Cambridge Essays on Education Part 9

After the press and the parent comes millinery. Perhaps it is Utopian to suggest that "caps" can be entirely abolished; but the enterprise of haberdashers and the weakness of school authorities have led to a multiplication of blazers, ribbons, caps, jerseys, stockings, badges, scarves and the like, which certainly tend to mark off the successful player from his fellows, and to make him a cynosure of the vulgar and an object of complacent admiration to himself. Success in games should be its own reward. In some cases it certainly is. And the paradox is that very often it is those who are least bountifully endowed by nature who profit most. Some there are who have such natural gifts of strength and dexterity, that from the first they can excel at any game. Triumphs come to them without hard struggle, and they breathe the incense of applause. But others have a clumsier hand, a slower foot, and yet they have a determination to excel, a resolution in sticking to their task that brings them at the last to a fair measure of skill. Such a boy is already rewarded by the toughening of the will that perseverance brings: he does not need a ribbon on his sweater. To give the other, the natural athlete, a coloured scarf, is to run the risk of making him over-value the gifts he owes to nature.

There is no reason why a boy who excels in games should not excel in work. The two are not competing sides of education, they are complementary. The schoolmaster's ideal is that his boys should gain the advantages of both. The athlete who neglects his work, grows up with a poorly furnished mind and an untrained judgment. The student who neglects his games, grows up without the nervous development that fits his body to be the instrument of his will, and without the knowledge of men and the habit of dealing with men which are indispensable in many callings. It has been proved again and again that it is possible to get the advantages of both these sides of school life. There is no reason why the playing of school games should be anything but a help to the intellectual development of a boy.

But the constant talking about games is by no means harmless, though it is true boys might be talking of worse things. It is related that a French educational critic was once descanting to an English head master on the monotony of the conversation of English public school boys: "they talk of nothing but football." But when he was asked, "And of what do French school boys generally talk?" he was silent. But if "cricket shop" saves us from worse topics, it certainly is destructive of rational conversation on subjects of more general interest. In great boarding schools we collect a population of boys under quite abnormal conditions, cut off for the greater part of their social life from intercourse with older people. It is, I think, a general experience that boys who have been at day schools and are the sons of intelligent parents, have their minds more awakened to the questions of the day in politics, or art, or literature than boys of equal ability who have been at a boarding school. They have had the advantage of hearing their father and his friends discussing topics which are outside the range of school life. Boarding schools are often built in some country place away from the surging life of towns, where the noise of political strife and the roar of the traffic of the world are but dimly heard. In such seclusion the life of the school, particularly the active life of the playing fields, occupies the focus of a boy's consciousness. The geographical conditions tend to narrow the range of his interests, and he remains a boy when others are growing to be men. Those who have the wider tastes, are deterred from talking about them by the ever present fear of "side." They will talk freely to a master of architecture or music or j.a.panese prints, but they are chary of betraying these enthusiasms to their fellows. And masters are not free from blame: I suppose we all of us sometimes bow down in the house of Rimmon, and when the conversation languishes at the tea-table, fall back on a discussion of the last house match. It is the line of least resistance, and after a strenuous day's work it is not easy to maintain a monologue about Home Rule. Not the least of the boons of the war is that it has ousted games from the foremost place as a topic of conversation. I have not noticed that they are less keenly played, although the increase of military work has diminished the time given to them; but they have ceased to monopolise the thoughts of boys. The problem then of reducing the absorption in games is the problem of finding and providing other absorbing interests. We cannot, fortunately, always have the counter-irritant of war. Where we fail now, is that the intellectual training of a boy does not interest him enough in most cases to give him subjects of conversation out of school. We give some few new interests by means of societies, literary, antiquarian or scientific. But the main problem is to make every boy see that the work he does in school is connected with his life, that it is meant to open to him the shut doors around him through which he may go out into all the highways and byways of the world.

Do school games produce the man who regards games as the main business of life? We must emphasise "main." It is certain that they do encourage Englishmen to devote some part of their working life to healthy exercise--and few, I suppose, would wish them to do otherwise.

