The Limitations of the School.
by G. F. Bridge, Esq.
Volume 12, 1901, pgs. 186-195
Continued from page 106
Part II.
(Continued from pg. 106.)
One of the most conspicuous weaknesses of the British boy is to my mind what I would call his illiterateness, by which I mean the slight comprehension he has of the meaning of language, and his incapacity in many cases to understand any language beyond that of the playground or the sporting columns of the newspapers. Let me give two examples of what I mean. I have known a sixth form [11th/12th grade class] where there were only two boys who knew the meaning of the word "abyss," and I have known a fifth form [10th/11th grade class] only one boy which could explain the meaning of the proverb, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good." This ignorance of the mother-tongue is, in most cases, the greatest obstacle in the way of teaching boys foreign languages, a fact recently brought before the Headmasters' Conference by so eminent a teacher as the headmaster of Marlborough College. The modern language master is hampered, not by the inability of the English boy to learn foreign languages--an inability which is in most cases quite imaginary--but by having to teach English at the same time as he teaches French and German. The study of English authors, which ought to be one of the pleasantest tasks of the schoolboy, and indeed rather an intellectual relaxation than a task, becomes a laborious spelling out of the meaning of difficult sentences, and Shakspere and Milton are as obscure to the boy as if they were written in a foreign tongue. I am quite aware how much the school itself is to blame for this illiterateness. The study of the mother-tongue is, I know, shamefully neglected in our public schools. Teaching boys to read intelligently--and this really lies at the bottom of an intelligent comprehension of language--is looked upon as beneath the dignity of public school masters. English as taught in the lower forms of schools too often means simply the study of grammar in its most barren and mechanical aspect or else the unintelligent learning by heart of poems wholly unsuitable for the young.
But whilst I fully admit that schools ought to do their share in helping children to an understanding of language, I venture to point out to you that this is a case in which the atmosphere of the home has a very considerable influence on the progress of the child's mind. The understanding of literature and a feeling for poetry are, like the higher moral graces, things which are seldom acquired at all if they are not acquired in early childhood. The literary education of a boy begins when he learns simple childish poems at his mother's knee, or reads simple childish books with someone who takes care that he shall understand and appreciate them. The foundation of the understanding of language and of books is laid in this way, and if it is not laid in this way, the language teaching of schoolmasters will be for the most part but a building of houses upon the sand. This kind of elementary teaching means mainly three things: (1) the understanding of the meaning of words, whether used singly or woven in sentences; (2) the ability to read aloud; (3) the acquisition of the fundamental ideas of grammar; and the more of this kind of training the child receives in the home, the better equipped will he be for the literary teaching he will receive at school. I may add to this that appreciation of literature is an intellectual grace seldom acquired in schools. The active, bustling, noisy life of a school is not a favourable soil for the growth of such a delicate plant. Of this truth I become more and more convinced every year that I teach--that the boy who comes to school with no love of reading, and no appreciation of what books and literature can tell him, will profit little by all the literary teaching he receives in the school, and will leave the school--whether he leaves in the fourth or the sixth form matters little-will leave the school dead to all the pleasures and elevating influences of literature.
What I have said of the appreciation of literature applies with even greater force to the love of the fine arts. Public school life, the tendency of which is to keep both boys and masters in a state of intense, and indeed somewhat feverish activity, is unfavourable to the growth of the quiet, thoughtful spirit; it is not likely to foster any appreciation or love of art. It is true that secondary schools have made great strides in the teaching of drawing, and there are now, I imagine, few schools where that subject is not taught to at least a considerable percentage of the pupils, and it is true also that music is cultivated more or less in the great majority of public schools, but the practice of drawing--valuable as it is for practical purposes and as an education for hand and eye--will not of itself help a boy to appreciate pictures, nor, I imagine, will singing in a class inspire a taste for the music of Beethoven or Mozart. The cultivation of the aesthetic faculty is quite a different thing from the acquirement of practical skill, and either may exist without any tincture of the other. For the cultivation of the aesthetic faculty, it cannot be said at present that schools do anything. Go into any school and observe the bare walls of the class-rooms, ask how many pictures there are in the school which boys ever get a chance to see, ask how many times a year the scholars ever have their attention called to a beautiful work of art. And yet if we believe, as surely we must believe, that art is a refining and elevating influence, we ought to try to do something to give our children the advantages of such an influence. Is it altogether a good thing that children should spend all their working hours surrounded by ugliness? Is it not something of a pity that they should never see one of Raphael's pictures, or even one of Landseer's? And yet, while you blame schools for their carelessness in this matter, I would ask you to remember that the love of beautiful things, like all the finer feelings, cannot be taught like Latin and Greek, but is rather, like religion itself, an inspiration caught by one individual from another, and the individual from whom the child catches it is, in nine cases out of ten, the parent.
