NATIONS LIBRARY / The Nation's Library. The outstanding feature of the NATION'S LIBRARY is specialised information by the most capable and com- petent authorities, and every subject dealt with is brought right up to the point of its relationship to modern life and thought. Nothing obsolete finds a place in this series; each book provides ample material for thought in its particular direction and presents knowledge in its most modern dress. The volumes already issued or in preparation include : SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM. PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P. AVIATION. CLAUDE GRAHAME- WHITE. SANE TRADE UNIONISM. W. V. OSBORNE (of the Osborne Judgment). INDUSTRIAL GERMANY. WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON. EUGENICS : A SCIENCE AND AN IDEAL. EDGAR SCHUSTER, M.A. (Oxon.), D.Sc., Fellow of New College, Oxford, sometime Galton Research Fellow in National Eugenics at the University of London. THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF SMALL HOLDINGS. JAMES LONG, Member of Departmental Committee on Small Holdings. MODERN VIEWS ON EDUCATION. THISELTON MARK, B.Sc., D.Lit., Lecturer on Education in the University of Manchester. THE CASE FOR RAILWAY NATIONALISATION. EMIL DA VIES (Chairman Railway Nationalisation Society). THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT. ETHEL SNOWDEN (Mrs Philip Snowden). M.V.E. A 2 THE NATION'S LIBRARY Continued CANADA AS AN IMPERIAL FACTOR. HAMAR GREENWOOD, M.P., Barrister-at-Law. A HISTORY OF TRUSTS. M. E. HIRST, M.A. (Birm.), sometime Scholar of Newnham College, Cambridge. With an Introduction by F. W. HIRST, Editor of The Economist. THE CASE AGAINST RAILWAY NATIONALISA- TION. EDWIN A. PRATT, Author of American Railways. THE PRINCIPLES OF EVOLUTION. JOSEPH McCABE, Author of The Story of Evolution, The Evolution of Mind, etc. MODERN COMMERCE: A SURVEY. H. H. BASSETT, Editor Financial Review of Reviews. A BOOK OF FOLK-LORE. REV. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. THE MODERN BRITISH NAVY. Commander CHARLES ROBINSON, R.N. (Ret.). BURNS. Rev. LAUCHLAN MACLEAN WATT, M.A., B.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A. (Scot.). OIL FUEL. VIVIAN B. LEWES, F.I.C., F.C.S., Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. CO-OPERATION AND CO-PARTNERSHIP. LANG- FORD LOVELL PRICE, M.A., Fellow and Treasurer of Oriel College, Oxford, Reader in Economic History in the University of Oxford. POVERTY AND THE STATE. GEOFFREY DRAGE, M.A. (Oxon.). THE STAR WORLD. A. C. DE LA C. CROMMELIN, B.A., D.Sc. (Oxon.), Assistant at Royal Observatory, Greenwich. MODERN VIEWS ON EDUCATION The roots of education, if it is to be of any avail, must lie in the very hearts of the people. GRAHAM BALFOUR. MODERN VIEWS QA^ EDUCATION THIS ELTON MARfr,B.Sc. BALTIMORE ; WARWICK & YORK, Inc. PUBLISHERS |\/V PREFACE A VERY casual glance will show the reader that this little book is in no way an academic study. It does not aim to be an introduction to the study of education. It is merely a bird's-eye view of some of those features of education which make it so great a factor in the nation's life. So far as limits of space, and the necessity of selecting some only of the more salient and popular aspects of the question permit, the following chapters deal with education as a people's question, one that affects the hearth and home, and at the same time touches the very roots of national prosperity and all- round strength. It is impossible to omit all reference to the teacher's work and to lose sight entirely of his interests and ideals whilst chiefly considering those of the citizen; but the schools are here treated mainly from the public standpoint as they concern the citizens who support them, whether privately 369873 PREFACE school fees or publicly through taxation. Little more would have been needed by way of preface, but that since the book was written important foreshadowings have been given of intended legislation. The skilful way in which curiosity has been aroused has done something to awaken a renewed interest in education as the nation's greatest work. An optimistic note is struck; and this suggests, as the chapters on ' Organisation for Teaching* are intended to show, that the makings of a national system already exist. It is really less correct than has been customary of late, to describe the conditions as chaotic. Reform is needed; but 'chaos' would be irreclaimable. It matters not whether we consider the c Public School' system which is invested with great traditions and has proved its worth on so many fields, or the publicly provided system with the Elementary School at its base; in each case the makings of a system exist, and each is capable of yielding an absolutely essential contribution to the national life, by enriching the service which Britain's sons shall render to the Britain of to-morrow. Wales and Scotland and the United States of America (in their provision of free High PREFACE 7 Schools and State Universities) have done something to show us the way with respect to a publicly provided national system of education. No educational legislation will touch the root of the matter which does not open out ways for children attending ele- mentary schools of a far more practical and varied character than as yet exist. This is in part a question of the improvement of the nature and conditions of elementary school education. It is surprising to read and those who will be most surprised will be the teachers themselves from the pen of a well- known parliamentarian that 'the character of the education given in the primary schools has reached a very high standard, and little improvement is now possible.' More strange still that these should be the words of an able member of the Labour Party. There are several references in the following pages which show that improvements are not only possible but are urgently needed, if the schools are to be satisfactory in themselves and adequate in the outlook they give to the scholars upon their after career as workers and citizens. With respect to the * Public School ' system, a significant indication of room for reforrr 8 PREFACE was given in December, 1912, when the Head Masters' Association discussed in private the by no means fresh proposal of a Royal Commission to inquire into the relations between the Public Schools and the Univer- sities. Clearly, at a time when many things are being asked for, the motto must be, 'First things first ! * Neglecting ' secondary * educa- tion for the moment, the first things would appear to be : a more sustained care and a widened opportunity for youths between the school-leaving age and, say, the age of seventeen or eighteen ; and to do more efficiently the work we are already aiming to do in the Elementary School. The former is, to a large extent, the question of the Continuation School, with its corollary, the acquiescence of employers in some liberal scheme of release from labour during certain hours SL liberality likely to yield a rich return in the improved workmanship and more efficient manhood of the future. With respect to the real need of doing better the work already being attempted in the Elementary Schools, it is almost sufficient to say that there is no acceptable definition of the aim and meaning qf education which accords with tJie PREFACE 9 assigning of fifty or more scholars to one teacher, as is still quite commonly the case. The head master of Repton has lately said : * May I beg every one interested in education to give the authorities no peace until classes are reduced to a maximum of twenty-five?' Dr W. T. Harris, late United States Commissioner of Education, used to advocate thirty as an ideal number, permitting adequate individual opportunity side by side with sufficient community life and feeling. 1 To add to the teacher's difficulty in dealing with these large numbers, there are often normal, pre- cocious, and slow if not deficient children in the same large class; and for some of these last-mentioned, as observation and hand-to- hand experimenting readily show, much of the school work has, and can have, little or no clear meaning. Most towns have done something for mentally defective children. London has shown how much humane and, nationally speaking, economical work can be done by schemes for cripples' schools and * special difficulty* schools. The 'special diffi- culty* schools are for backward or way ward 1 The teachers themselves, expressing their views at the 1913 Conference of the National Union of Teachers, are at present content to re- affirm that 'no teacher should be directly or indirectly responsible for more than forty children/ 10 PREFACE children, such as are so often a deadweight upon the hands of the ordinary class- teacher. One effect has been to dimmish the number of children who would otherwise have had to be sent punitively to * industrial' or 'reformatory' schools. The makings of a national system already exist; and there is sufficient clear insight into the true things in education to give urgency to the demand for wider movements seeking ampler results. There appears to be a second feature in the educational planning of which hints have been given, namely, that it will be tolerant of diversity. It is evidently anticipated that the proposals that are to be made will appeal to an awakened and generous patriotism rather than serve to revive the disastrous, though inevitable, controversy in which 'the enthusiasm which passed the Act of 1870 frittered itself away.' Part of the strength of English education lies, as Mr Sadler wearies not in telling us, in its diversity. Part, accordingly, of the wisdom of the legislator lies in allowing for diversity. This is what seems to be contem- plated. 'We ought,' says Lord Haldane, 'to PREFACE 11 put education first, and then make our arrangements for meeting the feelings of those who have strong religious convictions, which must be respected and for which provision must be made.' A great point will be gained when the impracticability of any attempt to create an artificial uniformity in English education is effectually realised. So far as this question is touched upon in the following pages, the tendency of the suggestions would be, within fairly wide limits to set the individual schools as free in respect of religious instruction as they are in respect of other school subjects. The solution, when it comes, will need to be at once religious in effect and educational in spirit. And what appears feasible is that the State should take over responsibility in the matter, and that, within the extremes of, say, twenty to forty- five or fifty minutes daily, schemes of religious instruction should be drawn up in the schools and presented for approval, as they are in other subjects. This seems to be the way of determining with the greatest approximation to the truth how much and what kind of religious instruction may be given to the maximum advantage of the children attend- ing any individual school, and also to the 12 PREFACE ultimate furtherance of the religious life of the community. The long discussion, accom- panied by a certain polemical emphasis on either side, has left many keenly desirous of a solution which shall overlook neither the historical considerations which belong to the question, on the one hand, nor the needs of the hour, on the other. The State alone can intervene to solve what the President of the Board of Education de- scribed in March of this year as fi an insoluble denominational problem' namely, 'how to retain the use of the denominational school buildings in this country, to permit denomina- tional religious education to be given in those schools, . . . and at the same time to safe- guard the ratepayer from contributing to the cost of denominational religion.' Might not the State make itself sponsor for the diversity which it would be educationally uneconomical, even if it were politically practicable, to dis- allow? Supposing forty-five minutes daily were the limit of time assignable to religious instruction and a corresponding proportion of the costs of elementary education, roughly one-seventh, were made a State charge or even one-seventh of the additional cost to the ratepayer of elementary education since PREFACE 13 the non-provided schools received rate-aid the ratepayer's grievance on this score would seem to be met. Any such application of the principle of diversity cuts both ways. It sets free each type of school, provided and non- provided, to work out its own life. There always comes a moment when British people yield to the spur of the reiteration that they are behind this or that country in one or other matter. At the present moment there can be little doubt that England is ready for an educational leap forward. The situation is crudely summed up in three negatives: there is not chaos ; there cannot be uni- formity ; we must not remain at a stand- still. The possibility of reform turns upon the first ; a fresh realisation of the meaning of educational liberty hinges upon the second; the progress of the nation depends upon the third. With regard to the second statement, the principle of diversity has, of course, a wider reference than that of the denomina- tional problem. It looks, amongst other things, in the direction of more liberal and quickening methods of administration and supervision. The publicly provided schools have won a considerable amount of freedom. 14 PREFACE They must go on to win more. Apart from real 'liberty to teach,' neither Statute, nor the knowledge of right aims and methods, nor the results of experience, can avail to any great extent. One may illustrate the point by the difference between the expert and the 4 faddist,' of whom not a little has been heard. The tendency of the faddist is to think that he is only adequate in so far as he is explicit; for him there is just one way of doing a thing. Whereas the expert has an eye for what is good, and the more original it is, the more it differs from anything he has seen before, the more willing may he be to see in it initiative and ingenuity. In school administration America's chief source of success lies in the leadership of men and women who have this kind of instinct for school life and for educa- tion as a living process, an intuitive accept- ance and appreciation of the thing that works. We may hail legislative action, but these other things must follow if the best results are to be attained. Instances are given in the following chapters which point to the upspringing of a new faith in education. However high it may be man's destiny to climb, education is par excellence PREFACE 15 the force that helps to raise him: education in the broadest sense, certainly, but an education of which the school shall be, if not the mainspring, at least the acknowledged centre. To the view, held by some who would not willingly be regarded otherwise than optimists, that man has reached the limits of his development, and henceforward it is the environment alone that becomes more highly organised, the teacher answers with an opposing faith. He is, almost by profession, an optimist, believing in life, believing in the future, believing in man's possibilities. He stands for the improvement of the race. This little book is a very slender treatment of a great theme. What is good in it is mainly due to a quickening contact with teachers from all kinds of schools and in various countries, and to a participation in their vision of an ideal, the vision of man slowly * becoming what he is. f THISELTON MARK. THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER. The waste in a teacher's workshop is the lives of men. ED. THRING. CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Some Modern Views of Education Some Criti- cisms of Present-day Education National and International Importance of the Question ... . 21 CHAPTER II THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK I A JUSTIFICATION OF THE SCHOOL The School open to Community Influences Educational Ideals capable of Realisation The Present Problem : a Justification of the School ... 32 CHAPTER III THE NATION AND THE SCHOOLS A Deepened Interest in Education one of the Needs of the Hour Some Mam Aspects of a Nation's Educational Need which appeal to British People with Special Force Application to Schools of Various Types . 36 18 CONTENTS CHAPTER IV ORGANISATION FOB TEACHING ! (I) THE PROVISION OF SCHOOLS Some Aspects of Public Control Supervision of Publicly-provided Schools Note on the Correlation of the Work of Central and Local Authorities ..... 48 CHAPTER V ORGANISATION FOR TEACHING : (2) THE EDUCATIONAL LADDER The Public School System (one Type of Educa- tional Ladder) The Publicly-provided Educational Ladder Welsh Intermediate Schools, and other examples . , 64 CHAPTER VI ON SCHOOL CURRICULA The Question of a Primary Curriculum of Uni- versal Reference Considerations govern- ing the choice of Primary School Studies The Secondary School Curriculum . 85 CHAPTER VII EFFICIENCY-VALUE OF SCHOOL STUDIES The General Idea of Efficiency-value of School Subjects Geography and its Efficiency- value Elementary Science English Language and Literature Educational Handwork Secondary Education and Efficiency-values The University . . 106 CONTENTS 19 PAGB CHAPTER VIlA (Supplementary) A SUGGESTIVE TIME-TABLE AND SYLLABUS Courses of Study in Chicago Elementary Schools Nature Study Courses in the Same . 133 CHAPTER VIII VOCATIONAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION Vocational Education in the Elementary School Vocational work as a Sequel to Elemen- tary School Education Vocational Features in the Secondary School . .140 CHAPTER IX THE MONTESSORI SPIRIT Description of the Work in the 'Children's Houses' An Elementary School in Eng- land Some Secondary Schools , . 172 CHAPTER X THE CHILD AND THE SCHOOL Education as Co-operation with Child-nature Some Physical Conditions affecting the Child's Education Intellectual Education in relation to the Child's Development Ethical Aspects of School Life The Home and its Influence upon the Child at School The Child Leaving School Early Days of the After-school Life 201 20 CONTENTS PAOB CHAPTER XI RESUM& OF CONCLUSIONS . . 241 APPENDIX 252 SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 INDEX ....... 261 Modern Views on Education CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Slowly this powerful race works its way out of its confining ruts and its clouded vision of things, to the manifestation of those great qualities which it has at bottom piety, integrity, good nature, and good humour. MATTHEW ARNOLD. THE purpose of the few chapters that follow is to link together a keener interest in the life and work of the schools with that fine quality of human nature, the love of man for the child. Popular views of education are part of the intellectual and social environment on which the school depends for much of its vitality and success; and discussions on education will always be more or less futile unless the points of view of teacher and citizen are brought together and helped to blend. Every chapter in this short book aims at this blending of the educational forces. So far from being a technical study, its 22 MODERN VIEWS purpose is to view education largely in its public aspects; in its intimate connection with public life; in its subtle dependence upon public co-operation and support. The more highly specialised education becomes the more natural it might seem to think of the school, and for the school to think of itself, as a thing apart, and of the education that is given as something peculiar to the school itself. But this, nine times out of ten, is specialisation beyond education point. Really, we are all educators through the schools. There is a division of labour, but no division of life. Commonly, we think of the school as a means. Quite as truly is it an end in itself. It is the nation's public expression of how it thinks of, believes in, and lives for its young life. The education which a nation gives to its children is thus its truest reflection of itself. 1. Need for Constant Adjustment in our Views of Education. The community that is in any true sense progressive is ever gaining a fresh vision of itself and of its needs. Corresponding changes must of necessity occur, and even with some rapidity, in our views of education. Few, fortunately, are the parents and the few not the thoughtful ON EDUCATION 23 who say, when thinking of their children's education, 'It was good enough for me, and ought to be good enough for them.' On the contrary, not a few have awakened to the fact that what we had was not really good enough ! And the next step, whether dic- tated by sheer logic, or by humanity, or by patriotism, is to ask : What will be, so far as foresight and planning can secure it, 'good enough' for our children? Moreover, education, by its very nature, is anticipative. Its problems are the problems of to-morrow, viewed, so far as is possible, from the standpoint of to-day. A policy of 'standstill' is out of the question; still more so, a falling back upon the standards and methods of the past. We shall only worthily show honour to the past by accepting its aid in order to excel it. This principle applies to the whole range of educational activity, from the manner of organising a national department of education to the management of the single class and the training of the single child. We require a progressive system to meet a progressive need. 2. Some Modern Views of the Aim of Educa- tion. The only definitions of the meaning and aim of education that have much value 24 MODERN VIEWS are those which allow for this progressive- ness. They are the formulae, to use Herbert Spencer's phrase, of a 'moving equilibrium.' As examples of such definitions of the aim of education we have those of Spencer himself, 'to prepare us for complete living,' and, a phrase occurring in the same context, * unfolding our individualities to the full in all directions.' Another striking British defini- tion of the aim of education is in the words of Dr James Ward, 'The aim is efficiency for the highest life.' And somewhat finely, Mr Thomas Burt, at a time when he was the only representative of labour in the House of Commons, said : * Education has been advo- cated from every possible point of view. It has been said that education will reduce the rates, that it will empty the prisons, that it will enable our workmen to hold their own in competition with other nations. But I don't believe that the working men of England want education on any one of these grounds; but they want it because it will make them better, happier, and wiser men.' We have now to ask, whether public opinion and individual (even expert) judgment are entirely reassuring as to things being as well with us educationally as we should wish. ON EDUCATION 25 8. Some Criticisms of Present Day Education. Criticisms abound. Educators themselves lead the way in scrutinising the school and its performance. From self criticism and outside criticism no type of school escapes. This is well. 'These are counsellors/ as said the exiled duke, 'that feelingly persuade me what I am.' Ideals are only realised through our successively discovering wherein we fall short of them. In this way all good criticism is in reality co-operation, and in spite of an imposing array of professional advisers administrative, organising, and inspectorial in nation, city, and county, suggestions of value may come from the unprofessional citizen, especially from the parent. Many things are hidden from the officially wise and prudent. Hence, rather inviting than resenting criticism, we give ear with some eagerness to what the critics have to say. It is not long since we were half-startled by the very title of a book by Mr Harold Gorst : The Curse of Education; though his readers soon found that it was not education in itself but the manner and method of much of it with which the writer was out of patience. Some complain that the Empire, its prowess and commerce, is more thought of than the M.V.E. B 26 MODERN VIEWS child, the future citizen of the Empire. Others assure us that many children are spoiled at school for careers for which they were otherwise fitted, and are only half fitted for the careers which they choose. Mr Bernard Shaw's characteristic expression has frequently been quoted : ' My education was interrupted by my schooling. 5 'Past mistakes in our elementary school methods have been/ we are told, 'recognised by all educationalists; they are felt by all workers.' Parents every now and then publish com- plaints of the great Public Schools, and of the Preparatory Schools which prepare boys foi them. Witness the English Review for September, 1912, and the continuance of the discussion in the October number. Again, in a recent book, of special interest owing to the long experience its author has had of English education, the late Senior Inspector of Elementary Schools discusses What is and What might be. He does not think that the defects of the elementary schools are graver than those of other educational insti- tutions, rather that they are less grave because less deeply rooted. Yet, making all exceptions, we find him saying, 'Whatever else the current system of education may do ON EDUCATION 27 to the child, there is one thing which it cannot fail to do to him, to blight his mental growth.' We need not think that this debate upon the education of the hour, with the running fire of criticism which accompanies it, is confined to any one country. In the work and staffing of their schools, American educa- tors are aware of grave defects, some of which they see to be extremely difficult to make good. From France expressions of dis- appointment in results are to be heard. Again, the Vice-President of the Parliamentary Commission for Public Instruction at St Petersburg said in 1908 : 'Ever since 1900 people in Russia speak only of the radical reform of the system of education.' The German Emperor has seen the necessity of intervening in order to secure a modernising of secondary education in Germany; and the excessive intellectualism of all school work in that country is often remarked upon. Indeed, a summary statement, which would find sympathetic hearers in all countries that have made any real point of education, may be quoted in the words of a German writer : 'Gentle Reader, have you ever felt that the school you used to attend as a child really 28 MODERN VIEWS gave you the education which you now see would have been the best? Are your own youngsters, at this very minute, being edu- cated so as to turn out quite healthy, and capable of doing some real good in the world? Do you find them content with their life at school? Or do they make constant com- plaints about the "awfully hard Latin and Greek prose," about the "endless work," "the dreary lessons"? Did you ever put to yourself this question : Is there anywhere in the world to be found a school where, in place of a mere one-sided training of the understanding, or mere stuffing of the memory, one might find an education and harmonious culture of the whole being?' This writer had, he said, found such a school, in a land which for the present he would not name; in 'neither Germany nor France; nevertheless, not in the moon/ So much for the actuality of criticism : a grindstone always at hand on which, granted otherwise favourable conditions, those who are professional teachers may sharpen their tools. 4. National and International Importance of the Question. Each nation of necessity studies its own schools. They are nearest to hand; they are its own charge and care. But from ON EDUCATION 29 a scientific and human standpoint the interest is quite as truly international as national. This is shown by many happy tokens. Every one knows of the cordiality with which foreign visitors are received by American teachers. Naas, in Sweden, is a great Swedish- international centre of Sloyd instruction. Jena, in Germany, is a similar centre of general educational study. *We found, indeed, at Jena/ writes an English head master, 'in an eminent degree, that cordial welcome which seems to flow from the German heart to all who search for knowledge, and are willing to work. Thanks to the freedom of their intercourse, their easy social customs, and the total absence of reserve, in a few days we had lived years. In Jena were all nationalities, all brought together by one force, the wish to learn/ In 1902 the present writer was visiting schools in Holland when the bitterness of feeling following the Boer War was at its height. Through a casual meeting with a perfect stranger he was brought into touch with a Rotterdam merchant keenly interested in education. Rapidly arranging his business, this gentleman gave the writer there and then all that remained of his morning some two 80 MODERN VIEWS hours; and, after returning to his office in the middle of the day, met him again in the afternoon for an equal period in order to impart a real knowledge of the work of the schools in that educationally progressive city. In many such ways we are learning that teachers and students of education, the world over, form one great community, a single army of workers for the world's well-being; and that, just as knowledge becomes more and more a single world-power, so is education throughout all lands one vast united and uniting force making for the good of man. There is no clearer view to be had of the solidarity or oneness of mankind, especially in the pursuit of progress and the search for the higher paths, than in the manifest solidarity and oneness of the world's educational forces. Thus a true educational spirit gives the clue to the higher conceptions of the meaning of empire. Our best conceptions of empire are in keeping with the law of solidarity. Never, probably, has the ideal of the true educator been more eloquently portrayed than in Matthew Arnold's tribute to his father, the great head master of Rugby : nor could an imperial nation dream of higher tribute from dependent races. ON EDUCATION 81 CHAPTER II THE PURPOSE OF THE BOOK : A JUSTIFICATION OF THE SCHOOL The foremost teachers of the foremost nations are the chief creators of the life that is to be. THRING. EVEN in so rapid a survey, a certain dis- tinction needs to be drawn between new schools and schools with great traditions. Yet each owes its character to the life of the community, and is a centre of community ideals. For the public spirit of past genera- tions lives on in the traditions of our older schools. And this has its educational value, inasmuch as just pride in one's school is one way of acceptance of social ideals and social responsibility. But a new school may also attune its life to what is best in the national spirit in such a way as to stir within its scholars 'high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots.' Each school in its own way may succeed in making men and women of intellectual vigour, balance, and alertness; of tempered character and noble purpose; fitted to play their part in the 82 MODERN VIEWS physical, intellectual, and moral improve- ment of a strong and free race. Educational ideals, that is to say, are capable of realisation. History amply proves this. In ancient times the Spartans adopted a system of education which so completely harmonised with their ideals, and for defensive purposes with their necessities as a people, that, so long as they adhered to it and remained on their own soil, they were all but invincible. So Plutarch, in his life of Philopcemen, the conqueror of Sparta, in the second century, tells us. Philopoemen found that, before he could finally overcome the Spartans, he had to uproot their educational system and institutions and compel them to give their children an Athenian education. We may, perhaps, disregard, as difficult of proof, the suggestion that through Rousseau's influence Spartan ideals became so fashion- able with French parents of his own and the succeeding generations that, in co-operation with the new consciousness of individual manhood which the Revolution had inspired, they formed one of the chief means of furnish- ing Napoleon with the army with which he overran Europe. A better substantiated example is that of Germany, whence the ON EDUCATION 33 philosopher Fichte at the beginning of last century went to visit Pestalozzi's famous school, and came back with profound con- victions as to the possibilities of a rightly devised system of education. He embodied these convictions in a series of Addresses to the German Nation, delivered at Berlin, in which he argued that the one way to redeem the German nation was to organise and vitalise the education of the people. An early result was that the State began to give financial support to educational experiments. This was in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and in its light we have to consider the frequently repeated statement that 'the schoolmasters of Germany won the war of 1870.' These illustrations go to show that educa- tional ideals are realisable; and, though the test in each case is strength in war, we have probably not yet reached a period in the world's history when war-power has ceased to be one test of the comparative physical might and mental and moral resources of a nation. It can scarcely be in doubt that the nation which rises highest in and through its schools will be the invincible nation of the future 34 MODERN VIEWS in whatever spirit-quickening tussles other, one hopes, than war the future may have in store : Where the children are taught to be laws to them- selves, and to depend on themselves; Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands; Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, There the great city stands. Here are factors alike of school power and of empire. The Present Problem : a Justification of the School. An education which achieves anything like the results of which we are speaking is, of course, an effect of many causes. The home, the school, society, the whole life conscious, instinctive, subcon- scious of the child himself, even the physical environment of air and scenery, are playing their part. The school life of the child, however, is the part of his education which we collectively plan, and the problem before us is intensely practical. We need to con- sider, and in all possible ways to seek to enhance, the value of the education which the school offers. The appeal of the hour continually changes; and it is to the nation's varied need that the ON EDUCATION 85 school gives answer. At the time that the bulk of this book was being written, the nation was alert in the almost instant expecta- tion of a call to arms. In making our response to every such call we shall depend much upon the answer that the schools will have given in strengthening for the qualities that make for success. At the present moment, the call comes rather from the inner life of the nation. It is for a * national system of educa- tion,' meaning that the schools shall be lifted to a higher plane in their task of nation- building the making of men, citizens, and workers. It is only when the nation takes counsel with itself in this way that the school can respond to the nation's need. For the school is what the people collectively make it. Especially in what is done for the rank and file of the nation, in creating for the scholars who pass through our elementary schools diversity of opportunity and enlargement of life, will the nation find its sure reward. 36 MODERN VIEWS CHAPTER III THE NATION AND THE SCHOOLS Whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of a nation must be first introduced into its schools. VON HUMBOLDT. 1. A Deepened Interest in Education one of the Special Needs of the Hour. The oft- quoted words at the head of this chapter have almost the force of an axiom. Yet 'the subject of education/ says one, 'has never really interested the voting class.' 'It may appear a somewhat remarkable fact/ writes another, 'that England, the birth- place of modern industry, is the last of the great nations to build up its educational system.' Political philosophy has never wavered in its insistence that a democracy must be educated. A democracy is a nation in the act and process of self -creation; and progress is the law of its life. In a living democracy, the 'land of promise' of the fathers becomes the birthland of their children : the achieve- ments of yesterday become the heritage of ON EDUCATION 37 to-day. Education can do much in a nation which is alive in this fashion. It will know how to turn to account spontaneous manifes- tations of the nation's inner life how to interpret them, and how to use them. Whilst these chapters are being written one such service has been rendered by Vice-Chancellor Sadler of Leeds University, in his description of a type springing up in our midst youthful, distinctly which is * self -confident, insatiable in its appetite for new experiences and sensations, buoyant, swift-minded, gay, but often ruthless towards the incompetent, quick but fickle in its intimacies, humorously tolerant in its judg- ments, stoical in danger, unfrightened of the future, though uncertain of the issues which the future might bring.' Not to know a type like this when it is with us is both to misunderstand and to be misunderstood; and to fail in consequence in our educational effort. Britain possesses in her children material second to none in the world. But our children need a first-class education one that shall qualify them for empire amongst peoples of every race and clime. Again, education can take account of the 88 MODERN VIEWS factors which give to a nation's development its common direction and tendency. The French political philosopher, Montesquieu, has spoken of Britain as 'the one nation in the world which has best known how to avail itself of those three great things religion, trade, and liberty.' These national hold- fasts must be the educator's clue : the hint also to the nation as to the ends for which school and education are to stand. British education will need to be attuned to these fundamental faiths; to spring from them; to react upon them and make them fruitful. And in more specific ways education can adjust itself to the nation's need. It is, for example, a British characteristic to be a little proud of a reputation for being 'the best muddlers through in the world.' Pos- sessed of the knack of accomplishment, we are apt sometimes not to economise its cost. Goethe, as Lord Haldane reminds us, said that 'the Englishman is only short of intelli- gence/ which can only mean that we are too little given to the habit of looking well ahead and planning for success. Energy spent in getting out of corners is subject, from the standpoint of efficiency, to a considerable subtraction. It is in keeping with our mood ON EDUCATION 39 to give a ready ear to the story of Sir Francis Drake's famous game of bowls, finished after he was told that the Armada was in sight. The time spent in play may have disguised a good deal of hard thinking. If so, this should be added to the story. Otherwise the frequent relating of the incident falls too much into line with a British tendency which needs no encouraging. But a right education is remedial. It is the work of education to cultivate the habit of planning for success : Savoir pour pr&voir, afin de pouvoir. 