HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE Editors : HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LlTT., LL.D., F.B.A. PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. (Columbia University, U.S.A.) NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY THE SCHOOL AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EDUCATION J. J. FINDLAY M.A., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY J AUTHOR OF " ARNOLD OF RUGBY," "PRINCIPLES OF CLASS TEACHING," ETC. LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE S RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, 3.E., AND B I'Nd AY, SUFFOLK. PREFACE THE heart of this book is to be found in Chapter V. If the reader once accepts the standpoint there taken, the succeeding chap- ters fall into shape in systematic order, while Chapters I to IV are found to be in place as foundations for the whole plan. The author's endeavour has been to present a variety of topics welded together in one scheme of thought. The reader will scarcely expect to find every burning question in Education debated within the limits of these covers, but some reference at least is made to most of the themes which are of general interest at the present time. If on many of these the discussion seems curtailed it will be borne in mind that for students the volume is offered as an introduction, while for the general reader it is important that the pages should be readable. To Mr. Arthur Bartle, Mr. J. A. Dale, and Miss S. K. Findlay thanks should be expressed for a careful revision of the proofs. December 8, 1911. 250325 CONTENTS CHAP. PACE PREFACE V I ORIGINS 7 II THE YOUNG OF MAN . . 20 III THE RISE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS . 31 IV THE FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL ... 42 V STAGES OF GROWTH (OR DEVELOPMENT) . 73 VI THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION . . 99 VII TYPES OF SCHOOL WITH SOME REFERENCE TO UNIVERSITIES . . . . .138 VIII THE TEACHER 166 IX THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL . . .195 X THE CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL . .231 BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 INDEX . . 254 THE SCHOOL CHAPTER I ORIGINS 1. THERE is a curious contradiction in the attitude that we adopt towards education. No subject bores us more when we are in the mood for being bored; every one can talk about it, for children, like the poor, are always with us; but how seldom is anything new discovered, or even anything old propounded in a novel way. But in other moods the theme is of en- grossing interest and of supreme importance. The philosophers, who differ in everything else, agree in maintaining that the progress of mankind depends upon education; and the fond mother, looking at her baby's features in the cradle, agrees with the philosopher. For, defined in the broadest terms, educa- tion is no more and no less than the pro- vision that mankind has to make for the progress of the species to which he be- longs, i. e. civilized man. There are many 7 8 THE SCHOOL more lofty conceptions of education, but they are liable to error if they neglect this lowly starting-point and fail to treat our species according to its rank with other animal species. The conditions under which the human breed has survived and made pro- gress are, in fact, more patently in evidence with us than with other animals, for man finds himself able to adapt himself to new situations with extraordinary facility. He will take on a new habit, acquire fresh quali- ties, flit to a foreign climate, anticipate peril, discover wants, adapt himself to a novel environment, or rather, as we shall see, compel environment to adapt itself to his demands, and thus prove himself fit to meet, and to master, the pitiless circumstances under w r hich creation lives and breeds and dies. Now all the plans which man devises for these ends are, in the nature of things, de- vised for the young; it is they who are the species, who enable it to go on. The funda- mental instinct in all organic beings is that of caring for succession, and the fundamental laws of life are those concerned with trans- mission to offspring. The brute, by instinct, trains his young to seize the prey, to flee from danger, to hunt for food; and the young of bird and beast, by instinct, will imitate, ORIGINS 9 practise, and, if successful, survive. Thus the first, common-sense if you like, the brutal account of schooling explains it as a neces- sary effort to equip the child for the duties which lie before him. He must keep the ball rolling : adaptation and progress are part of the inevitable scheme. True enough, man has become so clever that he sometimes asks, in pessimistic mood, " Is life worth living ? " but the answer comes sharply enough from the biologist : " Yes, it is worth living to those who are fit for survival ! " Mankind as a whole cherishes the race ; its love for its young far exceeds that of other animals : the mother endures with fortitude the labour of bearing them, and the father shares with her the daily sacrifice involved in their upbringing ; school- ing must start, and does start in the simply truthful mind of the common people, as the latest example of the primary instincts which we share with wolves and bears. It is needed now by every English child in a way that it was not needed a hundred years ago, for the race has developed new needs, and the girl or boy who cannot read or write will starve not, perhaps, literally go without food, but in the larger sense, man and his breed will not " survive," if they neglect schooling. It may be true that slum families multiply faster than suburban families, but the law 10 THE SCHOOL of the survival of the fittest goes beyond a mere counting of heads : if need arose the strong stocks would kill off the weaker somehow. The present writer met a young navvy recently who was attending a night school; the man had a wife and two children, and found that he wanted higher wages. He said that no labourer in his gang was able to write more than his tiame ; if he could learn to read and write decently he would at once take a higher position, as a foreman. He was asked whether he had not been to the elementary school ; yes, he had attended up to the age of ten; by that time he had learned his cate- chism and he was then sent to frighten crows from the farmer's crops. This is not to say that, as a matter of course, our epoch is nobler or better than the world of earlier days : the fact that you and I have been to school or college does not make us finer folk than our grandmothers : it means that, as things now stand, schooling is a new want that, within limits, has to be supplied. A similar situation is presented in the animal world : we have made the cat a domestic creature, and hence if we turn a kitten loose in the fields it cannot survive. There are many districts abroad, and a few in England, where a cat can go into the woods and live ORIGINS 11 on birds, rabbits, and mice, until it is shot by the gamekeeper; but, on the whole, this artificial civilized environment having been created, the young of the species must share the environment or disappear. 2. We see, then, that while man is depen- dent upon schooling, most animals are dependent upon instinctive reactions for their adjustment to environment. " Such animals are not able to apply experience to the improvement of adjustment, and are consequently not amenable to the influences of education." Thus, what we have called " education " is not so much an extra benefit conferred on man as a fundamental character- istic of the race : the animal remains animal, remains the species lobster, worm or ape, because he cannot be educated. Sometimes one finds the control to which man subjects some of the higher animals described as " education " : but this is a loose mode of speech. Man can " train " many animals to respond to stimuli, to answer his commands; and by artificial selection and elimination he can improve a breed. Indeed, some anxious observers of human develop- ment would like to see similar plans of control adopted by man for the human breed itself; but, whatever value is thought to attach to such methods, they are clearly apart from the 12 THE SCHOOL modes of progress indicated by the term " education." Man is, indeed, so powerfully impressed by his superiority over the brute as to be only too inclined to forget the pit whence he was digged. Until recently the psychologists were willing to leave folk in ignorance, comforting us with the fond delusion that we are gods endowed with reason, in contrast to the brutes who live by instinct. Now we know that we are both : that we have more instincts than they : that we, as they, accept readily the dominion of habit; and with them fall under the paramount law we, too, appear as ail organism adapted to its environment. But the environment is infinitely complex, and the organism, in most baffling and intri- cate fashion, is adapted not only to meet its environment, but to study it, to get behind it, to conquer it. The human creature, with his self-consciousness, his speech, his ideals, is at once the most splendid illustration and the most dazzling contradiction in modern science. Compare him with his dog. The dog, too, has an ideal : selected by his masters, he finds his highest end for life in affectionate loyalty; apart from this, all he is concerned with is the satisfaction of the primitive sensual in- stincts of hunger, sleep, sex and hunting. No ORIGINS 13 doubt satisfaction comes also from novelty in perceptual experience, but this leads to nothing, and the dog abides on his lower level of mental activity. Thus man has risen, it would appear, to his higher levels by two stages : first of all, he is found able to profit by past experience; secondly, he has immensely advanced in means of communicating experience, utilizing the experience of the best for the common good. Above all, this tool of speech has served the purposes of education, for it is by communicat- ing to offspring that man contrives to secure the advance of his race. Here, again, there are faint analogies in the animal world. All beings are equally concerned with man in helping their young to survive, and certainly the higher types find means to transmit experience. The Jungle Book portrays bear, python, wolf, behaving like comrades, each handing to the other the forest lore. We do not, however, read Kipling for scientific pur- poses ; the training that the wolf gives to the baby wolf is instinctive and is transmitted from generation to generation on a model that varies little, if at all ; it is only in the human species that we find such a memory and a mode of communication as enables experience to supplement instinct with any effect. It is of importance to observe that this 14 THE SCHOOL supplementing of an instinct often involves its suppression. We have already noted that man is a creature of instinct, 1 but he makes " a man of himself " by thwarting their power, by controlling their sway, by letting many of them atrophy for want of use. When man was a tree-dweller he cultivated the instinct of clinging with his toes he had derived it from his progenitor the ape : our children still possess the instinct, although it is weakened but we let it become atrophied there are no branches to cling to ; or we inhibit it with socks and shoes. Now these variations in the human breed are all concerned with tendencies and powers which spring from our general gift of recording and communicating experience. When we study the variations in a breed of animals, we commonly think of physical characteristics; the size of cattle or poultry, the strength or wind of a horse. But the striking fact about man is that he seems only to be concerned, as a race, with mental progress; in body there has been little change, and this chiefly concerns the size of the brain as organ of mind. This is not to say that in the care of the young we can afford 1 These comparisons between man and animals must only be taken in general terms. For more precise state- ments, comparative psychologists such as Lloyd Morgan should be consulted. ORIGINS 15 to neglect the body; when we find education treating the body with contempt we witness a most extraordinary example of perversion. With man the body is essential because it is the servant of the mind, and renders indis- pensable service. A complete definition of education gives a due place to this considera- tion, which will claim our attention again in Chap. IV. Nor can the human being be properly de- scribed apart from his equipment of intelli- gence, of emotions, of desires, of ideals as well as of positive knowledge, or concrete experience. We are often inclined to discuss " progress" in terms of great discoveries and inventions Americas and steam-engines ; but these things are not progress : it is in the mind of man that they are found, and by man they are utilized. If he were deprived of them he could recover them. The educative process, contemplated in the large sense, is the road by which all these experiences and powers get transmitted and transmuted as one generation succeeds the other. From Tree- Dweller to Air-Man the story is the same : races have struggled, triumphed, multiplied, decayed, and all along have so acted because they have been able or finally unable to communicate experience and adapt it to new situations. 16 THE SCHOOL 3. It will be noticed that we have by im- plication admitted one feature of human struggle and progress shared by man with most animals but displayed by him to a surpassing extent. Man is a social being, i. e. he lives with his fellows in packs, or herds, or hives ; he not only transmits experience to his own youiig, but he recognizes kinship with his fellows : his progress is theirs : their achieve- ment is shared by him. True, there is struggle within the breed, but there is also mutual aid ; hence, among the young, a large part of education consists of social contacts : the child learns by interchange with his kind, and more especially by contact with those of his own age and range of experience. This point needs all the more to be emphasized because it is so often ignored both in theories of education and in school practice. What- ever may be said in abstract treatises as to the formation of character or the unfolding of mental powers, all such results are conditioned by an ebb and flow of those social relationships which make so large a part of daily experience and claim so often the focus of attention. Man cannot conceive of himself apart from his kind, and the teacher or parent who studies the child as a separate unit makes little progress in the art of education. We there- fore devote the concluding chapter of this ORIGINS 17 volume to a discussion of school in its corporate aspect. 4. We have sought thus far to explain education by the aid of biology, but it has already become clear that there is much in the situation for which our parallels with animal life will not account. " Progress " is a useful term in debate, but it may disguise confusion of thought. The story of the past, in general terms, is clear : but what of the future ? Whither are we tending ? The great mass of the human race, now as ever, are dominated by the imperative in- stincts of the body : the child, like other animals, begins to share in the battle for existence as soon as its frame acquires suffi- cient strength. Among all the low r est types, whether penned in city slums or roaming in savage wilds, this struggle precludes atten- tion to higher wants : animal impulses assert under such conditions their fullest sway. But even at these low levels man finds that there is a life beyond mere living : among the most degraded tribes we hear of the domestic rites of religion, ceremonies that surround the central crises of life and death : there is crude music and dancing : the heroic deeds of by- gone days are told once and again. Some- how, after countless ages of evolution, man found himself : in some mysterious crisis he B 18 THE SCHOOL took that step towards the light which cut him adrift from the brute and made him- man, a being conscious not only of a re- membered past, but of an idealized future, conscious not only of new wants, but of duties. Man becomes man when he frames the question, What am I ? It is at this point that the conception of formal education emerges, as an abiding element in human progress. Among savage tribes little distinctive provision is made to enable the young to share the experience of the elders ; they share in the common life, and are present, it may be, when the rites of the tribe are performed, greedy with eyes and ears to watch and imitate : but it needs a further step before men undertake the act which is specifically called Education. Some father has a clearer vision than his fellows : in the face of his growing boy he sees the man who shall take his place and office : so with pains he imparts the scanty tradition, hands on the expiring flame. In the rare moments of relief from toil he summons his children and " teaches diligently " the statutes, the judg- ments, the story and the song. In its best and truest sense education has always been con- cerned with ideals ; for life is more than meat. Comparative biology cannot define the pro- vince of the teacher simply because human ORIGINS 19 aspiration, faith and fear stand apart from the physical life. This aspect of our subject, which brings ethics into relation with educa- tion, will require our attention below when we consider the function of the School (Chap. IV). CHAPTER II THE YOUNG OF MAN 1. IT will be noticed that we have made a distinction between the scope of the terms "education" and " schooling." By "school- ing " we mean the educational provision made for the young, for the rising generation, which is unable by its own efforts to survive and progress. " Education," unfortunately, is used in a double sense. We speak vaguely of being " educated " by books, by society, by travel at all periods of life, whereas in legislation and politics the term is confined to the definite requirements of non-adults. Both animals and mankind are influenced throughout life by environment, but this lies apart from the specific effort made to enable the adult and mature society to foster the immature and helpless. Many adults, it is true, seek oppor- tunities for self-culture, for the enlargement of experience, for the satisfaction of the intel- lectual life, but these efforts, though commonly described as " educative," and though playing a great part in human progress, are of a 20 THE YOUNG OF MAN 21 different order from deliberate plans by which the young are afforded similar opportunities and experience. If, therefore, we employ the term " education " at all in these chapters, it will be only in the restricted sense as equivalent to schooling. It must be borne in mind that we cannot draw any hard and fast line as to the stage in the development of any individual at which he can be properly regarded as able to " stand on his own feet." Physical changes certainly offer preliminary conditions; the stage of childhood is marked off from that of adolescence, and one difference between the child, as contrasted with the boy or girl, is that the former feels his helplessness, while healthy boys and girls are distinguished by a craving for independence. But the latter, in the eyes of adult wisdom, are still helpless, needing both direction and control. 2. Our analogies with the animal world will here be of service again ; for progress of a species in one direction is accompanied by an appear- ance of loss in another. The animal relying on his instincts and profiting by experience quickly learns to help himself, but the young of man is artificially protected and guided, so that he is comparatively " helpless " for a longer period. The biologist points out the law working in the ascending scale of 22 THE SCHOOL animal life : the higher the type, the longer is the period of dependence upon parents. The chick begins to peck as soon as he is on his feet, but the young of mammals cannot find release so soon. Now the sociologist observes a similar law in the progress of the human species : every advance in civilization, whether in a nation or in a single family, carries with it "an extension of the period of infancy," i. e. of the time during which the offspring is regarded, either by the nation or by the parents, as unfit to forage for him- self. " The meaning of that period of help- lessness or infancy, as I see it, lies at the bottom of any scientific or philosophic understanding of the part played by education in human life." * By elaborating the machinery of modern life we make the process of adjustment to environment more complex with every genera- tion; and not only is the length of " infancy " extended, but the helplessness of the infant during that period is increased on a similar scale. Servants, nurses, governesses, all have the effect of keeping the young from domestic experience, with the idea that helplessness, as regards primitive economic needs, may give scope for greater ultimate efficiency, in adjust- ment to a society where knowledge and Social experience play their part. In an earlier day, 1 N. M. Butler : The Meaning of Education. THE YOUNG OF MAN 23 when practical experience was regarded as of greater moment, both the page at the court and the apprentice in the workshop were trained to be of immediate service to their elders. Perhaps, however, the most evident ex- ample of the working of this law of the exten- sion of the period of infancy is shown in the elaboration of professional training. In every university we notice the contrasted attitude of the older generation and the new ; the older men look with regret on the days when a student could begin to earn his living in medicine, or engineering, or the Church, at twenty-two; the younger men insist that a lad is not given a fair chance if you expect him to reap the fruits of study before twenty- five. Indeed, President Butler lays it down as an accepted dictum " that the length of time that it takes for the human child in this generation to adapt himself to his surround- ings so as to be able to succeed in them, to conquer them, and to make them his own, is almost, if not quite, thirty years." We are bound to admit that for the best minds in all the higher walks of life the extension to thirty years is justified ; but surely it is very wide of the mark to generalize as to " the human child " of every type. For while it is true that the environment to which we need to become adjusted grows more complex with 24 THE SCHOOL every decade, it is not true that every in- dividual is equally plastic and adjustable. The best engineers and physicians will no doubt benefit themselves, and mankind, if they are encouraged to study and accumulate knowledge at the expense of their elders right up to the age of thirty ; if thereafter they serve their profession for thirty years, they will render a hundredfold all that they have cost. But it is only the few that can answer the measure of this rule. The great majority, if kept in economic idleness till thirty, or even twenty, would remain so for ever : in them the instincts which lead the young to active exer- cise, to production, to be doing for themselves, far outweigh any acquired and inherited tastes for study and research; if these primary in- stincts are thwarted by tempting the young to remain out of touch with the strain and pur- poses of adult life, too often the result is a disappointment. Here we come upon a diffi- cult controversy which can be better handled in a later chapter. 3. There is a second and still more modern problem offered to our notice when we seek a line of demarcation between the helpless young and the helping adult. Among the young of all animals are some who fail to reach the stage of independence they sicken, or are maimed. How do the strong treat the weak ? THE YOUNG OF MAN 25 On the whole, nature is pitiless : it is true that here and there exceptions occur among animals, but mutual aid seldom extends to those who will never be fit to make repay- ment. And it is only by slow degrees that man has come to a different way of thinking (or rather of feeling) and has taken under his protection not only the children but all who are really helpless the blind, the halt, the insane and let us add, in still more recent times, the criminal. By adding these to his charge, he steps into regions where the biologist will no longer serve to answer his riddles, for he appears to find satisfaction in protecting and educating those w r ho will make the race no return for his efforts. When an Education Board at the present day establishes a school for cripples or for the blind, it no doubt hopes that a few of these sufferers may reach eco- nomic independence, but ratepayers and tax- payers are scarcely deceived by such pious hopes ; we work and pay for such unfortunates because they belong to us, and we admit the social obligation that will lead us to care for them and, if need be, to protect them, all their lives. Yet, be it well remembered, this care for the unfortunate among the young, whether a product of self-regarding virtues or of philanthropy, is conditioned by an economic situation. It may seem a harsh 26 THE SCHOOL doctrine, but one reason why society now cares for idiots and cripples is that it can afford to do so. In fact, the chief reason why govern- ments support education is because the investment is sound. These are luxuries, i. e. they are evidence of economic security and it is a commonplace of social science that although the love of money is the root of all evil, a cash balance is a necessity of progress. As a family becomes well-to-do it keeps boy and girl longer at school, and when the State finds the budget swelling it will spend something extra on education : in both cases the motive is mixed. The result, too, does not always answer to the design : our word " school " does indeed answer to the situation implied in its derivation (oxoty, leisure); both scholar and teacher at school are, in this sense, of the leisured class ; but it by no means follows that the issue of these leisurely pursuits will be for the benefit of the race. 4. Let us, however, consider further those aspects of modern education which are con- cerned with the interplay of the two factors the release from economic pressure, and the extended helplessness of the young. Helplessness, like every other tendency, may become fixed as a habit : when the time comes THE YOUNG OF MAN 27 for the child " to put away childish things," to share with his elders in the struggle for exist- ence, there is often a sharp conflict before the habits of youth are broken. The young must ultimately share our responsibilities and bear our burdens, or the race is lost ; how long can we risk leaving them without such experience ? It will be readily observed that the increasing surplus of wealth, together with the immensely increased security in its possession, has made this a crucial question in modern civiliza- tion. Classes in society are formed whose effort is directed not only to provide eco- nomic freedom, with schooling, for their off- spring during infancy, but to extend this security right through life. The old dictum was, " If a man will not work, neither shall he eat " ; the new doctrine often runs, " Our children will not need to work, if we elders can work for them and provide much goods, laid up for many years." Thus it has become possible, more and more since the dawn of history, for many individuals to live right through life without having to provide clothing and shelter at all : they belong to the leisured class, or to professional classes, set apart and supported in order to care for ideal needs of our complex humanity needs which have no relation to any view of life on which biology can throw light. 28 THE SCHOOL But even here the struggle for existence goes on, and with a fiercer zest. The " top dog " among mankind seeks to maintain his own order with at least as much energy as the soldier-ant. It is not surprising, therefore, that education has become a battle-ground for class struggles. As soon as a member of any group discovers that schooling, of this or that type, is of benefit to the young of his " class," he will fight to secure it, just as he has fought to secure goodly pastures, and he will fight for that sort of schooling which will main- tain his class, as a class, with its social outlook, its class bias, its solidarity. At this moment in England we witness an excellent example of the play of these forces. Up to ten years ago popular sentiment in our large cities cared little for " high school " education: the common opinion among manufacturers and tradesmen was that a boy had better finish with his schooling as soon as possible and "get to work": fourteen was "quite old enough for a lad to be put to doing some- thing. 5 ' But opinion has changed : men have come to see that a secondary education counts heavily in favour of those who have secured it ; and now the democracy are insist- ing that these novel benefits shall not be confined to the classes who can pay for them. On every hand cheap secondary schools THE YOUNG OF MAN 29 have been established, and boys and girls, with little discrimination as to talents or character, flock to them, thus extending to seventeen or eighteen their " period of in- fancy." But the " leisure " and freedom of secondary education is not good for all, only for those, whether rich or poor, whose character is fitted for it. In a later chapter we shall hope to show how these considerations may be applied to the problem of secondary education. 5. It will be readily seen what grave anxieties are here presented as to the kind of schooling which is offered to the rising generation. The normal animal instinct would lead a child, as he enlarges his economic experience, to forage for himself, to provide for his own wants and those of his kin ; but instincts may be partly suppressed or atrophied, and a false type of schooling comes into vogue, which extends not only the period of helplessness, but the inner attitude of helplessness and dependence. Thus a type of being is created that refuses to forage, a parasite preying on his fellows, a drone, w r hose body will defile the hive unless it be expelled. Such a type of schooling may become perilous to the welfare of an entire people; and the questions it raises invite us into regions of political controversy beyond the ambition of this book. A survey of 30 THE SCHOOL the types of schooling offered in English- speaking countries would show that most children are still being trained to take a share both in the economic and civic responsibilities of the coming age; but others are indulged with fatal habits of dependence, while a third class learn the habits of the soldier-ant, who maintains his economic independence by " governing " his servants. Such a man cannot forage, but he has learnt the arts of control, and thus can induce others, black and white, to forage for him. With the varied resources and the varied responsi- bilities of the British Empire it would appear that there is room for all three classes for many years to come. CHAPTER III THE RISE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 1. IN this preliminary inquiry as to the origin of the School we have used the phrase " the adult community " as standing apart from " the young." But this requires further analysis. How does " the adult community " go about to fulfil its function ? The work has indeed been of slow growth. We have already taken a glance at those far-off days when man first found himself able not only to " struggle for existence " but to struggle with himself, rising to higher things. We saw that it was due to those first efforts of liberal education which were to be witnessed round the domestic hearth. And technical education finds its origin in ages equally remote. What an animal learns from his parents is an affair of blind imitation, and so to a large extent it has been and always will be with mankind; but human elders have always been ready to explain, to show the how and why of tool and con- trivance. Now just at the point where such 31 32 THE SCHOOL explanation took shape as a deliberate design, there we must admit the dawning not only of apprenticeship but of an art of education in its technical aspect. Thus began schooling as an indispens- able duty of the family and to the family the adult community assigned the task. The tribe, for other purposes, combined and re-grouped itself in various ways, but, in primi- tive times, the advancement of the young, as regards both skill and knowledge, rested with the parents, and could not be regarded apart from the problem of family sustenance and family progress. In spite of the varied experiments made in ancient and in modern states to relieve the family of this burden, it would still appear that the soundness of the body politic greatly depends upon the proper discharge of this function. The neglect of it in any household leads to degeneracy. Both in the squalid shelters (not to be called " homes ") of the lowliest poor and at the opposite pole of society, where some of the wealthy leave their offspring to the sole care of nurses and tutors, the same disastrous phenomenon is seen. 2. Education, then, took its rise in the Family, and can never be safely severed from it. But with the growth of civilized com- munities something more has been demanded : EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 33 life becomes more complex, ideals seek a wider range; families combine into tribes, tribes into nations. Culture, which burned with feeble flame on the family altar, becomes organized on a wider scale; the need is ex- perienced for a separate caste, a tribe of Levi, a band of Druids who shall tend the sacred fire, and foster the traditions, the passions which make a People and a Race. Many tribes, indeed, felt so deeply this demand for spiritual guidance that they took shape as a theocracy, with a national polity controlled by the chiefs of their religion, readily sub- mitting their destiny on earth to those privileged ones who enjoyed communion with heaven. Hence education, at its earliest appearance as an organized scheme, is the concern of priests and clergy; even in com- munities where civil and religious authority stood apart, the latter retained control of the organized processes of culture. Whatever share might be retained by the Family, all the more public and permanent attributes of culture were absorbed by a caste whose power in- creased with every advance in human know- ledge. Here is the origin of the school, as an institution 9 i. e. a collection of scholars from various households ; with a teacher, the agent placed in charge of the institution. It should be observed that the first type 34 THE SCHOOL of school to be evolved is a professional one; the teacher's first concern is to re- produce his own type, to care for succession within the caste. In the darkest days of Israel, "when the Lamp of God had almost gone out," the child Samuel is called to minister before Eli. In such periods there can be no distinction between secular and religious education : law, medicine, fine art, science, all arose from the same sacred fountain and poured their treasures into the same sanctuary; all these materials of pro- gress and culture were jealously preserved by the guardians of the spiritual mysteries. Confining this superficial survey to Christian Europe, we may say that, up to the epoch of the Renaissance, no other conception of the control of education was possible. 3. And yet, without any conscious recog- nition of severance, two or three movements were at work in which the layman operated apart from his spiritual adviser. The leisured classes (if one may speak of leisure in days when idleness was unknown) developed a form of education adapted to the needs of the court. The page submitted to a long- course of schooling before he was at last sent forth a belted knight. The profession of arms had become a highly organized career, sharply in contrast to the clerical calling. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 35 True, our Odo of Bayeux could wield a mace as easily as his crozier, but he had few successors; succeeding times demanded a finer specialization of employment. Thus the princes of this world, restive then as now under the clerical yoke, took a hint from the methods of the Church and turned school- master ; the elaborate example of the monas- tery was countered by the equally elaborate equipment of the castle, where, to use the modern phrase, " the governing and directing classes " were taught to fight and rule. " To rule " as well as to fight, for Law was the earliest of the professions to strive against Church supremacy; canon law was met by common law ; and to the training of the clerk in the monastery, and of the page in the castle, there had already been added, before the days of Chaucer, that of the lawyer in the secular court. At a lowlier level the growth of city life laid the foundation of an apprenticeship system. Trade guilds were as highly organ- ized as were the grander corporations of Church and of nobility. Wealth, here as elsewhere, gave leisure for citizens to school the young in the arts of the counting-house and workshop : the problems of commercial and technical instruction were being handled in many a European city; the grammar 36 THE SCHOOL school and song school were left to the clergy, but the humbler task of fitting the lad for his secular calling was not neglected either by merchant or by craftsman. At the present moment, in America, voca- tional education is being discussed as if some novel principle were at issue, but the story is an old one; ever since the dawn of schooling the claims of Vocation have con- tended for supremacy with the Family and the Church, and they now seek to influence the State, which, as we shall see, takes a masterful direction of the whole machinery. 4. Now, while these types of school train- ing for knighthood, for law, for trade like the monastic school, prepared for a definite career* they differed therefrom in being conducted without the aid of professional teachers. In more primitive times the father had trained his sons both to fight, to barter and to manu- facture; this duty is shared by others, but it is not as yet devolved upon persons set apart for the task : such instruction is merely a supplement to the daily toil. The Church, which at earlier epochs had created and fostered the school, was the first to evolve the professional teacher, with his special school-craft, with his grammar, his Trivium and Quadrivium a liberal education, valu- able in itself apart from its relation to other EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 37 departments of the clerical life. True, the teacher remained for long attached to the ecclesiastical order; just as lawyers and physicians up to the seventeenth century were largely clerical, so up to our own epoch, the teacher retained his alliance with this order, which made of teaching a distinctive function. It was in the universities that the separation first began : long before the defiance of Rome by Luther, these resorts of learning had rebelled against the traditional rights of bishop and pope; and although sympathies between the scholar and the priest will always exist, they have tended more and more since those days to reach their goal by different routes. But, apart from universities, school- ing in medieval times remained as an affair of religion. The grammar school, in its origin a professional school for the clergy, had long ago opened its doors more widely; among the boys who flocked to school in the Middle Ages there were many who sought liberal culture apart from clerical aims, and the Church welcomed them and taught them freely. She had her reward at a later day : when the storm of Reformation broke over Europe, when the voice of pastor and priest lost much of its power over men's affections, they were still permitted to keep their hold over the young, controlling the school which 38 THE SCHOOL they had founded and fostered for the benefit of mankind. Throughout Europe the same rule pre- vailed. Like the Catholic priest the Protestant pastor retained the oversight of schools within his sphere; among Englishmen the Puritans, alike in old England and new, rivalled the ancient Church in zeal for teach- ing : when Acts of Uniformity drove a dis- senting clergyman from his parish he found occupation, if not solace, in the instruction of youth. Nor did the tie weaken in later days. When, at the close of the seventeenth century, the Charity School was set on foot, it was the clergyman who fathered it, and the aim of the teacher was still directed rather to piety than learning. In the succeed- ing century, when the demand for universal schooling arose in every European coun- try, the churches found a new field for the exercise of their influence, more extensive, although less exalted, than their sphere in medieval ages. In earlier days the Catholic Church had shared with universities and grammar schools the ideal of liberal cul- ture ; now, in an altered world, the Churches, no longer one but many, have taken their share in handing on the torch to the humble and the poor. It is not surprising, therefore, that the EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 39 teacher is still in many quarters regarded as a lay ministrant to the clergy : as a pro- fessional man he still finds his social status largely as an adjunct to "the cloth"; no wonder that the Churches, especially those of ancient fame, continue a claim upon their offspring. The resistance to these claims is also a matter of history as well as of present politics; it might well be sketched as one act in the great tragedy wherein State and Church have been protagonists since the days of Constantihe. For it is the State which emerges, in ofte shape or another aristocratic or democratic, local or central as a fourth corporation, rivalling the Family, the Vocation and the Church in the control of school and teacher. Luther looked to the princes of Germany to help little children to spell out the word of God : the modern Socialist l says boldly, "the State is the Over-Parent, the Outer-Parent." While the Family cares with instinctive jealousy for the welfare of the individual child, and the Church, with lofty ideals, claims him for the service of the Eternal, the State is envious of both, and insists that the care of the young is a prime duty of Government. Long years ago the Churches discovered 1 H. G. Wells : Socialism and the Family, p. 57. 