The Press. Saturday, June 5, 1920. Is it Well with the Child?

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 16853, 5 June 1920, Page 8

The Press. Saturday, June 5, 1920. Is it Well with the Child?

' A philosopher's life is spent ill dis- ' covering" that, of the half-dozen ' truths ho knew when a child, such an 'on© is a lie, as the world states it in ' set terms; nryl then after a weary 'lapse of years, and plenty of.hard 'thinking, it becomes a truth again ' after all, as he happens to newly con'sider it and view it in a different re'lation with the others: and so he re- ' states it, to the confusion of some'body elso in good time." There is natter for reflection in Browning's ;vords, more especially in these days of reconstruction, as the easy phrase goes, ivhen we are so frequently and emphatically assured that all things hare jecome new. But we make the quota:ion here with a more limited ion. For it happens to sum up with xrint and felicity the line of thought leveloped in the disturbing article rhich the current number of "The 'imes" Educational Supplement prints n its front page. A disturbing article ■ 0 call it advisedly, for its very tifle is

. challenge. Most of us are m the lood just now to shrink from tho old nd belaud the new, and more especilly inclined to congratulate ourselves hat in matters educational we are linking rapidly free of the fetters of he past. And here is "The Times" Educational Supplement, not the least nlightened organ of advanced opinion, evoting two long columns to the Fallacies of the New Teaching"!

It- is true that the said article is the antribution of a correspondent and not n editorial. But that hardly Eaves the ituation. If the editor were disinlined to endorse its disconcerting docrine, would he have given it so promicnt a place? And what makes maters worse is that it is frankly reactionry in tone, and backs its heterodox pinions witK copious citations from the Titings of that most mordant of •onists, Samuel Butler. "Some men can pass through academies unscathed, but they ore very few, and in the main tho academic influence is a baleful onfe, whether exerted in a university or a school," is a bold ixadox to quote in days when wo arc I demanding more prolonged school aining and a university for every eduitional district, and it is no loss dislieting to be solemnly instructed* iat "Intellectual over-indulgence is the mogt gratuitous and disgraceful form whicli excess can take, nor is there any the consequences of which are more disastrous." Yet we meet ith both assertions in this poccant arL'le, and are even assured that our hools and universities alike aro guilty

'"tho true radical sin of being in too great a hurry and of believing in short cuts too soon."

X>ut these Butlonan paradoxes are llv introduced to reinforce and drive >me the main contention, and it is the ain contention itself which is so conunding. For the New Learning, lat admirable intellectual organon, the :-rnier cri of the educational progresres, a thing eo sacrosanct that it innot be mentioned in print without 10 glory of capital initial letters, is ;sailed, and assailed not for its weakjss but for its overpowering strength. ; has, so it is contended, been all too iccessful, and its undoubted success is s most dangerous symptom. Eegardss of their depressing doom, its little ictims begin with play and end with icntal exhaustion. Learning by doing

the watchword of the hour. The upil is no longer taught; ho is led on i learn. Roto work and rulo of lumb, those comfortable processes, ave gone to the scrap-heap—so at least

; is alleged. Lessons have become so ieflfwint that cy<jh tJi© ffcbr^nT

yields to their dangerous scduction, and has his interest stimulated into such fierce activity that "without real- " isingwhat he is doing'' he is led into hard intellectual work. The school has ceased to be the place of learned leisure its name suggested to the trencrations that retained a tincture of Greek. Facility in the tonpics, so it is claimed, is now acquired by tho arduous dircct method which admits of no pause in the rush of fresh impressions. Boys and crirls aro provided with extract of chronicle and rcccrd and construct their own histories. They arc no longer asked to learn where London is, but are supplied with, or construct, regional survevs "to form the basis of physio- " graphical laws reached by a process "of logical inference."' They are "intrigued,'' as tho phrase goes, with mathematics, and have come to regard it as "a perpetual feast of nectar'd !< sweets where no crude surfeit reigns."

Beauty itself is no longer left to worl 1 its perfect work in peace, but "tb "much-vaunted lesson in Appreciation' is followed by some device of dead]; '1 r l efficiency to sccure the largest obtain 'j able yield of immediato "use" from tb 1 poem, or picture, or play that has beci the subject of the demonstration. An< | even this is not the end. "Civics anc I " politic?, self-government, and demo 1 " c-racy in the schools aro tho fashion 1 " ablo cries. Boys now have the addi " tional worry of legislation and judicature thrust upon them." Every boj liis own prefect is tho goal we are rush- [ ing to. In plai.-i fact wo aro applying to our schools tho methods of our factories, and straining every nervo in pupil and teacher alike to secure maximum output. "The baneful technique "of efficiency" is riding us like a nighthag. In the very midst of our fountain of joy in the latest educational birth of the age 3 the serpent of over-prossuro is once uioro rearing his ugly crest. No doubt our only too carefully instructed teachers aro more or less learned in tho rudiments of school hygiene, can "distinguish measles from smallpox, or "a louse from a bug," and may even be capable of reeling off tho mystic eht-mical formula of the "toxin of " fatigue.'' But what profits it, if teachers and taught alike are caught in the wheels of the machine, or, to change tho figure, have become so intoxicated with "the glory of getting " oil" that there is no time left to 'pause in? There is, of course, overstatement here, but none the less thero is food for thought. Most of us have been at school, and many of us have tried our hands at teaching. Wo know by sad experience that when even pressure was kept up the whole day long, when thero were no wholsome breaks of slackness or idleness, or even—regrettable as the admission may bo—of indiscipline, we reached tho end of our toils somewhat jaded. Thero is a point of view from which tho "drunken Helots" of Lamb's famous essay may seem to have been happier in their care-free life than tho "young Spartans." But perhaps after all we are disquieting our souls unduly. "Tho great heart of England, as tho " politicians say," wo aro handsomely conceded, "beat 3 true. It knows that " most people get along very nicely " without much education; that they " are not many-sided, and that thero j "is no Tfeason why they should be." And there still is, so this exasperating critic consolingly informs us, in boys, if not in girls, an unexhausted fund of idleness and inattention. "They will allow us to teach them what they " want," and; as their fathers did before them, "ignore the much greater "portion which they do not want; and "so by our failures the sanity of the " human race may be preserved.'' After all it seems that there is no urgent need to add a new clause to our Litanies petitioning for deliverance from premature intellectual activity. Tho salutary bocn of dulness has not even yet been banished from our schools. Nature, with her tiresome insistence on tho strenuous business of bodily growth, has so fs;r seen to that.