What Is and What Might Be

E >> Edmond Holmes >> What Is and What Might Be

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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 masses 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 seashore 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 title), "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
emancipation 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 pronounced. 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 "classes" are
unquestionably much less fortunate than the "masses."

[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 Assistant-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 Dickens' 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 attitude 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 God. It is to the
current misconception of the meaning and value of the Bible, and the
consequent misconception of the relation of God 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 Schuerer.

[11] Here is another example of the mental blindness which
rule-worship 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 class 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 assembled 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 shores. 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
modicum 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 sunshine 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 passive 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 promptitude
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 passu_ 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

Love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.

It recently happened that on a certain day one of the
assistant-teachers had to go to a hospital, that another had to take
her there, that the third was ill in bed, and that Egeria--the only
available member of the staff--was detained by one of the managers
for half-an-hour on her way to school. The school was thus left
without a teacher. On entering it, Egeria found all the children in
their places and at work. They had looked at the time-table, had
chosen some of the older scholars to take the lower classes, and had
settled down happily and in perfect order. This incident proves to
demonstration that the _morale_ of the school has somehow or other
been carried far beyond the limits of what is usually understood by
discipline. I have seen historical scenes acted with much vigour by
some of the children in the first class, and applauded with equal
vigour by their class-mates, while all the time the children in the
second class, who were drawing flowers in the same room, never lifted
their eyes from their desks. Yet no children can laugh more merrily
or more unrestrainedly than these, or make a greater uproar when it
is fitting that they should do so.

And if there is no need for punishment, or any other form of
repression, in this school, it is equally true that there is no need
for rewards. To one who has been taught to regard competition in
school as a sacred duty, and the winning of prizes as a laudable
object of the scholar's ambition, this may seem strange. But so it
is. No child has the slightest desire to outstrip his fellows or rise
to the top of his class. Joy in their work, pride in their school,
devotion to their teacher, are sufficient incentives to industry.
Were the stimulus of competition added to these, neither the zeal nor
the interest of the children would be quickened one whit, but a
discordant element would be introduced into their school life. Happy
as he obviously is in his own school life, it would add nothing to
the happiness of the Utopian to feel that he had outstripped his
class-mates and won a prize for his achievement. So far, indeed, are
these children from wishing to shine at the expense of others, that
if they think Egeria has done less than justice to the work of some
one child, the rest of the class will go out of their way to call her
attention to it. If some children are brighter, cleverer, and more
advanced than others, the reward of their progress is that they are
allowed to help on those who lag behind. This is especially
noticeable in Drawing, in which the pre-eminence of one or two
children has again and again had the effect of lifting the work of
the whole class to a higher level. But the laggards are as far from
being discouraged by their failure as are the more advanced scholars
from being puffed up by their success. From the highest to the
lowest, all are doing their best and all are happy together.

From morals to manners the transition is obvious and direct. Be the
explanation what it may, the whole atmosphere of this school is
evidently fatal to selfishness and self-assertion; and in such an
atmosphere good manners will spring up spontaneously among the
children, and will scarcely need to be inculcated, for the essence of
courtesy is forgetfulness of self and consideration of others in the
smaller affairs of social life. The general bearing of the Utopian
children hits the happy mean between aggressive familiarity and
uncouth shyness,--each a form of self-conscious egoism,--just as
their bearing in school hits the happy mean between laxity and undue
constraint. They welcome the stranger as a friend, take his goodwill
for granted, take him into their confidence, and show him, tactfully
and unostentatiously, many pretty courtesies. And they do all this,
not because they have been drilled into doing it, but because it is
their nature to do it, because their overflowing sympathy and
goodwill must needs express themselves in and through the channels of
courtesy and kindness. There is no trace of sullen self-repression in
this school. Accustomed (as we shall presently see) to express
themselves in various ways, the children cannot entertain kindly
feelings without seeking some vent for them. But whether their kindly
feelings lead them to dance in a ring round their own inspector,
singing "For he's a jolly good fellow," or to escort another
visitor, on his departure, through the playground with their
arms in his, their tact,--which is the outcome, partly of their
self-forgetfulness, partly of the training which their perceptive
faculties are always receiving,--is unfailing, and they never allow
friendliness to degenerate into undue familiarity.

There is one other feature of the school life which I cannot pass
over. I have never been in a school in which the love of what is
beautiful in Nature is so strong or so sincere as in this. The
aesthetic sense of the Utopian child has not been deliberately
trained, but it has been allowed, and even encouraged, to unfold
itself; and the appeal that beauty makes to the heart meets in
consequence with a ready response. Of the truth of this statement
I could, if necessary, give many proofs. One must suffice. The
children, who are adepts at drawing with brush and pencil, wander in
field and lane with sketch-books in their hands; and one of them at
least was so moved by the beauty of a winter sunrise, as seen from
his cottage window, that, in his own words, he felt he _must_ try to
paint it, the result being a water-colour sketch which I have shown
to a competent artist, who tells me that the _feeling_ in the sky is
quite wonderful.

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