40 THE SCHOOL that the School was the true recruiting-ground for adherents; at last her rivals have copied her example : every new movement, in com- merce, in art, in politics, seeks to " capture " the teacher and the schools, until the problem of the children, instead of being the dullest of political issues, threatens to prove not only the most perplexing, but the most absorbing topic which can engage the attention of public men. An analysis of these claims, and an attempt to reconcile them under the conditions of our time, must be deferred to a later chapter. 5. Thus, by taking a hasty survey of more primitive conditions, we find the ground prepared for considering the func- tion of the School. Education, as we shall discuss it, is concerned with the young, the immature; it is something specific and deliberate, added to the vague influences of environment and circumstance which attend the growth of experience; and, in its origin at least, concerned with the higher, the spiritual needs of man. If man had been content to " live by bread alone," the young of man might have continued to seek physical survival by process of imitation : but the school is the product of their aspiration. The School is not a building, but an in- stitution, with two factors the scholars and EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 41 s their teacher : the latter, after the lapse of ages, finds for himself a separate career, a part to play in the complex drama of a modern nation. Within his school he is a master, cut oft from his fellows by the distinctive marks of his profession ; but they in turn, as parents, as clergy, as officers of State, are his masters and contend for his obedience. But before attempting to reconcile this con- flict, we must turn back; we shall be better able to consider who shall control the school if we first of all discuss its purpose. CHAPTER IV THE FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 1. IN the above chapters we have already noted the first common-sense reason for maintaining schools. We may express this by the formula enlargement of experience. The child needs, for example, the three H's, practice in using his hands, knowledge of history and geography, command of tools; some of these experiences he can, perhaps, more effectively gain at home, but, on the whole, he is found to be better adapted to his environment if he goes to school, especially as he there meets with his fellows, learning from them as much as from his teachers. But this naive account of the situation merely disguises the difficulties of the theme before us, for when we endeavour to realize proper aims for the school and the limits to be assigned to these, we are confronted with the most per- plexing chapter of educational science. For, first, this simple formula assumes that enlargement of experience is a process analo- gous to feeding : we, the adults, are to impart, 42 FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 43 while the young are to receive with open mouths. Too often is teaching thus crudely conceived as a mechanical process wherein the subject, vaguely called " the child," receives with docility the superior, ready-made learning of his seniors. But " the child " who attends an educational institution, at any age from three to twenty-three, is a rapidly changing being who, as we shall see in the next chapter, undergoes strange trans- formations, passing through stages or periods in each of which his reaction to experience assumes a different shape. Secondly, in spite of helplessness, this sturdy " infant," so far from taking all we offer him for granted, is on the road to conquest over his elders ! The relation between old and young should not be conceived as something fixed and static; the one meekly accepting what the other authoritatively distributes. While to all appearance the child is being moulded and formed to suit the plans of those set over him, he is unconsciously a rebel, preparing in silence to underpin the walls which have sheltered him ; he begins in childhood a life-long struggle between con- vention and freedom, and one function of the school is to give fair scope for this spirit of independence : " where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,'' is a doctrine which 44 THE SCHOOL serves us in pedagogy as much as in religion or politics. Thirdly, this desire for freedom is not merely self-assertion, but it springs from the same source as that " divine discontent " which was suggested in an earlier chapter ; it is the supreme function of the school to foster ideals, or, to speak in more technical terms, to help the young to evaluate experience, establishing their own standards for appre- ciation, in every department of conduct and life. Just as, in matters of sense-experi- ence, the scholar replaces his vague percep- tions of distance and size by standards of measurement which become year by year more accurate, until the man of science fully armed can approximate to the truth with astonishing minuteness, so in matters of behaviour man is on the search for standards by which to measure up the worth of whatever is offered him. Now, any adequate review of the purposes which a school has to fulfil must take account of each of these features of the situation, and I shall hope, after examining them more closely (commencing with the third), to arrive at a statement of these purposes which will be found to accord with the inner meaning of the movements by which, both in England and abroad, the face of school education is FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 45 being slowly readjusted to a new social order. 2. Standards of satisfaction. As the varied world of experience opens before the child, he begins to form his tastes, places a high value on this while despising that : unsatisfied always, but gradually, as the years pass, find- ing limits to the hopes and fears that can possess him. Now the school, under favour- able conditions, can play a dominant part in this process, for it seizes on the leisure time of life; it prevents the child from " sinking back into the beast," by calling his attention to things that are " lovely and of good report " : thus he is helped in creating his system of values, which form the basis of his character. " The hart panteth after the water-brooks " and therewith his measure is taken, his limits are reached ; man also manifests desire, but his standards reach higher; he needs water from the brook, but he has discovered also a longing for God. This, I repeat, will always be the chief end of schooling : men's standards will change, systems of theology and morals, of knowledge and art, will come and go, but the worth of a man, to himself and to his generation, will always depend supremely upon his taste, upon his choice of satisfactions out of the numberless avenues of experience to which 46 THE SCHOOL modern life invites him. No doubt these avenues are wider for the children of the leisured class, but the great things of life, even its finest possibilities, are no longer confined to the wealthy : the child of poverty can be poet, preacher, man of science, if he chooses such a path. And now, as in earlier days, however much the facts may be forgotten or disguised, schools are maintained because men want children to set their affections on what is worthiest. Our contentions for mastery over the schools wax so fierce simply because we differ so fundamentally in our conception of what is worthy of esteem. But quarrel as we adults may among ourselves in our declara- tions of faith, we are compelled to unite in recognizing that the young will pursue the same restless quest which has stirred the human spirit in all the ages. And, while the manner of this contention is often a humiliation to Christian men, it at any rate proves the earnestness with which, now as at the dawn of education, men are determined to keep open for the young the roads that point to the stars. Fight as they may among themselves, secularist and ortho- dox contend for control of the children just because the issue at stake touches man at the centre of his being. FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 47 3. Tradition v. Progress. Amid all these arguments, we can distinguish two oppos- ing forces, due, perhaps, to temperament as much as environment, which contend for the scholar's allegiance in every type of school : one relies upon the past, upon reverence for tradition, obedience to law, appreciation of the great things handed down by wise and famous men of old; the other bids youth forget the things that are behind, and find satisfaction in discharging his duty to the world about him; it shows him a vista of undiscovered values in science and art, and bids him seek new revelation there, letting " the dead bury their dead." Conservatism and Progress appear thus as contradictory claimants for the allegiance of the school, and we shall trace their influence again when we consider how the aims of the school govern our choice of " pursuits." Both seem to justify their right to engage the attention of youth ; however anxious a modern world may be lest youth should be ignorant of physiology, it is equally solicitous to preserve the memo- rials of our race, for it is only through these that idealism takes concrete shape. Much of the past may doubtless be " scrapped " as lumber, but at least a few cathedrals, a few stories such as that of the Prodigal Son, one or two Greek heroes, a few choice tracts of 48 THE SCHOOL glorious scenery, a Chippendale chair, and even the rude tools of primitive man all these help youth to shape his conception of life's meaning, viewing himself as heir of all the ages. But with equal eagerness the progressive spirit in the modern world attempts to capture the school on behalf of new know- ledge, and these efforts take shape as move- ments for technical or vocational education. The child must be so instructed as to be able to earn his bread, and at the present day when science, transportation, politics have trans- formed the adult world of manufacture and commerce, the schools are summoned to " wake up." In spite of the teacher's affection for culture, he is hustled into the market-place and challenged to prove the value of his wares in terms of salary and dividend. It would, however, be a caricature, even when writing for a " nation of shopkeepers," to repre- sent the advocates of Progress as merely con- cerned with the struggle for existence in commerce and industry. On the contrary, the sentiment here at work is universal in its range ; and it affects the school, because the elder generation, conscious of imperfection and failure, hopes, through schooling, to " call in a new world to redress the balance of the old." " My school-days," says the father, " were passed idly and unprofitably enough ; my FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 49 children at least shall not suffer that mis- fortune." So, where he learnt only some scraps of Latin, they shall add French and German; formerly an outline of natural history, with " the use of the globes," was all that science offered to the young; now every decade presses a new discovery upon his wearied brain the chemist, the physicist, the electrician, the botanist, the geographer, all claim that the progress their studies have made should be represented in the school curriculum : and we must refrain from attempting even to catalogue the list of social sciences which, under various rubrics, are pressed on the attention of the young. 4. Convention v. Freedom. This rivalry between old standards and new does not, however, complete the picture. Values are abstract, ideals are in the clouds; they are brought down to earth by means of symbols, ceremonies, customs ; men hold together and retain their kinship only by the agency of settled machinery which represents and re- covers through the sign, the living reality which it signifies. Value which intrinsically belongs to the original is thus transferred to the image; and degeneration in man, as man, has always been recognized when he learns to worship idols, and finds his satis- faction in obeying the tyranny of custom; 50 THE SCHOOL conformity, submission, compromise there must be, but in his striving for a higher life, aesthetic, intellectual or moral, man ever reasserts his freedom and escapes once more the bondage of forms and conventions. Now the school has always been seized upon as a ready means for preserving the continuity of settled forms. " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." As conceived in earlier times, this institution was an exclusive society, ex- pressly designed to reinforce the efforts of family and clan to conserve the distinctive qualities of the stock. This is the proper definition of " culture," imparting the mys- teries of the cult language, arts, manners, rites to shape the correct form in which youth is to be bred. And let no one suppose that the process as witnessed to-day is merely a survival of by- gone practices : on the contrary, it is a per- manent characteristic of all community life. Conventions and symbols are necessary ; they are only mischievous when they usurp the place of reality. The young are ready enough to imitate the habits of their elders : practical though they are in many senses, they are also sociable, and intuitively accept the style of the life about them. And yet the rising generation, as we have seen, cannot FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 51 accept without change the standards and values of its forbears; for all who, putting away childish things, become men in any real sense, the transformation from infancy to manhood is essentially an advance from a life controlled by custom to a life of inner freedom; as children, we see through the glass darkly ; as men, we face experience with open eyes. Hence the new wine, the gospel revealed unto babes, cannot be confined in the old bottles of convention ; it was surely in some such sense that Jesus of Nazareth spoke when, smiling at the little ones, He averred that of such is the kingdom of heaven. It can readily be understood how effectively scholastic methods have aided in the main- tenance of established modes of culture. The school-masters, agents in this process, are themselves the chief upholders of discipline and custom. They themselves have been " schooled " to discharge their office by devo- tion to the accredited symbols of culture, and too often, shut as they are within the cloister of their profession, they make a fetish of these disciplines and neglect the eternal values, the realities of experience from which their culture took its rise. The study of Greek among Western nations at the present day offers a striking illustration. 52 THE SCHOOL Gifted boys and girls, especially when aided by teachers who appreciate the imperishable things of Hellas such scholars carry their study from the letter to the spirit and marvel- lously expand their view of life. But when teachers and scholars with scantier equip- ment pursue the Greek language, they are worshipping a fetish : their pursuit of ancient forms of speech renders little service be- yond attaching them closer to the rank and class which they attempt to adorn. Nor must we assume that the traditional studies, of which Greek and Latin are typical, are alone subject to the process by which the realities of experience may sink to the level of meaningless custom. On the contrary, the inevitable tendency amongst those who force new pursuits into the school curriculum under the plea of practical necessity for life's voca- tions, is to mould these studies into a cultural system which, to the young, appears no less mysterious and meaningless than much of the scholastic lore which has been handed down the centuries. The process is always the same, and in the interest alike of children's welfare and of the advancement of knowledge I invite the reader's careful attention to it. We may take as an example the efforts at reform made by Herbert Spencer, exerted through those four famous essays on Educa- FUNCTION OP THE SCHOOL 53 tion. Spencer voiced the progressive opinion of his time on behalf of science : the children are being deprived, he declared, of knowledge about all that lies in most direct relation to their needs ; they possess bodies and are ignorant of physiology ; even the mothers and daughters know nothing of the laws of nature which underlie the vital concerns of our domestic life. He succeeded in moving public opinion : those who controlled the schools became genuinely in earnest to arouse in the young a desire to learn about these things, and South Kensington examined millions of children in physiology and the laws of health. The result certainly has not met the hopes of those who started the scientific movement in schools. Undoubtedly they have succeeded in establishing the prestige of science : it is placed side by side with the more venerable pursuits of the academy, and all the machinery of learning is available on its behalf ; it takes rank, with its logic, its text-books, its examinations, as part of the cultural system ; the scientific man claims equal rank with those who profess more venerable cults. But, while thus elabor- ated and organized to suit the tastes of adult thinkers, the pursuit of science loses the very qualities which make it of service to the young. Chemical atoms have no advantage 54 THE SCHOOL over Greek particles unless the advantage becomes part and parcel of values realized and appreciated by the school-boy; physi- ology may be immensely important for the wel- fare of mankind, but all the exhortations of anxious reformers will not compel the young to care about it unless it can be brought into relation with their crude and unorganized experience. 5. We are here brought squarely face to face with that conflict of purposes which is at present acutely dividing the teaching body all over the world, and is the source of differ- ence oftentimes between parties neither of whom recognizes the origin of their dispute, We have seen that the school is adopted by the adult community as a vehicle for controlling values and ideals, presenting to the scholar the best that adult life affords, whether from the tradition of the race or from its stores discovered anew in art or science; and it uses the school as a means for rein- forcing by authority all that has grown to be accepted by society with the routine and symbol and style that both express their meaning and stamp them as approved. Thus the rising generation are trained to accept values for life on the model of their elders; and are expected to find satisfaction, both for behaviour and for thought, in docile FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 55 acceptance of what they are " taught." But when we actually examine the facts, that is, when we observe the phenomena of child nature; even when we merely diagnose the method by which the rising generation brushes aside the tradition of the elders, we have to admit that only half of the story has yet been told. The situation, indeed, is not without its pathos, as every father and mother can bear witness, when the youngsters take flight from the nest. For hitherto we have treated the relation between young and old as a static one, whereas both are on a moving plane, and the youngster moves fastest, with stronger impulse and with surer footing. True enough, as we saw above, the young are helpless, and are ready to receive all that they can secure in gift from their elders ; but they reconvert to their own purposes the treasures of learning that are poured upon them. It is their pro- vince to rediscover, to discard and reject all that does not serve their purpose. We are not far gone in the twentieth century, and already the young bloods of literature are telling us that the nineteenth century, nurtured on Darwin and Tennyson, is a " back-number " ! With due docility our young people obey the conventions which we enjoin, learn with diligence the grammar and mathematics, the cricket or the drill which we impose, but all 56 THE SCHOOL the while their inner nature is preparing to break with convention, and roam afield in search of alien ideals. While we fondly rule our offspring as though we were gods, training them after our own image, they are unconscious rebels, feeling somehow that revolution is necessary for the salvation of mankind. We can, perhaps, from this standpoint best explain the immense influence of Rousseau and of Pestalozzi. When we set a student of education to read mile or Leonhard und Gertud he often becomes impatient : while acknowledging the strength of their senti- ments, and their devotion to the young, he feels that many of their chapters are trivial and banal, sometimes even grotesque; and he cannot conceive how their contemporaries can have been so stirred by these romances; he demurs when we insist that this age and these men saw the dawn of a new epoch in schooling. The explanation is easy when we remember that western Europe was opening up the era of democracy, of political freedom : and the same sentiment that made Burns declare " a man's a man for a' that," startled the world to the possibility that children also might be " free " ! True, neither Pestalozzi nor Rousseau put the situation in these terms : with them it was a plea for Return to Nature (with a capital N, which stood for much FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 57 nonsense also); but they were in reality voicing the revolt of the rising generation against those tyrannies of custom which, by its schooling, had oppressed the child in education more heavily than his parents had been oppressed in the world of politics or economics. Thus we see emerging an aim for the school, which has gathered force from a hundred contributing streams since the days of Pestalozzi : it opposes at every turn the rigour of accepted convention, and claims initiative, independence, freedom for the child. Helpless as he is, ready to wander and be lost as he may be, he must yet be " free," and we, on his behalf, should cherish his freedom and allow him, as a set principle, to do much for himself and to imagine that he is doing even more than he actually achieves. If to some readers this explanation appears unbalanced, I am convinced that others will recognize it as a true interpretation of pheno- mena which can be observed not only or chiefly in school, but in every house where there are children. Time out of mind the old folk have lamented that the young are less disciplined, more " independent," than they themselves were in like case; but this com- plaint has never been so widespread or so well founded as during the last fifty years. In other words, the spirit of democracy, of 58 THE SCHOOL equality call it what you please has inevit- ably affected men's attitude towards the family and the child, and it is at last slowly penetrating our views as to the purpose and method of the school. Any one who takes up the pedagogic literature which is especially characteristic of our epoch (I may, perhaps, single out the writings of John Dewey as being most significant), will find this same key- note running through it all, viz. the desire to let the child live his own life and settle his own system of values. So far from resenting his self-possession and independence, we should recognize that such an attitude (if natural and not merely a pose) is essen- tial to orderly growth towards manhood and womanhood. 6. We must dwell a moment longer on this topic, for we meet here with one of the critical problems of contemporary education. Free- dom is a fine word to juggle with, but we hope that we are making clear precisely what it is from which the child may seek to be freed : it is freedom from convention, from symbol when to him the symbol is merely a sign, from custom when the custom can plead only usage and not use in its defence. In the best of schools, the machinery of formal lessons can- not but be artificial : the standing reproach against teachers is non vitce sed scholce FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 59 discunt, they teach for school and not for life. The more this machinery has been elaborated in modern days, the more it tends to defeat its end : codes and rules, time-tables and programmes, all, if pushed to excess, serve as a hindrance to personal development. Character is a make-up of many qualities, but some of these at least are due to the spirit of independence. After all is said, character can only be my character : if it has not been formed by me, if I am not allowed choice, at least in details, if I cannot say Yes or No, then the virtues are merely borrowed : and the outcome is not a character but an understudy. The child in all periods of history has mani- fested the same desire to try his wings, and his efforts begin to be recognized in this epoch simply because the spirit of freedom, if not of licence, is everywhere in the air and challenges convention at every turn. That its presence in the schoolroom is often unwelcome, that its advent is so long delayed is not surprising. The School is always a day behind the fair : the stir of philosophy, of science, of politics, only penetrates slowly within its walls : and in an issue where so much is at stake, where the antagonists are so fairly matched, one can Scarcely be surprised if the anxious teacher hesitates to embark his restless youngsters on the adventure to which educational reformers 60 THE SCHOOL would entice him. True, the teacher seeks freedom for himself, but that is a different matter : as we shall see below, all who take a hand in controlling the schools are united in demanding elbow-room. In England many authorities are concerned in school organization; we have so many inspectors, secretaries of boards, principals of schools, each entitled to his freedom from superior authority, that little independence or initiative can be left to the scholar : and from what one hears abroad even ultra-democratic communi- ties, such as the United States or our own colonies, seldom realize how thoroughly the spirit of democracy is invading the classroom. So we witness the rival forces of discipline and freedom encountering at every turn. In all relations of life, if a man is to play his part and render service he must accept convention, learn habits of submission, restraining the " unchartered freedom " in which youth delights ; but if the inner spirit is depressed, if the instinct for liberty in the larger and deeper issues of life is quelled by authority, then the school has stopped the springs of being at its source. 7. We have so far described the function of the School as concerned, in the realm of values, with compromise between the claims of tradition and progress; and, in the relations FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 61 of children to the adult society, with com- promise between convention and indepen- dence. But, it may be asked, why not be more precise ? Why not lay down the law at once and indicate on behalf of children what standards of taste are to be accepted; why not formulate an ideal and give substance to these eternal values after which the child should aspire ? and, as regards freedom, why not define the limits where convention must be rejected or accepted ? It is at this point that a sharp difference in method reveals itself between the new pedagogy and the old. We are attempting in these chapters to exhibit the trend of thought among modern students of education, in their search to find secure footing for a new science (if we may make pretensions to such a title). Now, the first obligation imposed upon any profession which seeks to systematize its practice in theoretic terms is to recognize the limits to its range, and if we can to-day, in any sense, speak of a science of Education, it is because we see more clearly than the pioneers were able to do the boundaries of our field. The text- books of education are strewn with abortive efforts to cover the whole range of philosophy ; assuming the right, even the duty, of the school-teacher to determine issues which lie beyond his authority. But it is not for him 62 THE SCHOOL to decide between the warring camps of ethics and of religion, or to settle the balance be- tween humanities and science. In earlier days men like Locke in England, Herbart in Germany, or Laurie in Scotland, did attempt these bolder flights : endowed with great philosophic insight, and experienced also as instructors of youth, they expounded a com- plete system; setting out with a noble ideal for humanity, they deduced from this a complete scheme for the work of the school- master which, if steadily pursued, would educate youth to perfect man. These were great achievements, and as examples for study are beyond praise : chief among them, the Herbartian System as elaborated by Herbart's disciples (of whom Rein at Jena continues to be the most distinguished exponent) is of abiding worth. But the example of these great thinkers is scarcely likely to be imitated, for, with the increasing specialization of function which characterizes the modern world, we shall not again find a philosopher to compare with these great minds of the past, who framed a system of ethics and philosophy which could be re- duced to the terms of an educational manual. The teacher, like workers in other professions and callings, has to accept his place, and although to some it may be regarded as a FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 63 derogation of his office, he appears to me to be transgressing his function when he claims to impose his own ideals, his personal philosophy of life upon the school. These young folk are not his own to handle as he pleases : they belong to the home, to the State, oftentimes also to a Church : and the teacher is the servant of the community, not its master. Nay, more, the child, as we have seen, means to be his own master some day, and he w r ill not be grateful to his teachers if they have endeavoured to cramp his experience by a philosophic system conceived by a teacher in the study. Other considerations reinforce this view. We distinguished at the outset between school- ing and education because the large field of education includes every means by which the race, both adult and young, seeks the higher purposes of existence ; but the school is limited to immature beings, who are only feeling their way in matters of conduct : ideals, like every other form of experience, are in process of growth; the youth's ethic is simple, his view of morals primitive; in days not far distant he will no doubt take flight, and may range beyond the boldest aspirations of his teacher, but for the present he is content with the simplest fare. For the teacher also this is the wisest course. Like every professional man, he is an actor, playing a professional 64 THE SCHOOL part. When alone, or with other adults, he can find scope for adult modes of experi- ence; can see the world with larger vision, can drop the school-master and find relief in the thoughts and feelings of his con- temporaries. There is no hypocrisy here, although there is restraint ; there is submission to convention ; for the obligations of his post require that a man who lives among children shall be a child while in their company, but shall, for their sakes as well as his own, main- tain his personal freedom among the men and women of his own age. Is there not, after all, a smack of insincerity in the more popular view which lays upon the school and the teacher excessive and exclusive obligations as regards morals and the training of character ? The school is not the only place where right conduct is to be imposed. If righteousness is in demand, is it more necessary in the city school than in the City Council ? Is it for the good of the community that an Education Board should be more moral and religious than a Board of Health ? The school and its teachers are the creation of the community : the teachers spring from " the people," and the people control the schooling : hence the ethics of the school, its standards and ideals, are such as its creators fashion As Professor Dewey has warned us : " There FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 65 cannot be two sets of ethical principles, or two forms of ethical theory, one for life in the school and the other for life outside of the school." It has been the dream of theorists that our places of education, by some magical influence, should regenerate the nation and create a new type of man; the literature of the Victorian era, at the epoch when education was first made compulsory, is full of sentiments of this kind. That dream has gone, but we can replace it by a larger hope : the school is no longer to be a special preserve for morals, with its teachers cut off from their kind as a lay clergy dispensing a special cult, but we may witness it increasing its hold on the affections of the community when it frankly stands side by side with the market-place and the factory, sharing with them a code and an ideal which will inform every region of conduct and every rank of society. We can agree, then, with those who hold that the work of the school must be placed on an ethical basis, but are conscious of no derogation from the loftiness of the teacher's office when we bid him accept what I have elsewhere described as the Ethics of the Period. He does not create this ideal, but his school activities should express it with all intensity and sincerity, In engaging its teachers the 66 THE SCHOOL State can expect no more from them than it desires from all good citizens ; true, many of them have dedicated their lives to the service of humanity from elevated altruistic motives, thinking more of the ideal purpose than of the rate of pay : happy are the children who come under the influence of such teachers : but that is not in the bond. Nor are such saints to be found among teachers and clergy alone : the life of consecration is pursued often in the strangest company, for " the wind bloweth where it listeth." Finally, we defend this limitation of the aims of schooling from another point of view, from the standpoint, namely, of the psycho- logist; for there is a subtle danger to the healthy development of children n the common attitude which brings either religious practice or ethical reflection too much into the focus of the child's attention. Here, again, the writer has no desire to disparage the solicitude which the Churches and the moralists display on behalf of the young. But their error (at least until recent years) has been found in the neglect to study the child's nature; he is very open to suggestion, and responds readily to emotional appeals, but if the subject-matter of these appeals lies beyond his range, Jiis interest readily evapor- ates and his emotional response becomes a FUNCTION OP THE SCHOOL 67 mere convention. Those who exercise the healthiest influence over children, those, that is, who are most respected and beloved, whether teachers or parents, often hold them- selves in reserve; they refrain from probing too intimately into the recesses of the childish heart, they abstain from exhortation and rely upon suggestion rather than formal instruction. If high standards are to be the outcome of school experience, these must grow in the storm and sunshine of each day's events, not as a separate and specific product which can be exposed to view, but as the very breath of life. Here the intuitions of wise pastors and teachers correspond to the dictates of genetic psychology, which applies to the growth of moral ideas and sentiments those laws of development which will engage our attention in the following chapter. The moving of these deep currents of " moral thoughtfulness " should be looked for, not in the stage of childhood, but as the finest pro- duct of education during adolescence. 8. We thus bring into relief what now appears as the peculiar function of the profes- sional teacher : to be the student of a growing organism. The institution which he conducts is not merely a place for imparting instruction, but distinctively a place where all the re- sources of science are brought to bear upon 68 THE SCHOOL the problems of growth and change. This view of his calling becomes all the more im- pressive in modern days because the sphere of schooling is so greatly enlarged ; the progress of mankind may be imperilled by false conceptions of education, just as this progress may be ensured by ideals in har- mony with those vast designs which mould the destinies of creation. And if at every epoch these considerations were of weight, they impress us, above all, in these modern days because the spread of schooling and of culture accelerate at unex- ampled speed the spirit of change; a decade now serves to familiarize the world with novel- ties which, in earlier epochs, would have sufficed for a century. In such an epoch the school has to fulfil the function of a balance wheel, steadying the restless energy with which society enters upon novel adventures, giving time for childhood and youth to grow at easier pace to a mastery of a new age. Among these newer conceptions there is one which has of recent years successfully asserted its claim to be included within the functions of the school, and we may conclude this chapter with a brief allusion to it. Hither- to we have discussed the child's experience and needs as concerned solely with his mind and character, and in earlier days the school FUNCTION OP THE SCHOOL 69 had little concern with his physical equip- ment ; it was only in the boarding institution public endowed school at one end of the social scale or truant school at the opposite end that matters of health, food and clothing were deemed worthy of attention. But all this is now changed : science has taught us the intimate relation between physiology and psychology ; the physician has become indis- pensable as adviser and inspector of all types of school, and watches the condition both of teacher and of scholar. Twenty years ago, the opinion was universally held that while children might freely receive the higher gifts of spiritual and mental nurture, the school must abstain from affording the physical basis of a " free " breakfast, for fear of undermining parental responsibility; but to-day, in all countries where children are starving or sick, it is acknowledged that the function of the public school must include, with or without the aid of parents, due tendance for the physical frame ; and that the teacher, if need arise, must minister as a nurse as well as an instructor. 