What Is and What Might Be Part 5

Time-tables, schemes of work, syllabuses, record books, progress books, examination result books, and the rest,--hours and hours are spent by the teachers on the clerical work which these mechanical contrivances demand. And the hours so spent are too often wholly wasted. The worst of this machinery is that, so long as it works smoothly, all who are interested in the school are satisfied. But it may all work with perfect smoothness, and yet achieve nothing that really counts. I know of hundreds of schools which are to all appearance thoroughly efficient,--schools in which the machinery of education is as well contrived as it is well oiled and cleaned,--and yet in which there is no vital movement, no growth, no life. From highest to lowest, all the inmates of those schools are cheating themselves with forms, figures, marks, and other such empty symbols.

The application of the conventional motive force to the school children goes by the name of _Discipline_. If the pressure at each tap is steady, constant, and otherwise effective, the discipline is good. If it is variable, intermittent, and otherwise ineffective, the discipline is bad. The life of the routine-ridden school is so irksome to the child, that if he is healthy and vigorous he will long to find a congenial outlet for his vital energies, which are as a rule either pent back (as when he sits still listening to a lecture), or forced into uninteresting and unprofitable channels. When this desire masters him during school hours, it goes by the name of "naughtiness," and is regarded as a proof of the inborn sinfulness of his "fallen" nature. To repress the desire, to keep the child in a state either of absolute inaction or of mechanically regulated activity, is the function of school discipline. Whatever in the child's life is free, natural, spontaneous, wells up from an evil source. If educational progress is to be made, that source must be carefully sealed. As an educator, the teacher must do his best to reduce the child to the level of a wire-pulled puppet. As a disciplinarian, he must overcome the child's instinctive repugnance to being subjected to such unworthy treatment. The better the "discipline" of the school, the easier it will be for the mechanical education given in it to achieve its deadly work.

In making this sketch of what is still a common type of elementary school, my object has been to provide myself with materials for answering the question: Does elementary education, as at present conducted in this country, tend to foster the growth of the child's faculties? If my sketch is even approximately faithful to its original, the answer to the question, so far at least as thousands of schools are concerned, must be an emphatic No. For in the school, as I have sketched it, the one end and aim of the teacher is to prevent the child from doing anything whatever for himself; and where independent effort is prohibited, the growth of faculty must needs be arrested, the growth of every faculty, as of every limb and organ, being dependent in large measure on its being duly and suitably exercised by its owner. If this statement is true of faculty as such, and of effort as such, still more is it true of the particular faculties which school life is supposed to train, the faculties which we speak of loosely as perceptive,--and of the particular effort by which alone the growth of the perceptive faculties is effected, the many-sided effort which we speak of loosely as self-expression. Far perception and expression are, as I have endeavoured to prove, the face and obverse of the same vital process; and the educational policy which makes self-expression, or, in other words, sincere expression, impossible, is therefore fatal to the outgrowth of the whole range of the perceptive faculties.

The education given in thousands of our elementary schools is, then, in the highest degree anti-educational. The end which education ought to aim at achieving is the very end which the teacher labours unceasingly to defeat. The teacher may, indeed, contend that his business is not to evoke faculty but to impart knowledge. The answer to this argument is that the type of education which impedes the outgrowth of faculty is necessarily fatal to the acquisition of knowledge. For the teacher can no more impart knowledge to his pupils than a nurse can impart flesh and blood to her charges. What the teacher imparts is information, just as what the nurse imparts is food; and until information has been converted into knowledge the child is as far from being educated as the infant, whose food remains una.s.similated, is from being nourished. The teacher may pump information into the child in a never-ending stream; but so long as he compels the child to adopt an att.i.tude of pa.s.sive receptivity, and forbids him to react, through the medium of self-expression, on the food that he is receiving, so long will the food remain una.s.similated and even undigested, and the soul and mind of the child remain uneducated and unfed.

