workers only. They are men. They are women. They are children.'' This still small voice is often stifled to-day. It is always being outcried. There is another that says ''Workers are Workers. Hands are Hands." In a paper of yesterday there was a letter which is typical, and which may be quoted therefore here. "Miners are still miners, quarrymen are quarrymen ; we still have the same army of railway men and navvies ; stokers still stand in their sweat rags before the furnaces and gas retorts; Lancashire empties her schools into the cotton mills, Leicestershire into the shoe factories , Yorkshire into the woollen mills. Our shipping ports are crowded with stevedores and dockers labouring at ships, and the lads of the coast towns become hardy fishers. The big cities have their dustmen, sweepers, and sewermen ; South and East London pass their girls through the schools into match, jam, and soap factories, printing works, and laundries. The building trade has its hundreds of thousands ; the small towns supply shop assistants; the country districts domestic servants ; and to name one more class, there is the whole body of agricultural workers. 7 "The advocates of the present system (or more or less '^advanced" methods) fail entirely to show how the crowded curriculum will or can have any bearing on the classes named, and which classes constitute three-fourths or more of the entire population. But there is a fear that a real harm is being done by encouraging a false attitude of mind in youths, and disin- clining them for work rather than inclining them to it ; and it is a disservice to a youth to make a kind of student of him and then ex- pect him to cheerfully turn to the bench, the trowel, or the plough. ** Taking the schools generally throughout the country, and squarely facing the fact that the vast majority of the children must pass into and spend their lives in the callings men- tioned above, and others of a similar nature, I think — with all respect to those of a different opinion — that there is much to be said for the directness and simplicity of the old Three R's. ** Let there be a thorough grounding in these ; let grit, endurance, courtesy, and self- reliance be encouraged and inculcated, and we can well dispense with many of the frivolous fancies that are passed as education." Here we may ask, can grit, and endurance, and self-reliance be developed in the ordinary school of to-day where, as we know, everyone has to live by rule? Of course, a knowledge of three R.'s are wanted to-day in boys and girls by a great 8 number of employers. The businessman likes to get a boy who writes a good hand and spells and figures well. Quick, keen senses and power of attention are priceless, too, in a great many trades in which boys are taken on. But the dull can be taken on for a while in large numbers. Making all due allowance for the growing need of higher technical education, the demand for mere drudges is wide and steady. They will be ''turned off at forty." Or they will lose their jobs with any change in methods of production and organisation. That is not the point, however. The drudge will do quite well for a time — the ignorant will serve a turn. Afterwards comes the dreadful moment — the moment when he is adrift, a helpless, hopeless, struggling creature. The fact to note here is that the half-educated, unprepared youth or girl can easily get a job — that even if he or she could not read or write he could get one. But everyone who thinks of education has to think of the human being, not of the worker. This may seem ''fantastic,'* "idealistic," far- fetched. Yet it is the only thing to be tried now. For the practical method — of educating workers as such — has broken down. It has no meaning, it has no result. It is a baulked pro- ject. Moreover, everyone who had insight saw this long ago, and tried again and again to begin 9 the real work. They tried, and they failed be- cause in the first place everything was against them. Also they were perhaps afraid of their own impulse — the impulse that drove them to think of the child as a child and not as a future ''worker." II. The First School Board. There were several eminent men and women on the first London School Board. Of these. Professor Huxley was, perhaps, the most famous. Doubtless, his presence alone proved an inspiration in these very early days to many. The earliest reports indicate that all the members entered on the new task with great enthusiasm. It was a thrilling moment. At last, and while the whole intellectual world was breathing a new life, the whole people were to share this life ! Yet hope and en- thusiasm were to be quickly damped. The counter-enthusiasm of some of the membere of the new body for **religious" questions, soon led them all off the path of real progress. Meantime, the result of the first efforts to give primary education to the children gathered into the schools were not only discouraging, but very puzzling as well. To go back however to the ^'Religious" ques- tion. It became, almost from the first hour, not only a bone of contention, but an ever-present excuse for the postponement of every kind of advance. There were seven motions on re- ligious instruction at one of the earliest meet- 10 11 ings, and the Board began to receive deputa- tions of protesting Congregationalists, and other Dissenters, almost from the hour of its birth. There is, to be sure, evidence that the more progressive members were not all at once side-tracked by these discussions, and that fiome of them continued for a time, at least, to indulge high and noble hopes. Take for example the motion of Mr. John MacGregor, appearing on the agenda in the second month of the Board's life. It is easy to ridicule it, so long-winded and rhetorical it appears. No doubt it was received with laughter. It would certainly provoke smiles if it appeared on any agenda-paper to-day. And yet it contains the germs, not only of re- forms since carried, but of many that are not carried yet; reforms that are being delayed even now, and misunderstood, and for lack of which everything seems to halt. Listen to Mr. MacGregor, contending in 1871. **That it be an instruction to the Works and General Purposes Committee to invite, con- sider, and report upon suggestions, designs, and apparatus, by which schools provided by the Board, especially those for the poorest children, may. be made: 1. Healthful; by playgrounds and facilities for exercise and for bathing. 2. Pleasant; by children's games, and music. 12 3. Attractive; by comfortable school furni- ture, simple tasteful decoration, wall-pictures, diagrams, and flowers. 4. Stimulative; by prizes, holiday-excur- sions, visits to exhibitions and museums. 5. Instructive; by illustrative lectures, and by periodicals and publications suitable for children. 6. Useful; to children of parents at work, by arrangement for dinners brought by the children, or provided by voluntary contribu- tions. 