1 1 Space forbids any adequate discussion of the experi- ments with school clinics,, conducted in London since 1908. The pioneer of this movement, Miss Margaret McMillan, who combines a rare insight into child nature with the fervour of an apostle, is convincing many administrators that the school clinic is not only a logical 70 THE SCHOOL It is not surprising that this extension of our duty to children has led to much searching of heart; it now appears more plainly than before how fatally the young are trained if we lead them to expect all to be provided for them, without any return on their part; in former days, when The Family was the source not only of physical nurture, but of much intellectual nurture also, the child was re- quired to share in the domestic burdens of the household : to-day conditions are profoundly altered; not only among the dependent classes who hover on the verge of starvation, but in all ranks of society, the child has far less opportunity in his home environment of realizing the need for personal service. Thus a generation has grown up which tends in sequence of the Medical Inspection Act, but that it can be maintained by public authorities at comparatively small cost. Nor should this plan be regarded as suitable only for schools in slum neighbourhoods, although, no doubt, for such children the need is most urgent and the profit most obvious. The work of Dr. Clement Dukes long ago at Rugby, of Dr. Mumford more recently at the Man- chester Grammar School, to quote only two examples, shows what can be done for secondary schools, while as regards colleges and universities, the control of students' physical life established in many American institutions would repay careful study. The simple fact is that the collection of scholars day by day provides everywhere the opportunity for successful diagnosis and oversight such as can never be rivalled by the isolated efforts of family- practice. FUNCTION OF THE SCHOOL 71 its subconscious attitude towards life and duty to be dependent on the State, or on other powerful agencies which can, if they will, provide for its wants. It is not without significance that, during these same years, a school of thought has gained some influence in Europe which teaches men to look to the State for the complete regulation and main- tenance of the community ; no doubt, in the desperate condition of the abject poor in the great cities of Europe, it is not surprising that such a theory should strike root, apart from the influence of schooling, but if we recognize that men are moulded more by the indirect suggestion of their environment than by the open expression of opinion, then great weight should be attached to the subconscious effect on children of the elaborate provision made for them since the State has seriously under- taken to provide universal education. During some ten years of his life, the child witnesses the school with its apparatus, its teachers, its comforts provided for him with ever greater and greater care, solicitous more and more to please and interest him, solicitous not only for his mind, which is a remote affair, but for his stomach and his body replacing more and more the guardianship of home. Can we be surprised that here as elsewhere the child is father of the man, and that the out- 72 THE SCHOOL come of a philanthropic system which ignores child-nature while bestowing ungrudging gifts, is to create a type of adult nature which con- tinues to clamour for support ? The remedy will not certainly be found by putting back the clock : it can only be sought by a deeper study of the laws of growth ; by discovering, that is to say, such modes of conducting the pursuits of school as shall enable the child, not only of the indigent but of the prosperous family, to practise while under tutelage such habits of service as lie within his range, so that when he reaches years of discretion he will be truly " free," not only as a voter, but as a worker in his community. Thus it appears that the enlargement of the function of school to include hygiene and physical sustenance will compel those who control it to revise their conception of its curriculum and daily life ; and in a later chapter we shall offer hints as to how this may be effected. But we must first deal in more detail with those stages of growth which have already claimed our notice, and which demand consideration before we can with any success determine how to occupy young people during the years of school. CHAPTER V STAGES OF GROWTH (OE DEVELOPMENT) Now, growing double o'er the Stagirite, At least I soil no page with hread and milk, Nor crumple, dog's-ear, and deface hoys' way." IT may seem out of place to quote poetry in support of the researches of psychology, but when the poet is Browning an exception may be allowed. In Rabbi ben Ezra and in Development we find aid to our contemplation not only of childhood and of youth, but of those later stages which lie beyond the province of these chapters : " Youth shows but half ! " 1. The most convenient dividing line at which to begin the study of growth in a human being is that which marks the onset of adoles- cence. For not only are there decisive physical changes which mark the fuller ex- pression of sex both in its so-called primary and secondary characters, but the associated new mode of mental life is equally impor- tant as a turning-point in development. Stanley Hall, the chief investigator in this 73 74 THE SCHOOL field, writes : " Adolescence is a term now applied to a pretty well-marked stage, begin- ning at about thirteen with girls and a year later with boys, and lasting about ten years, to the period of complete sexual maturity. It is subdivided into pubescence, the first two years; youth proper, from sixteen to twenty in boys and perhaps fifteen to nineteen in girls ; and a finishing stage through the early twenties. The first stage is marked by a great increase in the rate of growth in both height and weight. It is a period of greater suscepti- bility to sickness for both sexes; but this vulnerability is due to the great changes, and the death-rate is lower in the early teens than at any other age. It is the time when there is the most rapid development of the heart and all the feelings and emotions. Fear, anger, love, pity, jealousy, emulation, ambition and sympathy are either now born or springing into their most intense life. Now young people are interested in adults, and one of their strong passions is to be treated as if they were mature. They desire to know, do, and be all that becomes a man or woman. Child- hood is ending, and plans for future vocations now spring into existence, and slowly grow definite and controlling." The important feature of the situation is that the adolescent looks upon his world with STAGES OF GROWTH 75 new eyes : and this world includes his own life to an extent that was impossible at earlier stages. As a child he was fond of exercising his motor powers, of watching the actions of other people and trying out these in his own experience; fond of repeating such an action and proud of attaining skill. But now as a youth (we may adopt the term youth as more convenient than adolescence to cover this entire period) he finds human behaviour to be of absorbing interest ; and since the field of exploration is so vast, since also it extends to the intimacies of his own behaviour, it is no wonder that time is required for adjustment : no wonder that a youth is often wayward and fanciful, appearing " difficult " to those who have him in charge. For he feels himself already a man, sharing our ideals, with im- pulses and emotions reaching far beyond the possibilities of attainment. On account of their outstanding importance for mankind, two realms of experience, viz. religious experience and the relations of the sexes, have been commonly regarded as claim- ing special attention in adolescence, for the one marks the spiritual progress of the race, while on the other depends its survival. Hence the guardians of youth, in all types of civilization, have taken these as their distinc- tive province. Indeed to many people the 76 THE SCHOOL whole life of youth is regarded as one pro- longed and anxious crisis, marked by instabil- ity and danger. There is some truth in this view, especially as regards the earlier years, which Arnold of Rugby used to describe as " the dangerous period " through which the lad must be " hastened " in order the more firmly to settle his outlook towards life on a foundation of " moral thoughtfulness " such as guides the actions of the grown man. There is truth also in this presentation when we contrast humanity in these years with the earlier stage from, say, eight to twelve which will receive our notice presently. But there is a grave risk in thus exagger- ating the outlines of the picture. To the youth himself, the new life is not a period of storm and stress, unless his environ- ment arouses the storm. He is new to the situation, and therefore at first lies open to suggestion from every quarter ; inexperienced in the new country, and eager for experience, he answers readily to every call. But the stir of moral and religious impulses and of the sex instincts is only one manifestation of the new life : the intellectual life also appeals to him on every side, just so far as his capacities and his opportunities permit. As Mr. Irving King says : " Wherever suggestion is strong enough, we find many instances of sudden STAGES OF GROWTH 77 awakenings in other spheres than the religious. The reason for their being relatively so abun- dant in the religious sphere is because ... a pressure is usually brought upon all within reach of such influences. . . . We find evi- dences of sudden awakenings in various direc- tions. Many boys and girls first become conscious of the meanings of various studies. After long periods of grinding in mathematics, language, literature, music, etc., the subjects suddenly clear up. We have instances of rapid changes from a pessimistic to an opti- mistic attitude, clearly attributable to a simple social suggestion." 2. While this new life is a definitely new mode of experience for all human beings, it is significant also as a parting of the ways between individuals or groups whose differ- ences in capacity have hitherto been concealed. Thus in America, in schools where white and coloured children are taught together, it is often found that the coloured race will com- pete with success up to the age of twelve, but thereafter they fall behind. It would appear as if the qualities inherited by man from remote ancestry, shared by an entire group, serve the child adequately until the dawn of adolescence ; the more immediate inheritance then comes into play, and a man of good stock forges ahead, rejoicing in the freedom of his 78 THE SCHOOL new powers, impatient of restraint ; while the mass of mankind remain content with the conventional experience which sufficed for their ancestors. Hence we find that nations, or rather groups within nations, which care for good breeding and have mastered a machinery of culture, seek to assist nature by fostering systems of schooling especially adapted to this period, while laying less stress upon the years of childhood. Greek education was the most conspicuous example in ancient times, as is the higher English education in modern times. For, if we may revert for a moment to an earlier chapter, it is in youth that the man or woman learns to fix standards of value; " all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them " are spread before him, and he makes his choice. At first there is inconsistency; every month displays a new affection; sug- gestions pour in from every quarter; but as the years of youth pass by the steady pressure of a system of culture asserts its sway and fixes the style, the standards, the ideals for a lifetime. The strongest intellects, the fiercest emotions, resist the pressure more or less, and hence we witness so often the victory of rebel- lious youth. Revolt, here as elsewhere, is justified by success : the man or woman who has the gifts, the inborn capacity to STAGES OF GROWTH 79 assert his own supremacy, can spurn the strongest pressure of social or academic cul- ture. From such situations emerge the poets, the thinkers, the innovators of all kinds : for these youth is indeed a period of storm and stress. Now the fact is that these exceptional char- acters have always claimed special attention from observers and biographers, and to this cause one attributes the exaggerated views of men like Stanley Hall as to what should be the normal course of development. The adult always tends to exaggerate the importance of adult (i.e. of his own) life, and to estimate the earlier stages merely from his point of view, i.e. as preparatory exercises for the achievements of maturity. Hence his desire to capture the youth, while still plastic, on behalf of those values which seem to him of most importance ; hence his alarm when biographies of great men reveal the excesses of the adolescent in rebellion, or when devoted educators such as Arnold of Rugby and Stanley Hall sound a note of warning. But to the youth him- self, the present life affords a sufficiently varied scene : the period is not merely a preparation, but is itself a life; and if it ends there, it has issued not only in promise but in fulfilment. Hence a deeper sympathy with youth would 80 THE SCHOOL caution teachers and parents to restrain their hand : not indeed from the cynical point of view which approves of sowing wild oats, but from a larger trust in human nature, and a sounder confidence in the wisdom of the coming race. " It is questionable, therefore, whether in early adolescence strong social pressure should ever be brought to bear upon the youth in any one direction. The most normal development will be attained by letting him live in the midst of a society occupied with its customary functions." 3. The later years of adolescence, from about eighteen to twenty-three, are merely dis- tinguished from the earlier by the extent to which habits and ideals have become fixed; statistics of physical development, height, weight, etc., havejbeen adequately secured, but these can scarcely be correlated with pro- gress in mental development, for this last is partly conditioned by environment and oppor- tunity. No common standard can be laid down to describe the mental growth of a labouring man who from the age of fourteen has spent his best energies in making bricks, along with that of a college student whose interests have been divided between the foot- ball field and the laboratory. Nor, again, can either of these be discussed along with the scope for initiative provided for a youth of STAGES OP GROWTH 81 capacity who is placed in responsible charge of affairs before he is twenty years of age. As we have seen, the advancement of culture has brought with it an extension of the duration of schooling far beyond the legal age of adult- hood : and while this is a wise provision for those who are fit for it, all our knowledge of youth's capacity warns us that the academic life, affording, as it does, small outlet for achievement except in sports or in debating clubs, scarcely corresponds to the requirements of the period during these closing years. The Black Prince won his spurs at Cregy before he was seventeen; William Pitt and Fox w r ere in Parliament before they were twenty-two, These were, of course, exceptional natures, trained precociously for public affairs, spring- ing, too, from a stock that fostered their capa- cities ; but they may serve to show the trend of adolescent development, and to mark the difference between the earlier and later stages. Young men, and women too, want scope for energy; not, indeed, that they are always fit to embark upon their final career in life, but they are anxious to "try their hand"; and the healthiest system of culture is surely one which gives scope during these " years of wandering " for some independence in achievement. If, by w r ay of summary, one had to give F 82 THE SCHOOL advice to those who are to take the charge of youth, we might urge, first, that normal sub- mission to custom and environment should be enforced, but that variation and even eccen- tricity should not be too harshly judged; secondly, that variety of outlook and experi- ence, both of men and of things, should be afforded; above all, that the best of these, both the personal influence of sympathetic and generous teachers and the guidance of the best in literature, science and the arts should be presented. Much will be rejected, but what is retained will be retained for life, and the gratitude of youth to those who provide it with discipline and sympathy is boundless. 4. Turning now to the earlier life of child- hood, we are embarrassed by the variety of lines of demarcation drawn by different investiga- tors. We can all recognize the advance in ex- perience made by the infant when he learns to walk and to speak, but if at later stages we are too positive in correlating age with capacity our conclusions may be questioned. There is, however, one well-marked point of departure : at about the age of eight the brain has grown to its full weight, and this achievement must be admitted as having decisive bearing upon the mental life as well. Hence we may mark off the years eight or nine to twelve or STAGES OF GROWTH 83 thirteen from that of childhood proper, which reaches from infancy to the age of eight. Here, again, it is necessary to urge that each span of years in itself is a complete stage, with its own mood of reaction to experience, its own standards of satisfaction even as the caterpillar stage is a life distinct from that of the moth. On emerging from infancy the little child sets out to master the world, i. e. to make in succession a series of differentiations breaking up the unity into a finer and still finer range of discriminations. To the baby in the cradle a coloured ball is not a separate object, but just a stimulus which evokes an immediate response : he has not differentiated between himself and the object, or between the object and the activity which it calls forth. For the grown man the same stimulus, if it secures his attention at all, calls up an inconceivably com- plex response : and for every adult the re- sponse will be different. The task of the psychologist is to describe the order of this process of differentiation; to interpret, that is, the relation of overt acts to the whole field of consciousness and not merely to some mental power, such as imagination or fear finding meaning and consequence in the child's behaviour as observed in its setting here and now. During the last forty years, beginning 84 THE SCHOOL with Preyer's First Three Years of Childhood, many investigators have recorded with wealth of detail the items of infant behaviour, but, unfortunately, much of the work is discounted by the attempt to interpret the phenomena in terms of adult functioning, whereas the very purpose of the inquiry is to discover how the simple resources of the child, functioning in his child world, enable him to grow to the wholly different being with a mind which functions as adult man. " Preyer, the founder of the scientific psychology of child- hood, frequently uses pre-existing classifica- tions of psychology upon which evolutionary and genetic ideas have taken no effect. He employed them as Procrustean beds by which to measure the facts dealt with. The data were genetic, but not the method of treating them nor the conclusions finally reached. " Sufficient material has, however, been accu- mulated to enable genetic psychology to outline the course of development, in terms such as the chief authorities at the present day are agreed in accepting. The period of two and a half to six or seven is usually described as the playtime of life, and the language is accurate if by play we understand not the idleness that the adult demands as a means of recreation after toil, but an entire attitude towards experience. To STAGES OF GROWTH 85 play is to image an activity and act out the image, instead of merely displaying immediate impulse in response to stimulus. Everything is material for play-acting, and obviously what is near and oft-repeated stimulates the player more rapidly than what is occasional and remote. It must be borne in mind that the child is not, at the beginning of this period, conscious of the disparity between the object and his mode of expressing it; he does not regard himself as playing a part, but as living a life. This explains whjr myth and fairy-tale are taken so much as a matter of course ; to him they are not fantastic because he has not yet discerned the dividing line between the real and the imagined. All his actions are directed to the learning of facts, to a better estimate of values, and play is the process by which he attempts to relate these to himself. By such efforts he combines and re-combines his images until he gets the better mastery of them : he constructs a little world of his own, and if his innate capacities are great, or if his tutors feed him with fairy-story, he will often overflow with fancy, exactly as his savage ancestors used to do in their efforts to master their world. It is, then, a mistake to regard the love of fairy-story or myth as something isolated from the rest of experience : rather it is a mode of 86 THE SCHOOL life, which governs the whole, just so far as this life is unfettered. For other instincts are at work besides this of play ; by play no doubt the child reaches out to the new world; but instincts of self-preservation in the present world also controls his action ; he accepts con- trol, and reacts to the behests of his elders ; he does as he is told, not from a sense of duty, for he has no such sense, but as a matter of course : and equally as a matter of course he expects compulsion when he rebels. And much even of his free activity can scarcely be described as play : for in play his intelligence is to the fore, testing and selecting; but his little body still enjoys the simple reactions which he displayed in earlier years as a baby, and enjoys them all the more because he has now full mastery of his limbs; hence he spends much time in mere gambol, aimless running, hitting and shouting. Now, as this period draws to its close, the experience begins to have its inevitable effect in disillusion. It is this change that Words- worth describes with such rare feeling, but with a false note of sympathy, in his Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. There is no loss at least there need not be in the discovery that the play and the reality are disparate. For a time, no doubt, uneasiness is felt, and we witness one of those STAGES OF GROWTH 87 transition periods which the psychologists mark off as intervening between the more decisive stages in human growth. Thus, as the life of playtime closes, a year or two about the age of seven or eight is noticed when the child is dissatisfied with mere activity and yet can- not discover any remoter purpose in his per- formance. In some cases, especially where children are left much alone, fancy runs riot, and a child or a group of children will even adopt a second personality. 5. And so a second stage of existence emerges, which, omitting subdivisions, may be taken to cover the years from eight to twelve, until another shorter period of transition ensues, often called the pre-adolescent period, leading on to the larger life of youth which we have already described. " At eight or nine there begins a new period, which, for nearly four years, to the dawn of puberty, constitutes a unique stage of life, marked off by many important differences from the period which precedes and that which follows it. During these years there is a decreased rate of growth, so that the body relatively rests; but there is a striking increase of vitality, activity, and power to resist disease. Fatigue, too, is now best resisted, and it is amazing to see how much can be endured. The average child now 88 THE SCHOOL plays more games and has more daily activity, in proportion to size and weight, than at any other stage. It would seem, as I have pro- posed elsewhere, with ground for the theory, as though these four years represented, on the recapitulation theory, a long period in some remote age, well above the simian, but mainly before the historic, period, when our early forbears were well adjusted to their environ- ment. Before a higher and much more modern storey was added to human nature, the young in warm climates, where most human traits were evolved, became independent of their parents, and broke away to subsist for themselves at an early age." We may hesitate to follow Stanley Hall, from whom we here quote, in his excursion into anthropology, but his description of this stage of life sets off some of the leading characteristics. It is often called the Period of Stability, in contrast to the lack of equipoise which marks the onset of adolescence. And, indeed, the young boy or girl from nine to twelve is quite a practical and effective person. When we speak of the employment of child- labour it is with reference to these years; such practices, whether in farm and garden or in Lancashire cotton mills, are a survival of customs which until the modern era were universal, and found their justification in the STAGES OF GROWTH 89 need, felt by all normal children in these later years of childhood, to test themselves against the objective world by seeking to achieve a result. Formerly, in the earlier stage, the mind was absorbed wholly in the image, and any kind of reproduction would serve the purpose of expression : but the disillusion experienced since those days has led the child to a clearer apprehension of relations between means and ends; the world, both the social world in which he now perceives himself and others as workers, and the world of things which he and others manipulate, is now re- vealed as a field for work. Here again we must define our terms : work to the child has little connection with wages that re- lationship is the outcome of a riper civiliza- tion ; economic values are as yet but slightly appreciated. No doubt the adult environment more or less vaguely intrudes such considera- tions upon his field of consciousness, but the sharp intelligence about pence which we witness, e. g. in street arabs, is not in the line of normal development. The difference between the " play " activity of young children and the " work " activity of older children lies in the motive. With the little ones effort was put forth merely to define an image : these older children realize that action can produce results, and hence they 90 THE SCHOOL are only satisfied when a product (some object created apart from the child himself) is the outcome of stimulus. Hence, in contrast to the play attitude of his earlier life, our young workman now appears to be serious and indus- trious. This seriousness is, of course, only a seeming, for the infant at play was living out his life just as soberly and effectively as older folk, but we welcome the evidence of industry in the Period of Stability because we find the youngster beginning to grow up in our image ; he poses as a little man, and the posture gratifies us; we think we are being imitated, although in reality the youngster is not concerned to imitate us, but merely to gain a foothold in the novel world of product, This stage is thus properly described as a period of stability, since, within their range, the boy and girl can now make steady pro- gress in equipment. Now is the time for drill, i. e. for regular exercise in all acquisi- tions which possess meaning. " The period just preceding adolescence is, by reason of its stability of adjustment, more suitable than any other stage for methods of a drill character ; that is to say, the old-time methods of the school-master result in less harm between the ages of nine and twelve than at other times ; but with the beginning of adolescence drill methods become wholly unsuitable and only STAGES OF GROWTH 91 engender boredom and dislike of a subject " (Slaughter : The Adolescent). How keen boys are at this age to learn games and to learn also to be useful, to do real work in companionship with mother and father, if the parents are still close enough to nature to bear a hand in domestic duties. It is here that the luxurious classes in modern times yield to decadent tendencies. In newer countries, such as Australia and America, even wealthy families retain some recollection of pioneer habits and are willing to let boys and girls " do chores," but in Europe false theories of culture, allied to contempt for manual toil, have tended ever since medieval days to cut off the child from his natural bent towards practical social activity. City life has intensi- fied the evil, and middle-class families often imitate their betters until at last we have to look to the school to repair the neglect and to initiate reforms which will engage our attention when we seek below to apply the fruits of child-study to the problem of the curriculum. 6. We must forbear from lack of space to enter upon other phases of the mental life at this stage. Extensive studies have been made, mainly in Germany and America, of the child's reactions towards literature, towards art, to- wards society, towards religion. It is now 92 THE SCHOOL fifty years since the collection of such data was first proposed. The inquiries made in Berlin on the Content of Children's Minds on Entering School 1 set in train a host of investigations. Many of these, it must be confessed, are worth- less, for the requisite skill has been lacking, but the work of Stanley Hall, of Earl Barnes, of Kerchensteiner, to mention only three out- standing names, serves to rescue child-study from the ridicule which has befallen it in some quarters. Those who have constantly to deal with children at this stage, often find the most perplexing problems to arise from their atti- tude towards morals : at times they appear affectionate and social, helpful and altruistic ; but, again, they present a self-centred front, absolutely proof against appeals to which an older person would at once respond. Explana- tion can only be found by reverting to the interpretation of mind in terms of function. Morals are a growth, and the child can have no moral code except that which ranges within his own activity. Adult values of behaviour, like adult society in all its phases, are too com- plex, and however readily an adaptive child may simulate the outward forms, he simply cannot share the higher life as personal experience. He is, on the whole, selfish, not because he consciously aims, as adults are 1 Described in Stanley Hall : Aspects of Child Life. STAGES OF GROWTH 93 tempted to do, to succeed at the expense of his fellows, but because in these years he learns to function as an individual : only by this pro- cess of testing himself against the objective world standing up, so to say, for himself can he learn to preserve that personal integrity which must precede any effective display of altruism during adolescence. This must suffice as an indication of the method by which the genetic psychologist is to-day seeking to sift out and co-ordinate the mass of material which records the variations in children's activities. What is now needed is not so much the massing of further data about individual traits or interests of groups of children, but rather to secure the complete and continuous record of a few lives, noted by skilled observers who understand both how to select the relevant facts and how to interpret these in terms of their meaning for development. 7. The need for such detailed records will be more readily recognized if we consider the difficulties encountered in the treatment of exceptional children. Throughout this chapter the reader, especially if he moves in acade- mic circles, will have probably thought of children of his acquaintance who, apparently, correspond not at all to the stages above outlined ; they are precocious, or, if we prefer a more technical term, supranormal. At the 94 THE SCHOOL other extreme are subnormal children ranging all the way from the merely backward to the hopeless imbecile. Of the latter nothing can here be said except to affirm the value of the efforts now being expended on their behalf. Not that, as a rule, defective children can really be so trained as to mix on equal terms with other adults, but important benefits accrue from their segregation : the rest of the community, in schools and elsewhere, can receive better attention when relieved of the presence of these unfortunates. The skill and research expended on their behalf results in contributions to science which promote the welfare of mankind at large ; here as elsewhere pathology comes to the aid of hygiene. Last, but not least, these unfortunate children themselves lead happier lives. As regards supranormal children, science has yet little to say, for while in some sys- tems of schooling exceptional capacity has been selected and festered with great care, it is only now that attention to this field of in- quiry is beginning to attract attention from psychologists. We have spoken above of precocity and of supranormality as if the terms were identical, but an obvious distinction should be noted. Precocity, strictly defined, has reference merely to time; the precocious child matures earlier STAGES OF GROWTH 95 than the average in one or other phase of development, whereas supranormal capacity denotes a more fundamental and permanent range of power which the subject may not display at all in his earlier years. Fo example, the precocious musician will be paraded as a virtuoso before the public at the age of eight ; a slower child may conceiv- ably reach the same pitch of excellence ten years later. By itself, of course, precocity has no value; it is no benefit either to the per- former or to the audience for a child of eight to replace a man of thirty-eight as an inter- preter of music. The phenomenon is worth studying for scientific purposes, but before the performance is over, humane feeling would wish to put the child to bed; and those who appreciate music for its own sake will prefer not to have their impressions disturbed by such anxieties. The case of the supranormal, or, if we may adopt a popular term, the gifted child, is different. He may develop slowly; indeed, his powers as an adult may depend for their full bloom upon respite from pressure during the earlier years. While, again, the endowment may manifest itself in some special form of ability (it certainly is bound in adult life to narrow itself down to some main stream of social activity), as a rule it is dis- played as a superior general capacity, a higher 96 THE SCHOOL form of intelligence as much transcending the common run of mankind as these surpass the lowly-developed defective. But now, in view of these enormous varia- tions in the human breed, what becomes of our sketch of the growth of function on a normal scale in a series of stages with average limits of age ? Well, the genetic psychologist answers by admitting fully that man, both in his powers of physical endurance and in his higher powers of mental capacity, is the most variable of all beings, and that as a result instances are always forthcoming of strik- ing variations from the normal, whether as regards any special quality or as regards the speed with which the common course of pro- gress is accelerated or retarded. But such admission does not allow of any abandonment of the order in which function waits upon function. John Stuart Mill was learning Greek at four, while a normal child would have been playing with toys. We cannot dogmatize as to the rights or wrongs of his case ; we have no data to go upon to enable us to condemn or approve ; he grew up to be a distinguished public man, but no one can affirm that he might not have been a man for all time if his father had not inhibited some of the childish instincts which assist the development of humdrum individuals. At this moment a STAGES OF GROWTH 97 parallel case is afforded in the son of Professor Sidis, a well-known teacher of philosophy in America, who has published views on schooling based upon the unique phenomenon presented by his son's progress. When this youth has reached the age at which Mill wrote his auto- biography, the opinions of the father and the son will undoubtedly provide excellent material for scientific inquiry; meanwhile, the cautious habit of physicians, who usually abstain from prescribing in the domestic circle, might be recommended to parents whose offspring are supranormal. In an age when mental phenomena are being handled with great seriousness, it is a grave misfortune when men of learning treat the methods of science with such contempt. Fortunately, this field of research is now beginning to be taken in hand, by competent inquirers : the experi- mental psychologists are busy with investiga- tions into Individual Differences, and, although no immediate result can be anticipated from their inquiries, they are laying the foundation for methods of research which cannot fail to enlighten our knowledge of this darkest of all fields in mental development. And, however much we may be impressed by a special case of variation from the normal, either in genius or its opposite, our knowledge of what con- stitutes a normal mind in successive stages, a 98 THE SCHOOL although still inadequate, does afford a basis for the further study of school practice; it would therefore appear to be incumbent on those who organize educational systems to give due regard to this factor in their systems of schooling. CHAPTER VI THE ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 1. IN our preliminary sketch of the rise of School as an institution we noted the early history of a conflict between elements which have contended, and will always contend, to secure the control of the young. Having now inquired more fully as to what is possible for the School to achieve on their behalf, we can resume the story and consider principles on which these contending forces can seek re- conciliation, and review the duties which those who organize the schools have to fulfil. We have already seen that the State, i. e. the entire body politic which controls the individual in his public relations, has now definitely assumed responsibility for all types of schooling, and it is only by consent of the State machinery that Family, Church or Vocation can hope to maintain a share of influence. There are, however, many ways by which a nation can express its will in the control of schools, and in Great Britain the method of control has gradually been evolved 09 100 THE SCHOOL as part and parcel of our general custom and attitude in " Home " Government, i. e. the central authority in all our departments of State is expected to influence the community in co-operation with local authorities, in- specting their work, adding to their funds, regulating their machinery, but never super- seding them, and often leaving to them the initiative. It is difficult for foreigners to understand our mode of disputing about education in this country, because they find it hard to realize this distinctively English plan of aiding and abetting rather than taking the lead. When aid to the elementary schools began (about 1832) it took the character of a financial contract : the State farmed out its obligations, paying cash in return for " results." Seventy years elapsed before England accepted to the full the modern position that the Government must act on behalf of the people at large in securing the permanence and efficiency of the instruments of culture in all its varied forms. It would take us beyond our limits to discuss the political basis of this theory ; the decisive step was taken by the Act of 1902, and since this date the prestige of Government in educational affairs, both at Whitehall and in borough and county offices, has been enormously enhanced. It is, of course, still possible for non-state ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION institutions, aided either by private endow- ments, by contributions from churches or by fees from parents, to maintain their inde- pendence, and this open door should be stoutly defended, since, as we have seen, progress in all matters of higher intellectual and spiritual life depends upon " freedom, variety and elasticity." But, while some in- stitutions can continue this life, it is a grave misfortune if they are compelled to cut them- selves adrift from the public system and segregate a portion of the community from the general stream of national life. The only means by which they can retain a share in control are of an indirect kind, influencing general opinion, thus securing that the State machinery actually does operate in the interests not merely of the official system, but of those wider and deeper needs which the family life, the religious life, and the vocational life express. 2. As regards the religious life some further discussion is in place, for the relation between Church and School is always before us, not only in England but throughout Europe, and if at the moment it gives little concern in certain parts of America and of the British Empire, this is only because, at the present moment, the population in those regions is of a homogeneous character. 