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, <lyed, and *Vaulked'' at some spinner's cottage. The women meet together, and they sing loud and louder to ''bring the cloth." They have weaving and waulking songs, and they know the story of every poet in the song book. As for the work it is all begun, continued, and ended at home, so that the children see the whole process, from the bringing in of the sheep fleece to the putting on of a petticoat. Mr. Balfour has said that these people are the finest peasants in Europe. They are not peasants at all — have no trait of the real peasant who is more or less the same every- where. Oats are grown for fodder, and potatoes planted on the slopes near the bothies. But there is nothing of the torpor of village life in the islands. The father builds his house with his own hands. He with his barefooted children roofs it with turf, rears the wide low walls, paves the floor, and puts up the chimney. They go out on the wild seas, crossing in the dark between the islands, fearless because they 52 learn to know the treacherous winds and cur- rents. It is strange to see the lads and also the children with the older men in the boats. Their obedience is not only prompt. It is delicate. They answer to the lifting of an eye- brow as it seems. This training in attention is given under the sternest circumstances — cir- cumstances that cannot be reproduced in a school. It is education of an intensive kind. Young hunters have it. Teachers want to give it now as well as they can in the altered cir- cumstance. In so far as the simple forms of work are concerned the thing is easy. In America and elsewhere there are schools which are organised with the aim of making vigorous recapitulation of the life and labour of a younger world possible. In that fast going world no child need bolt civiliza- tion. "Weaving, and pottery, and rude carpentry, also (in some open-air schools) building of huts and primitive dwellings. The teachers do not stop at any difficulty. It is said that the scholars go into this kind of learning as a fish goes into water. In London schools as well as in the Western States of America, it has a huge success. Something is missed out? Tes. Danger is missed out. One does not see its ''bright face'* in a class-room. Can anything take its place? The Greeks thought that no- thing could take its place. Plato would send 53 the boys into battle (under hidden protection), compelling them to bear the tumult and to be- lieve that they were facing death. We moderns, however, cannot send the whole child com- munity into mimic warfare. We cannot set it afloat in the Minch. We cannot, even as yet, send all our children into Recapitulation Schools or classes in the woods. Meantime we have learned that we can if we will keep close to the Great Teachers, and also that intelli- gence and will power can be developed in more than one way. Drill is one of these means. It seems to do the work once done by the wild, heartless dis- cipline of Nature — the mother who does not spare, the blind mother who pays without counting. In the Paris schools Professor Binet, with the help of certain devoted teachers, has carried drill sheer over into the world of what is called ''head-work." He drills not large muscles but attention power, memory, will, initiative and imagination. Here, for example, is a class of abnormal (very backward) children taught by M. Roguet, at the Ecole Communale for boys, Rue des Ecluses, St. Martin. The teacher comes in and at once every eye is fixed on him. He does not call for silence. The very word discipline is never heard from him. He has fixed six objects on a large piecx^ of cardboard, and he turns these towards the class. They 54 crowd round him, then hurry back to writ© what they have seen. '^Cork, pencil, rose, etc. In order to get full marks they must write them down in perfect order and all must finish in two or three minutes. The exercise is finished. Now all are trying to carry small bowls or basins filled with water to the brim from one table to another. It is done quickly, and so carefully that not a drop is spilt. Now, while the visitor looks at the basins the whole class stands as if frozen — each with his arm stretched out. This is a Will exercise. These once restless boys, so aimless too in their move- ments, are now keeping every muscle under control. Lips that were once loose and open are tight now and eyes brighten. It lasts some minutes. Silently all is changed. Yet tense action is here still. The class is watching one boy and another fill in gaps in a written sen- tence on the blackboard. Then the long sentence is spoken and one after another repeats it from memory. Now the teacher utters a quick rain of figures. The boys patter them out fast like ticking machines. What is this? One after another steps on the plat- form, makes the movements of workmen — a sweep, sawyer, blacksmith, engineman, pilot. '^Write the names of all the red things you can think of.'* There is a noise of pencils, and many things are named : ** Cherries, straw- berries, roses, uniforms, flags" — and a belated voice says: 'Hhe Devil!*' ''Name things that 55 turn." Fast rain the answers. ^^ Earth/' ^'Compass/' ^'Top/' ^^Ball," ^'Wheel/' **Bicycle." All this is mere drill, and it is not claimed that it is anything more. It does for wandering wits, and feeble memories what remedial drill does for twisted backs and rounded shoulders. The teacher speaks little. There is a strange silence in the room, broken only when the boyi leave their seats to show their slates, or read, that is to say compose, at the blackboard. This is hard work. It goes on for a long time, more than an hour and a quarter. The Fro- belian ideal is learning by doing. But here is not merely work. Here is intensive action. Again and again, for a few moments, the powers of every child are at full tension. As for the teacher, his work also is hard, but it is quite other than is the task of the con- ventional master. He has not to speak much. He has not to '^keep order." He is always look- ing at keen, eager, attentive faces, though they are the faces of children who were back- ward yesterday. Yet, ^'At the end of the morn- ing I'm tired," he admitted. '^I can't take drill in the afternoon. Neither can my scholars ! ' ' M. B/Oguet has kindly given the results of the training. Forty-nine children have been taught in his special class. (The work is new, it was begun in Paris only between two and three years ago.) 56 Sixteen of the 49, we learn, are still in the class. Ten have gone back to the ordinary schools. Four have been lost sight of. Nineteen have left school. Eight of these are now apprenticed and are doing well (one is apprenticed to a mechanician, another to a carpenter, another to a printer, etc.). Three are working in shops. Two are clerks. Of the scholars now in the class, one appears to be above, rather than below 'the average mentally. A few months ago he was two years behind the boys of his age in schoolwork, though he attended regu- larly. M. E/Oguet indicates by means of a chart with coloured lines the progress of children in the ordinary school, and of the same children after they have passed into the mental drill class-room (the room which is so clearly nothing more or less than an extension of the room for simple physical exercise). The lines that show the backward child's progress in an ordinary school are almost level. Those that indicate his advance by the new method are almost upward, and between these two there is a sloping line that gives the rela- tive rate of advance of the normal child in the class-rooms of to-day. But no diagram is nearly so striking as are the faces of the chil- dren who attend Mr. Eouget's '^drill.'* Formerly they were dull but now they are full of life and interest. These are in the School Clinic of to-morrow, where disease is not the 57 thing in question, where teachers and those who help them are free to think of develop- ment. The change in them is like that wrought in poor, shuffling, feeble recruits after a course of drill and hygiene in the army. Mental drill is, of course, not entirely new. It is not new in France, where Lecoq and other teachers of drawing gave plenty of visual memory drill with good re- sults. James Hinton^s game of the twenty- seven cubes, described in his little pamphlet, **The Education of the Imagination," is a course of memory-imagination drill, pure and simple. But M. Binet has carried out this kind of drill as no one else has tried to carry it out. He has illustrated its value in quite a new way. He is the Ling of mental gymnastics. And have these gymnastics any value at all for normal children? M. Roquet used formerly to teach in the primary schools of Paris. He is sure that the drill, which does so much for the back- ward, would do even more for the intelligent. ''What should I not have been able to get from my normal scholars in the ordinary school," he said, ''if only I had treated them as I treat the defective children in the 'special' class ? ' At this point some may be inclined to ask : What is a normal child? Without trying to give a full definition we may say it is one who marches with the great army, keeps in step 68 with the great majority arriving at the different stages of life in much the same way and at the same time. To do all this is to be * 'normal." It is then possible to frame a scale of normal development — to trace the advancing human and find what is * 'normal" for the baby, for the six year old, the seven, eight, nine year old child, and so on up to the adolescent and adult. Yet one can find the normal by studying not one child or twenty, but thousands, and not infants alone, or school children, but individuals at every life stage. That is what M. Binet and his helpers have done, and the result cannot but prove helpful, all the more because in their labour they try to disentangle mere progress in school subjects from growth in real intelli- gence. At the age of 3, a child should, accord- ing to Binet' s metrical scale of intelligence, be able to point out his eyes, his nose, his mouth. To show the persons or objects in a picture. To give his own name, to repeat six syllables. (Of course one may think of other tests. These are only guiding lines.) At 5. — He should be able to compare the weights of two boxes. To copy a square. To repeat a phrase of ten syllables. To count four sous or pence, etc. At 6. — He should be able to tell which i& the right hand, the left ear, and so on. To repeat sixteen syllables, tell his age, do three messages without forgetting one. Tell the 59 morning from the evening. Define objects by telling what they are used for (he cannot define them otherwise at this age). At six progress in reading begins and goes on till nine. At 7. — He should know how many fingers he has. Copy a written phrase. Copy the figure called a lozenge. (It is more difficult than the square.) Repeat five figures. At 9. — He should be able to give the date in full. Tell the days of the week. Define things otherwise than by their use. Read and remember six things of what he has read. Give back money change in twenty pence, and place five boxes according to their weight. At 12. — He should be able to criticise ab- surd phrases. Put three words into a phrase. Find at least sixty words in three minutes. Give abstract definitions, etc. At 15. — Repeat seven figures. Find three rhymes to a word. Repeat a phrase with 26 syllables. Interpret a picture. Solve a pro- blem in psychology. Looking through this scale one is struck not by the forwardness but by the slowness of mental development. Only at seven does a normal child know how many fingers he has, and at nine, it is early enough to know the date and the days of the week. Only at eight years old does M. Binet give the task of counting three halfpennies and three pence, and ask 60 a child to name the figures from twenty back* wards. Of the four year olds not one ex-^ amined knew his left ear from the right. Of the 5 year old one-half could do this test. Only at 6 no one blundered ! Only at 6 does an average child know his right hand from his left, and at this age — 6 — one-half of all the children do not know how many fingers they have. Yet in France, as well as in England, babies of four and five have been set to do ''Number" lessons very seriously. The children who had not really done learning the geography of their own limbs have had to learn the geography of the earth. Is there any use in this kind of learning? We have no reason to think that it has any use or value. On the other hand it may do some harm. The young child's wonderful memory is doubtless a kind of refuge. It can say a great many things in parrot fashion. Great use is made of pictures in testing growth of intelligence. The teacher takes for example a picture of a man and woman asleep on a bench, and shows it to a child of three. The little one says '*A man" or ''a dada," * 'mamma." A 7 year old will pass from the mere naming of objects to description, "They are sleeping on a bench," he will say, or "It is a man and a woman, and they are asleep." A normal child of ten or eleven passes on to the interpretive stage. "They are poor people who are home* less," he will say. "They have been turned 61 out into the cold night." This power of inter- pretation, found only in older children, is in- troduced as a test at the age of 12. But here a word of warning must be said. The examiner is not acting in these tests like one who has simply to weigh a box or to take a chest- measurement. He cannot fall back on mere routine at any stage of his investigation. There are many tests only because one, or only a few, are not enough to prove anything. Take, for example, the case of John, aged nine. He is found, by one or more tests, to reach the level of the eight year old, a fact expressed by ''i — "or one year behind. He succeeds, however, in three tests of the nine year olds, and in three of the ten year old tests. So he is, after all, at the level of his age, nine years. We may describe an examination of the new type. It is so very different from the old, and the object is quite different. ''What have you done?" says the examiner we know so well, and of course this question has to be asked, by judge, examiner, teacher, and Society itself. The new order of investigator, however, is not a judge. He is trying, literally, to put himself in the child's place. He wants to learn some- thing about the child himself, not his work, and this is the only way in which to learn it. It might be well here to describe one or two ''examinations." They are, to begin with, very pleasant events. No shadow of fear darkens them. The teacher is no longer a 62 teacher when he enters the room where they are carried on. He is an observer pure and simple. The child, however, is on the alert. It is easy to see that he is putting forth all his powers. It is as though everything in him knows that it is on its trial, and hastens to prove itself to come into the open and be appreciated. At Eue Grange-aux-Belle, in the School of which M. Vaney is headmaster, M. Binet has a small psychological laboratory. It is a very modest room on the ground floor. There are no expensive appliances, only a table with pens, ink, paper, and two or three chairs. On the walls are photographs, children's drawings, and paintings, and on the wide window-sill a basin of water, with jars connected by a tube, the whole forming a simple means of testing breathing-power. M. Vaney sits at the table. He is the close friend and co-worker of Pro- fessor Binet. The door opens, and Armand, an eight year old boy comes in. Tall and broad-shouldered, he looks at least ten. His large eyes sparkle as he takes his seat at the table. He reminds one not at all of the student but of a soldier going into action. He reads a long sen- tence, of which, after a pause, he recalls five images (which is good for an eight year old). He then goes through a memory test, naming coins without touching them : fr. 10 —2 fr.— 10 fr.— fr. 50—20 fr.— 1 fr.— 5 fr.— fr. 25. The whole test does not last half-a- 63 minute. ''Write down every word yon can think of." The child starts at once, but he is weak in this exercise. He finds only 40 words in three minntes. He has no idea of following any trail* or taking up any suggestion. Next conies the time test. He is in advance of his age here. He knows the year, month, and day, and can tell the months of the year. There is a good weight test. Five small card-board boxes are brought out. One holds 3 grs. weight; another 6; others 9, 12 and 16 re- spectively. ''Place them in the order of their weight." The child does this quickly, almost without hesitation. When they are shuffled he finds the right order again. Hitherto the tests have been concerned with memory, and sensation for the most part. In these young children and even "defectives" may do well. But now we pass into new regions. We are going to deal with intelligence apart from mere sensory quickness, apart even from school culture. " What is the difference between the butter- fly and a fly?" Armand makes three comparisons — only one of which I remember. " The butterfly flies over flowers; the fly over things we eat." An Inventive test came next. The child was given three words and was asked to make sentences, each of which contained them all. One minute was allowed for this test. Armand got through * It is strange how often in these tests we wre re- ftiaded of hunters and their ways. 64 this badly. His bright little intelligence folded back as it were at certain well-defined regions. It broke down altogether over ab- stractions. ''What is charity?" ''Charity is giving bread to the poor.'' "What is justice?" No answer. "What is kindness?" "Kindness is to be kind to people." Nevertheless, his definition of a fork was very complete. "It is an instrument which civilised people use in eating." " Set up a shop. You will be the mer- chant," says M. Vaney. "I buy 4 sous worth, and I pay you with this piece of 20 sous." The little merchant comes out of this test well. The tests of comprehension, included such questions as : — When you have lost a train, what do you do? When you are late for school, what do you do? When a comrade strikes you without mean- ing to do so, how should you take it? To this last A. replied, after some hesitation: "Tell him not to do it again." In the tests of criticism he came out well. M. Vaney made absurd statements, such as "I have three brothers, Paul, Ernest, and I." The child discovered them at once. He is put down at last as two years (according to scale) in advance of his age. After him came Jules, aged eleven, a deli- cate-looking undersized boy, who has spent a year in hospital. 65 He is far behind Armand in many of the tests. He cannot range the boxes so fast, nor recall so many images and figures at a moment's notice. He has not snch a quick perception of things, and in the speed tests for mechanical acts, he is far behind. But he is older. He finds at once guiding lines in the search of words, so that he manages to utter seventy in three minutes (the limit for children of eight to eleven is 200). Above all, he is ahead of Armand in defining justice, kindness, etc. He reads not merely with fluency, but also with expression. No one could fail to have a clear impression at the end of the examination of the change that takes place at certain stages — the crossing of fron- tiers. The advance with a little dropping, it may be, of baggage ! Something is lost on the onward way. From various ''Memory" tests carried on in the schools among children of various ages it is found that memory is best in the younger children, and that early childhood, that is up to the age of seven or thereabout, is the time when the impressions gained are most vivid, most fruitful and most enduring. Yet all children have not, of course, got equal power of memory, and so it is simple justice to get some notice of its actual extent in the individual, just as we now try, in mere justice, to find what is the range of hearing or vision. To be sure teachers and inspectors £ 66 have done this time out of mind in a certain fashion. But their methods were rude, and the mistakes were, it is to be feared, serious. They may often have punished the unfortunate. Inspectors, too, have often punished the master who could not make the weak equal with the strong. The Memory tests given by M. Binetin Paris schools are various. In the simplest of all the scholars are tested by having to repeat words they have heard. There are others, however, to test ''incipient" memory, that is, the memory of things that cannot be uttered or recalled but which have left their trace on the mind, since the learner needs a much shorter time to master them than he would if he had never heard them at all.* There are also the * 'recognition" tests, that is, the singling out of words learned from many others. These tests are carried out in the schools of the most observant teachers. But the results show that though the teachers may be keen observers, and are getting hold of a great range of new material to which the old-time teacher was a stranger, yet they make a big percentage of gross mistakes when they have only general impressions to guide them. * Examples of this are to be found in many so-called failures of our present school system. Great surprise is often expressed by the teacher of adult schools and even tutorial classes at the rapid progress of men and women who attend them. They appear to have for- gotten almost how to read. Their first essays were crammed with mistakes in spelling. After two months^ time these very students are writing splendid essays. 67 Thus, for example, in one very able observer's list, two boys are put down in the ''Bad Mem- ory" group, one of whom can repeat twenty- five verses eight days after learning them, while the other can recite eighteen. That is to say these two belong really not only to the* 'Good Memory" group, but are among the best of that group. When one begins to think how a young human being grows, learns, develops, one sees that the process is not only a very long one, but that it is varied as well. When a certain age is reached — at seven or thirteen — lessons and drill are important, but even more important is play, and work, also day-dreaming and sleep. Every one of these helps the thing done in part, through the others. One must attend — but not too long. One must take pains — but only at intervals. One must learn how to focus one's powers, but every one, young and old, must know how to give up all striving, and trust to the power of the uncon- scious. Then as it appears there will be no overpressure anywhere. It is just this resting and also variety in life that fails in so many places. It is not granted to many children. It is not found in the inland village — which is gloomy and often stagnant. But it fails also in the great cities . Mr . Reginald Bray has painted in vivid colours, the state of the town child : '*He is hurried to school — 68 one of thousands ; in liis playground he sees himself, a frail unit tossing helpless among the eddies of a crowd .... Everything he does is swept away and is no more seen. If he brings home a few treasures they are sent down the dust shoot ; if he strives to cultivate a small patch of flowers in the backyard the cat digs them up ; if he digs a hole in the soil of one of the parks, it is levelled and smoothed away He is dodging now this vehicle, and now that; he is halting now to gather something from the upset barrow of a coster; now to watch a herd of bullocks swept into the slaughterhouse. Here walking, here running, here idling, now laughing, now crying, now shouting, he drifts into aimlessness." On reading this one begins to feel that it is not the school, but the outside environment that makes the town child changeable, and un- stable. It is from his playhours, not his work- hours, that something vital is missing.* It is not easy to supply this vital thing, very far from easy to supply the best things of all — the sense of freedom, the field for experiment, some peace in solitude too, and the breath of adventure. *The switchback of daily experience does not halt though even in school. He changes even his teachers very often; and the good teacher does not dare to cling to any one in her class. They are all moving on and away so fast. This is not so in every city. (In Copen- hagen, for example, a teacher will have the same cnild from seven to fourteen.) But it is so in London, and also in other great cities. 69 There is a movement now afoot to get chil- dren out of the street. Back to the land means for some not merely back to the fields and hedgerows, but back into any open space — into any space that can be cleared and made free again of sun and breeze and rain. Can one bring the Hebridean's great educational advantages to the child in Deptford or Canning Town? **Yes/' cry some bold voices. ''You may even do that, or go a long way towards doing it." In Canning Town, in the Spring of 1909, this work was begun by Miss A. C. Sewell. We quote here from her first Report. ''On March 20, 1909, the 'Garden' Club began its organised work with time-tables drawn up afresh each week to suit the lengthening days. Gardens were allotted as follows : 12 vegetable gardens to big boys; 12 flower gardens to big girls; 18 small gardens to children under 10 years of age. The children were divided into classes of six, and each class had a regular lesson of one hour's length per week . . . This plan was kept up until the end of the Summer term. The Club was open an hour and-a-half each morning before 9 o'clock, during which time I was present not to teach but to be talked to, and the voluntary attendance of children during these hours to giye care to their gardens will, I hope, be regarded as one of the most valuable features of the experiment." "The ground was part of an old churchyard, and large enough to allow of 40 little gardens. 