Whether, then, we concern ourselves, as educationalists, with the growth of the child's whole nature, or with the growth of his master faculties, or again with the growth of those special "senses"

which evolve themselves in response to the stimulus of special environments, we see that in each case the effect of the teacher's policy of distrust and repression is to arrest growth. When the stern supernaturalist reminds us that the child's nature is intrinsically evil, and that therefore in arresting its growth education renders him a priceless service, we answer that, in arresting the growth of the child's nature as a whole, education arrests the growth of all the master faculties of his being, and that there are some at least among these which, even in the judgment of the supernaturalist, imperatively need to be trained. When the strait-laced, result-hunting teacher reminds us that his sole business is to teach certain subjects, and that therefore he cannot concern himself with growth, we answer that, in neglecting to foster growth, he makes it impossible for the child to put forth a special "sense," a special faculty of direct perception, in response to each new environment, and so (for reasons which have already been given) incapacitates him for mastering any subject. There is always one point of view, if no more, from which my primary a.s.sumption--that the function of education is to foster growth--is seen to be a truism. And from that point of view, if from no other, the failure of the routine-ridden school to fulfil its destiny is seen to be final and complete.

Yet to say that elementary education, as it is given in such a school, tends to arrest growth, is to under-estimate its capacity for mischief. In the act of arresting growth it must needs distort growth, and in doing this it must needs deaden and even destroy the life which is ever struggling to evolve itself. It is well that from time to time we should ask ourselves what compulsory education has done for the people of England. How much it has done to civilise and humanise the ma.s.ses is beginning to be known to all who are interested in social progress, and I for one am ready to second any vote of thanks that may be proposed to it for this invaluable service.[15] But when we ask ourselves what it has done to _vitalise_ the nation, we may well hesitate for an answer. Twenty years ago, in the days of "schedules" and "percentages," elementary education was, on balance, an actively devitalising agency. The policy of the Education Department made that inevitable. But things have changed since then; and it is probable that the balance is now in favour of the elementary school. But the balance, though growing from year to year, is as yet very small compared with what it will be when the teacher, relieved from the pressure of the still prevailing demand for "results," is free to take thought for the vital interests of the child.

Whom shall we blame for the shortcomings of our elementary schools?

The Board of Education? Their Inspectors? The Teachers? The Training Colleges? The Local Authorities? We will blame none of these. We will blame the spirit of Western civilisation, with its false philosophy of life and its false standard of reality.

Shall we blame the Board because, in the days when they called themselves the Department, they made the teachers of England the serfs of their soul-destroying Code? For my own part I prefer to honour the Board, not only because on a certain day they liberated their serfs by a departmental edict, but also and more especially because, in defiance of the protests and criticisms of Members of Parliament, employers of labour, Chairmen of Education Committees, and others, in defiance of the ubiquitous pressure of Western externalism and materialism, in defiance of the trend of contemporary opinion, in defiance of their own practice,--for they themselves are an examining body whose nets are widely spread,--they refuse to revoke the gift of freedom, which they gave, perhaps over-hastily, to the teachers of England, and continue to exempt them, so far as their own action is concerned, from the pressure of a formal examination on a uniform scheme of work.

Shall we blame the teachers as a body because too many of them are machine-made creatures of routine? For my own part I honour the teachers as a body, if only because here and there one of them has dared, with splendid courage, to defy the despotism of custom, of tradition, of officialdom, of the thousand deadening influences that are brought to bear upon him, and to follow for himself the path of inwardness and life. To blame the average teacher for being unable to resist the pressure to which he is unceasingly exposed would be almost as unfair as to blame a pebble on the seash.o.r.e for being unable to resist the grinding action of the waves, and would ill become one who has special reason to remember how the Department, in its misguided zeal for efficiency, strove for thirty years or more to grind the teachers of England to one pattern in the mill of "payment by results." It is to a certificated teacher that, as an educationalist (if I may give myself so formidable a t.i.tle), "I owe my soul." And there are many other teachers to whom my debts, though less weighty than this, are by no means light. Most of the failings of the elementary teachers are wounds and strains which adverse Fate has inflicted on them. Most of their virtues are their own.

Shall we blame the Training Colleges because, with an unhappy past behind them, they have yet many things to unlearn?

