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, 4<M>0 ; 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, 
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