70 All round were the crowded streets, with their unwholesome little dwellings. There was no money for an expensive scheme of any kind — and yet a great deal was done, just as on Robinson Crusoe's island a great deal got done. Necessity being in Canning Town as in mid- ocean islets, the Mother of Invention. ''When play is over for the little ones, some three or four of the elder children sweep up the infants' play-ground. When this is done a new lot of boys arrive upon the scene, and in fifteen minutes turn what had been the infants' play-ground into a night camp. Three different types of bed are used (all on the ''Catre" plan as used in hot countries) the making of which has been in the hands of the children. One boy in a holiday school made himself a bed in class, which he proudly carried home and sleeps in. Another result of interest is that the night camp has on one occasion been taken over by the father of one of the boys. This man, delicate and out of work, has gladly availed himself of the health-giving oppor- tunities given by the Club, bringing four of his own boys to sleep out." As there was no money to build lavatories the Club had to make its own. The children, with Miss Sewell contrived a lavatory, which is movable, strongly fenced in and protected, and yet convenient for inspection. They also made a shower-bath, screened with the cheap- est sacking, over a firm wood-work frame. The 71 demand for the shower-bath was great, morn- ing and evening. The feeling of the children about it may be guessed from the following letters : — ''Dear Miss, — I think we ought to thank you and Mr. Alvis for wasting your time over us by giving us shower-baths in early morn- ing. ''Dear Miss, — May a trustworthy boy have a shower-bath. A. Halford would like one too." Miss Sewell wants to make it clear that her Club is not a small open-air school. It is not a school at all, but a kind of garden, and ex- perimenting ground, necessary as an adjunct of every school. She asks why the parks should be practically empty for half a day, and for a quarter of a year. ''In the great park, called Scansen, at Stockholm, no scorn is thought of raising kitchen crops ; and gardens are specially planned that schools may visit them." Miss Sewell suggests that at certain hours of the day the garden might be under the care of public Authorities. Below is a Time-table, the ordinary print of which shows what was done in June in Can- ning Town. — The italics show what might be done under a larger scheme, taking advantage of the permits of the code. Only a small number can go to the more or less expensive open-air schools of the Local Authorities. But many can have a new kind of play-time. Nature is waiting all the time 72 under rubbish heaps and behind locked gates. The new work and play may begin soon, and wherever these are begun they will give a new value to the school lessons. Time Table. Time. How occupied. No. pres- ent. In whose charge. At whose expense. 6-7 Camp rises. 8 Voluntary. 7—7.30 Company for shower-bath. 10 ^j — 7.30—9 Garden talk. Plants given out, &c. 10—20 Organiser. Parks Authority. Bducation 9—10.30 Manual work or Gardening, 1st to 3rd 10 School Teacher. year. Authority 10.30—12 3rd to 6th year. 20 „ ,, 9—12 Infants, 30 „ „ 12-1 Little Children. Sand play. Drawing and Gardening. 50 Organiser. Parks Authority 2-3 Nature Study. 30 School Teacher. Bducation Authority 2-4 Infants. J, „ „ 3-4 Drawing. ,, ,, J, 4.30—6 Gardening. Sand play. Drawing and 60 Organiser and Parks Story-books. voluntary. Authority 6-7.30 Special Parties. Tea. Dancing. Act- ing. Gardening, Ac. 30 Organiser. ** 7.30— H.30 Big Boys. Members and visitors. Gar- dening. Races, &c. 18 " •• 8.30—9 Bed-driU with visitors. 18 ,, ^ 9 Turn in for the night. 8 School nurse or voluntary. Bducation Auihoriij *Even in the open-air school, there is at first, a good deal of formality, and even a good deal of artificiality. Yet, already there is a shaking loose of cramped minds and bodies. In the Birley school the children have dug and planted the whole garden, and the whole place is a scene, not only of industry but of experiment. The boy builds mud-houses, and plays at early Britons. Looking round one feels as if nature had come running back — as if childhood was no longer drilled out of ex- istence. In Sheffield, says a report, the baths were eagerly looked forward to. The children began to play without quarrelling, and to bear defeat bravely. The idea of esprit de corps was conceived — the absence of which in children of the Council schools was remarked by a representative of the Head-Teachers' Association, who held that such children would destroy the tone of any public school. THE WORKER'S CHILD AT FOURTEEN. However good elementary schools may be, their function is very limited. A child quits this kind of school at the age of fourteen, or even earlier. If a teacher attempts too much within this period the elementary education is spoiled, and the work of a later period is spoiled also. For elementary education should help to supply the materials for a later stage of life and development, but it cannot do this well if it attempts to do anything else, or any- thing more. In the hurry and bustle of a work-a-day life it was expected that nature could surely hurry her processes a little in view of the necessities of working class children. In England they were, and are, sent to school at five, or even at four years of age, and by dint of work, instead of play, it was hoped, doubtless, that they would be equipped for life at fourteen, or even earlier. This hope is still indulged in by the workers, and also by many of their best friends. *'I left school at ten or eleven," says one pros- perous man, and another, ''You see how I've got on. Hard work doesn't hurt anyone.'* This, of course, is not true. Hard physical 73 74 work liurts children terribly, as the researches of Dr. Thomas and others have proved beyond any doubt. If, turning aside from mere twisted bodies and injured hearts, one Asks about the result of arrested education on the mental side, the pride of the workers them- selves is up in arms. *^I never went to school at all," says a great writer, '^and yet I am famous, and everyone reads my books." There follows a chorus of voices. They remind us of legions of gifted working-class men ; calling up the shade of an immortal tinker, an illus- trious tramp, and a shepherdess whose name will shine like the stars for ever. All this does not tring us any nearer to the facts with regard to the effect of early labour on the children of the masses. We have good reason for believing that most children are born healthy. We have equally good reasons for believing that most children are born with well-made brains and capable of long continuous mental develop- ment. A certain proportion are, of course, above the normal, and in a very large class there would of course be a good many super and sub-normals. But we have not to deal with these in discussing the question, but with the nor- mal. Let us admit at once that the exceptions are numerous. How does the normal child fare when obliged to go into the rough and •tumble of life at twelve or fourteen ? 75 The evidence of M. Binet, who has worked at the problem for 30 years, agrees with that of other psychologists. ''Though our metrical scale was drawn up in order to measure the intelligence of children, it allows us also to learn what is the limit of intelligence among adults, at least, among the working class. In 80 far as power of abstraction is concerned, it does not go beyond the limit of the twelve year old. Two tests, one of questions having to do with the intelligence, the other with questions that put the critical faculty on its trial, constitute the touchstone." The power of abstraction then is not allowed to develop. That is the dictum. We have evidence to show that this loss is often more apparent than real — and that when circum- stances are at all favourable (as in the case of many in the Tutorial classes) it is suddenly, almost dramatically, made good. There is no object, however, in blindly deny- ing the findings of the only persons who have made anything like a full investigation of the whole subject. After all, this dictum is . what we must expect, if education is to stop between twelve and fourteen. Fourteen is, in some ways, a worse age than twelve at which to bring education proper to an end. It is the age of temptation. At the late Conference on Children's Employment in Glasgow, teachers and mis- fiioners rose to testify that nearly all the 76 men who go wrong take their first fatal step between fourteen and sixteen. They testi- fied also that the great majority of these were not nearly bad characters at all, but quite the contrary. The truth seems to be that the fourteen year old is more at the mercy of suggestion and impulse than is either an older or a younger child. At the age of thirteen or fourteen the great majority of the boys and girls of our country are taken from school and are set to work. To what kind of work? To any work, in most cases, that they can do. A very large number become part of our transit system like the draught horses. The tragic thing about their lot is not that they work hard, but that their work arrests development. Dr. Thring admits all this very naively in his famous book on the Education of boys when he shows, quite conclusively, how, though a great genius may emerge out of almost any gulf — the time available for real education will always determine the relations of classes. Let us take a case or two in illustration. Here is George, a little boy of thirteen,* * The younger the victim of over-work the more complete of course his ruin. "Secondary Education/' says the recent Report on Half Time exemption, ''is practically closed ta the half-timer. It is hopeless for him to compete for a scholarship with the full-time scholar. As for the Evening Continuation Schools, it is not very wonderful to hear that the child-worker has no desire to enter them. In Halifax an investigation into the Evening School careers of boys between 13 and 14 years of age, who entered the Evening Schools in the Session 1903-4 77 small for liis age, bright, refined looking, going to school regularly, and fond of drawing. One day you learn suddenly that he has gone to work. And why? Is his father dead; or has he lost his job suddenly? Is the family starving? Not at all. Things are going as well as they can ever go in a family where the chief is a casual earner. What has happened is that the boy is fourteen. With the fourteenth birthday the family automatic- ally withdraw him from school.'' I can't keep him any more," says his father. In a few months the little boy is no longer bright and refined looking. He has lost ambition and is drunk with fatigue every night — almost like his father. He will certainly not go to the Continuation Classes of his own free will — and no one has any right to compel him. Why should he go? To waste what little strength remains to him and learn next to nothing? In a few years he will be like his father who cannot keep a son for sixteen years, and hardly even for thirteen years. Take the case of a girl, aged thirteen. Phyllis is very bright, learning fast at school, shows that 79 per cent, of those who had not been half- timers received ifistruction in classes above the pre- paratory course, while only 25 i)er cent, of those who had been half-timers received similar instruction." But ''while 33 per cent, of the full-timers received special Instruction in classes beyond the preparatory classes for at least two years, only 3.3 per cent, of the half- timers stayed so long. The same condition is to be found in other towns where half-time is prevalent. '' 78 gentle to the younger children, and devoted to her mother. One day to your horror you hear that Phyllis is ^Vorking." She is the drudge of a dressmaker, and when you next see her the ugly change has taken place which condemns her for ever to a lowly place and a stunted life. What is to be done? Compul- sory attendance of continuation class? This is put forward very much to-day. But to-day the actual problem is not fully faced. Only the worst symptoms are faced. The price paid by the child worker has never yet been fairly estimated, and perhaps there is no means of fairly estimating it. For, in order to form a real estimate it would be necessary to separate the results due to monotony and arrest from those caused by exposure to downright evil and degrading surroundings. The boy street sellers who appear for theft and other offences at the police courts represent one or ler of result. But the factory child worker who loses all ambition and desire for progress re- presents quite another. The latter suffers a very distinct order of loss, and from a national standpoint this kind of loss is a hun- dredfold greater than that represented by even the unhappy young criminal. Yet it is easily overlooked, because in the first place, the vic- tim and his parents do not even suspect that there has been any loss at all, and also it is clear to them that he may live a very useful life after all ! It is often pointed out that such 79 useful persons are necessary as well as quite happy and contented. So it is thought well that the whole world should be full of ''happy/' ''useful" people. Is there no field for the full exercise of mental power and aptitude, save in the case of the members of a small privileged class ? This question will have to be asked and an answer found. If it was asked in bye-gone days an answer was ready. Children were born to a trade or calling. They followed it as their fathers had done before them, and even to-day Custom rules in some places, so that the miner, the weaver, the spinner, is destined for the mill or mine from his cradle. But a series of revolutions of various orders have now broken up the ancient closed trades for ever, and it is custom and circumstance, not law that dooms the children to follow one trade rather than another. To-day, however, we have new prejudices. It is ofen said that the country child should be a good labourer, and the city child a workman, clerk, or shop assistant. But the country child is not always born to be a labourer. Often he makes a good salesman, or takes to the work of a traveller with great joy and success. On the other hand, the cockney turns out some- times (when chance favours him) to have a little gift for growing vegetables and roses, and for bee keeping or poultry rearing. The most baffling thing of all, however, is that many 80 people who care nothing for what are called '•country pursuits," or **city jobs," have a dis- tinct call to kinds of work that are neither. They hover (in their leisure time) on the skirts of the professions and trades which they might have followed and could not. A mechanic in Swindon has a real gift for ambulance work. He is in demand when there is any accident, ^nd a favourite with the doctors whom he helps sometimes. A furniture remover, too, reads medical works and wishes ^'he could have had ihe education." Such persons, many of whom have a real ''gift" are to be found everywhere. Artists, geologists, carpenters and amateur nurses. It is clear that the accident of locality does not furnish the best reasons why a boy or girl should follow one trade or another. The truth, indeed, seems to be that the ques- tion of aptitude hardly arises at all in settling the career of most people. They have to take what they can find, and make the best, or, as often happens the worst of it. Something may be known about their powers by their teachers and parents. But even in the schools where the individual child is observed it is not often possible to know what he is best fitted for at the age of 13. For a while all education was '* literary," even for the babies. It is now becoming the rage to turn away from ''letters" and make handwork the centre of all primary school education. But, as the education of 81 the worker's child ends to-day before 14, and ended yesterday at 13, and even at 12, how could either ''system" yield its more important results? The great fact that emerges to-day is, that none of the children can be ready by either system to enter the world at 14. The future mechanic no more than the future farmer or merchant is ready 'Ho begin the world," or specialize at a bench. This is denied by some masters in town and country who want the children young. But it is feared these are not preparing children to be future citizens and workers, but to be future drudges or ''failures." It is now time to admit facts. The mental development of the average working-class child is arrested in a very significant way at the school-leaving age. No "technical education" for working-class boys would do away with the causes of this arrest? These causes lie much deeper than the giving or with- holding of any special order of training (however important). They depend on a GENERAL falling away of every kind of human impetus and help just at the time when these are most needed — at the age of thirteen or fourteen. A great many boys and girls also belong happily to the practical and positive type. They are well-fitted for work requiring manual skill. Even among backward children there is a good percentage of excellent 82 manual workers — children who, it may be, can do nothing with books, and are hopeless dunces, till they find themselves before a bench with tools in their hands. Our mis- take, however, has been to take the backward child as the representative of all the practical and positive type of minds. It is a fatal mis- take — and absurd on the face of it. Not only many of the lowliest but also some of the highest minds belong to this oldest, most stable, and enduring of orders. What is to be done with them? Send them to work at 12 or 14? But that is the greatest blunder, perhaps, which a nation can commit. It was easy to fall into this error. It seemed so plausible. It rested on a solid basis, that is to say on the fact that some back- ward children can be good manual labourers. Other backward children belong more or less exclusively to other orders. Some backward children do badly in the workshop and hold their own fairly well in reading and recitation ! Defect does not lie in the fact that one belongs to one type or another, but in that one cannot pass to the higher orders of work in any depart- Tnent. It is fatal to plan the educational systems of the bulk of the nation's children on the needs of any group of defectives ! Yet that is what we have been doing in the past, and that is the course we are held to now by the bulk of working-class parents. 83 If the arrest of development in the "' prac- tical" order of child is a loss to the nation, the neglect of the type of mind described very often as the ' 'imaginative/ ' the * 'literary' ' and ' 'intro- spective" is a serious danger. Such children go out into life having their own temptations, their own special powers, too, of working mischief. In adult life they are despised very often because of their lack of that very training that would have made their power real and effective. In short one must not stop growing at 12 or 14 on pain of becoming stunted for ever. It is necessary (for complete human life) that two kinds of mind activity should go on freely : that the inner and the outgoing movement should be vigorous. In virtue of one of these a child or adult is an observer, and in virtue of the other an interpreter. Normal human beings, in virtue of their humanity, have to win by training, continued far into the teens, a grow- ing power over the outer and the inner worlds. They gain this power in various ways. We are always emphasising one, perhaps because we do not fully understand either. Of the need for advanced manual training, there is no need to say much to-day. It is becoming the new fetish. Everywhere people are waking to the meaning of idle hands, and the effect of such idleness on youthful brains. Bolder and larger schemes of work are being drawn up. Forges as well as benches are being put into schools. The 84 Minister of Education himself, described schools that are full of the hum of labour. A kind of English real school is coming into ex- istence — real higher grade schools, with laboratories as well as workshops. It is hard to see how a youth of any type almost would not profit by spending some part at least of his day working and experimenting, observing and recording. But it is time to go further. The training that is implicit in language is also important, not for one type of boy or child, but for all types. This fact has been overlooked hitherto because **Physical Education" is understood in a limited sense. It would seem almost as if people forgot altogether that words are chosen and uttered, just as wood or stone is selected and hewn by the action of bodily or- gans, and that these organs can be trained only through action. It would seem that up to very recent times the English, who went in for so much large muscle exercise, lost the very idea of action as a thing present also in oral work. Not so the French. Take for example such a classbook as the *' Livre 'le Style," of P. Larousse. In it there are 142 lessons, every one of which obliges the pupil not to listen merely or to read — but to search , com- pare, choose, judge, and experiment with words For example in the first exercises, certain groups of words are given that have the same general meaning, yet each has a specific meaning 85 of its own that marks it out from the other. * ^Indolent, negligent, idle, nonchalant." The pupil must define every one of these and give it its own place. *^ Wages, honor- arium, salary." **Animal, beast, brute." The scholars have not only to define these, but to put them in their right places, in sentences. Later, they take piles of words and find synonyms for each. Then follows drill in sentence-making. Not languid composition, but real gymnastic — the finding of phrases to duplicate others — the reading by contrast, that is reading the opposite word of any which one finds in italics. (Thus for example, the scholars read a description of the French nation with words in italics, which, replaced by their opposites give a picture of the Arabs.) There are exercises on the ellipse in lan- guage — the scholars first filling out the elliptic phrase, and afterwards (always the reverse movement following every new exer- cise) condensing the full sentence. On "sterile" phrases there is a long gymnastic (which shows very clearly how wordiness is not the aim of the training) . Then come exercises intended to be a kind of bridle to pedantry. In the latter part of the course the poets, and the work of great tale tellers (such as La Fontaine) are put in contrast to that of the mere purist. It may be said that the great writers do all this kind of work well without lessons. 86 Yes, but the small writer does not do it well. The rank and file man or woman does not even try to do it alone. We know what happens to him or her now. It is only by continuous training that the later con- quests of mental life are made. For lack of it people sink back and are lost as thinkers to the world. Nothing makes good this loss. Masters and mistresses complain that the vic- tims are * 'stupid," "'reckless/' that they cannot be trusted alone. All this is true. If one is lamed, one may well limp. Of real language training one may say that it is not out of harmony with the methods of the workshop. In both orders of work, one learns by doing. It would be impossible for an indolent teacher to use such a book as the Livre de Style. The teacher who uses it cannot perorate, cannot shift the stress of labour from the pupils to his own shoulders. It is they who have to act all the time. It is they who feel the call every moment to go forward, to search, to struggle, to win — to act, in short, just as they must act in the gymnasium, the workshop, the playing- field. At this point everything grows dim before the eyes of many a working-class parent ! It may be that their children fall back just at the age when they should take a long leap forward. But what is to be done? There is no margin at all left even at the best of times from a wage 87 of 30/- a week and under. To save from such a wage is to stint the children in food, and that is a poor kind of saving. What is to be done? Is the State to take action? Is the parent to wait till new legislation is passed? The answer is surely that the State must take action, but that the parent cannot wait. To begin with, the field of child labour should be invaded by the adult. The carrying and fetching, even the doorstep cleaning and baby- tending could be done by men and women out of work, quite as well as by children out of school. If this work is unorganised to-day that is because the workers are too weak and isolated to organise anything. Even such ''private" labour as that of the house-keeper and home-worker is now being put on a coUec- tivist working-basis. Why then should not the child-trades be organised too? The shop- keepers in any street or area could, if public opinion demanded it, band together to have their fetching and carrying done by grown-ups. To-day, as soon as the * 'jobbing" boy or girl is 17 he or she is turned away because he will ask more wages. It should be made impossible to get a boy or girl under 16. If we turn away from the idea of scholar- ships as a possible solution that is because they touch only a small number, and far from stand- ing for a common right, constitute a distinction and a privilege. In a large number of public elementary schools 25 per cent, of the places I 88 are now reserved for the children from the com- mon schools. Were every place reserved the schools would serve for a mere fraction of the youth of the nation. And will the democ- racy of to-morrow even desire to accept the ideal of the ruling classes of to-day in educating their sons and daughters ? Truth obliges us to confess that this ideal is open to every kind of criticism. It was conceived when no one had very clear ideas as to the meaning of growth, and when certainly no one had any very clear appreciation of the varieties of men- tal types. What shall be done for the youth of the nation between its seventeenth and twentieth years ? Should these years be spent in games and study? It is certain that the new psych- ology does not justify us in coming to any such conclusion. On the contrary, it indicates very clearly that at sixteen or seventeen a new bath of experience, and a new and serious discipline is necessary for real progress. The field for the exercise of adolescent energies, turbulent as they are in the first manifesta- tions can hardly be the study or the class-room. In every age the fighting, ''ragging," rioting student has indicated this in spite of his tutors, though in English Universities at least (though not in Germany) it is believed that games, boating, riding, etc., will provide at once an outlet and a discipline for the Samurai of the privileged classes. In this our successors may 89 see only a timid reversion to mere play as a preparation for life. At seventeen life grows stern. One cannot then find a stern and varied enough kind of discipline in any playing-field. The new life with the love of adventure and the ardent desire for experience as well as know- ledge should find expression now, if ever, in the work-a-day world with all its responsibili- ties and trials. But in order to make this possible two things are necessary. First, the working, or rather the wage-earning day must be limited — say 20 to 30 hours per week. Secondly, the young workers should attend either Higher Technical Schools, where they should be trained as scientifically educated skilled workers, or (in the case of lads and young girls of another order of mental make-up) in Higher Schools, where Modern Languages and Commercial subjects in a liberal sense would be taken. Higher Agricultural Schools, with liberal courses in Chemistry, Physics, Mathe- matics, Literature and Languages should be provided for those who will engage in farming or any department of rural work. There still remains the scholar to be pro- vided for, the type of young person who, if fortune was at all kind to him, would not wish to give up *' Greek in Eesponsions," and who is, in the opinion of Thring and others, the most precious material of all. It is im- possible to think of these without remember- ing that they were royally provided for in the 90 past, and that all this provision has been for the most part in vain.