Shall we blame the local Education Authorities because, with an unknown future before them, they have yet many things to learn?

No, I repeat, we will blame none of these. We will lay the blame on broader shoulders. We will blame our materialistic philosophy of life, which we complacently regard--orthodox and heretics alike--as "_The_ truth"; and we will blame our materialised civilisation, which we complacently regard--cultured and uncultured alike--as civilisation, pure and simple, whatever lies beyond its confines being lightly dismissed as "barbarism." These are the forces against which every teacher, every manager, every inspector, who strives for emanc.i.p.ation and enlightenment, has to fight unceasingly. If the fight is an unequal one; if there are many would-be reformers who have shrunk from it; if there are others who retired from it early in the day; if there are others, again, who have been crushed in it;--we will blame the forces of darkness for these disasters; we will not blame their victims. On the contrary, we will honour all who have fought and fallen; for when the cause is large and worthy of devotion, failure in the service of it is only less triumphant than success. But if there is honour for failure what shall be the guerdon of success? What tribute shall we pay to those who have fought and won?

For there are some who have fought and won.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] It must be clearly understood that throughout this chapter the school that I have in mind is one for "older children"

only. Whatever may be the defects of the elementary infant schools, an excessive regard for outward and visible results is not one of them. Exemption from the pressure of a formal external examination has meant much more to them than to the schools for older children; and the atmosphere of the good infant schools is, in consequence, freer, happier, more recreative, and more truly educative than that of the upper schools of equivalent merit. And when we compare grade with grade, we find that the superiority of the elementary infant schools is still more p.r.o.nounced. The "Great Public Schools," and the costly preparatory schools that lead up to them, may or may not be worthy of their high reputation; but as regards facilities for the education (in school) of their "infants," the "cla.s.ses" are unquestionably much less fortunate than the "ma.s.ses."

[7] Not long ago I happened to enter the Boys' Department of an urban Church School at about 9.15 a.m. The Headmaster was sitting at his desk, drawing up schemes of "secular" work. All the boys above "Standard III"--94 in number--were grouped together, listening, or pretending to listen, to a "chalk-and-talk" lecture on "Prayer" [of which there are apparently five varieties, viz., (1) Invocation, (2) Deprecation, (3) Obsecration, (4) Intercession, (5) Supplication].

The Headmaster explained to me that "of course it was only during the Scripture lesson" that this overgrouping went on. The lecture on Prayer was given by a young a.s.sistant-master, whose naive delight in the long words that he rolled out _ore rotundo_ and then chalked up on the blackboard, had blinded him to the obvious fact that he was making no impression whatever on his audience. The boys, one and all, reminded me forcibly of the "white-headed boy" in d.i.c.kens' village school, who displayed "in the expression of his face a remarkable capacity of totally abstracting his mind from the spelling on which his eyes were fixed."

[8] There are many elementary schools which the Diocesan Inspector does not enter. In the "Provided" or "Council" Schools "undenominational Bible teaching" takes the place of the "definite dogmatic instruction in religious knowledge" which is tested by Diocesan Inspection. But even when undogmatic Bible teaching is given, the shadow of an impending examination, external or internal as the case may be, too often sterilises the efforts of the teacher.

Not that the efforts of the teacher would in any case be productive so long as the att.i.tude of popular thought towards the Bible remained unchanged. To go into this burning question would involve me in an unjustifiable digression; but I must be allowed to express my conviction that the teaching of the Bible in our elementary schools will never be anything but misguided and mischievous until those who are responsible for it have realised that the Old Testament is the inspired literature of a particular people, and have ceased to regard it as the authentic biography of the Eternal G.o.d. It is to the current misconception of the meaning and value of the Bible, and the consequent misconception of the relation of G.o.d to Nature and to Man, that the externalism of the West, which is the source of all the graver defects of modern education, is (as I contend) largely due; and it is useless to try to remedy those defects so long as we allow our philosophy of life to be perennially poisoned at its highest springs.

