Our Work.
Volume 7, 1896, pgs. 474-476
Natural History Club.--The Committee hope that P.N.E.U. Members and their children will make collections for the November Exhibition.
It is considered that the furtherance of a reverent love of Nature is not enhanced by collections which involve the taking of life. Stuffed animals and birds, butterflies, birds' eggs, etc., will not be shown this year. Any other Natural History objects, Nature Note--books, drawings of flowers, insects, animals, birds' feathers, dried flowers, fossils, etc., will be gladly welcomed. Also such exhibits as clay or wax maps, which help towards the knowledge of actual surroundings, are of great interest. The report of last year's Exhibition is now out of print, but intending exhibitors can see a copy on application to Miss Blogg, 28 Victoria Street, S.W.
Arrangements are being made to start Branches of the P.N.E.U. in the following places during the coming season :--Richmond (Hon. Sec. pro tem., Mrs. Johnson, Little Over Hill), Weybridge, Manchester and Chichester. Readers of the Parents' Review are particularly requested to send the names of friends they may have in any of these districts to Miss Blogg, and at the same time to write to their friends inviting them to join these branches when formed, enclosing leaflets, etc., relating to the Union, which may be obtained from the office.
House of Education. (The Address of the Lady Visitor at the Annual Meeting, which came to hand to late for the July number.)--I come here this evening to present the Certificates to the old students of the House of Education, but before speaking to the Students, let me take this opportunity to saying a few words about them, and about their home at Ambleside.
It is my privilege to visit the House of Education yearly, if possible, and each year I find it a greater pleasure, for each year I am more impressed with a sense of its great importance as the practical solution of certain difficulties connected with home education,--difficulties long realized but never yet met. I dare not attempt to define what those problems are, speaking in the presence of educational experts, and of one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of schools, whose early recognition of, and consistent sympathy with the aims of the College, have been one of its Principal's greatest encouragements. Still less may I venture to interpret Miss Mason to herself, after listening to her comprehensive and lucid exposition of the aims of the " Union."
Avoiding then, with intention, all definitions of what education is or should be, let me, as Visitor of the House of Education, tell you how beautiful a work it is in its outward expression as well as in its inward meaning : for with the true artistic sense that a fine work is worthy of a fine setting, Miss Mason has located it in a large old-fashioned house, with beautiful pleasure grounds, at the head of Lake Windermere. To sit in the big class-room, looking across the sloping lawn, through a foreground of varied trees, to the splendid panorama of mountains and valleys
beyond, is in itself a liberal education, and one calculated to stir to its very depths the inner being of the most unimpressionable student. The grounds are also valuable as giving ample scope for the pursuit of natural history and botanical studies, thus making recreation times useful as well as exceptionally healthful and delightful.
The Students live on very intimate, though respectful, terms with their Principal, and my report of the College would be a very poor one if I failed to impress you with a sense of the value of that influence over the Students. Miss Mason has not only exceptional capacity for training them in how to train and for teaching them what to teach, but she has a faith in their vocation and a confidence in their capabilities that would seem ideal, but that they are thereby spurred on to realize her ideals, and thus prove how vitalizing a very sane enthusiasm may become!
Necessarily, work carried on under these conditions prospers, and in prospering it expands. Each year is now marked by the throwing out of vigorous off-shoots from the Parent College : these off-shoots being the direct outcome of its needs,--its organic growth. Such are The Parents' Review School, Mothers' Educational Course, Old Students' Union, Students' Magazine. But what is perhaps less known is the existence at Ambleside of a Practising School, which is arranged on the lines of a home schoolroom, and which forms the practical training school for the Students in teaching. The school is held in a detached room in the grounds, formerly a billiard room. The Pupils are in five classes, varying in age from six to eighteen. Although originally intended only for pupils from the neighbourhood, four big girls now board in the town to have the advantage of attending the school. It is worked by the Students in turn, week by week. Each class is small, and represents a family, not a school-class. It is delightful to see the eager interest of each child, whose intelligence is developed with special consideration of its individual needs, while the terms existing between Teacher and Taught, i.e., between the Students and the Pupils of the Practising School, are a practical carrying out of the science of education so ably interpreted in the Parent College.
Among the advantages enjoyed by the Students at Ambleside, I may mention one which is briefly recorded in paragraph V. of the Prospectus as " weekly instruction in art at the house of a friend" : words which give but a poor idea of the valuable and consecutive training in the knowledge of what is beautiful in the world of art, which the Students receive from their kind neighbour, Mrs. Firth. Her lovely home, described by Ruskin as " the most beautiful nest in England," is rich in reproductions of pictorial and architectural masterpieces, and it would be difficult to over--estimate the valuable of the artistic training she so generously bestows on the Students of the House of Education.
Miss Mason bade me speak of the Students, but forbade me to bless them in public. I cannot, however, close my account of the House of Education without saying how greatly I appreciate a tone of mind which is delightful in its perfect simplicity and freedom from all self-consciousness, and which I recognize as the consequence of noble ideals in life, worked out in reverent acknowledgment of the true Source of all inspiration.
I come now to the pleasant task of presenting the Certificates: though it is tempered by the explanation that these are temporary Certificates, used only as an earnest of better ones to come. Those of you who are at all in touch with the work at Ambleside, will understand that a Certificate which should represent and interpret in any measure its aims was not easy to design, and yet that the subject sympathetically grasped might be the opportunity for a real work of art. The talented artist who has so kindly undertaken the work, did design a very beautiful Certificate, but with this fundamental objection, that the rise upward through the education of the children's best possibilities, landed them in a heaven of highest culture that was fitly typified by a beautiful Greek temple; it lacked that acknowledgment of Christian inspiration, which is so essentially the key-note and foundation stone of the House of Education.
It is difficult to amend such a design on lines suggested by others than the artist, and the present attempt has hardly been successful. Mr. Wilson feels this himself, and he has generously offered to re-compose the Certificate. We have accepted his offer all the more gladly because we feel that the beautiful figure of the weary mother, resting at the foot of the present composition, painfully suggests relegated duties, whereas, in the scheme of the House of Education, the mother is essentially the guiding and controlling force of the children's fullest life. Meanwhile, though art is long, and a work of art is worth waiting for, Miss Mason who is nothing if not practical realizes that life is short, and as the Students have already waited long for their Certificates, she has wished them to receive these ones pending the completion of the improved ones.
In presenting them to-night, I take this opportunity of reminding the Students that they themselves virtually represent the House of Education and are the living personification of its aims and aspirations. On you then, the old Students, rests in great measure its reputation, and for the present, at any rate, "it is judged by your works." I am often struck by the sense of your deep responsibilities in this matter! The Principal and all the staff at Ambleside may work unweariedly to ensure its success; fifty students may be the living embodiment of its ideals, and yet the fifty-first may bring discredit on it by failing to realize its aims and to live up to its principles. I venture to remind you of this without fear of causing pain because, so far, there is no sign of indifference or lukewarmness on your part," rather the recent forming of the "Old Students' Association, with its "Students' Magazine," for interchange of experience and for mutual encouragement, points to an enthusiasm and a vitality among the Old Students that must bear fruit in living work, and that does rejoice the heart of our revered and dear Principal.
I cannot put before you a higher ideal than that of carrying out generously in the spirit, as well as in the letter, her conception of what she would wish the Students of the House of Education to do, and still more to be; and I cannot wish you a higher good or a truer happiness than the verification of that wonderful paradox,--the promise that in losing your lives for the good of others, you shall find them again a hundred-fold, both in this life and in the life beyond.
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