7. Influential; in after life by a system of communication with scholars after they leave school, and of rewards to those who give satis- faction to employers." On the day when all this appeared on the agenda, seven motions on the religious train- ing question were brought forward. The Pro- gressives adopted exactly the same methods as the Moderates. They discussed the religious motions with great heat, finding in it a subject for endless talk and animation. They withdrew the motion of Mr. MacGregor altogether, and no allusion to it appears henceforth on the min- utes. Engaged in a fight which need have no end, the combatants on both sides seem to have forgotten Mr. MacGregor's baths, etc., en- tirely. There was to be no serious talk of baths for many a year. Members discussed the school rate for religion in exactly the same 13 temper as people had discussed the church rate in former days, and the meetings, other- wise dry and formal enough, were relieved by the precipitous arrival of Congregationalists, and others, all putting forward some of the arguments (with which we are now so familiar) against denominationalist teaching in rate- aided schools. With all this there was a desire to begin some real work. It was there, after all, in the hearts, not of one or two, but of many, Carlyle's thunderings were still re-echoing through the land.* The words of Mazzini, warm as sunshine, keen as flash of swords, had not been spoken in vain. *'It is an educational problem with which we have to do — it is to regenerate man in his ideas, and in his senti- ments. It is to elevate and enlarge the sphere of his life.'' The new School Board took steps to discover how best to set about the education of the masses. Professor Huxley was appointed chairman of a committee entrusted to draw up schemes of education. He pointed out the value of physical exercises and drill — not only * "If the whole English people be not educated with at least schoolmaster's educating, a tremendous respon- sibility before God and men will rest somewhere !" ''How dare any man bid the deviFs darkness continue in it one hour more." Reconcile yourselves to the alpha- bet, or depart elsewhither,^' with a great deal more cal- culated to amaze and alarm the new School Board mem- bers. 14 in committee, but in popular lectures. Mr. MacGregor supported him manfully. (Mr. MacGregor, indeed, tried not once, but several times to get bathing introduced as part of physical education.) In the scheme of education drawn up by the special committee, the studies of infants included: — A. — Morality and Religion. B. — Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. C. — Object-lessons. Hand and Eye Work of Kindergarten. D. — Singing and Physical Exercises. Already as we shall see there was a tendency to multiply subjects. What to teach? This was the question that vexed and persecuted everyone. The first London School Board grappled with it, just as Authorities are grap- pling with it now. Probably some of the members saw very well that the whole life of many children was crippled. Only they did not see how to rescue them. They hoped that they could supply what was lacking in the form of lessons. (It was a very natural mis- take for new educationists to make). This indeed is at the bottom of all the rage for new subjects — and above all it is the reason why education itself is analysed and split up continually into little departments of know- ledge, while the real value of every kind of lesson is lost. The form of examination and inspection too, in the earliest days, allowed this dissecting 15 process to go very far. To teach many things and to examine carefully, to see if they had been learned or not — that was a thing that could be done and was done. Even the wisest were at first unconscious, it would appear, of the deceptions that were being prepared for them. They hastened to divide the school- day, so as to get into it everything that seemed to be useful or important, and a list of * 'Dis- cretionary Subjects'' was drawn up for older pupils, which included Shorthand, Navigation, Telegraphy, and Mechanics. As the months passed, the enormous difficul- ties of the new task began to dawn on the new members. One gleans a little of the real facts from the old reports. Disillusionment shows through them. We can see it, even though the minutes give very little informa- tion on educational matters. A superinten- dent remarks on the ''fearfully coarse and noisy singing of the children.'^ An inspector complains that the result of education on even the brighter pupils — that is to say, on those who were going in for the teaching profession — was an unexpected and disappoint- ing one. ' 'The three great rivers of England are the Thames, the Nile, and the Amazon," writes one pupil — and others give answers to questions in geography which prove that they are memorizing words and jumbling them to- gether, and that this is the only result of les- sons in geography. 16 After two years' service on the Board, Pro- fessor Huxley resigned. A great many cir- culars had been sent out before this time. A great many addresses were sent to great men, and some to people not so exalted. But these persons, no more than the Lon- doners, had the materials necessary in order to answer all or even a few of the questions put to them. There were, of course, great teachers in the world. Few of these, if any, had spent their time in studying the effect of city life on the children of the masses. Froebel had been dead twelve years, and his disciples were keeping to the letter of his teaching ; but even when two years later they began a fresh propaganda in England, they addressed them- selves, not to the teachers of the poor, but mainly, if not altogether, to mothers in draw- ing-room meetings. Meantime, even those physical exercises on which Professor Huxley had set his heart were in many cases far worse than useless. How much mischief they did we cannot know. They were ^ Vrongly derived'* as Dr. Leslie Mackenzie has said, having their roots in an ideal of the camp not of the school. That body of knowledge which the New Authority was seeking for was not in exis- tence. It is only now being slowly gathered by the help of many patient and obscure workers. III. A NEW ERA BEGINS. Foe forty years educationalists talked a great deal of subjects. Now they are leaving this wilderness — they are beginning to think of the child himself, of his aptitudes, his defects, his health, his growth. (Hitherto the complaint has never been that children could learn nothing : on the contrary, children learned everything — reading, draw- ing, woodwork. The complaint from parents and employers has been that this kind of learn- ing does not appear to help them much — that it develops the intelligence little, and that all initiative gets lost somehow among the books and figures.) It began some time ago. The * 'study" of the individual child was undertaken with fer- vour by mothers with leisure. Darwin made the method of observing one's own baby illus- trious. Charming biographies of young chil- dren are written. Great artists too, such as Pierre Loti and Tolstoi, have given to the world recollections of their own childhood. The scientific method is seen, perhaps, best of all in Paris, where Monsieur Binet and his colleagues pass under review hundreds, B 17 18 perhaps thousands, and are able to fix some re- liable kind of standard, not only of health, but also of intelligence. For the moment we will put even the notion of standards aside. The facts that have met us in the first attempt at a survey have been overwhelming almost in their brutal nature. Who could have believed that weakness, defect, arrest, disease, deformity, semi-deafness and blindness were general in some places. Who could have guessed that these things are common even among the children of the well- to-do? Yet the first reports of the School Medical Officers do not leave us in any doubt on this point. In the last few years we have seen the * 'figures" so often. Can we not take them for granted now? Perhaps it may be well to give a few details here, if only to show how im- possible it is to go on while pain and weakness and horrors unspeakable are right in front of us. Out of 372 scholars examined in the Boys' Department in a Deptford School, 168 are found to be in urgent need of Medical Treatment. In the Girls' Department, out of 412 examined 184 were declared to be cases for a doctor's immediate attention, and even in the Infants' Department 34 little children out of 105 are pronounced to be too ill to go on longer without treatment. 