102 THE SCHOOL Indeed, the first point for the student of this problem to observe is that conflict only arises when a community ceases to be homo- geneous in its general attitude towards reli- gious belief and practice. It is precisely because a portion of the community desires to be " free," i. e. to break away from the uniformity of the traditional faith, that the difficulties arise. Thus, in many parts of Ireland and of Quebec, as well as in portions of southern Europe, the Family and the School are in harmonious sympathy with Catholicism; in other parts of Canada and in the United States there is an equal homogeneity of sentiment where the bulk of the population is Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist, and where, equally by common consent, the Church refrains from any direct interference with the School. But the re- lationship is none the less present; for the teachers and Boards that control the schools train the children steadily in sympathy with the view of life which characterizes the neighbourhood : it is obvious that they cannot do otherwise. It is essential to note that what we call the view of life touches not only religious observ- ance, but social morals and customs of every degree. This is a feature of the situation which is often overlooked or disguised by those who ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 103 discuss this theme. The dissenter is as often as not a reformer in matters other than religion : he and his kind tend to be " free " in many other matters besides those which " the Church" specifically defends; social groups tend to appear, influenced often by occupations in life, and tend to break up the homogeneity of a community quite as much as differences of dogma. The gulf between the parson and thq labourer in many an English village is not so much a quarrel about religion as an aliena- tion in culture, in speech, and in the entire outlook towards experience. Hence it is evident that the defenders of the old faiths have at stake something more than religious instruction to children. When the Jew in Manchester, or the Lutheran in Michigan, U.S.A., maintains a separate school, he does so because the School is a community whose life expresses not only the creed, but the manners and customs, the taste and tradition of the elders. Now it is vain to expect that homogeneous communities, such as we have noted above, will subsist for many generations in any large area of the modern world : essential as it is to humanity to maintain the continuity of tradition, the spirit of intellectual freedom (as we have seen in Chapter II) again and again breaks up the harmony, and the rising genera- 104 THE SCHOOL tions set out on new adventures. Hence, as soon as the State undertakes to organize a complete system of education, the statesman has to feel his way through a conflict which penetrates to the deepest issues on which men engage. Here, as in the classical instance of the gospel propaganda, there must be " not peace but a sword ... a man's foes shall be those of his own household." Statecraft may choose to seek its ends by an indifference to the great things of life, treating the School as merely a dispensing shop for so-called secular lessons; by a despotic contempt for freedom which will attempt to force uniformity of practice upon all : or by manifesting a spirit of sympathy and tolerance which, through compromise, will sacrifice much of detail in the hope of achieving a deeper spiritual unity. As we survey the various battlefields in which the conflict has been waged, the principles under which such compromise is being worked out can be discerned, and it must suffice to indicate these in summary form. (a) Where a separate group in a neighbour hood exists holding views of religion and life quite distinct from those of the majority, and numerous enough to provide children for a school, it is an act of tyranny for the State to enforce an alien culture on the children In any event, the pressure of the majority ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 105 outside the school will exercise some influence over the young, and the State has no right, simply because of its dependence on a majority vote, to stamp out the individuality of dissent, either of a dissent which adheres to old creeds or a dissent which proclaims a new evangel. The test of the claim which such a minority makes is its willingness to make sacrifices for that which it holds dear. If the patrons of such institutions are willing to " put their hands in their pockets," if the teachers are willing to sacrifice some part of their emolu- ment, or if the parents are willing to forgo some advantages in secular instruction for the sake of those greater things in creed and conduct which they cherish, under such con- ditions it is the clear duty of a statesman not to crush but to lend a generous hand in maintenance. So long as the separatist school conforms honestly to the minimum requirements of a code, so long, that is to say, as a schooling is afforded which enables the child to keep step in tolerable fashion with the public standards of culture, the demands of the State are satisfied. For it must be borne in mind that the cultivation of the religious life is a matter which the State is simply incom- petent to control. It acts through politicians and officials who, whatever may be their 106 THE SCHOOL personal character, are bound by official attitudes. The very spirit of freedom which has erected democratic government demands that families shall be free to practise old faiths and to cherish these through the schooling which the child receives. (b) But while we recognize the rights of dissent, and the duty of the State to aid the separatist school, some principle is needed to indicate the measure of this rule. The only principle that can be applied is to limit the support to the minimum needs of the situation. The Church exists not merely to maintain its foothold, but to extend its power, to gain new adherents; and with such pur- poses the State can have no concern. As a propagandist agency the Church must rely upon its own resources. If, as many allege, the aid afforded to non-provided schools by the Act of 1902 is such as to relieve them from their fair share of the burden, then an in- justice is being done, since the State is in- directly assisting in the promotion of special types of faith and custom. It is difficult, however, to come to any decision on such a point even if it were within the province of this volume for the financial data are not put before the public in a form which makes it easy to arrive at a fair judgment. It is for the Churches which have benefited by that ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 107 Act to offer the necessary proof, since so many of their fellow-citizens are offended by the employment of public funds to disseminate private opinion. (c) While defending the " right of the parent," as it is often called, to maintain the unity of the Family in opposition to the State, we must give room for the opposite principle. Children are not solely the property of their parents : they belong to the State ; their cul- ture, as well as their vocation, is a matter of public concern. By residing in the com- munity which fosters progress, the Family shares the benefits of an advanced civilization, and, in return, must be content to forgo some of the authority over its children which it claimed in more primitive times. Formerly the Churches, as the sole fount of culture and science, controlled the freedom of the Family as regards its children : if they now exaggerate parental claims in opposition to the State they raise the further question as to the extent to which either State, Family or Church is justified in its zeal to " capture " the rising generation. (d) For our study of child nature in the last chapter has exposed the limitations to which all adult forces are subject in attempting to coerce the minds of youth. In matters, above all, of intimate personal experience, an 108 THE SCHOOL attitude of reserve seems most prudent even in the interests of the faith itself. True enough, the youth can readily be made an enthusiastic convert, but how often scepticism in the twenties succeeds devotion in the 'teens. And so far as creeds are a matter of intellectual apprehension, the instructor must have patience and wait for the riper mind to grasp the fundamental differences which sever man from man. To the infant all churches and all moralities are alike, and when manhood comes he must mix with his fellow-men of every type, sharing their common code of ethics. If he is to learn to choose the good and to refuse the evil, it seems wise in the common interest that he should share, even as a child, to some extent at least, the public child-life of his neighbourhood, although his parents may protest that some of their rights are invaded. (e) Hence in all communities where political and social freedom have found scope, the sentiment on behalf of the public school, definitely severed from ecclesiastical control and directed wholly by State officials, finds increasing support. In such communities the churches which have broken loose from older institutions cease to seek control over the weekday schools, and are content to ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 109 maintain a hold over the Family through voluntary effort in Sunday-schools ; the cleric himself tends to become more of a citizen, mixing as an equal with his fellow-men ; and it is found possible for sects differing widely in theological basis to unite in ethical ideals, and even to unite, for the limited purposes of the School, on a common basis of religious profession. Thus we witness in Great Britain, as in newer countries, the wide adoption of an " undenominational " system where the rites and ceremonies specific to the sect are distinguished from what is more universal, and this attracts the great majority by the evidence of tolerance and charity. It seems to answer the needs of the child just because it presents to his notice what is simple and general rather than the particular and occult. Thus, by the stress of circumstances, a special type of homogeneity has been created which serves over a large area of the English- speaking race to bridge the gulf between Church and State, between Family and School. The Bible can be read, not as an ecclesiastical authority but as a fount of sacred literature, honoured alike by all the Churches; hymns can be sung, not as the distinctive possession of one Church, but as expressing the sentiments of all. Such exercises, of course, are of little value 110 THE SCHOOL where they become merely an official form, but their value to the School society is great, simply because they may help the child to bridge the gulf between morals and religion, between Church and home, between secular and divine, between weekday and Sabbath- day. The grown man can, of his own motion, bridge this gulf. As we have seen already, he plays many parts ; he can understand, for example, that the obligations of ethics apply to the counting-house as much as the house of prayer ; that the voice of God speaks at times on the mountain-top when it has forsaken the cathedral, that faith atid works are often found n separate company. But the child cannot make these distinctions, and if the statesman, pushing this unhappy quarrel with the eccle- siastic to the extreme, can accept no com- promise between freedom and superstition, the danger is imminent of leaving the child- mind empty both of aspiration and hope, and of the discipline of fear. True, there are many men who find that they have " no use for religion," and a few who honestly avow that they have been deprived of this experience; but it is not for them to use the arm of the State in order to deprive the coming race of such experience. What most men desire is not less religion, but more not that religion should be banished from the school, but that ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 111 it should invade the warehouse, the factory and the forum. And it will achieve this conquest just so far as its universal elements are exposed to children's attention with that simplicity and reverence which all men feel when they unite in submission to the Unseen and the Eternal. (/) We have here, I think, outlined at its best, the argument that has supported what is called " Cowper-Temple religion " since the famous School Board Act of 1870, a measure which has probably done more to reconcile the warring sects of Protestantism in England than any direct efforts of the Churches to achieve that end. But once again we must admit that just so far as the majority in Protestant communi- ties have welcomed this State policy of com- prehension, just so far has it disquieted those whether Anglican or Roman Catholic, Jew or agnostic who cannot share in that communion. To them the very extension of an undenominational system is the denial of the first principles of faith. Hence, therefore, in addition to a tolerant support of separatist schools, where the size of a distinctive popula- tion may warrant such a plan, the demand for " right of entry " into the public school seems justified. No doubt it is injurious to the harmony of the school community for the 112 THE SCHOOL children to be severed week by week into separate groups for worship and instruction ; but the severance is already there, and the child's affection for Family, Church and School will not be lessened if he finds agreement to differ replacing a spirit of antagonism. But if a suggestion may here be attempted, I would urge that in place of " right of entry," the parent should demand a right of sub- stitution. For the proper venue for religious instruction is not the public school, with the Anglican teaching one group in Room X, and the Catholic another group in Room Y; the church building, the house of God itself, is the fit place of assembly for teaching the distinctive doctrines which the Church holds dear. And the clergyman himself is the fittest teacher, not the public school teacher who, in these unhappy controversies, finds his allegiance divided between Church and State. It would surely not be difficult for the law to recognize " attendance " once or more during the school week in church buildings. Already school children are sent to swimming-baths and to playfields under public auspices; it would be almost as easy to organize a plan for attendance at the ministrations of the clergy when parents made a request to that effect. And I, for one, should not hesitate to vote public money to facilitate such arrangements, ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 113 so long as they were conducted with efficiency ; such influences are at least as much a part of education as instruction in swimming or cookery. And even if the positive result of such occasions seemed to be small, even though official educators might cavil at the amateur efforts of the clergy, such criticism would be of small moment compared with the profounder effects on children's minds in finding reconciliation between religion and the secular arm. If to this modern world, rent as it is with the passions of religion and of race, the hope of peace, whether in politics or religion, seems remote, something at least is gained if the coming race are from early childhood taught by the example of public tolerance to honour not only the majesty of the State but the faith of their fathers. There is, happily, much evidence to hand that public men, both in the churches and in the field of politics, are ready to accept such efforts at compromise, and thus in countries such as England, where habits of spiritual freedom forbid the simpler solution of a homo- geneous community, a finer solution can be sought ; the unity of civic life may be secured amid families widely divided in social and religious sympathies. 3. Without pursuing further these conflicts, 114 THE SCHOOL which are indeed as much a matter of politics as of education, it will be more profitable, assuming the overlordship of the State, to review the functions which it discharges and see how far rational principles can be dis- cerned which will assist rather than retard the achievement of those aims which we discussed in Chapter IV. We have hitherto spoken in general terms of " The State," and it should be noted that we cannot find any precise dividing line which will indicate where a central authority should control or where a subordinate local authority shall assert its independence. In this, as in all departments of State, the decision has to be made not on a priori grounds, but by taking account of racial customs and in- herited attitudes towards government. The only guiding rule seems to be to approve any division of function which works. All that can be definitely stated is that the central authority should deal with what is the common concern of all, while the local rulers can with better effect apply the general to the particular; that the central authority should be especially concerned, with its ampler resources, to secure the best experience, and to place the results of its investigations at the disposal of the localities. We can say further that it is a prime duty of the ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 115 legislature, when distributing duties between central and local authorities, to prevent over- lapping and rivalry, so as to eliminate waste and enable the schools to do their real work with the smoothest and simplest mechanism. Indeed, the hindrances to efficiency created by the multiplication of administrators lead many people to urge the abolition of local jurisdiction and to devise a simpler form of control, handling the schools like the post and telegraph service, with the teachers as departmental clerks and H.M. Inspectors as school managers. The objection to such a system arises not from any belief in the superior wisdom of local authorities, but from the distinctive nature of the educa- tive process. School, as we have seen, is an institution, a permanent society, and, except in the case of boarding schools, its life is closely in touch with the locality where it is established. For social life cannot be maintained worthily with a machinery which suits the needs of telegraphy or sanitation. As Professor Geldart has recently shown in the case of trade unions, any permanent institution tends to take shape as a " personality," with idiosyncrasies of tone and sympathy. Hence, in my view, every type of school, from the university down to the humblest infant 116 THE SCHOOL school, needs for its best development some form of local management by a small group of people whose interests lie in that community. Such management differs, on the one hand, from the official internal control by the principal and staff of teachers, and, on the other hand, from the control of a local board which in England, as in America, takes over- sight of a large number of institutions. Our English school law still assumes that a body of managers is in existence for each institution, and in. the case of non-provided elementary schools, and of endowed secondary schools, they not only exist, but wield a control which in the opinion of many is too extensive. I share this opinion, but at the same time it is a grave misfortune that the rivalries between Church and State have led to the practical abolition of managing committees in " pro- vided " schools. In other parts of Europe similar conditions have produced a like effect : the common school originally fostered by the local clergy, Protestant or Catholic, gains so much from the material and intellectual resources of a central authority that the assistance of a local committee is often held to be superfluous. It is only in America, where in all departments of government local autonomy is jealously guarded, that a different situation exists. Mr. Bryce, in The American ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 117 Commonwealth, points out that " to-day in the south as previously in the north and west, the school is becoming the nucleus of local self-government." But even here the centre of interest is hot the individual school, but the unit area of local authority, within which, as population grows, more schools than one are required. So that in the large cities of America we have the same situation as in Europe, i. e. a system of schools managed from a central bureau, with little or no auto- nomy for the single school community. I venture to dwell upon this point because, except Professor Rein of Jena, I know of no writer who has felt it to be worthy of attention. Teachers fight shy of it because they are already encompassed with too many masters ; bureaucrats from the opposite side of the fence are equally disposed to be impatient at what they would regard as an interference. It is only when special situations arise such as that now presented in London under the recent Acts for children's care, that the need is acutely felt for that personal interest in the social life of the school which is the distinctive task to be assigned to a managing committee. Where, as in London, the physical condition and vocational outlook of a mass of children have become well-nigh hopeless, it becomes clear to every one that the scholastic machinery 118 THE SCHOOL of instruction substitutes stones for bread. Any one who visits, for example, the School Settlement, so devotedly founded and con- ducted by the head teacher of the Fern Street Infant School in a London slum, readily appreciates the value of school managers, or of a small body of persons serving the same purpose, i. e. as guides, and, if need be, over- seers of the institution. Now the principle here exposed is of universal application. If it is serviceable where the children need free meals and medicine, it applies equally to the higher needs of the community ; and although to the present generation of teachers and officials this argu- ment is unacceptable, I adhere to it as an article of faith based on personal experience as well as on investigation. Just so far as the School is realized as a community, with its fringe of neighbouring families linked to it by the precious ties which childhood and youth create, just so far will this principle gain acceptance. In the present materialistic age we are content to place the organization of schools on a cash basis : " He who pays the piper," we say, " calls the tune," hence the agents of the taxpayers, at headquarters, and the agents of the ratepayers, at Whitehall, claim sole authority; but in due time it will be admitted that those who contribute their ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 119 own children to the School have a right to some voice in its affairs : children are a more precious contribution than gold. Indeed, the administrators themselves will be compelled in due time to foster and welcome such com- munity interest, for ratepayers and taxpayers are always distrustful of expenditure which shows so little " result." The burden of education rates increases enormously with each decade, and it will only be borne with equanimity when the people at large who receive the benefit are closely allied with the machinery of control. Limits of space again forbid discussion of the manifold ways in which this element can be maintained in an educational system ; we can merely formulate the principle, viz. that in every grade of education, the unit of government should not be a geographical area, but the school community itself. In the highest grade of institution college or university the same principle is at work, although it takes a different form. Here it is not the parents, but the " Old Boys," the body of former students whose sentiments of regard for Alma Mater maintain the continuous life of the society, and serve to uphold its prestige among an entire people. The extra- ordinary development of State universities in the middle states of America affords a 120 THE SCHOOL capital example. The earliest of these founda- tions, that of Ann Arbor, supplying the needs of the great State of Michigan, is at the pre- sent moment relying upon its association of alumni, 30,000 in number, to renew among the people at large the sense of obligation to this instrument of State advancement. No wonder that in such communities pecuniary aid is afforded with a goodwill of which we in Europe have little conception. 4. A brief review must suffice to mark off the functions which authorities, of one type or another, have to fulfil in every educational system. At the outset the various grades of institution have to be classified and grouped. The classification should embrace not only those within the public system, but those of every rank which contribute to the national welfare, including all forms of private enter- prise, not neglecting even home tuition, which has its part to play even where public provision is most elaborate and efficient. The English law is sometimes interpreted as if parents are breaking the law when, under proper safeguards, they personally undertake the instruction of their offspring. Now while it is the plain duty of the State to see to it that fit opportunities for schooling are open to every one, it is by no means its duty, either as central or local authority, to ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 121 grasp the entire control and management. As regards central authorities, at Whitehall or elsewhere, the opposite rule is much the safer. It is a fortunate situation in England that only one or two institutions are now actually administered by the Board of Educa- tion, and it is at least worth while to consider whether local authorities should not follow the same policy, i. e. to co-ordinate, to inspect, and to support, but to refrain wherever possible from actually managing the details of an institution. The larger the population under the control of an authority, the less efficient is it likely to be in such management. When a local authority pursues the opposite policy, and attempts from its own resources to provide all types of school within its area, the mischief is twofold: it ceases to take a comprehensive and sympathetic over- sight of non-official enterprises, and it pre- sents its own institutions in rivalry to these. The hardest lesson which public authorities, both national and provincial, have to learn is to recognize varied efforts put forth in the educational field by voluntary and non-official enthusiasm. So much for the spirit in which public authorities should undertake to review the needs of a community. The principles on which the different types of school are dis- 122 THE SCHOOL tinguished requires separate treatment and is reserved for Chapter VII. When a school is defined and established, the next step in organization is to procure the teacher. We postpone this topic also, since the status and qualifications of the teaching body are of capital importance; the efficiency of an educational system can indeed be quite well estimated from the appreciation which the community shows of those whom it engages in the service of the schools. 5. The oversight of the State does not cease with the appointment of the teacher. (a) Attendance. While refraining from in- terference in the technique of the teacher's craft, the State is bound to see that in general terms the aims proposed are achieved. Thus the scholars must be present; in the elementary school their attendance must, if need be, be enforced; in the secondary school and college, the opposite rule should prevail and the State should see to it that the idle and indifferent are excluded. We have already noticed, in discussing the origins of School, that the temptations to leisure which an extended schooling affords cannot be resisted by all boys and girls. The recent expansion of secondary schooling in Great Britain, in spite of its undoubted benefit, has no doubt brought this evil in its train, ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 123 and it is for the State to assist the teachers to cope with it. (b) The British Examination System. The exit of the scholar from the school society is no less a matter requiring expert control in the public interest. In this field the German states have set an example to the world at large ; the far-seeing statesmen who, early in the nineteenth century, re-cast the education of their people, foresaw that the best incen- tive to industry at school would be to train the people to appreciate a Leaving Cer- tificate (Abiturienten-Zeugniss) which would attest that the scholar had lived the school life year by year and passed out of the society with the " course " complete. Much as the Anglo-Saxon race, with its keen sense of personal freedom, may distrust the Germanic system of culture, here at any rate we can learn from them; there is no more striking example of the difference between efficiency and clumsy failure than to contrast what is called the English examina- tion system with that of Germany. No doubt, under the primitive conditions which prevailed fifty years ago, the College of Preceptors and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge with their Local Examinations, and the University of London with its degree system, rendered a real service in founding their 124 THE SCHOOL machinery for distributing printed papers and marking the answers; the plan un- doubtedly incited teachers and scholars to work; it helped to standardize the schools and gave opportunities for scholastic ambition which, in the absence of a better system, were welcome; and in times when the credit of teachers was low, and their own sense of responsibility defective, it was essential that some trustworthy and impartial judge should be called in to give a testimony which the public could trust. The system owed its success to the development of transit facilities through the railways, which had recently been invented ; it seemed a great thing to be able to examine at the same moment John Smith in Surrey and Mary Sykes in North- umberland, and within a few weeks to produce a reliable percentage as assessment of their efficiency. This machinery was powerfully aided by the rapid cheapening of books and paper, enabling scholars to prepare for these examinations on the exact lines required ; and the result is an all-embracing method of assessment which is applied, with the precision which any such machine can display, to every field where the public requires evidence of scholastic attainments. It has " reformed " the Civil Service; it has certificated millions of young people for commerce, for hygiene, ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 125 for art, and it supplies the chief test by which students are admitted to our universities. And since 1902 many local authorities, in- cluding London, have applied the machine, often in the crudest fashion, to select children of capacity, by thousands and tens of thou- sands, giving them scholarships and main- tenance for further education. Nor is its influence confined to Great Britain; several of the United States follow a similar plan, notably the State of New York, and, in Canada, the great province of Ontario. A system so powerfully entrenched, creating such large vested interests, has been able to defy criti- cism, for it is trusted by the general public, which is glad to secure a rough-and-ready method where favouritism can have no place. But efforts have not been wanting to modify, if not to overturn, the operation of the machine. The system of inspection instituted by the Board of Education has at least established an alternative mode for assessing the efficiency of the secondary school ; the Regents of New York State and the Board constituted for Wales under the Intermediate Education Act have made gallant efforts to minimize the evils of wholesale examination, while the London University is endeavouring by a plan for School Leaving Certificates to overcome them 126 THE SCHOOL from another point of view. But it is evi- dent that the situation can only be met by State authority, i. e. by the combined wisdom of expert investigation whose results would command the adhesion of the entire country. This is a task for which a consultative committee such as we have described above is eminently fitted, and it is understood that the Board of Education has recently set its Committee to work upon this problem, or upon certain aspects of it. What, then, is the criticism which leads us to deplore the continuance of this primitive machine ? It is found to be injurious in two points, each of them involving matters which are essential to efficiency in the educational product. First, as a test of attainment it is incompetent, for it is one-sided, lending itself readily to mathematics, but most imperfectly to practical work : it can test a writer to the disadvantage of a thinker ; it encourages a rapid memory and discourages deliberate attainment. It has delayed for years in countless schools the introduction of improved methods of teaching, simply because its awkward machinery could not adapt itself to new requirements. Thus when in the 'eighties chemistry first began to be taught in secondary schools the present writer recollects the little packets of white compound that were sent to ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 127 his school along with many others, in order to serve as a test of boys' mastery of chemical ideas ; most people, at least the chemists, knew that this device would cripple the teaching, but it was the best that Oxford and Cambridge could do under the system. In course of time improvements were made, but the root of the trouble has remained; good teachers of science can secure results and distinctions for their pupils, but they continue to lament the sacrifice that is involved. Literature and Modern Languages are hindered quite as seriously, for in these the ear and tongue are in request as much as pen and paper. The defenders of the system sometimes reply that the art of acquiring and then disgorging the contents of a text-book is valuable, and should be encouraged ; but the reply is not germane to the issue. The injury extends beyond the curri- culum. A certificate, to be of value, should certify not only to the attainments of a scholar at one critical moment, but it should testify that he has lived the school life, and should by its comprehensive character take account of the entire school record. When a German inspector, acting as school examiner, inquires into the attainments of the older scholars, and, along with the teachers, awards a Leaving Certificate, he is not a mere marking machine, 128 THE SCHOOL but a free intelligence, coming into personal contact with both the candidates and their instructors; his long experience gives him an adequate acquaintance with the public standard, but he supplements his own judg- ment by the opinion of the staff of the school, who are trusted by public opinion in Germany with a confidence which at present is withheld in Great Britain. This leads to the second and more funda- mental indictment of the system, viz. that it cripples the initiative of the teacher. As we pointed out, this criticism has little relevance to primitive days, when no re- sponsible teaching body exists ; but the time is long past in England when teachers should be content to follow a uniform syl- labus, and to copy the devices which are entailed by the distribution of simultaneous examination papers. Thus in the teaching of English Literature, the State of New York selects twelve poems for each school year, " of which at least six should be mem- orized." The selection is quite admirable, but the scholars would be more likely to benefit if the teacher were encouraged to investigate children's poetry for herself. Our English Board of Education prescribes that every college student preparing to be a teacher shall learn at least two hundred lines ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 129 of poetry; it does not indicate the poems, but it employs men of distinction to spend valuable time in hearing these young men and women say their pieces. If the college were left free to train each student according to his needs, and the inspectors were free to treat each syllabus and each situation on its merits, it is likely that the true interests of our native tongue would be better safeguarded. Some of our universities exercise an even stricter con- trol, for they not only prescribe the authors, but publish and sell approved editions, and so relieve the teacher of responsibility for the comment as well as for the text. If this illustration be extended, it will be seen that the issue is fundamental simply because the freedom of the teacher within his own province is as vital to progress as his submission to authority outside his province. And in this profession above all, where theory is as yet so scanty, the hope of progress depends largely upon fostering a spirit of independent activity. The progress so far attained in England has been made in spite of the system, and the time is ripe for radical amendment. It is important to press home the importance of this difficult problem, for the layman does not yet recognize the far-reaching benefits which a sound system of Leaving Certificates, 130 THE SCHOOL extended from the primary school upwards, can exert upon the education of a nation. Such certificates are not only of value as affecting the progress of a scholar from one type of school to another. Their chief value is to the laity, to the employer, who, on the Continent, looks to the school record as reliable evidence of capacity. If supervised and endorsed by State authority, combined with a system of inspection, these certificates would shortly lead to such an appreciation of the school programme as would encourage scholars not merely to pass an examination, but to complete from beginning to end the course of education for which each type of school is specifically designed. 6. We have now indicated the chief problems which should engage the attention of organiz- ing authorities : when these are seen to there still remains the provision of ways and means ; the receipt and expenditure of moneys ; the acquisition of land ; the erection and main- tenance of buildings ; the supply of apparatus. In some countries, including England, great attention is also paid to provision for the payment of successful scholars in order to enable them to pursue a further course of schooling ; and, still more recently, the pro- vision of food or clothing to children whose forlorn condition is brought sharply into ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 131 notice by the very fact of their attendance. A few notes must suffice on some of the topics here presented. The Education Budget. As regards the general expenditure on education, public or private, no limit can be assigned, and it is useless to exclaim that the budget of national or local expenditure " increases by leaps and bounds." The amount that a family or a nation will expend upon its children is just as much as it can afford : the coming race demands no less and can expect no more. The outlay, for example, on administration has immensely increased in Great Britain and Ireland during the last decade, but few will be inclined to cavil at the effective services rendered by the multiplied officials and inspectors who guide the policy of the schools. Salaries have increased, not beyond the current increase in the cost of living, but they are likely to increase still more; the nation at large will have no jealousy on this score, if they find that the nation's children secure the direction of teachers who devote their lives to the national service. The expenditure on land and buildings has progressed at a rate which some deem to be extravagant : but it has only kept pace with the improvement in domestic hygiene and architecture which is a characteristic of the 132 THE SCHOOL present generation. A word of caution may, however, be here ventured. Lay authorities are, as a rule, willing to expend upon build- ings and equipment, because they appear to be getting something for their money ; tax- payers can see a fine building and point to it with pride. When one undertakes an educa- tional tour it is commonly this external provision that one is invited to observe : one's hosts are apt to be disappointed if the visitor turns away from these structures and spends his time in examining the real thing. Hence it is worth while for public authorities to inquire whether a fixed proportion should not be measured between the various items of expenditure, for fear lest the gorgeous temple should house unworthy service. Cer- tain it is that some of the finest fruits of teaching have been garnered, both in these and in earlier days, from school buildings which the most indulgent of inspectors would condemn. In this connection it is interesting to notice an inquiry which is being conducted, we believe, at this moment, by the Board of Education as to the wisdom of erecting structures of a more "temporary nature than has been usual. For it is evident that the needs of equipment alter so rapidly as to make any building more than thirty years of age unfitted for modern ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 133 requirements. Instead of putting the money into stone and bricks, to say nothing of architectural ornament, if the first thought were given to securing ample space in land, the expenditure would be well repaid. For children, old and young, need space and air : if you once get the land, you can put anything on it and remove anything from it. The movements now on foot, especially in great cities, for open-air lessons, for gardening employment, and for field games will un- doubtedly increase the demand for land, and is already leading to a closer co-operation between those who provide parks for adults and those who provide closed buildings for children. The earlier policy was to plant schools in the centre of population, crowding up still more the congested area : the new policy of town planning will lead to the acquirement of large areas which may serve the locality not only during the hours of school but during all the hours of daylight. In the United States an interesting movement is afoot to utilize the school building and grounds " as a social centre " enabling " the people " to meet there for recreation and for culture instead of closing the doors to both children and adults when lessons are over. In this way the maximum of benefit to a locality can be secured from the heavy 134 THE SCHOOL expenditure which a modern school building entails. The Educational Ladder. The generous expenditure in this country on maintenance scholarships always excites the surprise of foreigners who visit our schools, and they are right in attributing it, especially in its modern form as dispensed by local authorities, to the general democratic tendency. While England shares with other European nations the maintenance of traditional class dis- tinctions, it is distinguished by constant efforts to enable the individual of capacity to advance from one group to another: the scholarship system is one mode of making this advance easy. True enough the argu- ment is not openly stated in these terms, for our legislature recognizes no distinction of class; the principle, in logical form, is that of equality of opportunity unhampered by poverty or family exigencies. But this prin- ciple is also supported by another distinctively English trait the determination to select the best talent and foster it, even at the expense of those of mediocre gifts. (We shall see this same tendency in operation in the following chapter when we consider the principles under which types of school are differentiated.) These two tendencies in com- bination account for the excessive attention ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 135 which has been paid, especially since the Act of 1902, by our local authorities to the pro- vision of scholarships. Directors and secre- taries of committees, impelled by popular pressure, have spent their best energies in devising such schemes when they might have been better employed on other parts of their duty such as we have discussed above. For it is evident from the practice of other demo- cracies, notably Switzerland and America, that the educational ladder can be adequately supported on other methods. When once the fees charged for higher education have been reduced to a nominal level, the American educator thinks he has done enough, and considers that ambitious boys, if they lack the funds to maintain themselves while at high school or college, will be best educated by being required to earn what is needed. Hence in every type of educational institution above the primary school (and here Canada may be reckoned with the United States), scholars will be found engaged in employ- ments from domestic and hotel service to typewriting, teaching, lecturing in order to find the wherewithal to equip themselves for a professional career. As a method of climbing the ladder, this plan is as much systematized and officially recognized by universities and colleges as is our scholarship 136 THE SCHOOL system in Great Britain ; and while the pro- found differences, both economic and social, between old and new countries forbid us to imitate in detail, we must at least admit that self-reliance is fostered by this American plan. A man who has paid his way is more likely to appreciate what he has paid for with personal sacrifice. And while, no doubt, advancement to the highest standards of learning is hindered or delayed by serving as waiter or office clerk, these occupy no more time than the distractions found necessary by our leisured classes to relieve the tedium of learning, while they afford the student an insight into some practical conditions of the work-a-day world which may contribute somewhat to redress the balance between the culture of the academy and the vulgarity of the market-place. While, therefore, it would be a mistake to depreciate the motives which have led us in England to erect our special shape of educa- tional ladder, it would seem that the methods employed are open to revision. Natural selec- tion might be left to operate more freely; the educational exchequer would devote itself more resolutely to equipping the institutions of education to the highest point of effi- ciency; it would sustain the standards of achievement by pupils and teachers, it would ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATION 137 reduce to a minimum the fees for all types of education, and would then leave the pecu- niary needs of "maintenance" to be met from unofficial resources, or from any surplus that remains after the essential things in schooling have been adequately sustained. CHAPTER VII TYPES OF SCHOOL WITH SOME REFERENCE TO UNIVERSITIES 1. WHEN it is sought to interest the " man in the street " in the study of education, he is always baffled by our attempts to explain the difference between one type of school and another. He can understand the pressure of a school tax ; he can appreciate the claim of the clergy to influence education policy; he sympathizes with the ambition of a poor boy to win a scholarship, but he stumbles when set to explain, let us say, the differ- ence between secondary and technical edu- cation. Indeed, the wisest of men tread with caution in this labyrinth. The famous Bryce Commission of 1895, whose labours mark an epoch in the history of English education, published many chapters on the subject of their inquiry before they grappled with the initial difficulty of their task, and then, in answer to the formal question What is Secondary Education ? they subscribed to a dissertation which added to the perplexity. 