* Far, however, from wishing to turn the youth of the nation into an army of scholars, varied by a squadron of athletes or dexterous players, the new school of educationists will accept very simply the dictum that practice * The schools, to be sure, became very rich. Here is a quotation from Mr. Mansbridge, who has done so much to throw light on the Land-versus-Education question. "The endowments of all Secondary Schools in Scotland are not so great as Eton. Only the other day Eton received .£151,000 for ground near Hampstead, much en- hanced in value by recent developments. Some of the land, if not all, was granted to the College for the maintenance of poor scholars by Henry VI. It is a matter of anxiety to us what has been done with the money. Of course we know that the Eton College Trustees have done something superficially justifiable with it, but they have not done it for poor scholars." Harrow School was founded for poor boys. John Lyon, the founder, had this set forth even on his tomb (all can still read it on the Lyon Brass in Harrow CJhurch). "Heare lyeth buryed the bodye of John Lyon, late of Preston, in this Parish, yeoman, deceased, the 11th day of October, 1592, who hath founded a free Grammar School in this Parish to have continuance for ever, and for maintenance thereof and for reliefe of the Poore and of some poore scholars in the Univer- sities.'' He seems to have taken the greatest pains to make his desires known. The favoured boys were to be chosen for "towardness, povertie, and painfulness.*' A certain number were to go on to the University as eight-year exhibitioners. He bought land in Preston, and also in Marylebone. Needless to say, the London property increased in value. It now brings in an income of which he could have had no idea in wildest dreams. But how have the poor folks of Harrow profited by all this? In 1809, it seems, they bethought them suddenly that they had a right to this school. They chose represen- •tatives to go with their churchwarden to the governors 91 comes before theory, that a new bath of ex- perience precedes new life. England, in par- ticular, looking back on the story of the won- derful nineteenth century will find nothing to justify her in turning her youth into mere students, and locking them out of the world of action. On the contrary, she will desire above all to let her adolescents over sixteen and enquire why the elections were carried out (as was the fact) quite unlawfully. They complained that the school was of no use to them; that even if one or two fathers plucked up courage to send a child to Harrow School, the life of the said child was made unbearable by the behaviour of the hi|:h-6pirited young gentlemen. They appear to have said that the classics were of no use to them— falling into thg snare of commercialism without any misgiving. One of the masters of Harrow, Dr. Vaughan, felt sorry, doubtless, for the simple Harrovians. He actually helped them to build a school of a humbler order, by giving back a sum of money from the rapidly growing foundation treasury. Just so a child from whom a shilling was stolen might be quieted by having a large penny slipped into its hand. Take another school — Rugby. By will, Lawrence Sheriff, the founder, devised <£150 in money and property for it, and also <£100 as salary for a master. After- wards he revoked this, and granted instead a piece of land belonging to him in Middlesex. These few acres near Gray s inn Fields of course made the foundation wealthy. Passing by Winchester, Westminster, St. Paul's (whose lands once worth <£120 are now worth ^20,000 a year, and which was founded mainly for poor scholars) let us glance at Charterhouse. Sutton, the founder, builded better than he knew, and yet not for those whom he had the desire to help. His aim wa« to open "one free school for the instruction, teaching, maintenance, and education of 35 poor children and flcholars. The first resolution passed by his governors at their first meeting was "No children shall be placed here (in Charterhouse School) whose parents have any estate in land to leave unto them, but only the chil- dren of poor men who want means to bring them uj).'' Though the school has now over 30 masters, and its wealth is increased in proportion, the class-rooms are not filled with the "poor scnolars." 92 enter the arena, not without protection but without reserve. And the protection itself will mean not the shutting but the opening- of gates, for it will make it impossible to limit a youth's experience of the working world to a fragment of a trade and a corner of a work- shop. Thus, we cannot join issue here with those who want a straight run from the primary school to the university, if this means that no one under twenty-one must work for his livelihood, but engage only in study and play ! Tame is the youth that submits to such terms as these, that does not long in dawning manhood and womanhood to be at grips with the world. ''Learn by doing,'' said FroebeL '*Lay hold of life," said Goethe to the young. In other words, labour and struggle, conquer, and bear defeat in the open on pain of having nothing to theorize about or study in later life if you fail to live now. What we see to-day is that the young people who are not allowed to do anything but read and play get into mischief. Mischief is another name for misplaced energy, and it is clear that the wild youths of the Oxford of yesterday, the young ''Bloods," as they are called, who got up the town rows and made the dons them- selves tremble in their rooms were really try- ing to get some outlet for their penned-up energies. It was a poor outlet they got. 93 It was, if not child's play, at least boy's play after all. These boys in their later teens were not obliged to take on any responsibilities. At the other end of the social scale there was child labour, infant labour almost, but the * ^ spirited ' ' young gentleman had no need to think of labour at all. It is possible that the spirited lad or girl of to-morrow will not toler- ate this. He will feel, when sheltered at college in his later teens, as a tall strong youth might feel held in a nurse's arms while out- side the flood was rising or the burglars were breaking in, met on the threshold by some of his small sisters and brothers. And yet education is not to end at 17. University or Higher Education is the right not of a few, but of all. Higher Educa- tion is given at Oxford and at Cambridge freely to men who are not scholars in any real sense as well as to those who can fully profit by it. What is more, the promise of it gilds even boy- hood and girlhood with a new radiance. In ^* Oxford from Within," Hugh de Selincourt writes of all this : ''All through his sojourn at school," he says of one,'* he was looking for- ward. Responsions was passed. The time drew nearer. Residence in Oxford loomed like the rosiest of clouds on his horizon, and so brightly that he could not look for long into its rosy depths. No lover awaited the arrival of his mistress with greater eagerness. There was no fear and no misgiving. His 94 joy as the time drew nearer became cumula- tive. His three years at Oxford was a solid, shining fact, behind which the uncertainty of the future was entirely hidden." As one turns to think of working-class educa- tion, one is conscious of a hardness, a dark- ness even where there is much planning and activity. Technical schools, evening schools, industrial schools and polytechnics. Excel- lent. But where is the glamour, the laughter, the joy of life breaking in over the threshold of youth like a wave? Where is the workers^ school one dreams of, and saves up for, and thinks of as a lover all through the stormy years of adolescence ? In Denmark — if anywhere, perhaps. For there many a farm lad or dairy girl does whisper to himself or herself as he or she goes about the day's labour, ^'I, too, will go to a beautiful place for six months — or three?'' Grundtvig was more than a reformer when he planned the High School, and determined it should be a beautiful place, open to all. He wanted a great TIniversity — a University of all Northland people, greater than Oxford. That dream was not realised. But he gave a new vision to farm servants. It was he who broke the heavy mould of the ^^ hard-baked peasant." He let them feel that all the striving and labour of these busy years would issue in a new awakening. VI. The Great Awakening. Up to the age of 18 schooling is more or less a matter of compulsion for many. The English, more than others, want to turn away from books. Many declare that they cannot believe in them. But there comes a time when all this revolt ends. With the dawn of manhood or woman- hood every normal being wakes, even to-day, as if from a sleep. He or she wakes it may be only for a moment — and seeing the walls of a prison house, sinks back again into mental torpor. No real observer doubts, however, that the waking hour comes, and that thousands bestir themselves then, who have never shown a desire for a larger life and will never again fight to win it. It is at this age that the high- born Russian flings herself into the search for new knowledge, leaving her own country if necessary, astounding the Swiss or French teacher by her ardour. It is at this age that the young Danes leave the land and flock into the High Schools. Sometimes the awakening shows itself in enthusiasm for a cause — in the rising of young peasants. (The martyrdom of Enjolras is the illustration of a fact common 95 96 to normal young manhood; that of Gavroche is, on the contrary an eccentricity illumined by genius.) England's young manhood and womanhood is certainly no exception. The History of the Adult School Movement shows this impulse persisting even in riper years. In one country the great awakening is ex- pected in all and prepared for. That country is Denmark. I write in October, the month of falling leaves. Over the wide flats of Funen the mellow sunshine is falling, and the last caress of summer is in the quiet hours. And now in the homes of many Danish land people there is a kind of hush breaking in on the work and minds of all. Thousands of young men and also women are packing their boxes and getting their clothes in order. They are going to leave home, perhaps for the first time (not a few have been out in service, however, to earn money for this wonderful flight into the new world), and everyone, from the father and mother who are making a sacrifice in letting a son or daughter leave the work of the holding or farm, down to the little children who look on with awe-struck eyes at the preparations, feel that something grave and important is afoot. It is not a change of place that is to be made. It is a complete change of life and occupation. The young man looks at his tools — and bids them farewell. The young woman stands at milking time near the cow-sheds, and takes 97 silent leave of tlie home life and its busy round of duties. It is the hour of the great awakening. Many- years have passed, and the glow of childhood is far behind. Far behind are the years when life was new, every day an eternity full of stirring events. One has grown sadder, a little chilled as well as strengthened by hard labour. Now comes a new day. Childhood was only the first awakening. It resembles this later and greater thing only as the grey dawn resembles the flooding gold of noon. Hegel taught that the awaking of youth should transcend that of childhood. The eyes that have opened to behold the near must in youth look beyond, and take a higher survey of life. *'Let the youth plunge into foreign languages and studies, mastering Greek and Latin, and living over again the life of distant and alien races," said Hegel. And Grundtvig, the great Danish founder of High Schools, took more or less the same view. Only he hated ancient Rome and all its works. Along the level roads of Denmark there pass in the late October days many young people. Some are well off and can hire carriages, or find seats in the cosy, hooded Danish wagon, driven by the light, strong Danish horses. But many are poor. Their luggage was sent off a week ago, for the sake of cheap- ness, and arrived in a leisurely way by the G 98 carrier's cart. Perhaps their thoughts, if not anxious, are grave and touched with sadness, as the thoughts of noble young people must be who turn their faces to a new world. They are going in for Higher Education — not Technical Training or any such thing. For Higher Education alone they fare forth under the falling leaves. Not for them the ''Continuation Class" wedged in a gap of the working day. Not for them even the Agri- cultural College, or Land School, where ''practical" subjects are taken that have a direct bearing on the future wage-earning power of the countryman or woman. Accord- ing to the statistics given in Dr. HoUman's recently published book, only 108 out of 2,592 men students in Danish high-schools took any instruction whatsoever in land sub- jects. The teachers — even the Agricultural School teachers — far from discouraging this estrangement of the peasant from his tools hail it as the great promise of his future emancipation. "We desire," said La Cour, the greatest of the Agricultural College teachers, "to make human beings complete jirst, to see the personality unfold itself as the prelude of every other kind of event or reform." From Dalum and Ladelund, Ringsted and Lyngby (all famous agricul- tural schools) comes the same voice — a voice that is like a finger pointing the way to the adolescent arriving at cross-roads in life. "In 99 order to learn about your work you must be prepared to learn. Growth itself is a kind of pulse — a beat and pause, a gathering of strength and a going forward. Do not hasten else you will lose all. To be a good farmer as to be a good scholar one needs intelli- gence — and real growth. So, for the present, forget all about practical aims. Forget your crops. Memory, imagination, reason must first awake and expand in the right atmos- phere and by the right means." So the pro- cession of youth moves on, heeding the finger- posts of the wise. Of all the schools Roskilde is perhaps the most beautiful. The approach is by a wide road with green fields on one side, and the blue firth on the other. The school itself, a large new building with grey terraces and wide-rounded doorways, recalls, for all its newness, the charm of old cloisters and ven- erable halls. It seems as if the Spirit of the Past breathed into the labours of the men who built the walls. N'o dormitories here. Every student has his own room, and over the doors are names that are lights of the past— ''St. Enud," ''Dalum," ''Sigurd," and so on. Then the lecture halls are wide, but not very lofty, and in spite of the many chairs closely ranged, they have a homely look. The rostrum is very low, wide, and rounded, and always one remembers it as a place where a man stands with folded arms, bending over 100 a little in earnest, familiar talk, like an elder brother or father speaking to his children. Grundtvig's method showed him to be an evolutionist by instinct. He, who had written books enough to fill a library, cast aside all books in facing his peasant scholars. He got rid of the school-desk; his rostrum was like a hearthstone. He went back to an art that is still cultivated in the bare islands of the Hebrides — the art of vivid, warm and moving speech. In Canna and in Eriskay, where fathers talk to their children of the past, it often rises into eloquence, but at its humblest, it is still the art of speaking in- timate and unforgettable words.* The High School teachers have not only revived and cultivated this half -for gotten art, they have expanded it into an oral method by which they take hold of every subject. For not only literature and history, but also physics and mathematics, as we shall see later are ap- proached in the same way. The purpose, too, of the man of genius who led them — for such he was, with his eyes of wild-streaming light — was opposed to all that was most cruel and cynical in the working- class education of the past. He reversed the * Father MacDonald, of Eriskay — the brilliant and much-loved priest of Eriskay, linguist, naturalist, poet, orator in many tongues, who died, alas ! in early prime — told me that many of the island fishermen often uttered in his hearing, discourses that equalled anything he had ever heard from trained speakers. Not only were the discourses good in matter, they were perfect in form. 101 evil process by which, in every great civilisa- tion of the past, the worker, however carefully trained, however skilled, was allowed to remain blind so that he could not even realise himself as a creator at all — so that, in fact, his work did not waken him. Grundtvig and his followers began by waking the scholar, and postponed every other end to this. *'The difference between the educated and the uneducated," says one of Grundtvig's followers, ''is not one of skill, or even of know- ledge. It is simply that the educated sees the relationship or connection of things." To rouse the scholar so that he should find his place in time, and in the world, and, finding that, should have at least some dim notion of the connection of events and the meaning of great lives, and of the race-soul; this was the first goal. However poor the mental equip- ment of his adult scholar he must reach it. One must help him to unify his poor resources, and in so doing lift him into the ranks of the ''educated," that is to say, above the discon- nected floating thoughts and visions of child- hood — above the broken, mutilated life of slavery.* *It is not at all clear that even the most highly skilled town workers ever reach this point at all. Not in one country, but in every country educationists have reason to think of the city-learner as one who learns evervthing, but who does not find the thread through the labrinth, and who does not expect to find it. M. Herrmann Trier, who pioneeered the Evening School work in Copenhagen in the eighties, testifies that excellent as 102 It is well to look back at the life of the man who, with another called Kristen Kold, did for the education of young men and women what Froebel did for the education of children. It is true that Grundtvig was, in politics, a Tory. If he was a lover of freedom, it was only of inner freedom, the liberty of mind and soul. And then it is hardly true to say that he wanted to give the best to all. For he did not see how all could have more than a glimpse as it were of the Halls of Beauty and Wisdom. But he said that everyone should have this glimpse and get to know something of the beauty and wonder of Life. The fact is that having got his foot on the threshold the Danish peasant stormed the Halls of Light. He threw off his dull vestments. He began to make his cow-house almost beauti- ful, and his little holding became a new thing in the story of labour. Grundtvig built better than he knew. But just because of this many would care perhaps to know something of this life so long (he died at about ninety in 1872), so full, so varied. Why did he not do as the other learned men of his day did? For after all he was not consciously at least what is known were the town classes they had little or no influence in 80 far as any aim beyond the mere learning of "sub- jects" was concerned. A man learned French, or arithmetic, or drawing, and drew or counted better in consequence — there the matter ended. The High School transformed the peasant. The Evening School did not transform the city dweller. 103 as a ''social reformer." There are many reasons why English people, and above all English working folk should want to know him, for it was in England, and when he was already an old man, that he got his final impetus. He got it from the toiling masses of England, who somehow reminded him of Thor, the God of Thunder and of the old Vikings. (He did not go far north, and was never in the North Country mills where the children were at labour.) As a child Grundtvig had learned to love his own race. His mother was the daughter of Danish heroes, and she sang to him the songs, and told him the stories of the great bye-gone days. His father too, the son of a line of preachers helped to give him a clear vista of the past. He learned many tongues, and became a fine classical scholar, but unlike many, he turned back to his own race. He translated the Snorre and Saxo into Danish, studied old chroniclers and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the British Museum. He loved the Danish peasant even more than the Greek philosopher. At that time northern mythology was not at all respected by the learned. There were no Wagner festivals, no popular translations from the old chronicles. To the learned at Copenhagen the northern mythology was an *'ugly bush," but the Greek classical litera- ture ''an enchanting rose tree." Yet it was 104 clear to Grundtvig that the enchanting rose tree had not its roots in Denmark, and that to graft the Greek rose on the English or Danish stem did not tend to bring scholar and labourer together, but had quite the contrary effect. To find the real spirit of the Danish people, to waken it through the living word — that was his aim. His first lessons must have been like the old Skald's song, striking the rusted harp of the peasant's nerves, and waking the old life -melody. First, the old tales, the old songs, the old spirit in the class- room. Through' these the peasant mould was to be broken, and the old fire and music stream forth anew. The results of immense learning were condensed into warm, simple words. These, falling from the lips of the High School teacher filled with ^'the spirit that works in freedom," would speak to the old brave spirit that was yet in the peasant. He would stir at the call of the Past. This was the prophecy of Grundtvig. The history of the movement is told by Dr. HoUman, of Berlin, in his book **Danishe Volkshoch Schule," which is not yet trans- lated. But it is also told in English by Mr. T. S. Thornton in his five Reports and Essays on Danish Education. The first High School was opened at Redding, in North Schleswig, in 1844, that is to say, at a time when Denmark 105 was sunk in despair. ''Tlie very thieves for- got to steal in Denmark then/' we are told. Surrounded by strong foes, ruined by wars and losses, the little nation had lost hope. In 1864, after a new war, the school was moved to Askov, north of the new border. There are over 70 High Schools now in Denmark, and about 200,000 men and women have passed through them. They have put their seal on the life of the whole land population of Denmark, and the proof of this is that we can hardly speax of the Danish * 'peasantry" any more. A great deal has been said and written ot the High School methods in England of latc But each of these schools has not only some- thing that singles it out from all others ; each offers something new to almost every stranger. Then they have taken root in Sweden, in Norway, in Finland, and Iceland sent her thanks to Askov when, some years ago, its headmaster, Mr. Ludvig Schroder, died. One goes, another, and all is not said. Every visitor finds in them something new. Singing is a great feature of the High School. On the morning and often in th^ course of the day one hears the same hard, strong singing in unison. The song-book used is full of beautiful ballads from the pen of Bjornsen, of Grundtvig, and others. Great attention is paid also to physical drill. The 106 masters hold that those who engage in hard, manual labour in youth require physical educa- tion even more than do those who do very little, or no manual work. So there is a fine gym- nasium in every High School; it is used for an hour daily by every student. In the summer months — from April to August — the school is filled by young women, and the gymnasium offers a pretty spectacle. The class is taken by Mrs. Ingeborg Appel. The young women, all in gymnast's costume, might be all scions of noble houses — so free and graceful is their carriage. Tall, and very fair, with flaxen locks, blue eyed, they have the beauty of the daughters of Sigurd. Many wear silver arrows in their heavy braids ; others have their hair in shining crowns, or smooth, parted in front, and bound with a silver ribbon. There are Swedes here and also Norwegians, and girls from the Faroes, and also perhaps an Icelandic maiden, speaking the old mother tongue of Norway — the Norway of a 1,000 years ago. The exercises are on the whole a good deal more strenuous than are those taken in our Polytechnics and Secondary Schools. For a whole hour the girls leap, run, bend, climb, and do breathing drill. At intervals they march about the hall singing lustily. At Askov the students number 400 in winter, There is a staff of 13 teachers (some of whom are famous in science and literature), besides 107 many visiting masters. A former pupil gives a description of a school day which appears in Dr. HoUmann's book *'Danishe yolkshoch Schnle," facts from which may be given here. At seven the bell rings, and the school awakes. (It is a large school and includes many buildings). Doors and windows open. Everyone helps to put his own room in order, (two students share one room as a general thing). At half -past seven there is a clatter of wooden shoes in the Court and hundreds of young people gather in the dining hall. After breakfast, prayers and singing, then the lectures begin. Dr. Marius Christensen takes the History of Languages, La Cour Historical Physics, and the Head Master Northern Myths and Hero Legends. At nine the pupils go to the gymnasium, and at ten the shower baths are crowded. Prom half- past ten till two the work goes on without a break. Lectures are given, but a striking feature of the work is that later the pupils form themselves into small groups. These have instruction in mathematics, physics, etc., until two. The second-year students (Askov has two- year courses) work in the laboratories. The school dines at two, and after dinner there is recreation. Games and more singing. From four to six there is Language study. 