[9] In far too many cases the teacher received a certain proportion of the Grant; and in any case his value in the market tended to vary directly with his ability to secure a large Grant for his school by his success in the yearly examination.

[10] _The Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ_, by Dr.

Emil Schurer.

[11] Here is another example of the mental blindness which rule-wors.h.i.+p in Arithmetic is apt to induce. The boys in a large "Standard II," who had been spending the whole year in adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing tens of thousands, were given the following sum: A farmer had 126 sheep. He bought nine. How many had he then? Out of 50 boys, one only worked the sum correctly. Of the remaining 49, about a third _multiplied_ 126 by 9, another third _divided_ 126 by 9, while the remaining third _subtracted_ 9 from 126.

[12] Reinforced in many cases by suggestive words. I recently found myself in an urban school while the "Fourth Standard"

boys were doing "Composition." The subject--Trees--had already been dealt with in a preparatory "talk." In front of the cla.s.s was a blackboard, on which were written the following words:

"fruit, flowers, I. _Roots_ tough, strong, stretch, extend.

II. _Trunk_ thick, branches, bark.

III. _Branches_ strong, tough, leaves.

IV. _Leaves_ green, shapes, sizes, beautiful, clothe, autumn, brown."

I am told that sometimes as many as twelve headings are given, each with its own list of suggestive words.

[13] I was recently present at a large gathering of teachers who had a.s.sembled to discuss the teaching of Drawing and other kindred topics. The district is one in which the gospel of self-help in Drawing has been preached with diligence and with much apparent success. One of the teachers, who was expected to support the Board in their crusade against the "flat copy," played the part of Balaam by reading out letters from certain distinguished R.A.'s, in which the use of the flat copy in elementary schools was openly advocated.

It was evident that those distinguished R.A.'s knew as much about elementary education as the man in the street knows about naval tactics, for the arguments by which they supported their paradoxical opinions were worth exactly nothing. But the salvos of applause, renewed again and again, which greeted the extracts from their letters showed clearly in which direction the current of subconscious conviction was running in that evangelised and apparently converted district.

[14] There are few teachers who do not also work from higher motives than these; but there are very few who are exempt from the pressure of these.

[15] It is pleasant to read that at Southend on Easter Monday (1910) there were 65,000 excursionists and only two cases of drunkenness. It is also pleasant to hear from an officer who has served for many years in India that the modern English private soldier in India is an infinitely superior being to his predecessors, and that India could not now be held by the old type of British soldier. We must not, however, forget that the "old type" conquered India.

PART II

WHAT MIGHT BE

OR

THE PATH OF SELF-REALISATION

CHAPTER IV

A SCHOOL IN UTOPIA

Having painted in gloomy colours some of the actualities of elementary education, I will now try to set forth its possibilities.

In opposing the actual to the possible, I am perhaps running the risk of being misunderstood. The possible, as I conceive it, is no mere "fabric of a dream." What are possibilities for the elementary school, as such, are already actualities in certain schools. Were it not so, I should not speak of them as possibilities. I do not pretend to be a prophet, in the vulgar sense of the word. The ends which I am about to set before managers and teachers are ends which have been achieved, and are being achieved, _under entirely normal conditions_, in various parts of the country, and which are therefore not impracticable. There are many elementary schools in England in which bold and successful departures have been made from the beaten track; and in each of these cases what is at present a mere possibility for most schools has been actually realised. And there is one elementary school at least in which the beaten track has been entirely abandoned, with the result that possibilities (as I may now call them) which I might perhaps have dismissed on _a priori_ grounds as too fantastic for serious consideration, have become part of the everyday life of the scholars.

That school shall now become the theme of my book; for I feel that I cannot serve the cause of education better than by trying to describe and interpret the work that is being done in it. The school belongs to a village which I will call Utopia. It is not an imaginary village--a village of Nowhere--but a very real village, which can be reached, as all other villages can, by rail and road. It nestles at the foot of a long range of hills; and if you will climb the slope that rises at the back of the village, and look over the level country that you have left behind, you will see in the distance the gleaming waters of one of the many seas that wash our sh.o.r.es. The village is fairly large, as villages go in these days of rural depopulation; and the school is attended by about 120 children. The head teacher, whose genius has revolutionised the life, not of the school only, but of the whole village, is a woman. I will call her Egeria. She has certainly been my Egeria, in the sense that whatever modic.u.m of wisdom in matters educational I may happen to possess, I owe in large measure to her. I have paid her school many visits, and it has taken me many months of thought to get to what I believe to be the bed-rock of her philosophy of education,--a philosophy which I will now attempt to expound.