19 These figures do not, however, reveal all the facts. They show, it is true, that out of nearly 900 children 400 stand in urgent need of treat- ment. They do not show that the remaining 500 are in good health. Many of these are, as a matter of fact, on the way to becoming ur- gent cases, for the doctor turned again and again to mothers in order to warn them **Not to-day, perhaps, but to-morrow your child will be in need of treatment.'' (The temptation of a school doctor in some areas is to exempt as many doubtful cases as possible in view of the number of sufferers who cannot by any means be regarded as ''doubtful.") A district inspector made the following re- port (which appears in the London medical officers' memorandum of last year) for one department : — ''Boys. In the sixth standard no less than 34 boys out of 56 have suffered with some more or less serious physical infirmity during the year." On further enquiry, the inspector added, that he did not infer that these boys were any worse than those in other parts of the school; their class master is a little more observant of, and interested in, their condition. "It is worth while putting this teacher's notes on record as an example of conditions which will in a few years' time be almost unbeliev- able, and also as an example of a teacher's fine interpretation of duty, although in about 20 one-third of the cases the parents could not be stimulated to take action. C.B. — Ringworm; absent 8th January to July, 1908. Alb. C. — Adenoids and enlarged tonsils. Eight visits to hospital. Ab. C. — Deafness; adenoids suspected. No action. S.C. — ** Scattered Homes" boy, Defective Vision. Aural discharge detected in school. Sda. C. — Tonsils operated on at London hospital, 1907. CD.— Tonsils removed 1907. Suffered St. Vitus' Dance. Visual Defect. G.P.— Epileptic Fits. P.P. — Deafness. No action taken by parents. B.R. — Defective Vision. G.R. — Defective Vision. A.S. — Defective Vision. Both parents seen. No action taken. N.S. — Defective Vision. Parents written to. No action taken. H.T. — Defective Vision. Parents written to and seen. No action taken. P.W. — Tonsils removed 23rd December, 1907. A.W. — Defective Vision. No action taken by parents. I.Z. — Deafness after Diphtheria. Speech affected. W.G. — Out-patient at London hospital. 21 W.E. — Defective Yision. Glasses sup- plied for work. E.B. — Defective Vision. Glasses supplied for work. C.E. — Defective Vision. Glasses supplied for work. C.R. — Polypus in Nose. Recurring. Haa been removed nine times. J.M. — Deafness in left Ear. Detected in February. C.B. — Tubercular Glands in Neck. R.W. — Severely cut about head by father. Three weeks in hospital. T.A. — Absent twelve weeks with Pneu- monia. A.B. — Absent four weeks with Pneu- monia, S.T. — Speech affected by cleft palate. H.B. — Injury to knee in climbing wall, receiving no attention. A.G. — Defective Vision. No action taken. T.A. — Defective Vision when tested.* Of 1,506 children selected for examina- tion, 663 had adenoids with large tonsils. Seven per cent. (164 out of 2,251 on the roll) were in a condition suggest- ing the advisability of surgical operation. The figures themselves give little of the im- * No reference is made to teeth. One may take it that few or none of these children had healthy mouthi. 22 pression conveyed by reading the individual notes of the mass of educational inefficiency which they represent. Inattentiveness, dul- ness, backwardness, serious mental defect, varying deafness, coughs, bronchial irrita- bility, recurring colds; these are the regular accompaniment of most of the cases of ob- structed breathing." As for the homes, a lurid sidelight is thrown on some of them. Here is an extract, taken from the same report : — "The action of the school nurses has been almost entirely directed to effective cleansing of heads, but it is now necessary to extend this care to the bodies and clothes of the children. The numbers are much larger than was sup- posed. Some 19,900 cases are known to the nurses. The superintendent of nurses found in one school 12 out of 55 boys in one class, 10 out of 60 girls, and eight out of 54 infants had verminous clothes ! In another school 43 boys out of 135 had verminous clothes. These proportions are fortunately characteristic only of the dirtier schools, but of these schools there are very many. Such conditions of body give one an idea of the state of the homes. The homes are often so dirty, so dark, and wanting in the means of cleansing, that it would have been pure injustice to ex- clude such children and prosecute their par- ents." Even the better-class home is not always up to a high standard. On the same page that 23 records the pitiable sinking of the poor into every kind of horror we read that ''The Medical Examination in Secondary Schools reveals an unsatisfactory state of personal Bygiene among the pupils," and a scheme is put forward for dealing with these conditions, which impos-^s penalties on sc^holars hip-holding children who are attending school in a state that threatens their own health, and that of their neighbours. These two or three quotations may serve as typical of a kind of report that arrives now from nearly every part of the country. Forty years ago there was no service that could either gather such reports, or deal with the evils which they bring into the light. There is such a service now in the army of Medical OiEcers, which has been at work since Janu- ary, 1908 in our schools. At the close of 1909 this army numbered 1,084 doctors, and assist- ing a few of them were 292 nurses. (Taking an average over the whole country, there is not as yet one nurse to 25,000 children.) We are at the earliest stage of survey — the **enumerative" stage — when the observers are just wading in and taking hold of the nearest facts. And yet we are in no doubt as to the immensity of the evil. So many children are ill. We are dealing with a racial problem, not a social one merely. The questions we have to answer are **How are these sufferers to be cured?'' and secondly, ''How is this widespread misery to be prevented?" But this last is, of 24 course, too vast for us to attempt a complete answer here. It seems quite clear that Medical