While I have been speaking of literature and art, I expect it will have occurred to some of you that much of what I have said applies only to exceptional boys, and not to the average boy. There is no doubt some truth in this, though much more might be done than is done to help the average boy to an appreciation of these great products of human thought. Still, of course, it is true that there are many children whom nothing could render sensible to the gracious influences of noble thought and beautiful form. And schools being necessarily fashioned to suit the requirements of the average boy, clearly art and literature will have small chance in them. But surely this makes it all the more incumbent upon parents who have children whose tastes are different from those of the average child, to see that those tastes are carefully cultivated. The quiet, thoughtful boy, the boy with literary, or artistic, or musical tastes hardly gets his fair chance in a school--see that he gets it in the home. You have considerable opportunity for doing this, for, owing to the remarkable length of the holidays in English schools, you have your children entirely to yourself for between three and four months every year. In those three or four months, at least, let individual tastes and faculties be cultivated, and let us take care that all our children are not, by too much rubbing together, made as like one another as pebbles on a sea beach.
I proceed now to speak of much smaller matters, and to point out to you that in class-room work a schoolmaster has great difficulty in teaching anything that only one boy can do at a time. This applies principally to whatever has to be done by the voice. You may have a hundred boys writing or drawing in a room at the same time, but obviously you can have only one boy speaking, reading, or talking French. In all the arts connected with the use of the voice, therefore, the power of the schoolmaster is strictly limited. There are three arts of this kind which every child, or nearly every child, ought to learn--reading aloud, recitation, the speaking of foreign languages. I might, perhaps, add a fourth--speaking to a number of persons, to the extent, at least, of being able to tell a story or describe a scene clearly and intelligently in the presence of a class. It can hardly be claimed for schools that they are successful in cultivating any of these forms of skill. More might be done for them in schools than is done, no doubt, especially in the matter of reading aloud, the gross neglect of which is a thing which a good many schools go out of their way to make painfully apparent to the public; but these vocal arts will hardly be thoroughly well taught except where the home co-operates with the school. Take the reading and speaking of French and German, for example. An easy sum in arithmetic will show you that if a master has a class of twenty boys, and has two hours a week to give to reading or talking French, each boy will be uttering French for just six minutes a week. Now the fluent reading or speaking of a foreign language will hardly be secured by six minutes' practice a week. It is often borne in upon me when I hear boys read French or German, but particularly French, how helpful to modern language masters would be the co-operation of parents who have some knowledge of foreign tongues, and who would be willing to listen to their children reading for, say, ten or fifteen minutes three or four times a week.
This leads me to make a remark about French and German conversation. It is much discussed amongst teachers whether it is or is not possible to "teach" (as the expression is) French or German conversation in the class-room. The answer to this question appears to me to mainly depend on what you mean by "teaching conversation." Conversation is properly speaking the free and fluent exchange of information and ideas, and in this sense French conversation is impossible in the class-room. On the other hand, it is certainly possible to give boys a considerable amount of practice in the utterance of French and German. But see what an immense advantage the parent has over the schoolmaster in this matter! The parent can carry on a real conversation with the boy, the master only a very artificial one; the parent can talk with the child for a quarter of an hour on end, the master for not more than two or three minutes. In fact, the difference between French conversation of the home and that of the school is the difference between the sham fight and the real battle!
The same principle applies to the special difficulties individual boys find with their work. The master dealing with the mass deals with the difficulties which experience has shown him are the rocks over which the average boy stumbles; but as no two boys are exactly alike, it follows that the individual boy will often find difficulties which the master has not explained. Every schoolmaster, therefore, who really cares about the progress of his pupils, will welcome any assistance given in the home which is directed towards clearing away the obstacles in the boys' path. Most teachers, indeed, view with distrust the practice of giving boys such an amount of help that their work is practically done for them, for this tends to make lads helpless instead of self-reliant, and also prevents the teacher from knowing what progress the pupil is making; but this is quite a different thing to helping a child over a stile which he cannot be fairly expected to surmount himself. The general principle in all teaching is to do nothing for the pupil which he can do for himself; but in the most carefully set home work, things will turn up which a backward or dull boy cannot do if left entirely to himself, and anyone who assists him in these difficulties renders a service both to the boy and to the school.
I have said so much of what the class-room work does not do, that you may fairly retaliate by asking me what it does do. My answer is that it does mainly two things for a boy's intellect--it disciplines the mind and it develops power. The continual wrestling with difficult problems, the effort to learn the hard piece of grammar, or to get the meaning out of the troublesome foreign author, all the daily exercise of the powers of mind under the varied stimuli of healthy rivalry, sense of duty, respect for his teacher, a sense of the importance of education, and a score of other motives, give power and self-reliance. And yet I am not sure that the principle that the main object of class-room work is discipline, and not the acquirement of knowledge, is not carried somewhat too far in these days.
"The object of teaching is to teach a boy how to learn."
"Not knowledge, but development of faculty, is the true end of schoolwork."
Phrases like these are repeated so constantly wherever those interested in education are gathered together, that there seems to be a danger of other important aspects of education being lost sight of altogether. It may be well therefore to remind ourselves, after all due respect has been paid to the work of discipline and training of the faculty--work which I would not have you suppose for a moment that I set less store by than other schoolmasters--I say, it may be well to remind ourselves that youth is emphatically the time for learning, that is, for laying in a stock of knowledge, and a store of ideas, and also for the acquirement of many forms of skill. The educational necessities of the time tend rather to obscure this side of schoolwork. It is an age of language-teaching. Never before in the history of the world has the unfortunate human boy or girl had to learn so many foreign tongues. Nearly every child in first-grade schools learns two languages, the majority learn three, some--I hope only a few--learn four. This is a species of education which is quite peculiar to the second half of the nineteenth century. The Greek boy learnt no foreign language; the Roman one at most, i.e., Greek; the modern European, till quite recently, two at most--Latin and Greek. French and German have been super-added during the last thirty or forty years to the classical tongues, and the consequence is, and I said, that most boys in first-grade schools now learn three languages, and that, consequently, at least half their school hours are spent in linguistic studies. Languages, either classical or modern, are undoubtedly one of the finest, if not the very best instrument for disciplining and developing the mind that can be found.
Many educationalists regard a boy's language studies as the most valuable mental discipline that he gets. Still it must not be forgotten that linguistic work is in the main disciplinary only, and does not add largely to a boy's knowledge or stock of ideas. Half of the child's working hours is a big slice to give to what is, after all, only the study of words, and a considerable fraction of the other half is occupied with the study of mathematics, another study the disciplinary effect of which it is hard to exaggerate, but which is, be it remembered, the study of numbers and abstractions. What I sometimes ask myself is--Where does the study of things come in? If the boy spend three-quarters of his time, and more than three-quarters of his energy, thinking and learning about words and numbers, how much brain will he have to spare for the study of the world and all that is in it, for nature and the numerous sciences connected with it, for man and his countless activities, to name but a few of which such as government, trade, war, art, open up before us immense vistas of knowledge? Does it not seem that mental discipline gets a little too much attention in schools at present, and the acquirement of knowledge too little? Is not the boy who can write Latin verse, solve mathematical problems, but whose mind is destitute of information, or ideas, or taste, somewhat too common a type? Here is a problem which the schools will surely have to solve in the next generation. What the solution will be, I cannot venture to prophesy, but I cannot help thinking that a considerable reduction in the amount of linguistic work done in the class-room will soon be one of the objects of educational reformers. That reduction will be achieved by the ejection of Latin from many schools, a change which I, for one, would view by no means altogether with satisfaction, but which is inevitable; and in many others by the adoption of improved methods in the teaching of languages, which will permit the pupil to make more rapid progress than at present.
But whatever may be the future, this much at least about the present is certain; that the predominance of linguistic and mathematical studies in secondary schools has a tendency to make education one-sided, and produce a considerable number of skilled classicists and mathematicians, who scarcely know the names of the planets, and would be puzzled to say whether Bismarck was a Frenchman or German.
I cannot bring these fragmentary remarks to a conclusion without briefly noticing two of the many hindrances to good education with which our public schools are struggling. The one is the absence of any satisfactory test of efficiency, the other is extreme poverty. The first point I do not propose to treat at length, because the best method of testing the work done in the class-room is a technical question, but I will venture to urge upon you to consider to what extent the present deficiencies in secondary schools are due to the insufficiency of their funds, for there is no one question on which it is more needful that the public should have clear views. Deficient buildings, old and unserviceable furniture, absence of physical and chemical laboratories, teaching apparatus altogether wanting, or represented only by a few obsolete maps, and two or three broken blackboards--this is too often the provision made for the necessities of education. Of the provision made for the flesh and blood requirements of school-work, I will content myself now with three quotations on the subject from the reports of the Bryce Commission on Secondary Education.
Quotation 1 (which practically contains the essence of the whole question):--"A very cheap school means either a very small staff or a very badly paid one, and in neither case can the efficiency of the worker be maintained."
Quotation 2:--"The statistics we have received from the representatives of the Assistant Masters' Association indicate clearly the existence of a large number of very small salaries, and correspond, without doubt, to the existence in the schoolmaster's profession of many who are mere birds of passage, picking up a small income on their way to other careers, of some, moreover, who are permanently worth for any other career no more than they get, and of better men who are forced to eke out a living by doing other work in time saved by the perfunctory performance of their scholastic duties."
Quotation 3:--"Young women with professional prospects such as Assistant Mistresses have, are not likely to take much pains and spend much money on qualifying themselves as really skilled labourers in education."
You see how clearly the Commissioners trace the inevitable connection between cheapness and inefficiency. That what is low in price is low in quality is a law of nature, from which all our Guilds, and Associations, and Unions, whether of teachers or parents, will vainly endeavour to find a way of escape. If the public refuse to pay more than a third-rate price for education, it must be content to receive in exchange a third-rate article. You must not expect to buy oil paintings for the price of olegraphs. Lord Rosebery the other day appealed to us to put the affairs of the Empire on a business footing. I do not know whether his Lordship regards education as part of the affairs of the Empire, but there is certainly pressing need for it to be put upon a business footing. Schools must be provided with the funds necessary for their equipment, and for the provision of an adequate staff. These funds may be provided for either directly by the payment of increased fees, or indirectly through the medium of rates and taxes, but provided they must be. I urge this upon you, because it is necessary that the public should understand that good education is not purely a schoolmaster's question, but one the solution of which depends largely on this question--What assistance is the public prepared to give? That is the question on which I invite you to ponder.
I trust you will not go away from here thinking that I have a low opinion of that class of schools to which the one in which I hold a post belongs. That would be quite a wrong impression. If I have pointed deficiencies and weaknesses, some of them inherent in the nature of things, and common to all schools in all ages, others such as might be removed or at least alleviated by an improvement in the economic conditions of schools, it is because it seems desirable that parents should know how big a slice of education there is left over for them to grapple with after the school has done its work. There is much that the school does not do and does not profess to do for children; but there is much that it does extremely well. And if we consider education in its broadest aspect--moral, physical, intellectual--it may be doubted whether an English public school, with all its defects, does not at present afford as good a training, discipline and general upbringing for boys as any other educational institution in this confused and defective world.
Proofread by LNL, May 2011