138 TYPES OF SCHOOL 139 The difficulty arises from the nature of things from the variety of human needs, and the novel means devised by schools to meet these needs as they assume new shapes. We shall therefore not attempt to expose a co-ordinated scheme of institutions, but to indicate some of the forces which, as a matter of fact, determine the forms in which the schools are moulded. We may picture these forces in a connected line of thought somewhat as follows : looking at the needs of the scholar as really if not ostensibly deciding the type of institution organized for his reception, we can distinguish the Present, the Past, and the Future: by the Present we mean the scholar's powers as indicated by the stage of growth which he has reached; his Past is the stock of culture and experience which he brings with him from inheritance and social environment ; his Future takes into account the part he has to play in life when school has done with him. We will take these three points of view in succession. 2. We have already noted, in Chapter IV, a series of epochs in personal development from infancy to adult life, and these afford us a succession of schools kindergarten, primaiy, secondary, college each covering one stage, with a community life and atmosphere, with 140 THE SCHOOL a type of teacher and equipment adapted to the needs of the subject infant, child, pupil, student, in due order. This is the logical scheme of things, and its simplicity commends itself to the organizer. He can plan a curri- culum for stage A which will open on to stage B, and then to C and D, and the ease with which curricula can be devised and conducted on this basis makes this classification fatally mischievous when accepted as an exclusive principle of administration. For it tacitly assumes that the completion of all the stages should be the accepted goal for all scholars : that schooling right through to the com- pletion of a university course should be the ambition of every human being, and that State policy in the differentiation of types should be governed on that principle alone. We have already combated this view in the introductory chapters and need not re- capitulate the argument. The study of the stages of growth should not lead us to erect a ladder which is of value only to the few who reach the top, but rather urge us to afford for each stage of development its appropriate institution, with a curriculum and corporate life culminating in its own achievement, without regard to the entrance requirements of the ensuing stages. Thus before the stages of adolescence there are the two periods TYPES OF SCHOOL 141 of the infant school extending to six or seven years, and the primary school from eight to twelve, which appear to be well defined ; and each of these should be treated as a separate " institution " whether or no they are conducted in distinct buildings. When we turn to the years of adolescence, greater difficulty is encountered, partly be- cause with increasing years individual differ- ences are more pronounced, partly because these differences are increased as between different nations and different social groups in the same nation. Thus a boy of fourteen on an Australian farm is often more adult in many respects than a German student of twenty, although in powers of abstract thought the latter will be far ahead of the former. But in general terms we can say that the ages from thirteen to seventeen constitute a period of life which is self-contained, and that the period from seventeen to twenty-two can be adequately distinguished from it. The differences of outlook and sympathy be- tween these two stages is sufficiently pronounced, although a fair number of individuals will be found in the second stage of adolescence at an earlier period than the average, while there are also a fair proportion whose slower development indicates that they should be kept at the secondary school as 142 THE SCHOOL long as possible before going on to college. The administrator has to bear in mind that both secondary school and college are insti- tutions where the mental outlook of the scholars shapes itself consciously towards adult life and independence. While still at school the youth is ready to accept strong and despotic control : the college regime should imply a relaxation in the outward form of control while still retaining for the tutor a sense of responsibility and a personal interest in his charges. It is only after the age of twenty-one, in the years of advanced study at universities, that the relation between teacher and taught can be accepted on both sides as one of mutual independence. (Comp. p. 74 above.) Some such series of types of school based on the stages of growth underlies, with variation in details, the system adopted in all civilized countries, but by itself it tends to a mechanical rigidity which leads to grave evils. It assumes that the average scholar will proceed steadily through each grade of instruction, promoted session by session to a higher grade along with those of like standing, until the " course " of the institution is completed. In fact, it implicitly ignores variations of native capacity, or differences arising from interruptions to normal progress. The public system should provide a course of study adapted to the TYPES OF SCHOOL 143 average powers of large numbers; this is offered objectively to each individual and he is assumed to go through it, whether he be exceptionally gifted and therefore able to progress more rapidly, or be hindered in the race and thus perpetually fall behind. Speaking generally, it may be said that all national systems where huge numbers are congregated in class-rooms suffer from this evil; that it shows itself most in grades be- yond the primary, since the older the scholar the more pronounced are the individual differences ; and that as regards nationalities England has the merit of having paid most regard to the needs of the more gifted pupils : with us emphatically the doctrine has held that "to him that hath shall be given." At this moment in the United States genuine alarm is felt at the neglect for capacity involved in the public system. Formerly any attempt to foster individual talent was re- buked as " undemocratic," but it is now coming to be held that the republic suffers from the lack of men of outstanding power, and that the public system is to blame for the suppression of this resource. For the boy or girl who possesses precocious qualities, to whom the average work of his grade is little more than child's play, readily falls into idle habits, or, finding that the occupations of the 144 THE SCHOOL class-room are not " good enough " to engage his powers, he " quits schooling " and seeks a more adequate sphere for his abilities. If the elaborate educational systems of Conti- nental Europe do not illustrate the same process to the same extent, reasons are to hand which account for the discrepancy. The result in America is shown at this moment in the " Baltimore plan " and parallel devices adopted elsewhere to cope with the mischief : distinct types of school are set on foot not only for the subnormal, but, to repeat the nomen- clature of Chapter V, for the supranormal. As regards the subnormal or backward child, our legislatures have now for a long time admitted the need for segregation, and have established schools of a separate type for defectives ; but in some communities it has been discovered that it is a wise economy to arrange separate teaching for those who fall behind the average in certain lines of response without displaying such deficiency as demands their being classed as " defective." Thus the city of Cleveland has recently taken advan- tage of the long summer vacation customary in the United States to meet this situation : its public elementary schools are kept open through the entire summer, and those who need to make up their deficiencies are required to attend for the four quarters of the year TYPES OF SCHOOL 145 instead of three. The plan has been adopted, we are told, after a careful financial inquiry, which proved that this additional expenditure in the summer would not only increase the efficiency of the school system, but would actually save money. Similar plans adopted in Germany, ift Diisseldorf and elsewhere, are also being watched with interest. There is an obvious danger in all such schemes about which parents on their children's behalf are more apt to be sensitive than teachers. If the backward scholar is too openly segregated to an inferior rank, he loses his self-respect and responds unwillingly to the efforts made on his behalf : it is the first duty of those who establish separate classes to make clear that these distinctions are made not from contempt for stupidity, but from real sympathy with differences. The scholar who at present is of slow capacity, or is held back by circumstances, may forge ahead of his contemporaries if helped by wise organization ; in any event, it should be made clear that scholastic merit is only one standard by w r hich men's qualities are to be measured. 3. Thus by considering merely the scholar per se, at his present stage of growth and with his native endowment, we can fore- shadow the outline of a scheme of schools arranged in systematic relations, but we have K 146 THE SCHOOL now to notice that the children, especially in an old-established community, are distinguished by their Past, i. e. by the varieties of culture and social environment. It would be easy for the present writer to omit reference to this point, for it is notoriously a theme which arouses resentment in many minds, but our task is to indicate the fact, viz, the forces that are at work in people's minds in the differentiation of types of school. The fact here is that many families, either by the acquirement of wealth or by devotion to ideals, attain a standard of culture by which they set great store, let it be the merest social veneer or the more solid attributes of sound taste, whether associated with a " smart set, 5 ! with a genteel suburb, or an historic reli- gious society. Now every such family, as a stock, prizes these elements as a valuable part of education, and is solicitous that schooling shall promote their continuance, or at the least shall not destroy them. There are, for example, thousands of English families, from the humble homes where sixpence a week is paid for entrance to a " non-provided " school up to those of historic stock whose sons attend the great " Public Schools," where this force is seen at work, and although, as we have already noticed, the legislature cannot assist the organization of schools on this TYPES OF SCHOOL 147 basis, it is folly to attempt to rule out the impulse as inimical to progress. For this force it was which first led parents to commit their offspring to the charge of tutors : a good stock, conscious of its worth, seeks to preserve its identity and perpetuate its qualities not only by breeding, but by nutrition ; and school provides one mode of environment through which manners and ways of life are enabled to persist. The working of this force in creating diverse types of schools could be illustrated at length from all countries of Europe; and in the New World as soon as a pioneer district loses the homogeneity of social conditions by reason of the influx of wealth and culture, all sorts of private or endowed schools are created, often by religious communities, which express the failure of the public system to meet a complex situation. It is a most delicate task for the adminis- trator to regulate the operation of this force so as to ensure that minimum of supervision which the common interest of the State de- mands, and to extend in return just so much aid as will encourage the operation of this force in its ideal form while preventing it from increasing the alienation of class from class. For, on the one hand, he knows that the progress of mankind depends not upon the perpetuation of exclusive stocks, 148 THE SCHOOL contending for power and privilege, but upon mutual acquaintance and sympathy; and, as he comes to understand the subtle influences of association among the young at school, he realizes the permanent effects upon habits of life induced during the plastic years of child- hood and youth. On the other hand, he fore- sees that the very success of a sound educa- tional system tends towards selection; those who profit most by a cultural environment tend to establish a family with novel interests and tastes which in a new generation will be unwilling to throw its youngsters into the melting-pot of the public system. The real injury is done when this worthy desire for retaining family culture is crossed with the opportunities and ambition created by wealth. It is here that the crux of the situa- tion is presented. The State can well afford to countenance the school which is selective, if the selection is based either on the native capacity of the scholar, or on the cultural habits which he brings as a part of his family endowment ; but when, on a society so consti- tuted, scholars are intruded on the sole ground that they can pay for entrance, when money is used to exploit a machinery devised for higher ends, then indeed the democratic sense is affronted and the State may rightly be charged with maintaining one law for the TYPES OF SCHOOL 149 rich and another for the poor. But while these sentiments are easy to put on paper, their application is far from easy. The class of " Get-rich-quicklies " can indeed only be commended for desiring to acquire quickly a culture which in its finest form takes time for proper growth. The opposition of sentiment as here outlined accounts for the permanent difficulties en- countered in the control of English secondary schools : we have the schools fostered by religious bodies, the old-endowed grammar school supported partly by families of good stock, and jealous of the intrusion of children of inferior breeding ; boarding schools compet- ing keenly with all the rest, and dependent more upon the wealth of parents than on the gifts of the State ; also, since 1902, municipal secondary schools appealing to a new civic spirit, and, finally, privately-controlled schools of all grades of efficiency. We have said little to reconcile these rivalries, but a point is gained when their competition is reviewed in the light of larger motives such as we have here reviewed. 4. But in addition to the family culture which lies behind the scholar, we have, finally, to consider his Future. True enough, a school which cherishes the culture of the past while training the scholar on his present level of 150 THE SCHOOL development is doing much to equip him for the future ; the phrase " liberal education " was indeed adopted to describe a curriculum which ignores a man's vocation for the sake of larger and deeper needs. Yet we saw, in Chapter III, how in very early days types of school were established with the direct intention of serving the purpose of professions and trades; if in modern times a sharp antithesis has been ^discovered be- tween liberal and technical education it is only because men have failed to see how intimate is the alliance between the two ; the ends both of vocation and of leisure need to be pursued in unison, if not always in conjunction. Undoubtedly the " old educa- tion," maintained in England up to say 1860, neglected the realities of life, and often boasted of its neglect. Even to-day there exists in certain coteries a contempt more or less veiled for " bread-and-butter studies," meaning thereby such pursuits as do not provide bread-and-butter for the critic. Confined in the cloister of his scholastic pursuits, absorbed, as he needs must be if faithful to duty, in the present life of his scholars, there is little incentive to the teacher for observation of the after-effect of schooling ; and it is little wonder that teachers breed their own kind, and are seen at their TYPES OF SCHOOL 151 best in creating more teachers Indeed, this criticism is especially apt as regards some institutions expressly designed for technical instruction, as, for example, those offering courses in commercial and in domestic sciences : some of these have had small influence upon commerce or domestic life, but they have trained a multitude of teachers certified as able to impart such instruction. It is precisely here that we need to seek for further light; we can find little satisfaction in discussing the question as concerned solely with the separate subjects of a curri- culum. The more a single study is treated in isolation from a larger scheme of education, the less value can it possess either for leisure or for vocation ; the more closely it is inter- woven with other experience and viewed in the light of larger issues, the more does its pursuit become worth while. And this sug- gests one principle which may guide the administrator when asked to found a separate institution to meet vocational needs. If such an institution is founded, it should be definitely and organically connected with the vocation; those who control it, whether as teachers or managers, should have first- hand experience in the calling, and the scholars should be avowedly embarked in that calling. The Trades School which is now being 152 THE SCHOOL encouraged in England, the Gewerbe Schule in Germany, the industrial school in America, are likely to achieve their end because this principle is being thoroughly accepted : the vocation is not thereby reduced to a lower level, but its prestige is enhanced, simply because the process of interpreting the craft involves resort to those branches of culture which stand in vital relation to it : the crafts- man when he teaches his craft is compelled in due course to become a liberal educator. The complementary principle needs equal emphasis, viz. that an institution for general education should abstain from the pretension to qualify its scholar for the detailed tasks which modern vocations impose upon crafts- men and professional men. It should rely with confidence upon its ability to foster the larger and more comprehensive talents which shall aid them, when the time arrives for leaving school or college, for rapidly engaging on the narrower field which the vocation defines. In other words, there is no room for the older type of technical school which sacrificed liberal aims without coming into vital contact with the world's business ; which pursued the older traditions of scholastic method, with a re-shuffling of the subjects of the time- table. This is not to say that there is no room for variety in the curricula which the schools TYPES OP SCHOOL 153 provide : there may well be a choice of studies afforded between which a scholar may " elect " so far as the resources of the institution extend; but it places the emphasis not on the relation of this or that study to the future career, but on its relation here and now to the general scheme of culture and of school life in which the scholar is absorbed. By way of illustration : our large secondary schools usually offer a choice, at any rate in the higher classes, between a curriculum mainly classical, mainly scientific and mathematical, or mainly modern and English (a similar variety is provided, in my opinion not so wisely, in Germany, by the creation of separate types of school; thus the Realschulen offer no Latin; the Gymnasien both Latin and Greek). The motive of the organizer in affording this choice of curricula is to help the scholar towards his future vocation; thus a lad destined for engineering will pay special attention to mathematics. But at this stage of his career such considerations ought not to have too much weight : the influence which his schooling will exert upon his vocation will not come mainly from this special preparatory attention to mathematics, but from his free general growth in an atmosphere, intellectual and social, which suits his nature. We must admit that there 154 THE SCHOOL are many inefficient schools which profess to foster such generous growth, and fail to make good their promise; but such cases will be remedied by improving not merely the instruction in mathematics, but the entire work of the school. To put this in new terms, we hold that for boys and girls whose capacity and character are of the right stamp, a prolonged experience of general liberal culture at school and college is the soundest introduction to the specialized duties of adult life. In all schemes of this kind we have to admit that vocational training is essentially the application of " brains " to practical pheno- mena : its quality and range depend abso- lutely upon the quality of mind which approaches its problems ; they can only be rightly appreciated in their proper setting, as parts of a wider experience. Here, again, to him that hath is given ; we find, for example, that able boys in London who have had a good schooling are offered a shorter period of apprenticeship in certain trades, for such an apprentice not only gets over the ground in shorter time, but with greater efficiency. 5. With each stage of development the con- flicting claims of culture and vocation be- come more acute ; hence we should now turn our attention to the situation as it is presented TYPES OF SCHOOL 155 in colleges and universities. A most striking example of the worth of a prolonged syste- matic training (and of other points discussed in this chapter) is afforded by the practice of English universities, and especially, perhaps, of Oxford, re-shaped during the last generation by Jowett and his contemporaries. Un- doubtedly there is much of failure in these as in all academies : much that is anti-social in its tendency, much that needs reform ; but our concern is to indicate the ideal of those who have worked out a theory into successful practice. Now Oxford is pre-eminently English in its conception of education, because it fosters in its own life the competitive spirit : each college stands or falls in rivalry with its neigh- bours. English also in its belief in the selective principle : it seeks to educate only those who can stand the test of its life of leisure; and in its preference for those whose family culture points them out as likely to profit by the special influences of the place. Provided with such material, college tutors endeavour by personal teaching and oversight to pro- duce a definite effect on the individual : lectures are less important than essays ; examinations are very important, not only because of the stimulus, but because, when skilfully handled, they form a means of 156 THE SCHOOL gauging ability. This tutorial method can be applied to any type of curriculum, for it is the training that counts rather than the details of knowledge ; but, naturally, the older humanistic studies, which for centuries have been perfected as a pedagogic instru- ment, answer more easily to the ideal. It will be recognized that this conception of a university career differs from that current in most parts of the world where the " depart- ment " with its professors and lecturers, its laboratory and its research apparatus, has emerged in modern times as a distinct type of institution playing an indispensable part in the organization not only of modern industry, but of the entire realm of intellectual progress. The modern university, in fact, seeks to fulfil two disparate functions, and combines in one organization two institutions, whose purpose should never be confused. As a " college " it finds its chief duty in the charge of youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, who still require, and respond to, the guidance of a professional teacher ; its function is much like that of the secondary school; although it specializes (and, with scholars of this age, we must allow ample variety), it subordinates the acquirement of mere knowledge to a more liberal ideal. But as a congeries of departments constituting a university it TYPES OF SCHOOL 157 has a different aim : for the science which the " department " professes is now the principal interest, and tutorial relationships are of less account : the professor and staff are not so much teachers as senior colleagues, guiding the independent research of younger men. Credit is gained not so much by producing all- round efficiency in the individual, but by exhibiting the results of investigation, and the funds are expended with this end in view ; lavish resources are required for equipment, and the staff are prized not for their tutorial powers as directors of youth, but for evidence of original powers in research. Our universities in all countries are at present pulled in these two directions, and attempt as best they may to combine both functions. Where the resources are ample, as at Oxford and Cambridge or in the larger universities of the Continent and of America, the double duty can be discharged, but it is of capital importance for administrators to allow for the fundamental distinction and to devise plans so that whatever aim is accepted shall be achieved, even though this involves dispensing with some fields of study and research which the title of "University" might properly include. Thus the discussion of the functions of a university is seen to bear close relations to 158 THE SCHOOL the entire problem of vocational training. As a place of research, the university department is in close touch with professional and indus- trial life, for in all departments, except those concerned with pure learning, it finds its problem for investigation in the difficulties which the practitioner encounters. Economics, politics, chemistry, medicine, each depends for its stimulus upon questions raised in the world outside. As an institute for education, the university may either aim at a general culture such as our older universities profess, or it may organize definite vocational schools, such as schools of medicine, or of law : in the latter case it has to see to it, as it best may, that a maximum of liberal culture is secured by the spirit in which the professional studies are pursued : here, as in the case of the technical school above noted, the risk of failure is greatest. And, again, such a college should hold no quarter with a curriculum which sacrifices the aims of liberal culture to the pretence of preparing for a craft or profession while holding the student aloof from real contact with practice. I have dwelt upon this theme not only because it is in place in any discussion of types of school, but because evidence is to hand from many quarters, in the British Empire as elsewhere, that university corporations TYPES OF SCHOOL 159 are being recognized as indispensable factors in national progress : students flock to them ; millionaires, cities, states support them : it is seen that much will result, of evil or good, from the skill with which their policy is directed. We have to go back to the Europe of medieval times to find a parallel to this situation. Nor can we see the working of these forces in their proper light if we confine our attention solely to the body of students and instructors gathered on the university " campus." The idea of university " extension " has long been familiar, and this is now taking new shape in England under the impulse of the Workers' Educational Association, while in America a variety of influences, which can perhaps be best studied in the State of Wisconsin, are giving to the term university a new signifi- cance. Even the auspices under which these chapters are written as part of a " Home University Library " illustrate the working of the same tendency. In the Middle Ages the difficulties of travel and of communication, combined with the scarcity of books, confined the organized machinery of culture for adults to selected spots where an institution could be created with all the symbols and the authority appropriate to the worship of Minerva. But the modern world, with its 160 THE SCHOOL democratic temper which holds in small esteem the traditions of a learned caste, and its facilities for rapid communication and diffusion, realizes that the society of a univer- sity may embrace many groups within the State who possess capacity and energy for the serious pursuit of knowledge even though they are not concerned to complete the courses prescribed for degrees. It thus becomes an organ for extending the resources of science beyond the limits of the school as defined in this volume; but it becomes " an instrument of the people," placing its resources at the disposal of all members of the State who need its aid. No doubt this ideal is easier to de- scribe than to fulfil : the duty is not fulfilled by merely distributing lecturers or books to miscellaneous audiences ; still less by offering instruction of an elementary grade, such as the schools should provide ; nor is the ideal attained by ministering only to one class of the community, artisan or other, which can make its voice heard. The university of the future will place at the disposal of all classes, for the common benefit, both the methods of study and the result of research which give to it its special character; and it will discover manifold means by which such a purpose can be achieved. The more it opens out in this new field, the more readily will the TYPES OF SCHOOL 161 claims of universities for material aid be acknowledged. 6. At this point we can see more clearly the value of institutions which may be distin- guished from all that we have hitherto dis- cussed by offering partial education, 1 i. e. they engage only a part of the scholar's daily activity, the other part being already allotted to a vocation. Of this the clerk working in his spare time at commercial geography, the engineer attending evening classes in mathe- matics are examples. There is an infinite variety of such institutions, from the instruc- tion given through the post in correspondence classes, to the courses sanctioned by some universities for instruction towards profes- sional degrees. Their merit lies in the close relationship which should always be empha- sized between the course of study and the vocation; for the motive which leads the student to attend such a course is always most powerful when he finds that an immediate goal can be proposed for his endeavours. It is true that some so-called continuation classes are still maintained in this country which offer instruction of a miscellaneous 1 Lack of space forbids introducing here the important service to liberal education rendered by the Sunday-school, by Y.M.C. Associations, etc., conducted by non-profes- sional teachers. 162 THE SCHOOL type, reaching down to handwriting and including, as Sir John Gorst on a famous occasion admitted, the art of dancing. But the only justification for including such studies in a scheme of partial education has been found by deploring the deficiency of regular school education imparted in earlier years. This is a bad plea to advance, and could only serve the administrator as a temporary expe- dient : his duty clearly lay in improving the work of the elementary school, so that there would be no necessity to offer a repetition of its curriculum to young men and women. It is not surprising that efforts to restore the elements of culture to the forlorn derelicts who made nothing of the "standards" in their childhood have largely proved abortive. For youths, engaged in the lowest branches of toil, revert most unwillingly to the school desk : they are now adolescents, and we find them spending their leisure in the social opportunities of the city streets. It is pro- posed to win them back to some regard for culture by applying compulsion, and while the State can hope to achieve something by its authority (where it can persuade the employer to diminish the long hours of labour), such a system of partial education will only succeed if it recognizes the status of the adolescent, by giving some scope for his TYPES OF SCHOOL 163 social impulses and for his precocious sense of independence. In this field valuable experi- ence has already been gained : the lads' clubs and girls' clubs of Manchester, and similar institutions in London, point out the road to success these institutions are not mere class-rooms, nor mere recreation-rooms, but they are corporate societies, and as such, in good hands, they achieve for their members many of the aims of liberal training which in another rank of society are entrusted to the secondary school and the college. For it is plain that among a group of young people who are economically independent, but receive no stimulus to culture either from their home or their employment, the motive for self- improvement can only be reached through social organization adapted to their stage of growth. Once more the official provision for instruction tends to fail where it offers intel- lectual work in isolation ; if contact cantiot be directly made with vocation, then it must be sought by giving a place to social instincts. 7. Our discussion of vocational needs has thus brought under our review most varied types of institution, from the university to the lads' club. One further question may be asked which may place these efforts in some relation other than the necessities induced by class distinctions or economic needs. Con- 164 THE SCHOOL sidering solely the quality and character of the scholar, can we determine in any individual case at what point attendance at a school for the entire day should cease and make way for absorption in a vocation along with its appropriate vocational training ? The answer to this inquiry is not difficult if we admit to the full those individual differences in taste and capacity on which we have already dwelt. For every scholar displays, sooner or later, what may be called " vocational instinct,'' stimulated or retarded more or less by the environment of home or school ; and the signs can be clearly discerned by those who know him. Young people under normal conditions want to play some part in the world; in spite of the comradeship of school, its artificial programme palls on many as the years go by : the indefinite extension of schooling (i. e. of general liberal schooling) is by no means a benefit to all. It is best to release some even as early as twelve years and to give them the benefit of a Trades School type of experience ; others may well remain till fourteen, when they are ready for an apprenticeship combined with instruction; others show powers which make a secondary school life congenial to them ; and there still remain some to whom, as we saw in Chapter II, a longer withdrawal from vocation can safely be permitted. In all TYPES OF SCHOOL 165 countries where a fair supply of public in- struction is to hand these individual differences operate effectively in the middle ranks of society, but at the two extremes there is maladjustment. At the one end, lack of means sometimes turns away from school a gifted child whose powers would benefit by a higher education ; at the other, extreme wealth often purchases for youths of both sexes an extended time of leisure at school when the vocational instinct should cut it short. In other words, a great many boys and girls would make more of life if they went " to work " for at least part of the day, even when their parents can afford to pay handsomely for their schooling. Note. The reader may be surprised at finding no reference in this chapter to differentiation of schools, on the basis of sex, especially as in England separate colleges and ( ' High Schools " for girls have played so prominent a part. But the omission is deliberate. A scientific treat- ment of the relation of the sexes in education would require us to consider the psychology of sex differentiation in Chap. V, and to pursue the theme to the closing chapter on Corporate Life. Or, rather, one should go back to the foundations, and survey the status of girls and women by the aid of anthropology, history, and ethics before attempt- ing a dispassionate review of the contemporary situation. For such a study these pages cannot afford space ; while to treat so grave a problem superficially would not accord with the serious purpose of this Library. Throughout the volume the author tacitly assumes that men and women should be co-partners in (modern) educa- tional effort, as mothers and fathers are partners in the (modern) home. CHAPTER VIII THE TEACHER 1. THERE is a wide gulf between the lofty ideals assumed for the profession of school- teacher and the popular estimate of his value. Our English fiction from Thackeray and Dickens onwards usually portrays the school-master in an unamiable light. And the people at large are of the same mind. ' c A teacher, are you ? " said a colliery manager of my acquaintance recently to me; "ah well ! I was a pupil-teacher myself for a year or two, but I soon found a better job." He expressed the popular mind : it is not so much because teaching is ill paid, but that it is regarded as not quite a worthy employ- ment for a man of capacity. There is sup- posed to be something effeminate or enfeebling about it; and indeed it is more and more coming to be regarded as an occupation for women rather than men. Not that children are the worse for being taken in hand by women; the contrary is the case. But it is a capital misfortune when, as has already 166 THE TEACHER 167 happened in America, men cease to teach the young, instead of becoming partners with women. Formerly, as we have seen, school teaching maintained its prestige as a branch of the clerical calling ; now that respect for learning and science has been enhanced, it seeks to recover status by identifying itself with the pursuits of the academy and laboratory. Fifty years ago the ambitions of teachers who started at the lowest grade were crowned by gaining the right to prefix Rev. to their names : now the struggle, equally intense, is to secure the letters B. A. as a suffix. Thus within the profession itself there is often a lack of enthusiasm : rarely does a man advise his sons to follow the father's example, as is the case in other callings. The reasons for this depreciation are not far to seek : they are traced to the underlying contempt that the adult community has for the child community. When the pessimist of the Old Testament declared that " child- hood and youth are vanity " he was echoing the general opinion handed down through the ages ; and the New Testament, declaring that " of such is the kingdom of heaven," was anticipating a point of view which is only now coming to be realized as nearer the truth. It is true that parents are full of affection and 168 THE SCHOOL sentiment, but the intensely individualistic attitude of the parent who loves his children as the most valuable part of his property is far removed from that respect for children as a whole which is needed if the teacher's calling is to be treated seriously. The crude con- ception of childhood still flourishes which regards the child at any stage as little more than an imperfect specimen of man or woman, to be despised because he cannot yet do the things that " we " can do, living an inferior life which must be superseded as soon as may be. Thus to the teacher, and to the public who share this view, the calling often appears somewhat abject. "Men of the world " are always pitting their wits against their equals, but the teacher is shut up with a crowd of his inferiors ; if he asserts himself he takes the likeness of a petty tyrant ; if he allows his mind to sink to their level he tends to lose his manhood. This, in plain terms, is what is always being felt both within the teaching body and in the world beyond the school walls. Even in the universities, which stand aloof from school teaching, the same disability is seen : Cecil Rhodes, while devising by his will a scheme for the mutual benefit of Oxford and of the Empire, placed on record his distrust of the don. 2. Clearly this fundamental attitude affects THE TEACHER 169 the efficiency of teaching ; for it not only dis- courages the best ability from adopting the career, and leads many who have adopted it as a stop-gap to forsake it on the first occa- sion, but it prevents progress, hindering the efforts of those who would restore the self- esteem of the teacher by widening the area of professional responsibility. There are few callings in which the workers have been per- mitted by public opinion to have less control over their professional procedure, although a few teachers' societies, especially in the primary grades, have strenuously endeavoured to secure some independence. We have seen that, from the nature of the case, the school as an institution must be externally controlled by public authorities, but such a situation should be compatible with an abundant measure of internal freedom and self-government by the teaching body, if that were desired by public opinion. In a few institutions, such as the old-established " Public Schools " and some of the universities, where public opinion can be disregarded, such freedom is asserted ; not, however, on behalf of teachers as a whole, but solely as the privilege of those who tutor the children of the leisured class. Elsewhere it is tacitly accepted that the State, both in its central and local organs of authority, must constantly check the 170 THE SCHOOL teacher's activity, since the teaching body are not of a character to be entrusted as such with privilege and power. The movement, in fact, proceeds in a vicious circle : served by many members who are only birds of passage, depreciated by public opinion, cramped within the petty regime of the class-room, the pro- fession tends to lose in efficiency : it thus appears to the State as unworthy to be exalted and is kept bound in leading-strings which perpetuate these evils. The remedy is not far to seek : respect from the State and from public opinion only ensues upon the creation of self-respect, i. e. by dis- covering new standards of value in the calling itself. If the arguments of earlier chapters have been followed these are being discovered more and more on those basic principles derived from the nature of childhood. Thus the teacher is no longer a clergyman, or a clerical assistant; but he remains an idealist, for he studies the child in society as growing up in due course to occupy the place of his fathers and advance the spiritual progress of the race. While he cherishes his rank among scholars and men of science he has discovered his own special field of scholarship and research, allied to but independent of theirs : his peculiar study is Child Study, i. e. the investigation of all that concerns THE TEACHER 171 the growth from stage to stage in children's life and experience; and herewith, of course, the measures and methods by which this growth can be most prudently directed. He is no longer a dispenser at secondhand of scholastic wares; he declines to retail the crumbs of knowledge that he has submis- sively received in the academies ; but he tends to be a thinker on his own account, judging of cause and effect, revising and il need be re-shaping that machinery of schools in which the community engages his activi- ties. Thus a demand arises for a formal recognition of the teacher's office, and in England this has taken shape for many years past in a lively agitation on behalf of a Teachers' Council, as a professional body with powers bestowed by the legislature, dealing especially with the qualifications of the teacher and allied matters which affect his status. The strength of this agitation and the co-operative effort made by all ranks of teachers is evidence that a professional consciousness now exists which can claim recognition. In earlier days little could be said on behalf of freedom for the teacher when, as in Prussia of the eighteenth century, the pensioned drill sergeant was selected to teach the children ; or, as in America of later days, a charming girl of Irish descent could 172 THE SCHOOL usually secure a teaching appointment by the good office of a city alderman; or, as in England, even now, it is possible for persons to be employed as " supplementary teachers " if they are vaccinated and have reached the age of eighteen ; l under such conditions the State is compelled to assume autocratic powers and rely entirely upon its own authority. But, unfortunately, a bureaucracy when once established finds it hard to surrender a part of its power in compliance with new conditions. 