2. The Main Aspects of a Nation's Educa- tional Need which appeal to British People with special Force. The strength of a modern nation depends upon the possession by its people of all classes of power in work, the spirit of citizenship, and virile personality. Work, citizenship, individuality these are the nation's primary needs. And in this need for the cultivation and strengthening of work-power and character-power (which includes good citizenship) the nation looks to its schools. Viewing various types of school from this standpoint, not only do the essentials of the education to be given in each stand out more clearly, but we have 40 MODERN VIEWS a standard whereby to judge of remediable defects. It is not possible to separate these three essentials. For where, whether in the course of school education or as a result of it, either power in work, or the spirit of citizenship, or strength of individual char- acter is conspicuously lacking, some degree of failure in respect of the other two is inevitable. Should our public schools, for example, boast of their esprit de corps and the masculine self-reliance of the men they train, yet tend to regard hard work on the part of the average boy as 'bad form,' both the quality of the patriotism that is developed and the grounds on which self-reliance rests are seriously impaired. Apart from sheer thoughtfulness and the habit of taking pains both to know and to plan, daring itself falls short of the highest courage, and lives may be sacrificed in vain. Every reader will remember the irreparable loss to British homes and the British nation of the fearless young officers who in the early stages of the Boer War exposed themselves to the deadly fire of the Boer rifles. Even foreign onlookers, in no ttay because of their sympathy with the British cause, lamented the needless sacrifice. ON EDUCATION 41 With this kind of Public School boy courage it is impossible not to feel a kindling sym- pathy, and to think of it with a certain pride. It is proof that the blood has not deteriorated. Moreover, it is dash of this kind which often brings in the winner. But when it is not intellectualised inspired and sustained by an adequate insight into the relation between means and ends even such courage loses some of its worth. It is 'magnificent but not war.' One would only utter here words which should be as an added wreath upon the graves of brave men. Yet the view is held that habits of thoughtfulness and of planning for success would go far to prevent? such needless losses. (The general question of the public school curriculum, which may have much to do with the narrowing of the school life and of its influence, need not be touched upon at this point. 'The very general dis- like which it is idle to deny boys have for work/ says the author of Croesus Minor, a book which treats racily of Public School education, 'is not so much antipathy to work as to the particular dose which is presented to them.' If a course of studies that would have had a high efficiency value 42 MODERN VIEWS for average British boys if only they had happened to live some centuries ago is offered them to-day, they are almost bound to treat it lightly). Other Boarding Schools or mixed Day and Boarding Schools present the widest possible variations in merit. But the same three tests should be applied. If they stimu- late to work, strengthen character, and evoke esprit de corps, they fulfil the essential conditions. In the majority of cases these schools are private ventures on the part of those at the head of them, and the arrangement for a boy's or girl's education at one of them is a direct bargain between parent and proprietor. Many parents are careful in their choice of a school; most, no doubt, think they are : all need to be. A school ought not to be too small to permit the growth and maintenance of a good public spirit. A school with a few big boys, a few little boys, and a few middle- sized ones is seldom desirable. Not to speak of other serious dangers there is too little public life; and the type of character that is fostered tends to artificiality. There is likely also to be too little emulation in work. A good playground and playing-field life is ON EDUCATION 48 a healthy sign in any school. Virility, esprit de corps, and (for young people) a valuable type of purposiveness grow by participation in good games. Both north and south of the Tweed there are boarding schools, in the hands often of old Public School boys, which in a large measure succeed in incor- porating the public school ideal and the spirit of public school traditions with zest for work and earnestness of purpose. The value of such schools in the nation's life is self-evident. Some Day Schools succeed in being really great. There are always, of course, the 'train- boys' and 'train-girls/ i.e. those who come in by train in time for school in the morning and leave by the first train they are allowed to catch in the afternoon. Such may often get little more in addition to the life of the home, than schoolroom, train, and home lessons. But many of these are caught up and helped by the contagion of a good school- spirit. Playing-fields, holiday tramps and holiday camps, school clubs, and the leader- ship in work and recreation of large-hearted men and women as masters and mistresses, make for keenness of life, good citizenship, and, with the co-operation of the home, for force of character. 44, MODERN VIEWS Coming to the Public Elementary Schools they are the schools which the nation directly supports for its own ends. One country after another has realised that national salvation is at stake in its educa- tional planning. America, for example, not solely because it is a democracy, but because it is a cosmopolitan democracy, has to assimi- late some of the cruder elements of older civilisations. The flag, which we are too shy or too diffident in displaying in our schools, is there superabundantly in evidence as the emblem of citizenship. * American citizen* is America's watchword. In that name a Western civilisation has to be built up. Our elementary schools might well borrow the suggestion and do more to foster and make intelligent the fine ideals of British citizen- ship. Quite recently an English head master published what struck him as an extremely significant portion of a letter which he had received from a boy who had just left his school and emigrated with his parents to the States. * Every Monday morning we stand and say: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to my country's cause for which it stands one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" ... saluting at the word ON EDUCATION 45 ' It would not be excessive if, in addition to Empire Day and national com- memorations, we, at the beginning of each term, were to make use of some similar reminder that we, teachers and scholars (with parents if they would also come to the school re-opening), are commencing a new period of work together in Britain's name. The one school in which the writer has seen the Union Jack flying from a flagstaff in the school grounds on ordinary days is a country school in the heart of Cheshire, under a mistress a school in which there are fine features of many kinds. The nation, again, looks to the Elementary School to prepare the bulk of its children for their working days. What, however, can we reasonably expect? Under the teach- ing conditions which still commonly prevail, the work of the individual tends to be lost sight of, if not actually lost, in the work of the mass. Often, and of necessity, it becomes less true to say that the children work, than that they are worked. This is partly because we have not yet seen the end of the effects of the old system of payment by results; but far more because the classes are almost everywhere too large. In the new schools 46 MODERN VIEWS in the city of Rotterdam the classrooms are planned for not more than thirty-five or forty scholars with one teacher. This has been the rule there for more than ten years. With us, the average class is far too big, and from teachers so conditioned we are asking results of vital, even sacred, moment. We are asking them to give back to us at the close of their school days British children equipped for work, loyal and patriotic in spirit, strengthened in will and character, and, as many would add, swayed by motives answering to the deeper things in human nature and the higher things in human aspiration. We have a certain kind of faith in the school. But with all our business instincts we have not yet organised a system of ele- mentary education which half pleases any- body. The committee on industrial educa- tion, for example, in their report issued in 1906, say that children from our elementary schools are not able to think for themselves. They have had, that is to say, eight years of schooling from infant years onwards, and they have, according to this report, not even learned to use their own brains ! They are not well grounded in essentials, continues the report, and not accurate in work. If ON EDUCATION 47 the ratepayer and taxpayer does not want to know what is wrong, is it not time that he did? What sort of educational ladder can we erect on a rickety base of this kind? How are we to expect work-power and character-power each of them a vital neces- sity in a nation that would be strong? The streets will not supply them : the homes are too prone to hand over their part of the responsibility in the matter to the schools. Continuation classes, the Boy and Girl Scouts movements, lads' clubs, some of the best Sunday schools with social offshoots such as Life-saving Brigades, and similar enter- prises do something. But no one will pretend that this is enough. The ordinary day schools must be enabled to accomplish more. Smaller classes are the first and absolute essential. Trained teachers throughout, and scope for the application of the results of their training professional train- ing, that is to say, and professional liberty are the second essential. These two things granted by the nation's decree, we might have a great and true education, second to none in the world, superior to most. 48 MODERN VIEWS CHAPTER IV ORGANISATION FOR TEACHING Never rest till you have got all the fixed machinery for work the best possible. The waste in a teacher's workshop is the lives of men. And what becomes of the waste? . . . They live on, and they hang heavy on the neck of all progress; they form the cumberers of the ground, or worse, who drag down the national life. THRING : An Address to the Teachers of Minnesota. 1. Some General Aspects of Public Control. How, then, are schools to be provided? Education being of such worth, will not parents pay for the education of their children, townsfolk and neighbours for the education of the orphaned and uncared for? the first, because they see in their children's education incomparably the best form of endowment policy; the second, from regard for the public weal or in a spirit of philanthropy, wisely looking for a sure return? Countries have varied greatly in their attitude and social tradition in respect of education. Scottish tradition, following the enlightened policy of the years 1560 and 1696, through ON EDUCATION 49 Church Assembly's edict and national statute, has long been favourable to individual effort. Parents have striven with heroic self-denial to give their sons an education, and neighbours have reached out a helping hand to 'a lad of parts.' But the necessity for universal education never has been, probably under existing social conditions never could be, anywhere met by such individual effort. -2. Some General Considerations affecting the Public Provision of Schools. Individual nations have their own peculiar difficulties in carrying out this all-important branch of the public service. American education, for instance, is far too much under the domina- tion of politics, and the resulting insecurity is doubtless one reason why men do not take up teaching in greater numbers. But America knows nothing of the difficulty of adjusting national and local administration. France has made short work perhaps too short of the religious controversy which still poses amongst us, to the unspeakable damage of the cause of education itself, as the ' education question.' We have in this aspect of English education a besetting hindrance to anything like a popular interest in education. Yet only two things need to be adequately realised M.V.E. c 50 MODERN VIEWS in order that the strain of the irrelevant * religious' controversy shall be considerably eased. One is that diversity, educationally speaking, is advantageous. The second is that the burden of denominational religious education can never, in any real theory of the school itself, be thrown entirely upon the school. 1 The churches and the home life count immensely in the religious education of the child. From the public point of view, the more important of these mutually compensating considerations is that British citizenship is, both by impulse and by tradition, tolerant of diversity. It is equally opposed to this tolerance of diversity for denominationalists to have wished to 'capture the board schools 5 and for an * unsectarian ' party to aspire to extinguish the 'non-provided' or voluntary schools (or, if not the schools themselves, their distinctive features). With respect to 1 Canon Wilson, formerly head master at Clifton, goes even further. He says : 'Let me say that the distinctive doctrines of the Church and many of the sects are utterly unimportant at schools. . . . No genuine school- master in any rank can for an instant digress from his religious teaching into such debatable ground ; it is one of the stupendous and far-reaching blunders that the world outside our profession makes, when they say that masters cannot be trusted to speak on religion, because they would proselytise. ... It is to misconceive the nature of the only possible religious teaching at school.' Essays and Addresses, page 61. ON EDUCATION 51 the 'capture' just mentioned, the woe of the once vanquished is still to be traced in many of our public elementary day school curricula. Yet should the policy of undenomination- alists be to lead to the branding of our publicly-provided education as 'secular,' the hurt to the nation's life might well be regarded as no less great. We have in the decision to abandon in future the secular education debate at the Trades Union Congress an indication of the nation's weariness of the discussion, and of the hopelessness of a fruitful outcome from its maintenance. But, in the meantime, what are we losing? In the first place, the people's interest in education itself; and, in the second place, valuable school time, with- out the attainment of the very ends to which this school time is devoted. Let us hear an authoritative opinion on this second point. The quotations are from Mr Holmes's book, What Is and What Might Be. 'The first forty minutes of the morning session are given, in almost every elementary school, to what is called Religious Instruction. The Scripture Lesson, as it is familiarly called, is supposed to make the children of England religious. The time given to religious instruc- tion is, to make a general statement, the only 52 MODERN VIEWS part of the session in which the children are being prepared for a formal external examina- tion. That being so, it is no matter for wonder that many of the glaring faults of method and organisation which the examina- tion system fostered in our elementary schools between the years 1862 and 1905 still find a refuge in the Scripture lesson. Overgrouping of classes, overcrowding of schoolrooms, col- lective answering, collective repetition, scrib- bling on slates, are still rampant, while religious instruction is being given. 'In most elementary schools religion is taught on an elaborate syllabus which is imposed on the teacher by an external authority, and which therefore tends to destroy his freedom and his interest in the work. . . . But what of the child's emotional faculties? Will not the beauty of the Gospe? stories, will not the sublimity of the Old Testament poetry make their own appeal to these? They might do so. But what chance have they? I do not wish to suggest that the religious instruction given in our elementary schools is always formal and mechanical. There are teachers who can break through the toils of any system and give life to their teaching. But the net ON EDUCATION 53 result of giving formal and mechanical instruc- tion on the greatest of all "great matters" is to depress the spiritual vitality of the children of England to a point which threatens the extinction of the spiritual life of the nation/ These quotations are given for the special reason that they express the convictions of one who has spent his life in the schools and attained to the premier position amongst the Government Inspectors of elementary schools. 'The boys leave school hating the Bible ! ' was a leading head master's remark to the writer many years ago. Other head masters, again, say that excessive insistence on religious instruction during their college experience (this is not universal, because of differences in college routine, and also of differences in individual temperament) deadened their interest, and with this influence upon them they had to commence their work as teachers and administer a similar overdose to their scholars. Surely we are the victims of a false emphasis. The teachers who are able to carry through the syllabus and really use it to religious ends would not, one thinks, be the less able to assume their spiritual captaincy over young lives on an amended scheme. In all publicly provided 54 MODERN VTEWS schools for diversity should be permitted in non-provided schools if it is desired it should be possible to halve the time given to religious exercises, to abolish the examina- tion, and to allow the head teacher, who will know how to consult with individual teachers in this important part of their work, to choose the syllabus for his school, as he does, with even less absolute necessity, in other subjects. 3. The Supervision of Schools. Inspection is not merely appended to a national system ef education; in some form or other it is essential to it. Germany has its system of inspection, so has France; America, whose educational system is not national, substi- tutes for inspection city or state superin- tendency and sectional supervision of subjects or grades. The American method, even under present conditions, is, on the whole, more educational in tendency than our British plan; and its value will be incalculably greater under the improved conditions which must surely ere long set school work free from party politics. But granted the necessity of inspection, its methods and even its aims are far from being finally determined. We need to have some notion of the pur- poses served by school inspection : how it ON EDUCATION 55 can help the teacher and strengthen the work of the school. For in education the living touch is the teacher's; and all the superincumbent machinery exists to give vitality to that touch. Unfortunately our provision of the people's schools did not start with that clearly in view. Education was a something almost a commodity to be provided. Schools were the centres where this something was to be had. It has been shrewdly remarked that the full meaning and possibilities of Mr Forster's Education Act were not realised, because there was not in the early stages of its existence any one to ,take over its educational administration with the same competency and tact as had been displayed by Mr Forster in carrying the measure into law. 'Till twenty years ago,' said a speaker at the first International Moral Education Con- gress in 1908, 'the British public (from the President of the Education Board down- wards) thought of education not as the chief national asset (as America and Germany have long regarded it), but as a " bore." ' It was something provided by legislation and administered by a Government department, the quantities of which could be prescribed 56 MODERN VIEWS by code, and the 'results' of which were measurable by quantitative standards. * Write "Grant Factory" on three-fourths of our schools,' said an educator to an Australian visitor in 1890. These are indications that the work of the inspector was for a long time carried on under unfavourable auspices. The inspectors were merely Government examiners, appointed to see that the State got value for its money, before the State itself or anybody representing it had made up its mind as to wherein good value would consist. The abolition of the method of individual examination and payment by results is, comparatively speaking, so recent that inspec- tion is still a somewhat uncertain quantity. Naturally some inspectors have been unable to shake off the outer show of misanthropy engendered by the petty tasks of the earlier period; whilst others have entered con amore into the new regime, gladly exchanging the yard-stick for an opportunity quickening to mind and spirit. Here is already room enough for variety. Add to it the fact that we have not, as America would long since have had, any special university training courses for inspectors, and that till lately elementary school inspectors have not been ON EDUCATION 57 required to have had at the time of appoint- ment any practical knowledge of the inside of an elementary school, and apart from other testimony, might it not be expected that inspection will be a somewhat uncer- tain quantity? 'The last inspector wanted it so and thus; this inspector wants it thus and so.' What is one to say to a teacher to the hundreds of teachers making this remark? That 'it is good experience to keep trying different ways?' Conscience forbid ! The American superintendents divide them- selves up, unconsciously but inevitably, into those who are the business directors of their systems of schools and those who are the educational leaders of their teachers. The latter are the very life and soul of the American system. Some American cities visited by the writer in 1900 had officials of each type: the superintendent, of whom so great an expert as Dr W. T. Harris said there is one thing that good superintendents can do almost infallibly, i.e. 'to make good teachers out of poor ones'; and the business official, the clerk or secretary, or director. Could not the English Board differentiate its inspectors? We need masters of routine 58 MODERN VIEWS and inspectors of buildings; and we need men of quickening touch and liberating spirit. The way is now clear for this higher inspectorial service. Yet ask an inspector of broad view and humane instincts if he is able to realise this aim, by entering into the spirit of a school and contributing something from himself to its life, and the answer almost invariably has to be that he has not the time. And this is waste of public money. It is spending upon details of routine the time of a man capable, if he had opportunity to specialise along these lines, of giving guidance and inspiration to the teacher, and fresh vitality to the contact between the teacher and the child. It needs also to be remembered that, as a general thing, and for fairly obvious reasons, an inspector's visit which does not revitalise tends to devitalise. Yet * educational vitality,' as Mr Sadler has well said, 'is the best thing that public money can buy.' The greatest inspiration in one's professional life may have been, as in the writer's own case, the meeting day by day for one or two weeks in the year an inspector who knew how to tone up and to inspirit. It is not without consciousness of the debt which our national ON EDUCATION 59 education owes to such, that one expresses the conviction that the influence of inspec- torial oversight is far too seldom a vitalising influence. Happily we are on the eve of one reform which has been overdue for some years. The Junior Inspector, described in Hansard as a 'young man fresh from the university who has only had twelve months* experience in elementary schools, and that not for teaching purposes, but to qualify himself for the list of applicants for Inspector- ships,' is apparently to enter the ranks no more. Evidence given before a special Royal Commission in 1912 has secured by depart- mental action the recognition of the claims of men who have had real experience in the type of school to be inspected; and a new class of Assistant Inspectors (from whose ranks H.M. Inspectors may be appointed) is to be created, teachers being eligible for appointment. Failing the differentiating suggestion, there is another which has very recently found expression, namely, that every large centre should have a Board of Education Inspectors' Office, where (a) the Government Inspectors of Education of varying type Primary, Secondary, and Technical --rould meet 60 MODERN VIEWS sectionally to confer, and where (b) a staff of clerks would relieve them individually of some at least of the more mechanical work of reporting and correspondence; and where (c) records could be preserved. Conferences, it is suggested, might be held periodically at such a centre between H.M. Inspectors and representatives of the local authorities, or teachers, or employers, or work-people in different trades. Before leaving the topic of the supervision of schools there is another matter which calls for mention. In different parts of England {known perhaps in small towns within a radius of a mile or so, in large towns and country places perhaps not known outside at all) work is being done of unsurpassed excel- lence. Were there the means of making this known easily and freely from school to school it would be an untold gain to British educa- tion. We should not need to close our eyes to what other nations are doing; but we should gain immensely by a better knowledge of the best work done by our own comrades. We need an agency for spreading knowledge of this kind. 4. Note on the Correlation of Local and National Services and Control. Services in ON EDUCATION 61 the shape of financial support and super- vision, and of control through code and by- law, divide the duty of providing education and the responsibility of administering it, between the central and the local authorities. It is partly an administrative and partly a financial co-operation. There are advantages in a certain amount of central control. These are : (a) independence of excessive local influences, political or otherwise; (b) the issuing of general recommendations and regu- lations from time to time though in this matter the need is sometimes felt of a steadier hand; (c) the possibility of guaranteeing a minimum qualification of teachers and a maximum assignment of scholars to teachers of this or that grade; (d) the arranging for the training of teachers with greater facility, and without reference to locality, social prestige, or denomination. On the other hand, the share of the locality in the administration secures advantages complementary to some of these, (a) Ade- quate local sentiment and influence can be brought to bear; (b) local needs may there- fore have consideration; (c) supposing, as one ought to be able to do, that the local control is sufficiently liberal and elastic, 62 MODERN VIEWS initiative in individual schools is possible, and yet it has the advantage of not being left without guidance where such is needed; (d) the local authority is free to avail itself of the best alternatives left open to it by the central authority; for example, in the employment of teachers, it can at any moment decide to employ only those professionally certificated, if not, indeed, only those who are professionally trained. Balancing the combined advantages against whatever occasions may arise of friction, in a right combination of the two forms of control, central and local, we have a system which avoids excessive centralisation such as exists in France, and excessive decentralisation, with its injurious openness to local influence on other than educational issues, such as exists in America. Financially, the correlation of local and central sources of supply depends partly upon a just appreciation of the fact that the service is national as well as local in its reference; partly upon questions of the incidence of imperial taxation and local rates, respectively. But in a general sense, the whole system of grants, in aid of services which are in the main locally controlled, has ON EDUCATION 63 its dangers, especially in undermining what, for want of a better term, may be called the principle of locality and the power of direct popular control. From Sir Philip Magnus are quoted these words of Mr Lecky : 4 1 should not be dealing sincerely with you if I did not express my own opinion that this tendency carries with it dangers even more serious than those of the opposite exaggera- tion of a past century 5 (the trend of opinion to wards lessening State control at the beginning of the nineteenth century) ' dangerous to char- acter by accustoming men to the constant inter- ference of authority, and abridging in innumer- able ways the freedom of action and choice.' But any completer rehabilitation of the power of the locality involves the whole question of the incidence of local taxation, a question which cannot much longer be shelved. The balance between government and liberty is a delicate one. For whilst direct local responsibility and a large hand in the immediate control give rise to a study of public questions, which is the foundation of a keen public interest, it is also true that neither public efficiency nor the liberty of the individual is attainable apart from State organisation. 64 MODERN VIEWS CHAPTER V ORGANISATION FOR TEACHING : (2) THE EDUCATIONAL LADDER Parents of all classes would certainly learn to understand any system which pursued ends at once noble and practical, in a definite and logical way, and would not be less interested than French or German parents in the studies and successes of their sons, if they were given a clear idea of the object which their own boy's school had set before it. NORWOOD and HOPE in Higher Education of Boys in England. I. The Educational Ladder. Education has been fairly rich in its metaphors; but few have been more happily conceived than that of the 'educational ladder.' Its inten- tion is clear. It suggests a direct and unbroken way from the beginning to the end of the formal education of school and college; the successive stages so connected that a pupil who has a distinct end in view, and who has attained to any given point, need be in no uncertainty as to the next step to take. It has been asked, how can a government be ON EDUCATION 65 expected to make provision for a complete system of education from the crfeche at the age of two up to university graduation at the age of twenty-two. But a more difficult question would be : How can private enter- prise be expected to make such provision? What guarantee, even likelihood, is there not only that the ladder will be wide enough for all would-be climbers, but that the separate ladder-lengths, representing succes- sive schools, will be securely roped together, so as to make a unity, a direct upward way, which the pupil may climb without fear of stumbling? It will be answered, perhaps, that the Preparatory School and the Public School, followed by the Naval and Military Schools on the one hand, or by the University on the other, constitute a ladder which has been set up independently of State control. This is largely true, and Britain owes much to its existence. Public school education has pro- duced some great scholars; but its dis- tinguishing service has been to turn out a number of men of practical ability and power in leadership. This is in keeping with British tradition and tendency. Practical impulses and interests have always played a large part 66 MODERN VIEWS in the initiation and maintenance of educa- tional work amongst us. 'When our fore- fathers founded grammar schools that is to say, schools in which Latin was taught they were not thinking of Latin as a teaching instrument, or of the learning of Latin as a moralising process; they were providing for the one indispensable introduction to all the professions and all the sciences.' In this sense the mediaeval grammar school was not really different in its aims from a modern technical school. This is the real ground- work of English education. Its aim is prac- tical; its outlook is upon life. Partly for this reason classical learning, which has figured so long as the basis of our secondary school curricula and which still has its eager champions amongst the heads of our great schools, has never been characteristically British. This the writer has already shown in a short sketch of the history of educational theories in England. Spenser deliberately went back to Saxon speech. Shakespeare makes sport of the new type of pedant in his plays. The satirist was even earlier at work. Barclay writes in The Ship of Fools: Many which say that they theyr grammar can Are als great folys as when they first began. ON EDUCATION 67 This was in 1508. A little later, students of educational method, like Lord Bacon at the beginning of the seventeenth century and Locke at its close, announced a better way; but classics continued to form the staple of our secondary and university education right up to the nineteenth century. For a moment, as Mr Rashdall says in his study of the Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, the human world had been 'brought into real and living contact with a new world of thought and action by the "New Learning'*; but ere long classical education in turn be- came arid and scholastic as remote from fruitful contact with realities as the educa- tion of the Middle Ages. What was a revela- tion to one generation becomes an unintelli- gent routine to the next.' This is rich soil in which Public School traditions unsympathetic to learning might take root and thrive. It is said that the parents of many Public School boys set more store by prowess in games than by industry in school. Is not this to be partly accounted for by the fact that father and son often for generations have attended the schools, and that family traditions may have sprung up of antipathy to the formal Latin and Greek 68 MODERN VIEWS curriculum which too long held almost exclusive sway? And this will continue until the value of the wider range of school options which now exists is adequately realised with its twofold practical bearing : first, that it brings a boy within the range and atmosphere of diversified studies and a variety of intellectual aims, whatever his own individual line of study may be; and, secondly, the invitation it offers him to con- centrate upon a course of work of his own choosing. There are serious defects also in the Public School ladder in the way in which it con- nects school with school and school with university. The scholarship system which links Preparatory School with Public School and Public School with University is a cause still operating adversely on the life of these schools. The system has undoubted advan- tages in helping clever boys whose parents could not otherwise have given them the education; but on the other hand, so far as the actual studies are concerned, it leads to a far too early specialisation upon scholar- ship subjects. The effect upon many of the scholarship candidates themselves is disastrous. Too ON EDUCATION 69 many promising boys are said by careful observers to be c a spent force' at twenty-one years of age; and even when the results are less disastrous than this, the fact remains, that years which Nature has signalised as years of a broadening interest and a strength- ening all-round grip, are allowed to lose their true significance and value. In the Preparatory Schools, boys have to specialise in order to win scholarships at the Public Schools. And at the Public Schools, to quote from the classical address on the subject, 'children are seized at an early age at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen and set down to one subject, or two subjects, of study ... as if the boy was made for the subject and the emoluments attached to it, and not the subject and its emoluments for the boy.' The able boy is thus allured into 'moving in blinkers for the best years of his life.' These are the words of the Master of Trinity, formerly for twenty-five years head master of Harrow, in an address which he rounded off by describing such specialisa- tion as 'the giant bully of all our tribe.' The end in view in this premature specialis- ing is the gaining of scholarships at the Universities. Tracing back the effeot of 70 MODERN VIEWS this to the Preparatory School, the scholar- ship ladder is like a rope ladder. It swings from the top. And, as every one knows, under these conditions the lowest rungs are the most difficult. The boys early selected as the promising climbers are penalised, with the exception, possibly, of the few exception- ally clever fellows to whom nothing comes amiss; and even these lose the chance of a broader range of studies which would in most cases benefit them far more. The head master of one of the best Preparatory Schools writes: 'We are hampered; but so are the Public Schools hampered themselves by the older universities. Public opinion is slowly but surely bringing the latter into tune with modern ideas ; meanwhile all we can do is to ensure a certain amount of healthy move- ment from below, and make the most of our chances with the boys by seeing that their preparation for whatever we have to prepare them is sound and thorough. As a matter of fact, the new curriculum lately adopted at Winchester, Harrow, and Eton is a great step forward; and considering the present state of educational opinion, I believe we ought to be grateful for such an explicit setting forth of their requirements.' ON EDUCATION 71 With respect to four of the * charges most commonly brought against the Public School system' of education, namely, too much attention to games, the sacrifice of industry to athletics, expensive habits of living, and over-valuation of the externals of refinement, it has been said that they are an indictment, not of the Public Schools, but of the parents who send their boys to them. One suspects that this is giving up the case too easily. School traditions have at least as much to do with the life and spirit of the school as parental influence and suggestion. Broadly speaking, the school sets up its own standard. And, self-evidently, the parents of the boys do not fix the curriculum, in respect of which there is a strong tendency to vote hard work, except for scholarship boys, 'bad form.' That this should continue to be the case is scarcely surprising so long as an excessive enthusiasm on the part of some of the greatest head masters for an education which was modern five hundred years ago conflicts, as to a considerable extent it still does, with the keenness with which a boy might otherwise avail himself of the wider range of choice and richer educational opportunity which these schools now offer. For the rest, criticism 72 MODERN VIEWS of Public School games is, for the most part, beside the mark. 