The Indian civilian does not make a worse judge for playing polo, nor is Benin worse administered since golf-links were laid out there. But there are men who never outgrow the boyish narrowness of view that games are the things that matter most. These remain the ruling pa.s.sion, because no stronger pa.s.sion comes to drive it out. For this the schools must bear part of the blame, for they have not taught clearly enough that athletics are a means but not an end. Not all the blame, for surely some must rest on a society which tolerates the idler, and has no reproach for the man who says "I live only for hunting and golf." And here as elsewhere, I believe we are judged more by a few failures than by many successes. We can all of us in our experience recall many an honest athlete who is now doing splendid service to Church or State, doughty curates, self-sacrificing doctors, soldiers who are real leaders of men. When they became men they put away childish things, but they have not forgotten what they owe to the discipline of their boyish games. Games are not the first thing in life for them now, but they have no doubt that they can do their work better from an occasional afternoon's play. They see things in their right proportion, because they know that the first thing is to have a job and do it well. If we can teach boys to begin to understand that truth while they are at school, we shall have exorcised the bogey of athleticism. I should expect to find (though I do not know) that the authorities at Osborne and Dartmouth do not need to bother their minds about that bogey. Their boys play games with all a sailor's heartiness, but their ambition is not to be a first-cla.s.s athlete, but to be a first-cla.s.s sailor, and the games take their proper place. It may be desirable to reduce the time devoted to games, though as I have said I doubt if there is any need to do so, except for cricket. It may be that we should give more time to handicraft, or military drill. But these things will not change the spirit. What we need to do is to make clearer the object of education in which athletics form a part, that there may be more sense of reality in the boy's school time, more understanding that he is at school to fit himself manfully and capably to play his part on the wider stage of life.

[Footnote 1: C.W. Saleeby, _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pp. 62, 63.]

IX

THE USE OF LEISURE

By J. H. BADLEY

Head Master of Bedales School

To teach a sensible use of leisure, healthy both for mind and body, is by no means the least important part of education. Nor is it by any means the least pressing, or the least difficult, of school problems.

"Loafing" at times that have no recognised duties a.s.signed them, is generally a sign of slackness in work and play as well; and if we do not find occupation for thoughts and hands, the rhyme tells us who will. The devils of cruelty and uncleanness will be ready to enter the empty house, and fill it at least with unwholesome talk, and thoughtless if not ill-natured "ragging." Yet work and games, whatever keenness we arouse and encourage in these, cannot fill a boy's whole time and thoughts--or, if they do, his life, whether he is student or athlete, or even the occasional combination of both, is still a narrow one and likely to get narrower as years go by. If life to the uneducated means a soulless round of labour varied by the public-house and the "pictures," so to the half-educated it is apt, except in war time, to mean the office and the club, with interests that do not go beyond golf and motoring and bridge. If our lives are emptier and our interests narrower than they need be, it is partly the result of a narrow and unsatisfying education, which leaves half our powers undeveloped and interests untouched, and too often only succeeds in giving us a distaste for those which it touches. Both for the sake of the present, therefore, to avoid the dangers of unfilled leisure, and still more for the sake of the future, the wise schoolmaster does all he can to foster, in addition to keenness in the regular work and games, interests, both individual and social, of other kinds as well.

He will make opportunities for various handicrafts: he will try to stimulate lines of investigation not arranged for in the cla.s.s-routine; he will encourage the formation of societies both for discussion and active pursuits, for instruction and entertainment. It is the purpose of this essay to suggest what, along these lines, is possible in the school.

But the reasons so far given for the encouragement of leisure-time interests are mainly negative. In order to realise to the full the importance of this side of education, we must look rather at their positive value. From whichever point of view one looks at it, physical, intellectual, or social, this value is not small. Some of these interests contribute directly to health in being outdoor pursuits; and these, in not letting games furnish the only motive and means of exercise, can help to establish habits and motives of no little help in later life, when games are no longer easy to keep up.

And even in the years when the call of games is strongest, some rivalry of other outdoor pursuits is useful as a preventive of absorption in athleticism, easily carried to excess at school so as to shut out finer interests and influences. It was a consciousness of this that led Captain Scott, in the letter written in those last hours among the Antarctic snows, thinking of his boy at home, and the education that he wished for him, to write: "Make the boy interested in natural history, if you can; it is better than games: they encourage it in some schools."