108 Danish, German, and English are taken, and at six, more History. It would seem as if eight to nine hours close study is too much in one day, but it hardly appears so. There is so much that refreshes. The poetic element is not absent from any of the work. Dr. Feilberg, the aged pastor of Askov, is a famous Folklorist and contributes articles to English maga- zines. To read one of his articles (as for example: *'The Corpse door — a Danish Sur- vival," which appeared in ''Folk Lore" three years ago) is to understand why as he stands up every eye is fixed upon him. He knows so well the custom, thoughts, and life of bye- gone days in Scandinavia and Iceland, he is so learned, and he finds none the less such simple words that everyone must listen. And through all runs a strain of music, of poetic thought and the idealism in which Grundtvig had such faith. One can see how, when on certain evenings, such a teacher meets with the scholars and talks over their work, life takes a new meaning. The work is very hard. Yet in spite of this close, rapid work, here is an atmosphere of rest. There are, as we said, no examinations to pass — no prizes to win. And the pupil is going back to his work after he leaves school. Into this busy yet calm place the young Dane turns at 20 or 22, as a heated traveller might turn down a cool lane. Here, the storm of adolescence past, the first initiation 109 into the world of toil over, he finds himself in a real school, a place of leisure. All the instruction has been planned to give him what he needs at this hour. In the programme of the Central College at Oxford I have seen among the list of subjects taken by pupils the word '* Evolution.'' I do not know how this is taught as one subject, but the histori- cal instruction of the Danish High School is carefully designed for one object — to give a clear notion of the meaning of evolution. Herr Appel, the head master of Askov makes this clear in the work. Students must acquire the ability to recall and live through again the life of the past. They must be absorbed in the main events and movements of the world's history. Otherwise, they are mere strangers in the world and also mere tools. The method is illustrated well even in the class-books that have been written by the High School staffs for their scholars. Take for example the great work on Physics, of which Mr. Appel is joint author. The book is a series of miniature illustrated biographies, one might say, as well as a description of researches and discoveries. Many of its prob- lems are, of course, faced by the scholars them- selves in the laboratory or in the experiment grounds near the school or in the field or class- room. But here is a book which makes the student walk all the time near the great shades of the discoverers. From Archimedes to 110 Robert Boyle the learner follows tliem. The writer knows them all well. He has spoken of them to his pupils as one speaks of those whose labours one has shared. It is the same as re- gards other subjects, as for example, astronomy. Here again the student is always stepping in the traces of the race. He puts his foot in the tracts of Copernicus, of Kepler, Newton and Bradley. If one turns from Professor Appel to Professor La Cour, teacher of Mathematics, one finds that the method is still the same. '*We take the same problems as the Egyptians once faced. We study their buildings. Then we go to Greece, or rather we follow Thales to Egypt, and return with him to Melet where he founds the Ionic School and sacrifices to the gods because he has found the law. (the very law which we have just ourselves dis- covered)." La Cour is never weary of testi- fying of the great impression made by the simplest propositions of Thales when they come before the pupil in the right his- torical connection. He shows how even the simplest lad or girl meeting the problems of geometry in the order in which they have arisen are no longer puzzled. ''Is it not absurd," he asks, "to set the hard problems first?* Little by little one learns the art of abstraction . . . One goes faster and surer *Binet asks the same question — is never tired of asking it. It seems hard to convince many teachers that one must not go too fast— on pain of going very slowly. Ill if one keeps in the traces of the human race itself, than if one adopts the method of stand- ing on a high pedestal and calling down to the bewildered novices that they must scramble over this or that cliff or into this or that gulf.'^ The end of all this learning and teaching is the waking to a new life. After a certain time the scholar gains a real vision of the past. A light flits over the darkness and chaos, and he begins to understand the world a little, and also himself. It is not likely, it is not even possible, say many of the High School teachers, that a youth can win this new vision in an Evening School, or in a Technical Institute, or Con- tinuation class. The atmosphere in such places is too noisy. And besides, the time is too short. In order to get any Higher Educa- tion one must go to a real school, and one must also spend all one's time and strength on the work of the school. One must forget worldly occupations and enjoy a real Sabbath of rest from these. Just as an Oxford man is heard to say proudly and thankfully ^'I am glad that Oxford is a backwater," so many of the High School teachers say ^'We are glad that no echo of the world of labour is heard in our schools." Mr. Thornton reported in 1905 that nearly 40 of the 66 High Schools then in existence in Denmark were purely humanistic. These schools contented themselves with doing the work of preparation. They did not begin 112 to teach even building construction or agricul- ture. Yet, close by many of the High Schools is the world of labour. Almost at the door of Askov, for example, is an agricultural experiment station with fields that are like leaves with large writing on them. To walk through them is to see on every hand the effect of soils and manures of different kinds on cereals. In the same grounds as Lyneby High School is the Land School of Lyneby. Many of the High School teachers are on Land School staffs ; and a large proportion of the High School scholars — about 44 per cent. — will go later into the Land School, which has given expert farmers already not only to Funen and Jutland, but also to Sussex and Essex ! The better-off students in the High School must be conscious more or less of that vivid new world of life close by. But even the poorest — those who cannot hope to go thither — must feel that they also belong to the forward movement in in- dustry as well as in life. As they rest now from toil in the field and farm-yards, the ex- periences of yesterday begin to have a new meaning. '^How do you solve your problems?" said a questioner of old to a scientist. *'By thinking always of them — by patience," was the answer. But the new psychologist does not believe in this method. ^'Not by thinking of them always," says Binet. *'By resting from them altogether after working a while." 113 No doubt the utter change of life, the rest from the old labours, plays a great part in the quick change worked by the High School. Every day its aim and method are vindi- cated. Its aim IS to waken the sleeper. Once awakened there is no need to shake him, to force things on him, to torture him with advice and help. He thinks for himself. The Danish land folk think about their sons and daughters not only while they are babies, but when they are in their teens. Thus near the College of Askov there is a Sloyd School, where the people's sons are sent to board in winter after they are old enough to leave the day schools. We try in England to show that child-labour is wrong. There are societies to make people wash, and save money, and open their windows. But all this is slow work. It worries — but does not awaken the sleeper. In Denmark, after a time, as education spreads through the Danish High Schools, the fine hygienic arrangements found in the schools began to appear in the homes. It is certain that very soon every house will have its bath-room, just as to-day almost every village has its com- munal bath-room and gymnasium Then the prospects of the land people be- came much brighter, just as their ways of looking at things changed. In 1870 Denmark was a poor country. The people grew corn, but had given no attention to stock-raising or dairy- work. Nothing strikes the stranger 114 more in Denmark now than the appearance of the horses. The farm teams are light strong animals; yoked in long waggons they give a new appearance to the country side. Farm labour is no longer associated with heavy- footed beasts and humans. On every hand one sees flourishing farms, experimenting agricultural stations, and co-operative dairies. The cow-houses are clean as parlours, and lighted by electricity. Above every stall i» a chart showing the yield of every animal, and also the proportions of cream to milk. In 1881 the net export of bacon, butter, and eggs was £2,402,000. In 1904 it was £13,614,000. It is now said to be over £25,000,000. Canadian farmers go to study the methods of the Danes, and the latter are held up everywhere as the most successful farm managers and dairy people. They are in touch with every country. Even the small- holders have their Press. They follow the progress of science in all that concerns agri- culture and stock-raising, dairy work, etc. The Danish small-holder is, in all technical matter, far beyond his brothers in France, Germany, and England. But he is interested also in social subjects. He has, moreover, his own schools — as at Odense, for example — which has a large small-holders' College. Of these small-holders (many of whom have spent only one winter at a High School) In- spector Buns said: '*It may be that they have 115 forgotten mucli that they learned. But they have been taught how to see, to hear, to use their powers." They are leading a movement of their own in Denmark, and have to be reckoned with, not only by agriculturalists, but by all politicians and land-law makers as well. The Danish High School is within the reach of the humblest. It is not, however, a poor man's university. The rich can come and the noble. A young baroness took her place last winter at Askov by the side of a cottar's daughter. The baroness swept and dusted her room with the cottar's daughter. But she had no privation. The food is ex- cellent and abundant. And some of the schools would compare with many a rich man's house. The bedrooms of Roskilde look out on a wide grassy court. On the walls hang beautiful pictures. In all the schools I have seen there was fine statuary, flowers in bowls and vases, quiet nooks for reading, and private rooms exquisitely arranged. In Hillerod High School there is a glorious picture of Isaac in the sunset light waiting for Rebecca. It fills the whole space of the southern wall of one lecture-room. *Dr. Hollraann says that of the girls and women in High Schools 50 per cent, are of the farm-servant class. A smaller, but still, a large percentage are the sisters and daughters of Small Holders. Twenty-seven per cent, are the daughters of teachers. State oflBcials, merchants, and people in society. Only six per cent, of all the students, men and women, come from the towns. 116 111 the dining hall teachers and scholars have their meals together. There is a hum of talk, and plenty of laughter at times. The pupils were not abashed by the presence of English and Scottish people. Many began to speak in good English at once. Of the bursary holders one-half would be sons and daughters of cottars ! **Ye must be born again/' said a great teacher. Here people are born again — launched far away from the life of hard toil and bodily anguish, baptised into a new life. The great majority of the High School pupils are landfolk. It is easy to see why the towns send only a very small percentage of scholars. In winter the land is locked, and the farmer and his helpers have little to do. Then the father can let his son go ro college without too great a sacrifice. The winter course begins in November and ends in May. Then as to ways and means. The cost of living and education is very low. A young man may spend six months at the High School for £9, or about 8s. to 9s. a week all told. It is exactly the sum quoted in the University Report of 1852 as being the minimum expenditure of crofter students at Aberdeen University. The cost of the three months' course for women only is about £6 all told. At Askov the fees for a six months' course come iir to .£11 or £12. Small as are these sums the poorest class of farm-workers could not of course pay them. The State gives grants to the schools. It also gives bursaries to the young men and women who need help. These bur- saries amount to about 22/- per month. They are given to not more than half the pupils of any year (for scholars in Land Schools the allowance is larger, being 25 kroner or nearly 30/- per month). In 1906, of these bursaried scholars 54 per cent, of the men were farm- servants, and 76 of the women were servants. Over and above these free students the High School masters give a certain number of free seats in their colleges. The State gives grants to the High Schools alone that amount in all to little less than £25,000 a year — not a bad endowment of higher rural education in a country of about two-and-a-half million in- habitants. The High Schools are all private ventures. The size of the staffs vary from two-and-a-half teachers to twenty. The number of men and women engaged as High School teachers in 1906 was 548. (Among these, as we saw, there are some famous names — La Cour, Christiansen, the late N. Y. Fjord, Feilberg, and Schroder, the close friend of Bjornsen. Mr. Appel, head master of Askov, has just been appointed Minister of Education.) The nation can yield no better teachers. The schools are freely helped by the State, yet they are, as we 118 said, private enterprises, and Mr. Thornton is never weary of showing how, under these con- ditions, private initiative and collective power can work hand in hand. Certainly no State could do what Kold and Grundtvig, Begstrup and Appel, Rosenthal and Broedstorff have done. They have shown what the power of the State is, and also where its power ends. The State is a bulwark to the schools. Its relation to them is fixed to the law of 1902, under which a school seeking public support must have been at work two years and have had both these years 10 twelve months' pupils, or 20 six months', or 40 three months' as the case may be. But at the back of every success there is a man or woman — or a group of men and women. Even the financial success of the High School is due in the first place to the genius of Kristen Kold. Those who care at all to trace the history of rural education in Denmark and elsewhere will love the name of this son of a Jutland shoe- maker. He was known to many as '*the Danish Socrates," a name given to him perhaps by Dr. Feilberg, who loved to meet him and who says of him : *'If he spoke to you only two or three words on the street you would feel well all day." He had great success as a tutor, but as he would not teach in the old established way everyone fought shy of him. He went to Smyrna and later walked home on foot 200 119 miles from Trieste to Denmark. Here he was engaged as tutor in the honse of a pastor to whom, in time, he made a strange proposal. He asked if he might take a few young peasants and teach them along with the pastor's sons, and sometimes alone. This wish was granted, and Kold was so pleased with the result that he built a school. This school cost about £100. Fifty pounds of this he paid out of his own savings, and he did a good deal of the building work with his own hands, the peasants helping him. Grundtvig helped to raise the other fifty pounds. The fees for a five months' course in his school were about £3 10s. per scholar! Great as were his difficulties the work grew in his hands. He gave higher education to 1,300 young people in his school at Ryslinge, and later at Odense. To-day, in Denmark, the faces of hundreds of country workers light up at the mere sound of his name. It was he who initiated the Women's Classes, and who in- spired, too, the free schools for children — State supported but under private management — which have sprung up in the wake of the High School. Thus the Danish High School is the product of two men. One a great and famous scholar, the other a son of the people. And now to return to England. Admitting as we may that our country has produced great agriculturists, and that our Land Colleges are not after all, so far as teaching is concerned, 120 behind those of other countries, the question remains: *'What of the English labourer?'' For it is the labourer, not the history of agri- culture we are discussing. According to the testimony of many experts he is hopelessly stupid. In a Report, lately issued on * 'Partial Exemption" there is an interesting letter from a clergyman on the English country labourer's child. It states that ''the boys best fitted for country work are strong, dull lads, in whose homes there is no tradition or environment of education." These boys should, says the clergyman, go on the land very young. They will be of no use for farm work if they are kept at school till they are fourteen. It is "a hardship for parents to feed, clothe, and boot big dull boys," says this witness. Another witness, an M.P., regrets that the farm boy is so very dull. He thinks that the ordinary farm lad is not worth more than the very small wage he gets. When he grows up to be a man he will get only from 128. to 15s. a week and he is not worth more. But the Member recommends that he should leave school at twelve and go to continuation classes ! Without going any further into this ques- tion, we have to point out that the time has now come to prove whether this "Stupidity" of the labourer is real or not. No continua- tion school can settle that question. But a real High School or College filled with young 121 farm labourers under the right influences, might settle it. More than a year ago Mr, Cadbury opened ^'Fircroft/' near Birmingham, as a College for young working men. The pupils are, it appears, largely from the towns, and so ^*Fircroft" can- not be said to be a rural college. The students who have spent a term there speak of it with enthusiasm. The course of study is much less ambitious than is that of Askov. The teachers give very cheering reports. They are at one with the University men who take the tutorial classes (opened through the Workers' Educa- tional Association) in saying that the working man and woman advances at a good pace when the way is opened. Their work goes to prove also that here is a growing demand for Higher Education among working class people. Even more cheering than these reports is the fact that scholars from the tutorial classes are themselves beginning to make a move in rural places. The villages and country places round Swindon, for example, are being visited by working men students with a view to rousing the farm labourer. None of this work can tell very effectively, perhaps, till a school is actually started. There is hope that at May- lands in Essex a bona-fide High School will be opened in the near future. To make a start — that is the point. It does not seem as if the enterprise should be too hard for English working men. There 122 are many country places where a large building can be rented at a small rate. In Bucking- ham, for example, buildings were quite lately offered for school purposes at a pepper corn rent, which were suited at least fairly well for a resident school or college. Staffing. The expense of a small staff of first-rate teachers would be a more serious item. As the older Universities, with their immense funds are now, however, beginning to offer help to working-class students in an organised way, and as these Universities are morally re- sponsible for helping poor students, it is reasonable to hope they will soon acknow- ledge the strong claims of the country people of England. Just as the Universities help to staff the tutorial classes in towns they might send teachers of University standing to give instruction in English Rural High Schools. It is also reasonable to believe that just as Denmark gives State grants to adult schools (whether they be High Schools, Land Schools, Small Holders' Schools, or others) so Parlia- ment through the Board of Education would give substantial help to the new movement, and would do this without in any way hinder- ing or making its real development from with- in almost impossible. 123 Management. But even this help and sympathy — were it forthcoming — would not alone make the new venture a success. In order to win real success the labourers and small-holders themselves would have to inspire the whole enterprise, and also direct it. They might, by-and-bye, form themselves into an association, elect re- presentatives (as their Danish brothers have done) and appoint delegates on the Joint Com- mittees of the Universities. But above all they would have to supply the driving power — to go into the villages, to rouse and teach and inspire. Neither can they leave the practical questions to others, as for example the practical question of house keeping, so brilliantly solved elsewhere. It is they who will have to show how to reduce expenses to a minimum without degrading the standard of life and fix the amount to be paid by scholars (a certain number of whom should be able to pay). Curriculum. It is not at all likely that the first school would even resemble Roskilde or Askov. The circumstances as well as the character of the English labour will create quite a new order of college. It may also be impossible to have the teaching purely humanistic. At first a ^'practical" side might be necessary, as it was for a few months at least in the first 124 Danish High School. A special teacher might be engaged for this side of the work. This point and others could only be settled whei\ the work is fairly started. It is enough to show that no very serious obstacles stand in the way of action. The spectacle of an economically-worked college, stajQEed by brilliant scholars, would be an object lesson to England, and even more valuable would be the spectacle of young labourers or farm servants working with a real aim in view — the aim of going to college and getting ready for a life that is worth living. VII. Universities Old and New. ^'On the arms of Oxford," says Mr. Albert Mansbridge, ''above the open book with its glorious challenge 'The Lord my Light' are three golden crowns. These are Labour, Learn- ing, and Fellowship." The bright challenge, and the triple crown did not draw the eyes of many labouring men and women in the last two centuries. A few faced Nature's problems alone and unlettered, in mine, workshop, and field. The great majority lived and died facing only one problem, viz., how to win food and shelter. Yet the spell of Oxford is felt even by way- farers and people who know her only from afar. Its cloisters, its "place of the Martyrs," the noble halls of some colleges, the still quad- rangles bathed in moonlight or dappled with leaf shadows do not keep their spell for those only who see them daily and enjoy what they give at all hours. Their beauty shines safety into the hearts of dusty strangers. Workless men hurrying through Oxford in the sad quest for a job are open to its spell. One at least of the little band of working men who have done so much for the children of Bradford vowed 125 126 himself to his task while passing through Oxford in search of work. It is not wonderful that such men begin to ask how the Universi- ties came into being, how they grew, and why (since they have no part in their life) are two of the golden crowns called '^Labour'' and ^Tellowship." Were the endowments really intended for the poor — and for the poor only? I do not think that the words of the founders leave us in any doubt on this point. The Oxford Commission of 1850 says **That the endowments of Colleges were designed for the poor is sufficiently plain from the language in which some of the founders describe their motives." William of Wykeham states that, next to his kinsmen* '^poor indigent clerks are to be admitted, be- cause Christ, among the works of mercy, hath commanded men to receive men into their houses and mercifully to comfort the in- digent." In Queen's and New College the Fellows are forbidden to keep dogs, on the ground that ^Ho give to dogs the bread of the children is not fitting for the poor, especially for those who live on alms." Those to be elected are defined in the several Colleges as "^paupers," ' 'paupers and those living on *The kinsmen, also, were in most cases, poor men. For the great ecclesiastics who endowed Oxford were sprung from the people. ''By poor men^s sons/' said Bishop Latimer, already, in his day a witness of the invasion by the well-to-do of Oxford, "were the people instructed. 