'In these islands/ says Sir Godfrey Lagden (in the Nineteenth Century, March, 1905), quoting an American writer, 'sport is not a dissipation for idlers, it is a philosophy of life. They believe in it as a bulwark against effeminacy and decay.' But keenness in games and intellectual power are not mutually exclusive. It is when games become the only things that the boys willingly think about that the excess begins to be felt. So far as the Public School system goes, it is becoming more and more evident that the foot of the ladder should be the first fixed point. The Universities themselves would be more serviceable if they were the crown of a well-planned system, instead of being a somewhat dreamy height from which educa- tional systems are prone to be let down. Secondary schoolmasters have, for some time, felt the need of freedom from the excessive domination of education by the University. In the case of their schools (which have tended to be isolated, and to fail to realise themselves either in relation to the demands of the work-a-day world, or to their own adolescent problem, or to each other) 'the dead hand of the Universities' has been 'felt horribly.' ON EDUCATION 73 'The real vitalising influences,* a leading head- master writes, c so far as they reach us, come from below/ In the address which has been already quoted, the Master of Trinity leaves us in no doubt as to the direction in which reform is to be sought. Speaking to teachers, he said : * Say to each of our colleges, one by one, "Thou art the man." Bring home to our consciences what we are doing offering year by year to the various schools such bribes as are almost irresistible, prizes of 60, 80, 100 a year, if only a master will give an education which he knows to be far short of the best; and if any able boy will consent to move in blinkers for the best years of his young life, fixing his eyes on the one or two subjects which will secure him honour and money and closing them to almost all that is most human in history, in biography, in art, in poetry, and in fiction, because in the examination such is the current phrase "it will not pay." No doubt, our shell is somewhat callous, and our Triposes are im- perious, and for at least a generation the current of superstition has run in favour of men who are sure of a first-class in some one subject and have no concern with any other. M.V.E. D 74 MODERN VIEWS But it seems to me tolerably certain that we must ere long reconsider our methods, and, if the phrase may be pardoned, redistribute our bribes. ... If it were once understood at the schools that this larger conception of intellectual desert was more recognised at the Universities, is it too much to hope that the schools too would gladly reconsider some of their own methods ? ' The remarkable thing is that the Universi- ties themselves are not satisfied. The report of the British Association meetings held at Portsmouth in 1911 contains the substance of evidence laid before a committee of the association, under the chairmanship of Principal H. A. Miers, on the overlapping between secondary and higher education. Oxford reported that a good deal of the work for the Preliminary Examinations in science is really school work. The scholarship system, which sends boys up with an insufficient know- ledge of the elementary parts of a good many subjects, is held partly responsible for this. Thus, some students who are reading for Final Honours are very imperfectly equipped in preliminary subjects : e.g. mathematics tot engineering students and German for science students. At Cambridge there is the same ON EDUCATION 75 complaint as at Oxford concerning the effect of Entrance Scholarships and the consequent omission of elementary training which should have been supplied at school. For example, the English of many science students is said to be very defective. If then, as is quite probable, proposals are more definitely made in the near future for an inquiry by Royal Commission and an earnest search for remedies, none who know the facts will experience surprise. One promising sign is that a large number of the Public Schools are willing that the State should intervene. To any action of the State there must always, however, be one proviso namely, that no intervention shall be of such a character that it could, by any mischance, restrict the freedom of a twentieth century Thring or Arnold. Some difficulty would arise, also, with regard to inspection. Men of known and successful experience in similar schools would have to be chosen. (It has long been a grievance amongst schoolmasters that it is so rarely from their ranks that the Government Inspectors are drawn.) The Board of Education began to see this, when arranging for the Inspection of Secondary Schools in 1902; and have, ten years later, 76 MODERN VIEWS begun to open the door to distinguished elementary school teachers. Clearly, pro- fessional work should be professionally in- spected. And, further, seniority in school service should be a qualification for the inspectorate in whatever department. 2. The Publicly Provided Educational Ladder. Full time attendance is required by law of all children up to twelve years of age (with the exception that in agricultural districts 'half-time' exemption may commence at eleven). This is at present our statute minimum the basis, therefore, of our educa- tional system. From the twelfth or thirteenth year the ways open into the higher schools, and the question arises : How far can the State give a child of proved ability but of poor parents a better start in life than his parents can afford to give him? Though absolute equality of educational opportunity nowhere exists, the State best serves itself as well as its individual citizens by seeing that there shall be an open way to a higher education for all who are really capable of using it well. Scholarships offered by municipal and county authorities go some part of the way towards providing an educational ladder of ON EDUCATION 77 this kind. The plan has advantages and disadvantages. It is well to be able to offer a lift to promising children. In some cases, too, the looking forward to the winning of scholarships by a few tones up the work of the whole school. In Flintshire, for example and Hawarden is for many reasons, both historical and educational, worth a visit one learns that, as one effect of the scholarship system, algebra finds its way into the ele- mentary schools as an aid to arithmetic, that history is better taught, that better literature is read, and that the general work of the schools tends to a higher standard. And the gain to the scholarship winners is that they are admitted to one of the excellent Intermediate Schools of which Flintshire has five. Occasionally, especially if the method of preparation has been one of 'cramming/ an unsuitable child may be passed up in this way, and the work of the higher school is impaired by the presence of the few that are unfit. But it will seldom be that the most unfit are scholarship winners. A real disadvantage, however, arises especially in small schools if the system tends in any way to convert the primary school teacher into 78 MODERN VIEWS an examination coach. Either too much is asked from the teacher, or there is risk of non-scholarship candidates suffering some neglect. In large schools there are various ways of avoiding this. But, speaking gener- ally, the winning of scholarships should depend on the ordinary work of the school. Again, even if there were no other defect in the system, it can scarcely be right that promotion by scholarship should be so strictly competitive that one per cent., or a fraction of one per cent., may divide winner and loser. Such a margin may depend on the veriest fluke. To meet this, do we not need a broader ladder, and one which children of equal merit and ability may climb abreast? A further and very real danger is that success may depend far too much upon verbal acquisitiveness, and on something which one more than half regrets to disparage, school docility, rather than upon direct capacity and practical power. In every such case a two-fold injury is done. The child's mind has been allowed to remain too passive, and the State does not get, as an outcome of its scholarships, the highly trained type of citizen and worker most answering to its needs. As an alert American ON EDUCATION 79 teacher said to the writer, 'The world wants doers, not readers of magazines/ A scholar- ship system which makes no point of catching the promising * doers' is a sieve with a hole in it. It lets through some that ought to be encouraged to go forward along practical lines. But these considerations are incidental. As to the importance of a well-graded system of schools, constituting an educational ladder, there can be no question. After steady work in one school, a child gains greatly by the very consciousness of having moved up into a higher school. At the moment in the life of the boy or girl which we are now considering, when the nascent impulses are strong and the outlook upon life is widening, the gain is so great that we might well wish to see it shared in by a far larger number. The limit should not be set by an examination of a formal and literary kind. (Of the many suggestions to improve the examination itself, some of the best are those which would introduce tests of capacity rather than of merely specially- primed memory, which would take account of the child's actual school work as seen in his books, and which would allow more weight to conference between the teachers past and prospective.) 80 MODERN VIEWS The elementary school is the potential basis of a system of publicly provided schools. At present, above the elementary and a sort of finishing school to it is the higher elementary (or, as in London and Manchester, the central) school. The aim of this school is to combine with an extended general education special instruction bearing on the future occupations of the scholars, whether boys or girls. The course is planned for three years, and is for children over twelve, the law being that at least twenty-five per cent, of the children shall have free admission as scholarship holders. (The courses at London and Manchester differ slightly from that prescribed for higher elementary schools. They cover four years, during the last two of which the children have the choice between an industrial and a commercial section.) The ladder, so far as day school life is con- cerned, normally breaks off at the close of the higher elementary school period; the pupils, on leaving, commencing work in an office or workshop, or in some skilled handi- craft. But the advantage which the boy or girl has gained is almost incommensurable with the time, little more than one additional year, which it has taken to gain it. London ON EDUCATION 81 and Manchester, it is interesting to note, offer leaving certificates to those attaining a sufficient standard of proficiency, which are a valuable form of guarantee to employers. To use a geological term, the higher ele- mentary school course lies conformably upon the elementary course below. For two reasons this cannot be said of secondary school courses. The first is the absence of any common understanding as to what constitutes a primary course, say, up to twelve years of age. The second is the extreme variation in the schools and the schooling described as secondary. Scholarships open the way for some to pass from elementary into secondary schools, both municipal secondary schools and . grammar or high schools. A clever ex-elementary schoolboy may win a grammar school scholarship and, with the aid of further scholarships, pass on to the University. Something of this kind is part of the very plan of the Welsh Intermediate School system. At the Hawarden Inter- mediate School, for instance, to which children are freely admitted by scholarships and other- wise from the elementary school, one year's record shows three winners of high University honours and other distinctions gained by old 82 MODERN VIEWS scholars; and three University entrance scholarships and two county scholarships tenable at a University gained by boys leaving the school. An example of what a comparatively small, and certainly not wealthy, town can accom- plish in the way of providing an educational ladder is furnished by Stockport. In diagram it may be shown as follows : ' UNIVERSITY " ELEMENTABY SCHOOL More scholars are found to pass on to the University from the Municipal Secondary School than from the High School or Grammar School. The Scholarship plan is as follows : Forty scholarships are awarded annually, thirty-five of which at least are offered to children attending elementary schools. Of these, thirty are tenable at the Municipal Secondary School, and five at each of the other schools. A maintenance grant of 5 per annum is made in suitable cases, and the ON EDUCATION 83 scholarships entitle their holders not only to free education but to a grant up to l per annum for books. Although each of the schools opens out into the University, each is self-complete in its aims and curriculum. The fees vary from 3 10s. per annum at the Municipal School to between 8 and 11 at the Grammar School, and from four to twelve guineas at the High School. The fact that the Municipal Secondary School at this town sends the greater number of pupils to the University has a bearing upon a question affecting the adjustment of curri- cula, and, therefore, upon the way of the young scholar up the educational ladder. Latin is not taught at this school. This means that the way to an Arts degree is practically closed to some who might other- wise seek it, and whose whole taste and ability lie, as is often the case, rather in the direction of arts studies than of science. May not the way be opened for a fuller recognition that the twentieth century has its own characteristic learning, as much in the humanities (broadly defined) as in the sciences and the branches of study leading to the professions? And may we not come to see that whatever our predilection for the 84 MODERN VIEWS classics due, it may be, to the fact that no other subject was so systematically and hence so educatively taught us in our own school days the study of man and his thought, of modern tongues, of the earth and man's activities upon it, afford ample scope for university graduation, inasmuch as philo- sophy, languages, history, literature, eco- nomics, mathematics, and geography being included, the avenues are thereby opened up to an adequate culture: 'A knowledge of ourselves and of the world. * Such an alternative way through the Arts Schools would be a boon to many. The University of Liverpool already allows students in training to be teachers to take an Arts Degree without Latin. The question, however, is a perfectly general one. Ought the fact that doors into the slowly won delights of an ancient literature, as read in the language of its own writers, have not been opened, to be a lasting reason why a youth should not pass through other door- ways to a humanising contact with the thoughts and the language of men of modern times? ON EDUCATION 85 CHAPTER VI MODERN VIEWS ON SCHOOL CURRICULA All are to be taught. And knowledge is infinite. And life is short. And average brains are weak. How can this be dealt with? This is our problem. TURING : Address to the Teachers of Minnesota. THE main question affecting the grading of schools is the grading of curricula. What is to be taught, and why? And at what stage in the learner's school (or school and college) life? The more it becomes impossible to treat of education in three watertight com- partments as elementary, secondary, higher, and the more the three grades become in fact 'parts of that organic whole which it is essential for us to form,' the closer we come to the study of what is to be taught at any given stage, and of the way in which the teach- ing at successive stages is to be made to form a unity. There is abundant evidence of the tendency to unify our educational system. This has not taken place without much probing of questions affecting studies. The 36 MODERN VIEWS constant debating of the question of com- pulsory Greek at Oxford is but one symptom of the emergence of a problem affecting education from end to end. We are, indeed, very far from having it settled in any single nation, not to say when we compare nation with nation, what 'lessons' and what activities should be devised for very little children. The Infant School has come to stay : at least until those Utopian days when all mothers will have the leisure, the equipment, and the grace of heart to teach, or, without conscious teaching, to guide their own children in their early days. No education can ever surpass such education in infancy; but as things are, we have to replace the * mother school 5 by the infant school. Probably, as no one knows except in vague outline what the education of the infant school should be, our key-note should be the making of the little child's experience, as much as may be, to resemble what it would be in an ideal home. To glance for a moment at this governing principle of infant training, it is of interest so see that it is the most striking feature in the work of three of the greatest pioneers Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori. (It may seem ON EDUCATION 87 early to place the third name by the side of two that have increased in honour with the closing decades of the last century and the first of this; but alike in its spirit, in its origin as an offshoot from earlier well- considered educational systems, in the scien- tific study and care in experiment which have already been given to it, and in the way in which it appeals to the higher indi- vidualism and spiritual impulses of the day, the Montessori method brings with it the promise of a far-reaching and quickening influence.) Pestalozzi lived as father, friend, physician, with the neglected children and the orphans committed to his care. The farm, the lessons, the affection he gave, and the aspirations which animated him, were but the incidents of a generous, educative * home '-life on a large scale. It was Pesta- lozzi's disciple, Froebel, who said, 'Come, let us live for our children' The home failing though it is, in Froebel's view, Nature's garden of childhood (Kindergarten) the school may bear the name, and become the children's garden. Dr Maria Montessori's schools in Italy are called 'children's houses.' Here, too, the spirit of the true home life is the spirit of the school. Her first regard is for 88 MODERN VIEWS 'the life that is growing within these children/ It is not, however, to infant education, at school or in the home, that we look for the beginnings of a systematised curriculum. Invaluable foundations may be laid inefface- able, they are doomed for better or for worse to be in the first six years of life. Life, even then, begins to branch out in all directions; and according to opportunity and encourage- ment these years may yield an enriching experience. But it is to the years of primary education, say, from the ages of seven to twelve, that we must look for the beginnings of a formal curriculum. 1. Is it possible to Determine a Primary Education of Uniform Reference for all Children ? This question has a bearing upon education in all its forms, and in all countries. And many have raised it. Granted, for example, that early specialisation is educa- tionally inadvisable and wrong in itself, the question of what should be the character of a primary or foundational education in the Preparatory Schools comes up for discussion in a strikingly interesting form. Stated in the broadest way, the problem is that of a curriculum of uniform reference : not ON EDUCATION 89 necessarily a uniform education. America, as is well known, does not hesitate to educate the son of a seamstress and the son of a millionaire side by side in the primary school; and, if the former boy is able to continue his education, in the High School also. It is a far simpler matter that is to be discussed here. Allowing for great differences of emphasis at the hands of different teachers, seme making more of one subject or group of subjects, and some of another; allowing, too, for those who would view the range of reference in any commonly recognised founda- tional course as a minimum, and would wish to exceed it, would it not be advantageous to consider, as many are inviting us to do, what really are the elements of a primary or foundational education? The three R's must give place. Formally treated, as they too often have been, they are not the elements of an education at all, but merely instruments which have not seldom been put to ill use in later life. Merely to be able to read, for example, is not to be educated. Apart from a taste for reading what is worthy and stimulating, real educa- tion can hardly be said to have made a beginning. The bare acquisition of the three 90 MODERN VIEWS R's, which is too often insisted upon, is comparable to the starving bird's possession within its stomach of bits of grit and sand swallowed to aid in digestion, but with no food for the instruments of digestion to work upon. In suggesting a primary or foundational education of uniform reference, there need be absolutely no notion of a Procrustean bed. Attainments cannot be fixed; even the educational aim may differ from school to school and from teacher to teacher. Besides which, some children will have enjoyed all kinds of additional opportunity, at home or through the influences of home, or by means of school hobbies and school associations; ethers, unfortunately, will have suffered from all kinds of defect of opportunity. The common school we shall, probably, never have. But it seems more than possible to discover what fields of reference should be included in every young child's education. The most definite educational discovery of recent years has been that of the value to be assigned to the instinctive life of childhood and youth. The years of primary schooling are those during which inherited powers and nascent tendencies unfold most rapidly. These ON EDUCATION 91 foundations of life-power are generic. On the one hand, therefore, to specialise prema- turely, is to nip nascent tendency in the bud. For it is less upon this or that specific capacity than upon balanced power and a complete human development that accomplishment depends; even genius accomplishing most when it is the apex of a broad-based pyramid. Shakespeare, for instance, was man first, poet second; hence he is supreme as poet. (Incidentally this is one of the justifications of the school; independently even of the class-room work, its round of life appeals to the boy from so many sides). And on the other hand, not to give each child, even the seemingly most backward, the fullest all-round chance to reveal what powers he has, is also a loss, both to him and to ourselves. 2. Considerations which must Govern the Choice of Primary School Studies. There are two directions in which to look for guidance in our choice of school activities and school lessons. We may consider either the nature and quality of the mental powers we wish to awaken and to develop in the scholar; or we may make a general survey of his life surround- ings, and of the environment in which oppor- tunities of success and service await him. 92 MODERN VIEWS Neither of these would afford us sufficient guidance in itself. If we think only of exer- cising the boy's mind on Mr Dooley's prin- ciple: *I don't care what ye larn thim, so long as 'tis onpleasant to thim. 'Tis thrainin they need,' we get back to formal ideas of school tasks, against which the real boy as opposed to the schoolboy has always been more or less in revolt. 'Mental gymnastics,' pure and simple, is a barren plea. The boy may as well exercise his powers on something that matters to himself and to the world as on something that does not. Climbing a ladder is better exercise than the treadmill. On the other hand, a curriculum derived purely from a survey of the world and its activities, such as we see at times proposed, and find to some extent existing in response to the demand that the boy's schooling shall be practical, will always tend to formalism of another kind. Life appeals to the boy of course actual, practical life. This shows itself in a hundred ways in the activities of the ordinary healthy child. But if we plan his school work from this standpoint purely, we shall once more make his school life artificial. We shall teach him arithmetic when he ought to be playing ON EDUCATION 93 at shop ; reading, when he ought really to be learning to talk; and writing when he would be better expressing himself in picture- language, traced in sand or drawn with coloured chalks. Yet each of the guiding considerations spoken of the child's apti- tudes and the world's work for him points out a way. In combination they point out the true way. The activities of the real boy and his preparation for the activities of the real world are not in antagonism but in agreement. The more the schoolboy is the real boy, the better for both. For is it not a matter of common observation that when school- work becomes too formal, whether as a gymnastic, or as a supposed equipment for life, the boy who has rebelled most success- fully against it does better in the world than his more docile classmates? In the quest for the elements of a founda- tional education we shall be on the surest ground if we make the child's interests our point of departure. We know at once that he is interested in the material world; we know also that he is interested in people, both in his behaviour towards them and in their behaviour towards him. Hence, follow- ing first the lead of the child's interest in the 94 MODERN VIEWS material world, (1) direct observations of nature and the varied outlook of elementary science cannot fail to appeal to him; nor (2) can actual exercise in dealing with quantities and with numbers, mensuration, weights and measures, money i.e. practical and theo- retical arithmetic. The boy likes to deal with real quantities and actual processes. (3) The same is true of practical geometry, and the elements of physics and mechanics. 'A boy likes to deal with forces; he has the feeling, when I am a man I want to do this.' Here, clearly, are three essential directions which a foundational education must take. Then, there are school lessons and activities which partly connect the child with the world and its contents, partly with people and their life in the world. Such are (4) geography, a knowledge of the more striking features of the world, and of the industry (partly, too, of the adventure) of the peoples who live in it; (5) handicraft work, giving knowledge and power in the use of hand tools which man has invented, and power to use the materials which the world provides ; (6) drawing, whether for expression (the basis of art), for planning (the basis of craftsmanship), or for more exact study (one of the bases of ON EDUCATION 95 science). These, again, are well-defined direc- tions in which the child waits to be led. The other group of interests which are vital to the child will have to do with his life as a human being, who comes to his compre- hension of life through communication and sympathy with other human beings. Included in these are (7) language use in speech and writing of the mother-tongue; (8) reading and singing knowing good books, good songs, good poems, and caring for their human meanings; (9) the story of one's own people, and stories of great men and great deeds of other nations, ancient and modern. Not one of these nine groups fails to correspond with foundational impulses and interests in the child's mind. Nor is there one which, if we had adopted the other alter- native and commenced by thinking of the world and of the child's future activity in it, we would wish to omit. But where are the three R's? For they must be included as instruments, if not as ends. They are there already; reading, in the only form in which the child, or any of us, cares anything about it i.e. reading some- thing that has appeal in it; and in addition, and as a means to this end, practice in reading 90 MODERN VIEWS and in articulation the latter a valuable by- product of the phonic method. Arithmetic as teachers and many writers and publishers of school books are coming to see not in the form of page after page of 'sums' '5864 multiplied by 19' and the like but arith- metic with some meaning in it, instancing to the boy 5864 of what? and why he needs to multiply by 19 in a word, a conscious dealing with quantities and numbers, an affair of real transactions and actual situa- tions ; in addition, the learning of tables and cultivation of accuracy as a (largely conscious) means to practical ends. Writing, requiring practice certainly, but not a piecing together of letters and of strokes and pot- hooks, but symbolising something from the very outset, if only as 'a' for apple; and as soon as possible writing connectedly as a means of self-expression or of keeping records. In such a provisional showing of the possible range of reference of a primary curriculum, there may be things omitted which one or another would wish to introduce. But is there any one line of reference which could with justice be neglected? And what- ever reasons may be urged, say, for the inclusion of a foreign language, is it not. at ON EDUCATION 97 any rate, arguable, that the ground that might profitably be covered by the time a child is twelve years of age in the subjects named affords a broad and generous founda- tion for future learning? 'If a boy wants to do anything at classics, he must begin at ten; before, if possible.' Really, this does not follow from anything we know about boys at this tender age. The counter-question is : Is the boy at ten really doing anything at classics? Is he not just fagging at words, and paradigms, and rules and exceptions, acquiring a mechanical adjustment to the whole thing? 'There is no reason why a boy should not begin French between ten and eleven.' As it is a living language, and the French are near neighbours, and the language is analytical, and in structure very much like our own, there is no good reason. Indeed, in schools and they are, one fears, the majority where not much that is of value comes from the teaching of English Grammar, there may be advantage from the side of sheer grammar teaching and of initia- tion into the principles of language in com- mencing French at this age. Grammar is one of the most educative of school studies; nevertheless it must be admitted that it is M.V.E. E 98 MODERN VIEWS quite commonly the least fruitful and the worst taught. If the art of exact expression, and the linguistic principles on which it depends, are to be obtained in any other way, the introduction of such other way will doubtless be in many cases an advantage. But a primary course would scarcely include a foreign language as an essential. The items suggested for inclusion are meant to stand less as separate subjects than as directions which the school work must tend to follow. They are put down item by item for the sake of clearness. Evidently, reading though avoiding the sacrilege of reducing a page of literature to a page of exercises may be the basis of much of the real grammar that is learnt, the basis of even more of the composition. Much of the history that is learnt at this stage, especially of the great deeds of men and women of our own and other nations, will be incidental to or actually included in the reading. But with all regard for the enterprise of the publishers of school- books, let the reading at the earliest and at every moment possible be from living books, and not from manufactured school readers, improved though they have been of late. I believe it is true to say that in all W. T. ON EDUCATION 99 Stead's Books for the Bairns, though there are frequently selections and condensation, there is none of this chip-chop. Books and literature are to be had. The American Supplementary lists for each grade show this. Moreover, American school experience shows for they make much of literature that the children prefer the best. In interpreting what has been said, one needs to add that the effect of any course of work in school will depend not so much upon the items included in it as upon the educational aim and procedure underlying it. The funda- mental differences amongst educators lie in their views concerning the real nature of knowledge. Is it cargo or driving-power? This important question still remains to a considerable extent a matter of private interpretation. There are those who regard the child's vital experience as yielding him what he knows : * lives, not lessons, are dealt with.' Thus knowledge becomes a driving power; for the whole life of the child and the life-power of the child tend to be bound up with his pursuit of it. On the other side are those whose practice betrays the belief that knowledge is something to be 'carried in the mind' a sort of load or cargo. Tested by 100 MODERN VIEWS the old adage: Knowledge is power, this idea of 'knowledge-lumps/ and of 'subjects' treated each as an end in itself, entirely fails. Knowledge in lumps is liable, if not actually to get in the way, at any rate to delay the starting of the machinery; and children of strong practical impulses seldom fail to show us how little it is to their taste. Clearly a curriculum is far less a question of items than of interpretation. Aim and method the why and the how of education as each school interprets them determine what a curriculum really is. Some valuable hints will be found in Professor Findlay's last book, The School. The curriculum, it is urged, should turn upon the child's increasing range of interests, and his power to reach out further and further in the understanding and mastery of his en- vironment. A wholly fresh note is struck in a sentence like the following : * 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.' The school accordingly will find scope for this, and the day be divided between purposeful workshop (and similar) ON EDUCATION 101 occupations; leisure (cultural) employments music and the story in drama or in other forms of prose and poetry; and technical exercises formal work in the three R's, physical exer- cise, and drawing. The task of the school is to interpret and to widen out the child's world. It interprets some of the world's puzzles, intellectualising rather than dispelling their mystery; finds fresh scope for the child's affections, as well as exercise for his mind and development for his body. It is a place where the boy lives, and learns to live by living. That is the school to the opening of whose doors all the higher and humaner impulses of mankind are tending; the school to which 'the whole child comes.' At present, as all know, there is another side to school. There are past con- ditions from which we are steadily drawing away. There are also some retarding con- ditions of the present, so difficult in many of their phases to deal with, yet so sure in the long run to be overcome. 3. The Secondary School Curriculum. It almost follows that the Secondary School must sustain what the Primary School has begun. Which of the foundational interests and activities can we afford to drop at 102 MODERN VIEWS twelve, at fourteen? The educational aim will still be, in Matthew Arnold's words, to enable the scholar 'to know himself and the world/ Avoiding the ambiguity, amounting almost to loss of definite meaning, of the term 'secondary' when applied to education, we may here think of it as an education continued from twelve years of age and not ceasing earlier than sixteen. To quote once more the author of Croesiis Minor, and his plea for a broad education, if only for the sake of the average boy : ' The average is the great question, and the largest question. Put before him all the accomplishments you can; throw light into his mind by opening whatever chinks are possible; teach him to respect himself and his own capacity/ Mr A. C. Benson, in an article in the English Review for October, 1912, deplores that the head master of one of our greatest secondary schools should speak of modern subjects as 'invading the sanctuary' of the school. Having himself been a master at Eton and taught classics for nearly twenty years, he is 'in no sense an opponent of the classics for the right boys.' 