Inspection has had some effect in rousing parents to look for a remedy. It is equally clear that this effect is comparatively small, and that m the worst districts it does not exist at all. According to the report, in one area 60 per cent, of all children found ill remained after inspec- tion altogether untreated, while 10 per cent, had ''doubtful*' treatment or mere promises. Only 28 per cent, were satisfactorily dealt with. The neglect may go on for years after warn- ing is given. Not one notice, but many, not one adviser (in many cases), but a number, try to reach the parent in vain. Let us here take a few illustrations from life — cases that are really typical. Ellen is a girl of thirteen, who having been in attendance at an ordinary school till she was ten, at last entered a special school. At the first inspection the doctor noted that she suf- fered from ''blepharitis," and that the eyes were much inflamed. Notice is sent to the parents but no attention is paid by them. One year passes, the doctor writes in his notes in the medical book, "no improvement." Mana- gers, teachers, inspectors, doctors, and even members of the Education Committee visit the school. Two years pass — three — the child 25 is nearly blind, and her schooldays are neap- ing an end. Nothing is done. Here is Marion, a small, but not ill- nourished child of ten. The teacher reports that she seems bright and intelligent, and un- fit for the ordinary school only on account of eye-defect. The left eye is slightly in- flamed. The child suffers also from some nasal obstruction. The teeth are in a bad state. The visiting doctors make notes of all these conditions in 1906, and again in the years 1907 and 1908. In 1909 the child's condition is worse, but she is being carefully reported on. The doctor who visits the school regularly, writes once more in the medical book, **no improvement." It is only just to say that many, even among the very poorest, try to get treatment. Some mothers, in spite of failures, show real heroism. Such is the mother of Robert. He is a boy of twelve, handicapped from birth by a mouth deformity, which has made it im- possible for him to learn to speak. He makes sounds that are almost incomprehensible. Teeth in a shocking condition. The boy is very under-sized, eyelids much swollen, and ear discharging. Attends a **Special Class," but makes little or no progress. At the age of twelve operation on mouth performed. The boy is found to be intelligent ; returns to school but requires special training in speech in order to use the new mouth. Training in 26 speech is given only incidentally in school however, and in the course of reading lessons. The child makes little progress. (In this, he resembles about a dozen other children with speech-defects, who are also trying to correct speech-errors, while struggling at the same time to master the art of reading.) The con- dition of his teeth is alone a fatal bar to real progress. He attends a Dental Hospital, setting forth in the morning, spending three- pence on the long tram rides, waits for hours, and returns at last in the afternoon too late for school. This goes on three, four, five months. It costs over a £1 (counting fees for extractions). In Miihlheusen, Dusseldorf, Strassburg, or other German cities, such a child would be treated in the schoolclass for a trifle of one or two marks, and without any interruption of his education.* There are successful cases that show up all the tragic elements in thousands of difficult and seemingly hopeless cases. A miserable little boy, deaf, almost inarticu- late, undersized, unable to read even the smallest words is allowed to receive treat- ment. Two months later he is full of eager desiire to learn. He attacks the reading book and begins to master the new art, draws vigor- ously, wants to model, to work, to play — asks *ThiR case ran now be treated in^a School Clinic — which the London Education Committee are going to finance in Deptford. 27 endless questions. In short, awakens to life and all its joys. It is not possible to think that the treatment which thus opens the doors of life is a thing altogether apart from ** Edu- cation," and that an inspector, a teacher, or parent is to think of it as somethin g for which the school has no responsibility at all. One might as well say that a violinist should not think of his violin — but only of his score. There are many schemes already drawn up by medical officers and administrators for meeting the need of suffering children. Some of these (like Dr. Barwise's Provident Club scheme in Derbyshire) fall back on voluntary subscriptions and contributions from parents. Only one quarter of all those needing treatment and re- ported on could be dealt with in the first year. In London, the Education Authority falls back on the hospitals — which, however, were never intended to deal with school children at all. Diseases that do not interfere with school- going are not only, in some cases infectious. They are nearly all very stubborn and need routine treatment. Their cure is largely a matter of the forming of new habits. Educa- tion, as well as medical care, is needed, in order to put an end to them. But, of course, no hospital can take the place of school, and no doctor can do the work of a teacher or highly skilled mother. The well-to-do mother perhaps need not fear when the worst is over and the doctor comes no 28 more. In her home she has a nursery, and many '^ helps." All the routine of prevention can go on merrily — bathing, dressing, exercise, eating, sleeping at regular hours. And by these the old evil is chased away every day and every night. Why did this private nursery come into existence? Because it was needed. The school nursery must come into existence for the same reason. Nurseries are needed also for the children of the masses. That same routine of washing, dressing, play in cheerful healthy space, is necessary for the prevention of illness in the case of the poor as of the rich; and opportunities for these must be forthcoming if the new medical service is to be of any practical service to rich or poor.* The School Health-centre is an extension of the Home Nursery — no more and no less. As the school family is immense, however, and as its needs are various, the Head of the School Nursery-Clinic must be a doctor, and his as- sistants must be trained hospital nurses (with- out ceasing to be home nurses first and fore- most). The school is not home. No, and yet it must supply something that will be found one day in every home. It must be built to supplement the poor shelters of to-day. A witty *It win be seen later how the services of a National Medical Staff must, sooner or later, help all classes. The well-to-do indeed, are already gaining something through the new work undertaken for the children of the people. 