127 alms," "paupers and indigent persons," *'for paupers" and ''ex-paupers." One founder gives as his motive for his establishing his fund that ''Want playing the step-dame to many, they who are best qualified for studies enslave themselves to the mechanical arts, and become truants to the ingenious sciences." The founder of Corpus Christi College writes thus : "In order that the honey-bee may work within, and not be called away to mean duties, we desire that there may be certain persons free from honey-making. But if any of these — devoted to humble service — shall please to imitate the honey-bees he shall deserve a double crown." Here is a founder who tried to release the poor from menial work and then flies to release those who serve them also from mere drudgery. The Fellows of New College were to be sup- plied every year with cloth for one dress, and with money to pay for the making of it. Their allowance was to vary with the price of wheat. The original Fellows of John Balliol College were allowed one penny a day for food and twopence on Sundays. The very form of such payments shows that the persons who received them were poor. At Brasenose, property to the amount of £4 would vacate a Fellowship, which, allowing for the difference in money value is still a very small sum. Waynflete founded Magdalen College for seventy poor and indigent scholars, thirty of whom were to be 128 called "Demyes/' and to remain for thirteen years. He did indeed permit twenty sons of noblemen to live at the college at their own expense. Gentle birth was no obstacle to those who wanted to study. But wealth, or even well-to-doness, was a real obstacle. It appears that the founders were not blind to the fact that the property might increase in value. They bethought them also that one day individuals might take more than their share. So the statutes of New College, and Magdalen, of All Souls, of Worcester College forbid the division of any surplus. The foun- ders of Merton, Balliol, Oriel, Queen's, and Pembroke lay it down that if the rev- enue increased the number of Fellowships must 4)e made larger m proportion. In early Re- formation times the founders of Protestant 'Colleges show the same desire to fence their gifts from the rich, and to forestall '^privilege" even among their own Fellows. Jesus College, the first Protestant College, fixes the amount which any Fellow may possess at a very low figure. (The Fellows might not have more than £10 a year at the time of election.) With solemn words, with threats and warnings even, the founders strove to make their purpose clear. The claim of the Social Democratic Party that education should be secular would have Tjeen met with no support from the founders. When the first Colleges came into being — that ^ 129 is to say — in the thirteenth century, learning, it would appear, was not very much esteemed, except in so far as it helped to make people attend to what was then believed to be their great religious duties. Thus, the founder of All Souls laid it down that '*the Fellows were bounden not so much to ply the various sciences and faculties as with all devotion to pray specially for the souls of Henry V., Thomas of Clarence, and the soldiers who fell in the French war." The Fellows of University College (founded about 1280) were even for- bidden to study anything but Divinity except in the holidays. Later, the great revival of learning passing over Europe, reached Oxford, and then a great change took place, the nature of which may be gathered from the new work begun in 1457 at the then new College of Magdalen. Academical lecturers were engaged in Moral Philosophy and Natural Philosophy, a thing which amazed not only England but even Europe. But only years after did Fox, Bishop of Winchester, ordain that there should be teachers of Greek at his College (Corpus Christi) that scholars should travel in Italy, that teachers should be elected from Greece and Southern Italy and the old routine of Divinity bo broken up. Out of the desire and creative impulse of the early Founders blossomed something new and strange. But this desire of theirs was to serve Eeligion as interpreted in the Church of their own day, T 130 and therefore to help the poor (more especially the poor of their own kin and birthplace). The Founders' wishes appear, on the whole, to have been carried out more or less faithfully for a long time. The solemn oaths and warn- ings had doubtless a great effect. They became longer and even more solemn as time went on. The oath imposed on the Warden of New College fills five octavo pages, and even when the letter was forgotten the spirit that inspired the framers of the Oaths died hard. So late as the beginning of the seventeenth century the poor were encouraged to come to Oxford. The Colleges receive them as Servitors or Batellers in large numbers, boarding, lodging, and instructing them at very low rates. The Old Halls (where the scholars were able to live cheaply) had been absorbed by the Colleges at this time,* and the members of the Univer- sity had to belong to a College, but they offered board at such a low figure that poor men could live at Oxford. *Froin the Report of 1852 we learn that the students who went to Oxford in old times lived in the houses of the township. In some cases a number of them lived together in a hotel or hall with a Master of Arts. The Master of Arts was the Principal. All that was needed for the establishment of such a hall was a year's rent in advance. Anthony Wood stated that he could show the names and places of more than 300 halls — so great was the rush of students once to Oxford. The majority lived in hired rooms. Many were in their earlv teens and some were even younger. They overran the taverns, hotels, and even the turrets of the city walls. Later all students over 12 had to go into halls. In the fifteenth century, however, Oxford was rapidly emptied, and then the Colleges bought up the halls and forced the scholars to come into residence. 131 In the year 1616, sixteen Colleges educated between 400 and 500 poor students. Magdalen College educated 86 of these. (In 1850 it was educating only 15 undergraduates.) The great Churchmen of earlier centuries saw that an oath cannot always be kept in the letter. They appear to ha^e been inclined to keep out Kins- men (when they became very numerous) rather than the poor as such, fearing perhaps as someone said later that the Colleges might be ''turned into clans." Thus, for example, as early as 1486 the Warden of Merton held an ''inquest of relations," and the last person admitted as a Kinsman was entered in that year. In the seventeenth century Archbishop Laud, on his own responsibility, reduced the number of Fellowships from 44 to 24, and as many others as he pleased to elect. Long before the date of the last Commission in 1852, however, all scruples about the hold- ing of statutes that interfered seriously with the personal desires of the ruling class had been swept away. Oxford was largely the rendezvous of high spirited, wealthy youths, whose habits and manners would have filled the pious Founders with dismay. It had been decreed that the scholars should live quietly and soberly. Many of these hunted, raced, gave dinner-parties that were notorious. The Statutes forbade the keeping of horses. But many of the students went hunting and tandem driving, spending in a single day an amount 132 that would have kept a poor scholar for weeks at the University. The statutes laid down that scholars must remain in Oxford, keeping close to their books, speaking Latin or Greek, and in one college at least French, and behaving quietly, obedient to their teachers, and devout. (It would appear that the neglect of foreign tongues was not a characteristic of English people, nor of the common people of England before the Reformation). But these came and went when they pleased. They gambled and ran into debt. In the eighteenth century all this went on merrily, but towards the middle of the nineteenth century when bad cases had come into the Courts, and the public were indignant, gambling was checked. Ex- travagance was hardly checked; and yet there was a great show of obeying the letter of the old laws. For example, a distinction was made between real and personal property. No pro- perty was counted real but the income a man enjoyed in his own right! Even the fees for degrees were based on this very false distinc- tion. Thus a man who had £300 in his own right would pay £50 for his degree, but a millionaire's son with £3,000 a year from his father need pay only £15 ! As for the Fellows — two-thirds of whom lived away from Oxford — they might keep their Fellowship or right to their allowance as Fellows no matter what amount of personal property they had. 133 The customs and thoughts of the age were reflected, quite innocently, even by the Arch- bishops. Thus Archbishop Whately argues that *'a man should be allowed a valet or a horse who had always been used to such luxuries, as they were as necessary to him as were shoes and stockings to his fellow- students/' It is true that all students did not live riotously. Young noblemen wore a distinctive dress. They were allowed to take their degrees earlier than other students. These relics of a bye-gone age, when differences of rank were very much more distinct than they are now were allowed to remain among the students of 1850. But among the Fellow^s or Tutors of the Colleges they had disappeared. In 1850, moreover, a new class was knocking loudly at the door. **It is desirable," said the new Commissioners, *'that the manufacturing and mercantile class, which has arisen by the side of the landed aristocracy and which is exercising a great influence on the public counsels, should seek to have its sons brought up where so many eminent statesmen of past and present times have been trained, and that the Universities should not cease to send forth a succession of persons qualified to serve God in the State as well as in the Church." And they set themselves to remove every abuse that stood in the way of the new and large number of people who were determined to compete not 134 only in tEe markets, but in every arena of life. The Commission set to work in a practical way. It was a Manchester School body, and breathed the spirit of the old Liberalism. It began by recommending that the Founders' wishes in regard to their own kin and their own localities should (with a few exceptions) be swept aside. This was certainly reasonable. Indeed, it was already done. Time had swept them aside already. The map of England in 1850 was not the map of Eng- land in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The land was the same but the boundaries were changed, and in many cases wiped out for ever. As for the next of kin they cannot always be found after a hundred years ! Much less can one be sure of them when four, five, six cen- turies have gone by ! Certain schools and localities might still have a first claim on ex- hibitions, as for example, Winchester to New College, BlundelFs School Tiverton, at Balliol, Merchant Taylors at St. John's, and others. But the sytem of close endowments must go, said the Commissioners, as a thing utterly out of date. The desire for liberty moves like a wind — though a rather easterly wind at times — through all the recommendations of the Com- missioners. They brushed aside the sugges- tions of Mr. Temple, that rich Colleges should build halls where poor students could be edu- cated without humiliation. They showed a 135 spirit of independence as regards Colleges (as places of residence) altogether, and advised that students should not be obliged to join them at all, but find lodgings of their own in the city. As regards poverty the Commissioners were not in love with it. ^'We have no wish to encourage ^poor scholars' to come to the University, because they are poor ... If we look to the wants of the country and the church we must believe that what is needed is not a scheme for counterbalancing the inequalities of fortune, but enactments which will provide that neither the rich nor the poor, if they have the necessary qualifications shall be deterred from following the course in which they can be most useful. What is needed is justice, directed by the removal of every impediment. (At that time the great mass of the people had no primary education worthy the name. Chil- dren went to work at eight years old, and even younger.) Not charity, designed to produce, under artificial stimulants, a large class of students without vocation." Thus the Commissioners set forth their views on the question of poverty. They stood for efficiency, looking for it, however, as a timid passenger might look at the sea through a port- hole. One of the great tasks of the Commission was to find means to get the best staff of teachers possible. They felt as everyone must 136 feel, that here was the crux of the whole ques- tion. They east about for ways and means of raising money so as to get more or less sub- stantial incomes for Senior Fellows — incomes which could tempt men even to turn away from the prospects of entering the Church, and enjoying one of the many rich livings in the gift of the University.* There were 540 Fellowships in Oxford in 1850 w^hen the Commission was appointed, though a great many had been suppressed. The fond desire of the founders that their numbers would grow had been altogether vain. But now the number was to be cut down still further. ''At the present time," says Lord Curzon, in his lately published book (1907), ' 'there are 315 Fellows of Oxford. Of these only 220, or seventy per cent, are engaged in University or College work." That is to say, 225 Fellowships have lapsed, or have been absorbed since 1850 ! The Commission recom- mended that Exeter College, which has 25 Fellowships (varying in 1840 from £120 to £130 a year, but believed in 1850 to be falling •Nine-tenths of the Fellowships of Oxford could be held by clergymen. The limit of time during which they coyld be held was ten years, after that there was other provisions. Some of the Colleges were and are patrons on a large scale. "Merton/' for example, had 17 advowsons or livings. Queen's College has 24 bene- fices. All Souls has 17 and over. It was a ''rule of peace" to offer vacant benefices in succession to the Fellows according to their age, without any regard to qualifications. For weary years the elderly men waited and accepted at last a post for which very often they were quite unfit. 137 in value) should suppress ten. The proceeds of five of these was to enrich the fifteen Fellow- ships left. It advised that All Souls should suppress a number of its junior Fellowships in order to endow four Professor Fellows at £800 a year each. (The gross income of this Col- lege was very large, and it is observed that the Fellows might have a larger dividend by '*a more careful attention to business.") It also advised that at Queen's a Professor Fellow- ship be created, two ordinary Fellowships be- ing sacrificed, that Merton should give up three Fellowships to create two '^Professor Fellowships," also Magdalen* (whose Fellow- ships were the richest in the University) should suspend twelve in order to endow six Professor Fellowships. In this way amounts could be raised which would help to make possible the existence of a staff of eminent teachers at Oxford . Over and above these two orders of Fellow- ships there is another, the Prize-Fellowship, which was intended to be a ''bridge" between the University and the outer world. It is held for seven years by the winners, and amounts to £200 a year. The winner need not be poor, need not live at Oxford (after the *We have seen already how such a recommendation was not a novel, and hardly, one would think, even a necessary one. In the course of things all surpluses would stop at home. None had increased the number of Fellowships as revenue increased. In an account of All Souls, for example, there is the following item. Divided between Warden and Fellows, ^64,293. 138 probation year), need not do any work for the University. He is simply to represent it in the outer world, and to carry its influence into the professional world. His £1,400 is a prize of ability — pure and simple. A strong desire shows itself through the whole report — a desire to equalise the position of the Fellows (as distinct from Professor- Fellows) and to separate them once for all from mere scholars and Exhibitioners. Some Fellows were elected before 1850 on terms that did not give them a voice in the management of affairs and did not make them eligible for Headships. These were put on a level with the others. Then the value of the Fellowships varied from JB20 to £500. The Commission fixed the maxi- mum at £300, and £150 as a minimum. The value of Headships now varies from £600 to £3,000 a year (only one Headship, that of Christ Church reaches £3,000). The mere tradition of the scholar as a poor and studious person, absorbed, and living apart from worldly ambitions and desire, had vanished completely. What Fellowships meant in the old days was a thing forgotten almost in 1852, quite for- gotten perhaps in 1910. In olden days the Fellows were the full-fledged scholars — the students for whose direct benefit the Uni- versity existed. But now Fellowships could be had only when the men had ceased to be students. The Fellows who remained at Oxford were, henceforward, the teaching staff of 139 Oxford. The Fellows were raised moreover as we have seen from CoUegiates, and have become not only the staff, but, in a large degree the controlling power of the University. ''Of whom then,'* it may be asked, **is the Undergraduate to-day the successor, since the original Fellows are now teachers?" Historic- ally he takes the place — strange as it may ap- pear — of the poor Demys, Servitor, Batteller, and under-scholar ! The Fellows gave way to a new profession — the Servitors to the most favoured youth of Britain. To go back to the Commission of 1852, it was, as we see, a re- forming body. It stood for efficiency — accord- ing to the light of its day. It set out to create open Fellowships such as would attract able men. But it also wanted good scholars. So it suppressed some old Fellowships in order to found new Scholarships (as for example, at Brasenose where five Fellowships were sus- pended to create ten Scholarships at £bO a year for five years and so on). It did its work so well that now there are over 500 Scholar- ships, of which 126 are open every year ; also 66 Exhibitions (varying from £25 to over £100). And it threw these open to free com- petition among those who could have Second- ary education. The large majority of Scholarships have no real poverty qualification. Out of the sum of £50,000 given annually in Scholarships and Exhibitions £34,000 is given in prizes that are 140 held out to incite the highest and quickest scholars in public schools. It is said, how- ever, that a great part of this money is given to persons who could not go to Oxford with- out the help of the £320 awarded to them. But poverty, as Lord Curzon naively observes is a relative term. To a farm labourer the in- come of a professional man who wants to send a large family of girls and boys to expensive schools, and to whom £320 is a real help, will appear princely. Nevertheless, the profes- sional man considers himself poor — and is sa relatively; for the income of the richest classes of the community, and their rate of ex- penditure are such that one may feel **in- digent" with £1,000 a year. Such are many of those who benefit by the Scholarship fund. As for the bulk of the endowments these are used as part payment for tuition (over and above the Fellowship money a teacher must of course have fees). The greater part of the resources of Oxford is paid not in gifts or benefices, but as the salary of teachers, or persons representing the teaching profession — that is to say. Fellows, Tutors, Readers, Heads. This can be seen by a glance at th^ published Abstract of the year, quoted by Lord Curzon in his recent book. The items are : Heads of houses £21,500 Fellows £61,500 Contributions in respect of Pro- fessor-Fellows £23,000 141 These items do not represent all the moneys spent on Fellowships, Tutorships, and Head- ships. In 1871, the 19 Heads received over J650,958 — this larger sum representing what does not appear in the Abstracts — Trust funds and funds from Ecclesiastical preferments. Neither does the Abstract include payments to Tutors and Lecturers (out of Tuition funds). In short, the Abstract does not show the amount paid after all to the teaching body. We learn, however, that in 1871 it was over £100,000. From a lately published balance sheet we quote two items : — Officers, Professors, Readers, Ex- aminers, Heads, and Fellows. College expenditure on TJni- £ versity purposes 157,350 College tuition 62,653 In view of the fact that in 1871 £101,111 was paid in Fellowships, and that in the last 40 years the Professoriate has been greatly developed, whilst, during the same time the college system has been taking the place of the Private Tuition once general, we may fairly conclude that this represents mainly Endow- ment funds. It is true that the receipts from the members of the Colleges — that is to say the revenue that comes not from the endowments at all — is very large and almost equals the en- dowments themselves. We can here compare them. 142 Trust Funds. £ 8. d. Total Colleges 240,708 8 6 Total University and Colleges 265,228 6 9 Total expenditure of the University £442,445 17s. 6d., which shows that £177,217 10s. 9d. was derived from Members of the University and Colleges.* No very large portion of this sum was apparently spent, however, on Teachers and Tuition. We are entitled, I think, to say that the Endowments are used to-day very largely if not mainly for the assistance of the rich and well-to-do. The great old Universities provide not only historical background, they provide also a financial background for the education of their students. It may be that many of these are not finally the debtors of the nation. A very few may give back a thousand-fold what they receive. The point of note here is that in the Oxford of to-day the working-class man or woman has directly and even indirectly very little part. Does this mean that the endowments of Oxford have been taken from the poor and •The foHowine is the tahle copied from the Report of the Workers Association : — £ 8. d. Rates, Taxes, Insurance 15,966 18 Chapels, Libraries, Maintain Buildings 19,000 Fellows, Readers, etc 157,350 College Tuition 62,653 Scholars and Exhibitions 52,890 College Expenses, Servants 33,196 Pension Fund 5,640 Miscellaneous 35,434 143 given to the rich? The poor have never claimed them. What is more, they were not even in a position to claim them. Suppose that Robinson Crusoe had been left not joint heir but principal heir of an estate while he was still banished on an island near canni- bals, and exposed every moment to the rigours of the weather. Suppose that in the meantime nothing at all was known of Robinson, that he was silent as the grave, and his relations also dumb, knowing nothing about him. If the next of kin or others went and took possession of the beautiful house, used it, did some good work in it, and prevented it from going to pieces, would that be robbery? Moreover, as time went on the great house got richer, not by one means, but by many. Many left new gifts to the actual tenants. As for Crusoe, it is clear that his first pressing desire was for food and shelter. Even if the parallel is not complete no one can venture to say that it has no reality. The most striking event of the past 50 years is that Crusoe has been heard of. He has at least learned to read, to write, and has come into some new relations with the world or a part of it. He has made himself known in certain ways, as for example, by sending 40 men into the British House of Commons in order to voice his message. Surely then the situation is a new one. The strange feature is that, even now the workers cannot put their 144 hands on their good scholars. Where are they to look for them since the great majority are prevented still by lack of early training as well as by other things. And the heritage, large in itself and growing, is small in proportion to the swelling numbers who must soon begin to look on higher education as a necessity, a primary need of every normal individual. Yet the people and their friends were not all asleep while the doors of the beautiful houses of learning were swung to. Let us glance at the movements they started outside in the twilight. The Adult School movement is the best known perhaps. It began as it could, using the w^orkers' scanty leisure. That is to say, it was a Sunday School and Night School Organisation. At first the friends of children tried to include them — but this, of course, was a vain attempt. The Infant Schools, however gently managed, were doomed. The children at the day's end were past learning, were past playing. If they cared for any meadows or for any class-rooms it were merely *'to drop down in them and sleep." But the Adult School movement grew and prospered. In some parts of the country 5 to 10 per cent, of all the working people attend an Adult School on Sunday mornings. There was another movement of quite another kind, a movement which gave rise in a large measure to Mechanics' Institutes, to 145 the Birkbeck, and also Working Men's Col- leges. The industrial revolution itself was the work of artizans, of workmen of genius such as Arkwright, Telford, Crompton, Rennie, George Stephenson, James Watt, and others. Their lives furnished the materials for Smiles' *'Self Help.'