'But must boys/ he asks, 'whose staple nourishment is to be the classics, remain in a sort of mediaeval dream, ON EDUCATION 103 blissfully unconscious of the opening thought of the world, its visions, its hopes, its ideas, its problems? And on the other hand is culture really not attainable on modern lines? Must the Universities continue to hedge themselves round by a fence of Latin and Greek?' What, then, ought the curriculum of a great secondary school to accomplish for its boys? 'They ought to see,' says Mr Benson, 'that every boy who leaves a public school writes a good legible hand, can spell satisfactorily, can express himself clearly in English, can read French easily and write simple French correctly, can calculate in arithmetic rapidly and accurately, and has a general outline knowledge of European history, modern geography, and popular science. I am not saying that the duty of public schools ends there; but it certainly begins there. Even for an average boy this curriculum would leave a considerable margin of time in which his special tastes and apti- tudes could be developed/ Here is, prac- tically, an extension of the primary curriculum just advocated into secondary education; and surely the aim should not be less than this , *A boy who has these accomplishments/ Mr Benson adds, 'would be in a position to earn 104 MODERN VIEWS his living, and it would not require anything like all the working hours for the eight or nine years of school life to give him this range of efficiency.' The Secondary Day Schools need to meet a similar demand. As far back as May, 1889, Mr Glazebrook, at that time head master of the Manchester Grammar School, men- tioned sixteen as the age at which a general education might break off and some amount of specialisation begin. 'The great mass of boys attending Secondary Day Schools who leave at sixteen to go into business require an education liberal, but on a moderate scale not the foundation for an intellectual mansion which is never to be built, but a serviceable cottage that will keep out the rain.' It is only for the boys who stay on at school after this age that the question of specialisation arises. But to give these boys classics alone, * stunts the mind and spoils the temper'; to let them divide their time impartially among four languages, history, two sciences, and mathematics, without any regard for indi- vidual taste or capacity, 'distracts and con- fuses'; to let each drop everything but his special study 'results in terrible narrowness.' The true method for these older boys, ON EDUCATION 105 Mr Glazebrook thought, would be found by combining the last two plans; little more than half the school hours being devoted to the special subject, and the rest devoted to general or supplementary studies. And again uttering the plea for adequate all-round work : ' Surely it is no exaggeration to say that a man cannot be called educated unless he has a moderate acquaintance with the literature of his own country, and at least one foreign language, and has a little real knowledge of history, of elementary mathematics, and of some one science. To withdraw any one of these branches from his education is to lop a limb from his mind* 106 MODERN VIEWS CHAPTER VII THE EFFICIENCY-VALUE OF SCHOOL STUDIES Any education which fails to make poor men or rich men efficient in action is an unsatisfactory education one which needs to be reformed, not only for the sake of its results, but because the studies which produce such results cannot themselves be sincere and wholesome. FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, in Learning and Working. THE notion of the efficiency-value of school work is by no means new. But its applica- tions need to be constantly passed in review. Social changes take place so rapidly that part of the efficiency- value of a school educa- tion to-day consists in its intense modernness. It must be up to date, and it must bring the scholars up to date. More than this, it must give them an adaptability and a suppleness of mind which shall put them on the qui vive for new occasions and the arising of new duties. It is well to press somewhat this anticipative or forward-looking aspect of any education that has a high efficiency-value. If we believe that education, in the nature of things, is in the main a conservative tendency ON EDUCATION 107 in national life, and view it, therefore, as inevitable that 'the great majority of schools embody in their work the intellectual pre- suppositions of the past generation/ what can we add but that 'consequently any change in the intellectual atmosphere of a nation does not fully show itself in its school system until nearly fifty years later?' Weightily as this view was urged in an important work published in 1911, one wishes to lay beside it the opposite opinion. It is so easy for us to fall asleep beneath the shadow of fifty years ago; so essential for us to wake up if we are calculating on the chances of life and welfare on the immediate morrow. The nations that have looked ahead in educa- tional matters have reaped the benefit. Human prevision and ingenuity ought not to accept this stultifying doctrine. Schools need not be a generation behind the times. On the contrary, everything concerning school studies and their treatment, organisation and its aims, administration and its spirit, must be continually undergoing readjustment, in view, not of the pre-suppositions of the past generation, but of our prevision and forecast of the future. Education is the creatively progressive tendency in national life. And 108 MODERN VIEWS education, in the nature of things, will do what we demand from it. This preliminary word has importance from the standpoint of these chapters, and it bears directly upon the present topic. A nation can no more afford to be behind in its schools than in its armaments. Both in the broadest and in the narrowest sense, men are more than armaments in the broadest sense, for in all life's great purposes and in all that makes for a nation's strength it is manhood that avails; in the narrowest sense, too, for proof of which we need not go very far back in the world's naval and military history. It is the common belief and expectation that education should have an efficiency- value. Even those who proclaim its failure in no measured terms derive some of the heat of their protest from the belief that it should be otherwise. Along two lines only shall we follow up this expectation : the first of these in the present chapter, namely, that an all-round curriculum has what may be called an efficiency- value; the second in the chapter that follows, namely, that there is room for the admission in all complete school courses of a certain amount of voca- tional study. ON EDUCATION 109 1. The Efficiency-value of an All-round Curriculum. Lessons which bring the scholar into touch with the world's life must be doing something to prepare him to participate in it. And the very recollection of this fact has much to do with keeping school work alive and actual rather than abstract and aloof from things that matter. Once let teachers realise, as so many do, that the end in view in their work is the making of men, that the school has a direct and incalculable efficiency- value in the quickening of the impulses which lead to power in work, public-spirited citizen- ship, and ennobled personality, and their work is no longer the 'day -jobbing' to which more than one professionally connected with it has compared it. It is a mission, and the teacher becomes a herald of a higher social order and a nobler patriotism. It is noticeable that every ordinary school subject has undergone transformation since the school books of forty years ago were written. It is pertinent to ask whether there are traces of any guiding principle running through the changes that have taken place. Looking back, we find that the child's geography primer which began with four or five pages of definitions, the question and 110 MODERN VIEWS answer manual of * sciences epitomised,' Mangnall's Questions, the Historical Reason Why, and the like however good their intention did comparatively little to bring the child into understanding touch with his environment. It is in the direction of this understanding touch that modern changes have been tending. One or two subjects may be selected to illustrate this tendency. 2. The Efficiency of Geography as a School Subject. The child's geography to-day starts where the child lives, and gradually widens his vision until city, county, country, continent, empire, stand in his mind for some sort of living reality. He gains insight into the variety of environment provided by nature, and into the ways in which man adapts him- self to varying environments. Through the real and the near is the child's way of approach to the real and the far. Through his own observation he is taught to interpret for him- self the records of what others have seen, and of the lives that other people live. Imagination is set to work even more than memory. . There are yet directions, of course, and there is one direction in particular, in which the direct efficiency-value of geography may be ON EDUCATION 111 increased. Supposing, as we may, that by the time the child is twelve he has a general knowledge of the geography of his own country, of the outstanding physical features of the world, of the great areas of produc- tion (mineral, agricultural, manufacturing), and of the main facts of the intercourse between nation and nation in commerce, time may thenceforward, with advantage, be given to enabling him to realise more fully the meaning of countries as the dwelling- places of nations. An elementary school education cannot hope to do this excepting in a very incidental way for countries outside the empire. But if, say, the two years from twelve to fourteen were given to gaining knowledge of the peoples living in different parts of the empire, their traditions and customs, and needs it would be time un- speakably well spent. It affords a great educational opportunity and represents little less than the imperial necessity of the child's leaving school with some sympathetic knowledge both of conditions of life in the colonies, and of peoples of different race who are his fellow-citizens in the British Empire. Secondary education may well include a 112 MODERN VIEWS similarly close and sympathetic study of other great nations of Europe, Asia, and America; but primary education should not fail to give to all British children a knowledge from which shall spring a feeling of kinship and sympathy with all peoples who live under the British flag. None should go from our shores, in whatever capacity, unenlightened by such study, and, because unenlightened, unsympathetic toward races having tradi- tions and ideals of their own, and in some instances possessing a culture and an intel- lectual capacity differing from, but not necessarily to be regarded as inferior to, our own. Mrs Besant, speaking at the Letchworth Summer School in August, 1912, in an address of great power, brought home this need. (Not as a school question, but it surely is such.) 'We send our missionaries over to them, but English people themselves should first be taught.' The Indians and ourselves are, for example, of one race, the Aryan. Colour, as Mrs Besant urged, is superficial, but race has to do with the physical build, with quality of brain, and, therefore, with faculty and power. ' We are dealing with institutions, and rights, and privileges, and must realise ON EDUCATION 113 that we are to deal with a type, and not with the colour of the skin. Only in that way can an Empire like ours hope to grow into real stability.' Geography may well have a high efficiency- value in the education of an imperial people. Its use may be not only to give a knowledge of the way from one part of the Empire to another, but also of the first prin- ciples of right adjustment to the peoples we shall meet when we get there. 3. To take another school subject, Elementary Science, or Nature Study. Where in many schools has a greater transformation taken place, and where in some schools is it still more needed, than in respect of the tit-bits series of object lessons, now often dignified by the name of ' elementary science* ? Imagine this as a Board of Education list of object- lessons, dated 1900, for the second standard : 'Horse, sparrow, roots, stems, buds, leaves, candles, soap, cork, paper. 1 No wonder that similar lesson-lists are still to ba found in many schools ! The more adequate and recent view is that elementary science, or Nature study, is primarily the study of our environment of life and force and the products and effects of life and force, which make the earth a home for man as well as 114 MODERN VIEWS for countless other living things, both plants and animals. In this sense, Nature study does not mean, in its first stages, the formal study of any one science. It unifies, rather, the elements or foundations of the sciences, whether of plant or animal life, of earth-building and earth-sculpture, or of physical and chemical phenomena. It is a presenting of the world to the child from the point of view of its harmony and connectedness. Later, de- limitation may come in and science be marked off into its several branches. Con- nected Nature study (or elementary science) of this kind will be a sort of corrective to the geography lesson, of which the key- note is man's struggle and triumph in erecting cities, establishing commerce, and gaining mastery. The Nature lesson will deepen the child's wonder, as it step by step reveals the marvel and unity of the surrounding world. This subject, none the less, has a practical or efficiency-value. For by whatever precise stages the human race passed from the savage state to the domestication of animals and to the pursuit of agriculture, man's early progress implied a growing knowledge, and through that knowledge an increasing control, of ON EDUCATION 115 surrounding wild nature. Nor have these pursuits ceased to belong to man's progress and well-being. 'The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us/ says Huxley, 'depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. The chess- board is the world, the pieces are the phenom- ena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. . . . Education is learning the rules of this mighty game/ In town and country schools alike there is need for this study. Concerning the value of Nature study in town schools, a singularly direct testimony was borne by Mr Vice- Consul Erskine in his well-known report on 'Education in Chicago/ presented to the Foreign Office, London, in December, 1900. After describing the Nature study courses in Public Elementary Schools, he says: 'These studies in Nature are found to be of great use to children, making them observe the common things around them with intelligence, and giving them instruction about many things that working people have to do with in the course of their labours, and enabling them to bring these theories into practical 116 MODERN VIEWS use. This education turns out the boys into the world with a wonderful self-reliance and capacity for seizing their opportunities. . . . Many of them rise rapidly, and at early ages are at the heads of departments.' Allowing, as we may, a margin for any excess of enthusiasm on the part of the Vice-Consul's informant, there is evident point in what is here said. Something is accomplished which never would be accomplished under a * candle, soap, cork, paper 5 regime. The Chicago scheme and an equally suggestive time- table of school studies are given in a short chapter supplementary to this. Specific instances of the serviceableness of Nature knowledge might easily be quoted. As might be expected, man's action tends at times to disturb the balance of nature. Commerce may be a direct cause of the intro- duction of insect pests into a country. France, for example, is said to have lost far more from the ravages of the small green fly, phylloxera, in its vineyards, than from the Franco-German War a statement which is borne out by the fact that owing to the devastations of this insect pest the area under vineyards decreased from 6,382,000 acres in 1875 to 2,868,000 acres in 1885. The insect ON EDUCATION 117 itself seems to have been brought from North America, where it infests the native vines, but without serious injury to them. Austria, Portugal, and Germany have also suffered seriously from this same fly. On the other hand, America has suffered so much from imported European pests that recommenda- tions have from time to time been made to institute an inspection of all nursery stock plants, etc., imported into the United States, and even from one State into another. Specialists alone will be able to trace sources of disturbance. But, if he is early trained to habits of observation, and gains some knowledge of what to look for. the 'practical man ' too often content with rule of thumb may be put on the alert. Husbandmen, agriculturists, fruit-growers, will all benefit by the possession of knowledge which at the very least makes them watchful. They will realise how impolitic it is to wait for disturbance and disaster to spread before investigations are commenced. The minds of practical men would also be prepared to receive the suggestions of specialists. The story of Pasteur's services to the silk-growers of France illustrates this. There is a disease to which the silkworm is 118 MODERN VIEWS liable in all its stages, and of which traces can even be discovered in the eggs of the silkworm moth. At the time when Pasteur undertook the study of this disease, known as pebrine, the silk industry in France was at a very low ebb. Yet because it was said that Pasteur had never seen a silkworm, the people laughed at the idea of having him as an adviser. But Pasteur knew how to detect the presence of the disease-germs which were causing the trouble, and suggested remedies. Where his advice was followed the disease was practically stamped out, and the industry immediately began to revive. Open-minded- ness to the knowledge of others, and watchful- ness for conditions to which the expert's attention should be called, result from an education which deals with the real world in an awakening way. 4. Language Study and Literature, and their Efficiency-values. We may recognise the value of literature in man's practical life without in the least overlooking its value as culture and as a pursuit in hours of leisure. The story of the life of Socrates as patriot, soldier, and philosopher, and of his wonderful bearing at his trial and afterwards at his death; the story of Hereward the Wake; ON EDUCATION 119 of the Scottish heroine as told in The Heart of Midlothian; tales of Scottish chiefs, or Maccabaean heroes; of Winkelried, Washing- ton, Garibaldi; tales of heroes of science and of geographical discovery, and of the patience of great inventors, offer examples from human story which awaken within the child the instinct to excel. Hence we need to think of c literature * not as lessons about books, but as actual enjoy- ment of the books themselves. The finger- posts are not the road; and useful guide- books to literature are not the literature itself. The study of language, again, has an almost incalculable practical value. The art of clear and accurate speech is of all arts that which has most worth for man. Schools (noticeably, but not exclusively, in America) are sometimes apt in allowing exercise in self-expression, inapt in enforcing the study of that art. Oral teaching may make words too cheap; but it may also reveal their power. Grammar teaching is scarcely worth while from any other point of view than this. It is a study of the rules, and a conscious acquiring of the power, of accurate expression. The grammarian does not exist to mar the 120 MODERN VIEWS child's feeling for fine literature by analysing, parsing, paraphrasing. He is the friend of the child's admiration. He teaches him what to listen for : reveals to the child what is the fitting relation of word to word, so that the child may have an open ear for fitness of phrase and exactness of expression in speech or in writing. And here, in all candour, is one of the advantages of the classics. There is probably no surer way, for the few that find it, of acquiring the habit of studying the force of words than in rendering one of Cicero's treatises or orations, or one of Virgil's finer passages, into English. Grammar, as the unfolding of the principles which underlie the art of accurate speaking, shades off into logic. And, of the things that ought to find a place in school teaching, but seldom do, logic may claim to be men- tioned first; not, however, the dreary wastes of ' formal logic' with its 'Barbara, celarent,' its woefully uninteresting 'doctrine of terms,' its wading through minutiae to things that matter. Ere the principles of logic can be widely useful to the teacher the whole text-book treatment of the subject will have to be re-shaped; just as psychology, under the influence of a genetic treatment (one, ON EDUCATION 121 that is, which begins with the child) has turned right about; so that the active powers, which formerly took up what time was left after discussing at length the intellectual powers and the feelings, now take front place. Yet the logical habit is everything. Logic is needed not as a 'subject,' but as a mode of intellectual life. And education has a poor claim to efficiency- value if it does not give the power to distinguish the processes of truth from the processes of error. A claim has been put in by a Professor of Education in one of our British Universities for the actual teaching of logic in schools. This is not really necessary. But what is necessary is that the teacher shall be master of the main principles of logic. It is a matter of the first importance that the school should give training in sound judgment; in the power to distinguish the worse from the better reason. It should help to inhibit the illogical habit of ' jumping to conclusions'; and to habituate the scholar to measuring the meaning of statements. There can scarcely be a finer practice for sharpening the wits and creating the habit of intellectual alertness than occasionally, when an illogical statement is made by a M.V.E. F 122 MODERN VIEWS scholar or found in one of his text-books, to get the class to probe the point thoroughly and detect the real nature of the error. School in this way tends to turn out those who live not by hearsay, but who wait for evidence, and are accustomed, so far as the length of their schooling and their possession of average reasoning power have made this possible, to assessing evidence before they accept it. Logic in these ways is directly connected with the language arts. It has to do with correct thinking, as correct thinking has to do with correct speaking. And more 'accidents' arise from the wrong use of words than from all other 'means of communication* put together. The three examples so far considered are selected to indicate that it may be possible so to interpret the ordinary lessons of the school as to invest them with practicality, without robbing them of any of their educa- tional qualities rather, it is believed, enhancing these. 5. We have a totally different type of subject in Educational Handwork. The handicap of the teacher in having to deal with classes the size of which makes them almost impracticable, a situation that still ON EDUCATION 123 too often occurs, was pointedly described by a speaker at one of the meetings in 1907 of the Education Section of the British Association. 'We set the children at rows of desks and say, "Don't." The remedy proposed was that there should be work- rooms in every school where we could say to the children, "Do." ' This is an essential of a right education. It brings the child into direct and educative contact with tools and materials. But we may go further than this. (For an example see pages 143-144). Up to the end of the twelfth year, at the very least, forms of handwork which fit in with ideas and interests that have quickened the child's imagination should have a prior claim. The association of idea with per- formance, the clarifying and broadening of ideas through performance, is both a method of learning and initiation into the art of living. At present, too much of the time spent in woodwork by the boy between twelve and fourteen is consumed in making useless miniature representations of objects rather than objects of use. A model that works, such as boys of this age sometimes make, is a different matter. A good balance, a signal with levers, a model of a crane, rank 124 MODERN VIEWS with objects of use. But with respect to the making of miniature objects, merely to incorporate certain 'exercises,' many wood- work instructors of to-day are saying with a well-known British educationist : * A model is an invention of the Evil One.' Some important cities have even had courses in woodwork in which the first three or four months have had no other visible outcome than the wasting of wood used for * exercises.' Obviously, the tendency of this must be to rob the boys' fingers of their native itch for contact with tools and materials. It is part of the instinctive life and tendency of child and adult to take pleasure in making things. The more meaning the thing that is made has for him that makes it, the greater does this pleasure tend to be, and, from the standpoint of efficiency, the gain to the child from educative handiwork lies in the attitude that is cultivated quite as much as in the dexterities that are acquired. He gains a sense of mastery and a readiness for life's demands. 6. Aspects of Secondary Education and Efficiency-values. The reference in the fore- going sections is most directly to Primary Education; but the same principles as was ON EDUCATION 125 said at the close of the previous chapter, apply throughout. It is in the Secondary School, and the higher its grade the truer this becomes, that the outlook upon life becomes more personal and direct. The Warden of Bradfield College read a paper recently before the Royal Colonial Institute, in which he was dealing with the influence of Imperial responsi- bilities on educational reform, and in which almost point by point he applies to the Secondary School the arguments of the present chapter. The press report ran as follows : 'He insisted on the importance of the study of historical geography, which, on account of the inordinate claims of the two dead languages over the student's time, had practically no scope in the existing curriculum of our Public Schools. The ignorance of the insular school- boy and, for the matter of that, the insular Englishman of the geographical conditions, of the vastness of extent, and of the varied sources of wealth in our Empire was phenom- enal. Another serious defect in English education, and one which stifled the growth of Imperialistic ideas, was the almost total absence of manual training in our best-known schools. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the sense of connection between 126 MODERN VIEWS mind and hand, which formed so integral a part in the system of a liberal education in America, was an undiscovered sense in English schools. Such a system seemed to be the only true preparation for training the students to encounter on the frontier of a half-developed Empire the daily difficulties and practical problems which pioneers were called upon to grapple with and to subdue. . . . * The curricula in every Secondary School ought to include a complete apparatus, and teachers, for instruction in manual labour and the acquisition of a trade. The pioneers of an undeveloped country ought early in life to have instilled into them the dignity of such labour, if they were to be the conquerors of nature and to subdue the obstacles of field and forest, of river and mountain, to the will of man. . . . ' On the edge of a wilderness men had to think and act alone, to depend on an unassisted resourcefulness; and that this power ought to be learned at the stage of Secondary Education it was almost a truism to main- tain. . , . But, above all, it was essential that education should provide for the scientific study of English.' Let it be admitted that the actual making ON EDUCATION 127 of men through the responsibilities and the offices of Empire is mainly accomplished on the spot; yet the school can give the out- look, prepare the mind with knowledge, and do much to adapt the character. The fact of Empire is in itself educative. Risks and burdens beyond our own shores widen our outlook. There is the pride, too, in brother- peoples, who went as sons from our shores, and are fellow-members with us in one commonwealth. There is advantage in learn- ing to appreciate the intellectual dignity and noble traditions of fellow-subjects of ancient races. The methods of Chester Macnaughten, the schoolmaster of the Jam of Nawanagar, who gave the young prince his first lessons in cricket, are worthy of careful study. His success was due to the use he made of Indian models and the ideals which had from their childhood been held up before his pupils, who were the sons of Indian chiefs. The past lived again before them in their head master's sympathy with it, and he was enabled to train amongst these Indian princes many who are taking, and will take, a worthy place as rulers of a part of the British Empire. Already we have abundant proof that we have entered upon the greatest of the centuries. 128 MODERN VIEWS But we found ourselves, as the editor of the Teachers' Guild Quarterly says, in an article on 'Empire and Education,' 'beginning the twentieth century but poorly equipped in many respects for the world-struggle for existence. Yet the spirit of the age had been at work. While the head masters from great public schools were discussing the question of ' Com- pulsory Greek,' other teachers were advancing the claims of modern languages; while scholarships to the old Universities were more and more being awarded for excellence in one or two branches of study, over-specialisa- tion at school was being denounced by the Master of Trinity and other high, though less eloquent, authorities; while the education of boys in our public schools was still mainly directed to proficiency in dead languages, some girls' high schools were enjoying a broader curriculum which laid more stress on 'outlook studies' and on the mother- tongue. We have now reached the point when a national effort must be made to modernise our higher school education in all directions and for all pupils.' In harmony with views already quoted, this writer advocates a general education for all pupils up to the age of sixteen as being ON EDUCATION 129 necessary if the rising generation is to eon- front the problems of the early future with an adequate mental equipment. The sub- jects of such a foundational higher education, or pre-specialisation course, would be (and the list agrees with those already given in other connections) the mother-tongue and its literature; science, and especially physics, the 'ground science'; mathematics; 'outlook subjects/ such as history and geography; manual training; and at least one language besides the mother-tongue. If two other languages are possible, then they should be either French and German, or one of these and either Latin or Greek. German should not be neglected as it is at present. No preference should be given to a dead over a living language. Preparation for the real activities of life finds its natural place in the secondary school. Some five or six schools stand out as having pioneered a way to purpose-serving occupa- tions in direct line with the world's work. Thring started carpentry at Uppingham; 0,nd Ruskin, when he was Slade Professor at Oxford, led a group of students to spend their afternoons in spade-work with him, making some ditches which had to be dug. 130 MODERN VIEWS Since then the boys of Sedburgh and Shrews- bury and Bath have done navvy work in their playing fields. So have the boys of Manchester Grammar School. The younger boys at Bedales and Abbotsholme take gardening seriously; and the older ones, hay- making, shed-building, fence-making on the estates. A few of the Bedales boys, under the leadership of one who was preparing to be an engineer, have built a thoroughly workmanlike cricket pavilion. At Clayes- more the boys have shared in putting up their playing-fields' pavilion and in construct- ing their own rifle range. 'They will not/ says the head master, * shoot less straight or display less patriotism than those for whom everything is done by hired labour.' On the contrary, this kind of work and the man of secondary school experience is not quite happy who cannot look back upon some share in work of the kind is in promising contrast to the description of the general shiftlessness of some ex-secondary schoolboys as described from actual life in the English Review for September, 1912 : 'Mostly charm- ing fellows, who could and should be earning well of the State. Yet they are useless, and feel themselves to be useless. It is, ON EDUCATION 131 indeed, one of the problems of modern England. Meantime, are these great schools doing nothing? It has been England's way to wake up just in time, though not always without a good deal of calling. To give one example, reforms have recently been made at Harrow and Rugby. Insistence upon English teaching is their key-note. Chaucer, Lang- land, More, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Locke have nutriment in them. And British boys will on the average come to them with a better-prepared palate than to the study of languages which comparatively few ever discover to be literature at all. This return to English after nearly six hundred years has within it momentous possibilities. The efficiency-value of University studies is upon another plane. If learning is to be sustained and research carried forward, if standards of reference are to be set up and kept up in any of the great domains of know- ledge, pure and applied, there must be centres devoted to study and investigation. The University is the place of concourse of teachers, certainly, but also of Masters of Learning. Let historical study serve for an example. 132 MODERN VIEWS Its results offer the surest data to the politician, and its conclusions the best guid- ance to the social reformer. A familiar saying tells us that 'history is philosophy teaching by example'; the facts of life are, that is to say, the key to the interpretation of life. History is therefore one of the key- studies, in which sheer accuracy has its own incomparable value. Our interpretations of life are fashioned by the continuous presenta- tion and almost unconscious absorption of historical data; our views of public policy and public duty are built up in the same continuous and largely unconscious fashion. It is of the first importance that the data, presented to us in a hundred ways, should be accurate. This can only be the case if masters of historical learning devote themselves and inspire others to historical study. ON EDUCATION 133 CHAPTER VIlA (Supplementary) A SUGGESTIVE TIME-TABLE AND A SUGGESTIVE SYLLABUS Two of the items included in Mr Vice-Consul Erskine's brief but exhaustive report on Education in Chicago have so direct a bearing upon the points raised in the pre- ceding chapter that it seems well to quote them. 1. The first shows the courses of study arranged for the eight grades, and the time, in minutes per week, assigned to each : Subject. Grade. 1st. 2nd. 3rd. 4th. 5th. 6th. 7th. 8th. Opening 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 Reading 675 600 500 250 250 English - - 150 115 100 65 65 145 175 175 History - - 60 60 60 200 200 Dictation - 50 50 60 60 60 60 60 Grammar _ 120 160 160 German and Latin Mathematics 225 225 300 300/ 300 300 300 300 Singing 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 75 Geography __ 200 250 300 __ Nature Study 100 100 100 100 90 90 90 90 Writing - - 75 75 100 100 60 60 60 60 Drawing _ 60 75 90 90 90 90 90 Manual Training 90 90 Physical Training 50 60 50 60 50 60 60 60 Recreation 125 125 125 125 125 125 125 125 134 MODERN VIEWS (a) Five minutes a day allotted to the opening exercises contrast with the thirty- five to fifty minutes given daily to religious instruction and exercises in this country. If education were regarded as a matter of competition between one nation and another, it would be bad educational policy, if nothing more, to forfeit so much of the early and best part of each day to lessons which are said in in a large number of cases to fail of their high purpose, and which in many instances have an adverse effect. The nature of the opening exercises in American schools, which occupy usually from five to fifteen minutes, the writer has dealt with in a report in the tenth volume of Special Reports on Educational Subjects. 