Two things will strike the stranger who pays his first visit to this school. One is the ceaseless activity of the children. The other is the bright and happy look on every face. In too many elementary schools the children are engaged either in laboriously doing nothing,--in listening, for example, with ill-concealed yawns, to _lectures_ on history, geography, nature-study, and the rest; or in doing what is only one degree removed from nothing,--working mechanical sums, transcribing lists of spellings or pieces of composition, drawing diagrams which have no meaning for them, and so forth. But in this school every child is, as a rule, actively employed. And bearing in mind that "unimpeded energy" is a recognised source of happiness, the visitor will probably conjecture that there is a close connection between the activity of the children and the brightness of their faces.

That the latter feature of the school will arrest his attention is almost certain. Utopia belongs to a county which is proverbial for the dullness of its rustics, but there is no sign of dullness on the face of any Utopian child. On the contrary, so radiantly bright are the faces of the children that something akin to suns.h.i.+ne seems always to fill the school. When he gets to know the school, the visitor will realise that the brightness of the children is of two kinds,--the brightness of energy and intelligence, and the brightness of goodness and joy. And when he gets to know the school as well as I do, he will realise that these two kinds of brightness are in their essence one.

Let me say something about each of them.

The Utopian child is alive, alert, active, full of latent energy, ready to act, to do things, to turn his mind to things, to turn his hand to things, to turn his desire to things, to turn his whole being to things. There is no trace in this school of the mental lethargy which, in spite of the ceaseless activity of the teachers, pervades the atmosphere of so many elementary schools; no trace of the fatal inertness on the part of the child, which is the outcome of five or six years of systematic repression and compulsory inaction. The air of the school is electrical with energy. We are obviously in the presence of an active and vigorous life.

And the activity of the Utopian child is his own activity. It is a fountain which springs up in himself. Unlike the ordinary school-child, he can do things on his own account. He does not wait, in the helplessness of pa.s.sive obedience, for his teacher to tell him what he is to do and how he is to do it. He does not even wait, in the bewilderment of self-distrust, for his teacher to give him a lead. If a new situation arises, he deals with it with prompt.i.tude and decision. His solution of the problem which it involves may be incorrect, but at any rate it will be a solution. He will have faced a difficulty and grappled with it, instead of having waited inertly for something to turn up. His initiative has evidently been developed _pari pa.s.su_ with his intelligence; and the result of this is that he can think things out for himself, that he can devise ways and means, that he can purpose, that he can plan.

In all these matters the Utopian child differs widely and deeply from the less fortunate child who has to attend a more ordinary type of elementary school. But when we turn to the other aspect of the Utopian brightness, when we consider it as the reflected light of goodness and joy, we find that the difference between the two children is wider and deeper still. There are many schools outside Utopia that pride themselves on the excellence of their discipline; but I am inclined to think that in some at least of these the self-satisfaction of the teacher is equivalent to a confession of failure. There was a time when every elementary school received a large grant for instruction and a small grant for discipline; and inspectors were supposed to report separately on each of these aspects of the school's life. A strange misconception of the meaning and purpose of education underlay this artificial distinction; but on that we need not dwell. Were an inspector called upon to report on the discipline of the Utopian school, his report would be brief.

There is no discipline in the school. There is no need for any. The function of the strict disciplinarian is to shut down, and, if necessary, sit upon, the safety-valve of misconduct. But in Utopia, where all the energies of the children are fully and happily employed, that safety-valve has never to be used. Each child in turn is so happy in his school life that the idea of being naughty never enters his head. One cannot remain long in the school without realising that in its atmosphere