29 Frenchman called the first Medical Officers of Schools ''Buildings-Doctors" because they were always examining walls and pipes. But now they begin to approach the child himself. They draw nearer at last and see him. The authorities begin to act at last, for it cannot be denied that a fair start has been made already with School nurseries or clinics. Bradford has now a large and well-appointed School Clinic with a staff of three doctors, two nurses, and a dentist. The rooms — 13 in number — are, or were, in the basement floor of the old Education Committee Office. There is a large waiting- room, a nursery (where children can be at- tended to by the school nurse), three doctors' rooms, a Rontgen Ray room (where children often sleep comfortably throughout the whole treatment), two dentistries, and two very pleasant rooms where eyes, ears, etc., are ex- amined. The whole has a very homely, cheery look which is not at all like the atmosphere of the hospitals. The clinic has no associations of mystery, of dread, or even of pain. The children come and go happily, and — most note- worthy fact of all — many parents come here long before their children are really ill. This is held as the crowning glory of the place. It is claimed that thousands of mothers begin to learn the real meaning of prevention. The doctors have drawn up their time-table, exactly as the teachers draw up theirs in the 30 schools. Instead of school-subjects, the doctors have diseases, however, to deal with. Those diseases have to be treated for the most part regularly, and in many cases for a long time, one has to learn to get well. Progress depends very often on the child's diligence as well as on the zeal of doctor and nurse. The first aim in view is — to make the child well. The second is — to keep him well. But this last is not to be achieved by mere spasmodic efforts, or by amateurish methods, such as many voluntary associations employ. The cost of maintenance is £378 per annum. Of recognised School Dental Clinics there are now several in England — one in Cambridge, one in Norwich, one now also in Deptford. The need .for them is so great that it is im- possible to exaggerate it. To begin with, at least 80 per cent, of all school- children require dental treatment, but hardly any receive it. Leaving out of account all the misery that is hidden under these words we must content ourselves here by pointing out the fact that speech training (one half of all that is best in elementary training) is out of the question to-day on account of the bad teeth of the great mass of children. The child himself knows this in many cases. He is doing all kinds of important things anyhow. He has to breathe, to smile, to eat, and, above all, to speak in a poor or ugly way. He breathes 31 wrongly, he eats badly, he even smiles pain- fully, and he leaves half his words unuitered. All this is quite as serious — in many ways even more serious — than is hand weakness, or hand stupidity. But, whereas people are waking up to see that hands should be used and trained, very few have any clear notion as to the real part played by language in thinking and doing. A hospital cannot undertake a new kind of work such as this. It is school work, and yet it is school work that is new. It is home work, but few homes can offer to under- take it. The after treatment of all skin trouble cases, of adenoids, also the regular training needed by cases of curvature, and of many orders of eye trouble can be completed only hy a teacher. For lack of this co-opera- tion, many hospital cases fall back; and are never fairly successful even after treatment. The amount sanctioned by the department for treatment was £3,400 up to July, 1909. Since that time London has embarked on a scheme for the treatment of children at hos- pitals. It is not necessary to go into details of this step, for it is safe to predict that it cannot end in real success. To begin with it is costly. The authority pays a subsidy of £5,000 to £6,000 per annum to eight hospitals for the treatment of 33,000 — that is to say it pays 4/- per head, or rather more. For, at the end of every month a case is treated as a new case. 32 Add to all this the expense of tram fares — where, as must happen in many cases, the scholars cannot walk the whole distance — the interference with school-work, and the absence of records, and information, and it is difficult to see how any authority can persevere long with this method.* Over and above the Bradford and Dental Clinics there are others of a more recent date. Bow Clinic was opened in December, 1908; Deptford Clinic was opened in June, 1910. t Dunfermline has now started, and it is hoped that in October a School Clinic and Health Centre will be opened in the Potteries. Many other towns are pre- paring to make arrangements for treatment on the same lines. There are also small clinics for the treatment of skin diseases at Reading, Croydon, and other places, and a move is now being made to get remedial drill for children requiring it at various places. The oldest clinic for spinal cases is at Dunfermline — where remedial treatment has been given for some years. At the Deptford Clinic there will be a depart- ment for special physical training. The teacher who will be in charge sends in a list *A certain amount of regular-school treatment has been given, however, in London. It has been followed by a wonderful success. The school for the treatment of Faviis, a scalt) disease, is now shut up. Nearly all the pupils have been cured. t The Dental Department is financed mainly by the London Education Authority. But the general Clinic is voluntary. 33 of illnesses that can be treated by exercises. They are twenty-two in all, and most of them are common among school children. All the adenoid cases will be sent to learn how to breathe at this clinic, and as this is the most important exercise of all, they should be at last the best equipped of all children. Bathing. As regards the conditions that breed disease, England is slow in dealing with them, or re- cognising the part which the elementary school can play in bringing about reforms. Only one English city — Bradford — has any- thing like a complete system of shower and slipper school baths. Yet in every school in crowded areas there is urgent need for this new order of class-room, where the whole art of per- sonal hygiene can be learned in a practical way. Washing is a very modern custom in Western and Northern Europe at least.* Yet it is a custom which now divides classes, and also arouses personal feeling of the most acute kind on both sides. A new safety has been won, and also new pleasure and well-being, and in some quarters these new good things are held firmly and without false delicacy. In the great public schools it is felt that young *It is almost unnecessary to say that three genera- tions back the person who washed well was an excep- tion, even among courtiers and in royal palaces. C 34 humans have to be trained to wash and to keep the teeth clean also. In these schools unclean- liness reflects only upon the individual, not at all on his family and class. Training is needed, and training is given — often by the Head Teacher himself. If all this is necessary for the safety of the rich, and everyone in the public school is frank and open about such things, why must the whole subject be shelved when one speaks of the working-class child ? In this country with ''soft rain water" in plenty, to quote Carlyle, there is a fear of speaking about and a neglect of cleanliness, that threatens the child of the well-to-do and careful artizan. He is yielded up a victim to the ill-cared-for child of the poor. Why should this