3. This appears to be the situation at pre- sent disclosed in England, and it can no doubt be paralleled in other states both of the Old and of the New World. In England we have witnessed of late years an unexampled display of energy at Whitehall, re-shaping the entire field of public education, and the ability with which this reconstruction has been carried out will surely be remembered with gratitude by succeeding generations. But it is evidently hard for those who have thus re-shaped a sys- tem to recognize that the very success of their endeavours demands a change of attitude, and it seems to be generally held in England that the time has come for the central authority to surrender some of its powers. 1 It is right to add that this grade of teacher is dis- appearing and will have no successors. THE TEACHER 173 This criticism applies, however, still more to some of the local authorities, which, with less warrant in expert knowledge and re- sources, tend to assume an authority alien to the spirit of democratic freedom. An almost chronic ill-will appears to exist in some parts of England between those who administer the schools (whether officials or laymen) and those who teach ; it often slumbers, but it occasionally breaks out, as recently, in unhappy agitation which at- tracts the attention of the entire country. It is the children who suffer most from such disturbances, and it would appear to be the first duty of those who lead the country in matters of education to ihduce a finer spirit to prevail. I venture to give voice to this criticism in a chapter dealing with the Teacher, because conditions of this kind (whose opera- tions are only dimly discerned by the public) tend to deprive the schools of the services of the best kind of teachers. If taxpayers and parents who follow other callings would look at the business of schooling from the teacher's standpoint, they would readily see that any benefit which can accrue to children from attendance at school will be enormously en- hanced if the teacher is satisfied honourably satisfied with the conditions of service : not only with the emolument, but with those 174 THE SCHOOL relationships which maintain his self-respect and his professional freedom. 4. When, however, we come to consider positive measures for recognizing the teaching force, many difficulties are presented. In the Act of 1902 the experiment was tried of inviting teachers' representatives to a small share in the local administration by giving them seats on education committees, but it has become increasingly clear that this course has tended rather to alienate local sympathy than to assist the autonomy of the teaching body. Here and there, no doubt, the services of distinguished individuals, especially among women, have been secured by this system of co-optation, but the principle is at bottom un- sound, for it tends to confuse the relation of employer and employee. What the teaching profession rather desires is that its voice should be heard and respected; that its opinion should be heard not merely through self- appointed societies maintained by the zeal of enthusiasm, but should be sought and ex- pressed through a recognized procedure based upon legislation. An example of this kind is already afforded in the Consultative Com- mittee created by the Act of 1899, but it is a misfortune that this body is merely the creation of government nominees and stands in no official relation with the general body THE TEACHER 175 of teachers. But the acknowledged benefit secured through its deliberations is evidence enough that the principle is right, and that it may be applied in county and city areas as well as at Whitehall. Example might here be taken from some of the cantons of Switzer- land, where the teaching profession stands high in public regard, and, as a consequence, is admitted to a voice, not in the final decisions of authority, but in the preliminary delibera- tions. Under such a system grievances have no place : regulations are not issued first and then complained of afterwards, but the pro- fessional council chosen by the teaching body has the opportunity, not by favour but by right, of considering and declaring its opinion before the decisive change is made. If such a policy and attitude could now be adopted by those in authority, it would probably do more to promote the inner efficiency of our schools than many enactments of the legis- lature. 1 1 A friend has reminded me of another hindrance to the teacher's efficiency the increasing hurden of office work, beginning, as in many elementary schools, with the collection of pence on Monday. Administrators ought to have some sympathy here, for they should know the deadening effect of office routine_, but in England they are at present merciless in adding to the burden of Forms and Returns. Our English schools will never display the freshness of vigour which should surround a society of young people until the teacher's load is lightened. 176 THE SCHOOL There is, of course, another side to this picture, In all professions the evolution of the trained expert, with his trade secrets, his guild privileges, his certified authority, is watched by outsiders with jealousy. And as regards the teacher this jealousy will always be felt, since his work touches other fields of activity at so many points. We may illus- trate from the agitation already alluded to on behalf of a Registration Council. By the Act of 1899 aftd amending Acts, Parliament sanc- tioned this mode of creating a teaching profession, but when the Board of Education, entrusted with initiating the formation of the Council, set about the task, it declared the situation to be impossible, because of the exist- ence of thousands of persons, musicians, artists, craftsmen, and the like, who claimed to rank along with the professional teachers whose interests, presumably, were contemplated by the legislature. The obvious fact is that any one, from a nursemaid to a senator, can teach A few thousands spent on clerks, with typewriters and ledgers, would in many localities do much to raise the level of achievement all round. Business men rely more and more on such aids to keep their minds active and alert, hut they are slow to see how needful these qualities are for the success of school life. Since 1902 the load has been increased in all types of school, for every reform at headquarters adds to the clerical burdens of principals of schools. THE TEACHER 177 something, for the young are always learning from all sorts of people ; the administrator's task is not easy when he seeks to devise regulations which shall differentiate the school- teacher who pursues his calling as a distinct profession from the varied list of persons (including the scientist and the physician as well as the musician and the painter) who take a subsidiary interest in the instruction of the young. The difficulty is heightened as regards school- teachers by the unwillingness of the State to allow freedom to any of its servants : registra- tion and professional recognition have been secured with comparative ease for many call- ings, not only because the public demand expert service, but because the service is paid for by individual fees. Any one, for example, can give medical advice to his neighbour, but if a fee is attached to the advice the registration law steps in and protects the trained and recognized practitioner. At an earlier day, when the practice of the private school-master was more in evidence than it is now, attempts were made to organize the teaching profession on a fee-paying basis, but with the vast increase in the public support and control of schools, the uselessness of such Teachers' Registration Acts has become ob- vious : it is the State which, on the whole, M 178 THE SCHOOL employs teachers and determines their rank, and the State, for its own good, must be led to see the importance of giving to the teacher a measure of initiative and self-government such as is admitted to be wholesome and effective for other callings. If the argument em- ployed in an earlier chapter on behalf of free- dom for children be also admitted, then the case for the teacher is strengthened, for he who is free to develop himself will be the more ready to allow the same freedom to the children whom he directs. At present the great bulk of teachers, in England and other countries, are classified, trained, and certificated by State enactment : whatever influence they exercise is commonly secured through agita- tion, or through the courtesy of State officials when these see the wisdom of consulting teachers before legislating for them. In the nature of things there seems no reason why this work should not be done with at least equal efficiency if the State handed over the details to organs largely chosen by the teach- ing body thus making this profession, like others, the guardian of its own standards and the effective promoter of its own improve- ment. The objection usually taken to such pro- posals arises from the method by which the State affords financial aid to the training of THE TEACHER 179 teachers : by awarding grants per capita to students in elementary training colleges it places the teacher in an eleemosynary (?) re- lation to the State different from that which prevails in other professions. The State says, in effect, " he that pays the piper calls the tune : since we, officials of the State, support the intending teacher, we must regulate minutely his affairs and keep him in tutelage." But if it can be shown that the time for tutelage is past, it would be an easy matter so to rearrange the grants-in-aid as to safeguard the public interest, while relieving the State officials of a task which cannot but be uncongenial to men of broad training. 5. Underlying the whole situation, however, there exist further complications. We have described the teaching body as if it were one, and it is true enough that the spirit of co- operation between antagonistic groups has been a feature of the last decade; but it is still true that the distinctions between types of school which we noted in the last chapter, due to the influence of deep-seated tradi- tions and habits, extend to the teachers also, and influences at every turn the current of policy. We cannot enter into the details of these em- barrassments, but the broad principle is surely 180 THE SCHOOL clear enough everything which tends to co-operation and unity, which helps one group of teachers to exchange their special powers and talents with their brethren, is to the good; and everything which perpetuates barriers, which accentuates differences, is to the bad, and should be discountenanced by the State. Although much should be conceded as to differences in types of school, we can only publicly admit differences in the qualification and status of teachers so far as the needs of children differ at the stages of growth. There are infants, children, youths, students the needs of each of these differ so greatly as to require different experience and qualities in the teacher, and we can distinguish kinder- garten, primary, secondary and college teachers quite justly and naturally on this basis. Such distinctions are based on the nature of the employment, just as those be- tween surgeons and physicians in the medical profession, and they can be recognized without any depreciation of one group at the expense of another. It would take us beyond the scope of this volume to inquire into the studies, academic or professional, which should engage the atten- tion of those who are designed for the teacher's calling. All the four groups of teachers need to be equipped as broadly as possible with THE TEACHER 181 knowledge and capacity in every branch of study, for children at all ages are ready to learn. In this sense it may be said of teaching more than of other callings that the training is never complete ; the equipment in art and scholarship gained at college merely provides a foundation for methods of investigation which should occupy the teacher all his life. He travels, attends summer schools, joins scientific societies, pursues hobbies, not only as other men do for the cultivation of personal taste, but because his worth in his profession depends largely on the width of his intellectual and social sympathies. We have here a justi- fication for the long periods of vacation per- mitted to the teacher in comparison with those engaged in other employments. These are intended not only as relief from the nervous fatigue induced by active work in the class- room, but as means for positive improvement by the enlargement of experience. Thus one of the chief hindrances to success with children is overcome : the school-room tends always to be a place for narrow specialist interest in contrast to that shallow but uni- versal interest in human activities which dis- tinguishes the young : the teacher needs to be a jack-of-all-trades, as well as master of one ; in other words, while his native capacities will lead him, like all adults, to specialize, i. e. to 182 THE SCHOOL care especially for one select field of study, his calling will tend to make him catholic in his taste, to care somewhat for music, for art, for literature, for science, for handicrafts, for out- door life, for society, since to be a guide in the school community all these pursuits have their part to play. 6. Clearly, too, when we seek to classify groups of teachers a difference will appear in the emphasis laid upon the pursuits engaging the special interest of one or of another. We have noticed a sharp difference between the stages of youth and the pre-adolescent stages as regards the general field of interest : young children are predominantly concerned in practical output with material they are craftsmen; whereas the youth has advanced to a larger vision in his social and moral in- terests. Hence, if distinctions are to be made between primary and secondary teachers we should say that the ideal primary teacher is one who, above all, is an artist and craftsman, 1 while the ideal secondary teacher is more in accord with the scholarly type which has been the tradition for all grades in the pro- fession. At present the chief tendency among those who seek to improve the status of prim- ary teachers is to induce them to pursue scholastic studies of the standard university 1 Compare pp. 89 and 203. THE TEACHER 183 type, and the most coveted posts are reserved for those who achieve academic distinction. But if our interpretation of child development be correct, a new conception of this status is urgently demanded. Many teachers, it is true, pay some attention to fine art and handicraft, and there is due recognition at the present day of " manual training " as an ele- ment of value in a teacher's equipment, but these pursuits are not brought into relation with the ideal elements which attach to the pursuit of literature. They are regarded as part and parcel of the vulgar life of the work- shop and the labour yard, and their advance- ment in professional esteem will depend upon a more honest recognition, in the spirit of Carlyle and Ruskin, of the nobility of " work." l Much would be gained if William Morris rather than Roger Ascham could be set before the primary teacher as an example. His task would be not to produce a new generation of mere factory hands or of cheer- less diggers of the soil, but of youths ready to find in these crafts a better interpretation of literature and of life than the school has hitherto been able to provide. 7. But such a reform will only be welcomed by those who have accepted modern views as to stages of growth, and since these views 1 Compare pp. 89 and 206. 184 THE SCHOOL depend upon the scientific study of children, it is clear that the broad culture in scholarship or the crafts which we expect from teachers will only bear its finest fruit when it is sup- ported by a distinctive interest in the final " subject " of his calling, viz. the growing child. Thus it is coming to be more clearly realized with every decade that this field of science, called by many names and pursued by many methods, will presently constitute the acknowledged and necessary basis for the teacher's equipment, serving the same purposes as natural science performs for the physician, or mathematics for the engineer. At an earlier day it was vaguely supposed that, since the teacher dealt with the human mind, a knowledge of psychology should help him along, but so long as the psychology itself dealt only with the adult mind, little headway could be expected. But from the days of Herbart progress has been slowly made towards that genetic treatment of mental life which alone can afford real guidance to the teacher. First of all a series of records, such as those of Preyer, were made of the first years of infancy ; there- upon a whole host of investigators, among whom Stanley Hall, Earl Barnes and Ker- chensteiner are pre-eminent, have investi- gated the content of children's minds during THE TEACHER 185 school years, collecting data from every field of human interest. Finally, the methods of the laboratory, applied first of all by Fechner and Wundt to general psychology, are being applied to child development, and a science that the Germans are calling Eocperimentelle Pddagogik is being organized by Meumann and others, which claims to be able in due course to revise the entire system of school instruction. This claim is perhaps extrava- gant, and some indulgence may be extended to the enthusiasm of men of science when they first discover a new tool; but in branches of teaching where results can be subjected to rigorous time-tests, and where apparatus can be devised which isolates some special feature of mental activity, one can fairly expect that the laboratory will throw light upon the learning process. One might extend this account by reference to the share in these investigations now taken by the medical profession. A child physiology has been put together side by side with a child psychology, and these taken together and applied to the conditions under which teachers and scholars meet in the school pro- vide a body of technical professional inquiry which, if time is allotted for its mastery, equips the teacher with a reasoned foundation for his professional activities. Unfortunately, we 186 THE SCHOOL are far as yet from allowing the time needed for such study. Its adequate mastery is at least as difficult as the task imposed upon the medical student, and yet no one at the present day is bold enough to propose such an expendi- ture on the training of the teacher as is de- manded for the physician. Much, however, will be gained if at the present day the founda- tions of pedagogic science are firmly laid in the scientific treatment of genetic psychology : a later generation will reap the benefit in a race of teachers more conscious than their predecessors have been of the strength that is imparted to a profession when its work is governed by the methods of scientific research. 8. Nor can the professional equipment of a teacher be regarded as limited by that range of studies usually covered by the term ex- perimental science. It is indeed one purpose of this volume to show how closely the func- tion of the school is related to the evolution of society which is witnessed outside the school walls. When the teacher comes to view the details of his day's work in relation to the whole school community, and this in turn as part of a larger movement in the neighbour- hood, the city, the state, a deeper meaning and purpose is infused into his time-table, and his interests are bound to be quickened. THE TEACHER 187 Hence some attention is fairly demanded to politics, or, if the terms be preferred, to ethics and sociology, and to the growth of mankind as a matter of historical develop- ment. But here, as in the study of genetic psycho- logy, it is only possible for a foundation to be laid during the years allotted to pro- fessional training ; in this as in so many other callings the practitioner only really appreciates the meaning of his studies when he has come face to face with the realities of practice. It used to be supposed that the technical " theory " of a trade or profession could be acquired at one period of life while the practice could be pursued at a subse- quent period, the latter in some sense being superimposed on the other. 1 But it is now coming to be recognized, especially, perhaps, among engineers, that the candidate or apprentice often fails to lay hold of the values of " theory " until he has tried his 'prentice hand at the practical job. Motive seems to be wanting, a perception of values is wanting. It would seem better, therefore, that all who propose to teach should, as soon as they arrive at years of discretion, secure experience, under- taking any employment in schools for which they are fitted ; they are thereafter able to see 1 Compare p. 151. 188 THE SCHOOL the abstract problem of the lecture-room in right proportion, and when student days are over the teacher is likely to carry with him for his lifetime that habit of associating theory with practice, of seeing the whole in the details, which is the foundation for rational progress not only in teaching, but in every trade and profession. 9. The present writer, therefore, while desiring on behalf of candidates for the teaching profession a sufficient period of training, is not anxious to press for an extension of this period as a compulsory rule for all teachers. But it is urgent that those who are especially alive to their opportunities and are pre- pared to sacrifice much to the improve- ment of education should be specifically and generously encouraged. It is just here that the greatest failure has so far been witnessed in England. Neither the Government nor private benefactors who advance research seem to have recognized that abundant re- sources are needed as a topstone to the edifice if real advance is to be made among the rank and file. Training colleges are provided, receiving many thousands of students, but no provision is made so that those who teach in these training colleges can receive advanced instruction and pursue their own Investigations in pedagogic science so as THE TEACHER 189 to be able with confidence to lead forward a new generation of teachers. If at this moment the United States appears to be making rapid improvement in the organization of its schools and in the daily work of its teachers, this result is due partly at least to the forethought with which Dr. Murray Butler and others twenty years ago laid the foundations for institutions, such as the Teachers' College in New York, where post-graduate study in all branches of education are afforded to men and women of ripe experience, who thereafter raise to a higher level the equipment of teachers in every quarter of that vast country. So far as the State regards itself as the foster- parent of the higher science and culture, the duty of promoting research at the higher levels applies to all branches of study alike, and it seems almost incredible that a wealthy govern- ment like that of Great Britain should find it impossible to spend more than 200,000 on its higher institutions of learning. But the duty is more direct, and the neglect of it more patent, as regards the advanced study of education, since the State controls so absolutely the train- ing college machinery. The Government has, indeed, recognized in its official documents the importance of research in education and has exhorted educators to pursue such research, but has hitherto abstained from practical 190 THE SCHOOL encouragement. At one time there seemed to be the promise of useful work of this kind in the Department of Inquiries and Reports established at Whitehall in the time of Mr. Arthur Acland. It is quite true, as Mr. Acland indicated at the time, that this bureau was designed in the first instance for the ex- clusive use of the minister and his depart- mental officials, but since governments them- selves only exist for the benefit of the people, it would readily be admitted that the results of investigations conducted under such auspices ought to be available for any who desire to share them. All our great depart- ments of State can, in fact, if their managers are so disposed, offer invaluable service as instruments of instruction, simply by putting freely at the disposal of the people the results of investigations conducted in the first instance for the benefit of government servants. The statistical material, the historical material which reviews development in the home country and the course of events abroad, need the co-operation of the State for their investigation; and, to come to details, there is no reason why the Education Library now housed at Whitehall, with the experts who conduct the Office of Inquiries and Reports, should not be organized as an institution for the study of educational administration, THE TEACHER 191 and put their resources at the disposal, let us say, of the neighbouring University of London. Those who administer popular government have still something to learn as to the benefits which the State can confer on the people by em- ploying the intellectual resources accumulated at headquarters for the benefit of the nation at large. The attitude of the State official who regarded himself as only remotely related to the daily needs of the people, pursuing a cult which they could not share, has been directly opposed to democratic requirements. For, in the last resort, it is only by the educa- tion of the people that a State system can survive : every official who serves in a govern- ment office should be regarded by enlightened rulers as an instructor, ready at all times to distribute information, so that an intelligent support may be accorded to State policy in place of a docile acceptance of party leader- ship. If this be true of all departments of State it is pre-eminently an obligation for Education Boards, whether at headquarters or in counties and cities. In an earlier chapter we have deprecated the direct and complete management of schools and institutions by such authorities; but every such authority is itself in a deeper sense an educational institution ; if State officials are conscious 192 THE SCHOOL of their " mission " they can, simply by the wise use of the printing-press, do much to advance the bounds of knowledge not only among teachers, but among the people at large. When educationists in England complain that the public is indifferent to education, the answer should be made that little is done, apart from sectarian and political disputes, to arouse their interest : as soon as secretaries and directors realize their dependence upon the people, they will readily find means to secure popular ap- preciation and sympathy, and thus educate their constituency to a renewal of faith in those resources of culture which they are charged to dispense. 10. Summary. It may be worth while to put into a few sentences the suggestions above made for the improvement of schooling, which should make the teaching profession more fitted to its task, and thus take the most direct means to improve the quality of the School. (a) Legislative provision for Teachers' Councils acting as advisers both to the central and to local authorities would do much to give the rank and file a status which they lack, as well as to secure the benefit to public education of the reasoned conclusions of its teaching body. THE TEACHER 193 (fc) While accepting the obligations of " civil " or public service, the teacher can fairly claim a substantial voice, denied to him at present, in determining the conditions and qualifications for service in his profession. (c) Distinctions of rank or grade among public teachers can only properly be based upon the differing nature of children at suc- cessive periods of growth. Here a sharp con- trast appears between the primary teacher whose ideal equipment should be that of the craftsman and artist and the secondary teacher who as regards his field of scholar- ship rightly devotes himself to humanistic studies. At the same time every teacher should, so far as his leisure allows, expand his tastes to all branches of human activity in those elementary stages attainable by his scholars. (d) The study of education, both of genetic psychology and of the social and administra- tive aspects of education has now made suffici- ent progress as to be of definite service to the teaching body. Hence the time has arrived not only to organize more fully the pro- fessional training of teachers, but to provide adequately for advanced study and for research. Public authorities could greatly promote such studies by placing fully at the public disposal the results of their own investi- 194 THE SCHOOL gation; aiming of set purpose to win the support of the people by displaying fully the policy which guides their ministrations. Thus the offices of State can themselves serve a valuable purpose as educational institutions. CHAPTER IX THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 1. THE initial difficulty in dealing with the school curriculum is that every one who takes an interest in the matter has already made up his mind as to the " subject " which he regards as most important. The adult has already made his choice; his conception of values, of what is worth while in life, is already determined : and he thereupon assumes that these valuable things must be supplied as nutriment for the young. Unless he has pursued the study of education with con- siderable detachment of mind he is unwilling to conceive of the curriculum as cyclical development, as a process in which various modes of experience may find an appropri- ate place at some important stage, although proving of little service if supplied at another period. This is, however, the only method by which the choice of studies can be discussed with any prospect of success. We have our group of immature beings, actively engaged, even 195 196 THE SCHOOL when their teacher leaves them alone, in mastering their environment; all he has to do is to examine these activities, and interpret their meaning in relation to the future life, the larger adult experience to which they lead. " The fundamental factors in the educative process are an immature, undeveloped being, and certain social aims, meanings, values, incarnate in the matured experience of the adult. The educative process is the due interaction of these forces. Such a concep- tion of each in relation to the other as facili- tates completest and freest interaction is the essence of educational theory " (Prof. Dewey). Hence our task is to follow the develop- ment already outlined in Chapter V, sketch- ing for each stage the nature of the employ- ment that seems most adapted to the needs of the organism. We need have no anxiety that a curriculum so framed will neglect to prepare the scholar for adult life, whether that life be regarded as leisure or as vocation ; for the child himself is by no means an in- different spectator of the moving scene : his own nature impels him to grasp at adult activities as year by year his vision of reality clears and expands. 2. In England children are permitted, although not now encouraged, to go to school THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 197 at three years of age; in Germany the sixth birthday is the appointed date at which to begin school life, for on that date the State assumes that the time for the childish play has passed, and the time for book-learning may begin. Now although his native land has never given due recognition to Froebel, foreign lands have accepted his view as regards the little child : we agree in England and America that if " school " be treated as a garden, where children grow through play, then it is right to afford them the opportunity for it. While solitude and quiet are good, society is also good for little children; and even at this stage, as soon as children can walk and talk, mothers should admit that their off- spring need to cut loose a little from the apron-strings. Of course in many families this necessary social experience can be found apart from the public organization of a school. A group of friendly families in a neighbour- hood readily supplies opportunities to the little ones for corporate play, such as is seen better, perhaps, on a summer's day at the seaside than elsewhere in England. But the conditions of city life, in most sections of society, tend to isolate little children too much, unless special provision is made, heiice the State is justified in offering room in Creche or Kindergarten for any children whose homes cannot provide 198 THE SCHOOL either appropriate oversight or appropriate society for children under six years of age. While, however, in congested areas where the mother has to go out to work, the Kinder- garten or Infant School is indispensable as a refuge, it is wholly contrary, both to the teaching of Froebel and to common sense, to set up such institutions for all classes of society as rivals to the function discharged by a good home. The average child up to six years of age learns best by simply living and playing around with parents, brothers and sisters, taking in at first hand those fundamental conceptions of the daily round of life which underlie all later experience. It is for this reason that a child is unfortunate who is either so well born as to be relegated mainly to the expensive care of nurses, or so ill born as to be deprived of a homely domestic circle. For attendance at an infant school or Kindergarten is only in place if it is treated as supplementary to the unorganized but essential experiences gained in and out of the house. For neither at home nor at school should there be as yet any question of a formal curriculum : the main concerns alike of teacher as of parent should be with exercise, sleep, fresh air, diet, and personal habit : there can be little formal procedure in instruction THE PURSUITS OP SCHOOL 199 because there is as yet little power of con- tinuous attention, nor is the world yet appre- hended as reality. It may be said with con- fidence that, if we omit precocious infants from the reckoning, no benefit accrues from introducing either language l or arithmetic to the child's notice before the age of six. If any individual children show desire to play with boxes of letters, or to notice the succes- sion of objects by counting, they should cer- tainly not be debarred from such enjoyment; but when an infant teacher takes charge of a class of such children, the programme by which she occupies their time should be adapted to the average : and in spite of codes and regulations, the psychologists have now sufficient evidence to warrant us in dis- carding formal instruction before six years of age. In Kindergartens where this rule is stoutly maintained no difficulty is found in keeping the little ones busy all they require is simple material, the simpler the better, which they can employ to give sub- 1 If, however, plans can be devised which familiarize the child with writing or with number wholly on the plane of play-activity this dictum should be modified. Reports from schools in Rome and Milan suggest that a further research into the psychology of children's per- ceptive power may produce fruitful results vide Fort- nightly Review, and Hamptons Magazine (U.S.A.), August 1911. 200 THE SCHOOL stance to their wealth of fancy. They co- operate with their teacher in dance and song : then they disperse into smaller groups, occupying themselves freely with chalk and blackboard, with bricks, with any kind of tangible stuff; and all the teacher need do is to help the society to live its own life without distress or undue disorder. Un- fortunately, the disciples of Froebel often out-do their master in elaborating machinery, with symbolic gifts and occupations, tending ofttimes to arrest the progress of more vigorous minds while perplexing the simpler souls. It is important also that this type of school- life should not be too prolonged : some of Froebel's followers are prone to assert that the methods of the Kindergarten should be carried over to the later years, but in so saying they contradict their master, who clearly discerned the great changes which take place with the passing of infancy. 3. The years seven and eight are usually a time of transition; the child has come to see meaning in the life about him, but a year or two passes before he can emerge upon the plane of sensible activity. So in these two years a mixed curriculum seems to be demanded play, in the form of dramatic activities, is found to be congenial; but a beginning can be made with serious attention THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 201 to language and number, if (and there is much virtue in this if) the teacher can so direct these pursuits as to keep them in touch with felt needs. Here at the outset of our plans for a time-table we must give due place to this cardinal principle, which is slowly being admitted as a governing factor both in the choice of school pursuits and in the method of conducting them. Children differ in many features from adults, but they are at one with them in the desire to find motive and purpose in their occupations : the motive may be trivial or transient, but to be most effective it must be felt at the time to be im- portant. Further, if we desire our children to grow rational, i. e. to see the relations of cause and effect in daily life, then we shall always be seeking to base our scholars' activities on the most direct motives which lie within their grasp. Thus in the present instance : why should a class of seven-year- olds learn to read books ? They may be urged to do so because it will please their parents, or because the school says that they ought to learn their letters quickly; Such motives no doubt have weight, but they will learn with better success if they have come to realize that this acquirement will really be of service to themselves, as an avenue to new experience : the " psychological moment " 202 THE SCHOOL for beginning this task occurs when the teacher finds that the little people have be- come curious as to the use of books and anxious to share in the acquirement. We decide on the age of seven as the right period for the average child, because this motive is then discerned to be in operation, and a method of instruction can therefore be devised which will bring symbol and reality into close connection. The material chosen for reading and writing will be such as is organically related to other pursuits which engage the children, either those selected for story and song at school, or those suggested from domestic activities. This principle is often spoken of by the name correlation, but much more is implied than is covered by that term : to correlate one school pursuit with another often means nothing more than to find some cross reference between the one and the other. But mental satisfaction de- mands more than this : if the young mind is to go forward to new pursuits with full energy, then the symbol, the abstract science, the alien information must be introduced as an interpretation of practical interests and conscious deficiencies. As is stated in another volume of this Library, " while the services of each science to practical life are constantly insisted on, and in no danger of being over- THE PURSUITS OP SCHOOL 203 looked, we far more often and readily forget the rise of each science jrom practical life." l This dictum is as true in the evolution of the individual as of the race, and it is of capital importance to every teacher and parent when proposing to engage children upon formal exercises either in book know- ledge or in useful arts. At every turn we have to seek for the starting-point, for some driving force of interest which will call forth the best attention and energy of the learner. And, as was said above, this postulate is asserted not only on behalf of seven-year- olds, but for scholars at all ages, as much as for ourselves in the pursuit of our adult activities. 4. Where, then, can we seek for these motives ? They are displayed abundantly in the healthy, normal interests which the boy and girl already manifest. Throughout the years from seven and eight until the approach of adolescence at thirteen, we can observe a succession of fields of activity from the house indoors to the garden and wood- lands out of doors. Thereupon, as the child gets acquainted with the possibilities and limita- tions of material, ensues an interest in instru- ments and tools which we may summarize as the craftsman's interest in the workshop or Evolution, in C( Home University Library," p. 222. 