* These, however, were more than self -helpers. The storm of discovery and invention which turned the world upside owed little to universities, but nearly every- thing to these men, and others like them, in workshops, factory, and mine. Many leading scientists turned away from the pioneers, and declared that their work could lead to nothing, so that during the time when tliere was not even a system of national elementary educa- tion, the new order of thinkers and doers, helped only by a few eminent scholars and depending not even on these in their struggle with Nature and her problems, advanced with- out the support of Authority or Tradition. ''The Examination Statutes passed even in 1850," says the Report of the Commission of Oxford, ''shows that the governing majority of Graduates were not then prepared to recognise even one single department of Physics or Natural History as admissible in the first two examinations." This would seem to indicate that Universities have something to gain by being in touch with K 146 Labour. Yet it is sad to note that many work- ing people on finding that talent and genius are not confined to college walls jumped to the conclusion that schools and colleges could do nothing for them. The industrial revolution once fairly over, the workers found less and less to educate them in their daily task. Formerly the home was still a kind of school, and the workshop a kind of college. Now imbeciles were engaged for some processes, and children of tender age were driven into the mills. It is true that the desire to learn never died out of the hearts of the workers. But though Mechanics' Institutes sprang up all over the country it became clear that they could not do what was once hoped from them. They became middle class institutions. It is true they helped workmen of very great ability, but they helped only a very small num- ber, and helped even these in a halting way. The humanistic side was altogether lacking in the education they offered, and it would seem that this is fatal — that it induces, as we saw, a kind of barrenness all round. The Midland Institute, however, made large provision for humanistic studies, and this is probably why it played a great part in the movement that led to the foundation of the New Universities. The hour of Workingmen's Colleges proper came when, in 1843, a People's College was started in Sheffield for the teaching of Latin, 147 Greek, French, German, Mathematics, Litera- ture, Elocution, Logic, Drawing. The hopes of many then soared high, for it was proposed to appoint Committees of Public Instructors who would open * 'Colleges or Finishing Schools," as well as Preparatory Schools. Finally, London's Working Men's College started with the most brilliant staff probably that was ever gathered within college walls. Ruskin took the Drawing class, Woolman the Modelling, Charles Kingsley, Eosetti, and Madox Brown took classes, Locock lectured on Astronomy. For once at least in our history a few workmen culled what was best of the teaching power of England. But it was always on a small scale. The movement cannot be said to have spread. Though many pupils were eager to enrol them- selves, though Colleges were opened in many English towns, and though great kindred movements were started and are now growing, (such as the educational work of the Co-opera- tors, the Young Men's Christian Associations, and various minor efforts) yet the light never fairly burned up. The principle of Co-opera- tion was first applied with striking success to business operation in Denmark, not in Eng- land. England had the most brilliant teachers. She had the best workmen. She had all, or nearly all, the pioneers. And this was not enough. ''In the black coal pit of the popular .148 heart, rain fell, liglit kindled" ; but the light never flamed up brightly. This does not mean that there were no great successes. Everyone has heard how, in the North Country, the miners and colliers made up an audience that delighted the heart of the greatest teachers, such, for example, as Huxley. They — these pitmen — were them- selves like a mine of buried treasure, and when the right kind of teacher appeared they began to show how real were the mental powers that had been lying dormant in the grim places of the earth. They not only learned fast, they showed the true missionary spirit. The history of University extension has no more thrilling chapter than that which tells how, after grim labour, colliers walked miles to hear the lectures, and how, later, some actually became class leaders themselves and began to teach what they had learned to others. Permitted, as one old founder would say, "to pick up the crumbs that fell from the tables of the learned," they at once began to feel an im- mense gratitude to the TJniversitv of Cam- bridge. They began to look on it with love and awe. Surely there were many good scholars here if any Government or Com- mission was really concerned to find them out and give them a real chance to win scholar- ships. But the candle, lighted in the North, went out suddenly. It was quenched by a great miners' strike. After the struggle there 149 was no money for the paying of fees or the buying of books. Nevertheless the clock hand moved on. The first Education Act was already passed when Mr. James Stuart, of Trinity College, Cambridge, succeeded in planting outposts of the University in the big industrial cities. In 1873 the University of Cambridge started the Extension Movement, and in 1876 London followed suit. Oxford, after one or two un- successful efforts, got under weigh in 1885, and the movement spread at last not only over the United Kingdom and in the United States, but on the Continent. In Continental towns, above all, in the most reactionary and unex- pected places, as in Russia, for example, the new movement grew apace and drew into its services some of the best teaching power of the country. To keep to England. It was never initia- tive that was lacking — but impetus, volume of public opinion. In 1890 Cambridge started summer classes with practical work in Physical Laboratories. Oxford had already begun short summer courses which were visited by many hundreds. Some of the people who went up to these were of course very sensitive to the beauty and wonder of the place, to the elo- quence of its halls, and its splendid equipments for learning. They went back to tell their sisters and brothers, and in some quarters there were stir and rumour. Moreover, 150 pioneers ncA^er failed — and some were bold. It was proposed that a true University career should be ofered to all. This was to be done by the establishment of a lecture room and a laboratory in connection with every public library, and by the sending out of a great staff of University teachers. Any town or district authority was to have power to engage one or more of these teachers, who would in the evenings take their scholars term by term and year by year through a course of study leading up to a University degree. Alas ! This float- ing University is still a dream. It would not be long a dream if the demand for Higher Education was keen and also general — but no one can pretend that it is general or even widespread to-day. The majority of those who have to toil hard for food and shelter are willing (if one can say there is any will where there is no choosing) to sleep through life and to have children who will never live. They hear their social betters say that they *'are happier knowing little," and they take this cowardly consola- tion — a real opiate put to their lips by men who perhaps believe that freed human in- telligence would darken the world for them I But the workpeople who have wakened, more or less, cannot be quiet any more. They will not turn over again and go to sleep in the dark. In 1903, mainly through the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Mansbridge, the Workers' 151 Education Association was founded. It came 'Ho stimulate the demand" for higher educa- tion among the workers and to satisfy it as far as could be made possible. It came first of all to rouse those who were half awake. It is often said reproachfully that this is not a great end to work for. It may, however, be a very great beginning. Just so every great movement has started, and it is diificult to see how it could start in any other way. It is at once a missionary and a research movement, for the University men and women who have begun the work profess that they have come out into the open and are taking working-class students not merely to teach them but also to learn from them. The pupils are not country folk as in the Danish High Schools. They are for the most part townspeople. They are not all eager to listen, and only to listen as are many of the Danish students. A good many are anxious to talk, and there have been at least one or two mur- murs from certain quarters that the English workmen scholars are not allowed to talk enough. Yet this natural desire is encouraged in this new order of scholar. The Tutorial class is a new thing, at least in so far as the methods in English schools and teaching are concerned. The tutors take each a class of thirty working people. They live near their pupils and are at hand always, not only as teachers but as advisers. 152 acting in fact as the guide and friend of each. A tutor takes most of his pupils through two- year courses. But hundreds of the Tutorial class students are already taking three-year courses. The regularity of attendance is wonderful, taking into account all the circum- stances. Indeed, under any circumstances, it would be written down excellent. Thus, for example, in 1909, out of 7,021 possible atten- dances in 12 Oxford classes there were 6,091 actual attendances ! Then, as regards the tutor, it is the simple truth that he has new and quite unique oppor- tunities for learning. Fresh from the mental gymnastics of college life and the atmosphere of the class-room (which after all turns so many in a while into indifferent and blase persons) he comes face to face with the keener spirits among the adults toiling for a mere living wage, and living in constant anxiety if not fear as to how they are to feed them- selves and their children. Sometimes the most brilliant scholar of the class falls out of his job : — and then what is to be done ? Or the amount of ' 'overtime" is such that the boldest has to give in and turn away from his books. Tutorial class men have described their new life as a plunge below the surface of things : the entrance into a new world where every- thing that was learned in the surface begins to look different. Things that looked simple and right enough in books and lecture rooms 153 begin here to wear quite another complexion,, because here in the real world one understands what poverty and overtime and competition really mean, and what is even more, one gets to know that the real sufferers are not the spiritually or mentally unfit. All here, fit and unfit, are caught in one net. The scholars, it may be, are for the most part of those who have kept up in spite of all, but we have no reason to think that they are better in every way than tens of thousands of those who have not been reached. They come to their task with every kind of disadvantage, and yet they get on fast. It is more a race than a progress. This is not a matter of opinion — a mere impression — else it would not carry any weight. It is the judgment of the university examiners who are certainly not likely to send out rose-coloured reports. They read with lifted eyebrows the essays of work- ing-class students on Industrial History, on Literature, on Economics, and they report that one-third of these workers' papers are equal to the work of Honours' men. Here surely are scholars. They might never have been heard of. Yet the good corn of good minds, lying dark and prone in the rain, lifts in the first blink of sunshine. Not long ago one of the women students, a mill-worker, addressed a representative meeting. Those who came to listen to her may or may not have had a preconceived view as. 154 to what an educated working-class woman should be. It was natural to believe that the method and circumstances under which she had learned would leave their imprint, and that though she might have read and thought much yet her culture would be less than that of more favoured students. It was natural to believe all this, and yet her speech, or rather her personality, belied it all and showed quite a new thing. To begin with, as she spoke all learned that she had from sheer need of words broken loose from her social idiom. She spoke with restraint and delicate choice of words, and yet very simply, and as she went on everyone forgot her diction together, im- pressed by something else that carried the listener away. This mill-worker copied no one. She spoke of what she had learned in the classes she attended, and of how it had lifted herself and her comrades into a new world. And as she went on everyone became conscious of elements of mental power and dis tinction that are new to-day, quite as new in colleges and drawing-rooms as in workshops and kitchens. The work she had done in th^» <3lasses had not helped her to earn a better wage as yet, but it had raised her up into a new life, and she was prepared to lay hold of this new life which once seemed to lie far beyond her. She became in a word her real «elf. 155 There could hardly be a better example of the meaning of higher education — and of its fruits. It would be strange if the University men and women who teach such puipls as these were not driven night and day to think of means by which they could go on with their studies. Not the tutors only, however, but all the leaders of the Workers' Education Association have to think of the question of finance for to-day as well as for to-morrow. They have to look at all the resources avail- able with an eye to the needs of the hour, otherwise the promise of greater things will slip away as it has slipped before from earlier workers and dreamers. Mr. Mansbridge sug- gests one way of raising funds which must, I think, commend itself to everyone who has even the smallest desire to help the poor scholar. He points out that the Scholarships were intended to help the poor, but that in 1850 the mere notion of using them for this object was flung aside. From that time the £80 per year four-years' Scholarships were open to every young man, however rich, who liked to compete for them. It is now proposed not to get rid of the able but well-to-do scholar who might long to enter the lists and win his prize. The proposal is not to go back to the ideal of the middle ages. Let the able youth ^f every order go in and win if he can. Only if 156 he be rich, or even well-to-do, let him he con- tent with a prize of honour. Let the winning^ of a Scholarship mean for him that he is entitled to wear the scholar's gown, to receive a prize of books, and only the formal rigrht to- apply for grants in aid — the money being re- turned by him, and going to swell the fund that is to make it possible for poor and gifted scholars to carry on their studies. It is believed in some quarters, that were the real truth known about the struggles of the poor, and the fitness of many to profit by a Uni- versity career, almost every well-to-do scholar would not only be willing but eager to hand back the gold he does not really need. Lord Curzon sees an objection to this, how- ever, because to quote his own words, *'If we take away the tangible reward while we have only the empty honour, we shall very likely find that we have sacrificed a valuable incentive to the industry of the well-to-do classes." This raises an old, old question — that of vocation. Who is the real student — the one who if Universities have any function is not to be set aside for the unwilling student. It would appear that his character may and does vary from age to age — that in one generation he may be a lean clerk devoted to books, and in another a bold seeker after truth, and ready to risk health, life, everything in order to win new light through experiments. In no age, how- ever, was the real scholar painted as one opeit 157 to the temptations of mere gain. The colleges are not marts. Down in Whitechapel, hungry school-boys wear a black badge with pride. It is a real badge of honour, and does not help them to-day at least to a dinner. And yet they are proud of it, just as, long ago, victorious youths were proud of a little wreath of laurel. If the well-to-do student needs the incentive of money as well as honour, and the *' spoil of his brains " must alwaj^s include some gold, it is hard to believe he is a student at all. On the other hand it is certain that possessed of means to begin with, and able to enjoy not only a good Secondary education but every other aid to study in college and without it, he can to-day safely keep the poor bona-fida student with a real vocation well out of the running. The leaders of the Workers' Education Association recommend that the "tangible reward" should be returned by the winning scholar in every case where it can be proved that it is not really a necessity. Fifty thousand pounds is in itself a great endow- ment. It is twice the sum which Denmark pays in order to equip an educative land popu- lation. If but the larger part of it were re- turned every year, it would allow many of the more brilliant scholars in the tutorial classes to go forward to the University; or, what is even more important, the extension work so sadly crippled for lack of money, and which 158 as yet hardly touches the country districts , might go on more rapidly. Not of course that this in itself would settle the question of the poor man and woman students' claim on the old Universities. In England it is difficult to get the case stated at all, because of the persistence of the caste system in latter days, not at all simplified but made a great deal more complicated by the success of the rich middle class. Oxford, within, is a very democratic place. But neither does this in itself simplify the matter at all. If Oxford admit only a handful of strangers it is easy enough for her to treat them as members of a family. It is the right or condition of entry that shows the real spirit of the governing classes. The caste system rules in the English educational world, whether, as often happens, it is not discussed, or whether it is freely talked about. Lord Curzon, for his part, writes of it freely. He points out that there are different social strata, and that a poor man may belong to one or another of them. He goes on to show also that two poor men belonging to different strata are not to be treated in the same way. In Scotland, where the plumber's brother is a light of the Established Church, and where the gamekeeper's son is perhaps a distinguished Greek scholar, this careful pigeon-holing of human beings does not go on, because it can- not. There may be as great an amount of social prejudice, but it does not express itself in the 159 same way. But in England, where, in thousands of cases, poverty decides whether a boy is to be a plumber or a doctor, a vanman or a school- master, the ''poor" (but not the very rich) are classified socially and cannot, as it appears, be treated on any common basis whatsoever. ''The majority of Oxford scholars," says Lord Curzon, "are the sons of professional men, with incomes of varying amount and description. A scholarship or an exhibition is often the means of enabling the father of such a man to give a better education to his other children which they might otherwise have been denied, and the man himself to enjoy that margin of amenity at the University which permits him to associate with his fellows without any sense of humiliation and to reap from Oxford Society some of its most valuable benefits. Such a man is not, of course, a pauper, but his pre- sence at Oxford is probably not less beneficial to the community than would have been the case with the working man or the artizan whom he is popularly supposed to have kept out." The income of the professional man whose son wins a scholarship may vary within wide limits. As a rule it is not so small as to prevent him from giving his son a long and expensive education. In any case the poverty of such a man is one thing, that of the work- man is quite another. Lord Curzon accepts this fact and gives it such importance that he makes a plea for the opening of a Working Man's College at Oxford 160 ioT those classes ''who are too poor to enter the ordinary colleges, or to spend half the year in vacations." Now there are Working Men's Colleges at Ox- ford already. Riiskin College is one, and the Cen- tral College is another. In these, as in the Small- Holders' School at Odense, workingmen band themselves together of design and of their own choice to study certain things under chosen teachers. This, however, is not the same as going into a college provided for them as a dass, and which puts a kind of seal on their particular order of poverty. It is not the being a shoemaker, a carpenter, a plumber, or even a chimney sweep that an educated human being would object to. The galling thing is to be isolated or ostracised on account of one's occupation, and it is not very strange that up to the present working class students everywhere have thrown cold water on the proposal for this Workers' College at Oxford. "Still they cannot come into the colleges in large numbers," says a voice from within, ''because in the first place the standard or cost of living cannot be brought down so that they can afford to live with men of another class. And besides, their education is not such as makes them ready to go on with young people who have been at public schools till they were 18 and 19 years old." Each of "these objections has to be met, though the 161 latter is of course, out of sight, the more im- portant, and deserves the long and strenuous kind of treatment which, sooner or later, the workers will have to give to it. As regards the high cost of living in college, it would be a vain thing to spend time in abusing those who set the pace in such matters. To begin with, the love of display and need for rich living does not begin in the colleges. It takes its rise in the homes of England. More- over, to-day, luxury is not associated (as it was yesterday) with utter lack of personal refine- ment, and even of bodily cleanliness ! So that now in condemning the one we have to be careful not to lower the standard of the other. Unfortunately, the question of the standard of living at Oxford hardly arises at all for the ordinary working-class scholar to-day. There are so many obstacles which he must overcome, there are so many questions which must be an- swered before he can even hope to go to College at all. It is probable that these earlier ques- tions disposed of the '^standard of living" one may begin to look paltry. Given a generation of workpeople with a high standard in hygiene, the question of luxury as such might be summarily dealt with. The veils of illusion having fallen it might appear that there was nothing below but the desire for display, for material pleasure, for self-indulgence. Will the workers of to-mor- row regard these things with reverent sub- 162 mission and delicate tolerance? In the Republic of Plato, the guardians or aristocrats of the State had no land, no jewels, money, or houses — neither could they expect to receive but only to give happiness. They were them- selves the gold of the State — its reasoning and directing power, its soul. Whatever we may think of the influence of Greek culture on the minds of those who have forgotten that they had any real culture or race heritage of their own, it is quite certain that the best type of Greek scholar cannot find the costly way of living found at Oxford to-day very imposing or worthy of respect. And here we may say that there is no reason why the workers should join in the bitter cry against ^^ Greek in Responsions." It is not a working-class cry. It never rose from the ranks either in Scotland, where so many ploughman-students flung themselves on Greek like parched stags at the swollen brook, or in England where in long gone by days ample provision was made for classical study in the endowed schools, though, in so far as the workers were concerned, all in vain. To quote Lord Curzon's own words, ^^ Greek will be learned for its own sake as long as learning exists." If, as we believe, every variety of intellectual type of scholars exists among the working people why should they begin by slighting the best ? It is to be hoped that even in the twilight of to-day the masses will take 163 rather a wider view. The Workers' Educa- tion Association has the same good reasons for starting courses for the study of Greek as it has for beginning classes in Craftsmanship. That is to say, it has the good reason that to some this branch of education is helpful and congenial. No less than 300 out of the 504 Oxford scholarships now in existence are given to classical students, and as the Public Schools — not the Municipal Secondary Schools — t^ke Greek, the way to Oxford is paved for the Public School boy.* There is a cry raised now for the development of the modern side in Public and Elementary Schools and the abolition of Greek as an en- trance subject. And as a growing though very small number of working-class children attend Municipal Secondary Schools, it would seem at first as if working-class parents should join their protest to that of the Moderns ! The fact * Here is the list of sub j ects for which the Scholar- ships are given. It is taken from Lord Curzon^s book, "Principles and Methods of University Reform.'' Scholarships. Exhibitions. No. given Total No. given Total Yearly. No. Yearly. No. Classics 75 300 30 120 Mathematics ... 15i 62 5i 22 Science 14 56 13 52 History Hi 58 64 26 Other Subjects... 7 28 2J 10 Total 126 504 57J 230 164 is, however, that they have never underrated or ignored the value of a classical education with- out paying heavily for it. Most important of all for them is it to see that different types of secondary education should be provided, that many orders of mind shall be understood, and that the sources of the highest culture shall not be fenced away from any. Some appreciation of all this, and of a great deal more than this, does lie in the heart of the waking masses. Labour itself is not even to-day a thing that deadens utterly and sends to sleep. Even the deepest sleeper of all, the rural labourer, has, we are told, some mental powers that do not come lightly to the surface, and yet often sur- prise and perturb those who try to reach down to the depth where he lives in darkness. But, if the half -submerged has a point of view, it is even more certain that the thousands of work- ing-class people now beginning to have some real interest in higher education must sooner or later begin to review the history and the actual constitutions and methods of the Public Schools and the Universities, and to deliver themselves of a message of which not even a prophecy can be found in the Report of Nineteenth Century Commissions. It is at least reasonable to believe that such will be the case. It is indeed certain that sooner or 165 later the long dumb masses will speak, and that their words will not be an echo, still less a *'vain repetition," put on to their lips by teachers, however noble. It is therefore necessary that there should be a new Royal Commission on University Education. The demand for it should now become clear and concentrated — a thing" not to be turned back any more. And indeed this demand is already put forward by the Trade Union Congress, which has given in- structions thereon to its Parliamentary Com- mittee. But this demand is not enough. It might very easily result in a Commission that would do little justice to the cause that is at stake. For it is not a mere revision of the whole system of using endowments and their increase that is wanted — essential as is this reform. Over and above all this there is the creative impulse in educational matters of a newly emancipated class which, if it be absent, no mere rearranging of grants in aid or terms of admission will be of any use. This creative impulse was not absent from the work of the last Commission. The members set out to do a certain thing, viz., to destroy privilege among the well-to-do. In the course of their labours they not only pooled scholarship moneys, founded better-paid fellowships, and rubbed out faint and old boundaries. They passed in review different courses of study, set forth the value of new subjects, accepted for 166 good or ill the duty of being something more than financiers. It is true that just as the founders, while helping the poor, did not grant the right of higher education to serfs, so the 1850 Commission, while destroying privi- lege among the middle and upper classes, re- fused, practically at least, the right of higher education to workmen. But this did not pre- vent the Commissioners from having a new message of their own in educational matters, nor from thinking out every one of their re- commendations as educational reformers of a Manchester School order. The ideal of an educated working class should of course be immensely wider, fresher, charged with newer and more vital elements — not because the workers are better than other people, but, to give but one reason, because they are overwhelmingly more numerous, and must include therefore, potentially at least, more varied and numerous types.