clean, well-kept child of a working- class home be allowed to run horrible risks? In some places school-going is a daily walking into a sea of infected air and disgusting con- ditions. Not only in the class-room, but even in the cloak-room he runs risks. The clothes, as well as the bodies of some of his school-mates are verminous, and though now, happily, a few school nurses are at work (nearly 100 are already busy in London schools) these cannot be expected to look after 700,000 children. Take the following as a glimpse into the state of affairs in some schools. ''There should be in some areas an apparatus for disinfecting clothes," says a witness, giving evidence to the Consultative Committee of the Board of 35 Education. "The state of the clothes is often due to the fact that they are bought at second- hand clothing shops." But this is not the only cause. In one area at least, South wark, when a child is found to be verminous, and the due warning to the parents is neglected, notice is sent by the school nurse to the cleansing station that the child will be taken there on a given day, and the Sanitary Authority there- upon sends the same day to the child's home to fetch away all bedding to be disinfected. One difficulty, however, which applies both to bedding and clothes, is that they are some- times in such wretched condition, that they ab- solutely fall to pieces and perish when disin- fected. The arrival of the disinfecting van, and of warning cards and circulars may be necessary to-day, but these are not the most powerful, or above all the most attractive methods. **You must begin always by admiring a nation if you want to understand it," said a great thinker. This is true also in learning anything. One begins with pleasure. To begin with pain, or fear, is to stop, or want to stop, at once . Nothing can be more naif than the pleasure shown by all children who attend school baths in Bradford, and in Germany and other countries. Here is a welcome to Hygiene — little hands open widely. The white-tiled walls, the tin- kle of pure water, the sunlight falling on the whole, and irradiating it, the laughing 36 voices of comrades all arriving to enjoy the great experience of the week — all this is a good start. But if, to all this, is added the pre- sence of a highly-educated man or woman who knows how to make the bathing drills alive with interest and meaning, then it is certain that no other lesson can compare in value with that which is given in the school bath-room. Germany has built thousands of school- showers within the last twenty years. England has hesitated. She has even ignored that start made thirteen years ago — in 1896, when Brad- ford appointed the first Cleansing Committee,* and built her first school bath at Wapping. That is why Hygiene still remains for many a book-subject — without real meaning or value. Germany appears to have banished rags — largely through her schools and teachers. England has not got rid of foul rags, and wet torn pieces of leather, which still form the clothing of some of her poorest children. But apart from rags, the question of raiment and foot-gear will have to be gone into. ♦This small Sub-Committee of the Bradford School Board consisted of Mr. Cryer, the Eev. Mr. Addison, the Rev. Mr. Leighton, and myself. We made en- quiries through school officers and others, and then drew up a leaflet to parents. It gave no offence, though at the last moment two of the members were not willing to let it go out. The first School Bath was built in a kind of uproar. Not all the members of the Sub- Committee voted for it. More remarkable is the fact, that after thirteen years, hardly a town or village followed Bradford's lead. ^ 37 Dr. Arkle, of Liverpool, after weighing Liverpool children, writes as follows: — ''Owing to the mysteries of the female dress, I am afraid that, although the upper parts of the clothing were turned down, they were not removed, and I fear that in many instances I was weighing almost as much petticoat as child." Not only was it impossible to get the right weight, but the chest measurement could hardly be accurate owing to the number of bodices. When winter comes on, many parents try to guard their children from cold, and they take the means they believe to be the best fitted to this end. ''Large numbers of the children," said Dr. Arkle, "were stitched into their clothes." They wear them night and day, lie down and rise up without ever allowing the air to reach the skin. When a child gets a new garment the old things are not removed, but the new is put on the top of them. This is a very strange habit, but a very general one. It is common in London schools attended by even fairly-to-do children. The result of it is that many children are, as Dr. Arkle has pointed out, always in a state of unwholesome perspiration. Even in winter they exist in a kind of modified Russian bath, and the risk of taking cold is more or less a chronic thing. In some cases the Russian bath is hardly a modified one. "While ex- amining one little girl in the poorest school, after loosening the dress I found three bodices 38 and a pair of corsets, then another old velvet dress which fastened at the back. At that point I gave up in despair and did not persist in the examination of the child." Side by side with these over-clothed victims were children who looked neat, but had no underclothing on, though it was Christmas time and very cold. One was wrapped in an old vest covered with a blue overall. A little boy who looked well-to-do had no shirt, but only a collar! Miss Wilke, Head Mistress of the Physical Training College, Chelsea Poly- technic, gives very much the same testimony. ** Few people," she writes in a leaflet, '* are aware of the extraordinary number of unhealthy and unnecessary garments that the children habitually wear. Of fifty schoolgirls, forty- five were found to wear the following gar- ments : a pink flannelette chemise, a pair of pink flannelette drawers, a pair of stays with steel busks, two pink flannelette petticoats made with heavy pleats round the waist, one red flannelette petticoat, and, finally, a dress which was usually too tight across the chest. When one considers," says Miss Wilke, ''the double bands of the under-garments and their numerous pleats, it is plain that each child had from twelve to twenty thicknesses of material round her waist ! ' ' Let the best teacher of gymnastics in the world stand before a class of girls dressed in this way, and what can she do? Let the best scheme of exercises be drawn up 39 by the Board of Education without regard to dress, and how could it profit the busked and banded little victim of the whalebone and flannelette mode? Suppose the victim had on heavy, misshapen boots, too, as often happens, what then ? The Board of Education illustrate the exercises in the Green Book by diagrams of a well-dressed little gymnast. But this little pictured gymnast is far to seek in many schools. Many a child thinks such a dress is only an ornament. I have seen children pre- sented with neat gymnast costumes put them on over all their tight everyday clothing — re- moving not even the dress bodice, but wearing the gymnast tunic like an ornament on the top. It will now be believed — for doctors and scientists are saying it aloud — that Breathing is THE test of health or fitness, worth all the rest in many ways. Yet how can one breathe well, dressed in this way? The clothing of the poorest class of child not only dishonours but discourages her altogether.