204 THE SCHOOL craft-room : finally, in imitation of his elders, he finds, or may find if we give right encourage- ment, that lively interest in letters and books which gives a proper place to the class-room and the library. Under these terms, house, garden, craft-room, library, we specify large regions of interest which have succeeded each other in the anthropological story, from the time when men first found a home in caves to the dawn of culture when the Word became the symbol of progress and the Book an object of reverence. It would be pedantic to attempt to follow in detail the parallel between race development and individual development, for though the child repeats the past history of mankind, he is environed also by the present. In this " present " environment, however, he can apprehend only what is simple and direct, and as we saw, when reviewing the period of stability in Chapter V, he masters this environment by practical rather than reflective activity. Thus the house (school house and home dwelling), with its walls, its decoration, its furniture and equipment; garden and forest, with animals and plants, with seedtime and harvest; workshop, with tools which man first devised to subdue the savage world of Nature ; finally, the library, embodying that higher stage of culture which first led man to send children to school : in THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 205 each of these directions we should endeavour to absorb our scholars* powers, not with fanciful exercises, but with practical necessary duties which the school and home between them require to be done. For we have insisted that these children are, above all, practical and pragmatical, ready to " work " quite as much as to " play." At the same time we do not overlook the worth of those play tendencies which absorbed the entire life in infancy, and which still abide, not only as means of pleasure and recreation, but as avenues to the enlargement of experi- ence. For the infant has now progressed until he realizes himself and his kind as part of a community expanding far beyond the confines of home and school. The circle first reaches to the neighbourhood about the child and takes form as Heimatskunde (local his- tory and geography), so excellently pursued in German schools; but quite as readily he adventures to distant parts of the globe. He realizes the past, hearing with eagerness the story of days gone by, and he pictures the stretch of space, for to roam beyond the limits of the horizon is as attractive to boys and girls to-day as it was to their ancestors in the days of Ulysses. Thus history and geography take their rise, not as learned studies, but as part of an expanding circle 206 THE SCHOOL whose images can be stamped upon the mind by active impression. Legend and literature are thus " expressed " in recitation and drama. Events can be recorded in letters and in pictures : the record can then be bound by child bookbinders, and thus the crafts attaching to the library find organic associa- tion with literature and language. 5. These illustrations are sufficient to show that students of child-nature are looking for substantial changes in the plans at present pursued for the schooling of young children. These plans will demand that the principal furniture of the elementary school will be benches and tools, some to be used indoors and some out of doors : that while the desk of our present class-room will be needed for a portion of the day, during which the scholars are engaged with pen and books, such furni- ture will be subordinate to the needs of the community for space and material in which to pursue the arts and crafts. And, as we saw in the last chapter, the distinctive gifts of the teacher will be those of the craftsman rather than the scholar. As regards the daily time-table we can roughly distribute it under three heads : (1) in the workshop, the needle-room, the garden, there will be serious industrial employment day by day. Some of the projects undertaken will be directly indus- THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 207 trial, intended to supply the obvious wants either of the school or of the home; others will find their motive in the expression of artistic needs, as, e. g., in providing drapery and accoutrement for a dramatic performance, or in binding and decorating a book. (2) Due time will be allotted for those leisure employ- ments which are comprised in the general range of liberal culture : music, the drama, with story both in poetry and prose leading to history and geography these are really a sequel to the purely ideal constructions which were " played " in the Kindergarten, and now, under more serious titles, still hold a place in the child's experience. (3) A substantial part of each day will remain over and above for " drill," i. e. for formal technical exercises in arithmetic, reading, writing, physi- cal exercise, drawing, and any other acquire- ment which involves steady repetition and drudgery. We saw in Chapter V that children at this period are quite ready to take pains, to strain their activities in order to acquire skill : they have become conscious of differ- ences in power between themselves and adults, and between one child and another : emula- tion and the desire for success spur them to achievement : the chief hindrances to a good result arise from a lack of steady repetition until habits of precision are formed, or the 208 THE SCHOOL onset of fatigue due to excess in strain, or lack of motive. For we must once more repeat that this third group of pursuits can best achieve its end when the motive for drill is discerned in the first and second group, arising from the industries or the cultural recreations. Finally, the school community should be allowed some time each day for its members to occupy themselves pretty much as they please. At present all schools provide short intervals between lessons, extending some- times to fifteen minutes, in which the scholars are left alone ; but this is merely a breathing space, interposed in order to enable the body to be ready once more to help the brain and mind in following the teacher's behests. Some such plan has already been tried here and there, and is at least worth considera- tion : it is merely to allow freedom to scholars for an hour or so at the end of each school day to remain in the school building, and to group themselves as they please for the further pursuit of anything which they can under- take jointly, in the school grounds, with the material and equipment which the place affords. Dr. Colin Scott, in his Social Educa- tion, describes the remarkable effect of such freedom on the initiative and social response evoked from boys and girls of the ages eleven THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 209 to thirteen, when they were permitted such liberty : and when one contemplates these young people in their native conditions, apart from our school-room tradition, it seems a very natural suggestion that in any school where the pupils are really stimulated to varied activity, they will be quite competent to undertake and execute projects, both industrial and cultural, as conceived by them- selves. While the children are so employed all the teacher has to do is to copy the example of the Kindergarten teacher and be near at hand to ad vise, and, if need be, to prevent inexperi- ence from causing disaster. Critics may indeed inquire why the scholars should use the school building for this purpose. If, it may be said, they are to do as they please without definite instruction, why cannot they pursue their avocations at home ? But the answer is obvious enough : the school building with its equipment and its society has already absorbed their activity, and provided them with motives and projects which they will desire to carry out in groups ; if the industrial, the cultural and technical pursuits of class hours have borne real fruit, the scholars will desire to carry on some of these pursuits from their own point of view, under their own organization : and, as a rule, the school house and grounds and the help of the school-teacher 210 THE SCHOOL will be welcomed by groups of scholars when so engaged. 6. The short space of one chapter forbids our enlarging on such a scheme of pursuits. Many teachers are ripe for it, and many schools are partially adopting it. But we may elucidate it a little by adding a few comments. A. As regards the industrial pursuits, it is necessary to have a clear perception of the child's attitude towards work. Hitherto the schools have commonly assumed that the child should " work " during many years at formal studies which lie remote from his present experience : the working classes have approved because they believed that such studies are not really laborious, but are associated with a superior life of leisure; while the authorities who impose such work on children do so from attachment to a scholastic tradition which regards work at arithmetic or writing as something superior to work with a rake or chisel. Two results have followed : (i) When the scholars show distaste for unsuitable work, the teachers tend to believe that children are by nature indisposed to work, and there- upon they either force them by discipline to perform tasks, or yield the position and pro- vide so-called " interesting " studies as sub- stitutes, (ii) The scholars themselves come THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 211 to have a false attitude towards industry; the instinctive tendency of human beings to be seriously and usefully occupied becomes atrophied by long attendance at school where " work " is identified with lessons which lead nowhere : where holidays and recreation are constantly eulogized at the expense of the pursuits demanded by school. Thus an un- natural type is created and thrown on the industrial market, namely, the man who has learned contempt for work, esteeming it merely as a means to wages, believing that only those periods of life are worth while in which he is set free for holiday. The remedy is surely to revert to the older tradition which was universal before the days of schooling, and which now abides in many sensible homes that is, to regard the child both at school and home as a fellow-labourer; not, indeed, as a wage-earner (although there is no reason why he should not earn pocket money), but as a serious and intelligent partner in the simpler tasks of the industrial community. Child labour has been exploited by parents and employers under economic pressure, and therefore by a natural reaction public opinion at present desires to exclude the child from a share in industrial achievement ; and many working men of the best type in trades unions will dissent from the opinion here expressed. 212 THE SCHOOL But he is the worst enemy of the industrial community who seeks to perpetuate scholastic traditions where these alienate the rising generation from the activities of the home and the shop. Neither wealthy nor indigent children can be safely trained between the stages of infancy and of adolescence without some of the discipline which comes from in- dustrial and domestic occupation. B. As regards the cultural studies, which we have treated as a sequel to the fanciful " plays " of the Kindergarten. We place these second in the scheme of pursuits simply because this broader experience, where our minds pass beyond the practical to the imagin- ative and the ideal, can never safely be per- mitted to occupy the centre of our activities, either in childhood or in age. To devise a curriculum whose staple consists of drama and poetry, of history and geography, where the learner is merely a spectator, is to create for our scholars an unreal world : they have no climax to their activities; they accept stimuli, but produce no result. The output is the type of man who spends the day in witnessing a cricket match and the evening in attending the theatre. It is true enough that as one type of experience these studies have their place : our culture, indeed, largely consists in reviving for pleasure and leisure THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 213 recollections of ideal modes of life and thought which have been depicted in the art and literature of the past ; for example, we may not hunt or drink, but we like to sing " John Peel " and " The Leather Bottel." So with our children : it is well, it is even necessary, they should sing and recite and act; they can, still better, be encouraged to construct their own dramas and their own songs. Their power over the world, both ideal and practical, is increased if, as John Dewey advocates, their simple industrial activities are associated with the problems which confronted primitive man; they will gladly play at being Cave Dweller, or Hiawatha, or Robinson Crusoe; they turn with delight to the great classics of that earlier day when the world was both young and old : the story of Joseph the Dreamer, of Ulysses the Wanderer, should be the dear possession of every boy and girl. But if these experiences are gained merely as luxuries, merely as amusing reading or intellectual exercise, without a related back- ground of practical activity, they tend to distort the child's view of life. In school practice these cultural studies, literature, history, geography, partake far too much of that futile form of class exercise called " chalk and talk," where the teacher alone masters the pursuit and expounds it to a 214 THE SCHOOL docile audience : or it is treated as mattei merely to be read and learned ; in such a case the text-book discourses and the audience is still more docile. The reform here advocated would not only relegate such pursuits to the second place, but would improve the method, by calling at every turn for co-operative activity from the scholars, while the teacher falls into the background and acts merely as a guide. A word of caution may be in place as to the field from which these cultural studies should be garnered especially as regards the topics of history. It is true that the child, as the heir of our ancestors, delights in blood- and-thunder stories and is willing to give his attention to battles and wars ; but it is surely unwise to whet his appetite. He is to live in a world which is longing for peace : important as it no doubt is, for nations as for individuals, to be equipped for self-defence, can we justify a scheme of history-teaching in which Caesar or William the Conqueror occupies the stage ? It is a matter of common knowledge in the United States that the history-reader em- ployed in schools did much to keep alive the resentment felt by Americans towards Great Britain long after the occasion was passed : and the same is true of France and Germany. Where the teacher selects historical material THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 215 from social problems, allying these with practi- cal interests in the development of crafts and industries, he is presenting not only a more accurate picture of bygone days, but is adjusting more wisely the outlook of youth on the modern world. C. By putting drill and technical exercises into the third place we are not desiring to lessen their importance, but to insist that our modern world can no longer afford to shut up children to pursuits which are empty of content. Our so-called scholastic discipline has consisted too much in setting the mind to perform acts (as, e. g., in syntax, in stocks and shares) on methods which the practical, sensible world has long discarded as obsolete : we simply cannot afford to waste our children's time thus in an age where so much has to be learned, where with every generation the field of knowledge is so vastly enlarged. These technical exercises, even including spelling, which appears so amazing a bugbear to many, would not prove formidable if they were kept in their place as subordinate to industry and culture. Children, we assert once more, welcome repetition and drill when they see some use for it ; when such motives are relied upon, a maximum of attention is secured which enables the scholar to master his drill with greater speed and accuracy. 216 THE SCHOOL After all, the essentials of arithmetic, reading, composition, are not so vast in their extent, even with our complicated tables of weights and measures, and our incongruous spelling : there is plenty of time in the years of school, if a short space be daily allotted for daily repetition. 7. Finally, this scheme of pursuits, covering the years from seven or eight to twelve, appears to afford no place for two branches which figure largely in regular school time- tables, namely, science and language, the one formulating the ideas which man or boy collects from his varied experience in industry or culture, the other analysing and reflecting upon that supreme art by which experience is " expressed." In one sense we are not prepared to admit the claim of either of these to a share in the school day, for as organized studies they belong to the next stage of development. This is not to say that the child is to neglect either science or language ; on the contrary, whether the time-table neglects them or not, his mind will be curious and active, seeking to find, oh the empirical level, an explanation for all that happens about him; and the teacher, craftsman with tools or artist with the weapons of culture, will always be ready to afford explanation. He will take time, as occasion arises, from the THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 217 periods devoted to industrial or cultural occupations, to treat separately of any topics in natural science or in the science of language when explanation seems required in order to help the young mind to master a situation. But the limit in the function of science and language should at this stage be rigidly observed : the child is indeed a thinker, but not as yet a deep thinker : all the science he needs is such as bears immediately on the problems which are presented by his occupa- tions. If at this age he accumulates a rich store of empirical knowledge, he will delight at his next stage of development to organize some of it into those more precise studies that we call science and language. Again we must protect ourselves from misunderstanding : there are precocious children who appear ripe for such studies long before twelve; and since clever scholars often become school- masters, the opinion tends to prevail that intellectual pursuits can be profitably pressed to the front in childhood; but, once more we must first provide for the average scholar : it is easy enough to give scope for special capacity when it is displayed in any individual case. There may appear to be some inconsistency here as regards mathematical science, for we have already admitted arithmetic to a promi- 218 THE SCHOOL nent place, as one of the " three R's " to be diligently exercised in drill. But the dis- tinction between empirical mathematics pur- sued in close relation to practical problems and the more abstract treatment of number and space is well understood : the latter finds a welcome in many minds during adolescence, but the former, even if elementary algebra and practical geometry be added to the arithmetic, is a congenial pursuit before the age of twelve just so far as it is limited to what is mechanical and practical. The same is, of course, true of language, including the use of foreign tongues. An excellent start can be made in foreign speech between the years nine and twelve, for by nine or ten a child is old enough to realize the possibilities involved in acquaintance with a neighbouring people; and he is still young enough and plastic enough to mould his organs of speech with ease, so as to acquire the new habits necessary to correct expression. But we have accumulated sufficient evidence, from generations of futile failure, to warrant us at the preserit day in holding no quarter with those who would keep children at this time of life, occupied with grammar and translation, from either the ancient or the modern tongues. The moral discipline which, in the last resort, is presumed to be secured THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 219 by such employment can be more directly gained by the exacting demands of serious industry. 8. The Secondary School Curriculum. By dwelling at some length on the pursuits of the primary school we can more rapidly note what should be the characteristic features of curricula planned for the years of adoles- cence. Two cardinal principles seem to press for notice : (a) After the age of twelve, more attention is required for those individual differences, whether due to inheritance, to capacity, to environment, or to opportunity, which engaged our notice in Chapter V. These have now become so pronounced as to demand varying types of school experience for differing scholars; (6) every youth, boy or girl, even if able to earn some wages, needs to be retained under strong control until he has completed the first period of adolescence, i. e. until the age of eighteen or thereabouts. In olden days this was well understood : if a lad was not at school he was a page at court or an apprentice in a shop. At the present day the increasing demand for continuation schools, and for the extension of compulsory schooling beyond the age of fourteen, shows that we are not con- tent with our modern laxity as regards the disciplinary control of youth : the hooligan and the apache are the direct outcome of our 220 THE SCHOOL dereliction of duty, and there is no more press- ing problem in education at the present day than that concerned with the oversight and training of adolescents. 1 Unhappily, progress is hindered at every turn by the cleavage between industry and culture. It is assumed that if a lad continues his secondary schooling, he is, and should be on that very ground, divorced from wage- earning or from industrial employment. Hence our adolescent society is sharply divided into two groups : the proletariat, who at fourteen or earlier assume a status of economic inde- pendence before they are ripe for it, is cut off from these secondary scholars who imbibe scholastic lore in an isolated environ- ment. Popular sentiment would have us increase the proportion of the latter in the belief that the indefinite extension of school- ing as enjoyed at present by the leisured class is an unquestioned benefit. But the study of adolescent life shows that the great majority of boys and girls from all ranks of society on leaving the years of childhood are ready to enter on some vocation, or at any rate on employment closely allied to a voca- tion ; all that is needed is that for some years they should be only partially employed at industrial work, and instructed for the rest of 1 Compare pp. 162, 163. THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 221 the day in matters which throw light upon the processes of industry. 1 The minority whose superior capacities or environment mark them out as likely to profit by a prolonged course of culture and of scientific training are at present, by our European tradition, cut off during many years from association not only with gainful pur- suits but even, in most cases, from the simpler duties of the household. But apart from prejudice there seems to be no reason why this sharp division between the two groups of adolescents should be maintained by those who organize their public training in secondary institutions. It seems clear that a regimen which deprives our youth, boys and girls, from any share in industrial or domestic toil goes counter to their natural instincts of social service and tends to unfit them for a proper understanding of the world. As we saw in Chapter VII, the New World here is offering an example to the Old which may be worthy of consideration. 2 If the force of these two principles be admitted, the organization of secondary education in any area would take a different aspect from that hitherto approved by State authorities. Firstly, the officers of State would exercise a certain compulsion over all 1 Compare p. 161. 2 See pp. 135, 136. 222 THE SCHOOL up to the age of eighteen, and would pro- vide for all a variety of courses of study, some of which would be partial, i. e. occupying only a portion each day, and leaving time for wage-earning, while others would be complete, giving larger scope to the more intellectual and capable to devote their chief attention to humanistic, scientific, or artistic pursuits. Secondly, as a matter of social control the essence of this organization would lie in regard- ing the whole of this youthful society as one body of adolescent scholars, sharing a corpor- ate life such as we shall discuss in the following chapter, adapted to their stage of development, and receiving in suitable groups whatever instruction is needed to prepare them ade- quately to discharge their future functions in life. Since these functions include not only the pursuit of a vocation, but an intelligent participation in the life of the community, it seems clear that while a part of this instruction should be " vocational, 5 ' i. e. planned in direct relation to immediate activities in trade or commerce, another part should be just as avowedly liberal or general, and pursued as a sequel to the general elemen- tary curriculum of the period of childhood. Space forbids our entering further upon the lively controversies which would open up if we attempted in greater detail to outline types THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 223 of secondary school curricula : but we can discern the general trend of opinion if we examine the requirements made by the universities in their matriculation examina- tions, for these are designed to mark the close of the secondary school period. These always include mathematics and some form of literature and language study, while a choice is usually permitted as between English his- tory, one or other of the natural sciences, and geography. In other words the ideal seems to be to require the pupil of the secondary school to pay some attention both to scientific and humanistic studies, but to be indifferent as to whether he finds interest in the fine arts. Now since university regulations exercise so powerful an incentive both to parents and teachers in secondary schools, it follows that the schools teach what the universities ask for, and what the university examination omits is given but a minor place in the secon- dary school programme. Thus the secondary school largely takes the character of a fitting school for the university, although less than ten per cent, of the scholars continue their schooling in any higher institution of learn- ing after the age of eighteen. This restriction of function was clearly pointed out by the Bryce Commission on Secondary Education, and affords a constant theme of discussion, 224 THE SCHOOL but no effective change can be brought about until the entire problem of school leaving certificates is handled thoroughly by State authorities as suggested in Chapter VI. Meanwhile we may venture an opinion that, while it is unwise at eighteen to prescribe a comprehensive examination during one week 1 in a series of studies which have covered four or six years, the curriculum of a secondary school (when the scholars are devoting the whole day to study) should include not only mathematics, the mother of natural science, and the literature and language of the native country; but space should be found for an elementary acquaint- ance with biology and with physics, since modern life presupposes some familiarity with natural phenomena, with the language of at least one foreign nation (since he knows not England who only England knows), and with some form of artistic expression in music or in arts of representation. But with such proviso, we must once more claim of the adolescent that his success in lessons will depend far more upon the intensity with which he develops power in his favourite pursuits than upon the number of " subjects " with which he makes only a bowing acquaintance. All who have taught boys and girls between 1 See p. 124. THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 225 the ages of fourteen and eighteen will admit that capacity, although it may be " general " in its scope, tends always to extremes : the enthusiasm of the adolescent leads him to devote all his energies to one goal, sometimes from affection for a teacher, sometimes from a bias created purely by accidental circum- stances. Although to outward seeming the youth may be dull and spiritless, there is always a vein of adventure in the inner spirit : the spirit of achievement is awake, and it is the lever by which the teacher, if he will, can spur his scholars to rapid conquest each of them following his own bent to some extent while accepting the strong con- trol, both intellectual and social, which is needed to tame the vagaries of adolescent adventure. 9. Thus the secondary curriculum gradually takes shape. On the one hand it should impose on every scholar a minimum of cul- tural pursuits, of which English literature may be taken as typical on the humanistic side and mathematics or physics on the scientific; on the other hand more and more time should be freely granted year by year for the indulgence of special tastes, for the intense and vivid acquirement of pursuits which, either by accident or from original capacity, the youth has chosen for his own : 226 THE SCHOOL these last will be closely allied with the general trend of the vocation which he has idealized for his future career : and the more closely the two can be identified the better the result. It may be granted that in many cases the vocation which a youth selects during adoles- cence is not a final choice. Often enough both men and women in later years change their mind, or circumstances compel a change ; but youth is the time for trial : a vocation is idealized and the preparation for it turns the callow youth into the capable man. Among such elective studies we should be willing to grant an honourable place to the fine arts or handicrafts at the one extreme and to classical languages and literatures at the other. The latter, indeed, in their finer development are more adapted for college than for school, but bright young minds should not be held back from the mastery of learning. In helping to guide the choice of studies for young people, parents readily notice that the classical curriculum has advantages, as regards at any rate the education of boys, over all the rest. For it has been and is pursued by many of the ablest teachers : a scholar who selects it is associated in many schools with a fine company of comrades and rivals; further, the technique of its teaching has been perfected, and the incentives offered for THE PURSUITS OP SCHOOL 227 success assist greatly to support the system. Thus in many cases the choice of Latin and Greek for bright boys in the secondary school is found to " work " best, although the theo- retical arguments sometimes set forth by the friends of the classics are unsound. Secondary schools, such as we here desider- ate, planned to meet varied needs are of course not easy to establish or to organize : a staff is required in which every type of academic and artistic power is represented : instead of the rigid uniformity of a German Gymnasium or Realschule every scholar, at least in the higher forms of the school, needs its own time- table. But such difficulties are being solved by experience ; when a body of school-teachers, encouraged by parents and trustees, are con- vinced of the importance of a wide choice of elective pursuits, machinery for providing each youth with the necessary instruction or guidance can be usually devised with fair success. Illustrations might be quoted from many of our large Secondary Schools, both in England and America. Among the minimum of compulsory studies which we desire to exact from all secondary scholars there is one for which a special place is demanded, if indeed it may not be regarded as a central theme from which literature and other humanistic studies should be drawn. 223 THE SCHOOL We refer to what is often called moral instruc- tion, 1 a pursuit which, rightly understood, implies the revelation to the adolescent of nis higher nature. It should include so much biology (physiology) as is necessary to inter- pret bodily functions, both in personal and social hygiene ; and in the later years of adoles- cence can well introduce the youth now ap- proaching manhood to problems of social and political conduct. 1 These may be studied through the medium of the great classics, whether ancient writers in Holy Writ, classical teachers of Greek and Rome, or our modern teachers in poetry and prose. The essential feature is the dawn of the philosophic, reflec- tive spirit; and here, more than elsewhere, success in teaching depends upon the sym- pathetic idealism of the teacher, whose delicate task it is to introduce the youth to an inner sanctuary where the select among mankind hold communion apart and " walk with God." Some instruction of this kind should be part of the initiation of the youth before completing these earlier years of adoles- cence, before obtaining emancipation from public control, whether to enter fully upon the freedom of an industrial career, or to proceed to college, where, although his freedom is more restrained, he has some choice either 1 Compare pp. 66, 67. THE PURSUITS OF SCHOOL 229 to accept or to refuse the counsels of the wise. 10. Our sketch of the relations between the primary and the secondary curriculum may appear uncertain at one point, for we have not carried the primary curriculum beyond the age of twelve, whereas under present conditions, in most countries both of Europe and America, the superior limit for primary schooling is fourteen. If, how- ever, as proposed above, public authorities take legal authority over all young people up to the age of eighteen, the break at fourteen becomes a matter of minor importance. In the opinion of the present writer the age of twelve is quite late enough for a conclusion to be reached as to a scholar's capacity which shall decide whether he is destined for a low grade of industrial employment, or is worth educating for a more responsible calling. In the former case, his last two years of complete schooling (Standards VII and VIII) would be partly occupied with industrial pursuits allied to those which will engage him as a wage-earner after the age of fourteen. When released by the completion of this course, he would still belong to the school community receiving vocational training for a few hours every week to interpret the meaning of his trade, and united on the lines to be discussed 230 THE SCHOOL in the following chapter in the social life of his fellows until the age of eighteen. Those, on the other hand, who are not designed to join the ranks of wage-earners at fourteen would, as is already the case under our Eng- lish system, be introduced at twelve years of age to the curriculum of the secondary school. As regards both groups, the limit indicated by birthdays is merely an indication of an average attainment. The law should not be content with an attainment of age, but should always require evidence that the scholar has gained the experience which the school pursuits afford. In other words, release from the tutelage of school and acceptance for service as a wage-earner should depend upon capacity as registered by a certificate and not merely upon the passage of years. CHAPTER X THE CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 1. IN the opening chapters we laid stress upon that aspect of school which regards it as an institution for social experience, as well as a place of learning, but this topic requires further treatment. For the more deeply one examines the personal life of children, or their qualities and attitudes when modified by school experience, the more is one impressed by the decisive influence exercised by the scholars, in every type of school, upon each other. Even where an adult, looking back upon his school-days, is not able to trace this relation of cause and effect, the effect may have been produced, for the influences of mind upon mind largely operate in the region of the subconscious. It is the more important that some space should be found for the discussion of cor- porate life because educational theory until recently has taken so little account of it. Indeed, one would almost suppose, when consulting most of the text-books written 231 232 THE SCHOOL in the nineteenth century, that the educa- tive process was to be conducted for one pupil alone; as, indeed, was the case at an earlier epoch when it was a favourite exer- cise for tutors to discourse at length upon the Education of a Prince. It is the more remark- able that this individual trend should have been maintained in English expositions of pedagogy, since our practice has been quite otherwise. It is not too much to say that, apart from a few disquisitions of a theoretic nature such as the Essays by Herbert Spencer, the outstanding contribution to educational pro- gress made by English teachers has been in this field. Foreign students of education from the time when Wiese visited Rugby in the 'fifties have always been ready to testify to the singular success with which the Englishman has thrown himself heart and soul into the social life of his community, and, without any pretence of sociological theory as basis for his practice, has directed the organization of his school community with results which are rarely witnessed in foreign countries. This distinction has been mainly achieved in our secondary schools, for reasons which will appear below, but the same qualities in English teachers which have served the secondary school so well have been at work and have borne fruit in some of the primary CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 233 schools. But the primary schools have been administered by men who have lived apart from practice, and hence it is not surprising that small place has been here found for the expression of sounder views of schooling. It was, in fact, some eight years ago that a paragraph was for the first time inserted in The Code to remind the teacher of the importance of " the corporate life of school." 2. Thus our theory of corporate life rests mainly upon the practice of our secondary schools; and it is worth while to note the circumstances which happily combined to establish this practice on so firm a foundation. Already, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it had become the habit in England to send lads to boarding-schools at a tender age. Secure from invasion, by a foreign foe, there was a freedom in England both for country residence and for travel to which the Continent was to be a stranger during many generations. Hence, among other social results, the boarding-school came to be the fashion in England, while the city day-school was most popular on the Continent. When, therefore, the industrial revolution brought about a sudden increase (especially in the north of England) of wealthy families desirous of a class education for their sons, the endowed grammar school, open to receive boarders, was 234 THE SCHOOL ready to hand, and the earlier part of the nineteenth century witnessed the rapid multi- plication not at first of new schools, but of the numbers in attendance at those of old founda- tion. At first these schools received little care and attention; and it is not surprising that a serious writer of the day described them, filled as they were with ill-disciplined and savage lads, as " the seats and nurseries of vice." Very soon, however, the conscience of the community was stirred, and, at the appro- priate moment, Thomas Arnold came on the scene with a genius of the special quality required to meet the crisis. He studied the nature of the adolescent, 1 and, while curbing with stern authority the instincts of licence, gave sanction to the demand that youth makes for a measure of freedom. Finding that the older scholars in such a society already wielded authority over the younger, he legalized this authority, placing responsibility on those whose attainment and character fitted them to bear it, and approving a period of service as " fags " for those who are younger. Recognizing, again, that the large school provides a life too complex for the best growth of the individual, he saw the value of the smaller community dwelling in the boarding- house, living its own life, although sharing 1 See Chapter V, p. 76. CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 235 the larger interests of the whole society. Himself a man of active physical vigour, he recognized, too, the value of hardy exercise in games. These youths recalled to him the barbaric temperament of early man, and the growth in fortitude, which the barbarian sought through hunting and through war, found a substitute in the contests of the playfield. Finally, he realized that an organized system was of little worth unless controlled by a succession of teachers of high ideals de- voted to its service. Hence he sought and found men of his own stamp, ready to share with him in sustaining that permanent tone of " moral thoughtfulness " which he preached as the ideal quality for a Rugby school-boy. Arnold appears, then, as the genius of this renaissance in " Public School " educa- tion, but he freely acknowledged that some among his contemporaries were as fully alive as he to the urgency of the task; and when, after only fourteen years as head master, he suddenly died in the prime of life, it was soon evident that his work, not only for Rugby but for all her sister schools, had been accomplished. His pupil Stanley provided for succeeding generations a record of his life, which ranks among our great bio- graphies, and this, together with the more 236 THE SCHOOL popular eulogy in Tom Brown's School-days, helped greatly to spread throughout England an appreciation of the principles which under- lie his reforms, and made easy the task of his friends and disciples who, in dozens of schools, both old endowed and newly instituted, put into practice what they had learned at Rugby. Looking back on the history of the British Empire during the intervening years, we can now recognize that these reforms were timely. For the boys who learned to rule and to obey in English schools were called in increasing numbers year by year to a sterner discipline in East and West wherever the British flag was carried. I have here condensed in briefest form a record which, while of prime importance to " the governing and directing classes " whom it immediately concerns, is equally significant for all students of education, since it affords overwhelming evidence of the importance of appropriate organization for corporate ends, more especially at the period of adolescence. A larger volume might properly notice some important criticisms of Arnold and his influ- ence, but the main facts in this unique chapter of English education are undisputed. 