* Their ideal too, for obvious reasons, should resemble less than does that of any smaller section, a merely personal or one-sided interest. All this does not appear to-day. It can appear only when higher education is general — when every one is not merely a unit but is individualised. This is why a Eoyal Commission by itself is little — is nothing. If *Of course there are many other reasons. To begin with they are not limited (as were the middle class) by the fierce desire for gain and the impulse to sacrifice everything to this end. 167 throiagh it flashes not the message of thousands of waking workpeople (scholars already in spite of all), but the pale recommendations of well- wishers and advisers of another class, it can have little interest. If it is a mere violent demand, issued by men and women afraid to do other than threaten and claim, it will have no power. Thus, it is very hard to see how any friend of labour should stand aloof from the Associa- tion that tries at least to bring Higher Education to the door of the English mill- hand, mechanic, and unskilled labourer. Back into the dim ways and silent the leaders of such a movement have to go, trying to make a highway where there is none. Much of the work is obscure enough — the helping of a poor workman here, the opening of a class there, the getting together a small fund to send _ an able essayist to college. Some of it is not obscure. There are new and great de- partures. Joint Boards of University men and workmen are formed. Not only the older Universities, but also London, Leeds, Liver- pool, and Manchester Universities have through these a link with the people ; 151 Co- operative Committees, 161 Adult Schools, 11 University bodies, 87 Working Men's Clubs, 48 Literary Societies, and five Trade Unions stand by this missionary effort, but, through- out its earlier years in any case, it goes for- ward with difiiculty and under a shadow. In 168 1910, we are told, nearly 2,000 students are pledged to a three years' course in tutorial classes. If it were 200,000 (which it might soon be) the real meaning of the work could be read easily. Its message would then be, as it were, in large print. A great new army, awake and alert, looking out on a new world, and holding new weapons. But to-day the reality is not understood except by a few. The print is, as yet, so small. But it may be said, the working people have got to Oxford — or a few of them are there anyhow. If they do not crowd into the old colleges they enrol themselves in the new. There is Euskin Hall and the Central Colleges. In the summer months too there are the sum- mer meetings Of Central College there is here no question, because its function, however important in it- self, is not education — primarily at least — but propaganda. It is said that Modern Lan- guages and Natural Science can be taken, but the students themselves declare that, as a matter of fact, only subjects that bear directly on social questions are attempted. All first year students are of course expected to take Sociology or Economics. Over and above thiar he takes Industrial History, Political and Con- stitutional History, Political and Social Pro- blems, Local Government, and Essay writing. 169 Ruskin College has a longer history, and its attitude to the University (unlike that of the Central College) has not been one of complete aloofness. It provides for about sixty work- ing-class men students. It has a resident lecturer in Sociology, and a special master for Economics, who lectures on Trade Unionism, Economics, International Trade, Marxian Economics. It has also a University lecturer on social questions from the stand- point of history, and others who take Local Government and Industrial History as special subjects. For a certain type of mind such a course of study doubtless gives excellent results. On others of equal power, and of equal importance to the Labour Movement, the work would have no such effect. There is little doubt that the Trades and Labour Organisa- tions, while supporting the new Labour Col- leges, should concentrate during the next few years on the research and missionary side of Higher Education, carrying the work hardily into the rural areas, multiplying tutorial classes in cities, refusing to turn back from dark places, but advancing even into the heart of slum areas. Inside the University the working-class student has something to fear, but not persecution; nothing (as in public schools) from the barbaric impulses of adolescents. No; the students are not boys, but have emerged from boyhood, and are now as 170 generous as they will ever be, and more generous perhaps, for they are in the dawn of young manhood and womanhood, ready to accept high ideals, to form new friendships. In short, they are in many respects at their best. In Somerville College the young work- ing women is surrounded by an atmosphere of good will and tactful kindness. Jn the men's College the horny-handed son of toil is listened to with respect, often with humility. One cannot emerge safely from a situation like that by repelling kindness that is quite sincere, or copying original types that are quite genu- ine. Yet here is temptation, of a subtle kind. One can easily become nothing in such an atmosphere. There is a new path. Only the strong will find it. There will be new types, new manners, new destinies. Through Higher Education these may be evolved at last. But those who can face new tests to-day at the old Universities are very few. So rare are they that they make literally no difference. The workers come to Oxford and Cambridge, it is true, as wayfarers. That is, they come to the summer meetings, which are the joy of every year to many a poor mechanic and work- ing woman. They visit the old Universities. They walk through the old halls, and linger in the beautiful gardens. The city is so still then, in the late summer nights, and yet to the new order of visitor she appears to give a new kind of welcome. ''At last," she seems 171 to say, *'you too have arrived." At last, in the great hush, she lets us, too, hear the eternal song, the song ''that runs like a river in our veins and sinks and swells for ever in our hearts." The moonlight streams down on the fine colleges (empty for such a long time every year). Behind the massed shadows loom darker masses. We walk home along streets made eloquent for ever. Midnight strikes. All the echoes die away in the pure silence. How hard is the industrial struggle that rages and has raged for centuries near this beautiful place. And how many of those who come here for a week, a fortnight, are swallowed up for fifty weeks of every year in that strife. But now they too listen. The dying echoes speak of Eternity, of Time, of Patience. "'At last you too have come. And why?" asks the beautiful city. And she seems to answer her- self: ''Because of something that does not die." For here in all that moulders, and in all that lives for ever, the listeners are reminded not of the dead hand but of the dead heart, the heart of their great countrymen, who longed to give them this glorious heritage . Th ey longed to give it not to one class but to the nation, and not to the rich alone, but above all and for all time to the poor. Then, doubtless, the working-class visitors must wish to voice the message not of an old Commission, but of a body that represents the new life and desire of to-day. Their thoughts cannot, moreover. 172 be confined to Oxford and Cambridge, save as these will remain great influences in time to come. They must fly beyond them, reaching out to the millions that can never hope to study in these colleges. For it is not the pro- blem of Oxford and Cambridge that has to be solved — but the problem of Higher Education of all. Acceptance — A Summary. It may be that few working-people will ever read this book, and yet to working-class readers, be they few or many, is this last chapter ad- dressed. For them is it written, and it is placed last very largely because many people who are not anxious to even skim a volume are willing, nevertheless, to glance at the end of it. There is a school of writers who are known as Realists, and among whom Zola is a great outstanding figure. These try to rid them- selves of all that made the glory of the Romantic school, to cast away every trace of affectation and sentimentality, and to paint things as they are, or as they appear to the Realist writer. A great many Realists such as Flaubert — to take another giant as a type — were either doctors or sons of doctors. They seem to make a speciality of medical scenes. But in any case their aim was clear enough and was tersely stated by Zola himself, '*Let every- thing be said, so that everything may be remedied." The story-teller gives place at last to the observer; and romance to science. It is a kind of transition which the ordinary person can understand. There is one thing, however, much greater than the temper of even great writers, and that 173 174 is the Spirit of the Age, of which they are only the more or less successful interpreters. In the E/Omantic age of the last two centuries, the spokesman of the people and the people them- selves were in a sense Romanticists. They passed from one paroxysm of feeling to an- other. In England there was a great religious movement at the end of the 18th century which was the beginning of much. But even in England the revolt of the masses, culminating at last in the Chartist movement, was as ' 'romantic" a movement as the English char- acter would allow of. Feeling was expressed naively in the street as in the study. * 'Feeling must always precede action" it will be said. Yes, but it need not always express itself in simple ''romantic" ways. There are signs that it does not to-day express itself always in this way even in the street. The lethargy of many minds is being fairly overcome at last, and how. By stress of feeling. Then we have the Realist — who is not only ready for explosive action but above all for hard labour in a great cause. The Realist makes his advent to-day not only in literature, but in the workshop, the school, the slum, the home, and in Parliament. The brilliant group of French writers— Goncourt, Daudet, Flaubert, etc., have their English counterparts in George Moore, Gissing, and others. But the public encourages the Realist not only in literature but at street corners, and in meeting places of every order. It asks for 175 facts greedily. Even those who forget the facts go home satisfied that a demand was made that is somehow in line with the forces of Evolution. Social reformers, instead of describing the woes of the poor, write books that give information about the wage-earning powers of men and women in mean streets, and also coloured maps showing the degree of poverty in different quarters. These books have a great vogue. They are extended reports, and for that reason they are popular, just as certain novels, too, are popular because they are almost photographs. All this indicates that the masses are sweeping beyond the age of mere impulse, and that a new kind of sincerity will be required in all those who would successfully appeal to them. And this is the hour when a real light begins to fall on the past. The past begins to be unveiled. Truths that could not be told before are uttered now. And what is more, they are followed by words that give new and dazzling hopes to the race. The hour is one, in short, for acceptance. '^Let all be known that all may be remedied," say the awaking people. Yet no one need be shocked here and 'Vlose this book," to alter an old formula, ''lest he will find something to revolt him in its con- cluding pages." We shall do nothing worse here than quote the words of the Chancellor of Oxford University : — 176 *'It is impossible/' says Lord Curzon, **that the standard or cost of living at the ordinary colleges at Oxford can be brought down to a point which will enable working men to enter them in any great numbers." So far from quarrelling with this statement we ought all to be thankful for the exclusive- ness which allows people to hold up a standard of living in any place at all. In many respectable areas there is much vulgar pride, all the social prejudices in full flower, and yet no attempt to hold up any standard of living at all. In the new school clinics just opened there are children from *' respectable " homes. Some are even ol the aristocracy of labour. Is there any standard of living for them at all? A point beyond which they and, what is the same thing, their companions must not sink. Not at all. They may go into any bath of infection . Rooms where €hildren gather have still to be furnished in a certain way. A cushion was left in a chair one day at a clinic. It had to be burned on account of vermin. Books were infectious after a day or two and had to be destroyed. Every- thing that can be soiled is foul almost at once. Nurses have to poultice some children's faces before they can begin to cleanse and prepare them for real treatment. Ophthalmia and other infectious diseases rush through the schools. It is sad to know of actual sufiEering allowed to go on, of discharging ears utterly neglected. 177 of rickety children becoming so deformed that the heart is displaced and fatal disease sets in. But even the spectacle of cruel suffer- ing does not impress one so much as does the fact that the causes of all this misery, so easily reTnovable, are not dealt tvith at all, that there is no standard, and that there never was any. But there are worse things than even these to tell. The Realist in Education must be bolder than any one else. Louise Michel was, per- haps, the one woman who ever wrote the true history of a certain unhappy child (type of a class), but no one would publish what she wrote. What is the most terrible result of overcrowding? And, above all, of stunted, mutilated manhood and womanhood? What happens when crowded in filthy dens? The physical nature develops in man and woman with no corresponding mental advance. Who will dare to tell ? The Eealist will tell. He and she know already. Not one woman, but many, now understand very well what lies behind the impregnable reserve of certain little oues. How much inspection we have to-day, and how easy to elude it! Where are the inspectors who know and will tell what is behind the evasive calm face of this pale child who breaks into a smile readily, a child whose real history would scorch the page on which it is written. The Doctor in the school comes here, too, like a hand on a dungeon door. 178 Happily the life story of the average slum child does not offer anything abnormal or very strange. He is behind the age as a rule, no- thing worse, and not so far behind it after all. For of late his betters have come on fast, and have forgotten, very wisely, what it was neither pleasant nor useful to remember. However, the bad old customs and manners linger in some places. Here is a little boy w^ho lost his father last year and went to live with his grandparents — a very respectable-looking old couple. The grandfather is intelligent — an old bargeman. But the grandmother swears so dreadfully that the child's language now is sown with curses. It is only because such Realism may keep for us the sense of kinship that one recalls how the upper-class man of a hundred years ago swore freely. Not a century has passed since squires and gentlemen were carried to bed, too, after dinner, helplessly drunk. As for a low stan- dard of hygiene three generations back, the less said of it perhaps the better. It is not neces- sary to go back to Queen Elizabeth (who bathed twice a year and always in fear, and \vithin call of two physicians) or to Queen Anne (who lost eighteen children) in order to find x^eople who set a bad example. The children of the worst areas to-day are after all no dirtier than were the Court-ladies of yesterday. The superiority of the upper class in such matters is that they changed their habits within 179 a generation. They were Realists. They gripped the facts — which is the bravest kind of revolt. Then silently, swiftly, all was changed. The money question did not stand in the way. But neither does it stand in the way of the masses to-day. A school nursery dealing with 450 ailing children per week costs less than £300 a year. Such children are, of course, merely treated. They are not nursed or kept in health.* Let us come to figures. ^ What is the cost of an ordinary school clinic, and how would a system of clinics affect the rates? At Deptford, a doctor attends one afternoon per week. There are two such part-time doctors. Each sees from 30 to 40 patients per week. In two months they have treated be- tween four and five hundred children. The nurse attends, however, every day for three hours, and a teacher of physical culture gives five or six hours weekly. The results are very encouraging. One spinal case was cured in five weeks by exercises. Adenoid cases, too, have yielded to mere training without treat- ment (though the number of these is small). *But even a health nursery (such as every primary school should include) need not be a place where money is wildly spent on every kind of luxury. In the Rue des Eclumes, Paris, there is a primary school where the whole child-community is organised not in classes merely, but as a family, and where the elder girls are assistant nurses, and the elder boys have each a younger brother to be more or less responsible for. Given a staff of teachers, allowed to co-operate with nurses and doctor, all could be done that is necessary for the actual bringing up of healthy happy children. 180 Grateful parents issue from side streets to ^ive thanks, to declare that whereas Mary was deaf now she hears, and that Johnny who was half- blind sees now like his neighbours. The clinic is treating well over 2,000 children per year. The cost of such, excluding the teacher's salary, would be roughly as follows : — Rent . . . Caretaker Doctors Nurse ... Pi'tijs^ &c. £50* £50 £100 £80 £20 Total £300 This works out at 3/- per child per annum. This estimate is rather high because the work is approached timidly. The rent would not be increased if the doctors were whole timers, and the general expenses would be proportionately less. In short, the clinic might deal with 12,000 annually, when the cost would fall very considerably below 3/- per head. No school clinic is doing its work thoroughly if it does not take account of the question of t^eth. A dentist could deal with from 1,000 to 1,200 cases per year. A school clinic employing a dentist four half days, a doctor two half days, and nurse, and dealing with 2,000 yearly, should not cost more than a little over £450. Even for this •The Greenwich Borough Council has kindly given us the use of the building rent free. 181 double treatment, then, the cases to not come to nearly 5/- per head. For 5/- one rould include special teaching and train ,ng to make the cures perfect. The first years will be years of mere rude labour. The '' cases " are in need of simple, elementary treatment. The work cannot yet be other than rude, simple, and laborious. The utter neglect of any treatment in the past will make it hard to cover large numbers in a short time. Later it will be otherwise. A child with a well-kept mouth, for example, need not remain long in a dentist's chair. Outbreaks of infectious diseases will become rarer and slighter. All the diseases that owe their origin to dirt — and we are dealing mainly with these to-day — will be stamped out. The routine work of the clinic will become easier, too, as the doctors, if not more skilful, at any rate are more at home in the work. Then the very nature of the work will change the great problems that are to-day beyond our range, and are hardly hinted at by even the school doctor of to-day, must come clearly into view. Intelligence will be measured more or less accurately. Type of mind can be recog- nised. Beyond lie secrets even more remote. An entirely new branch of medical science will be developed, and linking itself into the educa- tional system will transform the latter into a splendid means of racial development. All this is for to-morrow. But to-morrow need 182 not be far off. Meantime we can already answer the burning question. Will it cost much to make a start? Will it ruin the nation to make the children well? ^o. We can already prove that this notion is mere folly. The idea that the giving of medical treatment to the young must be ruinous was a superstition founded on greed and fear and superstition, the common origin of all superstition. A collective nursery for the children of an area with 20,000 inhabitants can be run for a sum that would not pay the yearly accounts of many a private nursery, and with a staff which many a mother would think too small to be in attendance on her three or four children. Take the question of feeding the children in poor areas. It is still believed in many quar- ters that a hungry child's dinner will ruin the ratepayers. The reason people jump to this conclusion is that they have never made the experiment, still less have they looked into and compared the prices of foodstuffs, or noted how food is used. Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, in *'The Camel and the Needle's Eye," gives the result of some enquiries he made into the accounts of the rich as well as into the bill of fare of poor folk. In one house where there is a family of seven, and a staff of 19 servants, the food bill per week is £72. In another, a small family of four and their attendants spend £60 128. 7d. in one week for food alone. (The 183 master and mistress dine out once or twice, but they give parties.) These families spend over £3,000 a year on their dinners, breakfasts, and luncheons. In Bradford, 1,700 children are fed daily in the best manner for £2,500. That is to say that for the price paid for the food consumed or wasted by a single family in the West End you might feed over two thousand children. Then the feeding of a family ex- travagantly degrades everyone, but especially the servants. *' Quarts of cream are emptied down the sink," says Mr. Ponsonby, ''joints and birds only half-eaten are thrown away, and the pig tub receives a rich enough allow- ance of vegetables, fruits, and cakes to satisfy the appetite of a large family. In fact, in one house where the household books averaged £63 a week, the matter was looked into and a re- duction was made of £34 without any diminu- tion in the number of servants." The feeding of children in the right way educates everyone concerned. In Bradford, at the school feeding centres, when hundreds of children, even thousands, have eaten, a very small pail, half filled, contains all the waste. The maid at the dish-rack shows you the little pail with delight. ''Look," she says proudly, ^'that is all that is scrapped." The worth of a few farthings, perhaps, left over after feeding nearly two thousand ! Very educative, too, is the right way of setting about clothing people. With 184 less than £20 thirty to forty children were dressed last winter in two schools. The girls made their own dresses. The jerseys could have been knitted by the little ones, and would cost about one shilling and fourpence apiece. At the time they were making their new clothes all the children leaped into a new desire for cleanliness, order, and beauty. A stranger entering would have been struck by their appearance. Had there been cleansing baths in the school, plagues could have been wiped out swiftly and quietly, and even with the means at hand children and teachers swept forward out of — what? We know very well. Close by there is a room kept spotlessly clean, and with windows open wide, yet which can hardly be entered when a few people even have been there awhile. Such is the condition of the clothes and skin of some of the company ! Many years have passed since Euskin wrote ' 'Sesame and Lilies." No one was such a master of the picturesque style in addressing women, and the beauty of appeal to the ex- quisitely dressed ladies of England on behalf of the naked and ragged still woos many to read his pages who would shrink from rags and all that goes with them. But now we have lost faith in the mere making of garments by ladies* hands. The task is too big for them alone. In the hands of one of our great State services — the teaching profession — it might become 185 effective. In the hands of the ^'charitable'* it is a mere pastime. Here, again, the Realist must begin to look into accounts and compare them. In this way some curious facts are brought to light. Leav- ing aside the exceptionally rich women who spend £4,000 per year and over on their toilette, let us begin with those who are not ' 'extravagant," as their friends understand the word, and who never wear — as some do — a boa which costs thousands of pounds, and rarely buy very costly lace or jewels. Two thousand is not considered a large sum in certain quarters for a woman to spend per year on dress. With the allowances of half a dozen of the women of this class, we could clothe all the absolutely ragged children in London. With the money spent by a dozen women in one year all the poorer class of scholars, who never put on anything new or fresh, could be neatly and warmly clad. Given away care- lessly, it is true, the new clothes of many chil- dren would soon be filthy again. They would be stowed away in dreadful places, or worn night and day till they were a vile covering. Given as inaterial for education, this we see does not happen. The new, clean clothes are the object lesson of the school — wakening new hopes, ambitions, and desires. Perhaps it is not possible yet to convince the Society woman that the constant changing of clothes is a waste of time, and also in this whirlwind of robing 186 and disrobing slie gains nothing in beauty. Not all would be patriotic enough to enjoy the sight of beautiful English chil- dren plucked literally out of the gutter — and worse — by the cutting down of their own ward- robes. Meantime, it is all-important that the working-class man or woman should accept the fact, now demonstrated, that rags are unnecessary, that at a small expense good clothing can be secured for all, that even the children can make their own clothes, and indeed ought to make them as part of their educa- tion. ''Learn by doing, ^^ said Froebel. We say we follow him. But how far? "We give them mats to embroider, but not baths, or handkerchiefs, or clean clothes. Have we not to teach hygiene also by doing ! And how can children use things rightly that they cannot reach at all ? Turning now to secondary education and the fate of the working-class child in his early teens, a terrible fact, long-hidden, long-ignored, waits for us. It is this. The great mass of human beings have to stop growing mentally while the impulse of growth is yet strong. They are fourteen-year children for ever (ac- cording to Binet the average working-class man is a twelve-year old) in so far as the higher powers of the mind are concerned. We, in England, have evidence that this arrest is not final. That given even very meagre opportuni- ties, many of these stunted intellects will 187 spring up like plants taken into a warm liouse. But that this arrest is common, almost general, in some classes, we have no room to doubt. It is a fact now brought to light and offered for our acceptance. The last person to refuse it should be the working-class man or woman. He or she has won the right to about 25 per cent, of all the places in a certain number of secondary schools. And what does this amount to? Not 4 per cent, of their children get any secondary education at all. And meantime the elementary school teacher is at least tempted to discourage his pupils from leaving him to enter secondary schools, for in going they leave his school shorn of all its glory. If one takes fourteen years old as a halting point there is nothing to be said — except that elementary education comes to an inglorious end. That is what the Realist in education is saying to-day. Nothing else can be said until the school age is raised — raised so that all our '* elementary" schools, or whatever we may call them, are built, and staffed, and organized to carry every scholar on till he has at least passed his sixteenth birth- day. There can be no serious opposition to this reform except the opposition of the working- class parent himself. He is opposing it to- day, and we are arguing with him. He fights against the raising of the school age, in some cases because he is poor, but not always. Often 188 he does it because he cannot imagine a good which he has never experienced.