* She never slips out of her life of humiliation — and this chronic humiliation destroys the great safeguard of the self-respect that is talked about so much. Yet all this misery can be done away with. It need not go on in school where all work to banish it. The children *I have not touched the subject on boys' clothing. It is an even more burning one from the standpoint of Hygiene than is that of girls' clothing. There should be a boys' school uniform as well as girls. 40 could go far towards getting rid of it them- ■elves. Why should they not make their own clothes? It is not such a great matter. Here, for example, is a teacher who sets her elder girls — that is girls from 10 to 14 — to make their own clothing and that of some younger children. A complete suit has only four garments in all — a woollen undervest, a long jersey, serge knickers, and tunic. The work is a great deal more massive than any- thing that can be shown in the way of * 'plain sewing'* as it is called. It is all the better fitted for young eyes, even if very fine darning and white seam (good things as they may be) were not far fetched occupations, in view of the stark misery of the street. The clothes designed by Miss Wilke may be made very pretty and artistic. At the least they are hygienic, simple, neat, and suitable. It is likely that the girls trained to make, and also to wear such clothes, would be glad to go on learning about dress. In the new health centres the subject might be taught in a new and interesting way, and this also is begun already in America. It will be started also this winter at the Deptford Clinic or Children's Health centre. In Chicago and other cities the mothers gather in school-rooms in the evening and come into close touch with new friends. They sew. They talk. They learn from one another. The movement has had a great success. There seems to be no reason why it should not make quite a new era 41 in social life possible, for every topic concern- ing home and child life is discussed, and the mothers come hither, not as suppliants but as citizens. They are not always listeners. There are often debates. Mothers are open to new suggestions and eager for new light. To turn now to the most acute sign of poverty, and some of the earliest attempts at a remedy inside school. Hunger and School Feeding. In 1907 Dr. Crowley made the now famous experiment in child-feeding. He found that certain orders of starvation were more common than others — and also that poverty accounts for this. Proteids and fats should bear a much larger proportion in the child's diet than in the adult, but they are dearer and therefore harder to come by than are lean and starchy foods. Hence rickets are common in some areas, and poor teeth are common everywhere. The food at the Bradford Centre is carefully selected. It contains always right proportions of proteid and fat. It is varied; not dull or stupid feeding. The same dinner is not put before a child twice in seventeen days. Savouries are a staple dish, for it is found that the right constituents and the right amount of them can be provided very easily in this form. The average cost per head of the dinners is from Id. to Ifd., though one dinner of the 17 42 falls as low as three farthings without falling short in proteid or fat. The school meal offers varied, and quite new opportunities from the educationist's stand- point. To begin with, however, it gives a chance at last for the re-education of a basal sense taste. /2e-education, because, in the case of thousands, the natural and healthy taste in food has been ruined, so that even children relish bad food, but turn away from what is wholesome. Just as some have forgotten or rather given up the right way of breathing, so they have also lost all power of right food selection.* At the school-table real taste- training can be given, and has been given. So that while a great many mothers (amateurs of so many orders) declare their children will not touch milk, or Scots oatmeal, or barley, these wholesome foods are taken eagerly by many children after two or three weeks' patient training. There is another aspect of the question that is more rarely touched on, however. The real advent of Socialism, of even a rudimentary order, must surely depend to some extent on the development of social feeling. That en- largement of the emotional life and imagina- * Adulteration of food is now an art and a science. Taste and smeU can be deceived, thanks to splendid achievements in modern chemistry now put to a bad use ! There is the more need to counteract this mit- education by giving genuine food at school. 43 tion, which alone makes possible a system of practical brotherhood (the giving and taking of service on equal terms, the concern and in- terest, once confined to small family groups, radiating in widening circles and including even the alien at last which Socialism implies, if it implies anything) must depend not alone on a theory of life, but on constantly recurring occasions for the deepening and vivifying of mutual interest in larger groups and associa- tions of persons, and above all on new oppor- tunities offered early in life for the social education of future citizens. The school meal offers such opportunities. The children who dine together come into new relations with one another. They come also into new relations with their teacher at table. All this does not mean that the teacher is to have new work thrust on her. It means rather that what is vital in human education should have the first claim. Our present school day, with its working hours, is not part of the eternal scheme of things. On the con- trary it is certain that, in the future, it will be changed in more than one respect. It was drawn up not with the view of meeting the needs of working-class children. It was drawn up with a view of making things easy for mothers who have no helpers. The babies have the same school hours as the seventh standard boys and girls ! I hope to show later a few reasons why this kind of arrangement cannot 44 hold for ever, and how, under a new order, the dinner-hour, the out-of-door life and play-time, might gain a new importance. It is often feared that the home itself must collapse if the dull scrambling of meal preparation is given up more or less, or if (as happens already) the washing is sent out to a laundry. But in the homes of mothers who have a little leisure, this does not happen. Quite the opposite happens. A new develop- ment of home appears to take place. The area of the mother's work and interest is widened more or less. So that, in many cases, at last she observes when disease threatens. She may even come to have some idea, other than a stranger might have, of her children's mental powers as well as of their character. This ex- tension of the ofl&ce of motherhood and home- making may be diffused to-morrow. Not a few but a great many women may take this wider survey. In any case, the advent of the communal kitchen will not threaten the home — though it may empty the scullery. Before leaving this part of the subject we have to bring it up-to-date. How far is physical education reported on by the new Medical Service. Very little as we have seen. The first Reports of the School Medical Officers are not only limited in scope. They are very tentative in their proposals. The doctors are concerned (very naturally) for the most part in 45 stating the needs of the children, not to saying how these needs should be met. There is one striking exception to this rule in the Report of the Bradford Medical Officer. This greater boldness is made possible by the fact that the new ideal is more fully admitted by the Brad- ford Education Authority, and that some means at least are already to hand for carrying out a new system of physical care and treatment. But even in this Report the writer appears to look forth as on hastening waves. He looks forth on a world where haste, and not growth, is still the great reality ! ' 'Speaking generally, the opportunity the mid-day meal affords from the educational as- pect is hardly recognised. . . . The under- lying difficulty is that the meal is looked upon as something to be got through as quickly as possible." The same feeling of rush, suggesting a kind of shamefacedness with regard to the new ideal shows itself in other ways. **It prevents," says the Report, '* adequate attention being paid to the cleanliness of the children, for children still come to some of the dining-rooms with dirty hands and even with dirty faces, too. ..." ''It is also," says the Report, ''the reason why attention is not paid to the moni- tresses, i.e., the older girls who assist in the 46 laying of the tables, the serving of the food, etc. The splendid opportunity of training afforded is hardly sufficiently appreciated. They should be the special concern of one teacher, who would be responsible for seeing that the staff of them was adequate, that they were scrupulously clean and tidy, that they had definite work allotted to them, and they kept strictly to it. . . ." These matters are all vital — all radical in their bearing on the future of the race. Yet they make their entrance on the arena at all with the greatest difficulty. They are pushed and hustled aside as if no one could bend his head in order to look at them. It is so in England ; it is so in France ; it is so as yet (in spite of advance) in every country. Meantime, the Report goes on hardily: **The least satisfactory part of the arrangement is the lack of attention to the individual child, the complaint which dogs the path of our ele- mentary school system at every turn. In the original experiment it was found that some of the children needed special care and atten- tion." The writer goes on to tell of those special needs to show how it is impossible to fling large numh^rs together pell mell, to treat all alike at meal-time, at play-time, any more than at lessons. 47 Thus far we have arrived then — and now must halt. The individual is, at last, in sight as it were. We have to keep him in sight — to get a closer and better view of him always for the future. IV. Education — Natural and Artificial. For more than twenty years a cry has gone up against over-study. '^The school hours are too long," says one great doctor, ''more es- pecially for younger children." ''The amount of headwork required is too much," cries another, and there is a ready chorus of agree- ment from thousands of weary parents. There appears to be very little doubt that the hours of study are too long, above all for the little children. But how is one to know how much a boy or girl should learn? Not only, however, does mental power vary. The circumstances vary that determine how the natural powers shall develop. In the cities the term over-pressure is on everyone's lips. The people in the Western Isles of Scotland never use that term, and what is more strange, they do not seem to know the thing. The school children in Barra for example or Canna are not over-pressed. They speak not one language but two, and they not only learn to write, read, and translate freely, but they go quite as far, and even further than the city child in arithmetic. Their parents do not 48 49 fear that they are over-driven. On the con- trary, they grieve that the school tasks are so easy. It is very striking to hear in Barra, ia Lunga, in Harris, in Skye, this lament from sturdy mothers. These places are so far off — so lost beyond the wild seas. No echo of the great world comes there. They are for prac- tical purposes more remote than New Zealand. '*Why don't they go on with their Euclid at the school?" asks a Skye woman, standing in front of a great pool in front of the door of her cottage (roofed with turf and waving weeds so that it looks like a part of the hill- side). '*They don't go any length in Mathe- matics, and my boy's stopped always." At Lunga, a father looks at his son's home lessons. '^A baby could do it all," he says, mournfully." *'The master might work them like horses if he wanted to. Why doesn't he?" If the children fell behind in their studies in later days one might say all this was an illusion. But they do not fall back — they go on. Dr. Leslie MacKenzie, in Edinburgh, has remarked on the island children's easy ad- vance, as had many other visitors, but these after all were only impressions that might or might not be taken by the public as the truth. Mr. William Dey, of Aberdeen, chairman of the Aberdeen Provincial Committee for Students in Training, whose work consists D 50 partly in arranging syllabuses of study for bursars and setting examination papers for them has published statistics to show that in proportion to population, the Highlands and Islands supply from ten to twelve times as many men and women of University grade as does the rest of Scotland. These mothers are not scholars in the ordinary sense. Some can read — and others cannot. Do they know anything of literature, or of history ? They certainly know something of the origins of great literature. Father MacDonald, of Eriskay, himself a great scholar,* and an eloquent preacher in at least three languages, declared that the Eriskay men were all born orators, and that they cultivated this art at their gatherings. It is worth while pausing to note here how all that is known and learned is worked, as it were, into the quick of the young lives spring- ing up in these rude homes. Every memory almost is warm and live. All the tales are of those who were near and dear to the is- landers. In the living room the wife and mother works at her loom. It belonged, per- haps, to her great great grandmother. Her mother used it. Every dark string is well- known, and the pedals are worn by the feet *He was educated at Barcelona, and aconstomed to preach in English, Gaelic, and Spanish. 51 ©I loved ones, long dead. How can she help loTing the worn pedals, and the dark threads? She talks about the past to the children. The past lives for them as they look at it through their mother's eyes. All this gives depth to the emotional life. It makes a hot-bed for thoughts. As for the work itself, it is not a stunning mystery — like that of the great modern looms tended by Bradford children. Flax is no longer spun, but wool is woven,