1 (b) Grammar is wisely postponed till the sixth school year. Surely it is right to regard it as more of the nature of an analytical or logical study of language when acquired, than a method of the acquisition of language. (c) German and Latin are alternatives. Would it not be a clear gain in the education of English-speaking peoples if this were universally the case? It is noteworthy that one or other of these may be taken up after the fourth year. This corresponds with the a suggestion, see page 54. ON EDUCATION 135 practice in some British elementary schools of beginning French in the fifth standard. (d) A noticeable feature of the time-table as a whole is the change of emphasis at differ- ent stages of the scholar's progress. Whether or not the minutes per week given to this or that subject correspond detail by detail with what we individually might plan, there is a suggestion of some value in thus breaking the monotony of the eight years' course by varying the programme. The following rough time-table of the seventh and eighth grades was given to the writer by the Principal of the Forestville School, Chicago, a school in which the work in literature is a marked feature, though (as the time devoted to it shows) not by over- insistence upon it in class : Latin, two hours; mathematics, two hours; science, two hours; English grammar, two hours; English literature, two hours; music, two hours; German, two hours; study, five hours; drawing, an hour and a half; manual training, an hour and a half; callisthenics, one hour; history, two hours. The recreation intervals would probably take portions from one or other of the lesson periods, the times having been rapidly written 186 MODERN VIEWS down by the Principal in the course of an interview. What is noticeable is the richness and variety of the course, 1 and this, probably, not in spite of but because of the fact that more than twice as much time is given to 'study' as is given to the direct teaching of any individual subject. The suggestion, which is coming to us also from other sources, is obvious. It is that we may quite possibly be over-dosing the children with ourselves. This Chicago school, at any rate, is widely and deservedly known for the excellence of its work. More intelligent appreciation of good English literature it would be difficult to find anywhere amongst children of Primary School age. The Principal expressed the belief that the general tendency is greatly to underrate the aesthetic and literary instincts of children; and that if children grow to appreciate a noble play (a play of Shakespeare was being taken at the time) they have no desire either for dime novels or for ten or twenty cent shows. 'If we are optimists, we ought to give our best.' At first the teachers in this school were told by outsiders that they 1 This is, however, the exception rather than the rule in the upper classes of the American Elementary School. (See the chapter on Curriculum and Character Building in the report just mentioned). ON EDUCATION 187 were teaching poetry and stories instead of the three R's, to which the Principal replied, 4 1 am giving twenty minutes a day to litera- ture; next year I shall give an hour. This year I give an hour to arithmetic; next year I shall give half an hour.' Yet the children stand well in all their subjects, arithmetic included. 'The children,' said the Principal, 'want variety in their lessons, just as in their diet.' And the response of the children them- selves was shown in many ways ; for instance, by the appearance of the seventh grade class- room, which was decorated with pictures illustrating Greek life and art, which the class had collected the previous year when study- ing the subject-matter of the Iliad and Odyssey; as also in the active interest taken in the play which they were reading. The Nature Study courses in the city, referred to in the preceding chapter, are from Mr Vice-Consul Erskine's report : SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER, NOVEMBER All Grades Seeds : dissemination by winds, currents, and animals. Trees : preparation for winter, as shown by leaves, sap, and buds. Observation of plants as the season changes. 138 MODERN VIEWS Insects : transformation. Birds : migratory, non-migratory. Homes and coverings of animals in relation to season. The human skin : function and structure; com- parison with that of other animals. Special attention given to utility of structure. Daily record of metereological conditions through- out the entire school year : dew, frost, clouds, fogs, rainfall, snow, hail, and direction of wind. Reading of thermometer and barometer in regard to changes of weather. For grammar grades : study of weather bureau maps* Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grades. Soil of school-yard and surrounding country. Erosion, sedimentation, rapids, waterfalls. Formation of streams; their channels. Study of pebbles : history as shown by form and material. Seventh and Eighth Grades Heat : evaporation, condensation, radiation, absorption, reflection, expansion, contraction, temperature. DECEMBER, JANUARY, FEBRUARY All Grades Effects of freezing on plants; winter condition of plants. Protection of buds. Animal movements : comparison with man. Skeleton structure. Foods and their relation to life. Prehension and digestion of food. . Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grades Effects of freezing and thawing upon different kinds of ground under varying conditions. Effects of frost on different kinds of stones. Plant and animal fossils. ON EDUCATION 139 Seventh and Eighth Grades Levers in body of man and other animals. Equilibrium of bodies. Heat : sources of, capacity for; liquefaction, con- duction; convection. Air : elasticity of pressure. The pump : the siphon. Liquids : capillarity, buoyancy, pressure. MARCH, APRIL, MAY, JUNE All Grades Observation of signs of renewed life in plants. Trees : wood, bark, mode of branching, buds. Germination of seeds : buds, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Study of plants : life, structure, function, and comparison. Reappearance of birds. Insects : cocoons, ants, house-fly, beetle. Renewal of animal coverings. Respiration and circulation hi man and other animals . Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grades Corals and plants, as geological agencies. Rock formations : dip, strike, etc. Wells and springs : position, cause. Seventh and Eighth Grades Light : incident and reflected rays, refraction. Lenses. Properties of matter : ductility, malleability, elas- ticity. Frictional electricity. In these grades nature study includes physiology. 140 MODERN VIEWS CHAPTER VIII VOCATIONAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION We can get only an artificial unity so long as we confine OUT gaze to the school system itself. We must look at it as part of the large whole of social life. These are the two great things in breaking down isolation to have the child come to school with all the experience he has got outside the school, and to leave it with some- thing to be immediately used in his everyday life. DEWEY : School and Society. ON every hand we are beginning to see the utter impracticability of any school which can be described as an 'artificial institution/ Yet these are the words used by one of our leading authorities, whose life has brought him into the closest touch with school work of various kinds : and they cut like a sword. A similar effect remains on the mind after reading words based upon inquiries into the after-school history of thousands of children who went to work in the mill, which appeared in one of the Board of Education Special Reports on Educational Subjects (Vol. 8) : ON EDUCATION 141 'There is absolutely no correspondence what- ever between school attainment and subse- quent skill at work, or even so far was the investigation carried between school records and evidence afterwards given of general intelligence.' Even this corresponds, how- ever, with what one may hear almost at any time from those who have had the oppor- tunity of observing the after-career of their former school fellows. Yet school successes ought not to end in career failures. Nor does it seem fitting that the school should send out as comparative failures those who immedi- ately pull level with children of good school record and, in many cases, surpass them. If this were a final verdict having reference to the steady average relationship between success and failure in school and in life, the school and its education would be put at once on their defence. This we do not believe it to be. Yet, as it stands, it points clearly to the duty of doing something more than we are doing for boys of quick wits and practical temperament who are not enamoured of school lessons and school repression; to whom the eight years, from four to twelve, of an experience which does not fit them, seem long, and ten years, from four to fourteen, 142 MODERN VIEWS may well seem too long. In all likelihood in helping them we should be doing something also for those whom school hypnotises into temporary success without safeguarding them against ultimate and more dreaded failure. Something may be done by giving to portions of the school work a more directly vocational reference. The over-production of penmen and the under-production of work- men has been giving rise to comment in all directions, and is helping to keep back an enthusiasm for education for which, on the grounds of its intrinsic worth and public importance, it should not otherwise look in in vain. 1. Preliminary Vocational Work in Con- nection with the Ordinary Work of an Element- ary School. An interesting example of an elementary school which furnishes a pre- vocational outlook and training is the Wood Close Council School, Bethnal Green, London. The published report of a Board of Education Inspector, dealing with a visit paid to this school in December, 1911, shows the kind of use which an ordinary elementary school (Standards I. to VII.) can make of a 'work- room' or ' practical room/ without any elaborateness in the fitting up. The boys' ON EDUCATION 148 department has six classrooms and a central hall, with a workroom on the fourth floor, i.e. on a level with the roof playground. The workroom is used by one-half of a class at a time; the other half of the class being taught by a student teacher. The two lowest standards remaining in their own class- rooms, Standard III. uses the workroom for clay modelling, Standard IV. for cardboard work, Standard V. for lead-work, Standards VI. and VII. for practical science. A good deal of practical work is also done by the scholars in their own classrooms. In Standard I., for example, which contains fifty-two boys, the story of Robinson Crusoe is the basis for the handwork, the English, the geography, and for much of the arithmetic and drawing. By means of a clay model of the island, knowledge of various physical features is given. The boys also make various models in paper and cardboard of boats, tents, boxes, and other objects mentioned in the story. With wood and wire they make railings, gates, rafts; and in chalk, charcoal, and crayons they sketch their conception of the scenes which have specially interested them. These forms of handwork occupy one and a half hour each week. Standard II. 144 MODERN VIEWS works in paper. Whilst one-half of the class is doing practical work, the other half is engaged either in arithmetic or in silent read- ing. And so on. Standard V. takes in its own classroom a preliminary course in weighing and measuring. Each child has a small balance about twenty of those in use having been made by the boys at the Manual Instruction Centre. The special feature of the school is the work- room. This room contains four strong tables, six feet long and three feet wide, at each of which six boys can work; and a movable bench seventeen feet long on one side of the room. Tools and simple materials are pro- vided for small "repairs, and for making simple articles required for use, which it is not worth while to make at the Manual Instruction Centre; and the room is fitted with cupboards. The method followed is to allow the boys themselves to plan and to experiment. In cardboard modelling, for example, each boy chooses the object he wishes to make, and works out the plan for himself, cutting it out first in paper for the master's approval. The teachers seldom give help till a boy has tried what he can do alone. The lead-work in Standard V. is an experiment in a material ON EDUCATION 145 chosen as intermediate between clay and wood. The same method is followed; and it is found, as one would expect, that some boys who are backward in their other school work do well in the practical room, and that all boys work hard and earnestly. Each section below Standard VI. uses the room for one period of an hour and a quarter each week. Each section of Standards VI. and VII. uses the room for two such periods for practical science. The work in this room, it will be seen, is in addition to what is done in the classrooms and at the Woodwork Centre, and the experiment has been fully justified. To take an American illustration. There is an interesting country elementary school in Massachusetts, in connection with a State Normal School, which has introduced indust- rial-social education as its distinctive feature. The school consists of a little over two hundred children in the nine grades (this being the common number of elementary grades in Massachusetts). * If your visit were to be made at three o'clock in the afternoon, you would see a school very much like the ordinary village school, housed in a modern brick building of six rooms, and doing the usual M.V.E. G 146 MODERN VIEWS schoolroom work. At five minutes after three you would see a transformation. The school becomes a manufactory, in which each child is making something. In the first-year room one group of children working in pairs is engaged in weaving woollen rugs for the doll's house; some are braiding, and others are sewing their braided raphia into mats. In the second-year room a group of the children is making furniture of tag-board, while the other division of the class has gone to work in the garden. In the third-year room the third-grade children are making raphia baskets; while the fourth-grade children are out working in their garden. Of the children of the grammar grades (i.e. above the fourth), some boys have gone to the attic to make rattan baskets; one group of girls is at the dormitory sewing on the machine; the eighth- grade boys and girls are at work in their garden, and one class has taken an expedition into the fields to study the birds. The children talk quietly together as they work. They go and help themselves to material as it is needed, and help each other when it seems desirable. (Often a child proves to be a more helpful instructor than the teachers.) They are allowed the utmost liberty so long ON EDUCATION 147 as they work and encourage others to work. It is worth going far to see the new spirit which shines in their faces and the new attitude which has been developed toward nearly all of the school work. This is evident throughout the day and in all grades. ' The point of these illustrations is that, if no plans for direct vocational work are forth- coming, the vocational or industrial spirit may be imparted to the school in some way independently. A strange thing which may be noted in passing has happened in our own country in Reformatory Schools and in some of the Truant and Reform Schools of America. Boys have been * committed' to these schools, and have received there a better industrial equipment than they would have had if they had not been so fortunate as to disgrace them- selves. No one would grudge these boys the benefit they have got; but why not extend it to those boys who have not disgraced themselves? 2. Vocational Work in the Higher Classes of the Elementary School, Ages Twelve to Fourteen. In speaking of a foundational primary curriculum up to twelve years of age, 148 MODERN VIEWS the last two years of elementary school life were intentionally held over for further con- sideration. There is a real problem here. These are the extremely important years of early adolescence. Life is just beginning to grip, and in not a few cases school simul- taneously begins to lose its hold. The writer has asked a class of students for how many had the last year or more of their elementary schooling had real value i.e. the period spent at school after reaching the sixth standard, as bright children do at twelve. Fully half looked back upon it as very nearly lost time. These were young men training to be teachers. In addition to this, there are many eager conscientious boys in whom the work-impulse wakes up at twelve years of age, precociously stimulated by home needs, it may be. One has seen such losing the keen edge of their boyish manliness during the years that they had still to spend in school. Carlyle's recipe, 'a training in practicality,' would have fitted either case. The first : for if the rising teacher is not so trained, how is he to point others along the path? A virile attitude towards life is the central factor in the teacher's effectual personality. And if the boy with the work-impulse strong within him ON EDUCATION 149 is not met half-way, something falls away from him never quite to be recovered. Scot- land, therefore, is right, and other elementary schools are right, in providing supple- mentary elementary school courses to meet the needs of the last two years. There are clear gains from this practice by-products, but deserving notice in at least two directions. One of these is the keenness added to the whole of the elementary school life by placing within it a platform to be ascended by ordinary industry before reaching the end of the school course (where at present there is often no platform but only the edge of a terra incognita). The other gain is the value which the parent will see in the child's progress to- wards, and in his interest and success in, the more practical schooling of the last two years. Scotland has done a great deal for thousands of its children in the elementary day schools by arranging, for scholars over twelve years of age, supplementary courses containing industrial, commercial, and household manage- ment branches. In 1910-1911 the Scotch Education Department paid its higher grants for 47,565 children so enrolled in two thousand 150 MODERN VIEWS schools. The aim of the work, which is purely supplementary to that of the elementary school, is to produce the useful citizen . . . fit in body and alert in mind, prepared for the 'rational enjoyment of his leisure time/ as well as for 'earning his living.' In order to be admitted to the course scholars must have spent six months in the highest class of the school, and be certified by the teacher of this class and the head master of the school as proficient in their work. They are then presented to the inspector for a 'qualifying examination* (not necessarily an individual examination). After one full year in a supple- mentary course a pupil who has acquitted himself well, and who is over fourteen years of age, may receive a certificate of merit, issued by the managers, and with the sanction of the Department through one of its Inspectors (Scotch Code, Art. 29). The con- ditions of award are admirable. They secure industry on the part of the pupil, who is required to keep his own record of the work he has done (an excellent feature), and to present it, whenever called upon, to the Inspector for verification. This record, sup- ported by the class-teacher's testimony and the head master's recommendation, is the ON EDUCATION 151 basis of certification. By this plan a form of school-leaving certificate is provided which avoids the evils which attend preparation for a leaving examination. The vocational feature is also sufficiently marked for the pupil to feel that a real change has been made in his work, one which gives him a truer liking for school and a more decided outlook upon life. The following time-table, which is taken from the annual report of the School Board of Glasgow for 1910-1911, shows the number of hours devoted to each subject : GIRLS' SUPPLEMENTARY COURSE English Arithmetic Housekeeping . Physical Training Singing . 9 hours 5 9 1J Total per week . 25 hours. BOYS' SUPPLEMENTARY (INDUSTRIAL COURSE) 9 hours. English . Arithmetic Woodwork and Drawing Physical Training Singing To be allocated to Ordinary Subjects . 8 5 Total per week . 25 hours. 152 MODERN VIEWS A new school of an interesting kind is being opened at Stockport. It has a workroom somewhat on the lines of the Bethnal Green School, though it aims to keep children from the ages of twelve to fifteen. This school aims to combine the cheapness of fitting and apparatus of the Bethnal Green School with the curriculum of a pre-trade school. l Instead of being fitted up with gas engine and a special room for metal work, incorporating many of the details of the best workshops in the country, the Stockport plan simplifies the tools and machinery in order to give the boys as sure a command of the processes as possible. The boy of ten who grew weary of his automatic toys, and said that he 'wanted toys that he could play with, not toys that played with him,' may well have his counter- part in the boy of fourteen who both needs and 1 This account of the school represents the views of its founders, having been kindly supplied by the secretary to the Education Committee. The school is now opened, and some of the features are already incorporated. As much use as possible is made of the practical rooms. An interesting feature, too, is in connection with the domestic courses. There is a model house within the school build- ings, in which girls who have had at least one course in laundry and in cookery and a few preparatory lessons spend, in small groups, four days a week for six weeks in real housekeeping under a special mistress. See Appendix. ON EDUCATION 153 prefers tools that he can use, not machinery which he must learn to obey. A room for woodwork and metal-work is to be provided. But one of the valuable features of the Stock- port plan, borrowed from the Bethnal Green School, is a 'general utility' room, to which the boys shall have as frequent and as free an access as possible. In it they will do a great part of their work in practical mathematics, drawing, and science. Cupboards will contain a fair supply of balances and of chemical apparatus, the body of the room being occu- pied by some six 'general utility* benches, each of which will accommodate six or eight boys working at the same subject. An elementary school of this type, with its 'pre-trade' school at the top, gives boys a changed outlook from the moment they enter the elementary school. It is a 'bucking- up' device, the effects of which will be felt by the scholars and, one hopes, rejoiced over by their parents throughout the school course. This point is of importance even from the vocational point of view; for anything tending to listlessness and to indifference to work is anti-vocational. (The Stockport Education Committee has launched its scheme partly on the strength of observations which show 154 MODERN VIEWS that there has been a striking retardation of a large percentage of scholars in their progress through the standards since the days of individual examination and payment by results. Whereas in the old days, say, a thousand scholars of a given school standing were worked up to a point at which practically all were allowed to pass up into the grade next above, now they find in the third and fourth grades not a thousand but fourteen hundred, and in the fifth and sixth grades not a thousand but only six hundred. The sixty per cent, who keep moving up are probably more intelligent than any corresponding sixty under the former system, but forty per cent, are too many to be allowed to fall behind and to remain there. This subject of retardation is one of the burning questions to-day amongst American educators also). Both boys and girls are to participate in the advantage of the pre- trade school. The course for boys is to be a simplification of Trade Evening School courses, and planned for three years, twelve to fifteen. The girls will receive a training in domestic subjects of all kinds. The elementary school has, therefore, an interest in the question of vocational educa- tion. Many head teachers are alive to this, ON EDUCATION 155 both in town and country. But what they do, they do on their own initiative. A head master, for example, converts part of his own garden into a school garden, and connects the scholars' work in it with a well-planned scheme of observational nature study. At first, the parents many of them gardeners, or interested in village occupations said : * We send the children to school to learn, not to work.' They have since discovered that work- ing of this kind is learning; besides which, more than one lad has found employment and is doing well at a horticulturist's in the neigh- bourhood. In another agricultural county, by the foresight of the head master, a plot of land of considerable size has been secured at only a nominal rent. In a single boy's plot of forty square yards a liberal allowance for one boy, but the school was fortunately placed the writer saw rows of spring cabbage, and pease, radishes, and parsley coming up; a portion being at the same time under seed. In this school of 150 children, twenty-six boys in the highest class were getting an education in garden and field work, bringing their tools from home and working after school hours in the evening, some of the boys making 3s. or 4s. out of a year's crop* 15b MODERN VIEWS Proportion sums worked out with this as a basis may help to show the lads that there is 'money' in the land, even when a rent is paid. Some rural head mistresses take their part in this good work, though in slightly different ways. Town teachers are equally keen in caring for their scholars' success in life (though as yet vocational courses of any kind are rare). No amount of external regula- tion, or lack of external stimulus, can curb spirit and individuality. That is why con- siderable freedom is at last being given to the schools. It has been earned. That also is one great reason why Britain still holds her own in the markets of the world. Excellent as individual efforts are, however, they only very partially supply a need which has become increasingly marked of late owing to the very general abandonment of the apprenticeship system by employers. A boy's chance of a vocational outlook from his school surely his due if he stays till he is between fourteen and fifteen depends either upon a specially circumstanced, or specially inspired teacher, as in England, or comes as a reward, as in Scotland. Should we not be approaching the matter more frankly if we said that the opportunity should be his by ON EDUCATION 157 right? All that is said about the advantages of abroad liberal education is sound in conception and spirit nor need such education be in any degree sacrificed, but the best education does not amount to much in a boy's after- career if with it he cannot earn bread and cheese. Some of us are 'brands snatched from the burning ' in this matter; and there are many brands that remain in the fire. School owes a boy who attends it a fair chance in life. And the average boy is far more likely to be well-disposed towards learning for its own sake if he can see just cause for thinking that the school cares for him for his own sake. A pre-trade schooling, as an option from twelve years of age, or as a supple- mentary elementary course, as a reward earned between twelve and thirteen, is good. But, as in so many other things, perhaps those that miss it need it most. To give every child a chance in life, and to make him of value to his country, are the very justification of the school. Fit and unfit alike have to survive, and the purpose of the school is to give to each a survival-value. Fundamentally our aim is practical. Learn- ing will continue to have its cloisters ; indeed, it is often from the cloister that the voices 158 MODERN VIEWS have come that preach crusades. Yet the spirit of the school is not cloistral, but chivalric. The ends it has in view are power in work, ideals of citizenship, and virile personality. 3. Direct Vocational Education as a Sequel to the Work of the Elementary School. When speaking of the awarding of scholarships from elementary schools one suggested reform was noted, namely, that which would replace the examining attitude, What have you learnt? by, What use can you make of what you know? Practical scholarships, no less for girls than for boys, have also been advocated. A few centres have provided scholarships of this kind. London offers both for boys and girls maintenance scholarships at the trade schools and technical institutes. Boys over twelve, who have passed the Sixth Standard, and who intend to take up a handicraft trade, may gain scholarships at a Preparatory Trade School, tenable between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, of the value of 6, with free tuition for the first two years, and 15 with free tuition for the third year. Boys over fourteen may have free tuition, with 10 for a first year and 15 for a second year at a Trade and Craft School. From the Trade and Craft School a boy will go straight to ON EDUCATION 159 the workshop, unless he has special ability, and can go through a full technology course with the hope of adequate reward at the end. Girls, similarly, may enter a trade school at the close of their elementary school course with a scholarship covering the fees, and a maintenance grant of from 8 to 12. The work is in some instances supervised by an advisory committee of trade experts, who both give advice in respect of it and interest themselves in finding situations for the pupils. 'Many of them,' says the head of the Borough Polytechnic Institute, 'have found suitable employment and have made excellent starts.' The following table shows the nature of the work done at the Shoreditch Technical Day School (for boys who have passed the Sixth Standard and are between twelve and thirteen at the time of their admission). It is a school which definitely prepares for furniture and cabinet making, and other wood- working trades : FIRST SECOND THIRD YEAR YEAR YEAR English Subjects . 4 3 1J Art Drawing and Modelling .6 4J 3 Mathematics . . .6 3 lj Science and Technical Lectures 6 4 J 4 J Workshop and Drawing Office 7 15 194 (Including six hours Metal Work.) 160 MODERN VIEWS The Borough Polytechnic Institute Day School prepares principally for engineering and various metal-working trades. Courses are provided in chemistry, physics, practical geometry, machine drawing, applied mechanics, art drawing, French, German, Spanish, metal-work, woodwork, and physical training. The school is founded for the pur- pose of giving a sound preparatory training, whereby London boys will have better chances of becoming skilled workers than they have hitherto had. It is felt that whilst much attention has been paid to the preparation of boys for various clerical occupations and for the Civil Service and other similar examina- tions, the adequate training of bright boys who would be successful in various trades has been almost entirely neglected; and, further, that, owing to modern methods of manufac- ture, with the consequent narrow specialisa- tion, there is now greater need than formerly for the preparation of boys for trades on a broad basis, which will enable them to adapt themselves to changing conditions of employment and compete successfully in the industrial world. Boys are trained, therefore, not to work mechanically, but to think for themselves, in the hope that they will thus ON EDUCATION 161 be fitted to take up responsible positions later in life. During the first year the course of instruction is the same for all boys. The subjects and the number of hours devoted to each per week are as follows : Mathematics . . 5 Literary Subjects . 7 Science . . .3 Art Drawing . . 1J Workshop Practice 7 Physical Exercises . 1 J Geometry and Mechanical Drawing . . 4 During the second and third years, for those boys who decide to enter the engineer- ing trade or any branch of metal-work, the subjects and hours are as follows : SECOND YEAR. THIRD YEAR. Mathematics 5 5 Literary Subjects . Science . . . Drawing Workshop Practice Physical Exercises . 7 7 5i 4J 44 5 6i 7 Diplomas are awarded to boys who satisfac- torily complete the three years' course and pass an examination. Leeds, Liverpool, and Bootle, also, have started Trade Schools of one kind or other. Now that apprenticeship has been set aside by a large number of firms which none the less require a constant fresh supply of workers in skilled industry, the need has clearly 162 MODERN VIEWS arisen that a 'supplementary education, normal and open to every child who in- tends to take up manual labour,' shall be 'put somehow into the English system of education.' To compare notes for a moment with what is being done in Germany. Munich, under the lead of Dr Kerschensteiner, whose name is now familiar in this country, has the reputa- tion of possessing the most complete system of trade schools in the world. The keystone of the system is the compulsory day school for the apprentice, the aims of which are both industrial and civic. Each trade, more- over, has its economic and commercial aspects, and these are studied. Employers are bound by law to allow their apprentices to attend these schools for from six to ten hours a week. But this aspect of the question is tactfully handled. Some trades, for example, are slack during the winter months. In such cases the boys may attend for three hours during the summer and fourteen hours during the winter. The courses cover the whole period of appren- ticeship, and generally fall between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Even though in some cases the apprentices forfeit their pay for the hours they attend the schools, and ON EDUCATION 163 do so for three or four years, it is found that good Continuation Courses of this kind attract rather than repel. For some apprentices, who come from other towns to the Munich classes, their employers pay the cost of travelling. There are no compulsory classes at Munich after 7 p.m., the available hours being 7 to 9 a.m. and 1 to 7 p.m. (In Bavaria generally, however, the instruction of apprentices is in the evenings and on Sundays.) All take courses in commercial correspondence, book- keeping, and arithmetic, German literature, civics and hygiene, religious instruction, along with instruction in drawing, the use of tools and machinery, and practical work adapted to each apprentice's own trade. There are courses for cabinet-makers (four years, nine hours a week), butchers (five years), for bookbinders (three years), tailors (four years), for messenger boys, wagoners and drivers, and for barbers and wigmakers. All appren- tices attend the schools free of charge. Munich has also commercial schools and continuation schools for girls and women. All girls who are not attending a secondary school (even those in domestic service) must attend a con- tinuation course. 164 MODERN VIEWS 4. Vocational Aspects of Secondary School Education. Few would challenge the opinion that before a boy leaves a secondary school he should have some outlook towards a career. If he is going to the university his course there will gain, not lose, by his having some vocation in view for which he is fitting himself. A school stands in a twofold relation to the practical life of those it educates. It is always part of the duty of the school to appeal to and strengthen the scholar's prac- tical impulses. 'Unless the world is come to a conclusion that is perfectly frightful,' Carlyle said in his address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University; he foresaw that there must be some kind of scheme of education that should be 'a training in practicality at every turn.* And further, in addition to giving this general training, the school should lay itself out to discover the boy's individual bent, and do something to assist him in specific ways both in the choice of a career and in his subsequent success in that career. In America much vocational work is done in the High Schools. In the High School at New Haven, Connecticut, which the writer visited in 1911, there are no fewer than eight ON EDUCATION 165 courses, each with a different vocational aim. These are called college preparatory, scientific, academic, commercial, manual scientific, boys' manual, girls' manual, girls' scientific. The last four are taken in a department of the school which is really a Manual Training High School. The work done in the workshops attached to some of the Manual Training and other High Schools in America, although taken along with other school work, and as part of the general course, has long been so good as to compare not unfavourably with that of many Technical Schools. As proof of this, and in justification of the educational pro- cedure which rendered such a result possible, the case of the Washington High Schools may be quoted. At a time when great pressure was put upon certain workshops owing to the Spanish War, youths in the third and fourth year of their course were drafted off into the industrial workshops, and soon equalled the workshop mechanics in their earnings. The educational methods which rendered this possible apply with great force at the present moment, when the introduction of educational handwork throughout the whole of the course in publicly-provided 166 MODERN VIEWS schools is in contemplation. The superin- tendent, at the time of the writer's visit in 1900 (a man of great ability, who had held the position for many years), attributed the success of these boys (who were, as just said, taking a full school course, of which the shop- work was only one branch) to the fact that there was handwork in that city throughout all the school years from the kindergarten to the close of the High School period. 