3. Now what is of value for the upper classes should be of service also to youths in the middle and lower classes. If for the benefit of CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 237 their own stock the wealthier families among us maintain a system so soundly based upon psychology, it would surely seem right that the State, for the public benefit, should sanc- tion these principles in organizing secondary schooling of all grades for the proletariat and the middle classes as well as for the wealthy. Already something has been done. It is now fifty years since Dr. Percival (the venerable Bishop of Hereford), when taking charge of a new school at Clifton, adapted the Rugby system to the needs of day-boys, and in the interval many secondary schools of all grades have followed his example in establishing a " House " system, so that the youth of our cities may share to some degree in an active social life and discipline which is congenial to their nature. It is being more and more recognized both in England and abroad that it is dangerous to the growth of character to unite a large group of adolescents in a school society, if provision is only made for instruc- tion in the class-room, if the teachers are merely instructors, or if outlet fails to be provided in play-fields for the discipline that comes from contesting the game with one's fellows. This reform is urgent, and it needs the energy of an Arnold to impress it upon the imagina- tion of our English people. The " Public 238 THE SCHOOL Schools," while they have rendered eminent service to the empire, have by their own con- fession done little for domestic and civic government ; cut off in boarding-schools from the environment of civic or county life, the boys learn, even without instruction, to despise the homely functions of a city councillor. And in the last decade we have witnessed, as a sequel to the Act of 1902, a rapid growth of municipal secondary schools to which thou- sands of boys and girls are flocking, often with the vaguest notions at times either among teachers or parents of the functions which the secondary school, when infused by a noble ideal, can discharge. Since Arnold's day our municipalities have become as great in their national influence as were the medieval cities of Italy, and their institutions of culture deserve and must receive the best and most devoted service if those qualities which have created the British Empire are to be retained at home on behalf of our own people, the democracy of Britain. At the opposite pole of society some effort has been made, on a philanthropic basis, to reproduce among the rough-and-ready wage- earners in the back street some of the qualities of the English public-school boy. The success of Mr. Charles Russell, of Manchester, and of others in conducting Lads' Clubs has been CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 239 significant, 1 and points the way to the next step in legislation to which we have already referred, viz. the recognition by the State of its obligations towards youth in all grades of society. The " nipper " or the corner-boy can be trained in a corporate society and at the same time make some progress in culture if he is placed in a community of his own age, with provision of land and buildings where he can find elbow-room, and with teachers ready to be companions as well as instructors. Until the nation is prepared to spend freely for such ends, it must continue to spend even more in the repair of neglect by the support of reformatories and gaols. 4. We have so far dwelt solely on those aspects of corporate life where the scholars are grouped for what may be called out-of-school purposes, apart from the life of the class-room. We have assumed, and the assumption is justified, that in every society the scholars will desire to group themselves and carry on a social life apart from what is prescribed for them in the successive grades of a curriculum during lesson-hours. In his class-room the scholar joins a new circle of comrades each year, and even if some of these remain together for successive years, the corporate life of a class (Standard, Form or Grade) is broken up 1 Discussed in another connection on p. 163. 240 THE SCHOOL and reconstituted each session. Hence an insti- tution which is only divided into class groups for the purposes of teaching never displays so active a corporate life as one which provides machinery analogous to that of the " House " system of our English secondary day-schools, where a scholar remains attached in member- ship to the little club which is called a 44 House " during the whole period of his attendance. Nevertheless, it need not be assumed that the scholar is uninfluenced by the social environment of the class-room. On the con- trary, teachers who understand their business will always admit that, unless the class be of an unwieldy size, beyond thirty, the process of learning is stimulated greatly by social exchange between the members. The secret of class management lies in recognizing to the full the need for inner unity among all who share in the task, when each contributes his part towards its completion. Under such conditions a class, sharing week by week in the common pursuit of intellectual projects, exhibits the marks of community life, and where these projects, under the guidance of a genial teacher, provoke keen enthusiasm, the educational result may reach to deeper springs of behaviour than can be achieved by out-of- school organizations connected with games. CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 241 Such a result is especially noticeable in schools, whether secondary or primary, which keep the scholar working for many periods of the week with the same group in a Form or Standard ; whereas when a time-table is devised which breaks up the scholars into different groups or "sets " for every branch of study, we wit- ness an extreme of individualistic teaching : both the instructor and the scholars are com- parative strangers to each other, and little advantage can be taken of the intellectual stimulus that comes from familiar acquaint- ance. These are matters which concern the internal direction of a school, and may pos- sibly be regarded as out of place in this volume ; but the point merits the attention also of those who are concerned in external control, for it is they who, under the pressure of public opinion, so often put the teacher into such a situation that he is compelled, against his will, to break up the unity of a class. For it is the public which is demanding the introduc- tion of new studies into the school, and new studies usually imply a re-shifting of the teach- ing body and of the class organization. Hence those who prescribe curricula for schools should never be too positive or detailed in their Demands; they should recognize that the most important feature of good teaching is witnessed in the steady flow of interest, of Q 242 THE SCHOOL class and teacher together, maintained with increasing delight from week to week. Even if the subject-matter which this little com- munity handles is not exactly such as trustees or the public might desire, these may rest assured that the educational result is of a far better quality than could be gained by break- ing up class unity, either by forcing new topics of instruction which the teacher could not so well undertake, or by dissipating the attention of scholars over a multitude of subjects. These considerations will be seen to have more weight as regards the primary school than for later stages of growth, since the younger scholars are less competent to work in independence of their fellows or of the teacher. Thus, while in the secondary school scarcely too much weight can be attached to a social organization devised apart from the curriculum, in the primary school the balance weighs on the other side ; it is the curriculum itself, both the pursuits selected and the method of handling these, that needs to be " socialized." And we thus find support, from a fresh point of view, for those changes in the primary curriculum which occupied us in the last chapter. For the practical employments in art and industry which we have put in the forefront among school pur- CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 243 suits find their motive in social needs. 1 Thus the class of a primary school re-shapes itself to our imagination not so much as a group of individuals sitting at separate desks, each imbibing instruction for himself from a teacher or a book, but rather as a hive of busy workers, broken up, it may be, into smaller groups, but uniting in a common purpose to be embodied in some concrete and tangible result, behind which the teacher alone dis- cerns an educational result of deeper and more lasting value. 5. Apart from the day-school organization many efforts have been made, such as Church Lads' Brigades and the like, to meet these social needs of the young, for the projects undertaken can only be executed in a spirit of co-operative effort. In the Boy Scout organization, which is spreading so rapidly 1 The school at present is engaged largely upon the futile task of Sisyphus. It is endeavouring to form prac- tically an intellectual habit in children for use in a social life which is, as it would almost seem, carefully and purposely kept away from any vital contact with the child who is thus undergoing training. The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form habits of usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, and apart from any existing social situation is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water. The most indispensable condition is left out, and the results are correspondingly futile. Dewey : Educational Essays, p. 35. 244 THE SCHOOL both in England and America, we have a forceful example of the possibilities of cor- porate life among boys when pursuits are chosen which correspond to their stage of development. General Baden-Powell is not a professed psychologist, but he has undoubtedly diagnosed with rare insight the qualities that distinguish boys between the ages of ten and fourteen. At present his plans are conducted outside the machinery of our schools, but it will be a misfortune if the pedantry of school officials prevents the appropriation by our school communities of all that is best in this unique enterprise; a teacher will do his work among boys none the worse if he takes the lead among them as a scoutmaster. If contact between the two is not somehow established, neither can achieve full success, for it is not well for a boy to be distracted by membership in so many communities ; he already has his home circle, and often the society of a Sunday-school, which claim his attention ; the day-school is, or should be, a powerful social bond; if now the Patrol be superadded, its success in absorb- ing his attention cannot fail to detract from the success of the rest. And it should be noticed that, although this movement has chiefly concerned itself with boys, the social nature of girls is worthy of the same careful CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 245 study, with plans adapted to their distinctive needs. I venture, therefore, to suggest that the time is ripe for the serious study of this enterprise by teachers of the young; if, as a result, new life and vigour is brought into the primary school, it will not be the first occasion on which the teaching body has accepted instruction from without. 6. Great, indeed, has been the progress of primary schools, and the present writer would be the last to depreciate the eminent services rendered by successive generations of ele- mentary teachers, who, with little encourage- ment from other social groups, have laid so thoroughly the foundations of the system. But the very success which they have achieved leads the teachers, and the public whom they serve, to be dissatisfied with the achievement. Only recently an eminent public servant, Mr, Holmes, on retiring from a lifetime of service in the oversight of these schools, has made a startling pronouncement on the need for drastic change. Although in detail the remedies he proposes appear to differ with much that is suggested in these pages, the reader of his volume entitled What is and What might be will discern the same general current of opinion which is moving towards reform both in the Old World and the New. This work of Mr. Holmes, like the present volume, invites the attention 246 THE SCHOOL not only of teachers but of the general public, to whom in the last resort the teacher must appeal if his ideals are to be realized. And in this connection we may properly con- clude by noting one aspect of school life which is happily finding increased recognition year by year. As a social group both scholars and teachers tend to be cut off from the com- munity outside, but in the minds and hearts of the scholars there is always a desire to link up the separate interests of their life. The child delights to communicate to the home circle what has occupied his mind at school, and wise parents always respond to such impulses, and are glad to be permitted to play their part, not to interfere with the freedom of the teacher, but as partners in a common service. In the old days many teachers used to resent this partnership, regarding the parent merely as a hindrance to the success of their endeavours. But it is now seen that the parents in any neighbourhood form, as it were, a community of their own, which may be utilized as a powerful aid to sustain the teacher's efforts. Many plans are now adopted to enable parents to understand the meaning of these efforts, by inviting them to Parents' Evenings, or to Open Days. By such means not only is a union created in the children's minds between the home circle and CORPORATE LIFE OF SCHOOL 247 the school circle, but the Family, which tends (as we saw in the third chapter) to be selfishly individualistic in defence of the single child, comes to an appreciation of the needs of the entire school, and is more willing to accept on the child's behalf the restrictions and limita- tions which the needs of the community impose on the liberty of the individual. And this interchange of interest between the school community and the public winch supports it should be promoted by educational authori- ties as much as by the teachers, for it is only as parents and the public come to a better understanding of school needs that they will be prepared to furnish the means. Land and buildings, money and materials are required for the education of the young on a scale which would have astonished our predecessors ; these demands will be willingly conceded, and the education tax will be willingly paid, wherever parents are taken into confidence and enabled to realize the blessings which accrue to their offspring from a generous system of schooling. Reverting thus to the first chapters of this volume, we image the School as a civic institu- tion, taking rank side by side with the Family, the Church and the State, combining all worthy elements in the commonwealth for the sake of those who will maintain its life in 248 THE SCHOOL days to come. If such a picture still seems more of a dream than a reality, it provides at least a ground of faith; faith in a social reform which finds its surest and speediest harvest in caring for the young ; faith in the coming race who will take up the burden of the ages at the point where teacher and parent lav it down. BIBLIOGRAPHY IN the present state of educational science, it is im- possible to refer the reader to any comprehensive text- books which will cover the wide field surveyed in thia volume. It is thought best, therefore, to give a few references for further reading on topics dealt with in successive chapters, and to add a short general list covering a wider range, CHAPTERS I-IIL John Fiske, The Meaning of Infancy; N. M, Butler, The Meaning of Education; Davidson, History of Education, chaps, i-iii $ Henderson, Principles of Education ; Home, Philosophy of Education ; Bagley, The Educative Process, chaps, i-ivj Verblen, The Leisure Class* CHAPTER IV. As above, and add Dewey, " The Child and the Curriculum," and " Ethical Principles applied to Education " (monographs in vols. entitled The School and the Child and Educational Essays). For Rousseau, etc., see General List, For Physical Education, etc, Clement Dukes, Health at School; Crowley or Hogarth on Medical Inspection of Schools; Margaret McMillan, The Child and the State ; Board of Education, Eeports of the Medical Department for 1909, 1910. CHAPTER V. Sully, Studies in Childhood, and Chil- dren's Ways ; Stanley Hall, Aspects of Child Life ; Slaughter, 249 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY The Adolescent (popular and readable) ; Urwick, The Child's Mind; Irving King, The Psychology of Child Development ; Mumford, The Dawn of Character ; Higgs, Moral Develop- ment of the Child; Earl Barnes, Studies in Education; Welton, Psychology of Education. On backward children Crowley, as above, Lapage, Feeblemindedness in Children of School Age. On supranormal children, etc. Thorn- dike, Individuality; Stern, in Amer. Journal of Educ. Psychy., Mar., April, 1911; Burt, Exper. Study of General Intelligence in Child Study, July, Oct., 1911 ; also reports of Superintendents of Education in Baltimore, Indiana- polis, etc., U.S.A. CHAPTER VI. Graham Balfour, Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland ; Edwardes, Jones and Sykes, The Law of Public Education; Encyclopaedia Britannica, article on " Education " a good account of English organ- ization, and briefer sketches for foreign countries; Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics ; Henderson, Principles of Education, as above ; Sadler, Outlines of Education Courses, contains many useful references; Board of Education, Special Inquiries and Reports, discuss many of the problems handled in this chapter; Fried. Paulsen, German Educa- tion, Past and Present (a translation); Riley, Sadler and Jackson, The Religious Question in Public Education; Evans and Claridge, J. Hirst Hollowell and the Education Movement* CHAPTER VII. Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics; Findlay, Principles of Class Teaching, chaps, iv-xi ; Royal Commission on Secondary Education, Report 1895; Sadler, Reports on Organization of Education in Liverpool, Sheffield, County of Essex, etc., etc., 1904-6, discuss current difficulties in England, Snedden, Vocational Education; Dean, The BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 Worker and the State; Creasey, Continuation Schools; Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets; C. E. B. Russell, Manchester Boys ; R. Bray, Boy Workers and Apprenticeship. On Universities Newman, The Idea of a University (for the controversies of the 'forties) ; Paulsen,' The German University and University Study; CHAPTER VIII. Paulsen, History of Higher Educa- tion, Board of Education, various Reports of the Con- sultative Committee, 1906-12, also Memorandum on the proposed Registration Council, 1911; Meumann, Vorle- sungen iiber Experimentelle Pddagogik ; Claparede, Experi- mental Pedagogy. For United States, publications of the Bureau of Education (similar volumes distributed freely for public information from many State Departments of Education). CHAPTER IX. Dewey, The School and the Child; Herford, The Students Froebel; Scott, Social Education ; O'Shea, Dynamic Factor in Education; Holmes, What is and What might be. For Secondary School Pursuits Norwood and Hope, Higher Education of Boys in England ; Sara A. Burstall, English High Schools for Girls; also Memoranda of the Board of Education on the Teaching of English Literature and on Elementary Mathematics. For Manual Instruction and Housecraft, recent reports by the Board of Education under these titles are valuable* CHAPTER X. Stanley, Life of Arnold, chaps, in and iv; Jane Addams, and Russell and other references in chaps, v and vii ; Holmes, as in chap, ix. ; Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys; Tompkins, School Management* 252 BIBLIOGRAPHY SHORT GENERAL LIST Encyclopaedia Bntannica, articles on Education and School, with many references. These chiefly treat of the history of Education : the essay on the history of educational ideas stops, however, with 1852. The Gyclo- pcedia of Education, now in course of issue in 7 vols., is comprehensive. The Teachers Encyclopedia deals chiefly with school practice. HISTORY. (A) The most valuable reading in educational history is gained from writers who have not confined their attention to the school, but have surveyed an entire field of culture : of such works, Burck- hardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy affords a good example, but an adequate list would carry us too far afield. (B) Of writers dealing chiefly with schools and education in the narrow sense, Munroe and Davidson, History of Education, are comprehensive text-books, Laurie, Woodward, Foster Watson, Adamson deal with various periods, especially of English education. Munroe gives elaborate Bibliographies for all periods, PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES or EDUCATION can best be treated by a similar division. (A) Most of the great writers on philo- sophy and life have made some definite contribution to education, and the student does well to read theso at the source, beginning with Plato's Republic (Bosan- quet is a useful introduction). The following may be noted : Locke, Thoughts concerning Education j Rous- seau, inrilei Herbart (The Science of Education, etc., or Hayward, The Secret of Herbart)} Herbert Spencer, Essays on Education ; Ruskin, A Joy for Ever, The Crown of Wild Olive, and other volumes; the late W James, Talks to Teacher si Tolstoi, various Essays, (B) Writers who were first and last teachers of children Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude, etc. (the biographies of Green, BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 Holinan, Compayr6 usually introduce him to English students); Froebel, The Student's Froebel, edited by Herfordj Thring, Education and School; Farrar, Sidgwiok and others, Essays on a Liberal Education, are examples. More recent contributions will be found above in the references given for tho various chapters. INDEX ACLAND, ARTHUR, 190 Adaptation and adjustment, 8-13 Adolescence. See Youth Animal instincts, 8-30 Ann Arbor, State University, 120 Apprenticeship, 35 Arithmetic, for young children, 199, 207, 216, 217 Arnold, Thomas, quoted, 76 ; at Rugby, 234-236 Arts, the origin of, 17 ; and the child, 207 ; in secondary schools, 223, 226 Attendance at school, 29, 122; compulsory, 164, 221 ; inferior limit, 197 ; superior limit, 163, 220, 229 Baden-Powell, General, 244 Baltimore plan, 144 Barnes, Earl, 92, 184 Boarding-schools, English, 233 Books and bookbinding, interest for children, 204 Boys' Scout movement, 244 Browning, Robert, quoted, 73 Bryce, James, 117 ; Commission, 138, 223 Budget, the Education, 131 Building, temporary school, 132 Butler, N. M., quoted, 22, 23, 189 Central authority, 114, 172, 173; as an instructor of the people, 191-194 Character, a personal affair, 59 Charity schools, 38 Childhood, divided into periods, 82 Child-labour, 88, 211 Children and the moral life, 63 Children's care, legislation for, 11 Child study, 170, 184 Church, as controlling education, 37, 101-113 Classical teaching, 51, 226 Class unity, 240-243 Clergy, as organizers of culture. 33, 37 Cleveland, plan for backward scho- lars, 144 Clinics, school, 69 College, distinguished from school, 80, 142, 156 Compulsion. See Attendance Consultative Committee, 174 Continuation classes, 162 Convention, opposed to freedom, 43, 49-60 Correlation, 202 Correspondence teaching, 161 Council of teachers proposed, 171, 174, 176 Court, education in the, 34 Cowper-Temple instruction, 111 Crafteman, child or teacher as, 182, 203 Culture in its beginnings, 17, 33 ; defined, 50 ; and the child, 212 Curriculum, constantly added to, 49 ; of schools, Chap. IX Custom and the young, 58 Defectives, care of, 25, 94 Democracy and modern children, 57 Dewey, 58, 64, 196, 213, 243 Differentiation ef types of school, 139-165 ; of teachers, 182 Discipline, 67-60, 212 Drama, and the child, 205, 207, 212 Drill, period for mental, 90, 207, 215 Drudgery and the child, 207, 212 Dukes, Dr. Clement, 70 254 INDEX 255 Economic progress and schooling, 26 Education, definition, 7, 8, 15, 16, 18, 20, 40 Ethics and the school, 61-65, 228 ; and the teacher, 65, 187 Eugenics, 9, 11, 14-16, 146, 147 Examination system, 123 Experience, 42 Extension of period of infancy, 23 of university teaching, 159 Fairy tales, 85 Family, and schooling, 32, 107; parents' evenings, 246 Fatigue, in the period of stability, 87 Freedom, 40 ; for teachers, 60, 178 ; in the time-table, 209 Froebel, 197, 200 Gardening, its interest for chil- dren, 204 Geography, 205 Girls' clubs, 163 ; schools, 165 note Grammar schools in England, 233 Greek, ancient, in modern Europe, 51, 52, 227 Hall, Stanley, quoted, 74, 87, 92 Handicrafts, 204, 224 Helplessness, 22, 27, 29 Herbart, 62 History, 205, 214 Holidays, needed by teachers, 181 Holmes, E. G. A., 243 Housecraft, its interest for chil- dren, 204, 211 House-system, 237 Ideals, origin, 18 ; as an end for schooling, 44-46 Imperial service and the school, 236 Individual differences, 97 Industry and the child, 207, 210, 211 ' Infant school. See Kindergarten Instinct, 8-30 Jesus with little children, 51 Jowett, influence on college educa- tion, 155 Kerchensteiner, 92, 184 Kindergarten, 139, 197-200 King, Irving, quoted, 76, 80 Kipling's animal psychology, 13 Ladder, the educational, 134 Lads' clubs, 168, 238 Land, need of, for schools, 133 Laurie, 2 Leaving certificate systems, 123- 180 Leisured class, origin of, 27 Library, education at Whitehall, 190 Linguistic studies, 216, 218, 223 Literature, origins, 17 ; and the child, 2t6, 213, 225 Local authorities, 114, 121 Locke, 62, 253 Luther, 39 Macmillan, Miss Margaret, 69 Managers of schools, 116, 117 Mathematics, 21$, 223 Medical inspection, 70 Mill, John Stuart, in childhood, 96, 97 Modern languages, 218, 224 Moral ideas of children, 65, 92, 228 Motive in children, 201-203, 212 Mumford, Dr., 70 Music, precocity in, 95 ; in schools, 207, 224 Office work laid on teachers, 175 note Oxford, college education at, 155- 157 Parents. See Family Partial education, 161, 220 Perciyal, Dr., his work at Clifton, 237 Pestalozzi, 56 Physical training, 15, 69, 235 Physics, in the secondary school, 225 Physiology for children, 53 ; for teachers, 186 Play, defined, 85 Playtime, of Mfe, 85-87, 200 ; its sequel, 205 Pragmatism and the child, 205 Precocity, 93, 142 Preyer, 84 Primary school curriculum, 200- 218, 242 256 INDEX Primitive man, compared to the child, 88 Professional training extended, 23 Progress, 4(5 Promotion of gifted scholars, 143 Psychology, genetic, Chap. V and pp. 184-18(5 ; experimental, 185 ; physiological, 185 " Public Schools," 235-238 Puritan clergy as teachers, 33 Reading, the early stages, 201 Rein, 62, 117 Religion and the school, 33-40, 101- 113 Research in education, 188 Rhodes, Cecil, scholarship scheme, 168 Rousseau, 56 Rugby, under Arnold, 234 Russell, C. E. A., 238 Scholarship systems, 135 School, earliest type of, 33 ; defini- tion, 40 ; purposes, 42-72 ; as a community, us School building as a social centre, 133 Schooling defined, 9 ; contrasted with education, 21 Science, in the curriculum, 52, 202, 216 Scott, Dr. Colin, 208 Secondary schooling, struggle for, 28 ; types of, 153, 219 ; curricu- lum, 219-228 . Selection, as affecting types of school, 146-149 Service, domestic, by children, 91 Settlement, school, 118 Sidis, Professor, son of, 97 Slaughter, J. W. f quoted, 90 Socialism and State schools, 71 Society and man, 16 ; and the child, 208 and Chap. X Sociology and the teacher, 187 Speech, as an agency in human progress, 13 Spencer, Herbert, 52 Stability, period of, 89-91 Standards of satisfaction, 44-46 State, a rival to the Church, 39 ; method of control in England, 100, 114 ; responsible for i . in education, 1S9 Sunday-schools, 161 note Supranormal children, 93-97 Symbols, 50-58, 202 Teacher, origin of the office, 33, 36, 39 ; as upholder of tradition, 51, 50 ; servant of the community, 03 ; his personal freedom, 64 ; his ethics, 65 ; his special field of study, 67 and Chap. VIII Technical education, origin, 31, 35 Trades school, 151, 164 Tradition, 46 Training of teachers, 180-190 Transition periods, 87, 2'jO Undenominational systems, 109, 111 Universities, emancipation from the Church, 37 ; relation to tho State, 120 , distinctive functions, 156-101; controlling secondary schools, 223 Values, system of, 44 ; degeneracy, 49 j derived from elders, 54 ; but rejected, 55 ; during the period of youth, 78, 228 Vocational education, 36, 150-154 Wells, H. G., 39 Vrisconsin, State University, 159 Women, education of, 165 not'- Wordsworth, 86 Work, exemption from, 27; defined, 89 ; the child's attitude, 210-212 Workshop in school, 203 Writing, age for beginning, 199 and note Y.M.C. Associations, 161 note Young of animals, 21 Youth, description of its features, 73-82, 236 ; later stage, SO ; at school, 162, 220; choice of studies, 226 Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay. Home University T ,'kv^VT- f Library Knowledge Cloth I/- . net Jj. Comprehensive Series of New and Specially Written f&ooks Leather 2/6 net EDITORS : PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A. MR HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. PROF. WM. T. BREWSTER, M.A. "The highly ingenious, attractive, and suggestive series of shilling books which now makes its bow to the public under the Home University Library's ensign is the symbol, in some respects of a revival, in others of a new era, in bibliology. In either case it is a symptom both of health and of hope in the future. . . . Each volume represents a three-hours' traffic with the talking- power of a good brain, operating with the ease and interesting freedom of a specialist dealing with his own subject. ... A series which promises to perform a real social service." The Times. 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JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.Sc., F.Z.S. (With Maps.) "The Home University Library is much enriched by this excellentlwork." Daily Mail. 13. MEDIEVAL EUROPE By H. W. C. DAVIS, M.A. (With Maps.) " A good specimen of the work of the modern historian." Christian World. "One more illustration of the fact that it takes a complete master of the subject to write briefly upon it." Manchester Guardian. 14. THE PAP ACT & MODERN TIMES (1303-1870) By the Rev. WM. BARRY, D.D. "The Papacy," says the author in his preface, "was for hundreds of years suzerain over kings, and the Holy Roman Empire was its armed defender. It is now the head of a world-wide voluntary association which wields no sword but its faith. How so remarkable a transformation came to pass and what it means politically is my subject." 23. HISTORT OF OUR TIME, 1885-1911 By G. P. GOOCH, M.A. "Mr Gooch contrives to breathe vitality into his story, and to give us the flesh as well as the bones of recent happenings." Observer. 2 25. THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA By H. A. GILES, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge. "In all the mass of facts, Professor Giles never becomes dull. He is always ready with a ghost story or a street adventure for the reader's recreation." Spectator. 29. THE DAWN OF HISTORY By J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A., Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford. " There is not a page in it that is not suggestive." Manchester Guardian. 33. THE HISTORT OF ENGLAND : A Study in Political Evolution. By A. F. POLLARD, M.A., Professor of English History in London University. With a Chronological Table. 34. CANADA By A. G. BRADLEY, Author of "The Making of Canada," etc. The story of the Dominion brought down to the morrow of th elections of 1911. 37. PEOPLES far PROBLEMS OF INDIA By Sir T. W. HOLDERNESS, K.C.S.I., Secretary of the Revenue, Statistics, and Commerce Department of the India Office. 42. ROME By W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A., Author of "Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero," " Life of Julius Caesar," etc. IN PREPARATION ANCIENT GREECE. By Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt. LL.D., F.B.A. ANCIENT EGYPT. By Dr F. L. GRIFFITH, M.A., F.R.S. A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE. By HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. THE REFORMATION. By Principal LINDSAY, LL.D. A SHOR T HIS TOR Y OF R USSIA . By Prof. MILYOUKOV. MODERN TURKEY. By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. THE EVOL UTION OF CITIES. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES, M.A. 3 Literature and *Art 2. SHAKESPEARE By JOHN MASEFIELD. " The book is a joy. We have had half-a- dozen more learned books on Shakespeare in the last few years, but not one so wise." Manchester Guardian. 27. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN By G. H. MAIR, M.A. " Altogether a fresh and individual book." Observer. 35. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE By G. L. STRACHEY. 39. ARCHITECTURE By Prof. W. R. LETHABY. With over forty Illustrations. IN PREPARATION ENGLISH LITERA TURE: MEDIMVAL. By Prof. W. P, KER, M.A. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By Miss JANE HARRISON, LL.D., D.Litt. THE RENAISSANCE. By Mrs R. A. TAYLOR. ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE. By ROGER E. FRY, M.A. THE ENGLISH LA NG UA GE. By L. PEARSALL SMITH, M.A. ENGLISH COMPOSITION. By Prof. WM. T. BREWSTER. GREA T WRITERS OF AMERICA. By Prof. W. P. TRENT and Prof. J. ERSKINE. GREAT WRITERS OF RUSSIA. By C. T. HAGBERG WRIGHT, LL.D. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By Prof. J. G. ROBERTSON, M.A., Ph.D. Philosophy and Religion 15. MOHAMMEDANISM By Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A,, D.Litt. "This generous shilling's worth of wisdom. ... A delicate, humorous, and most responsible tractate by an illuminative professor." Daily Mail, 40. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY By the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. IN PREPARATION THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Prof. GEORGE MOORE, D.D., LL.D. BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By R. H. CHARLES, D.D. THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Prof. B. W. BACON, Litt.D., D.D. COM PAR A TIVE RELIGION. By Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By Prof. J. B. BURY, LL.D. ETHICS. By G. E. MOORE. BUDDHISM. By Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A. NONCONFORMITY AND THE FREE CHURCHES. By Principal SELBIE, M.A. Science 7. MODERN GEOGRAPHY By Dr MARION NEWBIGIN. (Illustrated.) "Geography, again: what a dull, tedious study that was wont to be ! ... But Miss Marion Newbigin invests its dry bones with the flesh and blood of romantic interest, taking stock of geology as a fairy-book of science." Daily Telegraph. g. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS By Dr D. H. SCOTT, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory, Kew. (Fully illustrated.) "The informa- tion which the book provides is as trustworthy a first-hand know- ledge can make it. ... Dr Scott's candid and familiar style makes the difficult subject both fascinating and easy." Gardeners' Chronicle. 17. HEALTH AND DISEASE By W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.D., Local Government Board, Edinburgh. "The science of public health administration has had no abler or more attractive exponent than Dr Mackenzie. He adds to a thorough grasp of the problems an illuminating style, and an arresting manner of treating a subject often dull and sometimes unsavoury." Economist. 18. INTRODUCTION to MATHEMATICS By A. N. WHITEHEAU, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.) "Mr Whitehead has discharged with conspicuous success the task he is so exceptionally qualified to undertake. For he is one of our great authorities upon the foundations of the science, and has the breadth of view which is so requisite in presenting to the reader its aims. His exposition is clear and striking." West- minster Gazette. 19. THE ANIMAL WORLD By Professor F. W. GAMBLE, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Many Illustrations.) "For the thoughtful and philosophically minded student at the present day," says Sir Oliver Lodge, in his Introduction to this volume, "such a book is most timely and helpful. ... I am glad to have the opportunity of commending the series to that increasing number of readers who are hungry for trustworthy and assimilable information." 20. EVOLUTION By Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., and Professor PATRICK GEDDES. This volume, which, as the Manchester Guardian says, "is in its survey the most comprehensive of those devoted to Science, and is in a sense the key to them all," summarises the facts of Variation and Heredity, Selection, Function, and Environ- ment, and the chief Evolution theories, and concludes with an important "re-interpretation" of the development process. 22. CRIME AND INSANITT By Dr C. A. MERCIER, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., Author of "Text- Book of Insanity," etc. " Furnishes much valuable information from one occupying the highest position among medico-legal psychologists." Asylum News. 28. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH By W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College of Science, Dublin, 1873-1910. "As a former President of the Psychical Research Society, he is familiar with all the developments of this most fascinating branch of science, and thus what he has to say on thought-reading, hypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spirit- ualism, divinings, and so on, will be read with avidity." Dundee Courier. 31. ASTRONOMT By A. R. HINKS, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory. " Original in thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in treat- ment. . . . No better little book is available. "School World. 6 32. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE By J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural History, Aberdeen University. " For those who have not yet become possessed of the Library, this would form an appropriate introduction. Professor Thomson's delightful literary style is well known ; and here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods of science and its relations with philosophy, art, religion, and practical life. " A berdeen Journal. 36. CLIMATE AND WEATHER By H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of the Royal Meteorological Society ; Professor of Geography in University College, Reading. (With Diagrams.) 41. ANTHROPOLOGY By R. R. MARETT, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford University. IN PREPARATION ELECTRICITY, By Dr GISBERT KAPP. MA TTER AND ENERGY. By F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S. CHEMISTRY. Py Prof. R. MELDOLA, F.R.S. THE MAKING OF THE EARTH. By Prof. J. W. GREGORY, F.RS. THE MINERAL WORLD. By Sir T. H. HOLLAND, K.C.I.E., D.Sc. PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY. By Prof. J. G. McKENDRICK. THE HUMAN BODY. By Dr A. KEITH, M.D., F.R.C.S. PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. WM. McDouGALL, M.A. PLANT LIFE. By Prof. J. B. FARMER, F.R.S. Social Science i. PARLIAMENT Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir COURTENAY P. ILBERT, K.C.B., K. C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. "The best book on the history and practice of the House of Commons since Bagehot's ' Constitution.' "Yorkshire Post. 5- THE STOCK EXCHANGE By F. W. HIRST, Editor of "The Economist." "A little treatise which to an unfinancial mind must be a revelation. . . . The book Lombard St: ring Leader. 6. IRISH N4TIONALITT By Mrs J. R. GRF.EN. "As glowing as it is learned. No book could be more timely." Daily News. " A powerful study. ... A magnificent demonstration of the deserved vitality of the Gaelic spirit." Freeman's Journal. is as clear, vigorous, and sane as Bagehot's 'Lombard Street,' than which there is no higher compliment." Morning io. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. "Admirably adapted for the purpose of exposition." The Times. " Mr MacDonald is a very lucid exponent. ... The volume will be of great use in dispelling illusions about the tendencies of Socialism in this country." Tht Nation. 1 6. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH By ]. A. HOBSON, M.A. "Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique position among living economists. . . . The text-book produced is altogether admirable. Original, reasonable, and illuminating." The Nation. 21. LIBERALISM By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M. A., Professor of Sociology in the University of London. "A book of rare quality. . . . We have nothing but praise for the rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from first principles which form a large part of this book." Westminster Gazette. 24. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRT By D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Leeds. " A volume so dispassionate in terms may be read with profit by all interested in the present state of unrest." Aberdeen Journal. 30. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW By W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford. " Contains a very clear account of the elementary principles underlying the rules of English law, and we can recom- mend it to all who wish to become acquainted with these elementary principles with a minimum of trouble." Scots Law Times. 38. THE SCHOOL An Introduction to The Study of Education. By J. J FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in Manchester University. IN PREPARATION CONSER VA TISM. By Lord HUGH CECIL, M. A. , M. P. (Vol. 1 1 .) AGRICULTURE. By Professor W. SOMERVILLE. (Vol. 26.) PRACTICAL IDEALISM. By MAURICE HEWLETT. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. By Prof. S. J. CHAPMAN. COMMONSENSE IN LA W. By Prof. P. VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L. THE CIVIL SERVICE. By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. MISSIONS. By Mrs CREIGHTON. NEWSPAPERS. By G. B. DIBBI.EE. ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. By E. N. BENNETT, M.A. London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls. 8 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. MAR 15 1933 24 1936 ! ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY