A Dominie in Doubt Part 21

And yet, nineteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ gave the world a New Psychology . . . and none of us have tried to apply it to our souls.

VIII.

Mac came across a vulgar word in a composition he was correcting to-night, and it seemed to alarm him. He could not understand why I laughed, and I explained to him that I liked vulgarity.

I remember when a high-minded mother came into my cla.s.s-room in Hampstead. The highest cla.s.s was writing essays. On her asking what the subject was, I replied that each pupil had a different subject.

She walked round and looked over their shoulders. I saw the lady's eyebrows go up as she read t.i.tles such as these:--"I Grow Forty Feet high in One Night"; "I Edit the Greenland _Morning Frost_" (the news this boy gave was delightful); "I Interview Noah for the _Daily Mail_"

(photos on back page). She nodded approvingly when she read the t.i.tles of the more serious essays. Then I saw her adjust her spectacles in great haste; she was looking over Muriel's shoulder.

"Mr. Neill," she gasped, "do you think this a suitable subject for a girl?"

I glanced at the t.i.tle; it was; "Autobiography of My Nose."

"Er--what's wrong with it?" I said falteringly.

"It lends itself too readily to vulgarity," she said.

I picked up the book, and together we read the opening words.

"When first I began to run . . . ."

The high-minded lady left the room hurriedly.

I loved that cla.s.s. Often I wish that I had kept their essays. One day we had a five minute essay on the subject: Waiting for My Cue.

Lawrence wrote of standing on the steps in a cold sweat of fear. He had only five words to say--"The carriage waits, my lord," but he had never acted before. His cue was: "Ho! Who comes here?"

"At last," he wrote, "I heard the fateful words: 'Ho! Who comes here?' I could not move; I stood trembling on the stairs.

"'Get on, you idiot!' whispered the stage manager savagely, but still I could not move.

"'Ho! Who comes here?' repeated the fool on the stage. Still I could not move a step.

"'Ho! Who comes here?'

"Suddenly I became aware of a disturbance in the auditorium. The noise increased, and then I heard the agonising words: 'Fire! Fire!' Panic followed, and cries of terror rang out.

"But I . . . I jumped on the stage and cried: 'Hurrah!

Hoo-blinking-rah!' It was the happiest moment of my life."

Sydney took a different line. Her cue was the sound of a stage kiss.

Boldly she walked on, and the stage lovers glared at her, for she arrived before the kiss was finished or rather properly begun. The audience chuckled. At the next performance she determined to be less punctual. She heard the smack of the kiss, but she did not move. As she waited she heard the audience roaring with laughter, and then she realised that the poor lovers had been standing kissing each other for a full five minutes.

I must write to these dear old children to ask if they kept their essays.

Duncan was in to-night, and he told a school story that was new to me.

In a certain council school it was the custom for teachers to write down on the blackboard any instructions they might have for the janitor before they left at night. One night he came in and read the words: Find the L.C.M.

"Good gracious!" he growled, "has that dam thing gone and got lost again?"

That version was new to me. My own version ran thus:--

Little Willie is doing his home lessons, and he asks his father to help him with a sum. The father takes the slate in his hand and reads the words: Find the G.C.M.

"Good heavens!" he cries, "haven't they found that blamed thing yet?

They were hunting for it when I was at school."

I think both versions are very good.

I have a strong Montessori complex. I find myself being critical of her system, and I have often wondered why. I used to think that my dislike of Montessori was a projection: I disliked a lady who raved about Montessori, and I fancied that I had transferred my dislike of the lady to poor Montessori. But now I refuse to accept that explanation; it is not good enough for me; there must be something deeper. I shall try to discover that something deeper.

When I first read Montessori's books I said to myself: "She is devoid of humour." This to me suggests a limitation in art, and I feel that Montessori is always a scientist but never an artist. Her system is highly intellectual, but sadly lacking in emotionalism. This is seen in her att.i.tude to phantasy. She would probably argue that phantasy is bad for a child, but it is a fact that much of a child's life is lived in phantasy. Phantasy is a means of gratifying an unfulfilled wish.

The kitchen-maid in her day-dream marries a prince, and, as Maurice Nicoll says in his _Dream Psychology_, to destroy her phantasy without putting something in its place is dangerous.

To a child, as to Cinderella, phantasy is a means of overcoming reality. Father bullies Willie and the boy retires into a day-dream world where he becomes an all-powerful person . . . hence the fairy tales of giants (fathers) killed by little Jacks. In later life Willie takes to drink or identifies himself with the hero of a cinema drama.

The extreme form of phantasy is insanity, where the patient completely goes over to the unreal world and becomes the Queen of the World. And it might be objected that phantasying is the first stage of insanity.

Yes, but it is the last stage of poetry. Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, one of the most glorious poems in the language, is pure phantasy. I rather fear that one day a grown-up Montessori child will prove conclusively that the feet of Maud did not, when they touched the meadows, leave the daisies rosy.

No, the Montessori world is too scientific for me; it is too orderly, too didactic. The name "didactic apparatus" frightens me.

I quote a sentence from _The New Children_, by Mrs. Radice.

"'Per carita! Get up at once!' she (Montessori) has exclaimed before now to a conscientious teacher found dishevelled on the ground with a cla.s.s of little Bolshevists sitting on top of her."

In heaven's name, I ask, why get up? Life is more than meat, and education is more than matching colours and fitting cylinders into holes.

Montessori was thinking of the conscious mind of the child when she evolved her system, and the apparatus does not satisfy the whole of the child's unconscious mind. Noise is suppressed in a Montessori school, but every child should be allowed to make a noise, for noise means power to him, and he will use it only as long as it means power to him.

I have watched Norman MacMunn's war orphans at Tiptree Hall at work.

MacMunn, the author of _A Path to Freedom in the School_, did not say "Hus.h.!.+"; his boys filled the room with noisy talk as they worked, and never have I seen children do more work with so much joy.

The Montessori teacher, when she finds that Jimmy is interfering with the work of Alice, segregates the bad Jimmy, and treats him as a sick person. But the right thing to do is to solve Jimmy's problem as well as Alice's. What is behind Jimmy's aggressiveness? Jimmy does not know, nor does the Montessori teacher, because she has been trained in the psychology of the conscious only.

Another reason why I am not wholly on the side of Montessori is, I fancy, that her religious att.i.tude repels me. She is a church woman; she has a definite idea of right and wrong. Thus, although she allows children freedom to choose their own occupations, she allows them no freedom to challenge adult morality. But for a child to accept a ready-made code of morals is dangerous; education in morality is a thousand times more important than intellectual education with a didactic apparatus.

To-night Duncan came in, and as usual we talked education. I took up the subject of punishment, and condemned it on the ground that it treats effect instead of cause. After a little persuasion Duncan seemed inclined to agree with me.

"I see what you mean," he said, "but what I say is that if you abolish punishment you must also abolish reward."

"Why not?" I said. "The case against rewards is just as simple. A child should do a lesson for the joy of doing it. Milton certainly did not write _Paradise Lost_ for the five pounds he got for it."