'To superimpose manual training in the upper grades without previous hand-training is loss of time, money, and power/ Boys in their third year in the High School work to the minutest fraction of an inch. This they 'could not do if the eight-year-old boy had not been trained to think through his fingers/ With regard to British Secondary Schools, little need be added to what has been said in the previous chapter on the efficiency-value of secondary school studies. Some of our greater schools are sustaining the vocational outlook, and most have now the necessary equipment. But there is one feature of the preparation of the public school which is specifically vocational in spirit and yet which cannot be right. It is the segregation in some ON EDUCATION 167 of these schools of the clever boys who are candidates for scholarly distinction. This has even been spoken of as one of the privileges of the scholarship winner, that he is thrown into the association of other clever boys of studious habits. But it really amounts to setting up an 'intellectual compartment* within the school; and tends, in the words of one of our secondary school leaders, to treat scholarship as 'a sort of exotic bloom that can only be reared in a hothouse.' It is a doubtful compliment to the boys so treated, and a still more doubtful benefit. If scholarship cannot rub shoulders with the rest of the world, the scholar loses and the world does not gain. It seems fair to say that the pride of Eton or Winchester in its university suc- cesses must submit to a heavy discount in view of the fact that they represent an intel- lectual life in which, by direct organisation, the school as a whole is not asked to share. Rugby is an example of a school which has chosen the better way 'to the gain/ it is believed, 'of the Rugby scholars, as well as to the gain of the school as a whole/ True it may be that the Oxford and Cambridge dons are in the vast majority of cases ex- Public School boys; that is, that, by selecting 168 MODERN VIEWS some of the brightest intellects of British boyhood, upon whose preparatory training an immense amount of care has been ex- pended, some great scholars are produced by the system. But a school attains its truest success only when it inter- weaves intellectual and practical equip- ment. The question of the utilisation of the land, and of agriculture as a national industry, is occupying a large place in the public mind at the present moment. There is an educational side also to this question. The Board of Agriculture is doing good work in various ways. It is financially assisting universities and colleges in England and Wales to supply technical advice to farmers, and to provide for the investigations of local agricultural prob- lems. The Board also publishes a remarkably varied series of leaflets and reports which are of much interest and value to teachers, and even to the general reader, as well as to the agriculturist. But from the point of view of the school, as yet little or nothing is done in a public way to assist the boy who would, if the chance were offered him, turn to agri- culture. Mr J. L. Paton has quite recently pointed ON EDUCATION 169 to this as a very distinct gap in our scholarship system. He points out that there are many causes conspiring at the present time to draw boys and girls from office work and from other branches of so-called head work towards work on the land and with the hand. There is the Boy Scout movement, with all the manual work it teaches (a Boy Scouts' farm, of course, exists already in Essex) ; there is the development of small holdings, and the small proprietor movement ; there is the increase of population in rural areas. These and other causes are fortunately at work to check the rush of young people to office stools and to careers of mere scholastic attainment. But there is no outlet offered in our scholarship schemes for these boys and girls drawn towards work on the land. Good agricultural schools and colleges do exist, but there is no bridge to them for the secondary school boy or girl as there is to the universities and places of academic learning. Zeal for land work, which exists more often in boys and girls than is thought, might, as Mr Paton justly thinks, with advantage be encouraged by the granting of scholarships. Nor is keenness for work on M.V.E. II 170 MODERN VIEWS the land likely to be misdirected. There are still farming districts the bulk of this book was written in one of them where fortunes of many thousands of pounds are being made by skilful farming. Rightly viewed, the vocational aspects of education have something more than a purely commercial reference. The word itself is suggestive. It contains the root-idea of 'call' and c a calling.' Educationally, this means that life and the world's work call to the boy; and that he has in almost every case both the power and the will to respond. Chivalrous impulses carry men and women through much of life's drudgery. And the first stirring of these impulses is to be found in young hearts. Vocational education will invite them, not as tools of the world's labour, but as each a power in the world's work; each willing 'to face life at last, to look into the bright face of Danger,' or in any case to take the brunt of things and face responsibility. The nineteenth century did well in the midst of its industrialism to hold up the ideal of education as a broad and liberal training. All this the twentieth century can carry ON EDUCATION 171 forward. We may adopt, in our thought alike for the individual and for the common life, all that is wise and needful In the way of vocational education, and yet be learning 'that it is ultimately not the corn raised by the man which matters, but the man fashioned by raising the corn/ 172 MODERN VIEWS CHAPTER IX THE MONTESSORI SPIRIT The child who left the game in his eagerness for knowledge has revealed him- self as a true son of that humanity which has been through the centuries the creator of scientific and civil progress. Dr MARIA MONTESSORI, in The Montessori Method. (Eng. trans.) 1. A GLANCE must be given at the most recent of the great new conceptions and developments in education, one which has aroused attention of educators in both Europe and America. It is associated with the name of Dr Maria Montessori, an Italian doctor of medicine. She has long been interested in the study of children, and has brought to bear upon the problems of education (in the first instance, the education of deficient children) the result of many years study of biology and physiology. Dr Montessori com- menced her educational experiments with children from the asylums, and with astonish- ing results. Her scholars proved themselves able to hold their own in school examinations ON EDUCATION 173 with normal children from the public schools. People were amazed at these almost miracu- lous results; but the great teacher herself says : * I was searching for the reasons which could keep the happy, healthy children of the common schools on so low a place that they could be equalled in tests of intelligence by my unfortunate pupils ! ' She accordingly sought an opportunity to test her methods with normal children. The success in some of the Montessori schools has been almost as striking as were the results with the defective children, and a very wide- spread interest has been aroused. The ten- dency throughout the country has been to speak of the adoption of the 'methods' with a wise caution; but the educational spirit behind the methods and their marked success in certain cases have ensured for them a study that will be sustained, and a discussion which will long find place and welcome in educa- tional debate. No attempt to describe the procedure in the Montessori schools can be made in the course of a few paragraphs. But at the heart of the movement is an almost inspired faith in the life-force and individual power of each child. That is the Montessori spirit. 174 MODERN VIEWS (a) In Every Possible Way the Child is Allowed to Live His Own Life. He receives comparatively little guidance from the school directors. The apparatus is provided; the directress is present and participates in the children's life; but the 'lessons' are indi- vidual, and brevity is one of their chief characteristics. In this way collective lessons have been almost abolished; for the small children are free, and are not obliged to remain in their places quiet and ready to listen to the teacher, or to watch what she is doing. At once we realise that we are face to face not only with an almost new conception of teaching, but also with a special set of con- ditions. To attempt this in an ordinary English Infants' Department would be to court failure. 'Classes' if they can be so called in the Montessori system must be limited to about twenty children; there must be plenty of space in which the children may move freely and may group and re-group themselves (certainly not less than that which is at present allowed for fifty or sixty children); and the furniture must be as light as possible. These are only the outworks of the method, but they are clearly implied in it. ON EDUCATION 175 (b) The Child, thus Liberated, Learns by a Method of Direct Observation. For instance, he can perceive a square tablet and fit it into its corresponding space as an inset; that is, he can compare the square form of the tablet with the similar form of the sunk space into which it fits. His 'lesson' is comprised in the sentence from the teacher : ' This is a square.' The rest is done by the child. Or, in teaching colours, the teacher may say : 4 Look at this ! This is red.' And, again, 'This is blue/ 'Give me the red !' 'Give me the blue ! * If the child fails to give the blue, the teacher does not repeat and insist; 'she smiles, gives the child a friendly caress, and takes away the colours.' The work, in a word, is the child's work, not the teacher's. Learning comes by his observing, not by her insisting. The result is that children learn quickly, and the teachers do not tire. The child is spontaneous, and the teacher is natural. 'When the teacher shall have touched, in this way, soul for soul, each one of her pupils, awakening and inspiring the life within them . . . there will come a day when she herself shall be filled with wonder to see that all the children obey her with gentleness and affection, not only ready but 176 MODERN VIEWS intent, at a sign from her.' The order becomes perfect; 'and, if the teacher, speaking in a low voice, says to the children, "Rise, pass several times round the room on the tips of your toes, and then come back again to your place in silence," all together, as a single person, the children rise, and follow the order with the least possible noise.' (c) These First Steps in Learning are thus Steps in Self -realisation. The child has the constant satisfaction of discovering his own powers. By skilfully devised apparatus, which invites the child to handle, look, or listen, lessons are given in the discrimination of weight and temperature, shape and texture, visual form and colour, tones of voice, words, sounds of music. Practice is given in handi- ness by the use of various kinds of material. The child learns to button (by hand or by using a hook), to lace, to tie bows, to use hooks and eyes. He realises that he is learning to do something, that he is gaining power. Again, in preference to some of the purely symbolic games of the kindergarten, the children are taught to perform real acts of social service. They wait in turn upon each other at meal- time; little four-year-old waiters laying the knives and forks and spoons, carrying trays ON EDUCATION 177 with water-glasses and tureens of soup all without mistake or accident. During the meal-time they watch assiduously; not a child empties his soup-plate without being offered more; if he is ready for the next course, a 'waiter' carries off his plate. 'Every one/ says Dr Montessori 'is deeply moved by the sight I have just described, which evidently results from the development of energies latent in the depths of the human soul.' Gardening, too, as English and other experi- ments have shown, opens out a wide range of interests through the child's own activity. Children from four years of age work with the hoe, sow the seed, water the ground, and watch the growth of their plants. In another quarter of the garden, broods of chicks or pigeons appear where the children have been tending the birds; or tiny rabbits are seen in the hutch where the big rabbits have been fed. And all this, not as nature study though incidentally it is this still less as industrial education though the course of education through sense and muscle is felt to be preparatory also to this but as an un- folding of interests and an attainment of complete experience. 178 MODERN VIEWS Gymnastics supplement these activities, breathing and articulation exercises being especially studied. (d) All is Animated by a High Value set upon the Individual Life, and by Faith in its Possibilities. 'Before the social crusade of the present day lies the problem of life' Dr Montessori, as would be expected, cares too supremely for liberty and power of life not to adjust all her ideas of discipline to these ends. She still hears of the 'breaking' of the child's will as though the best education for the will of the child were to learn to yield it up to the will of his elders. This leads, she believes, to childish timidity, the moral malady of a will that could not develop. The remedy for the lack of individuality in the scholars, so often lamented at educational congresses, is only to be found in methods which 'enfranchise human development' and avoid 'repression of will-power and force of character.' This faith in the reality and depth of the child's inner life shows itself in many ways. Dr Montessori has the artist's sensitiveness to the effects of contrast. The children's self-activity, for example, is thrown into bolder relief by what are really forms of play, depending upon stillness and silence. ON EDUCATION 179 In silence they await the whispered call of the teacher, now to one and now to another, and show much pleasure when their own names are called. This is not an isolated discovery of the power of silence and of stillness in the home, in school, and in life. But the ' Houses of Childhood ' have hit upon charming ways of accentuating it. Almost the last word in Dr Montessori's book is this: 'Truly our social life is too often only the darkening and the death of the natural life that is in us.' It is for the sake of guarding that spiritual fire and keeping the real nature unspoiled that she trains the little children to enjoy silence and stillness, and to experience, however gradually and unconsciously, their subtle influence. (e) All this is not without Effect upon the Parents of the Children and Their Homes. The quarter of San Lorenzo, in Rome, was chosen for the first 'children's houses,' a quarter notorious throughout the city; for the newspapers contained 'almost daily accounts of its wretched happenings.' Some of these scenes Dr Montessori does not hesitate to set before us in all their lurid and sham^- provoking brutality. But even here she believed was the power of life, and a 180 MODERN VIEWS possibility, if only the right conditions were introduced, of a far higher self-realisation. Placed in a large dwelling-house, the rooms of which had been transformed into something more home-like by the Roman Association of Good Building, the parents are given a direct interest in their 'children's house.' Not only may they leave their children there when going out to work for the day, but they are given to understand that the money which they save by the care they take of the rest of the buildings maintains this room for the children and makes it theirs; they also have to undertake that their children shall come to the school clean, and that they will co- operate with the directress (who lives there !) in the educational work. 'Among these almost savage people, into these houses where at night no one dared to go about unarmed, there has come not only to teach, but to live the very life they live, a gentlewoman of culture, an educator by profession, who dedicates her time and her life to those about her ! ' And the gracious service is not unrewarded. The school is put within the house; the school is in the collective ownership of the parents; the directress is always willing to give advice and ON EDUCATION 181 help to the mothers; the mothers may go in at any hour of the day to 'watch, to admire, or to meditate upon the life there.' Little wonder that there are delicate and thoughtful attentions shown by the mothers in response ! 'They often leave sweets or flowers upon the sill of the school-room window, as a silent token, almost religiously given/ The advan- tage to the common schools, in thus forestalling the mothers' interest in their children's life and work there, when in three years they pass on into them, is not over- looked by those who plan and direct these children's houses. Once, again, the educational * method,' as Dr Montessori describes it, is being applied in conditions totally different from those which are found in our ordinary schools. So far as reaching the tenement dwellers was con- cerned, the crucial fact was the taking of the school to them, and making it in a sense theirs. The children were taken charge of for the whole day, and the directress even lives in the tenement house as a friend and counsellor. It is fair to note, however, that Mr Holmes, (See his pamphlet Educational Pamphlets, No. 24), found the system working more satisfac- torily in his judgment in the lowest class of 182 MODERN VIEWS a girls' school for well-to-do children, and in a convent school. Madame Pujol-Sejalas, the directress of the Montessori 'Houses of Childhood* in Paris, also speaks of a school in England, at King's Langley, to which she had sent her own little girl, and which was on very much the same principle. (/) The Motive, like that of all True Educa- tion, is that of the Betterment of Life. We often hear and read that society educates its young life in order to reproduce its own standards of well-being, and to impress them upon the rising generation. This would mean casting the next generation in the mould of the last in order to make our sons as fine fellows as their fathers are ! Dr Montessori prefers the ideal of the woman of Zarathustra : * To create a son ! A son better, more perfect, stronger, than any created heretofore ! ' Hence the houses of childhood have a broad out- look upon life. They are not self-contained centres of instruction : their influence irradi- ates home and neighbourhood. 'Scientific pedagogy will seek in vain to better the new generation if it does not succeed in influencing also the environment within which this new generation grows/ ON EDUCATION 183 It is highly probable that the world would have given far less heed to this notable piece of work were it not for the results attained in reading and writing. The children read and write at four years of age, and come to it by a process of their own. The writing turns upon the discovery (which Mr Ebenezer Cooke also made, and which became the basis some years ago of an alternative system of drawing authorised by the Board of Education) that a child scribbles naturally in curves. Instead of beginning with strokes, therefore, large curvilinear letters are made. They are cut out in sand-paper, and then mounted on card. By touching the letters and tracing their form with the fingers, the children learn the muscular movements required in writing them. The acquisition, helped doubtless by the comparative regularity of the Italian script, is astonishingly rapid. All the acts necessary to writing having been mastered, the child discovers some day that he can write, and he begins with whole words. Reading follows later. The work in these infant schools is planned in five stages. At the fourth stage, the child counts, and begins to touch and name the letters of the alphabet; at the fifth he writes 184 MODERN VIEWS words and phrases spontaneously, and reads from slips prepared by the directress. The inventress was as little disposed as an American kindergarten teacher would be to teach reading and writing to children under six years of age. She was practically forced to it by the children themselves, seconded by their mothers. The doubt will still linger in many minds as to whether something less formal, less mentally exciting when acquired though the children learn easily enough might not continue to be the basis of the children's studies in form and exercises in movement; whether symmetry and rhythm, the bases of design, might not be in the long run more educative and more profitable than the conventional symbols. In these early days all that is justifiable is to note, with the barest comment, what Dr Montessori herself says : 'The children seemed to demand some conclusion of the exercises, which had already developed them intellectually in a most sur- prising way. They knew how to dress and undress, and to bathe themselves; they knew how to sweep the floors, dust the furniture, put the room in order, to open and close boxes, to manage the keys in the various locks; they could replace the objects in the ON EDUCATION 185 cupboard in perfect order, could care for the plants; they knew how to observe things, and how to "see" objects with their hands. A number of them came to us and frankly demanded to be taught to read and write. And the faith of the mothers, that their little ones would from us be able to learn to read and write without fatigiie, made a great impression upon me.' The comment which these words suggest has been already broached. It turns upon the list of things which the children have learned to do. The exercises, which are here cited as finding their natural conclusion in writing and reading, will appear to some teachers to err on the side of immediate utility, and to leave more highly educative forms of spontaneous activity too much out of the teacher's reckoning. Drawing, model- ling, dancing, acting, listening to stories, learning poetry, have been mentioned as notable omissions. Dr Montessori, however, is the last to wish her method to be adopted by any en bloc. The utmost that any one, interested in experimenting along the lines of her discoveries, should aim at is expressed by Madame Pujol-Sgalas, when she says of her Paris schools: 'The animating spirit 186 MODERN VIEWS is the same, not the details/ Many of Dr Montessori's devices are highly ingenious, and when the results are before us it is not surprising that much is said about the ' didac- tic apparatus ! ' It is worth studying by the ordinary teacher for what it suggests even more than for what it is. But the roots of the system, and the secret alike of its inven- tive discoveries and of its success, are in Madame Montessori's whole-hearted belief in the child's powers of self-realisation. It is of less importance to the teachers of the world as a 'method' than as a manifestation of the new educational spirit. It is a token of the life and faith which are entering into educa- tion, and which are destined to make the education of the young in the twentieth century greater, alike in purpose and result, than the world has hitherto seen. 2. This same spirit, fortunately, is finding expression in many ways and in many lands. A striking example in elementary education is that described under the name 'a school in Utopia* in Mr Holmes' s book, What Is and What Might Be. The author tells of a village school (its exact locality need not be divulged) of a hundred and twenty children, whose head teacher has 'revolutionised the life, not ON EDUCATION 1ST of the school only, but of the whole village/ Activity and happiness are the salient features of the school life, in a county which is pro- verbial for the dullness of its rustics. The source of the happiness is the scholars* 'unimpeded energy.' 'And the activity of the Utopian child is his own activity. It is a fountain which springs up in himself, else, to give one instance, how could it happen that when the three assistant teachers were one day absent through illness, and the head teacher was detained by one of the school managers for half an hour, she found them aH at work when she entered, one o the elder scholars taking charge of the lower classes f This is only possible as a result of the higher discipline which is pervasive, but of which no one is ever very conscious. Some ten or twelve years ago the children attending the school were dull and lifeless; now they are bright and overflowing with life, because their better and higher nature has been allowed to evolve itself freely, naturally, and under favourable conditions/ (It must be said, in passing, that one hears of rural schools in America where transformations of a like kind have taken place; here the one example will serve.) The fundamental faith of the school 188 MODERN VIEWS is in the child's expansive instincts, his 'many- sided effort to grow. The teacher's essential part is to give these instincts fair play and free play.' It is education through self-realisa- tion. The nature of the child, that is to say, impels him (1) to talk and listen, (2) to wish to act (in the dramatic sense), (3) to draw and to model, (4) to dance and to sing, (5) to desire to know the why of things, (6) to wish to construct things. Communicativeness and spontaneous drama- tising are as fundamental in the child's nature and, therefore, in his education, as curiosity and constructiveness. The oral lesson is the great occasion for the play of the communicative instinct; the children being encouraged to ask questions and to express their own thoughts. With classes of thirty, however, which is apparently the average number in this * Utopian' school, since there are four teachers, much is possible which is impossible, and, indeed, almost ceases to be natural with twice that number. The head teacher, moreover, makes a habit of meeting, fifteen or twenty minutes before the time for opening school in the morning, such children as wish to talk to her about things that interest them. ON EDUCATION 189 Then, as many are now discovering, what a change it is from the dull and the formal to the living and the real when history becomes a source of simple drama rather than a string of dates ! The artistic impulses, again, with which all normal children are endowed, are used to give warmth and intensity to life in school and out of school. For it is understood that in order to draw with brush and pencil, children must learn to see and admire; and to care for music and find the power of song, they must learn to listen and to love. Certainly, the influence of music in children's lives has not yet been sufficiently allowed for, though it is known to have salutary physical and intellectual effects, as well as to be regula- tive of the emotional tendencies. In this school, the teacher, to use her own words, 'sets many of the children's lessons to music.' * When they are doing needlework or drawing or any other quiet lesson, she plays high-class music to them, which forms a background to their efforts and their thoughts, and which gradually weaves itself, on the one hand into the outward and visible work that they are doing, and on the other hand into the mysteri- ous tissue of their inward life.' In effect, instead of the teacher correcting the 190 MODERN VIEWS children's drawings, they are led to use their own free power and to correct them them- selves. Obedience is a feature of the Utopian school, just as it is of the 'houses of childhood.' It is the life of the school, rather than something imposed upon it, or even consciously present in it. Each child finds in it a way of attain- ment rather than a way of reluctant sub- mission. Effort and mastery are called for; the child's work is still the essential element in his education. But it is work in answer to an appeal to, and as an expression of, his own power. Reading, writing, and arith- metic relate themselves to one or other of the 'expansive' instincts, and are mastered as means to ends beyond themselves. The scholar finds in work a joy like that which we find in the work which we do best. And this joy follows the boys and girls into humdrum duties of their village life when schooldays are over. Even if here and there the author of What Is and What Might Be unconsciously dips his pen in the ink of the idealist, the main truth he is presenting holds good. 'The Utopian children/ says the author, ' arc by many degrees the happiest that I have ON EDUCATION 191 met in an elementary school, and I must therefore conclude that all is well with them. . . . Last year one of the boys, on leaving school, found employment in a large field on the slopes of the hills, where he had to collect flints and pile them in heaps, his wage for this dull and tiresome work being no more than fivepence a day. But he found the work neither dull nor tiresome; for as he marched up and down the field, collecting and piling the flints with cheery goodwill, he sang his Folk Songs with all the spontaneous happiness of a soaring lark.' This school is not referred to here as an isolated example. It is an instance and summary of good things that are happening in all directions. 3. We should not look in vain for secondary schools fulfilling similar conditions. Glancing back for a moment to a great nineteenth century master, it was through his faith in 'life and truth' 'truth' meaning to him the giving of a real education to every boy that Thring raised the small grammar school at Uppingham, with its poor premises and few ill-behaved boys, to a position in which it ranked with the great public schools of the country. He had faith in the Schoolboy, 192 MODERN VIEWS whether backward and diffident, or promising and brilliant and he believed, therefore, in the mission of the school. 'A message/ he said, 'plainly delivered by common lips in time of war may save an empire, if it is indeed a message/ His ' message ' was that education has human values, that it adds to the zest and joy of living, and that the boy is ready and waiting to put forth his strength and his skill. In his view, 'lives, not lessons/ were the master's chief concern; and he himself knew how to find the 'spark of fire in the coarsest of human clay/ Three striking innovations, now widely adopted, we owe to him : the gymnasium and the gymnastic master, music as part of the school training, and the school 'mission/ The school was thus to be a centre of earnest wholesome life; a place where mind is 'unlocked/ not the memory merely loaded. The outstanding strength of all our great schools is the part played by the boys them- selves in fashioning their life. This safe- guards spontaneity, and is the key to the educative influence of the schools. Mind, however, needs to be 'unlocked/ and interest in the world aroused. Hence, when France and Germany look to us for models and write ON EDUCATION 193 in praise of our secondary 'public school' education, it is to schools which offer a broad, all-round life, and whose world faces the real world, that they customarily look. M. Demolins is the best known of these writers. Dr Leitz is another. There are secondary schools, in which, without loss of what is best in the public school spirit, practical out- door work is as real as the play; where recrea- tion of lighter kinds and the pursuit of hobbies have an ample place assigned to them; and the school work is thorough without being oppressive. The boys have interests upon which they will converse with a visitor. And before a boy leaves the school, he almost invariably knows his bent, and has made up his mind as to his life-calling ; probably he has already, through his leisure occupations and in other ways, done something to prepare himself for the next stage of his career. The strength of such schools, as one of these school-founders has expressed it, is belief in the 'possibilities of English boyhood, when suffered to grow naturally and harmoniously/ 4. The 'moral' of these brief glances at the new educational life and power which are making themselves felt, is that Britain's gain lies in the direction of a completer faith in M.V.E. I 194 MODERN VIEWS the rich native endowment of her sons. British personality is far from being a matter of school-room manufacture. None the less, for our many-sided life and multiplying interest we need to have our powers awakened early. From a purely educational standpoint, there are two directions in which this higher note of care for individuality and self-realisa- tion needs to be struck. These are the liberating of the teacher and the liberating of the child. If, in order to set free the life and develop the power of quick vision and alert response in the childhood and youth of the nation, it becomes necessary greatly to increase the number of teachers in nearly every type of school, and also the number of training colleges, the investment will be a sound one. One hears, e.g., in some places of children being prematurely promoted in order to raise the higher classes to the statute minimum of sixty. But when this leads to scholars of four grades of attainment being bracketed together in one class and under one teacher, the need for more teachers and for a really more liberal and liberating educa- tion for the child is evident. Of equal importance is the liberating of the teacher. Until the teachers of England are ON EDUCATION 195 free, England is not free; for they impart of their spirit to every child. To say that the teachers of the great proportion of the children attending our elementary schools are not free at present, and have no sort of clear or sure outlook towards freedom, towards * liberty to teach,' is to assert the commonplace. Trained teachers tell of the disappointment that is 'general,' a disappointment which makes the 'struggle' to be alive as a teacher doubly difficult. The Code, they say, counsels the development of the individuality of the child; and they personally realise that their work should be to give each child freedom to develop along his own lines, 'interfering' only when the child is side-tracking. But think of it, say they, 'developing the individuality of sixty children ! ' 'I am willing,' says one correspondent, 'to wear myself out in doing so, but think of the rude awakening. In each subject our work is judged by experts. We have a drawing inspector, a drill inspector, a music inspector, a hand-and-eye-training inspector, and others/ One is reminded, in passing, of the words of a Training College student some years ago. After five examinations (whole or part week) in academic subjects, in addition to examination 196 MODERN VIEWS and inspection in professional subjects, she said, with a pardonable sigh : ' We seem to be always being examined.' In her case, there was a sixth academic examination to follow within the same twelve months. Now, perhaps, she is with equally good reason saying : ' We seem to be always being inspected.' Again, 'for some time the rule in drawing, especially in brush and crayon work, has been to "mass" the copy. The child sees the leaf, etc., not as an outline but as a mass, and we teach him to draw it accordingly.' Now comes the 'specialist.' He finds the lower classes doing crayon work, in harmony with the recommended method. But as it does not represent his personal view of the matter, all has to be changed. No psychological reason is given; but 'next day word was sent that outlines must be made. It will be thus until we have a change of specialist.' Now these extracts from a letter coming spontaneously from an old student have a meaning. The teacher himself interprets the situation thus : ' In most cases it is woe betide the teacher or the child who dares to exert his individuality.' Granted, we all have much to learn. Yet there is ample room ON EDUCATION 197 for a little more belief in the willingness and the life-force of both teacher and child as the only agencies that can produce actual results. It would not matter so much though an in- spector knew comparatively little about the type of the education he is inspecting, and the actual conditions of the work, if he knew how to come into a class and look for some- thing good to speak about, and so encourage with a word and a smile both teacher and scholar. He would then be a living force. And if he does know something, and gives advice or makes a suggestion with sympa- thetic insight into the conditions, his advice will in almost all cases be welcomed. For there is keenness for the work, willingness to learn how to do it better, care for the children, and no little patriotic aspiration, awaiting encouragement in the class-rooms of our elementary schools. Were it not so, there would be no hope; for vitality can but be quickened; it cannot be imposed. In such delicate matters as the relationship between a teacher and his class, the building up of school-tone and school-spirit, the awakening of enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits, we need always to begin by respecting the life that is already there. 198 MODERN VIEWS Is there any age after which it is too late to hope for the awakening of the deeper personality for which education stands? America gives us two striking examples. There is the Roycroft Shop, an industrial colony in New York State, with Elbert Hubbard at its head, to whom plain folk come seeking work, and he lets them do the work they can do best. Some are young people who were expelled from school; some are said to be deficient mentally and morally; some have been in prison. But if they have nothing else to do, and are not wanted else- where, they gravitate to the Shop, where 'they are given every opportunity to develop their energies/ The various departments of book-making (in all its branches), furniture making, even some art work, have arisen through there being c some one who could not do that so he was allowed to do what he could.' The result has been a renewed faith in the reality and worth of spontaneous human energy, and the discovery that this faith applied to manufacturing is a very good policy. The other example is that of the now famous George Junior Republic, in which, by allowing a free development of the social, civic, and industrial impulses the ON EDUCATION 199 proportion of the 'Junior Republic* criminals is no greater than that of the criminal popula- tion in the American Republic itself; although all the young people, when they enter upon the Junior Republic life, are either actual criminals, or in dangerous surroundings from which this unique reforming agency gives them deliverance. (A short account of a visit to the Junior Republic is given as an appendix to Moral Education in American Schools. Volume X. of Special Reports on Educational Subjects.) Briefly to sum up the present chapter. All truly educative methods have their worth in fulfilling the two-fold aim of indi- vidual self-realisation and social efficiency. Dr Montessori's view of man is that he is moving on to the possession of greater powers and completer efficiency. This is the creative aspect of her work. If, e.g. we do not give full scope to sense capacity, ' we isolate man from his environment/ But by giving play to the life-force that is in him man may continue to evolve with his environment, for his endowment is, in fact, vastly greater than the demands that have hitherto been made upon it. In infancy this larger fact of adaptation is, of course, only 'indirectly touched/ Self- 200 MODERN VIEWS realisation is the first and direct aim. Joy in life and power in work will follow. 