* The real cause of his strange indifference shows behind all his *' independence," his ''shrewdness/' etc. He is stunted, and cannot know it. Yet nothing encourages us to follow the ex- ample of the ''leisured" classes — to wish that, one day, all young people shall pass from one school to another till at the age of 20 or 22 all meet in the University. Britain at least can hardly settle down at last to give all her chi^ dren a dull and balked youth. "Dull," it may be said. "Is it dull to ride, boat, play games, hunt, etc. ?" Tes, it is dull to do these things only in safe and pleasant ways. Our fore- fathers were raiders and plunderers, but at least they had a notion that valour should have a field of some kind. Real Samurai would not want to spend their time in games, however "manly," nor to live a screened life in youth as in childhood. They would want — and do want — to face life at last, to look into "the bright face of Danger," or in any case to take the brunt of things, to bear hardships and face responsibilities. No mere "school" will save the young people who do not feel like this — who knowing that other people are going down mines, stamping * In Bradford 5 per cent., in most other cities 3 per cent, or less of the elementary school children go on to secondary schools. Five per cent, as a maximum. And this city has been congratulated by inspectors ! Inspec- tors may be content, but working-class parents have" no right to be. 189 glowing metal, facing storms, toiling around furnaces, do not wish to share the hardships and risks of the world. Swein of Aslifson, walking the oars of his dragon ship as they swept, fan-like, through the waters, was a fierce wild figure, and yet he compares favourably enough in some respects with the modern young gentleman in flannels. The latter is perhaps quite as brave. But he has no field for his valour, and that in the long run cannot be a good thing for valour, if environment counts for anything ! More cruel, even, is the fate of those who are brave in vain. On the north-eastern coast of Scotland there are fisher communities who are descendants of these same Norsemen who once raided the coasts and rode their galleys into the Moray Firth. Some of these fisher people are said to be direct descend- ants of the Vikings. In one county many of them bear the name of **Main" (a corruption of the Norse Magnus), and they add on what they call a ^*tee-name" to distinguish indi- viduals, as for example ''John Main, Bochel,'' etc. It is a wonderful sight, when the spring tides are on to see a boat come in manned by one or two fishermen and as many youths. The harbours are dangerous. At one point, where the boats have to pass in, there is a broken wall, making a narrow passage through which the rowers can just manage to sweep. Vikings the little crews look, with their helmet-like caps, 190 How well they use the oars, one steering as might Swein himself ! The youth are grave men at twenty. They go to the Shetlands, and are at home on wild seas in small craft. They whisper among themselves, sometimes a little wonderingly, of the naval men in the great men-of-war who ought to see ''a lot more of rough weather." They tell grave brief stories of the sea. They have the advantage constantly of the naval men in things that depend on ex- perience. The fisher for example, can gauge the depth of water to a fathom where the other goes wrong by twelve or twenty fathoms. And yet the fisher holding so much from the past is winning nothing at all from the pre- sent. What do the learned know of him or his life? Do they help him in any way to share what has been won by the modern world, or give him any hint as to how he can hold his own with the rich men who buy steam drifters ? Where is his share of the world of to-day ? It is a thing to face at last — this error of making some live in vain and others read and play to small purpose. Nature urges youth to face hardships in the later teens. Even if one cannot join lumber camps and engineering parties in the Wild West, storm into new lands, go out in yawls and other craft, one can earn one's bread in wharfs, in the shops and warehouses. This going into the world, far from destroying power, must, if done at the right moment, enrich and fortify 191 the whole mental and moral life. One day we may be sure the rich and well-to-do will re- quire * this kind of experience for their sons as they crave other good things. (Already every lad — and even every girl in her sphere t — of any spirit, however, craves it for himself.) The point we have now to urge, however, is not one that concerns the rich, but only the poor. It is the fact that even this strenuous life in the open does not take the place of secondary edu- cation, but only gives new meaning to it. To have this, and to have nothing more, is to live like a savage. To escape from it is to remain always more or less a child. Yet, how to get that kind of teaching that saves — that is the question. The problem is one that varies so widely in different areas and is affected so largely by local conditions that no central organisation * Some well-to-do mothers have achieved it — urged it by their healthy-minded children. A lady writes in the ''Survey^' (an American magazine) that for a year her 17 year old boy, tired of books, learned nothing at school. After a year or two in the West with an en- gineering party, however, he found a new interest in studies of all kinds. He loved them because they threw new light on a world he had really lived in and would live in again — the world of Eealities. t It is only fair to say that girls have taken the initiative here already — and that they were no sooner allowed to have any kind of systematic education in secondary schools than they insisted on going into the work-a-day world. Into our great hospitals well-to- do girls have crowded. Many are now lady helps, gardeners, and even farmers. The educated girls who go on the land do not shirk any drudgery, and this eagerness to go into the rough, and the staying powers to keep there really mark them out very often from the uneducated. 192 can deal witli it. It is a man or woman that has to be found always, not a system. In every community we must find one who knows — an intimate of the others, or, if that is impossible, one who has found a way to their hearts, and who understands their life in youth and manhood. If he is a University man or w^oman so much the better. Through him or her the rude labour of the outer life can be focussed, as it were, in the brightness and stillness of a sanctuary of learning open to all in their time of leisure. Here the young labourers on land and sea, and in the city might be allowed to connect his work with the art and literature and science that have grown out of it. He would be encouraged also to believe that every locality, and its people, have something that is precious, and also peculiar to them. By the sea, but also in the city, youth is the time for action. The young worker longs for self-expression as a means as well as an end in itself. Why, then, should not young architects and designers, and workers of every kind, be invited to do some of the fine work of their own city? In planning the education of girls over 17 we have to take into account a new body of facts, hitherto ignored. In the later teens Nature has changed, as it were, the physio- logical key, and is setting all human life to a new music. Now everything centres round the individual, and class teaching of certain 193 things is impossible. To this we will return presently — in a footnote. Various efforts are put forward in different countries with a view to helping the girls and boys in their teens who are out in the world. The work of Dr. Kerschenheimer, in Munich, is well known. That of Dr. Dyer, the Direc- tor of Education in Cincinnati, is not so familiar to British people. Under his regime a Continuation Day School for working lads has been opened, the employers paying the lads for attendance at one morning session per week. The teacher is not merely a practical work- man. He has a knowledge of engineering and mechanics which allows him to take an even- ing class of foremen, some of whom are re- sponsible for immense workshops, where the latest kinds of tools and machines are turned out. Mr. Eenshaw has made a study of the human problem offered by his young workers. He has heard the complaint of so many masters. **The hands can't think," and has set himself to find out the causes of it. Why cannot the boys think? It is well to listen to the answer of one who is teaching mechanics in a city which is, perhaps, the greatest centre for Machine Construction in the world. To begin with, he finds that geometry, which is the subject which lies at the core as N 194 it were of the whole work, is not taught early enough in the school course, so the early- leaving child is behind in it. Above all, it is taught merely as a book subject. As a mere book subject it cannot be learned, and yet if a mechanic expects to do any new or original work he must become familiar with its princi- ples. Mr. Renshaw casts aside school text books. He cannot ask his apprentices to wade through books for a petty fact. They must be treated as men, for after all they have to do men's work, or, at least attempt it. The age of mimicry and memorising is past for them. When an apprentice comes to him (amidst a crowd of others) puzzled with questions that involve much knowledge for the answering, while the youth's education is very elementary, he has to educate him as he can. And how is it to be done ? In the first place he never asks the puzzled youth if he has studied algebra or geometry. Neither does he turn to teach anything that has no bearing on a piece of work that is in hand. So — *'The subject matter of my lessons," he writes of his classes, *^is a mixture of shop practice and calculation, engineering subjects, and commercial practices, interspersed with as much effort for personality as the conditions will permit. When the material or tactics employed fail to hold attention they are im- 195 mediately changed; and it often happens that a boy, who, if he were in another school, would be studying decimals, is here doing problems in machine design that involve algebra, geome- try, trigonometry, mechanics, strength of materials, and drawing. His rules for deci- mals, etc., are stored away in his mind under such titles as ^designing gears,' * testing levels,* 'calculating speeds,' *feeds and motions in machines,' etc." It would pay any teacher to study Mr. Eenshaw's ** Jig-pro tractors," which are notched paper circles with rubber bands. No matter where these are placed the angles formed can be readily measured. Thus, for example, when the point of an angle is in the centre of the protractor the number of degrees between the bands which form the sides of the angle show the size of the angle or number of degrees. The principles that show one how to calculate all the angles, no matter where they are placed, are thus illustrated in a simple,, concrete way. The device is, of course, not intended for use as a tool. It is a means of helping one to discover for himself the facts of geometry without going to school. If one had not a paper circle and rubber band, a gear wheel from a clock and a piece of string would do, or the change gears of a lathe or a circular saw. The device illustrates the class-room method of the school. A glance round the 196 room,* filled, as it is, with specimens of spoiled work and also of good work, done by the boys themselves in the shop or factory, also gives one an idea of how the material supplied by their own lives and environment is used by the teacher. But this education through work is not all. Over and above the educational problem there is the human problem. The secret misery of the unready youth flung into the industrial world reveals itself at odd moments. It comes to the surface in the pre- sence of a teacher who is a new order of com- rade and friend. *'You don't mean," said one boy, **that there is any joy in labour, f Garn !" ''Yes, sir," said the teacher. Great surprise in the class. It is a startling theory. ''The workshop," cries another in a low voice, ''it's hell — that's what it is." And indeed, some places where boys work are terrible. There they have been sent off to work by fathers who throw them out as it were as kittens might be thrown into the water. They are tumbled into * Though we have dwelt on the work of this class a little it represents of course only a part of the work in- augurated by the leading educationists of Cincinnati for young pjeople over 14. They have followed the example of Munich in planning out and organising full courses of instruction representing the great divisions of human labour. The Building Trades, Engineering, Physical Sciences, Teaching, Arts and Crafts, Home Making, etc. fSuch words might be heard in almost any city. Not in Munich perhaps. But the small town of Munich spends over ^£80,000 a year on the education of pupils oyer the elementai'y school age. 197 the industrial world suddenly. It is pretty sure that all, being poor, have come out of child- hood and home with a jerk. They were un- prepared for what awaited them. ''You've got 'em bad," says the teacher one day to a de- jected youth who had been working for some weeks. His father had declared that he couldn't send him to school any more, and he sent him to a shop where, to quote the fore- man, ''Sympathy ain't kept on tap." "Yes, I have," muttered the boy, after weeks of dogged silence, and the tears fell like rain. But that is very rare. It is a point of honour with most of the young people to stifle their misery, and to adopt a coarse manner, which corres- ponds to a real coarsening and hardening pro- cess taking place within.* * This coarsening can be prevented so far as we know only in two ways, viz., by culture and by sympathy. In the later teens Nature has changed, as it were, the physiological key, and is setting all human life to a new music. Now everything centres round the individual, and class teaching of certain subjects becomes almost useless. The new life seeks new modes of expression and finding now shuts itself up in timid reserve. But shows itself into a new kind of self-consciousness and vanity. This is the age when a girl wants "to be a great singer," or still more delightful and common, "to go on the stage.*' She wants to go on the stage (not always as many think, in order to seek adventures, but obeying a natural impulse towards self-expression). She will stand up and "recite" at "entertainments." She does not know how to stand even, or to let her arm fall after lifting it. No matter. She must try as she can to give expression to the wonder- ful young life surging within her. This is the moment for fine physical culture, for the training of the Sense Organs in a new way. Any girl can now learn to move, to speak well — which will allow her to think well. Her parents think that only a great actress can aspire to these things. On the contrary, these are things that any girl should aspire to. A great specialist looking rau&d 198 *'The Continiiation School is no substitute of course for a real system of Secondary Educa- tion/' it may be said. No. The United States has such a system in her High Schools free to all. The Continuation Day School is not, however, a mere missionary effort. It is a research school of a high order, and is doing work that is bound to re-act favourably on the High School itself.* It is just this kind of Scout- School that we want so badly in England. As for the High Schools, they give a four-year course to pupils over fourteen, the industrial training of the last years being a kind expansion of the old apprenticeship system. There is nothing bookish or unpractical in it, nor is entrance into the world really delayed unduly. For in the last years the boys attend school and shop in alternate weeks. The teachers are of a new order. They go about with tools, just as formerly students at the young teachers in Bradford Pupil Teachers' Centre ©aid regretfully, **Here are dozens of splendid voices that could go in for the highest order of singing/* "It would be impossible, however, to train them all for grand opera, ' the practical reader will cry. Not for grand opera, but for sweet and clear speech, and singing that would delight many; for grace and beauty of movement they might be trained. * In 1850 there were only 50 Public High Schools in the States. Now there are 8,000. In 1890 only 200,000 were enrolled. To-day there are 800,000. It is interesting to note how these are recruited. It is not the well-to-do alcme who send their children. In a working-class dis- trict in Boston 90 per cent, of all the children go on to Hi^h School. It is the late arrivals — the recently-come emigrants who pull down the per centage to 10 per cent, all over the country. 199 went about with books. Yet, they are never, so far as one can judge, appointed merely on account of their technical skill. It would appear that the United States, in common with other countries, but more vividly than smaller countries, has realised the need for a new order of teachers — and therefore for a new order of Higher Education. They want teachers who have been workers, and yet who have all the versatility of the trained thinker, who have mastered the learning of the schools and can apply it under perfectly new conditions. No mere "technical education" will enable any- one to do this. Such teachers are coming to the front, but not in large numbers. One and another stands at very far in- tervals in the breach, doing a new work un- dreamed of by many even of our "modern" pedagogues. But the coming of the many that are needed, and that have to save tens of thousands of young people alive, must depend on the existence of some agency that will reach the toiler in workshop, yawl, or mine, and will help him to qualify for this new task. But where are the teachers who will make all this practical knowledge live anew, and give it a new meaning. In the Universities. But in England, at least, the outlook is not very bright in that quarter. It may be, and is, brighter than ever before. Yet, during the past year the Hebdomadel Council of Oxford, 200 having held a great many meetings with a view to considering new proposals for the admis- sion of poor men, changed nothing almost in so far as the working man is concerned. It was decided that even scholarship money should continue to be at the disposal of the rich who can win it. Prizes of £1,400 and £1,G00 are still to be won by the wealthy. The Exhibitions (reserved for the poor) vary from £20 to £30. These are facts to note and realise.* It is not easy to see how, as things stand, the best teaching can soon be within the reach of all. One thing, however, can ruffle even the most placid waters, and that thing is a new demand. If a new, and growing, and en- lightened demand for a share in the best kind of teaching that England can offer should arise * In some countries ail the Universities are practically open to all. One-fourth of all the students at Harvard University, for example, are working their way through by means of Scholarships, and by dint of labour. Even from the far West States young people flock up to the country's oldest Universities, taking their chances of finding work, and facing the struggle hopefully. The list of occupations they follow is a long one — from 30 to 40 callings are represented. Many of these are very hum- ble. Waiters, snow shovellers, guides, shopmen of every order are working out of class-hours for a living. In summer many go on the farms where labour is well paid. Some wait at table on their comrades, and neither rich nor poor feel that this is at all embarassing ! There is a kind of self-consciousness in every class in the Mother land which stands in the way of swift advance. Take the matter of School Bathing for example. Even in slum areas there is a doubt about putting Baths in School. In Chicago the millionaire's child bathes at school after games. The finest School Baths are to be seen at Park School, Chicago, to which pupils come in automobiles every morning. 201 in every part of the country, nothing could withstand it long. But such a demand grows and strengthens only by supply. There appears to be no way then of making the demand for Higher Education effective, save by helping the working people and scholars who are already struggling to secure Higher Education for all to-day. *'But why should not the worker strive alone?'' many will ask. Many workmen are striving alone. These are, for the most part, trying to do something as individuals. But in the older countries, in latter days, a new thing has come to pass. The worker and the scholar have met for a new purpose. And say what one may, this union has been fruitful. To go back once more to Denmark. Kristen Kold's success was just this, that he brought the University men into the farms and homes and schools of the common people in Denmark. At their meeting of scholar and worker the * * Spirit that works in Free- dom" revealed itself, and broke the spell that made the worker a slave, and kept the life of the Universities barren. Then all the words that used to fall from the lips of the pseudo-thinkers grew pale and withered. The peasants were not merely ''raised.'' They were transformed. Said the old world, *'He, the peasant, must be a drudge." ''Then the peas- ant shall die," said a new voice. "Instead of him shall come the new farmer, the educated 202 fanner, with interests in every quarter of the globe. He, with the last word of science in his ears, as he turns over his grain samples, or goes to his cattleshed." The new workmen- teachers of America are saying and trying to do practically the same thing. They are try- ing to transform workers — to make a new race of workpeople.* They fan the light that was dying at dawn in factory and mine. Dimly, perhaps, but truly, they glimpse at times the dawn of a new life, a world where all is made new, where every trade is trans- formed as the oldest of all- -agriculture — is transformed in at least one little country. Cer- tainly they speak and work, not as hirelings, but as seeing a kingdom that is invisible. Meantime, with what light they had, the working-class reformers have attacked a few social problems, and have begun even to solve them. Within the past twenty years they have settled the gas and water questions in some towns, and also the matter of tramway service. These later reforms deal, however, with day-old blossoms, not with the under- ground roots that drain the soil. The deeper problems, those age-long wrongs, the depth of *One cannot say "It is a lower class after all. The rich do not belong to it.'' The rich do belong to it. They are fitting themselves to enter this new order. The scholars of Parker School, for example, go out skilled workers — trained from early children to understand in- dustry and knowing the principles of many trades through having worked as smiths, carpenters, engineers, printers, etc., at school. 203 whose root in the social under-world is the measure, not only of the despair of the workers, but of the security of those who oppress them (wittingly and unwittingly) have hardly been faced, have hardly come even with- in the range of our boldest workers and thinkers. This is not the hour for despising the fine and old order of trained thinker, the scholar, who chooses the gold and azure of *'the humani- ties." But there are thousands who do turn away from him hopelessly. They turn from him, perhaps, without losing the desire for a new light. Does he possess it, living so far from them? Does he not learn in vain even as they toil in vain? Some hint of the truth may reach one and the other even in the Uni- versities. ''What are the humanities even to me," one scholar here and there begins to ask, ''since they divide me from my fellow- o.reature?" Meantime, there are many who, never rising out of a world of dull, hard labour, never cease utterly to long for something higher and lovelier than the mere struggle for the bread that perishes. Indeed, the whole desire of the workers to-day is touched with Idealism, however material their demand for more wages, better houses, etc., may appear to be. The poor woman in the slums, as well as the factory hand and the skilled mechanic, are conscious, more or less, of a beauty and light that eludes them always, but which they 204 were formed to love, and to appreciate in a growing measure all their lives long. The materialism itself is largely a result of this baulked desire for something else. Even the vice that degrades our cities is a kind of revolt against this monstrous denial. Nevertheless, the new hope is alight. Once fired, it cannot very well go out again. To fan it, and feed it, is one of the highest duties of a Labour or Socialist Party. THE SOCIALIST LIBRARY. A Series of Volumes on Theoretical and Practical Socialism. :: :: :: Paper, 1/- net ; Cloth, 1/6 net ; postage, 3d. extra. Yolume I.— Socialism and Positive Science, by Enrico Ferri. Volume II. — Socialism and Society, by J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P. Sixth Edition. Volume III. — Studies in Socialism, by^^^jean Jaures. Second Edition. Volume lY. — White Capital and Coloured Labour, by Sydney Olivier, K.C.M.G. Volume Y. — Collectivism and Industrial Evolution, by Emile Vandervelde. Volume VI. — Socialism and the Drink Question, by Philip Snowden, M.P. Volume VII. — Evolutionary Socialism, by Edward Bernstein. Volume VIII. — Socialism and Government, by J. R. MacDonald, M.P. Issued in Tw« Parts, each, paper 1/-, cloth 1/6. Volume IX.— The Child and the State, by Miss Margaret McMillan. Extra Volume I. — The Revolution of the Baltic Provinces of Russia, Translated by E. O. F. Ames. Sixteen Illustrations. Tke National Labour Press, Ltd., 30, Blackfriars St.,HaAchester. The Coming Force, The History of the Labour Movement. By FRANK H. ROSE. A vigorous narrative of the rise and growth of the Labour Party. An instruction to those who are imperfectly informed, and a reply to impatient and unkindly critics. CONTENTS: Introduction. Origins. A Note on Chartism. The Type of the Old Unionism. The '* Marking Time" Era. The Unlearned Lessons of the "Seventies." The Coming of Liberal-Labourism The Labour Electoral Association The Striking of the Roots. The New Unionists. The Last of the Electorsd Association. The Rising of the Independent Labour Party. The Birth of the Labour Party. Initial Struggles. First Fruits. The End of the Old Road. Through Chaos to Order. Legislative Rudiments. Labour in Parliament. Conclusion. II. III. IV. APPENDICES: Statement of the Provisional Committee of the Grand National Consolidated Union of Great Britain and Ireland, February, 1834. Extracts from Employers* Federation Manifesto, December 11, 1873. First Report of the Labour Representation Committee. Detailed Record of the Labour Party's Electoral Activities. Price, Paper Covers, 1/- net ; Cloth Covers, 1/6 net ; Postage 3d. extra. The National Labour Press, Ltd., 30, Blackfriars Street, Manchester. y