Besides health--and health, we must remember, is not only a bodily matter, but depends on mental as well as bodily activity, and on the enjoyment of the activity that comes from its being mainly voluntary--the pursuits that we are considering can do much to train skill of various kinds. The cla.s.s-work represents the minimum that we expect a boy to know; but there is much that necessarily lies outside it of hardly less value. Many a boy learns as much from the hobby on which he spends his free time as from the work he does in cla.s.s.

Sometimes, indeed, such a free-time hobby reveals the bent that might otherwise have gone undiscovered, and determines the choice of a special line of work for the future career.

But the chief value of such interests lies rather in their influence on other work, and on the general development of character. In giving scope for many kinds of skill, they are helping the intellectual training; and however ready we may be to pay lip-service to the principle of learning by doing, and to admit the educational importance of the hand in brain-development, in most of our school work we still ignore these things, so far as any practical application of them is concerned. One is sometimes tempted to wonder if in the future there may not be so complete a reaction from our present ideas and methods as to make what are now regarded as mere hobbies the main matter of education, and to relegate much of the present school course, as the writing of verses has already been relegated, to the category of optional side-shows. At any rate these free-time interests can supply a very useful stimulus to much of the routine work. In these a boy may find himself for the first time, and discover, despite his experience in cla.s.s, that he is no fool. Or at least he may find there a centre of interest, otherwise lacking, round which other interests can group, and to which knowledge obtained in various cla.s.s-subjects can attach itself, and so get for him a meaning and a use. And further, if we do not make the mistake of narrowing the range of choice, and allow, at any rate at first, a succession of interests, the very range and variety of these pursuits is an antidote against the tendency to early specialisation, encouraged by scholars.h.i.+p and entrance examinations, which is one of the dangers against which we need to be on our guard. If, therefore, without mere dissipation of interest, we can widen the range of mental activities and encourage, by discussions, essays, lectures and so forth, reading round and outside the subjects dealt with in cla.s.s, this is all to the good.

And all this has a social as well as an individual aspect. The meetings for the purposes just mentioned, as well as those for entertainment, have, like games, a real educational value, and do much to cement the comrades.h.i.+p of common interests and common aims that is one of the best things school has to give. And not only among those of the same age. These are things in which the example and influence of the older are particularly helpful to the younger. They can become, like the games, and perhaps to an even greater extent, one of the interests that help to bind together past and present members of a school. And they afford an opportunity for masters to meet boys on a more personal and friendly footing, and to get the mutual knowledge and respect which are all-important if education is to be, in Thring's definition, a transmission of life through the living to the living. That the organisation of leisure-time pursuits is of the utmost help to the school as well as to the boy, is the unanimous verdict of the schools in which it has long been a tradition. The master who has had charge, for the past five-and-twenty years, of this organisation in one such school writes that there they consider such pursuits as the very life-blood of the school, and the only rational method of maintaining discipline.

If what has here been said is admitted, it is plain that to teach, by every means in our power, the use of leisure, is one of the most important things a school has to do. We might, therefore, turn at once to the consideration of the various means for such teaching that experience has shown to be practicable in the school. But before doing so, there is yet another reason, the most far-reaching of all, to be urged for regarding this as a side of education fully as necessary, at the present time above all, as those sides that none would question. Great as is the direct and immediate value of the interests and occupations thus to be encouraged, their indirect influence is more valuable still, if they teach not only handiness and adaptiveness, but also call forth initiative and individuality, and so help to develop the complete and many-sided human personality which is the crown and purpose of education as of life. We do not now think of education as merely book-learning, nor even as concerned only with mind and body, or only as fitting preparation for skilled work and cultured leisure; but rather as the development of the whole human being, with all his possibilities, interests, and motives, as well as powers, his feelings and imagination no less than reason and will. In a word, education is training for life, with all that this connotes, and, as we learn to live only by living, must be thought of not merely as preparation for life, but as a life itself. Plainly, if we give it a meaning as wide as this, a great part of education lies outside the school, in the influences of the home surroundings and, after school, of occupation and the whole social environment. But during the school years--and they are the most impressionable of all--it is the school life that is for most the chief formative influence; and now more necessarily so than ever. When, a few generations back, life was still, in the main, life in the country, and most things were still made at home or in the village, the most important part of education lay, except for a few, outside the school. Now it is the other way.