'I have seen here,' Dr Montessori writes, 'men of affairs, great politicians, preoccupied with problems of trade and of State . . . fall into a simple forgetfulness of self . . . affected by this vision of the human soul growing in its true nature, the infancy of humanity in a higher stage of evolution than our own.' For family, nation, and empire, this is a note worth sustaining. And that nation has its future secure which makes this higher evolution its chief care. ON EDUCATION 201 CHAPTER X THE CHILD AND THE SCHOOL The child is greater than all statistics, still wild and free, notwithstanding the harness of the school, the uniformity of repetition, and the confinement of the class. DOUGLAS PEPLER, in The Care Committee, the Child, and the Parent. IN focussing, as we are now to do, the whole problem of education in the child, many questions affecting human welfare and human progress will crowd together in the space of a few pages. The whole problem of the future centres in the child; the possessor of the blood of the race; the only possible transmitter of the life and genius of the race ! No reasoned treatment of the theme could conceivedly suffer from over-emphasis. Viewed from the standpoint of fifty years hence, the child is well-nigh all there is. Side by side with this simple truism lives the passion of man to perpetuate that in which he believes. If we believe in man, in the nation, 202 MODERN VIEWS in the quickening of the nation's heart through empire, we thereby believe implicitly in the child, the builder of the new society which is to be the nation of the morrow, and the guardian of its empire. We can only fulfil our two-fold instinct to perpetuate what seems to us good, and to pave the way for that which shall be better, in and through our service to the child. We serve the future in him. Accordingly, the organisation of school systems, the planning of curricula, devices for discipline and moral training, must all bend to this first and chief consideration. There is but one principle that can guide us. It is that we learn to know and to respect the life that is already there. And here we have the pivot-truth on which all study of education turns. The child is our real teacher of educational method; and we follow a true path in proportion as we understand, and follow the lead of, the life that is already his. There is no known way of fitting the child to a school that does not fit him. At this point we strike upon a discussion still occupying an almost central place in educational debate. Does this view of the ON EDUCATION 203 child open out into sentiment? Is its out- come 'peptonised education* and 'soft peda- gogy'? The alternatives are put, and each, in a context of its own, is advocated by Mr Dooley, who is 'philosopher' enough not to be afraid of contradicting himself in stating two sides of a question when both are true. 'We send the childer to school/ he says in one place, 'as if 'twas a summer garden where they go to be amused instead iv a pinitinchry where they're sint f r th' original sin. . . . Well, afther they have learned in school what they ar-re licked f r larnin' in th* back-yard that is, squashin* mud with their hands they're conducted up thro' a channel iv free an' beautiful thought till they're r-ready f'r colledge.' . . . Mr Dooley then pictures such a one presenting himself: 'if he's not sthrong enough to look f'r high honors as a middle-weight pugilist, he goes into the thought departmint. Th' prisident takes him into a Turkish room, gives him a cigareet an* says : " Me dear boy, what special branch iv larnin' wud ye like to be studied f'r ye by our compitint profissor?" ' 'Whereas,' adds the philosopher, 'it was the being at school, and havin' to get things to heart without askin* th' meanin* iv them, an* 204 MODERN VIEWS goin' to school cold an* comin' home hungry, that made th' man iv me ye see before ye.' At other times he questions it out differently. 'What d'ye know about thim little wans that ye have so carefully reared be lavin' thim in th' mornin' befure they get up an' losin' ye'er temper with thim at night whin ye come home fr'm wurruk. . . . I've often wondered what a little boy thinks about us. . . . We wake him up in the mornin' when he wants to sleep. We fire him off to school just about th' time iv day whin any wan ought to be out iv dures. He trudges off to a brick buildin'; an' a tired teacher tells him a lot iv things he hasn't any inthrest in at all, like how many times sivin goes into a hundred an' nine, and who was King iv England in thirteen twenty-two, an' where is Kazabazoo on the map. He has to set there most iv th' pleasant part iv th' day with sixty other kids, an' ivry time he thries to do anything that seems right to him . . . th' sthrange lady or gintleman that acts as his keeper swoops down on him an' makes him feel like a criminal. To'rds evenin', if he's been good an' repressed all his nacharal instincts, he's allowed to go home an' chop some wood. . . . Maybe we're both wrong in ON EDUCATION 205 the way we look at each other, us an' th' childer.' There must evidently be a way of harmon- ising contrary opinions which are both right. The truth is that, though contrary, iiifey are not contradictory. The child does not need bribing; and frightening him is no part of his education. On the contrary, he finds pleasure in real effort; is interested in some- thing that means a fight. Every healthy child is ready for the mood of attack. For him, as for us, 'life is a happy war, but it is a very unhappy peace.' For him, as for us, 'there is no pacific method of reading the riddle of human happiness. Solviturpugnando.' With humorous insight the head of one of our modern universities has described primary education as learning to do things we do not like, and secondary education as learning to look as if we liked them. Allowing something for differences of temperament and endow- ment, it is true of the average healthy child that he craves to put forth his strength, whether of body, intellect, or will. And the invitation to do so is a compliment to which even those not naturally of an active temper seldom, if ever, turn a deaf ear. There is a middle way, therefore, between 'soft' and 206 MODERN VIEWS 'hard* pedagogy, between a 'peptonised' and a wholly indigestible mental diet. It is the way of a stimulating interest, of the nature and methods of which we gain our truest con- ceptions the more completely we allow for the life impulses within the child. 'The deepest thing in a child is the striving to be himself, his very self. And the first and great commandment is : Respect that in the child which impels him to live his own life in his own way.' The name of Colonel Francis Parker will, without much doubt, be linked with that of Horace Mann in all future histories of America's educational development in the nineteenth century. The writer was present, in 1900, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 'new education' movement in America, which, as superintendent of schools at Quincey in Massachusetts from 1875 to 1885, Colonel Parker had practically set on foot. At that meeting, which was addressed, amongst others, by Presidents Murray Butler and G. Stanley Hall, and the late Dr W. T. Harris, Colonel Parker described many things which were new twenty-five years before, but which have since become familiar : * The spelling-book was laid upon the shelf. Spelling was learned ON EDUCATION 207 by the Quincey children in the same way that the human race learned to talk, by writing correctly and continually. Learning by heart condensed and dessicated statements in geo- graphy and history was to some extent eliminated. Geography began with the real earth, and "mud pies" were introduced. . . . The systematic cultivation of selfishness by bribery per cents., material rewards, and prizes was banished. The old-fashioned, stiff, unnatural order was broken up. The torture of sitting perfectly still with nothing to do was ruled out, and in came an order of work, with all the whispering and noise compatible with the best results. The child began to feel that he had something to do for himself; that he was a member of society, with the responsibilities that accompany such an important position/ In order to test the results of this new departure, and to answer criticisms, an examination was held through- out the schools of the county, town by town. The examination was in the three R's, geog- raphy, and history. The results were pub- lished in pamphlet form, and Quincey had by far the highest percentage, leading in every- thing except mental arithmetic, and in that it stood third or fourth. One member of the 208 MODERN VIEWS Quincey Schools Committee gave $500 to have specimens of the penmanship, the composition, and the number work litho- graphed. The force that proved so successful at Quincey is the same the world over. It is the life and power and faith in the life and power of the child. 'Life,' as such different men as Nietzsche and Thring have taught us, 'is whatever may surpass itself.' And to humanity, says Nietzsche, is ceaselessly addressed the maxim ; ' Become what thou art.' 2. Education as Co-operation with the Child's Native Endowment. What the child cannot learn we cannot teach him. In all probability the world will wake up some day to the waste of time of which it has been guilty in trying to teach things which the child was not ready to learn. Nature deter- mines times and seasons in a way that no educational Code or School Committee can control. Water will no more flow uphill, than real knowledge into an unready mind. The fact that native or instinctive tenden- cies are the base on which the whole fabric of acquired knowledge and power is built is now so universally admitted that the reference ON EDUCATION 209 Here may be of the briefest. One or two per- fectly general points may be mentioned, because of their importance to the child both now and in his later youth and manhood. One fact to be noted in this connection is that though instinct is given in its tendency and direction, the force of its play depends largely upon bodily nutrition and vigour. From him that hath not is taken away even that which he hath. A richly-endowed organism will function but feebly, if the body is insufficiently nourished with suitable food and fresh air. The effects of ill-nutrition in childhood are very far-reaching. As Rousseau said : * The weaker the body is, the more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it obeys.' From health and vigour of body spring the love of life; and 'love of life is the foundation of moral health.' A second general consideration is one which has to do with the effects of school. The school, almost unavoidably, puts a check upon the natural activities of healthy animal life. This is noted by Professor Darroch, as by many others. 'Our school system, which requires that the child should restrain his instinctive tendencies to action, and for certain hours each day assume a more or less 210 MODERN VIEWS passive and cramped attitude, is also pre- judicial to the development and free play of the organs of the body which have entrusted to them the discharge of certain functional activities.' The play-interval during each school period is a concession in the right direction. The child's instinctive energies need to be kept active if school work is to proceed 'smoothly, without stumbling, and in a prevailing way/ And, further, the basal instinctive life needs to be kept strong in man, in order that the ever-increasing demands made upon him for adaptation may be satisfactorily met. It is the life which is strong at its base which has elasticity and spring. Proofs of the effects in school life and work of improved physical opportunities are always at hand. In a paper read at the International Health Exhibition as far back as 1884, an experiment tried by the late Mr Charles Paget, at one time Member of Parliament for Nottingham, was described. There was a village school on his estate at Ruddington. He was not satisfied with the general progress which the boys were making, and he provided for them a large garden. The boys were then divided into two sections. One of these ON EDUCATION 211 continued to do the ordinary school work; the other section worked in the school only half the time, devoting the other half to working in the garden. At the end of a term the gardening boys excelled the others in every respect in conduct, in diligence, and in lessons. There have been similar results elsewhere. Had the gardening boys only drawn level with the others, who of us is in doubt which school experience he would prefer to have had for himself? Something more than health follows from a well-developed physique. Springs of ancestrally stored-up energy well up to the surface, which other- wise would have remained below the surface and been lost. These springs fill the reservoirs whence personality itself is sustained and strengthened. A true education is to a large extent an evoking and utilising of instinct. We do not impose an education; we conduct an educa- tion. The word education does not mean, as it has often been said to mean, * drawing out from' the learner. There is no preposition 'from' either in the English or in the Latin. To 'educate' means to 'bring up* or Mead forth' the child. We do this by respecting and utilising the life that is already there, 212 MODERN VIEWS There is always an instinctive life that is worth developing. And we do not really educate until we both find the child and care for him. The very way that some teachers say * lads' and * fellows/ and others 'children,* is educative in this sense. It wakes up some- thing in the scholar, because it is a conscious call to something that is within him; it calls out the instinctive impulses of comradeship, the readiness to be and to do, and to follow a strong lead. 8. Some Specific Physical Conditions affect- ing the ChilcCs Education. That there are physical conditions which radically affect the education a child can receive is a fact, on every hand admitted and allowed for. The Board of Education sets limits to over- crowding, and makes their observance a con- dition of its grants. But much more needs yet to be done on these lines. There are still very many class-rooms far too small for the number of children for whom seating accom- modation is found. In some of them the teacher has not reasonable room in which to stand before the class. Again, how often are rows of children to be seen standing wearily upon the forms behind, and at the sides of a class, in order to have a ON EDUCATION 213 satisfactory view of what is going on before them? At this point, too, passing reference must be made to a severe handicap upon the work of the schools which might with ease be remedied. Many of our town and city schools are built right up to the street. The crowded rooms make it necessary to have the windows open. Yet the streets often have granite setts and lumbering traffic. The voice-strain upon the teachers, the ear-strain upon the scholars, and the distracting effect upon all will be evident to the most casual reader. It is right that a more noiseless paving should be used in front of churches which are used on one day of the week when there is almost no traffic. Is it not right and necessary in the case of the schools used five hours each day? Some paving committees have shown themselves peculiarly impervious to appeal. Yet the waste of the Education Committee's money is self-evident, and the physical injury to teachers and the hindrance inflicted upon scholars are allowed to continue. With regard to street cries and barrel-organ playing under school windows during school hours, the chief-constable and Watch Committee are sometimes willing to intervene. 214 MODERN VIEWS These are one or two examples by the way which show that education and school are not quite equivalent terms. There are conditions of education, some of them entirely public in their character and all attainable, without which the crowded day school may become a centre of assorted hardships rather than a centre of human power and life. Yet, without waiting for favourable conditions, work is going on in hundreds of schools and school-rooms, of which no one hears, but for which the world is unspeakably richer. By scholarly tradition in Scotland, by comradely impulses in South Britain, and in many other ways, the school child's teacher is in many cases, outside of his own family, the child's best friend. Opportunities devised by teachers for the physical training and welfare of children are common in connection with the Elementary schools of our large towns. Schools' competitions for football challenge cups and swimming shields are in this way sustained; and even school caretakers, who are often ex-army men, will train the tug-of- war squadron from their school for the annual sports. Girls and boys alike are frequently members of life-saving societies, and some become excellent swimmers before they reach ON EDUCATION 215 fourteen. City and borough councils are usually eager to co-operate. For example, in Manchester, schoolboys under thirteen who can swim eight lengths of the bath, and boys under fourteen who can swim twenty lengths, are given free swimming tickets for twelve months by the Corporation. With respect to our secondary schools, the tendency to criticise the devotion of scholars and teachers to invigorating games may easily run to extremes. Other things being equal, the master or mistress who is keen about games is obviously preferable to the one that is not. And, even other things not being quite equal, it is so. We have been told till we are almost mesmerised into believing it, that to sit at one end of a log with a Mark Hopkins at the other end of it is a liberal education in itself. We can surely believe that to sit before a master or a mistress of vigorous physique, with the stamp of athleticism upon their bearing and its ring in their voice, counts, during those mysterious prophetic years of adolescence in the liberat- ing of racial instinct, racial health, and personal power. British women teachers, and the girls they lead, will view lightly the preference of a famous danseuse for the 216 MODERN VIEWS ball-room as compared with the hockey-field; they will not, and need not, believe that success in the latter means the slightest risk of diminished success in the former; and, even if it did, they would choose the way of power. Physical power is the basis of all power. It unlocks the floodgates of ancestral strength; it builds together sinew and fibre, and makes for a firmness of physical texture which is one of nature's ways to moral strength, and almost its counterpart. It quickens vitality and finds courses for the blood. It needs no saying that efficiency-values and equipment for vocation of whatever kind run along these lines. The early co-ordina- tion of sense and muscle which some games imply, and the habit of quick decision and corresponding action which others cultivate, are valuable as preparatory to almost all practical pursuits. Patriotic appeals for the means to train athletes to break records at the Olympic games do not half meet the case. The less we depend on professionalism the better. It is the steady average that avails, and to this steady average the schools are making continuous contribution. The private citizen is often a willing helper. Let him but see the truth that a British boy needs ON EDUCATION 217 football or its equivalent almost as he needs bread, and there will not be much difficulty where twenty-two boys can be got together and an open space found for them in setting them to play. For its complete effect, how- ever, physical development must depend upon something more purposive than play. 'Labour/ says Emerson, 'is God's education,' and 'he only is a sincere learner, he only can become a master, who learns the secrets of labour.' He believes that this holds good even for the literary man, and that 'no separation from labour can be without some loss of power and of truth to the seer himself.' Hence the value of all kinds of purposeful manual occupations in school-life, in work- shop and class-room, in making fences and ditches, pavilion-building, hay-making, and navvying. 4. Aspects of Intellectual Education in Relation to the Child's Development. Con- siderations affecting physical education apply as often as not to the child's intellectual work. Overcrowding, for example, with its lack of sufficient fresh air and of space for physical freedom, impairs the child's mental activity. It means, moreover, a loss of individuality and of the liberty to learn. M.V.E. K 218 MODERN VIEWS Again, when we speak of physical power as the basis of all progress, it is to be remembered that the brain is a part of the body. It is never a case of body versus brains. Health, activity, and development of brain are one important part of bodily health, activity, and development. As Dr Francis Warner tells us, a well-exercised brain tends to general vigour and to longevity. One never hears of those who are specifically brain-workers being 'too old at forty.' Some of the criticisms we have had to consider suggest that, alike in our conception of it and in our practice concerning it, the intellectual side of education leaves much to be desired. Methods of teaching are certainly of the greatest importance. 'Stupidity may be directly cultivated,* as Professor Wei ton says, 'by making a full memory of facts the one thing needful in school. It may be cultivated nearly as readily by calling for no real effort on the part of pupils.' He thinks the last is one of the very prominent dangers of present-day education, arising partly from a confusion that has arisen between the interesting and the amusing, partly from a too low estimate of the child's powers, partly from a desire to avoid over-pressure. ON EDUCATION 219 'It is bad learning/ he adds, 'not too much learning which causes over-pressure/ Simi- larly a leading expert on children's diseases declares that minds that are made mere receptacles for knowledge are jerry-built, and unable to withstand the tests of strain and time. Brain fag he finds frequently; and the chief cause of it is learning by rote. Much of this is due in turn to our bondage to examination systems. Are we not still, in a wasteful degree, examination-worshippers ? Some, doubtless, have felt the spur and have been quickened to effofft. But, on the other hand, a boy may be three parts of a duffer in one direction and three parts of a genius in another. The examination very likely meets him in the 'duffer' direction it seldom meets such a one in the 'genius' direction, how can it? and he is in a fair way of being thwarted and dis- torted for life. 'But there are children who will not learn; and what will society say to you if you allow them to grow up ignorant?' How wise the answer : 'These children are perhaps craving to learn nine things, and are not ready for the tenth, which is forced upon them. . . . Society need not alarm itself ! ' 220 MODERN VIEWS Many points omitted here arise in con- nection with school grading and its effect upon the life of the child. The main thing to secure is the continuity of the educational process. Breaks of any kind are attended with arrest of progress and real loss. At no stage in the child's school experience is this kind of break more common than when he moves up from the infant school to the elementary. The following suggestion, which came to the writer recently from an otherwise unknown head teacher has very much to commend it: 'There appears to be in most, if not all, of our schools a gap between the Infant School and the Upper Department, and the difficulty is how best to bridge over this gap. My suggestion is to have for the lowest group of children in the Upper Department a skilled infant teacher (A). There would also be an equally skilled infant teacher (B) with the upper section of children in the Infant School. When the transfer takes place, B would go with the children and continue their education in the upper department for one year, gradually dovetailing their work and co- ordinating it with that of the upper depart- ment. A meanwhile would take the place of B in the Infant School, and after training ON EDUCATION 221 another group of infants for a year, would similarly be transferred with the children at the end of the year's course. A and B would thus alternately be a year in the Infant Department and a year in the upper school, and each would have charge of one set of children for two years until the gap was bridged and the work of the two departments co-ordinated. I take a simple case of trans- ferring one group of children. In large schools where two or three groups are transferred, there would necessarily be two or three A teachers to interchange with the same number of B teachers.' This is only one of the many details of school grading, the effects of which are daily impressing themselves upon the child and doing much to determine his intellectual progress. 5. Some Ethical Aspects of School Life. Physically and intellectually, as we have seen, education finds its only secure founda- tions in instinct. The active impulses, and the impulses to sense-activity, to curiosity, and to general mental activity 1 are the bases of physical and intellectual development respectively. Right behaviour, too, has its 1 See the Unfolding of Personality, Chaps. III. and IV. 222 MODERN VIEWS roots in instinctive tendency. It is true, of course, to say that education has another part to play than that of utilising and develop- ing instinct. It has to direct and to curb. And, further, it has to do what the child with difficulty learns to do by himself namely, strengthen the weak points. ' There are, and will be again, idle, ignorant, and even stupid boys. Are they to be turned out on the shore? or is it our business to make the best of them ? Every one who wishes to be a teacher will answer, "We must make the best of them." Be it so. But this means that the vast majority must have individual attention, and be looked to singly, and that there must be proper machinery, and proper structure and plan, to make this individual attention possible. Innocent looking sentences, but holding in themselves the seed-power of a world. Given a stupid boy, make him an efficient worker/ So Thring proceeds with his workman's hints on teaching work till he reaches 'the first article of the teacher's creed : "Work from the inside outwards." The general rule in moral, as in all other, education is that the boy provides the energy; we have to teach him how to apply it. 'A boy,' said an advocate of the work of the ON EDUCATION 223 Playground Association, c is a steam boiler, and, like the steam boiler, he has a safety valve; if you sit on that and hold it down, you'll have mischief.' There are very few teachers who have not a real liking for the boy with some mischief in him. There is more than a touch of pride in vigorous boy- hood in the way in which they often speak of a boy in their class as 'a terror, I can tell you.' There are wild traits even in tame animals; primitive manifestations in every healthy child; and, somehow, we wish them there. Before, therefore, we have the key to the problem of moral education, we shall have to place side by side the two facts : the first, that there are wild elements in the child, and the second, that modern life tends to be tamer than the people who have to live it. There is something in the child that will out. For his health's sake, in every sense, it must out. Direct contact with earth; delving, pile-driving, building, boy and girl scouting help to tame young lives without over-taming them. Many of the sins of childhood are the result of a life without sufficient outlet for the spirit and adequate exercise of strength. Is it not a false psychology which thinks that 224 MODERN VIEWS the child needs to be drilled and hardened into readiness for the fight? School work, say some, should contain things that are dull and repellant, that are against the grain, so that the child shall be prepared to face the diffi- culties of after life? Is it not rather true that the readiness to spring is already there, and that there is this imminent danger in repres- sive methods that we shall drive the boy back upon himself, and damage the spring? The exhilarating teacher is the one who really disciplines, for he sets free the life. He creates a habit of springing to the attack, of welcoming occasions to put forth effort, and gives his scholars the pleasure of dis- covering their own strength? There is no 'soft pedagogy' about this. It is the art of the free setting others free. It is personality displaying itself in the liberating and strengthening of other personalities. Lord Londonderry testified to the reality of school-power in this sense in an address to the Chief Inspectors of Elementary Schools shortly after his appointment as Minister of Education. 'He wished,' he said, 'to draw attention to the fact that all does not depend upon equipment.' . . . There are many village schools in England, most probably ON EDUCATION 225 many of them well known to you, which do not possess the latest system of desk, which do not possess the best lighting and heating, which do not possess large cloak-rooms and hat-pegs, or accommodation like some of the large Board Schools in London; and yet I feel sure that none of you will contradict me when I say that these village schools, incomplete as they are compared with others with respect to equipment, are giving the very best educa- tion to those children who receive education within their walls, and fitting them for their future career in life. ... It is, to my mind, because the teacher is in absolute sympathy with the interests of the children in his or her charge.' This is moral education. It is reaching the child, and encouraging him in the consciousness and in the use of his own life-power. How little, when we come to consider it, there often is in a child's life to stir the spirit of adventure ! How much that tends to half smother the boy, instead of heating his enthusiasm and quickening the courage- impulse ! True, we see problems set for home work which require pluck to tackle by oneself ; true, also, the courage which steadily faces task and duty is courage in 226 MODERN VIEWS its most ultimate and abiding form. But a boy or girl needs a fair background of stimulating experience before real pluck is brought to bear in school work. Perhaps in every way, even in the way of intellectual leadership, the greatest teacher is not the one who has most learning, but the teacher of the really bravest spirit. There is contagion in courage, as 'iron sharpeneth iron.' And often the so-called bad boy only 'needs some one to start the machinery of his life into opera- tion.' There is no work so utterly good in itself as this. Other forms of ameliorative work, even the highest, are almost haphazard enterprises compared with the daily hand-to- hand persistent work of the school with the child. The strength of society is not alone in the few who pose before us as its pillars; it is rather in the individual lives of its indi- vidual citizens whose personality has been wrought upon, in its strength-centres dis- covered, and in the building up of an assured personal life around those centres commenced, at school. 6. The Home and its Influence upon the Child at School. Between the child's in- school and out-of-school environment there is constant interaction. It is desirable that this ON EDUCATION 227 interaction should be harmonised for tke child's sake. For this a good mutual under- standing between parents and teachers is the first essential. Modern educational opinion is converging in this direction. A great need amongst the greatest educational needs of the hour is to bring the parents of the scholars into line with the work of the schools : first, to know it; secondly, to sympathise with what is right and good in it; thirdly, to support it, by reinforcing its influence upon the child through the influences of the home; fourthly, so far to understand the aims of the school and its teachers as to be able to meet the latter in fruitful conference at periodical parents' evenings, or at recep- tions, at which there may be an exhibition of school work, held either by one or two classes or by the whole school. The refining effect which this custom would have in some day- school districts, where at first glance one would speak of it as impracticable, might be a surprise to many. The Houses of Child- hood show how a spirit of this kind works. A good effect upon the children and their general attitude to the school would be sure to follow. Often it is not the school life alone which is 228 MODERN VIEWS affecting the child's progress. Cases of over- pressure, leading to enfeebled vitality and cases of backwardness, often have their source outside the school in the conditions of the home life, and the responsibilities children bear when out of school. If the nation knew what head teachers could tell them of children who come to school tired out and unfit to learn, a crusade of some sort would almost certainly be started. Minding the shop, minding the baby (each of these for practically the whole time the child is out of school), going on a milk round, or a newspaper round, acting as errand-boy before, between, and after school hours, to the loss now and then of the time for a meal ! Things like this are to be found in schools and in districts where it would have been but little suspected. And yet the nation's savings bank is the child. In one important way the nation has come to the child's rescue. It is idle to talk of the life-force of the absolutely hungry child. The inner life of the unfed child cannot reveal itself. The hungry child cannot learn. He has no strength with which to be good. As there are many insufficiently-fed children in our schools, either through carelessness or absolute poverty in the home, it will be the ON EDUCATION 229 common wish that the fullest effect should be given to the beneficent Education (Provision of Meals) Act of 1906. 7. The Child leaving School Tacitly, the school makes a contract with the community in the name of each individual child to give him a certain equipment of knowledge and of power for use in his after-school life. Much is being said about school-leaving certificates; indeed, votes are being taken on Education Committees as to whether or not they shall be instituted in the schools they control. It is very easy to imagine conditions under which a guarantee of attainments at the close of the elementary school course might have the advantages which the late Sir Joshua Fitch was one of the first in this country to claim. The method is in use in France, and is there believed to strengthen the teachers' hands, and at the same time to be appreciated by parents. It is also a sort of guarantee to employers. But, as things are in our elementary schools to-day, serious risks would be incurred which might easily outweigh all possible advantages. There would be a risk of false emphasis upon formal memoriter work; and also of a recurrence of some, at least, of the evils attendant upon the 230 MODERN VIEWS old system of examination before making school grants. Our elementary schools are but just beginning to accustom themselves to individual liberty in the matter of the school time-table; and the establishment either of local or national leaving certificates would almost inevitably tend to a return to uni- formity. The first need is an extension of the principle of freedom in the schools and through- out the classes of the schools. If within each school a plan of promotion could be devised whereby for those not passing up into a higher elementary (or central) or secondary school a supplementary or pre-trade course were available, and a merit certificate granted to those who earned promotion to this course and passed satisfactorily through it the advantages of a primary leaving certificate would be gained without the serious dis- advantages which a mere examination would entail. This is the Scottish method of awarding the 'merit certificate/ as already described. London and Manchester have leaving certifi- cates from their central (higher elementary) schools, the examinations for which are con- ducted by the inspectors of the respec- tive education committees. The need for ON EDUCATION 231 secondary school (leaving) certificates is vari- ously voiced. The indefiniteness of the range of secondary education raises a difficulty which some propose to meet by the granting of two certificates a lower after the com- pletion of a full four years' course in an approved secondary school; a higher, after the completion of a further more advanced course of three years. The Welsh Inter- mediate Schools have an elaborate system of progressive certificates possibly too elaborate, for the strain which it entails upon the school organisation must be almost excessive. These schools have a Junior Certificate (for scholars under sixteen) awarded for adequate know- ledge in five subjects out of a wide range of options ; and Commercial and Technical Certificates, also for scholars under sixteen; a Senior Certificate of Matriculation standard for scholars over sixteen; a Higher Certificate, awarded by examination on the results of work a year in advance of that covered by the Senior Certificate; and an Honours Certificate, requiring a still further year of work. That any scheme of leaving certificate needs careful consideration is shown by French experience. Sir Joshua Fitch quotes some wise words from M. Greard in connection 232 MODERN VIEWS with the French primary leaving certifi- cate. M. Greard speaks with great seriousness of the effects in some cases of the secondary school leaving examination (the'baccalaur^af examination). "Toute leur energie cer^brale a 6t6 use pendant la preparation a 1'examen, et quand ils arrivent plus tard a la vie, il ne leur reste de force que pour de modestes labeurs en vues de r&les secondaires.' Yet there can be little doubt as to the desirability of a scheme, centrally initiated, and admin- istered in part through the universities, in part through secondary school inspectors, and with the co-operation of the schools, which shall not depend principally upon an examina- tion spurt, but be based upon skill and know- ledge gained and upon reports and other evidence (especially the scholars' own records) of satisfactory progress throughout the school course. Another point of contact between the school and the scholar leaving it is the interest so commonly taken in helping the scholar to secure employment. In many cases the head teacher devotes a great deal of time and thought to this work. There are heads of schools whose idea of their mission is to fit their scholars sometimes unpromising ON EDUCATION 233 children in slum districts for a niche in the world's life, and find the niche into which their scholars fit. This is exceedingly valuable work. And whether or not, as some think, the schools should take over the work of the Juvenile Employment Bureaux, the work done by the school should be more widely recognised. At present a head teacher uses his circle of acquaintance and personal influ- ence, and may even make an effort to get into touch with employers. But he has already duties enough in school; and the opening of doors for his scholars would be eased for him by employers applying more commonly to the schools than they do. A Juvenile Employment Bureau, however excel- lent the intention of the officer in charge, cannot recommend a boy with the same confidence and the same sense of responsi- bility as his own schoolmaster. 