MODERN WAY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 2, 5 March 1947, Page 7

MODERN WAY

ENGLISH EXPERIMENT EDUCATION OF CHILDREN An outstanding example of Britain’s modern outlook on education is provided by two State schools at Northallerton and Scalby, in northeastern England. Completed four years ago, when the issue of the war was still in the balance and air raids on England were heavy, these schools, are run on revolutionary lines in State education. The results achieved during the next few years will be closely studied by the education authorities. If they are satisfactory other schools will be set up on the same lines. Eight hundred boys and girls from the hills and valleys, the farmlands and woodlands of the area of Yorkshire, came to the little towns of Northallerton and Scalby to learn in the midst of battle, how to take their part in shaping a world where war would have no place.

These two modern and beautifully equipped secondary schools aim to give these children a sense of freedom and responsibility to fit them as citizens. Here are no school bells or whistles, no lining up, no roll calls, no rules, no punishments, no overcrowding and no examinations. The children are taught to think for themselves, and to rely on themselves, and the only discipline they are subjected to is the question each child is taught to ask himself or herself: “Does my behaviour interfere with anyone else?” And you will find at Northallerton and Scalby almost no bad behaviour. You will find no tired teachers, no frightened or timid children, and no, dull pupils. The boys and girls (the schools are co-educational) walk about and talk to each other and to their teachers without any sign of restraint or embarrassment and without rowdiness or disorder. The classrooms are full of eager, bright-eyed youngsters who' - find arithmetic and geography good fun.

They are taught to regard their books, not as dull and dreary texts to be learnt by heart, but as keys to knowledge, and the school library is a popular place. Thirteen-year-old children at these schools are well used to handling and using books in order to find the answers to their own questions. All the subjects taught are connected with real things, so that every lesson has a practical meaning. The schools have their own weather stations, made by the children themselves; geography and science are learnt by taking readings of air and ground temperatures, humidity, wind direction, and atmospheric pressure from the weather stations and by the modelling of contour maps with clay. Arithmetic is taught by the keeping of accounts of the cost and profit of the school pigs, poultry, and rabbits, and biology lessons are linked with the care and breeding of these animals.

Boys and girls work side by side everywhere except in the wood and metal room, which is the boys’ province. This room is, in fact, the school supply base, for it is' here that the boys make all the garden tools for work in the many acres of garden that each school possesses—anw very well and stoutly they are made. No spades and forks unable to stand up to hard digging come from this workshop.' Here, too, the boys make poultry runs for the school chickens, geese and ducks; mend the canteen kettles and saucepans; make fencing for the cricket field, stands for the girls’ needlework display, and even theodolites for field surveying. The needleroom and the kitchens are not “for girls only.” If the boys want to learn sewing and cookery no one stops them, and many of them ask for lessons in these subjects. As much as possible the children are taught to “do things for others,” and during the war years there was a pai t of the school where the boys made toys and the girls made clothes for toddlers in a war nursery. This form of social service is continuing, although the war nursery has become a nursery school for workers’ children.

Many of these children come from isolated parts of Yorkshire moors, fxom farms and cottages miles from a bus route or a railway station. They come to school for the day, travelling in special buses from collecting points in a 12-mile radius. Northallerton serves 19 villages and Scalby many hamlets and farms. Their mid-day meal at school, well balanced and satisfying, costs them 4|d.