Town life, the replacing of home-made by factory-made goods, the disappearance of the best part of home life before the demands of industry on the one side and the growth of luxury on the other--these things are signs of a tendency that has swept away most of the practical home-education, and thrown it all upon the school. And the schools have even yet hardly realised the full meaning of this change.

Instead of having to provide only a part of education--the specially intellectual and, in the public schools at least, the physical side--we have now to think of the whole nature of the growing boy or girl, and, by the environment and the occupations we provide, to appeal to interests and motives, and give occasion for the right use of powers, that may otherwise be undeveloped or misused. A school cannot now consist merely of cla.s.s-rooms and playing fields. This is recognised by the addition of laboratories and workshops, gymnasium, swimming-bath, lecture-hall, museum, art-school, music-rooms--all now essentials of a day school as much as of a boarding school. But many of these things are still only partially made use of, and are apt to be regarded rather as ornamental excrescences, to be used by the few who have a special bent that way, at an extra charge, than as an integral part of education for all. All the interests and means of training that they represent, and others as well, need to be brought more into the daily routine; to some extent in place of the too exclusively literary, or at least bookish, training, that has. .h.i.therto been the staple of education, but more, perhaps, since it is not possible to include in the regular curriculum _all_ that is of value, as optional subjects and free-time occupations, though organised as part of the school course. For it is not only the few who already know their bent who need opportunity to be made for following it, but rather those who will not discover their powers without practice, or their interests without suggestion or encouragement. In this respect the war has brought opportunities of no little value to the school, not only in the absorbing interest in the war itself and the desire for knowledge and readiness for effort that it awakens, but also in the demands it has made for practical work of many kinds that boys and girls can do, and the lessons of service that it has taught. Work on the land and in the shops, for those whose school time is already too short, is a curtailment, only to be made as a last resort, of the kind of learning they will have no other opportunity to acquire; but it gives to the public schoolboy the feeling of reality that most of his school work lacks. Such opportunities of doing what is seen to be productive and necessary work, are, like the making of things for those at the front, and for the wounded, both in themselves and in the motives that inspire them, a valuable part of education that should not be forgotten when the present need for them is over.

If, then, by the fullest use of leisure occupations, we are, like Canning, to call in a new world to redress the balance of the old, what, in actual practice, is possible in the school? For an answer to this question one has only to see what is done in the schools of the Society of Friends, in which the use of leisure in these ways has always been a strongly marked feature long before it was taken up by others, with a tradition, indeed, in the older schools, of sixty or a hundred years of acc.u.mulated experience behind it. Instead of singling out, for description of the use it makes of leisure, any one school in which it might be supposed that there were special conditions present, it will be best to enumerate the various activities that have long been practised in several different schools. Of those selected for the purpose not all are connected with the Society of Friends; some are for boys and some for girls only, and some co-educational; but alike in being boarding schools, and in keeping their boys and girls from an early age until, at the end of their school life, they go on to the university or to their business or professional training. A few of the pursuits to be mentioned are obviously more appropriate for boys, others for girls; but the differences between those that are followed in schools for boys and those for girls are surprisingly small, and to give separate lists would only involve much needless repet.i.tion.

For the sake of clearness, it may be well to group the various activities according as they are mainly outdoor or indoor occupations.

In the outdoor group, games and sports need not be included, as being, in most cases, as much a part of the ordinary school course as the cla.s.s-work. They only become free-time pursuits, in the sense here intended, in so far as practice for them is optional, and a large amount of free time spent upon it. Thus, for example, while swimming is, or should be, compulsory for all, and a regular time found for it in the school time-table, it is entirely a voluntary matter to go in, as in many schools a large number do, for the tests of the Royal Humane Society. Apart from games, the outdoor pursuit that occupies the largest place is probably, in most of these schools, some branch of natural history (which may perhaps be held to include geology as well as the study of plant and animal life)--not so much by the making of collections, though this usually serves as a beginning, as by the keeping of diaries, notes of observations ill.u.s.trated by drawings and photographs, and experimental work, in connection, perhaps, with work done in science cla.s.ses. Similarly in the study of archaeology, visits to places of interest--there are always many old churches within reach, if not other buildings of equal interest--give matter for written notes as well as for drawings and photographs; and in at least one case, the fact that the neighbourhood is rich in Roman remains has given opportunity, under the guidance of a keen cla.s.sical archaeologist, for the laying bare of more than one Roman villa, and for making interesting additions to the school museum. Besides their use in the service of other pursuits, sketching and photography also have many votaries for their own sake, though the former is usually more dependent on encouragement from above. Then there is gardening.

The tenure of a plot of ground is a joy to many children; and in the opinion of the writer, some experience, and some experimental work, in the growing of the most necessary food plants, as well as flowers, should form part of the education of all at a certain stage, whether in school time or in free time. For some, where the conditions are favourable, this can be extended to the care of fruit-trees, bees, poultry, and to some kinds of farm-work. The needs of war-time have brought something of this into many schools, to the real gain of education, now and later, if it can be retained, at least as a possibility of choice. So also with the care of the playing fields: the more that the work needed for a game is thrown upon the players themselves, the more does it contribute to education. And so too with constructive work of any kind that, with some help of suggestion or direction, is within the compa.s.s even of comparatively unskilled labour. A lengthy list could be given of things accomplished in this way, with an educational value all the greater for their practical purpose, from Ruskin's famous road down to the last field levelled and pavilion built or shed put up, by voluntary effort and in time found by the workers without encroaching on regular school work. And lastly, an outdoor occupation for free time which, in the earlier days of school life, we shall do well to encourage--both for its own value and the manifold interests that it encourages and lessons that it teaches, and also for its bearing on questions of national service that will remain to be answered after the war--is the wide range of activities comprised in scouting, undoubtedly one of the chief educational advances of our time. Whatever differences of views there may be on the wider questions of military service for national defence, and of making military training a specific part of education, few can deny that, with a view to national service of _some_ kind, the use made by Sir Robert Baden-Powell of instincts natural to all at a particular stage of growth, by an organisation which can be kept entirely free from the failings of militarism, is a development of the utmost educational, as well as national, value. If a school already develops, by other means, all the activities trained by scouting, and utilises in other ways the instincts and motives to which it makes appeal, there may be little or nothing to be gained by its adoption. But of how many schools can this be said? For the rest it undoubtedly offers a way of doing, at the stage of growth for which it is best fitted, much of what, if there is any truth in what has been urged above, is, from the point of view of individual development, of greater importance now than ever before. If, in addition to this, it will go far to solve the problem of national service, and to remove the need for conscription in the continental form, there is every reason to give it a prominent place in the activities encouraged, if not insisted upon, at school.

Let us now turn to the group of indoor pursuits, which, if they have not quite so direct a bearing upon health, are in another way even more important; for a large part of leisure, even at school and still more, in all probability, afterwards, falls at times and under conditions that make some indoor occupation necessary, and the waste or misuse of these times is likely to be greater. In this group certain things need be no more than mentioned, as either applying, at any given time, only to a few picked individuals, or else likely, in the majority of schools, to be made a regular part of the school routine; such as, of the one kind, the editing of the school magazine, or members.h.i.+p of the school fire-brigade with the frequent practices that this involves; or, of the other kind, special gymnastics (including such things as boxing and fencing), or lectures and concerts and other entertainments given to the school, as distinguished from those given by members of it, the preparation for which gives occupation beforehand to much of their leisure. Of the free-time pursuits more properly so called, in which many can share, the commonest are probably the various school societies. Most schools have one or more debating societies, with meetings at regular intervals throughout the winter terms, for the discussion of questions of general or special interest; the difficulty being more often to find a subject than speakers. Many also have Essay or Literary societies, for reading papers and discussing the books and writers treated of, which involve a considerable amount of previous reading.

Besides these most schools now have similar societies, in addition to those for carrying out the field-work already mentioned, for holding lectures and discussions on various branches of science. Some also have a musical society for gaining fuller acquaintance with the works of the chief composers; and a dramatic society for reading and acting plays as occasion allows. Allied with these interests is voluntary laboratory work in some branch of science, both by individuals and groups, which may not unfairly be dignified with the name of research, even if it is only the re-discovery of what has been worked out by others. In some schools special provision is made for encouraging optional work of this kind in astronomy; in others it may be wireless telegraphy, or the use of vegetable dyes, and so forth. In some of this work even the younger can take part; and of the many reasons for its encouragement not the least is the wide field it opens to individual initiative.

Besides all these more specially intellectual interests, and of still wider appeal, various kinds of handicrafts afford abundant occupation, some for the longer and some also for the shorter periods of leisure.

Wood-work, carving, work in metal or leather, pottery, basket-plaiting, bookbinding, needlework and embroidery, knitting, netting hammocks and so forth--the only limit to the number of such crafts is the limit to the knowledge and energy of those who can start and direct them, and to the s.p.a.ce available, as some can only be carried on in rooms reserved for such work. So, too, with various kinds of art-work--drawing, modelling, lettering, making posters for entertainments; or music, both individual and concerted, orchestra practice, part-singing, glee-clubs and so on; or morrice and other folk-dances, now happily being widely revived. And lastly there are indoor games, some of which, like chess (cards are probably best confined to the sanatorium), have a high training value, and others afford a useful occasional outlet to high spirits; and entertainments got up by some society, or perhaps by a single form, for the rest of the "house" or school, such as a concert or play or even an occasional fancy-dress dance, the preparation for which will happily occupy free time for as long beforehand as is allowed, and does much to encourage ingenuity, especially if strict conditions are imposed that all that is required must be made for the purpose and not bought.

But by this time many questions will have arisen in the mind of the reader, especially if much of what has been enumerated lies outside his school experience; questions that demand an immediate answer. Even if all this free-time work and play may have a certain value, how can time be found for it without encroaching on the regular work and games which, after all, must be the main concern of the school? And even supposing that time could be found for both, will not all this voluntary activity and pleasure-work absorb the interests and energies that ought to be given to the more serious, if less attractive, studies? And again, how can all this wide range of activity be controlled? Who is going to teach, or look after, all these things?

How are they to be kept going? Are they, or any of them, to be compulsory, or is a boy or girl to be allowed to do anything or nothing, or to flit, b.u.t.terfly-fas.h.i.+on, from one to another, learning nothing except to fritter away energy in endless mental dissipation?

Only a brief answer can be attempted to these questions. It might indeed be given in the answer to the old puzzle, _solvitur ambulando_; for, given a clear aim and common sense, most difficulties in education disappear as one goes on. It is, in fact, a question of educational values; that settled, matters of detail soon settle themselves. From what has been said above, it will be plain that the writer is one of those who think these voluntary free-time activities of such value that they are willing, in order to make room for them, to jettison some of the traditions that have gathered about school work and games. Let the morning hours be reserved for the severer kinds of cla.s.s work, but let the afternoons be mainly given to active pursuits of other kinds as well as games; and on one of them at least let expeditions in pursuit of the outdoor interests above outlined be an alternative to the games chosen by the keen players, or compulsory for those without an equivalent hobby. Then, too, in the evenings let preparation be varied with handicrafts (the result will be an intellectual gain rather than loss), and time be reserved for the meetings of societies or for entertainments. It may be well to say here that while every one of the things above mentioned is an actual fact in some school, in none, probably, are all attempted at once, nor, of course, do any of their members take up many of these pursuits at the same time; but it is surprising how much can be done by treating a part of some afternoons and evenings in the week as leisure time for these pursuits. When this is done, there is usually a particular member of the Staff whose task it is, either permanently or in rotation, to see what is being done, to give suggestions and encouragement to beginners, and to see, if necessary, that freedom does not mean disorder. Naturally, in the case of handicrafts, others also take part as actual teachers or at least as fellow-workers; but though it is generally helpful for members of the Staff to join in all such work and in discussions, the aim of it all is likely to be more fully attained if as much as possible of the organisation and direction is left to members of the school. So, too, with the question of compulsion. Not all have so strong a bent as to know what they want to do, and sometimes interests come only by actual experience. It is well, therefore, to have an understanding that, at certain times, all must follow some one of the possible occupations; but the more it can be left to the individual choice, and the wider the range of choice, the better for the purpose we have in view. Not all country rambles need have a definite object, nor all time be actively filled that might be left for reading. But without a definite object few will make a habit of walking, or learn to know and love the country; and not all, especially where there is a multiplicity of other interests, will form the habit of reading unless regular times are set apart for it, times when books must be read and not merely magazines. How far freedom of change from one occupation to another is desirable is largely an individual question. The younger need to try many things before they can settle down to one, in order to discover their real interests and to exercise their faculties. But it is well to have a strict limit to the number of things that may be taken up at once, and a fixed length of time to be given to each before it may be replaced by another. With the older, this, as a rule, settles itself, on the one hand by growing interest in one or two directions, and on the other by the increasing demands of the school work and approaching examinations. It is the younger, therefore, who need most encouragement. In schools where, as said above, there is a long tradition of such free-time work, there is the less need for anything beyond suggestions and general supervision. Yet even in these it is found helpful to have, at the beginning of the year, talks upon the subject by some member of the Staff, or an old boy perhaps who has devoted himself to some particular branch, in order to explain what can be done and the standard to be maintained. In several of them prizes are offered every year, either by the school or by the Old Scholars' a.s.sociation or by individual old scholars, for good work in many of the categories mentioned above; these in some schools being the only prizes given. In some cases they are money prizes, as in certain kinds of work the tools or materials used are costly; in others the prizes are not given to individuals, but in the form of a "trophy" to the form or "house" that shows up the best record for the term or year; in others, again, the need of prizes is not felt, but interest and keenness to maintain a good standard are kept up by the public show, held each year, of work done in leisure time. And, it may be added, a great stimulus in itself is the wider freedom that can be earned by those who follow certain branches of study, in the way, for instance, of expeditions, on foot or by bicycle, to places where they can be pursued.

But with all this there is, of course, the danger that so much energy may be absorbed in these pursuits that little is left for the ordinary school work. In some few cases, where there is a strong natural bent and the free-time pursuit is a serious object of study, this may be a thing not to be discouraged, as it will provide the truest means of education. But in most cases care is needed to see that the due proportion is kept, and especially that mere amus.e.m.e.nt is not allowed to occupy the whole of leisure, still less to distract thought and effort from serious work. By making entertainments, which might, if too frequent or too elaborate, have this effect, dependent on the school work being well done, this danger can be minimised. For the rest, if free-time work is found to take the first place in a boy's thoughts, may not this be a sign that the ordinary curriculum and methods of teaching are capable of improvement, and that more use of these natural interests may with advantage be made in cla.s.s time as well? Not that work of any kind can be all pleasure or always outwardly interesting; there is plenty of hard spade-work needed in any study seriously followed, in cla.s.s or out. But if in education keenness is the first essential and personality the final aim, interest and freedom must have a larger place than is usually allowed them in the cla.s.s-room if the real education is not to centre in the self-chosen and self-directed pursuits of leisure.

One word more. It must not be supposed that all that has been described is only possible, or only needed, in the boarding school or only for a specially leisured cla.s.s. If, as has here been urged, these activities and interests form an integral part of education in its fullest meaning, they are just as necessary in the day school and cannot be left to chance and the home to see to. And of all the needed reforms in elementary education, amongst the most needed is the greater utilisation of the active interests and instincts of children, in a training that would have a wider outlook and a closer bearing, through practical experience, both on the work of life and the use of leisure.

X

PREPARATION FOR PRACTICAL LIFE

By SIR J. D. McCLURE

Head Master of Mill Hill School

I

It is, perhaps, the chief glory of the Ideal Commonwealth that each and every member thereof is found in his right place. His profession is also his vocation; in it is his pride; through it he attains to the _joie de vivre_; by it he makes his contribution to the happiness of his fellows and to the welfare and progress of the State. The contemplation of the Ideal, however, would seem to be nature's anodyne for experience of the Actual. In practical life, all attempts, however earnest and continuous, to realise this ideal are frustrated by one or more of many difficulties; and though the Millennium follows hard upon Armageddon, we cannot a.s.sume that in the period vaguely known as "after the war" these difficulties will be fewer in number or less in magnitude. Some of the more obvious may be briefly considered.

In theory, every child is "good for something"; in practice, all efforts to discover for what some children are good prove unavailing.

The napkin may be shaken never so vigorously, but the talent remains hidden. In every school there are many honest fellows who seem to have no decided bent in any direction, and who would probably do equally well, or equally badly, in any one of half-a-dozen different employments. Some of these boys are steady, reliable, not unduly averse from labour, willing--even anxious--to be guided and to carry out instructions, yet are quite unable to manifest a preference for any one kind of work.

Others, again, show real enthusiasm for a business or profession, but do not possess those qualities which are essential to success therein; yet they are allowed to follow their supposed bent, and spend the priceless years of adolescence in the achievement of costly failure.

Many a promising mechanic has been spoiled by the ill-considered attempts to make a pa.s.sable engineer; and the annals of every profession abound in parallel instances of misdirected zeal. In saying this, however, one would not wish to undervalue enthusiasm, nor to deny that it sometimes reveals or develops latent and unsuspected talents.

The life-work of many is determined largely, if not entirely, by what may be termed family considerations. There is room for a boy in the business of his father or some other relative. The fitness of the boy for the particular employment is not, as a rule, seriously considered; it is held, perhaps, to be sufficiently proved by the fact that he is his father's son. He is more likely to be called upon to recognise the special dispensations of a beneficent Providence on his behalf. It is natural that a man should wish the fruits of his labour to benefit his family in the first instance, at any rate; and the desire to set his children well on the road of life's journey seems entirely laudable.

It is easy to hold what others have won, to build on foundations which others have laid, and to do this with all their experience and goodwill to aid him. Hence when the father retires he has the solid satisfaction of knowing that

Resigned unto the Heavenly Will, His son keeps on the business still.

It cannot be denied that this policy is often successful; but it is equally undeniable that it is directly responsible for the presence of many incompetent men in positions which none but the most competent should occupy. There are many long-established firms hastening to decay because even they are not strong enough to withstand the disastrous consequences of successive infusions of new (and young) blood.

Many, too, are deterred from undertaking congenial work by reason of the inadequate income to be derived therefrom, and the unsatisfactory prospects which it presents. Let it suffice to mention the teaching profession, which fails to attract in any considerable numbers the right kind of men and women. A large proportion of its members did not become teachers from deliberate choice, but, having failed in their attempt to secure other employment, were forced to betake themselves to the ever-open portals of the great Refuge for the Dest.i.tute, and become teachers (or, at least, become cla.s.sified as such). True there are a few "prizes" in the profession, and to some of the _rude donati_ the Church holds out a helping hand; but the lay members cannot look forward even to the "congenial gloom of a Colonial Bishopric."

Others, again, are attracted to employments (for which they may have no special apt.i.tude) by the large salaries or profits which are to be earned therein, often with but little trouble or previous training--or so, at least, they believe. The idea of vocation is quite obscured, and a man's occupation is in effect the shortest distance from poverty which he cannot endure, to wealth and leisure which he may not know how to use.

It frequently happens, too, that a young man is unable to afford either the time or the expense necessary to qualify for the profession which he desires to enter, and for which he is well adapted by his talents and temperament. Not a few prefer in such circ.u.mstances to "play for safety," and secure a post in the Civil Service.

It is plain from such considerations as these that all attempts to realise the Utopian ideal must needs be, for the present at least, but very partially successful. Politics are not the only sphere in which "action is one long second-best." Even if it were possible at the present time to train each youth for that calling which his own gifts and temperament, or the reasoned judgment of his parents, selected as his life-work, it is very far from certain that he would ultimately find himself engaged therein. English inst.i.tutions are largely based on the doctrine of individual liberty, and those statutes which establish or safeguard individual rights are not unjustly regarded as the "bulwarks of the Const.i.tution." But the inalienable right of a father to choose a profession for his son, or of the son to choose one for himself, is often exercised without any real inquiry into the conditions of success in the profession selected. Hence the frequent complaints about the "overcrowding of the professions" either in certain localities or in the country at large. The Bar affords a glaring example. "There be many which are bred unto the law, yet is the law not bread unto them." The number of recruits which any one branch of industry requires in a single year is not constant, and, in some cases, is subject to great fluctuations; yet there are few or no statistics available for the guidance of those who are specially concerned with that branch, or who are considering the desirability of entering it. The establishment of Employment Exchanges is a tacit admission of the need of such statistics, and--though less certainly--of the duty of the Government to provide them. Yet even if they were provided it seems beyond dispute that, in the absence of strong pressure or compulsion from the State, the choice of individuals would not always be in accordance with the national needs.

The entry to certain professions--for instance that of medicine--is most properly safeguarded by regulations and restrictions imposed by bodies to which the State has delegated certain powers and duties. It may happen that in one of these professions the number of members is greatly in excess, or falls far short of the national requirements; yet neither State nor Professional Council has power to refuse admission to any duly qualified candidate, or to compel certain selected people to undergo the training necessary for qualification.