8. The Early Days of the After-school Life. The child who has left school and commenced to work, say at fourteen or fifteen, is still at a critical age. His character is far from formed. Actual school conditions have at times tended to hold his life-energies in suspense rather than to call them forth. In any case his habits are not fixed and he still 234 MODERN VIEWS needs a guiding hand. Accordingly, many teachers, in addition to finding their scholars employment, advise them as to ways of continuing their education and improving their prospects. Every teacher has a chance to become great in his last five minutes with a lad at school. But when the teacher has done all within his power, a considerable amount of following up is necessary in many cases. Especially in the poorest districts, where parents, unless reminded of their responsibility, are likely to be careless and forgetful, it is important to see that the boy and his parents know exactly what is the probable future of the line of work chosen; also that some one should keep a friendly eye on the boy during the first year or two that he is at work. This is part of the work under- taken by the London Care Committees. Whilst it is known that a boy or girl who has had a careful send-off from school will possibly select one or two Evening School courses, and supplement these by member- ship of a boys' or girls' club or Scout corps, there is still ample room for voluntary agencies, like that of the Care Committee, to take the young worker in hand. The organisation of the London Care ON EDUCATION 235 Committees was initiated by the London County Council after the passing of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act in 1906. Invitations were sent out to the voluntary societies already at work, either amongst children or in the relief and uplifting of the poor, and a Central Children's Care Sub-committee was formed largely from those nominated by these societies. Each elementary school, as a result of this, is now under a Care Committee, whose duties are to provide school meals, to follow up the medical officer's cases into the homes of the scholars by the visits of a nurse or of a lady-member of the committee, and to exercise a helpful oversight over the early working years, both by endeavouring to find suitable employment and by encouraging the young people to make the most of their opportunities. 1 In some schools play centres and 'happy evenings' have been started, or where they already existed have received new stimulus. A further question, and one which is promi- nently in the minds of leading educationists, is that of the compulsory attendance of 1 The regular visitation by voluntary workers does much to save children from neglect. Often "the parents have not known what was neglect,' but have regarded some of childhood's common scourges as inevitable ! 236 MODERN VIEWS children over fourteen at a continuation school. The city of Glasgow, for instance, availing itself of the permissive clauses in the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908, has had by-laws in force since 1910, requiring the attendance at continuation classes of young persons between fourteen and seventeen years of age. It is anticipated that this will affect about eight thousand children. Attendance is required for at least two evenings in each week, a third evening's attendance being optional. The rule applies to all young persons over fourteen years of age who (1) have not completed two years attendance in a supplementary course, or its equivalent; (2) have not obtained a certificate of merit; (3) are not otherwise receiving a suitable education; or (4) are not specially exempted. These pupils are compelled to attend school on at least two evenings per week. The compulsory subjects are English and the practical side of instruction, such as wood- work and drawing for boys, and cookery and laundry work for girls. Already a prosecu- tion for non-compliance has been successfully carried through by the city School Board. Altogether, as shown in the Report (1911-12) of the Committee of Council on Education ON EDUCATION 237 in Scotland, sixteen School Boards have passed by-laws requiring attendance, and over six hundred authorities provide continuation classes. Germany has a law similar to that of Scotland. Attendance at a continuation school is not obligatory throughout the country, but individual states, or districts, or municipalities have the power to make such attendance compulsory up to the age of eighteen; and employers must give facilities to employees under this age to attend the classes. The demand for continuation schools has arisen from the self-evident fact that the three ends of education power in work, capacity for citizenship, and a well-knit personality are not and cannot be attained during the elementary school period. The good school has during this time awakened impulses, but these have not as yet hardened into habits. The various articles contributed to Vice-Chancellor Sadler's invaluable work on Continuation Schools make a direct plea in favour of such schools. One needs but to think of the young adolescent with still, in some cases, consciousness of 'escape' from school, feeling his own freedom and a certain self-dependence as a wage-earner, face to 238 MODERN VIEWS face with the chances of the city streets and cheap amusements as his only change from work. The limits of the educational value of the picturedrome are soon reached. The youth and the maid of fourteen to eighteen need to think hard and to have some ideal, else their real nature will not find scope and development. It is the period, as Canon Wilson said, during his head-mastership of Clifton College, when c aspirations rise highest, when reverence is most natural, when good- ness and greatness are most inspiring,' words as true of the young worker as of the boys attending a great public school. For proof, which cannot here be quoted, one needs but to turn to such books as Miss Jane Addams's wonderfully appealing Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, C. E. B. Russell's Manchester Boys, or Miss McMillan's The Child and the State, which are not dream-studies but the outgrowth of years of daily hand-to-hand contact with the young life of which they treat. Clearly here is an educational problem of great magnitude; the care of the child and the youth during the habit-forming years. Might one not even say the defence of the child and the youth? For whilst we are ON EDUCATION 239 allowing him to find his own way, deadly attacks are made upon the strongholds of purity within him and upon the character that was beginning to form as a result of the better influences that had been brought to bear upon him. If we had a fiendish foe bent upon the downthrow of our land, no deeper plot could be laid, surer to work injury and havoc than the issue of some of the vilely illustrated papers that are sold for a halfpenny, and some of the unscrupulously vulgar post cards displayed in thousands of windows. No nation can lay claim to freshness of spirit or inner strength which tolerates these incite- ments to the worst behaviour, this daily and open lowering of ideals, and vulgarising of heart and mind. Here is a fight to be fought with no hesitating will. Switzerland, as Canon Rawnsley tells us, in an admirable protest in the Hibbert Journal, passed two years ago a stern law against publicly offend- ing modesty or morality by 'pictures, writ- ings, speech, or actions.' This war against the undoing of the nation's educational work, and the undermining of the life even of the child, must be carried into the enemy's camp. But when the best is done, the need remains for a higher and a continued education which 240 MODERN VIEWS shall fortify with purposeful labour the mind of our youth, filling and firing the imagina- tion with worthy anticipation and with some vision of man's ideal. But the all-round life of youth must also be kept in view. In addition to intellectual effort and enkindled imagination, in addition to recreation and social intercourse, the robuster traits which go to make a strenuous and efficient personality must have exercise and discipline. It would be difficult to con- ceive of a saner, more educative discipline of the spirited element in youth than the Boy and Girl Scout movements. Many a too tame boy will be invigorated, and many a too vigorous boy be tamed by this fine form of purposive adolescent play. Its citizenship value is as great as its personal value. As General Baden-Powell says, * It teaches a boy to do his duty, and to do it in his place.' ON EDUCATION 241 CHAPTER X RESUME OF CONCLUSIONS 1. IN a survey having so wide a reference, it may seem almost impossible to work from and to lead up to any single unifying principle. Roughly, however, the central thought and motif of the views presented is the principle which is fundamental in education namely, whether in organisation or in teaching, to respect and to build around the life that is already there. We do not impose an educa- tion. We conduct an education. 2. Almost everything depends upon the life of the nation itself, and upon the nation's own view of its life. The schools bear the impress of these two factors. Fortunately not of the latter only; for a nation's life is always greater than the nation itself realises. Yet the nation that believes greatly in its own life will believe greatly in the nurture and in the expansion of that life by means of education. 3. The same principle, to respect the life that is already there and build around it, M.V.E. L 242 MODERN VIEWS governs the planning of school-work from year to year; and our devising of educa- tional ladders from school to school, and school to college. It determines our treatment of school subjects from the standpoint of their efficiency or life-development value. It decides for us the lines along which vocational work is desirable in schools. The guiding principle throughout is regard for the present life and power of the child or youth. This is not neglecting the future. It is the surest way of safeguarding it; for youth is in its very nature anticipative. For practical pur- poses the very instincts of the child are more truly viewed as the germination of life-power within him than as mechanical reproductions of racial habits. Adolescence, e.g., means the beginning to be an adult. And as education proceeds, the more the school can avail itself of the fund of energy which instinctive ten- dencies supply, the better and more natural will be the education given. Boy nature will out. Unless it does, the man can never grow to his full size. Even the hooligan has a message. He tells of traits which have been or are being neglected, and which, because of this, have found for them- selves a morbid expression. ON EDUCATION 243 4. Life has a physical core. The individual is not a man plus a body, nor a man in a body. We do not derogate from the high claims of spirit by emphasising the importance (in terms of the spirit itself even the sacred- ness) of the bodily life. Every kind of strength and success in life has a physical basis. 5. The root and centre of the intellectual life is the instinct of curiosity. * Man wants to know : when he ceases to want to know, he ceases to be man.' This must be the govern- ing principle in our choice of curricula, and in our manipulation of them. What the boy does not want to know and we cannot get him to want to know is somehow in its wrong place. It may have many things to com- mend it to us. But we should no more ask the boy to learn the things that we like just because we like them and see something in them, than we should ask him to smoke our best cigars. This applies to our way with the three R's formally, instead of formatively treated; to our determination whether or not to teach an unwilling and wholly un- promising boy Latin; and to our general planning of a child's studies and drawing up of his school time-table. For this is the 244 MODERN VIEWS point. It is not a programme that looks well, includes everything, hits with this or that tenet of educational theory; it is the programme that is capable of becoming the boy's programme which is destined to be effectual in his education. One or two points may be briefly recapitulated. The Scotch Education Department deals shrewdly, and with a decisiveness which only sounds indecisive, with the three R's question. 'At no time,' says the Report for 1911-12, 'has Primary Education been regarded in Scotland as simply a matter of instruction in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, and at the present time less than ever is it so regarded. The problem is how to use the various subjects of instruction so as to develop all the faculties of the child, to elicit his sympathies. Pro- vided the art be skilfully exercised, proficiency in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic will be secured as a matter of course, as an incidental result, within the usual limits of school life in the case of normal children. But to aim at this incidental result principally or directly may well be to stultify the whole educational process without securing more than an evanes- cent, because mechanical proficiency in the subjects on which instruction has been ON EDUCATION 245 {Concentrated. Still, for practical purposes, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic maybe taken to be the main subjects of instruction in the Primary School curriculum. All the others are auxiliary, to be regarded as valuable for the variety of means they offer for exercising , the intelligence of the children, rather than for the amount of positive knowledge or of proficiency acquired, even although that may not be inconsiderable. . . . Nature Know- ledge, Geography, and History may be, and ought to be, made to subserve in large degree the purposes of the main instruction in English and Arithmetic, and instruction in the former class of subjects need in no way interfere with the attainment of proficiency in the latter.' The three R's, in a word, may be and need to be taught partly for practice in the use of number and language, but chiefly as an accompaniment of real studies and as instrumental in amplifying, clarifying, and defining actual ideas. The scale bumps in favour of the boy's three R's, as opposed to the three R's of the adult. With regard to the classics, nothing that has been said would deny their value to those who get real value from them. No transla- tion can give the direct flavour of one of 246 MODERN VIEWS Cicero's orations or of the Homeric poems. But the modern literature of European nations contains so much of the matter and spirit of the classical literature that, considering the importance of modern literature itself which may otherwise be neglected, the direct study of the classics may well be made optional. German, as even some advocates of the classical studies have admitted, might be more generally recognised as an alternative to Latin. It ought to be possible for a student to graduate in Arts in the twentieth century in literatures other than the classical. A classical education is, on the whole, far more prone to exclude a sufficient notice of modern problems and modern life than is a modern education to exclude reference to the ideas and histories of Greece and Rome. 'If,' says Sir Oliver Lodge, 'intellectual reform were necessarily hostile to our schools* great and good qualities, it would be too dearly purchased; but I am convinced it is not so. I do not, indeed, credit them with the whole merit of their produce at present; part of the power and success of our youth, when cast upon their own resources and con- verted into leaders of men, is due to their race and stock. Given a good, sound, healthy ON EDUCATION 247 Briton, and you have a great instrument for the world's work. . . . But give him real education as well, teach him what can easily be now taught him about the world and the forces of Nature, cultivate his mind so that he can think and can ascertain truth for himself and ... he would have his powers enhanced manyfold, and would be able to hold up his head and take a lead in the modern w r orld.' Equally weighty are the words of the late Professor Withers : 'If England is to be saved from the fate which seems to be involved in her defects, must not the public schools take the foremost place in giving to those who ,?ill in a few years be her most influential citizens a systematic intellectual equipment?' 6. The same principle of meeting the scholar on his own ground and planning for him an education that fits him, and further his all- round intellectual development, justifies a wide, as distinguished from a narrow or a specialised, course of study. The following words of M. Pecaut are the more striking as they occur in a chapter which is a plea for simplication. (The chapter is entitled 'Sim- plifions ! ' It is chapter xii in L* Education Publique et la Vie Nationale.) * Which subject MODERN VIEWS would you venture summarily to erase? . . . What economy should we take it upon our- selves to make, if we were left free to re-cast the whole? Gymnastics? our national his- tory? geography? arithmetic? geometry and drawing required in setting out and measuring work to be done in the various trades? the elements of natural science, now, by unanimous consent, a condition of agri- cultural and industrial progress? ideas about agriculture? Or would you restrict yourself in respect of grammar, reading, French (English) composition on familiar topics? Would you silence choral singing?* None the less, the method and spirit of the teaching remains the master-factor in the making of intellectual strength. The call for effort on the learner's part in shaping for himself the thing he learns, so that he really masters it and makes it his own; the reaching of the individual life through the lessons and the quickening of natural impulse into power; the presence and leadership of a teacher to whom life ' means intensely and means good,' the co-operation with class-fellows in the activities of learning these are chief among the influences which make school lessons a thing of life and power. ON EDUCATION 249 7. The conditions of to-day point towards man's intellectual progress. New discoveries of the nature of mind and new faith in its powers; fresh and vivid appreciations of the value of knowledge, as no longer a pursuit of the cloister or a privilege of the few; a completer faith in man, arising out of the blending of the doctrines of individualism and solidarity; a young, new day with a glad and confident outlook towards the future these are conditions favourable to a great movement, and one that shall deserve to be called, in the words of Sir H. A. Miers, the 'twentieth century Revival of Learning/ 8. References to moral and religious education have been made here but inci- dentally. Much has been crowded out in this rapid survey which would have had place in a larger work. But so little does this imply a disregard of the value of the strengthening of the spirit in youth, that with such educators as Arnold, Thring, Withers, Wilson, Sadler, Paton, and a host of others, to support the claim (not least, the weighty voice of the President of the National Union of Teachers for 1912), it might well have been placed first. Under the title Rationalisme el Tradition, M. Delvolve has recently published a careful 250 MODERN VIEWS inquiry into the effects of the 'lay moral instruction* in France as compared with the earlier traditional religious instruction. He comes to the conclusion that the dynamic effect of the new teaching upon the moral nature of the scholars is inadequate. And this he believes to be because it fails to attach itself to any * living centre' within the child's nature, 'around which the elements of the moral life group themselves, as it were, spontaneously, as an organism develops from an original central germ.' The traditional religious teaching had such an organic centre. There is ample British testimony to confirm this view. Canon Wilson's words have already been quoted. 1 Professor Bompas Smith, writing on boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, says : * The years between twelve and fifteen often witness a deepening of the boy's religious experiences. . . . There are many boys outwardly careless, and even irreligious, who would prove, if we knew their hearts, to be at times deeply stirred by religious motives.' * The instinct of the young soul is true,' says Canon Wilson in the same address. 'We schoolmasters who as a class are highly strung, and feel 1 See page, 238. ON EDUCATION 251 with peculiar intenseness the forces of the time are in more danger than any other class of pressing into extremes one or other of the two axioms of education : religion cannot be taught; religion must be taught* We must keep both constantly in view. Religion cannot be taught. Each human soul finds it for itself. . . . But that other truth must be equally in our minds, and needs the more insisting on. As the young soul grows by its own inner vitality, so it needs its natural food. The teacher can in part supply this.' Mrs Browning relates the teacher's thought and life with the thought and life of the learner in her own profound way in A Rhapsody of Life's Progress : With Teachings of Thought we reach down to the deeps Of the souls of our brothers, And teach them full words with our slow-moving lips, 'God,' * Liberty,' * Truth,' which they hearken and think And work into harmony, link upon link. Then we hear . . . the new generations that cry I attune to our voice, and harmonious reply, 'God,' 'Liberty,' 'Truth!' APPENDIX APPENDIX TO NOTE ON PAGE 152 IN many places the courses in housewifery are thoroughly practical, and are not only valuable to the girls, but are greatly enjoyed and appre- ciated by them. In some cases a neighbouring house it may be the caretaker's house is adapted for the purpose. In others houses have been specially built. The house at the Stockport centre is built between the senior and junior departments of the school (over nine and under nine years respectively), and has the effect at least for the scholars at the Alexandra Park School of a house within the school. At present four days a week for six weeks are given to the work of housekeeping. Next year probably the full school time (five days) will be so given. The instruction introductory to the practical housekeeping includes : Cleaning of linoleums, cleaning of paint and varnish; bed making, care of the bed and bedding; cleaning of flues, making of fires, blackleading; cleaning of silver, brass, copper, etc.; care of glass; care of sinks and drains; care of all kinds of brushes; clean- ing of windows; cleaning of carpets; cleaning of furniture; care of wood; cleaning of steps; lay- ing of dinner and tea table; order of washing up dinner and tea things; care of larder and store- room. Twelve to fifteen girls over twelve years of age attend the centre at one time, and are divided into APPENDIX 253 four groups. Each group works a week at each subject, and during the last fortnight this arrange- ment is continued, with the addition that all the girls receive instruction in spring-cleaning. The time-table is as follows : 9.30-12.0 1.30-2.30 2.30-4.0 Mon. General General Sewing. Housework. Housework, Tues. General General Sewing. Housework. Housework. Wed. General General Demonstra- Housework. Housework. tion. Thurs. General General Lecture. Housework. Housework. KITCHEN GIRLS (Two to four in number). Monday. Light fire. Shopping. Prepare dinner. Daily clean of kitchen. Weekly clean of storeroom. Wash up dinner things. Make menu for Tuesday. Tuesday. Same daily work as Monday. Clean- ing of dresser, drawers, and cupboard. Wednesday. Daily work as Monday. Weekly clean of larder. Thursday. Daily work as Monday. Weekly clean of kitchen. Cleaning of scullery floor. BEDROOM GIRLS (Usually three in number). Monday. Daily work in 1 and 2 bedrooms and bathroom. 254 APPENDIX Tuesday Daily work in bedroom 2 and bath- room and landing. Weekly clean of bed- room 1. Wednesday. Daily work in bedroom 1, and bathroom, etc. Weekly clean of bedroom 2. Thursday. Daily work in bedrooms. Weeklv clean of stairs, landing, bathroom, etc. SITTING-ROOM GIRLS (Three in number). Monday. Daily clean of sitting and school rooms. Cleaning of front steps. Setting dinner table. Waiting at table. Clearing table. Washing silver and glass. Tuesday. Work as above. Weekly clean of schoolroom. Wednesday. Work as Monday. Weekly clean of sitting-room. Thursday. Work as Monday. Cleaning cup- boards, silver, etc. LAUNDRY GIRLS (Four in number). Monday. Preparation for washing. Weekly wash. Tuesday. Thorough cleaning of scullery. Fold- ing and mangling of clothes. Wednesday. Ironing of clothes. Thursday. Washing and ironing of coloured covers. Mending of clothes in wash. Lectures and demonstrations are given in the afternoon during the course on : Lamps, beds, silver, boots, brushes, sick-nursing, care of infants^ storeroom, linen cupboard, etc. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. ON ORGANISATION, ADMINISTRATION, AND HISTORY GRAHAM BALFOUR. The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland. Second Edition. Oxford University Press. 1903. VARIOUS WRITERS. Education in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press. 1901. J. L. HUGHES and R. L. KLEMM. Progress of Education in the Century. W. & R. Chambers. 1907. JOHN CLARK. The Rise and Development of Scottish Education. (Proceedings of the Royal Philo- sophical Society of Glasgow. 1910.) H. B. BURNS. A Century of Education. Dent & Co. 1908. Outline of the History of Educational Theories in England. George Allen & Co. 1899. W. R. LAWSON. John Bull and His Schools. Black- wood. 1908. VARIOUS WRITERS. The Public Schools from Within. Sampson Low & Co. 1900. T. G. COTTON MINCHIN. Our Public Schools : Their Influence on English History. Sonnenschein. 1901 . F. PAULSEN. German Education, Past and Present. Fisher Unwin, 1908. F. P&CAUT. Quinze ans ffi Education. Delagrave, Paris. 256 BIBLIOGRAPHY F. PECAUT. U Education Publique et la Vie Nationale. Fourth edition. Hachette. 1911. J. C. TARVEB. Debateable Claims : Essays on Secondary Education. Constable. 1898. DE GARMO. Principles of Secondary Education. Macmillan. 1907. NORWOOD and HOPE. Higher Education of Boys in England. Murray. 1909. AUSTIN PEMBER. Croesus Minor. Sonnenschein. 1888. Lord HALDANE. Education and Empire. Murray. 1902. A. FOUILLEE. Education from a National Stand- point. International Education Series. Edward Arnold. 1892. DE MONTMORENCY. State Intervention in English Education. Cambridge University Press. 1902. C. H. THURBER. The Principles of Organisation A. B. Wood. 1901. W. C. GRASBY. Teaching in Three Continents. Cassell & Co. 1891. B. ON SCHOOL AIMS AND METHODS BOMPAS SMITH. Boys and Their Management in School. Longmans. 1905. ALEX. DARROCH. The Children. T. C. & E. C. Jack. 1907. ARNOLD TOMPKINS. School Management. Ginn and Co. 1901. VICE-CONSUL ERSKINE. Education in Chicago. Foreign Office. Miscellaneous Series. No. 544. 1900. BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 Sir J. G. FITCH. Educational Aims and Methods. Cambridge University Press. 1900. Sir PHILIP MAGNUS. Educational Aims and Efforts. Longmans. 1910. N. M. BUTLER. The Meaning of Education. Mac- millan. 1898. Sir HENRY A. MIERS. The Revival of Learning. (An Oration.) London University Union. 1909. MATTHEW ARNOLD. Reports on Elementary Schools. Board of Education Edition. 1908. P. A. BARNETT. Common Sense in Education. Longmans. 1899. JOHN DEWEY. The School and the Child. (Ed. Find- lay.) Blackie. 1906. M. E. BOOLE. The Logic of Arithmetic. Clarendon Press. 1903. M. E. BOOLE. Preparation of the Child for Science. Clarendon Press. 1904. Papers on Moral Education. (Report of First Inter- national Moral Education Congress.) Nutt. 1909. JOHN DEWEY. The School and Society. P. S. King and Son. 1901. J. J. FINDLAY. The School : An Introduction to the Study of Education. Home University Library. J. WELTON. Principles and Methods of Teaching. Clive. 1906. Report on Moral Education in American Schools. (Vol. X. of Special Reports on Educational Subjects.) 1902. Publications of the English and Scottish Education Departments. 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY C ON INDUSTRIAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION W. A. BALDWIN. Industrial- Social Education. Milton Bradley. 1907. JOHN SEATII. Education for Industrial Purposes. The King's Publisher, Toronto. 1911. MARGARET MCMILLAN. Education through the Imagination. Sonnenschein (now Geo. Allen & Co.) 1904. D. SNEDDEN. The Problem of Vocational Education. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. Education and Industry in the United States; and P. J. HARTOG on Commercial Education. (Special Reports, Vol. XI. FABIAN WARE. Educational Foundations of Trade and Industry. Harpers. 1901. D. ON THE PART PLAYED BY THE SCHOLAR IN HIS EDUCATION Dr MARIA MONTESSORI. The Montessori Method. (Translated by ANNE E. GEORGE.) Heinemann. 1912. The Montessori System of Education. (Educational Pamphlets, No. 24.) Board of Education. 1912. EDMOND HOLMES. What Is and What Might Be : A Study of Education in General, and of Elementary Education in Particular. Constable & Co. 1911. B. DEMOLINS. Anglo-Saxon Superiority : To what if is due. (Translated.) The Leadenhall Press. 1898. CECIL REDDIE. Abbotsholme. George Allen. 1900. BIBLIOGRAPHY 259 E. ON THE MORAL AND PERSONAL AIM IN EDUCATION DOUGLAS PEPLER. The Care Committee, the Child, and the Parent. Constable & Co. 1912. JANE ADDAMS. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. Macmillan. 1910. C. E. B. RUSSELL. Manchester Boys. Sherratt and Hughes. 1905. MARGARET MCMILLAN. The Child and the State. The National Labour Press. 1911. EDITH E. READ MUMFORD. The Dawn of Character: A Study of Child Life. Longmans. 1910. The Unfolding of Personality as the Chief Aim in Education. Fisher Unwin. 1910. EDWARD THRING. Addresses. Unwin. 1899. CHARLOTTE M. MASON. Home Education. Fourth Edition. Kegan Paul. 1905. CHARLOTTE M. MASON. School Education. Kegan Paul. 1905. HERBART. The Aesthetic (or Ethical) Presentation of the World as the Chief Work of Education. Trans- lated by E. and H. M. Felkin in The Science of Education (Geo. Allen & Co.); and by W. J. Eckoff in Herbarfs A B C of Sense Perception (Appleton). M. E. SADLER (Editor). Moral Instruction and Train- ing in Schools : An International Inquiry. Long- mans. 1908. JEAN DELVOLV. Rationalisme et Tradition : Re- cherches des Conditions tfEfficaeite d*une Morale Laique. F. Alean. 1910. 260 BIBLIOGRAPHY VARIOUS WRITERS. Principles of Religious Educa- tion. Edited by Bishop Potter. Longmans. 1901. B. A. KNOX (Bishop of Manchester). Pastors and Teacher*. Longmans. 1902. ATHELSTAN RILEY, M. E. SADLER, and CYRII* JACKSON. The Religious Question in Education. Longmans. 1911. T. RAYMONT. The Use of the Bible in the Education of the Young. Longmans. 1911. The Bible for Children. Pilgrim Press. 1912. The Young People's Bible. (Old Testament.) Pilgrim Press. 1913. The Young People's Bible. (New Testament.) In Preparation. INDEX ADDAMS, Miss Jane, 238. Adolescence, 238, 240, 242, 250. After-school days, 234. Agriculture, education in, 155, 168-169. Aim of education, 24, 39. America, education in, 49, 57, 62, 99, 115, 13&-139, 145-146, 164-165. Anticipative aspect of edu- cation, 23, 106-107. Arnold, Matthew, 21, 102. Arnold, Dr, 30, 75, 249. Athletics, 72, 215-216. BACCALAUREAT examina- tion, 232. Bacon, Lord, 67. Baden-Powell, General, 240. Benson, A. C., 102. Boarding schools, 42-43. Burt, Thomas, 24. CARE committees, 201, 233- 235. Carlyle, 164. Central control, 60-63. 'Central' schools, 80, 81. Character-building, 32, 39, 40,43, 118,119,178,182, 189, 190, 193, 205, 209, 212, 216, 221-226. Child-labour, 228. Classical education, 66, 67, 71, 83, 84, 97, 102, 103, 120, 243, 245, 246. Continuation schools, 236, 237. Criticisms of present-day education, 25-28, 46, 47. Curricula, elementary school, 88-101, 133-137, 248. , secondary school, 101 -105, 125-131. , efficiency-value of, 109, 110, 125, 126. , trades schools, 159- 161. , Supplementary courses (Glasgow), 151. DARROCH, Professor, 209. Day schools, school spirit in, 43. Delvolve, M., 250. Demolins, M., 193. Dewey, Professor, 140. 'Dooley,' Mr, on education, 203, 204. Drawing, 94, 183. ELEMENTARY schools (pub- lic), 44. Empire and education, 30, 31, 111-113, 125-128. Employment on leaving school, 232-234. English, the teaching of, 95, 118, 119, 131. Environment and education 113-115, 199. Examinations, 219, 232. 262 INDEX FINDLAY, Professor, 100. France, education in, 27, 49, 62, 229, 232. French, the teaching of, 97, 98. Froebel, 86, 87. GAMES, 72, 214^217. Gardening, courses in, 130, 155, 177, 211. Geography, 94, 110-113, 207. Geometry, practical, 94. George Junior Republic, 198, 199. German, the study of, 129, 134, 135, 246. Germany, education in, 27, 29, 33, 162, 163, 237. Glasgow, supplementary Elementary courses in, 151. , continuation school courses in, 236. Glazebrook, M. G., 104, 105. Grammar, 97, 119, 120. Greard, M., 231, 232. HANDWORK in education, 94, 122-124, 129, 130. Harris, W. T., 57. Higher elementary schools, 80, 81. History, study of, 95, 131, 132. Holmes, E., 26, 181, 186- 191. Home and school, 226, 228. INDIVIDUALITY, 174, 178, 186, 195, 206, 222, 224, 248. Infants, education of, 86- 88, 220. Insect pests and nature study, 116-118. Inspection of schools, 54- 60, 75, 195-197. Instinct and education, 187, 188, 208, 211, 212, 243. Intermediate schools (Wales), 77, 81. JENA, as centre of study of education, 29. Juvenile Employment Bureaux, 233. KERSCHENSTEINER, Dr, 162 Knowledge, cargo or power? 99, 100. LANGUAGE, study of, 95, 119-122. Latin in schools, 66, 67, 97. Lay moral instruction, 250. Leaving certificates, 229 232. Local control in education, 60-63. Locke, 67. Lodge, Sir Oliver, 246, 247. Logic, as branch of language study, 120-122. MCMILLAN, Miss Margaret, 238. Manual occupations, 122- 124, 126, 129, 146, 176, 184, 217, 223. Maurice, F. D., 106. Memory work and brain- fag, 219, 229, 232. Merit Certificates (Scot- land), 230. Method in education, 100, 218, 219, 248. Miers, Sir H. A., 249. Montessori, Dr, 86, 87, 172-186, 199, 200. Moral aim in education, 182, 221-226. Munich, continuation schools in, 162. Music in education, 189. INDEX 263 NAAS, centre of Sloyd teach- ing, 29. National importance of edu- cation, 82-89. National Union of Teachers (President of, 1912), 249. Nature Study, 94, 113, 114, 187-139. , practical values of, 114-118, 155. New education, the, 206, 207. Nietzsche, 208. OPPORTUNITIES for elemen- tary school children, Preface, p. 8, 76-83, 140-163, 202, 208-214, 223-230. PARENTS' interest in educa- tion, 64, 181, 227. Parker, Colonel Francis, 204. Paton, J. L., 168, 169, 249. Patriotism, 44, 45, 197. Peant, F., 247. Pestalozzi, 86, 87. Physical bases of educa- tion, 209-211, 215-218, 243. * Practical ' scholarships, 158, 159. Progressiveness of educa- tion, 22, 23, 106, 107. * Public School* education, 40-42, 65-75, 102, 246, 247. RASHDALL, H., 67. Rawnsley, Canon, 239. Religious instruction, Pre- face, p. 11, 49-54, 134, 249-000. 'Revival of learning,' a twentieth century, 249. Rotterdam, schools in, 29, 30. Roy croft Shop, the, 198. Ruskin, 129. Russell, C. E. B., 238. Russia, educational reform demanded in, 27. SADLER, M. E., 37, 58, 237, 249. Scholarship systems, 68, 69, 73, 76-79, 158, 159, 169. School-life, 35, 36, 42-44, 101, 192, 193, 203, 204. Scotland, education in, 48, 149-151, 236, 237, 244, 245. Scouts, Boy and Girl, 47, 169, 240. Secondary schools, 66-68, 82, 83, 101-105, 124-131, 164r-168, 192, 193, 246, 247. Self-realisation, an aim in education, 176. Shakespeare and the new pedagogues, 166. Silence as a factor in the child's development, 178, 179. Smith, Bompas, 250. Specialisation, 69, 73, 74. Spencer, Herbert, 24. Spenser, E., and Saxon speech, 66. Spontaneity in education, 146, 149, 174-181, 187- 191, 192-194, 197, 208- 212, 219, 224, 242. Supervision of schools, 54, 57, 195-197. Superintendentsof American schools, 54. Supplementary Elemen- tary Courses (Scotland), 149, 156. Swiss law against vulgarisa- tion of life, 239. 264 INDEX TEACHER, the, 31, 82, 212, 214, 215, 222-226, 233, 248, 249, 250. Thring, Edward, 32, 48, 75, 85, 129, 191, 192, 208. 249. Translation, value of, 120, UNIVERSITIES and the schools, 72, 74, 75, 83, 84, 103. VOCATIONAL education, 140-142, 170, 171. in elementary schools, 142-158. VOCATIONAL education, in Trade and Craft Schools, 158-162. as feature of secondary school education, 126, 164^-168, 130. Vulgarisation of life, against the, 239. WALES, education in, 77, 81. Ward, Dr James, 24. Welton, J., 218, 219. Wilson, Canon, 50, 249, 250, 251. Withers, H. L., 247, 249. LONDON AND GLASGOW. COLLINS* CLEAR-TYPE PRESS. 3 1 "8 -g "f OH s s s s Ji ^ C SR REC'D LD APR 1? r DEC 6 TA 360873 ..^ . UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY